A War in Crimson Embers

by Alex Marshall

  Course after course and hour after hour they talked and talked, but neither fallen queen broached the subject of what had happened to them back in Diadem, in the time between their separation in the Upper Chainhouse and their reunion on the lip of Diadem Gate. They would get there eventually, but this afternoon the People’s Pack was not invited. Nor did Indsorith’s thoughts ever turn to her mother or her father, and not even the ghosts of her brothers put in an appearance, hard as it was to believe after the fact. There were no unwelcome guests at their table at all—as the light faded beyond the open window and the lanterns were turned up they were just a couple of Outlanders making merry in a foreign bar.

  They laughed. They laughed at stupid fucking jokes, as if they both hadn’t blamed the other for their deepest, rawest wounds at one point or another. As if they hadn’t wished the most brutal revenge against the other, and plotted and schemed to bring the other as low as the lowest worm, and then grind them into shit beneath their boot. They laughed at Zosia impetuously signing on to be ambassador to a mysterious land that apparently boasted all of eleven human-shaped entities, tens and tens of thousands of weirdly sentient insects, and stranger monsters still. They laughed at Indsorith’s new and inadvertently Immaculate haircut. They laughed at the prospect of the rematch Indsorith had challenged Zosia to, and they laughed at the results of the arm-wrestling bouts that stood in for a sword fight until the barkeep politely asked them to stop making such a ruckus. They laughed at Zosia’s good-tempered old devil, wagging his tail under the table as Indsorith slipped him seared pieces of pork belly. And then they laughed at the fact that they were laughing.

  And when it was all over Zosia picked up the bill.

  As well she fucking should.

  CHAPTER

  37

  Nemi had warned Purna that he was bad, had gone over things with her half a dozen times on the long hike to his chambers in the Winter Palace, so she had been prepared for the extent of his injuries. She had even been prepared to see him dying, because she’d been around the block enough times to pick up what Nemi kept putting down. What she hadn’t been ready for was to see Maroto looking so old.

  That was what choked her up as soon as the screen closed behind her, Best good enough to wait outside with Nemi for now. Part of it was the bed, sure, because everyone looks as ancient as a Tothan witch-priest bundled up on one of those big Immaculate stone beds, but that wasn’t it, not by half. His hair might’ve been the worst of it, that once dark and regal flattop gone, replaced with snowy hair chopped so far down he’d lost some skin in the bargain. It made him look like his hairline had receded all the way back overnight, he’d grown the scraggly beard of a beggar, and in between these bad extremes was a dark bandage covering half his face. Then the ashy skin and new crop of wrinkles weren’t doing him any favors, either, the poor old bastard looking like he’d been brined with the pickles and then tossed out to bleach in the sun …

  “Yeah, I’m crying, too,” he said, sitting up on his pillow. “You just can’t tell ’cause it’s only from the one eye, and I left it somewhere on the other side of Othean.”

  That right there was what really busted Purna’s pipes, because as changed as he looked, as diminished, that voice was the same, and she flew to his side so fast her tears must have stained the screens on the windows. Nemi had warned her against holding him too tight, against touching him at all, if she could help it, but Maroto wasn’t having any of that nonsense. He dragged her onto the bed with him and hugged her so tight she thought he’d break something of hers, instead of the other way round.

  And there they stayed for a very, very long time, neither of them saying a word. Neither being capable of it. Neither needing to.

  When he finally let her go, she saw he’d apparently gotten his eyes mixed up, because the one he still had was red and dripping, half her damn hair soaked from it. She looked into his tired, battered face, and took his shaking, callused hand in hers … and then they laughed at their own tears, as only the best of friends can.

  “I thought I looked bad …” Maroto finally managed, which just set them both off again. That was how it went, deep into the day, bad jokes culturing worse ones, and when the tales were told they grew all the sillier in the telling, because everyone knows laughter is the only thing that can keep Old Black at bay, when she comes to guide you down … Horned Wolves are overly serious like that, have been from the very beginning.

  “Oh shit!” Purna immediately lowered her voice and leaned in close. “Speaking of, your sister is right outside. She wants to see you.”

  “Ah shit, really?” Maroto rolled his eye. “You are trying to kill me, aren’t you?”

  “You’ve gotta see her, man,” said Purna. “She’s family … and she’s cool.”

  “You’ve always had a sick sense of humor,” said Maroto. “We both know I’m the only cool one in my family.”

  “Hey, Sullen’s good, too!” said Purna, and then hesitated, realizing she hadn’t gotten more than the barest of bones from Nemi. “I mean, are you guys good? I haven’t seen him since back in the Haunted Forest, but Nemi said he’s been visiting you a lot so I thought maybe you two …”

  “Oh yeah, we’re good.” Maroto smiled, mostly to himself, it seemed. “And yeah, he’s in and out of here like crazy. Says he’s making me and his girlfriend matching eye patches, if you can believe it. So we’ve made up for a lot of lost time, and my nephew’s definitely good … but good’s not the same as cool.”

  “No, I suppose it isn’t,” Purna agreed. “I … I hope you don’t mind, I made him a Moocher, while we were on the road looking for you. I mean, don’t worry—he earned it!”

  “Oh shiiiit!” Maroto tried sitting up but had a coughing fit. When it subsided with the help of some spiked barley tea, he said, “Moochers. My Maroto fucking Moochers. They had to have told you who else turned up with Ji-hyeon, didn’t they?”

  “First of all, the only one of us who’s a Maroto-fucker is you, and second, I literally just got off the stinky monster boat, so nobody’s told me shit except I needed to get to you with the quickness, since you could croak any minute …” Purna swallowed. “It’s not true, is it? Nemi can fix anything … can’t she?”

  “You miiiiight be surprised as to who else around here is a Maroto-fucker,” he said, wagging his eyebrow. That painful and painfully false dodge did not bode well, but he just carried on, trying to change the subject the way he always did when he wasn’t up for Hard Truth Theater. “And regarding that other matter, well, if nobody else spoiled Ji-hyeon’s surprise I won’t do it, either. You’re in for one hell of a shock when you see who—”

  “Tell me,” she said, not able to play along anymore. “Tell me, Maroto. I can handle it.”

  He sighed, looking at his hands. How shaky they were. Then he looked at her with his only eye, and said, “I know you can, girl. I was never worried about you. I just … I just can’t bring myself to say it out loud? So come in real close, and I’ll whisper it in your ear.”

  She did, fully expecting him to give her a wet willy or something. Hoping he would. Instead, he told her the truth.

  Telling Purna was the hardest part, but now that it was done he could finally relax. He’d told her the whole truth, too, whether or not she thought he was bullshitting her: he really, truly believed they would meet again. Best friends always do, and in the weirdest places.

  That would have been a far more fitting note to go out on, but a good actor could draw power from even an overwrought page. And so he went ahead and invited his sister in, after kissing Purna’s cheek and sending her off to her unwitting reunion with the inexplicably ancient Duchess Din and Count Hassan. He wasn’t kidding, he really wished he could have been there for that … but it was more than he deserved, anyway. For the man who screwed the Star to save his own butt, a painful death in a lonely sickroom was about on point.

  Of course, the sickroom could’ve been lonelier. Best stalked in as if she were on hostile hunt
ing ground, sizing him up like he was a predator that might be too long in the tooth to be worthy of her blades. It’d been many years since he’d seen his sister, but damn she looked old.

  Well, if she wasn’t going to talk first, neither was he … Except after a hot minute of her just staring at him like she was trying out a new method of skinning game with just her eyes, he cleared his throat and said, “Hey, sister.”

  “The tree out there, they say you climbed it?” The first thing she’d said to him in well over a decade. Typical.

  “Yeah,” said Maroto, then smiled at the memory of his last misadventure. “Well, sort of. I jumped at a giant eye, but it turned into a tree? And tried to climb down, but, uh, slipped. Anyway, it’s a long story.”

  For the first time in his whole damn memory of her, Best smiled. Or tried to, anyway—you could tell she didn’t come by it naturally. But she came over and stood by his bed and said, “Tell me, brother.”

  Maroto considered everything that was odd about this picture. Most pictures were pretty odd, where they concerned his family. “Well, all right. But only because Purna vouches for you.”

  “She does?” Her words were sharp as her eyes, but how had he never seen how vulnerable they were, too?

  “Sounds like you have a song to sing me, too, but the host makes the first boast,” said Maroto, not feeling so bad about entertaining his sister anymore. Not so bad at all. Made him wonder about all the other things that might not have been so bad, if he’d had the courage to face them. All the things he’d run from, or ran out of time for … and then he stowed that shit back where it belonged, so he could sing his blood the best damn song she’d ever heard.

  There would be others. Many of them. He was well-loved. And he owed a lot of money. There would be more than came to her wake, certainly, but it’s unwise to get competitive about such things. What mattered was that of all the many who would come, he wanted her to be the first.

  Zosia made Choplicker wait outside. She would feed him well in the days to come, that seemed unavoidable, but he wouldn’t have a single drop of this. The screen clicked shut behind her, and she went to the stone bed.

  Even looking down at him, she couldn’t believe it. She found herself feeling his limp flesh for a pulse like a frantic child. Scratching his cold skin with her fingernail, to see if this was some wax double. Acting like she had with Choplicker in the Office of Answers, as if he were some sleeping devil she could rouse if only she found the secret key. Unable to accept it, because deep down she was sure she would have felt it when he went, close as they’d been. Unable to believe that even as bad as they’d hurt each other he really would have deprived her of a chance to say goodbye. To say she was sorry.

  But he had. And there, tucked into his winding sheet, was the final prick in a lifetime of fencing. A sealed letter bearing the letter Z.

  She wanted to ignore it, to deny him the last words he’d denied her … but she couldn’t. Tore it open, crimson wax falling on the silver coin that covered his only eye. Read it quickly in the half-light of the evening, read it again, then crumpled it into the fist she slowly ground against his cold chest, as if even in death she could reach that stupid heart of his.

  Hating him in that moment not for what he’d done, but because he’d been too scared to give her the chance to forgive him.

  And hating herself for being the kind of villain who inspired that fear in her own best friend.

  CHAPTER

  38

  Exhausted though he was after all the fun they’d had breaking in Keun-ju’s new lust-harness, Sullen couldn’t sleep. He should’ve just gotten up ages ago instead of fighting it, hoping he’d drift off through force of will, but that just proved no matter how much you learned in this life there were some mistakes you were just going to keep making. Softly and quietly as he could manage, he moved Ji-hyeon’s arm off his chest and eased out of the wide stone bed. Sleeping arrangements were another thing the Immaculates knew how to do better than anyone outside of Flintland—usually Sullen never slept so good as on the slab mattress, but not tonight. Stepping over the clothes scattered hither and yon in the enormous room, he went to the screen wall where the moonlight shone through and softly slid it open, stepping out onto the balcony.

  He didn’t think he could ever get used to this sight, the mountains of moonlit roofs stretching out to the sea. Ji-hyeon told him the Spring Palace was even nicer, but how did you even reckon a thing like that? At a certain point things were as fine as a baby’s baby hairs, and you couldn’t get finer than that.

  There was a time not so long ago that being out under the naked night sky like this didn’t feel so nice, and he’d be checking the edge of every cloud to see if the Faceless Mistress was creeping on him. Now that the song was good and sung he figured he wouldn’t mind running into her again, so’s he could knock her mighty knuckles with his own and tell her that was some good looking out. He still peered over his shoulder on sleepless nights like this, mind, but that was only so he could take in the silhouette of the majestic rowan spreading out high above the city.

  It wasn’t the same as coming back to a low fire and finding Fa waiting up for him, but it was as close as he’d ever come again in this life, and he was glad for it. Sometimes he wondered if the reason he was being so slow about climbing up and retrieving the black spear Uncle Maroto had left lodged in one of those branches was so that he’d always feel the old man watching over him, no matter where he was in Othean. Well, that, and it would be one dangerous ruddy clamber, and with his luck he reckoned he’d be scouting a lot of cloud-kissed branches before he hit on the right one.

  Or maybe Fa would save him the hassle, give a whistle to let him know which bough to scurry up the first try. You never could tell with that old wolf—times you assumed he’d go easy on you turned out to be harder than a diamond nipple, and times you figured he’d make it tough he just offered one of those rare blissed-out smiles and passed you the beedi. Sullen sighed up at the rowan, appreciating how the pale bark shimmered in the moonlight as if it were carved from a glacier, and even from this distance he could dimly make out ephemeral devils dancing down the paths of its stately branches, if he squinted just right. He remembered how as a pup his mom and his grandfather were always arguing over whether his snow lion eyes were a blessing or a curse, whether he was marked by the gods or marked by the devils, but here in the Isles folk didn’t seem to think there was any difference—spirits were spirits, and far removed from mortal notions of good and evil, right and wrong. Sullen liked that interpretation, even if he was sure his born-again mother wouldn’t.

  Feeling the mild ocean breeze ruffle his hair, Sullen wondered how hot it was on the Frozen Savannahs right now, if Ma had been right and they were really melting or if it had just been one of those warm spells everyone always took too seriously. He wondered …

  The bedroom screen slid open again and Keun-ju stepped out, the breeze Sullen had found so balmy making the Immaculate shiver in his robe. Of course, that could just be a pretext to have Sullen put his arm around him, but either way the solution was agreeable.

  “Is your stomach bothering you again?” whispered Keun-ju as he cuddled against Sullen.

  “Nah, it’s actually been better—how’s the arm?”

  “Amputated.”

  Sullen shook his head. “Does that ever get old?”

  “Not really,” said Keun-ju, wiggling his shoulder nub into Sullen’s armpit. When the bigger man didn’t take the rough-housing bait Keun-ju asked, “Is it anything you want to talk about?”

  “Nah, I mean, it’s just …”

  “Family drama?”

  “Family drama.” Sullen smiled, squeezing his partner. “I guess it’s like, I lost Fa, and I handled that. I did. But then I lost Uncle Maroto just as soon as we finally fixed things between us, and that’s bad, worse than Fa, even, but I’m handling it, too—but her just cutting out like that? Without even coming to see me once? How am I supposed to make that right
?”

  “You’re not,” said Keun-ju firmly. “You’ve done all you can for that woman. She is a crazy person.”

  “Well, yeah, but blood is blood,” said Sullen, the same excuse she had always made for him and Fa when the other clanfolk were riled up over something they’d said or done … or not said or not done.

  “Sullen, did you ever think maybe she didn’t come to see you because she didn’t know how to make things right, except by leaving?” Keun-ju rested his head against Sullen’s shoulder. “Your mother is very proud, and very opinionated, and very, very crazy. If she thought there was more to be said—or more likely, more blood to be shed—would she have left? In a hundred years?”

  “Nooooo,” sighed Sullen. “I know you’re right. Her ways are her ways, and if she’s finally acknowledged that they’ll never be mine we can all sleep better.”

  A snore from the Empress of the Immaculate Isles made them both smile. In the morning they would tackle all the challenges that came from being the bodyguards of a bloody-handed reaver who had usurped the very throne of Little Heaven, according to the rogue Isles who refused to acknowledge their new sovereign. For a few more hours, at least, though, they could luxuriate in having fulfilled the destiny they had chosen for themselves, and with no veil to slow him down, Sullen kissed Keun-ju on the balcony of the Winter Palace.

  Then they went back inside, to the bed they shared with Empress Ji-hyeon Bong.

  Horned Wolves did not ride, except when absolutely necessary. Such as when the interior of a vardo is cramped with folk and echoing with chatter for hour after hour, day after day. Purna was a respectable huntress, but loud, and her friends were louder. The pair of Outlanders were both very old, and so it was to be expected that they should be outspoken—Best’s father, after all, had only grown more irascible with age. These heavily perfumed greypelts also had songs of great and wild hunts, such as Best would have scoffed at had she not lived through such mad days herself, but neither the Duchess Din nor the Count Hassan constrained themselves to tales of glory and battle. If anything, they viewed these things as ancillary to all the feasts they had eaten, the new games of chance they had invented, and the bawdy songs they had learned. It was the songs in particular that had eventually driven Best to ride atop the vardo beside Nemi that last afternoon, and she was pleased to find it not unlike flying above the endless fields of saw grass.