The Thousand Deaths of Ardor Benn

by Tyler Whitesides

  It was true that Dale Hizror was finished. Ard had attacked Chief Aufald before he’d thought to detonate the Memory Grit. Pethredote was right. Ard wasn’t going to get away with this one. But he’d make blazing sure that Quarrah did.

  Ard placed the barrel of his Roller once more against the king’s forehead. “Get up.” Quarrah released him and the king slowly knelt before standing. “Now, remove the regalia. Slowly.”

  Quarrah came alongside Ard, her voice soft in his ear. “Are you sure this is going to work?”

  Ard reached up with his left hand and peeled away his adhesive mustache, leaving his upper lip tingling from the abrupt removal.

  “There’s a Reggie chief on the floor there,” Ard said, peeling off his artificial sideburns. “Drag him over here and take his helmet and coat.”

  Quarrah slipped silently away as Pethredote finished unclasping the buckles. As he slowly maneuvered his arms, the royal coat fell from his shoulders, crashing against the cool stone floor.

  “Now put this one on.” Ard used his foot to slide the fake regalia toward Pethredote.

  Quarrah returned, the Reggie helmet on her head, his crimson wool coat over one shoulder, and Aufald’s unconscious body dragged across the floor. As Pethredote buckled the counterfeit regalia into place, Ard removed his dark wig and prosthetic forehead. Quarrah gathered the real coat and crown and began loading them into the black bag.

  Ard looked at the pieces of the puzzle around him. A Reggie helmet and coat, an unconscious Aufald. A large black bag loaded with the actual Royal Regalia, and a stunned Pethredote wearing a fake. The balcony doors rigged with impenetrable Barrier Grit. The hallway doors desperate to burst with fifty waiting Reggies. An adhesive mustache and sideburns. A wig. The dim flickering throne room cloaked in a cloud of Memory Grit, which would burn out in minutes.

  Ard looked at Quarrah. He had to get her out. Above all else, he couldn’t see Quarrah arrested and executed. He’d given up his entire life to keep Tanalin Phor innocent. And now he was willing to do it for Quarrah.

  Ard turned to her, his heart hammering in his chest. “I think I love you, Quarrah Khai.”

  Her eyes grew big in the flickering light. “What?”

  “I said, I think I love you.” It seemed a strange place to profess it. Certainly less than romantic, with a loaded Roller to the king’s head. “Deep down inside. But I won’t let myself. Because of Tanalin. I can’t let her go, Quarrah. And no matter how much I want to love you, you’re not Tanalin Phor.”

  Quarrah stammered. “Why are you saying this?”

  “So you’ll understand why I’d give myself up to make sure you escape,” said Ard. “And because neither of us will remember this conversation in a matter of moments.” He grinned at her. “Now help me get everything in place.”

  Quarrah suddenly became aware of herself. It was like awakening from a dream, unsure of when she had fallen asleep.

  The last thing she remembered was hunching low under a dome of Barrier Grit, trying to conceal her face as King Pethredote approached. There had been a scuffle and Pethredote shot at Ard. And now she was here, standing on the opposite side of the throne room, wearing some ridiculously oversized wool coat.

  Quarrah glanced down at her attire. It was a Reggie coat. No, not just any Reggie coat. Quarrah was wearing the crimson uniform of a Regulator chief! She felt the weight of the helmet atop her head as well. And there was something on her face!

  Quarrah reached up, touching her upper lip. An adhesive mustache had been pasted on, along with a pair of long sideburns. Under the helmet, Quarrah now realized she wore a dark wig, tied back in the fashionable men’s style.

  She was wearing Ard’s disguise! What the blazing sparks?

  No sooner had she realized it, than the throne room doors burst open from the hallway. Lines of Regulators poured in, weapons loaded and ready.

  Quarrah staggered backward, but the Reggies flooded past her to the situation in the center of the throne room.

  Two figures stood beside the burning dragon skull. One was King Pethredote, the shell crown atop his head, and his stocky frame draped in the regalia coat. The other was Ard. Not Dale Hizror, but unmistakably Ardor Benn.

  His disguise removed, Ard stood with shaven face, his arm outstretched as he pointed a Roller directly at the king. He was surrounded in a moment, the ranks of Reggies brutally forcing Ard to his knees, the Roller swatted out of his hand.

  Quarrah lifted a hand to her temple. Ahhh! What was going on? The scene unfolding before her was dreadfully confusing. It was as though she had begun reading in the middle of a book.

  Clearly, she had failed to steal the regalia. King Pethredote was wearing it, for Homeland’s sake, and there was no sign of the black bag that held the counterfeit. Across the chamber, the alcove she had broken into was sealed up tightly. She absolutely remembered breaking in, but now the trap lock was back in place as though she had never managed to spring it.

  It was all so puzzling. And although she couldn’t understand it, she knew that Ard was somehow behind this baffling turn of events. It was obvious that Quarrah’s ridiculous attire was in place to allow her to escape unnoticed. Ard would be furious if she squandered the opportunity.

  Casting one final glance at the mess of Regulators around the throne, Quarrah turned away, walking calmly for the hallway. She kept her face downcast, shoulders squared, and Reggie helmet pulled low.

  Everyone had their attention fixed on the struggle at the heart of the throne room. All they saw was another Reggie coat.

  In a moment, Quarrah was away. She rounded a corner and let her anxious breaths catch up with her. She was alone, and her thief’s instinct to run was stronger than ever.

  Fleeing was what Quarrah Khai would do. But this was Ard’s ruse. She had to predict what he would want from her. Dale Hizror’s character was ruined. The first thing people would do was search for Azania Fyse.

  Quarrah needed to return to the service room and change back into her wig and dress. She needed to return to the reception hall looking for Dale Hizror. She needed to act dismayed when word came of Dale’s arrest. She needed to deny any knowledge of Dale’s true identity as Ardor Benn.

  Maintaining Azania Fyse would be dangerous, but it could buy them a little more time. It could provide her another opportunity to return to the throne room and finish what had gone so terribly wrong tonight.

  But, oh, flames, it also meant she’d have to perform at the Grotenisk Festival. She’d have to stand on that blazing stage and silently mouth the words in front of thousands of citizens.

  Maybe getting arrested was the better end of the deal.

  I’m willing to do it. I wouldn’t have come this far if I wasn’t resigned to give myself up.

  CHAPTER

  19

  Isle Halavend paused halfway up the stone steps to catch his breath. Below, the Mooring waterway rippled from a passing raft. The architects really should have considered a better handrail. But then, perhaps Holy Isles were not meant to stay in active service at such an age.

  He began upward again, feeling the Trothian Assassin Blade rub against his upper leg. The terrible weapon was housed in a hardened leather sheath, well concealed beneath his Islehood robes. At her last visit, Lyndel had checked the Grit to make sure it was still packed tightly into the groove between the two halves of the blade.

  Void Grit. A thrust from the weapon would detonate it, clearing a space with tremendous force. Halavend didn’t know how much Grit was packed into the dagger, or how large the blast radius would be. It was a horrifying thought anyway. Homeland see that he never had to use it.

  Halavend felt ashamed for secretly carrying the Assassin Blade. He was a Holy Isle, not some hired killer. But Lyndel had been right about a sense of increasing danger. The sharks were circling. Halavend could sense it.

  He reached the top of the stairs and entered the vast Mooring Library. He wasn’t after books on the shelves today. Lyndel was coming in a few ho
urs, and he needed to give her another allotment of his manuscripts and journals.

  It was prohibited to remove unapproved materials from the Mooring. Halavend would be condemned just for having written these manuscripts, let alone smuggling them out.

  The process of removing them was slow. Halavend and Lyndel had been at it for cycles now. Quickest to go were the Agrodite documents, the first written scripture of the Trothian religion. What Lyndel would do with those writings, he didn’t know, since none of her people had the ability to read them. He supposed they would be reliant on Lander allies in future generations—not an unrealistic hope, seeing how well the races had meshed in just the last thirty years.

  There were no more Agrodite documents to smuggle away, but what remained was, in many ways, even more condemning.

  Halavend steadily made his way past the bookshelves to the far end of the library. There were several tables here, a few younger Isles seated before stacks of books. Behind them, rows of locked cubbies were built into the stone wall.

  Isle Halavend checked the numbers, pausing before locker 32. He fished into the pocket of his robe and withdrew a key, which he used to open the small iron gate.

  The private lockers were available for use by any of the Holy Isles. The Islehood could be competitive at times, despite the Wayfarist doctrine of aiding one another without payment. It was wise to guard one’s research, locking it away at the end of a long day.

  Halavend reached into the cubby, but paused before touching any of his documents. The trip wire was broken. Someone had entered his cubby before him.

  Halavend picked up the broken piece of uncooked string noodle. It was a crude system, but it appeared to work. With careful placement, he made it impossible for the books to be removed without breaking the brittle dried noodle. He could remove the uncooked string, of course, but someone unaware of its presence wasn’t likely to see it in the dim cubby. And if they did see it … well, it was just a string noodle.

  Isle Halavend snapped the already-broken piece between his fingers. Third time this week. Someone was snooping in his locked cubby. Halavend had little doubt as to who it could be. The only individual with a key to each locker was the Prime Isle.

  This was why the dagger strapped to Halavend’s leg felt necessary. Chauster was no longer casually suspicious. The Prime Isle was actively digging for any legitimate reason to see Halavend tried and removed.

  As long as Chauster waited for a reason, Halavend felt he could cover his tracks. It was impatience that Halavend feared. The bodies surrounding Prime Isle Chauster’s treachery hadn’t been fortunate enough to receive a trial. They had gone quietly. One by one, until anyone who might have known anything about the elimination of dragon shell was gone.

  Halavend had moved beyond suspicion. It had been two cycles since Ardor Benn had reported a confession from King Pethredote about poisoning the Bull Dragon Patriarchy. With that confirmation, Halavend and Lyndel had been able to link everything together with full confidence.

  Now Halavend couldn’t decide who he feared and distrusted more. The king, or the Prime Isle? Evidence tied the two together at every point along the path of hidden corruption. The two most powerful figures in the Greater Chain were masquerading as upright Wayfarists, when Halavend knew them to be the basest of Settled souls. Homeland be closed to them. It made Halavend sick.

  Isle Halavend withdrew the books from his cubby. These were not his incriminating documents. These contained bland research, an exposé on Teriget’s detonation of Visitant Grit in 1157. The topic he had told Chauster he was studying last time they had spoken.

  He closed the locker, and turned to walk away. He hadn’t gone five steps when he turned back to the bank of cubbies, his rehearsed expression making it seem as though he had forgotten something.

  Stepping up to the lockers once more, Halavend inserted a key and pulled open the iron gate. His heart raced as it did each time he accessed the hidden documents. An astute observer would notice that Halavend had not returned to the same locker, but to the one directly beside it, using a different key.

  The adjacent locker that Halavend now accessed contained a few loose pages and a dusty book. Groping toward the back, Halavend slid his finger into a notch and pulled aside the false panel. It wasn’t clever engineering, just a plank of wood, painted black and cut to fit the back of the cubby. The lockers were deep enough that many an Isle had rejoiced at finding a lost page or quill, if they went to the effort of detonating Light Grit. Halavend was counting on no such thing happening in locker 33.

  He slid two thin journals from hiding before tipping the false panel back into position. Nestling the forbidden books among his other research materials, Halavend locked the iron gate and strode away from the wall of cubbies, his step livened by the rush of his illegal activity.

  Even in death, she was helping him. Selfless, devoted, Isless Malla. It was her locker that hid his findings. No one knew he had the key. She had been gone more than nine cycles now, Homeland keep her. Had it really been that long? It seemed like yesterday that his young pupil had been at his side.

  Had the Islehood been pressed for cubby space, a locksmith would have been hired to forge a new key or replace the gate altogether. But there were lockers still available, and hiring an outsider to work in the Mooring Library was a process.

  But Halavend had the key. Another secret in a list that seemed to grow endlessly. Isless Malla had given it to him before she departed on her fatal mission. He gritted his teeth. There wasn’t a day that went by that he didn’t curse his poor health and crippling age. It should have been him on Pekal. It wasn’t right that the young should die and the old live on. Though, if Ardor Benn failed, living would mean very little for anyone.

  “Isle Halavend,” called a soft voice to his left.

  He startled, gripping the edges of his research books to conceal the journals in tow. The speaker was a woman. A young Isless with whom he had conversed a handful of times. He turned to face her, finding her eyes bright and eager. The same vigor for life that he had admired in Isless Malla.

  “It’s a blessing from the Homeland that I should see you passing,” said the young woman. “Isless Wyren,” she introduced. “Do you remember speaking with me before?”

  He nodded. Did she think he was going senile? “Of course. What can I offer you?” He tried not to fidget, lest his anxiety make him seem suspicious.

  “I’m writing a document on the Dronodan-Talumon protest against taxation of coffee,” Isless Wyren said. “It took place in 1182. I was wondering if you have any personal insights that I might be able to include. You know, from someone who lived during that time.” She gestured back to a stack of papers and an inkwell she had left on a nearby table.

  “Am I that old?” Halavend remembered the protest from his boyhood years, but what insights could he possibly provide this bright young Isless? Age hadn’t made him wise. It had made him skeptical, cynical, and distrusting.

  The young woman twirled a quill nervously between her fingers, hopeful for advice. Wasn’t this just how his tutelage to Isless Malla had begun? And look how that had ended, Homeland keep her soul.

  “I’m afraid I can’t help you.” Halavend glanced away from the look of disappointment that shadowed Isless Wyren’s face. “Perhaps the information you seek could be found in something previously written. Isle Jadrod wrote a paper that addressed several tax protests through the years, if I remember correctly.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I have read Jadrod’s paper. But I have found that history is best depicted by those who lived through it.”

  “I was merely a boy in 1182. The coffee tax hardly affected me,” replied Halavend. “We’re all living through history. The things happening today become papers and books of future Isles and Islesses. Simply living through them doesn’t give us special insight. Does your presence in the Mooring today qualify you to speak knowledgeably on current topics happening abroad?”

  Halavend’s words were st
raightforward, and Isless Wyren seemed to ponder them for a moment. “I suppose not,” she answered. “There is so much happening in the Greater Chain. I would only be qualified to speak on topics that have affected me directly. Anything else would be secondhand information. And that is no different from reading it in a book.” The young Isless paused. “Like the village in southern Espar. Did you hear what supposedly occurred there last cycle?”

  Oh, Halavend had heard, all right. It was the kind of news he had been dreading for a year now. Ever since his joint-doctrine studies with Lyndel had uncovered the startling truth.

  The village was called Brend, a small farming community on the southernmost coast of Espar. Halavend had never heard of the place until the reports began trickling into Beripent toward the end of last cycle.

  It was Moonsickness. The first ever reported case of the fatal sickness being contracted outside of Pekal. And if the messengers were to be trusted, it wasn’t just a single victim. The entire town had been decimated. A few of the Moonsick victims found their way to the next township several hours’ ride north. Well into the third stage of the sickness, they were killed by a rancher when they fell upon a herd of sheep and began tearing the animals apart by hand.

  Messengers were sent down to Brend, and the reports were horrific. Blind and mute, families murdered each other in a demented rage. Peaceful villagers turned on one another in episodes of psychotic barbarity. Each report listed a different number of Moonsick victims, but the reports were unified on the fact that the entire village was wiped out, leaving the quiet, remote farming community a gory mess.

  “It couldn’t be true, could it?” asked Isless Wyren. “We lit the Holy Torch. Its protection covers even the farthest reaches of Espar.”

  The Holy Torch. What could Halavend say on the matter? The ancient practice was false. Meaningless. Halavend and Lyndel had disproven that doctrine while uncovering a new truth. There was no Holy Torch. Well, in a sense there was, but not as the Wayfarists believed it.