Invincible (3 page)

THREE

JOY FROWNED AT THE
hunched pile of clothes and towels and bloody frog.

“Ink is not my enemy.” She didn't know much, but she knew that
better than she knew her own missing heartbeat.

Graus Claude heaved himself up on swaddled feet. “Perhaps it is
more accurate to say that he believes you are
his
enemy,” he amended. “And not just his enemy, but all of the Twixt's.”

“
What?
Why?” Joy demanded,
following the Bailiwick as he squeezed into the bathroom and fiddled with the
taps. “Is it because I'm the most dangerous human—or half human—in the world?
Because I was born with the Sight? Because he gave me his scalpel? Because I can
erase Folk marks?” Her voice rose above the splashing water. “We know all that
already! It's why I accepted a
signatura
to protect
my True Name—to take my place and be part of your world, to prove that I'm no
danger. It's why I agreed to join the Twixt!”

Graus Claude turned off the water and patted his hands dry as
his upper two hands rubbed the hand towel over his brow. He ignored the mirror.
It ignored him back, showing no evidence of a giant frog in its reflection.

“There may have been some misinterpretations concerning your
person that had been previously unimagined or unnoticed, and have therefore gone
unaddressed,” he said. “As your sponsor, the fault is mine, although I can
honestly say that the possibility was quite beyond my capacity to theorize or
even imagine, given the circumstances.” His icy blue gaze regarded her
uncomfortably, his four hands wringing the hand towels into ropes. “In fact, I
must confess that without the oath that Master Ink required of me, I would find
myself sharing his conflicted loyalties.” He folded the towels into squares and
set them down in a neat stack. “But you can rest assured that you have nothing
to fear from me, Miss Malone, as he has ensured that you have at least one ally,
one neutral party, until we can sort out this sordid affair.”

Joy exhaled slowly. “I have no idea what you're talking about
and I am
really
getting tired of it.”

The Bailiwick sniffed through flat nostrils. “Tired? Indeed, I
imagine you are.” He glanced out the window at the paling blue sky. “It must be
only hours until dawn. It has been a long night. A
very
long night...” The Bailiwick plucked at his ruined clothes.
“Might I request that we sit down for the remainder of this conversation? I find
myself quite exhausted by the evening's events.”

She knew—
knew
, mind you—that he was
manipulating her by using the proper rules of etiquette, decorum and polite
society that he'd drummed into her head during their tutoring sessions in order
to prepare her for the gala, but she still felt guilty for badgering him when he
was clearly in pain. Joy bowed slightly and led him into the hall in
silence.

The Bailiwick might be invisible, but even with Dad gone, she
didn't feel comfortable sitting out in the open. She pushed open the door to
Stef's room and stepped aside to allow Graus Claude to enter. After contorting
himself gently through the door frame, he ambled into the bedroom on toweled
feet and eased himself onto the bed. The springs groaned in protest. He sighed
in relief.

“Can I get you anything?” she asked.

He leaned back. “No, thank you, I think I can—”

“Good,” Joy said, cutting him off and shutting the door.
“Explain.”

The Bailiwick threw her a rueful glare, but it was harder to
wield an aura of commanding authority while sitting on her brother's bed.

“Very well,” he said. “You might as well make yourself
comfortable. It is likely the last time you will be able to do so again.”

Joy grabbed the desk chair and dragged it closer. “That sounds
ominous.”

Graus Claude nodded. “It is.” As she settled into her seat, he
lifted his legs into an odd sort of lotus position, pillowing his bandaged feet
beneath him, his knees bent behind. He rocked forward, putting the bulk of his
weight on his belly. “Master Ink was good to remind me of my oaths, both to you,
as your sponsor, as well as those mandated by the King and Queen as a member of
the Council.” He paused. “As you know, there is no oath that requires loyalty to
the monarchy—it is part of the rules they spoke into being, the very words that
created the Twixt.”

“Yes.” This was nothing new. So why did Graus Claude look so
serious/uncomfortable/afraid? His gaze didn't look so much at her as through
her, as if he was avoiding direct eye contact, speaking to her from a great
distance.

“The oaths we take when we swear allegiance to the Council are
designed to align us to the safekeeping of our world.” Graus Claude hunched
farther into his squat. “Do you know what we say about the origins of the Twixt?
Even without the memory of the King and Queen who spoke the world into being, we
somehow managed to remember enough to know that the Twixt was a place of safety,
of rules and order cleaved from the Elemental Wild.” Joy nodded. She'd heard the
phrase before. The Bailiwick looked at her expectantly. She raised her eyebrows.
He demurred. “It is an apt description, if not expressly clear when employing
proper nouns.”

Joy frowned. He'd lost her. “I thought ‘Elemental Wild' meant
that the Twixt was made back when Earth was forming, full of volcanoes and
glaciers and stuff—mountains growing, oceans receding, dinosaurs dying and all
that.”

Graus Claude was surprised enough to chuckle. “The Twixt is
hardly
that
old,” he said. “Remember, humans and
Folk used to share this world and there was a peace between us, reflected in
your stories—we shared magic and technology, knowledge and medicine, land,
children...” He sighed. Joy knew there had not been children born to the Folk
for nearly a thousand years. “There was a time when there were alliances and
oaths and bonds between us, before our True Names were used to force us into
servitude and retaliations became swift and dark and dire. That is when myths
were born. The brightest daydreams became the darkest fairy tales, horrors
whispered around the fire. Those were the dark times, when there was war between
us.” He shook his head. “No, that is not when the Twixt was made. It was made
when the King and Queen decided to create order, rules to govern the land and
our people in order to protect both humans and non—before we tore the world
apart. Those who agreed to obey these laws became the Folk,” he said. “And those
who rejected order, preferring chaos and the battle of wills, they were called
Elementals and their part of the world was called the Wild.”

Joy tried to wrap her brain around this new information. She
swallowed before speaking. “So they were Folk?” she asked. “Wild Folk. Folk
without rules?”

“In a sense. Yet they were like another thing entirely—older,
primal, powerful and proud, with deep ties to the physical world, preserving the
shape of what's real. From them, we took our courtly names: Earth, Air, Fire,
Water, Aether...you are familiar with these.” His gaze slipped to the window
where morning painted the clouds late-summer colors, pink and purple and bronze.
“They were the first ones, crafty and cruel. They did not seek to ally with
humans nor did they have any interest in peace. On the contrary, they enjoyed
sowing chaos and encouraging wrath among mortal creatures.” He sighed again,
sounding tired. “The Old Ways were forged in that time when life was lawless,
swift and absolute, when mischief presaged violence and violent ends. The
Elementals were eager to stoke the fires of dissent and sought no compromise.
They would not bend to the rules.” He undid a button at his collar, which was
equivalent to the noble toad collapsing into an inelegant heap. “They were
prepared to undo everything forged between our peoples, everything the King and
Queen hoped would protect future generations on both sides from folly and death.
But the Elementals were unapologetic, rigid, unwilling to be tethered by logic
or laws.” He paused. “Once the King and Queen declared themselves sovereigns,
the Elementals were deemed enemies of both human and Folk.”

He was speaking in excuses, platitudes. Joy felt nauseous.
“What happened?”

The Bailiwick lifted his eyes to hers. “They were hunted down.
Destroyed. Rooted out for the good of us all.” He rumbled like a whisper of
distant thunder. “It brought about the Age of Man. The Twixt was forged in their
blood and on their bones.”

Joy shuddered.
Genocide.
Her voice
was very small, her fingers twisted into white knots. “I thought the Folk didn't
kill one another.” The words fell like bricks between them—the beginnings of a
wall.

“They were not Folk. They were
Elementals
,” he mumbled gruffly. His fingers squeezed his shins and
the points of his knees. “We needed peace. We needed rules to govern and
protect. We needed to create order out of chaos if any of us were to survive.
That is why Master Ink reminded me of my Council oath—not simply to serve the
Folk of the Twixt but, specifically, to stand against the ‘Elemental Wild,' to
protect our world from the threat of Elementals and the chaos they sowed in
their wake.” He shook his head again. “I did not think they meant it
literally
—it was a figure of speech, an old saying
left over from the days of my mentor Ironshod and his kin.”

“Sort of like the Imminent Return?” she guessed.

“Yes,” Graus Claude said. “That traditional salutation survived
Aniseed's spell of forgetting, but we were ignorant of its deeper meaning until
you broke the chandelier in the Grand Ballroom, releasing our collective
memories of the King and Queen. We had forgotten about the promised Return of
our people from their refuge beyond this world.” The Bailiwick looked heavier,
grim. “We forgot that they were waiting for the Council to send word that peace
had been restored and to open the door.” He touched a palm to his belly.
“Centuries of waiting, wondering what had happened to the world they'd left
behind, their families and friends... I cannot imagine the suffering I
caused.”

Joy wanted to remind him that it was Aniseed who had tricked
him into casting the Amanya spell, erasing the memories of everyone in the Twixt
so that she could lead her coup against the Council, violating the Folk's
unswerving loyalty...but she couldn't. It was true—Graus Claude was the one
who'd cast the spell for his lover, Aniseed, not knowing of her planned
betrayal. Joy twisted her fingers together in silence.

He looked at her strangely. “But you saw it, didn't you?” he
asked with a spark of hope. “The world beyond the Bailiwick?”

“Yes.”

“And you opened the door?”

“Yes.”

He leaned forward, his voice low. “Did you see them?”

Joy flushed, uncomfortable with the memory. “Y-yes.”

His eyes were barely slits of sapphire light. “Tell me.”

She did, and the story came spilling out as if she could
explain away everything that had happened. “After I removed Aniseed's
signatura
, I used the scalpel to cut through the other
sigils that locked the door...” Joy trailed off, uncertain how Graus Claude
would react to her erasing the Council's sacred safeguards, but he didn't
comment. “The princess ran through as soon as the door was open. And there was
an army camped on the hills.” She knotted her fingers in her shirt. “The King
and Queen saw us—Ink and I—in the doorway. They said—” She faltered, but they
were not words that she would ever forget. “They said,
‘Behold the Destroyer of Worlds.'
”

Graus Claude sat up, his spine pressed against the wall. He
blinked twice. “I admit that does not sound like the most fortuitous of
greetings,” he said slowly. “What happened then?”

“They said to come closer,” she tried to explain. “I didn't
want to, but I—”

“You obeyed,” he said. “You could not help but obey. They are
our monarchs, after all. Those are the rules.” He tilted his head at her
expression, which felt oddly lopsided on her face. “And yet...?”

“I don't know. I stepped through the doorway,” she said. “And
the ground
cracked
.” Joy could feel the give of the
earth under her toes, the sudden lurch of lost balance and dread. “It split
right under my foot. Ink grabbed me and pulled me back.”

The Bailiwick stayed silent for four long breaths. “And
then?”

“The army charged,” she said. “We ran.”

He folded two sets of arms. “A wise course of action.”