“I want to shoot you,” mumbled the slant-eyed man.
This one has sense. I like him, Oliver thought, but the second he did, he balked at himself, disgusted.
The man was a demon. An abomination. The very thing he’d been trained to keep in line and kill. All of the strangers were. It was their kind that had mauled his city. It was their kind that had murdered everyone he’d ever known. It was their kind that had killed his father, his mother, and now his little sister, and Lana’s death was the line. He couldn’t forget that. He could never let himself forget that.
In front of Oliver, the pale demon took a step forward and gave a deferential bow of his head. Then, to Oliver’s shock, he sheathed his bloody longsword and held his gauntleted hands out palm-up.
“We mean you no harm,” the man said in a delicate voice. “We are an envoy sent by His Majesty Raener Veiyel, the king of this multiverse. We received a missive from our High Council that your Realm was in danger, and we’ve come to offer aid.”
Oliver blinked at him, waiting for the punchline, but it never came. This demon was being serious. Oliver stared at him, frowning.
He’s absolutely fucking crazy.
Without missing a beat, Oliver pointed his gun at the man’s head, and chaos erupted around him like the flash of a bomb. Suddenly, the slant-eyed stranger was on his feet, moving toward Oliver with raised, open hands, but the horned demon with blood for irises got there first. He shoved his way in front of the pale demon and was a hair’s breadth from Oliver now, Oliver’s gun sandwiched between them. He could smell the demon’s rancid breath through the sulfurous fires burning around them.
“If you raise that weapon to my brother again,” the demon snarled, fangs bared and inches from Oliver’s face, “I will flay you alive.”
The slant-eyed stranger weaseled his way between the two of them, the back of his head nearly hitting Oliver in the chin as he did. “Draven, don’t—”
“I didn’t ask for your input, Staatvelter. Tell your little human to put down his weapon.”
“He’s just defending—”
“Tell him to put down his weapon, or fate help me, I will make him.”
“Grant this man his suspicions, Brother,” the pale one said, a hand clutching at the shoulder of the horned demon. “I bear him no ill will for his actions. He is entitled to them.”
“You carry kindness like most men carry an axe.”
“Thank you.”
“It really wasn’t a compliment.”
Fed up and running out of time, Oliver jammed his revolver against the slant-eyed stranger’s backplate. Metal clicked against metal. The sound was as quiet as a copper piece striking cobblestone, but it made the world come to a screeching halt. Everyone froze.
If the man’s armour was enchanted, then Oliver risked the bullet ricocheting back on him and killing him, but if it wasn’t, the bullet stood a good chance of ripping a hole through this demon’s chest cavity—through to his heart. This man would choke on his blood before his tissue could knit itself back together.
It was a gamble Oliver was willing to take.
“Breathe, and I fire,” Oliver warned. The slant-eyed man went death-still under Oliver’s pepperbox, and so did the two demons in front of them. Oliver met both of their wide eyes in turn. In the horned demon’s, he found surprise. It held taunt, only snapping at the last moment like a thread of spider silk stretched to its limits. Anger was slow to spark, but when it did, it raged.
“Go ahead,” the horned demon said. “Shoot him. I’ll make sure this city digs another grave, just for you.”
Locking eyes with the pale demon was a different story. His eyes made Oliver jittery. There was a crisp worry in their silver gaze—and a quiet strength that men must have had in mind when they emblazoned sigils with wild lions. He was the type of man Oliver knew just glancing at him would make a fearsome officer, an officer who upheld the law, an officer that other men would follow simply and unconsciously.
There was a crash from off to their left, but Oliver didn’t turn. He knew it was the hollowsouls closing in. He could hear them growling and snarling like guard dogs set loose on a trespasser. It wouldn’t be long now before they attacked, before he died, but if Oliver staying put and holding a gun to this stranger’s back ensured that at least one of these demons went down with him, it would be worth it. His finger tightened on his pepperbox trigger.
“Sun and fucking stars.” Oliver’s eyes snapped to the wolf-eared demon over at the sidelines. She was seething at the encroaching hollowsouls: “I do not have the goddamn time for this motherfucking bullshit.”
Oliver didn’t see the shadow flying toward his face until it was too late. Something struck him hard in the temple, but before he passed out, he fired off a single round into the group of foreign demons and heard it hit flesh.
Someone shouted, frantic.
“No,” they said. “No—stars, no.”
And then everything went black.
Epilogue
SWORDS & WORDS
_______________________________
When the wolves are about, for the good of the herd, there must always be a slow calf.
Captain Saion’son Ghe’gok to the 104th Omani Regiment before the Battle of Ban-Or, translated from its original Narin
THE HIGH REALM OF SNAKE RIVER
THE OFFICE OF THE QUEEN, TON TOWER,
GANJI ON-IL, OMAN PREFECTURE, NORTHERN XEIXIN
High Queen Nianna’so Xi’eongsan ripped the memory leech from her forehead, its tiny teeth tearing free of her skin. With a splat, it hit her desk, and she scowled at it.
The leech looked like a black tongue writhing there on the varnished wood. Pathetic and ugly. Whatever memories of hers it was holding, she had no clue. They were gone, erased from her mind. She picked up her silver letter opener from its holder and stabbed the leech into the desktop. It died slowly, undulations creeping to a halt. Light from the sconced bulbs around the office glistened off its slick body and off the silver of the letter opener’s blade. Nianna’so frowned, jarred by the sight. This felt so familiar, like a routine, but she didn’t know why.
Why was there a memory leech on my head? she wondered.
When blood trickled down her forehead, sliding along the length of her nose and into the seam of her lips, she licked it away. The taste was watery and metallic. She reached up to touch the leech-tooth wound above her eyes, but while her fingers found the blood, the skin underneath it was already smooth and healed. Even the sting had dissipated. She shifted her eyes from the dead leech on the desk to find a cloth soaked with water and lavender oil waiting for her next to it. She used the cloth to wipe away the blood on her face, but even that felt like a habit she couldn’t remember. She set the cloth back down when she was done with it and stared at her desk, puzzled. The water on her face was cold. It dripped from her chin and down the front of her leather cuirass.
She only realized her hand had moved down toward her waist when it snapped the lid back on the jar fastened to her belt. She froze, jolted by the action. She hadn’t known there was a jar at her belt. When she looked at it, she was taken aback: several more black memory leeches were enclosed inside. The water in the jar sloshed.
In case you’re ever caught, the thought came to her out of the void of her mind. You keep them in case you’re ever caught.
She didn’t understand. Caught for what?
She looked back at her desk, and then it all clicked into place. Her disorientation from the procedure fell away like a shroud, and all at once, she knew what was going on, why she was here, and why she’d done this to herself.
Next to the leech’s little body was a piece of parchment. Scratches of Narin scrawled down the page in inked columns, right to left. It was her own handwriting on the page. Her eyes flitted over the messy script. She read.
An hour ago, you met with your masters alongside the eight others of your highest rank. Remember: they are small names and mean nothing to you,
weak links in the Society’s chain. Nothing has changed. No favour has been shown to them. What assignments they have, you are not privy. The meeting in all was no more than a celebration. Our mission was successful. The Enlightenment is nearly upon us.
It had been a meeting with her masters then. She tried to reach for the missing memory, but all she found was a vague impression in its place: the smell of a lake, the glow of a full moon, sand underneath her military sandals, blood on white cloth. That was it. There was nothing else to find. That knowledge made her grin, a laugh crawling its way out of her throat. Her whole body shook with the sound as it grew, and her chest went tight with a dizzying joy.
We’ve nearly won, she thought, euphoric. I’ve nearly won.
Before she folded the parchment over, she read the last few lines of the message that she’d left for herself.
You were commended for your work with the Guardian of Trees. There will be no further meetings. They have ordered you await further instructions by ether raven or by hand delivery from their messenger. You will know their sign when you see it. For now, proceed as usual. Seek no truth, only glory. File this record away in the usual spot.
She knew exactly where she kept her memories. Sliding her hand beneath her desk, she felt for a small button, one so tiny and inconspicuous that she would have thought nothing of it had she not designed the desk. As she pressed up on the button, it clicked, and a small drawer dropped down from the underside. She pulled it toward herself and sat the new parchment safely inside. Inside the drawer, there were already hundreds of them, all hinting at memories that were gone, pried from her head. They were the only tangible proof that any of the last five years had happened. Flimsy words, vague and precisely chosen, nothing the Council or the Saeinfinae would ever be able to validate.
The only memories she kept in her head—in full colour and clarity—were those containing the faces of the other top-ranked Society members, all eight of them. Those she would never erase. If she fell, she would make sure they all fell with her.
“Nfer dok ankh dok,” she whispered. It wouldn’t be much longer now. It would all be over soon.
As she clicked the drawer shut and leaned back in her upholstered chair, she swiveled her cat ears to listen to the courtiers conversing lazily in the rooms nearest her. She could hear further than them, too: there were guards in the halls smoking inkweed pipes; courtesans standing in the main vestibule, the bells sown into their hemlines tinkling as they giggled like children; politicians in the moonroom bickering back and forth in Narin; and even priests in the chapel, singing in chant their praises to the Guardians and to the Council, the two things Nianna’so was trying to eliminate. The irony amused her.
When the Enlightenment came, she would kill her priests if she had to, if her masters commanded it. It would be no hardship. A new world was coming, and her subjects needed to be prepared to rise to its expectations, just as she was.
She stood from her desk and faced the rest of the wood-panelled office. The screens at the tops of the walls let in jaundiced light from the bordering rooms. Mounted animal heads from old hunts stared back at her with glassy eyes. Underneath them were golden plaques engraved with the animals’ names, names she’d given them as she’d stood over their cooling bodies in the evergreen forests. It was ritualistic for her: find an enemy, neutralize it.
That was what she was focusing on now. Nine High Monarchs can’t rule the Infinity, she thought darkly.
There would be no dividing the multiverse amongst them for any long period of time. There would be warring, arguing, bloodshed, and betrayal. Her masters would watch their infant world burn at the hands of the people they were entrusting it to.
No—when it came down to it, if the Watchers wanted true peace, they would have to choose one of them to rule and only one. They would have to choose their most loyal follower, the most devout of their herd. Someone who would see their cause through to the end and rebuild a grand new multiverse for them, a world where evil was smote out before it could even niggle its way into existence.
It will be me, Nianna’so thought, balling her hands into fists and gritting her teeth as she smiled. It will be me if I have to kill the others with my bare hands. I will protect my masters’ dream from those who would see it destroyed for the sake of greed.
She’d taken the Xeixini throne twelve years ago to rule the High Realm of Snake River, after her sister had been murdered at the hands of an Geongi assassin. The mewling man who’d hired the assassin had hoped power over the dimension would shift to his country’s president with Queen Mian’ji dead; he’d wanted the glory of a seat in the Saeinfinae’s High Court for his president.
And so after Nianna’so had executed the assassin, she’d sentenced his contractor to death with relish. She’d watched him drawn and quartered at her orders in the courtyard before an audience, and when his intestines had sprawled the grass, she’d laughed. She’d laughed until she’d gone dizzy underneath the weight of the summer sun. She’d laughed even when she ordered her troops to wage war in Geong, overthrowing the country’s government and burning their capital to the ground, hanging their president from the highest tower of Ganji on-Il and letting his body rot away to bones and cloth. The frayed rope was still up there, flapping on a windy day.
For Nianna’so, there was a feeling of righteousness that came with eradicating evil. It was akin to being poured full of light, she imagined. Throat bursting with it, every shadow in her blood and bones burned away. It was an addicting feeling. A sweet madness.
The world is an ugly place.
She’d known that from a childhood of watching the people in Xeixin’s capital city murder each other any time they found a corner just dark enough they thought it could get away with it. It was what had driven her into the Omani military, a place where she’d found even more corruption, more bloodshed, more needless power play. She wanted to cut that corruption out of the world, the same way she’d cut her sister’s murderers out of it.
If she accomplished anything with her masters, it would be to avenge Mian’ji, to become an architect of a multiverse where nothing like what had happened to her sister would ever happen to another living soul again.
That was the dream of Nianna’so’s masters. No more alley knifings for a few crumbled bills. No more false treaties and genocides. No more government-sponsored torture in hidden rooms. No more rape and abuse. No more soldiers slaughtered and left for the birds. No more villagers starving, stomachs distended, skin clinging to bones, shot for stealing, smothering their own suffering children. No more children orphaned.
No more children left behind in her care.
It had been hard enough to live up to her older sister’s prestige, which had stretched like a long shadow across the one hundred and fifty countries of their dimension. Nianna’so herself had been nothing but a commander in her sister’s army, one who had never touched a single piece of legislation in all her six thousand years of life. Taking on the challenge of the throne had been the easier part of filling her sister’s shoes. It had been hardest for her to raise her sister’s toddling quadruplets, never having been a mother to anything in her life.
With pride, Nianna’so could now say the children—while still children—would soon be more than capable of taking on the great Xeixini throne. Leiung’sen, with her gentle, bookish wit. Mei’ri, with her aptitude for cutthroat strategy. Naoma’ro, with her bullish talent in the training yards. Dai’lin, with her pale beauty and faked naivety. One of the girls would sit at the head of Ganji on-Il and rule husbandless, womb full of whatever seed she pleased. They would protect the legacy Nianna’so would leave them when she mounted the Infinite Throne, the world she was building to keep them safe.
A huff of quiet admiration passed her lips, and she let her feet carry her out of her office, into the humid, wood-panelled halls of the palace. They were labyrinthine and full of shadows. Her guardswomen in their leather armour, spears like a stiff forest of trees, made no attempts
to approach her as she wended her way through the corridors and out onto the southern veranda.
Moonlight slicked the tile and cast baluster shadows across it in stripes. Migrating lilies sat along the banisters in their pots, bedded down for the night. The air was warm, full of night and forest and flowers. The jar of leeches at her waist slopped back and forth and the leather of her armour creaked as she left the porch and entered the hanging garden beyond it, tail flicking behind her. The stone path clicked against her wooden sandals.
Ahead, the garden trellises overflowed with tendrils of blooming bioluminescent wisteria. As she passed beneath them, they flared with brilliant purple light that rained down on her in heavy drops, painting constellations across the backs of her freckled hands that faded away after a few moments. During her childhood, she’d captured wisteria light in vials with her sister Mian’ji, corking it and hanging it around her neck to gleam for the better part of a few hours. It was meant to be good luck, and as much as she wanted to cork it now, she knew she didn’t need its luck anymore.
Underneath her sandals, the yijgrass curled until it stretched over her toes and hugged them. The velvety blades let go every time she stepped forward, but when at last she dropped to her knees and sat at the edge of the garden, the grass caressed her bare ankles, her unshaven legs, her hands, and her tail. It wound itself around and encased anything of her it could reach, like the multiverse itself was speaking through it in a divine dialogue, trying to embrace with her.
She looked out over the drop at the edge of the garden, where the land broke away abruptly and collapsed down into a cavernous gulf of kudzu-entombed mountains. The moons’ twin lights swam between the peaks in a sword-silver haze. One step off the side of the garden and she’d fall over four thousand feet, at least according to the scrolls written by Architect Mao’den that were kept in the basement of the palace. She’d never measured the drop. She leaned forward and fingered the crumbling edge of the cliff, only to feel a night breeze crawl down the back of her neck, almost like a push forward. She stared down at the blackened void beneath her and exhaled, at peace.
A Shard of Sea and Bone Page 37