Kingdom Blades (A Pattern of Shadow & Light 4)

by McPhail, Melissa

  “We will come to that in a moment.” The Empress looked him over with a hardness in her gaze that made him tremble deep inside. Finally, she said, “Giancarlo believes you were courting the Princess Heir. Were you courting my daughter, Felix?”

  Felix shook his head emphatically no, because his breath had momentarily fled him. “I-I think Tanis was courting her, though. I mean…she said he was.” After his embarrassing prostration before the Empress, Felix no longer entirely trusted everything Nadia had said to him.

  “Nadia said this?” The Empress arched a brow and looked to the High Lord. “Tanis…Phaedor’s ward?”

  The High Lord was frowning severely at Felix. By way of answering the Empress, he arched a raven brow. “A truthreader of immense talent.”

  Felix snorted without thinking. “There’s an understatement.”

  The Empress returned her gaze sharply to him. “Explain this comment.”

  Felix dropped his eyes with a grimace. Shadow take his wagging tongue! “Forgive me, Aurelia,” he whispered. He just knew at any moment the Empress was going to summon her Praetorians to take him in hand, and the second time they laid hands on his person wouldn’t be nearly as pleasant as the first.

  Why, oh why had the zanthyr said those things to him? What had he meant that he would miss his opportunity? Opportunity for what? To deliver himself to the headsman’s block?

  “Answer the Empress’s question, Felix di Sarcova.” The High Lord sounded deeply displeased. “What did you mean by this remark?”

  Felix braved a look at him. “You mean…but don’t you know?” He shifted his gaze between the two adults regarding him so remotely, realized yet again just who he was standing in front of—only the two most powerful people in the damned Empire!—and had to remind himself to breathe again.

  “Tanis followed me across two twisted nodes, Your Grace. By himself, Your Grace. And at the Quai game, I thought…well, he ran so fast he was a blur. I know for sure that when we were in N’abranaacht’s apartments, Tanis timewove to allow us to escape, and then he pulled me across the node.”

  The Empress turned an unreadable look to the High Lord. “These are peculiar truths.”

  “Aurelia, please.” Vincenzé leveled a critical stare at Felix. “The boy but deflects our attention elsewhere. In our interviews, he repeatedly claimed the Literato N’abranaacht was behind the attack.”

  Felix glared at him. “Because he is!”

  Vincenzé retorted caustically, “The Literato N’abranaacht was seen by a stadium of thousands battling against one of the demon creatures at the scene. Explain that, you lying little bastard!”

  The High Lord raised a hand. “Be at peace, Vincenzé.”

  The wielder’s fierce expression at once sobered into apology. He ducked a bow. “Your pardon, Aurelia…Your Grace.”

  The Empress remarked to the High Lord, “I do not think the boy knows the Literato is dead.”

  Felix felt all the blood draining from his brain in a long cry of whaaaaat?

  Panic’s hand closed around his throat. He looked for the zanthyr again, but he only saw shadows. The damnable creature had lured him from the safety of a rabbit’s den and promptly abandoned him to the wolves.

  “Ask him how the Danes used a twisted node, if not without his help,” Giancarlo murmured threateningly.

  Vincenzé speared Felix with a fuming stare. “Ask him where the Adepts were taken.”

  “Ask him where the demons came from,” Giancarlo said.

  “Ask him what treasure the Danes offered in exchange for his traitorous soul.” Vincenzé’s gaze was hot with accusation. “Ask him what he expected to gain.”

  The High Lord shifted in his chair. “What say you to these claims, Felix di Sarcova? So far you’ve offered us little of value.” His manner remained remote and dispassionate. Felix felt even less sure of himself beneath the High Lord’s gaze than the Empress’s. “You have already admitted to taking the Princess Heir from the protection of the palace. What leap then to imagine you delivered her directly to the enemy? Your pattern, alone of any man’s, lay upon elae’s second strand after the attack. With my own eyes, I saw it riding those ill tides; with my own heart, I believe you to be possessed of unsavory intent.”

  Upon hearing these words, a hollow opened in Felix’s chest, through which all of his breath instantly drained. His hands and face began tingling, and his vision went dark around the edges.

  “Speak now if you have something of import to confess, child,” the Empress said, “some compelling reason I should not deliver you at once to the Imperial Executioner.”

  Felix sucked in a shuddering breath and stared hard at the toes of his boots. What could he do to convince them of his innocence when the truth clearly meant nothing to them? What could he do to make them listen, to make them see...?

  ‘Select wisely when to play your truths or you will miss your opportunity.’

  Was this the moment the zanthyr had been meaning? Bloody Sanctos on a stake—of course, the creature had conveniently vanished while Felix was being raked over the coals.

  “Do you see?” Vincenzé’s tone dripped with sarcasm. “The boy knows no—”

  Felix made fists at his sides and turned the wielder a hot stare. “If you will permit me to reach inside my satchel here, Aurelia,” he looked back to the Empress, “I have something that may be of interest.”

  Giancarlo snorted. “There’s nothing in that bag but pages of crumpled scribbling. I inspected it myself.”

  Felix kept his gaze on the Empress and his tongue in close check.

  The Empress nodded. “Proceed, Felix.”

  Praying he wasn’t making another mistake—like agreeing to meet Malin after hours in the Archives, or making a pact with the Princess Heir, or trusting a bloody zanthyr—Felix opened his satchel and reached—not merely inside the hemp bag, but all the way across a leis into his Nodefinder’s coach.

  Of course Giancarlo hadn’t found anything in the bag. He’d have to be a Nodefinder to even notice the leis, much less be able to activate the pattern that opened the secret door. Thus did Felix retrieve the book of the Qhorith’quitara that Malin had taken from the Archives. Recalling too well the feeling of magic the thing possessed, he drew it carefully from his bag.

  A riotous alarm sounded. It shrieked in Felix’s ears like an entire fleet of banshees, only a thousand times louder.

  The High Lord gave a startled oath. The Caladrians swore. Felix shrugged his shoulders towards his ears and shoved both hands with the hated book towards the Empress.

  “Giancarlo…take it from him.” The High Lord’s voice could barely be heard over the shrieking banshee alarm. “Vincenzé, go silence the alarm.”

  Giancarlo snatched the book from Felix’s grasp while Vincenzé ran from the room.

  Felix pushed his hands to his ears and stared at his boots until the shrieking ceased. Whereupon, the Empress remarked into the aching silence of his tortured ears, “It seems you did not inspect the satchel closely enough, Giancarlo.”

  “Yes, Aurelia.” The stocky truthreader glowered accusingly at Felix.

  “I surmise there is some purpose in your returning this sacred book to us.” The searing reprimand in the Empress’s tone razed Felix to a nub. “That is, beyond the admission of yet another crime against the Empire?”

  Felix pushed his hands behind his back because they were trembling. “There’re some papers just inside the cover,” he looked pleadingly to the High Lord, who motioned to Giancarlo to hand over the book.

  “Tanis is the one who worked it all out,” Felix explained while the High Lord was carefully opening the cover. “Tanis knew the names, you see. He called them Malorin’athgul.”

  The Empress drew in her breath sharply. The High Lord’s gaze lifted at once.

  Felix did his best not to flinch. “Malin was reading the book and came upon the names first. He…he recognized the anagram of one of them. Look there, you’ll see it, Your Grace. At the t
op of one of those pages of Malin’s ciphers…Isahl N’abranaacht. It’s Shailabanáchtran, clear as day.”

  “Your Grace, I must protest—” Giancarlo began.

  The High Lord raised a hand sharply for silence. “Shailabanáchtran? Where did you hear this name? Did the zanthyr speak it to you?”

  “No, Your Grace—”

  “You stand before the Empress. Dare not lie to me.”

  “Never, Your Grace!” Felix turned an earnest and rather desperate look between them and then added to the High Lord, “Tanis recognized the names the minute he looked at Malin’s ciphers. He worked it all out in minutes. You see, Tanis knew N’abranaacht—Shail, I mean. Tanis knew what he was capable of.”

  “Tanis,” said the Empress again meaningfully, “the zanthyr’s ward.”

  The High Lord frowned deeply at her.

  Into this silence, Vincenzé returned and took up his position behind the High Lord, glaring the while at Felix.

  When no one else said anything, Felix looked back to the Empress and offered haltingly, “Tanis traveled with one of the Malorin’athgul for many weeks—the one called Pelasommáyurek. You’ll see his name there on the fourth page, Your Grace. Tanis had met Shail while traveling with Pelas. And N’abranaacht…” Felix wetted his lips, still feeling a measure of that dry-mouthed panic, “I vow, he recognized Tanis even before Tanis knew him.”

  The Empress was regarding Felix with a furrow narrowing her brow. “How did you come to possess a book of the Qhorith’quitara?”

  Felix forced a swallow. He couldn’t believe what he was actually about to confess. “I…was in the Archives the night Malin vanished.” He turned an apologetic look to the High Lord, and Giancarlo behind him, even though neither of them had personally questioned him on that subject, “so I knew Malin hadn’t run away, like so many others were claiming. Malin had just shown me the book, which he’d taken from the vault when the Imperial Historian wasn’t looking, and he was about to explain everything that had been bothering him, when we heard this noise…”

  Felix cast a glance around. None of the eyes watching him appeared to be looking any more favorably upon him than they had been before, and two sets of them belonged to truthreaders. It was terribly disheartening to discover that the truth actually meant so little.

  Felix wiped his nose on his sleeve. “Malin shoved the book at me and went to investigate the noise, but I…I got a really bad feeling, so I followed him. I saw him turn down an aisle, but when I reached it, he was gone.”

  Felix looked to each person in the room, promising truth with his gaze, beseeching their trust. In the last, not knowing if even one of them believed him, he turned dejectedly back to the Empress and slowly closed the flap on his satchel. He wondered if they’d let him wear it to the headsman’s block—but no…the Empress had threatened long, involved torture…

  “Why did you not return the book to the Imperial Historian, Felix?”

  The lad looked up at the Empress. “Since no one was asking me for it, Aurelia, I…I was holding onto it to try to figure out Malin’s notes. The book was the only clue I had to whoever took him away.”

  “Is that the only reason, child?”

  Felix shrugged dispiritedly. “That…and no one would’ve believed I wasn’t the one who stole it.”

  Giancarlo lifted frowning colorless eyes to Felix. “And the princess? How is she involved?”

  “I don’t know how N’abranaacht got to her. We were heading to the Quai game to meet her when the Literato did something to Tanis—nearly knocked him unconscious, I vow. I don’t know how; the man was a whole stadium away at the time—and when Tanis came back to himself, he said the Literato had Nadia and took off after him. That’s when all hells erupted.”

  The Empress turned wordlessly to the High Lord.

  “Tanis…enigma of Adonnai,” the latter murmured. He stared fiercely down at the book now lying closed on his lap.

  Felix scratched at his head, dislodging a tuft of calico hair, and gazed down at his boots, seeing neither scuffed leather nor marble floor but a stadium in chaos and Tanis running atop the bleachers towards the field, faster than any natural person should’ve been able to move.

  “Your thoughts speak loudly with veracity, Felix di Sarcova.”

  Felix lifted his eyes to find the Empress regarding him steadily.

  The High Lord grunted. “But you’ve said nothing that will help us find the Princess Heir or the other Adepts who were taken, which you claim you had no part in.”

  “Because I don’t know anything about any of that!” Felix felt a sense of desperation returning. “I was buried under a dozen fat-arsed blokes—begging your pardon, Aurelia—while Tanis sped off to save the princess.”

  The High Lord’s gaze tightened upon him. “And do you know what became of Tanis?”

  “No, Your Grace,” Felix gave a shuddering exhale, “but if the princess has any chance at all, I know it rests on him.”

  “The boy is right,” came a deep voice from the corner of the room.

  Every head turned as one.

  Felix saw the zanthyr standing in the shadows, and a wave of relief overcame him.

  The High Lord turned rigidly to confront Phaedor. “Pray, how is the boy right?”

  The zanthyr emerged into the light, flipping his dagger. He gave the High Lord a rather dismissive once-over and settled his emerald gaze instead on the Empress. “Tanis has drawn Nadia onto his path, and no force in the Empire can retrieve her from it until their threads in the tapestry separate again.”

  Staring at him with a concerned frown, the Empress murmured, “You would have us rest the hopes of the Empire on a boy of sixteen years?”

  “A nameless boy,” the High Lord remarked with a deeply furrowed brow, “offering no parentage to speak of.”

  The zanthyr flipped his dagger. “Tanis is the son of Isabel van Gelderan and Arion Tavestra.” He turned the High Lord an arch look, and there was aught of dark victory in it. “The sole heir to Adonnai.”

  Felix’s mouth fell open. Thirteen bloody hells, Tanis!

  He heard the Empress catch her breath.

  The High Lord went white as a sheet.

  The zanthyr looked back to the Empress. “Like his mother, High Mage of the Citadel, Tanis is an Adept of four strands. Two immortals have bound themselves to his path. More will follow.” He flipped his dagger again. “He is no mere boy of sixteen.”

  Whereupon a swarming sensation overcame Felix. His breath ran off to engage in some other less stressful occupation, the ceiling closed in on him, and darkness clutched him greedily into its depths.

  Thirty-three

  “The wise man looks both ways before crossing a one way street.”

  –A favorite Kandori proverb

  My…what have you gotten yourself into?

  Pelas wasn’t sure if he’d heard the words or merely imagined them. He swam up from unconsciousness through stinging pain, whereupon he perceived a cosmic flutter. Layers of thought whipped past as a sheaf of ruffling paper. The plane of existence altered.

  Suddenly he perceived the plane shifting as another universe collided with Shail’s. The two cubes of framed space drifted inside one another until the starpoints themselves collided…coincided—

  The intruding universe instantly overcame Shail’s—starpoints duplicated, claimed, owned, now superimposed—in the same way that Shail had overtaken and claimed Pelas’s starpoints.

  The revenants scattered wildly, suddenly as voracious to escape as they had been to feed but a moment ago. Pelas lay exposed upon the dull ice. He hadn’t enough energy even to move his head, but he saw what the golems were fleeing.

  Within the void, darkness was coalescing.

  Pinprick stars, as sparks from a fire, swirled into the shape of a man, and a gilded creation birthed through the veil of unbeing.

  First emerged a muscled torso of crackled gold, as if an artist had painstakingly painted his form in metallic foil. Then foll
owed an expanse of velvet wings dripping darkness—so dark that Pelas more had an impression of their immensity than actually saw them. He felt a kiss of deyjiin upon his brow, and then a hand, helping him to sit up. He blinked several times to make the focus of his eyes align with the perceptions of his mind…

  And saw a pale gold face peering into his, nearly human in its fashioning. A round red crystal glowed between the Warlock’s raven brows. His void-black eyes were smiling. “Pelasommáyurek.”

  “Rafael.” Pelas inhaled a deep breath of deyjiin, which was shedding off Rafael like smoke. “It’s been a long time.”

  The Warlock’s black eyes glinted like fire trapped in obsidian. “Has it?” Flinty sparks flared through his raven hair, which danced in tousled waves.

  The revenant hyenas were hovering at the edge of Rafael’s framed space, hungering as they milled about, waiting for the lion to depart.

  “What a fascinating predicament.” Rafael turned a curious look back to Pelas. “Even with your penchant for new experiences, I can’t fathom what you hoped to gain from offering yourself to a clutch of revenants.”

  Pelas managed a dubious exhale. “I didn’t do this to myself, Rafael.”

  The Warlock tilted his head slightly. “Who then?”

  “Shailabanáchtran.”

  Boldly, the revenants started inching closer. Rafael’s black gaze snapped towards them. His wings flapped once, quick and violent, and raw energy flared. The creatures scattered like beetles. Those who didn’t flee fast enough simply evaporated—an effacement Pelas might’ve managed if he could’ve duplicated the starpoints of that world the way Rafael had done.

  The Warlock looked back to Pelas with the faintest of furrows notching his brow. “You and your brothers find curious ways of interacting with one another.” His dark eyes regarded Pelas critically then, hinting of concern. “How badly have they drained you?”

  Pelas shook his head. He truly didn’t know.

  Rafael straightened to his full height and surveyed the space he’d claimed from Shail. “How came you to be trapped on this pitiful plane, Pelasommáyurek?”