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

by C. H. Williams

  “That’s it?” His voice reeked of desperation for a clash. Isa would’ve taunted him for it, would’ve turned his furious hunger into something approaching salaciousness.

  But as it stood, her expression was placid, uninterested in the spar.

  If she was going to fight, it’d clearly be on her terms.

  That, he could respect.

  He loosed a breath, rolling his neck.

  “You alright?” she asked, not glancing up.

  Augustus said nothing, pacing the length of the desk, trying to siphon off the agitation.

  “I was being kind, you know,” Elsie sighed. “They looked painful, and…well, you’re a General. The others—they respect you. You’re their leader. They’re not about to fuss over some scratches. It’s terrible, being in pain simply because nobody has taken the time to ask if you need help.”

  “Look, what I said about your brother—”

  “He is inexperienced,” she shrugged, straightening up, at last meeting his gaze. “You’re not wrong.” She paused, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, her mouth slightly open, like she’d caught a slew of words just before they left her lips. “I am sorry that happened to you. Page-rippers are cruel.”

  His fingers were poised on the desk as he took a curious step towards where she lingered, on the other side. “What did you call them?”

  “Page-rippers,” she said softly. “People who rip out pages of the story you’re trying to tell.”

  Augustus gave a derisive snort, rolling his eyes as he retreated to the fireplace. Night was beginning to fall in the compound, an insidious chill encroaching in the stone office. Page-ripper.

  A delicate way of describing what had been a brutal, bloody affair.

  And yet, not inaccurate.

  He recalled awaking in the compound infirmary, on that too-small cot strapped with itchy, white sheets, and it’d been Isa, sitting worriedly in the rickety wooden chair beside him. The ro’s dark eyes had been tearful, meeting Augustus’s.

  Isa didn’t understand this kind of hurt.

  Augustus’s father had simply been dismayed that his son had been captured and drained. He hadn’t even bothered to see Augustus, beyond the requisite visit for the sake of publicity, to show Caelaymnis he could not condone the actions of the Woodshades. Cam, too, had done well, seeming the grieving sister—and Heir Apparent—as she played nursemaid for all of an hour at his bedside.

  Fletcher, at least, had the sense to bring their mother to visit. Not that she’d even recognized her sons, but it’d been a small comfort, listening to her incoherent stories and feeling the touch of her hand in his, at least for a little bit. Alva, too, had paid a visit, for as long of one as the mystics permitted—though that they granted her reprieve from sequester as a novice in the Conclave at all was merciful.

  Floods of others came, too, held beyond the infirmary by the medics and their aides as he recuperated.

  Of all the words of comfort he’d been given, though, all the apologies, all the platitudes…

  Page-ripper.

  The office door opened with a shivering squeal of the hinges, Fletcher appearing, out of breath and discomposed. “Father—”

  “Mystic’s tit—now?” Swearing, he moved on instinct, sweeping not to move the map aside, but for the cloak tossed across the back of the chair behind his desk. She couldn’t be caught here. He was on thin ice, as it was, with his father, the illustrious King Bowyer, breathing down Augustus’s neck about every gods-damned movement on the plateaus, and Fletcher…well, the king wouldn’t need an excuse to toss his youngest and most disappointing son into a cell.

  In a smooth movement, he snapped the cloak across her shoulders, eliciting a fiery glare and a smack on the hand as Elsie moved to pin the broach herself, scowling.

  Maybe Isa was right.

  Maybe she’d be alright, as a sister.

  “Until next,” he nodded, snapping his boots together, throwing his shoulders to attention, and he could’ve sworn there was mischief in her emerald eyes as she pulled up the hood.

  They were out the door in a heartbeat.

  It took seconds to clear the maps, and Augustus was right behind, except where they’d turned right, making for a side-exit, he’d veered left to intercept Bowyer. Light-footed as she might be, the king would recognize a heavy-breathing human in the strict silence of the compound corridors.

  A few days’ time, though, and this would all be behind them.

  They’d cut off the production ring in Aerdela and cleanse the human settlement of any trace of blood-magic.

  He would find the one who’d been marked, as the Master said. The one whose tears could save the realm from its miserable fate.

  And at the end of it all, Bowyer would fall.

  RISA

  “Let them toast the victory, thinking they have won the war, for the battle has not yet begun.”

  ~Adrian Lynch

  Bouncing on the balls of her feet, Risa was a fighter at the edge of the ring. Her blue advocate’s robes jostled against her pressed trousers, whispered cheers of an imagined crowd, and her eyes were on the closed mahogany doors, sleek in the evening light.

  “Ready?” Adrian was coming up behind her, clapping a hand on her back.

  She rolled her shoulders back, nodding. “Ready.”

  And for a moment, the world stilled.

  She found his dark eyes, icy and familiar, his masked smile, dangerous and cold.

  This was their ritual.

  “You are strong,” he said quietly, turning for the door, words said as much for her benefit as his.

  “Fiery and unstoppable.” There was a chill in her voice, a promise of hellfire.

  “You are power.”

  She flexed her hands, drawing heat back into her fingertips. “A force to be reckoned with.”

  “You are goodness.”

  “Worthy and pure.” A smile was curling on her lips, now, devious and vengeful, and she was ready, ready to fight the good fight, to take names, to go until she could go no longer.

  “You are light,” Adrian intoned with resolution, already moving for the opening door.

  Risa’s heels snapped across the granite as she tilted her chin a little higher, pulled her own sort of ice from deep inside. You are strong, you are power, you are goodness, you are light, and she exhaled deeply, striding for the carved set of chairs set behind a matching desk.

  You will not be extinguished.

  And when they tell you you’re nothing but a foolish girl dreaming of the impossible?

  You prove them wrong.

  Draped in a garish set of white robes, embroidered with the symbols of the city, Regent Luminary Chancellor Vaupellum was smirking with self-satisfaction from what was, for all intents and purposes, a carved wooden throne some distance from the rostrum. Behind him lingered Ingrit, the pathetic little creature who’d been plopped into the Adjudicant Chancellorship and bore a look of eternal confusion, broken only by undying reverentialism when his eyes found Vaupellum.

  Strange bedfellows, indeed.

  “The session,” Vaupellum drawled, not deigning to meet Risa’s gaze, “has come to order.” With an indolent wave, he scooped Ingrit to attention.

  A poor omen.

  And she wasn’t the only one to think so.

  From just beyond her periphery, she could feel a pair of eyes boring beneath her skin.

  “The matter on the table stands as such,” Ingrit twaddled on. He gave the affect, she thought with some amusement, of a rather over-plump mouse stuffed into an ill-fitted bed-sheet. Vaupellum had treated his pet to a set of those crisp, white robes he’d yanked unceremoniously from the annals—but if he’d thought the attire would lend credibility to his skeezy little mouse-man, his hopes had been painfully misplaced. “This is a provisional hearing of the Aerdelaean Revisionary Request to review the charter proposition regarding the re-negotiation of trade allowances between our esteemed City and the independent territory of Aerdela, c
omprising nine autonomous districts represented by a Guild of Merchants, present and accounted today. As is customary, we will hear from Advocation for the Guild first.”

  You are strength, you are power, you are goodness, you are light.

  Adrian’s eyes met hers, and he gave her a slight nod.

  A third-year Resident with qualies almost in sight, she was expected to litigate her last six months independent of her advisor.

  In one hundred and eighty days, she would sit her qualifying exams.

  But today, she’d make them regret setting the case in her hands.

  Today, she’d prove them wrong.

  “Advocate?” Vaupellum was eying her with condescension, gesturing her forward with two fingers, as if she were a feral dog he was trying to coax inside. “I do believe that would be you, no? Do you have an opening statement prepared?”

  Risa rose slowly.

  Her movements, though, were not of hesitation.

  They were of a predator, lying in wait.

  Not breaking his gaze, she took the rostrum.

  You are strength, you are power, you are goodness, you are light.

  And she was back in the bathing room, staring herself down in the mirror as she’d said the words again and again all week, staring into her eyes, his eyes. The eyes of her brother, worlds away. Her fingers brushed the smooth polished wood, stained black, and she owned the moment, steadying herself, unblinking.

  Against the grain of the wood, her fingertips sparked, and it was difficult not to smile.

  What would he have said, if he could see her now.

  Would he be proud, like a brother should be.

  She liked to think so.

  It was moments like these when she pretended she was talking to him. That these words, they were the only ones that he got to hear. That these sentences were his only taste of her, that in these sentences, she had to make him understand, make him see her world with the clarity of polished crystal.

  “I appear,” she began, “in defense of the charter upon which this City was built.” Her voice cut through the room, and she heard shuffling and shifting as everyone sat up a little straighter and this, this was her chance to show him who she was. “Make no mistake, Chancellor. That is the only thing I defend today. I do not represent the interest of the Guild and the districts they covet. I do not represent any of the vying political factions within this City of our own, with their partisan agendas and power-plays. I represent nothing more than the founding doctrine that swore to provide refuge to human kind, the doctrine that swore blood be no decider, when the right to sanctuary lay at stake, the doctrine that vowed above all else to preserve the peace inherent in the hearts of human kind. And today, in light of the majority vote from within the Guild, I will prove that this doctrine—our doctrine—is not being fulfilled, within the City and without. Beyond our moral duty to our kin, I will demonstrate our unwavering legal obligation to intercede, and at last bring Aerdela into the fold.”

  Ingrit only glowered, shooing her away from the rostrum.

  Swallowing a smile, she turned on her heel, daring a glance at the men congregated in haphazard chairs directly behind her desk.

  The blue-eyed, blonde-haired sausage that was Commissioner Johannsen looked acutely uncomfortable, Commissioner Robston, too, with his fussy little face smooshed into a grimace.

  Only Clark Carson, with his smug little rat eyes, looked utterly unconcerned.

  He shouldn’t even be here. It was no wonder he’d taken to licking Maggie’s proverbial boots, though, when it’d been her legislation that let him through the gates.

  Subjects of litigation, her infamous address went, have an inalienable right—nay, an obligation—to face the music.

  Perhaps.

  But it felt a little like playing with fire and praying it didn’t burn the City down. Ingrit’s remarks tonight had been evidence of that.

  “Thank you, Advocate Barrett,” Vaupellum sighed, rising. “The issue on the table remains the question of whether or not to expand the current trade agreement. As it stands, limited quantities of rudimentary medical supplies are permitted to be distributed across Aerdela in exchange for rations of basic staples provided by the vast agricultural districts therein. The proposed modification would expand the definition of ‘rudimentary supplies.’ Further, it would also allow the infusion of various recreational supplies, including art and literature, from the City into Aerdela itself. Lastly, some—including Advocate Barrett—argue the expansion includes granting the right of territory to Aerdela, bringing them into the fold, as she says. This would dissolve the Treaty and allows the dissemination of culture—including magic—freely and without inhibition across the continent. Let us begin.”

  “Risa—”

  “NO!” Her breath was steaming in venomous plumes on the night air, tears freezing to her cheeks, and she had failed, failed her City, failed her mentor, failed everything that they’d been working for for years, and none of it mattered, because she’d failed him, failed him worse than any of the rest put together.

  “You cannot win them all—”

  “But this was the one that mattered!”

  Her voice shattered the alley behind the Chancery, and Adrian was quiet, leaning against the brick wall, arms folded across his advocate’s robes.

  “This was the one that mattered,” she echoed damply, face hot as she pushed back her coppery hair, fallen in soft curls from the knot it’d been barely contained in not ten minutes ago.

  Petition denied.

  Ooh, those words…they crawled beneath her skin. They pissed her off, made her work that much harder, but then—

  And, upon additional review, the Chancellorship will further revoke current allotments to the standing agreement. Medical supplies are suspended until further notice.

  Her plan—their plan, hers and Adrian’s—it’d been a carefully laid set of causal events.

  Get the unanimous vote.

  Well, they hadn’t, they’d only managed to get a 7-2 majority, and that’d been a gamble, as it was.

  But the vote wasn’t supposed to matter, not really, because the City was a refuge.

  Until the Regent Chancellor, in his mighty wisdom, had uprooted any efforts to bring Aerdela back into the fold, and Risa was staring, now, not down a darkened alley, but down the truth that crept to the edge of her nightmares, the reality that she had been running from deep within the Archive basements.

  The City didn’t want Aerdela.

  Which meant he was gone.

  The one she practiced speeches to in the mirror.

  The one with eyes like hers.

  Really gone.

  He would never know her world. And she would never return to his.

  Unless—

  “I want to tunnel-run.”

  Adrian’s head snapped up, his brow furrowing. “You want to what?”

  It was a small chance.

  A hopeless chance.

  That he would find the tunnels, find his way to the City, but there were a lot of runners waiting for someone on the outside, Asher included.

  “I heard Asher talking about it, last night. He—he lost a medic,” she said, pressing the tears from her eyes with the heel of her hand. “He’s short-handed. What we’re doing, Adrian? It isn’t enough. We’re moving backwards, and you know I can’t just stand here, watching them take, and take, and take.”

  She half-expected to see frost curling at his fingertips, to feel those glacial eyes chastising her for reckless abandon.

  Instead, he pushed himself up off the wall, exhaling deeply, nodding in thoughtful contemplation. “Well, I’ll talk to Asher. I think you’re an excellent candidate, for one—of course, gods forbid someone tell Asher what to do, stubborn jackass—but I agree. This is not the time to lay down and lick our wounds.”

  The affirmation made her eyes water, and sniffling, she turned her back to him.

  “Risa.”

  There was ice crunching under foot, an
d his hand was on her shoulder, not cold.

  Not warm, but…

  She wondered if he felt it, too.

  How it bled the cold from her bones, when he touched her.

  “I know this was personal for you,” he said quietly. “And I know you’re grieving more than a bad hearing.”

  “I just…I want to go home.”

  “I think that’s an excellent idea. Nerene and Roger—”

  “No. I want to go home, Adrian.” Her words hung in the air, defeated. “Not forever. Not even for very long. Just…”

  “You know any contact with you makes them a target,” Adrian murmured in a hushed voice. He was doing his best to be reassuring, probably. But his words only stung. “Especially without the most recent dossier, we’re running blind.”

  “What about eyes,” she pressed, and she knew she was barely treading water, grasping at sodden straws. “What if we put eyes on Clark. You know he’s not going to take this lying down, and it’d be a chance—I mean, at least peripherally—you’re right, we’re running blind, and for all we know…”

  Adrian’s hand fell from her shoulder, his sigh hissing disdainfully in the night.

  And she listened as his footsteps faded into the black, listened as the sounds of the City overtook her.

  Home.

  Home, after the tunnels.

  ELSIE

  “We often exempt our love from the oddities of daily life, as if it is something that resumes when the difficult parts are done. It makes me believe we know neither love nor loyalty.”

  ~Theodore Alderton

  Clustered around the dining table, the wine flowed with ease as merry conversation filled the air of Sam’s apartment. Empty plates lay heaped in the sink, forgotten in the revelry, a half-eaten cake of strawberry and vanilla sitting at the center of the table, each of them in turn promising they couldn’t possibly eat another bite, only to go back for another slice.

  “Well, I, for one, don’t know what took you so long,” Elsie remarked, raising an eyebrow as she edged her fork towards the cake, forgoing any ceremony altogether. “I told Fletch, it’s been ages coming, whether you admit it or not.” She shoved the oversized bite in, almost instantly regretting it, the sugary paste dissolving with sickening speed across her tongue, making her too-full stomach churn.