The Might of Monsters, page 1
The Might of Monsters
Maria Ying
Hua Publishing
Copyright @ 2022 Devi Lacroix
Copyright @ 2022 Benjanun Sriduangkaew
Copyright @ 2022 C.S. Cary
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the authors, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
The characters and events depicted in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Contents
Title Page
Prologue
One: Dull Roots and Spring Rain
Two: Mandible Memory
Interlude: The Professor
Three: Fangs for a Siren
Four: A Long Journey to An Uncertain End
Five: In Raiments of Gold
Six: The Tiger and Her Stripes
Seven: A Knife For a Knife
Eight: Silk for a Sorceress
Interlude: Ouroboros
Nine: Beasts of the Earth
Ten: Stone Butch Blues
Eleven: And We Shall Go Dancing
Twelve: Masque of the Red Death
Thirteen: All Roads Lead To Ruin
Epilogue
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Other Works by the Author
Prologue
Ten years ago
FAHRIYE
It’s not often a beautiful woman walks through my door. In fact, as far as this specific woman is concerned, the frequency of her appearance in my office should be never.
I stand up so fast it nearly makes me dizzy. I dive toward the door, easing it shut behind her while she looks on, amused. In height she is hardly imposing—I’m much taller and much bigger—and her pear-shaped build does not look the sort to intimidate. And yet everyone who has ever been in her presence would describe the experience as paralyzing; it has taken me near on two decades to be functional around her.
Elizaveta Hua is the warlock of her age, the most powerful woman in the world. Once, many years ago, I saved her children at great personal risk to myself, and from that moment of heroism has sprung the most important and dangerous relationship of my life. The Huas, as a general rule, have a nasty reputation, and Elizaveta Hua is persona non grata with the magical enforcement organization I work for, Sealing and Containment—to the point that they very well might have a kill-on-sight order out for her. And they would probably kill me, too, if they knew how frequently she and I slept together.
And here she is, standing in the belly of the beast, as if she doesn’t have a care in the world.
“Liz,” I say, my tongue tangling over itself. I try not to bite down on it. “Why are you here—did anyone see.”
“It looks like you finally earned that corner office.” Elizaveta’s small, full mouth is drawn toward a smirk. “A promotion, I hear; climbing up the ranks, are we?”
“Did anyone see—”
“Tell me, Inspector,” she says as she crosses the room and seats herself, uninvited. “Do you think the warlock of her age doesn’t know how to conceal herself?”
“You just walked through a place full of scryers and seers!”
She dismisses that with a flick of her hand. “Were they aware a Hua had slipped past them, every alarm would be on high, every gun would be drawn and every automated routine of destruction put to work. As this is not the case, you may rest assured that I have successfully hidden myself. I would point out the holes in your wards, but improving S&C’s barricades is not my job.”
And it is true: my organization hates her family to the point of obsession, so much so that they’d have let vampires feast on her children when they were little. They have grown now. Viveca and Olesya are in their twenties—excelling at their respective studies, according to their mother, when she tells me of them at all. She rations out information with the utmost care, in spite of her trust in me. A barrier must exist, always, between our lives. Between what is public and what is private.
Which makes her decision to appear here of all places…
“I have not come for a trivial reason,” she says, as if hearing my thoughts. “There’s something I would like to ask of you that I suspect only you can do. Though—we haven’t had dinner together for a while, have we?”
“I have to work for ten more minutes.”
She spreads her hands, magnanimous, an empress granting her permission. “I can wait.”
By that she means she’s sitting right there as I put papers into folders, organize my notes, all the things that I do when I’m winding down and getting ready to leave. It makes concentrating on these mundane, mindless tasks unaccountably challenging. To feel her eyes on me, on every movement; to know that she is studying my face, my fingertips. Maybe she’s thinking of how my mouth might feel on hers, very soon—
Stupid. From the start, I’ve been embarrassingly libido-led with this woman. Even now I still can’t identify what I was thinking when I asked her out to dinner that first time (and why in the name of all did she say yes?). Alright—I was standing before a woman who’s not just the most powerful in the world, but very beautiful and older, and exactly my type.
I wonder what she can see with those black eyes of hers; whether she receives the world in ranges beyond the visible light. Perhaps as I try to tidy my desk and wrap up the day’s paperwork, she can see blood moving through me, flushing my cheeks with heat. Or else she is watching power run in my veins, the natural ebb and flow that moves within any mage. A tide, in a practitioner of great power; a brook, in those less so. I have a full awareness of which category I belong to; only through constant training and the tutelage of the world’s greatest warlock has my little stream been marshaled into something respectable.
“You seem done,” she says after eight minutes have passed.
“You’re usually more patient than this, Master Elizaveta.”
Her head cocks. “Where would you like dinner?”
The problem of a relationship—or a fling, or whatever this is—with an incredibly powerful woman is that she has next to no familiarity with consequences. But if nothing else, the food is always excellent. “Sapporo.”
She takes my hand, and then we are away.
♦
Immediate and visceral: cold buffets my skin. My breath steams in the frigid air. A cantrip quickly takes care of that, warming me against this island’s climate. Elizaveta herself evinces no discomfort, either not feeling the cold—possible, given what she is—or already having woven basic temperature protection into her clothes.
Sapporo is a beautiful city: the air blue and very sharp, the mountains white and shadowed in the distance. I know something of its history, that it is a site of brutal occupation, evidence of what the powerful will do to those they perceive as powerless. And it’s hard not to think about that in the company of Elizaveta; I know something, too, of her family’s past. There have been chapters of incredible savagery, and more than once a Hua warlock has been the most cruel of despots. The hatred with which my institution regards her family has some historical basis. But she is not her forebears, and to the best of my knowledge she’s never been more destructive or murderous than most mages.
We come in to a ramen bar; she takes care of the ordering, her Japanese fluent where mine is at best of the touristic phrasebook sort. It’s an unassuming place, neither owned nor frequented by practitioners. I like these better than mage-owned establishments: leave me my little escapisms. Elizaveta knows it too. Maybe, I like to think, she shares my enjoyment. That, despite her might and station in high society, sometimes she also wants to get away. Between the two of us she blends in better, here, but I pass as a tourist just fine, if an inadequately dressed one.
The miso broth is rich, complexly flavored. The noodles are excellent. Elizaveta orders seconds.
“There’s something I would like to find,” she says in Turkish. A recent acquisition—she claims to have taken to it as a matter of practical security, something to flummox would-be eavesdroppers. Her reasoning is hardly sound: while in isolated Sapporo there may be no Turkish speakers save us, it's not as if it is a rare language. But she uses it to communicate with me, and it makes me—no, I refuse to pursue that line of thought, refuse to entertain those feelings.
Whatever her motivations, she has an incredible ear for it. I don’t know whether that’s her natural talent, a neurological advantage, or if it’s been obtained through magic. There are no spells, really, that will translate languages perfectly, but there are ones that can enhance the mind, augment comprehension.
I put down my bowl and gaze, longingly, at the slices of chashu the cook’s preparing. “And I’m the best tracker you know.”
“Cocky.” Her voice is rounded with amusement—she herself has said as much, granting me that title as a monarch might make a knight of her retainer. “But you are, and it’s good that you know your strengths. Nor is it the only thing you’re good at.”
I try to tell myself all the heat’s just from the ramen. “How are the—” I stumble here. There is a boundary, I think, and I don’t want to cross it, to become overfamiliar. “The girls?”
“They’re doing very well. Viveca will succeed me.” Elizaveta’s tone is warm with pride; her sclerae turn dark, as they occasionally do when she feels intense emotion.
“No struggle?
“No. My daughters adore each other, and Olesya is genuinely more interested in transfiguration than summoning rituals. Flesh-crafting, particularly, and she’s a prodigy at it.”
On my non-practitioner side of the family—estranged from me, for the usual reasons when one’s relative is a mage—there are cousins who’d trade anything to have access to the flesh-crafting that mages take for granted. I imagine that Olesya does not know how fortunate she is, and then quickly dismiss my uncharitable thought. It’s not her fault that she has next to no acquaintance with outsiders; most thaumaturges don’t, and see no need to bother. What can non-mages offer them?
The second servings arrive. I tuck into it, appreciating the extra chashu. It’s not fancy food, but many steps above the hurried meals I get every day in the S&C cafeteria, of varying quality. And we are in Sapporo. If only there was time to sight-see, but our arrangement is such that I can never truly disappear for long with her, cannot be seen with her; even from her children we must hide this.
It shouldn’t matter. I entered this knowing it would need to be this way, half-real. This thing between us has lasted nearly two decades precisely because neither of us have tried to put a name on it, because both of us have different priorities, different needs. Ultimately it’ll end when finally she tires of me or I ask for too much.
But it is Elizaveta that asks first, once more reading me like an open book. “Do you have a little time?”
“A day off.” That I should spend in my locality, so as not to rouse suspicion. Promotion or not, I’m scrutinized more closely than most officers of my rank and seniority.
“Enough to enjoy a few more good meals together, unless you’re in a hurry to go home.”
It’s just one day. “Alright.” I try to make myself smile past all the worry.
“I have already booked us a hotel. Two beds, to preserve your chastity, Inspector.”
I might be turning red. Really I should riposte, but it’s never been easy to, somehow, with her. Well, a first time for everything. “As if you won’t be the first to make that moot.”
She cants her head back and laughs. It is as if I am enspelled: it becomes impossible to look away from the sight of her, to not fall into the gravity of her all over again. She is exquisite. She is singular. Not just the most powerful in the world, but the most beautiful.
And in that moment it becomes obvious, too, that I’d do almost anything for Elizaveta Hua.
♦
The hotel—the ryokan—she’s picked for us is located in Minami Ward, a construct of red wood and warm illumination. Lanterns in the public area, and a few fireplaces; simple but elegant furniture, the occasional marble to interrupt the wood. There is a lovely, quiet minimalism. Our room has its own private bath, small and traditional, and a window that looks out to the mountains. It’s a quiet night, snow and frost on the outside. By all rights, we should be curling up together, sinking into the quiet, into each other’s warmth.
Instead Elizaveta is briskly unpacking; she has, incredibly, brought a change of clothes for me. A suit, the jacket and trousers deep brown with undertones of red, the shirt pale gold. “I trust it will be bearable for a day,” she is saying. “I have your measurements and took the liberty.”
I don’t ask how she has my measurements. “It’s very nice.” The tailoring is much, much finer than anything I could afford. Probably she has a couturier she patronizes—the wealthy truly inhabit another world. Equally incredibly, she’s prepared for me a set of sport bras and underwear. “I wear lace sometimes, you realize,” I point out.
“I was saving that for when we go shopping for it together.” Her voice is deadpan. “Silk in antique gold or burgundy will look good on you. Expensive lingerie under a suit is an especially intoxicating combination.”
I open my mouth. I sigh. I smile. “It’s just as well we will never live together. You’ll dictate all my wardrobe, and probably all my meals.” Not that I would not like it: I’ve been a creature of grim independence, and the thought of being lavished with such care…
“Why never, Inspector?”
Her expression has hardly shifted. It’s impossible to tell whether she is joking. “Well, I mean, for all the obvious, usual reasons.”
“Such as,” she prompts.
“I’m not going to leave S&C,” I say quickly. To become her kept tracker. “This work is important to me, Liz.”
“Who said anything about you leaving?” Her hands still in her lap. Her gaze grows remote. “In a few years, I will no longer be the Hua warlock.”
Nearly I drop the dress shirt. I hurriedly put it back down, on top of the luggage. “I think I understand what you mean. But—openly?” My superiors, and High Command in general, will never regard one of their officers associating with any Hua as value-neutral. I might as well be consorting with demons myself.
Elizaveta’s eyes meet mine, searching my face. “It was merely a thought, Inspector.”
I’ve disappointed her. Or, worse, she has disappointed herself. It has been a long time since our arrangement began, and yet there’s still so much I don’t know about her, the way she thinks, her personal philosophies. She has been my lover and mentor in sorcery too, plugging the gaps of my threadbare education, teaching me spells that would normally stay within her family. What I cannot figure out, even now, is her motive. Why give me so much, offer such largesse, when I cannot possibly reciprocate? Does she hope that one day I will protect her children again, speak up for them when S&C finds an excuse to go after the sisters, mitigate the harm?
But we have done so much together. She has fought evil beside me, when it did not benefit her; has bled to save the world, has bled to save me from a wound. I cannot believe that she is solely motivated by selfish goals, that I am but a means to her eldritch ends.
And I have had the same thoughts—what it would be like, about what I would be willing to give up, to wake beside her every day; to know, for once, what she looks like at peace. So I believe, I must believe, that the same thoughts have occurred to her. And still I say, coward that I am, “It’s a good thought. Only—”
“Only it’s improbable.” Still her expression gives away nothing. “Yet in my life, Fahriye, I’ve accomplished many improbable things. Don’t rule it out yet.”
The bathtub, I discover, is meant for two—but with me in the equation, it’ll only fit one of us at a time. “Get in,” she says; it is an order.
“I will do that once I’ve seen you disrobe, madam.”
“Giving orders now, are we.” She reaches over to tap me on the nose. And then she does, indeed, take off her clothes.
It’s not the first time I have seen her naked, but I don’t see it often enough. She’s small next to me, slight of shoulders and limbs, round and soft in the places where I am angular and hard. Her breasts are full, brown-tipped, touched with blemishes that are an inevitable part of life. Fool that I am, I cannot get enough of her breasts—I have, a few times, woken up with my face against them, much to her amusement. The urge to kiss her all over seizes me: the soft swell of her stomach, her thighs and what lies between them.
But she makes me get into the tub, where the water’s heat verges on this side of discomfort. She gathers my hair in one hand, murmuring that I seem due a cut, do I not usually keep it shorter? And she bends to kiss my ear, then the back of my neck. Each contact is electric, taking my breath away as surely as the scalding water.
Elizaveta stops there, though. She pours out the shampoo and massages it into my scalp, working slow and meticulous. It’s the first time we have bathed together, and it’s such a mundane thing, and yet achingly intimate. We fall into silence; there is only the sound of water and her small, elegant hands in my hair.
I ask her, shy, if I can return the favor. She says yes, and soon we switch positions, her in the water and I standing like an attendant of old. Some part of me wants to ask why she’s decided to do this, come with me on a day’s getaway, allowed me into her intimacy. But I’d rather not ruin the moment, and so I concentrate on her hair. A fine, thick mass. It is going gray but very slowly, either good genetics or thaumaturgy, and she has maintained it in incredible condition. Long, but pinned up most of the time so it doesn’t get in the way; unbound and wet, it looks as dark as spun night, touched here and there by snow. I’m careful as I sweep the shampoo through the strands, as I rub conditioner into her scalp. It’s not that she is delicate, but that I want to show her that I cherish her; I wish to express it in every motion as she has done for me.
