The Gods of Vice

by Devin Madson

“Don’t worry, I didn’t want to. I’m not that much your enemy.”

  “Why are you different? I can feel you now.”

  He didn’t answer, nor did his expression change—his mastery over it as strong as his mastery over his Empathy had been. With a strength of mind I could not even begin to fathom, he had buried it so deep it seemed not to exist at all.

  “You said…” I fiddled with the hem of my robe. “You asked if I knew what happens to Empaths who lose themselves. What did you mean?”

  Darius pressed a hand to his forehead, his fingers trembling. “Did you plan to finish me off by asking me endless questions and spilling yourself all over me? If so, it is working admirably.”

  He looked paler than he had while sleeping, and I could imagine Avarice’s scold should he come back to find Darius worse than he had left him. “I’m sorry.”

  “You say that a lot.”

  “I have a lot to be sorry about.”

  A laugh became a cough, and he lapsed into silence with his eyes closed and his hands shaking. One he set upon his brow, the movement drawing his sleeve back just enough to show the tip of the birthmark on his inner wrist. I stared at it, at this mark I had kept hidden all my life, upon the skin of the brother I had never known I had.

  I shuffled a little closer. “I really am sorry. What can I do to help?”

  “You can’t help me,” he said, still with his eyes closed. “You can’t even help yourself.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, go away. Go make yourself useful. I’m parched and starving.”

  “You think I’m stupid, but I’m—”

  “You are stupid. And you’re going to tear this empire apart more completely than Kin and Katashi ever could, now go away!”

  “Then what were you made to do?” Kokoro had asked. “You were made to steal and to hurt. You were made to break and destroy and kill.”

  I sat back, my heartbeat a thundering storm in my chest. Until I had been branded, I had never harmed anyone, and hadn’t since without being pushed to it, and yet everyone looked at me and saw the greatest monster there could ever be.

  “I don’t want the—”

  “Go away!” he howled. Lines of pain marred Darius’s brow as though merely existing caused him agony. “Bring me food. Bring me water. Do anything but sit there and consume me with your needs.”

  The sudden flare of his anguish hollowed my stomach and stole my voice, leaving me scrambling to the door, but even with it closed between us, I could still feel the rapid hammer of the heart he had wished would stop beating.

  I leant my head back against the wall while the tumultuous emotions faded slowly away, leaving silence in their wake. Peace. I could breathe again.

  Despite the number of people who lived within its walls, Koi Castle was quiet today, fear throwing a blanket over its blackened posts and narrow halls. It was a symbol of old power, of Otako power, every sign of Ts’ai occupation already being scrubbed from its innards. On the first day, a pile of Ts’ai banners had burned slowly, sending billows of black smoke into the air. Papers and books were going the same way, saddlecloths, tea sets and bone-handled knives—anything bearing the dragon Katashi had come to hate so much.

  “What happened?” Avarice came along the passage hunched like a bear, his hooded tunic fraying around the edges.

  “He’s awake,” I said. “He wants food and drink.” And death. But I couldn’t say that, not to him.

  Avarice’s relief refilled the pool of emotion that always lapped around me. His grin only lasted a moment, yet his joy seemed endless.

  “Go to the kitchens,” he said. “Tea, green pear, plain rice, and mild fish, very thinly sliced.”

  It ought to have been a servant’s job, or at least someone who knew where the kitchens were, but desperate to do something, anything, to undo the harm I had caused, I nodded.

  It took me ten minutes to find the stairs, but I did not ask for help because having a mission meant not having to think about what Darius had said. Occupation also kept me grounded in the world where my feet walked. If I let my Empathy wander, it would pull me out onto the walls for a sullen guard change, or into the upper chambers where fear hung heavy amid whispering men.

  When I descended into the lower keep, I found the ghost of Katashi walking at my side, black-clad, his hair dripping moat water and his soul a glorious light in which I had bathed. I had wanted him to succeed at his mission and reunite our family. Foolish not to have considered the consequences, not to have realised there would also be a platform in the courtyard that dripped blood.

  As though summoned by my thoughts, a pair of Katashi’s Pikes found me on my return from the kitchen. They were no longer unkempt rebels camping in forest clearings and travelling only by night. Now they had legitimacy, purpose, and these two wore the uniforms of imperial guards as proudly as Kin’s men ever had.

  “Endymion?” one said, slowing as he approached.

  “Yes?”

  He jerked his thumb in the direction of the throne room. “Emperor Katashi wants to talk to you.”

  “Can I take this to Lord Laroth first?”

  “Awake, is he? Well, the captain will be glad to hear that.”

  I noted the captain and also that he made no effort to correct himself. There were some who had been with Katashi long enough it would take time to adjust, even when he was perched on the throne with a crown on his head.

  “Here.” The other guard reached for the tray. “I’ll take the dead man his last meal. His Majesty was in no mood to be kept waiting.”

  “Dead man?”

  “Just our little joke.” A smile passed between them, but I let the Pike take the tray from my hands. Better to ask Katashi what had been meant. I had managed to avoid him since he had taken the castle, burying all yearning for his presence beneath the need to help Darius, but of course it could not last. Whether to demand my allegiance or to execute me, this summons had always been coming.

  I fell in behind the Pike who led the way, our steps out of time as we clacked along the passage.

  Stinking Vices. The captain ought to be rid of the lot of them.

  The whisper came like a hiss in my ear.

  They’re all freaks. Even Kimiko. Damn, but I liked her, she was good, that skin, that fire—

  The Pike turned a scowl on me, such confusion and anger in his face that I could not meet his gaze. Skin hadn’t been necessary, curiosity enough to carry me into his head.

  He walked on, and as we approached the end of the passage, sorrow sheared into me, a scream on its heels. A woman wailed, no words, just a mess of broken curses caught between sobs.

  “Keep coming,” the Pike said, glancing back. “That will be Lady Talamir. She asked to see her husband.”

  We turned into the main hall to find a woman kneeling before the throne room doors, her fine robe dishevelled and her silken hair slipping from its bun. Two guards were trying to pull her to her feet, but she wrenched from their grip. “Don’t you dare touch me, you filthy traitors!” she spat at them. “Kin will gut you for what you’ve done. He will hang you by your hair until your scalp rips from your skull!”

  One of them slapped her, knocking her back. “Watch what you say, or you’ll be the next to guard this hallway. Right up there beside your husband.” He pointed to a row of severed heads, watching on with glassy gazes. The sight of them seemed to sap all her strength, and she collapsed in a sobbing heap, allowing the guard to lead her away.

  My Pike guide shot me an expressive grimace, signalling sympathy at having to suffer through such a noise, but the woman’s pain was no mere irritation, it was a cut to the soul that would never heal. Almost I reached out to make him feel it, but he’d already set his hands on the doors.

  The hinges groaned as he pushed them open, spilling crimson light through the widening aperture. At the far end of the room, Katashi sat upon the Crimson Throne, the broad skirt of his robe reaching to the floor. His new chancellor hovered, a
waiting orders, but Katashi waved him away and got to his feet, Hacho adding to his already impressive height.

  “Endymion, welcome,” he said, smiling and holding his arms wide. His aura filled the room as completely as the stained light. “Come. Sit by me.”

  You would not smile if you knew my name, I thought. You would not ask me to sit at your side if you knew the truth.

  Katashi beckoned as the doors closed behind me. I had feared an audience, but only a few Pikes were present to watch my progress up the room to the dais. An insistent finger indicated the divan at his side, and I perched upon its edge.

  “Is the seat hot?” he said, settling back upon a throne that might have been made for him, so well did he look upon it. “Or perhaps you think I am going to bite you? I haven’t forgotten what help you were the night I took Koi.”

  I said nothing. In the vast space, the sucking silence was oppressive. Each blade of crimson light that cut through the room was speckled with dust.

  “Nor what help you were at the meeting,” he added when still I did not speak.

  Any other courtier would have been overjoyed at so friendly a reception, but they could not feel the trouble and confusion his smile hid, the lust and the hurt and the fear.

  “You were kind to me,” I said, at last finding words that might satisfy. “It was the least I could do to repay you.”

  Katashi barked a sudden laugh. “Because I gave you a bow and let you kill one of my Pikes?” I winced but he went on. “If you base your choices on who is kind to you, you’ll only ever get used.”

  Brother Jian had always been kind, expecting nothing in return—a thought accompanied by the shameful realisation I had forgotten him of late.

  “Whatever your reasons, you have been of help to me,” he said, perhaps reading some of my misery in my face. “But I have something more I must ask of you and your… particular skills.”

  Fear yawned its bottomless maw in my stomach at the mere thought of making use of my skills for anyone, but they were words I could not say. “Why not ask Malice?” I said, playing for time.

  “Malice has already had more from me than bears thinking about,” Katashi said. “I would not ask him for water were I dying in a desert.”

  Curiosity almost bade me ask what more the Vice Master could demand, but before I could speak, he went on. “This is about Hana.” And I had my answer.

  “Lady Hana?” I said, hoping he could not hear the speeding beat of my heart as I could hear the growing whisper of his thoughts. “Has she woken?”

  “Oh yes.”

  And when she pressed against me—by the gods, I should have Wen whipped.

  I clenched my teeth as though it might slam shut my Sight, but Katashi had always been so open I could almost feel the warmth of her body and the tingles her moans had sent through his skin. I clenched my teeth harder.

  “She’s awake, yes, and seems to have recovered from—” He stopped rather than make the observation that the very man he was asking for help had been responsible for that scene in the audience chamber. So many men had never woken again. “—She seems well,” he amended, “but I’m concerned that she…”

  Kin had said he would have no unwilling wife, but if he was expecting to make an announcement soon, then… did she consider it? Had she agreed?

  “You told me the night we took this castle that you can feel everything,” Katashi said, his calm exterior somehow managing to hide his inner turmoil. “You said you could feel anger and glee and lust. Can you feel loyalty? Trust?”

  “Nothing… nothing comes to me in neat little boxes.” I hesitated on whether I ought to call him Majesty, to give him the respect his new position demanded. But whatever had changed, he was still the man I had loosed arrows with in the forest while talking of fletchings and techniques, he was still, as complicated as it was, my cousin. “I can’t sit next to someone and feel the… individual pieces,” I went on, though with him it was almost untrue. “I only get an impression of the whole, and even then it comes to me without reason, without intent. I don’t feel the why or the how, only the is.”

  “Could you”—That grip in my hair—“tell me how Hana feels about Kin?”

  I need to be sure. I have to be sure. She could ruin everything if she chose.

  It was a stark demand after all the tiptoed meandering, but I had seen it coming. Heard it in the thoughts I could not mute. “I don’t know—maybe,” I amended when his scowl darkened everything. “If I was standing beside her and only her when his name was mentioned, or the possibility of… marrying him came up, but even then, without touching her, I couldn’t be sure of the emotions, let alone her thoughts.”

  “But you could if you touched her? You could read her mind like you read Tori’s?”

  Moments before he died.

  “Not without her knowing I was doing it. She would have to agree, would have to… I don’t know, stand still and let me poke around without minding that I was seeing her every thought.”

  He snorted. Not likely. She’d probably burn his hand if he tried. Gods but she’s intense. Too wild for Kin, but she’s good for his empire and he loved her mother. And if she’s shown him even half the fire she’s shown me, he’d want her. Just for the joy of having an Otako at his feet, he’d want her. Even just to harm me.

  His thoughts tumbled over the same ideas while he gnawed on his lower lip and stared at nothing.

  “You were at the meeting,” he said abruptly. “Kin said she would marry him and it seemed ridiculous at the time, ridiculous even now, but… I cannot be easy in my mind.” He stood and began to pace along the dais. “I need to know, because if I give her a position of her own and she leaves, marries Kin, then everything I have fought for, everything I have sacrificed will be for nothing! If he is in her mind…” Katashi’s hands clenched to fists, closing upon an ache even his thoughts had no words for.

  Desperate to escape the rising wash of his emotions, I said, “Just marry her yourself!”

  “She won’t have me!”

  His words rang through the empty throne room. “She refuses,” he added quietly when the echoes had died away. “Which, I can assure you, is quite a painful enough blow to my ego without the fear she might choose him instead. Or that he might work his lies on her or force her to the altar. I cannot let her legitimise him. I can’t.”

  “If you believe he would force her into marriage, then it doesn’t matter how she feels about him, there is still a risk.”

  As though my words had contained the sharp prick of a pin, Katashi slumped onto the throne with a sigh. “You’re right. And whatever his proclaimed honour, a man does what he must in desperate times. She can’t leave. I have to keep her close, that’s the only option.”

  I could find no words to answer, could only bend beneath the weight of his determination and try not to see the teasing light in her eyes or the mulish set of her chin, try not to hear her laugh or her breathless moans as they passed across his memory.

  “Don’t tell her I asked,” he said at last, straightening his back. “Don’t tell Malice I asked. Don’t tell anyone that I asked.”

  I nodded and rose to leave, needing fresh air that wasn’t full of Hana’s smell and her hands and her body, but before I had taken more than a step, Katashi gripped my hand—hard and sure to show he knew what would happen. And it did, as easily as on every other occasion our souls had connected, but in the bright glare of his very being, it was not my sister I saw. Not the throne nor the empire nor the crown. It was Kin. Kin choking. Kin bleeding. Kin screaming. Kin dying. Katashi’s anger and obsession choked everything it touched, while the mantra of his inner thoughts echoed through his soul.

  I will have my vengeance.

  “I mean it, Endymion,” he said, letting go. “Don’t betray me on this or anything, because I know who to go after to make you hurt.” Katashi tapped the hand that had just gripped mine, and I walked to the doors, shaking, afraid of who he had seen in return.

  Chap
ter 3

  Darius

  Malice stood in the doorway like a ghost from my past, wearing the same blue robe he had dressed Endymion in because he liked his little jokes.

  “He wakes,” he said, entering on light feet. It had been dark at our last meeting, but now I could see how much five years had changed him. His silken hair had the same glossy sheen, yet the bone ribbon was a new touch, a new nod to the name he had taken on and couldn’t shed. His face too was so much the man I remembered, and yet there were the tracings of lines beginning to show if one knew where to look. He was five years older yet not five years different.

  “Nothing to say? No glorious reminiscence or pleasure at being properly reunited?” He sat on the edge of the divan and it sank beneath him, drawing me closer to the silk of that robe. “I missed you, yes?”

  Malice ran his long fingers through my hair.

  “My little Darius,” he went on, breathing deep of some scent only he could recognise. “I missed you more than words can say. You felt the same, yes?”

  I had. In those early years, I had often found myself talking to him, imagining what I would tell him about the stupidity of a councillor or the sexual intrigues of the court that Kin alone took no interest in. It had been Malice’s company I longed for and Malice I spoke to in the darkness of my mind. He had been brother, friend, ally, and protector for many years, a staple of every day. The contours of his hand were so deeply etched upon my palm that to hold any other felt wrong.

  “Darius,” he said, fingers halting their progress through my tangled hair. “You can’t tell me you’ve lost your voice.”

  “No, you’re right. If I had, I couldn’t tell you that.”

  Malice grinned. “And you haven’t lost your pedantic wit either, I see.” His smile faded and he sighed. “You look so different, yes? I thought so that night at the Gilded Cherry, but now I can see you better, you look so much older.”

  No surprise we had seen the same in each other. Empathy had never been kind to the bodies that wielded it.

  “What are you going to do with Endymion?”