“Of course I pretended it was easy,” Umber scoffed. “I was trying to scare you off. I wasn’t about to admit I had limits.” With a raised brow, he added, “Clearly, it didn’t work.”
“Sorry,” Hansa said again.
“I’m not entirely disappointed with how things turned out.” His arm snugged around Hansa’s waist meaningfully.
Hansa was starting to get used to the way his body tightened in response to remarks like that, and Umber’s direct gaze. He wasn’t prepared for the way his heart gave a quick little lurch, too.
He wanted to pass it off with a quip. Something suggestive and witty. Something that would acknowledge that, while he wouldn’t have chosen a sojourn into the bowels of the Abyss, he had no complaints about the quality of his time in Umber’s bed—or wherever else they ended up.
Umber’s lips quirked again. “Take your time, Quin,” he teased, well aware that sexual banter had most decidedly not been among Hansa’s skill sets when they first met. “You’ll come up with something eventually. Mind if I distract you in the meantime?”
“Please.”
Umber’s fingers trailed down Hansa’s cheek and over his jaw, a tickling rasp that made him shiver. “Your beard didn’t grow when we were in the Abyss,” he remarked.
Hansa scrubbed a hand over his own face. He was looking forward to some quality time with a mirror and a blade to remove the shadow that had grown in the few hours since they returned to this realm. Then, curious, he smoothed a palm over Umber’s jaw.
“Give me a month and I’ll still fail to grow proper stubble,” Umber said.
“Funny, for someone whose parent had fur.”
“Not mine,” Umber replied. “Some Abyssi have scales. Let’s go a little farther down this hall. I know a quiet spot where we can examine the issue in detail.”
By the time they returned to the room, the fire had dropped to a few burning coals—which was a good thing, since the faint light they cast was enough to show that Cadmia and Alizarin were both stark naked, fast asleep, and tangled around each other. Despite their changed situation, Hansa still felt awkward seeing a Sister of Napthol that way. Umber, far more comfortable with casual nudity than Hansa, threw a blanket over the two of them before he and Hansa settled into place in front of the fire.
Languorous and content, Hansa drifted into sleep with his head on Umber’s shoulder, listening to the spawn’s oh-so-slow heartbeat.
He woke to the sound of the door closing. Blinking, confused, he realized that Umber was no longer with him, but had apparently just come in from the hall. Cadmia was also up, and thankfully dressed once again. Alizarin was nowhere to be seen.
“You tossed and turned most of the night,” Umber said, before Hansa could clear his throat to ask. “I wanted to let you sleep.”
“Where’s Alizarin?”
“Hunting,” Cadmia answered. “He left just a few minutes ago.”
As Umber arranged new logs on top of the barely-glowing coals in the fireplace, Hansa glanced through the bag, which was full of simple, portable foodstuffs. “Are we preparing for a siege?”
“We need to teach you and Cadmia how to veil your power today,” Umber said. “I didn’t want to have to go out again, and the work will make you both hungry.”
“Oh. Right,” Hansa said, grimacing. Abyssal sorcery always seemed to involve his getting cut up and bleeding.
“Where do we begin?” Cadmia asked.
“Do you still have the knife Alizarin gave you?” Umber asked.
Cadmia patted the weapon sheathed at her belt. Hansa wasn’t sure “knife” was the right word for something crafted out of black Abyssi bone, with a blade as long as his forearm. The Abyssumancer Naples had helped Alizarin create the weapon so the Abyssi could form a bond with Dioxazine. Alizarin had given it to Cadmia before they left the Abyss.
“Hansa?”
“I have it.” Hansa unenthusiastically pulled the knife Umber had given him the night before.
“Good. Now come here.”
Umber sat on the floor not far from the fireplace and drew his own knife from somewhere. Hansa knew for a fact that, even when the spawn stripped naked, the sheath that held that knife wasn’t visible. It was a neat trick.
“Abyssal sorcery is about power and will, not much else,” Umber explained. “You raise power, and you direct it with your mind.” As if it were the simplest thing in the world, he pulled the knife across his fingertips and casually flicked the drops of blood at the fireplace. The fire sprang merrily up, licking along the fresh wood as if Umber had nurtured it with fresh pine kindling. “In your case, you’re directing your power inward. Normally it reaches out, seeking. Hansa, you’ll find this task harder, because the bond instinctively reaches for me and for flesh, while Cadmia’s child is still used to receiving its sustenance from its mother. You need to stop that grasping, since it’s the aura that a guard with the sight—or a passing mancer—picks up on.” He looked at both of them, then said simply, “Try it.”
“Excuse me?” Hansa smiled at Cadmia’s shocked tone. For once, he wasn’t the only person in the room uncomfortable taking a wickedly-sharp blade to his own flesh.
“In my experience,” Hansa said through half-gritted teeth, “every question I ask tends to make it worse. Umber, what’s the trick to getting the wounds to heal so I don’t bleed to death if I cut too deep?”
“There’s no trick. Abyssal power is very practical. It doesn’t waste.” The spawn held up his unmarked hand.
So their lessons began.
Set his teeth. Pull the knife. Once he was sure it would heal and he wouldn’t cause himself permanent damage, Hansa found the easiest way was to grip the blade in his palm so he didn’t need to look at what he was doing.
That was the easy part.
The next part was visualizing what he wanted to happen, commanding the power that continually reached toward Umber like a flower leaning toward the light to curl up tight inside him, and then holding it there while the magic fought like a caged raccoon.
By lunchtime, he was glad to throw down his knife and eat ravenously. Cadmia ate more food than she had the night before, but also gladly accepted when Alizarin returned and offered blood. Hansa was considering dragging Umber off somewhere private to help recover some of his own power when Alizarin suddenly tensed and growled, his tail lashing as he looked around the room as if to catch a glimpse of something elusive.
Cadmia pulled back from him. She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth and asked, “Alizarin? What’s wrong?”
Most of the time, Alizarin wore what he called his “play” form: the masculine body with blue fur and an expressive tail. That form wasn’t a lie, precisely, but it wasn’t true. When the Abyssi fought, the tangible part of him faded into a smoky darkness made of heat and claws. Even now that Hansa knew he was an ally, looking into that living shadow still made every mortal instinct scream, Run!
Right then, Hansa could see that true form peeking out. Alizarin perched on the balls of his feet, tensed as if listening. His lashing tail left afterimages, and a plum-colored aura of heat spread from him, as if darkness could leave a residue on the eyes like a brilliant light could.
“Something watching us,” he said in a voice that rumbled like thunder. “I can’t quite see it.”
They kept their blades in their hands as they waited, watching the Abyssi snuff the air. What they were doing here was grounds for arrest and execution. If someone had seen them and then ran to report them, the only question would be: Run, or fight?
“It fled,” Alizarin rumbled. His voice was a lilting growl, a match to his half-solid form. “This way.”
“Should Cadmia stay behind?” Hansa asked, as they all tried to go through the door at once to follow Alizarin. Surely a pregnant woman shouldn’t—
“No,” she snapped, in a tone that warned him his concern had been offensive once again. He made a mental note to stop suggesting ways to protect her, no matter how hard he had
to bite his tongue to ignore all his training.
They followed Alizarin down the hallway in the opposite direction as they had gone the night before. As the Abyssi squeezed through a half-blocked archway, Umber stepped forward to go first; when they emerged on the other side, he put one arm around Hansa, and then one around Cadmia.
“What are you—?”
“Shh.” He cut off Cadmia’s hissed complaint and refused to let her go.
They entered a large room half-full of broken crates and other odds and ends. The bitter tang of crystal smoke, a dangerous and addictive drug that was controllable in Kavet mostly because it couldn’t be produced natively, coated Hansa’s tongue and made his eyes sting. He also couldn’t fail to recognize the sounds of passion rising from the debris, which clearly concealed at least several pairs, or perhaps a larger group. He didn’t want to know which.
They skirted the outside of the large room and slipped through a gap in the wall to enter a narrow corridor lit only by occasional streams of sunlight flickering through gaps in the ceiling. For a moment, looking at the rows of numbered doors, Hansa thought he was looking at a massive inn. Then he realized this must be an old storage warehouse. The room behind them had been a main cargo area, but these were smaller units, which might have been rented out to trading vessels or merchants. There were two floors, with the upper one accessible by stairs and a narrow catwalk.
Unfortunately, Alizarin led them up.
The condition of the floor made the floor of their room seem well made. Pieces were missing from this one, and snaking rot was clearly visible. Hansa was watching his step so carefully he barely noticed when Umber let go of him and drew his knife instead.
Umber’s voice in Hansa’s head whispered, Stay sharp. There’s nothing I can do to make us fit in here, and the kind of people who stay in the warehouse protect their privacy with blades.
Alizarin paused outside a doorway. The door had long since broken away, replaced with a hanging rag of a blanket. Whatever colors it had once been had long ago faded to smeary browns and grays.
Alizarin nodded significantly toward the curtain.
At the thought of pushing aside that piece of fabric, Hansa’s flesh crawled. It was a rotten thing. All he could imagine looking at it was black mold and graveyard fungus. Surely if he touched it, the pestilence would seep into him, his skin would slough off, and he would die in leprous agony.
“In there,” Alizarin said, sounding puzzled at their hesitation.
Hansa looked at Umber and Cadmia, who seemed equally reluctant to proceed.
“Is there another way in?” Cadmia asked.
Hansa swallowed and took a step back, wary of breathing in whatever spores might billow out from the pestilent rags.
Alizarin tilted his head. He looked at the curtain. “This way,” he said.
Umber rubbed his hands on his arms. Pale-faced, he said, “It’s spelled. It isn’t really—” He broke off, as if the next words were too foul to say aloud. He drew a deep, hitching breath.
His words were enough for Hansa to realize what was happening.
In another time, it would have been his second lieutenant Jenkins with him, using his sight to identify power. Jenkins, who had also been Hansa’s best friend since childhood, would have been the one to say, “There’s some kind of spell here, probably trying to keep us out.” Now it was Umber, whose half-Abyssi blood must have made him slightly more resistant than the mere humans.
Once it had been pointed out, Hansa was able to recognize the kind of power blocking their way: necromancer.
The 126 caught Abyssumancers most often, usually men and women in their early twenties who didn’t have the restraint to keep their Abyssal impulses under control and avoid coming to their neighbors’ attentions. Numenmancers like Xaz were the next most often found, as their desperate meddling with the divine realm could create a frost that ate through stone and metal, blighted crops and damaged livestock.
Necromancers were rarely caught because they could do things like this—create an aura around themselves that made you absolutely certain death was waiting for you, so most people avoided them and never noticed their work.
Umber had identified the spell, but it was Hansa who stepped up to enter the room first. His hand ached for his sword, which was surely sitting in its case in his apartment, as he eased the curtain aside. Even knowing it was a spell, it took all his will to push past the bone-deep revulsion that coiled his guts and drove bile up his throat as he put a hand on the cloth.
He had walked through Abyssumancer lairs where the viscera of small animals—and sometimes larger ones—smeared and popped under his feet. He had entered Numenmancer refuges where the air singed his lungs with cold and icicles threatened to drive into his flesh. He had seen necromancers curled up asleep on beds made from the bones of the dead.
He had no idea what to expect here. He braced himself against what he might find.
Chapter 7
Lydie
Lydie squeezed the heel of a brown hand against her temple, trying to push away the throbbing pulse of blood that felt like it would split her skull. She leaned forward, clutching to her chest a tattered doll whose buckwheat-hull stuffing concealed shards of bleached-white bone, dry earth, and a generous pinch of pyre ash.
Almost time to get rid of your doll, Mama, she thought.
Mama didn’t answer. She had been gone a long time.
When Lydie was younger, she had been able to carry the doll everywhere without exciting comment, but she was fourteen now. It would be noticed. She needed to replace it with something less conspicuous. She had been telling herself that for months, but kept putting it off. She didn’t have much. How could she part with the last gift her mother gave her?
She pressed her face against the doll’s homespun wool body and again tried to visualize high stone walls encircling her. Within her imagined tomb, it was cool and quiet. Nothing could reach her.
The wall of power shattered as intruders pushed through the curtained doorway to her room, shredding her laboriously-crafted illusions and protective spells like spider webs.
The man in the front of the group was broad shouldered, with fair skin losing its summer tan to winter, brown eyes, and slightly darker brown hair, which looked like it had been cut short and then allowed to grow several weeks past when it needed a trim. After he crossed the threshold, his eyes locked with Lydie’s, and he held out a hand in a sharp, clear gesture for those behind him to halt.
He was armed only with a shoddy-looking knife, and he wasn’t wearing a uniform, but Lydie didn’t need those cues to recognize a soldier.
She gripped the doll tighter, scrambling to focus her power, as two others entered behind the soldier, one a slightly-plump woman with strawberry-blond hair and brownish-green eyes, and the other a tall, lean man with fair skin, black hair, and startlingly blue eyes. Neither of them looked like fighters, but they also clearly weren’t from the Fens.
Lydie projected an image of rot and decay as she said, “There’s nothing here for you. No coin, no crystal, no food that isn’t spoiled. Not even a clean blanket. And you don’t want me.”
The spell should have worked, would have worked against the drug-seekers, slavers, would-be pimps and common thieves who were the most common threats she faced here.
The guard swallowed thickly, but didn’t flinch.
Instead he said, “We’re not here to take what’s yours or to hurt you. Put down the doll and we’ll talk.”
She felt the spirits swirl around her, their whispers rising to howls as she raised as much power as she could without complex ritual. She would have to try the aversion spell again.
The woman eased forward, a hand on the lead soldier’s arm to urge him to back off. Her voice was gentle as she said, “We just want to know why you were spying on us.”
“Spying? I haven’t spied on—” The shades. Something had disturbed the shades, and caused them to batter restlessly against her walls until she ha
d commanded one of them to go see what was going on. “—you. You’re the ones who’ve disturbed them.”
Simple guards, even those trained and tasked with fighting mancers, would not have upset the dead.
“Necromancer.” Lydie flinched as the man in back said the word, though it didn’t sound like an accusation. It sounded, inconceivably, as if he were on the verge of laughter. “Now we find a necromancer.”
“No.” Lydie gasped, reflexively. “I’m not—I’m just—” She drew a breath and declared, “So what if I am? You’re consorting with a demon.”
That was the news the shades had brought her, had screamed at her, until she had needed to go into a trance despite not having the tools she needed in order to hear the whole story. Her headache now was a result of their distress.
“That’s quite a curious thing for you to know,” the lean man in back purred.
“Its presence disturbs the dead,” Lydie admitted. One of them looked like a guard, but if so, he was a renegade one. Maybe if she told them the truth they would go away. “They’ve been battering at my shields all night. I finally ordered one to tell me who and where you were, so I could avoid you. That’s all. I didn’t expect him to bring you right to me.”
The three others shifted their gaze simultaneously toward an empty space in the room, as if listening to something. Lydie followed their gazes, knowing what that movement had to mean. “Hello?” she said. “I can’t see you . . . or hear you . . . but I know you’re there.” Abyssi. The shades had claimed there was one nearby.
“It is probably for the best,” the black-haired man said, “that you cannot see him.”
“You’re an Abyssumancer?” Lydie asked him, trying not to shudder. She had always done her best to avoid all other mancers, but especially those who worked with the infernal realm.
This time, the man laughed out loud. “No mancers here but you.”
Lydie flinched from the word, an accusation that was usually tied with arrest and a death sentence. “Don’t call me that.”