Master of One

by Jaida Jones

  Another twitch of the X’s. “Your honesty reveals a strength of character—”

  “Ugh, enough.” Rags felt scratchy between the shoulder blades. “Do whatever you were going to do with those sorcerous cloths.”

  Curiosity was the main cause of death for a thief, but Rags hadn’t managed to bury his. He’d grown up rubbing shoulders with Cheapside hawkers, selling hen’s teeth and gutter water as cure-ails.

  Real magic was for the Queen and her sorcerers. So far, Rags wasn’t a fan.

  Shining Talon went about his business, weird even by fae standards. It involved packing warm dirt onto Rags’s skin, which quickly cooled it, then tying the makeshift bandages tightly. The stinging faded. Rags’s hands felt unnervingly numb.

  “Dirt isn’t supposed to be good for scrapes. You know that, right?”

  Shining Talon didn’t look up as he replied, “Fed with the corpses and blood of my ancestors, this dirt is different.”

  “Ew,” Rags said.

  But his hands did feel better. Couldn’t argue with that.

  Shining Talon’s job done, it was time to leave the ruins. Relief surged in Rags’s chest. He wanted out of this place. For good.

  If Shining Talon harbored misgivings about departing, the only sign was a faint dulling of his features. He glowed less, and the color of the lights veining the walls in their unreadable patterns faded with him.

  19

  Rags

  They traveled upward. Rags recognized each of the tunnels but didn’t have the opportunity to sit back and inspect his handiwork, appreciate the skill it had taken to get through them. He wasn’t in his profession for the glory.

  He was in it because it was less pathetic than faking a limp and begging on a corner. Not to mention more profitable.

  Rags wiped the dirt off the front of his torn shirt, noticed some bloodstains he hadn’t taken stock of before. Before he knew it, they were passing his old friend the first corpse.

  “Pal of yours?” he asked Shining Talon.

  “My brother,” Shining Talon replied.

  That shut Rags up. He hadn’t been thinking about what kind of people left one of their own to sleep while their world, their way of life, burned down around them. Crass to ask what happened here when it was so obvious. Death, ruination, the fae wiped clean off the map.

  Save for one.

  Rags gulped. “What’d he do to get slapped with a punishment like that?”

  Shining Talon looked confused. “Our family was always first in service to the crown. His assignment was an honor.”

  Shining Talon didn’t share how he felt about his position, but fine. Rags didn’t need to know. He didn’t fully understand why he’d asked. Everyone already knew the fae were crazy.

  Rags didn’t think about Shining Talon or his brother. Instead he focused on the treasures he was leaving behind and how rich they would have made him, giving him something to do until the first breath of fresh air touched his face. Couldn’t help grinning as he stepped into daylight, shielding his eyes until they readjusted to the sun.

  He’d missed sunlight, the freedom of open sky, a lack of centuries-old traps firing poisoned projectiles at him and walls made of bone that seemed to breathe around him . . .

  Shining Talon too stared upward, unblinking, stopped in his tracks.

  Morien, when he noticed this, doubled back. “I must request you remain close,” he said. “The forest is treacherous. I would not be pleased if I were to lose you. Either of you.” This last for emphasis, with a pointed look in Rags’s direction.

  “But the trees . . .” Shining Talon’s voice nearly broke on the last word. “What has happened to the trees?”

  Rags tried to follow his gaze, found nothing amiss. The trees grew densely around them, tall and ancient, shimmering at the corners of his vision whenever he switched focus. Other than that, not a stump in sight.

  “Don’t see anything wrong with them,” Rags said.

  At Shining Talon’s feet, smaller than she’d seemed before, One whipped her tail back and forth, reminding Rags of a wary street dog who’d run into a pack of kids who had once kicked it for sport.

  “They are diminished.” Shining Talon swallowed, a bob of the black ink bands encircling his throat. He shook his head, shook something unseen off his shoulders. “I will not lag behind again, Lying One. On this, you have my word.”

  Rags caught him staring at the trees as they continued, occasionally reaching out a hand as if he wanted to rest his palm on the bark, then pulling back at the last moment. There was something sad about it. Rags felt like he was interrupting a mourner at a gravesite.

  “What are you doing?” Rags hissed at last. “He’s not going to be happy if he has to come back for us again!”

  “My apologies, Lo— Rags the Thief,” Shining Talon replied, “but the trees do not speak to me.”

  “Yeah, trees don’t speak to anyone.”

  “They should,” Shining Talon insisted. “They used to.”

  Rags had to bite. “What did they say? ‘Fuck, there’s a worm in my roots, tickles like a sonofawhore?’ ‘Wish that sparrow would stop taking a shit on me?’”

  “Yes,” Shining Talon admitted, “those were the most common complaints. But they phrased it so beautifully. Through their language, you could understand a little more of the living world.”

  Rags gave up talking to him after that.

  20

  Rags

  Morien took them back through the forest, past where the black trees faded to brown bark laced with silver, then only brown, dull moss and wet dirt that didn’t hum or glow. He had them set up camp close to a stream, where Rags could just barely detect signs of a previous camp, only a few days old. Had they stopped here when Rags was blindfolded and he couldn’t remember?

  Would the still-blindfolded Queensguard discuss this trip among themselves when it was over? Rags couldn’t picture them gossiping. Even before the blindfolds, their silence had been eerie, all-consuming.

  At least that didn’t matter anymore. They had a lizard to follow, and she had chosen her own path.

  The sun dipped below the tree line. Rags sat moodily by the fire. The cuts on his hands, beneath their tenderly wrapped bandages, had begun to itch, the good kind of itching, the kind that signaled skin knitting together and scabbing as it healed.

  It was too soon for that to be happening yet.

  Rags had the decomposed flesh of Shining Talon’s ancestors to thank for his rapid recovery—and for the fact that he wouldn’t sleep without nightmares for a while.

  Think about something else—like how One stared with three unblinking eyes at the campfire. Each leaping flame illuminated the mechanisms underneath its only mostly opaque scales. Rags studied the cogs and gears and perfect hinges shaped into One’s muscles and bone. He thought of the pride in Shining Talon’s voice when he spoke of the Great Paragon, and all the good it hadn’t done him or the other fae.

  “Rags the Thief.” Shining Talon’s voice, coming from Rags’s side without warning, made Rags jump. “There is no need for you to maintain watch. I require little sleep and will act as your guard. You may rest safely.”

  “You require little sleep, huh?” Rags’s moodiness filtered into his words, making him spit them out more bitterly than he’d planned. “You could be angling to make me let my guard down.”

  “I do not lie.” Shining Talon was so deliberate in this rebuttal that Rags had to assume he’d taken offense. “Rather, I should say that the fae do not lie. My people are incapable of deception.”

  “Sure.” Rags sat up, engaged despite himself. “Except there’s plenty of ways to deceive someone without lying to them.”

  He could’ve sworn there was a flicker of something like amusement on Shining Talon’s face. Or was it only firelight reflected in his eyes?

  “Yes,” he agreed warmly, in a way that chilled Rags to his bones.

  He would’ve let the silence swell up to insulate him, but Shinin
g Talon spoke again. “Have I done something to displease you, Rags the Thief?”

  Nothing. That was the problem. The real source of Rags’s frustration was Morien, but he wasn’t stupid enough to take it out on the sorcerer. He couldn’t talk to Shining Talon about anything real with Morien haunting their steps. Besides, Rags knew Shining Talon’s respect couldn’t be infinite. It would end sooner or later. Better if Rags didn’t get used to it, cut it off at the pass before he started to like it.

  He knew where this road stopped, and it wasn’t anywhere good.

  “I wish you’d been a pile of gold,” Rags muttered. “Would’ve made my life easier.”

  “And once you had delivered what the Lying One asked for? What then?”

  Morien’s head lifted. He knew he’d been mentioned. If he’d looked at them across the fire in challenge, it would have been preferable to the sense of foreboding in his profile, swathed in scarves.

  “He’d’ve killed me,” Rags admitted. “Left me to rot in the ruins with the rest. And someday, maybe somebody comes along and thinks I’m another of the corpses guarding the place.” He shrugged. “Could be worse fates. Currently, this suspense is a pain in my ass.”

  “Allow me to offer my clothing to ease the discomfort,” Shining Talon began, reaching to pull off his gossamer shirt, probably made of moonbeams and maiden’s kisses, so he could give it to Rags. Like it was nothing.

  Rags swore and flung himself down on his back, grimacing when a twig stabbed him in the ribs. “Keep your clothes on, Shiny. I’ve slept more soundly on worse beds than this.”

  But despite the confidence in his statement, Rags lay awake for a long time, eyes obstinately shut.

  Shining Talon knew he wasn’t asleep.

  It was the principle of the matter. Which was all Rags had left.

  21

  Somhairle

  TWO MONTHS EARLIER

  It was another perfect morning in Ever-Land, except all the birds were dropping dead.

  Perhaps it was a curse.

  Prince Somhairle Ever-Bright was familiar with curses, having been born one to his mother: a living reminder of the words Oberon Black-Boned had murmured to the wind in his final moments, a blight on House Ever-Bright.

  The royal womb was doomed to lie barren. As long as an Ever-Bright queen wore the crown, she would never bear heirs.

  At first, this was manageable. One sibling in every generation was trained for the coronation. Soon, different factions of the court sought to control the queen from an early age. Depending on their advisers, certain queens ruled more wisely, more nobly, than others. All of them died violently, of illnesses that arose out of nowhere, or accidents that could never be explained. They were replaced by the next in line, though she was never a daughter but a cousin, a niece, a favored relative. Always whispers of the Ever-Bright curse shrouded the brightness of their power in gray grief.

  Somhairle’s mother, Catriona, had ascended to the throne during a time of great mourning and terror. When she bowed her head for the crown, she was the sole surviving Ever-Bright. The last of her name.

  Historians recorded that on that day, her courtiers’ weeping nearly drowned out the celebration bells at her coronation.

  Hail, the last of the Ever-Brights. Farewell to their legacy, to the once-sunlit heroes of the realm.

  The Queen’s supporters believed that she dedicated herself so ruthlessly to her kingdom because she never wanted to hear her people weep again. She worked tirelessly, some thought single-mindedly, with her sorcerers to discover a cure to Oberon’s blight.

  She awarded her favored courtiers with estates and acreage on the Hill. Ever-Nobles counted their place in the Queen’s esteem by how high along the slope their homes were located. Her palace was spotless perfection, without flaw or fault. Rooms of white marble veined with silver, black tiles to mimic the ancient fae frescoes. It was glorious, though at times disturbing, to recall that these black tiles were indeed black fae bone.

  Somhairle once asked his mother why she had ordered the palace decorated with fae motifs and fae art when she so hated the Folk.

  “Dear boy.” The Queen rarely called her sons by name, for she had too many to keep track of. Yet when she was with Somhairle, sadness clouded her eyes—a sadness he knew, even as a child, was reserved personally for him. “There is beauty in cruelty. Beauty is what survives when everything ugly is stripped away. And one must be cruel to triumph against ugliness.”

  It was then that Somhairle had first understood how someone could fear the Queen.

  He hadn’t been certain if she was talking about him, or the fae. Her own child, or her most hated enemy.

  In the end, Catriona had triumphed by doing what no Ever-Bright queen had done since the Fair Wars ended: she had borne blood heirs.

  Despite her triumphs, her people feared her. It was believed that the spell the sorcerers had mirrorcrafted to return life to Catriona’s womb had unnaturally extended her life-span in the process.

  It was true that although Somhairle’s mother had not borne her first heir until the fiftieth year of her rule, she still looked as young as the day she’d taken the throne. Her reign had lasted nearly two hundred years now, more than twice that of any Ever-Bright queen before her.

  Fourteen hale and healthy sons had come into the world before Somhairle arrived, one side of him withered from head to toe, piercing the royal fantasy of perfection. Queen Catriona might have been able to cheat death, but there was no cheating Oberon’s curse.

  Fourteen sons who allowed the kingdom to believe the curse had at last been broken—and Somhairle, whose existence implied otherwise.

  Catriona’s world was a diamond that would sustain no faults.

  While Somhairle’s half brothers resembled their respective fathers, Somhairle alone took after their mother. Perhaps this made it worse for her: that, looking into Somhairle’s face, she saw only a warped reflection of her own.

  If the Queen and her youngest son had ever posed together for a portrait, their artist would have painted two rosebud mouths, full and unsmiling, and two pairs of pale blue eyes the color of summer rain. Somhairle’s round cheeks made his face less of a blade than Catriona’s, but the same curling gold hair framed their faces. He shared her long lashes, too.

  This resemblance only made his flaws stand out more starkly. The muscles in Somhairle’s right arm and leg were shriveled and useless, similar to a book left out in the rain, its pages wrinkling toward the spine.

  His first memories were of nurses with averted eyes, of hushed whispers cupped behind the same dough-soft hands that had wiped his tears and dressed his scrapes. He was a message. A token. A symbol more than a boy. Somhairle understood this early on. He watched and listened as his brothers brought accolades and honor to their mother’s legacy.

  The Queen trusted Adamnan, her eldest son and a natural diplomat, to hold stewardship of the Hill whenever she was absent. Diancecht had founded the city’s archival restoration, dedicating himself to scholarly pursuits, dredging lost histories up from the muck and into the light. Each year the twins, Coinneach and Comhghall, climbed higher through the ranks in the Queensguard. And Laisrean was popular at court, always dancing late into the night with someone beautiful from one of the Ever-Lasting Houses, netting gossip more precious than pearls.

  Of these, it was only Laisrean who was more than mere stranger to him. Owing to their mother’s unusual longevity, Somhairle had half brothers old enough to be his father or even his grandfather. He’d been schooled alongside those princes closest to him in age: Laisrean, Prince Murchadh, and Prince Guaire. Among them—in their little cadre Somhairle was the youngest, Murchadh the eldest—the greatest gap was a mere five years.

  Another seven years between Murchadh and the next-eldest prince, Prince Lochlainn, who was the only playmate Murchadh had considered worth his time.

  In the end, age wasn’t the dividing factor, but health, Somhairle’s failing and his brothers’ hale. Five year
s ago, after his thirteenth birthday—and his thirtieth life-threatening fever—Somhairle had finally been sent away from court, beyond the far reach of his mother’s Ever-Bright corona. The Ever-Land manor bristled with lavish gifts like unburied treasure: a carousel nestled in the woods; a silver skiff in the shape of a dragonfly docked in the boathouse; a hidden cave beneath the cellar with only gemstones buried in the walls for light.

  Reminders of the Queen’s affection, in the only way she knew to show it.

  For the first year, his next-eldest half brother, Guaire, had visited monthly, making no secret that it was duty and not pleasure, to confirm how Somhairle was settling in. After the first year, he visited twice. He hadn’t returned since the third year.

  The rest of his half brothers carried on, undisturbed by Somhairle’s absence, riding a courtly carousel upon which no mount remained for him.

  Only Somhairle’s half brother Laisrean had visited frequently, together with Laisrean’s friend Tomman Ever-Loyal, because Laisrean knew Somhairle got on well with the Ever-Loyal girls. He’d always wanted sisters, and thought he’d found them, until even they grew old enough to forget their youthful summers together and ceased returning to Ever-Land’s idylls.

  Laisrean still wrote, but infrequently.

  Somhairle refused to begrudge them their freedom.

  Regardless, it had been years since they’d traipsed through sunlit fields together. Years since anyone, friend or brother, had come knocking at Somhairle’s door.

  The Ever-Land manor and environs were built to resemble a fae dream. No roads or walkways traced the grounds. Instead, summer gardens grew wild between the estate houses, framed by lakes and rivers, the occasional rocky outcropping leading to a waterfall. One could stumble across a gathering of vine-and-marble statues hidden amid a grove of lemon silkwoods, or an orchard hung with floating globes of sorcery-light. It had once served as the Queen’s private holidaying grounds, though after she made it Somhairle’s world, she hadn’t once returned to visit.