Of the Mortal Realm

by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

  Hansa knew Poll. He had never been able to keep his mouth shut. He would think he was being secretive, but he would share the news with “just a few people.” The rumors would pave the way in case anyone else spotted Hansa.

  “I just need to pick up a few things,” Hansa said, “and then I’ll be gone again. Keep up the good work.”

  The final, fake words felt like paste on his tongue as his guilt finally caught up to him. Indathrone wouldn’t contradict him because Indathrone was dead. Hansa’s own captain, Captain Feldgrau of Company Four, wouldn’t contradict him, because he was also dead; if these men were taking orders from Captain Montag of Company One, Feldgrau hadn’t been replaced yet. Who else would question the hero of Kavet, the man who supposedly single-handedly took down the Abyssumancer and Abyssi responsible for the deaths of a dozen good men?

  Slowly, he went into his home. He imagined he smelled the bitter smoke of herbs some sighted guards used to heighten their perception, though surely the smell would have dissipated by now.

  Jenkins had always refused to use those, claiming they made his eyes sting and nose run and so were more a distraction than a help.

  Gut-struck by the memory, Hansa leaned against the wall of the kitchen and drew a deep breath around the lump of tears in his throat. In truth, the room had an antiseptic smell; someone must have cleaned out the remains of what food he had left behind, probably after it had molded and become foul in his absence.

  Then his gaze fell on a familiar trunk, and his heart fell even further. He didn’t need to open it to recognize it from Jenkins’ apartment at the Quin Compound. He knew it contained the items Jenkins had willed to Hansa. If Hansa had died first, a similar collection of belongings would eventually have ended up in Jenkins’ room.

  He didn’t open the trunk. He didn’t even take the time to change, but filled his pouch with spending money, put on a lined vest and cloak, and crammed as many extra clothes into a pack as he could. He wondered what the soldiers outside had made of his strange garments, which were made of material that looked like silk, but had been crafted like parchment, by scraping and stretching the tough skins of certain Abyssal beasts.

  He couldn’t stand to be in the apartment any longer. He bid good evening to the two soldiers and walked back toward where he had left the others with as much composure as he could muster. He had a brief moment of panic when he couldn’t see them, and thought they had left, then realized he had gone outside the edge of Alizarin’s concealing illusions. When he focused on magic instead of what his eyes could see, he was able to identify the telltale edge of Alizarin’s power, and the others within it. As Alizarin had said, he couldn’t hide them from someone with the ability to see Abyssal magic.

  Once he reached the group, the illusion dropped completely. Hansa leaned against Umber, tucked his head down against the spawn’s shoulder and drew a deep breath to keep from shaking. Umber didn’t complain when Hansa’s hands snaked under his shirt to find his bare back, even though they had to be cold as ice, but wrapped an arm around his waist to hold him close.

  Umber’s skin had a faint musk like clove smoke. Touching him felt like putting the final piece into a masterful stained glass window, perfect completion.

  The compulsion to seek the spawn’s skin and the deep contentment of finding it were heightened by the bond between them. It was more than sexual attraction, which Hansa had felt well before he had demanded the third boon; it was like the need for water or food, something vital he would die without.

  “We can’t stay there,” Hansa said. “They searched my house and have been watching it. Even if we can sneak past them, Alizarin can’t hide us forever, and as soon as the others know I’m back, they’ll come looking for explanations. Someone with the sight is sure to show up.”

  “Do we have another plan?” Terre Verte asked, his voice crisp and unsympathetic.

  Murderer, Hansa thought, lifting his eyes to the supposed once-prince. Verte, he thought, mentally correcting what he had been calling the man in his own head. Hansa had thought the double name was a style from some far-off country, but Verte’s earlier rant had made it clear that “Terre” was a title.

  He isn’t my prince.

  “I was a suspected mancer,” Xaz said practically. “They will have gutted my apartment and burned everything I owned by now.” Hansa squelched the unhelpful guilt he felt at Xaz’s utterly flat remark.

  “What about the Fens?” Cadmia asked. Despite having snuggled against Alizarin for warmth, she was shivering steadily and had a bluish cast to her lips.

  Hansa raised his brows at the suggestion, and Umber let out a sharp half laugh and said, “Sister, your knowledge surprises me.”

  “The Fens?” Xaz asked.

  “It’s a semi-abandoned series of buildings not far from the main docks, but not quite in the village,” Umber said, bright blue eyes dancing with amusement. “Very popular among men and women seeking illicit deals and assignations.”

  “Guards get called down to try to clear it out every now and then,” Hansa added, “but everyone knows we’re just going through the motions. The regulars have some kind of early-warning system set up, and the place is a rabbit warren of exits. There’s never been any sign of sorcery, so the One-Twenty-Six doesn’t bother with it except when someone makes an official complaint and we’re required to make some noise.”

  “People squat there, don’t they?” Cadmia snapped. “Sometimes people who come for counsel mention it.”

  Just as Hansa had been a loyal guard in his former life, Cadmia had been a well-respected Sister in the Order of the Napthol, which provided medical services and spiritual counsel to Kavet. Cadmia specialized in advising the general scum of Kavet—drunkards, thieves, and other petty and more serious criminals.

  In short, the kinds of people who would know the Fens well.

  “It’s a good idea,” Hansa admitted after thinking it over. “It’s a place out of the snow where no one looks too closely at anyone, and where guards generally don’t bother to come—much less anyone with the sight.” Cadmia’s stomach rumbled audibly and she rubbed at it, then dropped her hand lower as if to cup the tiny speck of life sheltered there. Hansa added, “Hopefully we can also trade for something to eat.”

  “Then it’s decided,” Umber said, with the alacrity he tended to demonstrate whenever he was reminded of Cadmia’s pregnancy. Hansa couldn’t help but wonder if his solicitousness was caused just by Cadmia’s condition, or whether it was specifically because her child would be Abyss-spawn like Umber himself.

  They left the city proper, then skirted the edge of the Kavet docks district and the surrounding village. Most trading vessels preferred warmer southern ports at this time of year, but there were still enough ships tied up and therefore enough sailors in port to make this area wilder than the city proper. The mingled clamor of tavern bards, carousing, and bawdies hawking their wares felt surreal. Normally, when Hansa walked down here in the tan and black livery of the 126, these raucous noises fell into silence.

  Now, with the help of the Abyssi, he was invisible.

  The noise died away behind them as they approached a string of ramshackle buildings—the remains of old warehouses that had seen better days. Most had been partly gutted by fire many years ago, or had roofs staved in by untended ice and snow, and had never been repaired.

  “This?” Verte asked. He had been so quiet that Hansa, walking in the front of their group with Umber, had almost forgotten him. Now he was looking at the structures with his usual disdain. “Why are these warehouses in this condition?”

  Hansa shrugged. “There are superstitions around them of bad luck,” he admitted, “but mostly, no one’s had the money and motivation to buy them and either break them down or rebuild them.”

  Verte scoffed, but before he could make another disparaging remark about “his” Kavet, Umber cut him off.

  “Alizarin, can you hide everyone else for a few minutes, but let Hansa and me be seen?” he aske
d. “We’ll secure a room, then the rest of you can follow in a few minutes.”

  The Abyssi nodded.

  “This way,” Umber said to Hansa. “Tuck your head down so your cloak hood hides your face. We don’t want anyone recognizing you.”

  “That won’t look suspicious?” Hansa asked, though he obeyed even as he inquired. He had learned that hesitating when Umber suggested he do something never improved matters.

  Umber laughed, and cinched an arm around Hansa’s waist to pull him tightly against his side. “In this place? Absolutely not.”

  Inside, there were signs that some repairs had been done, probably by regular occupants, but enough doors and walls had been left with gaping holes to make it impossible for anyone in this area to get cornered.

  Hansa expected Umber to let him go before they reached areas with people in them, but the spawn kept him close. Only as they pushed aside a hanging blanket and entered a room where several groups were set up playing dice and card games did he realize that Umber wasn’t holding on to him for comfort, but camouflage.

  As several men and a few women looked up at them, Hansa’s face heated. Even if these strangers didn’t recognize him specifically, his cloak wouldn’t hide the fact that he was obviously a man, pressed close enough against another man that they had to be lovers. In any other area of Kavet, they would have been derided and told to break it up or face arrest for public display of perversion.

  Not long ago, Hansa might have been the one doing the deriding.

  In the Abyss, where sex was considered as vital as air and shame was a divine and thus unwelcome complication, it had been easy to accept his relationship with Umber. To revel in it, once he had overcome his anxiety. After so many years fighting to be who he was supposed to be, pursuing his relationship with Ruby because it was what everyone expected, and dreading having anyone notice what was wrong with him, honest passion with the handsome, experienced half-Abyssi had been a revelation.

  Now that they were back in Kavet, his skin crawled with the need to hide.

  The man acting as dealer looked them over and asked, “What kind of room are you looking for?”

  “A private one,” Umber answered, “with a lock. I have cash.”

  Without waiting for a response, Umber tossed a coin to the dealer, who caught it, glanced at it, and pocketed it. Hansa thought it was a silver bit, though he hadn’t seen it well enough to be sure; it wasn’t a princely sum, but it could have bought them a room and meal at a proper inn if they hadn’t wanted to avoid more-reputable areas.

  “Pardon me,” the dealer said to the players at his table. “Put your cards down. Cheat and you know I’ll cut your fingers off.” He made this threat with a sunny smile that somehow reinforced its sincerity.

  He didn’t have anything as solid and immovable as an innkeeper’s key board. Instead, he opened a battered satchel, rummaged through it with consideration, and tossed Umber a heavy brass key.

  “Room four,” he said. “You know the way.”

  It wasn’t a question, clearly. Umber nodded. How much time he had spent in this place—and with whom?

  In the last weeks in the Abyss, Hansa had been able to pretend the real world, this world, didn’t exist. He had been able to ignore the fact that he barely knew this man who had become his lover.

  Now, as Umber led him up a staircase and down a dark hallway that Hansa was half convinced might collapse under him, Hansa couldn’t help feeling that all the messy details of the mortal realm were going to catch up to him soon.

  He was so lost in his own thoughts that a scoff from behind him made him jump half out of his skin as Umber unlocked the door.

  Umber chuckled. “Didn’t see them?” he teased, as Hansa realized it was Verte who had made the disapproving sound. He, Alizarin, Xaz, and Cadmia were right behind them, hidden in Alizarin’s power until that moment.

  Hansa didn’t deign to answer as he stepped forward and examined the room. He had passed through the Fens enough on required raids that he knew there were places here that would be worse than staying in the snow—areas where damp and neglect had left rot and ruin, where a misstep could easily break a man’s ankle, and where refuse attracted flies and crawling vermin.

  This room was cold, and dark enough that Verte once more lifted a hand to summon foxfire. The silvery light made every surface appear frosted as it revealed a simple but clean chamber with a scarred but serviceable table, two mismatched chairs, and a wide mattress in the corner. There was a faint smell of damp, but that was the worst of it.

  “This is much nicer than I expected,” Hansa admitted. He had seen more unpleasant rooms at tavern inns.

  “It will be even nicer if the fireplace works,” Cadmia added, as she spotted a fireplace with a haphazard pile of logs next to it.

  “It should,” Umber answered as he moved to arrange the logs on the hearth grate. He didn’t bother with kindling; instead he drew the ever-present knife from his belt and nicked a fingertip. The moment his blood touched the wood, flames rose to lick at it like kittens at cream.

  “Nice?” Verte echoed, looking around incredulously as Umber whispered the fire into merry life and blessed heat filled the room.

  Apparently the room wasn’t palatial enough for the prince. Yes, it certainly had its flaws. For starters, there was a large gap in the far floor, which had been half covered with a fishing net Hansa couldn’t imagine was particularly helpful except to make the hole invisible in the dark. There was no way to let in sun or moonlight, because the only window had been boarded over. Still, what had Verte expected?

  “It’s clean,” Cadmia elaborated, “and it has a working fireplace.”

  “There are only a handful of rooms like this,” Umber said, “and House, the man who runs this area, guards them fiercely. If you trash one of his rooms, he’ll add your blood to the mess before he makes you clean it up with your tongue.”

  Once the feeling had returned to his extremities, Hansa felt a bone-deep weariness take him. He glanced at the mattress, and couldn’t help briefly considering what might have been done on it. After all, this was a place he knew mostly as a spot for the types of trysts Kavet’s culture and laws declared perverse and criminal.

  As was often the case, Umber responded to Hansa’s engrained Quin disdain with an amused question: Are you imagining things you think people have done here, or things you would like to do here? I can’t tell.

  As usual, Umber had a point. Hansa had spent twenty-six years as one of Kavet’s elite. Now, even after he had accepted how ignorant he had been and how much his own status had changed, he was still daily faced with examples of his own habitual arrogance and assumptions.

  Hansa and Umber had had a few conversations on that subject previously, and he wasn’t in the mood for another one right then. He had just opened his mouth to make a snarky retort instead—hoping he could come up with one by the time he started speaking—when Verte announced, “I think I’d prefer to find my own lodgings.”

  The once-prince’s gaze swept the room, as if challenging them to argue with him.

  “You . . . what?” Hansa asked. “You can’t possibly plan to go back out there tonight.”

  “A few more minutes in the snow won’t hurt me,” Verte said. “I refuse to stay in this slum.”

  “You don’t know the city—anymore,” Hansa argued, amending the last when he saw the spark of challenge in Verte’s gaze. “You don’t know the laws. You’ll attract attention.”

  The prince’s impassive expression suggested he expected as much, and was waiting for Hansa to explain why that was a bad thing.

  “If they capture you, they will kill you. Do you understand that?”

  Why was he even trying to talk sense into this man? So what if the Quin captured him? Unlike most of the mancers the 126 had captured and executed, Verte was actually guilty of a crime worthy of arrest, and Hansa didn’t doubt he was able and willing to commit more.

  Xaz spoke calmly. “He’ll have a
guide.” Her lips quirked on the last word, as if she hoped to be far more than an advisor. “If he wants one, that is.”

  “A guide would be deeply appreciated.” Verte smiled and held a hand out to Xaz. “If you don’t mind a few more minutes in the snow, lovely lady, I’m sure we can find better accommodations.”

  Xaz accepted Verte’s hand. “I’m intrigued to see what you can come up with to try to impress me.”

  In the years Hansa had known Xaz, she had always been reserved and demure, and uninterested in any of the men Ruby had thrown her way. Apparently Ruby’s choices had lacked a special something—such as powerful sorcery, and the ability and willingness to murder a man with his bare hands.

  We can’t just let them walk out of here, Hansa thought, unsure if he intended it for Umber or not.

  Did you expect them to stay with us? Umber replied. I’ll feel safer with them gone.

  If not for the commands of her divine masters driving them together to the depths of the Abyss, Xaz would never have been with them, so it shouldn’t have been a shock that she was willing and perhaps anxious to leave—but it still was.

  Spotting the blue Abyssi crouched by Cadmia, as if hoping not to be noticed, Hansa said, “But, Alizarin—”

  Xaz shrugged, and spoke directly to the Abyssi. “I have no power over you, just as you have no power over me. That was why you wanted to bond to a Numenmancer in the first place, wasn’t it?”

  Alizarin’s half nod, half shrug of response seemed strangely uncertain, though Hansa had been under the same impression, that Alizarin had chosen Xaz because he wanted a tie to the mortal realm without being subject to an Abyssumancer’s commands.

  “Then we’re both free to go about our lives.”

  “As for myself, I haven’t forgotten I am in your debt,” Verte said, glancing briefly away from Xaz to Hansa and Umber. “Once I have regained sufficient strength, I will seek you out and we can discuss severing your unwanted bond to each other.”

  Unwanted, Hansa thought. It was, or had been, but that single word was too simple. He had changed since demanding the third boon, too much to simply go back now.