Chapter 49

  Derxis dropped the crystal chunks into the hands of Leocanto Lockbreaker. The Lockbreaker made them vanish in a display of prestidigitation so subtle that Derxis wondered if actual magic had been involved.

  “Are you certain,” Leocanto inquired in his mellifluous voice, “that you will not require assistance?”

  “Quite certain,” said Derxis. “We are not to be disturbed. Not until she leaves.”

  Leocanto left Derxis in front of the door. A private room. Not, under any circumstances, to be disturbed while he met with Akkama, not even if the Lords of Skywater rained hellfire down upon them. Which shouldn’t happen, Derxis reminded himself. That hellfire thing didn’t happen for another year or two.

  He entered and saw with satisfaction that the Lockbreaker had prepared it according to his request. Polished mahogany desk, elegant rice-paper curtains in bamboo frames, a fire crackling merrily in the hearth. It looked very much like the late Shogunate style. Almost, but not quite, like the room in which he had found Akkama with a dead Majesty and a blind friend.

  That vase was too much, though. Leocanto, canny beast, had divined the intent of Derxis’s oddly specific requests. He had supplied a vase depicting dragons and unicorns afrolic on a crimson field. Very clever, and pretty funny, but just a bit too much. Derxis took the vase and shut it away in one of the larger drawers of the desk.

  There. Perfect. He could see it all: what she would think upon entering this room, why she would think it, how she would react. He didn’t even need the mind spike.

  She came early, hoping to catch him off guard. She should have known better.

  Derxis waited for her in a plush leather chair near the fire. An equally cozy chair sat across a small table. Akkama came in warily, one hand on the hilt of Nemesis, eyes flickering in search of traps. Didn’t she know him at all? His traps could not be seen. Adult Akkama would never have…oh, well.

  His appearance put her on edge, for he wore the full regalia, including gloves. And he had chosen the mask of Judgment, of a like kind to the mask he had worn at Guertile.

  “Ok,” said Akkama as she tried and failed to read something on his person, some hint of why she was here. “Whatever this is, let’s get it over with.” The shifting of her eyes, the uneasy stance, the tiny twitches of her expression and tremors of voice—they told him everything he needed to know. She had killed Emmius. Her guilt could not have been more obvious were it seared into a scar across her face. Derxis knew this for certain because he had seen that very scar, and could thus make the comparison. Akkama gave it to herself after she murdered Zayana, about four years ago by his reckoning. He recalled that version of Akkama’s final words to him: kill her. Kill the young and foolish serpent. Derxis had no intention of doing so. Rather, he would kill the one he knew , the elder Akkama, by preventing her from ever existing.

  Miracle time, no powers.

  Hard mode, D-man.

  Let’s go.

  “Please,” he said with an easy laugh. He gestured at the chair. “Have a seat. Relax!”

  “I will not do either,” she replied, an edge of anger already in her voice. She hated not knowing why he laughed.

  “How about this,” he said. “I’ll put away my mask, and you put away your sword. Hmm? Over there.” He stripped the mask from his face and tossed it across the room to where the box sat on the mahogany desk.

  Akkama did not move, though she did take her hand off Nemesis’ hilt. She narrowed her eyes at him. “Something…is different about you.”

  “Something is different about you as well, Akkama. Have you not heard the saying that you’ve never met the same person twice?” He giggled.

  Akkama rolled her eyes, a characteristic expression that she would abandon after she scarred her face. Seeing it again filled Derxis with an unexpected giddiness. “Arrogant as always,” she muttered.

  “Arrogance,” Derxis declared with a raised finger, “is the privilege of the ignorant.”

  “Look who’s talking!”

  “Hee hee! I meant myself, of course. Whyever would you think I was referring to you ?”

  Akkama gritted her teeth, hissed softly. “Why,” she said, “Am. I. Here?”

  “Ah! That one’s easy. I am going to take your talisman from you.”

  She blinked at him, visibly replaying his sentence to make sure she’d heard correctly. “What?”

  “Your talisman. Your ten-sided white thing. The one with a tenth of it missing. I’m going to take it from you.”

  She smirked, more amused than threatened. “Yeah?”

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  He grinned back at her. “Yeah.”

  “And how will you do that?”

  “First, let’s see it. Put it there on the table.”

  She hesitated, as he had known she would. But then, out of curiosity and a morbid desire to just see him try to take it from her, she reached into a pocket, pulled it out, and dropped it on the table. It fell with a clatter. “There,” she said, smug in her confidence that whatever trickery he might employ, in the end he would have to actually reach across the table and physically take it. At which point he would be down one hand. And really, that would not be so bad, as he knew. Her own hand was back on the hilt.

  “You killed Emmius,” said Derxis. It caught her completely off-guard. She opened her mouth—first in shock, then to reply, but he preempted her. “Black disappeared, and then you killed Emmius. You left him on the Paper Moon.” Her expression confirmed that she had indeed left Emmius on the Paper Moon. That was bad. It meant his body was almost certainly irrecoverable. He could not be brought back, and neither could the draconic words on his skin, which had turned out to be pretty important. Colors shuffled on Derxis’s skin as he wondered whether he had really seen Emmius for the last time. Save us, man.

  “You…” said Akkama. Emotions battled across her face. She had been hoping to pin it on Abraham Black.

  “I don’t need proof. We both know that. Mind reader, remember?” He leaned forward. “And here’s something else I know. Something that Emmius knew, something that you desperately hoped no one else in the world knew. Well, I know.” Akkama had told him herself, far off in the future. “I know that you cried yourself to sleep after Prax. I know that you had nightmares about Anthea. She was broken, haunted, a pale shadow of her former self, and you did that to her. I know that you wish things between you and Zayana could be the way they were long ago.”

  “Shut up,” Akkama whispered, her eyes blazing. Heat rolled off of her; the room’s temperature began to climb.

  Derxis stifled a laugh, but he did not shut up. “And I know,” (although this part was only educated conjecture) “that you can’t even draw your sword right now without remembering the tension of Emmius’s body as you cut through him. In fact, you haven’t drawn it since then. Because…you’re afraid. Hey, remember my prophecy about you? I do.”

  He was right about the blade thing. She would have drawn it by now.

  He pushed further. “I know why you killed him, and I also am aware that you don’t know the reason yourself. But I, a color priest, can assist you with that: you couldn’t handle the forgiveness. And I understand, Akkama. Forgiveness is a mighty draught indeed! It can sting worse than any hatred. It can be a weapon. To be used with caution, right?”

  She trembled. He pushed further. “And I hate to be that guy, but I did tell you so. At Guertile? You should have listened. What is the point of prophecies when no one listens?” He shook his head in disappointment. “Hero of Fire on the Paper Moon.” He laughed sadly. “Can you take a wild guess what your quest might have been?”

  Now the dragonsteel blade emerged, its impossible edge glimmering.

  He leaned away in mock surprise. “Going to kill me too? Akkama, ladies and gentlemen: problem solver! Just stab anything you don’t understand.” Despite himself, Derxis was veering off-script. The Emmius thing was throwing him off. He sneered in genuine disdain at someone antithetical to the order of the color priests, someone with no regard for others, someone whose future self would beg Derxis to kill her.

  When they had first met, Emmius had said to Derxis, that can’t be right. I do nothing, like, all the time. And Derxis had laughed and laughed. He had really liked Emmius.

  Akkama took a threatening step toward him, on the brink of once again letting raw thoughtless fury dictate the course of her life. But she held herself back, trembling.

  One more push. Derxis raised his hands defensively and said, “First, I want you to see what’s in that box over there.” He nodded his head sideways at the table where he had thrown the mask. A fine lacquered box rested on four ivory legs styled as herons.

  Akkama’s sword cleaved the lid of the box clean off its hinges. She took a moment to process what lay within. When she turned back to Derxis, he had taken his gloves off. He waggled his pale fingers at her, fingers entirely free of orange arda.

  “What is the meaning of this?” Akkama growled.

  “How’d I do? How was my mind reading? Not bad for someone who doesn’t actually have mind powers anymore, right?”

  It was his mind spike in the box. Akkama took a moment to grasp its significance, the fact that Derxis had been without his powers since she entered the room.

  Derxis spoke, his voice about as serious as it could get. “You see, Akkama, you were right. I have changed. I can read you like a book, even when all my powers are sitting over there in a box.”

  “It’s just tricks,” she said. She turned to him and glared him down with fiery eyes. “It’s no different than the stupid mind games you’ve always played. They won’t work on me, priest!”

  Derxis chuckled—a sound of true amusement, infuriating to Akkama. “You don’t understand. I can see each pathway in your mind. I’m looking right now at the map labeled ‘Akkama.’ I know what you’re going to do even before you do, even before you are aware that there is a choice to be made. And I am about to put a stop to your nonsense. Once and for all.”

  “Shut up.” Her voice was a whisper, deadly quiet. She watched him with staring hate-filled eyes, tensed like a serpent ready to strike.

  “As the last color priest, it is I who will take responsibility for you. I will not allow you to become the Akkama I knew. This is for Emmius.” There was a finality in his words. The conversation was over.

  He stood.

  The burning edge of Nemesis carved his thoracic cavity from corner to corner, hewing easily through his ribcage and splattering blood like orange paint over the fine furnishings. He had not predicted that. He’d expected a beheading. He died laughing.