Of the Abyss

by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

  “Sister, you may be allowed to discuss the Others with impunity, but as a simple citizen of Kavet I do believe it would be illegal for me to speculate on the subject.”

  But his eyes were dancing with amusement.

  She bit her tongue, because he was right . . . damn it . . . even if she was certain he was playing with her.

  She was still trying to form another question for him when she saw Novice Sienna waving at her through the crowd, trying to get her attention. When she ran forward, Cadmia thought she would mention Hansa’s release, but that wasn’t the subject on her mind.

  “Cadmia, do you have Pearl with you?” Sienna asked, breathless.

  “Pearl? Why would she be with me?” Cadmia responded.

  “I have no idea why, but I was hoping anyway. She’s been missing for . . . I’m not sure for how long, actually, but no one remembers seeing her for hours, probably since she last went outside.”

  “Would she have run away?” the stranger asked.

  Cadmia wanted to snap at him to stay out of this, but Sienna answered, wringing her hands. “She’s always been happy at the Hall. And she never goes anywhere without permission. I think she’s afraid if she wanders off, no one will be there when she comes back.”

  “That girl should not be alone in this city.” In contrast to his cavalier or frankly manipulating tone earlier, the man now seemed genuinely concerned. To Sienna, he said, “You should go back to the Hall.”

  “No, we should alert the guards,” Cadmia argued, trying to think of the best way to respond . . . only to realize that Sienna had already turned away, and was ignoring her as she followed the stranger’s “suggestion.”

  “You don’t want sighted guards looking for her,” he said.

  “You’re not implying . . . Pearl is the sweetest little girl I’ve ever met!” Cadmia hissed. “Every guard in the One-­Twenty-­Six already knows and adores her. She likes to bring them cookies and cider and talk to them while they’re on duty. And how would you know anything, unless—­”

  As her mind caught up to her mouth, Cadmia realized her suspicions had not only crystallized into certainty, but that the stranger knew it. Cadmia took a step back, eyes searching for the nearest guard as she drew breath to call out.

  “I have no intention of harming you,” the man said, his tone still casual, as if he were discussing the weather, “and in fact, I may be able to help you find Pearl, but if you raise your voice at this moment I can kill you, without anyone in this plaza noticing, much less raising a hand to help you.”

  “Do you know where she is?” Cadmia asked, in a soft, trembling voice.

  “I may be able to make some inquiries,” he responded, “if you agree not to cause trouble for Mars’s newest Quin hero.”

  “You monster,” Cadmia hissed. “You would really hold the safety of a nine-­year-­old child hostage, just for my silence?”

  “Your voice is getting loud,” he warned, prompting her to snap her mouth shut again. “And yes, I would. I don’t do favors, but I will make deals. You stay out of our way, and I will do my best to return Pearl to you, or, if she is already safe and wishes to stay where she is, to let you know as much.”

  For all she knew, he was the one who had taken Pearl—­just as she was now quite sure that he had healed Hansa, and probably manipulated events to secure that guard’s freedom.

  The Others cannot lie, she thought, and if he is spawn, like Hansa believed, they also cannot back out of an agreement once they have given their word. If she was right about what he was, then he would need to help Pearl, as long as she kept her mouth shut about Hansa.

  She had felt Hansa’s innocence when she went to him. If this creature had healed him for its own reasons, then every word Hansa had spoken in his own defense had probably been true. He wasn’t a mancer; he had been caught in a trap involving magic and creatures beyond his training or understanding. In that case, did she even want to cause more trouble for him?

  Or was she just justifying her own actions, when she said, “If you will do everything in your power to ensure Pearl’s safe return to the Cobalt Hall, then I will refrain from mentioning my . . . concerns . . . to anyone.”

  “If I discover Pearl had a good reason to leave the Hall of her own free will, I will not force her to return. But I will see to her safety.”

  Cadmia nodded. “Do I say thank you?” she asked.

  “We shake hands,” he said, “and then you don’t see me again until I intend for you to.”

  They did, and then he was gone in the crowd, as if he had never been there.

  CHAPTER 13

  After a meeting with Winsor Indathrone, in which Hansa was informed that he had acted valiantly when he had confronted the demon and slain the responsible Abyssumancer, Hansa returned to his apartment with the intention of curling up in bed and not thinking about the fact that he had obviously done no such thing.

  In the morning, he would visit Ruby and beg her forgiveness.

  How would he approach her? Should he apologize outright? Should he wait for her to apologize?

  Would he ever be able to tell her what really happened?

  Self-­consciously, he touched fingertips to the front of his new shirt—­compliments of the Quinacridone—­over his new scar.

  Insist on this boon, on the other hand, and you will not be rid of me. . .

  He shuddered as he pushed open the front door of his apartment. Exhausted and heartsick, he pulled off his winter outerwear and kicked off his boots. He would have liked a hot bath, to help take away the chill of the Quin dungeons, but didn’t have the energy required to haul and heat water.

  He was halfway across the living room when the assault came. All he could do was brace himself. The door slammed as he fell back against it, his wits slow to catch up to the fact that the slender shape that had launched itself at him was Ruby.

  “I was waiting for you . . . I had to talk to you . . . I’m sorry,” she whispered, her arms still wrapped around his neck, and her soft body leaning against his tense one. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know how I believed that horrible story. I’m sorry!”

  I saw the blood with my own eyes, she had said. Had Umber come up with an alternate explanation for how Hansa had been injured one minute and healed the next, or had he erased the memory of the brutal wounds from Ruby’s mind? “Ruby, there’s something I have to tell you—­”

  “Not tonight,” she said. She raised onto her toes and kissed him with trembling lips. “I can’t talk tonight. I need you to just hold me and tell me you’re okay and that you forgive me.”

  “Of course I forgive you.” How could he not? He was the one who should have been begging her to forgive him.

  “Jenkins is dead, Hansa,” Ruby whispered. “Did they tell you that?”

  “I saw it. I’m so sorry. It was too fast. There was nothing I could do.”

  She let out a whimpering cry and buried her face in his shoulder. Her body trembled against his, soft and rounded but alarmingly chilled.

  I do believe my little sister has a crush on you, Hansa. Be nice. Jenkins’s teasing warning from years before, when Hansa had been eighteen and Ruby fifteen, floated through Hansa’s mind. Four years later, it had changed to, You might as well give in. Ruby gets what she wants. Finally, when Hansa had told him about buying the ring, Jenkins’s only response had been, It’s about time. Be good to her.

  Jenkins wouldn’t be beside Hansa at the wedding. He wouldn’t be there to tease Hansa about his anxiety or to congratulate him on finally finding the nerve to tie the knot.

  There was nothing I could do! Hansa told himself.

  You saved yourself by letting a monster meddle with my sister’s mind. Twice.

  The words weren’t from Jenkins’s ghost—­normal ­people couldn’t see or hear the dead that way—­but they might as well have been.

&
nbsp; “Ruby—­”

  In response to his saying her name, Ruby lifted her face and pressed her lips to his again. He could taste the salt of her tears.

  Give her a kiss for me.

  The memory of Umber’s combination of threats and promises, combined with his imagination’s rendering of Jenkins’s horror, made him stiffen and instinctively recoil.

  “I’m sorry,” Ruby whispered. “I said such horrible things to you, and now here I am throwing myself at you like all should instantly be forgiven.” She stood up, backing away. “I’m sorry. I’ll . . . I’ll go.”

  She turned to flee, and he caught her arm. “Don’t. It isn’t like that. I just . . .” She turned back to him, tears in her beautiful eyes. “I have too many awful things in my head right now.”

  She nodded, biting her lower lip. “Of course. And you must be exhausted. I am, too. We should both get some rest. Do you need anything before I go?”

  I need you, he could have said. Should have said, for her benefit. “You shouldn’t be alone,” he managed.

  “Olive said she would stay over tonight.” It took Hansa a moment to place the name. Ruby had friends at the herbarium, but Hansa hadn’t met many of them. “She’s making a tisane to make sure I sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow?”

  “Breakfast?” he suggested. Somewhere with air and sunlight, and no blood or screaming or iron doors. That’s all I ask.

  Ruby nodded again. “I think the Green Jewel still serves breakfast?” she suggested. “I doubt either of us wants to cook.”

  He forced a smile, and saw her relax a little. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  He wanted to add something sweet, or suave, or romantic, but nothing came. They said awkward goodbyes, and then Hansa was alone. He climbed into bed, but it was a long time before he fell asleep.

  When he did, he tumbled into dreams of the Abyss.

  The world was full of black fire. He was trying to walk between the flames, but every time he brushed against one, they seared, and drew blood, until it ran down his skin from dozens of lacerations. Still he stumbled onward, trying to flee.

  He had to get out. He couldn’t stay here. This wasn’t his world.

  “Let me help you,” a voice said, as someone took his hand and pulled him through the flames, onto an endless plain, surrounded by needle-­like mountains on all sides.

  He turned to thank his savior, and found himself facing a creature out of nightmare, darkness made solid. Pain shot up his arm from the hand it still gripped as if with a vise of needles. He tried to scream, but the breath he drew was full of smoke, so he choked instead.

  He woke coughing, shaking and sweating as if in the grip of the worst winter flu. His entire arm ached, the pain radiating upward from his tightly-­clenched fist.

  He had to fight to relax, to tell his body it was just a dream. Nightmares were understandable, after what he had been through.

  It was just a dream, wasn’t it?

  He looked at his hand, remembering how the Abyssumancer’s blade had felt when it had cut him. Could it have done something to him? Would it be stupider to ask someone, or to risk someone with the sight noticing something off about him that he hadn’t reported?

  This was the kind of quandary he would have gone to Jenkins about.

  The thought hit him hard, taking his legs out from under him.

  He couldn’t stand to speak to other guards yet, and after his disastrous interview with Cadmia Paynes he didn’t dare seek guidance from the Napthol.

  He cleaned up, dressed, and then walked to the Green Jewel Inn as if in a trance.

  His already dark mood was not helped when his gaze swept over the crowd in the breakfast room and he beheld a familiar figure at another table, one long leg hooked over the bottom rung of his stool as he nursed a drink and chatted with the young woman sitting next to him.

  Hansa stood, prepared to challenge the half-­breed before Ruby arrived, and immediately heard Umber’s voice quite clearly in his mind:

  Sit down. We’ll talk about this in a minute.

  Hansa took a step forward, with the thought, Oh, no, we’ll talk about this right now.

  Umber chuckled at something the woman next to him said, but his silent voice was cold. This pretty girl next to me happens to be a Numenmancer. She is confident that she is well-­hidden, but if the hero of Kavet approaches us right now, she is going to panic, and you and your beloved are all going to be in the middle of her undoubtedly violent response. So sit. Back. Down.

  Hansa sat, resisting the instinct to take a second look at the woman Umber had identified as a mancer. He had seen enough to know it wasn’t Dioxazine, and he didn’t want to put all innocent bystanders at risk by trying to see more.

  He jumped as a hand touched his shoulder.

  “Sorry,” Ruby said. As he stood to greet her properly, her eyes widened. “Oh, darling, you look exhausted. Did you sleep at all?”

  His shoulder blades itched as he tried to ignore the mancer and spawn on the other side of the room. “A little. Not well. How are you?”

  “I . . . don’t know,” she admitted. “I feel numb. I tell myself Jenkins is dead and I just feel blank. I can’t make myself believe it. I know it will hit me eventually, but until then I’m just going through the motions.”

  “I know how you feel.” At least you didn’t wear his blood and then get arrested for his murder. Hansa shoved the nasty thought away, and dropped his gaze to the menu so she wouldn’t see it in his eyes. He was too tense, too tired, too overwhelmed, but he didn’t want to take it out on her. He struggled to think of something he could stand to say to her. It’s my fault for not realizing what Dioxazine was years ago, and for somehow tipping her off at the door so she had time to summon that creature. I’m a coward for running. I’ve never felt so helpless in my life. And now I’m only sitting here because I broke the laws I swore I would fight and die if necessary to uphold.

  The silence had stretched too long while he considered and discarded ideas. She asked, “Will you have to visit his parents?”

  She asked as if Jenkins’s parents weren’t hers, too. Hansa almost said, That’s the captain’s job, then remembered Captain Feldgrau was dead, too. “Someone from the Napthol will,” he said. “They wouldn’t want to see me.” Ruby hadn’t spoken to her parents in years, but Jenkins had kept in touch a little.

  He was about to say that they should probably visit his parents—­Jenkins had been like a second son to them, and they deserved to hear what had happened from Hansa instead of a messenger from the 126 or the Napthol—­but a chuckle from the mancer behind him made the hairs down the back of his neck lift. With relief he realized she was standing up and saying farewell to Umber. She strolled out of the Green Jewel without a single glance at Hansa, and some of the tightness left his chest.

  We should talk now, Umber suggested, at the same time that Ruby sighed and said, “Do you want to talk about . . . it? About . . . how it happened, I mean?”

  Her wide expression and trembling lip said she didn’t want to, but was trying to give him what he needed. Wasn’t that supposed to be his job—­to take care of her?

  He couldn’t speak aloud to Umber, but knew the spawn had previously read his thoughts, so he tried responding by clearly thinking, Later. For now, you aren’t supposed to be here.

  I was here first, Umber replied. I’ll meet you out back.

  Umber stood, and smiled at the waitress as he paid his tab. Judging by the woman’s expression, the tip he left was generous.

  “Hansa?” Ruby prompted.

  “I’m sorry, I . . . I don’t even know how to—­” Now, Quin! “—­put what happened in words. I don’t think I want to,” he admitted.

  “Well then,” Ruby said in a voice full of forced lightness and cheer. “You don’t have to. But you do have to take care of yourself. I’m going to make sur
e you eat, then put you back to bed.”

  If you make me come over there, you’re going to have to introduce me, Umber threatened.

  “I’m sorry,” Hansa said, “I need to deal with something. I’ll be right back.” Umber wasn’t supposed to be able to come near Ruby, but Hansa didn’t have much faith in the rules he had set out when demanding the second boon.

  Ruby frowned, but said, “Okay. I’ll order for you?”

  “It won’t take long,” he assured her. He tried to kiss her goodbye, but she nodded and turned her face away with the excuse of looking at a menu Hansa knew she had to have memorized by now.

  Trying to hide his sudden desire to strangle someone, Hansa made his way to the back door of the inn. Outside, leaning against the wall, stood Umber. Despite the frigid autumn air, he didn’t even have the decency to wear a proper cloak or gloves or otherwise make any attempt to appear normal.

  “What do you want?” Hansa demanded. “In case you hadn’t noticed, my almost-­fiancée is waiting for me.”

  “Oh, you’re engaged again, are you?” Umber asked, without the least bit of interest in his voice. “I’m sure that’s very important to you, but I couldn’t care less. I need you to do something for me.”

  Hansa couldn’t help a snicker. “No.”

  He turned to go back inside, and Umber stepped in the way. “I’ve made you into a hero, Hansa. The least you can do is play the part.”

  “Not for you,” Hansa pointed out. “We made our deal. As far as I understand, that means it’s over. I don’t have to—­”

  “Fine,” Umber said. “You made your demon-­deal. You won the woman, and became everyone’s favorite man. You are under no obligation to live up to your legend.”

  “Damn right.”

  “After all, the city was perfectly willing to lock you up and throw away the key before you were guilty.”

  “Do you have a point?” Hansa grumbled. “Or are you going to get out of the way?”