by Devin Madson
We had both been willing to die rather than go back to Malice, just for different reasons.
“Shall we keep moving, Master?” she said with sunny sarcasm. “To wherever it is you were so desperate to go.”
I winced but didn’t rise to the bait. Instead, I looked up at the sun peeking through the branches overhead. “South?” There was no sign of a main road or a settlement and no outline of the mountains that clustered close to Koi. “How far back did we leave the Willow Road?”
“I never joined it.”
“West of the road then.” I closed my eyes for a pained moment. “I think I know where we were going.”
“You think? They were your orders.”
“While I was unconscious.” I listened to her moving around as though checking the horse over. “Where would you want to go if you were broken of body and spirit?”
“I don’t know, a shrine? A physician’s house? The… healing waters in Giana?”
“No. Home.”
Kimiko folded her arms and flashed a brittle smile. “I wouldn’t know since I haven’t had one for quite a long time.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Still not good enough.” She patted the horse’s rump. “Shall we keep moving? Now you’re upright, we can probably both ride and cover the ground a bit faster. I didn’t find a saddle, but those are a pain with two people anyway, so if you’re worried for your pair, you’re welcome to ride side-saddle.”
Genuinely weary, I just gave her a dour look, which earned a grin. “Am I being too cheery for you? You’re more than welcome to remove the mark on me and then you can go the rest of the way on your own. I’ll even let you keep the horse.”
“I’ve never removed a mark before,” I said. “I don’t know how or even if it’s possible.”
That wiped away her smile. “Not in all that time experimenting did you think to try it?”
“You’re only the second person I’ve ever marked. And believe me, I tried to remove the first. Many times. Many. Times.”
She glared at me a long moment, but whether or not she believed me, she asked no more questions. “Fine,” she said at last. “We should get moving then. I’ll help you up before me, then all you need to do is not fall off, all right? Assuming you still want to go home rather than somewhere more interesting, like back to Koi to hand yourself over to my brother for execution.”
“It’s tempting, but no. Given dear Katashi’s undoubted interest in upsetting Kisia’s food supply, home is exactly where I need to be right now.”
I had not been home for years, so many years I couldn’t even be sure how many. I had not visited in the five years I had served Emperor Kin, despite it being expected for councillors to attend to their estates. I had not returned after escaping Malice either, and for many years before that, Mei’lian had been a more fruitful source of souls, emotion, and power.
“Well,” Kimiko said as the outer wall of the compound came into sight, overgrown and missing stones. The second floor of the manor that peeked above looked even worse than I remembered. “This is a shithole.”
She slid from the horse’s back and approached the outer gates, both chipped and with paint peeling. She lifted the rusted knocker disdainfully. “This isn’t really your family estate, is it?”
“It is, I’m afraid,” I said and slowly dismounted. Everything still ached despite having recovered from the borabark over the last few days.
“But… I heard you were one of the wealthiest men at court.”
“I was. Witness this fine if very ruined robe I have travelled all this way in. Purple thread is so expensive, but it looks lovely with my eyes.”
Kimiko looked at my eyes as though noticing their unusual colour for the first time. “Sure. But this place looks like it fell on hard times a few generations back. I’ve never seen bramble sop grow this big before.” She poked a branch of the thorny tangle covered in white flowers. “If nothing else, you could have been selling this off to make cheap jasmine perfume. The smell is almost the same if a bit bitter.”
“I don’t lack for money. I just don’t use it repair my house.”
“But why not?”
“Ministers of the left are very busy people, you know.”
She folded her arms. “Yes, like every other lord that ever danced attendance at court. But they all have land agents and stewards and… and relatives who help maintain the proper dignity of the family.”
“I’m sorry you feel my dignity is maligned by a few tumbling-down buildings.”
The gate lock had long since rusted into disuse, so taking the handle, I hauled the heavy door open to a chorus of tortured metal. “Welcome to Esvar,” I said with a bow.
Kimiko peered in through the open gate with a grimace. “It’s even worse than I thought. Also, not to alarm you, Darius, but you seem to have some guests.”
“Guests? The rats?” I stepped up beside her and found two boys peeking at us from behind one of the portico’s main pillars. “Oh, no doubt they’ve dared each other to come up here and see if the place is haunted.”
“It’s not haunted, but it smells bad!” one of them called out, sniggering as his companion punched his arm.
“Don’t,” his friend hissed. “What if that’s Lord Laroth? He might eat us.”
Kimiko looked up at me. “And you said you didn’t eat people.”
“I don’t.”
“Shit, it is him! Run!” The frightened boy grabbed his friend’s arm and managed to drag him a few paces before the braver of the two planted his feet and would go no farther.
“Are you really the dead lord?”
“No, I’m the alive one. Here, do you want to earn some coin?”
The boy hovered, looking from me to Kimiko and then back at his friend, who hissed that they should run before I chopped them up. “Coin?”
“Yes, they are these little round discs—”
“I know what they are,” the boy snapped, and I admired his disdain in the face of a fearful apparition. “What do you want us to do?”
“Fetch Kata Monomoro up here. Tell him I’m home and I want to see him.”
The boy hovered halfway between running and staying, but his friend stopped hissing at him. “You mean Agent Monomoro?”
“Yes,” I said. “Do you know where to find him?”
“Of course. What’ll you pay us?”
Kimiko leant close enough to whisper. “We don’t have any coins.”
“Monomoro will give you each a silver from my coffers.”
“A silver each? Just for running to Monomoro’s house?”
“Yes,” I said, clenching my teeth in gathering annoyance. “Anything to have the job done and both of you out of my courtyard. Now go on!”
They ran off between the manor and the outer wall, which meant either the side gate had been left open or part of the wall had come down.
Kimiko took our horse’s reins and led it into the courtyard now empty of intruders. “I don’t suppose the stables even have a solid roof.”
“Oh no, I imagine the stables are the only place that has one, and if all the horse boxes aren’t still in one piece, I’ll be amazed. Avarice was always very particular about horses.”
“Avarice? Did he work here then?”
Having been drawn into saying more than I’d meant, I followed in silence, letting my gaze sweep the all too familiar courtyard. The wisteria had taken over entirely since the last time I’d been home, and moss covered all but the Errant board the boys had been using, their pebble pieces left part way through a game.
“Darius? Is that tree growing through the roof?”
“Oh yes, that’s been there as long as I can remember.”
“I should think so given how big it is. Why in the world would anyone let a tree grow inside their house? It’s not like you couldn’t have pulled it out when it was a sapling. Or chopped it down before it got so big it would crush half the house if it fell.”
I pointed her in the directi
on of the stables. “But it’s not a normal tree,” I said, walking alongside. “Its wood is too hard. You can’t chop off even the thinnest twig. I don’t know how it was when it was small, but some of the records mention failed attempts to pull it out. It is connected to the ground by steely roots.”
Kimiko grinned over her shoulder. “Now you’re making fun of me.”
“Not sure how.”
“A tree that can’t be chopped down?”
I shrugged and pushed open the stable door. “You’re welcome to find an axe and try. You can’t imagine I would be sad to see half—or all—this disgusting pile collapse beneath it. The tree may crush everything and good riddance.”
The stables had hardly changed, and I breathed in the scent of old hay and dust and the oil Avarice had used to clean the saddles. This had been his favourite place and he’d managed to fix it up because my father had never come in here, always leaving his horse at the door on the rare occasions he came home.
“You hate it.”
“Pardon?” I said, returning from my memories to find Kimiko watching me, her head tilted in that little bird way she had.
“You hate this place. That’s why you haven’t done anything to look after it. You’ve just been hoping nature will slowly swallow it.”
“It wasn’t a pleasant place to grow up.”
Her head tilted a little farther. “Was it like this when you were a boy?”
“Worse.”
Because my father had never been home, or sometimes because he was. Both had been terrible.
“Did you father hate the place too?”
I shrugged and took down one of Avarice’s old brushes. “No doubt. Or perhaps the house wishes not to be salvaged and resists all attempts to fix it.”
“It’s not alive.”
I used to think it was.
“Darius?”
“Hmm?”
“Where do you keep going in that head of yours?”
Setting the brush to the horse’s coat, I forced a smile. “Nowhere pleasant, my dear. Why don’t you see if there’s any dry hay?”
We had just finished seeing to the horse when the gate screeched again and the slow clop of hooves entered the courtyard. “Hello? Is anyone here?”
I strode out to find a stranger with reddened cheeks mounted upon a small horse, its mane full of the same prickles we had just been picking from our horse’s hair. “Are you Kata Monomoro?”
The man looked down at me, greying brows low. “Are you Lord Darius Laroth?”
“I am. I know we’ve never met, but I had the honour of receiving the few letters you sent me at court.”
“As I had the honour of receiving your eloquent replies.” He gestured to the house. “I have complied with your wishes, as you see, my lord.”
“So you have. Now I have new orders I would like you to carry out on my behalf. I would invite you into the house to discuss them, but very likely one of us would fall through the floor.”
Finally seeming to accept I was who I claimed to be, he dismounted and bowed. “Is my lord wishing to set his house and lands in order? The rest of your estate and your tenants have been very well tended, I assure you, it’s just this—”
“I may repair it, yes, but I have some work to do first. I’m going to need a secretary and a pair of messengers and a couple of men who know the countryside between here and Hamaba very well.”
“My lord?”
“It’s ‘Your Excellency’ or ‘minister,’ and don’t stand there goggling at me; I have a lot of work to do.”
Chapter 9
Endymion
We left the bodies on the road and continued our journey, a smaller group than had departed Koi in the afternoon heat.
Malice kept me close. He did not look at me. Did not speak. He lay upon his divan, letting his body rock with the motion of the wagon while the air thickened with opium smoke. Slowly its sweetness sucked all cares from my heart while the gentle sway of the wagon lulled me into a doze. There, strange dreams roamed the edges of my mind. Colours blurred together in the lamplight, and I touched the raised scab on my cheek, caressing the smooth surface and puckered ridges of my first Traitor’s Mark.
Malice exhaled a stream of smoke, his heavy-lidded eyes making him appear half asleep. Outside the shuttered windows, another village passed. One hundred and eighty-one souls, momentarily distinguished by proximity. Soon they would fade into the mass of life like all the others, leaving only a handful of Vices at the touch of my latent Empathy. Silent. Sullen. Fearful.
Having lost all concept of time, I knew not how long we travelled before the wagon stopped. Muffled voices sounded outside and the door opened, pale, hazy light drifting in. Then Avarice, his large, dark form blocking the doorway.
“We’ve arrived, Master,” he said.
Malice let out a long sigh. “Delightful.”
“There’s no sign of Conceit or Folly, Master.”
“Not so delightful, yes? We will wait here for news.”
“And if it doesn’t come?”
He clicked his tongue. “Not a thing to be suggested, yes? They will come.”
He will not leave me.
The whisper came without touch, shearing through the air. The words Malice had left unspoken. Darius would never die to escape me, could not, even if he tried.
“Staring at me, Endymion?” Malice said.
“Yes.” My tongue felt lazy and fat. “What if you’re wrong? What if he dies?”
Malice froze in the act of curling his ponytail around his finger. Then, lifting the opium pipe, he tapped it against his forehead. “Stay out, yes?”
“Then don’t shout.”
A smile flickered on his lips. “What good advice, yes? Hope?”
The young Vice came to the door, his face pale and his eyes dark-rimmed.
“Show Endymion to his room.”
“Master,” he murmured but did not wait.
Trying to shake the lingering fumes, I stirred my limbs to action, each heavy with a weight I had never known. I gripped the panelling with trembling hands. Outside, there were eleven marked Vices and twenty-one unmarked men, and another sixty-two farther up the mountain. The numbers flowed through my head as easily as thoughts. A village of seventy souls sat at the edge of my Sight and the vast bulk of Kisia was at my fingertips, its precise numbers eluding my touch.
“I believe I asked you to leave, yes?”
I found I had frozen mid rise and blinked.
“Try to stay with us, yes?” Malice said. “I don’t know how to bring you back.” He waved a hand toward the door. “Go, clean yourself up. Eat. Rest. And Endymion? Don’t let my Vices eat you, yes?”
“Yes,” I said, stepping into the pale haze of a new day.
The wagon stood in a courtyard beneath the boughs of a large tree. Men in common peasant clothes were unloading supplies from beneath the running board, while the Vices rubbed down their jittery horses. Entirely in his element, Avarice was taking the time to pass his hand over each velvety nose, murmuring words of comfort under his breath.
A squat tower blocked some of the morning sky, its stones speckled. It looked like part of an old castle, its rampart tumbling. The scrubby hillside was littered with the jutting remains of old walls and a second collapsed tower adorned the next spur.
Hope stood at the edge of the courtyard, staring back the way we had come. There the road wound down the mountainside and into a dense oak forest, its canopy a green blanket that seemed to stretch over Kisia all the way to the rising sun.
Out there was a place he had once called home and a man he had once been.
“Where are we?” I asked, forcing my lips to frame words.
“One of Rina’s many old outposts.”
As though my question had reminded him of his orders, he turned toward the tower. Dodging moving men, he made his way across a wide courtyard to the open doors, not seeming to care whether I followed. Most of the Vices ignored him, turning their shoulde
rs and stepping out of his way, but Spite, a long gash still bloody upon his face, stood his ground, forcing the shrinking Hope to go around him. His scowl followed us, burning into the back of my head.
The gods will judge.
I followed Hope through the large doors and into a dark hall, its stones smoke-blackened. Beams the colour of rusted iron twisted across the roof, each one hung with dozens of dark lanterns. They might once have made grand constellations, but now the old paper covers were moth-eaten and barely hung together.
“Hope,” I said, as he led the way along a winding passage full of tight spaces. “I’m sorry, I—”
He lifted a shaking hand. “Don’t.” His pace quickened, fingers clenching into fists.
He led the way to an upper gallery where arrow slits let in shafts of light and thin partitions separated one alcove from the next, each containing a sleeping mat and nothing more. “Here is your room,” Hope said, stopping at one of the openings. “In fact you could have any of these. Dead men need no beds.”
He let out a strained laugh and turned to leave, but I gripped his arm, my fingers closing around fabric. Although it wasn’t his skin I touched, Hope yanked his arm free. “Don’t touch me.”
“They attacked us, Hope.”
“And that is an excuse? What man deserves to die like that? Next time you want to kill people and feel powerful, leave me out of it.”
I let him go, watched him walk away out of sight along the narrow gallery. Next time you want to kill people and feel powerful. What had he seen in our connection? Had I really wanted to do it? I hadn’t thought so. But I hadn’t hesitated either.
In my alcove, the sleeping mat called to me. I couldn’t remember when I had last slept. It felt like weeks.
Sleep.
And if the gods judged, I might never wake.
I woke. Something wasn’t right. A change in the air, a whisper in the warm afternoon. I sat up, suddenly alert. Hope was standing in the doorway. “The Master wants you to eat,” he said, meeting my gaze.
“Why does he always send you?”
“Because he’s a snob.”
“Eh?”