Lord of Secrets

by Breanna Teintze

  I crawled painfully towards Gwillam’s corpse and Brix’s vial. Not that I knew how I was going to keep her safe once I had it, but at least she wouldn’t wind up riding in the pocket of a marulach.

  Ripples of pink crackled across the room and I pressed briefly into the ground as the magic pulse above me sucked the heat out of the air, my breath freezing in front of my lips. Next came a wave of silver that set most of the room vomiting, and Jaern to giggling.

  ‘You’ve practised since I’ve been away,’ he said, delighted.

  I inched forwards. Gwillam’s sightless, boiled-onion eyes watched me, ringed by eyelids that were mostly charcoal. I swallowed, astonished by how difficult it was to put my hand inside a dead man’s clothes.

  First I found a cheap dagger. I yanked the sheath off and put it into the hand on my broken arm, glad I could still – sort of – close my fingers. Gritting my teeth, I rifled around in Gwillam’s pockets until I touched the cold pewter-and-glass of Brix’s vial.

  Now, if I could find more paint and a brush, I could at least distract Jaern long enough for Acarius to land a blow.

  So loyal, Jaern said, inside my head. Watch now.

  I rolled on my side, the vial clutched to me, eyes wide.

  And Acarius lost.

  Jaern parted his lips and exhaled a stream of silver light, curling through the air. It struck Acarius on the mouth. He gasped just before the shock wave burst from him. The entire room except me, Makesh and the marulaches froze, paralysed on their feet.

  Makesh had slumped to the floor, fainted or dazed with fright, and the marulaches’ lack of souls must have made them immune. But the rest – Lorican, Keir, the Guildies, all of them – fell into the spell together, turning to stone. I could watch nobody but Acarius.

  His skin drained of colour, first to grey and then white and shiny. His clothes followed suit, hardening. At last my grandfather was nothing but a marble statue with living eyes, and the temple fell silent.

  Twenty-Six

  Jaern turned to me, eyes rimmed in red. One of his pupils had shrunk to a pinpoint; the other was widely dilated. He must have caught a spell, one that probably would have shattered the skull of anyone else. It gave his face a curious lopsided effect, contrasting with the otherwise rigid symmetry.

  Makesh lay where he had dropped, curled into a foetal ball on the floor near the altar, rocking.

  I tried, one more time, to sit up.

  Jaern crossed the floor with that same rapid grace, reaching out to help me. I swung the dagger blindly, without thinking. It snagged across his chest, laying open a gash from hip to shoulder. He caught my wrist with one hand and held it away from him. The broken bones in my shoulder crunched.

  I screamed until my breath ran out, and waited for the pain to recede. It didn’t. I couldn’t pull away from him. I couldn’t fill my lungs again, dragging air into my throat in inadequate snatches.

  This was my fault. I should have ended it long before we got to Cor Daddan. I should never have let him out of that prison circle.

  ‘You’re hyperventilating, infant.’ He let me struggle for a few moments. ‘Get it out of your system.’

  He didn’t bleed. His clothes stayed slashed, but the cut closed up, edges melting together like sand under waves. Runes blazed on the back of the hand that gripped mine. I could have wept with frustration.

  The spell poured down my arm, the black pendant around his neck throbbing, buzzing. For the second time in my life he made the broken things in my body whole. My bones shifted under my skin. The ligaments in my broken shoulder and ruined knee jerked back into place. The god repaired my body, made it fit to inhabit for centuries.

  ‘I don’t care,’ I said. ‘I’ll still kill you.’

  ‘Try, if it makes you happy.’ Jaern pulled me to my feet. ‘Save the world. You’ll have time. Now walk backwards.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Stubborn.’ He took me by the throat. ‘This is not the time. Get back on the spiral so I can bleed Makesh and get on with it properly.’

  ‘No.’

  His hand squeezed, just enough to induce panic. ‘Step backwards,’ he said flatly, ‘or I’ll smash that vial you’re holding into dust.’

  ‘Leave her out of it.’ My fingers tightened around Brix’s vial. I had failed her, too. I had bent everything to keep her from being trapped, had done my best, and I had still failed.

  ‘I’m not the one who keeps involving her, am I?’ Jaern shoved. ‘Go.’

  I stepped backwards.

  ‘Good.’ He came with me, guiding me on to the spiral, pronouncing the spell as we moved.

  One by one, the runes painted on my body lit. The magic hooked into the runes on the floor, holding me more efficiently than any chain. Taking a step would have done nothing but tear chunks of flesh off my bones.

  My mouth filled with blood. I had to either swallow or spit if I was going to talk and I was damned if I was going to swallow. The red glob that landed on the floor was streaked through with vibrant blue-black. The necromantic spell was taking hold. I didn’t have much time.

  The hand on my throat released. Something I couldn’t quite recognise flickered across his expression. It was almost . . . playful. ‘Did you do that on purpose?’

  ‘What?’ I said. ‘Spit blood?’

  He grinned. ‘Lick your lip.’

  Slowly I understood that, in the middle of all that carnage, the god was flirting with me.

  ‘Jaern,’ I said.

  For a moment he seemed to forget about the ritual, searching my expression. ‘Going to turn me down, Cricket?’ he said, softly. ‘Without even thinking about it? If this body is a problem, I can always get a different one. Blond, if you prefer.’

  I gritted my teeth. ‘You think the body is the problem? After what you’ve just done – they didn’t all deserve to die.’

  ‘Everyone deserves to die,’ he said, impatient. ‘Even you, even me. Don’t be irrelevant. I’m not asking for much and I’m not offering you nothing. You say you don’t worship anything, but the name of your god is written in everything you do, everything you fear. You’d pray to it, if you thought it could hear you. You’d suffer to be worthy of it. You are suffering, in fact.’ He leaned closer. ‘Do you want to know what you worship? What you care the most about?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Love.’ His deep voice rang the word like a bell. ‘You want it like a child wants his mother.’

  I turned my face away, not that it made any difference. I could still feel his eyes on me.

  ‘You’re attached to the girl,’ he murmured. ‘Fine, there’s no accounting for tastes. After the ritual you can have her. I’ll help you get her out of the bottle – it makes them whole, the djinn-folk, being more or less in torpor under glass. I’ll even teach you to put her back in, if you like. There’s no point throwing tantrums when you could just ask nicely.’

  ‘I’m not stupid,’ I said. ‘You can’t stand her. Why would you help her? What would you be getting?’

  ‘I’m not helping her.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘I’m getting the same thing I’m giving you. Eternity, in the company of someone who understands me. I expect we both will have our occasional . . . diversions. But thirty or forty years isn’t so long, when you’ve got centuries ahead of you.’

  I pulled on my wrist again.

  His hand moved not at all. ‘I can afford to wait.’

  ‘Let go of me,’ I said.

  ‘I’d rather not,’ Jaern said, ‘until I have some assurance that you won’t make this process tiresome. You still think that if you kill me and give the girl back her sister-brat that she’ll be grateful. She won’t. She’ll take her family, she’ll put up with a few caresses from you and then she’ll leave again. Even if I’m wrong and you get your lifetime with her, she’ll die. You’ll be alone, the way I am. You don’t understand what that’s like, the way the loneliness eats you.’

  I snorted. ‘Lonely? You?’

  ‘He died.’ />
  I stiffened. The naked pain in the two words was too large to be spent for an apprentice. The agony, the ache – I recognised it. The hateful vulnerability. I had felt that when Brix left me.

  I spoke as carefully as I could. ‘You mean . . . ?’

  ‘Acarius, yes.’

  ‘. . . died?’

  Jaern watched me through half-lidded eyes. ‘Temporarily.’

  Why hadn’t Acarius told me? I should have known him better, put it together sooner. ‘You loved him.’

  ‘Everybody,’ Jaern said softly, ‘worships something, Cricket. I had a little while. A few dozen years. A blink. And then he was dying. Wouldn’t let me stop it. Wouldn’t let me keep his soul safe, in a new body. He said it was a sin.’ Jaern’s fingers dug into my skin. ‘A sin. To take a body from some fool who didn’t appreciate it and use it to preserve a soul like his. What was I supposed to do?’ He paused, as though he half expected me to give him an answer.

  But I had no answers. I couldn’t even sort out my own objections. How did someone so afraid of death wind up drinking it?

  ‘It’s not a large leap from playing with dolls made of bone to making bodies like a tailor makes a suit,’ he said. ‘It’s not my fault that I’m a good tailor. And you look like he used to. I thought I was hallucinating when I saw you the first time, seeing what I most wanted, mad in the dark. Gods, you look like him.’

  ‘I’m not him,’ I said.

  ‘I know,’ Jaern said, but he didn’t, not really.

  ‘Here I hoped it was my scintillating personality that did it for you.’

  It broke the trance. He blinked, then smirked. ‘Well, I’ll admit that without the mouth you’d be less interesting.’

  ‘Are you going to let me go?’

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘Are you going to play nice?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  The smirk turned back to a grin, full of teeth, sharp. ‘I suppose I can’t actually complain.’

  ‘How did you manage with Acarius, anyway? Was he unconscious, or drunk, or what?’

  Jaern shrugged. ‘He did his best to make it impossible. It’s hard to move a soul that doesn’t want to be moved. But I did it anyway. I may have . . . been a little angry with him.’

  ‘Tricked him,’ I said.

  ‘Thought he’d forgive me. He didn’t.’ He looked at the dagger. ‘What do you want the knife for? You can’t hurt me with it.’

  ‘Nothing. I want my damn hand.’

  ‘Suicide won’t do you any good, either.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘I won’t let you die for good. The ritual is all but complete. I’ll catch your soul and move it.’

  ‘I don’t want to die.’ I meant it. I was twenty-six, and I wanted the rest of my years. That much of his fear I shared. After all, I had spent my whole life working to arrange things to prevent the unexpected. Death was nothing if not unpredictable. Annihilation would be bad enough, but what if dying didn’t mean silence? What if the priests were right and it was nothing but the kind of darkness that breeds ghosts?

  He released my wrist. ‘You wouldn’t be the first genius to find martyrdom alluring.’

  There was no way out, not this time. He was going to make me watch my life end and my unlife begin. Worse, he was going to make me watch him cut through the world like a scythe, making more orphans, breaking more hearts.

  ‘I’m not a genius.’ I toyed with the dagger, remembering the first argument I’d had with Jaern – a lifetime ago, in the dark of a different temple. What had I said? ‘I believed you when you said Keir took out Acarius’ soul.’

  He considered this, then conceded. ‘It wasn’t even a very good lie. I took Acarius’ soul, of course, before he imprisoned me. Keir is nothing. I pulled the name out of that entertaining mind of yours the first time I touched you.’

  Something flickered in the back of my head.

  You can’t separate a soul from a body. That’s what I had said, arrogant prick that I was. Why had I believed that? You can’t separate a soul from a body. What had he retorted?

  ‘You can’t do that,’ I said, mechanically.

  He laughed. ‘Of course you can, infant.’

  My memory suddenly snapped into place. Of course you can, infant. What do you think a dagger to the throat does?

  ‘Now, we understand each other.’ Jaern stretched his fingers with precision, like a musician. ‘We should begin.’

  There was a way out. One.

  ‘Your soul comes out first during the ritual?’ I said, falling back on questions until I knew my own mind. Gods, I didn’t want to do this. Fear flooded my veins, so complete that I almost felt calm. It wasn’t fair, having to choose.

  ‘Obviously. It’s oldest.’ He studied Keir’s line of runes. ‘I’ll have to repair this inept business first.’

  ‘And when does the human sacrifice come in?’

  ‘It will activate the runes on the altar, in a few minutes. Make it so the soul will go into the vial, instead of straight to the afterworld. It’s a matter of having enough blood to fill all the channels.’ He glanced at Makesh. ‘Hardly a human sacrifice, though, is it? I had wanted to use Lorican, but that’s not possible now. Happily, we don’t need him. Is this consent, Gray?’

  Lorican. Another person who had tried to be kind to me, another statue, standing there with frozen terror on his face. Another person I’d failed.

  I gritted my teeth. ‘You don’t care about my consent.’ Still, what if I did let Jaern finish the ritual? I could always kill him later, when I had time to think and study. It was even possible that I could restrain him for a while, wasn’t it? I could get him to teach me about the spell binding Acarius and Lorican and all the poor half-witted Guildies – even Keir. Perhaps I could figure out how to reverse it.

  What if I didn’t have to gamble? What if I didn’t have to suffer?

  I forced myself to ask another question. ‘After that you take out my heart?’

  ‘While Acarius and Lorican watch, yes.’ He waved a hand. ‘A nice touch, don’t you think?’

  So my grandfather was alive and aware inside his stone skin. My chest contracted, but I didn’t have time for that fresh slice of horror. Unless I changed my mind, soon I would know whether my guess was good or bad. If I was right, Acarius and Lorican and everyone else would be free. If I was wrong—

  Theory. That was what it came down to, again. Just bare, crazy theory.

  ‘You’re a bastard,’ I said.

  ‘You’re repeating yourself.’ Jaern picked up the doll and fitted the obsidian into its empty eye socket, then cradled it absently in the crook of his arm. He took Keir’s fallen paint and brush, squatted and started touching up the edges of the sigils. They were still dark, which meant I had just a few moments left to make my move. ‘You should sit down, by the way, or you’ll fall.’

  I didn’t have to do it. I could stop fighting. I could have a little peace to read and learn and do some good with my wits. Maybe I could even have Brix – have a life. Maybe I could protect the world from Jaern, keep him distracted.

  I don’t have to do it.

  Brix.

  I looked down at the vial I held, warm under my fingertips. I could get her out, but then, sooner or later, I would have to explain. Even if I was able to lie, eventually she’d pull the truth out of me and I would have to stand there and meet her eyes.

  What an idiot I was, after all, thinking I had ever had a choice.

  ‘Gray.’ Jaern spoke gently. ‘Sit down.’

  Slowly, I went back down to my knees. I put Brix’s vial on the floor beside me, where it would be easy to reach afterwards.

  ‘You’re wrong, you know.’ Jaern paused, brush between his fingers. ‘I do care. I wish you were willing. If you are, it won’t hurt. I can give you that – it won’t hurt.’

  I knew he was trying to be kind to me. Perhaps that was why, even then, I couldn’t quite hate him. Magic was Jaern’s addiction, too.

  ‘It does hurt.’ I tightened my grip on th
e haft of the dagger. ‘I’m scared as hell.’

  ‘Don’t be.’ He straightened. ‘It’s going to be all right.’

  ‘No, it isn’t.’ I took the knife with both hands, put the point beneath the notch of my sternum and pushed it in.

  ‘Stop!’ He lunged at me.

  Warm liquid poured over my hands. The pain was narrow, though, a lancet through the centre of me, mixed up in the heat and the metallic stink and the fear. I ignored it, focusing on Jaern.

  Fall. Fall.

  For all his speed, Jaern only had time to take two steps towards me before he stumbled. He stared at me, at the scarlet puddle collecting beneath my body, then at his own treasonous feet.

  Fall, damn you.

  I drew a hitching gasp as something pulled away from inside me, thread by thread, unravelled.

  ‘Gray, how—’ He stretched out his hands in front of him. ‘Gray. My soul. I don’t have it – I don’t – I’m—’

  Afraid. He was afraid.

  Breathe. It took so much thought to keep my lungs moving, to keep from coughing my guts out, to keep myself conscious. I had to stay alive just until the last trace of his soul left me, and I had to figure out how to speak at least once more. I wasn’t going to let my last words cause suffering, even his suffering.

  Breathe.

  ‘Not . . . alone,’ I said.

  Jaern smiled, tender, lost.

  And he died.

  *

  I slumped backwards seconds after Jaern fell, my head thudding against the stone. It took longer to bleed out than I had expected, but he was right. Mostly, it didn’t hurt.

  I was cold, though. Colder than I had known anyone could be, lying on that glassy black floor.

  Sound spilled around me.

  Some part of me knew it when the necromancer’s spells crumbled. The marulaches dropped, empty corpses once more, and pattered like leaf-fall in an autumn forest. People frozen into statues regained their humanity, groaning and crying. Someone – probably Makesh, with a newly restored mouth – started to shriek.