The Crown's Dog

  “What can you tell me about her?” Baldair prodded gently.

  “Not much,” the woman confessed. “I only recognized the name because she worked in a jewelry store I frequented.”

  “And where is this store?” Erion asked.

  “The Jeweled Crest. It’s on the northern cliff-side section of town, just off Ridge Road. Today is their day off, however.”

  They hadn’t had cause to head to the far corner of town. But it seemed they were now handed every reason.

  “Thank you for that information,” Baldair said. “Does anyone have anything else?”

  With nothing more to be said, the rest of the night’s guests were dismissed. Baldair held his poise, seeing the last of them out the door. By the time the dust in the inner courtyard and stables had settled, it was midday, the manor was yet a wreck, and they still had a dead body to deal with.

  The prince seemed to be equally overwhelmed as he collapsed onto a sofa with a heavy sigh.

  “Not a word.”

  “A word?” Erion kept moving; if he stilled, the hangover and exhaustion would catch up to him, and that would be the end of all motivation for the day.

  “I said not a word.” Baldair opened his eyes with a tired grin. “And I meant not a word scolding me for how last night was a bad idea.”

  “Ah,” Erion let out a noise of comprehension. “I think that is well and truly apparent without my saying anything.”

  “In my defense, it wasn’t supposed to end up like this.” Baldair looked around the room at the chaos. “Well this, I expected. But not a murder.”

  “Is it safe for me to come out?” Jax leaned in the door frame.

  “Yes, they’re all gone.”

  Erion was relieved to see that his friend was merely lying low. He withheld comment on Jax’s mental state, already knowing he’d be shrugged off. Instead, he resumed reading the labels on the bookshelves and continuing to try to bring the room back into some sort of order. He didn’t like the feeling of Jax hiding away like some animal. Of being present only when it suited everyone else.

  “So, did we get anything useful?”

  “Only confirmation that she had a side job at the jewelry shop,” Baldair answered, then looked to the window. “Apparently it’s not open today, and it’s only a few hours before night... We’ll need to prepare the body for the Rite of Sunset.”

  Nana appeared in the door frame, a tray of biscuits and tea held firmly between two hands that didn’t normally shake. “I thought you three could use something warm.”

  “Thank you, Nana.” Baldair accepted a steaming cup.

  “After we see to this dark business of handling the body, I will get things arranged for your departure.”

  “Departure?” Erion inquired.

  “What departure?” Baldair was equally confused.

  “I thought—well, after everything, you would want to return to the palace.”

  Baldair shook his head. “I’m not leaving until this is sorted.”

  “My prince, I think it may be best, given all that’s happened, if you return to the palace,” Nana encouraged gently. “I wouldn’t want to see you wrapped up in the pirate’s curse.”

  “There is no curse.” Baldair waved it away. “Just a woman dead when it was my responsibility to look after her. Thank you for your concern, Nana.”

  The woman gave a small bow and departed from the room.

  “How did this whole pirate nonsense come up again?” Erion had thought the matter had faded into the obscurity of boredom.

  “The woman had the mark of the trident—the one we found in the palace—carved into her palm. Nana said that the pirate queen left a curse on Oparium specifically that any who should even utter her name would invoke her wrath. Might be why they take it so much more seriously down here.”

  “Sounds like a way for a tyrant to control by fear to me.” Erion folded his arms, leaning on one of the bookshelves. “And a tall-tale sailors enjoy spreading and mothers use to scare their children into behaving.”

  “Ghosts and curses don’t kill people; men kill people,” Jax insisted, echoing Baldair’s earlier comments.

  Erion nodded, relieved they all seemed to be on the same page in dismissing superstition. He had seen many a great and terrible thing in his life, not least of which was the woman’s still body this morning. But he had never seen nor heard of any specter coming back from the dead to exact vengeance or justice. When someone died, they passed to the realm of the Father, and the god never let anyone from his halls.

  “Still, the locked door remains an enigma.” There was a note of hesitation in Baldair’s tone.

  “Locked door?”

  Baldair and Jax proceeded to fill him in on everything they had found in the room. The circumstances surrounding the girl’s death became curiouser and curiouser by the moment. An unassuming girl who seemingly had no enemies, a room locked from the inside with no other way out, no culprit, a struggle the room showed no signs of, and a pirate ghost.

  “Enough for now,” Baldair declared finally, after they had talked in circles for an hour. “The day is waning, and we need to prepare for the Rite of Sunset.”

  “Who will perform it?” Erion asked.

  “We only have one Firebearer here.” Baldair stood, making for the door. “I’m going to go check on the status of the body.”

  The prince left with a tone of oblivious finality.

  Baldair meant well, but there were times when his youth and inexperience showed. Even though Erion was not more than a year older than the young prince, he felt well senior in moments like this. Erion had been raised with his family’s expectations yoked across his shoulders. Whereas Baldair, to most of the Empire, was quickly becoming seen as nothing more than the playboy spare heir to the throne. And the prince seemed to have embraced the role since his Coming of Age ceremony at fifteen—something his brother’s jeers no doubt encouraged.

  Erion looked to Jax, who merely shrugged and brought his hands to his hair. He pointedly left the room before Erion could even breathe a word, his hands fumbling to knot his dark locks.

  It was true; they had only one Firebearer. But, were it Erion’s decision, he would have chosen the harder path. He would have sought a Firebearer from town, a crone from the city’s chapel, or built a pyre—something else.

  Were it his decision, he would not have asked the man who had pled guilty to burning a woman alive to immolate the body of yet another.

  8. JAX

  HE STILL SAW her in the flames, just as he could still feel the blood on his hands.

  Jax stared into the fire flickering in the hearth, burning directly atop the stone without the need for wood or coal. He watched it with bitter regret. If his magic ran deeper, he might be able to place his face into the hearth and see the future the fire held. He would be able to see the red lines of fate the Mother wove for them all.

  But the gods would not even grant him the gift of meaning. They remained in their other realms, infuriatingly removed. Silent spectators to the horrors that, in all their divine power, they should be able to stop. The gods were cruel and had abandoned the world. This much Jax knew was true.

  His fingers twitched, the phantom slickness of crimson still coating his skin.

  The flames in the hearth flared brighter, crackling against his emotions. His magic enveloped them violently. A spit of flame jumped out, singeing the carpet by his feet. Jax felt nothing more than a mild heat.

  “Careful, or you’ll burn the place down.” Erion’s presence startled him from his trance. The other Westerner sat next to him, a mere finger’s width from where the fire had just leapt from the hearth.

  Jax looked back to the fire with a soft sigh. It dulled back to a normal burn—a healthy flame fueled by little magic, detached from his emotions and thoughts.

  “I burned down a Western Lord’s manor with his family in it. What do you think they’d do to me if I burned down an Imperial household with the prince in it?” Jax g
rinned darkly at the thought.

  “Don’t even speak on it,” Erion scolded. “We both know you wouldn’t.”

  “You don’t know what I would and wouldn’t do,” Jax murmured.

  “I know better than most.”

  Erion was right. Jax had first met his elder brother, Gare, at the Academy of Arcane Arts in Norin, but somehow he had struck it off better with his non-magical younger brother than the fellow Firebearer. Erion had been the one Jax had gone to after the incident. And Erion had been the one to bring Baldair into the picture just in time for the trial, begging for Jax’s life.

  “You knew a different man. It’s been a long three years.”

  Erion had the sense not to object outright. “True… But I believe I know some fundamental truths about you. If I didn’t, I would not have fought for you then. Or continued to fight for you today.”

  “Let them think what they will.” Jax picked up one of the books in the stack he had been neglecting. “It’s better that way.”

  “I don’t believe that.” Erion shook his head. “They will see you as a good man yet.”

  “I don’t want them to.”

  “Jax—”

  “And you shouldn’t either.”

  “You can’t stop me.”

  “It’ll get you in trouble one day, Erion,” Jax sighed.

  “Why?”

  “Because, one day, I will have actually snapped.” The voices in his head were back to being quiet. They usually grew silent in the presence of his unorthodox friends, who were also his keepers and owners. But their echoes were impossible to ignore and became louder by the day.

  “I doubt that.”

  Jax snorted, not dignifying the objection with a proper response.

  “You’re a good man, Jax. What you did was for the right reasons, even if—”

  “Never mention it again.” The fire flared again. Jax took a deep breath to get himself and the flames under control before he burnt the book in his lap. “Never mention it to anyone ever, or I cannot be held responsible for my actions against you, or anyone else.”

  Every time Erion tested the waters on the matter, Jax made sure he pushed back further. It was better for everyone, her memory included, if no one mentioned the events that led to his conscription to the crown. Erion meant well, but Jax was beyond saving. His immortal soul had died alongside hers.

  “If you don’t trust yourself, trust in Baldair and me. We won’t allow you to become the evil you seem bent on thinking you are.”

  Jax sighed and tugged at his hair, knotting and unknotting it. It was better if everyone thought he was evil. If he was evil, he could live with himself. He could have an explanation for what happened three years ago. He could hide the truth of what had led him to murder and preserve her memory.

  “Sometimes, I think it would be better if I lived up to the world’s horrible expectations of me,” Jax whispered.

  Jax stared into the flames once more, seeing beyond them. The face of the woman he was about to send to the Father’s realms transformed into the face of his dead lover. She stared back at him with her hollow eyes and gaping mouth; silent screams filled his ears as his fire consumed her. Jax pressed his eyes closed.

  “What’re you reading?” Erion asked, having the sense to shift the topic. He leaned over, inspecting the book in Jax’s lap. “That again?”

  They had scoured the library several times over when they’d first arrived for any information on Adela. Most was scribed in the form of storybook lore, but they had consumed it eagerly like children on their hunt for long lost treasure. Treasure that, according to all the tales, Adela took with her as she fled Oparium and the Emperor’s soldiers.

  “I thought we may have missed something.” Jax flipped the page uselessly. “After all, now that we’re ghost hunting for different reasons, maybe I’ll catch something new.”

  Erion snorted. “Southerners and their superstitions. It’s stories like that which have resulted in sorcerers being so ill-treated here.”

  Jax couldn’t deny it. Where the West had celebrated sorcerers since before its annexation to the Empire, back into the days of antiquity, the South shunned them. Much of it had to do with the Crystal Caverns—a place of unspeakable power that had been sought through the ages in the most nefarious ways. If there was a place of nightmares and curses made real, it was there.

  But it was a meager excuse for the persecution of all sorcerers.

  “Well, pass me one.” Erion held out his hand.

  “I thought you didn’t believe in ghosts?” Jax grinned, obliging the man.

  “I don’t.” Erion gave the matter a long moment’s thought. “But there is clearly something to this. She did have that mark on her hand.”

  “Speaking of…” Jax flipped open one of the books he had set aside. “Look at this one. We didn’t pick it up before because it’s not explicitly about the pirates, just the ‘history’ of

  Oparium sailing.” He pointed to a drawing of Adela’s mark on the page.

  “The mark of Adela is one all sailors are familiar with, as it was used for a number of applications,” Erion read aloud. “Right side up, it marked the pirate queen’s territory. Up-side down, it would be found carved into doors and painted on walls to mark traitors and enemies for death. Her legion would even carve the mark into the right hand of those caught stealing from her brood.”

  Jax was waiting for Erion’s eyes to lock with his own when the man looked up from the page.

  “Renalee had the mark on her right hand, carved just so,” Jax emphasized.

  “You think she stole something?”

  “If she did, wouldn’t it be convenient for whoever she crossed to impersonate the pirate queen?” That the townspeople believed Adela was still among them was obvious enough in their reactions to the murder. It’d be enough for someone to hide behind.

  “Makes more sense than a ghost,” Erion mused. “Perhaps innocent Renalee wasn’t so innocent after all.”

  9. ERION

  DESPITE LINGERING EXHAUSTION from the prior night’s revelries, Erion burned the midnight oil again. Only this time, books were his primary company.

  Only when dawn winked through the windows did Erion slip into bed, and he kept sleeping until his room was bright. It was a late night and a late rise, but, as long as he wasn’t utterly hungover, he still woke before Baldair or Jax. It didn’t mean he wasn’t tired. He was exhausted to the bone. But habit trumped exhaustion, and he could think of no better way to

  shake the aftershocks of a night of far too much excess than with discipline.

  Dressing in his usual training clothing—a worn linen shirt and soft leather trousers—brought back some normalcy. A wide belt held his sword and scabbard, familiar, stabilizing weights that were much needed after the past day’s events. Erion rested his hand on the pommel. It had been a gift from his father when he had first begun traveling south as a boy, shortly after befriending the prince by chance on one of Baldair’s few visits to the West with Prince Aldrik.

  The Imperial manor, generously dubbed the “summer palace” despite not being very palace-like, was situated on the far edge of the southernmost port of Oparium. Nestled in the woods, Erion had ample space for running laps and viciously attacking trees without any person complaining of the thunk, thunk, thunk of his sword.

  By the time he started back for the manor, the sun was high, and he was dripping with sweat. A plume of smoke chimneyed into the sky like a beacon. Erion passed through the front gate into a wide inner courtyard. Stables that had previously been packed were now empty, deep furrows in the mud the only remnants of the quantity of people they had invited to their soirée.

  Offset to the side of the stables was a pile of refuse, currently aflame. Jax stood back, leaning against the wall of the manor. His dark eyes reflected the flickering orange light, as though Erion could see the magic he was maintaining as their garbage from the prior night burned.

  A man exited from a side door
holding a bloody pile of cloth. His eyes met Erion’s, and he quickly threw the wad into the flames before scurrying back into the manor. Erion didn’t blame him; he didn’t want to face it either. He tore his eyes away and started in through the front door. He’d seen enough burn; the woman’s immolating body from Rite

  of Sunset scarred his memory. He didn’t want to see anything more.

  Guilt flushed through him as he closed the door and realized that Jax didn’t have the option to walk away from the fire.

  “How did you sleep?” Baldair asked from behind the billiards table.

  “Well enough.” Erion strolled into the room, pulling up the bottom of his shirt to wipe the sweat from his face and hands.

  “Well enough to have already been running drills.” Baldair gave a wide yawn, clearly expressing how he felt in regards to the notion. “Seriously, what did the trees ever do to you? I heard you chopping away at them for half the morning.”

  “Some of us aren’t blessed with the gift of the sword and actually have to work for our skill.” Erion folded his arms, glancing at the table. The books from the night before were spread out across its surface. “You can read?”

  Baldair gave a mocking laugh. “The man has jokes! Yes, while I am not my brother, I can read.”

  Just the mention of Crown Prince Aldrik brought a sour note to Baldair’s voice.

  “Jax give these to you?” Erion looked out the window at the brightening day. The sun was chasing away the thick sea fog of the morning, revealing a brilliant blue beneath the gray sky only obscured on occasion by the thick plume of black smoke from Jax’s labors.

  “He pointed out a few passages he thought would be useful given recent events,” Baldair affirmed and tapped one such passage—the one on the hand marking. “But I don’t know what it means for us.”

  “I kept thinking on it myself.” Erion shifted his weight, leaning against the table. “We know it’s a mark for theft. We know she worked at a jewelry store. Perhaps she did have some enemies?”

  “Doesn’t seem like the thieving type.”