VIII

The golden hour of morning bled through the windows, weakening the ætherald lamps Lyra had been using all night. She rolled her neck to alleviate some of the tension that had been mounting during her sleepless investigation.

She took a swig of violet gin straight from the bottle before glancing over the heliographic reconstruction of the carnage. The dismembered bodies of clan knights were strewn about her in jigsaw pieces. She took another deep swig before dragging over one of the heliographs of interest. Rainer’s body stared at her open-eyed, his fire-opal irises now clouded with milk. Along his neck and face were the striations of black veins, a common side effect of chaotic magic exposure.

Since her first mission to eliminate Dominus had gone awry, she had been scanning night and day for any lead she could use to pick the trail back up. He’d been careful enough with his movements, travelling mainly at night and concealing himself within shadows. But he would have to slip up soon. Lyra was sure of it. And once he did, she would gladly drive a bolt sword through his heart.

She corked her gin bottle and put it on the table, picking up the results sheet she’d received from the potion specialist detailing all of the ingredients Dominus had used for his decoction. She didn’t recognise the recipe, but it was undoubtedly chaotic in origin, with reagents he couldn’t have scavenged easily in the wild. He had to be getting it from somewhere. But from whom?

Occassi would never speak to sprites, that much she knew. Not even if she came under the guise of a polite inquiry. However, there was one demoness she’d been intending to pay a visit to.

She picked up her pistol and slotted it into her holster and then exited onto the forested trails, alive with the ruckus of beasts and humans alike, but it was past the aromatic heart of the wood Lyra wished to travel to. Down the lichen-carpeted steps to where a colony of occassi had festered.

One could tell how much closer they were getting to it by the way the surroundings shifted. The trees that once dominated this natural stairwell crumbled away to give space for this urban enclave. The botanical odours native to the country had been smothered by cigar smog. Even the creatures who’d once called it home had fled, sensing the naked danger in their midst. It was the lair of decomposers now.

Lyra cringed when she accidentally crunched a snail underfoot and scraped off its remains on the kerb, stiffening when she saw the glowing eyes of ravenous rats blinking in and out of the gutters. Her neck prickled with dormant huntress instincts as she kept her focus on the task ahead—the rows of dilapidated stone houses falling prey to foul weeds, moss, and waxen brown mushroom heads.

She meant to breach one den in particular. Whisperings through the sprite network had alerted her to what hid inside, but she needed to see it to believe it.

She didn’t bother knocking before she entered, throwing open the door on the tawdry conclave that had gathered. Its members consisted mainly of men. Human men. Scantily clad in fur loincloths and slicked with oil.

A cloud of moongrass smoke veiled the air as it flowed from brass pipes passing between their lips. They converged around the occassella at the centrepiece who sprawled leisurely in a fur-edged cape with a man feeding her grapes coated with his own blood. She hummed in pleasure as she traced her sharpened claws down his face with faint affection before bidding him on his way.

When she noticed the intrusion, she sat up with a coiled smirk on her lips and revealed a tight gown that left little to the imagination. “Well, well, boys. It appears we have company.”

Lyra realised she’d not often seen an occassella this close, and the experience was like encountering a rare, exotic beast in the wild. She felt bewilderment, terror, and a little admiration. “Are you Vesperia?”

“Guilty.” She cocked her head to one side. “Have to say, I don’t get spritemaids knocking on my door too often. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I think it might be best if you tell me what all this business is.” Lyra placed her hands on her hips, keeping one finger perched on the handle of her pistol.

“Them?” Vesperia’s lips broadened to a toothy grin and a hint of fang. “Why, these fine specimens are merely keeping me company. No law against that, is there?”

A vein pulsed in Lyra’s temple. “As long as they’re all here by choice.”

Vesperia’s chuckle was thick as syrup as she snapped her fingers. Immediately, a man rushed forward to offer her a moongrass pipe. “Quite willing, I’d say.” She touched her palm against his cheek. “This one became mine after I rearranged his skeleton to cure his humpback. That one over there.” She pointed in the near distance. “I extracted a virus from him that would have claimed him long ago otherwise. And that one.” She flung her hand in another direction. “I ate his woe and despair and he fell to his knees for me at once. These were lost and discarded lambs when I came here. Wanted by no one. I give them a place to stay.”

“And it just happens to be a coincidence that terrible misfortune befalls those surrounding these men shortly after they came to your service?”

“I’ve already had a lengthy discourse regarding this with your fine uniformed ladies at the Iron Clan.” Vesperia handled the pipe with cultivated precision, betraying the ancient aristocracy in her blood. She perched it between her berry-red lips, her dark lashes sweeping low. “If someone’s cruel lover has her hair fall out in stress? A domineering employer loses her fortune? A neglectful mother develops a bout of boils? What is it to do with me?”

It was on the tip of Lyra’s tongue to command she cease with her smug obfuscations. Preferably with her fist around her throat.

“Yet I imagine that isn’t what you are here for?” Vesperia swivelled the pipe in her fingers. Her lips had left a dark red imprint from her lustrous rouge.

“Quite right.” Lyra unrolled the sheet she’d been keeping up her sleeve. “I’ve come to inquire about this.”

Vesperia plucked the sheet with her claws and gave it a quick scan with a bemused look and wrinkled nose. “What’s this? An ingredient list for a potion? Well. I can’t say I understand what you’d want to do with this.”

“Why?” Lyra asked. “What does it do?”

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to disappoint you. I don’t quite know. It’s a recipe far more ancient than my years.” Vesperia shrugged one shoulder. “I’d seek someone more senior from the motherland to answer that.”

“I don’t believe you.” Lyra advanced upon her, jaw tightened. Her hand went to her pistol. Then stopped when she realised the men were gathering to protect their eldritch mistress.

Vesperia cocked her head to one side, curiosity sparked at the challenge.

They would be no match for Lyra alone, but harming mortal men would be anathema, and she didn’t doubt Vesperia’s lack of scruples to use them as shields.

“You’ve asked your questions, and I’ve been quite candid.” Vesperia handed out the sheet to a man, who offered it back to Lyra. “And I don’t appreciate my honour being called into question. I can scent your lust for my blood, huntress, and if I’m honest it’s starting to tarnish the ambience. I bid you good evening.”

“Evening,” Lyra replied through gritted teeth before turning to leave the den. She paused to take a deep breath of air. All that moongrass was beginning to make her feel faint, but not enough to diminish the murderous rage battering at the doors of her ribs to be released.

Dominus arrived in a sherwani suit of all black, as though it were night itself that clothed him. The colourful verve which marked all Thal cities had now long been muted, much to the delight of his senses. Part of his reasoning for seeking refuge so deep within the rainforest was not simply its ease of obscurity but to escape the irrepressible exuberance of Thalistan’s lifestyle. The smells were stronger here, the talking more frequent, too much skin and sweat and scent to distract him.

Tonight he would attend an exclusive event at The Blue Lobster, a supper club frequented by the fashionable of Thalistan. One of Sadik’s legitimate fronts for his notorious alchemy chain. He’d received the invitation directly from Elina and had snorted in amusement at the brief notice declaring evening attire only. He’d thus mugged and murdered a mortal to facilitate this, helping himself to the contents of her purse.

The body he had left in an alleyway after contorting her skeleton to form the shape of a star. While there were many arts with which he was intimately familiar, from sketching to sculpting to the more abstract of disciplines, the most potent medium for him of all was blood and bone. Taking apart a creature’s physical form and refashioning it into a tapestry of carnal imaginings—mosaics pieced together from different shades of bruising, patchwork hides, and splattered murals of viscera.

Now he waited patiently in another alleyway for Elina to arrive. He had insisted upon her accompanying him to the supper club as an incentive for Sadik to meet with him. In the past decades of hiding, Dominus had watched in real time the birth of the mogul and his unprecedented rise to success.

Mundane citizens rarely came into wealth so miraculously, not without there being some unsavoury means involved behind it. Dominus knew it to be true here, in the so-called idyllic continent of Vysteria, as it was back home. He was thankful Yilan didn’t disappoint in that assumption. Beneath the guise of zany potions and spell reagents was an interconnected network of smuggling and selling chaotic magic wares on the market.

Suffice it to say, the mortal had money and means, two things Dominus was in dire need of, and a common crook would be a far more easily exploitable mark and far less likely to turn to the aid of sprites.

He heard the faint tapping of Elina’s shoes on the pavement as he remained concealed in the alleyway. He emerged behind her with a smile, delighting in her nervous start before him.

“You’re on time,” he said, glancing over her shawl in celadon silk.

Elina narrowed eyes tinted with a palette of greens and golds in perception of him; her brow and temple were encircled by flower petals. “Let’s get this over with.”

He held out his arm to her, and she rebuffed him. So he took her arm more forcefully and rested it into the crook of his elbow. “Act natural.”

“The disgust I feel around you is all instinct, you’d best believe.” Her sable curls were adorned with a gold chain headpiece, and with each birdlike pivot of her head, the dropped-emerald ornament that dangled in the bridge between her eyes frolicked. “What do you want with Sadik anyhow?”

“I need not explain myself to you.”

His dismissal riled Elina but she kept it contained. The sooner she could be rid of this ogre the better.

The doors to The Blue Lobster were shrouded by a canopy of cursive iron and coloured glass, fronted by a sculpted façade of its animal namesake that leaned with unsettling verisimilitude over the rim. When they neared the entrance, the door attendant held up a hand to halt them.

“Ah, Ms Elina!” The Thal smiled in recognition. “It’s been quite a while.”

“That it has, Jagjit.” Elina handed him the invitation with a plus one attached. Sadik always sent them in the hopes she would come. She never did.

“Who’s the friend?” Jagjit asked, scarcely glancing at the invite.

Dominus lightly tightened his grip on her elbow in warning. He could crumble her mortal bones like chalk if she wasn’t mindful.

“He’s an acquaintance of your boss.” Elina smiled, her doe eyes betraying no untruth. “We’re getting them reintroduced.”

Jagjit hummed, giving him a onceover. He pocketed the invitation. “Well in that case, enjoy your evening.”

With that, they entered through the antechamber to the sound of calypso. The coat area stood to one side, with the lavatories at the other. Brass double doors etched with the relief of peacocks led to the thick of the music and merriment. The club was an elegant palette of dark coffee and gold, several sculptures of the snake-goddess of life, Naya, interspersed throughout in gilt-bronze.

Dominus watched witches and men alike dine at elegant tables with beige leather chairs, with more private alcoves flanked by twisting pillars silhouetted behind sheer drapes of silk. His lip curled in distaste when he saw snake-hipped men wining on raised circular platforms, inciting jovial cheers and hoots of encouragement. How degrading.

“Which one is Sadik?” Dominus leaned down to murmur in Elina’s ear.

“He won’t be down here.” Elina glanced upwards at the balcony area where a room was concealed behind tinted glass.

“Get me up there, then.”

Elina led him past the servers to another guarded door. “I’m here to see your boss. He should be expecting me.”

“Yes, Ms Elina.” One of the guards stepped aside while the other appraised Dominus. “The occasso?”

“He is with me.” Elina strained what she called her Grim Reaper smile, the one she always used before declaring a grave diagnosis. “Please, Sadik has been waiting a long time for this. He wouldn’t want me to be held up.”

The two soon relented and opened the door for her. Elina ascended the stairs with Dominus in tow, conscious that her act was beginning to wear thin. It was enough that she would be thrust before Sadik’s presence for the first time in ten years, let alone also having to lie to get to him.

At the final door, her nerves had risen to sizzle in her stomach. Sadik would not be so easy to fool as his guards, and yet, at the same time, she would be glad to drop her performance around him. She exchanged the customary words to let them inside.

A man leaned against his desk in wait. His white tunic embroidered with gold was stark against his ebony skin, his long hair bound in gold-cuffed twists. “Well, well, if it isn’t my honeybee, come to visit my hive. It’s good to see you here, Ela.”

“Don’t start.” These were the first words she had properly spoken to him in a decade, and yet, as always, his expression remained adoring. He was permanently frozen within the first throes of carefree summer love that had sprouted the moment they’d met.

“Now, Elina, is that any way to greet the love of your life?” He straightened with the aid of his cane—a gold-plated staff shaped like a firedrake adorned with obsidian orbs. “The least I could receive is a bit of sugar after you dragged a monster straight through my security measures.”

“Sadik Yilan.” Dominus savoured the name on his tongue as, at long last, he stood before him. “You’re a difficult man to reach.”

“For good reason, in your case, though it’s not every day I’m blessed with the presence of visiting royalty.” His eyes twinkled at Dominus’s surprise—he had one black eye and one blue, the latter indelible proof of his bartered soul to chaos. “What might I do for you?”

“I have a proposition for you, one I feel will be quite… piquant.”

“Well, I’m certainly all ears,” Sadik said, before pointing his staff at Elina. “If you wouldn’t mind letting her go first, that is. We don’t need her being privy to this business.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that.” Dominus pulled Elina closer and brandished his claws at her neck. “You see, Elina here happens to be my insurance. Either you give me what I want or I slit her throat.”

Sadik bowed his head in acknowledgement. “Your negotiating skills could use some work, monster.” His hand slid up the expanse of the staff. “Let me tell you something.”

He aimed the staff towards him and shot. A needle-like projectile embedded itself within Dominus’s neck, and he accepted it with a smile, knowing whatever effect it might hold would be useless against him.

That was, until it took hold.

Then, slowly, his blood congealed and stiffened in his veins until he could feel every strain of his circulation attempting to wiggle through to his rapidly waning heart.

“What have you—” He could only stop to glance at the webbing black veins in his forearms before lack of oxygen forced him to yield consciousness.

Dominus drowned in his dreams again, his head surfacing as though he were held underwater. He felt lightweight, drifting, and then slowly tethered once more to the lawful bind of gravity. He was hyper-conscious of every frantic lurch of his chest as his bloated heart worked to drum circulation back through his arteries.

A moon-white face met him when he surfaced, her eyes unkind. Welcome back to the land of the living, Dominus Calantis.

When he awakened he realised he’d been chained. He could hear the ceaseless chatter of his bindings with every half-inch movement of his wrists. Though his pulse had triumphantly resumed, his veins were still stiffened and sore in black calligraphic patterns. He gave a perfunctory tug of his chains, testing. They didn’t budge an inch, but a sudden oscillating stream of light irradiated the metal.

“Wouldn’t fancy your chances of slipping free of those bracelets, monster.” The sonorous vocals of Sadik rebounded against the metal walls.

Dominus’s eyes darted rapidly to locate the source.

He found him seated in a raised booth of reinforced glass. When his eyes eventually met Sadik’s, his captor smiled and raised a cocktail glass, complete with slices of lime and an umbrella, in salute. A miniature ocean swirled in glowing aqua liquor.

“Now, those chains are made from genuine meteorite, the cosmic metal of the solarites. The perfect bane for an occasso such as yourself.”

Dominus clenched his fists, willpower warring against the futility that confirmed the incessantly blathering mortal was correct. He tried his best to summon a curse to shatter the window and was rewarded with a sharp wasp-sting of pain from his shackles.

“Stubborn, aren’t you? Not used to being bested, I gather. Especially from someone barren like me. A harmless little magic-free mundane.” Sadik spread his arms in a neutral shrug. “But you know what? That’s what I love about chaos magic. And I mean, the real chaos magic. The potent kind. None of this watered-down, back-alley-brew-stirred-in-a-cauldron type shit. No. Real chaos magic. True chaos. Well, it favours us all.”

Dominus had recognised the potent signature of chaotic magic the moment it had been used upon him. The staff had been imbued with heartbreak, likely with the aid of a memory box. What he could not fathom was how Sadik had come to acquire such power.

“If this is your idea of torture, then I must commend you… for I’d rather suffer a miserable death than be forced to endure another second of your drivelling.”

“Well, well, it speaks.” Sadik was delighted by this development. “But contrary to what you might be used to down in Mortos, I don’t believe in torture. Never had the right incentive. Nah, I’m just keeping your ass put long enough for the Iron Clan to come and take you off my hands.”

Dominus couldn’t allow his journey to come to such a snivelling defeat as this. Not after all he had suffered. He scraped his mind for any figment of an idea that might lead him out of this predicament. But bound in chains with his magic impotent, Dominus found himself swiftly out of options. He didn’t know the first thing to say that might sway a mortal of this nature.

Darius had always been the talker, the one with the throat full of sonnets, the silver tongue with its serrated edge. Dominus used to watch him make fine work of his victims—smoothly piercing through raised guards and inhibitions, burrowing through skull and cranial tissue. His weapons were words, and he never needed to pause to reload.

“Turning me over to Soleterea so easily”—his voice crackled before he moistened his lips—“seems foolish… when I could be so much more useful to you free.”

Sadik stirred his glass with the cocktail stick and took a sip. “I don’t see how that adds up. I let you loose and you might snap my neck the moment you’re handy, or go after Elina. I have little use for loose cannons like you, monster. It’s detrimental in the realm of business.”

“You and I… We can help each other… You have money, connections, influence…” Dominus swallowed thickly. “All things I require… and I assure you… the rewards shall be immense.”

Sadik’s eyes narrowed in consideration, his interest piqued. “What kind of rewards are we talking here?”

“Soleterea… destroyed my life… ruined my family… corrupted my brother… You help me enact revenge… I shall give you anything you desire.”

Sadik steepled his fingers and tapped them idly against his mouth for a few moments. “I’ll think it over, monster.” He drained his glass and shuffled across to the exit. “I may have a task for you yet.”