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Chapter 21

  The hunting party camped on the rocky side of the island. Once the servants arrayed lanterns and bedrolls, Esor fell over, and then it was morning.

  He was the first awake. The others had celebrated the successful kill through the evening, devouring the choicest meats. They remained unconscious around the fire.

  Esor picked his way over sprawled àlvar bodies to search for a nearby stream that he could hear, but not see. The horizon was rimmed bright-blue by coming Light. The same bright-blue shined back from a stream down a shallow ravine. A waterfall cascaded over rocks barely twice Esor’s height to end in a reflective pool, and frogs bounced away when he slipped through the grasses surrounding it. Esor left his robes upon the shore to wade for the waterfall naked.

  To be clean was a blessing after a full day dirty, and Esor thought unfriendly thoughts about how miserable a soldier’s life must have been, unable to bathe for weeks or months on end. He swam slowly against the flow of the river that escaped the pool, letting his muscles warm to the movement.

  “The baths at the lodge are better,” said Corvin, startling Esor. The Lord Mayor had approached from around the rocks unseen. “We’ll return before the Light reaches its apex.”

  “I like swimming outside,” Esor said. His long strokes did not lose rhythm. “I do it all summer in Sibíko. My mother says I’m semi-aquatic.”

  “What kind of fish lives atop the trees?” Corvin stepped down to the shore. He wasn’t wearing anything above the waist again, just as when he hunted. He had abandoned the bloodier portions of his wardrobe and wore only half his underrobe. His muscled chest was dirty, bloody, and bruised. Mortal after all.

  “Have you never seen a grebe refresh herself after a long flight from the hills?” asked Esor. “Or the way an elk may leap into a pond if the afternoon grows too hot?”

  Corvin stepped into the shallows, extending a hand to feel the flow of the waterfall. His robes floated upon the surface of dark morning waters. “Warmer than I expected.”

  “Not quite the baths, but pleasant enough,” said Esor. “If you...”

  He did not finish the thought. The Lord Mayor stepped under the waterfall and tipped his head back to receive the full force of the flow. The hunt’s filth sluiced off his bare chest. Corvin’s curls hung in a wet, heavy clump behind him, fully exposing his straight nose and angled cheekbones. He looked fleetingly peaceful when bathed.

  Esor forgot himself. He was standing and staring when the Lord Mayor opened his eyes again.

  Cheeks heated, Esor sank into a deeper part of the pond to swim again. “When you’re done...remember to take back the knife you gave me before the hunt. It’s among my clothing.”

  “You could keep it,” said Corvin. “A gift.”

  “It would be useless in my hands. I shall hope proximity to a great unkillable warrior of the Kovenor keeps me alive.”

  Cleaner, smirking, the Lord Mayor left the water and sat on a large root to pick through Esor’s belongings. He found the knife quickly. He continued to search the jumble of cloth, finding charcoal and a small notebook. “I told you that I have more plans for travel, didn’t I? More visits to far-flung cousins of decadent wealth.”

  “A blessed life,” said Esor. “It must feel like a waking dream.”

  “Oh, I can’t imagine you’d care for such a life. You prefer to remain in the library with your books. Better to experience the world through others’ journals while seated at a desk than see these places yourself.”

  “A more glamorous life isn’t available to my kind.” Esor dipped lower in the water until it swallowed his chin and lapped his bottom lip. He was tiny before Corvin. “Thank you. Again. For bringing me here.”

  “It is time for this waking dream to end and life to resume. We embark for ?elasdur tomorrow.”

  It felt like a dream to Esor, gazing up at the Lord Mayor’s gleaming lengths of moistened skin exposed to dawn Light, while Esor himself was engulfed in naught but water and the chain of his necklace. He was unburdened by his own weight. Unburdened, for a final day, of the ugly realities in ?elasdur. And in dreams anything seemed possible.

  ~

  LORD MELIO? WALKED to the dock with them on the Light they departed. He took Esor aside for a private conversation. They exchanged some kind of envelope. Esor bowed, Melio? laughed. Corvin observed it from the gangplank.

  Esor stood at the prow as the swoop drifted away from the island, letting those noble spreadroot trees fade into the ocean haze.

  Corvin hovered over his shoulder. “What did Melio? give you?”

  “He offered to hire me when my contract with you has concluded,” Esor said.

  “Considering alternate employment already?”

  “No, of course not, never.”

  “You took the envelope.”

  “He was a kind host, and politeness demands—oh!”

  The Lord Mayor plucked the envelope from Esor’s pocket. Several pages had been folded together, so it was thick. When Corvin flung it off the side of the swoop into the water, the envelope sank quickly. Esor watched the waves where it disappeared. “Don’t trust any Kovenor,” said Corvin. “Nor should you trust any members of the Patriciate. They will only seek to use you. Do you understand?”

  “Of course,” said Esor.

  He didn’t.

  ~

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  THE JOURNEY TO AMEZUZ had felt a leisurely cruise; the return was abrupt. Ocean waters chilled to steely gray as soon as they turned north. The moods of the Kovenor were similar. Ilare spent the entirety of each Light standing gloomily at the stern, wrapped in progressively greater numbers of scarves, while Samej lurked nearby. Corvin never left his cabin. After their conversation about the job offer, Esor didn’t see the Lord Mayor again.

  ?elasdur seemed all the sadder than when they had left—the tower leaning a little further from the bay, the waters a little blacker, the village just so much muddier. Half the shacks nearest the water had collapsed since they left. “They lose some every season,” said Dak. “They build ‘em back anyway.”

  àstin still wasn’t in his classroom.

  While Esor sought to remove the many nests of bloodtoads and other vermin which had taken up residence in his absence, àstin was, in fact, receiving his final sentencing from the local Patriciate.

  Briskly, Esor swept away dust. It glittered in the new Light of springtime, still colder than the early winter he had left behind.

  Those who had remained in ?elasdur over the course of the winter talked of its passing like a war survived.

  “I lost an entire shelf of scrolls to moisture before realizing the window had taken a leak,” said Medista gruffly.

  “The church needs extensive repairs. The storm brought down half the dome again,” said workmen who banned Esor from entering.

  “Two of the village seamstresses I use lost fingers to the chill of the wind,” said Kuper the steward. “I’ve no idea what they will do now! Bond payments come due soon!”

  On the last matter, Esor swore to speak to Corvin. “I will see if I can have your maimed seamstresses sent to my mother in Sibíko. Tasero has work for all abilities in her choir.”

  Yet Corvin did not make himself available to talk. Esor had gotten accustomed to the Lord Mayor’s constant presence on the island. As soon as they returned to ?elasdur, he vanished.

  Esor went to the guard station to ask after the route to the gaol, intending to visit àstin. The guards deflected Esor’s questions no matter how persistently he argued.

  He refused to leave the guard station. That was how Dak found him, some hours later, when waning Light turned shadows long and blue. “Dak! My good buck! Can you help me?” said Esor. “I demand to visit my colleague, but they will not help me take the first step!”

  “Your colleague has left the gaol.” Drawn and serious, Dak said, “Doctor Xeta wants to see you.”

  ~

  THE RAIN HAD FALLEN to a steady drizzle, the kind where the Chaos-wracked ocean clouds seemed to have settled to buzz and sting over the whole city. The air smelled wrong—fishy but sharp, metallic like blood, though the spatters of blood spilled on the ground under àstin an Galefar’s knees weren’t enough to effervesce.

  ?elasdur’s courtyard was ringed by awnings unfurled to protect observers, but àstin had no relief from the peppering rain. He wore the stained shreds of the trousers he’d worn when discovered with Vaseri. Dried blood stuck his hair to the swollen knob above one eye. His bottom lip was newly split, bleeding freely. Without food or drink, he could only curl in on his own body, too weak to meet the gazes of those who judged his actions.

  “Perversion,” said Patrician Malor, “is antithetical to who we are as àlvare. The All-Mother bestowed stewardship of Her Body upon our people, and we strive to bring Order where Lorkullen’s Chaos touches. When we find Creep, Waste, and perversity in our Empire, it’s upon us to do more than purify. We must prevent its reoccurrence.”

  His hand was swift with a belt knife. àstin cried out. Fresh blood sprayed. It marked black upon the ground it struck, deprived of color by the cool-hued lanterns hung around the courtyard.

  Malor lifted àstin’s severed ear between forefinger and thumb. He turned to let everyone see how short it was. Even Malor’s age-drooped pinnae were thrice the length.

  àstin tried to put a hand over his ear, but a palace guard twisted his wrist behind his back and pulled him upright. The bruises purpling his flesh were exposed. He had been beaten often in the gaol.

  “The All-Mother calls to us to embrace passion and seek justice,” said Malor. “It would be unjust to detail the crimes of àstin an Galefar, exposing his victim to shame. You need only know he violated one of our most precious.” He flicked aside the ear, letting it slap to the stone. “A Levusàlvar.”

  Graveyard silence surrounded the living, shifting within their cloaks, exchanging glances.

  The quietest of all were Lady Kit?anve and her daughter Vaseri, seated on a balcony extending from the nearby manor of a resident artist. They were motionless underneath the canopy of brown-edged ivy and tangled gray branches. Kit?anve’s hand rested on her daughter’s shoulder, long nails gently indenting Vaseri’s skin.

  “Were they in ?elasdur, the Inquisitors would punish àstin an Galefar as seen fit by the Church,” said Malor. “We need no Inquisitors to tell us the divine’s will. In our palace, in our city, we are closer to Chaos than any other, beyond the quick help of our Emperor or Grand Cardinal. We are sovereign by need. Our laws are absolute. We know what to do with those who betray us.”

  A door quietly clicked open and closed again on a balcony adjacent to Kit?anve’s. Esor an Amen stepped out, tanned from his winter vacation. His nervous hands failed to smooth his hair as he bowed to Doctor Xeta.

  “You’re late,” murmured Xeta, beckoning Esor to stand beside him at the half-wall. “You missed the introduction.”

  “I’ve been watching through the window,” said Esor. He had been approaching when Malor cut àstin’s ear, then found himself immobile.

  “Excellent. We have a responsibility to see this.” The doctor leaned on his elbows. His hands were steepled in front of his face.

  Esor considered the crowd below, which shifted to permit the passage of more armed àlvare. These were not palace guards, but soldiers from the Ildòrian encampment outside the city. They wore short swords and bows, glaring into the watching crowd as if prepared to draw.

  àstin sagged in the arms of his captor, dazed, chest heaving.

  Once archers surrounded the courtyard, Lord Mayor Corvin materialized from a shadowed alleyway. He was dressed in silver-gray, the material sleek and light as a dove’s feathers, the robes so long that they rippled before every step and followed him like a river. The high collar was closed tight around his throat. He wore black leather gloves and a ruby diadem, antlers unadorned.

  Malor jerked a long switch off his belt and shoved it into the Lord Mayor’s grip. “In the absence of Inquisitors, Lord Mayor Corvin serves as the All-Mother’s hand.”

  Corvin studied the switch, trailing his fingers along its length, testing its suppleness, and rubbing his thumb on the razor tips. “I’m not anyone’s hand.”

  His arm flicked. Thunder cracked over the courtyard. àstin screamed. A crimson mouth striped across àstin’s chest and blood sprayed Corvin’s robes. The frothy hem gleamed with it.

  The Lord Mayor lifted an eyebrow at the crowd, as if asking a silent question.

  Esor’s hand clutched the Eternal Cross hidden under his shirtsleeves, bunching the fabric.

  Corvin snapped his arm again, and again. He crosshatched àstin’s skin. His delicate touch only striped the surface, at first.

  A twist of his wrist brought the razors to bear. He cut into àstin’s belly thrice, each deeper than the last, yanking free segments of skin that were meant to contain his innards. àstin was torn open, spilling himself upon the flagstones. The deepest secrets of his viscera were exposed. Then the Lord Mayor took his face. The razors were merciless on tender skin.

  The Heralds began to sing. He was not yet dead, but the announcement was made: ?àstin an Galefar has been purified.? The towers amplified their voices over the city and beyond, echoing all the way to the Heralds in the foothills who would sing the news onward.

  Eyes rolling, mouth gaping, the fight left àstin. He sagged into mound of his own remains as the words washed over him.

  ?àstin an Galefar has been purified.?

  Corvin drew a small knife and, without pause, inserted it into àstin’s throat underneath the chin. He died quickly. The courtyard was motionless, silent. Corvin’s robes were drenched. He handed the weapons to his footman and peeled off his gloves. Underneath, his hands were perfectly clean.

  “It’s done,” he said.

  Malor stepped forward again, glowering at the balconies. “Remember, we don’t tolerate perversity in ?elasdur. Do we?”

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