City of Keys, page 19
“Yes.” Balaur rubbed the stumps of his fingers, his gaze distant. “As do I, my son.”
Chapter Eighteen
Sleet stung Alexei’s eyes as he strode through the tangle of alleyways, shoulders hunched against the cold. The Markhound was a dark shadow ahead, trotting along with her nose pressed to the ground.
She’d caught his brother’s scent again.
He could tell from the alert set of her ears. But Alice knew better than to make a sound. One bark and Misha would know he was being followed.
Alexei reached the mouth of the alley just as his brother emerged from a nondescript house half a block down. He slipped back into the shadows, snapping his fingers. The Markhound’s slender body blurred into the darkness and vanished.
A minute later, Misha strode past, whistling a cheerful tune. He wore the Blue Flame tabard of the knights of Jalghuth. A sword rode at his hip.
Lezarius had made him captain of his personal guard. Misha’s knights loved him. Everyone did. Alexei’s brother was handsome, charming, intelligent, decisive. A skilled leader who had honed Lezarius’s dispirited army into a tightly-organized, professional fighting force.
He’d designed the new garrisons on Khotang Lake, fortifying the natural barrier against Bal Agnar. Recruited and trained civil militias to patrol the northern reaches of the Morho. Lezarius trusted him completely. Mikhail had saved him from the assassins at the Batavia Institute, then from Falke’s hunters in the Morho, and finally from Balaur himself.
No one but Alexei, Lezarius and the Reborn knew about his brother’s Nightmark.
Mikhail laughed and smiled as he always had, equally quick with a joke or some cunning strategy to keep the mages from their throats. He’d gained weight and no longer bore any resemblance to the half-starved wraith at the Batavia Institute. His blue eyes gleamed, his teeth were white and strong. He wore a scruffy dark beard as he had when they fought in the Void together. It suited him.
Yet Misha was off.
Alexei noticed it in brief, unguarded moments. A tightness in his eyes. Eruptions of temper over nothing. He always found some excuse when Alexei tried to spend time with him, as if he feared what his brother might see. Unlike the others, Alexei knew him too well to be deceived.
One morning, he’d walked in on his brother while Mikhail was pulling a tunic over his head. Alexei caught a glimpse of the Mark on his chest—a blindfolded man with a knife at his throat—but it was the yellowing bruises along his ribs that ignited a spark of worry. Mikhail had yanked the garment down with a flash of annoyance. When Alexei asked, he claimed he’d gotten them sparring with his knights.
But no one ever landed a blow against his brother. Misha was too quick.
Their rooms were in the same wing of the palace. Alexei still had trouble sleeping. When he heard a soft tread in the corridor late one night, he’d known it was Mikhail. He’d followed and discovered that Misha was leaving the Arx at night to prowl the city. Wine sinks and brothels. Bare-knuckle boxing matches.
He’d watched his brother beat a local favorite so badly, the loser was carried in a bloody heap from the ring. It had taken six men—all thick-necked giants—to pull Misha off. Alexei had told Lezarius about it. The pontifex sent knights to shut the place down, though he wouldn’t hear a word against Mikhail. Blowing off steam, Lezarius called it.
The willful blindness to his brother’s condition frustrated Alexei no end. He still believed Lezarius to be the best of the bunch—better than Falke, certainly—but where Mikhail Bryce was concerned, the pontifex simply refused to face the truth.
On the surface, life in Jalghuth was back to normal. But Balaur’s occupation had left permanent scars. The city had a dark underbelly that drew his brother like a moth to a flame.
Misha must have suspected something because he grew more careful. Alexei had only managed to catch his trail tonight because he’d used Alice. Now she sat at his feet, lips pulled back in a silent snarl. The Markhound knew something was wrong, too. She’d known since the day Misha’s Nightmark was restored to its original purpose.
A slow decay of the soul.
Alexei scratched her behind the ears.
“Mane, little sister,” he told her. Stay.
Alice’s rump obediently hit the snow. He walked to the house and knocked on the door, mouth dry. Over the last month, two women had been found murdered in their beds, both on nights Mikhail had been roaming the city.
Relief flooded him as footsteps approached. The door was opened by a pretty, petite woman in a blue silk robe. A startled expression crossed her face as she took in his clean-shaven face and plain brown cassock. Then she gathered her composure with a smile.
“How can I help you, Father?”
“May I come in?”
She inclined her head and stood aside. He stepped past her, inhaling a whiff of musky perfume. “You thought I was my brother.”
She cocked a thinly plucked brow. “Who?”
“I saw him leave just a moment ago.”
The woman tucked her hands into embroidered sleeves. “You have the same eyes. Like the ice on Khumbu Massif. Did he send you here?”
“He doesn’t know. I . . . I followed him.”
“My clients pay well for privacy. If you seek information, you should ask him yourself.”
Alexei took out a wad of folded bills. “I’d rather ask you.”
She counted the money. “So much for a question? All right. You’ve bought one.”
“What does he do here?” Alexei asked bluntly.
Her dark eyes regarded him without shame. “I provide a specialty service, Father. For some, pleasure and pain are the same.”
Alexei’s heart sank. “So he hurts you?”
She laughed. “You misunderstand. Men come here for punishment.”
“So you hurt him?”
“At his request.”
“How often does he come?”
She shrugged. “It used to be once a week. Lately, every night.” A playful smile. “That’s two questions you’ve asked me now.” She looked him up and down. “Perhaps you are alike, hmmm? Craving a taste of the lash?”
Alexei’s cheeks warmed. “A kind offer, but no. That is not my fetish.”
“A pity.” She drew the robe tighter, her voice turning cool. “I’m afraid I have other appointments. If you’ll excuse me.”
He left the house and stood for a minute in the quiet street, both relieved and unsettled.
They were both consenting adults. Alexei felt slightly ashamed for sticking his nose in.
It doesn’t mean he isn’t doing other things, a voice whispered. Things you know nothing about.
Alexei’s gaze moved past the Arx, following the ice road to the octagonal spire of Sinjali’s Lance. A construction of the ancient Praefators who founded his faith, the tower sat atop a wellspring of the ley and acted like a prism, dividing it into three layers.
Blue for the logical mind. Violet for the unconscious. And red for the deepest, most unruly power.
He wished he understood Nightmarks better. How they worked exactly.
Sanctified Marks were given by the clergy. They tamed the red ley.
Nightmarks fed it. They were invented by Balaur when he was the young pontifex of Bal Agnar. Expressions of the subconscious in its purest form, with no filter of rationality.
The ley interacted with each individual mind. Ferran Massot had abused his patients. Tried to attack Kasia. As soon as Alexei heard about the two murders of women, he’d been terrified it was Misha.
But the demons lurking in his brother’s mind seemed to have their own unique hungers. That Misha was dangerous Alexei had no doubt. But now he wondered if the threat was really to others, as he’d assumed.
And why Mikhail Semyon Bryce, the most decorated captain of his generation, a paragon of virtue in every other respect, despised himself so much?
It was still dark when Alexei left his rooms and walked through the clusters of jaunty, tilt-roofed buildings down to Lake Khotang. The snow had stopped. In the distance, the jagged teeth of the Sundar Kush seemed to scrape the stars.
Torches glowed in the slits of new-built towers along the shore. It had been Mikhail’s idea to use the stone from the stelae field to construct a ring of defensive forts.
Beyond lay the dark mass of the Morho Sarpanitum. The forest had been quiet so far, but Bal Agnar was less than a day’s march. The lake was the only thing standing between them and Balaur’s army.
And the Sundar Kush. The rugged mountains guarded Jalghuth’s eastern flank.
He waited in a stand of pines until he heard the rhythm of pounding feet. Alexei stepped into the path just as Misha came around a bend. His brother drew up short, breath coming in puffs of white fog. He wore sneakers and sweats with a small Blue Flame embroidered on the breast.
A guarded expression crossed his face. “Alyosha.”
“Oh, hey.” He smiled, feigning surprise, and performed a few casual stretches that made various body parts creak in protest.
While Misha was training knights and building forts, Alexei had been shut up with Lezarius, going over all the administrative tasks of the Arx that Balaur had neglected to deal with, like ensuring an adequate supply of crops from the lowland valleys. Proper care for the sick and infirm. The reopening of schools. A million other essential aspects of a functioning city.
“I thought I might run the circuit with you,” he said.
“It’s 20k.”
Alexei concealed his dismay. “I can handle that.”
“There are hills.”
“You think I’m out of shape?”
Misha’s teeth gleamed in the dark. He took off at a sprint. Alexei cursed and ran after him.
The first kilometer was brutal. By the third, he wished for death—and doubted it would be far off. His heart felt like it might explode. But the old competitive instinct refused to let him concede defeat.
Alexei still remembered the first time he’d managed to beat his brother in a foot race. It had taken a whole summer of obsessive training behind his back. The expression on Misha’s face when his little brother overtook him in the last ten meters had been priceless.
Their father encouraged the rivalry. He made a big deal about Alexei’s victory, ribbing Mikhail for weeks until even Alexei grew weary of it. But his brother never seemed bothered. Once he got over the surprise of losing, he’d looked relieved. As if he were tired of being perfect all the time.
By the time they crossed the bridge over the lake’s inlet, somewhere around the 7k mark, Alexei could feel his blood starting to oxygenate. Every muscle burned. It would be worse—far, far worse—tomorrow. But the frigid air swept the cobwebs from his mind. He felt the euphoria that came from pushing through agony into a clean, pure state of forward motion.
Dawn broke as they passed through the foothills on the northern shore, the flank of the mountain rising to the left, and then down a long wooded incline. When they neared the road back up to the Arx, Alexei sprinted ahead. He heard a muffled curse.
Something thumped against his back. Icy water trickled down his neck.
Alexei shouted in outrage and gathered his own snowball, packing it tight. Mikhail ducked and it splattered against a tree.
Within seconds, the battle was raging. When they were kids, his brother’s strategy was to endure bombardment while he assembled an arsenal, then unleash them all in a rapid-fire barrage. He hadn’t changed. Alexei managed to nail him four times before brutal retaliation came.
He collapsed into the snow and curled into a ball as Misha unloaded a series of missiles perfectly aimed at the gap in his sweats. By the time it was over, they were both soaked and shivering and laughing harder than they had in years.
His brother pulled him to his feet. “I won,” he said, grinning through the frost on his beard.
“How do you figure that?”
“Whoever throws the last one wins.”
It was an ancient argument.
“But I hit you more times!”
“Doesn’t matter.” He backed away as Alexei started packing a fresh snowball. “Last one standing!” He tore off.
Alexei hurled the snowball and missed. “Shit!” he cried, running to catch up.
He was cooling off and everything was starting to hurt now. Misha left him in the dust, only pausing to wait when they were past the snow line halfway up the ice road.
“We should do this again,” Mikhail said. “Tomorrow?”
He didn’t seem winded at all.
“I’ll think about it,” Alexei panted.
They walked the rest of the way without speaking, but it wasn’t the brittle silence that had stretched between them before. Back at his rooms, Alexei took a hot shower. He’d needed the exercise. If nothing was torn, he’d stick with the routine. The first week would be the worst.
But it wasn’t just the run that left him with a warm glow. He knew now that his brother was still there. The one he respected and loved and looked up to. All he had to do was help him remember.
He’d just pulled a fresh cassock over his head when a knock came at the door. Mikhail poked his head in. He’d changed into a Blue Flame tabard.
“The Reverend Father wants us both,” he said.
“What about?” Alexei fell into step with him in the corridor.
Misha shook his head with a sigh. “I’m not sure, but I have a feeling it isn’t good.”
Chapter Nineteen
They found Lezarius in the council chamber with a small group of cardinals and bishops. It was a pleasant room that smelled of old parchment and beeswax candles. Arched windows looked out over the white expanse of Lake Khotang.
The assembled men and women murmured greetings as they took seats at the long table. Lezarius studied a map of the continent.
“A Markhawk arrived this morning,” he said. “From Luk. Novostopol was attacked two days ago.”
Alexei stared in shock. The city’s location at the southern end of the continent left it far from the fighting in the Morho Sarpanitum.
“I thought the mages were penned up in Bal Agnar,” he said.
“Not that kind of attack. It was a starfall.”
“Starfall? You mean meteorites?”
Lezarius nodded. “It caused great devastation. The fact that it mainly damaged the Arx suggests the mages had a hand in it. Balaur is the obvious culprit, but it makes little sense. If he commands such power, why hasn’t he done the same to Nantwich? Or to us?”
Alexei exchanged a worried look with his brother. All their preparations had been for a traditional siege.
“Luk says there will be a meeting of the pontifices in Nantwich,” Lezarius said. “He urges me to come.”
“Will Falke be there?” Mikhail looked around the table. “I hardly need to remind you that he sent assassins for both of us at the Batavia Institute. The man is a viper.”
“Peace, Captain,” Lezarius said gently. “Falke is missing. Presumed dead, though they haven’t yet found his body.”
“Saints,” Alexei murmured. “How many casualties?”
“They’re still digging out. Half the Pontifex’s Palace was destroyed, and many other buildings. I don’t know the final numbers.”
There was a grim silence.
“Nonetheless,” he added, “Novostopol is committed to sending a representative to this council.”
“Who is it?” Mikhail asked.
“Bishop Maria Karolo,” Lezarius replied. “What do you know about her?”
“She’s the head of the Order of Saint Marcius,” Mikhail said. “An arch conservative.”
“Ah. And how does she view her authority?”
“Without limit,” Alexei said dryly. “But Feizah reined her in.”
The Order of Saint Marcius enforced the Meliora in cultural matters—meaning it acted as the Curia’s censors. Depictions of sex and violence, in particular, were frowned upon. But Novostopol was a free-thinking city. The trends waxed and waned depending on who ran the Order. Karolo’s predecessor had been notoriously tolerant of almost anything. A collective groan went up among the liberals when she was appointed.
“She and Falke despise each other,” Alexei said. “So there’s little chance she knew about the conspiracy to kill you, Reverend Father.”
“Well, that’s encouraging,” Lezarius said with a mordant smile. “The question is, should I meet with them?”
“Absolutely not,” Misha said.
“I’m for it,” Alexei said after a moment, ignoring his brother’s scowl. “The Curia must face this threat together.”
“I agree,” Bishop Panday said, studying each of them with keen brown eyes lined heavily with kohl. She was the youngest member of the council—and also, in Alexei’s opinion, the smartest. His brother thought so, too, seeking her opinion on most of his plans. Misha looked unhappy that she wasn’t taking his side.
“It’s tempting to fortify our position and dig in,” Panday said. “But despite all Captain Bryce has done, I fear that Balaur could take this city if he tried hard enough. Without the Wards and stelae, they will sweep over us. The fight must be brought to them. A joint offensive in the Morho is the best option.”
Cardinal Jagat frowned. He was the only one present who had remained at the Arx during Balaur’s occupation. He’d believed he was being loyal to Lezarius. The shock of learning that he had served a false pontifex left him deeply distrustful, bordering on paranoid.
“If we make it until spring, the ice on the lake will soften,” Jagat said. “Should Balaur’s forces try to cross in boats, the archers will set them alight.” He tapped the map. “There are passes in the Sundar Kush, but a hundred knights could hold them against an army.”
Alexei shook his head. “A regular army. Not nihilim with full access to the abyssal ley. If any of them broke through the lines, they would turn our soldiers against each other. I’ve seen it happen.”
Misha leaned forward, voice soft. “Am I the only one who remembers that Clavis also wanted our Reverend Father dead?”
“I remember,” Panday replied. “But she is still the lesser evil.”
