The Miscreant (An Assassin's Blade Book 2) (11 page)

There was a twitch of his wrinkly face; an appreciative acknowledgment.

Lysa shot up from the table like she had a bulging cramp in her calf. “No, no,” she said, finger twirling madly, “it’s simpler than that. We’re still living, right? So that doesn’t make sense. It must record only the thoughts of the realm it’s in. Life and death — they’re two separate realms, yes?”

“Picture it as an overlay,” Rav said.

“Yes, that’s what I imagined. And nothing that goes in naturally can come out. Otherwise, no one would stay dead. Everyone would want to come back.”

Rav barely confirmed her suspicions before Lysa continued with her breakneck pace.

“So—”

“Hold on to your britches, girl,” I said, interrupting. “I don’t mean to blow a hole in your cheerful theories here, but we had corpses — live, animated corpses — at our heels. Now, I’m not suggesting they’re inhabited with dead people — or living, whatever term you prefer — but—”

“It would be an accurate suggestion,” Rav said. “Reapers. My brother employs them to go in and come out with what you saw as the reaped.”

“What’s with digging up the bodies on Mizridahl, then?” I asked.

“Bodies are vessels,” Rav explained. “When the inhabitants of this world are brought into the living realm, their spirit is ripped away from their vessel in this realm. Without a tether in the living world, they float about, unseen, useless. A similar phenomenon happens if they are separated from their body in this realm. Without an empty corpse to claim, they are sundered and cannot exist physically. But souls are not intended to leave this realm once they pass into it. The reapers… what they do is nothing short of torture. Once they take you from this realm, you become a husk. Broken and shattered, mindless. As you’ve seen.”

That brought up a lot of questions, and being a man who enjoys answers, I just
had
to inquire. “What do you people have here, stockyards of corpses? Let’s suppose I keel over tomorrow. What happens? I float about in this bloody world till my eye catches a body not in use?”

“You retain a copy of your body when you pass on,” Rav said.

“That’s not important,” Lysa insisted.

I side-eyed her. “It’s pretty fucking important.”

“What’s
more
important,” she said, “is that we can stop this extinction event
and
the very source of the problem.”

“By killing his brother,” I said. “I think we already clarified that.”

“No,” she said sharply. “You’re not thinking about the big picture. I mean, yes, we have to do that. But his death won’t really change anything, will it? His book, the knowledge it holds… goodness, someone will always desire it. And the cycle will begin again.” She pranced around the room and continued on. “But if we take it and hide it in this realm — the realm of the dead —”

“It’s called Amortis,” Rav said.

“Okay. Amortis. If we—”

“Why not just burn the fucking thing? Or throw it in the ocean? Destroying things is far easier than hiding them.”

“It can’t be destroyed,” Rav said. “Gods know I’ve tried.”

“So,” Lysa said, annoyed, “if we hide it here, it can’t be used to harm ever again. The only ones who will have knowledge of its existence will be us and the reapers. We can hunt the reapers down one by one, so they won’t be a problem. And you and me, Astul… we’ll live out our days until old age takes us. That leaves Rav as the only person who has knowledge of how to enter and exit Amortis, who could retrieve the book.”

Rav straightened himself. “Take care of my brother, and I will gladly end my time in the living realm.”

Lysa shrugged. “There. Then the cycle ends.” She looked proud of herself, content even.

I was not content. At all. Thanks to a nagging question I had a feeling wouldn’t be greeted with the kind of answer I hoped for.

“How much time do we have?” I asked.

“Two months,” Rav answered. “Give or take a week. That’s how long it will be before the Bay of Selaph dries and the land bridge connecting Mizridahl to its sister continent is revealed. Afterward, the reaped will converge on all living things. And your people, they will not put up a fight. Because their crops will wilt, their earth will bake, and their rivers will dry. They will welcome death, no matter how it arrives.”

The pride inflating Lysa’s chest whizzed right out of her like the bravery of a rebel upon seeing the guillotine.

Now, she understood.

No one had managed to end this fucker in five hundred years, and we were supposed to do so in under two months? Lovely.

W
e had six days
. Not until the whole upsetting world-goes-poof thing, but until Rav, Lysa and I departed for the great beyond. Otherwise known as Operation Kill Rav’s Brother.

While waiting for the day to arrive, I kept mostly to myself. Lysa was buried in history books and deriving as much as she could from
The Sepulchering of Self
, so she didn’t provide much company. Rav disappeared for hours, and I couldn’t exactly go looking for him. He had given us specific instructions to stay in the house and not, under any circumstance, to leave.

Normally, telling me to not do something naturally makes me want to do it. But given that the apparent world of the dead lurked nearby, I wasn’t very eager to go venturing away from safety.

So I fattened myself up on cakes, spent hours in the library and looked at the various paintings hanging from every wall in Rav’s house. They all shared a common theme of the coast, and on each canvas there was a small cove. Sometimes the cove would subtly fade into the background of a furious ocean or a sandy beach. In other paintings, it would stand at the forefront, and from its shadows peered tiny slits resembling eyes.

Some pieces were charming, with a careful touch of a brush dipped in colorful oils that were layered on in smooth fashion. Others were disturbingly abstract, with thick, jagged edges and a mishmash of angular designs, but just clear enough that even a novice eye could see a cove somewhere within.

I asked Rav about the significance of the cove. He smiled, shrugged and told me we’re all creatures of habit, and that we all cling to something.

On the fourth night of our stay, I dreamed the cove trapped me inside. And I looked out to see the ocean, but instead I glimpsed the entirety of Mizridahl, the fringes of its shores encompassed with a short swivel of my head. The world burned, burned, burned.

I decided the next morning I’d stop gawking at the paintings. I had enough nightmares on my own, thank you very much.

It made me wonder, though. What was happening to Mizridahl? I’d been away for a couple weeks now. Had Braddock Glannondil died from his flaming encounter? The world could get messy if he had. Or did his fat protect him from mortal burns?

Had Vayle freed more slave children? Of course she had. Strongest woman I’d ever known, right there. Nothing would stop her.

What of those who had strayed from the Black Rot after the war? I had reason to be angry with them, for not coming to me and telling me they were done with the life. Instead, they drifted, pretending they’d return. But I understood. They’d come
this
close to losing everything they had. They needed something more out of life now. Hopefully they found it. After all, there’s nothing more demoralizing than searching the depths of your soul and coming up empty.

Also of question was the lack of rain and the relentless heat sweeping across Mizridahl. I had an inkling that Rav’s brother was responsible, a suspicion Rav confirmed. If ending all of life was his brother’s plan, why not bake everyone alive? Why even go to the trouble yanking the dead out of their realm? The answer to that, it turned out, was simple: affecting the elements is conjurer business, something his brother had learned from the book. But it ain’t easy to do, and you can’t keep it up for long. Rav said he’d die of exhaustion before the populace of the living realm died of thirst and hunger and heat. He’d still kill plenty, but plenty wasn’t his objective: absolute obliteration was.

Day five, midday. I found Lysa in the library. She had somehow procured a small leather bag. She had a knife in her hand, and she jabbed the pointy end into the leather and began turning the handle in a circle.

“Uh,” I said, “what are you doing?”

“You’ll see,” she said. Her tongue poked out of her mouth, and her forehead wrinkled as she applied more pressure to the handle of the knife.

After a few minutes, she had carved two tiny holes into the top corners of the bag. Then she produced some string from her pocket, threaded it through the newly made eyelids and tied a couple knots.

“Snazzy, huh?” she said, now wearing the bag on her back.

“Yeah, real snazzy. What’s it for?”

She shouldered off the pack and stuffed a few books inside. “Rav said I can take these.”

I cocked my head to get a better view of the titles. “
The Hidden Power of Triangles
,” I said aloud. “You have horrible taste in books.”

“At least I have taste.”

“I was an avid reader in my younger days. What do you say after packing up your tomes of knowledge that we drain Rav’s amphora of mead?”

“I’ve never really drunk anything,” Lysa said sheepishly. “Other than tea and water, I mean.”

“You ought to give it a try. A little sip here, a gulp there, and all your worries fade away.”

She seemed to consider this. I could’ve mentioned how the booze loosens you up, puts a smile on your face, and turns a shy mumbler into a compelling storyteller, but none of that would have interested Lysa. Losing her worries, though? An intriguing premise there.

“Okay,” she said. “Sure. Why not?”

Twenty minutes later, Lysa and I were sitting across from one another at the table in the dining room, mugs filled to the rim with amber-colored mead.

She inspected it cautiously, then took a sip. Her eyes reacted with pleasure, almost pushing her brows into her blond bangs. “It’s like… like honey, but with—”

“With a kick?” I suggested.

“Exactly. It’s actually really good.”

It was good, much better and sweeter than most of the mead Mizridahl had to offer. Some of the shit there smelled like it’d been rolling around in a barrel full of dead rats for half a century.

I raised my mug. “How about a toast?”

“A toast,” she said, chewing down on the prospect of such a thing. “To…” She crinkled her face. “Oh, I don’t know! I’m not good at this.”

I laughed. “Two friends we are…who have come near and far… ah, fuck it. Clank ’em together and let’s drink, huh?”

Lysa giggled and tipped her mug into mine, and we drank. And we talked. She emptied her second mug, and at this point her cheeks were rosy red. Her freckles seemed to blossom with every sip, dotting her pale face in a meadow of warm, soothing flecks.

What a lovely girl. And not
that
kind of lovely either — the thought never crossed my mind. Not even once. Perhaps this was how fathers felt about looking into the face of their grown daughters — a sense of affection that… well, I couldn’t hope to describe it. It was all new to me.

“Okay,” she said, peering into her third mugful. “Question time.”

I leaned back into the chair. “Hit me with whatever you got.”

She nibbled on the top of her fingernail, then flung the tip at me, wagging it in front of my face. “I had you pegged for being a selfish, narcissistic butt… hole.” I stifled a laugh. “But you’re out here, like what? Saving the world? Why? Why, why, why? It doesn’t make any sense. What’s in it for you?”

“Well—”

She smacked her chest in interruption. “For me, you know, it’s curiosity. I wanna know what’s out there. I wanna see it all. I wanna learn. The world has so many secrets. So many! And I’ve only just begun to discover them. And getting to the bottom of this whole thing — Rav’s brother, the book — there’s just so much to learn. But what about you? Curiosity isn’t what made you come to me, or fly across the ocean or any of that. Is it?”

We both drank. Lysa teetered and tottered in her seat uneasily.

“Are you going to let me speak this time?”

She snickered like someone who’d drunk a cask of wine, her head swaying, eyes moving in crazy directions, mouth permanently fixed in a lopsided smile. “Yeah,” she said, laughing again, “Promi
ssss
.”

“The Black Rot—”

“Your killers? Oops, I mean — I mean ashsassh…” She giggled and tried again. “Assashsh… assassins!”

“Yes. My assassins. We’ve all gone our separate ways. They’re trying to find their own selves, and I’m trying to find me. Needs, wants, who I am.”

Lysa tilted her head back and burped. “You’re Astul, silly.”

It seemed letting her drink three mugfuls of mead was a poor idea. Although I wasn’t hoping for deep, meaningful conversation. Just any conversation at all.

“Oh,” she said, slapping my wrist, “it’s only a joke! I’m sorry. Are you sad?”

“Sad? No, I’m Astul. Remember?”

She tried kicking me under the table, but missed and smacked the chair instead. “Well, I don’t know what you want or need. But you are, at least you’ve been to me, a good person. And I’m happy you’re here.”

That was likely the inebriated part of her mind talking, but I’d take it. She reached for the amphora, but I yanked it away.

“Take a break,” I said. “See how you feel in a few minutes, hmm?”

She put her elbows on the table and punched a fist into her open palm, for no discernible reason. “I’ll take a break, mm hm. Small one, okay? My eyes feel heavy.”

Thirty seconds later, snores reverberated across the table. A few minutes later, she was slobbering. I reached over and curled a few strands of hair out of her mouth and behind her ear. Then I sat back, emptied the remaining mead into my mug, and sighed.

A drunk realization had smacked me hard and true. All my life, I’d considered the best part of me the loner within, the drifter who only needed a sword and some wine. But the greatest times of my life, the moments in which I was truly content… they all shared a common thread: someone else. Something else. Be it Vayle, the Black Rot, the long-forgotten fling with Mydia.

I watched Lysa sleep.
The drifter
, I thought, a doleful shake of my head.
The loner.
In the end, I suppose we lie to ourselves more than anyone.

I
woke
with what felt like a hot knife lodged in my temple. The subtlest movement thrust the knife deeper, eliciting a groan from my parched mouth.

After making sure I was still covered up from the waist down — I had a strong relationship with the naked body after a night of drinking — I stumbled down the blurry steps. Probably could’ve seen more clearly had my eyes not been in the shape of slits, but that would have meant more light blinding me, and light mixes with hangovers like fresh mint mixes with a freshly squeezed orange.

Lysa was sitting at the table where I’d left her the night before. A plateful of food lay in front of her. The handle of a fork pointed to the ceiling, its prongs stuck in the broken yolk of an egg — a remnant of a valiant but ultimately fruitless effort to bring food from plate to mouth.

Rav bustled in from the kitchen, bundles of wooden jewelry boxes in his arms. He let them fall from his body and onto the table. One rolled across Lysa’s plate, smooshing her eggs. She grunted.

“A young girl giving herself the old pat on the back with a bottle,” he said, unlocking each box with what looked like a master key. “That doesn’t surprise me. But you? You know enough to not fill your damn belly with firewater before a hard day’s work.”

“I have a vice,” I said.

“You have a problem.”

“I’ll be sure to consult with you when I need some help.” I looked around desperately for something to wet my sandy mouth. A steel carafe sat near the hearth. Looked like the kind of thing one would use to steep tea.

I walked over, grabbed it by the handle and aimed the spout at my mouth. Soon as the stuff inside hit my tongue, I gagged. And coughed. My face twisted into a shape I didn’t know was physically possible. My entire body shivered as I spat the bitter-tasting shit into the hearth, billowing up a cloud of soot in the process.

“Ack!” I yelled, slapping my tongue in hopes that would dull the horrible taste. “The fuck!” A few eggs remained on a serving plate, so I grabbed one and tossed it into my mouth.

Ever swish around cold yolk and white egg fluff? Yeah, it’s not the most pleasant sensation in the world. Turns out, it doesn’t soak up pungent flavoring either. So now I had what tasted like a mix of dirt, tree root and chewed-up egg swirling around my tongue. Oh, and my head felt like I’d headbutted a fist a few times. And to top off this wonderful experience, I couldn’t quite swallow, because I’d drunk almost an entire amphora of mead, which meant my throat was dryer than the inside of a dead cactus.

But the body is both a marvelous and stupendously dumb creation, and mine tried forcing down the egg, tree root and dirt. All of that got stuck in my throat, and I vomited a conal spray of just awful, terrible yellow-orange mush.

Hunched over and heaving, I was faintly aware of a hand on my back.

“Stumpkorf,” Rav said. “It’s an acquired taste.”

After finally getting a good swig of water — and cleaning up my gut excretions — I had a seat at the table and enjoyed some bread and oil. Lysa was more cognizant now, although you wouldn’t know it by her face. She looked as though she’d gotten into a fight with a ghost. And lost. Badly.

Her face was pale and cold, eyes half-opened. Hair stringy and brittle, crusted to her lips. She look at her eggs and blinked.

“I feel…” She closed her eyes and shook her head, slowly.

“Like shit?” I ventured.

“Yeah, like that.” She nibbled on some bread, took a gulp of water, and ate an egg. Satiation made her come alive.

“What is all this?” she asked, hand hovering over the twenty-some jewelry boxes and coils of thin copper wire.

“Think Rav’s trying to introduce us to his weird fetish,” I said.

The old man ignored my playful jab, choosing instead to focus on unwinding each wire. A series of distant knocks somewhere from deep within the house gave him pause.

“Hmm,” he muttered. “She’s early.”

Rav got up and retreated into the kitchen. His heavy footsteps faded.

“Are we expecting someone?” Lysa asked.

“Apparently he is.”

“Shouldn’t you be kind of worried? You’re always worried about things like this.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Um… forks in the road.”

“Surprises, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Everything about this place is a surprise.” I wiped some excess oil off my mouth with a chunk of bread, then I felt disgusted with myself as that was something the fat fuck Braddock Glannondil would do. “So I’m learning how to relax. Novel idea, huh?”