Shadows of Asphodel

by Karen Kincy

She hurried to his side as he handed the tickets to the conductor, who glanced between them with obvious curiosity on his face.

  “Your cabin is number seven,” the conductor said, “down the hallway on the right.”

  Cabin? Singular?

  Wendel offered his arm to help Ardis up, playing the part of gentleman, but she shook her head and climbed on without him.

  First class was indeed luxurious, with wood paneling on the walls and elaborate cut-glass shades on the lamps. Ardis found their cabin and slid open the door. Two bench seats in paisley velveteen faced each other. She fiddled with one until it folded out into a berth. At least they would be sleeping opposite each other.

  If she could even manage to fall asleep tonight.

  Her jaw taut, she folded the berth back into a seat once more and glared at it. Then she sank onto the seat and rubbed her face as if she could erase her fatigue. Her dirty boots looked out of place on the plush carpet.

  Wendel stood in the doorway of the cabin. His face was unreadable.

  “Nice little stunt back there,” she said.

  “Stunt?” he said.

  “If you want to lie low, first class isn’t the way to do it.”

  “I always travel first class.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “How lucky of you.”

  “If I suddenly travelled coach,” he said, “it would look suspicious.”

  “Suspicious to who?”

  Wendel walked into the cabin, and slid the door shut behind himself. He sidestepped past her and drew the curtains on the window. He was standing awfully close to her. It made her want to leave the room, but she kept a poker face. Wincing, he sat on the seat opposite her and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees.

  With a whistle, the train jolted into motion and chugged from the station.

  “Suspicious to who?” Ardis repeated.

  Wendel bowed his head, and his hair shadowed his face.

  “The Order of the Asphodel,” he said, “among others.”

  “Are you a wanted man?” Ardis said.

  “I’m not wanted by very many,” he said dryly. “But once they question my loyalty, they won’t stop until they have found me.”

  She clenched her jaw. Things were beginning to make more sense now.

  “You swore fealty to me,” she said.

  “I did.”

  Ardis climbed to her feet and looked down at him.

  “Don’t try to use me,” she said, “for your own devices. I’m not an idiot, and I’m not blind. I won’t be your alibi while you go rogue.”

  He lifted his head. “I’m not their puppet, and I won’t let them hurt you.”

  She laughed scathingly. “As if you could protect me.”

  Wendel stood, his face only inches from her own. The smoldering in his eyes made her mouth go dry. He didn’t smell like blood and death, as she had expected, but like rain on pines. The train swayed along a curve in the tracks, and she gripped the table beneath the windows, afraid she would lean on him.

  “I promised you,” he whispered, “that I would repay my debt to you. I owe you the courtesy of saving your life in return.”

  She didn’t blink. “And after you save my life?”

  “After?” He furrowed his brow. “What do you mean?”

  “Will you turn on me, and kill me in my sleep?”

  His eyebrows arched. “Why?”

  “I have no reason to trust you,” she said.

  “Then I will earn your trust.” He met her eyes. “Will you let me do that?”

  “Damn,” she sighed, and she sank back into her seat. “I don’t want to deal with this. I just want to do my job and get paid.”

  Wendel tilted his head. “Why do you kill for profit?”

  His question knocked her off balance. She stared at him.

  “Why do you?” she said.

  “I don’t.”

  She laughed derisively. “But you’re a necromancer.”

  He lifted one shoulder in a lopsided shrug. “I don’t get paid.”

  “Then is killing a labor of love?”

  As soon as she had said it, she regretted how callous it sounded. But Wendel didn’t flinch. He looked at her with ice in his eyes.

  “A matter of survival,” he said.

  “Then we understand each other,” she said.

  The cold in Wendel’s eyes melted. He seemed to be studying her face, and she felt her cheeks betray her with a blush.

  “You must be more than a mercenary,” he said.

  She frowned. “Are you more than a necromancer?”

  His face sharpened, and he didn’t speak for a long moment.

  “I want to be.”

  When she saw the hope in his eyes, the knot of anger inside her unraveled. Either he was a very good liar, or she was beginning to believe him.

  ~

  The warm glow of the dining car contrasted with the wind-driven sleet outside the train’s windows. Ardis leaned back in her chair, her spine aching, and relished this hard-won moment of rest. The polite murmur of conversation and the clink of silverware on china were a far cry from the sounds of the battlefield.

  “Ma’am?” said a waiter in a white uniform. “Could I start you with something to drink?”

  “Just water,” she said. “Thank you.”

  “Very well, ma’am. Please let me know if you need anything else.”

  She had to admit, she could get used to this first-class service.

  At the table nearby, a woman wrapped in furs giggled at her companion, a portly man in a top hat. She doubted they had started their journey in Transylvania. More likely they were just passing through on their way to Budapest. They likely couldn’t even see the rebel skirmishes from the railways.

  And where was Wendel?

  She hadn’t seen him since their conversation in the cabin, when he had excused himself and vanished elsewhere on the train. She could only hope he hadn’t passed out, considering how he was still looking poorly.

  “May I join you?”

  Ardis glanced to her side, a sarcastic comment armed and ready—but it wasn’t Wendel.

  A slender man with sandy curls and a neatly-trimmed beard stood there. He wore a well-cut charcoal suit with an edelweiss pin at his lapel. He looked a bit sunburned, and she wondered if he had been somewhere faraway.

  “Oh,” Ardis said, flustered, “yes, I suppose so.”

  “Allow me to introduce myself.” The man smiled at her and bowed. “I’m Konstantin Falkenrath. And I didn’t mean to be so presumptuous, but I’m afraid this dining car is rather popular at this time of night.”

  “It’s fine.” Ardis unfolded her napkin. “I haven’t ordered yet.”

  “Are you dining alone?” Konstantin said.

  She hesitated, then wondered why. It wasn’t as if her and Wendel were going to dine together every night, or at all.

  “Yes,” she said. “Please, sit. And my name is Ardis.”

  “What a pretty name,” Konstantin said, and he looked at her when he said it.

  Ardis noticed the archmage’s eyes were sky blue, a shade that reminded her of summer.

  “Ardis is derived from the same root as ardent,” he said, “if I’m not mistaken.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” she said.

  She had chosen the name because it sounded right. But even after living for three years as Ardis, she would never forget her birth name. She was still Yu Lan inside, Jade Orchid, the Chinese word for the magnolia flower.

  “Where are you from?” Konstantin said.

  “America,” she said, since that was vague enough.

  “Oh? Which part?”

  Chinatown, San Francisco was the address she called home. She could still remember standing in the street and breathing in the confused perfume of fried restaurant food and cigar smoke and ever-present sandalwood incense.

  Ardis blinked away the memories. “California.”

  Konstantin nodded, and thankfully didn’t question her more.


  The waiter returned with Ardis’s water. “Anything for you, sir?”

  “I’ll have a gin and tonic,” Konstantin said, without even looking at the menu. “And I hear the asparagus and trout is excellent tonight.”

  “And you, ma’am?” said the waiter.

  Ardis opened the menu and stared at it, but it might as well have been written in ancient Greek. She put on a confident look.

  “The asparagus and trout as well,” she said.

  “Good choice,” Konstantin said.

  He had a warm smile, the kind that made Ardis return it without a thought.

  She nodded at his edelweiss pin. “You work for the archmages?”

  “I am an archmage,” he said.

  Konstantin steepled his fingers on the table, and Ardis sipped her water to cool her blush. To think that the man sitting across from her was one of her employers. Though she couldn’t remember hearing of Falkenrath.

  “Or I will be,” Konstantin said, “once I arrive in Vienna. Then it will all be official.”

  Ardis raised her eyebrows. “You must be one of the youngest archmages there.”

  He laughed and looked down at his fingers. “Yes,” he said. “Is it that obvious? I had hoped the beard would help.”

  “It does,” she said.

  He stroked his goatee and made a face. “Do you think I should aim for long and gray?”

  She laughed. “No.”

  “I have a few good decades left in me before that, I should hope.”

  She cocked her head. “I’m curious,” she said, “where you got that sunburn.”

  He smiled. “The Dodecanese.”

  “The what?”

  “The where.”

  Konstantin flipped the menu over. On the back, there was a map of European railways. His fingertip rested on the Mediterranean.

  “There,” he said, “in the Aegean Sea. Twelve marvelous islands called the Dodecanese. The water there is a remarkable turquoise.” He furrowed his brow. “Unfortunately, of course, the islands are still occupied by Italy.”

  “Why were you there?” Ardis said.

  He broke into a boyish grin. “The Hex.”

  She didn’t want to look ignorant, but she had to ask. “The Hex reaches that far?”

  He nodded enthusiastically. “Last year, when Italy invaded Tripoli, the Ottoman Empire turned to Austria-Hungary for help. The archmages pledged their aid and have been hard at work constructing the magic of the Hex.”

  Ardis leaned forward in her chair. “The entire Ottoman Empire?”

  “Almost! We’re fortifying it here and there, like along the Dodecanese.”

  Shaking her head, she leaned back. “Amazing.”

  Konstantin ran his finger along the borders of the Kingdom of Serbia.

  “Everyone can keep fighting like dogs,” he said, “over the scraps of the Ottoman Empire. We will muzzle them until they obey.”

  The Hex did deaden gunpowder and render guns useless, but that hadn’t ended hostilities.

  “Hopefully,” Ardis said, frowning.

  The waiter returned with Konstantin’s gin and tonic. Ardis glanced around the dining car. Her gaze locked with Wendel’s. He stood in the doorway behind the archmage. His face was shadowed, his body tight like a cat about to spring.

  “Have you been to Vienna before?” Konstantin said.

  Ardis nodded and opened her mouth to invite Wendel over to their table. But the necromancer shook his head, and she glimpsed a look of loathing on his face before he backed out of the doorway and disappeared again.

  Why did he look so repulsed? Did he have a history with the archmage?

  “Ardis?” Konstantin said.

  “I have been to Vienna,” she said. “Believe it or not, I work for the archmages.”

  “Is that so?” he said.

  The waiter delivered their plates with a flourish. On each, a tiny filet of trout rested in a sea of sauce, with no more than six grilled spears of asparagus on the side. Tender white asparagus, the kind they called spargel in German.

  It was hardly a dinner. Ardis resisted the urge to grimace.

  Konstantin shook his napkin loose, and inclined his head in her direction. “Please, tell me more. Are you one of the peacekeepers?”

  Peacekeepers. Now she couldn’t stop thinking of how scornfully Wendel said that word.

  “Yes,” she said, and she impaled a spear of asparagus on her fork.

  “The rebels in Transylvania really are troublesome, aren’t they?”

  Ardis chewed for a minute. “Not so much after you behead them.”

  Konstantin laughed nervously. “Beheadings are hardly proper dinner conversation.”

  “You asked.” She finished her trout in one bite.

  “It was a rhetorical question.”

  Ardis stared at her empty plate. “If I can speak freely, I’m not sure we’re winning. More and more of the Transylvanians have learned how to fight with bows and spears. I’m even seeing decent swords out there.”

  Konstantin dabbed at his mouth with a napkin. “An unfortunate consequence of the Hex.”

  “Unfortunate consequence isn’t how I would put it,” she said.

  The archmage looked directly at her, his eyes keen with interest. “And how would you put it? As a peacekeeper?”

  Ardis knew how close she was to insulting one of the very architects of the Hex.

  “There will be a war,” she said, “and all the magic in the world can’t stop it.”

  Konstantin sipped his gin and tonic pensively. He peered out the window as they rocketed through the dark forests of Transylvania.

  Ardis dropped her napkin on the table and stood. “I think I’m done for tonight.”

  “No dessert?” Konstantin said.

  She shook her head, since she suspected it would be equally miniscule.

  “Then good evening,” he said, “I hope to see you again.”

  She mustered a polite smile. “Thank you for the company.”

  On the way back to their cabin, the train rattled over a bridge, and Ardis’s meager dinner squirmed in her stomach. The lights in the cabin were on, and the train’s staff had converted their seats to berths, folded down the blankets, and even left a mint on each of their pillows. She shrugged and swallowed her mint whole.

  The door to the tiny bathroom stood ajar. She rapped on the wall.

  “Yes?” Wendel said.

  “It’s me,” she said, and she peeked inside.

  Wendel was bent over the sink, bracing himself with his hands, breathing shallowly. He glanced at his reflection in the mirror, his face etched with pain. Then she saw why. His wound was bare and bleeding again.

  Wendel met her eyes in the mirror. “Ardis.”

  “What are you doing?” she said.

  “Doctoring myself.” He held out his hand. “Could you pass me the alcohol?”

  Ugly black sutures ran the length of his wound, and blood still seeped past the stitches and trickled down his chest.

  “The alcohol?” Wendel repeated. “To clean the wound?”

  Ardis glared at him. “You don’t use alcohol to clean wounds. It’s too strong. And why did you take the bandage off?”

  Wendel’s outstretched fingers twitched. “The medic told me to apply a new one.”

  “But you haven’t stopped bleeding. You need to put it on the old one.” She shook her head. “You shouldn’t have been running around.”

  He lowered his head and made a noise between a growl and a sigh. “I’ll fix it.”

  “Have you never bandaged yourself?” she said.

  “No.”

  Ardis grabbed the first aid kit from the counter. “That’s it. I’m taking over.”

  “I said, I’ll—”

  “Shut up and let me do this before you pass out.”

  “I’m not going to—”

  Ardis dabbed at the wound with a damp towel, and he sucked in his breath. He wasn’t bleeding too badly, but she wasn’t su
re he had any more blood to spare. She was impressed he had lasted this long without keeling over.

  “Hold still,” she said.

  “I am,” he said. “It’s this train swaying back and forth.”

  Ardis finished cleaning the blood, then washed her hands and unwrapped the gauze. She tore off a piece, then taped it over the wound. Wendel clenched his hands when she touched him, but he let her continue. She reached around him to wrap a bandage around his chest, and he grimaced when she tugged it tight.

  “Are you always this sadistic?” he said.

  She glanced at him. “Are you always this delicate?”

  He scowled. “I’m so glad you aren’t a nurse.”

  “Me, too.”

  Ardis fastened the bandage and stepped back to inspect her work. Wendel looked at himself in the mirror, his face white.

  “Damn cold in here,” he muttered.

  The train jolted on the tracks, and Wendel stumbled forward, catching himself on the edge of the sink. He didn’t look like he was going to stay upright much longer, so Ardis grabbed him by the arm and hauled him out of the bathroom. She let him drop onto his berth. He fell back in a slump, propping himself with his elbows.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “Not going to pass out?” she said, though her voice didn’t have as much bite in it.

  He mustered enough strength for a sarcastic smile. “God, maybe I will. This berth is comfortable. And look, two pillows.”

  Ardis raised her eyebrows. She was not going to go there.

  Wendel’s smile twisted into something nasty. “How was dinner with the archmage?”

  “Do you know him?” she said.

  He snorted. “I think not.”

  “Then how could you tell—?”

  “Anyone who stinks of so much foul magic must be at least an archmage.”

  Ardis stifled a laugh. “A necromancer, complaining of foul magic?”

  Wendel gave the ceiling a look of cool disdain.

  “Necromancy,” he said, “is a natural magic. The archmages toy around with spells and tricks memorized from books.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t think there’s anything natural about raising the dead.”

  He glanced sideways at her. “Natural meaning inborn. Inherited.”

  “Ah.”

  “I know you think necromancers are monsters,” he said.

  Ardis’s throat tightened, and she couldn’t meet his eyes. Yes, that was what she thought, but hearing him say it sounded… unfair?