Between Family: The City Between: Book Nine

by Gingell, W. R.

  “My father has gone all in,” Zero said. “If this gambit of his doesn’t work, the king won’t leave him alive once he’s out of the trial arena. Anyone aligning themselves with my father will also face death or worse.”

  “Yeah, but to be able to do that, the king has to be alive,” I said.

  Sarah, slowly, said, “At what point does he die? The king?”

  “Oooh!” said Morgana, her eyes widening. “That’s a good point. When will he die? Shouldn’t he already be dead, or dying? Daniel, you told me it’s a natural cycle.”

  “What I’m wondering is, is this something he can run away from?” I said, while Daniel was still trying to swallow a mouthful of mince and rice before answering. “You lot say the king usually dies naturally or whatever; when he’s coming to the end of his reign, the heirlings start showing up naturally. None of this lot of the heirling trials has happened naturally; Lord Sero was out there trying to kill every heirling he could get his hands on, and someone else was out there trying to keep as many alive as possible so they’d have a finger in the pie no matter which one came out on top. It was all conniving from both sides. So if this is supposed to be natural, which way around is it?”

  “Does the coming death of the king force the heirlings out, or does the appearance of the heirlings bring about the end of the king,” said Morgana, nodding.

  I crossed my legs beneath me, warming to my question. “We know which one the king believes, ’cos he murdered all the other heirlings in the last we-don’t-know-how-many cycles. He also didn’t die, which makes it look more like heirlings are the deathknell of the king than the other way around.”

  “They’re symbiotic,” Zero said. “You can’t have one without the other, but no one can tell which is the root and which is the fruit.”

  “Well, that’s flamin’ useful.”

  “Your point still stands,” he added, surprising me. “The death of the king historically precedes the heirling trials; there will be a great many people wanting to know how the king’s death will come about.”

  “Reckon the king will be wondering that himself,” I said. “What I want to know is, can we use that kind of advantage to make sure he’s the one that carks it once we get out of here? Because he obviously isn’t considered one of the heirlings: he would have been in here if he was. As far as I see it, we have to make sure that we stay alive long enough to get out of this system with whoever wins, and that the king is pushing up daisies before he gets around to murdering the heirling that wins out.”

  “The heirling that wins out is likely to try and kill us.”

  “Thanks, Eeyore,” I said, glaring at Daniel. “Let’s assume that we manage to survive—or at least hide out—until all the actual competing heirlings are dead—”

  “—Except for Sarah,” Morgana reminded me.

  “Oh yeah, that’s another problem.”

  “Thanks,” said Sarah, but she looked a bit more cheerful anyway.

  “So we assume that we all survive until that point,” I began again, the glimmering of an idea in my mind. “Just hiding out in the house where no one can get at us, because the house is—”

  “What’s the good of staying in the house if the king’s just going to be waiting for us once we get outside?” Daniel said morosely.

  “Because we still don’t die until we get out, you gloomy git,” I told him. “And maybe we don’t have to die then, either. Can’t we…I don’t know, bring him to judgement for meddling in the heirling selection and trials?”

  “There’s no way of bringing the king into any kind of judgement,” Zero said. “Even if one of us was the champion and wanted to call him to single combat or restart a new trial with him joining the surviving heirlings, we’d have to know his name.”

  “That’s all right,” I said. “I’m working on that.”

  “You’re—Excuse me, you’re what?”

  I stared at Zero. “I’m working on it! Got a few ideas about where we might be able to find his real name. That’s one of the reasons I was trying to call Detective Tuatu in the first place.”

  Morgana, grinning, leaned against Daniel and seemed to settle in for the duration.

  “How on earth do you think you’re going to find the name of a behindkind king who has been living for centuries without being challenged by name by anyone Behind?” Zero asked incredulously. “Pet, I know you like to look at things from a positive point of view, but—”

  “Fae always let their guard down when they’re around humans,” I told him. “You know you do.”

  “Not enough to give out their name freely to humans, willy nilly.”

  “You’re the one who told me,” I said, grinning. “You said that heirlings have to have at least a drop of human blood. They gotta have behindkind blood, too; but the human blood is non-negotiable. And the king owns that bit of land right in the middle of Hobart, so—”

  “Behindkind “own” land everywhere,” he said impatiently. “They glamour or trick humans into—”

  “Don’t think you understand,” I said. “He properly owns it: family property that was passed down through generations for as long as Hobart’s been around. In the human world, he has actual paperwork with an actual name on it. Tuatu’s just been having a bit of trouble getting to it to have a gander at the name.”

  Zero stared at me, perplexed. “Why would the King of Behind own a piece of land in a small city centuries younger than he is?”

  “Same reason as every other heirling ended up being an heirling, I reckon,” I said, grinning. “He fell in love with a human for a while. You know, for people who are always boasting about how above emotions they are, fae are pretty flamin’ impressionable when it comes to a pretty human girl or boy. He lived there for about twenty years, as far as Tuatu can tell.”

  “You can’t tell me he gave her a real name!” Daniel said, in disbelief.

  “’Course not!” I said. “But he gave a name to the woman he married, and he gave a name when he bought the land, too. If Ath—if Athelas is anything to go by, he’ll probably have been playing games with those names.”

  Zero, a furrow between his brows, said, “Let’s not discuss Athelas,” and he said it with such harshness that no one else quite liked to say anything at all.

  That was all right with me. I didn’t know exactly what it was I was chasing, after all. I just knew that when it came to fae and names, and fae and humans, the fae didn’t always behave as cleverly and emotionlessly as they liked other races to think. And I was pretty sure that that was where I’d find what I needed.

  I couldn’t sleep that night, but at least I wasn’t the only one. It was just us girls upstairs: Sarah sitting up on the couch with her arms wrapped around her legs like she was afraid something would come after her any second—she probably was—and Morgana, tiny and dramatically white and black, beside her. Chelsea sat on the floor in front of the armchair where Chantelle was curled up in her human form as though she was still in her wolf form, trying to heal. We’d tried to turn the lights off, but that just left us looking at each other in the darkness and that wasn’t much fun, either.

  “You’re worse than the lycanthropes when they’re wolf, Pet,” complained Morgana, at last. “What’s bothering you?”

  “Dunno,” I said, grinning a bit. “What about you? Don’t see you getting much sleep, either.”

  “I don’t like it when Daniel goes out,” she said, with an almost blistering simplicity. “I don’t like him coming back home with wounds and bruises. I don’t like having bad dreams about him while he’s away.”

  “I don’t like having dreams at all,” Sarah said. “North taught me how to stop most of them, but some still get through. Sorry that you’ve got to go out again because of me, Pet. I told Zero that I’d go instead of Daniel.”

  “You don’t have to be sorry about that,” I said. “Of course we’re going to make sure your parents are okay! That’ll make two of us going out, anyway: reckon Zero won’t stop me goin
g out this time. I think he’d rather keep an eye on me at this point, and now that the kitchen window is fixed, it should be a lot safer in here.”

  “You still don’t look comfortable,” she said, too sharp despite her young age. She looked just a bit younger than Morgana looked—that is, about twelve to Morgana’s professed sixteen—but both of them had far too much experience for the age they appeared to be: Morgana because she was actually something like a hundred years old, and Sarah because she’d been trapped Behind for a year or so. Spending that long Behind was enough to give anyone a wealth of experience—along with a wealth of grey hairs—that they’d much rather not have.

  “I feel like it’s a bad idea to go out again,” I said slowly, giving voice to thoughts I didn’t quite understand. “Not that it’s a bad idea to make sure your parents are okay, but it feels like stuff is closing in on us, and I don’t know what direction it’s closing in on us from. I don’t like it. I don’t like that Zero’s dad is in here, either.”

  “You’ve got a feeling of doom,” Morgana said, propping her chin on the back of her hand. “That’s understandable, I suppose. Maybe you’ll feel better when you see JinYeong tomorrow—don’t glare at me! You always perk up a bit after he comes to the window. You might as well admit you like the fact that he keeps coming here despite not being able to get in. Did you think he’d get tired of it and go away?”

  “Vampires are very clingy,” Sarah said, tucking her feet under Morgana’s pillow. She looked as though she was feeling a bit safer, which was nice. “And he’s only about seventy in vampire years, isn’t he?”

  “There are vampire years?”

  “Vampire years, fae years—do you know that rock dusters don’t actually age, they just ossify more and more until they stop moving?”

  “What are vampire years?”

  “Stop changing the subject,” Morgana said, and I stuck my tongue out at her.

  “Vampire years start from the date the vampire is turned,” said Sarah. “They regress a lot at the start with all the hunger and feelings and stuff. Even after they get to the point where they can control the hunger, some of them never learn to control their feelings again; they’re pretty clingy when they find someone they love. You’re lucky he’s managed to avoid biting you.”

  “He bites her a lot,” Morgana offered.

  Sarah stared at me, horrified. “He feeds on you?”

  “He doesn’t feed on me, he bites me,” I said, hunching my shoulders. “Sometimes he kisses me. It’s different.”

  “He kisses you?”

  “Don’t look at me like that!” I protested. “I get super speed and a lot more strength when he bites or kisses me!”

  “You really are fully human, then!” Sarah said, awed. “Or at least, you aren’t part fae; but there aren’t too many races that can mix with humans and still look…well, human.”

  “What about you, then?” I asked, feeling a bit too warm about the cheeks and in need of a change of subject. “Aren’t you fully human?”

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “Not many of us heirlings are. You’re about the only one I know for sure, and you’ve probably got a bit of something else back in the line. With me, we think it’s mer: there are stories about my grandma and a mysterious man from the navy.”

  “It isn’t just biting and kissing,” Morgana said, sotto voce; and she sent an innocent look in my direction when I scowled at her.

  “I thought you were like me,” I said to Sarah, slightly disappointed. “Fully human. My three psy—I mean, Zero keeps saying that humans can’t do the sort of stuff I can do.”

  “They can,” said Sarah. “But it’s not that usual, either. Humans have magic but we don’t get taught how to use it.”

  “That sounds about right, too,” I said gloomily. I’d once known how to use the magic I had, but my parents had made me forget. Now that I remembered again, there was still no one to teach me how to use it.

  “What would you want to try and do, anyway?” asked Sarah. “Instead of going out again, I mean? If there’s a way we can find out where my parents are—whether they’re in here or out there—that’s better than going out again while the arena’s still so full of heirlings and hangers-on.”

  “I don’t know that, either,” I said. “I just…I feel like there’s gotta be a better way of getting to your parents than running around in the maze out there. And I feel like something’s going to come clawing through the windows at any stage. I need to understand why the house is acting the way it is.”

  Morgana, looking doubtful, asked, “Is that important right now?”

  “Maybe,” said Sarah, an unexpected ally. “Instinct is important when it comes to Between and Behind. Things usually bother you for a reason.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” I said, and got up to wander around the room.

  The girls watched me for a little while, but they must have been tireder than they thought, because by the time I’d gone around the entirety of the upper house, Chelsea and Chantelle were fast asleep and Sarah had also fallen asleep on Morgana. Morgana wasn’t asleep, but she seemed to be in a sort of trance state that I’d seen Zero in a time or two. The behindkind equivalent of power-napping, is how I think of it.

  I left them to rest and went downstairs to check out the windows there, unsure exactly what I was looking for. Half of the lycanthropes were asleep in the living room, though Daniel was in the kitchen drinking coffee and looking worried. That was about as normal as Zero polishing his multiple knives and swords, so I left him to it and circled the living room.

  I even went into the little alcove where Zero slept for the few hours per night that he sometimes slept and tried the window there, ignoring the odd looks from everyone camping out in the living room who was still awake. From there, I could see the front patio and the road but there was the same kind of distance between the window on my side and the window on the outside that I had felt when I tried to get through to JinYeong. Nothing quite matched up with the world outside, even if everything was as it ought to be in here. It was our own, smaller version of the heirling arena outside: self-contained, seemingly impervious from the outside, and running on its own rules.

  I didn’t see how I was supposed to fix the gap between the arena and the outside world, let alone our house and the outside world. It wasn’t just that we were vibrating at a different rate as the outside world, it was as though we were trapped inside a bubble full of other bubbles that intersected in dangerous ways: the bubble of the heirling arena, stuffed to the brim with self-contained bubbles like my house.

  I leaned my backside against the edge of Zero’s desk, huffing out a breath, because there was nothing useful about that knowledge. It was just one more nail in our collective coffin, because unless we could find a way to convince the arena that the trials were over, it didn’t seem likely that we would be able to get out. And for the arena to think the trials were over, at least Sarah would have to be either dead or triumphant.

  I shoved my hands in my pockets, musing on the possibilities—or lack of them, more like—then took them out to push the books and piece of paper or two that I had nearly knocked off the desk back onto the desk. One of them fell on the floor anyway, fluttering down and away from me with the same kind of annoying aloofness as its fae owner.

  Only it wasn’t the same kind of creamy, heavy-weight paper that Zero’s books and files were usually made up of—it was human paper. It could have been something from one of the files Zero and Athelas were always pinching from the police station, but it had an even thinner feel to it than regular weight paper.

  Nope. It wasn’t something from a file; it was a piece of paper from my own things. It was the photocopy of my great grandmother’s driving license.

  I couldn’t help the deep stab of fear that made my fingers grip the paper tightly enough to put my finger through it. Why the flaming heck did Zero have the copy of my great grandmother’s driving license that had gone missing from my ro
om?

  Had he had it since it went missing? Had Zero found it in the living room where I might have lost it, or had he actually come into my room to find and remove it? If so, why? How had he known it was there, and what to look for?

  Could Zero have been the one Athelas was looking for—

  Nope. Couldn’t think like that. I wasn’t going to start distrusting Zero just because Athelas had betrayed me.

  So I stalked back out into the living room with my stomach moving in slow, heavy, sick lurches, and asked Daniel, “Where’s Zero?”

  “He’s trying to clear away the banshees from the bathroom,” he said. “Since someone didn’t care about—hey! Where are you going?”

  I ignored him and headed down the hall, skirting around the last few bits and pieces of rubble that were still rolling slowly and gently back toward their place in the wall. Zero was just coming out of the bathroom when I reached the door, and since a sleepy lycanthrope pushed past me to go to the toilet right at that moment, I grabbed Zero by the leather-clad arm and towed him toward the laundry room instead, where I had to stop the old mad bloke from digging through the sheets and send him tottering toward the door.

  I shut the door behind him and said crisply to Zero, “What the flaming heck is this?”

  He stared at me, then at the crumpled photocopy, and the complete confusion on his face settled the sickness of my stomach in an instant. Whatever it was, he expected me to know what I was asking.

  “You took this out of my room,” I said, trying to clarify for him. Now that I was certain this wasn’t another betrayal, it was easier to take the time to try and find the right words to ask what I wanted to know. “You’ve worked with humans before—”

  “Yes,” he said shortly. “I told you. Back then I was young and idealistic.”

  Young and idealistic. That was pretty close to something Athelas had said to me that night—that night when I learned that there was someone he hadn’t been able to bring himself to kill.