Of the Mortal Realm

  “Excuse us,” Rinnman said. He gestured to the blacksmith, and both men judiciously fled the room.

  “I wasn’t dead,” was, stupidly, the first excuse that came out of Hansa’s mouth. It had never occurred to him to tell his parents that he wasn’t dead, because it hadn’t occurred to him that he was. Despite his sojourn in the Abyss, he hadn’t expected to be declared dead. He drew a breath, and managed more appropriate words. “I’m sorry. It was stupid of me.”

  “You missed Ruby’s service,” his mother said softly, less hostile now but with hurt more evident in her eyes. “And Jenkins’. I hadn’t thought you would miss those for anything in the world.”

  “They gave Ruby a service?” Hansa asked, pleased but surprised. Suicides were not usually allowed such a formal farewell.

  “Indathrone had sighted guards examine the site where . . . where her body was last seen. Where you were last seen.” Her voice wobbled a moment. “There was mancer magic all over it. The Quin wouldn’t declare it a suicide when there was that much evidence of possible magical malfeasance—especially after someone reported that Ruby had gone to the docks and the ship seeking Cadmia Paynes for guidance.”

  That wasn’t quite how it had all happened, but if it meant Ruby was allowed to be remembered well, Hansa wouldn’t argue. “That’s good,” he said. She was in the Numen; whatever powers made that decision had obviously decided that she had lived rightly.

  Of course, Jenkins had gone to the Abyss. Maybe the powers-that-were weren’t good judges after all.

  “How was Jenkins’ service?” he asked, though it felt rather odd to do so, given he had talked to the man the night before.

  His mother looked away as tears came to her eyes. “Beautiful,” she said. “His mother . . . that poor woman. Can you believe, we’re at her son’s funeral, and she’s trying to comfort me. At her own—”

  She broke off, swaying. Hansa reached for her, afraid she was about to faint, and she sucked in a gasping breath. She looked up at him with unfocused eyes. “Hansa?”

  “Mom?” His heart had leapt into his throat. The voice had been hers, but it was wrong, as were her movements as she looked around.

  “Good,” she said. “We’re alone.”

  “What’s going on?”

  Now she spoke quickly, the rhythms of her speech not hers at all as she said, “Hansa, it’s Lydie. You need to meet me at Umber’s house. Now would be good.”

  She let out a quietly exhaled breath, and as she actually did faint, Hansa was almost too slow to catch her because he was too horrified by what had just happened. He managed to help her to a chair, where she opened her eyes and looked around in confusion.

  “Hansa?” What in the three worlds had Lydie done? “What happened?”

  “I think you fainted,” he said. Please don’t remember.

  “I felt dizzy there a minute,” she said. “I think maybe I should lie down.”

  He nodded. “Rinnman can find you an empty sitting room where you can rest awhile. I have a meeting I need to get to, but we can meet for dinner, or breakfast tomorrow? I don’t know how late I’ll be tonight, but I do want to tell you everything.”

  Wanted to tell her everything, but how much could he?

  That at least was a question for another moment.

  “I’ll hold you to that,” she answered, with a mock-glare. “I know you’re a grown man, but a mother never stops worrying. Give me a hug and a kiss before you run off to do your important world-saving work.”

  Hansa did, and hated how frail his usually strong, vibrant mother felt. Grief and anxiety had clearly taken a toll on her the last few weeks. Hansa promised himself that, as soon as he could, he would tell her the truth—at least as much of it as was his story to tell.

  In the meantime, he didn’t think Lydie would have gone to such lengths to contact him unless it was an emergency, which meant he didn’t have time to lose. He found Rinnman, saw his mother settled, gave his apologies to his next meetings and signed out for the evening.

  Getting back to Umber’s home unnoticed was more easily said than done, as half the population of Mars was either in the Quinacridone Compound or in the market square, and they all wanted to talk to him. He managed to evade them by ducking into his own apartment, then out a window on the back of the building.

  As he hurried back to Umber’s house with his head down against the bitter winter wind, he couldn’t help but recall the way he and Jenkins used to tell each other ghost stories. Playground tales said that necromancers could possess people, but most of Kavet accepted that as a myth. Hansa’s own mother had dismissed it as a story told to keep kids from wandering alone at night.

  Other fears took hold of him as he walked. Was something wrong with Umber? Had something gone wrong while he and Naples were setting up their tableau to distract the Quinacridone in Eiderlee? Or what about Cadmia? She and Alizarin had gone to the temple. Anything could have happened there.

  He moved faster.

  Bursting into the house, he found Lydie and Cadmia sitting at the kitchen table, both drinking hot mulled wine, and Lydie eating anything she could fit in her mouth around her shivering.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked breathlessly.

  “Nu-Numini,” she said. “Numini . . . ghost.” Another spasmodic shiver took her, badly enough that she had to set her mulled wine down.

  Cadmia tucked the blanket over Lydie’s shoulders down more tightly. “Alizarin and I met a Numini in the temple,” she explained. “He gave us tools to help Lydie talk to one of them. She did some kind of ritual. By the time she called me for help, she was blue with cold. She insisted we all needed to talk together immediately.”

  “At least Numini ghost is a power source,” Lydie said, only partly incoherently. “Wouldn’t normally have . . . able to do the reaching spell.”

  “Reaching spell? Is that how you possessed my mother?”

  Lydie’s eyes widened. “Mother? S-sorry.” She wrapped her hands tightly around her mulled wine again. Cadmia picked up a second blanket that had been warming in front of the hearth and exchanged it for the one on Lydie’s shoulders. “Reached for . . . person . . . closest to you. Need t-t-t . . .” She lost the next words in a round of teeth-chattering.

  “Warm up first, then talk,” Hansa suggested gently. “Hopefully the others will get back soon.”

  As Lydie warmed, Cadmia described in more detail what she and Alizarin had heard at the temple.

  Just as she finished, Naples, Umber, and Alizarin came home, all power-giddy. Their jovial moods had dissipated quickly as Lydie stopped shivering enough to form full, coherent sentences and launched into her own story about being visited by a Numini, about the tragedy of Clay and his daughter, about Pearl being the only surviving Terre, and Quinacridone—the real Quinacridone—walking the mortal plane, bound to an Abyssumancer, and apparently Dioxazine’s patron.

  “Pearl?” Cadmia repeated, clearly shocked. “That’s—I mean, I knew she had some kind of power, but I never stopped to think what—that’s why a Numenmancer kidnapped her. It seems so obvious now.” Her eyes widened. Hansa couldn’t help thinking about the dangers to Abyss-spawn from Abyssumancers seeking a power source. Could a Numenmancer be so cruel to a Numen-spawn child? Would the Numini tolerate it? “Or they did it at Quinacridone’s command, if she’s really a Terre, too,” Cadmia speculated. “I feel like an idiot for not thinking of it sooner. The poor girl.”

  As they all exchanged overwhelmed glances, Alizarin asked, “What did the Numini you spoke with say its name was?”

  Hansa didn’t see why that was important, but Cadmia asked, “You think maybe it’s Veronese?”

  Alizarin nodded. Lydie cleared her throat, reminding them she couldn’t hear Alizarin directly.

  “Alizarin wants to know what the Numini was named,” Cadmia said. “He knew a Numini, once.”

  Lydie shrugged. “It didn’t give me a name.”

  “Who else could it be?” Cadmia asked rhetorically
. “Numini can’t lie, and this one said he knew and loved Alizarin.”

  All this was news to Hansa, but before he could say anything, Umber spoke up. “If we trust this is Veronese, do we trust Veronese?” he asked. “The Numini haven’t been kind to us so far.”

  They all looked at Alizarin. He tilted his head, thoughtful. “I do,” he answered at last.

  “Presuming we decide we want to do it,” Hansa said, “what exactly does this ritual Veronese suggests entail, other than Pearl?”

  Lydie rubbed her eyes wearily. “First, you need either a necromancer or an animamancer—someone whose power naturally comes from Scheveningen. That, I suppose, would be me.” She paused and drew a breath. “Next, we need to go to Scheveningen’s grave, which the Numini—Veronese if that’s his name—says is ‘in the earth beneath the oldest structure in Kavet.’ I’m hoping someone knows what that means.”

  Cadmia groaned. “The oldest structure in Kavet is the Cobalt Hall. Did Veronese say anything about how we were supposed to get you in there?”

  “I lived in the Cobalt Hall,” Naples pointed out. “Clay did, too. What changed between then and now?”

  “The law?” Hansa suggested. “Magic responds to will and intent, right?”

  “Or maybe not having a Terre heir nearby damaged the magic somehow, after Clay died,” Cadmia speculated. “Pearl lives there now, but Veronese said he actively tried to keep her disconnected from that birthright.”

  “The Numini had Pearl kidnapped once,” Umber interjected. “I think we should move quickly to protect her, even if we can’t immediately figure out how to get into the Cobalt Hall. We also need to tell her what is going on.”

  “There shouldn’t be any sighted guards in the market square right now,” Hansa said, glad to have done something more useful all day than answer questions about his nomination as President, shuffle papers, and get yelled at by his mother. “We can go together.”

  “We need a little time to regroup first,” Umber said reluctantly. “You’re looking drawn from too much time spent veiling your power today. Naples, Alizarin and I enjoyed ourselves, but we also burned a lot of power out in Eiderlee. And Lydie is about to fall over.”

  “Veronese said Quinacridone would need to rest for a little while,” Lydie reluctantly acknowledged. “And you’re right. I’ll be useless until I rest and meditate to get my power under control.”

  “I can go ahead,” Cadmia suggested. “I’ll keep an eye on Pearl and make sure she stays inside. It doesn’t make sense to take her out of there until we have a plan, anyway. If Alizarin can’t go into the Cobalt Hall, Quinacridone probably can’t, either, in which case Pearl is safer there than she would be here.”

  “The rest of us can stay nearby,” Hansa suggested, “in case you need support.”

  “Do you think it’s safe to use your apartment by now?” Umber asked.

  The question caught Hansa off guard, and absurdly startled a laugh from him. “I’m still a little horrified by how little everyone at the Quin Compound suspects me. I think as long as we’re careful not to draw attention to ourselves, we should be fine.”

  So that became the plan. Naples left his bone ring with Cadmia, since it would serve as a quick and powerful tool with which she could draw blood and summon them all without anyone noticing. As Cadmia and Alizarin said their farewells, Naples, Umber, and Hansa packed the essentials they would need, then trudged back to the center of the city and to Hansa’s apartment to collapse into bed—together—and only eventually into sleep.

  Hansa was in a kitchen he had never seen before, but somehow, in the way of dreams, knew was his. He was standing over the stove, making breakfast, wearing a frilly pink apron that even while dreaming he knew had to be Umber’s contribution to the image.

  But it wasn’t Umber or even Naples that he turned, with a smile on his face, to greet. Instead, it was a woman who swept into the room, with an infant cradled in one arm and a bottle in the other hand. She was wearing a pink star sapphire ring.

  Their baby in her arms, Ruby leaned close so he could kiss her.

  “Aah!”

  Hansa woke with a start as Naples cried out and smacked him on the shoulder.

  “Ow! What in the—”

  “Don’t do that!” the Abyssumancer said, horror written across all his features.

  “Do what?”

  “Go back to sleep,” Naples said. “But we do my dreams this time.” He lay back down, his head resting on Hansa’s chest, but his thoughts still grumbled in Hansa’s head: Damn Quin with your Numen-damned frilly dreams of women and babies.

  And yes, they did dream Naples’ dreams next: dreams of power, and blood, and lust, and the viscous sea of the Abyss, and skin and fur and slick scales like silk, and the crystal caverns where Abyssi were born.

  Chapter 36

  Cupric

  Admittedly, it wasn’t how Cupric had expected things to go, but he wasn’t objecting. Actually, he was buzzing. Nearly hallucinating, as he tried to figure out how to organize and control a kind of power with which he had no experience. The first time he had tried to stand up, he had fallen down, so just then he was lying on the floor, staring at the ceiling.

  Doné was standing above him, looking down at him.

  “Get control of yourself, Mancer,” she said. The tone was gentle, but the words felt like a slap.

  He struggled to compose himself and stand up. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s a different kind of power than I’m used to dealing with. It’s . . . disorienting.”

  “You said you needed to feed. You’ve fed. You said you needed to rest. You’ve rested. Now you’re ungrateful.”

  He grabbed onto the side of the bed in order to push to his feet. “I’m grateful. I’m very grateful. But I’ll admit I’m surprised.”

  “Who else would I feed to an Abyssumancer?” she asked. “I am the one who asked for your assistance. I wasn’t about to give another to you.”

  The words left a knot in the pit of his stomach, and he found himself asking, “Did you . . . at least . . . enjoy it? At all?”

  He had thought she had. He had tried. He had put more effort into pleasing her than he had ever bothered to put forth with any woman he had ever tumbled into bed with, and he had thought that he had succeeded. He hadn’t known if the Numini were capable of feeling passion or physical pleasure, but no matter how power-starved he had been, he would have stopped if he hadn’t been sure she was responding. Now she was standing there, still nude, and speaking as if it had been some kind of vile sacrifice.

  “I’m Numini,” she said.

  “But—” She shut him up with a glare so cold it made his breath catch, and gooseflesh raise all up and down his arms. “Sorry,” he whispered.

  This was absurd. He knew it was absurd. He was an Abyssumancer. She had said yes—no, she had more than said yes, she had in fact initiated the encounter—and he had done his damndest to give her pleasure. So why was he quivering at the face of her disapproval? Why did it feel like she had just stuck a knife in him?

  What was wrong with him?

  He sighed as she walked toward the window and parted the curtains to look out at Amaranth, letting misty dawn light spill through the gap. He hadn’t ever looked through that window; he usually had other things to do when he was in this little box of a bedroom. Now he wondered what she was seeing.

  What was wrong with him? He leaned back against the wall, an ache in his body he couldn’t identify. It wasn’t from the fight with Naples and the Abyssi. All that had healed. He was just in pain.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again. Saying it helped, a little, even as it made some part of his brain writhe in objection. “I didn’t realize it would upset you. I wouldn’t have . . .”

  She turned. “I am fine,” she said.

  “I just—”

  “Shh.” She put a finger over his lips. “There is nothing you are capable of doing to me without my consent. I know what you are, perhaps better than you do, a
nd it would be cruel of me to ask or expect you to be anything else. So there is no need to castigate yourself in my name, not over this.”

  “I wanted to please you,” he dared say.

  This time, the expression in her eyes was both gentle and sad. “I know. And it is . . . noble of you to wish it.” The praise warmed him, in the same way that her next words felt like they ripped him open. “But we can all only strive with the tools we are given. You are an Abyssumancer. There is nothing I or you can do to change that. It is good of you to want to be more. That desire pleases me. But you will only find despair if you try to defy all that is your nature in order to earn the grace of the divine realm.”

  The statement knocked his knees out from under him; as she stepped back, he fell, sliding down the wall until he was once again sitting on the floor. He leaned his head on his knees, trying to breathe, trying not to mourn.

  She touched his hair lightly. “There is something you can do for me.”

  He looked up, tears on his cheeks. “Anything.”

  She smiled, just a little, but it was enough for now. “There is a child housed at the Cobalt Hall. Her name is Pearl. Do you know her?”

  He nodded. “I know who she is.”

  “I need her,” Doné said. “I had a Numenmancer bring her to the temple recently, but his attention lapsed and she was stolen away. Bring her to me here?”

  “I cannot go into the Cobalt Hall,” he said. “Will she come out?”

  “You can ask for her, and she will come to the door,” Doné replied. She paused, then reached back and plucked a feather from her wing; it shone violet and gold, and was as long as his forearm. “Give this to her. Tell her that her father wishes to see her, and remind her that he told her the Numini could not walk in the Cobalt Hall. She will go with you.”

  “I can do that,” Cupric said, only to then hesitate. “Will sighted guards see this? Or for that matter, will they see me? I’m not sure I know how to control the Numen power well enough to mask it.”

  “They will not be a problem,” she assured him. “Hansa Viridian has kindly sent them all away. Of course, Hansa himself may be a problem; he also wants the girl, in order to spill her blood in their rites. I will keep an eye on you, and intercede if Naples or the Abyssi Alizarin is there, but the rest you should be able to handle on your own.”