Of the Mortal Realm

by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

  We’re alive, he said. I think. We are alive, right?

  Think so, Naples answered.

  If we’re alive . . . who did it hit?

  The same wordless dread came from Naples and Umber in response.

  If the Numini struck to kill, Naples said, his thoughts echoing with horror, and the bolt wasn’t meant for me, then it would have been for Alizarin.

  Alizarin? He tried to push himself up despite his barely-starting-to-clear vision.

  “Don’t move too quickly,” a voice outside his mind said. It sounded tinny and far away, the result of standing inside a thunder-clap, so it took Hansa a moment to recognize it as Rinnman’s. “These burns are deep. We have doctors on the way. I think you should be able to sit up, though.” Gently, the other guard helped him, which was when Hansa noticed he was starting to regain feeling in his limbs.

  “The others?” he asked hoarsely.

  “A few others were caught in the blast. They’re being tended to.”

  Hansa’s throat seized up the next time he tried to speak, and he coughed violently before he managed to ask, “Everyone alive?”

  “There’s a young woman in pretty rough shape,” Rinnman answered. “They don’t know if she will make it. Cadmia Paynes is also unconscious, and the doctors are trying to stabilize her.”

  Hansa couldn’t ask about Alizarin. No one else could see him.

  He’s not here, Naples said silently.

  What does that mean?

  I don’t know. Nothing good. The words were heavy.

  “Stop that,” Rinnman whispered.

  “What?”

  “Whatever you’re doing. It’s getting in the way.”

  “Huh?”

  “You’ll be fine,” Rinnman said, still speaking in low tones. “You were my priority, but I should check on your other friends now. The girl who’s in the worst condition seems to be a necromancer, and they don’t heal well on their own.”

  Hansa stared after Rinnman as he limped off.

  What? Umber asked, sensing Hansa’s shock. He still sounded as pained and distant as he had a few moments ago.

  Rinnman knows Lydie’s a necromancer, and he somehow felt me talking to you two.

  Let me sleep. Thinking too loud, Naples said. His mental voice was fuzzy.

  You’re . . . better, Umber said to Hansa.

  Hansa managed to stand, and searched for Umber, who was several feet away covered in black-purple blood-blisters. Hansa struggled to find a place on the spawn’s skin he could touch without hurting him further. How was it that he was so much better, and standing already?

  Rinnman limped back over, every movement slow and trembling. He looked worse off than Hansa now. “Let me see what I can do,” he said. He looked from Naples to Umber, and back to Hansa again. “I don’t know how much more I have left in me.”

  He was clearly asking, Which one?

  Hansa nodded to Umber. It wasn’t a question.

  Rinnman knelt, painfully, given his injured leg, and leaned over Umber. He put a hand on the spawn’s throat as if checking for a pulse, and with his eyes half-closed he leaned forward and blew a gentle stream of air at his face. It was subtle, just a man checking the injuries of another, if Hansa hadn’t been watching closely.

  Rinnman’s eyes shot open and he looked up at Hansa with concern. “What . . . ?”

  Rinnman had been able to identify Lydie as a necromancer immediately, and had sensed Hansa speaking silently to Naples. What had he sensed just then from Umber? The infernal realm itself? “Please, help him,” Hansa pleaded.

  Animamancer. It had to be.

  Rinnman returned his attention to Umber, and a few moments later the spawn coughed and shuddered. His eyes opened, and Hansa watched as they cleared and focused.

  Wow, was the whisper Hansa heard in his head.

  “It’s enough,” Umber said.

  “You’re still very hurt.”

  “I’ll heal. Don’t waste your power. See if you can help Naples?”

  The guard nodded and moved on.

  We should be dead, Umber observed. Most of us would be, if not for your friend-in-hiding. Once Cupric and Quinacridone realize we’re alive, they’ll return to finish the job. We have to get out of the city.

  Where?

  We need—When Naples tried to reply, Rinnman hissed as if in pain and snapped, “Don’t do that if you want to make sure you regain feeling in all your important extremities, understand?”

  Naples didn’t speak again. Hansa and Umber exchanged a glance.

  By the time he pulled away from Naples, Rinnman was sweating and shivering.

  “Will you be okay?” Hansa asked him, alarmed at the man’s condition.

  Rinnman nodded. “I’ll be fine. And so should all of you. There will be some scars, but you will live. Except . . .” He hesitated.

  “Except?”

  “Cadmia. I can’t help her. Some power in her shoves mine away.” He looked up and said more softly, “The crowd is coming near again, and the doctors will be here momentarily.”

  “They’ll want to move us to the Cobalt Hall,” Hansa managed to say, thinking of Naples and Lydie.

  “There’s no way to pretend this was anything other than a magical attack,” Rinnman replied. “I’ll have them treat you in a private wing of the Quin Compound.”

  “What will the doctors see?” Umber asked practically.

  “Less critical injuries than they expected, but you’re all still hurt, and bandages would not be a bad idea.” Rinnman struggled to his feet. “They will want to put guards by your sick-room, Viridian. It could be a problem if you expect to have”—his gaze flickered, just for a moment, to Umber and Naples, before he finished with the word—“guests.”

  “Are any of the other guards—?”

  “Like me?” Rinnman shook his head. “No. I don’t know if any others might have other kinds of power.”

  “What happened to your leg?” Naples asked with a voice like dry parchment. “Shouldn’t you be able to heal it?”

  “I got in a fight,” Rinnman answered. “I fought back.”

  He didn’t wait to answer more questions, but went to greet the doctors who were finally trickling to the scene. Umber and Naples had to be carried, agonizingly, but Hansa managed to stay standing.

  Lydie, it turned out, was also on her feet.

  “I’m sorry,” she said as she reached Hansa’s side. “He would have had enough power to heal them better if he hadn’t had to help me.”

  “Is it true that you can’t heal well on your own?” Hansa asked, as they staggered side by side toward the Quin Compound.

  “I can heal,” she said, “I just do it slower than most people. I wouldn’t have healed from that, though. None of us would have.”

  They didn’t have time for more before the doctors separated Hansa from Lydie and led them both into the compound.

  “It’s a miracle you’re alive,” one of the doctors said. “You must have been far enough away not to get the brunt of the blow, but you could still have internal injuries. You will need a thorough evaluation.”

  “It must not have been as bad as it looked,” Hansa managed to mumble.

  The doctor looked over his shoulder, glancing skeptically toward the plaza. Hansa turned to see what he was looking at and nearly fell over.

  A few yards from the front of the Cobalt Hall, there was a slice ripped out of the ground. It was narrow enough to step across with barely an increase in stride, but as deep as a grave. Cracks and smaller craters spread out from it like a spider web, all the way to the base of the Cobalt Hall on one side, and the fountain at the center of the market on the other. The edges were coated with what looked like frost.

  Looking at it made him dizzy.

  He should have been dead.

  He did the next best thing; he passed out.

  When he woke, he was in a bed, on top of the blankets, with much of his body wrapped in bandages. It was night; the shades were tight
ly drawn on the windows, but someone had left a lamp burning, turned down low.

  Sitting up revealed pulled muscles and tight, blistered flesh he had felt less the last time he woke up. Maybe that was good; it meant he wasn’t numb anymore. It also meant he could feel his skin, and all along that skin was a different kind of pain—a kind of burning tingling he recognized all too well. Where was Umber?

  He limped to the doorway and startled the guard outside when he opened it.

  “Sir! I didn’t expect to see you up,” Gray said. “The doctors wanted to talk to you as soon as you were awake. Do you want me to tell them—?”

  “Wait,” Hansa said. “I want to see my friends first. Where are they?”

  Gray nodded down the hall. “They’re all in the next few rooms. Rinnman said we should keep you all together, to make it easier for the doctors to treat you, and in case anything came after you. There’s only one staircase that leads to this hall, and we have another dozen guards all around it. What happened? I—I’m sorry.” He cleared his throat. “I’m only supposed to be here to deliver messages, not to interrogate you when you wake. Rinnman made that very clear.” He straightened deliberately to attention. “I’m here if you need me.”

  “I need to check on my friends.” Hansa walked past Gray to check the next room. The younger man didn’t say anything more or try to stop him.

  The first room held not Umber, but Cadmia. She was sleeping, but not peacefully. Lydie was by her side, and she looked up sleepily as Hansa walked in.

  “She’s dying,” Lydie whispered.

  “Dying?” Hansa echoed hoarsely. One side of Cadmia’s face was marred by burns and blood-blisters; the other side was icy pale. That was all Hansa could see of her above the sheet. “Can you help her?” The words were a plea based on what might be nothing more than Quin hear-say and myth about a necromancer’s power.

  “What do you think I’m doing here?” Lydie snapped back. “I can’t heal her, but I’m holding her from passing into the next realm. She has enough Abyssal power that it’s healing her, not as fast as it would Umber or Naples, but a bit. I think it can save her, if I can keep her in her flesh long enough.”

  Hansa let out a breath. Lydie sounded harried and exhausted, emotional, but not despondent or desperate. She believed what she was saying, believed she could save Cadmia, given the time. Did they have time?

  “Veronese managed to send Jenkins with a message, too,” Lydie continued, as Hansa stared at the slow but steady rise and fall of Cadmia’s chest under the light sheet that covered most of her body. “He says Veronese cannot come to help us because we may all have been tainted by the divine realm when Quinacridone attacked us, and he’s worried we might be able to see him.”

  “Why is that a problem?” Hansa asked, frustrated. “We could use his help.”

  Lydie paused, expression unfocusing a little in the way it did when shades spoke to her. “Because mortals can’t look on the Numini without falling in love. I didn’t understand it fully when Veronese tried to tell me, but I’ve been listening to the shades since, and they have helped me understand. Numenmancers have natural protection because of their control over the divine realm, but others just . . . fall. That’s why being exiled from the Numen drove Terre Verte to madness even before the Abyssi abused him for nearly a century. It has destroyed Cupric, not that Quinacridone cares. She sees it as an improvement.” She dropped her gaze. “Veronese says it’s why as soon as he tasted a Numini’s tears even Alizarin fell in love, and from then onward was desperate to reach the divine realm himself. And it’s why—” She choked, then continued in a whisper. “It’s why Clay slew his daughter. Because she went mad with it. Pearl should be safe because she’s spawn, but she is drawn to the Numini because she possesses her mother’s memories of them, so she can be easily manipulated by them.”

  Lydie shook her head as if to clear it, then looked back at Hansa.

  “We need more power than we have,” Lydie wailed softly. “We need to resurrect a Gressi, or get out of Mars. We need to rescue Dioxazine and fight one of the most powerful Numini.” She dropped her head in her hands. “I’m barely managing to keep Cadmia alive. I’m in over my head.”

  Hansa resisted the urge to sit by Cadmia’s bedside; he feared he wouldn’t be able to stand again. Instead, he dropped his hand onto Lydie’s shoulder. “I’m worried we all are.”

  Chapter 39

  Dioxazine

  “If you don’t mind a few more minutes in the snow, lovely lady, I’m sure we can find better accommodations.”

  Terre Verte’s heavy gray gaze made her shiver, not with fear but anticipation. He was a beautiful man, and more importantly, he gave her that smoldering look knowing full well who and what she was.

  She accepted his hand with a challenging grin. “I’m intrigued to see what you can come up with to try to impress me.”

  He charmed the necromancer who owned Amaranth Farms—if that was the word for it—with just a dash of Numen power mixed with sheer force of personality. He summoned globes of foxfire to warm the bedroom and fill it with peach-colored light, a trick a pure Numenmancer could not have managed; Xaz watched his power as he worked, wondering if her bond to Alizarin would allow her to do something similar. She would have to experiment.

  In the future. At that moment, he turned toward her and all other thoughts stopped. Strangely, she didn’t feel nervous. She had nothing to hide.

  “Beautiful, beautiful,” he whispered, and it was obvious he wasn’t talking just about her body, but about her power as well.

  He blew a gentle breath across her breasts, and she laughed at the sight of frost, which trailed across her skin just long enough to make her shiver before it melted away. He more than accepted what she was—he gloried in it.

  She stayed with him in Amaranth, helped with his plans when she could, experimented with her own projects at other times—and enjoyed her nights in his bed. And retrospectively, she knew the exact moment that he saw . . .

  Something . . .

  In her power. Something disturbed him, and it was more than the taint of the Abyss.

  She didn’t . . .

  . . . really remember anything after that.

  Until now.

  Dioxazine sat up with a silent scream as something ripped inside her. The violence of the severing made the magical bonds holding her shudder.

  DIOXAZINE!

  She looked around, trying to figure out where she was. It was like the temple, but until this moment she had been alone and powerless in a bubble of reality from which there had been no doors or windows, or even any sense of time. She wasn’t sure if she had been there a moment or a month.

  Now—there was a now, suddenly—she turned, and though she couldn’t focus on the image, she knew it was one of the Numini.

  “What’s happening?”

  We need to get you out of here before the prison adjusts to the . . . change.

  With the word change, the bubble of power contracted with pain that made Xaz cry out.

  I’m sorry, the Numini said. Please, we have to move quickly.

  “Move . . .” She hadn’t moved in . . . How long? She hadn’t even been aware of moving, of anything, since that last night when Verte had come back from scrying into the Cobalt Hall, kissed her, then stepped back and looked at her like she was a stranger.

  MOVE! the Numini ordered. Do not let his sacrifice be in vain.

  “Sacrifice?”

  But she didn’t need the Numini to answer. She had felt it; she could feel it now.

  “Alizarin,” she said, and now it was her horror that caused the womblike bubble to ripple and contort. “He’s—he can’t be dead.”

  He may be destroyed or only banished, but either way the man you knew is gone from this world. The severing disrupted this prison long enough for me to reach you, but you must take over now. Please.

  She wanted to ask more, particularly to demand the Numini explain what had happened to Alizarin, what it mean
t that he was gone from this world, but the Numini’s urgency was infectious. Maybe if she turned her attention, like leaving the mancer’s temple . . .

  It was like taking a step at a right angle to everything, and it hurt, but she forced her way through and at last she found herself by the river in Amaranth Farms. She looked up and blinked at a hazy figure, like streaks of gold against the half-frozen river-water.

  “You need to get to the city,” the Numini said. “I can bring you to where Hansa and the others are. Quinacridone has worked over the years to make you afraid of your power, but you have gained much these last weeks. You may be able to help.”

  “The . . . what, who?” Her head was spinning.

  The Numini reached for her, lifted her, and then she was falling through ice.

  She found herself again, gasping, this time on a rug-warmed floor.

  “The fuck?” A raspy voice spoke behind her and she turned. Naples was barely recognizable past the cuts and burns, but she would know those copper eyes anywhere. “Nearly-naked Numenmancer. Am I hallucinating?”

  She shook her head—and then had the sense to look down and realize, yes, she was nearly naked. She had been in her shift when Verte had locked her away, and she wasn’t wearing more now.

  Naples wasn’t looking though, at least not in any kind of lascivious manner. His expression spoke more of shock, which was very much what Xaz was feeling herself.

  “One of the Numini released me,” she said, less out of an urge to inform Naples and more because she needed to figure out what was going on. “Alizarin . . . what happened to Alizarin?”

  Naples winced, but Xaz wasn’t sure if the pain was physical or emotional. “Your Numini hit him with a bolt of lightning.”

  She swayed. She hadn’t known the blue Abyssi long, and she had spent much of that time wanting to get rid of him, but if it hadn’t been for him she would never have stood up to the Numini—she would never have stood up for herself. He had changed her.

  “Oh, wipe that expression off your face, Numenmancer,” Naples snarled. He pushed himself up to sit, but didn’t stand. “You’re free now, right? Does anything else matter to you?”