“Sae?” Naliah said, interrupting her thoughts.
“Yeah?”
“I have something to talk to you about later.” He shot her a quick sideways glance. A paper in his pocket crinkled. “Guardian business.”
She furrowed her brow. “And it has to wait?”
“Until we’re alone, yes.”
“Then it can wait.”
Once Artysaedra and Naliah made it to the tailor’s, a relatively quaint shop, its storefront window filled with a plethora of purple suits and dresses for Kjall’a, Naliah held the door and gave a sarcastically deep bow. “After you, milady.”
“Call me milady again and I’ll snap your fingers off to wear around my neck,” Artysaedra said, and walked into the shop. It smelled of a light bit of lavender from a gilded bowl in the corner of the mirrored room, a miniscule amount that was easy on a demon’s nose without forcing them to deaden their senses to it. In Artysaedra’s experience, demons naturally kept their senses at a level just above a human’s—enough to see and smell nearby predators with ease. She was always tuned a little higher than that.
Artysaedra put on a bright smile when greeting Lyonard, who was too polite to let his face give away that he’d definitely heard what she’d said to Naliah.
One of the few people who doesn’t criticize me for being too crass to be a lady, Artysaedra thought bitterly. She could already hear her tutor Jaimess’ high, supercilious voice correcting her posture and instructing her to smooth out her accent into something gentle, articulated yet flowing. Why does a lady have to be a dainty little maiden? Wouldn’t a man rather have a woman who could defend his homestead and match him drink for drink? What fun is a daft, pretty little thing he has nothing in common with and has no use for, like some worthless little doily for his table?
“It’s a pleasure to see you, Princessa Veiyel,” Lyonard said, clasping Artysaedra’s hands in his warmer ones. “Come in from the cold, and we can get this drudgery over with as quickly as possible, I assure you.” He winked.
Artysaedra liked Lyonard Bargeaux for a lot of reasons. For centuries, he’d been her family’s tight-lipped tailor. And one of the many things he kept to himself was that he fitted Artysaedra for trousers and silk button-downs for her to wear during jaunts outside of the castle. In Lutana, enough young women had started dressing in Artysaedra’s image, though, that her parents had discovered what she was wearing behind their backs—and it wasn’t hard to for them figure out that Lyonard was behind it—but Lyonard always kept his mouth shut when Artysaedra’s parents came to him to complain and, in the meantime, he kept sewing for Artysaedra.
He was a man unfazed by intimidation, a man with a polite aura about him that still felt like one sour note in a chord. There was something formidable hidden in his gentleness.
At a first glance, though, there wasn’t much to him. He was a reticent demon with a predilection for wearing iridescent waistcoats underneath his velvet suit jackets and for leaving a sketching pencil absentmindedly tucked into his plaited hair. Today, his waistcoat was a purple that shimmered like moonstone when the light drifting in from the window hit it. His blond hair was bound at the nape of his neck like always, and his long fingers were quick and precise with the measuring tape he wore around his neck. As he worked, he manoeuvred around Artysaedra’s long tail with ease and ended his measurements with the circumference of her neck.
It was hard to tell Lyonard was a demon from a distance. All four of his fangs had been pulled out for some reason he’d never shared with Artysaedra, and he was one of those strange mixed blood animalii like her father without a physical marker to identify him. What gave Lyonard away as a demon were his eyes and his skin. His eyes were an otherworldly lilac, framed by blond lashes, and his porcelain skin was a little too smooth upon close inspection, like a doll’s.
Artysaedra knew he was some sort of fish demon, early enough into his lifespan to avoid blatant signs of aging but far enough into it to appear in his mid-thirties. As she recalled, Lyonard had a sister who frequented the shop. She was a water elementus, so it was likely that Lyonard had that blood running through his veins, too—and elementii had slightly longer lifespans than their animalii cousins, though only by a few thousand years, give or take. As a result, it was impossible for her to guess at Lyonard’s age, but if she forced herself to, she might have put him around eight or nine thousand years old out of an estimated lifespan of eighteen thousand years.
As she stood there while Lyonard logged her measurements in a notepad, Artysaedra recounted that she knew next to nothing about Lyonard personally. He had as many secrets as he kept for her family, yet as a child, she’d felt safe around him when the nursemaids had brought her around. Even now, she was content in his presence.
Once Lyonard was done, having given her a glimpse at his proposed design, he told her that her dress would be ready for pickup in two weeks’ time, the morning before Kjall’a. Artysaedra stepped down from the platform she was on to accept help from Lyonard’s attendant, a demure sheep demon who was holding her Guardian asa like it was a relic. The black silk of the gown was cold when Artysaedra slipped it back on over her white under-robe.
She repeatedly had to wave away Lyonard’s attendant. The woman kept trying to help Artysaedra tie her belt at her lower back and straighten her belt drape down her front, even though Artysaedra had done it for herself a million times. Every time she snapped at the woman to stop, the attendant stepped back, only to inch forward again after a few seconds and slide her hands over Artysaedra’s shoulders or down her spine. Once her gown was finally on, Artysaedra levelled the attendant with a pointed glare and stretched out her hand to take Mercy back from Naliah, who was leaning against the scythe and smirking. Reluctantly, he returned Mercy.
“If you like her so much,” Artysaedra said with an annoyed scowl, fitting her hand around Mercy’s leather-wrapped shaft, warm from where Naliah had been holding her, “why don’t you get a scythe of your own?”
Naliah shrugged. “I prefer my fists.”
Staring down the attendant until she finally scurried from the room, Artysaedra didn’t mean to sound quite so angry when she said, “I’m sure they’ve seen more action than Mercy lately anyway.”
“My fists?” Naliah said, and lifted an eyebrow. The ghost of a smile tugged at his mouth. “Well, that’s a little personal, but if you really want to know—”
Artysaedra looked down at him, unamused. “You know what I meant.” She pressed the tip of her tongue to one of her fangs until it stung. She could taste blood. When her tongue healed over, she focused on a single point in the floral wallpaper over Naliah’s head and bit it open again. “It’s only a matter of time until the Guard hunts my ass back down. Then it’s back to the tower and embroidery lessons for me.”
Last night, Kah Nordus had personally escorted Artysaedra home, and the castle guards hadn’t been subtle in their tailing of her since. It had taken her an hour earlier to lose them in the residential districts after her routine blessing of a newborn. She’d woven through the factories, the shipyard, the chimneyed roofs of the Wingham gated community, the mezzanine level of the frouffy Scarlet Lion—even through Yue Street and its miasma of antiseptics and fraudulent potions and through some seedier back alleys on the edge of the marketplace plaza where demons blitzed out of their minds stared up at the snowy sky, flopped out on the icy cobblestones like weeds growing up through the cracks. Now that she’d left her warding behind in the pub, it wouldn’t be long before the guards found her again. She ground her teeth.
“Why’s the Guard tracking you down?” Naliah asked. “Did you steal someone’s cat or punch a toddler again?”
“Again? I’ve never punched a— You idiot, no. Because I’m forbidden to leave the dimension. You know that,” Artysaedra said, and Naliah chuckled. When she didn’t join in, his laughter died away all at once. He stared at her.
“You’re forbidden to what?”
Behind Artysaedra, she heard Lyona
rd close the door with a click, but closed doors didn’t stop eavesdropping, especially not for demons. Artysaedra coaxed a ward around them. She shook her head. “I don’t understand. Why are you acting surprised?” she asked Naliah.
“Because I am.”
“The Council decreed all this right after that girl—Maluviahl, or whatever—right after she went missing. It’s been weeks. You can’t not know about it. I’m your partner. I haven’t been permitted to attend to the Abyss, and I haven’t been sent out on small assignments out-of-Realm, either. Not even to cleanse rivers or rebuild cities. Did you somehow not notice I hadn’t been around?”
“I guess I thought you were busy.” Naliah’s face scrunched. He seemed confused. “No one’s told me any different. Has the Council’s really been keeping you here?”
“Yes.”
“Then why didn’t you send me a letter or something when you hadn’t heard from me? I’ve been worried all day about you.”
“Why’s it my fault you didn’t know? You could have sent a letter. Or you could have come and found me whenever you wanted, but no. We both know you spend most of your time with that freckled mouse and her oafish sidekick. Stars forbid you carve out some time for your actual partner,” Artysaedra shot off. Naliah looked guilty, and at the sight, Artysaedra sighed. “I’ve been sitting around here like a damsel in distress. Mother doesn’t let me out of the castle most days and insists on discussing my wedding plans, and a Councilman visits every afternoon to make sure I’ve stayed put. They’ve already talked about locking me in my room during Kjall’a with a dozen of the highest ranked castle guards.”
“I’m sorry, Sae,” Naliah mumbled. “I didn’t realize. I knew they were protective of you, but—”
“But,” Artysaedra finished for him, “it’s just going to get worse until the Council finds Maluviahl. I still say she’s hungover in some foreign dimension and hasn’t crawled back to her shrine yet. I don’t know why they’re making it a big deal.” As soon as she said it, Naliah looked at her like she’d spoken another language. “What?” she snapped at him. “What is it this time?”
“They did find her,” he said dumbly. “And the others.”
“Others?”
“The other Guardians that have gone missing.”
“What the hell are you on about?” she asked. “What other Guardians?”
“Maluviahl, Leorias, and Orrhen,” Naliah said, and his face scrunched up again. “The Council told us this morning. I figured they’d already told your family. Marette’s still missing, of course, but they found those three, and you”—Naliah’s momentum slowed and his eyes widened—“and you have no idea what I’m talking about at all, do you?”
If Mercy’s shaft weren’t enchanted, Artysaedra was certain she would have broken it in half. She was seething. None of this made any sense. “All these people have been missing? Not just Maluviahl.”
“Well, they disappeared right after her, but yes—”
“And did the Council know they were missing, too?” Artysaedra asked, and at this, she felt downright murderous. “Because if they did, they’ve been lying to my face. For weeks.”
“They…told you it was just Maluviahl?”
“They were adamant.”
Piece by piece, Naliah filled her in on what the Council had decided she didn’t need to know. He told her how the Council had called a meeting of the entire Order, to confirm for them that four of their comrades were missing—three of them found so far, lured away from their shrines, murdered and mutilated. But Naliah’s story left her with more questions than it did answers. For one, why had the Council waited to address the Order about these disappearances until three bodies had turned up, and why were they still hiding all of this from her?
“Is this the business you had to tell me about?” she asked, and Naliah shook his head. “Then what—”
“Later,” he said with a weak smile, and she scowled at him. “Come on. I’ve got no plans to leave for the next day at the very least. We can get rousing drunk if you’d like, worry about the rest in the morning.”
“You’re a handsy drunk,” Artysaedra said. Begrudgingly, she let her bitter thoughts go. She’d think on it all later, she decided, when she had a moment alone. “Old Lady Nancy still talks about you sticking your hand up her skirts.”
“The woman’s been through a couple millennia, but she still has thighs like steel.”
“Idiot.”
“Oh, like you’re the more meritorious drunk. All you do is sing morbid sea songs and try to sleep on the tables. And there was that time you tried to start a fight with Willis and ended up setting yourself on fire and blackening your own eye.”
“I still say you made that up.” Artysaedra hefted Mercy up against her shoulder. As she headed for the door, Naliah pushed it open for her. “Though it would explain why Willis laughs every time he sees me down at the docks.”
“Challenge him to a fight.”
“As if he’d accept. It’s hard enough to find someone who’ll hit a princess—much less a Guardian.”
“I’d’ve hit you, back before I was a Guardian.”
“Back when you were a little slave boy living in the sewer end of Anderton?”
“Devil’s Shot,” Naliah said. “I was the King.”
“And I’m the Beast of the Bay,” Artysaedra said as a snowflake landed on her nose. It tickled. “We could put on a hell of a show down at the docks. Me putting you on your back like the woman you are.”
“And me knocking out some of those pretty white teeth of yours. Think we could get your mother to attend?”
By this point, Artysaedra was smothering a snort. “If I told Mother she could wager my impending nuptials, I think she’d have half the Royal Treasury on your name. She’d cheer you on at the sidelines to beat my face into the dirt.”
Naliah’s face did something strange. It twisted for just a moment—an expression there and gone so quickly Artysaedra couldn’t identify it. “She wants you married so badly?”
“Yes,” Artysaedra said. The word left a bad taste in her mouth. It had been a month since she’d been forced to visit Prince Hallien Renald in the High Realm of the Northern Isles, but she could still smell that horrible, heavy cologne he wore. It reeked of pine needles and wet dog. “My third fiancé to date,” she said with a sneer. “Another straight-backed, flute-playing ponce with a silver spoon jammed up his ass.”
“You haven’t shaken him yet?”
“Stars, no,” Artysaedra said. “I’ve tried about all I can think of without Mother getting suspicious. Stepping on his feet during balls. Eating rancid meals before our chaperoned evenings. Even kneed him in the cock once. Accidentally, of course. He still looks at me like I’ve hung the damned moon.”
“How dare he.”
“It’s disgusting.”
“Deplorable.”
“Devastating.”
“Despicable.”
Artysaedra snorted, loud and ugly, knocking her body into Naliah’s as they walked. He grinned up at her. “I should take you out to the next ball, you know. I know how much you adore them. Dressing up in a suit—”
“Suits,” Naliah said with disgust.
“—wearing cufflinks and shined shoes—”
“Barbaric.”
“—and keeping your hands off the noble ladies.”
Naliah gave a horrified gasp, throwing his hand to his chest. “I can’t touch the women? Well, Sae, dearest, I’m afraid there I must draw the line.”
“Well,” came a velvet voice from down the street, and both Artysaedra and Naliah looked away from each other toward it, “I do hope the women you won’t be touching include my sister.”
In the middle of the snow-laden street was Artysaedra’s elder brother, Draven. He stood out against the snow with his black hair and olive-cast skin—like a drop of dark coffee in the dreary, white landscape. His face was as hard as their mother’s, his garnet-red eyes just as stern as he stared down Naliah. It
was only a matter of time until the full-on bickering began between the two of them, Artysaedra wagered. The two were always at each other’s throats.
It hadn’t always been that way. For eighteen long years, her brother and Naliah had been as thick as thieves, closer than even she and Naliah had been as su-lanh. What had changed between Draven and Naliah two years ago, she had no idea. One day, they’d been inseparable, and the next, Naliah had been banned from Draven’s wing of the castle. She’d always wondered what had ended their friendship, but no matter how many times she’d cornered them, neither had ever furnished an answer.
“Did you need something?” Artysaedra asked, making no effort to sound polite. Draven didn’t break his gaze from Naliah, his arms crossed over his chest.
“Something happened at home,” her brother said, curt. “Father told me to come find you. He’s worried. I just didn’t realize he’d be here with you. Truth be told, Guardian Staatvelter, I’m surprised you aren’t out whoring in some seedy pub or brawling with your fellow thugs. That was all you did before you met my sister, wasn’t it?”
Naliah gave a gentleman’s smile and tucked his hands into his trouser pockets where something crinkled. “Oh, you know me. The only thing I love more than a good fight is a good whore.”
Draven visibly blanched.
Fed up, Artysaedra stepped forward and planted Mercy in the snow like a staff. Her brother finally looked at her. She noticed that, instead of a suit, he was wearing a thick canvas apron with half a dozen stains and holes in it, a few drops of dried blood spotted down the front. He had glass caught in his hair and clothes. From where she was standing, she could smell fresh potions on him: lemondew sage, angelflower, mushrooms, and something with a dusty scent she couldn’t place.
She lifted an eyebrow. “Wow. It must really be urgent news if you crawled out of your cave.”
A Shard of Sea and Bone (Death of the Multiverse Book 1) Page 14