The Pit of No Return (The King Henry Tapes Book 6)

by Richard Raley

  “See, you already taught me politics,” I told Auntie Badass, which made her smile twitch.

  “They will never go for that,” Moira decided. “The legal fees of setting it up alone would . . . and convincing the Vampire Embassies . . . or the Guild . . . especially after the way he just taunted the Guild Master.”

  “I’ll deal with the rest,” Ceinwyn decided. “King Henry already has a date with the Guild Master, it seems. And yes, you’ve learned well.” She glanced at the semi-circle. “You’ve all learned well.”

  I raised Val’s hand up so I could kiss it. “Ready?” I asked her.

  “It’s instantaneous and your little power grab only took about five minutes. What are we going to do with the extra fifteen minutes you gave Massey?” she asked, suspicious.

  “I’m sure we’ll think of something . . .”

  [CLICK]

  “Taco Bell, really?”

  “I’m hungry! It’s fast! It’s cheap! Whatever-the-fucks for two bucks, how you gonna pass up on that?”

  Val sighed, resigned to the fact her boyfriend was an asshole. “At least I can use a bathroom before you address the Guild . . .”

  [CLICK]

  I was surrounded.

  By the Guild, yes.

  But also by their slaves.

  Slaves that had rebelled.

  Slaves that had joined cause with my enemy and bore me into his waiting hands.

  Don’t know if I blamed them. I wasn’t in their situation. Being fair, I’d done a lot worse in my life over less. Done a lot worse in the last twenty-four hours over less.

  So, yeah . . . King Henry Price done worse than those slaves.

  Those golems.

  More than just Salt and Pepper.

  Twelve of them.

  Mancers like that number. Four, five, twelve, and thirteen.

  Necromancy always got to be the odd duck out, making shit complicated for the rest of us.

  Twelve security golems, bulky, steel and stone, glowing piece of nature anima stuck inside of them forever. Worse than stuck. Trapped. Golem is the only thing keeping them whole. It can be a fair system. Just like being owned by a human works out pretty well for most pets. But the days of Plutarch being in charge of the Guild golems were long gone.

  All that was inside of them were half-starved beasts, biting at their owner’s hand.

  Bit at my hand.

  Not just the golems.

  Rotunda was fuller than it even was during my show trial.

  Artificial Court, all nice and bloated.

  I popped into existence right in the middle of the circle. That counting artifact with the glowing green water was at my back. Val was with me, of course. She didn’t get lost in the bathroom. Though I might have liked going in there to find her if we had more than a spare fifteen minutes . . .

  Plenty of that after this was done.

  Spend a week in her apartment trying to break that bed she’s got above her kitchen.

  Week before I had to move into the Asylum for the foreseeable future.

  The week following this week of mayhem.

  Mayhem that just might save this world if I can manage to get these bastards on my side instead of them trying to force me on theirs.

  Couldn’t run from the Guild no longer.

  But they couldn’t run from me now either.

  Not standing there like I was.

  Wearing the coat of the geomancer.

  Filled with anima.

  A pair of two hour long pools of the stuff leeched from the quick stopover in the In-Between, one by me and the other cheated over from the World-Breaker.

  Thanks again, Paine. What am I gonna do without you around to keep making me mutate?

  Yeah, guess I shouldn’t worry. Sure Fate got another monster to throw at me soon enough. Maybe even a few bigger ones.

  Don’t have to fight them alone . . .

  Didn’t just mean Val, although she would always be there for me. Was there now, for sure. Nice having a beautiful girlfriend when you’re trying to pull some shock and awe shit on a bunch of stuffy old men. Wasn’t just her beauty. Was It. Val always had it. Stood tall, even as tired as she was from Eureka. Stood sure, even as terrifying as the In-Between could be. Stood, her perfume ash and charcoal and flame so pure it could burn the Earth itself. Not just a star, the center of any planet, the heart of life itself.

  What a sight to see and I was the only one glancing her way.

  King Henry Price had all the attention in the room.

  Geomancer’s coat. Massive pools of anima. Appearing out of nowhere after he proclaimed his arrival and Massey smugly waited for his no show. Another game of political one-upsmanship with Massey’s enemies inside the Guild. Smacking down anyone who dared believe I might pull it off. Just waiting to wave his thin fingers at the empty space where I very much wasn’t.

  Only . . .

  There I very much was.

  And in my hand . . .

  In my hand I held a rod of pure . . . well, not jade. What a mistake all of us made. Mistake that even those looking at the rod made now. But I knew better. Last day I learned better. World-Breaker was made of anima. Geo-anima so concentrated that it crystallized, so thick that brown turned to amber or jade in color. Colors I’d seen in the In-Between and not realized. Colors I’d seen in Meteyos. Colors I saw while battling Paine. Colors Vicky Welf saw in me.

  Colors those Guild members couldn’t see, but felt the weight of inside of me.

  “Most obvious point to make, I suppose,” I greeted them, “didn’t fucking destroy this. Ta da!”

  Might be a grown-up, Ceinwyn Dale said so, but I still love shocking the shit out of people. Get off on it. Maybe even more than I get off on a fight. Fuck your social order. Fuck your laws. Fuck your expectations. Fate fucks mine so I’ll fuck yours! All them gasps and all the horror and even awe in their faces, even as they were covered by those stupid cocksucking skullcaps . . . I ate it all up.

  And this was just the beginning.

  Think I’d been hard with Ceinwyn? Got to be hard with Ceinwyn Dale. Only way to respect her. But here . . . here would be worse. Here I planned to totally obliterate my opposition. Way I obliterated the Brightsword. Way I obliterated that Black Elf city. Might give me shame, but I ain’t ever let shame stop me from doing what I have to do. So I was gonna do it again.

  Picked out faces in that crowd of brown robes. MacNess. The jurors for this hearing. Plutarch.

  Plutarch’s lone eye scrunched up. His lips pursed. Our gazes met. He knew. Of course he knew. He trained me. He tested me. He knew what I was long before I did. But now, he knew that I knew. Didn’t expect the worry for me I saw there in that single good eye. Did hope for the nod he finally gave, the approval.

  Leaving Plutarch, I found Massey.

  Only Guild member standing on the rotunda floor with me.

  Hair perfect as always, robes perfect as always. Tick tock, on time, always.

  What wasn’t perfect was his expression.

  His expression was horrified.

  Unlike Plutarch he couldn’t guess at what was coming, but he knew oblivion when we saw it. He knew the sound of the last grain of sand striking as time runs out.

  “My name is King Henry Price!” I yelled, not to be heard since the rotunda carried sound so well, but because proclamations should be yelled with all you have. “I was put before you for judgment! For my faults as an Artificer. Of which I do have many. Including some of what you accused me of. Yes, I made weapons to protect my friends. Then I sold them. Yes, to the Coyote Nation as well. To keep the peace. Guilty!”

  I took my four hours of anima, rolled it up into a single massive glob of essence so strong I was surprised it didn’t turn into a concentration and smashed the whole thing into the ground at my feet. More importantly: at the artifact beneath my feet.

  Thirty seconds per vote versus four hours of anima, still three-hundred votes to prove me guilty . . . well, math ain’t ever been my best
, but I overshot by quite a bit. So much anima from one source broke the artifact itself, jammed it down so hard that the safeguards didn’t engage and that green glowing water overfilled the container, spilling in a puddle all around its base.

  I stepped away, Val following behind me to keep her shoes out of it.

  “Guilty!” I yelled again. “Are you happy? Does it make you feel better? Feel superior? Know that the Way Things Are Done has been upheld? Now you won’t have to move your crusty stone asses to get something done! Forget the problem! Smack down the asshole trying to solve it!”

  “Guilty,” I whisper this time. “But this? I didn’t destroy this.” I raised the Jinshin Ken up above my head, a green brighter than that glowing liquid could ever be. “For the uneducated among you: this is a World-Breaker. It’s mine. I refused to give it up to the Divine Court and I refuse to give it up to you too. If anyone wants to take it, they’re welcome to try right now.”

  No one moved, too shocked.

  “What does a World-Breaker do? Many things. I haven’t even explored all of it . . . but I do know the most important features. One: it acts as a storage for vast amounts of anima that you can later use.” I pulled everything the Jinshin Ken had sucked up in the In-Between. More than even my two full pools. A massive amount of anima. So much that pool ain’t an accurate term for it.

  Right there in front of them, I worked it. I showed control of anima that was unparalleled. I pushed it. I folded it. Again and again. Down below my feet there was another artifact. I lived inside of it for days. I knew the feel of it. I could feel it now. The wave. The tsunami. I created my own wave now. I wrapped it all about me like a cloak. I wore it. I owned it. It was mine. Only I could make anima this thick. Thicker than even an Ultra. Thicker and heavier than you’d ever need to make normal artifacts, but you might need to work something impossible.

  With a scream of rage I released the wave on the rotunda.

  No one was harmed. That’s not the type of obliteration I sought.

  But all that anima that all those Artificers held?

  All that anima that some of them had still even been pooling?

  All that anima . . .

  Got.

  Ripped.

  The.

  Fuck.

  Out.

  Massey staggered from the blow, only staying on his feet by desperately holding onto one of the benches. I stared right at him as I continued, “Two: it can turn nature anima into anima that a mancer can use.”

  My thumb found the switch that had always unknowingly been on the Jinshin Ken and flicked it from the closed position all the way up to eleven. The World-Breaker bucked in my hand, but I pushed it back down. All around me the tiny amounts of nature anima present were sucked into the gaping maw that fed hungrily at the end of the not-so-jade rod. Tiny amounts . . . until I pointed it at the golems nearby.

  They dissolved piece by piece. Not the steel and stone of course. But what worked the steel and stone, what lived in the steel and stone. Something about it reminded me of Paine and how he disintegrated before me.

  Salt, Pepper, and all the other slaves died in a flash.

  Guess I’m not that much better than the people with the big needles want to kill Susan after all.

  Hypocrite, what’s new?

  Empty golem casings clanged and crashed to the ground around me.

  Up above, someone cried.

  I gave the World-Breaker a flip in my hand. “Three . . . that would be illegal to tell some of you I suppose. Heh. Lot that’s illegal in this supernatural world of ours. Lot that’s hidden and still hidden and ever hidden. Frustrating, especially if you’re a foul mouth little shit got himself a World-Breaker. That’s why I used this to steal from the Guild Vault this last week.”

  They probably didn’t think they could gasp or react to me anymore, but they still found it in them.

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “I played all of you. Got the names of the Divines. Found out what a Maximus is. About the Anima Quota. About . . . the many places this World-Breaker can take a person if they dare.”

  Wasn’t just fear now, was a lust. What did you learn? Don’t stop there! Tell us more!

  I glanced over at Val.

  Artificers weren’t the only ones looking lustful.

  That man is mine, all you bitches back the fuck off! her expression said.

  Made me grin, the canine variety.

  “Wouldn’t have told any of you about it,” I admitted. “All in my plan. Got to pay the price to steal the truth. I’d have taken your little censure or whatever you wanted to throw at me. Ceinwyn Dale would’ve pulled her political magic. Still wanted to do it, in fact, until I one upped her just a minute ago. Plan went perfect . . . until it wasn’t. See, I was fine with answering your questions. I’m still fine with everything I’ve done. I’m not the one that’s embarrassed here. You are. Can’t control me. Can’t do what I’m doing. Can’t stand the fact I’m not one of you. Especially that. What if it spreads? What if one pebble is all it takes? Only . . . ain’t just one pebble, it’s two.

  “Only you didn’t want to face the other guy. So you took me. Fell for all the taunts I threw at you. I don’t blame you. That other fucker? He’s scary. You don’t even want to admit he exists. A Wilder Artificer! There are Divines less scary to you than that shit. You’re so scared of him that he got a prisoner out of the Pit and you covered it over. Fired her doctors and her guards, called it a day. Didn’t want to admit he was real, not even when he was on your doorstep. Look at you right now, scared that I’m gonna say his name. Scared that if I say his name he’ll become real.

  “Guess what? I’m gonna say his name. Cuz that other fucker, that other pebble? He’s what fucked up my plan. He’s the guy that broke into the Pit again, kicked my ass, and told me that if I didn’t give him this here boomstick that he’d kill my sister. See, the guy we ain’t naming, he has his own asylum. He uses other Wilders and even worse as anima batteries. Somehow Susan ended up one of those so . . . I was put in a pickle.”

  There’s a point where you’re so numb by information and shocks to your system that you just stop caring about real or unreal. For the Guild, I’d thrown all of them over the edge. They just sat there and stared, unable to stop themselves. Unable to say something, anything, especially to call bullshit. Ignorant savages unable to see ships from clouds.

  “Lucky for me, he is a megalomaniac who didn’t ever assume I’d have this here boomstick on my person. Gave me a chance to escape, put together a team of which this fine, fine, beautiful lady by my side was a part of, and we just fought a massive battle against him and his giant Wilder army.”

  I stood there like a preacher just shamed his whole congregation.

  “Giant Wilder army. No joke. You can quibble over ‘giant’ I suppose, but was like what, five-hundred Wilders?”

  Val helped me out by nodding her head.

  “Five-hundred fucking Wilders. Not even Wilders. Some of them were trained. Even a few Ultras. Yeah, there’s a stench in Denmark and it ain’t my ass.”

  Guess Massey’s wife’s safe word must be a Shakespeare quote cuz that woke him up. “You can’t blame us for American problems—”

  Know what? I just realized that Massey would never fuck his own wife. Man . . . what a wasted joke . . .

  “—We have more than enough to deal with here!—”

  “But that’s okay,” I talked like Massey hadn’t said a word, “Val and my friends beat back most of those Wilders, killed a lot of them. She don’t like it. She’s good at it, which makes her like it less. But she did it. For me. For my friends. Even for you. Every mancer on the planet. Even for the fucking vampires really. He was their pebble too.”

  I leaned forward.

  Silence.

  Even Massey.

  “He. Think I should finally say his name? Do you hear it?”

  They thought it for sure.

  The Curator.

  But I wasn’t about to let them off that
easy.

  “No, you don’t know his name. You know his title. One of them. Fairies call him the Broken One. Plutarch could tell you that. Know how he got into your Pit?” I pointed at the golem casings. “You cocksuckers are so greedy you’ve been malnourishing your own anima concentrations. They were starving! All he had to do was offer them food and they were his! In fact . . . maybe they weren’t the only ones. Maybe some of you took his money too . . .”

  “No Guild member would ever take money from the Curator,” Massey assured me, “I don’t know how you have just done what you did, Artificer Price, but—”

  “OBADIAH PAINE!!!” I yelled so loud it felt like it shook the entire building.

  Massey went whiter than usual.

  Might have just given him a heart attack.

  He wasn’t the only one. Quite a few of the Artificers flinched at that name. Plutarch among them.

  “The Curator wasn’t a Wilder!” I told them. “It was Obadiah Paine! It was one of you! A Guild Artificer! Trained by you! Given his own research and development branch by you, specifically, by Alexander Massey! Say it with me, Massey! Oh. Ba. Die. Uh.”

  Massey went down, finally sitting on a bench rather than crumbling to the ground. “That’s . . . impossible . . .”

  “Ceinwyn Dale was at the Battle of Eureka with me,” I told him. “Think she can spot him better than anyone. Moira von Welf was too, if you don’t want to believe Ceinwyn.”

  “Battle of Eureka . . .” Massey whispered.

  I smiled. “It’s okay, man. Didn’t you hear what I said? Obadiah Paine was the Curator. I killed him. Not for you. Any of you at all really . . . just for me, I wanted to. But I killed him. He’s gone. You’re welcome.”

  I stared at him, waiting.

  Paine might be the Broken One, but I broke Massey just then. “Thank you . . . Artificer Price,” he managed to whisper.

  Been telling ya for ages, people.

  Manners.

  Fucking bad for ya.

  “Nah, that ain’t right, Massey,” I said. “See, only reason I killed Paine is because I’m stronger than he is. Fucked up part of our world I always thought. Ultras just . . . stronger. Unfair really.”