Of the Mortal Realm

by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

  “I thought I should share,” Naples replied. He leaned back a little, blinking slowly, and said, “I should probably ask first, shouldn’t I?”

  “It’s polite,” Hansa answered inanely, fighting the impulse to pull Naples closer again.

  Above the loose collar of Naples’ shirt, Hansa spotted claw marks that wrapped around the back of his neck then seemed to go down to his chest. Looking more carefully, Hansa spotted the edge of another on Naples’ wrist where his cuff had hitched up. The wounds weren’t bleeding anymore, but they hadn’t quite healed yet, either.

  “What have you been doing?” Hansa asked again, holding the clearly-intoxicated Abyssuancer at arm’s length no matter how much he wanted to drag him down across the desk.

  “Sennelier,” Naples answered.

  “Senne—the Abyssi?”

  “He, Cupric and I had quite the threesome,” Naples said.

  The other Abyssumancer’s name was enough to cool some of Hansa’s ardor.

  “Is Cupric dead?” Hansa asked.

  Naples shook his head. “I didn’t figure that would go over well with Terre Verte.” Then he smirked. “But it’s going to be a looooong time before he forgets us. And I cleared any remnants of the bond from him, so he won’t be able to rebuild the link from his side. And I saw Alizarin. And Azo. I brought her to Amaranth Farms, since that’s where she wanted to go. She’s campaigning or organizing or something for her brother I guess.”

  Hansa wanted to ask for details about Cupric, but when Naples spoke Azo’s name, it was with a choked tone that had nothing to do with the lust and power Naples had been radiating a moment before.

  “Are you all right?”

  The Abyssumancer hesitated an instant, then said, “There’s more than one reason I’m appreciating being really, really drunk right now.” He squinted a little, as if to focus, and asked, “Do you mind that I came here? I could leave.”

  “I wish I could invite you to stay,” Hansa groaned, “but this is probably the last place you should be right now. You’re not veiling your power.” Hansa doubted Naples was capable of that at the moment. “But I have a job for you, which Umber and maybe Alizarin can help you with.”

  “Your wish is my command, Mister President,” Naples quipped.

  Briefly, Hansa detailed his thoughts about how they needed a dramatic-looking distraction that would give him an excuse to send sighted solders away, and would make the other solders in the 126 feel like they were doing something about the increasing rumors about a mancer gathering. Naples’ eyes sparkled in a way that made it clear he had some ideas, and was looking forward to them.

  “We can do that,” he said. “How about Eiderlee—is it still called Eiderlee?”

  Hansa vaguely recognized the town’s name, and nodded. “It’s a couple days outside the city I think.”

  “Alizarin, Umber and I can move faster through the rifts,” Naples said. “We can be home by dinner.” He grinned again, but slowly the expression started to fade as he asked more seriously, “Unless you would rather I not come back with them?”

  Hansa started to answer immediately, then cleared his throat. “Come for dinner,” he said. “Right now I feel like saying stay afterwards, but you’re glowing with enough power it’s making me dizzy.”

  Another flash of white teeth. “I’ll look forward to asking again when we’re both sober. In the meantime, enjoy your day.”

  “Can you clean up the lobby a little without anyone noticing?” Hansa asked. “I’m not sure what the sighted guards might see when they come back, but—”

  Naples gave a dramatic sigh. “You’re no fun,” he said, “but you can consider it done.”

  He sauntered out, pausing to blow a kiss over his shoulder before he opened the door. Hansa stopped to take several deep breaths and try to put the veils on his power back in place, which was what he was still doing when Rinnman stepped in.

  “Good timing, Rinnman,” Hansa said. “The man who was just here was a contact of mine in Eiderlee. We need to—”

  “Sir,” Rinnman interrupted politely, proffering a letter sealed with the symbol of the city council.

  Hansa cracked the seal, feeling a bit like a figure in a dream. In the elaborate formal script of the council scribe, the letter informed him that he had been nominated by the requisite number of citizens as a candidate for interim President. There was a place at the bottom of the form for him to sign either accepting or declining the nomination.

  He stared at it.

  “Do you intend to accept?” Rinnman asked.

  Hansa took a deep breath. He dipped his pen in the ink. And he signed his name.

  Chapter 33

  Cupric

  Cupric had managed to crawl back to the temple, and stopped there to rest—or try to. He kept waking with a start. When he first arrived, he had thought he had sensed Alizarin, but that unreliable beast had abandoned him in the Abyss and hadn’t reappeared since. Later, there had been some kind of scuffle between a pair of Numini; their crystalline voices had made his head ache.

  The temple wasn’t safe. It wasn’t a good place to sleep. But Amaranth Farms wasn’t any better, not when Cupric would need to face Terre Verte and tell him he had failed.

  Damn that Abyssumancer. Who had he been? Where had he come from?

  Cupric would have to return to Amaranth briefly, since that was the soft spot in the mortal plane he knew he could reach from the temple, but he wouldn’t stay. If he stayed, he was going to have to kill Terre Verte in his sleep, because damn him, this was his fault.

  Cupric could have blamed the other Abyssumancer, of course, but even thinking of Naples made the temple’s mutable form quiver.

  “Mancer.”

  “Fuck off,” he snarled to the first Abyssi who spoke to him. Then he changed his mind and said, “Wait.” It growled, but Cupric could keep some control of it in this place, even in his present state. “Tell me everything you know about the Abyssumancer Naples.”

  The Abyssi laughed. “Everything?” it asked.

  “You do know him, don’t you?”

  “We all know him,” the Abyssi answered. “He is Modigliani’s.”

  “Whose?” An Abyssi, probably, but the name was said as if it meant more than that.

  Another voice spoke, one Cupric hadn’t expected to hear. “You do not know Modigliani?” one of the Numini asked. It was hard to tell through the cool voice and the shift in the temple as the creature spoke, but Cupric thought it sounded surprised.

  “I’ve made a point of not getting too personally familiar with too many Abyssi.”

  He cringed at the memory. He had almost thought he had the upper hand in the fight with Naples, and then the damn witch had smiled, drawn blood, and whispered, “Sennelier, I invoke you, summon you, invite you. I offer sport.”

  “But you know Modigliani’s Abyssumancer,” the Numini said. “You are a friend of Naples’?”

  “Not a friend,” Cupric responded, vehemently, before pausing to consider whether a lie could have been more profitable.

  “If you are no friend of his, and no friend of Modigliani’s . . .” It seemed puzzled, and curious. “Are you allied with Terre Verte?”

  He had no idea what the Numini was getting at, but decided he probably didn’t care. It couldn’t harm him, not in the temple. The Abyssi around him would devour it if it dared violate the magical treaties here.

  So he told the truth.

  “Not anymore,” he said.

  “If that is the case, we may have a use for you.”

  “He isn’t one of yours,” the Abyssi said, entering into the conversation once again. “We let you talk to Alizarin’s mate because she chose you long ago, and he is odd for our kind. This one is ours.”

  “This one,” the Numini argued, “is a mancer, one of the more powerful of his kind, and therefore free. He can respond to a proposal as he wishes, with or without your consent. Sennelier never meddles with the affairs of the mortal realm, anyway.
”

  “I’m listening,” Cupric said, intrigued, but cautious. Numini didn’t seek out Abyssumancers; they simply didn’t. Why was this one talking to him, and what did it have to do with Naples or Terre Verte?

  “Sennelier doesn’t meddle,” the Abyssi said, “but he would object to your using what is his.”

  “If we cannot acquire his permission, it can be done without,” the Numini replied. “We can free you of him if you wish, mancer.”

  Cupric’s idle curiosity shifted to alarm.

  “No thank you,” he said. The Numini moved closer, now seeming confused. “Look, I don’t know if I can or can’t help you or what you want me to help you with—or why—but no matter how I feel about recent events, I’m very sure I don’t want to belong to the Numini. No offense, but I like a lot of things your kind doesn’t approve of. And if you just mean ‘free’ from the Abyss, I like power too much to give it up.”

  “We cannot completely strip you of the Abyss even if we wished to,” the Numini said with an impatient sigh. “Trying to remove that power would kill you. And as you cannot help what you are, we would make no attempt to curtail your attempts to feed.”

  Well, that was condescending and comforting at the same time—but what else could you expect from one of the divine realm?

  He had opened his mouth to respond when the Abyssi who had argued with the Numini moved forward again. Cupric wasn’t sure if it meant to attack or not, because almost immediately there was a ringing in his ears, like the sound of someone running a damp finger around the rim of a crystal goblet. The Numini responded with the graceful beauty of frost—and an instant later, the Abyssi who had tried to interfere was simply gone. Cupric wasn’t sure if it had been banished from the temple, or outright killed.

  “Rude,” the Numini said, its tone utterly dismissive. “Now, Mancer, where were we?”

  “We were at, what do you want from me, and what does my knowing and not liking Naples have to do with it?”

  “Naples belongs to the lord of the Abyss,” the Numini replied. “As such he is not to be trusted and not to be trifled with, directly at least. But he and I have fought before, and Modigliani is not as much of a threat as many think he is.”

  “You’ve fought,” Cupric repeated. “Who won?”

  The Numini laughed, and the sound was like bells and a breath of warm air amidst the chill. “I did, naturally. I was a lord in my own right before Modigliani was ever hatched, and a simple Abyssumancer has few defenses against the divine.”

  “All at once, I’m liking you even more,” Cupric said. “But let’s get back to what you want from me.”

  “I need a tie to the mortal plane,” the Numini said simply. “My Numenmancer has been taken from me and I fear I must resort to drastic measures to retrieve her.”

  “Your Numenmancer . . . Xaz?” Cupric hazarded the guess, based mostly on his earlier observation of Terre Verte’s bed-turned-altar.

  The Numini didn’t exactly nod, not in this bubble of unreality, but the effect was the same.

  “You’re going after Terre Verte, then?” Cupric asked.

  “He must release her.”

  This all sounded too good to be true. Of course, there was one snag to it he already had identified. “I admit the idea of having an ally who can best Naples appeals to me, as does the idea of your interfering with Terre Verte’s plans since I think he’s batshit crazy. But I’m an Abyssumancer. Assuming I were willing to help you, I don’t see how I could.”

  “The blue prince has already demonstrated the technique,” the Numini said, “when he formed a link to Dioxazine. Since I ask for your consent, I would have no need for his subtlety. I can mark you with my power before you leave the temple, and it will linger in you long enough for you to open a rift and for me to assist you in allowing me to cross.”

  This was madness.

  Then again, so were the slices up and down Cupric’s body from Sennelier’s claws and teeth—not to mention Naples’ knife. He could use a powerful ally. Xaz had supposedly had some trouble managing her power immediately after she bonded to Alizarin, but by the time Cupric had met her it all seemed to be under control again. If this Numini could help Cupric extract himself from what had become a painfully volatile situation, it was probably worth it.

  “I want to establish a few things before I agree to anything.” The Numini nodded again. “I’m not a Numenmancer. I won’t be commanded, and I will not be chastised. I will sleep, or eat, or fuck, what I wish, when I wish, and I don’t care if I offend your Numen sensibilities.”

  “I have already agreed that I would not attempt to prevent you from . . . indulging,” the Numini said, distaste obvious in its voice. “It would hardly be fair to attempt otherwise, since I will be equally free of your commands, as Alizarin has also demonstrated.”

  “What would I need to do to summon you?” Cupric said, still contemplating.

  “Once I have marked you, you should be able to feel our power,” the Numini said. “I have seen you open a rift once already across the planes. I am sure your attempt to reach the Numen will be awkward, but I will assist from the other side, and it will be enough.”

  “I should know your name, in order to summon you.”

  “You may call me Doné, if you wish. It is what my intimates call me, in my realm.”

  It could still all go terribly, terribly wrong, but so far as Cupric was concerned, between Terre Verte and Naples, things had already gone bad.

  “Okay,” he said, agreeing. “You can—”

  The Numini did not wait to hear more. The frost crept from Cupric’s feet, up his legs, over his hips, across his torso, down to the tips of his fingers, and over his throat. At Cupric’s next breath, it felt like he had walked out into the coldest of Kavet’s winter days; his lungs seized as he choked on the icy air. He had long enough to think, I wonder if it remembers an Abyssumancer can freeze to death, and then the world went dark.

  He woke, no longer in the temple, but back in his bed at Amaranth Farms. He tried to push himself to a sitting position, but the muscles in his arm trembled and it collapsed from under him. He let out a cry as he hit the bed again.

  In the temple, where it was power instead of muscle that moved him, he had been able to forget how hurt he was. He needed to feed, but that was going to be difficult if he couldn’t even walk.

  He glanced down at his body, which was crisscrossed with cuts and darkened with bruises and the edge of curling burns. The bleeding had stopped, but that had been all he had been able to manage.

  He looked closer, and realized that some of the marks he had first taken for bruises were in fact frostbite blisters. That was new, and doubtless a result of accepting the Numini’s power. Well, Xaz seemed to be fine—or she had been before the Terre had done whatever he had done to her.

  Time to play this game.

  He rolled over onto his stomach, wincing as the movement pressed on cuts, bruises, and blisters, and shut his eyes to examine his own power. As the Numini had suggested, it was easy to reach toward the Numen; he could feel a tug from that direction as the Numini guided his fumbling.

  I’m going to need you to help me feed, then get somewhere safe, he said as he reached the Numini he had spoken to in the Temple. I know that’s probably not what you wish to do, but if I don’t feed soon, I’ll lose any connection I manage to make to you.

  I will assist you.

  It was like reaching into a deep lake, and having something from that darkness wrap tendrils around him and pull. He shuddered against the alien feel of it, but didn’t fight. “Doné,” he whispered, instead, knowing the name wasn’t real but using it to direct his attention.

  “I call you into this world.” Calling one of the Abyssi didn’t need to be so ritualistic, but the Numini liked ritual, their power liked ritual, and it was easier to use it than fight it.

  “On the power of the agreement we have made I summon you and bind you to your promises.

  “By my power
, given to me by Sennelier, and by you, I invoke you and offer you a bond in this world.

  “I call you, summon you, invoke you thrice.”

  As the last words were spoken, Cupric felt the air around him cool. He squinted, trying to see but needing to protect his eyes from the icy air. He wished he had had the sense to curl up in the blanket before doing this, even though he knew it wouldn’t have made a difference; this cold was coming from inside.

  He shut his eyes the rest of the way as light blinded him, then snapped them open as he felt a hand on his shoulder. The first thing he could make out past the glare was the shadow cast by the Numini’s wings on the far wall. The glow dimmed gradually, or else his eyes adapted, and a long fall of raven-dark hair came into focus. Then skin the color of violets, and slowly, swirls of white and silver across that skin. Eyes like mercury, surrounded by black lashes. The graceful curve of a cheek, and of lips of dusky rose, then the curve of a hip, a breast, a thigh, and he realized that the Numini was not an it but a she and in fact the most beautiful creature he had ever had the honor to gaze upon.

  He felt his heart skip and was certain the tears in his eyes were from neither the cold nor the glare, both of which were now tolerable.

  Every fiber of his body still ached, but he found himself struggling down from the bed, conscious that his body had responded to her beauty and fearful that he would offend before he fell to his knees before her.

  She reached down and caressed his cheek. His eyes closed and he sighed.

  “We will do well together, Abyssumancer,” she said, with a voice like the wind across the sea. “Indeed we will.”

  Chapter 34

  Lydie

  Lydie groaned as Cadmia handed her the silver teacup and told her what was in it—both because this silver souvenir reeked of its previous owner’s death, and because the last thing Lydie wanted to do was try to talk to the Numini.

  “Why me?” she wondered aloud. Whined, perhaps. She had earned a chance to whine, hadn’t she? “If a Numini wants to talk to us so badly, why doesn’t it send a Numenmancer?”