“Are you confessing right now?” Nori-Rin asked.
“No!” the High King said. “Heavens, no. I’m trying to tell you I’ve planted myself in this society—to spy on the social-climbing bastards, you see. But they’ve found me out, obviously. Betrayed me, like they’ve betrayed the Order. Like they’re going to betray the Saeinfinae and the multiverse in a very short time, I assure you,” he said. “The number of High and Low Monarchs in the group—you’d be astounded. The information I have? You can’t even fathom. I know things your little Council has kept from you. I may know more than even they do about who’s behind these murders.”
“You’re behind these murders,” Svahta said at Nori-Rin’s back.
The High King laughed again. “What hound holds his own leash? I obey orders, Guardian Muiraighaille. The same as you. Would you like to know whose?”
“Why are you telling us this?” Nori-Rin asked, leaning back but keeping her niqwar in place. “Not that I’m not grateful, of course. Keeps the blood off my armour and the teeth out of my hair. Saves on bathing in general. But the question begs: why?”
It was like a shroud had been ripped from the High King’s face. All at once, he went savage. The change was a complete transformation—like a sweet wolf’s whiskered snout rumpling to reveal a mouthful of curved white teeth perfect for ripping out windpipes. The monster had always been there, but now, it was on display. The High King looked like a vicious animal, caged against the wall. His haunting grey eyes were wild.
“Because I want this society extinguished,” he spat. “They are a scourge on this multiverse. And now, they’ve led you here. They’ve set me up as their patsy for all of it.”
“And why should we care what happens to you, you dried up tit?”
“Because they’ve set you up, too, child. As a mark,” he said. He leaned forward and let his lips graze Nori-Rin’s cheek as he spoke nervous words into her skin, breath steaming up against it. “See through their lies. You are smarter than them. I am no threat to you. Spare me. Spare me, and I’ll make certain they don’t lay a finger on you. I’ll help you guarantee their downfall instead.”
Silence swelled between them. After a moment, Nori-Rin stepped back and looked the High King over. His neck was bleeding profusely, his chest and the front of his white skirt now wet with blood. He remained still, though, not running, not fighting, not calling for help. His chest heaved, and his blood pounded through his veins.
“Take the information I’m going to give you to the Saeinfinae,” he said. “Without my name attached to it for the time being, if you would. While I’m certain the others already suspect me, I don’t want them to find out I’m working with the crown. I’d like to remain breathing for the foreseeable future.”
“We should apprehend you,” Nori-Rin said. “Take you to the Council and let them yowl you. Get a red ledger. Maybe even a finger if you mouth off.”
“I wouldn’t talk.”
Svahta let loose a dark laugh from behind them. “People always talk. They just need the right incentive.”
“I wouldn’t,” the High King insisted. “I swear it. I won’t say a word. Not even about the massacre these people are planning.”
Massacre? Nori-Rin stared at him, but he didn’t flinch. Not a finger. Not an eyebrow. Not an inch. He looked serious. A massacre of what? she caught herself thinking, then frowned. She knew better. Rats said anything to get out of a corner. How do we even know he’s telling the truth?
“I have your attention then,” he said. “Yes, a massacre. Several Realms are in the crosshairs. Billions upon billions upon billions of lives have targets on their backs. Including the Infinite Royal Family. You think this is just about your little Guardians? No. This goes beyond what you can even fathom. This is the fall of the multiverse. This is the fall of the Infinity.”
“The fall a’ the…” Svahta trailed off. She stepped around Nori-Rin to stand directly in front of the High King, two heads shorter than him but unfailingly intimidating. And all she had to do was stand there. Nori-Rin stared at her rigid spine, at the steel backplate covering her green knee-length battle asa, at her hand, firm on her flail. It seemed to unnerve the High King, judging by how his pulse kicked up a tick. “The fall a’ the Infinity? They’re tryin’ to cripple the multiverse?”
“Destroy it, darling,” the High King said. “Obliterate it to nothing and rebuild. So here’s my offer to you: release me and allow me to continue my membership within this society. My reputation among them may be reparable yet. Anything I hear, I’ll pass on to you. You keep my name out of your subsequent reports and your forces do nothing to suggest to this society that you know their next moves—because if you do anything to compromise my identity or my safety before this society is abolished—if you do anything that may end in the deaths of my people—then I will feed your names and the names of everyone you love to my masters and their servants,” he said. “If I die, so do you. We fall together.”
“You’re not in a position to threaten anythin’,” Svahta warned him.
“I’m in the position to threaten everything.”
It shocked Nori-Rin when Svahta loosened her grip on her flail and the tension unraveled from her shoulders, but before the High King could so much as breathe a sigh of relief, Svahta grabbed him by the jaw. Her nails cut through his skin, blood welling along her fingernails. She jerked his head down and made him look her in the eyes.
“What’s the name a’ this group?” she ordered.
The High King didn’t try to break free. “The Society of the Watchers,” he said. “I’ll take you straight to them.”
Part Four
This City of Death
CALL ME BROTHER SHAME
_______________________________
There exists no good, nor exists there any evil. The universe does confine itself to absolutes. The universe simply does; it is man who applies his own meanings in order to feel less like the slobbering beast and more like the master with his leather crop.
excerpt from a lakeside speech in the Realm of One Tree
THE MULTITUDINOUS REALM OF BLACK WATERS
THE LADRIS RIVER, DOWNSTREAM FROM ODD’S PORT,
GANDER PROVINCE, SOUTHEASTERN NORMANY
Draven flexed his left gauntlet just to watch its sharp plates shift over one another. As he made a fist, the plates over his knuckles jutted out in four sharp blades. He imagined burying them into the face of another demon like the guard who owned this gauntlet would have done without hesitation. It would rip through skin and muscle and stab into bone, he imagined, but it wouldn’t kill. The thought made him queasy.
For hours, his stomach had been in knots, though not because of what they’d discovered at the caves, as horrific as that had been, but because of the fight between Kinrae and Artysaedra. He loved Artysaedra—he did—but he loved his brother, too, and the sight of him in so much pain hurt.
“Everything okay?”
Jolted, Draven ripped his eyes from his gauntlet. Across the small clearing they were camped in, Staatvelter was huddled over a steaming pot, Beaker begging for scraps at his side. Staatvelter stared at Draven, both of his thick eyebrows raised. His hands stilled in the middle of carving an onion.
“I’m fine,” Draven said after he unglued his tongue from the roof of his dry mouth. His eyes were heavy, fatigue weighing down his body like his armour. He should have slept the night prior. Now, he regretted skipping out.
“You’ve been quiet since the caves,” Staatvelter said, and continued cutting up his onion. “What we saw was tough, I know, but it might get worse. I just want to make sure you’re prepared for something like that. It’s okay if you’re not—”
“I’m fine, Staatvelter,” Draven ground out at him. “Patronize someone else, would you? I’ve given less than half a thought to what we saw. Worry about your soup or whatever it is you’re making. It reeks.”
Staatvelter glowered over the steam churning from the pot. “I’m trying to be civ
il here. Would it kill you to return the favour?”
“Kill? No. Seriously maim? Yes.”
“Suit yourself then, Your Highness.” With that, Staatvelter went back to cutting up his onion with harsh motions.
He’d been in a sour mood for the last few hours. Simple inquiries like what time of day it was or when they would rest were met with acidic responses. Draven should have known better than to have engaged him: Staatvelter was always crabby when he was tired. It was something Draven remembered clearly from too many long nights spent in his lab, the two of them hunched over his worktable, snapping over petty things like why Draven had decided to bed a noble at the very man’s engagement party or why Staatvelter insisted on growing that hideous beard of his. As those memories resurfaced, Draven’s mood darkened even further.
Breaking off his friendship with Staatvelter had devastated him. He didn’t like to remember how close they’d been, because then he had to remember the months when they hadn’t spoken at all. Too many times a joke had come to his mind, dying on his tongue the second he’d realized the room was empty. Too many times had he seen something amusing in Lutana and been halfway through composing a letter to Staatvelter about it before he’d remembered he couldn’t. Too many times had he accidentally pulled up a second stool to his worktable. Too many times had his mother criticized him and he’d needed Staatvelter to vent to. Too many times had he needed a friend and not had one, all because Staatvelter had thrown it away.
Draven cast the thoughts aside, forcing his attention to the clearing they were sitting in instead.
They’d made camp for the night along a wide forest of alder trees on the bank of a rushing black river, but not long after doing so, they’d discovered the ink-black water held only rotting fish and so they’d started other dinner preparations. Artysaedra and Kinrae had disappeared to gather firewood after Staatvelter had ordered them to get it done and get along, and he’d been largely ignoring Draven in the meantime. Underneath the rush of the river, the crackle of campfire, and the gurgle of boiling water, Draven could make out his siblings’ footsteps, dragging through a bed of rotting leaves almost a mile out. To be more precise, he could hear the shuffle-drag of Artysaedra’s footsteps. It was in the silence between them that Draven imagined his light-footed brother’s steps.
At the thought of his brother, Draven could see Kinrae’s devastated face at the caves all over again. His throat clenched. There had been tears in his brother’s eyes. Draven had needed to hold him back from their sister, Kinrae’s angry shouts cracking. Thinking about it now, it took Draven aback.
Kinrae hadn’t cried since he was a child, not since the death of the wild rabbit he’d caught in the mountain forests and named Ser White. Out of all Draven’s fragmented, half-forgotten memories from his childhood, that one remained clear. His brother had raised the rabbit for years, composing music for it, chasing it through the halls, trying to teach it the sigils of the High Houses from his lesson books. When the rabbit had died, Kinrae had curled over its body and shaken with gut-wrenching sobs until Draven had cradled the both of them to his chest.
It’s okay, he’d whispered to Kinrae. Ser White will go to the Golden Fields. We have to be happy for him.
Demons had to learn the ephemerality of life very early. For them, the death of everything around them was as certain as the flow of a river ever onward. Kinrae had cried the first time he’d come to that realization, and then he’d never cried about anything ever again.
That Draven had seen his brother brought to tears for the first time in thousands of years—it made his throat constrict. How badly did our sister hurt him to have done that?
But that wasn’t even the whole of it. Kinrae had never yelled or gotten violent like he had at the caves, not even when Draven had stolen that celestial begonia his brother had been given as a gift by another Realm, the one he’d planted in his little garden and watered diligently with lemon juice every day. He’d only asked Draven what experiment he’d performed with it the next morning, the faintest hint of sadness in his voice. His brother was a fortress disguised as silk. He took everything with gentle grace and sweet smiles or hid away until he could. He clenched his fists behind smoothed anger, and he ground his teeth behind grins. He never raised his voice. He never slung insults. He was proper—proper and kind and good.
But not for this.
Why didn’t you tell me? Draven wondered. Why didn’t you tell me you don’t want to be the crown prince, Kinrae?
Kinrae had never hinted once before that he resented being the eldest son and heir to the throne. He loved attending lessons and meetings. He waxed poetic about political philosophy and history. He left for suit fittings with smiles and walked parades with tenderness in his eyes. The fact Draven had assumed all these years that his brother was happy made him feel like an idiot. How blind was he to have overlooked something like this, for centuries? Had Kinrae had these feelings for centuries?
You didn’t tell me anything, he thought. I didn’t understand you were afraid of your future. Do I even know you at all?
Crestfallen, Draven watched Staatvelter prepare their supper. Staatvelter added to the boiling pot chopped tomatoes, chili powder, cubes of unpeeled potatoes, kidney beans, and even some slices of red bell pepper. When the flame beneath the pot fell low, Staatvelter reignited it with a flick of his fingers.
The smell of the soup—savory, sweet, a hint of spiciness—made Draven’s stomach growl. They’d eaten some hard cheese, dried fish, and hardtack after the caves as they’d trekked northeast in the darkness, but that was all. Draven hadn’t been able to stomach much of it anyway, but he was ravenous now. He wanted to fill his stomach and sleep. The time change was wearing down on him, making his eyes leaden. Staatvelter had told him a long time ago, long before they’d made camp, that day had ended in the Realm of the Infinite. It was around noon there now.
“What are you cooking?” he asked Staatvelter begrudgingly, unable to take the silence anymore. He almost expected Staatvelter to ignore him.
“The masters called it klavaban,” Staatvelter said without looking up. He stirred the pot. “Anavene for slave stew. We called it stechban.”
“Which means?”
“Shit stew.”
Draven raised an eyebrow. “I’m not sure you improved the name there, Staatvelter.”
“That wasn’t the point. Better to eat shit than be called a slave, my father used to say. I watched my mother make this all the time. She’d steal chili powder from the kitchens so that it wasn’t as bland for us. When I went with Master Elias—I’ve told you about him—I cooked for the other slaves. I’d take some of the liver and other scraps he wanted me to throw away and add it to the mix.”
Draven couldn’t think of anything to say to that.
With a sigh, he pictured the sack he’d left in the ether and reached for it. His arm disappeared up to the elbow in the air, fingers gripping a solid weight. He pulled the bag out and rummaged, his hand coming out with a few tendrils of leafy greens, plucked from the plant he’d stowed. He cleared his throat and held them out toward Staatvelter, who looked confused.
“Faegeroot,” Draven said. “It restores energy when ingested. Add them to the stew. We’ll need it.”
The confusion on Staatvelter’s face gave way to understanding. Then his mouth thinned into a line. “Thank—”
“Don’t mention it. Ever. Please.”
“Fine.”
Staatvelter came over to take the greens and went back to cooking. Boughs overhead creaked with a cold gust of wind. Draven stared into the dark forest and wondered if he’d made a mistake offering the faegeroot. It wasn’t for Staatvelter, he told himself. It was for the good of the group. Staatvelter was still his enemy. He was still a bastard who had ruined Draven’s trust.
Draven didn’t know what his sister saw in the man: a scruffy ex-slave-cum-Guardian with slanted eyes, a bird’s nest for hair, and an accent that sounded like it had gone twelve rounds with a
sack of rocks and lost. He was a man who jumped at unexpected sounds and had moments of whip-crack cruelty without warning. He was a man who could drink alcohol like water and fought like death was a prize to be won.
She sees the same thing you once saw in him, Draven thought immediately, which soured his mood. He was your best friend. The first real friend you’d ever made in your life. He didn’t care about your money or stained reputation. He cared about the nothing and the nobodies. He cared about you.
Then Staatvelter had gone and ruined it. It had been a cool spring afternoon. Draven had been euphoria-drunk off the invention of a new potion that would help the taker feel ether shifting around them for the purposes of learning reconjuring more easily, and then suddenly, the mood had turned. One second, he and Staatvelter had been laughing, and the next, they hadn’t. Draven still remembered the taste of Staatvelter’s tongue forced into his mouth, his legs wrapping around his waist, fuck me whispered in his ear. Draven had been too shocked to react, but as soon as he had managed to gather himself, he’d shoved Staatvelter back—knocking him across the tabletop of his lab station and shattering beakers.
They’d exchanged a lot of words after that. They’d screamed at each other. Staatvelter had punched him in the face. Draven could still remember the last thing Staatvelter had said to him while storming from the room. Those words echoed in his head.
“I hope he finds out about you sometime soon, Draven, and I hope he’s disgusted by you.”
After that, Draven had ordered the servants to keep Staatvelter out of his quarters. Indefinitely.
He was supposed to be my friend, Draven thought, but he didn’t want me. People never love the truth. They always love the version of you that suits the best version of themselves.
A Shard of Sea and Bone (Death of the Multiverse Book 1) Page 26
