by Queen, Nyna
“Maria Carvalis. Where did you hear that name?”
No innuendo this time, huh? Darken swiftly skipped through his available options. Lying, unfortunately, wasn’t one of them. Not here in the Pacified Zone. If he did, he would definitely leave without answers. That was, if he left at all.
Deciding to put all his eggs into one basket, he finally said, “Governor Robert Ferhus mentioned that name shortly before he was murdered.”
Blayde nodded slowly as though Darken had confirmed something that he had guessed all along.
“I had someone look into his affairs,” Darken continued. “Fourteen years ago, the governor made a large payment to the benefit of this Maria Carvalis. A very considerate sum, in fact.” He paused, waiting for a reaction.
Blayde returned his gaze steadily, not giving him the slightest inch. “He did?”
Darken clenched his fists, wanting to crush something. “Yes, he did. And somehow this woman is connected to the abduction attempt on my niece and nephew last month. I want to know how.” He took a step forward. “You recognized the name. Who is she? And don’t lie to me because I’m also quite good at detecting that.”
Taking his time with an answer, Blayde turned his head, looking out over the distant lake below, his dark-skinned fingers absently brushing the railing.
“Do you know how I have managed to keep this place running as long as I have, Darken? How I mange to … co-exist with the realm?”
Darken blinked. What kind of question was that?
When he didn’t reply, Blayde fixed him with his piercing gaze halfway over the rim of his shaded glasses. “Neutrality and discretion, Darken. Neutrality and discretion are the magic words. I do not, on principle, get involved in the matters of the realm’s politics.”
“You?” Darken barked an incredulous laugh. “The master of secrets? The all-knowing eye of the solitary tower?”
“There you have it.” Blayde held up a finger. “I collect information. Collect—but I do not share them, except to protect this place. They are my security, a sword I keep edging diligently, but which I do not use unless absolutely necessary.”
He folded his hands, almost piously so. “I’m afraid I cannot help you, Darken.”
Darken felt a whisper of darkness shudder through him, a sweet black shiver burrowing right under his skin.
“So you tell me you know something but will not help me?”
“What I may or may not know is not the issue here.”
“But of course it is.” Darken’s voice was laced with bitterness and rising anger. “Don’t mince words, Blayde. I’m not one of the fools you deal with day in and day out. Do you really think you can fob me off that easily?”
Blayde just kept looking at him.
“Damn it, Blayde!” Darken slapped the wall without controlling his magic so that a ripple of power raced along the mural and killed the nearest magic torch, sending sparks in all directions. He didn’t care. “This is my family at stake here! The children were almost abducted twice now, and someone tried to poison my brother at the Summerball.”
And that someone had almost managed to kill Alex who, in her utter lack of self-preservation, had drunk the poison that had been meant for his bother. The fear he’d felt when he caught her collapsing body in the box above the ballroom came back to him in a sickening rush. It only fueled his anger, reaching deep into his veins where the blackness pulsed, hungry, waiting.
He glided toward Blayde, his magic slithering out of him, charging over his skin in streaks of black lighting.
“If you know something, you must tell me!”
A phantom wind rippled the surface of the lake below and pulled at the torches on the wall. For a breath, the world seemed to frost over, encasing the Custodian in a glowing silver mist.
Blayde’s deep voice was too soft. “Are you threatening me, Forfeit? In my own territory?”
Thin ice. Very thin ice.
Darken forced his hands to open and let out his breath in a slow hiss, releasing the grip on his death magic with it.
“I’m asking you … as a friend.”
He wasn’t sure exactly how much their sometimes uneasy friendship meant to the Custodian, but it was some kind of friendship, braced by a forced but ravished sincerity. And despite him being what he was, Blayde had always welcomed him in his territory. Had always provided him with the help he needed.
Blayde hesitated and Darken dove into that gap, ruthlessly exploiting his every option. There was too much at stake to be squeamish.
His voice dropped into a deep, silky croon. “You owe me, Blayde. You know you do.”
The children and Alex had been under Blayde’s protection when the false messenger had lured them out of the Pacified Zone right under Blayde’s nose. And if Darken hadn’t appeared in time…
Blayde stiffened, and his dark lips curled. “Yes,” he agreed softly, reluctantly. “Yes, I owe you.”
“Then help me,” Darken implored him, letting the full measure of his desperation show. “Help me and the debt will be paid in full. Who is this Maria? She’s the key to solving this riddle.”
Blayde looked up sharply, one hand still on the railing.
“Did you say ‘riddle’?”
“Riddle. Plot.” Darken brushed the word away with an angry jerk of his hand. “Call it whatever you like.”
But Blayde raised a commanding hand to silence him, his face suddenly distant.
“Riddle,” he whispered, more to himself than to Darken. “Riddle, yes … answer the riddle … the key… the golden key …” He spun abruptly. “The sugar cube is still alive, isn’t she?”
Darken recoiled, completely taken by surprise.
Blayde let out a long, knowing sigh. “But of course … Alexandre de Nuy, yes?” He shook his head in an how-did-I-not-see-that way. “I admit, I’ve been wondering about this new acquaintance of yours, but I didn’t realize…” He pursed his lips. “Brazen, Enforcer. Extremely brazen to bring one of her kind into the Royal Palace. I always knew you had balls, Darken, but this… You’re taking risks, my friend.”
Darken suppressed a growl. He’d come here to get information, not to provide Blayde with new ones.
If it had been anybody else who had found out about Alex being alive, he would be digging a quiet grave right now, but since it was Blayde…
Darken was almost about to deny Alex’s survival, a lie though this might be, when Blayde’s words suddenly struck a sharp chord in his mind. His eyes narrowed. “Wait. Alex is the golden key?”
In the whirl of events following the slaughter at the border of the Pacified Zone and Alex’s healing, he had completely forgotten about the little Augur’s vision in the Academia Scientiae when he had visited Barthi to use the Amplificum. Now her words came rushing back at him in a staggering stream of ominous memories.
A castle built on rotten beams. The golden key will help answer the riddle, but if it is broken, it will forever remain unsolved. Pain.
She had used the word ‘pain’ several times. And tears. Yes.
Tears turning into diamonds sparkling on a woman’s palm. So many cries in the darkness … or maybe … unheard in the darkness?
Then came something about a snake chewing its own tail, and someone who would bleed.
A shiver went through Darken. That had been Alex. Alex, being tortured by the mercenaries outside of the Pacified Zone. Alex, almost dying in his arms. The memory pumped even more ice into his veins as though he had fallen through a crack in the surface of a frozen lake.
The Augur had told him to run, and he had, reaching Alex just in time.
Darken frowned at Blayde, knowing it was futile to ask how the Custodian knew about the vision he had shared with the Augur girl. One way or another, Blayde always knew what happened inside his territory.
The Custodian was still watching him with the most unreadable expression on his face.
“Yes,” he finally confirmed after a long pause. “Alex is the golden key.” A
fter another pause he cited, “The golden key will help solve the riddle, but if it is broken it will forever remain unsolved.”
“But it wasn’t broken,” Darken said with a feeling of fierce triumph.
Alex hadn’t been broken. They had tried and they had tried hard, but he and Josepha had been able to save her.
“She survived,” he repeated firmly. “Which means the riddle can still be solved.”
“Some riddles should remain unsolved.”
Despite the mellow summer evening, Darken felt a chill wind around his spine.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
Blayde nodded toward the lake in the encroaching gloom. “Visions are like the ripples on a pond.”
Great! Another riddle!
“Now, that clears up everything.”
The Custodian clucked his tongue at Darken’s tart tone of voice. “Visions are manifold,” he said softly. “That is why Augurs usually use at least one interpreter for them, and even then their meaning often remains unclear. What you think you see isn’t always what you really see.” He hesitated. “That a key wasn’t broken doesn’t mean it is unbreakable.”
The little hairs on Darken’s neck rose. The ground beneath his feet which had been stable only a moment ago, suddenly felt fluid. “Did you See something?”
The other man held his gaze, and a ghostly glow ignited behind his glasses. “Your future is hazy, Darken. It’s in flux. A vortex of images that changes with every decision you and those around you make. But one thing is crystal clear: I see death in your future, Darken.”
Darken let out a harsh, bitter laugh. “I am a Forfeit, Blayde! Death is my future. Always has been and always will be.” He slowly shook his head. “You cannot scare me with your platitudes. I have no intention of backing down. With or without your help—I will find out exactly what is being played here if it’s the last thing I do.”
“Those are famous last words, my friend.”
This time it was Darken who put a palm against his chest, giving the other man a crooked grin. “It pains me that you have so little confidence in my abilities.”
Blayde didn’t smile back. “It’s not your abilities I doubt, but … Darken, you have no idea what you’re getting yourself into. The people you’re going up against, they have no mercy.”
“Good,” Darken whispered, letting his coldest Forfeit smile play around his lips. “Because I don’t intend to have mercy on them either.”
Blayde shook his head with an almost pained expression. “There’s no way to talk you out of this, is there?”
Darken didn’t hesitate for a second. “No.”
He would do anything—anything!—to keep those he loved safe, and if that meant washing the streets of this country with blood, then he would do that, too. If that made him a monster, it was a price he was willing to pay.
Blayde sighed. “Very well. For the sake of our old friendship—and because I owe you—I’ll give you this much: You’re asking the wrong question, my friend.”
Darken bared his teeth in a growl. “I’ve really had enough of your riddles, Blayde!”
Blayde frowned a little at his temerity, but still added, “You want to know about Maria Carvalis, Forfeit? Well, then the question is not ‘who’—the question is ‘where’.”
CHAPTER SIX
AFTER Darken had left, the Custodian of the Pacified Zone remained on the balcony for a long time, staring over the lake in the misty gloom below. In the darkness, it lay calm and placid as if hewn from volcanic glass, reflecting the silver orb of the full moon like a giant mirror.
Behind his shaded glasses, Blayde’s eyes caught its light and sent it back into the sky where it fused with the stars that were beginning to appear one by one, burning tiny glowing holes into the indigo curtain of the night.
At night, the world seemed both small and endless, full of mysteries and secrets and a thousand things most people could neither see nor imagine. At night, his little territory seemed to stretch far beyond the hills of Nivatt, and the boundary between his realm and the rest of Arcadia barely seemed to exist. Yet visible or not, it was always there, always reminding him of the fragile truce he’d called so many years ago.
He didn’t interfere with the world outside his boundary. It was the one rule he never broke. By keeping out of Arcadia’s affairs he ensured that, in turn, the ruling forces of the Republic left his little enclave alone.
A fragile truce, indeed.
He promised people a safe haven beyond the reach of Arcadia’s laws and rules, and this was how he kept that promise. He didn’t interfere.
It didn’t mean that he wasn’t aware of what was happening outside of his territory. The realm was a place full of lies and secrets, the first of which he despised, and the latter of which he collected the same way others collected valuable little figurines, storing them in hidden safes to be dusted off and exhibited if the occasion called for it.
So many secrets. Some small, some wondrous, and some terrible. Like the one that shrouded Maria P. Carvalis.
Blayde wearily dragged a hand through his tangled dreads. Of all the secrets Darken could have come to him for answers, it had to be this one.
He felt a slight pang of regret. Darken’s investigations would provoke a storm that would shake the Republic to its very foundations.
The Custodian sighed and turned away from the night and its unanswered questions. Perhaps it was about time that this particular secret was revealed—but at what cost?
Slowly, he strode along the balcony railing, one hand on the metal, until he reached the place where Darken had crunched dents into it the last time he had visited this place. Blayde’s fingers traced the bumps in the metal, testimony of a destructive power that was seeking a safe outlet.
He had no love for Arcadia—they had put a bridle on him and then were surprised when he refused to jump through the hoops they held up for him. He didn’t give a damn if the Republic survived the brewing storm or not. But Darken…
There weren’t many people he called friends. As the Custodian, he stood beside the people he sheltered, not among them. Respected but feared, venerated but avoided. His special gift and his augmentations made him different, and most people painstakingly kept their distance from him, too afraid of what he might glimpse in their souls if they let him too close.
Darken, due to his deadly magic heritage, knew very well how it felt to be used, knew what it was like to be looked upon wearily simply because of what he was, what it was like to stand alone amidst a crowd. The Forfeit didn’t fear him, even pitted himself against him, and their sometimes heated discussions added spice to an often lonely existence.
Blayde frowned into the darkness. There were many who had criticized him for allowing Darken Forfeit to walk freely inside his territory, but he had vigorously silenced them. The Pacified Zone was a sanctuary for those in need of it, and Darken—Darken needed it more than most. A man who hadn’t been favored by fate and whose life was seared with losses and rejections. There was only so much loss a man could take, and now Darken stood on the brink of loosing everything dear to him.
Gripping the balcony railing with both hands, Blayde tilted his head back and let his Sight slip in once more, allowing himself to become a vessel for the ever-changing currents of possibilities.
His eyes ignited behind his glasses like two fallen stars, irresistibly bright, turning him into a beacon, both in the darkness of the night and in the darkness of his mind.
He fought against the staggering influx of images that flooded him like a crushing river which could rip the mind of an inexperienced Augur apart. After a moment, the pressure eased. Driven by his focus, he glided through the glittering universe of memories and possibilities, ploughing through the currents of ‘maybe’ the way an experienced swimmer mastered a rough tide, searching among the endless possibilities for the one future he was interested in. Darken’s future.
When he found it, he recoiled. The vision hadn’t changed—a
nd if it had, then only for the worse.
Blayde saw them all, zillions of different possibilities like single glowing threads that wove together and eventually thickened into two parallel paths. Two possible futures. Inside the vision he saw them like snapshots of what could be yet might never come to pass. In both futures, Darken stood inside the same room, pitch black except for a spotlighted table. In both, an intricate wooden puzzle box with a keyhole waited on the tabletop, still closed but beckoning to be opened. In both, Darken was holding out his hand. Yet in the first, there was a golden key on his outstretched palm, while in the other … in the other he was holding the twisted pieces of a broken key.
And that second image was getting stronger, whereas the first one was fading—still possible, but much less so. It was already weaker than the last time Blayde had taken a glimpse. The decisions Darken and the people around him were making were inevitably leading him toward that second path, and if nothing changed, the threads would narrow until it was the only path left for him to tread. The first future would simply vanish, like a photograph that had been dropped on the surface of a lake, slowly soaking in the waters of ‘improbable’ and gently sinking down into its murky depths, to be forever forgotten.
For now, both futures were still possible, but it was only a matter of time until one would cease to exist.
Reluctantly, Blayde let go of his Sight and returned to a world which seemed cramped and crushingly defined compared to the vastness of the boundless possibilities he experienced in his mind.
With another soft sigh, he dropped his hands from the railing and made his way back into the hotel to check on his guests.
He didn’t interfere with the world outside his territory. It was his rule.
But it wouldn’t hurt to keep an eye on Darken. And on the spider. After all, it was what he did best.
CHAPTER SEVEN
IT was long past midnight when Darken arrived back at Helton Manor. Darkness sheltered the stately mansion in its nightly cradle, obscuring the pine and myrtle trees that stood sentry around it.