The Last Sun

by K. D. Edwards

  “What more do we need to see?” Addam asked. “Isn’t that paraphernalia right there, that circle? That?” Addam pointed at a bowl near the body. Michael had dribbled his blood into it at the start of the summoning. Or at least, that’s the way it looked.

  “Trust me,” I told him. “It’s what isn’t here that’s interesting. Don’t disturb anything yet, just look for more summoning tools.”

  The suite was bigger than Ella’s. A studio kitchen was separated from the bedroom by a half wall, and there was a small bathroom. The bathroom was clear of gore, so I sent Addam in there to look.

  I took the dressers, wardrobe, closet, and wastepaper baskets. We failed to find what I was looking for. I couldn’t find the hammer used for nailing the copper strips into the carpet. No open box of chalk; no knife sets; no receipt for the bowl, which still had a sale sticker on the bottom. No herb crumbs in drawers; no nail holes in the floor under the carpeting other than the ones that had just been made; no healed bloodletting scars on Michael’s wrist or fingers.

  “This,” I said, “is staged as hell. Which means . . .”

  “It’s Ashton,” Brand said.

  Addam made a sound from the bathroom and stepped into the doorway. “Ashton?”

  “Addam,” I said, “there’s nothing here to show that this room has ever been used for a summoning before today, or that Michael was a practiced summoner. It stinks of a setup. Call it a gut feeling, but I’m betting Ashton doesn’t have a dead brother or road rash on his face. I’m betting Ashton isn’t lying in a pool of blood.”

  “Ashton, Geoffrey, Michael,” Brand said, his eyes lit by his uncanny intuition. “All of them. We’re going to find out that they were all in on this, and either they’ve started turning on each other or, more likely, Ashton was Lead Douchebag all along.” Brand glared at the room around us. “And bet your fucking life, each of them hid something that incriminated the others because they knew they were all untrustworthy bastards. Luckily, Michael was an idiot. If he hid something, it’s either in one of those sports trophies or in the place he stashed his porn when he was a kid. Fuck not disturbing anything, let’s tear this place apart.”

  “Should . . .” Addam started, and then gagged. He looked away from Michael’s body. “Should we be worried? If it was Ashton—could he still be here?”

  Brand went over and crouched next to Michael’s body. His knee hit the ground between blood splatters. He pulled Michael’s torn shirt away from his chest and jabbed a finger deep into one of the knife wounds. Addam gagged again.

  “He’s been here a while,” Brand announced. “The body has cooled. Now tear this place apart. I want answers.”

  Brand picked the trophies. I went for one of the two mattresses. I didn’t know whose bed was whose, but there was a racing journal on one of the nightstands, so I picked the bed nearest it first.

  In the edge of the mattress facing the headboard, there was a jagged slit. Inside was an electronic storage device and a couple of ancient Dear Penthouse magazines.

  “It’s an SD memory card,” Brand said.

  “That’s what I was thinking,” I said in what I hoped was a wise voice.

  He snatched it out of my hands and plugged it into an adaptor he had in one of his vest pockets. He stuck the adaptor into the side of his smartphone.

  The memory card contained a bunch of images. Brand swiped through squares of blue-and-white diagrams. Blueprints?

  “Can you tell what they’re for?” Addam asked.

  “They’re screenshots of a GIS overlay,” he said.

  “What’s GIS?” I said.

  “Rune, when I plugged the memory card into my phone, it looked like your head was going to explode. I’m not fucking explaining what GIS is. Just take my word—it’s a really high-tech map.”

  “Okay, then what’s it a map of?”

  He frowned at the phone. “A building. Security system. Air ducts, sewer lines, marked exits. Damn, I think that’s a secret passage.” He swiped to the bottom corner. “Here . . . You can see the cross streets outside the building. Nazaca and Hyperion. What’s there?”

  “Arcana compounds,” I said. “There’s a string of Arcana compounds on Nazaca Road. The road is built over the island’s main ley line. Can you access city records?”

  “No cell service,” Brand said.

  His nose wrinkled, and his gaze shot to Addam. He took in what he saw faster than me, because he started swearing first. Addam had picked up a tiny, stoppered bottle from a nightstand and opened it. The smell was foul—fresh shit mixed with gardenia. It was also familiar, and that was the reason Brand was swearing.

  “I’m a fucking idiot,” Brand said. “That’s how he did it—that’s how he tricked us!”

  “Ashton,” I said. “That’s the cologne he was wearing at the hospital, when we got attacked.”

  “I discounted him, just a little, because he was there when we got attacked. He had to fight with us—and it looked like he was in just as much danger. I had all the pieces right there! We know Ashton trained at one of the Wasteland camps. He knew how to fight. And yet there he was, with us, fighting the recarnates, and using all these fancy fucking flourishes that would have gotten a normal person killed in a fight. And I fucking ask you: Why would someone who knows how to fight use fancy fucking flourishes in a life-or-death battle?”

  “When he knows he’s not in any real danger,” I said.

  “I’ll bet you everything that this,” Brand said, and pointed to the bottle, “acts like a scent marker. This kept Addam’s fuckhead business partners from being attacked by the recarnates that they’re working with. We—”

  “Sh!” Addam hissed, holding up a hand. Brand’s teeth clicked shut. His response to caution was much more developed than my own.

  Addam cocked his head. I heard it, too. A shushed murmur, a repetition of the same syllables. The sound resolved into words: “Doesn’t work doesn’t work doesn’t work doesn’t work doesn’t work . . .”

  Brand began knocking on the wall. Six inches to the left of where he started, the bang went hollow. He felt around for cracks in the whitewash, and gave me a quick look.

  I opened my senses to the unseen, one of my gifts. I immediately spotted the spells that kept something hidden. I went to where I thought the handle was, and, as easy as anything, opened a secret door.

  Inside was a closet filled with coats, board games, and a desiccated old bong covered with rugby stickers. Curled on the floor was Ella Saint Nicholas. Her thin face was lined with tear tracks. Emaciated hands were pressed over her mouth. She had bitten down on her fingers in a bid to keep quiet; the half-moon teeth marks had filled with shallow blood.

  Addam went down to his knees and pulled her against his chest. “It’s okay, don’t look,” he whispered, keeping her face against his shoulder. “Just hide your eyes. I’m going to pick you up now.”

  “It d-doesn’t work,” she stuttered. “It doesn’t work anymore. They came for us, came after us. They didn’t stop. They didn’t stop when Michael told them too. We ran in here, and he hid me. He told me to hide. He told me I’d be okay if I hid. And I did, and they came, and he screamed, oh, he screamed, he screamed, and he won’t stop screaming!”

  Brand went to the room where Geoffrey was being held, presumably to loom menacingly over him. I followed Addam to Ella’s bedroom.

  Once there, Addam laid her on her bed, on a girlish quilt of pink-and-purple yarn. He pulled the quilt over her. Without the glamors I’d seen her use previously, the true scope of her self-starvation was laid bare. It was a hard sight.

  Addam’s face had filled with despair. He wasn’t stupid. He knew that not only might Ella not recover from this, she might not be allowed to recover. The things she was involved in carried death sentences.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about one thing: Michael had hid her. Bad things at the door, and his last thought was to keep her safe? It was an unexpected mercy. There was something about it that made me want to cr
y.

  I went back into the hall. A servant materialized. “Can you stay with her?” I said. “Keep her in her room? Someone should be with her at all times. Give her a light sedative, if you have it, but nothing that will knock her out. We’ll need to talk with her later.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “Rune,” I said.

  “Yes, my Lord Rune.” The woman hurried past me.

  After a minute or two, Addam came into the hall. We walked in silence to the room where Geoffrey was being kept. I juggled half a dozen platitudes in my head. Finally I said, “Because smelling a sealed vial in the room of a dead man is such a good idea.”

  His face inched into a tiny smile. “We did learn something from it, Hero.”

  “Nice spin control,” I said.

  Ahead of us, Brand slipped out into the hallway. “How do you want to play this?” I asked him.

  “With patience and compassion,” Brand said. “What do you fucking think? I took away all his sigils. We should beat the ever-loving shit out of him.”

  “I think I should go in alone,” I told him.

  Brand’s face went neutral. “No.”

  Speaking to Brand as much as Addam, I said, “I have a . . . prior relationship with Geoffrey. Let me see what I can get out of him first. As much as I want to know why they’ve done what they’ve done, I’m more interested in finding out where Ashton is now. We need to lock him down and make sure Rurik isn’t brought back.”

  “‘Prior relationship’?” Addam asked.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Brand said. “Rune, talk to him, but we’re standing in the doorway.”

  He shoved me into the room.

  Geoffrey was in the process of standing up. His footing was already unsteady, and I got the impression that the half-filled tumbler of liquor on the table next to him wasn’t his first. The whiskey bottle sat in a puddle of splashes.

  “He’s dead,” he said. “My brother’s dead.”

  “Geoff, did Ashton try to kill you?”

  “He did that to Michael, didn’t he? He did. Of course he did. I think he tried to kill me, too, I . . . There was a car. A car jumped the sidewalk and almost ran me down. I knew, I knew, I knew it was Ashton. Everything went wrong. This wasn’t what we set out to do. This wasn’t how it was supposed to end. You’ve got to believe me, I—”

  “Geoff, I need you to start from the beginning. It’s time to come clean. You realize that, right? As bad as things are, they can still get worse. Do you have any idea what you’ll be held responsible for if Rurik gets summoned again?”

  “Again? Does that mean . . . It’s gone?”

  “So you know about Rurik,” I said.

  Geoff gave me a tired look. “You don’t need to trick me. I’ll tell you everything.”

  I topped off his whiskey as he settled in the chair. I sat on the sofa. Geoffrey didn’t speak as he lifted the tumbler in a spasming, two-handed hold. After a fourth coughing sip, he set the glass back down and looked at me.

  “We wanted more out of life. Michael and me. The Temperance Galley . . . Well, all of them, all of the Moral Certainties . . . they’re so slow to change. They’re all so careful in their projects. Michael and I wanted to follow in the footsteps of men like the Tower and the Chariot—men who embrace the human business world, who’ve become financial giants. We thought Ashton wanted the same thing. That’s what he told us. I think even Addam agreed with us, at least up to a point, but he never wanted to go far or fast enough. Right, Addam?” He looked behind me. I don’t know what expression Addam gave him, but Geoffrey quickly dropped his eyes.

  “In the beginning, the idea was to get Ella into a . . . leadership role. She was sweet on Michael. All he had to do was tell her he was interested, and she was hooked. He—” Geoff stopped talking and went, if possible, paler. He was looking at Addam again. I didn’t have to guess what look was on Addam’s face this time.

  “It wasn’t supposed to turn out like this. It wasn’t supposed to be about harming you or Christian. We just wanted Ella to get more contacts. Then she could take your place in our business. She wanted the same things we did. Or at least she wanted whatever Michael wanted. That’s how this all started, I swear, it was just a . . . a . . . a shifting of power, of getting Ella on our team instead of you.”

  Geoffrey looked back to me. “I didn’t know about the kidnapping or Christian’s poisoning until they were done. And by then, Michael and I were in so deep, we couldn’t go to the guarda without implicating ourselves. And . . . and all of the sudden, Ashton had that Rurik, and those recarnates. He had an army. It was scary, so bloody scary.”

  “You poisoned my brother,” Addam said softly.

  “Ashton did,” Geoffrey stammered. “He used some sort of rare herb. Something the doctors wouldn’t figure out right away. It was supposed to keep Christian weak. Sickly.”

  “Is it reversible?” Addam asked.

  It was the darkest tone I’d ever heard from Addam. I knew that Geoffrey’s life hung, possibly immediately, on his answer. I swiveled around and saw that Brand was putting a hand on Addam’s shoulder, more to give me a chance than to restrain him. Brand would have no problem with Addam putting a sword through any part of Geoff’s body.

  “It’s reversible,” Geoff said. “It is. We never intended to kill him, just inconvenience him. At least, that’s what we all said, but now . . . Now I don’t know what Ashton intended.”

  “Geoff,” I said. “What’s at the corner of Nazaca and Hyperion?”

  He sank back into the sofa cushions, eyes wide. “I only found out later,” he whispered.

  “I don’t care when you found out. I want to know who lives there.”

  “Lord Hermit. It’s the Hermitage. I think . . . I think Ashton wanted to destroy the Hermit. Then all of Lord Hermit’s assets would get absorbed into the three other Moral Certainty courts. With Ella as the acting heir scion for Justice, and between the three of us, our resources would increase. I think Ashton wanted to take the Hermit down. He said it would be easy.”

  Easy? I wasn’t sure about easy, but as far as courts went, the Hermitage was far less protected than most. By his very nature, Lord Hermit didn’t surround himself with others.

  And while this was interesting, it didn’t address the biggest concern of the moment. “How did Ashton summon a lich?”

  “I didn’t know it even was a lich! Not at first. They’re not even supposed to exist! I didn’t know . . .”

  He lifted the tumbler to his mouth. I stood up and slapped it away. “Geoff, enough. Stop telling me how you’re a victim. Start telling me how Ashton did it.”

  “I don’t know! He said he had friends who owed him favors. Powerful friends. I don’t know how it was done, or where it was done, or when it was done.” Geoff looked past me. “They’ll go after Ella now, Addam. She’ll be in danger, too. And he hates you, Rune. Ashton hates you; he says he won’t let you ruin his life again. He’s going to keep trying to kill you.”

  “When the hell did I ruin his life the first time?” I demanded.

  “That’s what he said. I don’t know what he meant. It doesn’t make sense—no one knew you were going to get involved. The recarnates were never meant to be used on you. Rurik was never supposed to go after you. But when you began looking for Addam, everything started falling apart, and Ashton committed more and more resources to stopping you. Now his plan is ruined. There’s no way he can go after the Hermit. I think . . . I think he’s snapped. I think he just wants people to suffer. He tried to kill me. He killed my . . .” Geoff stopped talking. Fat tears slid out his eyes.

  “He didn’t snap,” Brand decided. “Michael’s murder is too calculated. He’s tying off loose ends. I don’t like this.”

  Geoff grabbed my hand and started to say something, but I pulled it away with such force that he fell out of the chair.

  Geoff let out a low moan and hunched into a ball.

  Something about that pathetic display made my consci
ence twinge. I’d cared for him once. And he’d as good as lost everything. I knew what that felt like.

  I crouched down to say something not entirely awful, but Geoffrey cringed. He said, “You don’t have to hit me. You don’t have to send him to beat me up again. I’ve told you everything. Michael’s dead. What else matters? My life is over. My . . . Oh, gods, my mother, I have to tell my mother about this.”

  And that? That about summed Geoffrey up. I decided I didn’t feel much sympathy for him after all.

  I started to get up when his words penetrated. “What do you mean, ‘beat you up again’? Brand? Brand didn’t beat you up.”

  Something sullen broke through the tears. “Back then. That night you saw me go into the bushes with Lydia, you sent him to beat me up. You’re lucky I didn’t have him arrested.”

  I got up and joined Brand in the hall. He avoided my eyes.

  I whispered, “You beat Geoffrey up for me.”

  “I didn’t like him,” Brand said. “It’s not like I needed an excuse. Get that smile off your face.”

  “You defended my honor,” I said.

  “This strikes you as a good idea,” he said. “Teasing me.”

  Whether I did or not became irrelevant, because the hallway lights went dead.

  Which wasn’t half as bad as what else had happened.

  “The wards are down,” Addam said in shock. “The estate wards just went down.”

  SIEGE

  While everyone began to talk at once, I whispered a cantrip. A sphere of light appeared above my head and burnished the dark hallway.

  McAllister was saying, “We have backup energy sources; the lights should have—,” while Addam was saying, “They’re not coming on, the backup wards should have come on immediately!”

  “What other defenses are there?” I said. I raised my voice over theirs. “Addam! Quickly!”

  “Let me think,” Addam said, and squeezed his eyes shut.

  He didn’t understand. Brand did, judging from the leathery rasp of a blade being pulled from its holster. So did McAllister, who hovered behind us with a terrified expression. We had moments. It didn’t matter if Ashton was moving against us or not—we were open to the Westlands, and we had moments.