The Hanged Man

by K. D. Edwards

  He turned and walked over to the bed, and dropped roughly onto the mattress. He stared down at his hands, cradled loosely in his lap.

  “Max,” I said. “Talk to me.”

  He chewed on that for a moment, and swallowed the pieces of a dozen replies. Finally, after a long minute, he said, “I remember the moment I realized I wasn’t special.”

  “Max—”

  “No. I mean, really. It happened. You’ve got to understand that when I was young, very young, I was special. My grandmother doted on me. Lady Lovers. She said I was going to be a great man. She spent so much time with me. She tried to train me. But . . . I just . . . never had it. Never had what you have. What other heirs have. And one day she stopped training me. She stopped calling for me. She just . . . vanished from my life. And . . . and she . . . I was given to my uncle. To be trained for a marital alliance. To . . .”

  I went over and sat next to him. “I am not about to base my decisions on the thoughts of a failed Arcana. What happened to Elena says just about everything you need to know about her.”

  “But still, I’m—”

  “You’re mine. And you’ve been special to me from the day you entered my home.”

  “Brand put my head in a toilet,” he reminded me.

  “Well, the next day. The very next day.”

  His brief smile faltered. “You made a deal with her. You didn’t have a choice. She tricked you. She gave you a sigil, but tricked you into watching me until I turned twenty-one. You didn’t ask for any of this.”

  “That,” I sighed. I reached up with both hands and fumbled with a clasp behind my neck. It took a second, but then the chain sagged into my hands. I pooled the cameo pendant in my palms and held it out to Max.

  He shook his head at me, not understanding.

  “I’m not about to give you the emerald ring she gave me. I don’t want you to keep a single thing from that family. You get this. My mother’s cameo. It’s a bit . . . well, you know . . . weird. But it means a lot to me.”

  “I don’t . . .What?”

  “This sigil is now your sigil,” I said. “Its will is now your will.”

  And the magic spun between us. I felt the loss of it like a cool shiver, and then it stretched to Max and settled on him. Goosebumps rose along his arms.

  “Rune,” he whispered.

  “You’ll need to learn sigil magic,” I said. “It’s far past time. And I don’t want you to think I’m raising you because of Elena’s ring.”

  “But . . . if you give up the sigil, you’ll have no reason to keep me. I don’t—”

  “Shhh,” I said, and put the necklace in his limp hands. “Listen to me. A few days ago, on the ship, we thought Corinne was dying. And she made me promise to make a home for Corbie, Anna, and Layne. To protect them. To love them. And it was so important to her—that last bit. It makes me think I’ve been stupid for not saying it more often when I mean it in my own life. Max, you have a home. You are under my protection. And I love you. Brand and I? We love you, Max.”

  He closed his eyes as the first tear ran down the side of his nose.

  “Listen to me,” I said again. “When this all started—with the Hanged Man—I was hard on you. I came down so hard on you. And what did you do? You didn’t complain. You didn’t protest. You stepped into the background and waited for the chance to help. And you’ve just been standing there, quiet, since, letting us take the lead. Which is so good of you. And you’ve gone off and done this amazing work, both before and after. You found the entry to the attic on Sun Estate. You figured out a way to interpret Quinn’s visions in a truly astonishing manner. You got us vital intel on the mushroom farm.”

  He shook his head, and more tears fell.

  “So I don’t want you to worry about being special. I want you to know you already are. I want to see what comes next.” I put my hand on his head, which shook as the young man tried to hold in his emotions. “I want you to be brilliant, Max. I want you to shine. I want you to see your potential like I see it, like Brand sees it—and I want you to share it with everyone who has the good fortune to cross your amazing path. And if you need a turning point? If you need a starting point for this change? Then it happens now, and where we stand. Will you enter my house? Not just my court. My house. Will you enter Sun House, and be as kin?”

  The door to the room opened. Brand stepped in. Max blinked tears at him, and watched as he crossed behind us and slipped onto the mattress, so that we were all close. The two stared at each other until Brand said, “You’ve fucking met Rune, right? He’s going to get all formal and insist you say the words out loud.”

  “I . . .” Max whispered.

  “Matthias Saint Valentine, will you join my house?” I said.

  “I will. I will, please. I will.” Then he started crying in earnest.

  He buried his face in his hands and leaned into us, partially against Brand, partially against me, so that we both supported his weight.

  “Then you are no longer Matthias Saint Valentine,” I said. “You are my kin. You are Matthias Saint John, and the Sun Court stands with you.”

  Eventually, it came to now, that moment of the evening when I could slip away and steal a minute of quiet for myself.

  Max had picked up my hosting slack. He was meeting new Enclave guests at the door—people who either had been invited or were curious. He seemed excited about trying out his new name, which was cute, and also couched in a display of rather stunning manners.

  I went out to the beach, until the party was behind me. It cast faint light and noise along the sand like a northern aura. I dragged a chair near the edge of the rising tide, and told myself I’d go back inside when the water reached my toes.

  Time passed, and after a while, I wasn’t alone anymore.

  Brand had a plain manila folder in his hand, which he threw on the sand between us while throwing himself down with a grunt. I waited a second until he found a proper insult, because, well, Brand.

  “It would have fucking killed you to haul over two chairs?” he asked.

  I smiled at the black sky and shook my head. “And you can keep that bloody folder to yourself. Nothing good ever happens when you come at me with one of those.”

  “No?” he said. “There’s money in it.”

  I squirmed around in the chair so that I was facing him. “Our money?”

  “Our is a strong word. I’ll let you look at it, at least. And for the fucking record, nothing good happens when you come at me with a folder, either. Why did you leave that stupid old folder on my bed?”

  I’d left him what I’d found in Sun Estate’s attic. I didn’t want it. I didn’t trust myself with it. Either Brand knew everything in the folder, or he didn’t. It was wrong of me to make the decision for him.

  Brand watched all this play across my face. “We still need to talk about this?”

  “No,” I said too quickly.

  His jaw went mulish. “They’re in South Boston. Still. This address is old, but they’ve been there since I was born. They’ve been there for generations. I’m Irish, by the way. American Irish. Do you want me to care about this? What would you say if I wanted to go?”

  “Go?” I echoed dumbly.

  “Will you allow it? If I want to move there, get to know them?”

  There was still oxygen in the world. I knew that, rationally. It just felt otherwise. So I pretended I didn’t need to breathe fake oxygen to settle my fake panic because everything was fine. This was fine.

  “It’d be fine,” I said slowly. “They need mercenaries in Boston, right? Or something like mercenaries? That’s a skill you can take anywhere. So . . . It’s your decision. To move or not.”

  I’ve never felt his gaze so heavy on me. He stared at me for another few beats, then shrugged and nodded. He dropped his head and kicked at the sand with the heel of a bare foot.

  “I mean,” I added, “there are other things I could do, if the mercenary thing didn’t work out for us. I could wo
rk as a barista. They have lots of barista jobs in America, right? We could find a huge loft, like all those poor young people in American sitcoms live in. We’d be fine.”

  His eyes shot back to me. The tightness around them melted into a small smile.

  “What?” I said.

  “Idiot,” he whispered.

  I sunk back into my chair and wondered why I was an idiot. And why was he so damned relieved? It’s not as if—

  “Oh!” I shouted, and stabbed a finger at him. “You were asking if you could leave me.”

  “Fuck off,” he said.

  “No. Oh, no, you are so stupid. We are going to grow old and die together. And then? Then we’ll get rejuvenated and grow old and die together again. And again. And again. Leave me? Move to Boston without me? Are you mental?”

  I think he may have laughed—literally, actually laughed—which he hid behind the brusque motion of slapping the manila folder into my lap. “Look,” he said.

  I opened the folder. There were a few scary-looking documents with the Arcanum seal on them, along with a check. I picked up the check. I stared at one zero. And then another. And another and another and another and another. Lead by the number four.

  “Four million dollars?” I said hoarsely. “Is this a check for four million dollars?”

  “Yes. And be careful with it—I want to memorize Lady Death’s signature later.”

  “Lady Death is giving us four million dollars?” I asked.

  “Spoils of war. Did you get a nice look at it? Good.” He plucked it out of my hands, folded it, put it in his breast pocket.

  “We’re rich,” I said. “I want to see it again.”

  “No. We need it as a down payment. It’s as good as spent.”

  “What the holy fuck are you thinking, and stop thinking it right now,”I demanded.

  His expression tightened. “You’re an Arcana, Rune. You’re at the top of hill. Know what that means? Everyone is going to want to push you off. You need a compound. We need to rehabilitate Sun Estate.”

  “Oh.”

  “Four million dollars seems like a lot, but you know how much damage that place took.”

  “Oh, we are so poor again,” I said.

  “Not to mention,” he added. “It appears we’ll need a very, very big back yard.”

  I didn’t like the way he said that, so I pretended to be interested in a particular big wave that broke in front of us.

  “Because remember Plan A?” he continued. “When you had the chance to divide the spoils yourself? Remember that? Remember when you gave Lady Death the job? Well, turns out she has a sense of humor. Open the folder. Go on.”

  I pinched the edge of the folder and slowly drew it open. The check had been sitting on a document with the Arcanum seal. I started reading what looked like a laundry list of items awarded to the Sun Throne in action against the Gallows. Including . . .

  “A dinosaur?” I sucked in a breath. “She’s giving us the Hanged Man’s dinosaur?”

  “You killed the ifrit, its master. And it’s not just a dinosaur. It’s an old dinosaur. They had a healer look at it. It has arthritis. We own a dinosaur with arthritis. Do you want to imagine what the fucking vet bills will be like?”

  “Did she give us anything else I need to know about?”

  “You mean like a World War II battleship?”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “And yet.”

  “She did not give us the battleship. The battleship could cause global retaliation. It’s haunted and needs a ton of spell-work. She would not give it to me.”

  “Put like that, you’re right—it’s amazing she didn’t keep it for herself.”

  I slammed back into my chair and slapped a hand over my eyes. We were silent for many, many waves. There was much to think about.

  Finally, I said, in an almost excited whisper, “I own a dinosaur.”

  And Brand whispered back, “I own five-story battleship guns.”

  We reached out at the same time and banged fists.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  So many more acknowledgments to add this time around. The thing I never expected? Was how damn cool it would be to share New Atlantis with readers. The joy and support and learning they’ve given me in return has been nothing short of life-changing.

  Many, many thanks to Kathy Shin and her art and music playlist; Run Boy Run played nonstop while Rune battled among the skyscrapers. Thank you Vic Grey, who shared artwork and Twitter love; their drawing of Rune and the nine animal masks was especially chilling. (They helped name the ninth mask for me, too: the Owl. And have you seen their representation of Lady Death and the Wheel of Fortune on Twitter? Exceptional.) Kathy and Vic join several other wonderful people who drew images inspired by Tarot, which was why the free novelette, The Sunken Mall (set between The Last Sun and Hanged Man) was dedicated to them. You can find links to the story and their artwork on my Twitter account.

  Thank you to Ben and Keith from the podcast TG Geeks. I had my first author podcast interview with them, and they spoiled me for every experience I had after that. They sound like radio gods; I could listen to them all day. Thank you for the wonderful experiences and unflagging support, guys.

  And contest winners! Thank you @becausebenjamin for naming the ifrit in a Twitter challenge. And thank you to Grace Craumer and Fabricio Toms who won a contest in Ms. Patricia Jackson’s class at Central York High School. Together they named AnaÏca, a guarda captain who tried to refuse Rune entry in the Arcanum. She has an eye tattooed on her wrist, the same color as her irises, and smells strong of clean, plain soap. Hosting that contest with Central York was one of the coolest things I’ve ever done. (And every class should have a teacher like Ms. Jackson.)

  Thank you Britny Herzog for creating my sequined cloak of many-rainbow-colors for World Pride in NYC in July 2019. Marching with the Barnes & Noble float during Pride was another Life Highpoint. Words can’t even describe how surreal and magnificent it was. Britny made it even more special with that glittery cloak.

  Thank you to the folk who run the Battleship North Carolina. The battleship museum was, of course, a massive inspiration for this novel. I’ve spent many, many hours there. You can literally track Rune’s progress through the boat on a real floorplan. War is never pretty, not even as a clean museum preservation, but it’s a part of our past, and, wow, I wish we would start to learn from it. At the very least, we shouldn’t forget.

  Thank you Sara Megibow of KT Literary—agent extraordinaire, voice of reason, constant supporter. Thank you Rene Sears, the best editor in the multiverse. Thank you Micah Epstein for the stunning cover; and Audible and Josh Hurley for the exceptional voice narration. Thank you to Kim Yau of Paradigm Talent Agency for representing my Hollywood interests (and for giving me the chance to casually drop a phrase like that into conversation, ever); and to Logan and PL for the fascinating, in-depth talks about what the TV world looks like. And thanks to all the other talented, amazing folk at Pyr: Samantha Lien, Marianna Vertullo, Hailey Dezort, Dana Kaye, and Jarred Weisfeld.

  Thank you to all of you who follow me on Twitter. (Except family and coworkers. I have banned you, if for no other reason than to keep you from seeing me in a sequined cloak.) I never thought I’d be a social media person, but here I am, loving Twitter and my Twitter friends. Thanks for letting me share snippets and scenes with you in advance.

  And thank you to the Writer’s Cramp—my longtime writing group. Blakely, Scott, Paige, Christie-Sue, Emmalea, Ali, Kwame, Taylor, York . . . Y’all are my guiding star. But particular thanks to the authors Christie-Sue Cheely and Scott R. Reintgen, who were there until the bitter end, and read the final stretch of Hanged Man within hours of it being written. I love you guys.

  And you. Seriously: you. Thanks for joining me on this ride. More to come. I promise.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  K.D. lives and writes in North Carolina, but has spent time in Massachusetts, Maine, Colorado, New Hampshire, Montana, and
Washington State. (Common theme until NC: Snow. So, so much snow. And now? Heat. So, so much heat.) Mercifully short careers in food service, interactive television, corporate banking, retail management, and bariatric furniture has led to a much less short career in higher education. The Last Sun and The Hanged Man are the first two novels in his debut series, The Tarot Sequence. K.D. is represented by Sara Megibow at kt literary, and Kim Yau at Paradigm for media rights.