The Untold Tale (The Accidental Turn Series Book 1)

by J. M. Frey

  “What was it?” Pip asks again, hands coming up to frame my face, and I shake them off, annoyed by the grittiness on her palms. “Forsyth.”

  “My love,” I pant, forcing myself to breathe slowly, carefully.

  Pip jerks backward, eyes suddenly wide, shaking so hard that her legs nearly dump her on the uneven ground. “What?”

  “I don’t love you,” I say. It feels good. It feels right. It feels hot and strong, and I feel fantastic. I feel empty and buoyant. There is no worry for her, no fear, no pathetic sniffing after her, no desire for her body or her time or her opinions. I don’t care. “I don’t care!” I say out loud, just to hear it. “I don’t love you! Ha! Ha ha! I don’t love you!”

  It doesn’t even hurt when Pip’s olive face turns white, and she closes her eyes slowly, painfully, like she’s just been gutted.

  ✍

  Travel by wind is nowhere near as overwhelming as having a zephyr steal an emotion. The thing allows us time to gather up our gear, and then lifts us together; it feels like riding on an overstuffed feather pillow, gentle and sweet smelling. Within moments, we are set down again, just as gently, in a very deep, very low basin in a peak on the far side of the range. There are stairs cut into the side of a wall composed of gray-lavender stone that sparkles like fey trails in the sunlight, revealing veins of gold and crystal with each intricate swoop.

  Vegetation carpets a full third of the walls, vines growing up or down, I cannot tell, but glistening with moisture and life.

  “It’s beautiful,” Bevel says, eyes on the way shafts of sunlight highlight the glittering interior of the Rookery. Kintyre and Bevel drop their packs, draw their swords, and begin to make a circuit of, ducking behind boulders and climbing halfway up the stairs to make sure that we are safe. It leaves Pip and I alone, but that doesn’t bother me in the slightest.

  My eyes are for the desk itself. It’s less a Desk that Never Rots and more like a naturally occurring shelf of stone that has since been smoothed by the hands and stomachs of a hundred thousand scholarly pilgrims, coming to touch and kiss the place where they say the world began, the place where the Great Writer first Wrote.

  I stand in the two indents in the stone floor, where generations of feet have worn a groove. I close my eyes and run my fingertips across the silky surface. It doesn’t feel special, or different, not colder or warmer or anything other than what it is—stone. Purple-gray granite scattered with crystal. But it feels reverent, somehow. Holy. Perhaps it is my own perception that makes it so, but isn’t that what faith is, anyway? One’s own perception?

  “Pip, come see,” I say. “The Great Writer’s desk.”

  “Elgar Reed began writing in his shitty community-housing co-op apartment in 1978,” Pip grates out. “On a beat-up old typewriter he inherited from his aunt. It’s in the Smithsonian museum now. I’ve seen it. This is just a slab of rock.”

  I am inordinately pleased that my brother was not near enough to hear her say that. “Hush, Pip, we agreed to keep it secret from them.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do!” she snarls.

  I turn to her, take in the tightness of her shoulders, the way the skin around her almond-shaped eyes has gotten wrinkled and tense, her hands balled into fists. “What’s the matter with you?” I ask.

  “What’s the . . . the matter?” she splutters. “Forsyth, you gave away your love for me. I think I’m allowed to be upset about that!”

  “Why?” I ask, genuinely curious. There is nothing attractive about her anger, not the way they describe it in the epic poems. Her eyes don’t glitter; her cheeks don’t pink delicately. She is mottled and flushed and scared looking. Not attractive at all. “What does it matter to you? You don’t love me back.”

  “You don’t know that!”

  “I do!” I thunder, taking a step toward her and enjoying the way she flinches back from me, small and surprised and, for once, not yelling at me. “I asked you, and you said nothing. You couldn’t answer with anything but to shove me away. I think that was a pretty clear indicator of your feelings, bao bei.” I can’t help but add a sneer.

  “I just wanted space,” Pip says, desperation creeping into the edges of her words. “I just wanted time to figure it out.”

  “Why?” I ask again. “You’re leaving. You’re leaving today. Now. As soon as we get this riddle solved. So why does it matter to you whether or not you can untangle how you feel for me from the horror of what you suffered? And why does it matter if I love you back anymore?”

  “I just . . . I want . . .”

  “I wanted,” I challenge. “I have needs too, Lucy Piper, and you can be a bully! I was suffering too, you know!”

  “I-I . . .” She licks her lips, seemingly unable to figure out the words with which to respond.

  “I was suffering, and you pushed me away. You told me I had no right to overwrite your desires with my own, but you never, not once, acknowledged my right to desire. You are so full of self-righteous ire that you never once saw how much my love for you hurt me, too.” I spread my hands, and my grin. “Well, now it’s gone. And when you go, it won’t hurt me.”

  “It will hurt me!”

  “That is not my problem,” I say calmly.

  “I don’t want to leave with you hating me.”

  “I don’t hate you,” I correct her coldly. “I just don’t love you.”

  Pip walks right up to me, throws her arms around my neck, and, decisive and sure, pulls herself up onto her toes and slots her mouth against mine. The kiss is uncomfortable, with her weight hanging off me, her tongue cool and slightly slimy against my lips. I twist my head away, breaking contact.

  “Why aren’t you kissing back?” She pulls away, eyes searching mine for something I know with cold certainty she will never find there again.

  “You are allowed to kiss me with no permission given, but I am not accorded the same respect, I see?” I ask, and can’t help but sneer: “Is it because I am a man?”

  “Forsyth!” Pip gasps, shocked by the keen cruelty of my rebuff. “I . . . I didn’t . . .”

  “And now you see? You shoved me away, but all I wanted was to be able to communicate with you in a way where our words would not get in the way of the message. But you rebuffed me, and now, we are through.”

  Pip’s breathing hitches, and she clutches her hands at the base of her throat, startled. “I thought . . . I mean . . .”

  “You told me never to touch you.” I spread my arms. “I am complying.”

  “I said never without permission! God, Forsyth. I wanted . . . of course I wanted you! I still—I . . . I just didn’t know how to . . . to give it to you without it being tainted. I was scared that you . . . that all you’d see in me was Bootknife, that you would be searching for double meanings in everything I said, searching my eyes for green at every turn.”

  “You never need fear that now.”

  Pip screams in frustration, slapping her palms against my chest, angry. It stings. It is irritating.

  “Don’t do this!” she wails. “Forsyth, don’t do this to me! You were the one good part of this whole miserable fucking world! You were it! Don’t take that away from me, please.”

  I feel sorry for her. I would be lying if I said I didn’t. It is a misery to see another person miserable. But I can’t give her what she wants. I am not capable.

  Kindly, gently, I disentangle her limbs from me, hold her by the wrists at arm’s length.

  “I’m sorry something so good has to end this way,” I say gently. “But it is over, and you need to accept that. Please.”

  Pip’s face crumbles, and she coughs, choking on her sadness.

  Applause, slow and mocking, fills the space where Pip’s protest might have been. We both jerk our heads toward the staircase, startled.

  Descending it, clad in skin-tight black and gold, arrogance embroidered into every thread of his elaborate, opulent jacket, is the Viceroy.

  I whip my head around, searching for Kintyre, but h
e is absent.

  “Your brother is chasing Shades,” the Viceroy oozes. He flicks his wrist lazily, and a shadowy copy of himself turns and runs up the stairs before flickering into nonexistence at the rim of the cavern.

  I draw Smoke and push Pip behind me, then circle around the desk, keeping it between the Viceroy and us. For once, she goes when I push her. Her fingers clutch at the elbow of my travel robe, face pressed into the cloth between my shoulder blades. She is hiding. And she is shaking. Terrified. I hope that she has enough sense to let me go if I need to lunge at our enemy.

  “Why are you here?” I ask.

  “Oh, Shadow Hand, what a good opinion you have of yourself. It is not for you.” He hops down the last few steps, demonstrative and gleeful, his beautiful face twisted with mischief. “I seem to have misplaced my second-in-command. I thought, well, now would be the perfect time to replace him with Bevel. Bootknife was so jealous of my feelings for my little knight.”

  “You don’t love Bevel,” I say, but it is a question.

  “No, but I want him,” the Viceroy replies. He takes a few careful steps toward us, keeping the desk between his body and my sword. “You see the way he trots after that oaf, Kintyre? You see how loyal and good to him he is, and see what little thanks he gets? I would treat him better. I would earn his loyalty and appreciate him. Ah, you feel the same—you don’t like the way your brother treats his companion.”

  “I didn’t used to,” I correct. “If you’re here for Bevel, why are they out chasing Shades?”

  “Because I thought I’d like the privacy to check in on my other little project.” He tilts sideways, theatrical, making as if to peer around my back. “And how is my little mousey-mole? Have you enjoyed your adventure?”

  “Fuck you,” Pip says from behind my back, but it is muffled by fabric and fear.

  The Viceroy laughs. “Such a temper! But I see you’re talking to me again. That’s a good sign.”

  Pip presses her forehead tighter into my back and her arms come around my waist. She is doing everything she can to remain upright, to stand up to the literal source of her nightmares, and for that, I have to respect her. She has neither fainted nor fled.

  “Hm, or not,” the Viceroy muses when she says nothing more. “No worries, once I’ve killed the Shadow Hand and taken his Mask, you’ll come with me and Bevel. You’ll have no other choice.”

  “Kin-Kintyre?” Pip asks.

  “His death is mine to deliver, but not collect. Just to be on the safe side, you understand. I can’t let either Turn live,” the Viceroy says conversationally. “It is always wise to end the entire line. No pesky revenge vendettas from over-inflated relatives to worry about then.” He raises a hand consolingly. “Don’t take it personal, Lordling Turn. I’m sure Sheriff Pointe will make an excellent lordling to Lysse Chipping in your place, and I do find him ever so much easier to intimidate than you. He has much more than you to lose, you see.”

  “Don’t you dare touch that child!” I snarl.

  The Viceroy stomps a foot against the loose gravel of the basin floor. “I’ll do as I like! You won’t be in any position to issue demands, Sha-sha-shadow H-h-hand,” he mocks.

  I know he is trying to infuriate me, trying to break through my guard and force me to make mistakes. I have read about this tactic enough in Bevel’s scrolls, heard about it from Pip and Kintyre both. It works on my brother, reliably. I will not let it work on me.

  He lifts his left hand, and it is encircled with cold blue light. It makes his fish-pale eyes glimmer gold and the cavern around us dance with sparks. “Step away from her,” he commands.

  “No.”

  “I don’t want to harm my pet,” the Viceroy warns. “But I will. If you step away from her, I will end you gently, swiftly, and I promise she will be unharmed.”

  “Until the next time I don’t do as I’m told!” Pip snarls.

  He smiles gently, benevolently, but his golden eyes remain dead and flat. “That is a lesson for you to learn, pet. I’m sure you will. Eventually.”

  Pip lets go of me, breaking her hold and loosening her arms just enough that I am free to move, but so the Viceroy cannot see that she has released me. I take this for encouragement and, without a sound or a cry of warning, lunge. My stomach drives up against the edge of the desk, but Smoke more than reaches across it, and I manage to score a slice against the Viceroy’s breast. A red line wells up where I have parted the fabric of his jacket, but it’s not enough, it is not deep enough.

  With a cry of rage, he lets fly the ball of light in his fist. I duck, smacking my arm against the side of the desk on the way down; numbness radiates across the limb. The light crackles over my head, and the scent of singed hair suddenly fills the air. I have no time for my own vanity, however, and switch Smoke to my other hand so I can cut at the Viceroy’s knees under the desk.

  “Aren’t you full of yourself, Forsyth Turn!” he crows. “You think you can stop me? Fat, stupid, old, stuttering lordling!” He dances out of reach, and I am forced to scoot backward enough to rise. His attention is on Pip, his right hand out and glowing green, tracking elaborate runes into the air.

  I dodge around the desk, and he skips back a step, laughing. “The isolated and useless younger son of a drunkard and a throw-away woman. Insolent and meaningless, until he is needed to play his part, speak his words on the world’s stage, and then vanish, melt back into the shadows like the rest of us puppets, eh?” he howled. “Aren’t you sick of it, Forsyth Turn? Aren’t you sick to death of existing at the behest of another? The way you are the supporting character in your own life, doesn’t it just kill you? Doesn’t it just . . .” He grins, slow and sly. “Make you want to kill?”

  “Stop it!” Pip snarls.

  But it does, and I lunge, and he slaps his left hand against the side of my head, hand cupped, making my ear ring. A spell blasts against my skin, harsh and burning, throwing me against the cavern wall. I just barely get my feet under me again.

  “I’ll kill him, I will!” the Viceroy hisses. “First you, then Kintyre, then little Miss Pip here will tell me how to get to her world, and I’ll kill that self-important Elgar Reed for putting me through twenty years of hell! For making me lose every time!” he bellows. “I should have won! I should be king! I should own the whole damned world!”

  His right hand glows a more intense green, and I realize, suddenly, what that means. I whip a look at Pip, and groan. Dear Writer, no! She is back under his spell! Pip herself is tense, holding her arms tightly at her sides, her head bowed and her jaw clenched, teeth bared. “I won’t, I won’t!” she is snarling, neck a mass of jutting tendons and eyes screwed shut.

  “Obey!” the Viceroy snarls, and I take advantage of his distraction to try to bring my sword down on his arm.

  He must have been expecting it, after Bootknife, for he swings himself wide and out of range. He raises both hands, each shining a different color, and Pip screams.

  I risk a look over my shoulder at her and my heart stutters in my chest, horror crawling up my throat. She is hovering above the ground, toes brushing the loose gravel, arms straight out. Through the sleeves of her jerkin, I can see the green glow of the vine scars writhing, sliding over her neck and across her cheeks. Her head is thrown back, and the green glow is coming from inside her throat, too, illuminating her mouth. Green light radiates from her eyes, wide and lined with tears.

  “Stop it!” I shout over the sound of her agony.

  “Surrender to your death, and I will,” the Viceroy replies, all calm. His left hand is ready, red filling the cracks between his fingers this time, prepared for the moment I lay down my sword.

  “If I surrender, you will hurt her again, anyway.”

  “True,” the Viceroy says. “But only because she screams so prettily.” He twists his right hand, and Pip shrieks in demonstration, high and piercing and so filled with agony that I wince, my own throat tightening in sympathy. “Surrender, and I will stop.”

 
What can I do? He is using Pip as a shield, for all that she is not between us. But he has been fighting me as he would fight Kintyre, all magic and threats, no finesse. Could I . . . ? Would he . . . ?

  I take a clumsy, two-handed grip on Smoke, as my brother would do on his own great battle sword. The Viceroy tenses and rocks onto the balls of his feet. Smoke is too delicate a blade for bashing about, but I lift it as if it were heavier, more substantial, as if it would make me slower.

  The Viceroy laughs and dances out of the way when I swing the sword down, all fleetness of foot but no skill, and he makes Pip scream again. I chase him again, thrusting clumsily, and he dodges. A third time, and I am sure of it. The Viceroy has fought heroes with swords before, but none with any skill. None like the Shadow Hand. None like me.

  As rapidly as possible, as soon as I am steady enough after my third lunge, I spin on the ball of my foot, correct my grip on Smoke, and flick the blade at one of his wrists. I score a gouge in the left one, and he shrieks. It is not deep enough to sever the appendage, but blood begins to pour from the wound, and I feel confident—as the light in his fist flickers—that the blood loss will kill him in a matter of hours should the wound remain unattended.

  I don’t have hours, however, and neither does Pip. The Viceroy drops his left hand to his side, features twisted into the only human emotion I’ve ever seen him really feel—rage. I execute a needlessly flashy lunge, hoping the swiftness of the motion and the complicated arm gesture will distract him as easily as it ever distracted Pointe, and side step him. He thinks I have missed and takes a step back, right into the path of my point. It sinks in just above his right kidney, and he screams again.

  Blast, I had been aiming for a lung.

  The Viceroy wrenches himself off my blade and gestures with his green hand. Pip drops to the floor and curls herself upright, eyes narrowed and shining and focused on me. Another gesture, and I feel my stomach sink. Pip throws herself at me, arms wide for a grapple, and I just barely manage to duck under her. She is fast, and she has stamina. I am taller, but she is quicker. The Viceroy lands a blow against the back of my head, and I stagger forward and reel to the side in time to avoid Pip again.