“Of course,” Terre Verte said before crossing and pressing a hand to an apparently blank wall.
Hansa blinked. If he hadn’t seen so many doors appear and disappear at Naples’ and Azo’s estate, he might have thought he hadn’t seen this one previously due to the tears in his irritated eyes. Instead of an empty arch, a sturdy-looking door of slick, polished wood appeared.
“We are back in the human plane, right?” he asked.
“Yes,” Terre Verte answered. “But this was a hidden room, not meant for the eyes of anyone who might stumble across it.”
They all moved toward the doorway, anxious to get away from the stagnant air and now nearly blinding, billowing dust.
The moment they crossed the threshold, though, Hansa’s breath hissed in with unwanted familiarity. Carved cherry wainscoting rose waist-high on the walls, below horse-hair lime plaster smoothed over old stone and painted soft, barely-blue gray. Like most soldiers in Kavet, Hansa had spent his share of hours repointing and painting those damned walls, one of the many mind-numbing tasks that could be assigned to young grunts without the authority to object or older soldiers being disciplined. Even the smell was familiar: spices of winter stews and familiar tea, ever available this time of year in the guards’ mess.
All that meant they were in the last place they wanted to be.
“Shit,” he hissed, anxiously looking up and down the hallway. It was a miracle no one had seen them emerge from what should have been a blank wall. “We have to get out of here.”
“Where is here?” Cadmia asked, rubbing at her nose, probably to clear away the dust.
“We’re in the Quinacridone,” Hansa said. “I don’t know exactly where, which means probably one of the private halls, maybe where the monks live. I recognize the—”
A figure turned the corner, one he wouldn’t need to introduce.
President Winsor Indathrone was fifty-three years old, dark-haired and shrewd-eyed. At that moment, he was wearing slacks and a shirt without vest or jacket; he was comfortably at home, which meant this hall was probably part of his personal residence. He frowned at them all, then focused his gaze on Hansa.
“Viridian? What is the meaning of this?”
Think! “We . . .” Was there any excuse for this? Would President Indathrone recognize Xaz? Even if he didn’t, how could Hansa explain even his own presence in the president’s private wing of the Quin compound?
Instead of coming up with something clever to say, he couldn’t help calculating how many guards would come running the instant His Eminence opened his mouth to summon them. How many guards would, based on what Hansa had seen when they had gone to arrest Xaz, be slaughtered as Alizarin moved to protect their group.
Or, if it was true that the Quinacridone Compound was protected from the Abyss and the Numen by its own human spells, how many guards would appear to execute everyone in their party on sight.
“Hansa?” Indathrone prompted, voice colder this time, warning that it wouldn’t be long before he lost patience.
He skimmed their party, his eyes never fixing on Alizarin, reminding Hansa that on the mortal plane most humans couldn’t see the Abyssi at all.
Terre Verte took charge, stepping past Hansa. “Winsor Indathrone, you are the very image of your grandmother.”
“My . . .” Indathrone frowned with confusion. “Who are you?”
Terre Verte extended a hand. “How rude of me not to introduce myself.” Indathrone offered his own hand, as one tends to do out of habit when offered such an engrained sign of courtesy. “I am Terre Verte. And I believe you have overstayed your welcome.”
The next movement was swift. Terre Verte accepted the hand Indathrone had lifted, but used it only to tug him forward before he reached up, bracing his Eminence’s body with his own, and matter-of-factly broke the neck of the most powerful man in Kavet with a single, undramatic crunch.
“We invited that family to supper. Not to move in.”
Terre Verte released him, and Indathrone’s body collapsed unremarkably to the ground. Hansa stared at it, waiting for it to . . . what? Echo? The death of such a man should resonate. It should shriek in a way that made bones quiver, like when Abyssi fought. His fallen form should flicker with escaping force.
But he was only a man, and his body was only meat, so he lay there unmoving.
Terre Verte turned around, brushing dust from his elegant clothing. “Now I think I’d like to walk about my city. It has been a long time.”
EPILOGUE
“I thought you said you could control your children,” the black Abyssi accused, his voice an angry purr. “ ‘All things serve the divine,’ or so you say.”
“Mortals are . . . limited,” the Numini conceded. “They have unanticipated qualms, and choose to rebel at unpredictable moments.”
“Thousands of years of life,” the black Abyssi spat, “and that is your belief? Mortals are unpredictable? A newborn Abyssi could tell you that a mortal will choose survival first. Faced with death, they always run.”
“Not always,” the Numini minced. “Though I suppose that is a newborn Abyssi’s perspective, given it is your own. Your kind sees a few centuries at most before you are destroyed by your own folly. I have seen millennia.”
“You and your endless years got my mancer killed.”
“You were supposed to deal with the blue Abyssi before he reached the pit.”
“Antioch wasn’t equal to the task.”
“And the king of the Abyss couldn’t send another?” the Numini scoffed. “Don’t you have any power over your subjects?”
The black Abyssi did not rise to the challenge. “Abyssi do not jump to follow commands the way Numini do, especially when those commands may make an Abyssi dead. I have no wish to be sacrificed in the crystal caves just yet.”
“They have all returned to the mortal realm now,” the Numini said. “Let us wait and see what they do next. They may yet serve. If not, we both have other tools. If the worst comes to pass, these can be . . . discarded.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
AMELIA ATWATER-RHODES started writing when she was thirteen, and has since then published seventeen young adult novels in the Den of Shadows, Kiesha’ra and Maeve’ra series. Several of her novels have been ALA Quick Picks for Young Adults, and Hawksong was The School Library Journal Best Book of the Year, and Voice of Youth Advocates Best Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Selection. In 2006, Amelia decided to take a break from YA and started writing the Mancer trilogy as part of National Novel Writing Month. Of the Abyss is her first adult novel.
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Young Adult Novels by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes
Den of Shadows
In the Forests of the Night
Demon in My View
Shattered Mirror
Midnight Predator
Persistence of Memory
Token of Darkness
All Just Glass
Poison Tree
Promises to Keep
The Kiesha’ra
Hawksong
Snakecharm
Falcondance
Wolfcry
Wyvernhail
The Maeve’ra
Bloodwitch
Bloodkin
Bloodtraitor
COPYRIGHT
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
OF THE ABYSS. Copyright © 2016 by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontrans
ferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books. For information, address HarperCollins Publishers, 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007.
EPub Edition SEPTEMBER 2016 ISBN: 9780062562135
Print Edition ISBN: 9780062562142
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Amelia Atwater-Rhodes, Of the Abyss
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