Of the Mortal Realm

by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

  “My . . . Numini?” she repeated, not reacting to the jibe. “The Numini who freed me spoke as if it cared for Alizarin.”

  “Well, your Numini, the one who makes you a mancer, is Quinacridone, and he is not fond of us all. He killed Alizarin, and your being here is going to lead him right back to us.”

  There was too much in that brief speech for her to process it all right away. Alizarin, killed. Quinacridone. She tried to focus, but her mind was still spinning from a combination of the spell Verte had used to trap her and the shock of being pulled from it. “Then what . . . what are we doing about it?”

  “We?” Naples leaned back against the headboard. “I can’t even stand. I can’t run and I definitely can’t fight. I’ve seen what that creature can do and I doubt you have a hare’s chance of winning against it, either.”

  “The Numini told me maybe I could help.”

  “Help,” Naples spat. “What do you expect to do? Actually, you know what would weaken Quinacridone? You, dead. So why don’t you go downstairs, and tell the fucking Quin you’re a mancer, and let them all do us a favor for once?”

  She recoiled. “I didn’t—what did I—”

  Despite his earlier words to the contrary, Naples managed to put his feet on the floor and struggled to rise. Unsteadily, gripping the bedpost, he stood before her as he said, “Before he was your annoying pet, Alizarin was my lover. He was the first person willing to touch me in decades, after I was bonded to Azo. He probably saved my life and he definitely saved my sanity. And now you dare stand there with that pained expression on your face when we both know you would have killed him to get rid of him if you could have.”

  His knees gave out, and he ended up kneeling on the floor.

  “It’s pretty obvious I’m in no condition right now to fight you,” Naples said, “but I swear to you I will find the energy somewhere, if you don’t get out of my sight.”

  She stumbled backward, barely looking out the door before she fell through it.

  She was met by instant activity in the form of shouting, demanding questions from . . . Quin guards. They had been at the far end of the hall, but must have heard the door open and seen her, an interloper who had no reason to be in this place. She was once again inside the Quin Compound, as if Naples’ words had been a curse instead of a suggestion. Why had the Numini brought her here? For that matter, why was Naples here?

  As her mind caught up to reality, it occurred to her: Naples is dead.

  The two guards reached her, but she could only stare at them, dumbfounded. Was she dreaming? She could barely even hear what they were saying.

  Another door on the hall opened, and Hansa leaned in it.

  Both guards jumped to attention. “Sir! She broke in somehow. We were just about to take her downstairs.”

  Hansa shook his head. “Let me speak to her.” He nodded back toward the room he had just left.

  Xaz was surprised for a moment that they let her go with him, but then she realized that most of the guards who had witnessed her arrest had been slain that day; there was no reason either of these would recognize her not only as a mancer, but also as that mancer.

  Also, this was probably a dream. She felt so vague and groggy, she had to be asleep.

  She followed Hansa, only to find the room already occupied by an unconscious Cadmia and a girl Xaz didn’t recognize, but who shone lightly with divine power.

  Actually, Hansa seemed to be marked with that power as well; Cadmia glowed even more brightly.

  “Struck by lightning?” Xaz said, remembering what Naples had said.

  The girl glared. “Who are you?”

  “Lydie, this is Dioxazine,” Hansa said, at which point the girl’s eyes widened and she paled.

  “Dioxazine. The Numenmancer. The Quinacridone’s Numenmancer.”

  Xaz winced. “Why do people keep calling me that?”

  “Because apparently you are,” Hansa said. “It’s why Terre Verte locked you up. I assume you remember that—and how did you get out?” He looked at Lydie. “Did you mount a daring rescue while I was unconscious?”

  “One of the Numini released me,” Xaz said. “I already went over that with Naples, who likes me even less now than he used to. Why are we in the Quin Compound?”

  “Long story,” Hansa said.

  “The short story is, there’s a Numini who’s planning to take over Kavet and this entire realm, and it’s your Numini, and you’re the only one who can possibly control him. Except for a Gressi, who we can only resurrect if we can somehow get into the Cobalt Hall.”

  “And . . . Alizarin? Where is he?” Xaz asked, hoping they would undo the ugly words the Numini and Naples had said.

  They didn’t. Instead they both looked away. Hansa answered, “We don’t know for sure, but we haven’t seen him since the lightning strike. We’re hoping he was just driven back into the Abyss, and is all right there.”

  He may be destroyed or only banished . . . the man you knew is gone from this world. Dioxazine had interpreted the Numini’s words to mean the worst, and Naples seemed convinced he was dead, but “gone from this world” didn’t have to mean gone forever. Right?

  Hansa looked at the girl, Lydie, who said, “I can’t sense him one way or another, but I don’t know what that means. I don’t have any practice with Abyssi.”

  “Why—” Xaz’s voice choked when she first tried to speak. She had to clear it before she could ask the essential question. “Why did . . . Quinacridone . . . attack you?”

  Her Numini had never told her its name—deliberately. Names had power, especially among the divine, and unlike Alizarin, who had declared their bond a partnership from the start, Xaz’s Numini had always clearly considered her little more than a slave. Now, as she spoke the name aloud, she could feel the Numini it belonged to. Her Numini.

  “Shit,” Hansa suddenly hissed. “Pearl. How could I have forgotten about her?”

  “Lightning?” Lydie replied succinctly.

  “I didn’t see what happened to her. Rinnman would have said if she was hurt, right?”

  “Rinnman?” Xaz echoed.

  “Probably,” Lydie answered half-heartedly.

  “Pearl?” Xaz asked, remembering the command that had started this entire disastrous adventure, weeks ago, when the Numini had told Xaz to get the girl and bring her to the mancers’ temple.

  “Quinacridone wouldn’t hurt her, would he?” Hansa asked. “I mean, she’s a kid, a half-Numini kid, and he’s a Numini. Even if he needs to make sure we don’t get to Pearl and resurrect Scheveningen, he wouldn’t hurt her?”

  Xaz pressed a hand to her temple, wincing at the pulse of anxious pain there. Who was Scheveningen?

  “The Numini—my Numini,” she said, answering the one question she could, “was furious with me when I ‘allowed’ Alizarin to kill Naples, even though he’s an Abyssumancer and was going to kill Cadmia. He wouldn’t hurt an innocent child.” She started to run a hand through her hair and discovered that it was tangled as if she had walked through a wind-storm. “And by the way, Naples is in the next room. I’m a little confused.”

  “I’m sure you are,” Hansa sighed. “It’s a long story. Lydie, can you tell Xaz what has been happening? I should assure the guards she’s not a danger, then check on Umber.”

  The other girl nodded.

  “I don’t suppose you could find someone who could bring me some clothes?” Xaz asked as Hansa limped toward the doorway.

  He nodded, then stepped into the hall.

  “Okay, then,” Xaz said. Naples, back from the dead. All of them in the Quin Compound, where the guards were jumping at Hansa’s orders. Quinacridone-the-Numini was in this world despite the fact that she certainly hadn’t been the one to summon him because she had been bonded to an Abyssi at the time. And dear Numen, she had complained about Alizarin, but just thinking about him gone felt like contemplating an absent limb. She could only pray Hansa was right and Alizarin had simply been banished back to his n
ative plane—except, of course, there was no one she dared pray to.

  “Fill me in,” she said to Lydie. “The highlights, at least. I have a feeling it’s a long story.”

  Chapter 40

  Hansa

  Hansa sent Gray to get Dioxazine something to wear, after assuring the two guards that she was a friend of Cadmia’s, who had raced over in such a panic after hearing that her dear, dear friend was injured that she had forgotten to even dress.

  Strangely, it was the first lie Hansa had told that people seemed to doubt. Gray’s sardonic expression suggested he had more lascivious explanations in mind; Hansa remembered Terre Verte’s talk of a mistress door in Indathrone’s private wing of the compound. No one questioned him, though, and he didn’t think anyone would except maybe Rinnman—and that was a conversation Hansa was looking forward to.

  Umber was sleeping like the dead when Hansa walked in. Though he understood why Rinnman had prioritized the way he had, Hansa wished the man had focused on healing those with power. Naples and Umber were the fighters of their group.

  He sat by Umber’s bedside, careful not to touch him, afraid to hurt him. The magic, of course, was screaming at him that if he didn’t touch him they would both die, but Hansa doubted either of them would be up to much any time soon. How much of a problem that was going to be, how quickly, he didn’t know.

  So he sat there, fighting the desire to wake Umber and the knowledge that the other man needed to rest, the need to touch him and the fear of hurting him. At last he leaned down to kiss him, not the way the power wanted to, but the way he wanted to.

  The door behind him opened and he stood quickly enough to see Rinnman avert his gaze as he hesitated on the threshold.

  “I should have knocked,” the other guard said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Come in,” Hansa sighed. “And don’t apologize. You saved all our lives. Shouldn’t you be resting?”

  “I don’t sleep much,” Rinnman answered.

  “Is that a personal trait, or because of . . .” Hansa trailed off, afraid the question would be taken badly.

  Rinnman shrugged and said, “I don’t know.” He crossed the room, using the crutches deftly, as extensions of himself. Hansa remembered him saying not just that he had gotten in a fight, but that he had fought back.

  “Will that heal, eventually?” he asked.

  Again, the man shrugged. “We’ll see. Some things do, some things just don’t.” He put a hand to Umber’s brow and his eyes widened. “Your friend here, on the other hand, is healing very quickly, even beyond what I could do.” He looked up at Hansa and asked bluntly, “Indathrone’s dead, isn’t he?”

  “Yes.” It was all he could say.

  Rinnman’s gaze was unflinching as he asked, “Did you, or one of your friends, do it?”

  “No!” Hansa hissed, shocked—only to realize that, in a way, they had. “It’s a very long, very complicated story, but you need to know that I have been doing everything in my power to protect Kavet. Obviously I have some additional motives, but I am still loyal to this country.”

  The door opened again, and this time they both jumped up as they saw Naples there.

  “You should be in bed,” Rinnman gasped, as Hansa hurried over to help steady the Abyssumancer. “I’m happy to see you well enough to stand, but I can’t believe you’re—”

  “High. Pain. Tolerance,” Naples bit out. He winced as Hansa caught him around the waist, but then leaned into him, and they walked together toward the nearest chair. “Trust me when I say I’ll heal better in here.”

  When Hansa looked up from Naples again, he found Rinnman carefully not looking at any of them.

  “He is on our side, isn’t he?” Naples asked.

  “I think so,” Hansa answered. “Rinnman?”

  The other guard said, “I’m on Kavet’s side, and I believe you, Hansa, when you say you are, too. I don’t want to know more than I have to, and that includes . . .” A pointed glance to Hansa, Umber and Naples each in turn. “I just don’t want to know. For now, I’ll make sure Gray and the other guards stay a bit farther down the hall. There is only one entrance to this wing. They don’t need to be right outside your door.”

  He walked out, pausing along the way to briefly put a hand on Naples’ shoulder. Naples sighed, his body relaxing as if some of the pain were gone.

  “I would like credit now for showing epic restraint,” Naples said, once Rinnman had closed the door behind himself.

  “For what, not getting crude with Rinnman?”

  “I could have jumped him,” Naples pointed out.

  “You can barely stand,” Hansa replied. “How can you possibly be thinking of sex?”

  “I’ve gotten hurt worse during sex. You’ve never screwed the king of the Abyss.” Naples paused, reconsidered, and said, “Hurt worse than I am now, at least. It would have been a close call if not for the animamancer.” He winced, and shifted in his seat. “Divine wounds are more difficult to heal than infernal ones, though, so I’m not exactly at my peak at the moment. We are all going to be in trouble if Cupric or Quinacridone comes back to pick up the Numenmancer.”

  “Xaz said she saw you.”

  Naples practically snarled. “Yeah, we had a brief chat.”

  “She seemed dazed,” Hansa said. “Is she all right?”

  “Don’t know. Don’t care,” Naples answered.

  “Don’t-know-don’t-care if the only person among us capable of fighting the bloodthirsty Numini is up for the task?”

  “Don’t-know-don’t-care if that bitch who doesn’t have the spine to ever take on one of the Numini and who got my friend dead gets fed to a lesser demon,” Naples spat, the vehemence as brutal as the truth in his words.

  “We don’t know that Alizarin is dead,” Hansa said.

  “Do you see him about?” Naples snapped back. “Do you see him hovering by Cadmia’s side, waiting for her to wake up? Do you see him here, lending power to help us heal?” He dropped his head in his hands, and let out a cry that sounded more like an animal than a man.

  Hansa struggled to swallow past the knot in his throat. “Isn’t it likely he was just banished to the Abyss?” Hansa suggested, desperately. Naples knew the ways of the Abyss better than the rest of them, and every line of his expression and waver in his voice said the blue Abyssi, who Hansa had once hated and feared but had come to care for, was gone. “If Veronese is here when Alizarin thought Modigliani killed him, then why can’t Alizarin just be in the Abyss? You could summon him back, couldn’t you? He doesn’t have to be gone.”

  “Well, he is,” Naples snarled. “Maybe he’s alive in the Abyss—probably he is—but I’ve seen Dioxazine. There isn’t a hint of the Abyss on her, which means Quinacridone burned any connection to the Numen from him.” Before Hansa could ask what that meant, Naples rose to his feet, as if despite his pain and exhaustion he couldn’t stand to stay still. He explained, “Even when I first met Alizarin, he had a Numen taint, I guess from this Veronese. It’s what drove him to seek a connection to the divine realm in the first place. It’s what taught him to be gentle. And even it wasn’t enough to ever teach him the things he learned while bonded to Dioxazine.

  “I could call his name and probably summon what’s left of him, but it won’t be the Alizarin that you or even I know. The kind of blast that could burn him free of Xaz’s divine taint wouldn’t have conveniently left Veronese’s in place. That means he would just be an Abyssi of the third level, a creature of hunger and lust and nothing else. He won’t remember us as friends, or remember me or Cadmia as people he cared for, or even remember his child as something he loves. What he’ll remember about us is that being around us hurt him, because the higher emotions do hurt, and he will do everything in his power to kill us so we don’t hurt him again, because that is what an Abyssi understands.”

  Hansa sank down on the bed beside Umber. The movement roused the spawn, who opened his eyes with a sharp expression that instantly faded as he felt the
pain in Hansa and Naples.

  He reached out to pull Hansa close.

  “You’re still injured,” Hansa said. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Umber answered. “You’re hurting worse.”

  They curled together. Naples shuffled over to them and looked down imploringly until they both reached up to pull him into the bed, too. It hurt, where bodies pressed against injuries, but it was better than being apart.

  “We have to figure out what we’re going to do,” Hansa said.

  We’re going to do this first, Umber replied. He kissed him, gently, that much contact as much as either had the energy for.

  I can’t believe he’s gone. Hansa wasn’t sure whose thought that was. Maybe his own.

  They lay together, sharing wordless grief and gaining comfort in nearness and touch, until the dark pool of despair changed into something harder, brighter, and more solid—but resolve.

  We have to fight Quinacridone. That was Naples, the first of them to pull from a sense of numb defeat. We can’t let him get away with this. I don’t care if it kills us. I’ve done dead before, and even if this one sticks . . . we have to fight him.

  That means we need to find Pearl, and summon Scheveningen.

  And convince Dioxazine she has the power to fend off her Numini.

  Their thoughts all blended together, responding to each other in what quickly became half sleep.

  Dioxazine should be able to find her Numini, and Pearl might be there.

  If Pearl is with Cupric, there must be a way to find him, right?

  If Quinacridone isn’t helping him block it, I should be able to trace my power to him. That had to be Naples. If not, I can ask Sennelier to find him. He doesn’t normally get involved in the actions of the higher planes, but he can’t be pleased about Quinacridone claiming his mancer, and he won’t want the Quinacridone taking over here, either.

  Somewhere in the midst of discussion, planning and commiserating, sleep claimed them—a sleep full of dreams of the Abyss and frosted by the icy rime of divine wrath.