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

by C. H. Williams

  “What am I, fucking invisible—”

  “What the hell happened here,” he snapped, taking one of Teddy’s bloody hands to help him up.

  “No idea,” Teddy sighed. “One minute, everything seemed fine, the next, this.” His tired eyes flicked to Risa. “Theresa, meet Fletcher. Fletcher, Risa. She knows Sam…or something.”

  Lovely. Just lovely. This evening had been unraveling with stupendous speed, and so why wouldn’t it have met this wretched little climax on the bloody ballroom floor?

  Well, now you know how he knew about Clark’s little arrest.

  Because his buddy, there, had been the one to arrest him.

  His Royal Highness seemed to be content to ignore the introduction. “Teddy, where’s the others?”

  “Excuse me,” Risa cut in, crossing her arms. She would not be brushed aside.

  Fletcher turned, scowling. “And you are?”

  “Someone with a vested interest in why Caelaymnis has a military presence at an adolescent’s introduction ball,” she hissed, taking a step forward.

  “We, unlike the City, are content to continue enforcing the terms of the Accords, as you have so blatantly failed to do so!”

  “This is about the blood-magic?” she demanded in a half-whisper, shooting an incredulous glare at Teddy. Couldn’t just keep your head down, could you. Couldn’t just be the sweet little boy you were when I left.

  Teddy gave her a helpless shrug, brow knit. “Look, I told you, I don’t believe he’s innocent—”

  “We don’t have time for this,” Fletcher cut in, eyes on Teddy. “There’s a problem.”

  Risa scoffed. “Don’t keep us in suspense, Highness.”

  “This business does not concern you,” he muttered, moving back as a pair of servants approached, stretcher in tow.

  “Look.” She lowered her voice, eyes finding his with burning intensity. Make your case. “If you stirred this whole debacle up after that abysmal first arrest, you either have a death-wish or proof. Believe me when I say that either way, I’m happy. If he’s involved in something shady, and the Chancellor is asking my advisor to smooth things over with your people, I need to know. And if you’re hell-bent on sending your career careening into a flaming pile of garbage, that’s fine with me, too. I’m an advocate. Either way, I can help.”

  Fletcher’s eyes flashed, his hand tapping uneven rhythms against his leg as he studied her. “Fine.” He glanced back to the girl. “We were supposed to raid a secret warehouse on the eastern border of the estate. I had intelligence that that’s where the production facility was being housed.”

  “But you didn’t find it.”

  “We found the warehouse,” he said, dropping his voice to a barely audible whisper. “It was chalked full of medical supplies. From Caelaymnis, of all places.”

  “Oh, mother—are you fucking kidding me,” Risa demanded, letting the rag fall, forgotten on the tile. “Medical supplies?”

  That fucker.

  He’d signed an agreement with Caelaymnis.

  Vaupellum had cut him off, and so he’d signed a black-market trade agreement. For medical supplies.

  Some bind.

  Either enforce the Treaty or let the district die.

  He had her up against a wall the whole time, and he knew it.

  Her fingers found the pin holding the chignon in place, and tugging it loose with exasperation, let her hair fall. “Okay,” she muttered, running her fingers through the loose strands to soothe her aching head. “Okay, what was the game plan, here?”

  “I have to find Augustus.”

  “I saw him follow Clark and them out,” Teddy said, scooping up the abandoned rag from the floor, beginning to work it over his own fingertips.

  “They were going for the carriage house, it’s where he…hold up.” Risa shot a look to Fletcher, the realization dawning on her.

  Sam knows Teddy through Elsie, Elsie and Fletcher…

  Oh, shit.

  The little heiress had found herself quite the match.

  “What,” Teddy asked softly.

  But her eyes had already flicked to the massive man sauntering down the grand staircase, a General’s insignia on his breast. “That the ‘Augustus’ you’re looking for?”

  Fletcher looked thoroughly unnerved, though, watching his brother descend down the steps.

  Not that she could blame him.

  She only knew the youngest Praequintelya son by name, and that, only because it was her job to know. The General, though…

  She knew him by reputation long before she’d been an advocate.

  “Sir,” Fletcher began, “the warehouse—”

  Augustus cut him off, a letter outstretched in his hand.

  Not a letter, she realized.

  An order of arrest.

  FLETCHER

  “We are all traitors. Every last one of us. We have forsaken the gods, and they have forsaken us, and there is no honor, anymore, nothing but sinners and blasphemers and those simply too tired to fight anymore. You wanted the truth. There it is.”

  ~Augustus Praequintelya

  “What is this,” Fletcher glared, snatching the parchment from Augustus’s hand, nearly shredding it open.

  Something was wrong.

  He should’ve been able to hear it, thrumming away.

  But in the quiet of the night, the stillness struck in the wake of tragedy, he could hear nothing.

  He split the wax, eyes flying across the order.

  By mandate of Senate, Council, and Crown, we hereby issue the Order of Arrest for one Elizabeth Mirabeau, under charges of high treason, casual delinquency against the realm—

  “You arrested her?” Fletcher snarled, throwing the parchment aside, magic curling in his fingertips. “I don’t—what the hell were you thinking? Have you lost your gods-damned mind?”

  “Have you?” Augustus replied coolly. “Defending a traitor with such fervor?” His voice was placid, flat and unfeeling, his eyes nearly unseeing.

  The way they’d been when he’d come back.

  After they’d tried to drain him.

  It was with that same sort of indifferent disregard, now, that Augustus looked him over, not seeing a brother, a friend, even another soldier, but only an enemy, an enemy with an agenda that did not suit the General’s whim.

  They had killed him, Fletcher decided. They’d killed him, when they’d drained him in the highlands.

  It’d been a ghost that he’d found, this last week. He’d found the ghost of his brother in the halls of the compound, an echo of the spirit of who he’d been, and it had moved on.

  Leaving him with this.

  “Clark—”

  “Is of no consequence to the realm,” Augustus remarked. “Lying little girls, on the other hand—”

  Fletcher turned, fury rising. Lying little girls—

  Whirling without warning, he sent a lucent flying towards Augustus, fiery and angry.

  “Tsk, tsk. Temper, little brother,” he murmured, deflecting it with ease.

  “What is your problem? Four days ago, you were laughing it up with her, and now, you’ve arrested her? You’ve lost your mind!”

  “Do you know whose bed you’ve been sharing, brother dearest? Did you know she has a criminal record nearly a mile long? She has picked and plucked from every street cart in the district, broken into every shop on the boulevard, stolen everything from stale bread to diamonds! She nearly murdered a man, Fletcher, and you’ve been fucking her without a second thought. It is time to face the facts. She saw your crown, and she made a grab for it. A heist to top them all.”

  Something was clawing at his chest, raw and bitter, sucking the air from his lungs, sparking magic in his palms.

  “Don’t,” Fletcher breathed, eyes smarting. “Don’t talk about her that way.”

  She was Elsie.

  She was sweet and good and kind and honest and she saw beauty in the world, saw hope, saw life where she had no right to see it.

&n
bsp; She was the one he would’ve married, if she’d have ever wanted that, but she didn’t. She didn’t want the ring or the crown or the titles or anything but a soft little kitten and a quiet little cottage and a life where she could stop hurting and actually start living.

  “I only speak the truth. If you can’t bear to hear it, then perhaps you should’ve chosen a less…destructive companion.”

  This—this had taken their petty competition to new depths, using his own mission to toss Elsie in a cell, derailing what would’ve proved to be one of the most substantial raids in Aerdela in the last two-hundred years, and all, a pathetic play for dominance.

  The lucent that flew through the air wasn’t the warning shot the first had been.

  This one had been made to kill.

  Augustus send a shield deflecting the blow—barely. Another, and Fletcher had nicked his brother’s leg, undiluted anger, cold and hateful, fueling the precision.

  With the third lucent, though, the General had sent another shield rising, except this time, it was Fletcher who was trapped, trapped with his lucent quivering in agitation, itching for the fight, trapped in the humming walls of magic.

  “I am warning you,” Augustus growled. “Do not test me, Fletcher. This isn’t a path you wish to go down.”

  “I hope you die!” There were tears in his eyes as he sent the lucent futilely against the wall, feeling it fizzle out before it’d hardly left his hand.

  “Fletcher Praequintelya—”

  “—I hope you die, I hope you rot in hell, I hope you pay for this—”

  “—you are under arrest for the violation of an Issue of Aegis, for contamination of the sequestered territory known as Aerdela, and for the threat of death, real and attempted, against a member of the reigning royal family.”

  The air was thin, refusing to stick in his lungs—

  Bleeding out.

  Augustus was bleeding the air from the shield.

  “You…” But Fletcher couldn’t finish the words, spots beginning to speckle his vision as he slid to his knees.

  The only meaningful training sessions he’d ever found with his brother, crafting this trick, and what had Augustus done but turn it against him.

  The world was tunneling, and he knew it was a matter of seconds, now, before it went black altogether.

  He turned his thoughts to Elsie.

  At least if they’d both been arrested, they’d find each other again in the cells.

  She was so beautiful tonight, in that gown.

  A beautiful, wily, wickedly smart, unapologetically proud thief.

  And he loved her for all of it.

  Sins, and all.

  THE MASTERS

  She is gone.

  Risa fights for her, every day. Teddy mourns. I am told that Fletcher’s friends are working for answers, too, though I cannot say I trust them, after what has happened.

  As for me, I visit Desi, some days, so as not to feel so useless. The rest can fight, and there is nothing that I bring, at least not now.

  Clark is useless—and innocent of nothing more than subverting the bad end of a trade agreement that would’ve left the Valley half-dead.

  And still, she is gone.

  ~Sam Alderton,

  excerpt from a letter dated December 21st

  ELSIE

  “And eyes of red, skin of snow, a soul to hell will send,

  Hopes and dreams and deepest wants,

  Beware the wily mende.”

  ~ ‘Cautionary Tales for the Still Yet Living,’ An Anthology

  Bound and gagged, Elsie was kneeling on a sinfully soft hearth rug, the fire crackling wickedly behind her.

  A great beast lurked in the shadows, heavy exhalations bringing snorting growls, wet and blood-curdling across the room.

  At last, the etiolate rose from the armchair.

  His skin was a translucent sheet of white, delicate and pale. His snow-colored hair was slicked back across the top, sides sheered close. The pale gray waned charcoal against the lightness of it all, and he seemed, to her, drained of color.

  Save for the eyes.

  The color of apples, ready to pick beneath the flaming leaves of fall. The color of a sunset, setting the sky alight.

  The color of blood.

  “Remarkable,” he mused, squatting before her, head cocked to the side. “You are made in her likeness, this, I knew, and yet…remarkable.”

  The silk cords against her skin were hot, so slick she should’ve been able to slip them, and yet—

  “You wish to escape,” the etiolate continued, rising once more. The corner of his lips were curling upward, watching her expression. “I know you, love. I know your deepest desires, your secret wants, what you, above all else, crave most in this world and beyond. I am Anscip Xavishia. It is my business to know.”

  She had struggled. She had screamed. She had fought.

  And she’d still been torn out of her emerald dress, shoved into a cotton shift, and tossed onto the hearth rug for this—this creature to devour.

  “I am a mende,” Anscip said, stopper clinking against the vat of liquor, leaning back against the bar to watch her with lustful red eyes. “For the moment, anyway.”

  Stop it, stop it, stop it, get out of my head—

  He gave a quiet laugh. “I’m not reading your mind, love. I’m not one of those parlor-trick Listeners, pretending to peruse the mind as if it’s a book to be read. I told you. I am a mende. Your darkest urges, your most passionate desires…they belong to me. Every. Last. One.”

  The beast was stirring, now, stretching, arching its spiked back.

  It was a monstrous thing.

  Horrifying, the mangy fur, clumped and matted, clung to the creature, and with a snarling snort, its fangs flashed in the firelight, dripping and dangerous.

  A barghest.

  The words itself seemed to send her mind into a panicked frenzy, fear consuming all rational thought, and all sense of fight or flight had been overwhelmed with one command, one edict, one unbreakable rule that she couldn’t seem to not follow.

  Freeze.

  The impetus to statue-stillness was petrifying.

  Anscip snapped his fingers, and the beast hissed, retreating back into the dark.

  “It knows,” the mende snickered, returning to the armchair. “It can smell the death in your veins.” Reaching for the silver bell on the side-table, he gave it a ring, the echo tinkling innocently through the room, and a moment later, a door opened.

  Augustus.

  His expression was empty as he watched her struggling against the bonds.

  “Take her,” Anscip was saying, gesturing with boredom to Elsie, “and be careful. Not one drop of blood comes from her body, not one cut, one nick, one scrape, one splinter, or this is for naught.” He glanced up at the General. “When she bleeds—and mark me, she will bleed—it will be from the dhacrym, and nothing else.”

  SAM

  “Ah, the caracara—a majestic bird of prey. Notorious carrion, their off-spring are vicious, having even been known to fling each other from the nest for fear of self-predation.”

  ~Greysha Boewliç, ‘A Natural History of the Unnatural: A Memoir’

  Sam was met with a pair of black coal eyes and a delicate foot, tapping with furious delay beneath a hearty layer of crinoline.

  Celeste Carson.

  “How dare you,” she snarled, arms crossed as she watched him with hateful fury.

  “What now?”

  “You have the audacity to detain Father, conveniently stepping up to ‘take care of things’ in his absence? What the hell kind of bullshit is that?”

  “I didn’t detain anyone,” he snapped back, turning down the hall. “It’s his own foolish meddling that’s gotten him into trouble, and pardon me that you were nowhere to be found. I had a ballroom of servants, bleary-eyed and frightened after witnessing a fight, a foyer of guests that refuse to leave, and a band of mercenaries chomping at the bit to toss anyone who looks at them wro
ng into the debtor’s prison by the harbor. What did you expect me to do, Cele? Sit back and wait for you whilst everything went to hell?”

  “It’s pathetic, staging these accusations against him to take his place—”

  He turned on his heel, glaring. “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me,” she hissed. “You’re angry that this is my district, that it’ll be me stepping up when Father dies, that it’ll be me binding ribbon with Mattie, that you’re left with nothing but your pathetic little back-district farm boy!”

  “He is my husband, which is more than you can say about Mattie,” he snapped back.

  Cele’s scowl faltered, realization dawning in her eyes. “What did you say?”

  “Nothing,” he muttered darkly, turning to leave.

  She caught his arm. “Sam—”

  He shook her grip off, making for the staircase. “Leave it be, Cele. I don’t want your damn district. You want to step in and deal with this mess? Be my guest.”

  “That’s…it?” she said, disappointment in her voice.

  Sam glanced over his shoulder as he hit the first step, watching her fingertips lingering on the balustrade. “I didn’t ask to be here,” he said quietly. “I didn’t ask for any of this. And I thought a part of me still wanted it, but…” He shook his head. “I don’t. This isn’t my life. It’s yours.” His eyes drifted down the stairs, to the figures waiting at the bottom.

  “Sam?”

  He caught Cele’s stare. “What.”

  She sighed, the corners of her mouth twitching. “Congratulations.”

  He found the lot of them in the mercifully emptied foyer.

  “Our people have scoured every inch of the estate,” Risa murmured in a low voice, eyes flicking up to where Cele was watching from the floor above, fingertips poised delicately on the railing. “Nothing.”

  “Nothing,” Sam echoed in disbelief.

  “Look. The evidence against him was circumstantial, at best. I know your relationship with Clark has been strained, and gods know he’s not an honest man, but I think what Fletcher was keying in on were simply his movements as he brought in the medical supplies. Secrecy, heavy traffic—unusual traffic, for the districts…it’s a mistake anyone could make.” Risa was tying her chestnut curls back into a messy bun. “Believe me,” she muttered, “nothing would bring me more pleasure than nailing his ass to the wall. But if he didn’t do it, he didn’t do it.”