The Past
The alley was an old place. Too old, and yet, like all of Silfanore, damnably beautiful. The dark stone had been sung into graceful walls as if to tell the foreigners they were graceless things. The ancient limestone flagstones soaked up centuries of foreigner effluvia; since they weren't Hytori, the Hytori didn't bother to keep it clean for them. "Can't see shit," he whispered to the Phergus.
"That's all right for sweetmeat," the Phergus said.
"Quiet," said Zebasteos, too loudly.
Wood grated on stone. Thirty feet down the alley, a wedge of yellow light fell across the wet flagstones, widened. A figure stepped out and then the door grated shut behind them, leaving the narrow space in darkness. Oren shivered.
"Now," said Zebasteos, and a brilliant beam, directed from a rooftop opposite the agora, lanced down to pin the figure in a circle of revealing light beside the ancient wooden door. Bright eyes darted left, right, and then the man crumpled. Oren thought someone might have shot him, but there was no blood, no arrow or quarrel feathering him. Pale blond hair lay against the old stone. Face down, his limp hands looked white and pathetic.
The floodlight never wavered.
The back of the fallen man's coat heaved and burst, blood splashing the wall and doorway. A pair of impossibly long limbs, gleaming and grayish-pink like diseased insides flexed in the glare. The monster seemed to pull itself up out of the perfectly fitted flagstones, through the inert, bloody ruin that had been Len'Falas. It was seven feet tall, stood on two legs, and seemed to be headless. Then it swung slowly to face them, and Oren saw that it had a head, but no neck. It was eyeless, the skin gleaming like freshly spilled guts. The mouth, if it was a mouth, was circular, shallow, and lined with a seething growth of hairs or bristles, glittering like black metal. It kicked the rags of clothing and elven flesh aside and took a step, its mouth seeming to search for them as it moved.
Zebasteos said something in Mythrasi or Vallenor and rushed the thing, his arms spread like a man attempting to dive through a window. He went through it. Into the twang of a crossbow from the dark beyond the circle of light. Fragments of stone whizzed past Oren's head; the Phergus jerked him down into a crouch.
The light from the rooftop vanished, leaving him with mismatched afterimages of light and monster. His ears rang and he smelled something unidentifiable. His own senses were unreliable since the rune was burned into him, but this was insane.
Then the light returned, bobbing now, searching the shadows. Zebasteos was leaning against a metal-bound door, his face pale in the glare. He held his left wrist and watched blood drip from a wound in his left hand. The blond elf, whole again, unbloodied, lay at his feet.
Ava stepped out of the shadows, all in black, with her crossbow in her hand.
"Get them down from there," Zebasteos said through gritted teeth. He nodded toward the rooftop. "We must get him out of here. This is not a good place."
"Little prick nearly made it," the Phergus said, his knees cracking loudly as he stood up, brushing ineffectually at the legs of his trousers. "You were watching the show, right? Not what happened in the shadows. Real cute. Well, help 'em get his ass out of here. I've got to look over all that gear before he wakes up, make sure Galeas is getting his money's worth.
Ava bent and picked something up. A dagger made of ash steel. "Nice," she said.
Zebasteos made a whining sound. Oren saw that most of his middle finger was missing.
Later, with the Hytori capital drenched in predawn blue, she told the driver to take them to the palace. The Phergus, Oren, and an enormous Mortallen had taken Len'Falas, still unconscious, from the alley. Minutes later, a carriage had arrived for Zebasteos, who seemed to be on the verge of fainting.
"You stupid fuck," Ava told the man, opening the door for him. "You should have hung back. I had him in my sights as soon as he stepped out." Zebasteos glared at her. "So we're through with you anyway." She shoved him in and slammed the door. "Run into you again and I'll kill you," she said to the white face behind the shadowed pane of glass. The carriage ground away down the alley and swung clumsily into the street.
Now their carriage whispered through Silfanore as the city woke.
"What is this thing?" he asked Ava as their ride parked itself on the fringes of the gardens that surrounded some ancient palace. He stared dully at the baroque mess of styles and eras.
"It was sort of a... private whorehouse for the prince," she said, getting out and stretching. "Kept a lot of pretties there. Now it's more of a museum. Maybe that will change with the next prince... Kind of like Pherg's shop, all this stuff jumbled in there: big diamonds, swords, the left hand of one of the original Dragon Kings..."
"Like. A necromantic relic?"
"Nah, dead. Got it inside this golden hand thing, little hatch on the side so the faithful could kiss it for luck. Managed to get it back from the Lysanrin, I guess, about a million years ago, and they never dust the mists damned thing 'cause it's not a dead god's hand or something."
Black iron deer rusted in the gardens gone a bit to seed. Oren walked beside her, watching the toes of her boots crunch unkempt grass made stiff by an early frost. The walked beside a path of cold octagonal flagstones. Winter was waiting, somewhere in the mountains.
"That Zebby, he's the real shit," she said. "Secret police. Torturer. Real easy to buy out, too, with the kind of money Galeas was offering." In the wet trees around them, birds began to sing.
"I did that job for you," Oren said, "the one... I got something, but I don't know what it means." He told her the Ostry story.
"Well, I knew there wasn't anybody name of Galeas in that unit. Looked it up." She stroked the rusted flank of an iron doe. "You figure...? Who do you think pulled him out of that hospital?"
"I figure Douma," Oren said.
She nodded.
"Thing is," he said, "do you think he knows he was Ostry, before? I mean, he wasn't anybody in particular, by the time he hit the ward, so maybe Douma just..."
"Yeah. Built him up from the broken foundation. Yeah..." She turned and they walked on. "It figures. You know, the guy doesn't have any life going, in private. Not as far as I can tell. You see a guy like that, you figure there's something he does when he's alone. But not Galeas. Sits and stares at the wall, man. Then something clicks and he goes into some sort of manic mood and wheels and deals for Douma, I guess."
Oren mulled that over. Galeas couldn't have been like that back when he and Ava were an item. She was off her rocker, as well, so pot calling the kettle black in some senses, but perhaps Galeas had been more put together back then and now...
"So why's he got that stash...? Nostalgia?"
"Perhaps he doesn't know about it," she said. "Perhaps it's just in his name, you know?"
"I don't get it," Oren said. He was fucking exhausted, strung out, and the fixes he had been given for his threshold sickness were only so much help.
"Just thinking out loud... How smart's a soul totem, Oren?"
"Uhh, depends, I guess? I'm no death shaman. But I've been asking around... seems like it depends on how degraded the soul is. Some aren't much smarter than dogs. Pets. Cost a fortune anyway. The real smart ones are as smart as they were in life. Perhaps more so with a new sort of... what's the word she used...? Objectivity?"
"Look, you're a fence and all. Got some magic now. How come you aren't just flat out fascinated?"
"I mean, talking to dead-ass Decimus is kind of freaking me out, Ma..."
"Ava."
"I guess they're rare on the market," he continued in a huff. "Militaries and grand poobahs collect 'em. Then there's the holier-than-thou type says they're immoral." He looked at her. He shrugged. "I dunno. Just isn't part of this... trip..." He cuffed his head with the heel of his palm, trying to order his thoughts and sensations.
"You're like all the rest," she said. "No imagination."
They came to a broad rectangular pond where carp nuzzled the stems of some white aquatic flower. She kicked a loose pebble in and watched the ripples spread.
"That's Douma," she said. "This deal's real big, looks to me. We're out where the little waves are too broad, we can't see the rock that hit the center. We know something's there, but not why. I wanna know why. I want you to go and talk to Douma."
"You're fucking dreaming," he spat. He hadn't asked for runes, nor ghostwine, nor to traffic with demons.
"Try."
"Fuck off."
"Ask the soul gem."
"What do we want out of Len'Falas?" he asked, hoping to change the subject.
Ava spat into the pond. "Gods know. I'd as soon kill him as look at him. I saw his profile. You think I'm fucked up? Galeas? Len'Falas can't get off sexually unless he's fucking someone over, betraying the object of his desire. At least, that's what I read. And they have to love him. Perhaps he loves them too in his sick, fucked up way. That's why it was easy for Zebby to set him up for us, because he's been in Silfanore three years, selling politicos to the secret police. Probably Zebby let him watch when the knives came out. He's done eighteen in three years, all young women. It kept Zebby in dissidents." She thrust her hands in her pockets. "Because if he found what he really wanted, he'd make sure she turned political. He's a rare fuckin' bird, thank the fuckin' Gods." She stared at the white flowers and the sluggish fish, her face sour. "I think I'm going to have to secure some special insurance on that Ambal Len'Falas." Then she turned and smiled, and it was very cold.
"What's that mean?" Oren asked, shivering.
"Never mind. Let's go back and find something like breakfast. I've got a busy night again tonight. Going to collect his stuff from some apartment in the Red Light District, then back to the Xenosagora and buy him some drugs.."
"Buy him some drugs? What's his poison again?"
"Doesn't matter," she said, laughing. "Won't work for you. But it looks like he can't work without that special taste. I like you better now, anyway. You aren't so Gods damned skinny." She smiled. "So I'll find some knife-eared dealer and stock up. You bet."
The Present
Silfanore was a memory. Now Solunarium was, as well.
"Fucking elves," he muttered to himself. The first wunderkind of the glamour trick he had met had been a twisted fuck, addicted to his cocktail of opium, Ecithian coca, and whatever else he had tailor made to keep him zooming while he charmed ladies into loving him so he could break their hearts and get his rocks off.
Perhaps he was no better. He had made people fall in love with him for his own benefit. If it required falling in love with them a bit to make it work, well, when he was at the heights of his sadism, he was also at his most masochistic. He sipped his drink. He looked back from the fogged window where Torin was sleeping like a big, dumb, happy baby. His heart beat faster looking at him, even in repose, and he was lucky he had fucked him into a deep, dreamless sleep so he wouldn't sense Aurin's unease and ask questions with his eyes even if he didn't ask them with his mouth.
He finished his drink, set the glass aside. He wasn't going to get any sleep, but he didn't want to disturb his boy.
A callused, sinful hand carefully brushed hair out of Torin's sleeping eyes, his parted lips. Aurin leaned down, kissed his cheek and tucked the blanket up under his chin. The burly smith was naked under it, and Aurin didn't want him to catch a chill.
He turned, and between one step and the next, he was in his cottage. It was cold and he cursed, naked and shivering.
Tapping his pendant, he called out to someone he didn't mind waking.
"Come to your Magus," he said, then began to stoke the embers in the hearth.
