I can feel the skin of the worlds peeling apart. Unrest screams in my blood. I ask the Head of my Line, and he tells me it is time.
Seikhiel sat at the bar at Enoch’s. An untouched glass of spiced melomel sat on the glossy wood surface, and on another day he might have already ordered another. Perhaps. The pub proprietor had stopped by mere minutes ago, leaving a plate loaded with treats, trying to tempt him. Seikhiel had no appetite.
The stool beside him creaked, the sound almost lost in the usual afternoon hubbub, but Seikhiel shied from it anyhow. He had made a decision, and however difficult, however distasteful, he must stay the course. Any of his colleagues would likely try to dissuade him.
A gloved finger reached across and prodded at the melomel. The rich reddish liquid sloshed.
“You planning to drink that, or just admire it?”
Seikhiel shrugged, prompting a sigh from the angel beside him. Some days, Raaqiel communicated entirely in sighs, punctuated with the odd eyebrow lift or one-shouldered shrug. “Shouldn’t you socialize with someone your own age?” He didn’t mean it. He enjoyed Raaqiel’s company, for all that he was yet so young.
And also that his years as a cadet had made the lives of his teachers markedly unpleasant.
“We’re colleagues,” Raaqiel reminded him, as he always did. Seikhiel nodded, as he always did. “And,” Raaqiel continued, “you have that look about you, the one you wear when you’re deciding to chase off after that cat boy of yours and leave the rest of us stuck with extra work.”
“I have no intention of chasing Luccan, but if I see him I shall tell him that you still call him ‘cat boy’.” If? When. Luccan would surely feel the same pull, would hear the same words chanted in his blood. Sphere in Heaven, Sphere in Hell…
Raaqiel reached for the plate of assorted tapas, the one Enoch had left for Seikhiel. “Whatever you say.” He scooped some crunchy fried dal onto a spinach leaf, added an olive, and rolled it up. “What are we going to tell your boss?”
“Lord Sidriel—”
Raaqiel made a rude noise and a dismissive gesture. “Lord Sidriel is irrelevant. He doesn’t mind your extracurriculars. I’m talking about him.”
Him. Seikhiel had known all along, but still he hated to face the truth. He hated that no matter how necessary his journey to the lower Spheres, his commander would neither permit it nor excuse the absence. He hated to think what punishment would follow. He hated it, and he hated himself.
What a coward he had become.
Raaqiel leaned back, scrutinizing Seikhiel with that pinched, calculating expression of his, the one that had always meant trouble. “Is it important?” he asked, his voice pitched low, suddenly emptied of irreverence and arrogance. Seikhiel appreciated the sincerity, even as it raised alarms in the back of his head.
“Possibly the most important mission of all.”
“That tiresome prophecy again?” When Seikhiel failed to answer, Raaqiel swiveled his stool and looked out across the knots of students that always crowded the dining tables. “Nothing for it, I suppose. I’ll have to take on teaching your classes until you get back.” He sighed. “Damn you.”
Seikhiel almost laughed. How absurd, that he could find humor at a time like this. How absurd that a former student was the nearest he had to a friend. How absurd his life. Damn him. He shrugged. “It may yet happen.” His blood chilled at his imprudent remark. Too much revealed. Too near his deepest fears.
Raaqiel’s too-sharp gaze darted up and down the bar. He leaned closer still, close enough to make tongues wag, and he whispered, “Akieryon?”
The name in Seikhiel’s ear felt like cold water across his face. His failure, the student he had lost. Possibly his downfall. He suppressed a flinch. Even so, Raaqiel read his expression with unnerving ease.
“You think he’s involved?”
“What, precisely, did you think ‘the Twins of Darkness and Light’ means?” Seikhiel hissed through his teeth. He should have used gentler words. Once, centuries ago, Raaqiel and Akieryon had been classmates. Once, Seikhiel might have helped him.
Raaqiel surprised him with a grin. “You know I try not to waste brain space thinking about the weird problems you get yourself caught up in.”
Indeed.
“I suppose you think you’re done with weird problems of your own?”
“You know me.” Raaqiel stuffed more fried dal in his mouth. “I’m here for the easy life I never expected to live. But,” he added, scooping raita onto a large spinach leaf, “I hate him more than I want to slack off. So go, save the worlds, and I’ll hang around here and cover for you.”
A faint tremor shook the pub, strong enough to rattle the dishes, but only just. The skin of the worlds ached, strained almost to breaking. The clusters of students never looked up from their studies. The waitstaff continued their work, serving and busing as though nothing had happened.
Seikhiel nodded. “Thanks.”
“Pfft.” Raaqiel gestured at the food. “You know this is on your tab, right?”
Out of habit, Chaighan kept his gaze lowered as he walked the upper corridors of the castle. He should look alert. He should watch his surroundings. Still, he had had less than a year to shake off his old life, and many invisible chains still weighed him down.
Anyway, the wards would alert him of any trouble long before his eyes could.
His feet took him along the familiar corridor, tiled in blue, exquisite with gold and white detailing. At the door he knocked twice, then entered, as usual.
“Chaighan, good morning.”
Chaighan looked up, and he smiled at the one demon whose gaze he routinely met. “Chancellor.” He saluted, and they sat together at a small table that groaned under the weight of a generous breakfast.
Chancellor Tharaiyelagh was, by all accounts, the least threatening specimen the Seyzharel race had ever produced. Slim and small, he had not quite reached his first century, a fact which showed in his boyish grin. He kept his plumage unfashionably short, cropped all the way to the scalp in the back, which only served to emphasize his youthfulness, his soft features, his slim horns. It also drew attention to his lack of wings.
Like Chaighan, Chancellor Tharaiyelagh had had his wings clipped. However, the procedure Tharaiyelagh had endured had been professionally done, brutal and swift, a punishment for breaking the law. The holy seal burned into his back stopped even the best of healers from making those wings ever grow again. Not that Enci didn’t try, even when everyone begged him to stop. Chaighan pretended not to know how the healer had nursed blistered fingers for days afterward.
Without preamble, Chancellor Tharaiyelagh took up a silver dagger and dragged the blade across his own forearm. He let the blood flow into a small crystal goblet. Business as usual. He passed the goblet to Chaighan, who cut open his own arm and let their blood mingle in the cup. Then they sat in silence, each pressing a square of soft linen against his fresh wound. Tharaiyelagh took the goblet back, and he gave it a gentle swirl.
“Are your horns growing in?”
Chaighan’s hand flew to the side of his head, to the nub just breaking the skin at his temple. Chancellor Tharaiyelagh sipped at the blood with an air of innocence, as though he had not just asked an invasive personal question. A hot flush crept up Chaighan’s cheeks. “They’ve started,” he said, keeping his voice pitched low to hide his emotions. At this point, in his old life, his masters would have had him bound and held down while a common smith cut his horns down to the bone again. He tried to shake himself free of the memories. Those days were behind him now, fading farther into the past with every bright morning, with each monthly meeting with the Chancellor, and yet when he touched his new horns, he could almost feel a knee digging into the small of his back.
Chancellor Tharaiyelagh passed the goblet back across the table. “I expect them to be magnificent,” he said, sounding a bit too much like their prince.
Chaighan sipped carefully, letting the mineral taste of their mingled blood warm him. Magnificence, he had come to learn, was expected in this place, in this nesting-tale palace of smoke and crystal. Their prince demanded beauty, grace, and grandeur. And none of them, not a single demon among them, wanted to disappoint Prince Baleirithys.
“I hope so.” Chaighan passed the goblet back and reached for a plate of pastries he could not yet name. And he did. He hoped to please his prince just as much as anyone here.
“Lord Baleirithys has a special mission for you.”
Chaighan choked on a bite of something spiced and buttery. He wheezed and sputtered, fighting to draw breath around crumbs that felt like shards of glass in his airways. “Me?” he managed at last. Through a blur of tears he saw Tharaiyelagh hide a smile behind another sip of the blood.
Far too much like their prince.
The smell of a cooking fire drew Luccan out of his dreams. His ears followed his nose in twitching. His grip on Warbringer tightened, more out of habit than any sense of a threat. He opened his eyes, and he blinked in the sharpness of the early sunlight.
A short distance away, Ragheiyont crouched over a small, smokeless fire. He had spitted something fleshy above it, and he took a stick and prodded at several lumps among the embers. Luccan squinted, not believing what he saw. Ragheiyont noticed in an instant.
“Fine clippin’ day, yeah?” Grinning, he gave the spit a turn. “I caught us some thatchfish. They’re powerful bland, but good protein.”
Luccan struggled with the evidence before his eyes. He had slept for an hour at most, and lightly at that. How had he not noticed the youngling steal off to go fishing? How had he not noticed until the smell of the fire reached him? “You… You’re making breakfast?” He scrubbed a hand across his eyes.
“Sure. Demons gotta eat, yeah? Or were ya twitch ta walk all the way to the castle on empties?”
Luccan grunted. “You are terrible at being a prisoner,” he said. He tossed his worn old cloak aside and shook his hair out. “Why did you not try to escape?”
“Didn’t care to.” Ragheiyont watched with the undisguised fascination of the very young as Luccan took his bone comb from its case and dragged the close-set teeth through his hair. “An’ why should I? Got nowhere better ta be.”
Luccan sensed a lie in that last statement, but he left it unchallenged, much as he ignored the way Ragheiyont’s speech patterns seemed to drift with no governing logic. He put his comb away, and he unspooled the soft gauze that wrapped his hands. He flexed his fingers, flexed his claws. Ragheiyont’s eyes widened, as they should. Luccan’s claws could easily end his noisy little life.
“Ya stripy everywhere, jo?”
Luccan’s breath escaped him in a huff of annoyance. He threw the gauze into a pouch, and he snatched up his cloak. “My name,” he snarled, “is not jo. It’s not ji’oghlo. It’s not szeah ou lhoue.”
“Hold up there!” wailed Ragheiyont. “You speak Dragonish? Since when!”
“Since before your race existed.” Luccan wanted to maintain his anger, to use it as a tool, as he intended to use this fledgling before him. It faded too quickly, somehow, and it left him feeling nothing but tired. “It caused quite a stir, you know, when the Sacred Dragon of the South chose this Sphere for her nesting grounds.” That had been the first time since the incident that he had set his eyes upon angels, the first time he had seen—
“What’s this Sacred Dragon thingie?”
“Don’t you know your own lore?” Obviously not. No one would disrespect the Head of his own Line like that.
Ragheiyont’s face darkened. “Who does, jo?” He turned his attention back to the fire, to the food there. “There’s scarce four hundred of us left, and that’s a generous count. Hawks and Ravens war across Seyzharel lands unchecked. The slavers rule the southern wilds. Word is that the prince does what he can, but it’s slow going rebuilding a kingdom, y’know?”
Luccan watched in silence as the fledgling took the spit from its place and pinched a flake of fish off of it. He had heard rumors of the near-extinction of the Seyzharel, of course, but he had assumed every word was exaggerated. Now he had to accept the truth of it. “How?” he demanded. “How have the mighty Seyzharel come to this?” One drop to Crown him, Mad him, make him King… The words sang in his brain, taking on new meaning, a meaning fueled by need most visceral, most horrifying.
It’s so much harder to save the world from a man who thinks he is doing the same.
With deft hands, Ragheiyont split open a roasted tuber of some sort. He dumped half of the fish on top of its steaming innards. “Dunno, jo,” he said, not looking up from his work. “I heard plenty of nesting tales about the sleeping king, but I can’t winnow fact from fancy. It’s all long before my time.”
“Most everything is long before your time.” Luccan accepted both Ragheiyont’s yelp of protest and the breakfast he handed over.
“I’m a hundred and twenty, jo!”
“I told you not to call me that.” Luccan nibbled at the fish. Ragheiyont had not lied about the flavor.
“What then? Ya gave me a mouthful yesterday.” Ragheiyont threw himself down on the mossy grass, kicking up a fresh waft of its spicy scent. “Or are you the titles sort? Your Bleak Terror, or whatever?”
Luccan hardened himself against a laugh. This upstart always seemed to land just near enough to the appropriate form of address to amuse him. “Luccan,” he said, hiding his smile in a bite of his steaming breakfast. “You can call me Luccan.”
Seikhiel sat with his eyes closed, waiting for the kettle to whistle. He had packed his essentials, had readied his weapons. Now only one task remained: his final cup of tea before departure.
Perhaps his final cup of tea forever.
He had spent a long while before his shelves of tea, selecting just the right one for this moment. Now the kettle screamed, and he poured the scalding water over his favorite tuocha. The first warm notes of the aged black tea drifted to him. He set the kettle aside, and he brought the tea back to his tiny kitchen table.
He had no name for the dread within him, no rational explanation for the grim feeling that he may never again return to his modest little house. He knew only that he felt the worlds shaking asunder, and that blood must be paid.
If Seikhiel asked his commander, he knew he would say that that blood should be Seikhiel’s. Recompense, remuneration for his lapse, for letting Akieryon escape. He had failed. In every possible regard, Seikhiel had failed, and now the price of his failure weighed down upon him.
Seikhiel poured the tea into his cup. The dark amber liquid reflected the thoughts clouding his eyes. He lifted it. He took a careful sip.
Even after centuries of practice, he just missed scalding his tongue. The rich, mellow bouquet of the tea drowned his senses and stilled his mind, bringing much-needed focus. His chances of success may be slim, but he may yet manage to save Akieryon. He may yet atone for his failures.
And, if he managed a bit of spectacular good fortune, he may even escape his commander’s notice.