The Last Sun

by K. D. Edwards

  Ciaran followed us to the tenth floor, where Lord Tower had arranged rooms.

  “You’re staying?” I asked him.

  “Lord Tower is paying me very well,” Ciaran said. He gave the Tower, who was standing behind us, a grave nod that was too respectful to be respectful.

  “How is it that you knew it was a lich?” I asked, in retrospect maybe a little suspiciously.

  Ciaran chewed on that. He said, finally, “It would be highly unproductive for you to suspect me of any involvement. Do you want my oath?”

  I blinked. Oaths weren’t small things, not to an Atlantean. “Godsdamn, Ciaran, how well is he paying you?”

  “We’re renegotiating,” Brand said. He glared at Lord Tower. “This is now a new job.”

  “Have I ever slighted you before, Brandon?” Lord Tower asked.

  Before Brand could count the fucking ways, or whatever else was coming out of his mouth, the elevator pinged and the doors opened.

  The Tower said, “I’ve had the staff prepare the entire floor for all of you. There’s a cold buffet in the living room if you want brunch, otherwise you should rest for an early dinner. We will make plans then.”

  After letting us know where Queenie and Max were, he excused himself and went in another direction. We headed to the common area, which was filled with plasma televisions, carpeting as soft as milk thistle, and plump leather chairs. Queenie and Max were watching a cooking show.

  Max’s face brightened. “You’re here!” he said, and ran around the couch. There was an awkward moment when he wasn’t sure if he could hug us. Brand solved the problem by putting him in a friendly headlock.

  Exhaustion swamped me. I must have lost a few seconds, because everyone was staring at me. Queenie gave Brand a worried look and bustled everyone toward the wet bar for a drink, to give us a moment alone.

  Brand said, “You need sleep. Come on, let’s find our rooms. This is the safest place in the city. Take advantage of it while it lasts.”

  Five minutes later, Brand literally put his foot on my ass and shoved me into an empty guest suite. The door slammed shut behind me.

  I stood in the middle of the room for a second, biting my nails, not knowing what to do. Then my teeth crunched on dirt wedged under my thumbnail. I decided to take a shower. After that, I collapsed into bed without dressing. My eyelids closed like a movie curtain, and I was asleep.

  I awoke many hours later, just before sunset. The bed sheet had been pulled over me, and clean clothes were folded on top of the duvet. I pawed through them and recognized an old pair of my blue jeans, and a gray-blue button-down shirt that Queenie said matched my eyes. Queenie. It made me smile to think of the Tower’s people descending on Half House to evacuate her and Max, only to have to cool their feet on the front steps while Queenie scuttled around packing overnight bags for Brand and me.

  My mood brightened even more when I saw my best pair of boots by the door.

  I dressed, pulled them on, and drummed the heels into place. I could feel the reassuring vibration of the recoil wards. I headed out to find the others.

  The Pac Bell was very privacy-conscious; each suite had its own hallway entrance, and no two entrances were in eyesight of another. Since I had only a dim idea where Brand had settled, I went to the common room, which people had to pass to get to the elevator.

  After a few minutes, I turned on the television set. I flipped the channel through two commercials and got a full-color shot of a New Atlantean street corner that looked as if a grenade had gone off. A red-spattered white sheet covered a body. The word spectre started scrolling across the bottom.

  I shut off the TV, left the common room, and randomly started knocking on doors. On the third room I tried, Queenie answered. More surprisingly, Addam was in the room, too. He stood by a bed stacked with half-opened packaging and shopping bags, wearing only boxers, with a pair of scissors in his hands.

  “I brought him clothes?” Queenie said to me. “That the Tower bought?”

  “I am half-naked, Hero,” Addam said. “And yet you have not taken your eyes off the scissors. Such a vigilant warrior prince.”

  “Thank you for noticing. And please tell Brand. So I’m guessing neither of you are ready to eat?”

  “I’ll see if things are ready, and you can help Addam clean up,” Queenie squeaked, and hurried past me. She was too flustered to even phrase it as a question.

  “I’m not really going to clean you up,” I told him after she left.

  “It might not be the chore you expect,” Addam said. He sat down, crossed his long legs, and showed me a stretch of abdomen.

  “How about I wait in the hallway while you clean yourself up?” I said, and shut the door behind me.

  When he opened the door again, he was wearing a white dress shirt and gray slacks. Whoever had bought the clothes had gotten his waist wrong; he had a good three inches bunched under the belt buckle. Of course, that belt buckle now had a million dollars’ worth of sigils strung through it.

  “I just realized it may be a while before I can return to my condo,” Addam said. “For now, I own neither toothbrush nor cereal bowl. It is a . . . clean feeling. Minimalist.”

  “That’s the spirit,” I said. “Don’t you have rooms at the Crusader Throne?”

  “Would it be wise to visit them?”

  “I suppose not,” I conceded. “Have you been in touch with your court at all?”

  “I had no choice, as it turned out. Lord Tower came by and reminded me that the moment I left Farstryke, my mother would have been able to sense me.” He grimaced. “She . . . monitors my well-being, one might say.”

  I remembered what Lady Justice had told me about the spells she’d placed on her children. She would, hypothetically, have been aware of the attack in the South Bridge tunnels. She would have been able to track Addam to Lord Tower’s building. “I’ve got this image in my head of her bursting through the wall like the Kool Aid pitcher.”

  Addam smiled. “Perhaps not so dramatic as that. Either way, Lord Tower suggested I contact my agents at the Crusader Throne, and have word passed along that I was fine, yet out of touch. Lord Tower felt it would buy us time.”

  “Good idea. And is there—?” I hesitated, knowing it was a hard subject for him. “Is there any news on Quinn? Or Christian?”

  “Christian is resting, but they have yet to identify the cause of his illness. Quinn is . . . asleep. Still asleep. It is kind of you to ask.”

  “I really think Quinn believed that he’ll be okay, Addam. He’s a seer. He’s gifted enough to see his path.”

  “That’s just it, though. From Quinn, I know now that there is no one true path. But Lord Tower has been in touch with Quinn’s doctors, and offered his own medical resources. He tells me Quinn is stable, and the doctors are confident. That will have to be enough, for now.”

  I changed the subject. “Are you hungry?”

  Addam’s smile returned, though slowly. “Ravenous. Lead on.”

  It turned out Addam knew this floor better than I did. Instead of the elevator, he guided me to the southwest corner, where the ceiling had been knocked out to allow for the installation of a sweeping stairway. As we climbed it, Addam fell behind. I glanced over my shoulder to catch him staring at my ass.

  He smiled at my raised eyebrows and caught up with me. “You are very handsome, Hero. May I admit something?”

  “You know, you flirted a lot less when you thought your life was in immediate danger.”

  He ignored me and continued with his thought. “I would like to admit I am worried you have a poor impression of me.”

  “Why would you say that?” I asked, stopping short.

  “I did not fight a spectre, as you and your Companion did.”

  “No, you just used Telekinesis to push bystanders from the line of fire. You pushed tripping hazards out of my way. And when I needed you to run for help, you went, without hesitation. You handled yourself well.”

  “So I impressed y
ou?”

  “You didn’t not impress me,” I said, a little nervous under the gravity of his stare.

  He squinted at the ceiling and nodded. “An acceptable start.”

  The dining floor was divided into several kitchens and many different salons, from intimate settings to a ballroom that spanned half a block. Servants guided us toward a room that faced the northern harbors, its windows cleverly designed to appear as a solid wall of glass. New Atlantis had gone several weeks without a Cleansing—the abrasive, toxic spell that periodically scoured away the worst of city pollution. The smog gave the sky a scorched appearance, almost pretty when viewed from the comfort of indoor air-conditioning.

  Lord Tower hadn’t arrived yet, but Brand was there. He was doing a circuit of the room, trying to find all the eavesdropping devices. There were already three wireless transmitters in his palm.

  “I’m not sure Lord Tower put those out as snacks,” I said.

  “He’s testing me. It’s fucking rude,” Brand said. He looked up and gave me a critical once-over. Whatever he saw made him nod. “You got some sleep. You look good.”

  “I agree,” Addam said, very politely.

  Brand gave Addam a look. Then he went over to the wet bar and put the listening devices into a bucket of crushed ice, which he then pounded with a beer bottle.

  When he was done, he popped the cap off the beer. He held it out to me while giving Addam a flat smile. “Appletini?”

  “A beer as well, if it pleases you, Lord Saint John,” Addam said.

  In the years since the fall of the Sun Throne, I’d had very, very few romantic interests. I was uncomfortable with people flirting with me, and usually let Brand growl them away. The fact that Brand was almost speculative with Addam’s interest was either really interesting or horribly unsettling.

  Not long after, the others entered. A servant announced that Lord Tower would be delayed and that we should begin dining without him. I approached the table, and Addam, in a move that seemed entirely uncho-reographed, stepped in front of me and pulled out my chair.

  I caught Max staring at Addam with a look of minor outrage. “Max,” I said carefully, while Addam sat in my right. More servants bled out of the woodwork and began swarming around us. “How’re you doing?”

  Max jerked into motion. He beat Brand to the table and slid into the chair on my other side. “I’m okay. How are you?”

  Brand grabbed the back of Max’s chair, lifted it up, and dropped it into the next place setting. He pulled another chair up for himself and sat down next to me.

  Max, undeterred, wiggled forward so that he could look at me down the table. He said, “I tried to fix the washing machine, Rune.”

  “That’s nice of you,” I said.

  “Um, it didn’t work. I broke a mop, too,” Max added.

  “Least of my problems,” I said.

  “Fascinating,” Ciaran said, speaking for the first time. His bright-red lips were pursed in Max’s direction.

  “Excuse me?” Max said.

  “You’re a Lovers. But your dreams make no sense. Just what on earth did they do to you?”

  Brand went very still. I went stiller. I said, to Ciaran, “Back down.”

  Ciaran blinked at me in surprise. “You misunderstand. The Lovers were wretched people. The dreams in that boy’s head are refreshingly kind. It’s pleasant to see a decent branch in that family.”

  “I . . . Oh,” Max said.

  He wasn’t sure whether to be pleased or mortified. But just the fact that he thought he ought to be pleased was, in a way, encouraging. I gave Ciaran a vague nod.

  The table was laid out with steaming platters and frosted pitchers. A single covered dish was placed at each setting. Each guest had his or her own attendant, and the attendants waited until the table was fully laden before whipping off the silver domes.

  “Are those . . . ?” Max asked curiously.

  “Sundrop fish,” Addam murmured with a pleased expression. “What a treat.”

  If I needed a reminder that Addam lived in an extraordinarily different tax bracket, it was right there. Treat was a poor way to describe a meal that I could never have afforded on my own.

  The Atlantean homeland was abandoned in the wake of the Atlantean World War, but some of the more-profitable fishing grounds had been reclaimed. Sundrops schooled in only one location: a treacherous reef about a dozen miles off old Atlantis. They were tiny, minnow-sized fish—mostly scale and bone with just a morsel of flesh—that generated their own heat and light. Even in death, the slivers of meat emitted a warm, molasses glow. I hadn’t tasted one in over twenty-five years, at my dead father’s holiday table.

  “Wow,” Brand said. “This’ll really give us the protein we need to fight monsters.”

  “I’m sure we could find something else for you, Brandon,” Lord Tower said as he glided into the room. He waved off a servant and went to the bar. “Perhaps something simpler to honor your human roots?”

  Brand waited until Lord Tower began to make a drink before saying, “You might want to use the other ice bucket. That one has bugs in it.”

  Lord Tower tilted his head down at the crushed listening devices. He tsked. “You only found three. I’m disappointed. Metaphorically speaking, the fourth you missed may get Rune harmed one day.”

  “I guess I’ll need to be more careful who I let near him, then,” Brand said stiffly.

  “So there’s this lich after us,” I said. “Tall guy. Rurik. He may or may not destroy the world.”

  “I do wish you wouldn’t personify it,” Lord Tower said, walking to the table. He took a seat at the head, which we’d left free for him. “The creature is not a he.”

  “He speaks, he dresses himself, and he’s pretty grabby with his hands,” I said. “That’s sentience.”

  “Can you tell us what happened now?” Max asked. “I was watching TV. There are . . . there’re all these stories. They say a lot of people died. Are you okay, Rune?”

  “I’m okay too,” Brand said, leaning forward and planting himself in Max’s line of sight.

  “This is what you need to know,” Lord Tower said. “A lich has been summoned. We suspect that one of its original purposes was to kidnap and hold Addam. I believe the summoner has since lost control of it. It used a very clever version of a tracking spell to find either Rune or Addam—it raised sentries in a grid pattern through the heart of New Atlantis.”

  “Like batteries,” I whispered. “Rurik used vulnerable people like batteries to power-up the most evil motherfucking radar system in history.”

  Lord Tower said, “If nothing else, this development reinforces one fact. The lich is not without limitations if it needs such tactics to track or trap you. That will do nicely for our next move.”

  I could see that the royal our rankled Brand, who wasn’t used to handing my well-being over to anyone else. He said, “How do we kill it?”

  Lord Tower said, “The easiest way to banish it is to find either the summoner or the summoning circle.”

  This was the first he’d mentioned the summoning circle, which made my antenna twinge. “I thought you wanted us to go after the summoner? Or, at least, to find all of the suspects, until we know for sure who was involved?”

  “Unfortunately, it appears that all of Addam’s business partners have vanished. Michael Saint Talbot’s rooms appear to have been the scene of an attack. Ashton Saint Gabriel was caught on a bodega surveillance camera one block from his house, running down an alley as if something was in pursuit. I have no intelligence on Geoffrey Saint Talbot.”

  “What about my sister?” Addam asked in a strained voice.

  “That’s unclear,” Lord Tower said. “I have been unable to reach her through conventional means.”

  “We don’t know who’s behind this,” I said. “We don’t know if anyone’s in real trouble. It could be a ruse.”

  “And, as such, things have changed,” Lord Tower said. “I’ll find the scions, assuming they rem
ain in the city. I need to stay close to the Arcanum, in any event. I want you to find the place where Rurik was summoned.”

  “You want us to find a specific summoning circle?” I asked. “Maybe it’s in a haystack. Next to a needle.”

  “The summoning of a lich is a significant endeavor. The ritual, almost certainly, would have required what we call an ‘imbued’ summoning circle. A very rare device. Creating one takes years of effort from dozens of magic-users. I suspect that whomever summoned Rurik used one of the two existing imbued circles on the island.”

  “Two?” I said. “I only know of one. It’s at the Convocation.”

  I was rewarded with a slight nod of approval for knowing that much. “There is also one at the Magician’s estate in the Westlands.”

  “Is there now,” Ciaran said, eyes glinting.

  “You will treat that information with discretion,” Lord Tower told him. He continued, “The Convocation is heavily guarded—and subtlety is our opponent’s best defense. It seems far more likely that they gained access to Lord Magician’s estate.”

  “You’re sending us into the Westlands,” Brand said. About a thousand “fucks” sparked in his eyes.

  “Not quite,” Lord Tower demurred. He picked up his fish fork. “Let’s finish our meal, and then we’ll take a walk.”

  Later, Lord Tower escorted all of us, even Queenie and Max, toward a glass elevator attached to the outside of the Pac Bell. It hadn’t been part of the building’s original translocated design; he’d built it himself in a pique back in the eighties.

  “I asked about killing it,” Brand said, out of the blue, as we waited for the glass elevator to arrive. “How do we kill it?”

  “With great difficultly and overwhelming force,” Lord Tower said. “Which we’ll apply if matters spiral further out of control. In the meantime, there are things that will injure or distract it. Bless-fire; graveyard amber; certain alchemical supplies lost to us with the fall of old Atlantis. I have my men trying to locate graveyard amber.”

  “Define ‘overwhelming force,’” Brand said.

  “I will,” Lord Tower responded, “if Rune fails to reach the circle.”