The Last Sun

by K. D. Edwards

  “Not even a little. Wait until the final test. I won’t say that you’ll wake up half-drugged in a Warrens bazaar wearing only a loincloth, but you will.”

  I went into the room and sat on the edge of the mattress.

  Max had recovered from his injuries, thanks to lots of rest, several loaves of banana bread, and liberal doses of healing spells. But the better he seemed to get, the more he withdrew from the household. Something was scaring him, and Brand and I hadn’t yet been able to broach the issue. I decided on the direct approach.

  “You look well enough to talk,” I said. He tried to shake my gaze, so I waited patiently until it was too awkward for him not to look at me. “We need to talk, Max.”

  “You’re going to make me leave,” he said. He turned his cheek into his pillow.

  “No,” I said.

  “You don’t want me to stay,” he said. “No again.”

  “You don’t,” he insisted. “This isn’t real. Me staying in this room, like it’s mine. Feeding me. Buying me clothes. This isn’t real. It’s all going to end.”

  “Who says?”

  “It . . .” He gave me an aching look, a painful mix of adult knowledge and a teenager’s confusion. “I don’t understand what you want from me. You’re supposed to want something. Everyone wants something. It doesn’t make sense otherwise.”

  “You’re wrong. I wish I could explain it to you, but it’s something you’ll need to learn for yourself.” I paused, but not for long. Kindness wouldn’t make the next bit any easier. “Max, who’s after you?”

  The question moved across his face like a slap. He shook his head.

  “Brand and I can’t protect you if we don’t know who it is. Is it your uncle? I know he hurt you. Are you worried he’s after you?”

  “Protect me?” Max said. His eyes watered, even as he laughed. “You’ve never been alone, have you? You’ve always had a Brand and I. It must be so incredible to have a Companion.”

  “Incredible? I think I’d pick a much more neutral adjective than that.”

  “You joke, but you don’t mean it. He’d do anything for you. He always has your back. He’d kill to protect you. I think he literally sits around waiting for you to ask.”

  “He’s protective about people he cares for. And he’s begun caring about you too, Max. You’re important to him now, too.”

  “Am I . . . Am I important to you?”

  “Max.”

  “I want to be important to you.”

  “We talked about this. You’re seventeen years old.”

  “We are a long-lived race,” Max said. “I’ll live for hundreds of years, and I won’t be seventeen again for any of them.”

  Brand jumped down the stairwell and landed in the hallway. I’d known he was listening, and he’d known I’d known he was listening, but he’d apparently wanted to prove a point by sneaking past me to the third floor. It had a better vent for eavesdropping.

  “Beautiful job getting to the bottom of things,” Brand said.

  He came into the room and slid onto the mattress next to Max. After bunching the pillow to support his neck, he jabbed Max in the back and said, “What’s wrong with you? He’s so old.”

  Max ducked his blush until he could shape-shift it into a consistent pale.

  “You went about it all wrong, anyway. If you really wanted to catch Rune’s eye, you should have stood outside his window in the rain and held a boom box above your head.”

  “Brand.”

  “What’s a boom box?”

  Brand snorted. “And how stupid do you think we are? You’ve dodged every question Rune asked. Do you think we’re not going to get answers?”

  His gaze traveled between us. “I . . . In the beginning, I was so worried you’d figure it out. When I first came to Half House, you thought I cared that my family was gone. That I blamed you for being a part of the raid that brought the Lovers down. I didn’t know how to tell you the truth, that . . . That it was an escape. But now I’m not so sure I escaped anything.” His voice broke. “The other day, a messenger came to Half House. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Who came to Half House?” I demanded.

  He shook his head.

  Brand jumped up and swung in front of Max. Max’s gaze was pinned by Brand’s advance, a deer in headlights.

  Brand said, “Who is after you?”

  “The . . . person. The person who I was being . . . married to.”

  “Max,” Brand said. “Don’t make me ask twice.”

  Max said, “The Hanged Man.”

  I stepped back, hit the wall.

  “The Hanged Man sent someone to our house?” Brand asked Max in a dangerously quiet voice.

  “A messenger. He said . . .” Max stopped talking.

  “He said the Hanged Man still has a claim on you?” I asked.

  Max nodded.

  “Won’t happen,” I said.

  “He’s the Hanged Man,” Max whispered.

  “And I’m me,” I said. “It won’t happen.”

  One crisis at a time, I thought.

  Later that day, I told Brand I was going to see Lord Tower, and I left Half House by myself. It was my standard lie when I needed to get away. It wasn’t as if Brand would willingly call there to check up on me.

  I took the underground to LeperCon, to a scruffy street several blocks away from Addam’s business offices.

  The studio apartment was a rent-controlled gift from a client who couldn’t pay cash. Brand didn’t know about it. If I had my way, he never would. I kept my name off the lease, utility bills—anything that could be tracked back to me.

  The first thing I did was putter around the tiny corner kitchen to make a pot of coffee, a small ritual of mine.

  When the knock came, I froze. No one had ever knocked on the door before.

  I was not unarmed, of course. I’d tailored my sigil load for the unexpected, a blend of aggressive and stealth magic. Wiping a thumb across my mother’s cameo—which Addam had long since returned, as I’d returned their house sigil—I let its stored spell shiver loose. The world briefly flashed in sepia hues.

  When the spell balanced, I used the Vision spell to mentally peel layers of wood and plaster away from the wall. It took a moment to moderate the sight, from solid material, to bones and tissues, and then back into very two recognizable forms standing in the apartment hallway.

  Before I could decide what to do, a voice said, “I like it when you make the candygram joke. The Avon joke isn’t very funny when you tell it, and maybe a little sexist.”

  I disengaged the ward and deadbolt. Quinn Saint Nicholas stood on my shabby welcome mat with his aunt, Diana.

  “Addam didn’t tell me you’d been released,” I said.

  Quinn scratched his cheek and said, “Um.”

  “We’ll be returning to the hospital shortly,” Diana said, fixing a firm stare on her nephew. “We made a deal.”

  Quinn was craning his neck around me in obvious interest. He was about to squirm past me when Diana cleared her throat and said, “Manners.”

  “My manners?” Quinn asked.

  “Nephew.”

  “Oh, the gift! I have a gift!” Quinn dug into the big, wicker-handled purse that Diana was carrying. She gave him a look of exasperation as he yanked her arm back and forth while rooting. He triumphantly pulled out a belt, then held it up for inspection.

  It was beautiful: hand-worked black leather with braided, decorative slots.

  One of the slots was filled with a small platinum disc.

  “Is that . . . ?” I asked.

  “The sigil you returned. Addam told you that you could keep it, didn’t he?”

  “I can’t accept that.”

  “You always accept it,” Quinn said, rolling his eyes. “Why wouldn’t you? You saved Addam’s life over and over. You saved so many people. Don’t you know what would have happened without you?”

  “It’s too much,” I said hesitantly.

  �
�It wants you. You used it more than I ever did, and for better ends. It recognizes you now. It sings for you.”

  I’d already accepted that Quinn was no ordinary seer, so the statement didn’t surprise me nearly as much as it might have. Why shouldn’t he talk to sigils?

  “May Quinn wait inside while we speak?” Diana asked politely, taking the belt from Quinn.

  “This isn’t a place for kids,” I said, somewhat stupidly, but it was true.

  “I’m not a kid,” Quinn said. “Is that a lava lamp?” He squeezed past me and trotted over to it.

  Diana sighed.

  I gave the older woman a glance. The matronly polish from a couple weeks ago was tempered by lines around her eyes and lips. I think I understood. She’d given her life in support of her sister’s reign. She’d been Ella’s caretaker. She had her own consequences to contend with.

  I gave Quinn a speculative glance and wondered who was really accompanying whom.

  Diana saw my glance. She said, “We were awful to him.”

  “We?”

  “Myself and . . . Ella. We were never kind to Quinn.”

  I didn’t comment. I wasn’t very good at sweetening the truth.

  “It’s an irony,” Diana said. “Of our entire family, Quinn is the only one who has visited Ella in captivity. This isn’t the first time he’s snuck out of the hospital in the last few days.”

  “What did . . .” I wasn’t sure how to phrase my question. “I mean, does Quinn know what will happen to her? Can he see her future?”

  “She won’t be executed. She’ll be exiled. Quinn says it won’t be easy, but—” Her lips quirked. “But most of the time, she has many opportunities for happiness. Once she even got married, and he’ll make her eat lots of food.”

  “She did awful things,” I said.

  “She is a foolish, damaged girl, who did foolish and damaging things. And we enabled her. I enabled her.” She pressed her lips together.

  Across the room, Quinn made a satisfied sound as he found the lava lamp’s on switch. Diana smiled faintly. “I am accustomed to being the attendant to my sister’s children. And Quinn needs . . . friends. I’d hoped Addam wouldn’t mind if I offered my time.”

  “Addam did a very good job raising Quinn, didn’t he?”

  “He did at that.” Diana held the belt out to me. “You will accept this.”

  “It’s a sigil.”

  “Manners,” she said, and shook the belt. I took it. For the sake of form, she added, “I give this family sigil freely. Your Will is now its Will.”

  And just like that, I had an eighth sigil.

  “Quinn would like to speak to you alone,” Diana said. “I apologize for any imposition. May I leave him with you while I sit outside? There’s a nice breeze in the park across the street.”

  “I’ll talk to him,” I said after a pause. “I’ll bring him outside in a few minutes.”

  Diana left.

  “You’re looking good, Quinn,” I said, closing the door.

  He tapped the side of the lamp, trying to get the blob to split.

  “You had something to say to me?” I asked.

  Quinn looked up. In five or ten years, his expression may have passed as guarded; but he was too young to keep the facial tics from betraying his tension. “Sometimes you need to talk to me,” he said. “Sometimes I just get to give you the sigil, and we’re both happy.”

  “Sometimes I need to talk to you,” I echoed, and mulled that over. “About the fact that you tried to kill Max?”

  His face crumpled. Just crumpled.

  “After things settled down, I had a lot of time to think,” I told him. “There are so many unanswered questions. And one of those questions is about Max. I couldn’t get it out of my head. Why did Max come with Brand to the Westlands? Brand said that you told him—via dream-walking with Max—that Brand had to come to the Westlands with Max and Ciaran. And Max swears that that’s the truth. So I thought to myself, Why didn’t Ciaran come to the Swimming Hole with Brand? They knew I’d be facing Rurik. Why would Ciaran stay behind? And Brand told me that you were clear about that as well. Ciaran had to stay behind with Max, to keep Max from following. And then I started wondering why Max was so important. Why was his presence so important?”

  “To take the knife thrust,” Quinn whispered.

  “To take the knife thrust instead of me,” I said. “You used Max like a pawn, Quinn.”

  “I . . . it’s not . . . It’s not like that.” He swallowed jerkily, causing tears to spill from his eyes. “He always had a good chance of being okay, but you didn’t. Time after time after time, you didn’t. You don’t understand what it’s like. You don’t know what it’s like to see.”

  “So you let Max get stabbed so that I wasn’t taken out. So that, what, I would still be able to save Addam?”

  “No! That’s not—I’m not that selfish! I let Max get stabbed so that you could part the clouds!”

  I blinked, surprised. “And that was important.”

  “It was the most important thing in the world,” Quinn whispered.

  My skin crawled. I rubbed at the goose bumps and said, “Why?”

  “I can’t tell you. Won’t. Can’t. It’s hard to explain.”

  “Why? Why can’t or won’t you tell me?”

  “Because it’s not my role.”

  “Whose role is it, then?”

  “Time,” Quinn said sadly. “Time will show you.”

  I turned away from him in a slow pivot and walked to the other side of the apartment. More than one emotion squared off in my head. Addam made everything messier. Addam made this complicated.

  “Prophets,” I said angrily.

  “I didn’t ask for this,” Quinn whispered.

  “No, you didn’t. But you’re too godsdamn young to make these decisions. You’re fifteen, Quinn. You don’t have the life experience. You don’t understand consequences.”

  “I see nothing but consequences,” he argued.

  “I’m not sure you understand them, though. Ashton Saint Gabriel summoned a storm. He used weather magic. When I broke the cloud cover, I sheared the storm in two. One half dissipated in the Westlands. The other pulverized two homesteads before heading out to sea. It swamped a fishing vessel, and two lives were lost. It’s a small hurricane now, heading north.”

  “But it could have been so much worse! If you hadn’t been there, it could have—”

  “There is no longer any could have! It’s happened. It’s fixed in amber. People are dead, and they aren’t coming back.”

  Quinn was five or six breaths away from actual sobs. The look on his face tugged on something deep in my heart, a very personal and private place. I’d been fifteen once. I’d been drawn into adult events far beyond my control.

  “Quinn,” I said, and I walked back over to him. I dropped to my knees and looked up into his face. “This will kill you. You know that, right? Most people with your gift don’t die in their bed of old age. They get lost in their visions and die of starvation, or have heart attacks, or get into avoidable accidents. Or they go mad. You are too young to be playing with this gift.”

  His lips worked around a few words. But he just shook his head.

  I said, “I know that this isn’t the sort of gift that can be returned, but you can choose not to use it in the fashion you do. And there are ways to help you with that choice.”

  “Ways?”

  “We can talk with Ciaran. Maybe Lord Tower. There are ways.”

  “You mean drugs,” Quinn said.

  “Yes. And alchemy. We need to look into it.”

  “You keep . . . saying . . . we.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I do.”

  A fresh batch of tears swam out his eyes. “I scare you.”

  “I scare people, too,” I said.

  I made a decision—one of those weird, impulsive calls that you’re fairly sure is going to change everything, one way or the other. “What time are you coming to the barbec
ue tomorrow?”

  “The barbecue?” he asked.

  “The barbecue. What time are you and Addam coming? You should bring your aunt, too.”

  “But . . .”

  “Didn’t Addam tell you?”

  “He said he was going. I didn’t know . . . I mean, he didn’t say you wanted me . . .”

  “So it’s settled.”

  Quinn’s eyes went unfocused for a second. “I remember the barbecue. I have three hot dogs, even though Max drops one of them on the ground a lot.”

  “Yeah, okay, do you remember that time we talked about the responsible use of your gifts?” Then, against my better judgment, I said, “And now that we know he drops the hot dog, I can stop it.”

  “You try, but Brand usually gets mad that you’re hovering next to the grill and punches you in the funny bone.”

  I slapped him on the knee and got up. “Tell Addam that if he brings a thousand-dollar bottle of wine, I’ll hit him with it. Make him buy something a non-ridiculously-wealthy person would bring, like a watermelon.”

  “We’ll bring a watermelon,” Quinn promised, the start of a grin on his face.

  “Good. Now let’s go find your aunt.”

  I caught him staring behind me, and I turned around to unplug the lava lamp. I handed it to him. “One more thing. This place is . . . it’s where I go when I need to be alone. It’s a secret.”

  “I won’t say anything.”

  “You shouldn’t track people down in places where they don’t want to be tracked down. If we’re going to be friends, we’ve got to have ground rules.”

  “I understand,” Quinn said, nodding at me gravely. “And thank you for the lava lamp.”

  I walked Quinn outside. Once he was safely pawned off on his aunt, I went back into the apartment, secured the door, and poured a cup of coffee. I stood there for a long time, staring into the sink, letting my mind wander.

  When the coffee was gone, I rinsed the mug, put it back in the cabinet, and walked to the far side of the room. I focused on my gold ankle chain. A spell flowed loose. It surrounded my hands like static.

  I waved a palm toward the wall.

  The smudged plaster vanished. In its place was a nine-by-seven collage of notes, newspaper clippings, Post-Its, photographs, guarda reports. Thumbtacks were dull points of color in a violent black-and-white representation of a twenty-year investigation. At the top were nine large squares drawn in black permanent marker.