A Shard of Sea and Bone (Death of the Multiverse Book 1)

by L. J. Engelmeier

  A great heir apparent, he is, Draven thought. An even slightly passable musician, he is not.

  “I’d rather sit in here all day with you anyway,” Draven told Athirae, and ran his fingers through her white hair to make it stick up. It was fine like spun silk. “But someday, you’re going to be off talking to the dead, doing those Guardianly duties Mother and Father signed you up for without your permission, and I’ll probably be married to some beautiful princess that will make me want to strangle myself with my own belt.” Athirae giggled, and Draven smirked. “You don’t have a clue what I’m saying. I could be telling you that the sky’s chartreuse or that I’ve suspected for years Kinrae was born with a stick firmly lodged up his ass. He really should see a physician about removing it, you know.”

  Draven set Athirae back down, Beaker crowding close to lick her face and slobber on Draven’s fingers. Then Draven went back to his table, wiping his hands off on his apron and taking up a pair of old goggles. They had a buckle at the back so that he could avoid manoeuvring them over his horns.

  He would have to start brewing from the beginning. It was something about the lemondew sage interacting poorly with the magpie bones. Of that, he was certain. Both ingredients were necessary for the potion, though. He wondered if there was something he could add to stop the reaction or something he could substitute in for either the sage or the bones. He could also return to basic mathematics and rework the unit percentages.

  He was deep into distilling more deauçoi mushrooms from the Guardian Realm of Rains when the door to his laboratory creaked open. The door let in light, brighter than that of the morning-grey beams streaking in from the mullioned windows to Draven’s left. He was surprised, after shoving his steamed goggles up onto his forehead with his wrists, to find the windows’ diamond-shaped panes were clogged with snow and fogged over. He hadn’t noticed the weather turn, though it explained why neither the fire churning away in the grate nor the bubbling cauldron on the lab table were warming the room much.

  With the trail of light came Kinrae, who paused in the doorway and looked around as though he was afraid he was unwelcome, his hand flat against the surface of the oak door. Kinrae was a bit like the light flooding in around him, Draven thought. Today, his brother’s white hair fell down to his waist unbound. His smoky quartz eyes, ringed by fair lashes, met Draven’s. His satin shirt flowed wide where it wasn’t tucked into his trousers, and although Draven knew exactly how slender his brother’s torso was underneath his shirt, the second he remembered all that pale, lithe skin, he had to forcibly shove his thoughts away into a mental trunk and lock it tight.

  Not the time, he chastised himself.

  “Can I do something for you, Brother?” Draven asked. His cracked goggles were slipping down his forehead with sweat.

  “I asked you yesterday to sit in on the Kjall’a meeting this morning,” Kinrae said. His voice matched his soft appearance, and Draven wondered yet again if his brother had a rude bone in his whole body or if they all read poetry and balked at swords. “But as the meeting is already underway, I must assume that you’ve forgotten.”

  “Well, you assume wrong, Brother!” Draven said with a grin. He strained the last of the mushrooms in his hand into a glass jar and dropped the leftover stringy, crimson mush into the pile heaped on the floor. He would need more. More mushrooms and more jars, he decided. Possibly more mushrooms than jars, but only possibly. “I just didn’t feel like going. Meetings are dull.”

  Kinrae sighed, much like the wistful maidens who attended the balls that Draven often snuck out of to collect fireflies in the courtyard for his inventory instead. “I’ve told you. Mother won’t be pleased if one of us isn’t present to observe the meeting, and I have to journey to the Realm of Arts today.”

  “To learn how to murder more violins.”

  “I don’t murder them, Draven. Mother says my playing is perfectly adequate.”

  “Does she often endorse the sounds of dying cats?”

  Athirae unleashed a high giggle that bounced off the dark stone walls, and Draven looked away from his mushroom juices long enough to point at her with the stirring rod in his hand.

  “See? She agrees with me.”

  “She cannot comprehend you,” Kinrae said, glaring, but his eyes were soft and hurt underneath his furrowed brows. Draven busied himself again. He didn’t like it when his brother looked at him like that. It made him feel things, right in his chest, things he preferred not to think about and instead pretend were indigestion. “I need you to sit in at the meeting, Brother. Please.”

  “Why? They have the meeting every single year. What could possibly change? It’s a festival. You put up some banners and bells. You make some food. You dance. You get raging drunk. And then you do it all again the next year. Hoorah. Why does it require a twelve-hour meeting?”

  “It is not that simple, Brother,” Kinrae stressed. “The High Realms have to decide which of the Low Realms to extend an invitation to this year, and then dignitaries must present their offerings to our parents. There also comes the decision of who will cater the festival and if the High Realms should bring food from their own cultures to supplement what we can provide. And of course, there are the banners,” Kinrae said with a tiny light blooming in his quartz-grey eyes, an excited smile tugging at the corners of his lips that made the feeling in Draven’s chest worsen. “It is important we have enough purple dye in the city and—”

  Draven tuned him out.

  I pity the woman our parents choose to marry you, he thought as he added the mushroom juice to the bubbling lemondew sage a little too savagely, stabbing the mud-thick mess with his glass stirring rod. Maybe he should have added the juice to the powered magpie bones instead. The poor woman might get to be the queen of the multiverse, but she’ll have to put up with your excitement about every dull political thing. I love you, Kinrae, but you have the personality of a doorknob.

  A very nice doorknob you want to get your hands all over, his mind pitched in helpfully, and Draven accidentally snapped the stirring rod in his hand. Half of it disappeared into the cauldron.

  Shit.

  “Are you even listening?” Kinrae asked.

  “Have you suddenly become interesting?”

  “Draven.”

  “Kinrae. I can say your name, too, Brother. And with a lot more ire. You need to work on your inflection. More bite, less defeat.”

  “Please attend the meeting,” Kinrae said, desperate.

  Then he got quiet.

  In his peripherals, Draven saw his brother cross the room. His shadow crowded Draven’s left side, blocking most of his light. When Kinrae’s fine-boned hand landed on the bare part of Draven’s arm, between his glove and his rolled up sleeve, Draven stilled completely. His heart stuttered in his chest like a broken machine. Kinrae’s palm was hot.

  Eyes glued to the table, Draven bit the inside of his lip. He’d always thought his brother smelled like the mountain forests did right before a storm—like leafy boughs whipped by wind, like impending lightning. That smell was overpowering now, stronger than even the heady scent of the mushrooms and the acidic bite of the sage wafting off the table.

  “I— If you— I will—” Kinrae stammered, then composed himself. “If you attend the meeting, I will assist you with your experiments again, as I did before. As your subject. You have my word.”

  Draven’s head snapped up at that. When it did, he almost dropped the broken stirring rod in his hand. His brother’s face was only inches away. He could see the different flecks of grey in Kinrae’s eyes—slate, molten silver, ash, glacier. He could feel the puffs of his brother’s breath against his nose.

  It took him a full six seconds to completely process Kinrae’s offer. Once he did, he was shocked. Kinrae liked to help Draven with his work as often as possible, but he hadn’t offered to be a guinea pig in twenty years, not since Draven had given his brother what had been designed to be a sleep aid but had accidentally ended up being an aphrodisia
c.

  That night, sitting against the cold door that connected his room to their shared bathing chamber, overhearing every moan, whimper, and slap of skin from his brother, trying not to touch himself after he’d grown hard, Draven had realized for the first time that what he felt for his brother was different.

  And morally dubious at best. But that’s practically my middle name at this point, so what the hell.

  “As many experiments as I want?” Draven asked warily, trying to hide his sparks of excitement. He imagined he was doing horribly because Kinrae looked like he was walking to the gallows. His swallow was visible, and his high cheekbones had gone crimson.

  “Yes.”

  Reluctantly, Draven moved away from Kinrae. He pulled off his gloves and goggles and slapped them down on the table. “Then you have yourself a deal! And if you go back on it, I’ll fill your bed with tadpoles.” Draven picked up Athirae, propping her on his hip. Beaker dogged his heels. “Come along, Sister. We have a meeting to go to.”

  “Please don’t take a dog and an infant to a meeting of the High Council,” Kinrae said with an exasperated sigh.

  “I go where I please as I please, Brother, and I think it’s time Athirae sees some ass-faced nobility. She’s been deprived. I mean, it’s not like you’re ever around to see her.”

  “Draven.”

  “There! Your inflection’s improving.”

  HEART & SOUL

  _______________________________

  Hail the Guardians, Children of the Council and Saviors of All. They cradle this Multiverse in Their palms. See that They do not wish to crush It.

  excerpt from the personal notes of Baron Richard von Geit of the High Realm of Three Winters

  THE REALM OF THE HIDDEN

  THE ASSEMBLY HALL, THE CENTRAL TOWER,

  THE PALACE OF THE INFINITE HIGH COUNCIL

  “We’ve called you all here today,” the Infinite High Council said in an unmelodious unison, “to discuss the recent disappearances of your comrades.”

  The announcement boomed through the cylindrical assembly hall, followed by the warbling murmurs of the gathered Guardians. Naliah tensed in a level-four mezzanine. The midday sun, visible through the hall’s oculus, bathed the theatre-esque room in harsh light, yet despite it, Naliah felt cold in his heavy silk asa.

  I guess those damned rumours are true then.

  He scanned the room again, looking for some sign of his su-lanah in the balconies that climbed up the room at even intervals—looking for her boyish black bob or her gigantic scythe Mercy—but Artysaedra wasn’t sitting anywhere in the multicolored crowd that Naliah could see. He’d searched the arena floor earlier, until the meeting had begun and Svahta had tugged him up the stairs and into a seat.

  “Everythin’ll be fine, Nal,” she said, her su-lanah Nori-Rin trailing at her heels. “Y’know Artysaedra. She’ll probably show up halfway through the meetin’, drunk an’ wearing someone’s stolen drapes.”

  Naliah pulled at his hair, knotted too tightly on the top of his head, and then he bit at the skin on the side of his thumbnail until it bled. It healed, and he bit the wound open again. He jumped when Svahta reached over with her tattooed hand to catch his wrist, pulling his hand back to his lap. When she pressed two of her sharpened fingernails against his pulse, he realized that his heart rate had racketed up a notch.

  He focused on her ice-cold touch. She smelled earthy and a bit sour, like the stagnant water of the wetlands in her home Realm. The room around them smelled of sweat and life the same way the streets of Anderton did after sunset. Someone unseen several balconies above their heads had dark chocolate on their breath. The person next to them reeked of fresh sex, the person next to them was menstruating, and someone else radiated ammonia.

  Naliah stopped looking through the diverse faces in the balconies opposite him. Instead, he forced his eyes to the frescos on the walls behind the crowded benches. In them, eleven dragons spread their leathery wings wide in garish yellows and rich purples. Armies of skeletons and naked bodies were prostrated at their feet. The sun was eclipsed in every painting. The images told the story of the Council in the time before they had given their magic to the Guardians, when they had ruled the multiverse as omnipotent beings, monarchs of life and death, creating the High and Low Realms with passing thoughts, forming seas with casual flicks of their hands, sparking apocalypses with nothing more than the rumbling tenor of their voices.

  Once Naliah was calm, he turned his attention to the other Guardians. It was strange to see them all in the same room. He’d never seen more than five or six at a time before. Here, they were a riot of different colours of silk, like a bowl full of candied beans.

  The Infinite Order of Guardians numbered five hundred, though Naliah knew there were five members who wouldn’t be in attendance today: the Guardian of Spirit, Princessa Athirae Veiyel, who had been bestowed with her powers even though she was just an infant; the Guardian of Light, Princess Arielle Penthoseren, who had been missing for a hundred thousand years and was largely irrelevant at this point; and the Guardians of Hopes, Rains, and Seas respectively, who had all disappeared in the last three weeks according to the rumours Naliah had discussed with Svahta and Nori-Rin while drinking off duty.

  Now, Naliah knew the rumours were true. Three Guardians were missing, and it was a serious enough matter that the Council had risked everything to convene the Order here today. And considering these circumstances, it worried Naliah even more that his su-lanah was conspicuously absent from this meeting.

  If Sae’s gone missing, too— Naliah thought, but he shook it off. No, I’d know that. I’d know if she was gone.

  Down in the arena, the Council was gathered at equidistant intervals around the eleven-pointed star that was formed by the black and white granite of the floor. All eleven members were present, Naliah noted gravely. He’d only ever seen the entire Council together once in all his fifty years as a Guardian, and it had been on the day of his initiation—when he’d stood before them in this very room and let them force a fiery beam of light through his eyes and down his throat like a blade, his body crumpling underneath the wash of pain and sheer power that had seeped through his every cell in the light’s wake, becoming part of him, knotting into his soul. Initiations were the only reason the Council ever came together as a whole in front of members of the Order.

  Something is different. Something is wrong.

  The Councilmen below were arranged in a gradient circle of skin colour, which began with Councilman Drakoon Veiyel the Great and his ghost-white hair and ended with Engoecha Arnetti the Horned and his skin as black as the sea at night. In between them were the other members of the Council: Meisha Illianthe the Wise, Vayala Illianthe the Valiant, Nak-chaellmiir the Cunning, Svaldari Lallen the Conqueror, Arystenar Lo-en the Wanderer, Zhen Yra the Sly, Erestenius Victorus d’Arturis the Sculptor, Anarquis Montamilyarde the Imminent, and Bal’Ah Hun the Shadowed. Ten men and one woman. None of them was wearing their parchment-coloured robes today. Instead, they wore colourful battledress: silver cuirasses over silk asa, gauntlets with pointed fingers, pauldrons like blades, beads and braids in their ankle-length hair, and metal caps fitted over the tall horns protruding from their heads.

  Something is definitely wrong, Naliah thought, and tensed.

  Svahta’s nails dug into his wrist harder, a step away from drawing blood, then disappeared. When Naliah looked over at her, she was holding hands with Nori-Rin, the two women’s fingers laced together like puzzle pieces, tattooed white skin against black. Nori-Rin towered over the both of them on the bench, boarish. Her dark eyes were zeroed in on the arena, her pierced brows drawn together. The gold chains looped through those piercings and braided into her wild hair were flush against her furrowed forehead. Her mouth was set in an impassive line.

  “Calm down, Nal,” Svahta drawled under her breath.

  In the arena, Councilman Svaldari Lallen stepped out from the rest of the Council and moved toward the center of t
he star on the floor, red silk billowing around his legs. There was a falter in his steps that Naliah had never seen before. The Councilman’s gleaming pauldrons made his shoulders look wide, aided by how he held himself like a dragon—his broken horns thrust high, his chest pushed out—but something about the posture was off today. Naliah let his eyes adjust to the distance, fine-tuning their strength until he could see individual strands of Councilman Lallen’s light brown hair. It was the same shade as his skin. Underneath his eyes, dark circles stood out like bruises. His square jaw clenched and unclenched several times.

  What has you this worried? Naliah wondered. He glanced over at Svahta. Her curly cornsilk hair curtained her freckle-marred face, but it didn’t obscure her entirely. Naliah could see that she was frowning down at the arena, pensive, but he couldn’t tell what was on her mind.

  “By now, we’re certain many of you know about the disappearances of your fellow Guardians,” Councilman Lallen boomed. Dozens of bodies shifted infinitesimally in their seats, quieting. Naliah couldn’t keep himself from scooting to the edge of his row’s bench. “Maluviahl, Orrhen, and Leorias all received urgent letters while in their Realms and went off to attend to them. Alone. Their shrine attendants contacted us after a few days without any word from them, and after an extensive investigation into each matter, we regret to inform you that yesterday evening we located all three of their bodies.”

  Naliah blinked. For a moment, it felt as if the hard bench beneath him had dropped away. Bodies? They’re dead?

  “We also— We suspect,” Councilman Lallen continued over the beginnings of frantic whispering, his voice cracking all of a sudden, “due to the—to the uncanny similarities between each incident, that your comrades were—were lured away from their shrines under false pretenses, and it is— We believe— It’s highly probable that they were murdered.”

  The hall burst into chaotic shouts. Hundreds of voices overlapping, amplifying into a deafening cacophony. The shouts bounced off the walls and drowned out anything the Council was trying to say.