22: AN EARLY SPRING

Kihrin’s story Inside Vol Karoth’s prison

“Merit’s not dead? Ha! Merit’s not dead!” I bounced around a back-alley street on the outskirts of the city, in one case literally kick-jumping off a wall before I landed again. What can I say? I was in a good mood.

Teraeth blinked. “The man running the velvet house…? Why would you even care?”

“I agree,” Janel said. “Is he an old friend of yours?” Janel paused in our walk and leaned back against a wall, stretching out a leg. I stopped to watch her, because Janel’s legs deserved an audience.

We hadn’t as yet found anything significant, but we had started to notice the way the city both was and wasn’t Karolaen. Parts of it seemed newer, even so far as to be reminiscent of sections of the Capital, while other parts were even older than the ancient city, architecture that dated back to the voras’s original settlements on Nythrawl.

What it meant or how we could use it was less clear.

I walked over and took up a section of wall next to her, mostly for the excuse to be within touching distance. “Merit and I used to belong to the same group of thieves in the Lower Circle.”

“The Shadowdancers?” Janel squinted. “I didn’t think you were friends. Didn’t you threaten him with blackmail?”

“Sure, but if Merit hadn’t liked me, he’d have found a way to screw things up. Blackmailing him was just giving his conscience a salve so he didn’t have to feel bad for ringing out the Shadowdancers.” I paused. “But it does kind of make me wonder what Merit was doing running the Shattered Veil Club. Or working for Galen, for that matter.”

“Priorities?” Teraeth said. “Does this matter?”

I sat back down again and exhaled. “No. But it’s still nice to find out that someone you thought was dead is still alive. And Galen—” I smiled. “Wow, Galen’s come a long way, hasn’t he? I always thought he was going to … I mean, when I ended up on that slave ship, with no idea when or even if I would see him again, all I could think about was that Galen was going to be all alone. But I think he came out okay. Although Darzin used to be the one who controlled the Shadowdancers, and Therin before him, and Pedron before that. So really, this is just following the family tradition.”

“The freeing-slaves bit is new, though,” Teraeth mused. “I really hope I have the opportunity to rub that in your mother’s face, Kihrin. You know, that she might have managed to murder the only good pair of royals in the whole empire.”

“You’re a bad man, Teraeth.”

“This is not a secret,” he admitted, then immediately paused and looked thoughtful.

“No,” I said. “You’re right; it’s not a secret.”

Teraeth spared me the briefest grin before he returned to his thoughts.

“What is it?” Janel asked.

“I was just contemplating that Vol Karoth doesn’t seem particularly creative.”

I laughed. “I just felt the weirdest desire to defend him.”

“He’s not, though,” Teraeth said. “He seems to only be capable of working with what secrets are already in someone’s memories or his own memories, which is why I was jammed into that very strange ritual sacrifice that was far more in keeping with S’arric’s experiences than my own. So I was just thinking that secrets benefit him. The things that he knows that no one else does.”

“He clearly can read our minds,” Janel said. She didn’t have to explain how uncomfortable the idea made her.

I scrunched my nose. “Technically…” I rubbed a finger under my chin. “Technically, we both can. Go looking through everyone’s memories. Everyone who is at the Lighthouse seems to be accessible to me, although some are growing less so with every passing second. I’ve avoided that because, well, it’s rude. I wouldn’t want someone else tripping through every dirty thought I’ve ever had.” I held up a finger to Teraeth. “I know you wouldn’t judge. Even so.”

“I might judge a little,” Teraeth admitted. “Or at least critique.”

I rolled my eyes.

“But once any of you join me here”—I pointed down at the ground—“you seem to no longer qualify as easy to read. Just for your information.”

“Ah, a bit of bright side,” Janel said. Then she turned to Teraeth. “So what are you suggesting? We ask Thurvishar to pass along that everyone needs to share their darkest secrets? We brought that up. I somehow doubt everyone has confessed to all their issues.”

“Then those issues will be used against us,” Teraeth said. “I understand how laughable it is to have me be the one suggesting honesty is our best weapon here, but…”

“Hey, don’t look at me,” I said. “I’ve had two different wizards and a mimic spelling out every secret I ever had for anyone who takes the time to read about them. Pretty sure I have no more secrets to divulge.”

“That’s not true,” Janel said. “I don’t really know your preferences in bed at all.” She gave me a serious, piercing stare. Someone who didn’t know her would probably have missed the faint way the corners of her lips turned up, the tiny signs that she was doing everything in her power to keep from grinning.

A laugh bubbled out of me, quite out of my ability to stop it, flaunting itself in the face of every challenge before us. “Are you and Teraeth ganging up on me?”

The two shared a look.

“Yes,” they both said together.

“Uh-huh. I see.” I stared at them both, the feelings in me sparkling and warm. I’d have labeled the feeling as “happiness” if it wasn’t anchored down by the knowledge that I didn’t get to keep my loves.

Or more, I suppose, that they didn’t get to keep me.

I took Janel’s hands in mine, traced the dark skin with my fingertips, then closed my hand around her wrists. Janel wasn’t a small woman, but she was still thin enough in comparison that I could manage that with one hand. I raised her arms over her head and set my hand against the wall, trapping her like a pair of shackles. Purely performative, of course. This was Janel, after all. She could free herself whenever she felt like it.¹

“My preference,” I said, not whispering because I wanted Teraeth to hear this too, “is usually for reins. And a hard ride.”

She swallowed visibly, but she didn’t look … displeased. I bent down and grazed the side of her neck with my teeth. Janel gasped.

I felt movement next to me. Teraeth said, “What happened to you liking being tied up?”

I nipped at her ear while I eyed him. We were basically out in the open, but it didn’t really matter when the whole city was deserted, did it? “I knew I shouldn’t have told you about that.”

Teraeth eyed us both with more than a little interest. “Nothing to be ashamed of. Not a thing anymore?”

I sighed, gave Janel a gentle kiss on the temple, and let her go. This wasn’t really the time or place for this, even if I knew both my dear partners would be enthusiastically willing, anyway. So I figured I might as well be honest.

“No,” I said. “Three months in the rowing galley of a slave ship cured that nicely.”

Janel straightened and pushed herself away from the wall. “What?”

“Remind me to tell you about the scars sometime,” I told her. I stepped away from both of them. “Any other secrets you feel like sharing? Because our sexual proclivities hardly seem like the sort of thing Vol Karoth is really going to use to mess with our heads, and he already knows that I’m in love with both of you.”

“I hate it when you spoil all the fun with rationality and logic,” Teraeth muttered. “We could’ve had confessions. Demonstrations.”

“You just wanted the excuse to get into my pants,” I told him.

He grinned. “You have met me, yes?” Teraeth pushed his hair out of his eyes and started to walk down the street.

But then we both realized Janel wasn’t following.

She hadn’t moved from the wall where I’d left her. She’d crossed her arms over her chest and was staring at the far side of the street. Finally, she scoffed and shook her head, looking at the ground.

“Janel…?” I hated the way my heart was starting to hammer inside the cage of my chest.

“I do have one secret,” Janel said, sighing, her posture very much that of someone psyching themselves up to reveal something unpleasant.

When neither of us said anything, she shrugged and looked away.

“Janel.” It was Teraeth’s turn that time. “You know there’s nothing you can say that will change how we—”

“I’m pregnant,” she said.

“—feel.” Teraeth’s eyes went very wide and more than a little panicked. He ran back over to her side. “I’m sorry. Did you just say…?”

“I did. And I am.” She sighed. “You wanted secrets…” Her eyes met mine. “It’s why Suless stabbed me back in the Manol. She knew I wouldn’t abandon my body, even after I finished my transformation. The baby would have died.”

Teraeth asked the big question: “Who’s the father?”

Wow. There were … there were options, weren’t there? We still didn’t know what Suless had done while she was possessing Janel’s body, and while Suless had never shown much sign of being particularly interested in fooling around with, well, anyone, it seemed unwise to discount the god-queen of malice’s capacity to make a special exception just to be a petty bitch. Which made King Kelanis a possibility, as well as Teraeth.

But I didn’t ask. I knew who the father was.

“I am,” I said. “Aren’t I?”

The whole world seemed to hold its breath, but the look in her eyes was all the answer I needed.

“Yes,” Janel said.

I walked back over to the alley, set my back against the wall, and slid all the way down into a sitting position. Fortunately, the one good thing about exploring the deserted city lurking in the mind of a quasi-dead god was that the alleys were shockingly clean.

I was not at all sure how to interpret how I was feeling. Overwhelmed. Scared. Absurdly, inappropriately pleased.

“I wanted to be further along before I said anything,” Janel continued, “but Teraeth’s right; Vol Karoth will try to use it against us. There’s very little chance he doesn’t know.”

“Good luck using that against me,” I said. “If he thinks it’ll make me unhappy, he’s out of his tiny little divine mind.” I stopped and floundered. “I mean … assuming you … I mean I shouldn’t assume.”

“I’m keeping it,” Janel clarified. “Makes me laugh, though.”

“Laugh?” My voice might have broken on that.

Her smile was warm and bittersweet. “This isn’t the first time I’ve tried to free you from Kharas Gulgoth while pregnant. It’s just that this time, I’m carrying your child instead of his.” She tilted her head toward Teraeth.

“Eh. It’s his turn,” Teraeth said.

Janel flicked her fingers against his shoulder. Then she scowled at me. “And I am still beyond angry at you. How dare you kill yourself to get out of helping me with this. Take some responsibility.”

“Well, technically, I—” I shut up as she glared at me so fiercely it was a wonder the street didn’t catch on fire. I cleared my throat. “Thurvishar thinks it might be possible to make me a new body with Wildheart once this is all over, but, uh—” I sighed. “Fuck, I’m so sorry. You know I’m not coming back from this. Even if we win, I can’t—” I exhaled. “There’s this rather large hole in the universe that’s going to destroy everything, and someone has to fix it.”

“It doesn’t have to be you,” Teraeth snapped.

“Yeah, it kind of does,” I said. “It’s literally what Vol Karoth was created to do, and he’s the only one who can, so if I can somehow find a way to make this”—I gestured around me—“work, then yeah, it’ll have to be me.”

“That’s not true,” Teraeth said.

“It is—”

“It’s not!” Teraeth shouted. “Saying it is just means you’ve given up on finding a better solution. Fuck you, Kihrin! I’m not going to lose you!”

I glared at him. “You think I don’t want to be around for this? How dare you! I’m not—”

Janel turned her hand into a fist and slammed it down onto the street, which cracked.

Both Teraeth and I got the hint. We shut up.

Her voice was soft and sad and more than a little bitter. “The surest way to suffer defeat in a battle is to walk into one planning not to win. You’ve already taken your loss as granted, which does nothing more than guarantee that result. That is unacceptable.”

When I turned to Teraeth, he shook his head. “Oh no. I’m not on your side. You’re really going to just sit there and tell us that Relos Var’s plan is the only one that can work?”

I started to answer and then stopped. Because that was … that was actually a good point.

Janel added, “Winning, in case you’re curious, means you’re still around to enjoy it afterward. It does not mean you have sacrificed yourself to save the whole world. We’re going to find another way. You’re smarter than this. We are smarter than this.”

“I don’t—” I stopped and swallowed. Gods. I was going to have a child. Janel was going to have a child. Taja—

Taja. The Luck Goddess must have known. Maybe she’d even helped the odds. Looking back, the answer the Goddess of Luck had given me hadn’t at all been “Don’t worry about it, she’s not pregnant,” had it? The one and only time we’d slept together, and of course Janel ended up pregnant. What luck, indeed. I felt a fluttery sense of excitement neatly drowned out by pure blind panic. I wasn’t ready for this. The whole universe wasn’t ready for this. It didn’t matter that we were already on a sort of time line. This made it so much worse. When I thought of all the people, gods, entities, and demons—oh, most especially demons—who would try to use a baby against us, against me, I felt more than a little queasy. Neither Xaltorath nor Suless would let this go.

Fuck, Relos Var wouldn’t let this go.

And then the dread twisted again. If Janel couldn’t figure out a way to make it back to her own body …

She must have had some idea what my expression meant, because she leaned over and kissed the side of my mouth. “If we can’t find a solution to this, it won’t matter if I’m here or if I’m back at the Lighthouse. Everyone’s dead, anyway.”

“That doesn’t mean I like it,” I protested. Next to me, Teraeth snorted in agreement as he brushed his fingers across the side of Janel’s neck.

“It would be rather odd if you did, wouldn’t it?” Janel said. “Let’s figure how to fix this mess first. And after that, we have seven more months to solve the rest of it.”

I laughed. “Sure. Nobody’s been able to figure this out in over three thousand years, but I’m sure we can sort it all out in the next seven months. Really, Janel, I thought you were going to ask for something tough. This’ll be easy now that we have the proper motivation. Thank you for that.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, Monkey. You helped.”

“Fantastic job.” Teraeth picked up Janel’s hand and squeezed. “I’m feeling very motivated.”

I stood up and gestured toward the doorway. “Let’s keep moving.”

Galen’s reaction The Lighthouse at Shadrag Gor
Just after Qown, Galen, and Sheloran’s memories

Galen turned to Talon as the memories ended. “Could you pick one of us and stick with that, please?”

Talon grinned. “No, ducky. Be less interesting next time.”

Kalindra blinked at Sheloran. “What on earth were you doing in the Lower Circle?”

Sheloran sighed, fanned herself, and didn’t answer.

“I admit, I find myself wondering the same thing,” Senera said, scowling as though someone had just dug spikes under her nails to force that statement.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Sheloran raised her chin and made a special effort to look extra haughty.

Galen laughed in spite of himself. They’d seen her plans from her own point of view, but they still hadn’t made the connection. And Sheloran didn’t feel like explaining. It was downright adorable. No one trusted anyone, even after literally seeing through each other’s eyes.

Perhaps adorable was the wrong word.

“Red’s doing what she always does,” Galen offered. “She’s saving everyone. Whether they want to be saved or not.”

“Taking control of an underworld gang hardly seems like saving anything but your own purse,” Kalindra said.

Sheloran collapsed her fan with a sharp metallic click. “That’s because you’re not paying attention, which is frankly a huge disappointment given your background and training. An underworld organization has resources, connections, all the right Watchmen on the payroll, secret routes into and out of the city, even trained sorcerers and teachers. If such an organization is seen as less of a threat than the Royal Houses and guilds, they even have loyalty. Think of what you could do with that.”

“To what end?” Xivan asked.

“To provide the civic services the government is failing to offer, obviously,” Sheloran said, “as well as maintain a system for smuggling escaped slaves out of the city, destabilizing the power structures of oppositional organizations, and eventually forcing the High Council to open Voice nominations to the general population. The fact that it will also have the effect of making us ridiculously rich is just a bonus.” She added, “It was a ten-year plan.”

Everyone stared.

Talon began laughing hysterically.

Xivan pinched her nose. “The babies have a ten-year plan. Of course they do. Makes perfect sense. The smartest person in any room is a teenager. Just ask them.”

Sheloran turned red.

“Isn’t she great?” Galen said, beaming. Seriously, he had the best wife.

Senera sighed. “Okay, I applaud your goals, but if we get out of this, we need to talk.”²

“It’s nice to have a plan, but uh … if there really are more god-kings in the Royal Houses, you might want to uh … go over that plan again.” Qown’s brows were drawn together. He looked concerned as he distributed bowls of soup to the group.

“Oh, and that’s not even taking into account what happens when those same god-kings figure out that a healthy chunk of the Eight aren’t around anymore to force them to behave,” Talea said. “It’s going to be a mess.”

Galen frowned. It was going to be a mess, anyway. Part of it was his fault. He’d said too much, been far too honest. Even if Galen could go back …

Well, he wasn’t sure he could. House D’Mon was all but finished, and his hand had tossed in the last grain of rice to send the whole thing crashing down.

He wanted to laugh at Senera’s concern. It wasn’t exactly difficult to see the older people in the room dismissing Sheloran’s plans as the cute, enthusiastic overreach of a teenager with no awareness of the realities of the world. Some of the people in this room were also trying to change things in Quur, in several cases violently, and often for decades. They’d probably told themselves that their inability to fulfill those goals meant they simply couldn’t be changed quickly. Not in ten years. Maybe not in a hundred years.

But they didn’t know Sheloran the way he did. And they clearly didn’t understand how the march of history could move with sickening lethargy, resisting every pull and push, only to spin about on the edge of a coin, moving so quickly it left one breathless and tossed upside down.

This was the year everything changed.

Still thinking over politics and revolutions, Galen absently put the spoonful of lentil soup to his mouth. He immediately spat it back out again and stared down at his bowl in shock.

It had rotted.

From the sounds of disgust and retching from the others, he wasn’t alone in his experience. Qown was staring down at his bowl, aghast. “It was fine two minutes ago!”

“This looks like someone left it out on the table for two weeks,” Kalindra complained. “Tastes like it too.”

There was a tense moment. In particular, Qown and Senera shared a look. Then both ran outside into the hallway. Galen followed, hand on his sword for all the good it would do him. At least Sheloran had her magic.

The hallway was freezing cold, and the end of it, where the tunnel led out into the Lighthouse tower, was pitch-black. Galen could still see through it, but he was all too aware that he likely was the only one for whom that was true. Everyone else was staring into the black, unable to hide their growing dread.

“I see his head,” Galen said. “And part of his chest, most of his hands and forearms.” He felt the dread grab tight around his throat, that gut twist that reminded him that while they’d been talking and joking and sometimes shouting, Vol Karoth had been slowly escaping.

“I’d like to go back inside now,” Sheloran said.

No one said a word in response. Everyone just slowly left the hallway and returned to the keeping room. It was warmer, and brighter, but not louder; no one knew what to say.

Finally, Qown asked Senera, “Do you think time is fluctuating unevenly?”

Galen didn’t understand the ramifications at first. Then he realized that if the food really had rotted because too much time had passed, then their attempts to gauge how long they might have before Vol Karoth would escape were meaningless.

He could be free any moment.

Before he had a chance to say anything, the world changed.