A Shard of Sea and Bone

by L. J. Engelmeier

  “Draven?”

  Draven hummed.

  “I don’t want you hurt on this expedition, either.”

  His brother shifted uncomfortably. The movement put enough space between them that they were no longer touching, but they were still within the field of each other’s warmth. “Yes, well, I’m not the crown prince.”

  “That doesn’t mean you’re not important.”

  “Everyone else might disagree with you there.”

  “You are important, Draven.” He reached out and cupped the nape of Draven’s neck, and Draven froze. It took everything Kinrae had not to twist his fingers around his brother’s braid. He couldn’t cross that line. Instead, he gave a light squeeze and waited until he felt Draven loosen up again. “Always.”

  “And here I was meant to be comforting you.”

  He slung an arm around Kinrae’s shoulder, grinning, but Kinrae was the one who turned the touch into a hug. He wrapped his arms around his brother, settled them at his back, and slotted himself to Draven. His brother was warm and solid, his hair brushing Kinrae’s cheek. He smelled of potions and musky sweat and bafkesa—like home. Draven’s blood pounded through the vessels in his neck, against Kinrae’s cheek. Waves beating a shore.

  Kinrae closed his eyes and listened to it. When Draven’s arms settled around his shoulders at last, Kinrae’s ribs ached like they’d been pried open, like his heart had ripped from his chest. He wanted to press his mouth to his brother’s pulse, run his tongue along the sinews of his neck, and sink his teeth into the soft skin under his little brother’s ear.

  But he couldn’t. Draven was just another thing Kinrae wanted that he couldn’t have.

  I don’t want to be the Saeinfinae anymore, he admitted to himself, then jumped when another knock came at the door. He jerked away from Draven, standing. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a strange expression cross Draven’s face, there and gone.

  “Come in,” Kinrae called.

  His pageboy Henry clopped only a few steps into the room before giving a polite bow, his mop of red hair tumbling over his forehead. He was a coltish scrap of a boy, and for a half-demon, it was peculiar that he looked so young despite being nearly a century old. Half-demons didn’t age near as gracefully as their demon counterparts. Henry had always looked the same, though, ever since the boy’s mother had sent him to serve Kinrae and eventually earn a title for himself. For several decades now, he’d been in Kinrae’s service. He was very competent—precise and unobtrusive. Behind him followed a small trail of servants, carrying pieces of armour that Kinrae had sent them after earlier.

  “Thank you. You can lay those on the floor,” Kinrae said, and the servants did as instructed. They departed wordlessly, but Henry stayed behind.

  He produced a folded piece of parchment from behind his back and held it out. It was sealed with wax: a letter. As Kinrae took it, he was temporarily overwhelmed by the sharp smell of ammonia on Henry, likely from the post office’s stables he frequented on Kinrae’s behalf. The letter’s wax seal was pressed with the symbol of an open eye Kinrae didn’t recognize, but he broke it anyway and read.

  “What is it?” Draven asked.

  “An invitation,” Kinrae said. “High King al-Loriaris has requested our presence at his Desert Ball in four days.”

  “Us? As in also me?” When Kinrae nodded, Draven whistled, openly amused. “Well then, I must have made quite the impression at the Kjall’a meeting this morning. And I didn’t even have to take off my trousers.”

  Kinrae folded the letter back up and returned it to Henry. “Please inform the High King that we must decline his invitation.” Henry nodded. “We have prior engagements.”

  “Of course, Your Royal Highness. Do you require anything else?” he asked, accent still lilting a little off. Kinrae had never been able to place it. It didn’t sound quite Hanaran, which was where Henry hailed from, nor were his vowels round enough to have been influenced by the bordering city-state of Weddershun.

  “No. I trust you to maintain everything in my absence.”

  “So you will be leaving then, Your Royal Highness?” Henry asked, green eyes glinting. Kinrae nodded and dismissed him.

  Alone with Draven again, Kinrae eyed the pieces of well-worn armour littering the white marble floor and frowned. He hadn’t thought this far. “Will you help me dress, Brother?”

  He convinced himself that he imagined the hitch in Draven’s breath.

  THE SCENT OF LYE

  _______________________________

  A spirit has three distinct parts: the soul, a sphere of approximately four inches in diameter, located above the navel; the soul’s light, which radiates out from the soul into every living cell; and the soul’s shadow, about which little is known, though I have concluded it is buried somewhere within the soul.

  excerpt from On Death, penned by Makin-Kif, former Guardian of Spirit, published in the Realm of Forty Ravens

  THE GUARDIAN REALM OF STORMS

  EAST WING OF THE GUARDIAN’S PALACE, THE HAPUANJI DISTRICT,

  UPPER AGRAPALL, CAPITAL OF THE FIRST KINGDOM

  Somewhere down the hall, a lively concert was playing.

  Nori-Rin leaned back in her office chair, humming along. She hadn’t had any luck tracking down her stalker earlier, but she knew he’d been a man—barely over twelve stone by the decibel and pitch of his steps, a heavy musk about him underlain by lye. He’d disappeared shortly after Dara-Li had spooked him by pointing him out. Nori-Rin hadn’t been able to get a glimpse of him as she’d followed after him, and his trail had gone cold outside a slaughterhouse in Lower Agrapall. She’d told her guards to keep an eye out for him, just like her attendants were keeping an eye out for strange prayers trying to pull her out of her shrine, but she hadn’t told any of them why.

  Smiling, she sat back and listened to the familiar jig of playful hand drums, bamboo flutes, and tinny plucked strings drifting through the palace. Voices took up singing and chanting lyrics in Palli. Driven by instinct, Nori-Rin’s hands rotated around her, the moves of the grishitti dapoor still drilled into them from the centuries she’d spent as a rudulanni in the Guardian’s Rattiya. She stood from her chair, hands meeting above her head in a series of claps, hips snapping back and forth as she danced the story of their Realm’s creation by the first Guardian of Storms, Jyan-Po Dashakuur. The chains she’d woven back into her hair after her bath and looped through the piercings in her eyebrows jangled with her. The various animals around the room—spoonbills, quails, and red-beaked bandies up in the rafters; a tiger, a macaque, and small nest of shivhiks lounging on the floor—all took notice of her. Even Admiral Anderson looked up from where he was stretched out on her goose down bed.

  She danced away from her overflowing desk into the center of her room, across the thin rugs. Incense smoke churned around her, the air thick with sandalwood and spice. She twirled and bowed, clapped and dipped, stomped her heels and toes on strong beats. Her heavy, split skirts flapped around her legs, and her wild hair floated around her head like a cloud. She remembered the first time she’d ever danced for Guardian Pashkaloneet, back when she’d been just a training ruduli. The throne room had sweltered with summer heat so much so that the special marks painted on her cheeks had melted from her sweat. She’d made her debut with dozens of other rudula, fluttering about with a sheet of chiffon to a dance of chants and bells. At the end of it, Guardian Pashkaloneet had stepped forward and knelt in front of her. The jewels in his tightly bound headdress had glittered under the sun streaming in through the screenless windows.

  He’d invited her into his troupe, and from the sidelines, her mother Rin-Da had cheered with the other rudulanna. A place within the Guardian’s Rattiya was security in education. It was leverage toward a political title. It was a position of high respect in the Twelve Kingdoms, though the other girls had often mocked her, calling her jiji’rudulanni. Thug-dancer.

  Nori-Rin had her own Rattiya now, which performed across the Kingdoms in h
er name. It was one of her only luxuries under King Diyagida. The only other people in the land she had any authority over were her staff: two hundred demons who operated a sort of office-and-church for her, filtering prayers and performing blessings on Nori-Rin’s behalf. Any militaristic or legal power they’d once held over the Realm had vanished centuries ago when the Twelve Kingdoms had established themselves and subsequently asserted their dominance over the dimension. The Guardian of Storms had once singlehandedly ruled all Twelve Kingdoms with a vast garrison of attendants, but slowly, they had all been subsumed as servants to the Twelve Crowns, and then as servants to the First Kingdom after years of brutal warring within the lands.

  In the end, the Guardian of Storms had been left as little more than a pet of the First Kingdom—a glorified priest, an assassin, a trophy. Nori-Rin had more sovereignty in other Realms than she had in her own.

  She wished she’d considered that before taking the job a century ago, but she’d been deliberately kept ignorant.

  When Guardian Pashkaloneet had approached the Council about retiring to the countryside to live out the rest of his days, the Council had searched for a replacement among the tight circles of his followers. Nori-Rin had competed against thousands in a series of trials. She’d nearly lost, too, but her score had pulled ahead of the captain of the King’s Guard in the last two events—something she’d learned months later had been fixed. The captain still seemed to bear her some ill will, which amused her. Why should he have been angry? King Diyagida had only secured her win because he’d thought she would bow to his will.

  It took her a moment to realize that the music outside had stopped, the hall full of lazy conversations between guards on duty. Someone was breathing in the doorway, heartbeat sluggish. There was the overwhelming smell of earthy swamp water.

  “Distracted?” came the voice.

  Nori-Rin turned.

  Svahta leaned against the door, a bemused smile crinkling her crystal blue eyes and heavily freckled cheeks. She looked like a doll—petite and slight, a heart-shaped face and upturned button nose. Her multi-coloured loose tunic swallowed her frame but left her collarbones bare. The whorls and branches of her colourful tattoos were on full display, every inch of skin up to her jaw covered in symbolic depictions of her clan’s history, the wide-winged crane spanning her throat marking her as the ruler of her clan and Realm. Her tunic was tied at the waist by a series of thin, patterned sashes that Nori-Rin vaguely remembered the meanings to, and underneath, Svahta wore a billowing pair of pants, tucked into short boots. A silver torc curled around her neck, alligator teeth hanging from the ends.

  “Is everything all right?” Nori-Rin asked. It had only been half a day since they’d parted ways in the Council’s palace, and the two of them never saw each other more than twice a month. A visit so soon was strange.

  “M’fine,” Svahta said, and her smile softened. “Delegated to Jarl Domhnathuin for the day. He deals with most a’ the clans’ politics anyway, an’ Vahtiki’s overlookin’ shrine duties. She can direct healin’s an’ investigations on her own. Ain’t nothin’ to worry ’bout. Promise.” She glided across the room and grabbed at Nori-Rin’s bare stomach. Her hands were cold and milky white against Nori-Rin’s black skin. “Look at ya, ya pudgy duck.”

  “I just ate,” Nori-Rin pouted.

  “Oh, hush. Ya always got a pudge. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with it.” She patted Nori-Rin’s stomach. “Look like a snake that got hold of a horse. All kinds a’ pretty curves to ya.” She ducked her head with a chuckle. “Anyway, mind some company tonight?”

  “You’re staying?”

  “Thought ya might want help sortin’ paperwork. Your Realm ain’t as small as mine. I can stand to step away sometimes.” She beamed up at Nori-Rin. “Unless ya wanna hog all the paperwork for yourself. I know how much ya like it.”

  “You want to help with paperwork?” Nori-Rin asked, quirking a brow. “What’s gotten into you, tiki?”

  “Maybe just wanted an excuse to see ya.”

  “Then you’re going to see me do a lot of paperwork,” Nori-Rin said with a playful grin, and left Svahta to return to her desk. The glow of the sodium bulbs ensconced along the walls and the fairy lights webbed across the room flickered. The light played over the letters haphazardly strewn across her desk. “Nyaatkellish has come to Agrapall, tiki, and everyone’s feathering in their gift requests all at once. Well, not all at once. That would be strange. Huge influx of letters like that, all at the same time. You know what I mean. Anyway. The staff left me with the ones from the nobles. Did you know three of them asked me to attend their family dinners? Well, no, you wouldn’t know that. Silly question. Should keep me fed up well, though. A woman asked for a title for a distant cousin. Or an elephant, if that was easier. Which it is, funnily enough. Though I don’t think she should have a phapher in the city. Might have to discuss that with her. Another asked I find out which of the Afterlives her aunt was sorted into so that she can pray appropriately.”

  “An’ how ya plan to fulfill that request exactly?”

  “Lie, probably.”

  “Ri.” Svahta laughed, shaking her head. “Ain’t ya gotta fill Nyaatkellish requests honestly?”

  “Well, I honestly don’t know and honestly can’t find out. I could always ask Naliah to ask Artysaedra to do me a favour, but I’m sure that pretentious lout would rather cut off her left tit. If she had a left tit. Or a right tit. Do you think she knows she’s titless?”

  “She ain’t that bad,” Svahta said, plopping down on the mattress on the floor. Above her, a bandy chatted and cackled. The tiger on the other side of the room rolled over onto his side. Admiral Anderson opened a lazy green eye, sprawled across the bed. “She acknowledged us last time we seen her. An’ she laughed at your joke about the cobbler an’ the prostitute. Or at least I hope that’s what she was laughin’ at.”

  “If she were any more full of herself, shit would leak out her ears, tiki.” Nori-Rin poked at the half-finished shark and vanga root soup now cold on her desk. There was a fuzzy bit of down stuck in it. “I know they’re su-lanh, but why Naliah became friends with her, I’ll never know. Why he’s kept at it? An even bigger quizzer to me. Her whole family can rot for all I care. My mam met them once, you know? Danced at a feast they attended. One of the brothers—the younger prince, I think—he slept with the lead raja. Had a wife, too. The raja, not the prince. Anyway, that ended badly. Their marriage, I mean. Ended badly. And Artysaedra—she was just a little squaller back then. Set my mam’s skirts on fire because she wanted to go home.”

  “Ya told me this story, love.”

  “Have I?”

  “Only ’bout four hundred times.”

  “That your nice way of telling me to clam it?”

  “More like an invitation for ya to do somethin’ other’n talk for once.” Svahta gave a lopsided grin. She leaned back on her elbows on the bed, and her long braid slid behind her shoulder. “A run, a spar, a round a’ Jakar’s Bluff—your choice. Unless, o’ course, ya have too much paperwork to do.”

  Nori-Rin glanced from Svahta to the stack of letters on her desk, then back again. When her eyes settled on the papers a second time, Svahta laughed.

  “Good grief. You’re actually considerin’ turnin’ down some time to relax, ain’t ya? Why do I find that so endearin’?”

  “Because you love my work ethic.”

  “Almost as much as I love—”

  Someone knocked at the doorjamb.

  “Come in,” Nori-Rin called.

  Nori-Rin’s chief of staff Bala-Yan stepped through the open door, looking as put together as always. Her wild black hair was tamed into its typical sleek bun, and the painted dots that pocked her severe, doe-ish face were immaculate. Perfectly symmetrical, gold chains draped over her forehead. The kohl smeared around her eyes was artfully done but made her eyes more prominent than they already were. They bulged slightly, her sclerae and irises replaced by a striking golden brown. Her pu
pils were ringed in silver. When she gave a wide smile, it showed off her fangs, slender and hooked with a deadly cobra’s curve.

  “Here again, I see, Guardian Svahta of Clan Muiraighaille,” Bala-Yan greeted formally, and gave a polite bow. “Always a pleasure to host you, Your Guardianship. Do let me know if I can assist you in any way or make your stay more comfortable.”

  “Thank ya, darlin’. I will,” Svahta drawled from where she’d sat up on the bed. The tiger lounging across the octagonal room got to his feet and slunk over to the bed, where Admiral Anderson gave him a baleful, green-eyed glance. The tiger halted, flopped down near Svahta’s feet, and accepted the strokes to his ears she bestowed upon them.

  “Anything I can do for you?” Nori-Rin asked Bala-Yan, who nodded and stuck out a papyrus letter. It was thin and square, the size of one of Nori-Rin’s bleached palms, sealed with navy blue wax. There was a symbol pressed into it Nori-Rin recognized but couldn’t remember where from: a hand with its thumb folded over the palm, its four fingers raised.

  “This was delivered downstairs an hour ago.”

  “By who?”

  “An unidentified young male,” Bala-Yan said, her tone suddenly stoic, leftovers from her time in the King’s Guard. She folded her arms behind her back and tilted her chin up. “The attendant didn’t get a good look at him, he left no name, and he was gone by the time the staff called me down.”

  “Why are you delivering it to me yourself? Not that I mind seeing your face. It’s a nice face.”

  “The letter has the seal of a High Monarch, Your Guardianship,” Bala-Yan said. She glanced down at the letter. “I checked it against my books. It’s legitimate.”

  Nori-Rin looked back at the letter, trying to remember which of the twenty-four High Monarchs the seal belonged to and wondering what they could possibly want from her, then she blinked, taken aback. Why did the letter smell like—

  She pressed it to her nose and took a slow, deep breath, like she was savouring a fine wine. There was the obvious smell of papyrus, but underneath it, she caught whiffs of sand and vanilla, and then—yes—musk. It was a heavy musk, like a man’s sweat. Lye was mixed in with it. There was even the faintest scent of urine on the page, too.