by Jesse Teller
“What wall?” Rayph asked.
“The wall you have to climb to get in, the wall that keeps out the dark and the nasty. I’m the one who will stop you from hurting him, and the one who will crush you when you try.” Lyceanias turned to the bartender and the mug of wine the man had brought for him. It had some sort of film or grease floating in it, but Lyceanias didn’t seem to notice. “They are buying bodies down at the Crown. Some kind of experiment.” He let the words hang in the air.
“Good, I’ll need a place to unload them when I make them.” Rayph nodded. “Are Ty and Cable here?”
Lyceanias looked Rayph over before nodding and walking away. He sat at his table. He coughed and rapped his dagger hilt on the table. A pair of boots could be heard coming down the hall upstairs. They reached the stairs and paused. When they descended, Rayph could not help but smile at the look on Ty’s face.
“Ivoryfist, how long has it been?” Ty asked.
“Long and longer. How do I find you?”
Ty’s face rippled and he said nothing. He nodded to a chair in the back of the room and walked to it.
“We are getting pushed out,” Ty said. “Chaos is a juggernaut. Artan is taking all my hits for free. He is faster and more deadly than me or Cable, and we cannot keep up.”
“He is not more deadly,” Rayph said.
Ty grimaced. “He is scary this time.”
“You have faced him before. This time he is in force, but not unbeatable. I am here to help,” Rayph said.
“Did you notice Brody is younger this time?” Ty asked.
Rayph thought back to the dinner and the face smiling across from his own, and he nodded. “Didn’t notice at the time, but yeah he looked about—”
“From what we can guess, he is fifteen this time,” Ty said. “He is a teenager. That makes him more dangerous.”
“How?”
“He keeps his experience. From one death to the next, Brody does not lose his memories or his expertise, but he does lose something with age,” Ty said.
“What does he lose?”
“Caution, reserve, fear.” Ty looked at Lyceanias and back to Rayph. “He is more daring and fearless than age would make him. He believes he is invincible and this makes him bolder. He is going to be harder to predict. He is going to be harder to scare. He is going to be harder to kill.”
“More prone to rash action,” Rayph said.
“Maybe.”
“More likely to lose his temper.”
“If you say so,” Ty said. There was something there. Something terrible Ty was hiding.
“Where is your sister?” Rayph said.
Ty looked away. He gritted his teeth and a terrible anger overtook him. “She is with Smear,” Ty said.
The woman in the corner stood and stormed out of the bar.
“How will I find her when I see her?” Rayph asked.
“Changed,” Ty said. He wanted to leave it there, but Rayph needed more.
“What did Brody do to her?” Rayph asked. He braced himself for the worst.
“He used her. He beat her. He—” Ty was almost overcome with rage but he bit it down.
“Is she here?” Rayph asked.
“She is, but she won’t want to see you.”
“Let’s try,” Rayph said.
They stood and went upstairs. The temperature dropped ten degrees when they ascended the stairs. Nothing to block the wind to the second story left the entire top floor a victim of the cold. The walls in the hall were shot through with drafts and whistling air. The walls sagged in toward one another. The floors moved with each step. They walked past rooms with no door whatsoever, just a thin coverlet shielding the renter from the world beyond. Rayph listened as he walked through the hall. Sex, whimpering, and arguing in a different language. Rayph had heard it before but couldn’t place it. He kept his mind on where they were going and fought back his revulsion at the stench of the place. They reached the back of the hall and the door that stood barring the way. It was thin and the room beyond could be seen through the widely spaced boards. The door had no handle but sported a huge hole where the handle had been.
Ty reached into this hole and shifted a bar. He pushed the door open and they entered. Ty closed the door behind him and replaced the bar, braced against the floor to keep intruders out. He walked across the room and opened a window. He reached outside and touched a board, letting a blast of winter wind in as he did. Rayph pulled his robe tighter around his shoulders and waited. When the window was closed again, Ty walked to the center of the room and stomped on a floorboard. It tilted up and he reached under and pulled a lever.
The floor coughed up a trapdoor that led into darkness. Ty motioned for Rayph to enter. He thought about it. He was turning his back on one of the two most dangerous assassins in the world. Rayph gritted his teeth and stepped down the stairs. He came to a low ceilinged hall and ducked to walk under it. He reached a curtain and pushed it open.
He was greeted by warmth and a pleasant smell of incense and burning candles. The room was dim and lavishly decorated. The floor was carpeted, the furniture plush. A slight melody drifted on the air, and in the corners of the room, curtained-off areas hid all activity from view. Rayph was directed to one of these. When he opened it, he nearly cried out.
Cable lay on a bed lit by candles. Her face was bruised and shattered, her neck riddled with cuts and what could have been the mark left by a strangling cord. Her body was bruised and beaten, her flesh cut and savaged. A scarf over her lower face covered everything under the nose, and though he knew he was not supposed to see it, he could discern the face was wrong there. It was too flat, too sunken in to be normal.
Smear stood over Cable and Rayph looked to his friend with searching eyes. Smear looked up with tears in his eyes.
“Brody did this,” he said. When he spoke the name, Cable flinched. Pity and hate filled Rayph in a black surge that threatened to overtake him. He stepped back to the other side of the curtain to calm himself. Ty joined him.
“He is trying to draw you out into a fight against him,” Rayph said. “He will be ready for you. If you go to him now you will not make it back alive.”
Ty stared at the ground, his jaw working, his teeth grinding.
“Once he has you, he can move in here and take out Cable. If he is done playing with her, which I doubt he is.”
“Rayph, we have had our differences in the past but—”
“Ty, we have to set that aside for now. I have not approved of some of the jobs you have taken in the past, but that is not why I am here. There are killers, then there are killers. I do not like what you do, but I see the need for it. We have never gotten in each other’s way. I don’t care what you have done in the past. What I am concerned about is Chaos and the darkness that grows around them. Help me take them out and I will leave you to your druthers.”
“Cable is not broken. I won’t give up on her,” Ty said. “She is still the most dangerous woman in the world.”
“For now we have to get her back on her feet. Can I look at her? Maybe take her with me to a church I am friendly with?”
“No church. Not ever. She is beyond their ability to heal. And they hate all people like us.”
“Can I heal her?” Rayph asked.
Ty lifted an eyebrow. “Do you even do that anymore? As far as I know, you haven’t healed anything or anyone since you came to this country. Is that even possible?”
“I used to be one of the most gifted healers in the nation of Ebu. I have recently made peace with Vanyel. I haven’t tried healing again yet, but I can if you want me to.”
“First time back to your god asking for favors and you are going to ask him to heal a killer?” Ty asked. “That wise?”
“We will see,” Rayph said. “You got a new boss?”
Ty nodded. “He is quite a man. Got a mind and a way about him. He is perfect for the job. You met his half-brother upstairs.”
“He is related to Lyceanias?” Ra
yph asked.
“Charmer, isn’t he?”
“Yeah, he looks like a people pleaser. We need to pool resources if we are going to face this enemy of ours. Can you get me in to see your new guy?”
“I will try, but he doesn’t like going out of family with business, and he has trouble playing nice.”
“Anything I need to know?”
“Nothing I can tell you,” Ty said.
“Try to get me in to see that man. I have a few other stops to make. First I would like to see Cable again and get a look at what I’m dealing with.”
Ty motioned for the curtain and they entered. Cable’s eyes were closed. Rayph walked to her side, touched her face, shifting her head slightly to look at her cheek. Smear said nothing. He watched with growing concern.
Rayph looked again at the mouth, strangely shaped and almost gone. As he reached for the scarf, Ty stepped up beside him.
“Brace yourself,” the assassin said.
Rayph obeyed as best he could. He pulled the scarf away and Smear grunted. He gritted his teeth audibly and stormed out of the curtained area, into the room beyond. Rayph tried to take his eyes away from the wound but found it impossible.
He stared, fighting to make sense of what he was looking at but unable to make peace with it. He pulled closer, fascinated and terrified at the same time. He looked to the jawline and saw a ragged tear where the mandible met the upper jaw. The mandible seemed stretched or broken or— Rayph pulled back in horror and looked to Ty, who wiped tears from his eyes.
“Where is it?” Rayph asked. Ty shook his head.
He looked away, and when his eyes returned to Rayph’s, they housed a furious amount of wrath. “He kept it,” Ty said. “That monster kept my sister’s bottom jaw.” Ty sobbed, and Rayph stared in terror at what was left of Cable’s face.
The Land of Torment and Loss
“This is good. This one for sure,” Tate said, picking up a book about transdimensional portals to the land of the elemental planes. “This will do nicely. I will use this for the fundamentals of bindings between worlds. I can use this for the creation of shields to block our world from the inclement conditions of Hell, but without Thrak’s notes on Sizen Dere divination cords, I am working blind here.” Tate looked at Roth and shook his head. “Without that journal, I don’t think I can facet our rings to allow us to even contact Hell, let alone open a portal to it.”
Roth cursed and stomped away. He was tired. His senses were shot. He had never been this worn out before, and he groaned at the idea of what was being asked of him.
“You have to go into his personal study,” Tate said. “You have to raid his desk, and you have to steal me that book.” He shook his head and crossed his arms. “Until that is done, we are wasting our time.”
“I will not steal from Thrak,” Roth said.
“The way he stole from our mother?”
“You’re speaking nonsense. You’re slinging blame wide now. We didn’t even meet Ithyryyn, Quill, or Thrak until we were boys.”
“Get me the book or admit defeat. I’m going to bed. The tower is yours. Don’t bring the half breeds back,” Tate said.
“What made you say that, I wonder?”
“You think it racism?”
“I think it had better not be,” Roth said.
“I have less racial prejudice than you do, little brother,” Tate said. “I swear it to be true. No, I do not hate all half breeds. I hate that one.”
“Burke?”
“No, the brute his father sent him with. The man is a sore.”
“Arcturus is not a sore. He is just—”
Tate pointed at Roth and grinned. “There is no polite ending to that sentence.”
Both brothers laughed.
“You have a problem,” Tate said. “Go fix it.”
Roth walked his castle in Callden, his hands clasped behind his back, his head down. He walked past the great halls and the large ballrooms, and he stopped at the arch that led to the hall of portraits. Every ancestor of his who walked this castle was memorialized in that hall. Ever since the yern made the Callden family noble, the castle had been collecting paintings. He thought of the wisdom and honor illustrated there and he shook his head.
He wanted to walk that hall, wanted to look at those faces, but the only image he could summon up was his mother on her cushion. He could only see her face and the beauty of it.
Roth and Tate had visited one of their mother’s friends in Dragonsbane. The wizardess mistress of the Candle Tower had talked with them for hours. She answered Roth’s questions about his father readily but was reserved when talking about their mother. Roth had listened very carefully, and the tale he heard had been damning. Sob had used his father. Had abused him, and in the end, the wizardess had made implications.
Tate had been furious, threatened to tear the Candle Tower to the ground. Roth was forced to carry Tate away, but the things said could not be unsaid. Sob had stolen from Ruther on his deathbed.
Tate vowed vengeance for his mother, but Roth had simply wanted to get away. He had not wanted to be in that tower anymore. He just wanted to escape. In his mind, he had always built a great love story for his parents. This was too hard to think about.
Roth wanted very badly to go and look at the portraits of his forebears. But he could not make himself do it. A week of standing in her castle, staring at her picture, had made communing with his Callden relatives impossible. He walked to a large sitting room he never sat in, to the great circular windows that looked out over the courtyard of his castle. He saw the wall that held back the city, the gate that fit into the wall and beyond the portcullis, a figure stood there outside his gates. The guards were talking to the man, but Roth knew they would let him in.
Roth could not imagine why Ithyryyn had not come in on his own. The gate rumbled up and Ithyryyn entered. He touched his circlet and Roth felt the pulse throb through the air. Roth flashed his mark through the window and Ithyryyn nodded.
Still the charms master did not open a portal to the room Roth stood in. He simply walked into the building.
Roth walked to one of the chairs and pulled the dust covering off. He dropped it to the floor and sat. He waited, wondering what could be happening, not liking any of the options he was coming up with. When Ithyryyn darkened the door and bowed, Roth did not light the room. He let the hall light frame him in his seat, and he stared at the image of the silhouette before him.
“Have I drawn your ire?” Roth said.
“Not in the least,” Ithyryyn said.
Relief rolled over him and Roth beckoned his master in.
“Please find a seat,” Roth said. “Can I get you anything?”
“No, I am fine. I brought something for you,” Ithyryyn said. He uncovered half of the couch, folding the sheet off the edge of the cushion and sitting.
Roth’s heart seized in his chest. He closed his eyes.
“I have it right here.” Ithyryyn patted something hanging from a bag on his hip. “I just want to know why you want it so badly.”
“The journal.”
“Yes. Why do you want my brother’s notes on portal crystal cutting? Make me understand why I might give it to you.”
“Why didn’t you portal into the castle? You have a room,” Roth said.
“When you are in the college castle, I interrupt you at leisure. When you are here,” he motioned to the room and the building around them. “I assume you are here for family business. The work of your fathers. Here you are a noble of Tienne, so I will approach you as a man of your station.”
“I have seen you bust in on kings without so much as a warning,” Roth said.
“Yes, but never to you.”
“How about Tate?”
“Him, too,” Ithyryyn said. “Why would I pay him any less respect than you?”
“Because you don’t trust him.” For so long Roth had been thinking the words that when they were spoken out onto the air, the relief was instantaneous.
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“I trust him,” Ithyryyn said. “Do you?”
“Are you implying that I shouldn’t?” Roth asked.
“I imply nothing. I do not believe in implications. I think they are a construct of the mind of the listener. My question was innocent. And it needs no answer. That is the sort of question that only needs to be asked.”
“Why are you here, Ithyryyn?”
“I want to give you this book. I want you to have it so you can cut your ring and open a new world to us. But first I want to hear you tell me why.”
“How do you know what I want? Is the Callden Collective monitoring the books I read now?”
“Yes.”
Roth jumped to his feet and curled his hands into fists. “That is none of your business. I am not a child, Ithyryyn!”
“Never said you were,” the man said. His voice was calm, melodic even.
“Then why are you spying on me?”
“Gale watches what I read. Quill watches what Thrak reads. Me, you. Thrak, Tate. It is called having a study partner. This way, Gale can keep an eye on my projects, and if he thinks I need a book to fill out what I am working on, he gets it to me or mentions it. It is a system that invites conversation on projects and cross-learning. You are dancing around every book about the Sizen Dere and the factors needed to open a world with these rings. I am here to find out why.”
“You want to stop me.”
“Not at all. I plan on giving this book to you whether you answer my questions or not. If you sit here and lie to me, I will still give you this book.”
“Why?”
“Because it is your book,” Ithyryyn said. “It belongs to Thrak, therefore it belongs to the college. It belongs to the college, therefore it is your personal property. I am here not to bless you with this information or to deny it to you. I am here to ask why you want it and maybe get an idea of where you might be going with it.”
“I’m not sure that I am going to go at all.”
“Is it a place you will not be welcome?”
“Yes,” Roth said.
“Is it a place you will be staying for an extended period of time?”