The Hanged Man

by K. D. Edwards

  He touched my Adam’s apple with an ice-cold finger and drew the finger up to my chin.

  He stepped back, and as he did, the paralysis broke. “This is a formal act of aggression,” I said breathlessly. “You need to understand that—”

  Spots danced in front of my face. The black spots of a nearing faint. I wasn’t breathing. Panicked, I opened my mouth and took a long, noisy breath.

  I drew on that calm I’d used earlier—that arctic certainty that I’d lose everything if I gave in to panic. So I added facts together. I could breathe. But it was no longer an involuntary response. I just needed to remember to breathe.

  The Hanged Man clapped his hands together. “What fun. I am going to make you eat your fingernails next.”

  “I’m not sure you’ll want to do that,” I said, to the soundtrack of my fast pulse. Breathe. I made myself breathe. “Not until I show you something.”

  I reached into my pocket. The Hanged Man tensed only until he saw my phone. He watched, amused, as I tapped a few buttons. Then I put my phone back in my pocket. And breathed. Remember to breathe. I took a low, steady breath.

  After a few more moments of polite smiling, he said, “You were planning to show me something?”

  “No. I lied.” Breathe. “You’re just like every old Arcana I know, completely oblivious at how dangerous technology can be. I was just stalling for time while I hit send on an email I drafted a few hours ago.”

  “An email,” he repeated.

  “Yes. To every Arcana I know. Every Arcana I have contact information for. Every Arcana who owes me a favor; every Arcana who has supported me in the past. I’ve requested an immediate forum to present claims against you. I also mentioned that, if they’re receiving this email, it means I’ve sent it in your presence, or the presence of men I suspect are in your employ. I don’t want there to be any confusion if something were to happen to me.”

  The Hanged Man went still. Not so much shock—he was too slick for that. Just the stillness of a very old Atlantean who momentarily forgot the need to mimic the movement of normal people.

  “You’re bluffing,” he said.

  “Am I? My boyfriend is second in line to the Crusader Throne. You’ve just killed his men, by the way. He had a team at the Dawncreeks’ house.” Breathe. Breathe and enjoy the look of surprise on his pallid face. “The Moral Certainties already owe me a favor, and the Hermit has stated publicly that he’s in my debt. The Sun Throne was once a power bloc with the Celestials. And Lord Tower? Well. He and I have a long-standing arrangement.”

  My pocket started to buzz. As, actually, did his.

  Now I smiled. Spots danced in front of my face again, and I remembered to breathe. “Looks like someone’s trying to reach us.”

  “Let them accuse me,” he hissed. “They’ll never find your body.”

  My pocket stopped buzzing. But his? His started buzzing again.

  He pulled a sleek phone out of his robes, and eyed the screen. His face went back to that inhuman stillness.

  “Do I look like that?” I asked. “When I read a text message from the Tower? Let me guess. He’s warning you he’ll be calling me shortly, and he’ll expect that I’ll answer.”

  “Little brother,” he said. “When this is over and done with, I will plant daisies in your skull.”

  Shadows dashed across the room, creating a sphere of darkness around Lord Hanged Man. As he vanished into it, he continued to stare, so that those dead eyes were the last I saw of him.

  Alone, I sagged. I yanked a chair away from the conference room table and collapsed into it. My skin prickled with the pins and needles of shock.

  I gave myself only a few seconds, focusing on my stalled breathing. What would it take to counter a curse from a mass sigil? I pulled my phone out of my pocket and dialed Brand.

  “Hey,” he answered. “What did they—”

  “Zeta protocols,” I told him.

  He took barely a half-second to rearrange his entire life. “Home or hole?”

  “Hole up here for now, then we’ll head home in force.”

  “Chapel,” he decided. “First floor. Interior room. Nearby access to a stairwell. God fucking damnit, Rune.”

  “I’ll tell you more when I get there. Gather everyone. We’re at war with the Hanged Man. And—gods, Brand.” Spots. Faintness. Breathe. “The Dawncreek house has been destroyed. Keep it quiet, but tell Addam. Find out if . . . any of his men . . .”

  “I want you here,” Brand said, and this was when his urgency cracked into worry.

  “I’m on my way.”

  I ignored the Tower’s call, because I was in the middle of using my sabre’s garnet blade to burn away the vines. If I was being honest with myself, I was also trying to keep from hyperventilating, because the curse hadn’t lessened. What would happen if I panicked and passed out? If I couldn’t tell my body to inhale, would I . . .

  I needed to get back to Brand. I needed the others.

  When I’d destroyed what was left of the conference room door, I dialed the Tower back. He answered by saying, “Good day,” to which I immediately responded, “Good day yourself.” It was a sign and countersign code we’d established years ago, for use in situations where free will might have been compromised.

  “Rune,” he sighed.

  “I didn’t have a choice,” I said, starting down the hallway toward the elevator. I transformed my sabre back into a wristguard. The warm metal tightened against my flesh.

  “You had abundant choices,” he said. “That was the entire point of breakfast the other day. I provided you with options.”

  “He ambushed me, not the other way around. He forced my hand.”

  There was a pause. A hesitation. Then, “Rune, what happened? Are you hurt?”

  I didn’t feel like admitting I’d let the Hanged Man get the jump on me. “Just my pride,” I lied, then told my body to breathe.

  “And the meeting of the Arcanum you called?”

  “I have a plan,” I said.

  “A child with a stick of dynamite may have a plan, too. It doesn’t make it a wise plan.”

  I stopped walking, my finger an inch from the elevator button. I counted out a few Mississippis in my head. “I deserve better,” I finally said. “You trained me better.”

  He sighed again. “Apologies. I am just . . . concerned with what you’ve set in motion.”

  I pressed the elevator button. “Have you gone to the ship yet?”

  He didn’t reply.

  “You have,” I said, confident. “It’s not the sort of thing you’d leave to anyone else. I know you well enough for that. You saw what I saw, didn’t you? What he’s turned that ship into? The patches where time—”

  I think at that point Lord Tower may have tried cutting me off, because there were some conversations you didn’t have over a cell phone, no matter how secure Lord Tower’s connections generally were. But I didn’t hear him, because I’d forgotten to breathe, and everything went wobbly.

  Next thing I knew, I was on my knees in a moving elevator, trying to will oxygen into my body.

  Through a darkening tunnel, I heard Lord Tower calling my name.

  I may have been hyperventilating; or maybe the Hanged Man was reaching out through whatever spell he laid on me; but there was not enough air in the world to keep me conscious.

  I felt a spell tear into me, like a stiletto sliding into my brain. The magic grabbed onto my thoughts—grabbed onto my Companion bond— and shot out along the connection that linked me to Brand. I heard Lord Tower shout, “FIND HIM NOW, BRANDON! BRING AID TO HIM NOW!”

  Then everything was black.

  Then everything hurt.

  Then it felt like my bones were cracking.

  Then I knew my bones were cracking. I felt a rib splinter as a mouth breathed into mine. I gasped and pushed the weight off my body. I was in another hallway. Curious ghosts were gathered around me, and Brand was giving me CPR. In the background, Anna Dawncreek shouted about
glass. I didn’t understand any of it.

  “Tell me what happened,” Brand begged. “Rune!”

  “He needs to break the glass!” Anna yelled.

  “Anna, quiet! Go find a healer!” Brand yelled back. “Rune? Rune-gods-fucking-damnit-talk-to-me!”

  “Spell,” I gasped. I made myself breathe, but it was like inhaling though a crooked straw. “Curse. Can’t breathe.”

  I struggled to an upright position. Anna was trying to get past Brand, but Brand held her off with a raised arm. He didn’t see her face, but I did—I saw her eyes burning with a brilliant orange light.

  Anna grabbed Brand’s arm and pulled. Brand flew into the air, tossed backwards down the corridor. Anna dropped to her knees next to me and punched my chest. I tried to stop her before she drove a rib into my heart.

  “Don’t you see the glass?” she said. “Break the glass!”

  She swung her arm and punched me again. The light from her eyes flooded the ground around me. The curse broke into glowing fault lines and shattered. She’d somehow managed to break a spell cast from a mass sigil. It vanished into squalls of wind that made my bangs flutter.

  I took a clean, clear breath.

  The light faded from Anna’s eyes. She gave me a grim, satisfied look, and sagged against the hallway wall.

  “I’m okay,” I said as Brand scrambled back up to us.

  Brand gave Anna an astonished look, and left her a lot of space as he knelt on my other side. Emotion after emotion raced across his face. So he took a second and closed his eyes. The wrinkles around his eyes deepened as he drew all his panic into cold bodyguard reflexes. “Talk to me,” he said.

  “The Hanged Man put a spell on me. It messed with my breathing. Anna . . . countered it. And none of this just happened. Do you understand me? None of it happened.”

  “But—” he started to say.

  “I cannot appear weak. I cannot spare the time to convince myself to feel strong again. I just have to be strong.” I was babbling, but there were so many layers to what was going on, and what was coming next. “Anna, nothing happened. You will speak of what happened to no one. Brand, zeta protocols. Now.”

  He grabbed my arm and hauled me to my feet. I kept the hold for just a second. Maybe two. And then I let go and stood on my own. I’d need a Healing for my ribs, but other than that, I’d felt worse.

  “Everyone is in the hospital chapel,” Brand said. “I was outside when Lord Tower . . . did whatever the fuck he did. No one else knows you were attacked.”

  “Does Addam know about . . .” I cut my eyes to Anna.

  Brand nodded. “He’s trying to reach his team.”

  I turned to Anna, who was still sagging, exhausted, on the ground. I held out my hand to her, but she stubbornly climbed upright on her own. “Am I in trouble?” she asked.

  “Not even a little. But you cannot tell anyone what happened. Not yet. Please. This is so very, very important.” On so many levels. So many dominoes. So many things set in motion. I didn’t have time to deal with the birth of Anna Dawncreek’s Atlantean Aspect. I didn’t have time to consider that her Aspect—the glowing amber eyes—was what my own Aspect had been, in its early days. I didn’t have time to consider that her Aspect was already, plausibly, stronger than mine. She’d broken a curse from a mass sigil.

  “I promise,” she whispered.

  “The chapel is this way,” Brand said, and led our little group down the corridor.

  As I went, I pulled out my phone and texted the Tower the words: I’m fine. Thank you. (And right there was something else I didn’t have time to consider. How had he taken over my Companion bond? I had the sinking suspicion that, yet again, I’d forced the Tower to reveal one of his hidden secret defenses. It was not a comfortable hand of cards to hold.)

  My phone buzzed. A return text. Secure surroundings; then contact me.Only the Tower would take the time to use a semicolon in a text.

  Brand turned us down a small tiled hallway that ended in ornate wooden doors with frosted glass panels. Diana Saint Nicholas was pacing in front of them. When she saw us, she straightened, and folded her arms across her stomach. I’d learned over the last couple months that it was her take-no-shit pose.

  “We will talk,” she said quietly, stepping toward us.

  “There’s no time. Let’s get inside the chapel.”

  I tried to brush past her, but she didn’t move, and I had better manners than to push her aside.

  She said, “I’m sorry. Am I merely a bit player in this episode of the Rune Saint John show? Do I not have my own lines? By all means, Lord Sun, allow me to mutely step aside while you draw my nephews into further danger.”

  I winced, because she wasn’t wrong.

  “Addam has received word from the team that—” She flicked a glance behind me, at Anna. “From the team. Two are dead.”

  I let the guilt sink deep. Let it calcify, adding another layer to all the guilt I’ve accumulated over my life, all the other lives I’d had a hand in ending. “I did not know this would happen,” I said. “It was not expected.”

  “Irrelevant. What danger are we in now?”

  “That’s what we need to evaluate. We need secure surroundings. I’ll move us to—”

  “Young man,” she said, and actually stomped a foot. “Will you listen? That’s what I’m trying to establish. In moments, the remainder of the security team will be here. They are the victims of an attack, and are sworn to Addam, Quinn, and myself. Inside the room behind us is that boy, Layne. Is it true he’s been sworn to your service?”

  “I . . . Layne. Yes.”

  “Then those sworn to you are under attack as well. Why haven’t we invoked sanctuary privileges?”

  “Here? Sanctuary here?”

  “New Saints is neutral ground. They have profound defenses. You may not have a seat on the Arcanum, but you’re entitled to its privileges. You—we—can request sanctuary for seventy-two hours. This is a secure location.”

  I hadn’t known. I took the information like the remarkable gift it was. One way or another, all of this would be over in seventy-two hours. Knowing Queenie, Max, Quinn—all of them—would be protected would free my hands.

  “Will you contact the hospital administrator for me?” I asked Diana.

  “I already have. He’s on his way. I’ll speak to him when he arrives—go inside.”

  I was about to tell her that she shouldn’t be alone in the hallway when a group of seven men and women in dark suits and somber expressions turned the corner. They had swords on their belts, and the Crusader Throne crest on their breast pockets. Several of them had streaks of ash on their face; and one of them was bleeding.

  One of them also had belts filled with platinum discs draped over her arms—the matching sigils that Justice favored. She silently handed a belt to Diana, who fastened it around her waist.

  I decided Diana could stand in the hallway on her own.

  I swept into the chapel with Brand and Anna. The room was small, and filled with tripping obstacles in the forms of pews and statuary. Someone had cleared an area by a non-denominational altar. Layne was there, unconscious and in bed with an IV. A scared doctor stood next to him, pinned to the wall with one of Brand’s knives through the sleeve of his blue hospital scrubs.

  Max and Quinn. Corbie in Queenie’s lap. Addam on a phone, which he spoke into and put away upon seeing me. His complexion was ashen. Oh Addam. He was so far into this now that he wouldn’t be able to escape its orbit. If I failed—if the dominoes fell the wrong way and something happened to him—the grief wouldn’t calcify, it would crack.

  “Listen closely,” I said, and put aside all my uncertainty. “The Hanged Man has moved against me. On Diana’s advice, I will claim sanctuary, which will afford us short-term protection within the walls of the hospital. Their defenses are formidable, and I have to believe that the Hanged Man will not risk a frontal assault. In the meantime, I’ve called a forum of the Arcana to air my grievances. We’ll
stay here until that happens.”

  I looked at Addam. At the deep wrinkles around his mouth and eyes, a perversion of his laugh lines. I slid my glance to Corinne. Her body was tense, prepared for an ambush; she knew something very bad had happened. She was just waiting for confirmation of it.

  “There is more,” I said. “I am so sorry to have to say this, but in his move against me, the Hanged Man destroyed your home. The lives of two members of the Crusader Throne were lost. I did not anticipate this move. The best I can tell you is that I will answer this affront tenfold. On my name, I will make the Hanged Man pay.”

  “Our house?” Anna whispered.

  “But . . .” Corbie said. He squirmed around to look at Queenie. “But?” Corinne went over and picked Corbie up. Scared, he buried himself against her neck. I could see his clothing quiver as he started to shake or cry.

  “Stop saying me and I,” Corinne told me. “That creature has moved against us.”

  I swallowed. “I did not mean to imply that this didn’t involve you. I have promised you my protection, and I—”

  “That’s not what I’m saying,” she said, nearly a growl. “I’m telling you that you’re not alone. We’re on the front line of this together.”

  We exchanged stares for a second, and I gave her a small smile. It didn’t change the fact that I’d never been more alone in my life. It wouldn’t change the fact of what I’d need to face tomorrow. But it was a nice thought.

  “Addam, can we speak?” I asked.

  “There’s a room. There,” Addam said, pointing behind him.

  “Rune,” Brand murmured. “You need a sanctum. We need supplies from Half House.”

  “Soon,” I told him. “And . . . I need to talk to you. Alone. Just give me a minute?”

  He stepped back, planting himself in front of the main chapel doors.

  I followed Addam into a small room that was basically a large supply closet. He shut the door, his back to me, and paused for a moment.

  I stared at his broad shoulders, bowed under the weight of the moment. “I am so sorry,” I said, my voice finally losing all certainty.

  He turned and pulled me into a full-bodied hug. I felt him along every line, every curve. It was a warm and beautiful sense of complete safety, and I enjoyed every second of the lie it offered.