Of the Mortal Realm Read online

  “Now.” Terre Verte turned, and his slate-gray eyes swept their group. “I think I’d like to walk about my city. It has been a long time.”

  It was Xaz who first found breath to gasp, “You just killed Winsor Indathrone.”

  Umber would have been curious to know how Xaz felt about that death, but he knew better than to try to read a Numenmancer’s mind. She, too, had gone pale, so much that her auburn hair looked like an unnatural infernal halo, and the faint freckles on her cheekbones stood out like ink stains. But if she felt anything about Indathrone’s death other than shock and fear of the immediate consequences, it didn’t show in her brown eyes or her pinched lips.

  “This is not the time or place to discuss the particulars of what’s been done,” Umber said practically. “We need to move. Hansa, what is the best way out of here?”

  “Someone is coming,” Alizarin warned, his voice a soft purr that tickled Umber’s skin like a physical thing.

  “Which direction?” Cadmia asked. “Can we run?”

  Her horrified thought echoed through her mind: We need to run, or else Alizarin will kill them all.

  The blue Abyssi was Cadmia’s lover, and she was carrying his child. If guards attacked their group, Alizarin would fight back. The Abyssi would tear through Quin guards like a shark through a school of krill.

  He had done it before, when Xaz had first accidentally pulled him into the mortal realm to protect herself when the 126 had gone to arrest her. That was the slaughter Hansa had been suspected of orchestrating, mostly because the other Quin believed a Numenmancer should never have been able to summon an Abyssi to her aid.

  Xaz hadn’t done it intentionally. She hadn’t known that the Numini had been conspiring to tie her and Alizarin together as part of their plot to rescue Terre Verte, or that one of the Abyssi would willingly come to her aid because he desperately wanted a tie to the divine realm.

  That divine link had made Alizarin a different creature since then, one with a capacity for compassion and even affection, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t kill anyone who threatened them.

  Umber would fight, too, if it came to that. He didn’t have the Abyssi’s capacity for violence, but he could hold his own. Still, he preferred running when there was a choice, so he was glad when Terre Verte sighed, pushed open the nearest doorway and said, “Inside. Alizarin, can you dispose of the body without attracting attention?”

  The blue Abyssi tilted his head, then nodded.

  Indathrone had been dead less than a minute. His blood would still be hot, which meant the most expedient way to be rid of his body would be to eat it. Umber had no objection to Kavet’s “beloved” holy moral and political leader becoming lunch, but he was glad Hansa and Cadmia wouldn’t see it.

  Alizarin stayed behind as the rest of them followed Terre Verte into a well-appointed sitting room lined with bookshelves. A spread of papers arranged on the coffee table and a merrily burning gas lamp suggested the occupant had just stepped out for a moment—as he had, except that now he would never return.

  “Tell me.” Hansa’s voice was cold and tight, and he bit off each word as if it hurt. “Was that a whim, or was it your plan all along to make murder your first task in the mortal realm?”

  Terre Verte met Hansa’s furious gaze impassively. “It seemed like a good starting point.”

  “A starting point?” Hansa railed.

  Umber put a hand on Hansa’s shoulder, trying to calm him. They didn’t have a good sense of what Terre Verte was capable of, but they knew enough that it would be foolish to antagonize him. Reason wasn’t what stilled Hansa’s tongue, though. Judging from the thoughts rising from him, he was too furious to form further words.

  “Yes, a starting point,” Terre Verte snapped. “Based on everything you have all told me, it is clear this country is sick. I told you before that I intend to fix it—”

  “No,” Cadmia interrupted, “you did not. It is my job to listen to people, to the hard truths and half-truths and outright lies they tell. You cannot convince me we misunderstood you, when it’s clear you deliberately led us to believe you had no knowledge of Kavet. Did you worry we would leave you in the Abyss if we knew your plans?”

  “Hardly.” Terre Verte brushed gray dust off his arm idly. “As I recall, you were the ones trapped in the Abyss until I opened the rift to bring you back to the mortal realm.”

  “And how many years did you spend trapped in that prison in the low court before we freed you?” Umber asked.

  “Based on what you’ve told me?” Terre Verte looked up at them again, and now his steel gray eyes blazed with indignation. “A little over seventy years.”

  He let that statement sink in. It didn’t take more than a heartbeat for Umber to make the intended connection: the revolution had been seventy years ago. The fall of the royal house—and the rise of Dahlia Indathrone, Kavet’s first elected president and Winsor Indathrone’s mother—had been seventy years ago.

  “I am Terre,” Verte declared, wielding the word as if it had more meaning than they knew, making it clear for the first time that it was a title instead of simply part of his name. “I am prince, heir to the line that has ruled Kavet for fourteen hundred years, with only brief interruption by that . . . Indathrone.” He spat the name like a curse. “Follow me or don’t, but this country is mine, and I will restore it.”

  Prince. Kavet’s royal family had been overthrown and replaced by their first President, Dahlia Indathrone—Winsor’s mother—six or seven decades ago. That fact was almost the extent of what Umber knew about the lineage that had supposedly ruled Kavet for centuries before then. It wasn’t exactly illegal to talk about those ill-fated days, but it was certainly taboo, and Kavet’s school history classes all began with Dahlia Indathrone’s election.

  He did know the revolt against the royal house, led by the Followers of the Quinacridone, was supposedly the result of the rampant abuse of malevolent sorcery among the royal and noble elite of Kavet.

  “Maybe you should clarify what you mean by ‘restore,’” Umber suggested, still gripping Hansa’s shoulder. “And how you mean to go about it. According to the yearly census, almost eighty-five percent of the country identifies as Quin, and certainly almost all of the rest are staunchly opposed to magic. If you just kill them all, there won’t be a Kavet left.”

  “Before we have this argument, can we get out of the fucking Quinacridone Compound?” Xaz interrupted, her voice shrill. “I was almost arrested once recently. It went badly. I’d like to not do it again.”

  As if on cue, Alizarin reappeared among them in a ripple of blue-black smoke.

  Xaz sagged with relief. “Alizarin, you’ve transported me before. Can you do that now, and bring us somewhere safe without our needing to walk past guards?”

  Alizarin’s tail swished as he considered, and then he shook his head. “A rift from place to place on this plane is hard to travel. I used your bond to me to hold you, and your power kept you together. I couldn’t bring everyone that way.”

  “Can you hide us, then?”

  The Abyssi nodded. “We’re a big group, but if we’re careful, and we don’t pass anyone who can see power, I can make people not notice us.”

  It was not entirely comforting, but better than nothing, Umber supposed.

  “How many guards in the 126 have the sight?” Cadmia asked Hansa. Occasionally people were born with the ability to see power despite not having a mancer’s control over it.

  “Seven,” Hansa answered without needing to think about it. Then he winced, and said more softly, “Six.” Hansa’s best friend Jenkins had possessed the sight, but he had been among the guards Alizarin killed. “Only one or two are probably on duty now, though, and they may be out on assignment. There are Quin monks who live here who might have it too, though.”

  “This was the royal family’s private wing,” Terre Verte said. “If I’m not mistaken, this was my mother’s chamber.” He swallowed, and for the first time Umber saw th
e hint of human emotion on his face—stark grief, quickly concealed. “There was a mistress door not far from here, and an entrance to a servant’s stairway on the east end of the hall, opposite the central foyer.”

  Hansa leaned against Umber and shut his eyes as if picturing the building in his head. “Yes, there’s a back stairway. Guards don’t usually use it, since we’re—they’re—not supposed to be on this side of the building. I don’t know if the monks do though, and I’ve never heard of that other door.”

  Terre Verte smiled, but the expression was sad. “It was a mistress door. It was hidden, of course. Perhaps it hasn’t been found.” Before leading the way to the door, however, he looked around the room and opened the drawers of Indathrone’s desk until he located paper and ink.

  “What are you—?”

  “Writing a note.” Terre Verte interrupted Xaz’s question without looking up from his task. “It will delay the hysteria and search once this man is discovered missing. For a few days, they will think he went off willingly, to deal with a personal emergency.”

  Xaz moved closer, peering over his shoulder. “You’re wrapping it in a persuasion charm?”

  “Yes,” Terre Verte answered, somewhat distractedly. “So no one will question the difference in handwriting, or the unusual situation.”

  Umber could see only the vague outlines of the spell the ex-prince wove as he wrote, which was clearly formed of divine magic—the better choice for persuasion.

  “Sighted guards will recognize a spell,” Hansa bit out. “It will only make them more suspicious.”

  “Then I will veil it,” Terre Verte sighed back, passing a hand over the completed missive with an air of impatience. “Do you think I am some crude novice?”

  Umber’s awareness of the spell snuffed out, leaving only the paper behind. He elected not to read the words and test if the magic could overcome even his own understanding of the situation.

  Once he was done, Terre Verte turned, pushed past the rest of them and reached for the door. He paused to ask, “Alizarin, is the hall empty yet?”

  The Abyssi nodded. “For now.”

  As the once-prince unlocked and opened the door, Umber watched him, trying to imagine what might be happening in his head. This had been his home—this, in particular, had been his mother’s room—and he had been royalty, some time before the revolution had ousted the royal house a little over seventy years ago. Now he was fleeing like a servant sneaking out in the night with a bag of the family’s silver over his back. How it must gall him to be reduced to such a thing.

  How unpredictable that might make him.

  In the hallway, Terre Verte moved confidently. After examining the cherry wainscoting and smooth plaster for a few moments, he ran his fingers over an irregular mark three feet away from the corner. He pressed gently against it, and Umber heard a click.

  The door opened silently.

  “It’s been maintained,” Terre Verte said. “Your President liked his privacy, too, it seems.”

  He didn’t wait for them before leading the way. They followed single-file down the narrow passage to a set of spiral stairs, and then to a heavy wooden door with a heavy metal lock plate.

  “It should open behind a copse of bushes at the back of the royal gardens,” Terre Verte said, looking at Hansa for confirmation.

  “Indathrone’s meditation garden,” the guard said hollowly.

  As they passed through the mostly-abandoned garden and into the city, Umber considered their options. His home was best protected, but that was exactly why he didn’t want to bring Terre Verte there—not until they knew what he intended, and how much of a threat it was to them.

  “Your apartment?” he suggested to Hansa. “It’s closest. We can regroup there and make plans.”

  Hansa nodded.

  Thankfully, they’d had the luck to return to this plane late at night. Mars was the capital city of Kavet, and its streets were never empty, but they had no trouble skirting the few people they saw. Unfortunately, the hour meant there was no sun to alleviate the bitter cold, and the clothes they had worn out of the Abyss had not been crafted for the frigid Kavet wind that swirled drifted snow into their faces. Umber’s Abyssal blood ran hot enough he normally wouldn’t have minded, but a dull ache settled into him from his bond to Hansa.

  “Stupid,” he heard Xaz mutter. “We were all born in Kavet. None of us thought to grab an extra cloak? Gloves?”

  “It bothers you?” Cadmia asked. She was walking close to Alizarin, his arm and tail around her for warmth, but was still shivering. “I thought Numenmancers were immune.”

  “I can’t freeze to death or get frostbite. I can still feel cold.”

  “Cold hands, warm heart,” Hansa said, chapping his own hands together. “Ruby used to say that about you, because your hands were always cold, even in summer.”

  The words were a stone in the pool of their wary companionship. Xaz had been friends with Hansa and his fiancée Ruby, before Xaz was reported as a mancer and Hansa went to arrest her. Ruby’s death wasn’t Xaz’s fault—she, too, had been a victim of the Numini—but that didn’t mean discussion about her was comfortable.

  No one spoke again for a while. What could they say?

  When they turned onto Hansa’s street, though, Hansa let out a hiss of alarm and put out a straight arm to block the others.

  “Damn, damn, damn,” he cursed, as they scuttled back. “I’m an idiot.”

  “What’s wrong?” Xaz asked when they were safely out of sight.

  “There are two men sitting on the front step of a house up the street,” Terre Verte answered. “They appear to be soldiers.”

  “They’re watching my apartment,” Hansa said. “With everything that happened, and then the way I disappeared, of course they’re here.”

  “Can you talk to them?” Umber asked. “It would be good to know what people know, or think they know, about the situation.”

  “I know them both,” Hansa admitted. “Neither has the sight.” Despite the practical words, his voice dripped reluctance.

  “Talk to them,” Umber said again. “If it goes badly, it will be easier for us to make a problem go away when it’s just two men in the middle of the night.”

  Hansa frowned, an expression that made him appear younger than his twenty-seven years. “Don’t hurt them,” he said. “I know how persuasive this group can be if necessary.” He looked at Umber, as if to remind him of the way he had changed Hansa from a villain to a hero in the minds of everyone in the city. “If I put my foot in my mouth and make them suspicious, I won’t believe anyone here who tries to convince me violence is the only way to deal with them.” This time he looked sharply at Terre Verte.

  “Of course,” Umber assured him. “Now go.”

  He gave Hansa a pat on the ass just hard enough to make the guard jump. Briefly distracted from his panic about what his fellow guards would think or do, he drew a deep breath and stepped around the corner.

  Chapter 3

  Hansa

  Hansa had never been much of a liar, but as the old saying went, necessity was the mother of all invention. It helped that Bonnard and Poll were men in his company, and therefore inclined to trust him.

  He approached the pair confidently, reminding himself that the sight was rare and there wasn’t likely to be a third man hiding in the bushes. Once he was close enough to make out their facial expressions, he saw incredulity and dawning joy.

  Hansa doubted his appearance deserved the sunny grin on Poll’s face as he snapped to attention and stepped forward to say, “Lieutenant Viridian?”

  “Soldier Poll, Soldier Bonnard.” Hansa hadn’t been their lieutenant directly, but they had all served under the same captain before his death at Alizarin’s claws and teeth. “To what do I owe this visit?”

  The two soldiers puffed up importantly before Poll explained, “Sir, I can’t say how glad we are to see you alive and well. When you disappeared while checking out that messy business down
at the docks, we feared the worst.” His voice dropped and he added gently, “It might not be my place to say, sir, but I was very sorry to hear about Ruby. She was a good woman.”

  Hansa swallowed tightly. He didn’t want to talk about Ruby, or about what had happened that day. Cadmia had run to get him, to tell him that Ruby was “hurt” and to see if he could help. Ruby hadn’t been hurt; she had been dead, and Hansa had been sure it was his fault. He’d had no way of knowing that the Numini had killed her, as a way to manipulate him into doing the exact stupid thing he did.

  Hansa had drawn blood, summoned Umber, and used the magic of a third boon to demand he do everything in his power to bring her back—an action that cemented them magically together for the rest of their lives, unless Terre Verte really had the power to break them apart.

  As if realizing that Poll had in his exuberance neglected to answer Hansa’s question, or taking Hansa’s hesitation as a cue to change the subject, Bonnard said, “Captain Montag ordered your apartment searched for signs of what had happened, and then watched for further activity or in case you returned.”

  Apparently someone had suspected Hansa’s activities hadn’t been entirely wholesome. He tried to remember what his house had looked like when he left it, and for a moment his stomach knotted. The last thing he had done there had been returning Abyssal power to Umber after borrowing it to rescue a little girl named Pearl.

  The soldiers of the 126 wouldn’t care about motive, not when magic was involved.

  Hansa reminded himself that, if sighted men had spotted the residue of sorcery in his apartment, soldiers would have been waiting to arrest him, not greet him.

  “I’ve been on a discreet mission for President Indathrone,” Hansa lied. “It had to look like I had simply disappeared. I need a little more time, though, so I would appreciate it if you didn’t mention that you spotted me.”

  They looked suitably impressed to be taken into his confidence, and both nodded solemnly. “Yes, sir.”