Of the Mortal Realm

by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

  “Umber,” the woman said, voice chastising. She moved forward, pointedly distancing herself from the two men. They both let her take charge, though the soldier remained tensed and the dark-haired one called Umber maintained a haughty smile. “I think we should talk,” the woman said. “Perhaps in our room? It’s more private than this, and I believe we have breakfast waiting for us. You look like you could use a meal.”

  Lydie tensed, trying not to show how much the offer tempted her. This had been a lean week, and the yammering of the shades, the trance she had utilized to speak to them, and the spell she had attempted to use to chase away the soldier had all drained her reserves.

  The soldier’s frame wilted. He sheathed his knife awkwardly, as if he had just realized it was out and didn’t want to draw further attention to the weapon. “We won’t hurt you,” he said, with what sounded like attempted gentleness. “I’m sure you understand why we were worried when we thought someone was spying on us. We expected something else when we came in here, just like you expected something else when we barged in. Can we start again?”

  Hansa Viridian. The name came to her, most likely from the shade she had spoken to earlier.

  “Hansa Viridian,” she repeated aloud. “That’s you?”

  This time, Hansa was the one to flinch. She wondered what kind of judgment he feared from her. Now that she knew his name, she knew who he was. Everyone knew his name. Was he worried she would despise him for betraying the 126 and meddling with the Abyss? Or that she would fear and hate him for the role he had played who-knew-how-many times as he arrested and executed people like her?

  She hadn’t decided yet, but she supposed it was worth talking to him more.

  Hansa nodded, not speaking.

  “I’ll go with you,” Lydie said. She smiled at the woman, attempting to look more confident than she felt. It was always better if people thought you were stronger than you were. “If you’re really offering breakfast.”

  Hansa glanced back at Umber, deferring to him, or maybe waiting for him to object. The woman glanced toward the empty space Lydie assumed contained the Abyssi, then focused on Lydie. She hustled the men ahead, and walked protectively close to Lydie. Lydie expected that she might try to chat, but she didn’t, which made it possible for Lydie to focus her attention on the hissing voices of the dead. She caught the woman’s name from them, and other bits of information she hoped would make sense later.

  Umber led them in a roundabout way back toward the House, a collection of rooms run by a man who went by no other name, and which Lydie usually avoided. She couldn’t pay House’s prices, but apparently this group could.

  They could also afford real food, which they offered without hesitation and which Lydie scarfed down as if the offer might be rescinded at any moment. For all she knew it would. The last time she had accepted a proffered meal, the kindly-seeming man had put a hand on her thigh the moment she started to eat, and extricating herself had taken more power than was usually wise to wield in public.

  Umber opened a sack full of apples, cornbread cakes, thick slices of ham, and a jar of real maple cream. Lydie couldn’t remember the last time she had tasted maple cream; she slathered it unashamedly on the cornbread cakes, only idly noting that Hansa took one tiny bite before shuddering. The energy around him shifted in a way Lydie knew meant one of the dead had just crossed his thoughts.

  Ruby, her mind whispered. Someone dear to him.

  He pushed the jar of maple cream toward Lydie, and ate his own cakes dry.

  They let her eat mostly in silence, waiting until she had put away a whole apple, two cakes, and a good-sized piece of ham before the woman asked, “What’s your name?”

  Her name wasn’t attached to anything incriminating—or much of anything. “Arylide.” Honey, you hate that name. Grudgingly, she added, “People call me Lydie. I know you, too. Cadmia Paynes. You’re a Sister of the Napthol, or you’re supposed to be. I still don’t know who he is.” She looked at Umber. Cadmia had said his name, but the spirits had little to say about him.

  “I’m surprised you recognized her, or Hansa,” Umber remarked. “Did you live in the city before you came here?”

  Lydie let out an incredulous snort and shook her head. “I don’t go up there,” she said. “A girl with brown skin down here in the docks district is just another sailor’s get, but in the higher city I get noticed. Besides, I can’t go to the Cobalt Hall for healing or counsel, and I don’t want to be near Indathrone’s—”

  When Hansa had tasted the maple cream, there had been a faint ripple in his aura; she might not have noticed it if she weren’t paying such close attention. When she said the name of Kavet’s President, the shift of power was tectonic, a rumble as if the ground might split beneath her. A piece of apple fell from her numb fingertips as she gasped with breathless horror, “You killed Winsor Indathrone?”

  “No!” Hansa nearly shouted, distress painting his face.

  “I can feel his death on you, on all of you,” Lydie snapped. “His shade isn’t walking with you, but his essence is smeared across your skins. That could only happen if you were there when he died.”

  “We were there.” Umber spoke calmly, less distressed than his cohorts. “But we were only witnesses. None of us knew what the man with us intended until it was too late.”

  “Terre Verte.” Again, the name came to Lydie. She normally tried to avoid speaking this way around others, but there were too many words and names and deaths flying in the air around her. Trying to control it was overwhelming.

  “How do you know about him?” Hansa asked.

  Lydie crossed her arms and paused, trying to make out comprehensible details in the overlapping, barely-coherent ranting of the dead.

  “Alizarin—the Abyssi with us—said he could sense the shade you sent because it was tainted by the Abyss,” Cadmia said aloud. “Is that shade the one talking to you now?”

  Lydie nodded slowly, her eyes sliding from Cadmia to Hansa as she did so. The shade she had spoken to in trance had wanted to share several pointed words with his once-friend.

  “Who is it?” Hansa’s voice was hoarse.

  Lydie sighed. “He said if I told you, you would probably cry like a little girl. I find that offensive, by the way.”

  “Jenkins.” The guess brought an answering flash of power, both in Hansa’s aura as he recalled one of the dead whom he had cared for deeply, and as the shade standing next to Lydie was named. “He’s here? He’s—Is he—”

  Lydie clenched her jaw, biting back a sharp retort, and let Hansa get to the conclusion on his own. He broke off as he realized what he had almost said: Is he all right?

  Of course Jenkins wasn’t all right. He was dead.

  “Can I talk to him?” Hansa asked again.

  She should have predicted this. “I went with you because Jenkins tells me you’re a good man.” Her eyes flickered to Cadmia and she added honestly, “And because you offered food. Maybe, maybe, with the proper tools I could find a way for you two to talk to each other, but that would call for powerful magic of the type that tends to bring guards and blades. It isn’t something I would try out here in the Fens.”

  She would have liked to talk to Jenkins for longer herself. Maybe, if she had been able to maintain the trance, he would have gotten around to telling her about Terre Verte and Indathrone and the Abyssi, instead of just assuring her that Hansa Viridian is a good man. You can trust him. He can help you, and you can help him. Please help him.

  The dead couldn’t lie to her, but they could be wrong.

  Sometimes, they could be so very wrong.

  Chapter 8

  Umber

  Umber reached out to Hansa, trying to offer comfort, but the other man was so focused on the necromancer and the possibility of speaking to his dead friend he shook off the touch without a glance.

  “Could you relay what I say?” Hansa asked desperately. “Or tell me—”

  “It doesn’t work like that,” the yo
ung necromancer snapped, eyes a bit too wide and near black with anxiety. They darted to the door, as if she were considering making a run for it.

  If she did, should they let her? She knew they were here. Was their presence disturbing enough to her that she would report them? Umber knew from personal experience that sorcery was the only thing that would make the vicious man who had run this slice of the Fens for two decades cooperate with authorities.

  Lydie would have to run, too, in that case, but she would risk it if she decided they were a more immediate threat to her. A teenage girl living alone in the Fens had to have wits, grit, and a keen sense of self-preservation.

  Tentatively, he reached toward her mind. He wouldn’t have tried to read the thoughts of an Abyssumancer or Numenmancer, since their connection to the other realms made doing so dangerous if not impossible, but a necromancer was only—

  The burst of white noise that filled his head the instant he opened his mind to hers shot a spear of ice into his temples. He clamped his teeth shut to keep from cursing. Lydie, thankfully, was too focused on Hansa to notice the attempted intrusion.

  “How does it work?” Hansa continued his interrogation, probably without realizing that’s how it sounded. “Could you—”

  Hansa. Umber spoke in the guard’s mind, knowing that irritated him and would therefore distract him from his desperate quest to talk to his late friend. You’re frightening her.

  As expected, invoking Hansa’s better nature worked where any plea to his common sense might have failed. He took a good look at Lydie, then sank down in one of the rickety chairs, which groaned beneath him.

  His despondency must have touched something in the young necromancer. She explained in halting terms, “Normally, shades are like leaves in the wind. I can hear them rustle, and feel them scratch against me. Sometimes I see an afterimage, or hear a faint whispering in my head. When a shade has something so important to tell me that they use all their strength to scream it at me, I might . . . it’s hard to explain. It’s more like suddenly remembering something, suddenly knowing it, than it is like hearing it. Like when they told me the name Terre Verte.” She shook her head and bit her lip. “I know he’s powerful and I know he talks to the dead, too, but I don’t think he’s a necromancer.” She refocused on Hansa. “If I need to speak to a shade more directly, I can go into a trance, but in that state I wouldn’t be able to talk to you. I can’t sit here and act like an interpreter, back and forth.”

  “I see. Well, thank you.” Hansa nodded woodenly. “If you do talk to him, would you let him know—”

  He broke off, and Umber could hear the rioting thoughts ricocheting through his mind: Tell him what? Tell him I’m sorry he’s dead? I’m sorry his sister is dead? I’m sorry it’s all kind of my fault, and I’m now friends with the Abyssi who killed him and we helped the Numini who killed her? Tell him I’m sorry I went to the depths of the Abyss to try to save him, then left without him or any of the rest of the men who served under us? Tell him I’m sorry we did save a man who then murdered the President we both served and may now be plotting Abyss-only-knows against the country?

  “Tell him I’m sorry,” Hansa said, “and I’m doing my best.”

  Lydie nodded tightly. Umber wondered if she had any intention of relaying the message.

  He looked at the rest of their group. Alizarin and Cadmia had stepped out of the way as well as they could in the crowded room while Hansa pleaded with the necromancer. Now, as if realizing that moment was over, Cadmia asked, “Did you say Terre Verte speaks to the dead?”

  “We were told he’s a Gressumancer,” Umber reminded her.

  “Really?” Lydie’s deep brown eyes brightened with curiosity. “I thought they were a myth.”

  In general, mancers worked with one of four planes: the Abyss or infernal realm, the Numen or divine realm, the realm of death, or the realm of life. Those powers were antithetical to each other, yet rumors persisted of Gressumancers, sorcerers who had mastery over all four.

  “We know he has power over both the Numen and the Abyss,” Umber said, looking at Alizarin for confirmation. Alizarin had heard fantastical stories about Terre Verte, the man locked in the deepest dungeon of the Abyss, for longer than Alizarin had been alive. He was the Abyssi version of fairy tales, really. “That combination is far more surprising than his also being able to speak to the dead.”

  “Do the shades just know he can do this,” Cadmia pressed, “or has he been doing it?”

  Lydie glared at her, as if to remind her that idly conversing with the dead was not easy.

  “I know it’s hard for you to clearly understand them,” Cadmia said, “but this is important. He is a dangerously powerful man, and we need to know what he’s planning. If he’s actively talking to the dead, something you say takes preparation and ritual, he’s doing it for a reason. We need to know that reason.”

  For that conversation, Umber would far prefer a direct “face-to-face,” rather than accepting the necromancer as an interpreter after the fact. Perhaps Hansa would get what he wanted after all.

  “If we brought you somewhere private and secure,” Umber suggested, “and helped you acquire the tools you need, would you be willing to help Hansa have a conversation with Jenkins?”

  Umber didn’t need to hear Lydie’s thoughts to see them reflected on her face. Living in the Fens, any man who offered to take her somewhere private was most likely someone she should run from, fast.

  Lydie looked thoughtfully around the room. Her eyes snagged on the bag of food, like she was weighing the risk against the possibility of more than one solid meal. Her gaze settled last on Cadmia, who looked back with the thoughtful, accepting expression she probably used with the ruffians who came to her for counsel.

  “I could do that,” Lydie said. Her green eyes fixed on Umber’s like a cat’s. “But it would be hard, and I’m putting myself at risk to do it. I know of your kind. I know you’ll make me a fair deal in exchange.”

  I know your kind. She had already told them she received insights from the dead, but the statement still startled him.

  “Yes, I will.” Ever since seeing her, he had wanted to help her, but his power made it dangerous for him to offer charity. Unbalanced favors tended to create a tie that could lead to a bond. This would balance the scales nicely and assuage her pride and his power.

  “I need to get some things from my room,” she said, “and make preparations. I might not be back until late. You’ll still be here?”

  “We’ll be leaving in the morning, just before dawn,” Umber answered.

  Walking to the Fens from the Quin Compound under Alizarin’s spell had been risky, since any sighted guard could have spotted them; Umber didn’t intend to repeat that gamble if he could avoid it. Waiting until dawn would give Cadmia and Hansa a chance to rest and regain the strength they needed to hopefully hold the veils over their power for long enough to make it through the city.

  Besides, they would all look less suspicious in the early hours of the day instead of the middle of the night. The docks woke early to put out fishing boats, and any sighted guards who spotted them in the city proper wouldn’t be surprised to see a group of respectable citizens out for an early-morning walk, perhaps to pick up just-baked pastries.

  Lydie nodded—then, with an expression that suggested she was being daring, she swiped one more cornbread cake before waving a curt farewell.

  “Do you want someone to walk you back to your room?” Hansa offered, ever the gentleman.

  Lydie gave him a haughty look that was older than her years. “I don’t want to have to protect you.”

  Then she was gone.

  Cadmia laughed at Hansa’s dumbfounded expression. Umber pointed out, “A necromancer might not be as frightening to us as an Abyssumancer, but she still has power. I suspect she can walk alone through this place like a ghost, without ever drawing a single eye.” He started clearing the remnants of food away. “Any thoughts on our young friend?”

/>   “Looking at her breaks my heart,” Cadmia admitted. “I keep telling myself to be rational, that she is a mancer and a stranger and I should be more suspicious, but she’s a child.”

  “A hungry, homeless child,” Hansa added, “who can’t go to the Cobalt Hall for aid. Do you really think she can help us get more information on Terre Verte, or did you just want an excuse to help her?”

  Umber shrugged. “Somewhere in the middle.”

  “I could go to the temple.”

  The slightly surprised-sounding suggestion came from Alizarin, who was thoughtfully twitching his tail back and forth around his waist.

  “The temple?” Cadmia asked. “Why?”

  “You said you want to know what Terre Verte is doing,” Alizarin said. “Abyssi have always gossiped about Terre Verte. They must have noticed he’s escaped by now, and might be talking about him. The Numini might be talking about him, too, since they wanted him. If I go and listen I might learn something.”

  “That’s a very good idea.” Hansa sounded as startled as the Abyssi had, and probably for the same reason—they were all still caught off guard whenever Alizarin demonstrated his capacity for complex planning.

  Except Cadmia. She had seen Alizarin’s potential first. She asked, “Is that safe for you?”

  Alizarin shrugged. “As safe as being here is for you. I can go now, while we wait for Lydie.”

  Alizarin didn’t turn to Umber or Hansa to say, Take care of her. Abyssi didn’t do that for each other, and in many ways, Alizarin treated Cadmia as a fellow Abyssi.

  Once Alizarin was gone, they all returned to their practice. As expected, Cadmia was better at creating and holding the veils over her power than Hansa, both because her power cooperated more and because she was less squeamish. Umber had never truly appreciated how practical the once-Sister of the Napthol was.

  The amount of power they used as they worked was staggering. Once Cadmia and Hansa had perfected the techniques, holding the veils in place would be easier than this repetitive raising and tamping of magic. It was easier to brace and carry a heavy weight than it was to repeatedly lift and lower one. Umber siphoned power into Hansa as he worked, grateful that they would be able to replace it as soon as they found a little privacy. That was one of the greatest advantages of a fleshbond; sex was the oldest and most effective ritual in the world for raising Abyssal power.