Of the Abyss Read online

  At least his nerves were keeping him awake. Between returning home late after overseeing the mancer’s branding and getting up early to honor his request for counsel before his scheduled execution, Hansa had managed only a few hours’ sleep. After the horror of the mancer’s grisly death, he had almost put this off one more time—­going home to sleep sounded very nice—­but told himself no. Dealing with horrors was the nature of his work. It was time to stop using that as an excuse to put off the good parts of his life. As soon as Sister Paynes had finished her report, Hansa had reminded his commander that he had asked for the day off, then gone back home.

  Now he tried to focus on cooking. Smell suggested the sweet bread was nearly ready, as it should be. He had fresh cider warming on the stove, and homemade maple butter ready on the table, which covered almost all of Ruby’s favorite breakfast foods with the exception of fresh strawberries, which were unavailable this time of year. Trying to replace fresh strawberries with preserves was likely to end with the jar dumped over his head. At least the warm bread and hot cider would be appreciated, in the face of the cold wind that had started last night and brought winter in like a thief in the night.

  Ruby started work very early in the morning, but was often able to come home for a few hours while an apprentice minded the distillery, so they frequently met at her home on days when Hansa was not scheduled. Hansa tended to breakfast more heavily when left to his own devices, but Ruby preferred to eat like a butterfly and snack all day, so they normally compromised when they met for brunch. But today was all about her.

  When she walked in, her cheeks were pink from the cold outside and her gray eyes were bright. She pulled off her heavy overcloak and hung it on the peg next to the door before she greeted him with a kiss on the cheek and the words, “Do I smell sweet bread?”

  She moved in a wreath of her own spicy-­sweet scent, which lingered from her work at the herbarium. She spent much of the day distilling essential oils, which judging from the orange stains on her fingertips, today meant wild carrots. The seeds left behind after the lacy white flowers were gone had a variety of medicinal properties.

  Hansa was just glad today hadn’t been devoted to garlic, or skunk cabbage. It was hard to be romantic on skunk cabbage days, which had been all too frequent during Ruby’s apprenticeship as an herbalist. She was now a senior journeyman and spent much of her spare time working toward her master work piece, an illustrated account of Tamari herbs and their cultural and medicinal uses.

  “Oo, and maple butter, you darling!” Her delight abruptly shifted and she focused her gray eyes on him with suspicion as she asked, “What’s wrong?”

  “Wrong?” he repeated. Did she know about the mancer who had taken a swipe at him? She always berated him for choosing such a dangerous position . . . no, she was responding to the meal, which had her favorites and nothing he would have prepared for himself. “Nothing’s wrong.”

  “Just tell me it’s not another woman,” she said, wide-­eyed, with one hand to her breast, and her gray eyes sparkling in a way that unbalanced Hansa, unsure if he was supposed to be comforting her, defending himself, or laughing.

  How had she always been able to do that? Even when she was just “Jenkins’s kid sister” tagging along on their boyish adventures, her friendly teasing and sharp wit had been able to cut circles around his.

  “You know there’s never been anyone else,” he replied, hoping to recover some of the nerve he had spent most of the last two weeks gathering.

  “Oh, good.” Moving to the oven, she peeked in and took the bread out, knowing he would have had it just ready. “You put in such an effort, I’m sorry to say I need to eat and run. I left the boy alone with a whole crop of bitterwort, and you know the Cobalt Hall will be on me if we let it scald. You’ll forgive me, won’t you?”

  Forgive her? He might strangle her!

  “Oh, darling,” she said, moving close and putting a hand on his cheek. “Don’t look at me so. I suppose I could stay a few minutes . . . but only if it is a very shiny ring.”

  “You evil woman!” Hansa declared as she danced back, the gleam in her eye now decidedly mischievous. She knew exactly why he had put this all together.

  “I’m evil?” she asked. “Your mother has been asking me every day for the last week where this is.” She held up her hand, and in it was the small silk bag that had been in his pocket a moment ago, before she had snuggled up close to him. Like many young ladies born to conservative Quin families, Ruby had spent some time fascinated with the Order of A’hknet when she was younger; in her case, the interest had caused a fallout with her parents that persisted to this day despite Ruby’s return to a more decorous lifestyle. Her nimble, sticky fingers still held the skills she had learned in her eight months with the mongers, though these days she mostly employed them to perform sleight-­of-­hand tricks for children.

  Before Hansa could even begin to sputter a reply, much less a proposal, a knock on the door made them both frown and turn from their playful teasing. Hansa debated ignoring it, but the pounding was too insistent.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  Ruby followed after him as he went to open the door.

  “Jenkins!” she scolded upon seeing her older brother on the front step. “Hansa was just about to propose. Do you mind coming back in a few minutes?” She swatted Hansa on the arm to add, “For your information, I took the afternoon off for this.”

  So did I, Hansa thought. Jenkins knew that, and knew why.

  “Keep smiling, Hansa,” Jenkins said, his voice soft. “The captain only gave me permission to give you the heads-­up because I swore up and down that none of your neighbors would question my coming here for a social visit while I’m off duty.”

  “But this isn’t a social visit,” Ruby said, voice flat.

  “Unfortunately, no, and I’m very sorry it had to happen today of all days. Let’s go inside.”

  “What’s this about?” Hansa asked as Jenkins let himself in despite Ruby’s glare.

  In response, Jenkins handed him one of the small stilettos carried specifically for use on sorcerers. The poison on it was difficult to craft and broke down quickly, so only on-­duty officers carried it.

  “We just got a report from a reputable source naming Dioxazine of 16 River Street as a mancer. I know you’re supposed to be off today, but I thought you might want to be involved in this one. Also, I understand that you’re neighborly enough that she might not panic if you knock on the door.”

  “Xaz?” Ruby asked incredulously. “But she’s so . . . so . . . and I . . .”

  She trailed off, probably considering the exact same things Hansa was: She’s so quiet and reserved, shy, always polite. Like someone who had something to hide? It was hard to imagine the woman Ruby had occasionally coerced into joining them for social calls as a mancer, but that seemed to be what ­people always said when someone was named.

  “You’re sure?” Hansa asked.

  “If she isn’t a mancer, she’s at least a sympathizer,” Jenkins said. “The report came from a Sister of the Napthol.”

  “No,” Ruby said, wide-­eyed. “Hansa, you are off duty. I’m not letting you—­”

  “You know I need to go. I need to know what she has been doing here.”

  Xaz had been living next to Ruby for months. Even if a mancer did nothing directly nefarious, the power itself was dangerous and unpredictable. Ruby could have been hurt—­and that was assuming Xaz had the best of intentions, and had not put herself near someone so important to a lieutenant of the 126 for her own purposes.

  Ruby crossed her arms silently.

  “Go or stay, Hansa,” Jenkins said. “I told them I wasn’t sure what you would choose to do. If the rest of the company doesn’t see us soon, they’ll break in.”

  “You’ve re-­treated this since last night, I assume?” he asked Jenkins, as he took the stilett
o and palmed it. The Abyssumancer should not have been able to wake as quickly as he had.

  Jenkins nodded. “The paraphernalia found on her was clearly a Numenmancer’s, so I was able to mix this pure for one of them. It should put her out fast and keep her down for a long time.”

  Hansa nodded. Like the brands, the poison was a remnant of an earlier age; it could only be distilled using equipment no one fully understood in the basement of the Quinacridone Compound, and it needed to be matched to the specific type of power the mancer wielded. If they knew going into an arrest what kind of sorcerer they were dealing with, they could use more effective poisons.

  “You could both let them go without you,” Ruby whispered, but the slump in her shoulders made it clear she knew they couldn’t. “Why couldn’t one of you have become a . . . a florist or something?”

  “Sorry, sis,” Jenkins said. “I wasn’t cut out to be a monk.” Jenkins had been born with the sight. There weren’t a lot of options for him outside the Order of the Napthol and the monks who followed the Quinacridone. “Hansa, we have to go.”

  “We’ll talk later,” Hansa said to Ruby, knowing time was short. The last thing he wanted was for the others to move while both their lieutenant and second lieutenant were here. That would leave only Captain Feldgrau with the poison needed to bring the mancer down.

  Ruby nodded sharply. He resisted the urge to keep arguing with her. She was afraid now; later, when they had all returned safely, she would understand why they had gone.

  Trying to school his face to a friendly, open expression, Hansa stepped through the door. He couldn’t see the other men from the street, but he trusted that they were nearby and would move quickly if Xaz tried to resist and Hansa could not subdue her immediately.

  The shades on the Numenmancer’s house were drawn tightly closed as Hansa approached.

  He knocked politely, resisting the urge to pound on the door. If Xaz didn’t answer, they would need to break in, which was risky. If she was out entirely, they could set an ambush, but that was still more dangerous than having her willingly come to the door.

  Abyssumancers had the unsettling ability to be armed even after being searched and stripped naked, but Numenmancers could summon lightning or make the air turn so cold it could freeze a man’s blood. Dangerous sorcery like that normally required a ritual, which gave men like Hansa an advantage if they moved quickly, but that potential delay was dwindling quickly if Xaz had realized what was going on and was at her altar preparing her defense.

  Hansa reached for the doorknob, and then jumped as it turned and the door opened from the other side.

  Xaz was normally a pretty enough woman, with auburn highlights in her brown hair and wide, expressive eyes, even though she constantly seemed on the side of too thin and too tired. At that moment, she looked feverish and exhausted, and she hung back from the door just enough that she would have room to jump back if he reached for her.

  Hansa wasn’t much of a natural liar, so he let neighborly instincts speak for him. “I’m sorry to bother you. I didn’t realize you were sick. Did I wake you?”

  She shook her head, and asked, “How did the proposal go?” Then she frowned and her eyes focused before she asked, “What are you doing here?”

  Xaz had handed him an excuse, so he was about to say that Ruby had asked ­people to come over to celebrate—­he would feel a little guilt later for using her that way, but it was better than tipping the mancer off—­but before he could speak or even hesitate and fumble a lie, the Numenmancer must have guessed the truth.

  She darted back and slammed the door behind her, but didn’t have time to lock it before Hansa shouldered it back open and went after her, trusting the rest of his men to follow.

  He found her in the living room, trapped and wide-­eyed like a deer. Jenkins had taken some of the men around back; they had probably slipped in through the windows as soon as Dioxazine had come to the door, and now they had blocked her escape.

  “Quin bastards,” Xaz hissed, looking from Hansa to Jenkins with an expression of betrayal that eerily mirrored how Hansa felt. He had thought, before now, that Xaz was a friend.

  She twisted to face Jenkins when he started to step forward, which left Hansa with a clear enough shot that he was able to bury the blade in the meat of her shoulder.

  She hissed in pain and stumbled to her hands and knees—­but stopped there.

  The temperature in the room rose abruptly as she shoved herself back up and turned toward Hansa again, reaching out and seeming to realize only as she did so that there was a knife in her hand: a black-­bladed bone knife that Hansa recognized instantly from the Abyssumancer Baryte. How did she have it?

  This wasn’t the time to ask; the poison seemed to disorient her, but it hadn’t taken her down entirely because it was designed for a Numenmancer’s power, and that clearly wasn’t what she was using. Someone had made a disastrous mistake. They hadn’t come here prepared to fight an Abyssumancer.

  Bole must not have seen the knife before he attacked. His sword took a slice out of the mancer’s arm before she dodged, but then she struck back and her blade found him between the ribs. It wasn’t a heart-­wound, but it was close enough, and with that kind of magic . . .

  The air seemed to darken, becoming thick and hard to breathe.

  Xaz shouted, “Just help me, damn you!” and then the world became red ruin as Bole’s skin steamed and split.

  Hansa couldn’t see it, but he knew it was there by the bloody claw marks it left across the skin of the next soldier to reach it. Abyssi. It would only be put back by killing its master. Jenkins was closest . . . so it was Jenkins who, a moment later, was nothing but a crimson splash, a few shards of bone, and a slowly falling residue of ash. Meanwhile, Xaz fled through the back room.

  Hansa couldn’t see anything, beyond a fourth soldier flying across the room and hitting the wall near the door hard enough that he fell, dazed, and another kneeling on the floor with an upraised arm suddenly becoming a mass of clawed meat. Hansa swung at where the creature had to be, but hit nothing; his sword moved as if through air, even as whatever it was continued to claw at the other guard.

  It wasn’t possible for a man to fight a creature from the Abyss, but thankfully it was also impossible for a mancer to control one for long. This one would eventually turn on the Abyssumancer who had summoned it, and in the process it would send itself back to the Abyss.

  Hansa just needed to survive that long.

  While the Abyssi was focused on one of the others, taking its time now that no one was directly threatening the escaped mancer, Hansa slung an arm under the unconscious guard it had thrown across the room, lifted him, and then ran.

  He had barely reached the street when he felt claws down his back. He fell hard, twisting to try to avoid slamming the head of the guard he had tried to rescue into the stone path.

  And then he could see. Nothing solid, just a general shape, but that was enough because that shape was made of nothing from this world. It was darkness and pain incarnate, and as it went for the fallen guard, Hansa’s nerve broke.

  Hansa had always considered himself brave, or at the very least loyal, but in that moment he abandoned those illusions. He stood, and he ran. He fell because of the wounds down his back and crawled instead, dragging himself away from the horror of a mancer’s wrath.

  CHAPTER 7

  Xaz collapsed, her limbs too heavy for her to even crawl any more. Her vision was blurred, her head was pounding, and the contents of her stomach seemed to have turned to lead. She didn’t know where she was, or where the guards were, or exactly what had just happened.

  She had barely made it home before collapsing into a deep, trancelike daze. When she finally recovered enough energy to try to speak to the Numini, she had discovered that the disc was missing, which made calling on the Numini for help nearly impossible unless they initiated the
communication—­which they didn’t. She would need to get to the mancers’ temple, a magical rift between the planes, in order to communicate with them.

  Aching in every muscle of her body, she had tried to sleep, only to find herself unable to tune out the damn Quin’s obsessive anxiety about his intended proposal. She was normally able to keep others’ thoughts from intruding on hers, but her power was so muddled she couldn’t seem to form the mental walls that she had habitually maintained since childhood.

  The inability had probably saved her life. When Hansa had knocked on the door, Xaz had assumed that he had come to deliver the good news in a jovial, neighborly way, but that hadn’t been the focus of his thoughts when he looked at her.

  Like every mancer, she craved the touch of her power’s realm, but knew the dangers of succumbing to that desire. She had never dared try to summon the Numini into the mortal realm. However, the alternative at that moment seemed to be branding and execution, so she responded instantly when one of the Others reached to her and whispered, I can help you. Pull me over.

  Then she had felt the poison. It had disoriented and weakened her even more than she already had been, turning fear into panic. The Abyssumancer’s bone blade had appeared in her hand without her in any way intending to summon it, and then the blood of one of the guards had been on her skin and she had shouted for help and fled as soon as the circle broke.

  “Come back,” she said, trying to speak with power in addition to her voice. It was difficult. “Please. I need your help.” The creature appeared before her in an instant, but looking at it just made her head hurt even more, so she shut her eyes as she pleaded, “I need to be somewhere safe. I need to rest until the poison wears off, where they can’t find me. Help.”

  As you wish. Its voice reverberated through her muscle and bone. She felt herself lifted before she fainted.