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

by C. H. Williams

  “I promise you will. Seamsters have a sense for these things,” he nodded. His eyes flicked to Isa. “Can she stand?”

  The Captain paused in the midst of preparing a bit of salve. Then, with a sigh, Isa nodded, a hint of a smile behind those dark eyes.

  Pulling back the blankets, Sam threaded an arm around her, helping her to sitting. “Alright, on three. One, two…”

  She was on her feet—albeit leaning heavily against him—and gently, he slid his arm around her waist, cupping her hand in his.

  “Look,” he said softly, finding her eyes with a renewed smile. “You’re doing it already. On your feet and waltzing. An historic recovery.”

  She wouldn’t be on her feet right now if it hadn’t been for Teddy and Risa.

  Hell. She wouldn’t even be breathing.

  “It’s backwards,” Desi muttered tearfully.

  He gave a quick glance to her left hand, sitting in his right. She wasn’t wrong. “Maybe. But you’ve always done things differently, Desi.” Carefully, he began to sway back and forth, drawing her in close. It was a far cry from anything she’d been taught. But it was dancing, nonetheless.

  “At least they’ll be talking about my introduction for years,” she said at last, a little vivacity returning to her voice, and pulling back, there was something that might’ve been tiny smile on her bruised face.

  Sam gave a quiet laugh. “That’s the spirit. Just think, Des. You’ll be the one that put Sam Alderton’s introduction to shame.”

  “Alright,” Isa warned, something playful in their voice, nevertheless. “That’s enough of that nonsense. I don’t permit my patients to go dancing off without a little rest first.”

  Helping her back into bed, Sam left her knocking back tonic after tonic from Isa’s steady hand.

  Strength was an odd thing, Sam thought, letting the door shut behind him. The cool air felt fresh in his lungs, better than the sick room, perfumed with ointments and tonics and bandages and heat.

  For some, strength was not falling. It was refusing to let the knees buckle, to collide painfully with the ground.

  Not for Sam.

  Sam had been forced down too many times to believe that. He’d felt splintering wood beneath his hands as he braced himself. Waiting.

  He occasionally told himself strength was knowing how to get back up—how often he believed it, he didn’t really know. To rise, only to be knocked down again. It was something he had known well.

  No, strength wasn’t really something a person could have. To possess was to lose.

  Strength was a found thing, small, like a hidden half-copper, brown and worn, hidden in between the paving stones of the crumbling road. Pummeled again and again, never relenting.

  It wasn’t forged in the furnaces of pain, amid the fires of I’m doing this because I love you and Perhaps if you hadn’t and It didn’t really hurt, now, did it. The heart that emerged was not of tempered steel.

  It was ash.

  There was no glory in surviving. No victory in bearing those kinds of scars. No triumph.

  He could remember when his ashen heart had started beating again, and a faint smile danced on his lips at the recollection.

  It probably should’ve been Teddy that had kicked his heart into action again. That was how the stories went, wasn’t it? He was supposed to fall in love, find his humanity in the arms of a lover.

  But ashen hearts didn’t work like that.

  People often believed that ashen hearts couldn’t remember how to love. That wasn’t true, though. Those hearts loved with ferocity beyond comprehension.

  What they couldn’t remember, though, was that they were not some broken, twisted thing to be discarded like refuse. That their worth was not defined by the pain they’d endured. That just because their hearts were nothing more than smoking embers, that did not mean they couldn’t be loved all the same.

  “Sam.” Clark’s voice drifted lazily down the corridor behind him, and Sam paused, fingers brushed against the railing. “I was dearly hoping to catch you, love. Young Advocate Barrett, it seems, has taken to avoiding my messages, and so I ask: what news is there of our little heiress?”

  A faint smile was tugging on Sam’s lips. “Her name is Elsie,” he said softly, “and her news is none of your gods-damned business.”

  ELSIE

  “And the gods strayed amongst the mortals, multiplying. In penance for their broken vow, their essence was spread throughout the land, and magic belonged to the gods no longer. No more could they stake their claim to absolute power.”

  ~Emilyon Dresada, ‘Tales of Our World’

  Eyes were such strange things.

  Their colors made no sense. Greens and blues and blacks and browns and misty, bloody reds, it was…nonsensical.

  Like great globs of jelly, waiting for a pair of thumbs to squish them out, out, out—

  “He says you’re a descendant of Cora,” Augustus said quietly, leaning against the wall across from her.

  His visits were real.

  She knew, because when the others came, they said things the real thems never would have.

  Augustus was precisely as she remembered.

  “She is Death,” he said.

  “I am Death.”

  His eyes were two disks, glowing in the dark. “Probably. You are strong. But it is unlikely you’ll survive.”

  Maybe she would find her parents in the Beyond.

  It was difficult, believing she’d been left for her own protection. Nobody left anybody with the Mirabeaus because they wanted them kept safe. Nobody left anybody with the Mirabeaus, if they were anybody at all.

  Factionists—what a funny word, fact-shun-ist…

  Clark was lying, lying, lying, and about what, she didn’t know, because Augustus was not a fact-shun-ist with his drivel of religious zealously and the decided not-deadness of her, because wasn’t that what the action-fists wanted, was her dead, dead, dead.

  “I have no magic,” she mumbled, tugging at the hem of her cotton shift.

  Like the refrain would save her.

  She didn’t need magic when he had his faith.

  “It is deep in your blood,” he murmured unblinking. “You could not coax it out unaided.”

  “Unaided, like you’re helping me,” she spat, pushing herself to standing against the frozen stone wall. Her fingers traced the spaces between that had sucked away the slants, her hoarse voice scraping against the stone. “You’re nothing more than a gods-damned page ripper.”

  AUGUSTUS

  “There’s nothing quite like a dysfunctional family dinner to send one spiraling unstoppably downward.”

  ~Mariann Bell

  Augustus could feel eyes on him as he sank down at the rounded table.

  “What happened to you,” Cam frowned, glancing past her husband, the illustrious Senator Cormalum, to study Augustus. Her blonde hair was pulled back in a severe knot, her brow almost permanently creased in disapproval.

  “Nothing.”

  You’re a gods-damned page-ripper.

  I am exacting the justice of the gods, I think they will forgive the breach of protocol, Augustus had snapped back. And such shall be brought forth that the wicked will reap their sins with the scythe of their own making—

  Page-ripper!

  “Well, that ‘nothing’ made your eyes all red,” Cam snickered, her taunt drawing Augustus from the stinging recollection. Her eyes flickered to Fletcher, who’d conspicuously moved his seat as far away from Augustus as possible—not that it did much good. Dradan dining was, by design, intimate. “Baby brother’s looking glum, too—why the dour mood?”

  “Prison’ll do that,” Augustus shrugged. “He’s pissy that he was fucking a traitor.”

  Granted temporary reprieve at the behest of Her Majesty and on and on and on, and all it meant was that she was well enough to sit at the table but had refused to do so if one was absent, and he supposed it didn’t matter, in the end, because Fletcher’d be back in his c
ell in two hours’ time, anyway.

  Fletcher was on his feet, fists clenched. “She is not a traitor!”

  “Funny, I always thought betraying the realm counted as treason—”

  “Why?” Alva glared at him across the table, a small ripple of power flying out. A warning. “Why do you have to be this way? He loves her, you don’t have to be an ass about it. Just because you…” She trailed off, a look of dismay coming across her face as her eyes met his once more. “Isa ended it with you?”

  “Get out of my head,” Augustus growled, anger rising again.

  “No, don’t.” Cam was leaning forward, amused, arms braced on the table. “Go on, Alva. Little brother likes his secrets—”

  Fletcher raised an eyebrow, impressed. “Well, remind me to tell Isa that’s a job well done—”

  “That isn’t funny,” Alva snapped back. “He’s hurt! I don’t care what an ass he might be—”

  Augustus’s head was beginning to throb with violent irritation. It had been this way since they’d been born. At each other’s throats. Competing in a game where Cam had been born the winner.

  The soft click of a door opening met their ears, and the arguing ceased at once, voices silenced.

  Bowyer had appeared, graying blonde hair swept back, the vee of his pale green tunic laced with thin, silver chords, matching silver buttons falling at his wrists. Belted at the waist and falling loosely down to his knees, covering the dark trousers, it was the traditional attire of the Drada—he’d even gone so far as to shed his silver stole, though nothing would part him from the circlet atop his head.

  And then there was her.

  The reason they’d come.

  A small woman beside him, her hand draped delicately over his arm, curls tumbling down only to be caught in a shimmering silver hair net, lest they run wild. Her gown was simple—the attire of one who was ill.

  The faint scraping of chairs filled the reverent silence as everyone rose.

  “Mm, I see they have decided to pretend they were not bickering like the children they are,” Lilleana murmured, assuming her seat beside Bowyer. Her eyes flickered around the table, meeting each of them—save Cormalum, her only son-in-law for the time being—in turn. “They would do well to remember a mother’s ears hear all.”

  Augustus fell down in his chair, letting out a quiet breath of relief.

  Lilleana took a moment to settle herself, clear eyes finding Alva once more. “I want to start the meal,” she continued on, reaching for her wine goblet, “by raising our glasses to my sweet daughter, who tonight, will be raised from mere novice to rank of mystic, in the tradition of our foremothers. To Alva.”

  The refrain echoed about the room, more somber than joyous, and Augustus heard the unmistakable sound of Cam’s teeth being ground together in frustration. Alva was not the only daughter. Alva was not even the most important daughter.

  But little Alva was a Listener, so fuck the rest of them, because she was the only one with their mother’s gift.

  At least this time, their mother’s doting would pay off. Alva was dangerous—and too bright for her own good. It was only a matter of time before she put the pieces together. The mind couldn’t be read like the pages of a book, but Alva didn’t need the whole story. Just the right lines, and she’d know.

  No, her talents would be better used praying with the mystics, listening to the harmonies of the gods spinning quietly in the heavens above. Perhaps the cool calm of the enclave would balance the fiery temper inside that girl. If she didn’t listen to reason, maybe she’d be listening to the gods, instead.

  Dinner lasted too long.

  Augustus had more or less taken to counting the time with glasses of wine, each one tasting sweeter than the last. The morsels had long since worn out their welcome by the time the platters were collected, and with clenched fists, he departed without a word.

  Drunk and frustrated, Augustus’s feet carried him from the dining hall into the streets of Caelaymnis, towards the barracks. Their military—almost as pitiful as dinner had been. A tradition more than necessity, for show rather than substance.

  Didn’t matter. He ran the whole damn show. General Praequintelya, that was him.

  And this fucking drama with Fletcher’s little traitor.

  Gods-damned page-ripper.

  He was doing his duty to the city and the gods alike. Just like it was said, they’d scrub the corruption from the earth, let the corrupt suckle from the teat of…of…

  He couldn’t remember, just then.

  The point stood, though.

  He was standing before the familiar door. A small apartment in a row of other small apartments.

  “Oh, gods.” Isa was standing there, arms crossed, looking furious. Eyes like stars shown back, though. Beautiful. The warrior’s physique was ill-hidden beneath the simple trousers and close-fit tunic, each curve, each muscle drawing the eye in.

  Had he knocked on Isa’s door? He must’ve.

  “You’re an idiot,” Isa was saying, “You’ve lost yourself completely—”

  “Stop it,” Augustus snapped. Or, he meant to snap it. What came out was a bit of a slurred mess, sloppy and juvenile.

  “If you’re here to beg, you’ve come to the wrong place. Go home. You can manage on your own, as you and I both know.”

  “You—you—” But the words seemed to linger just out of grasp.

  Each moment seemed clear, calm—but stringing them together to form some sort of sensical something or other…

  That was it. He remembered why he was here.

  “You had no right,” Augustus blurted, smacking Isa’s hand away where it’d lingered on his jaw. “E’ryone was asking questions, an’ you think you have this—this—this moral high groun’ but you don’t, Isa! You don’t!”

  “Now, wait—”

  “No! You wait! I am trying, Isa, trying to uphold everything tha—that this city was built on, because what else do I’ave? Tell me, what else, because Cam—Cam is the heir, and her ‘usband’s just trying to keep up with’er drama, an—an—an Fletcher’s this stupid little justice boy with his nobility, and Alva, Listening, an’ what does that leave, huh? I’ve got this,” he stumbled, fingers finding the General’s insignia on the coat of his uniform, and somehow, there was the sound of tearing fabric, the insignia in his hand, because he had to get it off, had to…

  “This! Nobody else is even trying to protect our home, Isa! Nobody understands—they don’t see! A—a Drada family died, didja know that? Because a human settlement west foun’out what he was, and they—they killed him, an’ his family, an—an’ they had this little boy, too, jus’ passin’ through, but no, not enough—oh, think you can trust ‘em, but you can’t…”

  Isa’s brow was furrowed, lips pursed. “Augustus.” A gentle thumb brushed something wet from his cheek—crying?

  “I am doing the right thing,” Augustus was insisting, chest tight as Isa ushered him inside. “I am—it’s the right thing, I know it is…”

  Protect his home. Humans were dangerous. Always had been. Always would be. Didn’t matter whether it was six-hundred years ago when they’d string up anyone with a drop of magic, or whether it’d been last week, when Augustus himself had to unbury the corpses of his people to send them away with fire once more. Their people had been trapped in their city too long, unable to venture beyond the borders without attack.

  A child, ripped from the loving arms of his mother, executed mercilessly for magic he could no more control than any of them could master the changing of the seasons.

  And Augustus was the monster for trying to protect his city.

  Just another gods-damned page-ripper.

  TEDDY

  “I did not know one could have so much strength, until I met my youngest sister. Of course, I also didn’t realize something so small could scream so loud—so, in this, I suppose, I am doubly gifted.”

  ~Theodore Alderton

  Hands braced on the bathing room sink, Teddy
exhaled a long, ragged breath. His eyes burned with swallowed tears.

  I will not fall. I will not fall. I will not fall.

  One day at a time. That was what Risa said.

  And for twenty-six mornings, he’d tried to take it one day at a time.

  Twenty-six mornings, and Elsie was still gone.

  The problem was, nobody seemed inclined to say where, precisely, she was. Nobody cared to hear petitions, nobody cared to shoulder the cause, nobody cared, period. She was a traitor, they said. They’d conduct their interrogations, as the law permitted, without the Hidden City’s interference. The City had already freed the Commissioner.

  Caelaymnis wasn’t keen on watching another human walk free, too.

  Adrian was fighting, Risa was fighting, hell, even Clark was fighting in his own twisted way, because Risa said she heard through the grapevine that he’d threatened his contact who imported the contraband supplies, promising pain unending if they didn’t give up the information, which they hadn’t, but it was a sort of nice gesture, all the same, he supposed.

  “Hey.” Warm hands were on Teddy’s waist, and Sam slid behind him, pausing long enough to brush a kiss on his cheek before moving him gently aside. “You okay?”

  Teddy nodded, folding his arms across his body as he watched Sam start the tap, a rush of hot water gushing forth.

  Sam’s cinnamon eyes caught his own in the mirror, giving him a skeptical look. “We don’t have to do this, you know. Celebrate today. I’m sure she’d understand.” His hands moved deftly, brushing the white shaving lather up his cheeks, down the stubbled neck.

  Teddy sighed, sinking down on the edge of the bath tub.

  “Not shaving today?”

  He shook his head.

  “Going rugged, I see.” Sam was trying. At least there was that.

  Instinctively, Teddy ran a hand along his jaw, feeling sandpaper beneath his hand. He kind of liked it. Today felt rough. So did he.

  And maybe that was alright.

  “I always loved the snow.” Risa was leaning on the kitchen counter of Sam’s apartment, staring out the window with a spark of excitement in her eyes.