Between Kings, page 25
part #10 of The City Between Series Series
I also didn’t think I’d be able to break up a fight if one started. My missing arm might not have been my dominant one, but it was still throwing off my balance more than I liked—not to mention somehow making me more hungry than I’d ever been with two arms. Until I learned how to rebalance myself properly, peace was the best option.
And we had a nice bit of peace, too. We had peace for another hour or two until Dylan and Darren went upstairs to take some lunch to Athelas—then tumbled back down the stairs in a mess of fur and feet and turned just human enough to say, “Boss! The old tea-drinker is gone!”
Zero, who had been propped up against one of the support beams to drink coffee for the last few minutes, didn’t say a word, but I felt North’s gaze sweep over me. She looked amused and not at all surprised. “When did you let him out?” she asked.
Tuatu’s eyes closed briefly, then opened again. “Ruth, did you let the serial killer go?”
“I mean technically speaking—”
“He helped us,” Morgana said, leaning back in her chair with a very faint shrug. “And he nearly died while he was doing it. He could have run away instead—we’d never have had the chance to catch him again.”
“He killed your parents,” Daniel said quietly. “Is that something you can live with?”
“I was raised with wolves from the start,” she told him, sparking a soft glint of laughter in Daniel’s brown eyes that surprised me.
He isn’t the softly laughing kind—he’s the angsty, teenaged wolf-boy-with-a-family-he-inherited-far-too-early type. It was nice to see that there was another side to him coming out.
“If you can live with it, I’ve got nothing to say,” he said. “He saved my life a couple times at least: I didn’t want to see him dead.”
“I don’t care,” said North. “He didn’t try to kill me.”
The frustration visible on Tuatu’s face sharpened his voice. “It’s not justice!”
“No,” I said quietly. “It’s mercy. And it’s going to eat Athelas alive until it’s a kind of justice anyway—unless he learns to deal with it.”
“You think he’s got enough of a soul for that?” the detective asked sceptically.
“Yeah,” I said. “Otherwise he would have escaped two days ago. The cuffs have been unlocked that long, and the spells have been down for longer.”
Tuatu swallowed. “I was in there yesterday! He could have killed me!”
“Yeah,” I said again.
“You might have warned me!”
“I didn’t know you were going to go in there!” I said indignantly. “If you’re going to go see fae serial killers without letting anyone know, you don’t get to complain that I didn’t warn you not to do it!”
“You knew he was going to use me to get free the first time, though, didn’t you?” he asked grimly.
“It was the only way I could figure to get him out of here and thinking he’d done it by himself,” I explained. “Sorry. I knew you could bargain to make sure that this was your last favour like I told you, and I needed to know for sure which side he was really on.”
He hesitated. “I didn’t have to tell him it was my last favour,” he said, finally. “He said it before I could. One last favour and you are out of my debt. And I couldn’t say no or stop myself helping him.”
It wasn’t as though I hadn’t had doubts about letting Athelas go, but I had been sure it was the best thing to do. And now as I stared at Tuatu, a few icy edges of doubt around my heart melted.
“Good for you,” I said. “Things might have been a bit dicey for you otherwise.”
“I’m aware of that,” he said pointedly. “I felt so guilty for having been the one to let him go!”
“Sorry,” I said again. “I really am. But it was the only way I could think of to make sure that everyone got out of the king’s Challenge alive and that everyone else kept thinking what I needed them to think for just long enough to sort everything out.”
“All’s well…?” he said, and let it linger.
“No,” I said quietly. Because there were still three dead lycanthropes and a missing arm to account for, and those were all consequences I was going to have to deal with.
I was also going to have to deal with another one: Tuatu might have a bit of trouble trusting me for a while—or at least still have a bit of resentment—and I couldn’t blame him for it. I would have done the same thing over again, so it wasn’t fair to ask him to forgive me straight away.
“Funny that everyone’s concerned about my love life,” I said, by way of changing the subject as North wandered off to the kitchen. I heard her opening the fridge like some sort of teenaged forager, and that meant that she was feeling pretty human today—for whatever reason. “When there’s that to worry about.”
The detective sent a sour look in my direction. “What?” he asked.
“That,” I said again, tilting my chin at North. “She knows you’re a human, but she still wants to be near you. She’s gotta know you’re gunna die years before she does.”
“She must also know that the closer she gets, the more human she will become,” Zero said, breaking his silence at last.
Tuatu’s lips tightened. “Yes. I noticed that.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Morgana said, with a dangerously red gleam to her eyes.
“It’s a dangerous thing,” Tuatu said. “It makes her more vulnerable, and my grandmother always said that things in flux are—”
“Yeah,” I said, as he stopped to think about what he’d just said. “We’ve got to have a bit of a word about your grandma some time, Tuatu. Reckon there’s a few things that might make a bit more sense once we do.”
“Not today,” he said.
I might have pushed a bit more, but that was when I heard it: a knock on what was definitely the linen closet door this time.
“Showtime,” I said, glancing across at Zero.
His eyes grew faintly bluer, which made me very happy. Happy because he could still laugh. Happy because I had the feeling he was looking forward to this particular visitor—and maybe messing with her a bit.
JinYeong, who had gone to open the door for Palomena—because of course it was Palomena—gave her his most annoying smirk and sauntered back across the room to sit next to me.
“I’ll take that as a bad sign,” she said, in the general direction of me and Zero. This time definitely to me, she said, “I’m sorry about your arm. I was glad to hear you’re alive.”
“You know what us pets are like,” I said, grinning. “Always popping up just when you least expect us.”
“There is tea,” JinYeong said, pointing at the teapot that someone had brought out.
Palomena’s brows rose. She turned an enquiring look on Zero, who seemed to be struggling with amusement once again.
“He doesn’t usually offer food or drink to people,” he said. “You might as well accept it.”
“Then I’m honoured, I suppose,” she said, which JinYeong accepted with a small tilt of his nose, as if to say, Of course you are.
“No food, though,” I said. “This lot haven’t let me in the kitchen for days.”
“I suppose they expect you to rest after throwing off the old world and putting on the new,” she said, and this time it was me she was looking at—in something like wonder, I thought. “I trust you have been resting.”
“Worried about me?”
“Perhaps slightly concerned.”
I beamed at her. “I knew you loved me.”
“Let’s say I’m fond of you,” she said, amusement lightening her eyes.
“We love you, too,” I said, beaming even more brightly.
That made her gaze at me a bit longer, and I wasn’t sure if she knew I was just playing for time, or if her thoughts had inevitably gone to Zero.
“I almost hesitate to ask if the steward is ready to go?” she said, and there was a delicate uptick to her voice that made the statement into a question.
Well, that answered that question.
Zero said emotionlessly, “The steward is gone. He escaped earlier today.”
“His timing certainly doesn’t seem to get any worse,” Palomena said. “But then, I doubt the king will be too worried about it, considering the…circumstances.”
“Figured,” I said.
“Yes, I thought you would,” she said, and her gaze lingered on me once again. “Can you live with it?”
“Better than I could live with the alternative,” I said, shrugging. “Will you be safe to tell the king yourself, or—”
“I’ll go with her, of course,” said Zero.
“Will you?” I said, grinning wickedly at him.
“Don’t smirk at me.”
“If you’re coming, we’d probably best leave as soon as we can,” Palomena said.
Zero’s brows went up. “You’re in a hurry?”
Was he trying to give Athelas more time to get away safe? It was hard to tell, but I liked to think so.
“No, but everyone is a bit excited at court, and they want to get things moving,” she said. “Ah. One more thing before we go.”
She reached into an inner pocket somewhere around rib level and brought out a golden envelope. You probably think I mean it was gold coloured, but it wasn’t: it was pure gold, threaded with lines of Between to keep it supple and useful without breaking.
She presented the envelope to Zero, and the way he hesitated so long before he took it left me with no doubt as to what it was.
“They want you back in the Enforcers, do they?” I said, making sure my voice was cheerful enough to show that I was happy for him and thought he should accept the offer.
“We’re still having a bit too much trouble with Upper Management to rest on our laurels,” said Palomena, as if it was an answer. “And the new king seems to be of the opinion that our policies regarding humans need to be looked at again. This particular position became vacant in the light of those two realisations.”
“Too flamin’ right they need to be looked at again,” I muttered, my stomach sinking despite the fact that I knew how good of a thing this was.
I’d known that Zero would be off again at some stage—whether by himself or with the Enforcers—but I’d expected a bit longer to come to grips with it. A few weeks. Maybe a month, or a year. Some time in the future, anyway.
Mind you, there was always the possibility of hanging around in JinYeong’s prospective clothing shop just to annoy him and mess with his ties, so my future wasn’t looking too bad despite everything. Maybe the two of us would even have a chance for a real date—or maybe just one where we didn’t both end up covered in blood, guts, or debris.
That hope didn’t take away the deep sense of sadness that had settled over me so suddenly, though. We’d only been a family for a little while, and I couldn’t help the deep, faraway ache that sank into my stomach at the thought of Zero going off again, never to come back.
“What’s the deal?” I asked, somehow unable to stop the words tumbling out.
“I’ll be based on the human side,” he said, reading the notice without looking at me. “And I’ll be a liaison. I’ll need to find somewhere to stay that gives me good access to Between as well as being well established in the human world.”
“Good grief!” I said, relief flooding through me. I didn’t have to lose him, either. “Just ask if you can stay with me in the house and get it over with, will you?”
Zero said in a pained sort of way, “I don’t think you understand how invasive it will be, Ruth.”
“Oh yeah, it’s not like I had Between and Behind encroaching on my house and my life since I was a kid or anything.”
“I will be here, too,” said JinYeong, cocking an eyebrow at Zero.
Zero’s blue eyes became ice. “We haven’t discussed that.”
“I’m not kicking him out, and I’m not letting you go sulk in another house around here. You’re gunna have to live with each other for the foreseeable future, so you better get used to it again, starting from now.”
JinYeong fairly exuded smugness; Zero didn’t try to argue, but there was a look to his eyes that said the conversation wasn’t over, even if he was going to be staying in my house. I couldn’t help grinning a bit, because I suppose that’s what family does—they look out for you and argue with you and try to do what’s best for you, even if you don’t always agree on what best is. It was just nice to have family again—especially when that family was Zero.
I went upstairs later, more by instinct than anything else. Maybe I felt as though I really should clean out Mum and Dad’s room now that their killer was out of it—open the windows and door, air it out and see if it couldn’t get back some of that peace and quietness it had once had to it.
Maybe I expected to see exactly what I saw when I stepped into the room—some version of it, at least.
The bed was made and clean, the room empty of anything that had once been Athelas’. Well, except for the fact that there on the chair we had confined him to was Athelas’ phone, right in the middle of the seat.
There was no reason to think that he’d left it for any purpose except that everything Athelas did was with a purpose. I almost didn’t pick it up anyway. I didn’t want to see any message that he’d left for me. I didn’t want a last benediction or a promise that he’d change, or return—or worse, a threat. I wanted a bit more time to think—or better yet, not think—before I started poking at too many of my recent memories.
Of course, I ended up looking anyway. What else could I do? I’ve always been too curious for my own good. And when I unlocked the screen, a single message was there: a notification, actually. It had been there for a few weeks, by the looks of the date. An unknown number that started with the Australian country code, as if it had actually come from another country.
Did they have phones Behind? I couldn’t even think of anyone from the human world who wasn’t currently in the house, who would be in contact with Athelas. I tapped the notification and the screen whisked me away to the message centre.
Yes, I was made aware; I’ve been working on the issue since then. If you provide the parts, the merman will provide the receptacle, and I’ll manage the transfer. A part from each will assure continuity of the scene, and I’ll leave the disposal of the scene to you. Three days are all we need. If you can guarantee safety until then, I guarantee that no loose ends will be left to disrupt your plans.
I frowned A part from each? Each what? Had Marazul been mixed up in whatever Athelas was doing? He was pretty risk-adverse, and I didn’t think he would have volunteered for the job. And if they were talking about a transfer with Marazul, who knew how to fuse human and behindkind tech and who knew how to transfer—
Wait.
Fingers. Ears. Toes. Ezri saying that her finger being gone was all in a good cause. The echoes I had heard in Marazul’s closed network through the badge I still had—those echoes I had thought were echoes of the day my friends died, but that hadn’t quite matched the memories I had seen in Athelas’ mind of that day.
The date—
I drew in a shuddering breath, because I finally understood the memory I had experienced of Athelas going over to the human headquarters.
He hadn’t been thinking about my death with any sense of emotion or interest because it hadn’t occurred yet. He hadn’t made the attempt on me yet. The memory I had seen of his meeting with the human group had been days before he made his carefully calculated and knowingly abortive attempt at killing me. He had gone there to kill them and had instead been persuaded to leave them alive with the promise that they would be out of sight and out of reach of anyone who could possibly want to see them dead or use them against me.
He must have known exactly what I was about, and he had known I would leave the memory at exactly the right time if not before. He had been happy to be captive in his memories for a little while if it would mean that I would see enough to figure out all the different parts of his plan. Even though he had resigned himself to dying, he hadn’t been able to stop trying to justify himself to me.
Which meant, I thought, hot and cold at once, that my friends were almost certainly still alive. No one knew better than I did that Marazul was about the only person who could possibly do the kind of transfer that the message was probably talking about—a message, I was now convinced, that had come from Blackpoint. Blackpoint was probably the only person who had ever coded himself into a computer game. If I added those two behindkind together, Marazul and Blackpoint, I was left with answer that made a faint, wondering hope flicker ablaze in my chest.
Between the two of them, they could definitely have figured out a way not only to transfer the humans safely out of the human world but to store them somewhere safe—and Athelas was the only one who would have been able to figure out how to make it look like they had all died.
A lot of small, seemingly disconnected things suddenly made so much sense.
All the new gear I’d seen the humans installing in the depths of their headquarters.
The missing ears, fingers, toes—the wry jokes about parts not growing back—there was no way it didn’t add up to exactly and only one thing.
I had messaged Blackpoint just before it happened. I’d warned him that life was getting dangerous, and that if he wanted the humans to be safe, he should probably do something about it. I’d thought he’d ignored me—or that he’d just been too late to do anything about it.
What if he hadn’t been too late? What if he and the humans had cooked up something with Marazul that was so new and dangerous that no one else—not even behindkind—knew about it yet? What if Athelas, tired of death and destruction and wanting to make as big of a mess as possible, had agreed to let the humans live?
I couldn’t help the grin that spread over my face. Couldn’t help the tears that were already gliding down my cheeks and into my mouth. I let them alone for a moment of two, then carefully wiped them away and hurried downstairs.
“Oi, Tuatu,” I said, overbalancing by the bannister as I tried to grab it with my missing arm. I steadied myself and asked, “You still got that phone of yours?”
