“I don’t need to convince you.”
“Which is why I am trying to convince you that you do not want to do this.”
Hansa picked up another shard of the vase. It glistened in the candlelight.
“Blood to seal the boon, right?” he asked.
“Hansa, listen to me,” Umber argued. “The third boon creates a permanent bond. Permanent. There is no way to break it. The symptoms of that bond vary drastically, but it is possible that you will lose all you are and become so obsessive that I’ll have to lock you away.”
“That’s the risk I’ll take, then. You know what I want.”
“You don’t want this,” Umber sighed.
“Not really,” Hansa said. “But I don’t see a choice.” He held up the shard of glass, examining the edge. “Do you have a preference of location?”
“Don’t do this.”
“I imagine the longer we wait, the more difficult it is going to be to bring her back,” Hansa said. “We should get on with it.”
Speaking very quietly, his gaze not leaving the shard of glass Hansa held, Umber explained, “I don’t even know if I can do what you’re asking of me. Even if I can find a necromancer, there is no guarantee he will agree to help, or that this will be within his power.” He reached out slowly, attempting to remove the glass from Hansa’s hand. When Hansa resisted, Umber held up his own knife instead. “It’s my blood we need for the third boon, anyway. So listen to me: I will try to find someone who can help. I will do everything within my power to bring him back here, and you and I can attempt to find a way to convince him to do what you want.” He pulled the knife blade across the flesh of his forearm, but instead of offering the wound to Hansa, he tore a strip from his shirt and awkwardly bandaged the wound. “You can still choose not to seal this boon. I ask that you wait to decide until I’ve done my best to discover if I’m even capable of fulfilling this demand. And in the meantime, I beg you to consider carefully whether, when I return, you really want to do this.”
Hansa nodded, gripping Ruby’s cold hand in his uninjured one.
Umber turned to go, but paused one more time in the doorway to say, “You know there’s a chance that, if I go out searching for a mancer, I may stumble across the wrong kind and not make it back?” When Hansa just nodded again, Umber shook his head and hissed, “Bastard,” under his breath before he stormed out.
CHAPTER 22
The falling snow meant Xaz had an excuse to keep her head down and her hood up as she walked through the thinning harbor crowds. She thought she had managed to put a veil over her power, but wasn’t confident about it. Thankfully, the sight was rare and sighted guards were rarer, so she thought she would be safe as long as no one recognized her face.
When Alizarin returned from hunting and she told him her plan to find the spawn, the Abyssi didn’t ask why. He was too thrilled by the idea of seeking out the spawn—who he called Umber, and who he felt would be more amicable to his advances than a Numenmancer—to ask why.
She had planned to go up to the city to start her search for Hansa, but the bustle at the waterfront caused her to detour. She heard Hansa’s name whispered by more than one person—Hansa’s fiancée, she thought—but that wasn’t what drew her attention. The docks hummed with cold power, as if another Numenmancer had been there. Who? Even if Hansa had become a mancer, his power would come from the Abyss. How was he involved with anything involving the Numen?
You’re a Numenmancer. How were you able to summon an Abyssi?
They stumbled across Umber before they found the guard. He greeted her with a dry, “Mancer. I can’t say it’s a pleasure to see you. Excuse me.”
Xaz shivered as the spawn she had come here to find moved past her. “Wait, please,” she called after him.
He turned slightly, waiting for her to continue.
Alizarin pranced toward Umber, unconcerned about the snow around his bare feet or falling on his fur, beyond a slight twitch of his ear when a snowflake dropped onto it. “Xaz has been feeling a little sexually frustrated,” he announced blithely. “Think you could help?”
Xaz fought a blush as Umber lifted one sardonic brow, amused. “Sorry . . . Xaz, you’re not my type.”
This time as he tried to push past her, she caught his arm. Her grip wasn’t strong, but he winced. Xaz noticed the blush of blood on the fabric of his shirt.
“You and your mancer having some difficulties?” she asked. The only time Abyssi or spawn actually bled was when they meant to spill power. A wound that stayed open meant something was unfinished—a dangerous state which left the creature vulnerable. Even Xaz, who had no natural tie to the Abyss, could feel the weakness.
Umber pulled his arm out of her grip. “I would believe that the lovely Abyssi sought me out entirely for sex—and I’m flattered, Alizarin, I really am, and I would love to take you up on the offer if I weren’t in the middle of something already.” Alizarin purred at the praise. “But you, Mancer, want something or you wouldn’t be here. Spit it out so I can say no and we can move on.”
Alizarin rested his chin on Umber’s shoulder, looking bored. As Xaz had suspected, he was far too interested in Umber as entertainment to consider that his knowledge might be a threat. Umber leaned back against the Abyssi, and Alizarin wrapped his arms around his waist.
Xaz said, “I need your help. Can we maybe talk somewhere more private?” This wasn’t the kind of conversation she wanted to risk having overheard.
The spawn actually laughed out loud. As if struck by a sudden idea, he twisted to speak to Alizarin. “Darling, you don’t happen to know where I might find a necromancer around here, do you? Ideally one powerful enough to raise the recently dead, but easily bribed.”
This time it was Xaz’s turn to snicker. “You are looking for a mancer? You really are in trouble, aren’t you?”
“If you could help me,” Umber continued, now completely ignoring Xaz as he addressed Alizarin, “I’ll have plenty of time for more enjoyable activities when I’m done.”
“If you help me first,” Xaz offered, “I can cast a finding spell. I think I should be able to locate a necromancer for you.”
Umber’s focus returned to her. “What do you need? I don’t have much time.”
“Can’t we go somewhere—”
Umber interrupted her with a half grunt, half snicker. He looked from her to Alizarin—who was watching the crowds hustle past them with apparent fascination—and then back to her. “You want me to strip the Abyssal taint from your magic.” Alizarin either hadn’t heard or didn’t care, so Xaz nodded. “If the Abyssi cooperated, I might be able to, but not in this state.” He held up his wounded arm. The small bloodstain had spread slightly. Whatever he had begun, he would be leaking power until it was done, or risk the magical equivalent of bleeding to death. “If you can find a necromancer—”
This time it was her turn to interrupt with a humorless laugh. “I would need tools I can’t get until the Numini will talk to me again.” The spawn might be powerful enough to break in to wherever the Quin kept such things, but again, it was clear he couldn’t do much at that moment.
Alizarin apparently had been listening. He turned to ask, “You need a body resurrected?”
Umber nodded. “If it can be.”
Alizarin brightened. “I could eat it,” he suggested. “Then it can’t be raised.”
It was obviously, for the Abyssi, a reasonable idea. Umber even responded to it as such, though he regretfully explained, “It’s long cold.”
Alizarin frowned. “Necromancer,” he said. “They don’t even go to the temples.”
“I know,” Umber replied. He didn’t seem to mind that Alizarin’s hands had drifted, so one wrapped around his waist but the other rested on top of the open wound. “How do we find one?”
“Kill something?” Xaz suggested sarcastically.
The two men looked to each other thoughtfully, apparently taking the suggestion seriously.
Seeing the contemplative looks, Xaz had to point out, “If a necromancer came running every time someone died, your corpse would already have one.”
“Good point,” Umber conceded.
“Abyssi are drawn to Abyssumancers. Numini are drawn to Numenmancers. The living are drawn to animamancers. Could the dead find a necromancer?” Umber asked Xaz.
“Not being a necromancer myself,” she said, “I neither know the answer to that question, nor how we would expect to make a request of one of the dead even if it were true.”
“Is it true,” a soft voice asked from the doorway behind them, “that those devoured by the Abyss dwell in the Abyss?”
The three of them turned to see a slender woman with a strawberry-blond braid and tawny hazel eyes. Xaz’s heart leapt into her throat as she recognized the violet robes of a Sister of the Napthol and she cringed in anticipation of the bloodbath that might follow.
Alizarin answered, “Yes. For a while.”
The woman frowned, her eyes narrowing as she searched the area. She shouldn’t be able to see the Abyssi without a mancer’s power, but a Sister of the Napthol was likely observant enough to notice the way the rest of them looked toward the apparently empty air.
The Sister spoke to Umber directly. “Is it true?”
“I’ve heard that,” he answered. He didn’t seem to feel that this woman was a threat. “Do they teach you to eavesdrop at the Cobalt Hall?”
“They teach us to attend to important conversations around us,” the woman said. “The Order of A’hknet taught me to eavesdrop. Am I right this is the Numenmancer they tried to arrest the day Hansa was nearly killed?”
Umber nodded. Xaz was ready to flee, but so far, this Sister didn’t seem inclined to raise an alarm.
“Is the Abyssi here, too?”
Alizarin smiled proudly as Umber said, “That would be true.”
“Then you have eleven souls in the Abyss. Eleven dead, to whom your demon has a blood-connection. Have them find your necromancer.”
“Pardon me,” Xaz said tightly, “but who in the name of Numen are you, and why are you helping us?”
Umber performed the introductions. “Xaz, this is Cadmia Paynes of the Napthol Order, and I believe she is trying to help me, not us, because I did a favor for her recently.”
“Okay . . .” Xaz said, still nervous about the stranger in their midst. The Napthol Order wasn’t a large step away from the Quinacridone. “So, you’re saying we send Alizarin into the Abyss.” If she could do it right, that might be a good way to lose him—though she decided not to say that bit aloud. “And have him . . . what? Tell them to find us a mancer? Why would they want to help us?”
“Tell them if they find you a necromancer, you’ll guide them to the Numen. That is your realm, isn’t it?”
Was that possible? Xaz had never spoken to the dead and gave little thought to the afterlife. If encouraging the Abyssi to go back to his native plane willingly didn’t sever his bond to her, perhaps the Numini would be pleased by her attempt to guide the souls she had bloodied back to them.
“Let’s move this conversation somewhere more private,” Umber suggested. “We’ll go back to the King’s Ransom. If we’re lucky, Hansa has changed his mind.”
Hansa hadn’t changed his mind. He had allowed the fire to go out and opened a window to keep the body fresher, and there was snow drifting in the corners of the room. Even though Hansa had bits of ice caught in his hair and eyelashes, he looked flushed and feverish.
“Hansa, please tell me you’ve reconsidered,” Umber said.
Hansa just shook his head. He didn’t even look at Cadmia and Xaz, just stared at Ruby as if hypnotized. Grief? The effect of the open boon? Xaz didn’t know enough about spawn and the Abyss to know.
“I—” Umber broke off, swaying; Alizarin caught him with a hand on each of Umber’s arms, but the Abyssi’s attention no longer looked solicitous. It looked hungry. Umber jerked back without a flirtatious word. “If we’re going to do this, we had best do it fast. Hansa, Cadmia has an idea that we can talk to your friends in the Abyss and ask them to help us find a necromancer in exchange for Xaz helping them move on to the Numen.”
A little life returned to Hansa’s face. He looked around as if just noticing everyone else for the first time. “Can you do that?” he asked Xaz.
Xaz had been braced for him to react to Alizarin’s presence, though she wasn’t sure if she expected panic due to his near-death or fascination due to his new mancer power. Instead, Hansa’s gaze skipped over the Abyssi as if he were invisible. She didn’t question the fortuitous turn; they didn’t have time to waste. “I think I should be able to,” she said. “I’ve never tried anything like it.” Despite her resolve not to spend time on unnecessary confrontations, recriminations, or questions, she couldn’t help adding, “I never meant to hurt them, or you. I thought I was summoning a Numini. I thought . . .”
She trailed off when Hansa looked away, the grief briefly so plain on his face that she couldn’t stand it. He asked Cadmia, “Why are you here?”
The question seemed to take the Sister of the Napthol aback. “I . . .” She frowned, clearly puzzled.
Once again, Xaz glimpsed the swirl of the Numen power she had seen at the docks. Ruby’s body was painted with its residue, and it actively clenched around Cadmia as the Sister of the Napthol tried to consider her actions logically.
Before Xaz could examine the trace, Alizarin distracted her by reaching to Umber again. This time, the hand that brushed Umber’s arm had claws that drew fine lines of blood from the spawn’s skin. Umber jumped, pulled back with a hiss, and snapped, “No.” He turned to Hansa. “Hansa, call this off or don’t, but do it now, before I’m too weak to do anything to help and the Abyssi decides I’m nothing but meat.”
Hansa’s eyes had momentarily cleared as Xaz spoke to him and he questioned Cadmia’s presence, but now they fogged again as he returned to his contemplation of the dead woman. “I’m not calling it off,” he said.
Umber unwrapped the bandage on his arm. “Then seal this boon, and I will quite gladly drag you into the Abyss with me.”
Xaz tried not to look, but her gaze was morbidly drawn back. A burst of hot power like the breath of some immense animal wafted through the room as Umber revealed a wound that was not only slowly bleeding, but had also blackened around the edges. As Hansa pulled Umber close and set his lips to the wound, that breath drew back in until the power coiled tightly around the two men and the room went cold again.
The next seconds that passed seemed unnaturally peaceful, almost romantically gentle. Xaz’s gaze traveled out the open window, to the driving snow turning the world to white.
Is it warm in the Abyss? she wondered.
Part 2
“This is not what you promised me!” The Abyssi snarled and whined, his voice replete with the offensive blend of arrogant and juvenile that seemed the province of the creatures of the infernal realm.
The Numini drew back, disgusted. “Promise,” it echoed. “I would never make a promise to one of your kind. All I have done is try to clean up the mess you have created.”
The Abyssi growled. If it could have reached across the realms with its body in addition to its awareness, it would have pounced on the Numini, heedless of the death that would have immediately followed. “The blue prince,” it said petulantly. “He killed my mancer. I want his.”
The Numini did not need to reply in words. The blue Abyssi, Alizarin, had bonded himself to a Numenmancer. Even this low creature surely knew better than to threaten one of them while speaking to a lord of the divine realm. The bridge of power that allowed them to speak became rimed with frost and sparked with arcs of blue electricity.
“Then I want something
else of his,” the Abyssi said, compromising in the face of the Numini’s wordless threat.
“I agree that Alizarin has been a . . . complication.” The Numini sighed. “I understand that he often meddles with others’ property. Deal with him as you see fit. I will see to the rest.”
CHAPTER 23
Cadmia hadn’t felt this right about her life in a long time. She had been feeling extraordinarily anxious for a while there, but now she couldn’t remember why. The plan to help Hansa, help Ruby, and help the guards who had died was a good one, and she was glad she had been able to suggest it.
She was blind to the Abyssi itself, but she could see all too clearly when the air tore, leaving a jagged scar in reality that could only be the rift to the Abyss. Snow swirling in through the open window became steam as it struck the rapidly growing rip, which quickly became a doorway-sized hole leading to tarry darkness. A twinge of unease tried to pierce her meditative calm when she saw the portal the Abyssi had opened so they could step into its native realm in search of the slain guards.
Calm, calm, the snow around her seemed to whisper.
How much power must it take to cut a portal like that? “It probably won’t stay open long,” she said, when none of the others seemed inclined to step forward. “We should go.”
Umber caught her arm when she moved to lead the way. “You can’t really intend to go with us,” the spawn said.
What a funny moment to question her. “Yes, I do,” she asserted, and then put action to her claim and walked into the rift.
Like the nursery-rhyme child whose cradle tumbles when the wind blows, she plummeted into a harsh reality. She had been wrapped in a warm blanket of peace and contentment, and completely unaware how unnatural that calm was until it was ripped brutally away. There had been something . . . someone . . . with her, but they were gone now. She was achingly alone.
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