by Beth Cato
“Something feels very wrong here,” Rivka whispered.
“There’s a reason people say it’s haunted.” Mr. Stout shrugged.
Octavia’s skin prickled with sudden heat. She quickly backstepped, tugging on Rivka as she did. “Magus,” she hissed. At least it won’t be a Caskentian infernal. The city’s wards are a blessing in that regard.
Mr. Stout immediately stepped behind a tree. She caught a glimpse of the Vera concealed against his wrist.
Octavia breathed in, willing her senses to extend. The smell struck her then, that particular ozone scent. “An aether magus.” She had to get out of range before the newcomer sensed her own magic. She turned down a side path, hugging her satchel a little closer. Rivka’s footsteps followed right behind. Through the bushes, she saw a tall shape.
“Who’s there? Pally?” a woman’s voice called.
She already sensed me. Blast it! Octavia walked faster, trying to lose the magus. Up ahead was a gray building, but a different sort of gray than the rest. Its stones contained the iridescent shimmer of heavy enchantment, same as her medician robes.
The hue and cry of blood caused her to stop in her tracks. Rivka bumped into her. The laundry basket dropped with a thud. Octavia turned. Blood wailed, its agony pouring, protesting as it spilled onto the ground.
“No, no, no,” Octavia whispered, breaking into a run.
Mr. Stout was wiping his knife clean on the aether magus’s skirt. The woman was folded over on the side of the path, throat slit. The blood was black in the absence of light. Octavia lifted her satchel strap over her head.
“No,” he said. “She was going for that.” He motioned to an alarm bell about ten feet away.
“I can heal her and the Lady will keep her unconscious—”
“You bring her back, I’ll kill her again. We don’t have time to waste.”
Oh Lady, what have I done by coming here? Behind her, Rivka made an odd crooning sound in her throat.
“You don’t know how long I’ve wanted to do this.” Mr. Stout spun the knife in his grip. “Now I can. Now I won’t be coming back here again. You two get along to the vault. I get to resume my old guard duties.” He grinned. Heart slightly accelerated, not panicked at all. He’s . . . enjoying this. “Don’t dawdle now.”
She should hurt him. Stop him. Her fists clenched with the yearning for her capsicum flute. Oh Lady, they hadn’t even gotten inside the vault yet—as far as she knew, it could all be books or the items of the Tree, nothing with the kind of value he anticipated. The war broke his mind. He’s the gambler, betting it all because a lucky pink-nosed cat crossed his path.
Mr. Stout’s grin widened. “Let’s be honest now. You told me how I can get into the vault. Do I really need you along?” He didn’t aim the gun but she knew the tension in his muscles.
“Your mother wouldn’t appreciate that.”
“My mother. My mother has never really appreciated anything I’ve accomplished, so this would be nothing new. Now go, you two. Get in the vault, find me something good. I’ll be having more fun out here.”
She stared him down a moment more and then turned away, brisk steps taking her back toward the vault. Tears blinded her. “Lady,” she whispered. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Another innocent like the soldier in the buzzer. Be with her. Ease her passing.” Rage burned in her lungs.
Rivka panted beside her. “How are we going to get inside if he’s back there?”
Octavia almost stumbled. “You don’t know?”
“Know what?”
“He’s your father.” As soon as the words emerged, she regretted them. He intended her to find out now, like this. Why?
“No.” It was almost a yell. “He can’t be. I knew my father. I . . . thought I knew him. He . . . he died at the northern pass. The zyme poisoning.”
Oh Lady. He was one of mine, one I failed. “How did you end up in the bakery?”
“After armistice, a man lived up on our building roof. I—I didn’t know him as Mr. Stout then.” Emotion thickened her voice, quickened her song. “The building burned. My mama . . .”
Fire. Octavia blinked back tears as she walked. “I’m sorry. I lost my parents in a fire, too. Waster airship conflagration atop my village.”
“Oh.”
“He took you in after . . . ?”
“Yes. He just gave me the shop and said live here, work here. Mama used to bake bread out of our flat. Frengian sweets, Caskentian loaves, Mendalian flatbreads, she did it all, taught me. That’s—that’s where I’ve been since.”
Octavia slowed down as they approached the vault. It shined, even with only scant glowstone lights scattered throughout the garden. Smooth marble pillars lined the portico, the tops and bottoms carved into snarled roots. The roof was steeply peaked, like a building up high in the Pinnacles where winter snow fell by the foot. Something chattered in the eaves. She wanted to think it was a sentinel gremlin looking after her.
“The vault. I never thought I would see it myself,” Octavia murmured. Please, let there be something in there. Don’t let this be futile like Mr. Cody’s library. An innocent woman just died for this.
Within arm’s reach of the iron door, the ward sparked against her skin. Menace resided in the enchantment, like a silent, poised guard dog breathing on her face. If she reached forward, she’d likely lose her hand, or worse.
Blood magic. Not evil, but powerful. The protection exists for a reason.
Devin Stout. He’s a coward. He’s been here before, maybe he’s seen what contact with the enchantment does. That’s why he sent us.
“What do I do?” asked Rivka, her voice small. She stopped beside Octavia.
“Hold out your hand. An enchantment like this will challenge you. You’ll probably feel a flare of heat, maybe even some pain. Don’t scream. Don’t run. Grit your teeth and bear through. You’re strong and you are of royal blood. It’ll know you.”
“I’m of royal blood.” Rivka sounded dazed. Loops of pale hair draped from the sides of her servant’s cap. She extended a hand and gasped. Octavia looked between the girl and the building. Please, Lady, let this be the right thing. Let good come of us being here.
Heat flashed from the building—a sign of the enchantment’s great potency—followed by a small pop. The door opened as if someone had turned a knob. Rivka looked at Octavia, eyes wide. The menace in the air disintegrated.
“It . . . it talked to me. It welcomed me. I—I really am royal.” She shook her head. “It asked who was with me. I told it you were a friend. It said it’d know if we were here for ill intent.”
Octavia had little experience with enchantments like this. Maybe the magi who laid the ward were bluffing. In any case, the vault was letting her in, so she wasn’t about to quibble. Rivka set down the laundry basket and pulled a glowstone torch from within the layers. They entered side by side.
The blackness was as viscous as oil. No glowstones. Certainly no electricity. Rivka panned the weak yellow light around the open space. The floor crunched underfoot—the tiles had deteriorated even more than the pathways of the garden. Shelves had collapsed inward, random spikes of wood still nailed in place. Octavia touched a piece of wood. It was soft, fibrous like heskool root. It practically dissolved at the pressure of her fingers.
“What happened here?” she whispered. Had to whisper, in the stillness and sanctity of such a place. Her boots found something soft—piles of dust. Considering the placement beneath the shelves, she imagined it to be the remnants of books. Despair clogged her throat.
“Miss Leander.” Rivka’s voice was high. “I think something moved back there.”
Octavia’s eyes followed the beam of light. A new body’s song met her ears—weak, distorted, like nothing she had ever heard before. A body in death wailed and blared, and this body did just that, tiredly. It was a s
ymphony forced to play the same dirge for years on end. A stench grew stronger, closer. Rivka whimpered and stepped back. Octavia grabbed her hand and a firm hold of the torch.
“Who’s there?” she called. She clenched the torch, ready to wield it as a cudgel. What’s there?
“Who here is of my blood?” The voice creaked like settling floorboards.
Cold chills trickled down Octavia’s spine as her tongue struggled to form syllables. “ . . . I asked first.”
The laughter was as brittle as the stones underfoot. A figure stepped into the faint light, a man as tall as Octavia. Pallid skin stretched over a naked body that was scarcely more than bones and sinew.
“I am King Kethan of the Fair Valley of Caskentia,” he said. “And who may you be, m’lady?”
CHAPTER 13
King Kethan. She took in his wretched condition and everything about this place, and she couldn’t doubt him. Somewhere in the back of her mind she heard the echo of Mother’s voice: If you should ever meet the King and Queen . . .
Heeding the memory, she bowed her head and curtsied low.
“Your Majesty,” she murmured.
“M . . . Ma . . . Majesty.” Rivka’s voice emerged as squeaks as she followed Octavia’s example.
“Rise.”
She did, biting her lip as she focused the light to the side of him so as not to blind him or highlight his nudity. He reminded her of mummified soldiers she had seen in the Pinnacles—boys who had gone missing years or months before in a previous bout of war. At that elevation, everything dried out. Skin sucked in close to the bone. Teeth were bared by curled-back lips. The King’s body had grown emaciated in such a way. The visible spaces between his ribs were deep enough to swallow fingers, and his lips parted slightly in a permanent grimace.
“I beg your pardon for my shameful state of undress, m’ladies,” he said as gently as he could. His voice resembled metal wheels on gravel, his accent lilting and Mercian. “By your reaction, you did not expect me. I gather that you were not sent here by Evandia.”
“No. No, we weren’t.” Octavia’s brain felt numb.
He looked at Rivka. “You, sweet child, look like you are my kin. What is your name?”
“My . . . my name is Rivka. I ju-just found out I’m your great-granddaughter.”
“Are you now? Has so much time passed? ’Tis impossible to tell in this place.”
Octavia took a steadying breath. “Your Majesty, my name is Octavia Leander. I’m a medician. I am also good friends with your daughter, Allendia, who now goes by the name of Viola Stout.”
A strange choking sound escaped his shriveled lips. “Allendia . . . lives?” Light as a blanket, he crumbled to the ground. The strangeness of his song grew more erratic.
Stupid, stupid. Of course he didn’t know she was alive. Octavia dropped to her knees. His song baffled her. She didn’t know how to understand it—to understand him. She tugged off her glove and pressed her hand to his arm.
Her awareness of the world shrank to a blip of light against midnight. His heart, a frail, poisoned thing. Everything inside him was toxic, discolored, foul, worse than any concoction stewed by the Wasters. And yet he existed, a soul encased in flesh. His stomach had shriveled like an apple left for weeks in the sun, but it wasn’t empty. An odd growth rested there, a cancer of a different sort, and most definitely not of his body.
Octavia slammed back into her own consciousness, dizzy.
“Miss Leander? Miss Leander?” Rivka’s voice was frantic at her ear, her slender hands clutching her shoulder.
“I’m here. I’m well.” Disoriented as she was, she managed to tug the glove on again.
“Tell me of my daughter, please.” King Kethan’s skeletal hand grabbed her arm, his wrinkle-lined eyes moist with emotion. She resisted the urge to jerk away, afraid of renewed direct contact with him.
“She’s about sixty now.” Older than her own father. King Kethan is emaciated and looks ancient at a glance, but he’s not. Rattled, she forced herself to continue. “She has a bold spirit. She can talk off anyone’s ears. She loves novels and ciphers, and has written dozens of books herself. She married a book publisher and has two children—”
“Of course she did, my clever girl. She would know to marry the source of her greatest joy.” He released his hold and leaned back, smiling. The rictus made her shiver.
“Your Majesty, I . . . how did this happen? You . . . everyone thinks you died in the infernal attack on the palace over fifty years ago.”
“I did.”
Wretched as his condition was, there were no burns. He was unblemished by fire, the same way Alonzo was after being healed by the Lady’s leaf.
Octavia pressed her fingers to her lips as she looked around the vault full of rot and dust. “Oh Lady. The leaf. They used a leaf on you.” Is this what the leaf does to a person? It prevents them from ever dying? The horror caused her to clutch a fist to her stomach. Alonzo, ending up like this? And that babe? What will happen to the babe?
Faint sounds carried from outside—scuffling, yelling. Rivka walked toward the door.
King Kethan frowned. “You know about the Lady’s leaf?”
“Viola—Allendia—told me. Your Majesty, is anything else in here? Has it all . . . ?”
“Rotted? Yes.”
Octavia took a few breaths to compose herself. Even if we reach the Tree, I won’t know what is happening to me, or what may work as a cure. Here I hoped that the illogical pull to the vault had some meaning, but now I need some new vision or clue. And Alonzo and the babe—I won’t know what can be done for them either. If anything.
“I had hoped for books about the Lady and the Tree, information. Things are happening. The Tree has just become fully visible—”
“It has? Oh God. At last. I must leave this place. I must go there.” King Kethan stood.
“He’s killed more guards,” called Rivka, leaning inside. Octavia nodded to herself as everything clicked together like teeth in a cogwheel. I am here for a reason. “Your Majesty, this can’t be a coincidence. Come with me. We’ll go to the Tree together. Rivka! Pull out some clothes from that basket.”
At the doorway, King Kethan paused and then stepped beyond the threshold. Octavia followed. The door closed itself. The ward flared into place as if they had never entered.
“Here, Your . . . Your Majesty,” said Rivka. She held clothing out to the King. He was paying no heed, staring up at the mottled gray skies over Mercia, tears streaming down his cheeks. His grief, his awe, was a palpable physical sensation within his body.
“I have not been outside since I awoke,” he whispered. “ ’Tis beautiful.”
After fifty years in a tomb, even Mercia’s murky skies and dismal gardens are paradise. “Your Majesty, we need to hurry. Let me help you.” Octavia tossed the torch back to Rivka. She draped a white robe over his shoulders. It fit him like he was a toddler playing dress-up in adult clothes. She managed to haul up the hem and tie the waist so that he wasn’t likely to trip.
He looked slightly less ghastly in the scant light outdoors. His face was gaunt and clean-shaven, skin gray, his stringy and colorless hair draped to the shoulders. The stench of him wasn’t as strong as it had been inside, yet was still very much there. She pulled the hood over his head and grabbed hold of his sleeve to shake him from his wonderment.
“This way, Your Majesty.” He walked faster, distracted as he was. Odd. His bare feet are consistently tender but his skin isn’t tearing or reacting at all. “I can’t keep calling you by your title in public. ‘Kethan’ may also stand out too much.” It was not a popular name.
“You may call me Mr. Everett, Miss Leander.”
Everett. She vaguely recalled that as the old royal surname. She gnawed on her lip. With his shoddy appearance and stench, he didn’t look like a proper ge
ntleman. Perhaps if they played at being family . . . “Would it be acceptable for me to call you my grandfather?”
He considered that for a moment and nodded. “That may be most prudent. Less formality will enable us to blend in more in public.”
Klaxons of blood wailed on the path ahead. Three bodies, still warm. The aether magus had turned cold, her blood viscous and mute. Devin Stout was uninjured. He stood with his gun in one hand and a clean knife in the other, heavily panting. The burn scars in his lungs strained his breath.
“What’s this?” Mr. Stout growled. He pointed the knife at King Kethan.
“This is what we found inside the vault. Everything else is gone.”
“Gone?” he snapped. “You’re lying.” He looked between her and Rivka. He knocked the basket from her hands. The worn reeds snapped on impact with the ground. Clothes and the torch tumbled to the path. He stomped through the tangle of laundry as if to find something hidden. He glanced at the dead bodies, his lips in a grimace not unlike Kethan’s. There was no regret on his face, just raw anger and frustration.
“Was it necessary to kill them?” Octavia hissed.
“Yes. What, you would have had me gag them and tie them to a tree? That takes time and rope, and I had neither.”
“Murder is sometimes the laziest course of action,” King Kethan murmured.
“We need to get out of here,” Octavia said, walking on.
Mr. Stout caught up with her in a few long strides. “How can everything in the vault be gone? Evandia’s not kin of Kethan. How did she even get inside?”
“As a young man, prior to my marriage, I did not behave with discretion,” King Kethan’s voice creaked. “As a result, there were numerous offspring. I acknowledged many and contributed to their upbringing as was appropriate.”
Fifty years locked away without companionship, of course he’s willing to say whatever comes to mind.
And Mrs. Stout would be appalled to know that the tavern footle was fully true.
Mr. Stout stared at the man walking alongside him.