“The bond itself broke when I died, but I still remember her. I remember how I felt. I remember the decades we—you’re lucky,” Naples said again, the words a sigh.
I am, Umber thought, but couldn’t bring himself to say aloud. But is Hansa?
He might as well have spoken aloud. Naples answered, “That depends if you think ignorance is better than knowledge. It’s easier sometimes, but I’ve never preferred it myself. Was Hansa happier ignorant?”
“Yes. No.” It was hard to say. Hansa had been happy, or at least content, but he had also been hiding. How much longer would his happiness have lasted?
They would never know.
“I’d love to stay and play, and I hope I’ll be invited back, but I have work to do,” Naples said reluctantly. “And . . . it might be best if I’m not here when he wakes up, in case he decides this was a mistake.” Umber shifted aside, and Naples slid out from under Hansa with the ease of long practice. He plucked the ring off the bedside table and put it back on the middle finger of his left hand, and only then searched the floor for his clothes.
“What’s the ring made of?” Umber asked. The thing resonated power.
“Grumbacher, the previous king of the Abyss,” Naples answered, pulling on his pants. “Modigliani gathered his bones from the crystal caves and gave them to me when I was trying to remember who I was.”
Once dressed, he used the ring to cut across his left palm, raising power in a wave that made Hansa grumble again, this time half waking. With as little effort as most men take to open a mundane door, Naples tore a rift and stepped into it with a jaunty goodbye wave.
As the rift closed with a breath of smoke, Hansa woke with a vague, “Wha . . . ?”
“Naples has gone hunting,” Umber answered.
“Oooooh,” Hansa replied, flipping onto his back with a grumble. “I . . . Did I really . . .” His face turned scarlet—rather after the fact, Umber thought. “No, yes, I did.”
Hansa’s head was full of recriminations like, What in the Abyss had he been doing? But his expression was remarkably, lazily calm. One needling thought—Umber’s experiences with Abyssumancers haven’t normally been this friendly—prompted Hansa to ask, “You really don’t mind?”
“I told you I didn’t.”
Hansa pushed himself up on his elbows. “Even though he’s an Abyssumancer?”
“I’m not sure what he is,” Umber admitted, thinking about how easily Naples had opened a rift to step across the realms, “but I don’t mind having him in bed, as long as he stays this well-behaved.” He glanced out the window, which showed only the barest lightening of the pre-dawn sky. “I know you need to get an early start today, but we still have a little time to spend, just the two of us. If you want to.”
Hansa replied by reaching out and pulling Umber down next to him.
Hansa probably didn’t realize that these were the moments Umber liked best, when the magic was sated. The bond was always there, and it responded any time they touched, but when it was sleepy and well-fed, Hansa was more playful. More timid, too, as his old shyness and inexperience spoke up when the bond wasn’t demanding immediate satisfaction—but watching him conquer that self-doubt and experiment purely for enjoyment was fun, too.
Of course he doesn’t realize, Umber thought. He can’t read your mind.
With Lydie’s and Naples’ voices prodding him, Umber opened his mouth to say something—then suddenly, as he looked up at Hansa, he realized he was looking at a man who might very well become President of Kavet. Hansa might demur and claim he didn’t want it, but once he had that power, he wouldn’t give it up. He would want to use it to help his country.
Umber lived comfortably these days, but would never forget he was the same half-demon boy who had scavenged for food and been willing to give everything to the first person who had seen him as valuable. Cupric had literally drugged him and chained him down to control him, but Umber had been willing to forgive him and give him anything he wanted.
He held his words.
By the time they went downstairs, the others were already gathered in the kitchen with serious expressions on their faces—including Alizarin, who Umber hadn’t seen before they all went to bed the night before.
“Welcome back,” he greeted the Abyssi, whose coat had returned to its gleaming turquoise-cobalt sheen. In fact, he looked better fed than he had before the honey incident. “You found a good hunting ground?”
“In the Abyss,” Cadmia answered pointedly for the Abyssi.
“I thought I heard Dioxazine calling me,” Alizarin explained, his ears twitching with irritation. “I went, but only saw Terre Verte. He wanted me to help Cupric bring Azo to the meeting.”
Cupric. Alizarin. Azo. There were so many awful combinations in that statement.
“And you went?” Hansa sounded incredulous.
Alizarin swished his tail and glared at the guard. “Azo is not fully recovered yet. I did not want to send a powerful and unfamiliar Abyssumancer to her home without an ally of hers beside him.” Now Alizarin grinned, and his eyes sparkled with mischief. “Naples found me while I was hunting. He said he was looking for Cupric anyway, and that he could help Azo cross to the mortal plane if she wished it, so he sent me back here.”
Naples and Cupric sounded like a much better combination.
“We’re worried about Dioxazine,” Cadmia said. “Rin says it’s concerning that he thought he felt her power, but only saw Verte.”
“We’ve also been talking about Clay,” Lydie said. “Naples mentioned him. He feels dead to me, but there’s something important about him. I’ve been working on a ritual to try to speak to the shade that has been trying to talk to me about him—someone very old, maybe not even in this plane, which would explain why I’ve had so much trouble so far. Given Clay was a Numenmancer, the Numini might know something about him, too.”
All of this explanation felt like it was leading up to something Umber wasn’t going to like.
“You think if you find Xaz, she might be able to help with Clay?” Hansa asked.
“No. We think the Numini might be able to help in both cases,” Cadmia answered, “which is why I am going to go to the mancers’ temple to try to talk to them.”
Umber couldn’t believe what she was saying. Before she had even finished speaking, he barked out, “Absolutely not.”
Cadmia squared her shoulders. “I do not need your permission, Umber. Alizarin will go with me. He says the power I have from the baby will protect me from the energies of the temple’s rift, and Verte has done us a favor of ordering the mancers to leave us alone. The Numini spoke to me once, when we were in the depths of the Abyss, and they saved my life, so there’s a chance they’ll speak to me again. While we’re there, Lydie is going to work on her spell to talk to the shade that has been harassing her, you are going to go help Ginger to spread rumors and manage nominations for President, and Hansa needs to get to the Quin Compound—unless you two have changed your plans, of course.”
They hadn’t. Umber opened his mouth to object, then averted his eyes from Cadmia’s and caught Hansa’s gaze instead.
The Quin gave a half shrug, cleared his throat, and said, “Well, I’m glad we have a plan all set up.”
Hansa was right. If Umber had been able to come up with a better plan or even a rational reason why Cadmia couldn’t or shouldn’t go to the temple, that would have been different. But like Hansa, Cadmia was willing to risk herself to do what she saw as right and needful, and it wasn’t Umber’s place to protect or forbid her.
Chapter 30
Cupric
The Abyss was full of sharp things, of things that bit and stung and burned. Granted it also had its share of beautiful things—Alizarin was one example of that—but the Abyssi still fell in the category of things that would eat him if they could.
The Abyssi could have opened a rift here and spared Cupric the awkward, painful, and exhausting effort of doing it on his own, but instead Alizarin had just yawned when
the Abyssumancer suggested he might be able to help. Terre Verte pointed out that if Cupric couldn’t open a rift to the Abyss on his own, there was going to be a problem with his coming back; the clear doubt in his tone hadn’t improved Cupric’s mood.
Seeing Azo had improved his mood. She was a beautiful woman, despite Abyssal coloration, and had looked at him with appreciation in her shining blue-violet gaze when he first walked in and introduced himself.
She had spoken a single command to her servant, and within minutes food had been provided that satisfied not only his stomach but also fed his power. Of course it did; it was grown in the Abyss. The meat provided him, a little more rare than he usually took his steak, was from one of the beasts of this realm. The very air held power.
And stinging, burning, sharp, spiny, biting things, as he had discovered later when Alizarin had offered to take him hunting, then abandoned him about twenty minutes from Azo’s home. The Abyssi claimed he had found “a friend” while hunting, which probably meant some old catamite, and had sent Cupric back on his own.
“Run afoul of fireflies, did you?” Azo asked, as she examined a burn on his upper arm.
“In Kavet, fireflies aren’t actually made of fire,” he said, somewhat defensively.
She laughed, an expression that briefly cleared the shadows of some unknown sorrow from her features. “In the Abyss, everything burns,” she replies, “or bites.”
“So I’ve come to notice.”
She salved the burn, easing most of the lingering pain, and bandaged it. “And what about you?” she asked.
“Me?”
She looked askance at him as she turned away, back to the glass of wine she had been nursing when he had returned. “Yes, you,” she said, with a smile. “Do you burn, or bite?”
Terre Verte’s sister! his mind warned him, as Azo poured a second glass of wine and held it out to him, gaze heavy. Back away slowly.
He hesitated too long, and she set the wine down and walked past him. “Well, then. I suppose I’ll head to bed.” His heart had almost calmed from the moment of panic when she added, “You know where to find me if you change your mind.”
Terre Verte’s threat had been in regards to anything “that is not with her complete and fully-informed consent,” right? Surely even the Terre couldn’t blame him for taking a beautiful woman up on an offer that had been made so clearly.
He abandoned the wine, but followed Azo. They didn’t reach the stairway, though; as she entered the front foyer, Azo stopped, frozen like stone. Only when he caught up to her did Cupric see that there was now another man in the room, standing in front of the doorway as if he had just walked in, and staring at Azo with the same stricken expression with which she was looking at him.
The man was slender, and the power he gave off was muddled; Cupric wasn’t certain if he was looking at a mancer or one of the spawn. Certainly, his copper eyes glowed like something out of the Abyss. “Burn or bite” indeed. Looking at him, Cupric knew this man would burn.
Once he recovered, at least. Just then, he looked like someone had slugged him in the gut. His voice was soft as he said, “Azo . . . Alizarin told me you . . . I should have . . .”
He trailed off.
Cupric saw Azo sway and stepped forward to put an arm around her waist to steady her. “Is this man a problem?” he asked her. Spawn, mancer . . . Whatever he was, Cupric felt confident he could deal with him.
Azo shook her head, slowly.
“You’re dead,” Azo said, her voice a choked whisper that swiftly rose in volume. “I felt you die. You nearly dragged me with you. I tasted the power of your death on Alizarin when he returned here. How do you now walk back into my home?”
“I will explain everything before I leave,” the other man said. “First, may I have your permission to perpetuate some violence upon your guest?”
“Excuse me?” Cupric said, the flowery phrasing not detracting from the intent of the statement.
Azo tensed. “Explain yourself, Naples.”
“That Abyssumancer and I have some unfinished business,” the other man—Naples, apparently—said. Belatedly, Cupric recognized the power on him. He had seen it very briefly in the mancer temple; they had crossed paths during Cupric’s first attempt to reach the Abyss, and Cupric might have been a little rough in taking power from the first place he could find it.
On the other hand, Naples hadn’t put up much of a fight, so Cupric wasn’t sure how he planned to avenge himself now.
“There’s a lot of that in the room right now,” Azo replied. “Cupric and I have our own ‘business’ to attend to.”
Naples flinched as surely as if she had slapped him. “Please trust me, and trust that it is not jealousy speaking, when I say that this is not a man you wish to have in your bed. If you would like for me to detail the reasons why, I can.”
Cupric shook his head as he stepped forward. “I can deal with this, Azo. There is no reason to concern yourself.”
She looked at him, then back at Naples, and shrugged.
“You boys suit yourselves. Naples, you have my permission to do as you think necessary, but when it’s done I expect you to explain.”
She continued up to her room, leaving Cupric more than a little offended. He had beaten this man once, without much difficulty.
Naples watched her go, a forlorn expression on his face as she ascended the stairs, but when he returned his gaze to Cupric the sorrow had been replaced with anger bordering on outright hatred.
Yet he smiled, an unpleasant expression that once more made him look more Abyssi than man. “If I had walked in to find you already in her bed, we wouldn’t be having this little chat,” Naples said. “But as it is, you haven’t quite crossed that line, and Terre Verte will probably be cross with me if I kill you.”
“You’re allied with Terre Verte?” Well, that was interesting. Had the prince sent someone to check up on Cupric?
“More or less,” Naples replied. “He doesn’t know I’m back yet. Now, let’s talk about Umber, shall we?” He stalked forward, and Cupric had to fight a reflex to step back, because there was something not-quite-human in the other man’s gaze.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Naples. You’re Cupric. Pleasantries over.”
“You’re an Abyssumancer?” Naples nodded. “You’re an Abyssumancer, and you’re going to give me a hard time about Umber?” Cupric felt more on solid ground now, knowing what he was dealing with.
“Having the Abyss in your blood will push you toward many things,” Naples said. “But stalking, drugging, kidnapping, and chaining a fourteen-year-old boy? Getting him blood-drunk, so you can pass yourself off as the only one in Kavet who can possibly meet his needs? That isn’t Abyssal. Hunger comes from the Abyss. Impulse comes from the Abyss. That level of premeditation is mortal or divine, and I don’t think the Numini would have approved of that particular plan.
“Now, I need to pull that bond off you. Are you going to let me, or are you going to fight?”
Cupric drew himself up, tearing himself away from the copper fire that had practically hypnotized him. “I want you out of this house. You’ve distressed Azo enough, and if as you say you’re also allied with Terre Verte, then you’re getting in the way of his plans.”
Naples tossed his head. “You’re not the only one here capable of opening a rift to the mortal plane.”
Then he did something he shouldn’t have been able to do. He twisted his hand, revealing as he drew blood from his arm a sharp, barb-like backing to a black bone ring Cupric hadn’t even noticed. He flicked his hand with the same showmanship some of the Abyssi would use with a claw or tail, and beside him appeared a rift.
Naples added, “And I’d say I do it better than you do. But that’s all right. You’re young. You’ll learn, if you survive long enough and stop being a coward about your own power.”
He moved close enough to touch, and Cupric drew himself up. Young. He easily had ten years on this boy,
as well as three or four inches and several pounds of pure muscle. He also hadn’t been stupid enough to do something as power-draining as opening a rift across planes in the middle of an argument.
It took only a thought for Cupric to bring his own knife to hand. It could be used to fight directly, and he appeared to have the advantage in that kind of fight, but being small didn’t make a sorcerer any less deadly.
Cupric closed the distance and wrapped a hand around Naples’ arm, over the new wound he had used to open the rift. Most Abyssumancers didn’t know you could tap into another’s power that way. Naples snarled as Cupric severed the link to the rift, absorbing the backlash of power into himself instead of letting it go to its natural home.
“You picked the wrong fight,” Cupric said. “If you are the Terre’s ally, I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if you force me to it.”
Instead of responding with violence, Naples wriggled forward so he could plant a kiss on Cupric’s jaw. Cupric shoved him back before that razor-sharp ring got close enough to cut his throat, and Naples chuckled. “C’mon,” the other Abyssumancer purred. “We could have fun together.”
This was exactly what Cupric hated about other Abyssumancers. Everything was sex. They got angry and they wanted sex. Injure them and it was foreplay, bleed them and it was erotic. Granted, Cupric was just as guilty—he had too much Abyss in his power to not feel the same blur between the four coins of power—but he had enough restraint to recognize when was or wasn’t a good place or time.
“I don’t do men,” he stated.
“No, you don’t, do you?” Naples replied. “With a few exceptions, of course, and that’s only if there’s enough power to make it worth your while. Not that I don’t have more than enough power to light you up like a new star.”
Cupric wasn’t tempted by the offer no matter how much power this wiry little serpent had, but the other man’s apparent distraction did offer an opportunity for an advantage. If Naples was distracted by the prospect of sex, it wouldn’t be hard to get a strong enough loop of power around him that Cupric could then break his neck.
Of the Mortal Realm Page 24
