Death and the Merchant (River's End Book 1)

by C. H. Williams

  “It is ours by rite—”

  “It is not. And for the sweet taste, you are paying the price. You were greedy. You took, and took, and took, and now your own flesh has begun to turn against you. You drank from the tainted well far too deeply, and now, you will die. Not by my hand—though, I promise, you will beg for my blade before the end. They all do. And you will, too, unless you tell me what I need to know.”

  Cold silence filled the cell.

  “So that is it, then. My death is sealed. Gods-damned vora—”

  The crack of skin-on-skin and the clattering of the chair filled the cell, the back of Augustus’s hand stinging with the impact as the man lay, half-coughing, the tang of blood lacing the air as he spat out a tooth onto the stone floor. “You dare to hurl such vile words,” Augustus growled, giving the chair a resounding kick for good measure, “when I might offer you reprieve?”

  The breathless half-words choked in a blood-filled mouth were the only answer.

  Scoffing, Augustus turned, folding his arms across his chest. Vora.

  An old curse, from days long gone. From a time when the Drada had been hunted like beasts and slaughtered for magic they couldn’t control.

  The word was ancient and so pathetically human. It’d faded, elsewhere, drifted away out of memory everywhere save the Woodshade settlements.

  And it brought everything back.

  The crisped pine bark grinding into his bare back as they’d bound him to the tree, his shoulders aching, his skin prickled with goose-bumps as big, fat spring-snow flakes came tumbling down from the midnight sky. Vora, they’d hissed, dipping the iced iron deep into his flesh. Vora. VORA.

  “R-reprieve,” the man panted, his voice betraying his pain.

  Already, it was beginning. The unraveling.

  “Our medics cannot help you.” He didn’t bother to keep the vindictive satisfaction from his voice. “But if you talk, we will keep you in good supply until the end.”

  The man craned his head from the stone floor, desperation in his blind eyes, searching the darkness. “Good supply?”

  Augustus crouched down beside the man, so close even those damnable human eyes had to see something. “I will personally see to it that you are given a generous helping of that swill you covet until you meet the gods. Do I make myself apparent?”

  He was nodding, now, viciously, violently, already his thirst overwhelming reason.

  His words spilled violently to the dark, too, his tongue a slave to his appetite.

  And when he had given everything, when he had betrayed the people he professed to love, when he had signed the death warrants of his fellows-in-arms, when he had relinquished what he’d claimed to hold sacred, Augustus rose, calling for the guard.

  A slender vial, as black as the night, was tipped into the man’s mouth.

  The screams came a moment later.

  Augustus turned for the cell door. Already, the growling of the beast could be heard, claws screeching against metal, chains clattering against stone down the corridor, and he didn’t look back as his command echoed through the terrorized shrieks and feral barks. “Commander,” he snapped, and he could feel a guard springing to attention. “Bring in the barghest.”

  THE LIARS

  We deceive, all of us.

  Ourselves, others, the gods…it makes no difference.

  ~Sam Alderton,

  excerpt from a letter dated October 23rd

  THE BEAST

  “And the gods played their games, convinced the mortals would not win.”

  ~Greysha Boewliç, ‘Songs of the Underworld’

  “Beautiful,” the Master whispered, running a pale

  finger along the mirrored ledge.

  Upon it, three vials.

  Each, the darkest red, and each, dripping with fear.

  Ruby Tears.

  The sweetest of all such magics. Pure. Scintillating.

  And powerful. So powerful, even the Beast could feel it, arching its back across the hearth rug. A faint shimmering, sending the earth trembling beneath its massive paws.

  Such chaos. Such order.

  Such fire.

  The glass cabinet clicked shut, and the Master turned, snapping at the servant. “Send him in.”

  The Warrior smelled of fear.

  They all did, though.

  “I believe,” the Master crooned, sinking into the armchair behind the desk, “I have found the answer to your problems.”

  The Warrior was stone-faced before him.

  Arrogant.

  But that’s what the Master wanted.

  “There is a girl,” he went on softly, steepling his fingers, “a girl we must have, no matter the cost. There is life, in the blood—this is our tenant. In some, there is more. But more importantly, in some…there is less.”

  He spun the Warrior such a beautiful story.

  Once upon a time, the story went, there was a girl.

  And she was Death.

  Where she trod, Life did not, and so it was.

  But she was dangerous. Life was so fleeting and Death, so permanent, and so, they hid her away. Tucked her into the reaches of the unknown, buried her beneath the rags, and prayed that she would forget herself, in the end.

  Forget herself, she did.

  She found the sun, and reveled in its light, and in the light, restoration.

  She found a love.

  And when she came of age, she began to remember.

  She was Death.

  And only a Warrior who knew death so well could at last vanquish her for good.

  The tears of the others were but raindrops on the path, the Master said. Good for nothing but muddy ground. This girl, though…

  She was a deluge.

  RISA

  “There’s never a good time. Merely the time that we’re given.”

  ~Risa Barrett

  An alarm clock clattered across the nightstand, jangling with giddy anticipation straight off the edge, landing with a gleeful crash on the bedroom floor. Swearing under her breath, Risa rolled over, dangling her arm over the bed as she blindly searched for the run-away, fingers finally meeting the lever with a satisfying clunk.

  Another fucking glorious day.

  Four years, and she’d nailed the routine. From laying in bed to out the door in fifteen minutes—ten, if she skipped coffee and breakfast.

  Today, she did it in eight.

  Eight minutes, and she’d tossed her chestnut hair into a bun, running a hot washcloth across her face. Eight minutes, and she’d pulled on the pressed gray trousers, the silken navy blouse, and a pair of slick black heels that clicked marvelously across the marble foyer of the Chancery. Eight minutes, and she’d stuffed her notes back into the leather satchel, pulled her coat on.

  It would’ve been seven, of course, but she lingered in the doorway of her tiny bedroom.

  Risa had left her in bed, wrapped in the pale pink quilt Nerene had bought.

  She was so gods-damned beautiful, sitting there in the morning light.

  And she didn’t belong here.

  Not in this closet of a bedroom, stuffed into a shoe-box apartment overlooking 47th Street. Not on this block of the City, running on coffee and patent-leather briefcases and tomorrow’s stolen time.

  She should’ve been on the beach.

  Not the rocky strips of sand that lined the eastern borders of the City, either, beaten by the angry sea of a Northeastern winter.

  Lea should’ve been lain bare against the hot sand of Thallassas with nothing but a turquoise sea, a cold carafe of wine, and a platter of sticky figs, sweet and chewy. It was a fucking shame, too, because that woman—she was summer. Unadulterated, undiluted, unrepentant summer.

  “You’re really sure, then.” Doe-eyed and regretful, Lea pulled the quilt closer, her lips already starting to pout.

  “I am,” Risa said softly.

  Lea nodded, swallowing. “Yeah. Okay, then. I, um…good luck, I guess?”

  “You too.”
<
br />   She turned, eyes locking on the front door.

  And when you’ve closed a case, she could hear Adrian saying, you don’t look back. You don’t apologize for the verdict bought with your blood, sweat, and tears.

  No apologies. No prisoners.

  She was Theresa Barrett.

  She was a gods-damned Advocate.

  And she owned today.

  RISA

  “Absolution isn’t real. Justice is subjective. Your job, though, is to act as thought forgiveness and truth are indisputable facts without believing the lie you’re actually telling. If you can’t do that—if you’re not prepared to live the dichotomy—you know where the door is.”

  ~Adrian Lynch

  Risa found the City shrouded in white as she pushed out of the stairwell into the street below.

  She’d heard Lea’s crying in the hallway—not that those cardboard walls would’ve stopped it, mind.

  It should’ve been a clean break.

  It remained, though, shoddy work, fracturing the two of them the way she had, with wine and regret.

  Bicycle bells clanged up and down the already-clear sidewalks, bicyclists appearing moments later from great clouds of steam billowing from the street grating, swerving in-between passersby with break-neck speeds, eliciting screams of indignation from pedestrians and streetcarts alike, and the City was alive. She paused, a reluctant smile on her lips.

  This place was in her blood.

  She dared a glance up, tracing the buildings that held up the glacial sky domed above, lofty high-rises forced up from within the walled perimeter, a necessity of confinement. Even by City standards, they were impressive feats. As a child, she’d been afraid of them—they might topple in the wind, she’d anxiously whispered to Nerene, gaping at the skyline.

  But there was a rush, looking out those windows and knowing deep in her gut she would not fall, a rush Risa had never been quite been able to find again.

  Ice remnants crunched under foot, the smell of yeast and coffee beans drawing her to the stand on the corner of her block, one of many that littered the smooth-paved streets, an obnoxiously bright yellow-and-green home-away-from-home.

  “Sonofa—I know your mother, you little—”

  “Morning to you, too, Sal,” Risa snickered, watching a knit-capped boy shooting off down the street, waving a bagel victoriously in the air, the veritable flag of victory.

  “Third time this week, Barrett. Third time. Kid’s out of control,” he grimaced. “I swear, it makes me want to—to just—” The blue gas flames licking the aged vat began to climb viciously up the side, the lid beginning to dance ominously as rolls of acrid brown coffee rolled down the sides.

  Risa tossed a fiver on the counter. “He’s just trying to get a rise out of you. And if it’s not too much trouble, Sal, try not to burn the coffee? Assuming there’s any left—”

  “He’s a thief! You’re an advocate. Arrest him!”

  “Not ‘til I’ve had breakfast,” she retorted, tapping the note. “Muffin and coffee, double sweet.”

  Sal glowered, turning. “Told me that last time, you did…”

  Snickering, Risa stuffed her hands beneath her arms, watching as a gurgle of suspiciously sluggish coffee steamed into the paper cup. “Asking a Treatist to bust your own kid, Sal. That’s desperate, even for you.” Her eyes flicked down the street, the boy’s chaos long-since swallowed up by the burgeoning crowd taking to the City in the morning light.

  “Sal, make that two of whatever she’s having,” a cool voice cut in behind her, and Risa turned, raising an eyebrow. “And thank your lucky stars she’s not charging you out the nose. An up-and-coming authority on our beloved Treaty, she’s liable to take your first-born…though I suppose that would suit you just fine.”

  There was pride in Adrian’s voice, bragging about his protégé to the man in the coffee stand.

  Then again, the Treaty was the pride and joy of the Hidden City.

  In the wake of a vicious war, at which the possession of magic had been central, it’d been crafted to protect the humans—especially the ones with magic of their own.

  As with so many things, it’d been the path of least loss, and to call it a victory felt wrong.

  The City might remain protected, hidden in the bay and brimming with magic.

  The same could not be said for Aerdela.

  Aerdela, which was alone. Isolated. Aerdela, where magic was forgotten not by ignorance but by mandate and mutual agreement.

  But it was easier, on mornings like this, not to think about the people left behind.

  Risa rolled her eyes at Adrian. “Since when do you take your coffee double-sweet?”

  “First lesson, Risa,” Adrian sighed, hands stuffed in the pockets of his dark woolen coat. His piercing dark eyes found hers, reveling in the morning chill. “Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to.” The snow-coated City seemed to set his rich, tawny skin into relief, and even at the coffee cart, he felt larger than life.

  Advocate Adrian Lynch.

  Three words guaranteed to get shit done.

  The coffee was scalding against the walls of the thin paper cup—and her tongue, Risa thought resentfully, courtesy of Sal’s flaring temper. That, right there, that was how Elementals got a bad rap. No training and no restraint, and they’d raze a city to the ground.

  “So, how’d Lea take it?”

  Risa let the question settle, her heels scuffing against the sidewalk. “It could’ve been worse.”

  “And you?”

  “Hurts like a sonofabitch. I liked her, Adrian,” she sighed. “She was a sweet girl. But she didn’t like the long hours.” Or the late nights in the library. Or the traveling. Or any gods-damned moment when Risa’s attention might’ve been on anything else. “We tried. It was an unmitigated disaster.”

  He took a sip of steaming coffee, grimacing. “On the note of unmitigated disasters, Regent Chancellor Vaupellum is reviewing trading charters with the Senior Advocates and the Advisory Council until noon, and I don’t need to express to you the urgency in the referendum drafts. I need them on my desk by eight tonight—which reminds me,” he added, giving her a side-long glance, “clear your plans, because our friend has filed a formal petition with the City that needs to be swept under the rug.”

  Swearing under her breath, Risa crammed a worn oneie into a paperboy’s hand, unfurling the roll he’d stuffed into hers.

  ‘Stricter Protocols’ After Breach, Demands Vaupellum.

  “Don’t know what he expects, petitioning the Chancery,” Risa muttered, eyes skirting the headlines. Blizzard Buries City—like that was news to anyone not living knee-deep in their navel. Caelaymnic Council to Petition for Modified blah blah blah, it had to be the altitude, because the mountain Drada were always begging for something else from the City. Six Dead in Tunnel Raid—

  She was a mask of ice, eyes flying across the page.

  In a late-night raid near a sewer grate in the south-west end, authorities moved to seize a band attempting to gain access to the City. Aided by the so-called Rescindants, a terrorist organization responsible for the lethal Cornerstone Protests, five individuals were smuggled beneath the City’s wards before authorities attempted apprehension. After utilizing what was thought to be a classified concussive device to evade capture, the Rescindants collapsed a portion of the main sewer, killing all five illicits and one member of the City Guard—

  She gave Adrian a side-long glare. “You saw this?” It was infuriating.

  “Asher stopped by early with the news,” he muttered.

  Risa stuffed the paper under her arm, fuming as she cradled the hot coffee with both freezing hands. “Our friend’s petition. And it’s too much to hope it came with a unanimous vote from the Guild?”

  They’d been seeking the vote for years. All nine commissioners, in agreement on one matter, and one matter alone.

  To join the City.

  To seek protection, unlimited trade, and above all else,
magic, the likes of which they couldn’t even begin to imagine.

  Perhaps Aerdela was inclined to forget. But it was impractical for its leaders to wholly dismiss the notion of an enclave of their brethren living in the City, not when Aerdela nursed a long and quiet history of dependence on the City.

  Words like hidden and forgotten and forbidden…they were relative, truth be told.

  To grant this—to dissolve the Treaty that had kept them sequestered in the wake of the Clash—well, Risa had made a career out of breaking down walls, and she saw no reason this would be any different. Beyond the back-door deals with commissioners that the Chancery was happy to overlook, this would mean letting magic flood fully amongst the districts. No more vaguely illicit hand-shake agreements delivering ointments and tonics onto the medicine shelves of merchants.

  Magic would flow free again.

  “If he had the unanimous vote, he wouldn’t be flooding my desk with this bullshit,” Adrian snipped.

  She blew out a steaming breath, headache already throbbing behind her temples.

  Fucking Factionist bastards, killing good, innocent people.

  Fucking Guild, fucking merchants, fucking Lea—

  “I have a query for you, Ms. Barrett,” Adrian mused, his voice lethal as they paused before the steps.

  The Chancery stood tall, a granite monstrosity beyond the hewn steps, its great squared pillars shining polished in the morning sun, the whole building was a mass of perfect corners, like justice could be shoved in a neat little box and delivered, a parcel to be purchased.

  “What do we do, when they tell us there’s no hope?”

  “We prove them wrong,” she said through gritted teeth, a familiar refrain pounded into their heads from their first step through the Chancery doors.

  “And what do we do, when they tell you there’s no point to this endless fight?”

  The sun was cresting over the skyline, now, great shafts of sunlight hitting the frozen pavement beneath their feet.