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Twilight in Heaven: Chapter 14

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Chapter 14

I’d conspired with Koru, King of Rats, to assassinate Mallens, Lord of Creation, King of the Titans. We had not succeeded.

My job was handling logistics. I’d carried the bribes, distributed the weapons, and moved the paper. I’d volunteered for the kill-team, hadn’t been taken, and now the kill-team had been killed. I was the only link between Koru and the other high conspirators and the assassins, and my metaphorical fingerprints were all over everything. Right now, I worried that the weapons the killers had used, copies of Death’s scepter All Things Ending, could lead back to me. Hasso, the forger, had put a maker’s mark on them, and he would definitely tell anyone who asked that everything was my fault.

Most of the weapons had been destroyed, but some Celestials had found one. When I’d tried to buy it, one of the Celestials, Osret, had betrayed us. He killed his two friends and shot me. I should have died but didn’t. Now he had the secret I needed.

Leving Dr Lammet’s underground home, I found a new day overcast and gray. A short walk took me to a safehouse I’d set up less than a week ago for the kill team. With them dead, no one else knew it existed. A water tower rose among tall, blank buildings with yellow and gray walls of sandstone, behind cover of pines. The tower hadn’t been used in years. I climbed the ladder one-handed, jimmied open the trick door, and rolled into a round room with a flat floor. It had blankets, a sleeping pad, and a few sealed water jugs. By the look of it, no one had been here since I had.

I dropped my bag and did the honeydew vials like shooters. Then I poured a little water into each one, drank that, and finally sucked the empty glass jars like a pacifier. Medicine always comes in useless packaging that ruins half the stuff. Then I lay down and slept like the dead for five or six hours. Inside the water tower was a black hole, and I’d feel it shake if anyone climbed the ladder.

When I woke up, I ate another package of ambrosia and checked my arm. It moved sufficiently if not well, but the brace impaired my mobility. I took it off and stashed it in the gym bag. I’d put it on when I returned. The ambrosia gone, I went looking for more.

Before the hit, I’d hidden four packages of payoff money for the assassins, and they weren’t going to need them anymore. Each package had money, ambrosia, some fake documents, and a small weapon or good luck charm. One had been lost, Osret had taken the money from two, and I moved through Hyperion, capital city of Heaven, toward the last.

Clouds lay low and heavy in the sky. They were big, round-bellied clouds that promised rain but withheld it, and on top Mt Attarkus a spiraling storm of darker shades roiled with lightning. Sometimes lightning bolts crackled down to the lower skies, but it rarely struck the ground. Instead it crawled across the hanging bellies like disjoint-legged spiders.

The sun must be up but showed no sign. Light came from lanterns and house lights. Someone had turned off the street lights. Ion’s palace, usually a monstrosity of unnecessary lamps and bonfires, looked tame with a few bright windows and one small lantern shining over the front door. But its windows had lace curtains drawn, and the door lamp vanes had been turned down.

It took me a couple hours to go less than three miles across empty streets because I kept getting lost. Ultimately I fell into my destination. I had crossed a small footbridge over a storm runoff where lamplight didn’t go, feeling wet ground for a small path, when I stepped wrong, fell through cattails to the muddy creek bed, and chose to break my fall with my head instead of my bad arm. I finally saw stars under the cloudy sky. After a bit I got up and started poking around.

This was one of my better stash spots. An abandoned garden filled blocked drainage ditch. The garden’s walls were worked stone under a worked bridge, so the dryads wouldn’t tend it. However it was in a storm drain, so the Celestials thought it beneath them. Tall grass hadn’t been cut in years, cattails clogged the waterway, and privacy hedges hid the unsightly area from the neighboring palaces. I’d hidden the last package behind a stone in the garden wall.

Now, the rock lay in the middle of the drainage ditch. The stash space lay empty. I felt a worm. He didn’t say anything. I decided to call him Alphonse.

Okay but seriously, now my sickness had gone terminal.

Someone had come here, pulled the stone out, and taken the box.

That someone might have seen me hide it. Once I’d gone, they’d investigated, found one hundred and twenty five thousand sesteres free for the taking, and took it. Possible.

Agents of Mallens could have taken it. They could know everything I’ve been doing all along. They could be telling Mallens about me right now, and all my plans were too late.

They could be watching me right now.

It could be… self, what did it matter?

The package wasn’t here.

I went south to the house of the cousins Hemlin.

#

Their townhouse rose on two stubby legs with a corridor or tunnel between them. They’d shut and locked a gate across the tunnel. Around back, it had a courtyard with a little garden and some sheds, and abutted an alley. A tall fence enclosed the property, with a locked carriage gate, but they hadn’t taken their trash in. I eased up onto a closed trashcan and tested my arm. It hurt but worked.

I pulled my head over the rear fence. The courtyard was empty, the house lit, and privacy curtains pulled over the windows. I saw moving figures in the first floor.

I rolled over the fence and stole across the courtyard. Their main door lead to a tiny foyer in one of the legs, and up a steep flight of stairs to the second floor. The exterior door was a glass oval, but the interior door at the top of the stairs was an ironwood portal. That was their main level with the kitchen, dining room, and open area. I hadn’t gone upstairs, but had seen them go upstairs to change their clothes.

I poked around the backyard, found a building stone I could lift with both hands, and threw it through the glass door. Stained glass shattered and fell. I dashed through, took the stairs in two steps, and spoke Prothadeus Raln.

Prothadeus Raln changed qualities to quantities. They had locked the door. They hadn’t locked it enough. I hit the door with my foot, it shattered like the stained glass, and I entered the living room.

Apseto had been behind the door. He was falling over a couch now. Nurim ducked around the kitchen counter with cooking knives in either hand, and as I came in, he started slinging. I dove and rolled, cleavers thudding into the walls.

Osret had frozen in a main room, standing by the dinner table near Nurim. I charged him. He turned for the stairs and ran.

Nurim grabbed more knives, smaller ones they’d probably never used. I threw a chair at him, he threw knives at the chair, and the razor-sharp blades chunked through it. The seat-cushion caught their handles, and the chair hit him. He threw it down, but I threw a flying knee into him. He hit the cupboard, his rear-end burst through the doors, and I left him there with soup pouring down his legs.

Osret’s footsteps thudded up the stairs. I grabbed an eight-inch carving fork and raced up the stairs after him.

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Twilight in Heaven: Chapter 13

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Chapter 13

Excuse me, but getting shot really hurts. It’s unfathomable until you understand. Yes, people get shot and run around, hopped up on adrenaline or anger, but those are simply more powerful things. The shock of taking a round, one round, astounded me.

I got shot in the shoulder, and to keep my arm from jiggling, I had to limp down the road. I felt ridiculous. Half a block away the parking lot fence ended at a narrow alley. On the other side a row of highrises had storefronts on their first floors. I ducked into the alley, limped past boxes, empty moving material, and three rows of hungry plants. When I slumped against the wall, they woke up and sniffed. Fat, gray tongues moved from green lips to taste the air. I could not rest here long.

I checked my arm. It was an in-and-out, with a tiny entry hole in the side and gaping exit wound in back. The bullet had made a right turn somewhere inside my shoulder. My collar-bone hurt across my shoulders. My fore-arm ached down to the elbow. I bled like a waterfall, like my shoulder had a spigot.

It wasn’t a clean, oh-golly-I’ve-been-shot-now-I’ll-fight-on wound. This one wound to one arm made me feel destroyed as a living thing.

Wow, I was in shock. I’d thought that took longer. My teachers had told me that it took a while, and they were not correct, which meant that Northshore–

Self.

I stared at my shoulder.

Make bleeding stop.

Yes.

I took my wet clothes out of the gym-bag, which I’d kept somehow, folded my shirt into a pad, and belted it to the exit wound.

I got distracted because I could see clouds. The sky was full of them.

I took my pants out of the gym-bag, made a long pad, and wrapped my whole shoulder. I tied it down with my socks. I kept fading in and out, getting sleepy, so I popped the half-eaten roll of ambrosia wafers. That woke me up like a bucket of water, and I checked the dressing again, fixing a few loose points.

What was I going to do?

You know what I was going to do.

I got up, and used my right hand to slide my left arm into Aesthus’s sweater’s pocket. It was one of those long, two-opening pockets over my belly. I tucked my arm in there.

Then I checked the sidewalk and didn’t see Osret. I couldn’t see much of anything. The heavy overcast had made an evening out of afternoon, and the streets were grim and quiet. Someone would come for the gunshots, but I had a very small amount of time.

I walked back to the parking lot, didn’t see Osret, went in, checked the space between carriages, and saw Aesthus and Zenjin. They both lay dead, eyes open in expanding pools of blood. The package was gone. The saber was gone. Osret was gone. There were footprints in the blood.

I left.

That was a dumb thing to do, self, but I didn’t waste more time in self criticism. I got out of there without leaving a footprint in the blood, and headed westward, away from the ocean. I thought I recalled a temple to Maya that way, and she took all visitors.

Hopefully.

#

I didn’t make it to Maya’s temple. I finally went down in a grove of cypress trees. They stood like teeth, elegantly sculpted into tall cylinders with pointed tops and rounded bases. All of them had their lower branches trimmed to hide the trunk, and low piles of mulch and tastefully arranged needles helped conceal the vulgarity of a tree rooting in dirt. Several offset lines of them followed a wide road. I was stumbling down the road when I fell over. I crawled away from the road and got somewhere hidden. All around me, silent trees pointed at the sky.

I fell asleep.

My dreams emerged from a peculiar blackness. I definitely dreamt of oblivion for a while. It wasn’t like a normal dream with images, houses like and not-like houses I’ve lived in, people I knew doing things those people would never do. I dreamt of nothing and blackness, an infinite stillness without fear, feeling, or thought.

And then images appeared like stars. They emerged in hints. It began with words my parents used to say, their accents, their sounds. My father had grunted a lot. He communicated with a bunch of ‘hmm’ sounds. My mother sang. My father actually sang pretty well too, and my mother always goaded him into singing more. Sometimes he sang under his breath and she would join the tune, and he looked like she’d caught him at something. And then she smirked, but he wouldn’t stop to let her ‘win’ so they sang a duet in the wagon or under it, where we lived when I was young.

Their voices appeared first in the darkness, and then came sights of the wagon. It was a big, boxy thing on four wheels with two horses. The horses smelled of sweat and animal, but they liked me so long as I approached from the front. The wagon had tall sides and a round top. It had a body of fabric and steel.

In my dream it rained and beat the roof. My parents and I took refuge inside, the horses grazed in the rain, and stars in lanterns filled the wagon with light and warmth. I was very young. My mom still carried me. My parents sang, and in my dreams, I fell asleep.

But inside the dream, the darkness didn’t return. For I dreamed forgotten dreams I’d dreamed as a kid, dreams of animals and plants. I dreamed of birds and goats, and they stepped from the real dreams I’d had, now remembered, to the dream I had under the cypress trees as I lay dying. Horses walked from inside out; fish swam through the air. In the way of dreams, things got fuzzy, and soon I lost the thread of which dream was which. People and characters moved without limits.

In the end, I opened my eyes and saw a man and woman, wrapped in trees and leaves. This was real.

I stared at them. They stared at me. We’d all surprised each other.

The two dryads were leafy people. They wore headdresses of laurel and clothes of ivy. They went barefoot. The woman wore many bracelets of wicker that rattled like windchimes as she moved her arms, and the man a torq of bamboo. They did not appear armed.

I put my hands up to show they were empty and said, “Hey.”

The dryads looked at each other.

“Hey,” said the man.

“How do you feel?” asked the woman.

“Pretty bad,” I said honestly.

“You got shot,” said the man.

I nodded.

“We were worried for you,” she said.

“We didn’t know if you were going to make it,” he added.

“I’m surprised I did,” I said.

They nodded.

The conversation hit a pause. I looked around.

They lived in a partially-underground forest house. Gnarled roots of something that smelled of pine formed a bubble overhead, one perforated with windows as the twisted roots passed from trunk to ground. A dozen windchimes hung from the ceiling, rattling when the tree moved in the wind. The air down here smelled of loam and old wood.

Two holes, doorways without doors, lead to other bubble rooms under the knurled roots of trees. One looked a lot like a kitchen and bath. A stream flowed through one wall to be diverted and split into a dozen lesser waterfalls and tubes. They all drained through a fault in the floor. The other had a bed. It also had some clotheslines, pegs, and several clean but organic shelf-structures. The shelves bent, the frames twisted, and the whole assemblies were packed tight against each other, placed in cunning and space-saving fashion. Her underwear piled on his. His shirts covered hers.

If they were anything like my parents, they were fighting for closet-space by stacking their stuff on each others. They weren’t angry-fighting, I bet, but they were definitely battling to see who’s shirts went on top.

My heart ached remembering my parents. I stuffed it aside. This wasn’t a good time to think about them, it was never a good time to think about them, but I slipped sometimes.

I checked my arm.

I’d been rebandaged. Uncarded cotton had been worked into smooth pads, no stray fibers emerging, and tied over the exit wound. They’d packed it deep in there. The entry wound was small enough they’d stuck a long, pointy leaf over it, one that stuck to the skin. It hurt like madness, and the cotton against the injury had turned reddish black, but there was still fluffy white stuff on top. They’d wrapped everything in some wide leaves and moss, likely for cleanliness.

I really didn’t know what to say. I figured I’d try to be polite.

“Thank you. How am I?”

The man made a face like he was stretching his mouth and stared at the ceiling, and the woman looked away. He sighed. She watched him and waited.

The man said, “You got shot. The shoulder’s pretty bad. Your humerus–” he drew his finger from elbow to shoulder “–-is broken at the joint, and scapula–” he pointed at the back of my shoulder “–is either bruised or fractured. The bullet looks like it bounced off the joint. You lost a lot of blood.

“You’ve got bruises and grip marks on your shoulders, sides, and hips. You had cold burns on your side, your knee was broken and you haven’t been staying off it well enough, multiple bruises in your hands like you’ve been fighting, and that shoulder. Ah, that shoulder.

“We operated, pinned, pegged, and set the bones. After that we cleaned that up, packed your arm, gave you stitches, and stuck you in a splint.” He degenerated into leafy babble, talking about the foliage wrapping my arm. The leaves formed a hard shell, reinforced with tiny vines and a peculiar mixture of moss. Wet and dried, it hardened into a carapace. He talked about stitches. He talked about my hands.

I hadn’t realized how many of the nereids had tried to take a chunk out of me. The dryad doctor drummed his fingers on a table. I tried to look innocent.

After several long seconds wherein the doctor obviously had a lot to say he was sorting through, he made a decision.

“You can imagine my surprise when I found you on my doorstep. Mortals are not allowed within Hyperion.”

I’d been waiting for that, trying to get ahead, and when he asked, I still had no answer. The first thing that floated to the surface in my head was, “Oh, this? Of course. It’s a disguise.”

That stopped him. “Disguise?”

“Yes, yes. You mean the appearance?”

“Yes.”

“I’m hiding myself.”

“Then who are you? You have the ears and eyes of a dryad, but not the color.”

“I wouldn’t be holding the disguise well if I told you.”

“What is your name, son?” he asked. He corrected himself. “What shall I call you?”

“Remus. And you?”

He was doctor Lammet and his wife doctor Melia. She was a pediatrician. He worked trauma care.

I’d passed out in an ideal place. Thanks be to Limatra. Or had I been lucky?

Either way, I thanked him. “I appreciate your help. So, in regular terms, how am I doing? I assume I’m going to live?”

He exhaled heavily. “You tell me. Are you going to go pick a fight and open up all your injuries again?”

“Maybe,” I admitted.

He snorted. It wasn’t my fault.

“You’re not out of the woods yet,” he said, adding partially to himself, “And I’m not quite sure what to do with you.”

“Medication, words of encouragement, and send me on my way.”

“How about a bill and you stop getting shot?”

“Sorry. Got mugged. No cash.”

“Of course not. This is Hyperion. Which pantheon should I send the bill to?”

“Dr Lammet, I’m in disguise. That’s exactly the sort of thing I can’t talk about!”

He looked at me like he’d just drank poison.

“I’m going to have to file with Saffron Skies, aren’t I?”

Saffron Skies was a bastion of the titan’s government. When you did work for Saffron Skies, you should be proud to wait for your lords. They work on Heaven’s time. This is why we’d tried to kill Mallens.

I smiled ingratiatingly. He didn’t look like I’d ingratiated myself.

“The problem is, Remus, that there are two different medication paths for you. I saw you had ambrosia in your pack, and it will help you. But if you’re mortal, it will also burn out your life. Those are good years you’ll lose. If you’re a spirit or Celestial, your string is long.

“So be honest. This matters. Are you mortal?”

I looked him dead in the eye. “No.”

“And this?” he waved at me generally.

I shrugged and looked innocent.

“Any medical history? Are your parents healthy?”

“They’re dead.”

His ears perked up. “Sorry to hear that. How?”

“Violence,” I said. “It’s not catching.”

“Says the man shot and beat up.”

“Doc, you’re being a little hostile here.”

“Because I’m tried, I’m just tired, of patching people up and seeing you go off and do the exact same dumb things that got you here in the first place. You’re wasting my work, and I don’t appreciate it.”

“It’s a bit more complicated than that.”

“It always is. Stop getting shot, vessick.”

Vessick doesn’t really translate, but it means what it sounds like.

“Your bedside manner could be improved.”

“Your patient manner is shtuttick!”

Again, exactly what it sounds like.

I shrugged with one shoulder.

He sighed again, said something unfriendly, and went into their kitchen. I heard him going somewhere in there, but the small doorway didn’t show him. Dr Melia didn’t follow him with her eyes.

“You young men,” she said quietly.

I had no reply to that, and she didn’t pursue the matter. She turned her back on me to tidy medical equipment into storage, and we waited for Dr Lammet.

A short pause later, he reappeared with a cotton sack. We went through the contents together. Willow bark, to be chewed, bandages and dressings, to be changed, a pair of extremely nice scissors, ointments, pills, and antiseptics. He even gave me a small mirror.

“Try to have a medical professional change your bandages. They’re mostly on your back, so you won’t be able to see them. But if you do have to do it yourself, use the mirror.”

“Thank you.”

He held up two vials of tiny slices of honeydew bathed in nectar. He didn’t give them over.

“Remus, honey dew is illegal for a mortal. They will catch you. Are you mortal?”

“No,” I said again.

He stared into my eyes for a while before handing the packages over. I put them in the gym-bag with everything else.

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Twilight in Heaven: Chapter 12

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Chapter 12

I had a moment of peculiar introspection. Maybe not even introspection. Recollection maybe.

Less than an hour ago, I’d considered killing all five of them for the blade. That would have been a bad fight, but I was desperate. Now, I had the sword, they stood to let me take it, but I’d have to pay them nigh everything I had.

Two hundred and fifty thousand sesteres was a lot of money. I told myself not to get wrapped up in comparative value. They had a nice house, probably worth a million or more, and it made the quarter ton I’d offered them look light.

Forget all that. The assassins would have been paid a million, half up front and gone, half on completion. Half-a-million sesteres lay in cases I’d hid around the city, a lot of money, and if this deal walked, I’d walk away with a quarter ton. If I was smart with it, smarter than the idiots I knew or the fool I had been, I could stretch a that a long way. I knew people who knew money. Northshore had a finance department, and I had friends. I could do well.

But I didn’t pay them, with all four drops I’d have more, and I could do much better. That’s the way money works. More is a lot better than what you have.

All the risk was front-loaded. Draw now, kill everyone, leave. It nicely silenced any talking mouths too.

That was what Koru had meant to do to me.

It wasn’t any complicated ethics I thought of. I thought of people: Koru, Astras, Hoarfast, and Seraphine. Seraphine had let them try to kill me. They had done unto me what I considered doing onto these others. There are rules and laws about killing. We had religions like cow turds on a ranch, and some variation of ‘Don’t kill people’ seemed present in all of them. I didn’t care about any of that.

I thought of Koru.

I warned Apseto. “I’m going to point this toward that wall.”

He moved clear but stayed between me and the windows.

I rotated the blade, keeping the tip away from him and avoiding anything that could be interpreted as a slashing motion.

The edge was flecked with stars. They moved inside the steel, floating like dust specks in water. A lighter type of steel, almost milky, made up the cutting surface. The metal body was darker but polished like a mirror. I saw distorted images of myself and the Hemlin cousins. The straight edge was as thick as my pinky finger, and just forward of it ran a groove on both sides. Up and down it dripped shadows, a slow dissipation of darkness into air.

The bottom had a fake stamp, artfully forged. A flower crossed a scepter, and below it stood three runes. No one read runes any more. I didn’t either, but I’d memorized these three: All Things Ending.

Badly-engraved writing on the hilt said, ‘Saber by Hasso, Twenty Fourth of Messidor.’

Hasso had left a maker’s mark on a forgery. I contemplated that for a moment.

“Sleep forever,” I whispered, and the sword glittered. My words ran down the blade like a wave breaking through a tide of phosphorescent algae. Star-fragments sparkled under the fluid of shadow and went still.

I put it down on the table and wrapped it in their table cloth. Anything they hadn’t already seen, I didn’t want them seeing now.

“It’s real. Decide who’s coming. I want to leave Hyperion tonight.”

The room exhaled again.

“’You taking the table cloth?” asked Nurim.

“I’m taking the table cloth.”

“Take the table cloth.”

A number of lower intensity negotiations happened. I said I’d stay away from the table provided no one else came close. They agreed, but Zenjin said he’d cover me. I agreed but wanted him to put the gun away. They hashed out who was coming with me and decided on Zenjin, Osret, and Aesthus. I ate the rest of their bread. That I wouldn’t tell them where the money was didn’t bother them. They expected that. Likewise, I expected their refusal to leave me alone for any reason until they’d been paid.

“That includes using the water house,” said Zenjin, waving his finger. “If you’ve got to drop a package, we’re going to be in the stall with you.”

I nodded. If three of them joined me in a stall, we’d better be really friendly, and we were not that friendly. But none of them were going to go alone.

I thought of them as one entity, the cousins Hemlin. That entity would stay close until paid.

They’d also eaten and snacked. We left Nurim and Apseto, and headed out into the city.

I carried the saber, and Zenjin walked behind me. Osret walked with him. Aesthus took at my left side, and I carried the saber in that hand. Osret had given me a gym-bag for my wet clothes, which was quite clever because now I had a bulky thing in each hands. The saber was too long to fit in the bag.

They weren’t stupid. They’d made a few mistakes, but they were smart people trying to think their way through hard problems with very little warning and no experience. I felt better that I was going to pay them and leave.

The first drop had been a little lending library in the Anentine neighborhood. The Anentines, a collection of insecure new gods that coalesced into a pantheon to stop other people from making fun of them, built immense, empty palaces with tiny backyard houses. They threw a lot of dinner parties, spent fortunes on candles for their unoccupied mansions, and lived in their tiny houses. Most were nature aligned in some way. The little lending library I went to had stood on a small pole mostly engulfed by a wild hedge, an idiotic bit of gardening fashion that I found quite useful. The hedge was no longer wild.

It wasn’t anything. Nor was the lending library. Mallens had stomped it into a hole through the crust of the earth. I saw sandstone and lime, thicker marble, black basalt, and deeper bedrock until vast drive gears loomed underground like hidden shapes.

The cousins Hemlin observed me looking at the crater. Eyes narrowed. Frowns hardened. I did a little mental trig. The library had been in the center of that crater.

“Keep walking,” I said and set off quickly.

I felt the cousins glancing between each other, watching me, looking at the buried hole. I felt like the empty houses hid dozens of watchers. I had to fight down the notion that the Hemlin cousins were going to figure out I had lied about everything and they’d know what I’d done. I kept walking.

The next drop was much simpler. I’d wrapped the package in wax paper, waterproofed it with more, and dropped it into a horse trough. They say the stables of Hyperion are always clean, but this one had some algae growing in it. Rain gutters fed it from the stable’s roof.

The trough was arm-deep, so I dropped the gym-bag, held the wrapped saber, and stuck my arm in. Without words, Aesthus kept a watch, Zenjin watched me, and Osret watched them.

The package was there, but it had gotten stuck. I had to use some muscle. The Hemlins were big guys, and any of them could have done it easier. I didn’t ask, and they didn’t offer.

I yanked it out, took the gym bag, and we ducked into the stable. The horses didn’t care.

“Somebody got a knife?” I asked.

Osret did. “Give me the package. I’ll open it.”

“Just let me use your knife. I’ll open it.”

Glances shot between them. Aesthus nodded. Osret ignored him. Zenjin finally nodded, but Osret refused him too. I really didn’t want to use the saber.

“There could be anything in there,” argued Osret.

“There’s money and my stuff. It’s not weaponry or dangerous, but it’s mine,” I said.

“I’ll just open it–”

“Don’t do that,” said Aesthus, for the first time sounded tired and short. “If it’s booby-trapped, I want it to go off on him.”

Osret froze. “Is it booby trapped?”

“Of course not.”

I didn’t even fake lie. They weren’t going to believe anything I said anyway.

Unhappily, Osret gave me a stubby pocket knife. I’d sealed the package well, so I had to scrape sealing-wax aside. Zenjin moved out at an angle, standing by a tack rack, and drew that piece of his again. He kept it down, but I was getting quite tired of the way he went for it everytime something happened.

Maybe he’d just bought it.

I put the box on the ground so everyone could see it, squatted, and opened the wooden box. It had a sliding lid, the outside of which was damp. Inside, packed in cedar shavings, rolls of silver coins lay in wax rolls. Each coin bore Mallens’s seven-pointed crown, the points capped with glittering fragments of real stars, and the edges rippled with alloyed adamant. Each coin was worth five thousand sesteres, and I’d packed five rolls of five.

Without uttering a word, I gave all five rolls to Osret.

He unrolled one, inspected the coins, and gave them to Aesthus. The two of them went through each coin. Zenjin watched, and I could see his shoulders clench. He kept leaning forward when they picked up a silver piece and held it to the faint light of the stable. But he stayed cautious, back, and tried to look everywhere at once. Osret offered him a roll of money. He declined to keep both hands on the gun.

The package also had four wax-paper rolls of ambrosia. I took one out, opened it so they could see what it was, and offered them a wafer. It had dried out. They declined. I popped one, chewed and swallowed, and hid the rolls in my clothing or in the gym-bag.

I took out four sets of passage documents and hid them in the gym-bag. The package also had a tiny idol of Limatra, the Autumn Goddess of Good Luck and Found Wealth. She was four inches tall, standing, with one hand out, two others clasped, and one loose at her side. The loose one was a hidden switch for a spring-loaded blade. I showed her as well before putting the idol in a pocket.

The package also had a dead rat. I hadn’t put it there, and it worried me immensely. I threw it to a hungry plant, which woke up long enough to eat the rodent corpse. On a hunch, I threw the plant the box too, as well as the wax paper and as much wax as I could scrape off the ground.

“That was one twenty five. Of the next package, I will give you one hundred and twenty five, and our business will be done. Do we all agree?” I asked.

“Yeah. Let’s go,” said Aesthus.

We left. Our walk was a little easier, significantly less tense. Payment breeds loyalty, and while they gave me no loyalty, I had bought a little trust. I popped a few more ambrosia wafers.

Ambrosia’s the stuff. If you want to really put on mass, you lift heavy, eat ambrosia, train, eat ambrosia, and lift heavy again, all in the same day. You can get huge, and you don’t get the aches and pains of low-lifting. I used to do strength circuits every morning, four hours of combat in the afternoon, pop ambrosia, do it again, and sleep like bliss. I hadn’t worked out hard in a couple of weeks as that assassination thing had been taking up my time, but the ambrosia did its work. I was feeling better than ever.

The next drop point was a similairly waxed package, hidden in the dirt under some flowers. They formed a small garden, not two feet wide, that ringed a large flower-shaped fountain, one that spouted like pedals. It was a little park, mostly out of the way, and not exactly hidden but not easily seen either. I had worried about this one, because the dryads who tended such gardens could easily have found it. They hadn’t.

I took the package, the four of us dipped into a parking area, and hid between two carriages. The carriage horses, mules, goats, lions, or whatever had been stabled elsewhere, and the leading harnesses stripped. The carriages were tall, four-wheeled things, capable of carrying four important passengers in comfort and perhaps half a dozen servants on varying benches, platforms, and fold-away chairs. Not only was the carriage yard concealed by a tall wall, through with there was only one gate, but no one in that direction could see us through the carriage anyway.

I held the package up so everyone could see it too was thoroughly wrapped in wax paper. I asked for the knife, and Osret refused.

“No. I’m opening that one. I don’t know what your game is, but you’re up to something. Give it to me.”

Sickness take me, I should have given it to him and left. But there was ambrosia, and I needed it. There was an idol of Arya who hid secrets, and I thought I might keep her around. So I stayed for a bunch of stuff when I could have just given them the box and ran.

He took out his knife to cut it open and stopped. “Would you back up a little bit? You’re in my space.”

I wasn’t—well, I was in his space, but the space between the carriages wasn’t that big. I backed up.

“And you,” Osret said to Zenjin, who’d pulled his Puritan again. “Watch him.”

“I am watching him!”

“Not enough! Watch him like the Sun. Point the gun at him or something. He got a little loose last time he opened one of these.”

“Oh, blisters on you,” snorted Zenjin. He glared at me.

Aesthus looked like he wanted to avoid an argument, so he took a step away too.

Osret crouched down but shifted the box to his knife hand. He put his other hand on the bottom. I looked away for a split second at Zenjin, who was almost flagging me with the Puritan, and noticed some movement in Osret’s hands. I looked back.

With gun in his other hand, the one concealed underneath the package, Osret shot Zenjin twice in the chest. Something banged like sledgehammers on steel and blew Zenjin’s ribcage out his back.

Aesthus screamed, and Osret shot him too.

I bolted from the carriages and ran for the road.

Osret ran around the other side, tracked me across the parking-lot with his holdout gun, and sent rounds after me. Two missed.

The third did not.

For a holdout gun, that thing kicked like a horse.

He got me in the shoulder, I dropped and skidded on my face, and Osret walked me down. The saber fell a dozen yards away.

Before shooting, he said, “Sorry, Remus. I don’t know who you are and don’t care. If it makes you feel better, I don’t think you’re a bad guy. But I can’t have people knowing what happened here.”

Glory, I wish I had that forged sword. It was right there. But Osret was closer, and he drew a bead.

I flicked the hidden switch on the idol of Limatra, the spring-loaded blade shot out, and stabbed him through the center of the forehead. Luck was with me. He blasted wide, emptying his cylinder into the wall by the saber.

But I wasn’t there. I’d gone the other way, out the gate, and fled the parking lot. Everything was wasted, and I still didn’t have the sword.

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Twilight in Heaven: Chapter 11

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Chapter 11

How expensive was their house?

It was a nice house. They had space. The couches didn’t butt up against the walls. They had artistically arranged chairs. Glass lamps rose over the softer chairs for reading, and bookshelves stood between the windows.

I read a few titles with big print: The History of Modern Airship Racing, Paint the Sky: The Gods of Dawn, and Lumina and Beauty.

I bet the cousins hadn’t read any of them but thought they impressed ladies.

The Hemlin cousins returned. Nurim had brought a plate with him, moshu fruit and a cracker, and he finally sat down. I mentally gave him two minutes before he got up.

“We have a counter offer,” said Aesthus. He paused. The rest of them watched me.

I waved him on.

“Five hundred thousand, but we’ll kick you back a hundred thousand.”

I opened my mouth, closed it, and exhaled the breath I’d taken to reply.

“You’re not paying us,” said Aesthus. He wore a hint of a smirk. “Your customer is. I won’t give you a receipt, but you can tell them the price was half a ton.”

I said, “Now that’s very interesting.”

They were a lot smarter than I had given them credit for.

The mere fact I was snow-jobbing them something fierce didn’t diminish that. In fact, it meant they might be able to see through my plans if I gave them time. I had too many lies. The structure of them was flimsy. These cousins would start pushing, testing, and if they pushed too hard on anything, the whole structure would come falling down.

I had a moment. Call it clarity, caution, or cowardice, I suddenly understood that while I was winning right now, I could lose very quickly.

“Three hundred, same kickback,” I said.

“No,” blurted Apseto.

Aesthus shook his head. “No. We need more than that.” He spoke as if Apseto hadn’t.

Apseto nodded.

That wasn’t a counter-offer, but I’d done the same thing when Zenjin had asked ten million.

I was winning. Take the saber and run, self.

What number were they thinking of?

I’d gone forty two thousand for no particular reason. They probably wanted at least forty two each. That meant two ten. No self respecting grifter would lower his own bribe, so I had to add one twenty five. Round up.

I said, “Three fifty, but mine is one twenty five.”

This time Apesto didn’t speak. Neither did any of the rest. They looked to Aesthus, who watched me like a card player.

I looked away, ate something, but when I finished, Aesthus was still thinking. I locked eyes with him and waited. It became a challenge. He wouldn’t look away, nor would I, and I didn’t know what out he was looking for. After several seconds, his pride wouldn’t let him blink.

I’d made this mistake before. I’d gotten into a contest with someone, a contest I didn’t need to win, but the strain of it grew weighty in my mind. A throw-away fight became a matter of pride. I locked eyes with the Celestial, born of the line of Tollos, sister of Mallens, Lord of Creation, and tested him. He didn’t look away; he invested in our challenge.

His cousins did not interrupt.

But he had to win.

“Three seventy five,” he said. He flicked his fingers between us. “Same, same.”

I looked away.

Nurim was eating moshu. Moshu are soft little fruit with a shell like a walnut. The fruit inside has about the consistency and sweetness of an apple. Normally people open them with a nut cracker, and the skill is breaking the shell without squishing the fruit. People who eat moshu with sticky fingers look childish.

Nurim saw me looking and put down his cracker. He took out a knife. Tapping a fruit against the plate to show me the shell hadn’t gone stale, and without holding it, he sliced the fruit open cleanly with the knife. He didn’t touch it at all, merely drew the blade long-ways across it.

That was, in all honestly, simply astounding knifework. He was doing it to show off, but I was impressed.

“You laughed when I said there were five of us,” said Zenjin quietly. “You think you can win. Maybe. But not as easily as you think you will.”

Self, let them win. Get the blade, destroy it, be done.

I made sure there were no misunderstandings. “The price is three hundred and seventy five thousand sesteres, and you will pay me one hundred and twenty five thousand sesteres of that.”

Aesthus nodded. “Agreed.”

I nodded. “Done.”

The room exhaled.

“Do you want to shake on it?” Aesthus asked.

“No.” I shook my head. “But we have a deal. The money is hidden a few places through the city. I’ll need to collect it. Does one of you want to come with me and bring the saber?”

“Yes. Does the blade have a name, other than saber?”

“You don’t need to worry about that. That sword, that one right there, is the one I want.” I pointed at it. “But I want to inspect it. Now.”

They all exchanged glances.

There were five of them, but I’d be holding the weapon. That was a sword for the killing of gods. They didn’t know exactly what it was, but they knew enough.

But I wasn’t going to go any farther and find out that by some unimaginable coincidence, this wasn’t the right weapon.

“Go ahead,” said Aesthus. “Right now.”

All five of them got ready. Zenjin drew the Puritan, laid a finger along the slide, but held it down, pointed at the floor. Nurim stood up with the knife. Osret moved around to the other side, and Apseto shifted so he stood between me and the windows. We’d drawn the blinds when we came in. Aesthus waited by the foyer. He looked ready to run, but for safety or for a gun, I didn’t know.

I got up, moving slowly, and lifted the blade from the table. The room breathed again, inhaling after its previous sigh. This breath it held.

There were five of them, but I had a blade made to kill the Lord of Creation. I could take them.

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Twilight in Heaven: Chapter 10

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Chapter 10

“Hold on, hold on, hold on I appreciate your help down there. I’m Aesthus of Hemlin, of the Line of Tollos. Thank you.” One of the cousins held his hands up, palm out.

He caught me by surprise. And after a moment, I replied, “You’re welcome. Thank you.”

The others looked like they didn’t know what to say, so they said nothing. I couldn’t fault them, but that left all the talking to Aesthus.

He continued. “You said you’re here to acquire the saber?”

I nodded.

“We can–” He paused. “—talk about that.” He paused again to make up his mind over something. “As I said, I’m Aesthus. These are my cousins, Zenjin, Osret, Apseto, and Nurim.”

The cousins looked varyingly wary, curious, or distrustful.

“Let’s temper blades,” said Aesthus. He glanced around.

The cousins had just not-fought each other, so they showed varying levels of willingness to not-fight me. Most looked guarded but listening.

“You too,” Aesthus told me. “You saved me, and I appreciate it. Let’s not waste your effort.”

I felt like arguing, but Aesthus was leaving everyone a way out. Besides, I’d saved their lives, and I’d be throwing that away if I fought them, something that moments ago, I’d been trying to figure out how not to do. This whole situation was making me short tempered.

But now that I was aware of it, I could fix it.

“Thank you. I’m pleased to meet you,” I said and waved specifically to Osret. He didn’t reply with much grace, but he nodded back. “I’m pleased to meet you all.”

“Come,” said Aesthus. “We live nearby. We’d be honored if you joined us.”

And again, I let myself agree.

We left the beach, avoiding the water if we could. In some stretches, there was no alternative, but the nereids did not pursue us while we looked for them.

#

The cousins Hemlin had a small palace that was basically a wide townhouse. Five stories tall with a courtyard out back, its second story overhung a tunnel through the first floor. The tunnel opened into the courtyard where a circle of smaller cobble stones between large slabs of sandstone formed the center of the back yard. Behind rose a small garden that seemed mostly full of strange rocks and small huts. The cousins lead me through an elegant glass door to a tiny foyer, a wide staircase, and on the second floor a large receiving room. They lit a fire from an ember dish, and offered me a stiff drink or a warm towel.

I took both, but the towel first.

Zenjim put the blade on the main table and patted it dry. I sat where I could see it.

“You said you’re prepared to pay for it?” asked Aesthus.

I considered before nodding.

“This is the only one left. It’s rare now, perhaps rarer. That’s got to be worth something.”

Maybe, I thought. There had been two assassin’s parties.

“How do you know?” I said, equally cautiously.

“Mallens didn’t just break the seashore. He broke the earth. There’s a power in him, an energy. When he strikes something, it comes apart, and not merely in breaking. The stuff of it disintegrates. I think he did not truly stamp this sword. Perhaps it was close to his foot but not hit. Maybe it had already been dropped and fell into the pit. But we found nothing else of its like, and we are from the high mountains. Apseto is particularly clever with finding things in stone, even stone under water.”

Apseto didn’t look cocky, but he did look confident.

“What if it’s in sand?” I asked.

“Sand is just a lot of very small stones,” said Apesto.

If that was how it worked for him, so be it.

“I’ll show a few cups,” I said and pointed at the copied sword. “I’m here to get that, and I’m willing to pay for it. My customer is willing to pay in cash, so there is no reason to be concerned about favors or credit. I was at the beach looking for the sword when we met and saved your lived. You owe me. Business is business, but enjoy all that breathing you’re doing. Drowning is a hard way to go.”

“Who’s your customer?” asked Zenjin.

“No,” I said. “That doesn’t need to be discussed.”

The group of them glanced at each other, and a silent conversation of shrugs and facial expressions told me they didn’t feel like arguing the point.

“I’m going to go change my clothes,” said Aesthus. He was dripping. We all were. “I don’t think we have anything that will fit you, but can I lend you some sweats?”

“Thank you. I’d appreciate that.”

Again Aesthus deflated the tension, but his idea was a good one. I didn’t want to let the saber out of my sight. They wouldn’t leave me alone with it. With some towels and a little consideration, everyone changed and met back up in their living room, arrayed on couches around the chair.

Aesthus wasn’t quite as big as the others and had a slightly softer look. He’d changed into khaki pants and a fitted sweater, leather shoes, and leather belt. My stubble was longer than the hair on his head.

Osret wasn’t quite as tall but wider built, and he wore tight clothing to show off his muscles. None of his shirts had sleeves.

Zenjin was a bigger guy but didn’t have the gym build of Osret. He had a huge back, shoulders, and gut. He wore designer t-shirts and jeans, the sort of sports shoes that get dropped in limited quantities. A silver-handled Puritan nestled under his left arm, set for a cross-body draw. No one else seemed to be carrying a gun, so it certainly was a statement, but fashion or security?

Puritans, from the 22nd Testament of Thorophus the Weapon Maker, were good guns. They were such good guns people collected them, which made them rare, then valuable, and now they were fashion statements themselves. Still, they shot straight and rarely jammed.

Apseto showed up in a suit, and I don’t know a whole lot about suits. His seemed to fit well. He had thunderbolts on his tie pin, thunderbolt cufflinks, and a brown shirt with a white tie that drew attention to his face. They said he could find things in stone, even stone under water. That could be a valuable skill, depending on how good he was, and he wore the suit comfortably. He didn’t pick at it.

Nurim sized up the bunch of us and started making something in the kitchen. He threw chips in a bowl, got everyone a glass of water or beer, and brought out some bread and a few spreads. He was always moving, cleaning plates or putting glasses on coasters. He and Aesthus were slim compared to the others, but they were still big guys. He wore jeans of some unremarkable make, a hooded sweater, a watch he kept checking, and slip-on shoes. He changed the latter twice during our meeting.

I started. “Let’s talk peacefully. I’m not looking for a fight.”

“I don’t see why that’s relevant,” said Zenjin. “You’re mortal. There are five of us. A fight won’t go well for you.”

“He’s hiding his power,” said Aesthus. He looked at me. “I don’t think the fight will go the way you think it will, but since you attacked nereids in water, you’ve got something in reserve. But let’s put that aside. Temper blades. You’re not looking for a fight, we’re not looking for a fight. How much?”

“And when and where and all that,” said Nurim, coming in with snacks. “You’re not carrying any suitcases full of cash.”

“Yeah, also we’re not letting the sword out of our sight,” said Zenjin.

“The hand-over can be arranged.” I tried to wave pleasantly. “One or all of you can follow me to where I have the money.”

“Let’s talk about that,” said Apseto. “How much?”

The sidebars stopped. Nurim in the kitchen stopped puttering. Zenjin leaned forward, elbows on knees. All eyes watched me.

I’d made two payment drops for each of the two groups. The killers had been paid half up front and half for after the job was done.

I’d never known exactly how Koru made his riches. Earlier, I hadn’t cared. Now I cared, but I didn’t know. He had money. Bills, bribes, and charitable donations had all been paid, and I’d paid most of them. I had also hidden small packages of silver coins and ambrosia for the successful assassins.

I’d been such an honest fool. I hadn’t taken a coin or a bite. The money waited for me now.

I said, “Forty two thousand.”

That was a bad lowball. Forty two thousand sesteres was new horse money, maybe even nice new horse, but not a race winner nor a good sire. It would make a downpayment on a home. Someone like me could live easily on forty two thousand a year and scrimp it out three years. All four drops combined had about five hundred thousand.

“That seems a little light,” said Aesthus.

“It’s a magnficient blade,” I said. “It’s also stolen. It was used in the commission of a crime, and people will come looking. Problems will come. You don’t know me. I don’t know you. And the saber will disappear and you can say, with utmost honesty, you have no idea where it is.”

“We know your name,” said Osret. He stuck his chin out at me.

I had to bite back a quick remark. Osret was hot-tempered to begin with. I had things too say but for once, didn’t say them.

“You are correct,” I agreed neutrally. “You know my name, Remus.”

Apseto sighed. He and Osret sat on a couch together, and Apseto leaned over and whispered something to the other.

Osret kept a stoneface for several seconds. “Of course. You are Remus, and when someone comes looking for the saber, I will tell them Remus has it.”

“Please do,” I said.

Mental clockwork shifted everyone else in the room. Nurim glanced at Aesthus, and if I had to guess, I’d say Nurim was recalling Aesthus saying I was hiding my power.

“Ten million,” said Zenjin.

“Nope.” I shook my head and ignored him.

“It’s a rare and stolen sword. The rest are destroyed. Ten million,” he insisted.

“That’s not an offer.”

“I said ten million, and we’ve got it right now.” Zenjin moved forward a little on his chair.

I reached out, took a slice of bread, and examined the sauces. Nurim had laid out butter, olive oil, and something yellow and ganular. I don’t think it was hummus, but I bet it was close enough to rhyme. I scraped invisible butter on the bread and layered over top with the hummus stuff.

I took a bite. My mistake: it was hummus, but they’d mixed ambrosia in here.

Wow.

I wasn’t faking. It tasted like euphoria. My wounds began to close. My scrapes healed. My aching muscles felt salved. Those little wrinkles of tension around my eyes relaxed, and I suddenly noticed a coldness in my side by the way it faded.

I had really lowballed them with that offer.

“This is really good.” I held it up to Nurim. “Sourdough?”

He nodded. “We get it from the artsy place down the street. Girls like it.”

Zenjin said, “What about the–”

And Aesthus interrupted him, “Do you mind if we take a moment?” he asked me.

I waved the bread. “Please do. I’ll be here.”

They looked at me, the saber, and gears clicked behind every pair of eyes. I waited.

The cousins got up and moved into the kitchen, forming a small huddle between the stove and an island of counter.

I tried to look relaxed and dangerous. I tried to look thoughtful. I thought, but I was thinking about ambrosia in hummus.

We had tried to kill the Lord of Creation for a million sesteres. One thousand miles, a ton, two weeks pay for a legion. We’d tried to kill the King of the Gods for a million sesteres. And these fools who had the saber had enough money to put ambrosia in the hummus!

Their house was worth more than a million.

I was in the wrong line of work.

A volcano went off between my ears. I heard nothing but eruptions and thunder. I thought of stale wayhouse sandwiches and of not being able to afford stale wayhouse sandwiches so I stayed hungry until I made it home. I thought of sleeping hungry so I could eat manna in the morning.

They’d laid out a whole spread of artsy bread with ambrosia in the hummus.

These guys could get blisters. I wasn’t going to stop for appearances. I ate all their hummus.

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Twiligh in Heaven: Chapter 9

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Chapter 9

The day was dark, the sky heavy, and the seas had no waves. Even the winds seemed hushed. What had been a perfect beach of endless sea and beautiful golden sand had become a cacophony of rock, deep pits, and broken shore. Mallens’s wrath had lifted the bedrock. Sand had fallen aside, sandstone jutted up into the air, and basalt plates rose from the lagoons.

I’d heard the five cousins perfectly though they stood about fifty feet away. A little hint of a breeze blew in my direction, so perhaps that helped, and the flat water had no waves to wash out their voices. I was trying to find an alternative to mugging them but nothing came up.

My thinking time ran out when the five of them turned and entered the shallow water between sandbar and shore. They were talking deliberately lightly about how great everything was going to be when they gave Mallens the sword, the one thing I absolutely couldn’t let them to do. That had to be stopped. Violence it must be. I crouched, Nurim walked in front of the rest and said something about Jesephene, before he vanished as if the ground underneath the water sucked him down.

The others screamed, and dark scaled hands grabbed them from below. Like a surge of little plops, the cousins plunged underwater. They struggled. Several propped themselves up on knees and elbows, but their heads were below the shallow surface. It’s said an angry nereid can drown you in a palm’s worth of water, and these had almost a foot to work with.

The cousins struggled. I saw their backs heaving, and the sea nymphs climbing on top of them: a pack of predators focused on their prey.

The heavens parted. Lights appeared. Inspiration sang.

This was a problem I could solve by hitting people!

I screamed Obesis, ran across the water, and they heard me coming. I wanted them to. There were more than a dozen of them, and they paid little attention to one, shouting idiot charging.

They should have noticed I ran on the water, not through it, but they learned.

“Obesis!” I shouted again and threw myself down and forward, skidding across the surface like an ice skater. A nereid rose out of the water to grab me, and I caught her in the face with a deep fist, the low swing you use on a grappler when he’s shooting. That’s a punch that has to hit like a boulder stopping a rhino to be any good at all. Mine sufficed.

Knuckles hit scales. I pushed through. My fist dragged her out of the water and threw her a dozen feet through the air. She landed on sand but hard enough it still splashed.

The impact stopped me. I sank. Water swirled around my feet. I shouted Obesis again, jumped to the surface of the water, landed on the splash, and when nereid hands reached for my ankles, I reached for them. I yanked him fully up into the air by his own wrists, and he gave me that look of shock that came with a hesitation. The utter comprehension of how bad this was about to be made it inevitable.

I spoke Raln, and all things were blades, even my fist.

I punched about half his head off, and all of him dropped.

Surprise gone, they stopped drowning the cousins and turned on me. I beat them down. Blood underwater is black, and nereids soon floated on the surface of the lagoons. The cousins lurched to their feet gasping, and when the sea people hesitated, counting their losses, I started shoving the big, solid cousins toward the sea.

“Out of the water! Run!”

He argued. “We can–”

I interrupted. “You don’t fight nereids in the water! Run!”

He ran. They all ran. The nereids attacked. I put down two but probably not fatally, and turned before the rest. Maybe they didn’t really want to catch me, or maybe I could run across the waves faster than they could swim beneath them, but I made it to the shore safely. The cousins stood there gasping, and the six of us ran uphill.

For a moment the spirits of the sea watched. Then they slipped beneath the waves. The one I’d knocked out of the sea had vanished, leaving beside just marks in the sand, and the forms I’d thought were corpses sank beneath the waves. You’d be amazed what a spirit can live through in their place of power, but I doubted all of them lived.

Whatever. It was over. I stood with the cousins, panting, and trying to get my breath back.

After a minute or two they asked the most reasonable question: “Who in death and darkness are you?”

And of course I lied. “Good afternoon, gentlemen. I am Remus, and I am a finder of rare, exotic, and stolen weapons. I’m here for the saber.” And I pointed honestly at the sword Nurim carried.

“It’s not a saber. It’s straight!” said Zenjin.

“Yeah,” said Nurim. “Hold on. It says something here.” He peered at the butt of the handle and held it right up to his face. He could barely see through the gloom of the heavy overcast.

I couldn’t remember the handle saying anything, but since I was trying to erase all traces of it, I didn’t want anyone to know if it did.

“It is called a saber because sabers are weapons of the elite. They’re more expensive.”

Five confused, wary people looked at me. The one holding my forgery grabbed it. I think he wanted to look threatening, but all I noticed was he wasn’t inspecting any writing any more.

I continued. “The single curved cutting edge gives some justification for saber. Likewise, the shape makes it slightly point heavy to augment slashing. However the straight back, as noted, would normally bring it into the longsword category. All of this is missing the point. Curved swords are weapons of the elite. Straight swords are cheap. If the maker called it a saber, he could charge double for it. If he called it a longsword, he couldn’t. As such, it’s a saber.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” said Osret. “You can’t charge more for something just because you call it something it isn’t.”

I laughed at him.

“People who have enough money to buy it would know it isn’t a saber!” he yelled.

“Correct. But that is an extremely expensive weapon, so it’s not going to see a lot of use. It will be worn, not wielded. It can be called anything the owner wants.”

“When you say expensive, how expensive do you mean?” asked Apseto.

“Extremely,” I said. “It’s also extremely stolen, and those two extremelies are about equal. I’m authorized to pay you for it, and I’m authorized to kill you and take it. My customer doesn’t care.”

“Parasite, there’s five of us!” said Zenjin. He looked like he was holding a grudge.

I looked at them and the dark lagoon. “How’s that working out for you?”

I waited until the silence became uncomfortable and then began a slow, mocking clap. No one joined in. I stared him dead in the eyes until he looked away.

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Twilight in Heaven: Chapter 8

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Chapter 8

“So we’re going to turn this in, right?” asked one of the men on the shore.

“Yes, we’ve decided to be stupid about it,” agreed one swimmer from the center of the water. It was the one who’d claimed to have gotten it before.

“Oh, the blight upon you!” swore the other swimmer in the dark lagoon, and he turned, pulling hard toward the shore. The blighted one followed.

I ran between dunes and broken trees. Knotted pines had fallen over. Rifts had been driven into sand and dune, and narrow rivulets crawled through them. I could see where the hills had sunk, and where they would level out as wind and rain would shave the sand bar’s rough edges. But I also saw huge shelves of black stone up on their sides like broken dinner plates dropped from a picnic. Mallens’s stomps had lifted the bedrock here, driven it down there, and hills like the Flatirons of Thango rose out of flat beaches. They gave me great cover.

Around a jetty I found the sandbar the five had stopped to rest on, but it wasn’t connected to the land. Between us was a submerged section of dark water, filled with silt and black weeds. It looked about knee deep. I could run across, but they’d hear and see me coming. Their spit of sand had no dunes.

I could wait and hit them when they crossed. If I timed it right, I could catch the few in front and put them down while the others were still in the water. That might cause problems depending on who had the sword, but it seemed better than bull-rushing the five of them.

I hid and waited. There was some argument I couldn’t catch, and I broke cover to get closer. They didn’t notice.

“I’m agreeing with you!” said the disagreeable agreer. “We all agreed to be stupid, and so stupid we shall be. We’re going to turn it in, because Mallens will give us a reward and certainly not just take it as his due. We aren’t going to take this obvious item of power to the mists and and make a party palace out of it! We’ll stay in our little house instead of making a mansion because all the partying would distract us from our complaining time!”

Someone sighed. “Osret,” he said, slowly and as if in great pain.

“What?” yelled Osret. “Who wants all that party sex? Clearly, not anyone here.”

“If this is one of the weapons used to try to kill Mallens, do you really think we should keep it?” asked another one. “Does that seem remotely wise?”

“Of course not. We definitely shouldn’t transform it into something nothing alike, because Mallens will clearly start watching the property market for mist palaces when he needs to find assassins. Blessings of feast and fortune, you’re so smart! There’s certainly no way we could hide a sword.”

Someone else sighed.

They all looked so tired except for Osret. He took advantage of their silence.

“And we certainly couldn’t do something worthwhile with it, like give it to the ghost. This is only exactly what she asked for, and then we’d get revenge on the man who killed your mother,” Osret almost screamed.

“You want to use a forbidden weapon to hire a ghost? Osret, what part of that plan could go right?”

“She’s a ghost! She disposes of things so they are never found. She’s a ghost!” Now Osret was yelling.

Another repeated, “You want to use a forbidden weapon-”

Osret said, “It’s not forbidden. Mallens doesn’t even know it exists!”

“Who cares?” interjected a third. “Are you going to argue with him if he finds out? Claim ex post facto rules don’t count? He’s the Lord of Creation! He’ll stomp you to death and unmake your essence. What will you do then? Be dead at him?”

“Osret, we’re decided,” said another. “No one cares what you think, so stop talking.”

“Death upon you,” said Osret, and I thought he would strike the other.

But he didn’t. The two of them glared at each other while the other three formed a silent, worried crowd. Then Osret looked away, and the rest spoke among themselves quietly.

One of them came forward. “Everyone. Osret, Zenjin–” he looked at the one Osret had cursed “–we have to live together. Can we all agree with that?”

No one agreed with that. Several muttered. Osret and Zenjin looked away.

“Now bless feasts,” said the one trying to still the conflicts.

Osret and Zenjin didn’t bless anyone’s feasts. Osret managed to look nauseated, annoyed, and tired at once, and Zenjin was looking at him like he’d just spotted someone he’d always hated and never been drunk enough to fight.

“Glad we’ve put that behind us. Now we–” He was looking at Osret when he sighed a deep, gurgling thing of bubbles in his throat. His entire attitude changed, and he turned back from the sandbar that separated us to fully addressing the others.

“Osret, it’s just us. You can stop performing. There’s no one here to see you. We’re cousins. Me, you–” he tapped his chest. “Nurim, Apseto. Zenjin–” he double-tapped the other on the chest too. “You’re wishing death on people! Osret, that’s not necessary! I understand, I’m with you, but we’re not trying to get you. We’re your family. Osret, it’s okay. Hesh, you with me?”

Osret wouldn’t look at him.

“Come on, hesh. Hesh, we go back from before we could walk. Before my Mom died, she used to tell stories of when you used to chew on me when we were crawlers. Come on. Please. I’m not fighting with you. I’m your cousin. I’m Aesthus. I’m a person, I’m family, not some enemy. Come on.”

And Osret still wouldn’t look at him, but he sighed.

“And Zenjin, you too. You had no reason to say that. It was disrespectful.” Aesthus held out an open hand, both warning and calming.

“Yeah, ye,” said Zenjin. He made an act of will. “Osret, I apologize I shouldn’t have said that.”

To Zenjin, Aesthus said, “Thank you.” And to Osret added, “See? We’re with you.”

Osret and Zenjin stood awkwardly for a moment, then shook hands like limp fish. But if they weren’t embracing like brothers, their shoulders held less tension, and their arms didn’t clench.

Aesthus continued. “We talked about this, and four of us agreed. But Osret, we’re not dismissing you. Yes, if things go right, making a mansion from the blade would be something, or giving it to the ghost. Yes, we could make a party house, and yes, if we didn’t have to pay rent, we could throw double bumps. I also heard you about giving the sword to the ghost. Feast and fortune, Osret, of course I want revenge. He killed my Mom!

“But she’s my Mom! And I think about her, the way she kept telling me to be smart and take care of myself. Mallens is mad. Not just angry, but mad with with fury. He threw Tollos into the sky! If he finds anything, anything about the sword, he’s not going to be calm. We’re not going to have a chance to argue our case. He’ll just start killing people.

“I’ll take the sword to him. I massage his feet. I know all of you hate it, so I’ll do it. I’ll tell him how wonderful he is and how loyal we are, and how everyone else is wrong and he’s right. I’ll give him the sword. And you’re right; he’s not going to reward us.

“But we’ll be made. And if we can talk him down, all of the other gods holding their breaths will remember. And if we plead–and I’ll plead, remember. You don’t have to say anything—he’ll take Tollos down from the heavens, and she’ll remember.

“You’re right, okay. If everything goes well, your ideas are better. But if anything goes wrong, we’re all going to die, and Mallens isn’t going to be calm or reasonable about it. But I’m pretty good talking to him, and I’ll massage his feet, get between the toes, and he’ll be okay. We win this way.

“But we have to stick together. We have to work together. You need to stick with us. Zenjin won’t say anything like that again, he apologized, and the rest of us will be a little more respectful. But if we, family, are fighting like this, Mallens is flipping plates. Come on, hesh. Stay with us.”

Osret made a noise like he’d eaten bad shrimp. He frowned at the sea and waves.

“Osret, agree with us,” said Aesthus. His voice was low but not soft. He insisted. “Let this be done.”

Osret looked away. The others watched.

After a moment, Osret tried to walk away, but Aesthus caught him and held him back. Another struggle of wills happened, and Osret obviously just wanted the others to drop it. But Aesthus wouldn’t, and while he didn’t contest with Osret, he didn’t look aside either. He stood peacefully demanding, and the other three cousins stood in a close circle around Osret. He wouldn’t be able to get away with shoving or fighting.

Aesthus repeated, “Agree with us. Let it be over.”

And Zenjin added, “I did apologize, hesh. I shouldn’t have said that.”

Finally Osret took Aesthus’s hand and shook it. “Fine.” He shook hands with the others, Zenjin again, and they were fast but tight handshakes. But it galled Osret, and I could see a deep banked fury in his eyes. It bordered on malice. His cousins must have seen it too or chose not to.

I felt like a pervert watching this conversation, so I looked down and away. The notion of running up on them and hard initiating to take the sword felt even worse. There didn’t seem to be any alternatives, but I stared around as if magic was hidding under a rock.

Instead I saw dark, quick figures like shadows slide through the shallow water. They moved without even rippling the surface, through water barely knee high. Nereids, fish spirits, the dryads of sea and surf, I thought.

All around me the wreckage of the beach rose in piles and towers. The nereids swam into the deep black water around the cousins’ sandbar and vanished. Nereids are usually peaceful, lazy, and they like to tease. But the shore had been ruined and disrupted by Mallens’s efforts, and the dryads had swum silently and fast.

They swam like predators, I thought. Suddenly I had something worse to worry about than Osret.

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Twilight in Heaven: Chapter 7

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Chapter 7

It took me two days to run from Angel’s Crest to Hyperion moving with all due haste. Clean air filled my lungs and made me want to move. Manna kept me going. The mountains of the west dwindled. North of me, other mountains would be rising though I couldn’t see them. Mallens had drawn the privacy veil around Mount Attarckus, thick white clouds that rolled with wind and thunder.

Of course that had nothing to do with me…well, it had everything to do with me (Yay! I mattered!), but I hoped no one figured that out.

My master plan to become famous seemed to have some rather significant problems.

I put them out of my mind.

When I arrived, I had one of those moments of indecision where I knew whatever I chose, I’d choose wrong. The heavy cloud cover blotted out the sky, and Hyperion, Beloved of Light, lay dark. I couldn’t see squat. I could head in at night, but I wouldn’t be able to see what I was entering. If I waited until dawn, that was time wasted.

After unpleasant hesitation, I waited. The city beloved by light lay dark. That didn’t look right. It didn’t sound right in my head. It didn’t feel right on my skin. I slept and started with a full stomach.

In the morning I couldn’t see the Sun, but dawn came anyway. The world went from dark gloom to light gloom.

Mount Attarckus rises north of Hyperion, the eastmost and tallest of the Broken Fangs. Other, lesser kings who had ruled Heaven before had built their mansions on those peaks, and Mallens had thrown them down when he heaved Attarckus up. In clear weather, it’s a cone that reaches the sky. A pennant of stars trails behind Attarkus’ summit at night, and at the summer solstice the Sun has to change his path to avoid hitting the peak. Now it looked like a funnel or a wagon stand. The green of trees had turned to dingy gray, and the cone of the base had barely begun to taper when it hit darker gray clouds. They spread outwards and rolled like the top of a pot of water just coming to boil.

The Headlands of Ju rose above the Dawn Sea on white sandstone. To the east they met the ocean with marble cliffs. Hyperion took up most of the headland, a rumpled plateau where white hills jutted up from manicured forests and table-top mesas held marble palaces. Every forest had been perfect, every stream bed sculpted. Spirits of water and rain came from the ocean or the fast flowing rivers nearby to tend the springs of the city. Sandstone is a dry rock, and only constant attention by the spirits made Hyperion livable by the gods.

I say by the gods because Hyperion was a city for the gods. No one else was welcome. The spirits were tolerated and Celestials allowed, but they both received cold welcome even as they kept it running. Being mortal in the capital city of Heaven was a capital offense.

So’s treason.

Earthquakes had shorn the edges of the plateau off, and golden palaces and magnificent lawns lay in rubble fields. Idyllic rivers tumbled over marble cliffs and ran through broken houses. The main roadway had fallen apart, and the sign that said ‘No Mortals’ had been torn apart. I scrambled up a scree-field and entered the city without ever passing a sign.

There were no guards. Sometimes I saw movement in broken palaces, and a few timid people moved on the streets. Mostly I saw no one. I’d catch a glimpse of someone a few blocks ahead, but by the time I got there, the streets were empty. A few times I came upon someone, but they pretended not to see me. I did what I could to take advantage of this.

From my mother’s side, I knew that spirits did live in Hyperion, more of them than even the gods knew. Many dryads came here to tend the perfect forests. Nereids warded the beaches and watched the waves like shepherds. Naiads sculpted the crystal rivers that flowed between houses, kept the deep pools clear of pond scum, and ensured the wild life didn’t get wild enough to inconvenience the gods of the city, much less the titans who ruled it and all.

Also from her I knew of the deep frictions between the spirits and Celestials. The Celestials, mostly born of titans and the great powers, but occasionally the forgotten offspring of gods, were powers of themselves, atavistic beings of might. Hoarfast was one. They had skins of steel, they breathed snowstorms, they wore capes of rain, or their bodies were goats or boars. Some were extremely powerful. Death was a Celestial. Some were mere animals. The Boars of Herindon pulled the chariot of Regulus and ate the corpses of his victims. There were many of them. Mallens had fathered five hundred sons. They were not gods and not titans, but somehow less.

Which put them in the ranks of spirits, but they had to be better than somebody.

In Hyperion, Celestials formed the interactive working class. They ran forges, carried bags, pulled rickshaws, and served food. Spirits tended their domains: forests, rivers, and parks. Celestials tended the works of the gods.

No one cared about mortals. We weren’t even a thing.

If they could, spirits and Celestials belligerently ignored each other. They could walk face-first into each other on a corner and move on without either recognizing the collision happened.

After crossing the outer walls, I headed east. If I approached someone among the trees, I walked near the roads. If someone with iron skin or bee’s wings approached, I stuck to the forests. Everyone put me in the ‘other’ group, and if questioned later would have a hard time identifying me.

Soon I found the waterfront facing the Dawn Sea. The Sun Palaces lay in tatters with roofs stomped in and grounds torn with canyons. Mallens’s stomps had driven the ground down to bedrock, and the tops of great trees stuck out of sand traps. Whole buildings were driven underground or smashed flat. Over this place a curse of dark skies hung.

But there were no signs forbidding me to enter. I suppose the clouds and curse of dark skies meant that, but they didn’t say so.

This was it. If someone found the scepters before I did, I was dead. I’d tattle on Koru immediately, and we’d be tortured together. My death would be agony, but his would last forever. I’d win.

Self! Stop!

I didn’t want to die in agony. Death in agony wouldn’t be better if Koru’s was worse. I needed to find the weapons, dispose of them, and I didn’t know what to do next, but there wouldn’t be a next if I didn’t get find the scepters first.

I thought of two utterly blistered summers at Fate, filing unread documents in the bowels of an office building. It’s beautiful and majestic office building. It’s built on Firmament of the Sky, behind the stars of the Mask! But you know what a basement in a scenic building looks like?

It looks like every other basement.

High stress, someone always checking my work but no one ever needing it, no promotion potential, I had almost nothing to show for those two summers. I’d already spent my wages on rent.

But I had four little bits of luck.

I prayed to the Pattern Spiders and asked for one of my favors. I needed to find those weapons.

I glanced around. No one watched. I jogged down to the sea and started searching.

#

It took me several hours to figure out what was where. The New Light Cape had detached completely from the mainland, and Mallens had stomped lagoons into the beach, making a false shore. Wooden towers for lowly gods to greet the dawn had toppled over. The deeps east of the Cape bred tall waves that rolled on or collapsed, depending on what took place beneath the surface. A morass of beach houses, scrub trees, and rocks hid under calm water.

I looked for Heridite’s Crest. It was, or had been, a low prominence where yellow rock stuck up through the beach, a famous picnic spot surrounded by small pagodas and pavilions. Mallens had stood there the last four years when he’d greeted the dawn at First Light. That’s where we’d planned the hit to occur, so it would be a good place to start searching. However the geography of the place had been rearranged.

While I was poking around on a spur of boulders, splashing noises suddenly broke the otherwise dead silence. They didn’t sound like fish or whales surfacing, and after a moment, I made out shouting from the other side of a line of dunes.

“We’ve got it,” said someone.

“You mean I got it.”

“Oh, shut up. We got it.”

Wondering what it they got, I ran over.

Two heads were splashing and yelling in the middle of a black lagoon, and several more were swimming for the beach. The swimmers resolved themselves into three climbing out of the water and fell, gasping, onto the sand. The two in the lagoon were still yelling.

“Would you both shut up?” yelled a guy on the beach. He held up something. “We got it!”

‘It’ had a blade as long as an arm with a two-hand handle. It had no hilt. The cutting edge formed a stretched S; the other was straight and blunt. The blade wept a kind of darkness when the man waved it, a faint staining shadow like ink in water. But it would cut like razors. It would cut gods. It was a godly weapon.

It was a magnificent copy of Death’s All Things Ending, and Hasso, who’d made it, knew exactly who I was.

My jaw clenched.

I looked over the five of them, three if I could get there quickly enough. They were tired; I was fresh. I could probably hit them from ambush.

Was I really about to kill three people to take that sword?

The idea bothered me, and yet, what did I face at Mallens’s hand?

I ground my teeth like I was chewing rocks.

Maybe I could get the sword quickly. I’d take it without killing anyone.

Yeah. No one had to die. It would be fine.

I stayed low and started around the rocks.

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Twilight in Heaven: Chapter 5

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Chapter 5

I woke up on the bier. It was a low, squat block of stone, uncut and unpolished, white marble shot through with veins of silver and speckled with quartz. This was where Koru told me to come for a reading of my dreams, where Zeni performed her day-job. Night-job, I guess. I sat up and my leg was cured. Zeni sat on a chair nearby, playing cat’s cradle with herself, and looking unutterably bored.

My schemes and flattery aside, she was quite pretty. Her skin had the same reddish tint as the river silt, carried down from the Tsme. She had big eyes and small, long-fingered hands. Her hair and clothing floated in the water as if they were weightless, and underneath her clothing, her form curved in most interesting ways. That was the thing about gossamer. It revealed shapes and no details, form but no specifics, and hints. She looked amazing.

She looked up while I was looking at her and put her game away.

She really was quite pretty, but now, instead of looking passionate, enraptured, or amorous, she looked curious and a little cynical.

“I fixed your leg,” she said, waving her finger at me.

“Thank you.”

“With less pretty language, why are you here? Be honest.”

“Mostly for the leg,” I said.

“Fair.”

“Also, I want your help to escape the valley.”

She shook her head. “I don’t get involved in the affairs of the Hakan.”

“I hate your sister.”

Zeni perked right up. “What now?”

“She’s a plague, and I want to work her downfall.”

Zeni’s eyes narrowed. “Which one?”

“Astras.” I paused. “Aelof’s fine. She’s quite nice, honestly, but she complains a lot.”

“She does do a lot of work,” Zeni said quickly.

“Maybe so, but I don’t want to hear about it! Anyway, I wish her the best. I’m talking about Astras. I want to work her downfall.”

“I don’t know if I should get involved–” said Zeni, and I hurried on.

“I think she’s cheating on Koru.”

That stopped her like I’d staked her through the heart. “With who?”

“Dr Simmons.”

She looked away, and the gears of her mind clicked audibly.

I went on. “He’s the really annoying one with the too-big head on the too-thin neck and laughs like a harpy.”

Zeni looked down, and her eyes fixed on me. She leaned forward in her seat, pulling barely-there fabric tight. “Why him?”

“A few reasons. One, he’s an idiot, she seems to like him, and I can’t imagine anyone putting up with him unless he was giving her a little something extra. Two, I don’t think Koru would suspect. Simmons gives a slightly-gay vibe. Three, I’ve never seen Koru give a lot of attention to Astras. She has to show up, look hot, and he treats her as being decorative. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was watering other fields as a way to get revenge.”

Zeni squinted. “Why do you want revenge?”

“She tried to have me killed.”

“Did you try to sleep with her, and she turn you down?”

“Who?” I yelled. My voice cracked. I didn’t mean to, but that meant there was no way I could have faked it. “The evil plague?”

“Yeah. You just said she’s hot.”

I stared at her for several seconds, then said, “No.”

“I’m just saying,” she just said.

“No.”

This turn of conversation had moved away from me. I was still kinda trying to seduce her.

“Baby, let’s not talk about other women.”

“Yeah, yeah. Enough with that, buddy. What do you want?”

“I’d like you to smuggle me out of valley without anyone knowing.”

Zeni waggled her head side-to-side a few times. She looked up at the Moon again and frowned.

“And I’d like to talk with you a little bit,” I added.

Her head stopped wiggling, and Zeni looked at me. It was a flat gaze. Her eyes didn’t open all the way, but she arched her eyebrows. Her lips made a thin line. But I got the feeling through her mask she wasn’t quite as cold as she implied.

“Come here. Talk with me a little bit,” I added. There was plenty of room on the bier.

She stood up with marvelous posture, and that made her hips and curves draw the floating gossamer tight. I enjoyed looking at her. She shifted her weight to her right leg, as if to take a step, but the movement made her curves curvier. Her left foot went up on the toe.

“Night Witch, Daughter of Alph, Oracle, come to me!” yelled the voice of the idiot above, the true blister under my sandal strap, Mithrak. “Give me your wisdom.”

“I won’t give you a bleeding thing,” muttered Zeni, slipping out of her position to stand flat-footed with fists on hips.

I slipped up from the bier, took her about the waist, and kissed her. She looked surprised, and she didn’t kiss me back. But she didn’t move away either.

After a long, pleasant moment, I leaned away without letting go. “Help me. I must escape.”

“Okay.”

“Mithrak’s going to ask you where I am. Don’t tell him.”

“I’ll lie to him.

I expected more fight there, honestly. “You can do that? As an oracle?”

“Do what? Lie to a customer? Oh, sweetie.”

“Dang.”

I’d always sort of suspected, but I’d just assumed it was impossible.

“Where do you want to go?” she asked.

Hyperion, I thought, but I didn’t say. “Just out of the valley, and far enough away I can’t be tracked easily.”

“Follow this stairway down, but when you come to the Moon, turn around. Before you, you will see many pools. One will bear the reflection of Angel’s Crest. Walk through it, and you will be there.”

“Can I come see you again?”

“If you want.”

And I did.

But I didn’t want to die. Fighting Mithrak would get me killed. If he fired even one round from that .43, Hoarfast would hear. And then…

I looked at Zeni.

“It would be great if they thought I was dead.”

She shrugged a mysterious shrug, but underneath she was smirking.

I ran down the stairway toward the Moon at the bottom of the lake.

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Twilight in Heaven: Chapter 3

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Chapter 3

Koru’s palace, Shang Du, stood on a tower of white granite, the Hakan. Behind it the folded Mountains of Tsme rose in jagged peaks, divided by deep, round valleys where the worms of Meru had crawled. The Hakan rose at the center of a bowl valley. At one time the spire had been joined to the greater peak Mt Nonac by a high wall of the same white granite, but the river Alph had cut a path through the junction. Now the crest of the rock formed a white bridge between Shang Du and the mountain, ornamented with lanterns and a wide path. The Alph entered the valley via a waterfall, the Hundred Ribbons, and circled the valley lazily until it passed underground. Koru’s palace up top was opulent and magnificent, horribly furnished, and carried a viewing deck that overlooked the valley and stood above the Tsme Peaks.

I stared at the other seven. Most of them stared at me. I wanted to think, but my mind struggled to comprehend Astras’s suggestion. No one quite moved. No one wanted this.

Maybe Astras did.

She kept talking.

“With the assassins gone, they will tell no secrets,” she said. “Nor will their remains be recognized. But they carried replicas of All Things Ending, and Kog had those replicas made. If Kog was gone, there would be nothing that connected any of us to him, and if we could all keep our secrets like the dead, we’d live.”

And if none of them said anything, they began to move.

“Take your hand out of your shirt,” I told Mithrak.

He’d reached under his jacket where I’m sure he carried a gun.

“I’m just scratching,” he said.

“Stop.”

Hoarfast shifted his feet. Somehow, he seemed closer.

I faced seven of them. Seraphine wouldn’t fight nor Astras, Koru would have others fight for him, and Dr Simmons looked irrelevant. That left Mithrak, Cole, Agammae, and the terrible Hoarfast.

I wanted to fight Mithrak, but not him and Cole at the same time. Not if they had help. I never wanted to fight Hoarfast.

Who was this Astras who suddenly had so much to say? What was she even doing? She was a trophy wife. She needed to shut up, look sexy, and be kept. Now she seemed content to wait, but some noise kept building. Maybe the waterfall of Alph was getting louder.

Mithrak scratched himself again. His hand moved toward his armpit.

“Stop that,” I told him.

“I’m just scratching.”

“I told you to-”

Mithrak’s hand shot under his shirt, and I hard initiated on the lot of them.

He grabbed his gun, my fist met his face, and I followed through his head. His whole face wrapped around my fist with jaws and jowls moved in opposite directions, until I finished the strike and launched him a dozen feet away.

Agammae went on me. She threw her chair, I blocked, but the chair was a big thing. It filled a lot of space. She came in behind and kicked out my legs. I dropped.

Cole jumped at me and missed. Hoarfast went wide around behind the rest of the group. I had two seconds before he got here. Agammae spun around and jammed her leg between mine. I tried to leap from my back, but she got herself tangled up with me.

Hoarfast passed the spare chairs and drinks table, four steps away.

“Overe!” I shot my legs skyward again as I slip-broke from Agammae’s grip. My body moved like a wave, and I ended on my feet. Cole tried to tackle me. I retreated, Agammae sprawled out to snatch my feet, I retreated again, and Hoarfast arrived.

His parentage showed. Lines of gray followed his veins. His knuckles had turned to steel.

He feinted, threw two shots, and somehow, he’d gotten between me and the door. His assault was beyond the rest of them combined. I countered low, he blocked, and we exchanged strikes that didn’t connect. Mithrak got up, leaning like the deck was pitching and he’d lost his sea legs. Cole kept trying to grab me. Agammae’s hands appeared with knives. I slipped around Hoarfast’s jab as his off-hand tagged me, and my side went cold.

I dove off the balcony as flashing knives flew overhead.

Shang Du’s balcony overlooked the deep forest. At the bottom of the granite pillar, Alph passed into a dark cavern. Fog and froth filled the pit, and sometimes Koru’s children fell in. None of them ever emerged, and rats are strong swimmers.

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