She took the cup, which was bitterly cold, as if it was full of snow instead of sand.
“I got the impression the Numini have been forbidden by their own leaders from helping us,” Cadmia answered—far too calmly, in Lydie’s opinion.
“Forbidden,” she echoed. “That doesn’t trouble you, that the divine realm seems to oppose what we’re doing?”
“The divine realm pushed us to rescue Terre Verte from the Abyss,” Cadmia retorted. “I’m currently opposed to whatever they are doing, too.” She shook her head. “My impression was that there is some fighting in the ranks. The one I spoke to wanted you to tell the Numini trying to reach you that Napthol is ‘loyal still,’ whatever that means.”
Lydie had more questions, but they weren’t ones Cadmia could answer. Loyal to whom, or to what? Were there factions fighting among the Numini? And most importantly: Why was I foolish enough to get involved in all this?
But it was too late to back out now, much as she wished she could.
“I’ll see what I can do,” she sighed, looking into the cup. The death attached to it was old, residue left by a shade who had died peacefully and moved on. It was only as strong as it was because someone—Umber, presumably—had kept this specifically as a memento of that loss. “Umber is rich and loves to cook. Doesn’t he have some silver cookware or something like that? I can’t use this.” She lifted the teacup. “It’s distracting.”
“He’s half-Abyssi,” Cadmia pointed out. “I doubt he wants to steep his food in silver. I found some linen napkins?” she suggested. “Numenmancers usually use silk, but these are new at least, as if he bought them recently but hadn’t had a chance to use them.”
“If this Numini is so desperate to talk to us, it will need to tolerate linen,” Lydie grumbled.
As they searched Umber’s linen cabinet, Cadmia asked, “Why is the teacup distracting?”
Lydie turned to stare at her, dumbfounded. “You found a single silver teacup in a cabinet somewhere—I’m guessing not with the rest of the dishes—and you didn’t automatically assume it had come from someone dead?”
Cadmia winced, as if the thought really hadn’t occurred to her, and handed Lydie one of the linen napkins. “I have a friend at the Cobalt Hall who collects silver spoons,” she said. “I didn’t think more about it.”
Because Umber’s house is littered with knickknacks and collections.
“It belonged to someone named Bonnie . . . Bonnie something,” Lydie said, as she carefully poured the sand into the center of the napkin, then gratefully handed the cup to Cadmia. “She hasn’t touched it in a long time, like maybe she lost it long ago, but someone—I’m guessing Umber—remembers it as hers.”
“So she is dead?” Cadmia asked quietly.
It was hard for Lydie to remember sometimes that that information wasn’t always widely known.
“Yes,” Lydie answered. “Peacefully, if that helps, a few years ago but not too many. Should I say sorry for your loss?”
Cadmia shook her head. “I never knew her. I’ll put this back where I found it.”
Lydie folded the napkin carefully before letting out a relieved breath. At least she wouldn’t be asked to facilitate communication with the dead again.
Just with a Numini.
She looked around the house, and frowned. She had spent the last days reinforcing walls to keep this creature out of her sleeping area, and didn’t want to breach those defenses, but she also didn’t want to attempt a ritual to talk to the Numini in the same spot where she had tied her power to the Abyss to help Hansa talk to Jenkins. Similarly, she wanted to avoid all the bedrooms.
It seemed there was no helping it.
Cadmia looked like she wanted to invite herself along, but Lydie had learned her lesson from having Hansa in her circle. . She returned to her room alone, and for a few minutes sat on the couch, closed her eyes, and simply breathed.
She had moved the couch to the center of the room and wrapped her protective circle around it the night before, so all she needed to do today was find the nerve to invite a massive, ethereal entity that had probably been responsible for her sleeplessness and splitting headaches to talk to her.
She also needed to decide how to use the white sand. She didn’t want to mix it into her circle of salt and earth; the Numini might see that as desecration. The best she could think to do was display it in front of her in the style of an altar and gently set her fingertips to it, using it as a focus in the way she might use the personal effects of one of the dead.
As the powerful chill of the Numen crept up her left arm, she drew a breath and dropped into the realm of the dead. Here inside her circle it was peaceful and still; the shades were locked outside, awaiting her next instruction.
“I call to the entity of the Numen who has been trying to speak to me,” she said, wishing she had a name with which to call it. Names were powerful.
The scraping, tapping sound came again, like branches sliding on a windowpane. This time she recognized it as a knock. There was a voice as well, but she couldn’t make out the words with her walls up.
She lifted an arm to open the doorway, and said, “I invite—”
“NO.” The force of the negation, shoved through her walls, stole her breath. It added more softly, almost too softly for her to hear, “Listen only. Do not look.”
This was seeming like a worse idea by the moment. Lydie closed her eyes, then tried again. Focusing her attention on the creature beyond her walls, she said reluctantly, “I invite you in. Speak to me.”
Her breath hissed in as coldness suffused her circle. This creature was touched by the dead plane, yes, which was both how she had felt it and how her wards had initially held it at bay, but it could never be mistaken for a simple shade. In some ways it reminded her of Naples, as if death was just something it had worn briefly.
“I am sorry to disturb you, and that my attempts to communicate hurt you,” the creature—Numini?—said. Its voice was melodious and sad. Lydie squeezed her eyes tighter shut to fight the desire to open them and see what was before her. As if sensing the impulse, the creature added, “You must not look at me fully. I am only a shade of my previous strength, but mortals who look upon the divine are lost to its power. Our Numenmancers are immune, but no one else.”
Lydie’s skin rose in gooseflesh, but it wasn’t just the warning. It was cold. She was starting to shiver, too. “If you have something you need to tell me, please say it fast,” she urged the being.
“I’m sorry, so sorry,” it said again. “You were the only one I could reach. I need to send a warning to Alizarin, and I cannot talk to him directly.”
Lydie sighed. Once again, it seemed to be her job to pass messages. “What is the warning?”
“Dioxazine’s Numini, the one who made her a Numenmancer, is in this world. She seeks to free her Numenmancer. She will need to rest for some time to recover from the strain of crossing the veil, but after that I fear she will target Alizarin first. She may kill him outright, or she may just try to break the bond, but either will destroy the individual he is now.”
“Alizarin is a prince of the third level of the Abyss,” Lydie pointed out. “Is this Numini strong enough to win in a fight against him? And why can that Numini possibly kill Alizarin, but you can’t even talk to him?”
“Alizarin is powerful, but Dioxazine’s Numini is one of the three high Arbiters of the Numini, and among the oldest of our kind. As for the rest . . .” The creature’s sign encompassed all the beauty of frost on the surface of a lake. “I was banished from the Numen long ago, and then banished from the Abyss. Once I had a tie to a Numenmancer on this plane, but . . .” Again, there was no sound, but Lydie could feel the shift in power. If the dead could weep, this is what it would feel like. “All is ash. It is his death you feel on me, and which allows me to linger on death’s plane. Allows. As if I have anywhere else to go.”
“You’re a Numini . . . ghost?” Lydie clarified. “That’s possible?
”
“It’s close enough to correct,” the dead Numini replied. “We cannot be killed by mortal means, but our own kind can destroy us. Please, you must warn Alizarin. I used him at my Numenmancer’s command, but I loved him and I would not see him harmed.”
“If this Numini is so powerful, how can Alizarin protect himself?”
“Dioxazine’s Numini will be more powerful when her mancer is free, which is why Terre Verte has imprisoned her, and why her Numini will first seek to free her. I do not know what horrors she may inflict on Amaranth, Terre Verte, and his mancers there, both in order to retrieve Dioxazine and once she is free.”
“She’s a Numini,” Lydie said. “She wouldn’t hurt people, would she?”
“She has tied herself to an Abyssumancer, and does not realize what that entails. She believes all things strive toward the right and the Numen given a chance, that Alizarin’s recent behavior is proof of this, and that already being of the Numen she will not be tempted by Abyssal things. She does not understand the rage and hunger. It feels to her like righteous fury, which is familiar to her, not like bloodthirst, which is what it is.”
“Why in the three planes would a Numini willingly bind herself to an Abyssumancer?” Lydie asked, with horror. The Quinacridone movement was proof of what happened when you mixed morality with simple human bloodlust; she didn’t want to see a Numini feeling all the hungers of the Abyss for the first time.
“Because Terre Verte has imprisoned Dioxazine and in doing so made it impossible for her Numini to reach any Numenmancers. He did this to weaken the Numini, and it worked, but has created a monster.”
“You didn’t answer me: How can Alizarin fight this Numini? Or the rest of us, for that matter. I’m not sure slaughter is how we want to deal with the Terre Verte issue.”
“Dioxazine can fight her Numini. Numini do all but lie to hide it, but on this plane, a Numenmancer is the more powerful of the pair.”
“You just said freeing Dioxazine will strengthen her Numini.”
“It is a double-edged sword.”
“And you said the Numini is likely to slaughter people before she even gets to Dioxazine to free her.”
The Numini-shade sighed. “And if a Numini slays Terre Verte, his shade will instantly cross into the Numen, where he we believe he plans to make war. And if Alizarin does somehow slay this Numini, or if Terre Verte does, then the loss will kill Dioxazine and sever Alizarin’s tie to the Numen and the mortal realm.”
“Fuck,” Lydie said, the word slipping out of her mouth before she anticipated it. “Let me see if I understand this. An extraordinarily powerful Numini wants to kill Alizarin, but if Alizarin kills her, it will destroy him anyway. This Numini might also kill Terre Verte, in the process expediting his war on the Numen and the destruction of the veils between the planes. Dioxazine may be able to fight this Numini—the one we can’t kill even if we can fight it—but only after she is free, by which point Terre Verte is probably dead? Do you have any good news to impart today, or maybe an idea? A suggestion?”
“Wake Scheveningen.”
Lydie struggled to place the familiar-sounding name, and at last Alizarin’s story came to mind. “The Gressi?”
“Yes, the Gressi. They are of the Numen, of the Abyss, of death and life and the mortal plane. They do not die, but only sleep. Scheveningen is the patron of the Terre line, though through the centuries of his slumber other Numini and Abyssi have fought for ownership of that bloodline as well. If Scheveningen wakes, he can strengthen the boundaries between the planes and banish those who threaten them.”
Bringing more Others into this fiasco seemed unwise, but at least according to the story, Scheveningen was opposed to the enslavement of the human race.
“How do we wake Scheveningen?”
“One of Terre lineage must make a sacrifice over Scheveningen’s resting place.”
Lydie almost snorted at that. “And how do you suggest we get Terre Verte to help us with that?”
“You have spoken amongst yourselves of Clay.”
“Spoken of, but not found,” Lydie said. “I am fairly certain he is dead . . . or is that not an issue?” If she could reach and summon his shade, maybe that would be enough? After all, this Numini was supposedly dead, too.
Again that wavering, this time touched with sorrow. “Dust and ash. He died by his own hand five years ago, after he slew his daughter Maimeri. Their spirits wail on the lowest level of the Abyss, where even I cannot reach to comfort them.”
“Died . . . slew . . . why?” Lydie stammered, then immediately regretted asking. Had she thought guilt from a mortal shade was painful? The feeling from the Numini was devastating.
“My fault,” the Numini whispered. “Clay thought his magic, the beautiful divine power I gave him, was a curse. He begged me to spare his daughter. I did. I left her only her tie to Scheveningen. She was tainted by the Numen through her father, but not enough to make her a mancer . . . just enough for her to see me, to know me, and . . .” Mortals who look upon the divine are lost to its power. Did the Numini say that last line again, or did Lydie just hear its echo in her head? “We had . . . mortals would call it an affair. I didn’t understand the risks. It destroyed her.”
Tragic, but Lydie hadn’t know the woman, and the information seemed useless, too.
It was as if the Numini needed to gather strength to speak its next words.
“Maimeri had a daughter. Pearl. She is the last of the Terre. I tried. I wanted to keep her free so when she was of age she could flee this land, but instead I must ask her to perform the sacrifice and tie herself to Kavet. With Pearl, you can wake Scheveningen. Without her, the Gressi will not wake, and the boundaries between the planes will fall, and Alizarin will die, and Quinacridone will rule you all.”
“Wait.” Lydie’s head was spinning with all of this information, but the last part made no sense at all. “I was following you until the end. How do the Quin end up kings of the ruins?” The one good part about destroying the world seemed to be getting rid of them.
The Numini seemed puzzled for a moment, then apparently determined the source of Lydie’s confusion. Not the Quin, the human sect of that name. Quinacridone, one of the high arbiters of the Numen. She is Dioxazine’s patron. She walks this realm. When the worlds crumble, she will be left to rule.”
“She . . . what?” Lydie couldn’t seem to get enough breath to form a coherent question.
“She . . . she, and I . . . thought we could make the lives of mortals better by bringing order to them.” The dead Numini sighed. “But even her attempt to teach Numen values to your kind through preachers was twisted by mortal interpretation, and eventually it all ended in disaster, and so many deaths.
“Since then, I have come to realize we were wrong about mortals. It is the conflict and the pain that allows you to be free and to love as you do. Doné still believes you need an arbiter for your lives, but has discovered it is not easy to force her will on mortals on this plane. The Gressi protected you and your free will too well. I fear she will allow Terre Verte to destroy the veils, because she knows once they are down, even the high justice Mir must allow her to step forward to care for the survivors.”
Lydie crossed her arms, and fought to keep her eyes closed. She wanted to be done with this conversation.
“Tell me how we find your daughter,” she said, “and how we summon Scheveningen. And anything else you know that might help us.”
Chapter 35
Hansa
It had to be almost dinnertime.
Please.
Hansa looked away from the piles of papers on his desk and rolled his shoulders. The bones of his spine let out audible pops as he stretched.
He had spent a half hour planning the excursion to Eiderlee, which would involve both of the remaining sighted guards and the captain of Company Five. Assisted by Rinnman and Gray, he had spent two hours after that filling out the paperwork that was apparently required for such a trip.
He hoped so.
In the middle of a meeting with Kavet’s premier blacksmith, one of the only men in the country licensed to keep a forge, his door opened again, admitting a sheepish-looking Rinnman. The other soldier half closed the door behind himself before saying, “I’m sorry to interrupt, sir, but you may want to take this meeting.”
From behind Rinnman, one voice momentarily separated itself from the jumble of conversation in the hall. “Let me in there, you! I’m going to strangle that boy with my bare hands!”
Hansa quirked a brow—then tried to suppress the expression, which he knew was something picked up from Umber. “You think so?” Given the babble of noise beyond the door, it took him a moment to replay the words in his mind and, only after that delay, recognize the voice. “Wait . . . is that my mother?”
The door pushed open, hard enough that Rinnman side-stepped barely in time to avoid being knocked over.
“Hansa!” Oh, yes. That was his mother, who strode in, glaring fiercely. “First you’re a criminal. Then you’re a hero. Oh, and you’re engaged. Then that horrible event down at the docks and you’re gone, presumed dead. Now you’re alive. And you never—” She smacked his shoulder at that, hard enough that he winced. “You never even bother to tell your mother you’re alive! Where have you been? I want to hear the truth from your own mouth.” As the initial fury of the tirade wound down a bit, tears appeared in her eyes. “What have you been doing that was so important and so secret that you could let your family think the worst, for weeks?”
He was a grown man. He was running for President. And at that moment he was, like any man facing an irate mother, reduced to a young child once again.
Of the Mortal Realm Page 27
