Special Deceptions (The Coursodon Dimension Book 5)

by M. L. Ryan

  Ziqua departed soon after the official week of mourning ended. Despite our rocky beginnings—well, my unfathomable jealousy—I was going to miss Uncle Fry’s mistress. She turned out to be fun and interesting, and had aided Alex and Sebastian well in their quest for information. In fact, her final contribution was a bit of intelligence concerning the one loose end.

  The same operative who shared the original chatter about Kyzal’s not-so-accidental death passed her another tip on Boklym’s whereabouts. Not wanting to leave his capture to anyone else, Alex, Sebastian, and Ulut traveled to a sparsely populated section of northern Alenquai—equivalent to Juno, Alaska, in the human dimension—to grab the bastard. The good news was Boklym was still there when they arrived; the bad news was the coward wasn’t alive. Another suicide, another handwritten admission of guilt confirming everything Xina put in hers. When Boklym got word his puppeteer had died at her own hand, he worried his chances of continuing to elude arrest had grown frightfully slim now that he had no one to pull strings. The plastic bag he taped over his head ended his life, but it prevented us from indulging in the bittersweet taste of revenge we’d hoped for.

  Our quest for some bloody payback denied, life in the palace went back to how it had been before all hell broke loose. Sebastian returned to Tucson to take up where he left off with Rachel, Alex remained overworked with seemingly trivial responsibilities, and I tried to act like a proper gryndin lypsemma. The only people whose lives improved were Tannis and Ulut. Their relationship was still going strong, its success, in my estimation, likely a result of keeping it a secret from the queen.

  As I spent yet another evening alone wondering if Alex would make it back to the suite before I was asleep, I couldn’t quite shake the feeling we were all just waiting for the other shoe to drop. I kept telling myself the unease was a consequence of the extreme changes in my life’s path of late, but there seemed more to it. I wasn’t happy being Hailey, consort to the crown prince. I didn’t like having to be cautious about what I said and did, and I really hated being stared at whenever I went out.

  I’d become so famous that while traveling to my weekly re-inking appointments, I’d taken to wearing disguises to avoid being recognized. Dressing like a guy worked well, until some observant weasel made Myrjix. From then on, we both had to conceal our identities. It got to be such a hassle, I finally gave up and asked Thilzo, the artist, to come to me instead after he closed his store. The new arrangement stopped my adoring fans from rushing me on the street, but it also put an end to much-needed time away from the palace.

  It was during one of those late night, in-house tattoos—a fiery dragon across my back—when Thilzo made an observation.

  “You seem very tense,” he observed, dabbing away the excess blue ink he’d just injected into my skin.

  “No, I’m not,” I argued. “Having a needle repeatedly shoved into my flesh just hurts.”

  “I’ve inked more sensitive spots on you lots of times. This isn’t pain; you were wound tight before I even started.”

  He was right. The back tat wasn’t nearly as excruciating as the flowering vine he’d done across my ribs the week before. “Maybe I am stressed.”

  “You should take up meditation,” he advised.

  “Does that work for you?”

  “No, I use tobacco to calm me down. But I know you’re against smoking, and my girlfriend swears by daily meditation.”

  I chortled. “Yep, nothing like nicotine addiction to settle the nerves.”

  As Thilzo continued to puncture my skin thousands of times a minute, I remembered the serenity of the Adoration Garden. It would be the perfect spot to indulge in a peaceful moment of Zen, as long as Ryxjat didn’t have the same idea. However, I recalled his assistant saying he only went in the afternoon.

  “How much longer?” I asked.

  “About forty minutes, I think.”

  Perfect. I’d be chillin’ before I knew it.

  *****

  The trip to the Adoration Garden proved easier than I expected; even without the map, I only took one wrong turn. Small bulbs along the floor illuminated the hidden passageways, but the section of main hallway immediately adjacent to the garden’s access remained unlit. As I opened the door and stepped into the garden, I halted. Clouds obscured the half-moon, and it was even darker out there than in the hall. It took a minute for my eyes to adjust, but even with the poor lighting, I knew I wasn’t alone.

  Damn it, is that Ryxjat? What’s he doing here this late?

  Much like the last time I’d been there, his back was to me, and I again retreated, hoping this escape would prove more successful than the last. I’d taken only a few steps backward when the breeze picked up and the acrid stench of burnt hair slammed into me. There was only one person who smelled like that, and it sure as hell wasn’t Ryxjat.

  Keem? The bringer of worldwide destruction was dead, right? Incinerated by me along with the pocket of Dekankara he’d fabricated in this dimension. My brain tried to make sense of the seemingly senseless evidence before me when the moon peeked out from a gap in the overcast sky. As the garden brightened, I got a good look at him, and it wasn’t good.

  He took that moment to roll his head as though working out a kink in his neck. The corners of his mouth lifted into what might have been a grimace, they were so puffy and scarred it was difficult to tell if he truly was in pain. Unfortunately, the ruined lips weren’t the worst of it. Mottled skin, stretched tight in some places while hanging in lumpy folds in others, covered what had once been a handsome face. A tiny nub remained where the ear I could see should have been, but his nose appeared mostly unscathed, as did his blue-black hair. If not for the odor, I never would have recognized him.

  I must have done something to announce my presence—an involuntary gasp or maybe he sensed the fear that had to be rolling off me in tsunami-like waves—because he whipped his head around.

  “You shouldn’t sneak up on me,” he chided. The unfamiliar voice sounded like he’d gargled with pebbles; his vocal chords must have been damaged as well as his face.

  “I thought you were Ryxjat.” A nonsensical reply, but it was the first thing that came to mind.

  His eyes twinkled in the moonlight, as though he found my comment amusing.

  “How are you still alive?” I continued, ignoring his apparent delight.

  “Ah, even in my current state of disrepair, you know who I am. This pleases me more than you can imagine.”

  He stood, turning around to face me. The full-on Keem was more shocking than the one side I’d already been treated to. While the right half of his scalp still sprouted a luxurious mane, the left was mostly hairless except for a few tufts here and there. His characteristic fried-hair smell was quite appropriate now, I decided.

  Keem raised what used to be an eyebrow. “Like the new look?” When I didn’t answer, he added, “You should; it is your doing. But do not worry, Hailey. I have mostly forgiven you.”

  Great. What could be better than the partial absolution from a psychotic megalomaniac? Despite my rising dread, I managed to keep my voice level. “You were trying to kill my friends.”

  “Yes,” he acknowledged. “Loyalty is an oft underappreciated character trait. That is one of the reasons I haven’t exacted revenge against you already.”

  Already? My personal terror-alert level, already at extreme, jumped up another notch to oh-my-god-we-are-all-going-to-die. I tried accessing my destructive magic, but the telltale tingling that signaled its rise wasn’t there. Shit.

  “When did you get here?”

  He took a step closer. The narrowed distance between us accentuated the nasty scent, making my eyes water, but I held my ground. His lips twitched—a smile?—and suddenly, the devastated features morphed into an unscarred face I knew all too well.

  Remarkably, it wasn’t Keem’s.

  Standing before me, in all his smug, rat-lipped glory, was Ryxjat. I hadn’t the vaguest idea of what the hell was going on. Had Ryxj
at always been Keem? I knew that didn’t make any sense. Whatever Keem had been up to since I’d torched him—which hadn’t been finding a good plastic surgeon, unfortunately—Ryxjat had been a fixture in the palace. For years before, actually.

  “I can see you are confused.” The gravelly voice was gone; not only did whoever-this-was look like Ryxjat, he now sounded like him as well. I inhaled, but didn’t detect Keem’s unpleasant aroma, just the odd, absence of one typical of the queen’s top aid. “Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?” he continued.

  I didn’t see that I had a lot of choice. If this was Keem, his magical abilities in this dimension were off the charts. He could transport me anywhere, or kill me with a mere flick of his hand. I sat on one of the benches, never taking my eyes off Keemjat. “Do tell,” I prompted.

  “After you transformed into a dragon—kudos on that, by the way—and burned both my lair and me, I awoke sometime later in what I can only describe as an intermediate place between dimensions. I can’t say for sure, but I clearly no longer was in the woods where I constructed the stable access and egress into the third dimension. Wherever I was, I was badly injured and alone. Unable to restore myself with magic, I found a cave and languished there while I healed.

  “Once I was stronger, I ventured out of my refuge to find food and water. A lovely stream was nearby, and as I quenched my thirst, I got my first look at myself. Quite a shock, as I’m sure you can imagine,” he added with a wry grin. “Soon after, I realized my face was not the only part of me altered. I lacked many of the abilities I’d used to such benefit in Coursodon.”

  I prayed he meant he now couldn’t force every volcano in the world to erupt one after the other like a fiery game of dominos, but I decided not to ask for specifics. He seemed like he was on a roll.

  “What I could do, however, which I had never been able to achieve previously, was transform into another.”

  This time, I had to interrupt. “You are Yterixa?”

  “No, pay attention. I don’t change into an animal; I can appear to be someone else. Many in Courso can achieve this for short periods, but I am blessed with the talent to sustain the ruse indefinitely. I need only drop the deception a few times per month to rejuvenate my energy. This is what you blundered into tonight.”

  He paused, narrowing his eyes. “In all the time I’ve been here, I’ve never once been interrupted whilst reverting to my natural state. No one ever comes to the garden at night. What enticed you to do so?”

  “I was looking for I place to relax,” I said sullenly.

  He chuckled, an odd sound coming from the usually humorless Ryxjat. “And how is that working out for you?”

  “Not as well as I’d planned,” I admitted.

  “I was hoping you were drawn here for a more personal reason. We were once so close, I wondered if you might see through my disguise.” He gazed into my eyes. “I have so missed our meetings.”

  I hadn’t. The freak invaded my dreams. I wasn’t sure which was more disturbing—that his demented attraction for me remained intact after I’d almost killed him, or the look of longing now directed at me from Ryxjat’s face.

  “So, you were describing your newfound talents,” I coaxed, trying to get him to continue while I worked on mustering up some magical firepower.

  Keemjat shook off his wistful air. “Yes, yes. It occurred to me that this skill could be used to my advantage. I failed to gain control over the Courso using brute force, but I still had the urge to take over. Once I discovered a way out of my dimensional purgatory, I began to plan.”

  So, he retained some of his previous gifts. He’d always had an uncanny knack for finding portals. I wondered what other powers he kept and neglected to mention. Such as tamping down mine?

  “Why not return to Dekankara?”

  “I could only travel here,” he admitted with a shrug. “I haven’t been able to access either of the other dimensions.”

  That was excellent news; at least humans were safe.

  “At first,” he said, picking up where he’d left off, “I focused on attempting another conquest here by assuming the identity of someone with great power. However, it didn’t take long to realize the foolishness of this plan. The governments here are too well established, and it would be difficult to stage a coup.” Keemjat’s eyes brightened. “However, Dekankara is ripe for the picking. What if I could influence the expansion into the third dimension?”

  “You can’t get in, and no one here has figured out how to get into Dekankara,” I pointed out.

  He smirked. “Not entirely true. You did.”

  While only a few knew about our foray into Dekankara, becoming the queen’s right-hand man allowed Keem unprecedented access to all sorts of secrets. This was so not good.

  “If you know that, then you also are aware we got there because of a freak accident. There’s no real portal.”

  “Not a freak accident,” he chided. “An unusual set of occurrences. If it could be achieved once, it can again.”

  I chose to overlook his assertion, which was the same conclusion I had come to long ago. “So you became Ryxjat. Then what?”

  “We are jumping too far ahead in the story; Ryxjat came later. After much deliberation, I decided to infiltrate the Glyzimutitch Zolmere. Even without a reliable portal, the Alenquai government had no clear policy on Dekankara. I needed to convince a majority of the GZ the necessity to expand into the third dimension. I finally settled on a powerful, well-connected member without a wife or children. While I excelled at mirroring appearance, mimicking personality proved more difficult. I had to spend a significant amount of time observing in order to fool those who knew or worked with him successfully, but I turned out to be quite adept at that aspect as well.” He leaned in closer and whispered conspiratorially, “I strangled him and hid the body in the basement of his house. If he’d had family, they might have stumbled upon his remains, and I certainly didn’t want that.”

  Always practical, Keem was. And how nice not to have to worry about a decaying corpse arousing the neighbor’s suspicions. And I thought identity theft in the human dimension was a problem.

  I recalled the AWOL legislator Rexa had mentioned some time back. “This GZ member, his name didn’t happen to be Plovix, was it?

  Something I’d never seen from Ryxjat swept across the face of Keemjat: approval. “Why, yes. You are a canny girl.”

  “But eventually, you moved on to Ryxjat.”

  “Plovix was useful for a time. Without family, and the added benefit of rumors—all true, by the way—of financial impropriety, Plovix could disappear without much suspicion of foul play. Everyone assumed he’d taken off with his ill-gotten gains.

  “You stole his money, too.”

  “A man has to live,” he asserted.

  “Except Plovix and Ryxjat.”

  He ignored me, focused on his tale. “The Syzbasti faction of the GZ was already of the same mind as I; they’d sent the team to investigate the remains of my lair. I soon realized, however, no matter how many of the GZ I persuaded to my line of thinking, policy would never change unless the royal family changed their position. They may not have any real power to enact laws, but the majority of the government, and the people, for that matter, hold their opinions dear. I became Ryxjat a few months ago. This provided unrivaled access to the queen, but every time I felt I was making headway, Kyzal would argue against me.”

  He said, “Kyzal” with such venomous indignation, I had a good idea what came next.

  He killed Kyzal because he was better at persuading Rexa? The rest of his explanation was unbelievable enough, but this made no sense whatsoever. “If you can change your appearance, wouldn’t it have been easier just to become Kyzal?” Or Rexa, for that matter.

  “Of course. However, my ability to appear as another is not infinite. I can alter my facial features and my voice, but I cannot change my overall body size. Povix and Ryxjat were both close to my height and build; Kyzal was much taller and
more muscular. The dissimilarities would have made it much more difficult to fool people.”

  That answered my unspoken question about Rexa, too. Height disparity aside, Keem would have a tough time pulling off female. Something bothered me, however, something that made me think he was still lying.

  I pointed to his fake hand. “You claimed you couldn’t alter your body enough to pass yourself off as Kyzal, but you managed to do a pretty good job with Ryxjat’s missing hand.”

  “Sometimes sacrifices have to be made for the greater good.”

  As he spoke, Ryxjat’s face changed back to Keem’s, and he glanced down at his right hand. Or, where his right hand should have been. It took a minute of staring at Keem’s stump before the grim truth took hold.

  “You had your hand cut off so you could play Ryxjat?” I gasped.

  “And risk a witness? No,” he said calmly, in Keem’s ruined voice. “I did it myself.”

  Gruesome visualizations of how that might have gone down made me sick to my stomach. The whack job lopped off his own hand. Keem was even crazier than I imagined.

  So many more questions crowded my mind I didn’t know what to ask next. In the interest of distracting myself from his admission of self-amputation, I settled on, “How did Xina get caught up in this?”

  If Keem knew he’d completely freaked me out, he didn’t let on. He reverted back to Ryxjat—albeit taking a bit more time than his last metamorphosis. “I hope you don’t mind, it is easier to speak while in this form. Anyway, back to your question. Kyzal was suspicious of the Syzbasti’s attempts to sway the queen long before I entered the scene. He became guarded and even held meetings in out-of-the-way places to avoid being spied upon.”

  Like ours in the abandoned missile silo outside Tucson so many months before. I’d always wondered why he chose such an odd location. Turned out his paranoia was justified. “What does that have to do with Xina?”