Grim

by Anna Waggener

  “And how is Michael?”

  Uriel’s face hardened. “Fine, I should think,” he said stiffly. “He won the Sickle, but I suppose you’ve heard. If you’d take that as a cue to leave forever and give up your stake in the throne, we’d all be much obliged.”

  Jeremiah gave an uneasy laugh. “You’re mistaken,” he said. “Erika had the Sickle as a gift this morning.”

  “Don’t add lying to your list of sins, Jeremiah. It doesn’t suit a rogue.”

  Jeremiah tilted his head. “I don’t think that anything can quite measure up to kidnapping.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Where are the children?”

  “What children?”

  “The Striplings.”

  “Erika has children? I’m sure the crown would love that. Bouncing human brats popping in for the holidays.”

  “I know that you spoke to them,” Jeremiah said with impatience. “Now tell me.”

  Uriel faltered. His forehead wrinkled as he finally pulled an envelope from his pocket. “It’s not my fault you’ve lost them, Jeremiah. Take your travel papers and stop twittering around my house.” He slapped the letter against Jeremiah’s chest.

  “I mean it, Uri. I need to know where they are.”

  “And I mean it when I tell you that I haven’t a clue.” Uriel stared at his little brother as if trying to read the joke. “Don’t tell me that you’re trying to pull your mother’s magic on me. There’s no amount you can change to make me love you.” When Jeremiah said nothing, Uriel sighed. “Well, go ahead, then. The last I saw of those monsters, they were still walking a pointless circle through the woods under your direction. Really, Jeremiah, I don’t know whether you were trying to drive them insane or ragged, but it borders on heartless.”

  “I was trying to keep them safe.”

  Uriel gave him a dagger smile. “Well, it didn’t help much, then, did it?”

  Jeremiah stared at the oak door as it clapped shut in his face.

  He marched back to the carriage, the traveling license crumpled in his fist.

  “Well?”

  Jeremiah threw himself onto the bench.

  “He said he doesn’t know.”

  “And?”

  He jerked his head back at the window. “And he isn’t lying.”

  Jegud looked his brother over before turning away as well. Neither of them admitted aloud what this meant. If Michael had pocketed Erika’s children without telling his most loyal brother, then the children were never coming back.

  Gabriel waited for Jeremiah. As the brothers rolled down the road to the king’s sixth house, they could make out his profile through the window of his own carriage. His favorite hunter, a pearl gray dog with salt-and-pepper ruff, lay at his feet. They rose, dog and master both, at the advance of Jegud’s coach.

  “Where have you two been?”

  “Visiting Uriel,” Jeremiah said, as Gabriel ducked through the door of his carriage. Jeremiah stepped out to join him. Jegud nodded at Gabriel and then signaled his own driver to move on.

  Gabriel and Jeremiah watched Jegud’s carriage disappear into the city before turning back to each other.

  “Were you apologizing?” Gabriel asked.

  “Hardly.”

  The crown prince looked his little brother up and down. “Are you afraid that you’ll hurt me, Jeremiah?”

  “Is that relevant?”

  “What is it that you know?”

  “No more than you. But I happen to think that it matters.”

  Gabriel shook his head. “I wanted to give you this in person.” He took out a sealed envelope.

  “What?”

  “A permit to stay in the Kingdom. I wrote it myself, after I saw your letter. No brother of mine, recognized or not, should have to go below for compassion. I’m so sorry about this.”

  Jeremiah was still confused over the news from this morning — that Michael’s girl had gotten the Sickle as well. He knew that Gabriel would understand better than any of them.

  “Hadn’t you heard?” he ventured, clinging to his last threads of hope. “Erika won the Sickle.”

  “Everyone won the Sickle,” Gabriel said, shrugging. “It’s just a consolation. Father said that he would be happier to go a widower.”

  “But your coronation —”

  “He plans to go to services.”

  Jeremiah felt as if the breath had been knocked out of him. “No.”

  “I tried to talk to him,” Gabriel said, his voice thick. “He told me that he’s been overlucky. He would rather go now than have that luck run dry. He wanted me to let you know that he was sorry. For everything.”

  “I’ve never blamed him.”

  “Yes, you have, Jeremiah. You’ve always blamed him.” Gabriel pressed the envelope into his brother’s hands. “I’d like for you to be there when he passes. It’s tonight at sundown.”

  “So soon …”

  “It isn’t our choice to make.”

  “Can’t the laws be changed?”

  “He doesn’t want them to be. He’s always been a purist, you know that. He’s always said that rules shouldn’t be distorted once they’ve been written. What kind of a hypocrite would he be if he changed that now?”

  Gabriel climbed back into his carriage. “We’ll see you?”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “You’re always welcome, Jeremiah.”

  “I don’t think that everyone feels that way.”

  “Why shouldn’t you be there on the day your father frees himself?”

  Jeremiah locked eyes with his brother. “Because,” he said, “I’m not so sure that I want to join him just yet.”

  Gabriel nodded. “That was politics,” he said. “Politics are always cutthroat.”

  He dropped the curtain to cover his window and called to the driver. With the crack of a whip, the pair of horses picked up their feet and carried away the crown prince’s private box.

  Jeremiah went around to the back gardens, trying to avoid Erika for a few minutes more. He was afraid to face her, now that he knew the worst, especially when his thoughts were filled up by his father. He’d lost her, he knew. She could never forgive him for what he’d done to her, and even if she could, he could never forgive himself. He was descended from a long line of men infamous for tearing apart the women who loved them best, and he now realized that he wasn’t any different.

  Jeremiah wandered down a dirt path, thinking about death. A nip of frost, lingering from morning, hung sharp throughout the air. It had been a long time since anyone except for Simon had come back here. Fishponds and flower beds were scattered over the sweep of hand-clipped grass. The year was too far gone for flowers; their leaves had stiffened up, as if arthritic, and were beginning to lose their color. Winter was a sad season in the Middle Kingdom. Snow never came, just a frost that spiderwebbed the whole city each night and a cold sun that glowed, weak as a fever patient, behind a sheet of white cloud.

  The first time Jeremiah had left the Kingdom in order to collect a human soul, it had been early December in Edo, long since renamed Tokyo. Snow fell thick, coating roads and houses, working its way into shoes and clinging to hair as if afraid of letting go. He’d been so preoccupied, he’d almost forgotten his charge. So this is it, he’d thought. Even their air is alive.

  Jeremiah stood over one of the fishponds, hands deep in the pockets of his trousers. A family of koi floated near the surface: pretty, flecked calicos with black and white, red and gold, each one costing a fortune because life was so precious in the Kingdom. Wealthy families paid in solid silver for birds, rabbits, baby mice, just to feel them breathing. These fish would go to the bottoms of their pools in a few days, trying to survive beneath a sheath of ice. Simon came out each morning and chipped a hole to bring them air, but sometimes it didn’t matter. Jeremiah could remember one season when every fish had died before spring. It was the same year that they had taken his mother’s coffin from the family crypt and m
oved it to the Colonies. The stone they gave her was inscribed with her name and nothing else. Jeremiah had visited a few times after the interment, and, once, he’d used his knife on the soft sandstone to carve a picture of the emblem that his stepmother had always worn, and that Martha had fished from his birth mother’s sheets, and had kept for him until he was old enough to understand. A thin ring crossed by a pair of sickles.

  Now it was only a picture, less than symbolic, because his father had taken the meaning from it that morning when he’d sent away those charms as if they were immaterial. As if they had always been immaterial.

  “You’re going to the service tonight.”

  Jeremiah turned. Selaph stood behind him, as still as one of the bronze garden statues.

  “I haven’t decided,” Jeremiah said.

  “You’re going, Brother.”

  For the first time, Jeremiah realized that Selaph had always been sidelined by his own silence. The brothers hardly ever considered him, because he had given them no reason to. He was soft-spoken, and what he did say was always noncommittal. He treated all of his brothers as if they were older than himself, letting them find their own way and, more often than not, letting them make his choices for him. It was because he never gave absolutes that they had gotten used to walking all over him, and because he never seemed to mind that they had never even noticed.

  “Why should I go?” Jeremiah asked.

  “Because Michael will be there,” Selaph replied. He made it sound so simple. Predetermined.

  “And when have I ever wanted to see Michael?”

  “You used to,” Selaph said. “When we were younger. Remember how we thought he was a king? More of a king than our own father?”

  “I do.”

  “Gabriel was the crown. He always shut himself up with his books and his lessons. Michael was …”

  “The second?”

  “Except to us.”

  “Except to us,” Jeremiah mused. “It’s funny how the tables turn, isn’t it?”

  “He has Erika’s children.”

  Jeremiah blinked. His mind felt numb — as if every rational thought had slipped away.

  “How do you … How do you know about them?”

  “Word travels fast here, as you should know by now. I’ve been keeping an eye on them, to make sure no one abused them too much. They’re only children. It’s not their fault.”

  “And you know where they are now?”

  “Didn’t you notice that I was gone from the ball last night?”

  Jeremiah flushed, because he hadn’t.

  “Of course, Brother,” he said. “Of course I did.”

  “He had me take them last night. He didn’t think that it should be someone they already knew. I listened because I thought that it might keep the family together.” He paused. “Both theirs and ours, Jeremiah. They came willingly.”

  “But why would Michael want them in the first place?”

  “He’s baiting you,” Selaph said. “He’s after your soul.”

  Jeremiah felt suddenly cold. He considered the statement for a moment, afraid to speak. “Hasn’t he got his own?” He’d meant for the question to be light, to ease the sting of such a hard situation. Selaph didn’t seem to take it that way.

  “I’m not always sure,” he said. The look he gave Jeremiah was filled with so much sincerity, so much sadness that it forced his little half brother to turn away. “He’s the one who moved the council against you.”

  “I know,” Jeremiah said, surprised with the thickness of his own voice.

  “You never meant for this to happen, did you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “You still love him.”

  “How can I? After what he’s done. After everything that he still means to do.”

  “He’s your brother.”

  “Not by much,” Jeremiah said. “Besides, I doubt he feels the same way.”

  “Are you taking your lessons from him now, Jeremiah? You used to call him a god.”

  “He used to be one, for me.”

  “What happened?”

  Jeremiah looked back at Selaph, unsure as to whether or not he expected an answer. Anticipation filled his eyes, as if he honestly didn’t know. All that Jeremiah could see, apart from Selaph’s expectant face, was an old memory from his childhood. The edges were faded, the sounds were muted, but Michael’s face came through clear. He was young and petulant and jeering as Jeremiah backed himself into an alley. Gabriel had come to save him just in time. If he hadn’t heard the shouting, perhaps it would’ve all ended there.

  “My mother, I guess,” Jeremiah said.

  “That didn’t change who you were.”

  “It did for him.”

  Selaph turned to leave. “You didn’t fall out of favor,” he said. “Michael did.”

  “Father hasn’t ever seemed to think so.”

  “Father’s isn’t the only voice that matters,” Selaph told him, and then he walked away.

  Erika opened the front door before Jeremiah even put his key to the lock.

  “Where are they?”

  “I don’t know how to tell you this, Erika —”

  “Don’t play with me, for God’s sake. You owe me more than that.”

  Jeremiah held back a rush of self-hate. Of course he owed Erika more than this. She deserved more than any of this. He found his voice. “Michael’s holding them,” he said, “to get to me.”

  Erika pressed her fingers against her forehead. “Oh, thank God.”

  When Jeremiah stayed quiet, she dropped her hand. A challenge flashed through her eyes.

  “You are going, aren’t you? I mean you’re not … you’re not just going to leave them?”

  He waved his hands in front of his face, palms out. “No, Erika. Of course I’m not going to leave them. Listen, my father is …” He took a shaky breath. “Is going to free himself tonight.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a service. It’s … complicated.”

  “But I thought —”

  “So did I. I was wrong. I’m going. Michael will be there. Gabriel will be there. I need him to see what Michael’s done. I need him to know. After our father goes … well, then Gabriel will be the one with the power to stop Michael. Gabriel will be the one with the power to send your kids home.”

  “I’m going with you.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  Erika grabbed his hand.

  “This isn’t about me. This is about my children. So yes,” she said, “I’m going.”

  Jeremiah ran a finger over the spines of a row of books, deliberating. He took one down and set it in the wooden crate at his feet. An identical box, already full, waited by the door of his study. Close to that sat a locked pine-and-iron traveling chest with his mother’s portrait perched on top.

  Gabriel’s proclamation lay unopened on the desk, and beside it, a note sealed with a splatter of blue wax.

  Gabriel —

  I’m sorry to write that your first wish as king will never be bidden; I have given up living on anyone’s charity.

  Take Kala, who has lived too long below her place, and let her remind you ever of the boys we used to be.

  Erika I leave also in your care, for I would be a poor host to bring her where I plan to go. I realize that she will not understand. Tell her that I’m sorry for all the pain I fed her. Tell her that I am afraid of being too much my mother’s son.

  I wish for peace, Gabriel, and a long reign to the new Throne.

  Do not look for me.

  Yours, humbly,

  Jeremy

  Jeremiah drummed his fingers on the glass front of the next shelf. At last, he sighed and pulled down a five-volume series. He frowned, thumbing through the pages, and tossed aside three of the books, each making a loud crack as it hit the tile. The last two he dropped into the crate.

  “Are you happy, Mother?” he muttered. He felt the Sickle’s weight in his left pocket, and reached in to feel the cool
metal. “Would you be happy if I wanted you to be?”

  He took down another armload of books. As he stared at them, a breath of air, half-laugh, half-sigh, passed over his lips.

  “For my eleventh birthday,” he said to the first cover, “from Armen Firman.” He flung it against the wall. SLAM. The next book was embossed with red velvet and gold thread. “For my thirteenth, from the dear lady Hildegard von Bingen.” SLAM. “From Gottfried Leibniz — a parting gift.” SLAM. “For top scores in mathematics, from Shen Kuo.” SLAM. “Here, from the queen herself, a very patient woman. She even signed it.” SLAM. “And this.” Jeremiah waved a slim leather-bound book over his head. “This was the first book I ever stole, after Father turned me out.” SLAM. He turned to his mother’s portrait, which smiled softly at him. “I hate you, Mother. I hate you.” He grabbed another book and threw it at the portrait. “I HATE YOU.” Another. The corner broke the canvas, ripping through the side of her face. “You LEFT me.” Another. It sank into the cinched waist of her gown.

  “YOU.”

  Another.

  “LEFT.”

  Another.

  “ME.”

  Another. Gone were her pale fingers, where the Sickle had hung before someone filched it away.

  Chest heaving, Jeremiah brushed his wrist across his eyes. He dropped the books that still dangled from his other hand.

  “Why couldn’t I have been more like you?” he moaned. “You, who couldn’t love your own son?”

  He looked one last time at the clean, empty green of his mother’s eyes and then walked away, the study door thudding shut behind him.

  Jeremiah and Erika arrived at the common just as the sky began to bruise. A halo of crimson hung over the building, a flush cast by the dying sun. A line of empty carriages waited along the sidewalk. Erika recognized Jegud’s black coach and Gabriel’s white one. A pair of trotters drew it today, instead of his hounds.