Mask of Poison (Fall of Under Book 1)

by Kathryn Ann Kingsley

  The horse puffed air out of its nose and reached back with its head to nibble on her shoe.

  “Hey!” She poked it in the neck, but she didn’t even know if it could feel her.

  “I think he likes you.” Lyon kicked the sides of his own animal and started down the street, abandoning her.

  “Wait—hold on—” She kicked the sides of Cricket, but he didn’t listen. He seemed intent on trying to eat her shoe. With a growl, she jumped back off the horse-insect and walked around to face him. “All right. Listen to me.”

  Cricket tried to walk away, but she grabbed hold of his bridle close to the bit and held him still.

  She pointed a finger at him. “No, listen. Look. I’m new here. I’m a mortal. I don’t have any of those…” She gestured at her own face, then gestured to the marks that ran down the plates of the horse’s face. “Writing, soulmark, whatever, things. I’m having a rough couple of days. And that’s saying something, trust me.”

  The horse puffed air loudly out of its nose again.

  “Please don’t give me a hard time. We can be friends. I won’t ask you for much, and I’ll do whatever I can to make sure you get fed tasty…whatever it is you eat. Okay, Cricket? Deal?”

  He nodded, bobbing his horns back and forth.

  She blinked. The horse monster actually nodded.

  “Can you understand me…?”

  He nodded again.

  She shut her eyes. Immortal creatures. Being turned into bats. A lunatic king who could command the dead. A floating blue woman. Cities of strange people and stranger monsters…and now insect horses that could understand speech. “Great. That’s just fucking great.”

  Cricket whinnied.

  “Oh, don’t laugh at me.” But she couldn’t help but laugh at herself and at the ludicrous turn of events in her life. She climbed onto Cricket’s back again. She went to take the reins, but then realized it was foolish. He could understand her. Why make him deal with her tugging on ropes attached to his head? “Could you go ahead and follow Lyon?”

  The King of Blood was a long way down the road already. He hadn’t once glanced back to see if she was following him.

  Cricket whinnied again, and Ember screamed as he took off unexpectedly. She grabbed hold of his carapace as he “galloped” down the road toward Lyon. She clung on for dear life, flattening herself as low as she could, and prayed she didn’t fall off.

  Meanwhile, the horse seemed to be overjoyed. He slowed to a happy prance and then a trot as they grew closer to Lyon, and finally let it turn into a walk as they fell into pace beside the man in white.

  He took one look at her and laughed. “First time on a horse?”

  “First time on a giant insect.” She glared at him. Sitting up, she put her hair back into a ponytail and straightened her clothing. “You creatures don’t like to warn me when you’re going to randomly take off or burst into bats.”

  Cricket shook his head, clearly laughing at her again.

  “I get it. It’s fun to tease the inexperienced one. Just don’t make a habit out of it.” She reached down and petted the mane of strange, dark purple hair that grew from the crest of his neck like a normal horse.

  “Ah. You’ve already pieced together that they can understand you?”

  “Wasn’t hard.”

  “You’d be amazed.” Lyon smirked. “Many people go hundreds of years of life without discerning that fact.”

  “I tend to talk to inanimate objects and animals.” She shrugged. “They were the only things I had to talk to for the past few years. When I asked Cricket a question and he answered, it was pretty easy to sort it out. How is it that they can understand us? Magic?”

  Lyon looked away his expression troubled again. “Yes. In a manner of speaking.”

  “What aren’t you telling me?” She leaned forward to try to keep eye contact with him.

  “Nothing important, I promise you.” He waved off her concern. “I’ll tell you when we reach our destination.”

  “Which is where, exactly? You never did really tell me.” She paused. “Although I guess it doesn’t really matter when I don’t know where we are. Or who anybody is. Or how anything works. I guess you could tell me we were going to the moon and it’d be all the same to me.” She chuckled. “Still nice to know, I guess.”

  “We are going to the estate of another royal.” Lyon’s tone had grown grim again. “We are going to meet with Aon, the King of Shadows.”

  15

  Lydia plucked another shard of glass out of Aon’s chest and dropped it into the porcelain plate he was holding with a quiet tink.

  “Ow.”

  Tink.

  “Ow.”

  Tink.

  “Ow.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Stop being dramatic.”

  “You’re terrible at this. Weren’t you a nurse?”

  “I was a forensic autopsy technician.”

  “Ah, yes, I remember now. And your lack of precision makes much more sense.”

  She pulled another piece of glass from his chest with the tweezers. It was a long thin one, and she made sure to take her time with it and glared at his metal masked face the entire time.

  He hissed in pain. “Point taken, my dear. Do not taunt the surgeon at work.” He leaned his head back against the pillows of the lounge in his library.

  “You’re just grumpy you were under that chandelier when everything dropped.” She smirked. “And you’re taking it out on me.” She plucked another piece of glass out of his chest and dropped it into the plate.

  “I dislike being made a fool.”

  “The chandelier wasn’t aiming for you.”

  “Wasn’t it, though?” Tink. He growled. “Ow.”

  She laughed and leaned forward to place a kiss against the smooth metal cheek of his mask. “Cheer up. I’m almost done.”

  “I am also ‘grumpy’ because there has been a cosmic upset in our world, and I lost precious time discerning what had transpired when I was crushed to death underneath the weight of my own décor.” He began tapping the pointed nails of his black metal claw on the back of the wood trim of the sofa, pinky to pointer, over and over again. The telltale sign of an irritated King of Shadows.

  Lydia always found the fact that he kept his metal claw—a prosthetic to replace his missing hand—utterly fascinating. And it was the single thing that, against all proof to the contrary, showed that he had regret for what had happened four hundred years ago. Or that he ever felt any regret for anything at all.

  He claimed that he kept it because he enjoyed the certain something that having a metal claw for a hand gave his appearance. But she knew he carried the scar of Edu’s death. He would never admit to it, but she knew.

  She saw it in his quiet moments. She knew how to read him, even when he wore his mask. Four hundred years of being with someone would do that. They couldn’t ever be officially married, but if the two of them weren’t husband and wife, she didn’t know who was.

  “What?” He lifted his head to look at her. “Are you done?”

  “No. Just thinking.” She went back to carefully plucking the glass out of his chest. The chandelier that had hit him had been an enormous, elegant piece made of cast iron and a great deal of stained glass. Now, much of that stained glass found itself embedded in Aon’s chest and arm. She had already plucked the biggest pieces out. He’d heal eventually, but it would take much longer and be far more annoying if all the glass bits were still in him when it happened.

  “You have that smile on your face again.” He tilted his head, the dark tendrils of his hair falling along the equally black mask he wore. “What are you thinking on?”

  “You. Us.”

  “Are you worried?”

  “About what?”

  “That the world seemingly toppled. That we cannot fold through space. Indeed, that much of my magic seems unstable at best, unworkable at worst.”

  “Mine seems intact. I know that doesn’t help your problems.” She
shrugged. “Of course, I’m worried. But it won’t be the first time my world’s been rewritten, don’t forget. We’ll figure out what’s happened, and we’ll deal with it. Like we always do.”

  “Ah, the words of the optimist. How charmingly naïve.” He leaned his head back again. She had insisted he take his shirt off. Not just because she enjoyed the view of the sea of black ink that ran over his body, but because it honestly did make plucking the glass out of his chest and arm that much easier.

  Someone knocked on the door of the library. “Come in,” she called.

  The door swung open, and in strolled Navaa, Aon’s second in command, elder, and regent. The tall, dark-skinned man with the half-mask fashioned into the shape of a skull smirked sardonically at her. “How’s the patient?”

  “Conscious and irritated, Navaa,” Aon replied through a growl. “Mind yourself.”

  Navaa bowed his head. “Apologies, my king. It was meant to be candor with Lydia, not as an insult to you.”

  “I am aware. You two do like your sarcastic banter.” Aon sighed. “To answer your question, I am as I said—conscious and irritated. What have you to report?”

  “The estate is in…well, pieces. We’re working quickly to repair it all, but we are owners of a great deal of glass.” Navaa shrugged up a shoulder. “It seems that some of our magic is still functioning as usual. But we have no means of getting or receiving word from the other royals.”

  “I told you we should have launched satellites,” Lydia mumbled. “Cellphones would have solved this.”

  “Except for the fact that if our world has shifted as I suspected, it would have rendered such trinkets useless.” Aon was back to tapping his clawed metal fingers on the back of the sofa. “Fetch me a compass, Navaa.”

  “A compass?” The elder raised his eyebrow. A long, silent, and deadly masked stare from Aon was enough to send Navaa to a stutter. “Yes, sir. Immediately. Should we send a rider to Yej?”

  “No need. I have sent our fastest scout.”

  “You mean spy,” Lydia interjected. She plucked another piece of glass from Aon’s chest. She only had a few more to go. “You sent your spymaster, didn’t you?”

  “It’s amazing how good spies are at scouting. It’s almost as though they are exactly the same thing only at two distinct levels of difficulty.” Aon chuckled. “And yes. I sent Maeve.”

  “Hopefully, she brings back more than a severed head this time.” Navaa walked toward the exit, shaking his head. “I’ll be back in a moment.”

  Lydia groaned. “Great. It took me an hour to convince her the severed head couldn’t talk if she didn’t let the guy heal. I hope we get back useful information.”

  “I trust her. Which, for a spymaster, is an uncommon thing. She is worth the occasional psychotic episode.”

  “If you say so. I could fly there just as fast as she can jump through shadows. I can still change shape.”

  “But you are a bit more conspicuous as a giant, ghostly, glowing winged snake, my dear. If something has gone wrong, better we be discreet.”

  “Why do you think this is a bad thing?”

  Silence.

  “Yeah, okay, you’re right. Nothing good comes out of shit like this in Under.” She plucked the last piece of glass out of his chest. “There you go.”

  “Thank you, dear.” He sat up and, with a flick of his clawed hand, he was fully dressed once more. He placed the plate of bits of glass on the coffee table and combed his fingers through her hair. “I appreciate the help.”

  “Anytime.” She kissed the cheek of his mask again.

  “Pah. You know you leave lip marks when you do that.” He pulled a handkerchief from his vest pocket and began to wipe at the metal.

  “You think it’s not on purpose?” She grinned and leaned in close. “Gotta mark my territory on the regular, or someone’ll get ideas.”

  “Oh, yes. Because the ladies are veritably breaking down my door to steal me away from you.” He wound an arm around her waist and pulled her against him. “Methinks if you have not had a challenger yet, you’re unlikely to in the future.”

  “Who says I haven’t just killed them all? Dropped them into the Pool of the Ancients?”

  “Why, how wonderfully devious and wicked a thing for you to do. And here I thought I could not possibly love you more.”

  The door clicked open. “Should I come back later?” It was Navaa.

  Lydia laughed and lowered her head. “No, no. Something’s very important about this compass.”

  “I had to go dig it out of your laboratory.” Navaa crossed the room and held out the small brass compass on a chain to Aon. “I’m sorry to say it’s…uh…a mess.”

  “I did not feel the need to bolt down my house as if we lived on a ship… forgive me for my lack of foresight.” Aon took the compass and flipped the lid open. He watched it for a second, grunted, and shut the lid once more. Standing, he strolled to his fireplace. The glass and furniture of the house had suffered in the sudden drop, but the bones of the estate were fine. He snapped his fingers, and the wood that the servants had restacked burst into flames.

  “Uh-oh. He’s gone full fireplace. That’s never a good sign,” she muttered to Navaa under her breath. The Elder of Shadows had to turn away and cover his face to hide his grin just in case Aon turned around, but the warlock seemed lost in his thoughts already.

  “Are you going to tell the rest of us?” Lydia got up from the lounge and walked up behind the King of Shadows. Aon had his clawed hand folded at his back, and his other, flesh-and-blood hand resting on the mantel.

  Aon let out a quiet hum, but otherwise stayed silent. It meant the gears were turning too quickly for him to voice his thoughts. It would take a second or two. Lydia sat down in the chair by the fire, enjoying the warmth.

  She had spent so long on her peninsula in the south where it was always tropical and warm that every time she came up to the capitol or to Aon’s estate, she always found herself shivering. And traveling up to the far north to visit Evie was an adventure in cold and misery. It was a good thing her best friend loved coming down to the peninsula to lie around on the beach.

  Even if it was less sunny than the ones back home on Earth.

  Now and then, Lydia missed the sun. But the one time she had seen it rise on Under had made her learn to never, ever want to see it again.

  “The poles have shifted.”

  Lydia looked up to Aon. The firelight was glinting off the perfectly smooth surface of his mask. Even for as long as they had been together, she would never stop being impressed at how eerie and impressive the man could look without trying. “Excuse me?”

  “The poles. They have shifted.” He tossed the compass to her.

  She caught it and, flicking it open, looked at the needle.

  “This room faces magnetic north. The table runs north and south along that line.”

  Lining up the compass with the table, she looked down at the needle. It was pointing a good twenty degrees to the left. “Whoa…that’s…that can’t be good. What does it mean?”

  “It means the size of our world has changed. It means that…I believe it has grown.”

  “How do you know? It won’t be the first time our world has shrunk.” Navaa walked to the bar by the wall to pour himself a drink.

  “With the yellow moon in the sky, and the disruption of our magic, I have all the proof I need. Besides, if our world had shrunk, we would be twenty degrees off in the other direction, wouldn’t we?”

  “I…guess.” Navaa sipped his drink.

  “What’s more is that I can sense the change. I am linked to the Ancients in a way that you can never be. Not only has our world grown, not only do we have a new moon…but we have a new royal as well. I would wager my life that there is now an eighth house.”

  Lydia groaned. She knew better than to argue against Aon’s hunches. He was almost always right. “Fuck.”

  Aon’s hand tightened on the mantel. “The question only rem
ains…who is this new king or queen, and how, precisely, do they intend to kill us all?”

  She went silent for a long moment. She wanted to argue that the addition of a new royal didn’t mean that they were out to kill everyone. It didn’t mean that there was going to be tragedy and ruin on the horizon for all of Under.

  But she knew that wasn’t true. She knew it was just hopeful thinking.

  She had long learned that, in Under, one should always expect the worst.

  Because chances were, it was worse than that.

  Instead, she shut the compass and stood. “What do we do?”

  Aon finally turned from the fire. “We prepare for war.”

  16

  Lyon wasn’t much of a talker, Ember decided.

  They had been riding for an hour, and he had yet to say anything to her.

  It seemed like kind of a waste to be in someone’s company and not talk. She had spent two and a half years in almost total silence with no one to talk to, nothing except the sounds of the world around her to keep her company.

  All she could hear was the quiet thuds of hooves and the chirping and buzzing of insects in the shrubs and trees. The occasional sound of a larger animal broke into the pattern, the sound of creatures Ember didn’t recognize.

  Finally, she couldn’t take it anymore.

  “So, tell me about yourself.”

  “Hm?” Lyon looked as though she had broken him out of his thoughts. “Excuse me?”

  “Tell me about yourself.” She laughed.

  “I’m afraid I’m not quite sure what it is you’re asking me.” His forehead creased in confusion as he pondered the question.

  “I’m asking you to tell me about yourself. Your life. Who you are. You’ve lived so long, there must be something to know about you.” She couldn’t help but grin at the man. He looked so puzzled. “It really isn’t that hard of a question.”