Broken Quill [2] (3 page)

“Yeah. Let me know if anyone leaves
me another love note.”

Grey considered, then nodded. “You
think there’ll be another murder?”

I got out of his car and stretched.
No folk about this early in the morning, just the cool breeze and a scent of
wet road after rain. “Let’s hope not. Farewell, Detective.”

He drove away and I ambled around
the outskirts of Riverwood Plaza, past the recently repaired fountain—which a
Voidling had blown up not too long ago—and let myself into my shop.

The first thing that always hit me
as I entered the shop was the smell of good, old books. That heady scent of
vanilla and something akin to freshly mown grass. Evanescent chandelier light
cast the maze of shelves and tiny warrens of towering books in a soft, faux
light. Navigating my shop almost required a map, the books were so many and the
roads between them so narrow and winding. I loved little nooks and crannies,
secret rooms and deep pockets. My bookshop was a labyrinth of cases and
shelves, doused in the scent of ten million pages and the creak of old leather.

I’d made this place home after the
war and my exile from Forget and all of that ugly business. Now, for the second
time in three months, it seemed Forget was bringing trouble to my door.

Murder was an ugly business—perhaps
the ugliest of business—and my head was killing me. If this was tied to Forget,
to the Knights and Ascension City, and all signs pointed toward the positive
there, then this was only the beginning, an opening salvo in a game of the
highest stakes. I was being targeted, but by whom? The last words of the bloody
message worried me somewhat.

Long live the Immortal King!

I
was
the Immortal King. A
name, earned in Atlantis, that had spread through the realms of Forget as
though it were wildfire, after I had seized the Infernal Clock and died for my
folly—only to be resurrected by one of the Clock’s crystal rose petals. I
rubbed at the scar across my palm yet again, where the petal had burned into my
body and brought me back to life.

Was the killer being sarcastic? A
lot of powerful people wanted me dead as well as several nation-worlds of
not-so-powerful people. I didn’t have enough to go on—not yet. Again, I had a
feeling that more pieces of the puzzle would fall into place soon. At least it
wasn’t me that had died this time.

No matter. I had to make a call and
catch a few hours sleep. In that order. If I was in danger—if the game was
afoot—then Sophie and Ethan could be, as well.

Sophie Levy and Ethan Reilly, my only
two friends in the world. Both just shy of twenty, both very much in love with
each other. About a month ago Sophie had given me her old touch screen mobile
phone. So far the phone held three numbers—Sophie’s, Ethan’s, and Paddy’s Pub
down the road.

I called ’Phie’s phone and got her
message bank. The time was only quarter to six in the morning, after all.

“Sophie, this is Declan. There was
some unpleasantness in town last night.” What could I say over the phone? I
didn’t know how the Western Australian Police operated, but could they tap into
phone calls? I’d read enough thrillers and seen enough TV shows to be wary. “I
hope you and Ethan are taking care. I’d like to see you later on today.” That
would do. I ended the call and tossed the phone aside.

Before collapsing on the old leather
couch in my writing alcove, amidst the towering stacks of a hundred thousand
books, I poured myself a glass of water and tossed back four painkillers. More
toxins for my bulletproof liver to process, but my head was killing me. Sleep
was swift and sure and crimson.

*~*~*~*

I awoke a little after noon and
didn’t bother to open the shop for what was left of the business day. Truth be
told, I didn’t open the shop for much of anything these days. My thoughts too
often turned to Tal—or Clare—and made me a foul proprietor of books old and
new. And I didn’t like to part with my books at the best of times. At least I
had enough money, stolen from Forget after my exile, to last me a few more
steak dinners. Just one of the perks of being a Knight and hoarding fantastical
treasure from a thousand war-torn worlds.

The shop was more of a refuge—a
barrier against the night and the Void unseen. In the months since I’d last
returned to Forget, undone the Degradation, and brought Atlantis forward
through time to the Plains of Perdition—in the months since I’d died and come
back to life—I’d spent considerable time constructing a platform of many and
varied protection wards around the shop.

I didn’t want to die again, not
anytime soon, and I was as safe here as anywhere on True Earth—the real world.

So bring your murderers and your
Voidlings. Bring your Renegades and your vengeful Knights Infernal. I’ll do
what I’ve always done and stop them every damn time.

My phone buzzed on the coffee table,
next to the typewriter and between half-empty bottles of wine, scotch, and a
regrettable mix of the two. I picked it up and tapped the screen a few times.
Two missed calls and a message from Sophie.

Hi,
Declan. We’re @ the uni tav
if you want to come down for a
drink? What’s wrong?

It would take me ten minutes to send
a reply with the damn thing—bloody autocorrect—so I stood up instead, stretched
away the aches and pains, and shrugged into my waistcoat.

The grey coat was heavier than it
should have been, given the thin layer of material. Its extra weight came from
two sources. One, I’d imbued the cloth with several Willful protections—magical
shields, to put it crudely. I’d been stabbed twice so far this year—once
fatally—and I may have been a touch slow on the uptake, but I do tend to learn
from my mistakes. And two, the waistcoat was fitted with a special holster.

A Roper Hartley novel was tucked
into that holster, ready to be drawn at a moment’s notice. The Knights In
fernal, although not averse to guns and swords, dueled often
and most effectively with weaponized words.

With books of the Story Thread.

We could pull constructs of Will
from the pages, from stories written by men and women with the talent to
harness the power at the heart of creation. Roper’s fourth novel, written by a
man long dead named John Richardson, was where I’d learned how to sew wards and
defensive enchantments into my clothing these last few months. Times were, I’d
have had an army of enchanters at my disposal to do that for me, but times
were… were times gone.

Dressed to impress, I took a sip of
scotch from an almost empty bottle on the counter and ordered a taxi to pick me
up in ten minutes from the corner just down the road. I pocketed my wallet,
stuffed with small bills and an ATM card, and my keys plus bottle opener, and
wandered across the plaza for a kebab before any other business.

You have to feed a hangover grease
and chili sauce, and I was already regretting not swallowing a few more
painkillers.

My taxi arrived on time. I jumped
into the passenger seat and off we went.

Sophie and Ethan attended university
about a quarter of an hour away in Joondalup. They had recently, in the last
month, moved into student housing together just off campus, on Lakeside Drive.
I’d gone to the housewarming, bearing a tiny cactus in a colorful pot, and
drank all the children’s booze, feeling not unlike an old hound surrounded by
young, yappy pups.

The Edith Cowan University was a
large, lush collection of modern buildings with a wonderfully cheap tavern
slapped down in the heart of the campus, next to a man-made lake. The sun
glittered off the dyed-green water, next to a half-dozen rows of neatly planted
pine trees, which stretched a good twenty meters high toward the cloudless,
blue sky. The scent of pine needles and fried food, from the pizza shop next
door, was an enjoyable mix.

Entering the tavern, I moved around
a collection of black and red couches and plastic-backed metal chairs, around a
row of three worn pool tables and made my way to the bar. The bartender, a
lovely young girl in her early twenties with blonde hair and freckles, was
wearing a summer dress striped blue and white.

I doffed an invisible hat. “Good afternoon.
Cider in the sun, I think. Can I take a bottle of strawberry and lime and a
schooner glass with ice?”

“Sure,” she said. “How are you
today?”

I’d been here enough times to be
recognized. My usual haunt was Paddy’s Pub, just down the road from my bookshop,
but I’d found myself here more and more since Ethan and Sophie moved in
together. It was a good little drinking spot, full of students who should have
been studying but seemed to know better.

“So far so good. Better for seeing
you.”

She smiled. “Do you have class
today?”

“Keep a secret? I’m not actually a
student.”

“No?” She gasped. “What are you?”

Shadowless. Forgotten. Exile.
Arbiter. Immortal. Infernal... King. “Thirsty.”

“That’ll be nine-fifty then.”

I found Sophie and Ethan sitting outside
the front of the tavern, on a small courtyard in the sun overlooking the lake
and the pine forest. Sophie saw me first and motioned me over. She was playing
with a large, bulky camera. Her pale skin and dark, red hair made her easy to
spot. A few brave ducks had waddled up the steps and were begging for pizza
scraps at the busy tables.

 “Hey, boss,” Ethan, my
unofficial apprentice, said. We shook hands. “You look like you were up all
night.”

Sophie had found Ethan earlier this
year. He was Willful but had never been recruited by either the Knights or the
Renegades. He was Unfound—due to the stretch on resources during the Tome Wars.
He had grown up never knowing why he sometimes set things on fire with a
thought or found himself levitating when he awoke of a morning.

“We’ll get to that. Let me have a
sip of this cider first.”

Ethan scratched at his scraggly
stubble and brushed a hand back through his mop of dark hair. He had a thin
face and sharp eyes but a friendly smile. He was tapping away at one of those
laptop computers I saw everywhere these days. If not for him—and Clare
Valentine—I’d have been imprisoned on Starhold above Ascension City a few
months back.

“Not like you to call,” Sophie said,
still fiddling with her camera. She pressed a button near the viewfinder and
the back panel sprang open. She inserted a cartridge of film, and it nestled
into place with a satisfying click. “Smile, Declan.”

I did no such thing. The camera
flashed and spat out a square Polaroid, which developed quickly in the sun.

“That’s not actually half bad,”
Sophie said. “A little sullen and brooding, but we should scan this and set you
up on Facebook—find you some friends.”

“Facebook?”

Ethan scoffed. “You mean you’re not
on it?” He tapped away at his laptop and spun the device around to face me.

I glanced at the screen and did a
double take. “Is that… is that an image of the Fae Palace in Ascension City?”

“I snapped that shot last summer on
my phone, just after we took off in that cruiser and saved you from Starhold.
Set it as my profile pic when we got back from Forget.”

“You’re… not kidding.”

“People just think it’s from a movie
or something.”

Sophie slipped her photo of me into
a special, slim wallet of similar photographs. The album was bulging with shots
she’d taken.

“Guess you’ve found yourself a
hobby.” I refilled my schooner with delicious cider.

“So, what was your phone call all
about this morning?” she asked. “You don’t call. Ever. Should I be worried?”

I took a long sip and then filled
them both in on the details—the gruesome murder, the bloody message, and the
likelihood that I was being targeted in some nefarious, otherworldly plot.

“I saw that on the news this
morning. Not the message with your name, but the murder. Christ, what can pull
a man apart like that?” Ethan asked. He kept his voice low, mindful of the
people at nearby tables. Our conversation wasn’t exactly sunny-cider chatter.

“A whole slew of things, actually,”
Sophie said. “We study the bestiaries during our first few years at the Infernal
Academy. Everything from angels to demons to monsters to… things that have no
real classification.”

“Forget is big,” I said. “Infinitely
so. This creature, whatever it is, could be something the Knights have seen
before, or it could be something entirely new. The fact that it’s here, on True
Earth, perhaps favors the former explanation. Only the really nasty stuff, the
loud
stuff, can cross universal boundaries and navigate the Void and the Story
Thread.”

“Well, it has to be something
clever, doesn’t it? If it can leave you messages,” Ethan said.

Sophie nodded her agreement. “What
do you think it is?”

“Honestly? No idea. Despite the
mess, it’s too
clinical
for something cheap and nasty. I keep stumbling
over the fact that whatever killed the man took his heart. That’s mighty
troublin’, but I’m not sure why. If we had access to the Forgetful Library and
the catalogues of Certain Nightmare I could… but we don’t.”