The Uncrowned King

by Michelle West

  Too many damned people here. Children.

  “Jay?”

  She nodded, tried to shake the memory away. It clung. Was it worse to find bodies, or to hear them being made, to see the dead and know that they’d all been far too late, or to hear deaths-in-the-making that she couldn’t prevent?

  Angel thumped her on the back, hard. She bit her tongue, and swallowing the blood—her own—and the curse that followed as she spun round to give as good, or better, eased the shadow.

  Shadow is what her grandmother, long dead, had called memory. What kind of life was it that could make a person think of all memory as shadow? Babaa, she thought, as she tried to recall that old woman’s face as clearly as she could a demon’s victims. The face remained blurred and indistinct, but the voice—that she could hear, with all its aged texture, its low, throatiness, its heaviness, and its odd joy.

  She seldom came this close to home.

  “Jewel?”

  She shook herself again. Happened too often, these days, and it had to stop. Devon waited, more patient with the woman than he had been with the child. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be. Meralonne?”

  “Nothing. Not back yet.”

  “Kiriel?” He wiped his brow with a cloth and looked, if possible, less comfortable in the heat than Jewel felt. The day had started before dawn, for all of them; it would end, if they were lucky, before dawn.

  She shrugged. “Gone up ahead. She won’t start a fight if we don’t—”

  She heard it, then. Not a scream, not precisely. It was a cry of surprise, edged with a pain that wasn’t quite real, but was close. Shock. Confusion. Child’s voice. She had no doubt what would follow, gods, no doubt at all. She’d heard it before.

  “Jewel.”

  He touched her. Avandar never did, but Devon was not often as circumspect in an emergency. They’d been through enough together that he had that right, even now. Surprised her, to think that, but that was all she had time for.

  Her hand was on her dagger, and then her dagger was in her hand, and the crowds that were as hot and sweat-stained, as tired—but not as frightened, not as tense—as she, parted before her. No, not quite. She found the rhythm for walking through it, found the spaces between bodies that moved and bodies that didn’t, found the openings that were left between one step and another. You had to be able to do that, as a thief.

  She was glad that there were things that had roots so deep soft living couldn’t destroy them.

  It tired him, to travel so quickly between one human place and another. He was not used to expending so much of his power, for he did not believe in gaudy display, in intemperate show of strength. It was not for the regard of the Kialli that he lived or struggled or planned; their regard was of little import, one way or the other.

  Immortals rarely worried about the passage of time.

  But time had become a matter of grave urgency.

  In years, the Lord would be ready to ascend with his army; to leave the frozen, rocky crags of the Northern Wastes and take the first step in the long plan that would eventually decide the fate of both man and gods. Years. Not decades, not centuries, not millennia—but a space of human, of mortal, years.

  Every person here, every person who did not suit his current plan and purpose, might live to see the coming of the Lord. And today, in the streets of Averalaan, upon land that formed the barrier and the burial ground of a much more worthy city, there were many of these people indeed.

  It did not suit his purpose to kill indiscriminately, to draw attention to himself or his nature. It rarely had, although when it became necessary, he made no objection. Of the Kialli, it could truly be said that only one was that least glorious of things: practical.

  And that one, Lord Isladar of the Shining Court.

  He had watched—and it was difficult, for Kiriel’s power was strong, if untrained and unsubtle—where he could, and he had seen, clearly, this one thing: Jewel. To get information about her had been difficult, but again, he had seen, clearly, the crest that she bore upon her finger, gold-heavy as humans were wont to fashion things of import. Terafin. ATerafin.

  It was a crest with which he was familiar, and it had led to the information he desired. Jewel. ATerafin.

  She was unlike Ashaf kep’Valente in all things save this: she had somehow made herself a figure that Kiriel could—and worse, did—trust.

  He was angered by it, for he was Kialli, and he had that temper. He had made certain that there were none left—save perhaps the great, stupid beast that had served as her dog—that Kiriel trusted. Not Ashaf. Not Isladar.

  His plan was not to be undone by a mortal whose life, no matter what she might desire or how she might struggle, was nothing more than the sum of a handful of years.

  He knew that she was close; had planned it, just so. Had there not been so many people, he would have arrived early, done his work, and left. As it was, he had had to arrive farther away from Jewel ATerafin than he would have liked. He was properly attired for a human, but he did not sweat with the heat; it was a flaw that he did not have time to correct.

  There. He found the child. Not a young one, which was a pity, but without the use of power to bind and to hide behind, the youngest of children were still too close to their parents to be easily taken. He could kill the parents quietly enough, but that would draw attention unless—again—he used the power that he would need to leave Averalaan quickly. Then, of course, he could kill them unseen; they would die on their feet, quickly and horribly, and there would be no sign of their killer. In streets as penned in with life as these, as hemmed by it, as contained, that would bring other deaths, a cascade of injuries and fear too complete for words—from one small action.

  He had seen avalanches in the North; had caused them infrequently; they were not dissimilar.

  But not today. Not this day. The time would come, and Isladar knew how to be patient. But he did not desire to travel twice, so great a distance, without his Lord’s aid as he had done this day.

  The child was drawn to him; this much he could accomplish with so little power it was natural; there was something in the forbidden that was attractive to children who had been raised without fear. In time, there would be none of those—but he took advantage of it now because it was required.

  He led the child away from its parents. He could not waste the death on people of no consequence, and he knew that if they heard the voice, they must begin their search in earnest, might even reach him before his intended victim did. It must be Jewel ATerafin who responded.

  It was not so difficult a task as that. She was, after all, looking for the kin, and he had them here, at his command. Kiriel was on the trail of one who had been ordered to make himself obvious to her; she would not return in time—and she was the only true danger, if not the only threat.

  He found an alley, long and narrow, and set about it a delicate seeming; gave it an aura of shadow, of subtle menace that would repel without causing alarm. Any who crossed these barriers he would kill outright, swiftly.

  He sealed the alley with his back.

  The child turned, sensing his glamour, his darkness. He saw her eyes widen, saw her smile uncertainly. The smile he offered gave her no comfort at all.

  Come, he thought, as he began his binding spells, come and find me, Jewel.

  With one slow cut, he began to summon his intended victim.

  He wasn’t prepared for her when she came.

  She saw it, of course; saw the dark glimmering that went up about the alley’s mouth. It was a blackness tinged and ringed with violet. The color of illusion; Meralonne had taught her that. But he had not taught her to see the shadows that billowed in violet confines because the shadows weren’t his to control.

  Shadow. Oh, she remembered the deaths. The earth had been the barrier between them,
between the dying and the men and women who desperately needed to help, to fulfill their responsibility—and it had been unbreachable. She could taste it, suddenly, the awful dryness in mouth and throat, the slightly salty tang of blood.

  She’d bitten her lip.

  There were people in the street, and they were safe, she knew they were safe. They let her pass, they let her pass each and every one, and as she approached the mouth of the alley itself, the crowd thinned. She blessed Kalliaris.

  Forgot about Cormaris.

  Forgot about Cormaris until she’d crossed the line that led into the alley itself. He hadn’t expected her, the bastard, hadn’t expected that she would come so soon. She knew it because his back was to the alley’s mouth and when she drove the dagger into the middle of his spine, he didn’t—not quite—have enough time to leap out of the way, over the head of his victim, a girl not much older than ten if Jewel was any judge.

  She’d cut, struck; not home, but it was enough.

  Or it should have been.

  She heard his cry; it was a roar that was suddenly cut away, as if by a sculptor separating stone from stone, essential nature from essential nature, to reveal something far worse: silence, deliberate control.

  She knew the dagger she wielded.

  She had seen it destroy demons before.

  Involuntarily, her gaze went to its blade.

  “Oh, yes,” this creature said. “It is . . . well crafted, little human. You were . . . closer than I expected.”

  Jewel caught the girl by the shoulders; she was bleeding, but the cut wasn’t deep; it was a long one that had pierced cloth and skin in a single stroke. She’d recover. If she got out of here. Jewel intended that.

  She put the girl behind her. “Run,” she said.

  “She cannot,” the creature replied, struggling to speak clearly.

  “The way is barred, Jewel. The only key is your death.”

  They were angry. They were all angry until they reached the alley itself. Avandar was unarmored; he was faster than Devon, and significantly more proprietary. He reached the alley before the last of Jewel ATerafin was swallowed by it. And it was as if she were physically swallowed; she moved through the alley’s shadows and they solidified at her back, blocking all light, all sight of her but the vision that memory provided.

  What had been the entrance into a narrow throughway was now a wall, black as Northern coal.

  Because he was Avandar, he survived.

  Devon could stop on a pin’s head. As blue light crackled and flared, he instinctively threw up both of his arms, crossing them in a clatter of metal against metal.

  Singed flesh and cursing brought them down.

  Avandar was bleeding, and it occurred to Devon, as the domicis staggered and dropped to one knee before bringing his hand to his chest and the ragged edge of cloth that defined its center, that he had never seen the domicis injured before.

  At his back, Angel and Carver skidded to a halt; Jester was caught up by the crowd, somewhere at Kiriel's heels.

  “Avandar?” Carver bent to speak.

  “Get Meralonne,” the domicis snarled.

  Carver turned and ran.

  She had never been this close to dying.

  She knew it, and knew it, the instinctive for once in perfect harmony with the intellectual. But she did not see the blackness or the death itself, and she took what comfort she could from that. She adjusted her grip on the dagger that was her only effective weapon—her only weapon, really—and bent into her knees, readying her weight for a leap or a dodge.

  But he did not approach her.

  Stall, she thought. Stall him for a time.

  As if he were just another power-mad human. As if he were Haerrad, or Marrick, or Rymark, or Elonne. A person of power. A politician who was willing to do whatever it was that was necessary to get what he desired. As if.

  “Don’t you have anything better to do?”

  It wasn’t the question she’d been about to ask. She’d thought to utter a threat of some sort, feeble or laughable though it was. But there; she’d asked.

  His eyes widened, slightly rounding at dark corners.

  “If you wield that dagger,” he replied, “you know what I am. Know that, and you have the answer to your question.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “No?”

  “You aren’t frothing at the mouth like a sharp-toothed madman.”

  His brows, which were dark and thin, rose, and then he smiled. It was a dark smile, but it was edged with genuine amusement. “You have no idea, Jewel ATerafin, how much I wish I could call my brethren to witness this. But I am . . . diminished. You are an interesting human, a foolish one to be so fearless; you are not a power.”

  “I’m not a mage, no. But—”

  He moved then.

  She was moving before the sentence was complete, rolling on the dirt and minimal garbage, cushioning the force of the fall.

  At her back, she heard the scream of the young girl. The alley took it and made it a resonating accusation. She had forgotten. The reason she’d come had been left behind by reflex, by her own desire to survive.

  She froze a moment as that realization hit her; moved again as the creature did, slicing cleanly through clothing and a thin layer of flesh. It hurt.

  But not as much as the whimpering did, because it wasn’t hers. She wheeled, fighting instinctive movement because instinct told her to leap away. The girl was alive, but she was clutching the side of her face; her arm was slick with new blood.

  He was there, and his face was devoid of the triumph she expected to see; she let instinct take her body—if she survived, she’d pay—and bled again for the momentary hesitation. But worse than that: the dagger skittered out of her slashed wrist.

  It only works once. Devon had said it. After that, it had to be cleansed, be reconsecrated. Something.

  She leaped.

  Carver started down the street, started out at a run. His mouth was dry. Jay was all right. She had to be all right. She’d never walked into a trap before.

  He wanted to believe it, but he’d seen Avandar’s face. Heard his voice. Carver wasn’t a grand patrician; he was a part of Terafin, but he hadn’t been born and bred to it. He knew fear, he’d felt it so often; he knew gut-deep visceral fear when he heard it.

  Avandar’s voice held about as much fear as a man’s voice could. And he’d never heard Avandar afraid.

  Get Meralonne.

  No. Carver stopped dead. Jay wasn’t the only one who operated on instinct.

  Stay alive, he thought, as he suddenly twisted round, knocking two soon-to-be-angry women over. Their curses were a comfort.

  Who did you turn to, after all? Who did you turn to when one of your own had been caught by the magisterians, or worse, angry merchants and their guards? You didn’t run to authorities; they’d be piss useless.

  You gathered your own.

  “Jester!” And then, louder, as if his life depended on it, “KIRIEL!”

  Why doesn’t he just finish it?

  She was bleeding from a dozen small cuts; the girl was bleeding from fewer. But while the girl was frozen with fear, as easy a victim as one could ask for, Jewel was in motion, constantly in motion. And it cost her. She couldn’t draw breath unless it were noisy, and it hurt now.

  “Why,” she said, bracing herself against the wall, “don’t you just finish it?”

  “My apologies,” was his soft reply. “I had no intention of prolonging either your misery or my stay.”

  She would have snorted, but she heard truth in the words.

  “The injury you inflicted is the cause of your less convenient death. You have cost me much here, Jewel ATerafin; more, in fact, than any of my brethren, who have both power and time t
o plan, have done in millennia. To kill you quickly, it seems, requires a magic that I can no longer afford to expend.

  “Let me compliment you on your reflexes,” he continued, as he moved slowly to close the distance she’d put between them. “I had thought to kill you quickly regardless.” A smile turned his lips up. “If you wish an end, perhaps you would oblige me?”

  “I’d love to, but you know how it is.”

  “Sadly, yes.” He reached back then, casually; the child screamed.

  Jewel had no weapon, or she would have attacked then. Probably would have died, but she couldn’t do it; she couldn’t ignore him. He had two weapons: the child and the fact that he did not tire.

  And gods, she was tiring.

  Devon ATerafin watched Avandar’s progress. He was not mage-born, not mage-trained, and his sensitivity to magic was more instinctive than real, a thing of imagination that was strong enough, on rare occasions, to cross the boundary of reality.

  This was not one of those occasions. He could see, clearly, that Avandar was struggling with something that was almost physical in nature—but with what, and how, he kept to himself, as he kept most things. His fear was strong, but focused, and this, as his magic, he kept to himself.

  In at least that much, they were alike.

  He waited as patiently as he could. He could feel the sun against damp skin, but at a distance; he was chilled with the need for action. Something caught the periphery of his vision, and he glanced up.

  Haloed by sun’s brightness, he could see a slender figure whose hair traced an upward spike: Angel had reached the building’s narrow height. He lifted an arm, hand palm out, fingers splayed wide. The shout behind Devon’s pursed lips died into the hiss and shout of a crowd of people all desperate to make good during the Challenge season.

  Angel, not ATerafin, bunched up, shoulders blades deforming his back the way a cat’s might have had he been feline, and chose that moment to disappear.