“Funny,” Dara-Li said, monotone, and dusted her palm off on her skirts. It left a fine powder of ice behind.
“I thought so, too,” Nori-Rin said. She rocked up onto her toes and then back onto her heels. “Bo-Yei’s a dockhand for the Black Rats’ runners. Or was, probably. Hopefully. Offered to get him a job at the cannery. No clue if he’ll accept, the tit. Anyway. Says the next shipment of adregaa is going to come into the harbour tomorrow on a schooner, marked under seals from the Fifth Kingdom. He doesn’t know the supplier’s name or where the warehouse it’s shipping from is located, but I have a list of officials down at the docks who are accepting some hefty yargon to let the shipments slide through the system. Now, either the King’s Guard can start doing its job so I can get back to doing mine, seeing as there was a bombing in the south this morning I need to investigate and tend to, or I can go cause a hell of a barker tomorrow down at the dockyard. Because if this drug cartel really does trace back to the Fifth Kingdom, you know I’ll follow it, and it won’t be diplomatically.” Nori-Rin smiled and hoisted her stray cat in the air. He gave a pathetic mewl. “Isn’t that right, Admiral Anderson?”
“Is that supposed to be a threat?”
“Did I not nail the tone?” she asked with faux-concern. “Let me try again: tell the captain of the Guard I’ll brief him. Dawn, Guardian’s Palace. If he’s late, I will finish this my way. Better?”
“You serve the king, you street mutt,” Dara-Li said. With a crunch of metal and glass, the watch hanging from her qim was crushed in her fist. “As a citizen in his great kingdom, you follow orders. You do not give them, not to him and not to a member of his Guard.”
“I don’t serve anyone I outrank.” At that, Dara-Li looked as though she’d been slapped. “Don’t confuse courtesy with station, Secretary Tayanooai. Dogs heel out of respect, not because their teeth are dull.”
“Should I tell the Guard you’ll be challenging the king for his position of power in the Realm then?”
“No,” Nori-Rin said with a shrug, and stroked the stray cat. “I don’t quite have the duupos for politics, you know? I prefer the honesty of murder. You see, a thug will just kill you; a politician pretends to be your ally even after you’ve bled out on his blade.”
“Watch your tongue.”
“Don’t trod on the wrong toes.” Nori-Rin tucked the cat to her chest and gave a merry wave. The ward around them dropped. “Always a pleasure talking with you, Secretary Tayanooai. Same time next week?”
“I’ll be here,” Dara-Li said, and then the anger sapped out of her body. She gave a low sigh. “Dog?”
“Yeah?”
“Watch your back, all right? Someone’s following you.”
“I know,” Nori-Rin said with a kind smile. “About six blocks now, I think. But thank you, Li.”
HIDDEN DESIRES
_______________________________
O Love, how you strike the heart like an arrow,
Yet make one wish for the bleeding wound!
Rambling No. XXXVIII by Sir Sydney DeLogos
THE GRAND REALM OF THE INFINITE
THE NORTH WING, KINRAE’S CHAMBERS, THE CASTLE OF THE INFINITE ROYAL FAMILY,
MOUNT DRAKIS, LUTANA, CAPITAL CITY-STATE OF THE ONE COUNTRY
“I would rather you stay here and leave your sister to deal with this matter,” Kinrae’s father said. “You have work to attend to here. You know that.”
Kinrae’s hands faltered on the rucksack he’d been preparing for his trip to the Realm of Black Waters. He was used to packing for visits to embassies in distant Realms, but he wasn’t certain what he needed for this trip. He wouldn’t be forced to stay in royal housing with his father’s Minister Plenipotentiary, so there wouldn’t be any need for additional sets of fine clothing or an array of hygiene tools. He also wouldn’t need books, his crown, or his chain of office. He settled on one silk shirt, a pair of old trousers, some scrap paper, an old sketching pencil, a compass, a full wetskin, two ripe wintercane fruits from his garden, a few phials of complete-meal potions, and three tins of healing salve that Draven had made for him in the past. The bag clunked against his desktop.
“I’ve decided to go with everyone,” Kinrae said. He drew the strings of his bag tight and tied them together. “Guardian Staatvelter believes that a Realm of the Infinity is in grave peril. As heir to the multiverse, it is my duty to protect all lands within it, is it not?”
“From a throne. Not with a sword.”
Kinrae gathered his confidence and then turned around to face the cavernous, gilded chambers of his room, rucksack in hand. Pale afternoon light swelled and cast a series of overlapping shadows across the colourless marble floors, the shadows darker where they crossed over one another. The vaulted ceiling, enchanted to mimic the sky and its weather, was blinding white today. Snowflakes drifted down from it but disappeared after a few feet. Across the room, his father was pacing the length of one of four marble fireplaces. His stop was abrupt.
“You’ll miss your lessons, Kinrae. Your instructors don’t deserve that disrespect. And as I recall, Ser Bannast was gracious enough to invite you to weigh in at the merchants’ council meeting this afternoon.” His silver eyes were sharp when he looked up. “You’d miss dinner as well. I invited the High Monarchs to join us to apologize for the incident with Maenasgoroth. Do you wish to extend insult to them?”
“No,” Kinrae said, sheepish, but he clutched his lumpy rucksack to his stomach. “Certainly, though, they can spare my attendance, Father? They did so this morning.”
“What of your meeting with Lady Adalicette then? Your trip to the Spire Courts with Princes Yendowin and Armand, your friends? Will you neglect that? You have alliances to build, Kinrae, and those bricks do not lay themselves.”
Crossing his chambers, unsure what to say, Kinrae set his rucksack down on top of the copious furs overflowing from his four-poster. A chill slithered through the room, despite the fires crackling throughout it that his father had stirred back to life with the poker earlier. The sheer bed curtains fluttered. When Kinrae remained silent, his father’s boots clicked across the marble floors and stopped just to Kinrae’s left. His shadow hovered on the edge of Kinrae’s vision.
“I have briefed Henry in my affairs,” Kinrae argued feebly. “He is rescheduling every one of my meetings for later this week. I will return for them.”
“The Viscountess has been waiting months to speak with you about the Veira-ohnese silver strikes,” his father parried without missing a beat.
“She can wait a few more days then. Yes?” Kinrae pulled his lips into a tight grimace. His father’s hair was slightly disheveled, his eyes glassy. The smell of whiskey was thick on his breath, and his woolen clothes still smelled of snow. He was tall and narrow standing there, and Kinrae knew if he were to shear his own hair and stop shaving, he would be the mirror image of his father. The thought made his chest ache like the cold had crawled inside it. “Please, Father. This is important to me.”
“It’s not your responsibility, Kinrae.”
“Father—”
His father’s hand clamped down on his shoulder and squeezed a touch too hard. “Do not make me command you. Leave the swords to your sister. Your place is here, in the palace, not with the Order.” His father’s cold hand moved up to cup the nape of Kinrae’s neck. His grey eyes softened when he said, “We cannot afford to lose you, Kinrae. You are our heir.”
Silence gaped between them like a maw. When Kinrae finally realized no words were going to follow what his father had said, he felt his throat tighten. Quietly, he had to ask, “Is that all I am?”
A pounding knock at the door interrupted them, echoing through the room.
His father gave his neck one last squeeze before he backed away. “Please, M’waffanata,” he said, lips barely parting beneath his white mustache. “Do as I bid. I’ll see you at dinner.”
His father clipped across the floor and swept through the wide door on the other side of the roo
m. The second he was out of sight, Artysaedra stomped in, still in full armor with her scythe in hand like a stave. Face hard, she marched straight over to Kinrae, every step punctuated by the thud of her scythe against the floor. Her crow-black eyes were narrowed. Shadow sloped across the angles of her olive face and settled in the y-shaped scar sunken into her right cheek. Kinrae couldn’t remember the last time she’d been in his chambers, much less the last time they’d had a conversation that didn’t result in his sister snapping at him and storming off. It had been centuries since they were close, and he’d been deliberately avoiding her since the cavern. He already knew what she was going to say.
“Can I help you?” he asked. To busy himself, he hid behind straightening the letters and miscellaneous books discarded on the small nightstand next to his bed. “I’m almost ready to depart—”
“Do all of us a favour and don’t come.”
Kinrae faltered. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me,” she said. “I don’t want you there.”
The paper in Kinrae’s hand was covered in bits of poetry he liked to pen before bed. He gripped it hard enough it ripped, severing a stanza down the middle. He forced himself to loosen his grasp and then gave a polite smile. “I have travelled the Infinity extensively. Certainly I have some expertise applicable to—”
“I said don’t fucking come. Are you deaf or stupid?”
Stung, Kinrae set the paper down on his nightstand and tried to stay calm. He breathed. “Draven is—”
“Draven won’t let me have his potion inventory for the wounded unless I let him tag along, and if he gets himself killed”—she shrugged—“whoops. Not exactly my problem. I won’t have to babysit him like I’ll have to babysit you.”
“I can manage Draven, and I can manage myself, Artysaedra.”
“Oh, sure you can.” His sister snorted. “Perfect fucking Kinrae. So good at everything. For fuck’s sake, you can barely stumble your way through a conversation that isn’t about taxes.”
Kinrae swallowed. He couldn’t let this get to him.
“You really think you’d be useful, don’t you?” Artysaedra mocked. “Stars, it’s laughable. You can’t hold a sword. You can’t follow directions. You can’t even shift into a second form. Do you even know what kind of demon you are?”
No, Kinrae thought, shamed. “Why are you saying all of this to me?”
“Because I know what’ll happen if you come,” she said. “It’ll be exactly like the last time we left on a trip together. It’ll be exactly like the time I had to drag your ass out of an enemy encampment in the Low Realm of Irons after they kidnapped you—no. No,” she said, and gave a dark smile, “after you deliberately went behind our ambassador’s back—my back after I had the gall to defend your ideas at the meeting.”
Kinrae looked away. “That was a long time ago—”
“You walked straight into the enemy’s fucking camp against orders. Because you thought you knew better than everyone. Because you thought you could end that war singlehandedly. Like you could fucking talk everything into being okay,” Artysaedra spat. “Life isn’t a fucking knitting circle, Kinrae. You can’t pray the world into being a better place. There’s no room for that bullshit or for you on this mission.”
Embarrassed, Kinrae tried to stand his ground, but his sister crowded close to him, sending him back a step, the heel of his boot biffing off his nightstand. He wobbled for his balance. “That was a long time ago,” he repeated, “and that wasn’t how—”
“That’s exactly how it went, Kinrae,” she said, wild as a gale. “Father might think you’re a perfect ray of sunshine and that the multiverse shines out of your damn ass, but you ruined an entire diplomatic tour through that Realm. They burned our embassy. It took Father six years to fix your mistakes. Even I had to go kiss some fucking babies, and do you think Father remembered to thank me for that while he was busy catering to you?” She jabbed Kinrae in the chest with the sharp points of her gauntlet hard enough to knock him back on top of his nightstand. Books hit the floor, and papers fluttered. He sat, chest stinging. “You were stupid enough to get yourself into that mess, and then you were worthless enough to get fucking stuck in it. I’m sorry if I don’t want to babysit you this time because Father can’t afford to lose you. I don’t want to clean up your fucking mistakes anymore, so stay home. Read a book. Do what you’re good at. Just stop trying to do other people’s fucking jobs—because you can’t.”
With that, she stormed out of the room, and for a long time, Kinrae didn’t move from the nightstand.
He looked around his room instead, at the detritus of his long life. From the floor to the ceiling, well-worn books written in hundreds of different languages lined built-in shelves, a ladder propped against them. Kinrae’s tempus glittered from a shelf near the vaulted ceiling, snug against a set of thirty-one thick volumes his grandmother had penned—The Complete Record of Creatures of the Infinity. He didn’t remember placing his tempus there.
His oak desk was piled high with various books on taxes, legislation, and political philosophy, quills neatly aligned and letters filed into slots. A celestial begonia, a gift from his brother, curled its silver petals in the sill of an arched window, a half-full carafe of lemon juice next to it. There was a steamer trunk tucked below the window where Kinrae kept souvenirs. They were from the Realms—mostly Low and Multitudinous—that he’d explored while visiting his family’s Infinite Embassies or trying to instate them in those dimensions.
Scattered around the room were posters tacked to the walls: maps of different Realms, charts of their stars, and depictions of different gods and goddesses he’d been introduced to and found interesting for what they told him about foreign cultures and their values. There were also sketches he’d drawn himself of creatures like the baka-raka that lived in lava pools in the Realm of Archipelagos and the begouille from the Realm of Bioluminescent Trees with its purr that could knock a man out up to twenty feet away. He had a suit of leather armour gifted to him by a Lazonii warrioress, mounted in a glass case. He had bones and rocks and a nautical telescope and an enchanted turtle brooch.
Once he was forced to take a wife and the throne, though, he would be reduced to experiencing the Infinity through these objects—through stories and memories. His father rarely left the Realm of the Infinite. It wasn’t safe to. When he did leave, he took no less than a hundred royal guards with him and confined himself to a single location. Kinrae already had little freedom to wander as it was, but it was still more than his father had and he prized it. He feared the day it would be taken from him.
I love the Infinity, Kinrae thought, but not as a Saeinfinae should.
He didn’t want to watch over the multiverse. He wanted to experience it. But that wasn’t in the cards for him. He was Kinrae Raener Veiyel, First of His Name, son of the great Saeinfinae, gentleman, scholar, heir. That was all he would ever be. That was all his sister thought he was. That was all he wanted to escape from.
I’m barely a good heir to the throne, though, he thought. Why would I think I could be good at being anything but?
After a few minutes, the door to the bathing chambers that connected his and his brother’s rooms clicked opened, and Draven stepped out. He had a fist-sized bafkesa in each hand, probably stolen from the dinner preparations in the kitchen. Kinrae’s stomach gave a half-hearted growl. He’d missed lunch, and he was going to miss supper, too. Without a word, Draven crossed the room and sat down on Kinrae’s bed, waiting for Kinrae to leave the nightstand and join him. He did.
Their knees brushed as they ate in mutual silence. Kinrae’s first bite was unpleasantly lukewarm, but the pastry was flaky and the beef and sweet cheese tucked inside were still full of flavour. Kinrae finished his food off before he spoke.
“Have you come to detail my inadequacies, too, Brother?” he teased quietly, but the words still tugged at the ache in his chest.
“Not today,” Draven said. “I…overheard what happened. Saed
ra was out of line. So was Father.”
“You don’t want me to come on this venture, either.”
“I didn’t before, no.”
Shocked, Kinrae looked over at his brother, whose pyrope eyes were averted. His full bottom lip was caught between his teeth. When he released it, it was creased and dark with blood. Kinrae couldn’t take his focus from it.
“I thought about it. Changed my mind.” Draven propped his elbow on his knee and swiped a hand over his mouth and chin; he sat there for a second as Kinrae traced the curve of his brother’s thick neck with his eyes. Then Draven faced Kinrae head-on. “Look, I don’t want you to get hurt, Kinrae, you know that, but I don’t feel that way because I think you can’t handle yourself. I know you can.”
Kinrae clenched his jaw to keep it from trembling. Draven was always too nice to him. Underneath his constant teasing, there was always sincerity—a care that was missing from Kinrae’s interactions with the rest of his family members, with his loose circle of aristocratic acquaintances.
Kinrae shook his head. “No one else seems to think—”
“I don’t care what they think. I know you can take care of yourself, Kinrae,” Draven repeated, hard. “More than anything, I know that. I know you.”
“I— Thank you.”
They sat side-by-side in comfortable silence, Draven knocking up against Kinrae’s shoulder with a smile. Kinrae smiled down at their hands, inches away from one another, Draven’s hand callused and scarred, light brown skin darker at the knuckles, Kinrae’s hands smooth and porcelain. He and his little brother were day and night next to one another.
Always chasing after one another, blurred at the edges.
A Shard of Sea and Bone Page 19