Pender remained silent until the sarcophagus had gone through. “No. Don’t much care for those. Didn’t help much yesterday anyway. When those big fuckers came out, if Mesiter Itharin hadn’t come through for us—the Leynar won that fight, not the Priests.”
“Only by numbers. It would have been even worse without the Priests there. You can’t seriously view yesterday as binary. Russ died”—
“The Grand Master,” Pender said, his words a sharp gouge.
“Yeah.” Grenn emphasized what he said next: “The dead guy whose body we just sent back to Karhaal. But his sacrifice will save countless lives. Already has.”
“Sacrifice.” The Warden spoke like the word itself, or at least its meaning, offended him. “I supported him because I support the Seat, and he was a sight better than Manifeld or”—he lowered his voice when a passerby cricked their neck looking toward him—“that trickster who calls herself the Undertaker. But if you think his death did anything other than postpone the inevitable, if it did anything at all, you’re just as deluded as the rest of them.”
“What does that mean?” asked Grenn, shooting a sidelong glare at Pender. “Who are the rest?”
Pender waited half a dozen seconds before he answered. “Ninety percent of my problems are because of Russell Hollowman, and he didn’t even have the courage to stick around and help solve them.” He shook his head. “No. The world is better rid of him.”
“You would do to watch your language,” said Grenn. Rage flowed into his words. The only man he’d called a role model had died. This fucker next to him didn’t deserve to stand in the same place, to speak his name.
“There will be a lot of changes,” Pender said while the last of the procession passed by. He turned toward Grenn. “Much will happen in a short time. Karhaal has become misguided, both in its leadership and way. Unacceptable, the king having his hand in our business or dealings at all, and the Grand Master’s absence over the last twenty years is precisely what allowed it. The Order requires a new leadership, a new way of doing things. One that will lead us to prosperity, not death and stagnation and misery—for that’s what Arnin offers under current standing.”
“A new way is what the Priests are all about, what everyone is about. No one wants to stay in the same place forever.”
“You fought in that battle just yesterday, boy. I’ll say it again: it wasn’t the Priests who won that for us. We were losing until the Leynar showed up, and thank the Goddess they did. Karhaal’s teachings have warped. Plenty share that view. In the coming days, there may be a time when you’ll have to make a choice. I hope you don’t make the wrong one, and that those who need you can count on you when that time comes.” Pender looked pointedly at Grenn. “Can they?”
His gut told him he wanted nothing to do with even an inkling of what Pender meant. “I will always do what I feel is right. And I won’t allow you to talk badly of Russ. Or the Order. He was too important—to all of us—and we require a united front now more than ever.”
Pender huffed. “And how will you stop me? Knock me upside the head?” His cheeks puckered, darkening the lines next to his eyes. He didn’t give Grenn time to answer.
“I do not like that man,” Barius had said while they watched the old Warden leave before the convocation. Uneasiness that extended beyond the world’s new order rent Grenn’s body.
“Regix pas roxe,” those around him intoned, pulling him from his thoughts.
An old Karlian stood at the front of the hall. Her voice echoed against the oak walls in humble dismissal. One-thousand-forty-three alabaster sheets lay flat against the marbled floor. Willa stayed seated next to Grenn at the back of the hall while those gathered made to leave.
“Wish I’d seen the one he did back in Karhaal,” said Grenn.
“He wouldn’t want you to h—hold that against yourself,” Willa said. A bandage knotted around her right thigh. Blood had seeped through despite Xenia’s care.
Grenn sighed. With Russ’s last words still fresh on his mind, he said, “I need to tell ya something,” then he told her about what Russ had given him. The riddle had run through his mind almost incessantly since last night’s dinner. It lifted him at least a little to talk about it.
“He told me he wasn’t going after it, regardless of what happened. Didn’t have the mind to stop him.” He wished he’d gotten to ask more. “If I’d have put coin on him or me yesterday, it would have been him every time.” Yet for Russ to pass this secret to him wrote a different story, changed the odds—though not enough to be in Grenn’s favor. What did that make him to Russ? His apprentice? Was it worth trying to define what they’d been to each other, if anything other than friends?
“And then we’d have lost the secret forever.” Willa drummed on the pouch that slung over her shoulder. “I shouldn’t have left him so casually, just before everything.”
“You’re just saying that now. What would you have said otherwise?”
Willa didn’t answer for several seconds, then she shook her head. “I don’t know. How many people get to meet their heroes?”
In Grenn’s ear, a news show marched through its points. The Battle at Tanvarn Flats still held the preponderance of air time. “Despite the scepter and Karhaal not responding to solicitations for comment,” a news agent said, “it’s not hard to imagine what happened during the battle that broke out between the forces of Light and darkness. In restricted aerial footage of the event, granted to us by a collective of brave journalists who don’t let censorship keep them from performing their godly work”—
Grenn whistled a pitch at his mech friend: “Xenia, news program.”
The droid swooped from overhead and hung his tablet in front of his face. She still amazed him, a comfort after everything else that had happened. On the device, a recording of yesterday played. A crawl ran down the right side of the screen, and next to it, a headline read in Plainari, ‘Grand Master and Order skirmish with Unknown Demon Forces.’ It jumped ahead in the fight to when the demons had melted while retreating to the forest, and the camera zoomed in and paused on a solitary figure, who had sunk to his knees amidst the chaos. A woman laid in his arms, and when the man looked toward the sky, the image froze.
A new headline appeared: ‘Russell Hollowman Sighted at Demon Invasion Point – Karlian Grand Master Reported Dead.’
“What this means for Coroth is not yet determined, and with silence from the powers-that-be, we advocate avoiding conjecture and hearsay. As always, we’ll keep you updated with the latest from around the world, and remember: if we didn’t report it, it might not be news.”
Grenn and Willa made their way to a room off the foyer. Burth, who’d waited outside the sanctuary during the convocation—“Don’t get into trouble,” Willa had told him—sat on Willa’s lap, passing a ball bearing Xenia had given him between his paws.
“I can’t believe he’d say that to you,” said Willa. Grenn had told her about Pender. “I heard M’keth with my own ears”—both of which flicked—“and I’ve never wished I could forget an—anything more, the way his voice alone seemed to chase Russ and Kendra from the cave.” Willa shook her head. Honest emotion washed her face and words. “There’s no place in this world for such divisiveness, especially now.”
Grenn hadn’t pushed her on it when she resisted a few days before. Her insistence on leaving him out of her head and Kendra’s departure had left him lost, a mood he would never become used to, but one he imagined he would experience often in the coming days. “Pieces tumble, ya know?”
Willa nodded. Her gaze skirted the floor in front of her.
A knock sounded on the door, and it opened before either of them answered. Kendra entered, a hand over her eyes. “I’m not looking, not looking.” As all the Leynars who’d attended the service had done, she wore only her robe and cloak.
“We can see that,” Grenn said, annoyed, doing all he could to not roll his eyes.
Kendra peeped between her fingers and lowered her han
d, smirking. “They told me I’d find you here.”
“Fucking?” Willa asked.
“No, that was my presupposition, knowing Karlians the way I do.” Kendra looked at Burth. “First things first.” From the pouch that hung around her left thigh, she pulled half a dozen stalks of celery and squatted gracefully, gesturing for the serren to come to her. “I’ve got something for you.”
Burth hopped to her without question, and Kendra whispered to him in a language that Grenn couldn’t understand. The serren responded in kind and took the bundle from her. The stalks still had their leaves, but Kendra had cut each from the bunch.
“Something to remember me by,” she said and pet the beast on his head. Burth bowed at his waist, holding the vegetables in both arms. He turned, and as he walked toward Willa, he bit into the first with a quiet crunch.
Grenn struggled to understand the significance of what he’d just seen, whether he’d witnessed a strange rite. He turned his attention to the woman who had been Russ’s friend and confidante and played at augur. “You’re Russ’s secret-keeper, aren’t you?”
Her gaze, a gorgeous electric blue, bore into him. “Was.”
“Then I guess”—he realized he had no idea what the fuck anything meant. “I mean, are we bound together now? Like that.”
Kendra shook her head, and she centered her weight on both feet when she stood. “The secret-keeper is no longer bound by the Law if the person for whom they keep dies.”
“That’s—good?” said Grenn, unsure and hating it. “Just tell me your half, and I—I can go get it.”
Kendra chuckled. “Russ was too smart for that, my dear. He invoked a magnitude of transference, or something close as to not mind the difference. Once again, he’s super-lucky I’m here, elsewise we might have lost this knowledge.” Her skin shined against the sunlight that streamed in from an upper window. “Though I have to ask: what did he expect you to do? Just come and find me?”
“Something like that. He didn’t tell me much other than the words. Really didn’t want to go into that fight with this.” Grenn paused. “So—what?—it’s just done?”
“Not quite,” Kendra said, and her gaze flicked between him and Willa. “Russell passed his secret on, so for the Law to reenact, I must pass mine on, too. The person with the secret”—she gestured to Grenn—“must have balance with their keeper. I can tell someone else the other half, just not you.”
“Who then?” Grenn said, anger edging into his voice.
“There’s her.” Kendra nodded toward Willa.
Grenn followed her gaze, and again he felt stupid for not thinking of that first. But that shouldn’t be surprising. You don’t really know either of them. “Will the secret work? Russ and you were close. I mean, do I need someone like that?”
“Wow,” said Willa, her voice flat.
Grenn raised his right hand. “Come on, you get what I mean.”
“I don’t know who else to tell,” Kendra said. She sounded so cool. “And I’m not leaving with this still in my head. If it’s not her, it will be someone.” She looked to Willa. “Do you mind?”
Willa shook her head.
Kendra gestured toward a corner of the room and said, “Over here, then.” There, they spoke in hushed tones, and Grenn suspected they’d switched to a made-up language—even if he’d wanted to, he couldn’t have understood what they said.
While Kendra spoke at one point, an unsettling magnetism spanned between him and the Priest. She peered at him over Kendra’s head while the Leynar spoke to her, and Grenn looked away for the purple of her eyes—So pretty, he couldn’t help but think.
“It’s tricky, though.” A smile played across Kendra’s lips. Their speech had returned to Plainari. “Sort of a joke I made—never imagined I’d have to use my half—so it’s the same word in Old Magornian.” She spoke a final few syllables and paused. “Shit, I hope you got that.”
Willa nodded her head to a tempo, her lips moving soundlessly. She smiled, and her mouth opened more into her right cheek than her left. “Yeah, I can hear it. Goddess, I can see it too.” Her gaze darted here and there over Kendra’s head. “But where’s the start?”
Kendra pointed to Grenn. “That’s his job. He gets you to where my—your—half picks up.” She stepped toward him. Her eyes saw more than they should have. “I sensed it when he passed it to you. I’ll never understand why he did it, but that’s his business.” She almost looked sorry for him. “I don’t know how close you were to Russ, but he was a weird one. Took me too long to see past that.”
Grenn’s mind tracked to minutes before the battle. “Happened to me, too.” What Russ told him had given him focus in that fucked-up time. “The secret, I mean. Like I’d stepped into an ocean and”—
“Didn’t know how to swim,” Kendra finished for him. “Yeah. Russ was pretty good at making people feel like that. Probably because he lived it for so long. He told me once that Lillie—she was the first person he didn’t have to fake it with.” She paused, and a faint smile crossed her lips. “I’m glad he found her. He deserved it.”
She loved him.
Willa settled herself next to Grenn. Burth sat on the table behind her still munching his celery, clicking intermittently in response to Xenia.
“Did—did Russ know, do you think,” said Grenn, “that he would die yesterday?”
Kendra’s gaze dropped to the ground, and she looked small, even for herself. She sighed. “He wasn’t stupid. Far from it. He probably knew what he was doing, what he was getting into. That’s the thing about the Grand Masters: they always seem to make the right choice, even during the worst of times. It’s a bit enviable. And a bit bothersome.”
A tablet dinged.
“Is that me?” Willa asked. She rifled through her bag.
Kendra suddenly held a device in her left hand. “No. I’ve—got to go.”
“Already?” Grenn asked. He didn’t want her to leave, perhaps just to extend the illusion that normality could exist if someone remained to guide him. Them.
Kendra swiped across her display and tapped a few dozen hurried gestures. “Yeah.” Her pouch expanded to swallow her tablet. “The world doesn’t stop spinning just because Russell Hollowman is no longer in it.”
“Well, wait,” said Willa. She hopped up and wrapped her arms around the Leynar’s waist. Kendra spoke a few syllables that sounded like variations of ‘m’ and ‘n’ next to her cheek. Willa responded in kind. They giggled.
Kendra rubbed Willa’s lower back, observing her. Grenn figured Kendra always did that with people—paid them such attention, trying to discern what they thought, maybe. The effect had unsettled him. Maybe he should study people more closely.
“Take care of him,” Kendra said. “They’re a stubborn bunch, but they’re pretty good at what they do.”
She and Willa walked to the door arm-in-arm and parted when they crossed the threshold. Grenn followed.
“Just like that?” he said.
The Leynar stopped and half-turned. She shrugged. “This isn’t over. Both of you know it can’t be. The demons”—her gaze became distant—“I’ve never seen that happen before. Russ has bought us time, but how much?”
“Where are yuh—you going to go?” asked Willa. “The Order could use your help, especially now. Someone like you could do us a real service.”
“Someone like me.” Kendra shook her head. Her eyelids hung heavy beneath her brow. “I want no more part in this. I’m better at other things. People—that’s my game. There are places I’ve not visited in a while. Gonna make a stop in on them first, and then who knows. I’ve considered mucking around a bit with Time magic, but”—she tutted—“the gods don’t like us misappropriating Their gifts, yadda, yadda. I hear a certain apothecary’s making inroads, though. Might end up there eventually.” She held up her left hand. On her middle finger flashed a ring, the one the king had given to Russ. “Won’t be a problem, regardless.”
“We might see you around, th
en,” said Grenn.
Kendra’s smile fell away. “Maybe.”
They watched her go.
The words Russ had told him passed through Grenn’s mind, and they carried him toward a plateau far to the north, almost past the meridian, to a land he’d never seen by his own sight.
Willa picked up Burth, who nibbled on his fourth stalk of celery. She petted him while he ate.
Xenia flew near Grenn’s cheek. “Are you sad?”
Grenn shook his head. “I’m fine,” he whistled, then he spoke to Willa. “What in the hells do we do now? I feel like—I don’t know. Like a great weight’s upon my shoulders.” He rubbed his neck.
“I know what you mean.” Willa looked at him. “If no one else, now I have to teach you how to fight.”
Grenn remembered a girl at the convocation who’d cried through almost the whole thing. He’d have to find a way to see her later. Passa maybe, or Tiana if she’d still meet with him—anybody to take his mind off the last few days. He sighed. “Shut up.”
About the Author
Philip C. Anderson is a science fiction and fantasy writer. He published his debut work, The Demon’s Call, in 2019. Anderson spent his early years pursuing the sciences and fine arts, and now, when he isn’t writing, he spends his leisure time gaming, making art, and reading. He grew up in southern California, where he still resides.
Thank You
If you enjoyed this book, I encourage you to review it at any of the websites where it’s sold or listed. Thank you so much for joining me on this adventure.
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