The Blood King’s Apprentice

by David Alastair Hayden

  Unfortunately, the gate didn’t reveal its secrets, so he trudged off to the Workshop to face the Storm Dragon.

  * * *

  With his mind exhausted from studying the scroll, he went to the Dining Hall to join the others. Kurine was wedged in between Enashoma and Awasa. She smiled and he said hello.

  Iniru patted the empty seat beside her and beckoned to him. “Get that little tushy over here.”

  Awasa nodded ever so slightly, so he went over and sat down. How odd that he now followed Awasa’s advice when it came to navigating his difficult relationships.

  “How was your day?” Iniru asked.

  “I accomplished a lot, but my brain is so tired it hurts to think.”

  “I’m sorry.” She leaned over and whispered in his ear. “I’ll make it all better tonight.”

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Kurine rushed out as soon as she finished eating. Turesobei stood and reached out a hand to Iniru. She took it and he helped her up.

  “Would you like to walk in the Courtyard?” he asked.

  “Is that what you did with her last night?”

  He nodded sheepishly.

  “Then not that.” She tugged him along. “Let’s go to the Bath.”

  “You can’t do that,” Awasa said.

  Awasa looked at Iniru meaningfully.

  “Oh, bother,” Iniru snapped.

  “What?” Turesobei asked.

  Awasa and Iniru stared at one another.

  “Iniru forgot that I claimed the Bath Hall for myself tonight,” Enashoma said. “I told everyone three days ago.”

  Turesobei stared at her. Something about this didn’t seem quite right. “You didn’t tell me.”

  “You’re never around.”

  “I’ve got a better idea,” Iniru said. “Let’s go make out in the Library.”

  “Okay, sure.”

  “Gross,” Lu Bei spat.

  “Stay out of it, fetch,” Iniru said.

  “Master, please don't make me come too.”

  “You can go to my room and sleep,” Turesobei said.

  “Aye-aye, captain!”

  When they entered the Library, Motekeru was scanning the shelves in the far corner of the first level. “Pardon me, master. I will leave.”

  “We can go somewhere else,” Turesobei said.

  Motekeru shook his bronze head. “It is merely a way to pass the time and I haven’t had much success. I will go visit with Lady Awasa.”

  He clanked off down the hallway.

  “Is it just me,” Iniru asked, “or is Motekeru’s relationship with Awasa kind of creepy?”

  “They have some things in common. And it’s good for both of them to have someone to talk to.”

  “Yeah, but he stays in there when she bathes, and that’s just creepy.”

  Turesobei shrugged. “It doesn’t bother me. And he’s not a real man anymore, you know.”

  “Hey, can you do me a huge favor?”

  “Of course.”

  “No matter the subject can we not talk about her tonight?”

  “Talk about who?” he asked innocently.

  She pinched his cheek. “Good boy. Come on, let’s go to the third floor.”

  Iniru raced up the stairs to the top floor and Turesobei chased her, not that he had any chance of catching up to her. She stopped and spun around. He skidded right into her and wrapped her in a hug. She laughed and kissed him.

  They sat beside one another on the ledge, dangled their legs out between the widely spaced bars of the guardrail and gazed down at the eight-petalled flower carved onto the floor. A long, awkward silence followed. Everything he could think of to say seemed insufficient. She probably didn’t want to hear more about gate magic, and they’d already discussed fighting techniques and battle tactics over dinner. And he didn’t want to bring up anything that might involve Kurine.

  Iniru hugged her arms around the bars. “Remember when we first met?”

  “How could I forget? I thought you were another one of the assassins when I saw you standing on the bridge.”

  “And I thought you were cute.”

  “Seriously? You didn’t act like it.”

  “Like you could tell.”

  “You were really mean to me!”

  She chuckled. “I can dislike someone even if I think they’re cute.”

  He frowned. “I guess so.”

  “Once I got to know you, I thought you were sweet too. But you were just so annoying.”

  “No, I wasn’t.”

  “Please. You were such a lost baby and you couldn’t handle anything that a spell couldn’t solve.”

  “Well, I didn’t grow up with your survival training. And it was all a lot to deal with.”

  “I know. I knew it then, too. But I was trying hard not to like you.”

  He smiled. “It didn’t work.”

  “You think?” She sighed. “I was only supposed to help you on your mission. I wasn’t supposed to befriend you, much less become your girlfriend. Looking back, that was my first failing as a qengai. And of all people, I should have known better.”

  “How was becoming my girlfriend a failure? You completed your mission.”

  “The mission was a success, but qengai are taught not to form attachments on missions. Of course, that can be difficult when you spend a lot of time with someone attractive, or if you’re asked to feign a romantic attachment or to…to do other things with a target.”

  “Oh.” His mind raced through the implications of what she’d just said. “Oh! That’s terrible.”

  “That’s being a qengai. You do whatever the Sacred Codex says you must do.” She pressed her forehead against the bars and gripped them tight. “I don’t know why I ever thought it was a good thing to be a qengai, except…well, it’s what I was raised to be.”

  “I can understand that.”

  “And I wanted so badly to make my mother proud.”

  “I’m sure she’d also be proud of you for being yourself and doing what you feel is right.”

  “Would she? I don’t know. And I never will.”

  “We’ll get out of this mess and then you can see her again.”

  “She died four years ago. Before I completed my training.”

  “Oh, Iniru, I had no idea.”

  “That's because I don’t like to talk about it.” Her voice lowered almost to a whisper. “Saying she’s dead makes it more real, so I like to pretend as if she’s still alive. That’s why I never told you about her before.”

  “Did she die on a mission?”

  “Giving birth to my little sister.”

  “I didn’t know you had a younger sister either.”

  “She died of a fever two years later.”

  “Niru, I’m so sorry.”

  They sat in silence for a while. Her words echoed through his thoughts. He’d missed something important in what she’d said.

  “Wait, when you said you of all people should have known better than to form an attachment on a mission…what did you mean by that?”

  She drew in a deep breath and stared absently across the Library.

  “My mother infiltrated a secret order of thieves called the Daggers of Baku. Her mission was to seduce their leader, Josru, to win his trust and learn everything she could about their group. She turned over their secrets: the members’ names, the locations of their hideouts, the floor plan of their headquarters, everything. And when the time came for the assault on the Daggers six months later, Mother unlocked the doors to their headquarters and neutralized the night watch.

  “Then she warned Josru and tried to help him escape.”

  “She had fallen in love with him?”

  Iniru nodded. “He didn’t take her betrayal well, though. As she turned to go, he stabbed her in the back. And that wasn’t the worst of it. Mother, blinded by love, had failed to wrest all the order’s secrets from Josru. He had four demons locked within a hidden chamber beneath his headquarters. After he stabbed Mot
her, he sounded the alarm and unleashed the demons. I lost both my fathers, two brothers and a sister in the raid. Many other qengai from the clan were lost, as well.”

  “What about Josru?”

  “One of his demons killed him. I guess his binding ring failed.”

  “Josru was the father of your little sister?”

  Iniru nodded. “Mother was never the same afterward. The wound never healed properly and it hurt her all through the pregnancy. But it was more than that. Her spirit was broken.”

  He put a hand on her shoulder. She trembled under his touch. “So you lost all your family?”

  “Two of my brothers survived. They left a week after the battle. I don’t know what became of them. My oldest sister, out of seven, married into a faraway qengai clan to escape the disgrace Mother had brought on her. Then it was just me and Mother, living in exile on the outskirts of the village. It was rough. I tried to keep up my training and help Mother. We didn’t have much, and few in the clan took pity on us.”

  “Did you learn about what happened from your mother?”

  “I know what you’re thinking. That maybe that wasn’t what really went down. But she told me herself. It was one of the few meaningful things she said to me after the raid.”

  “Where did you go after she died?”

  “I was lucky. My birth father’s brother took us in. His wife did her best with my baby sister, but she was a sickly child. I completed my training with Uncle Aru’s clan. It wasn’t easy. Most of them resented me. They thought I would bring disgrace to their clan just like Mother had to hers. I was only there because Uncle Aru said I was supremely talented and a valuable asset. He was hard on me and said I had a lot to prove.

  “I worked my ass off day and night to become the best qengai ever, but not because of Uncle Aru. I did it because I wanted to make my mother proud. Not the mother who had failed her clan, but the one who had trained me as a child. The one whose last words to me were…” her voice cracked “…‘Be the best you can be, Niru. Be better than me.’

  “I used to stay awake late into the night wondering how Mother could have fallen in love with Josru. How she could have betrayed the Sacred Codex and her people. But look at me now, giving up on being a qengai. So that’s why I, of all people, should’ve known better than to fall in love.”

  “I think I’m a lot better than the leader of a gang of thieves,” he said, a little hurt.

  “Of course you are! But love is love, isn’t it?”

  “So you regret falling in love with me?”

  “Of course not!”

  “You don’t think it’s a good thing you fell in love?”

  “It was the best thing that ever happened to me. But as a qengai I should’ve known better.” She smiled sadly. “I guess I couldn’t help it any more than mother could. She just wasn’t fortunate enough to fall in love with someone as wonderful as you, or to realize being a qengai wasn’t worth it. She could’ve run away with him. She could’ve been happy.”

  “I think she would be proud of you now.”

  “You think so?”

  “She didn’t tell you to be the best qengai. She just said to be better than her and to be the best you could be. I think you’ve done that.”

  She cuddled up in his arms. A few tears dripped onto his arm. After a long while, she looked up at him and said, “This was the worst make-out session ever, huh?”

  He laughed. “I got to know more about you than I ever did before. That’s better than kissing.”

  “Are you sure you’re a boy?”

  “I can’t be sensitive?” he asked indignantly. “Besides, we’re still going to make out later, right?”

  “That’s more boy-like.” She took his head in her hands. “How about now?”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  She hopped up onto her feet. “Not here, though.”

  “What? Why?”

  “This is a sad place now. How about…under the rose trellis?”

  He made a face. “You have got to be kidding. I never want to see another rose in my life! How about my room?”

  “Boring.”

  “Yours?” he asked.

  “Boring. The Throne Room?”

  “Are you suicidal?” Turesobei grinned as the perfect place occurred to him. “Wait, I’ve got it.”

  “You don’t have it,” she said.

  “The gate platform.”

  “You spent all day there working. Aren’t you tired of that place?”

  “I’d like make some good memories there that I can tap into tomorrow.”

  She laughed. “Let’s do it then!”

  * * *

  Midway through the next afternoon, those good vibes paid off.

  On his third attempt of the day, Turesobei made the Autumn Gate flicker to life. For a few brief moments, what appeared to be a vibrating pool of water shimmered within the stone arch. Then it vanished, leaving him panting and dizzy.

  “I did it!”

  The emerald-eyed Gyoroe shook his head. “You did well, but you did not succeed.”

  “But the gate worked for a few moments.”

  “If you had stepped into that portal, you would have been blasted into nothingness. Because you failed to activate the gate within the Autumn Realm.”

  “Oh.”

  “Opening the gate on both sides is what makes this difficult, and you are not going to achieve that until you can envision the characters in three sets.”

  “I’m getting close. I can picture them in a sequence of six groupings now.”

  “Then I suspect you will soon succeed.”

  “How could you tell the gate wasn’t active on the other side?”

  “Starting tomorrow, that is your next lesson.”

  The following day, he managed to keep the gate active for several minutes on three separate occasions, and he learned how to analyze the connection to make sure it was safe. Gyoroe had been right, it wasn’t.

  Seven days later, he opened his first safe connection between the Nexus and the Autumn Realm. It failed after thirty seconds, but it left him satisfied and the blue-eyed Gyoroe practically giddy.

  After that followed another week of alternating dates with Kurine and Iniru, all taken after long sessions spent learning the song and character sequences for each of the gates. He hardly slept anymore, and he skipped lunch and breakfast. Each attempt he made with the Autumn Gate fared better than the previous. He could now open the Spring Gate as well. It took effort, but he could reliably envision the characters in groups of three now.

  “You are doing well,” Gyoroe said. “You need only continue practicing. How are you faring with the teleportation spell for the realms?”

  “I’ve been so busy with the gate spells that I haven’t had time to study it properly.”

  Yellow, catlike eyes speckled with purple scanned him. “You have had time for kissing girls. Even in this very spot.”

  Turesobei blushed and swallowed. “I have, master. But I do work incredibly hard. And there’s a limit to how much knowledge I can absorb in a single day.”

  Gyoroe’s face folded into a deep scowl.

  “It’s true,” Lu Bei said. “And so far he has achieved everything faster than you had expected.”

  Gyoroe relaxed and his eyes morphed to pale green. “I suppose he has. Start working hard on the realm teleportation spell now.”

  “Yes, master.”

  “Also, begin teleporting a second person with you to the Workshop each day. After all, you will be transporting your entire team to the heart stone in each realm, and we cannot afford any mistakes.”

  “Before I transport someone I need to locate their kenja heart and bond with their energy signature, right?”

  “That is exactly what you must do. Once you can teleport each of your companions to the Workshop reliably, begin practicing teleports with the full group.”

  Turesobei nodded. He knew exactly who he had to teleport first, before Gyoroe thought to forbid it. Th
ough he didn’t look forward to telling her. And he absolutely didn’t want to risk her life by potentially screwing it up on his first try.

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  An hour before dawn, Turesobei awoke to a finger tapping his forehead.

  “Up up, awake awake, spelling time awaits!” Lu Bei sang.

  Turesobei clenched his eyes shut, groaned, stretched his limbs and yawned.

  Lu Bei continued to tap him on the face.

  He sat up and pushed the fetch away. “I’m awake!”

  “So grouchy in the mornings.” Lu Bei sighed dramatically. “And to think I made you a special invigorating brew this morning.”

  “Go get Shoma for me.”

  “Don’t know why you’re so grumpy,” Lu Bei muttered on his way out.

  “Because I worked hard yesterday!”

  And he’d stayed out an hour later than normal last night with Kurine.

  As he dressed, he contemplated how emphatic she’d been about not coming back to his room after a long session of making out in the Courtyard. He guessed that along with Iniru and Kurine splitting time with him on alternating days, they had established a rule about not coming into his room, because Iniru had refused to come back as well the night before.

  He shrugged. Whatever kept the peace.

  It was actually nice to have the last four hours of each night to himself anyway. He needed a soothing bath and a little sleep before dealing with the Blood King all day.

  Mumbling curses, Enashoma stormed in. “This couldn’t wait until later?”

  “Sorry. It has to be now.”

  “Maybe you don’t need to sleep here, but I do. I’m still growing, you know.”

  “You sleep eight hours every night?”

  “Just four.” She yawned and took a bowl of tea from Lu Bei. “So you were out late with Iniru, weren’t you?”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “You’ve got a silly grin plastered on your face.”

  “Oh.” He tried to frown but failed. “Actually I was with Kurine. You don’t have a problem with that, do you?”

  “I prefer Iniru, but I like Kurine, too.”

  “Well…yeah…good.”