12 Unexpected Guests
Morning in Thomaskweld smelled like ice. Cold water in the river. Shiverpines encircling the valley. Antal emerged upon the steps of the capitol building and breathed deep.
The scent of jasmine and green growth didn’t belong here, enough to set him on edge.
His mother followed, nose twitching, a squint against the sun. Never as bright on Winter as the other Season-Locked Planes, but more glaring than home. It took getting used to.
They crossed the plaza, dusted in snow. Around them, buildings rose as sheets of windows, metallic struts and domes glittering in dawn light. The finest human architecture. Yme spared few glances for the setting, frowning at Antal instead.
“What are you wearing?” she asked.
A plain shirt rolled to his elbows. Simple trousers. Antlers bare aside from carvings, not glinting silver like hers.
“This is how people dress here,” he said.
“How humans dress.”
“It’s a human city, azaevi.”
It was strange, walking beside her. The tap of bare feet and claws rather than boots.
The dual sways of their tails. Yet even as they fell into stride, Antal felt the tension, a distance deeper than the few inches between them.
Yme slipped on a smile. She looked around the plaza, pointedly taking in the scenery.
The grounds were quiet, buffered from the rest of Thomaskweld by a perimeter wall.
When they reached the gate to the city proper, she hesitated.
“We’re going into the city?” she asked.
Of course. Most daeyari rulers didn’t walk through their cities like simple mortals. They sat on thrones in capitol offices, lurked at forest altars. Apparitions means to stir fear, to seem invincible. Antal had vowed to be different.
“Have you visited Thomaskweld before?” he asked.
A pause. “No.”
“What better way to know a city than to walk its streets?”
He held out a hand, beckoning to the city beyond. Yme appraised the red stone archway like the maw of a beast, the iron gate its fangs. But when Antal resumed walking, she followed.
Thomaskweld was a beautiful city. Antal had taken too long to realize that.
From the capitol complex, a wide avenue formed an artery to the river.
Down its center, the parkway was decorated with snowy fir trees.
Along each side, lamp-posts were strung in garlands of pine and peat berries, copper energy conduits glowing between them.
Bright glass shopfronts. Stained timber and painted doorways.
Patios warmed by conduit-powered heaters.
Yme huffed as a caribou-drawn carriage clattered past. Another fluster at a dog barking across the street. Had she ever been surrounded by so many humans before?
Despite the cold, Thomaskweld was a lively city, loud with shouts and laughter and bootsteps.
Bright with lit interiors. And the smells.
River fish and wood oil, perfume and cloth, baking and frying and salting and all the odd, myriad things humans did to their foods, that Fionamara was always raving about.
The passage of two daeyari turned heads. Softened conversations. Most passersby curved to give the immortals a wide berth.
But they didn’t flee, as they used to.
At a cafe patio, a human woman shoveling snow paused to dip Antal a deep nod. Her energy conduits had gone out months ago. Antal had fixed them.
Behind the window of a clothing shop, a man fussed with the suit on a mannequin. He waved and grinned. Fionamara had dragged Antal into the shop to have a new jacket made. After the initial tension, the tailor had been delighted to experiment with daeyari measurements.
There was a shoe shop, where he’d accompanied Fionamara when she’d needed new boots.
The restaurant with her favorite soup, which he’d brought her when she’d caught one of those mortal sicknesses that made her cough and sniffle and groan like she was a step away from the Void, but which she’d insisted was just a cold, and had altogether been one of the most stressful weeks of his existence. At least the soup made her feel better.
Then there was the music hall where she’d taken him dancing.
And grander, in the distance, the arches of the orchestra building.
Antal couldn’t begin to describe to Yme what that place meant to him, the years he’d snuck into the rafters to listen to the symphonies.
The delight of Fionamara finally convincing him to attend a proper show.
The masterpiece of a dress she’d worn that night, dark as her eyeshadow, slinky fabric beneath his hands.
“You do this… often?” Yme asked quietly.
“You wanted to know how I’ve spent my time on the Winter Plane. See for yourself.”
Yme looked. She saw. But she’d not be able to appreciate the voices of the street, the hum of conversations on carriages and sidewalks. She didn’t know seasonspeak.
Antal hadn’t, either, when he first came here.
His predecessor had instructed him on running governor elections, managing conduits, requesting sacrifices. Then he’d left. Antal, alone, had gone to his forest shrine for the first time, had greeted the attendants waiting for him.
They hadn’t understood a word he said. He’d never forget the terror on their faces, as if they thought he’d eat them purely for the inconvenience. He’d had to teach himself the language, scrounging books and eavesdropping conversations.
The avenue ended at the river, a plaza bordered in iron railing. The water thundered by, thick with ice. Wind gusted down the valley, harsher than the Twilit Plane, but invigorating. Familiar, after fifty years.
Yme studied the street they’d walked down. Then her son. Not the vapid glances she so often took refuge in, but longer. Pensive. Antal overlooked that part of her sometimes, that she was nearly as old as Avroz. Perceptive, in her quieter ways.
“They aren’t afraid of you,” she observed. Not chiding. A quiet fact.
Antal trailed claws along the railing, picking at ice as he gathered his thoughts. How much should he tell her?
All of it, to have any hope of her understanding.
“I’ve chosen to rule my territory differently. The humans select their governor. They send representatives to a council. They live and thrive by their own hands, and I work to earn their support through aid, rather than fear.”
Yme’s tail flicked. “But they’re prey. How can prey not fear you?”
“A new system. I take no more living sacrifices, only the freshly deceased.”
“Corpses?” Yme’s nose wrinkled, crimson eyes wide with concern. “You haven’t been eating live? Is that why you look so thin? You’re still young, Antal, you need proper food.”
“It’s the same, azaevi. The taste is the same. The sustenance is the same. I’ve been moderating, is all. A temporary measure.”
His cheeks were fuller since his meal on the Twilit Plane, his eyes brighter. He had that at least, some shield against her worried gaze.
But Yme’s voice only lowered. “If Avroz knew…”
“He’ll find out eventually,” Antal said with hard surety. “I intend to do as much as I can, while I can.”
“They could strip you of the territory for this.”
Another aspect of her that Antal sometimes overlooked: she’d spent nearly four centuries at Avroz’s side. Never a taste for politics herself, but she listened, learned. Yme knew how the Daey Celva operated as well as anyone with a seat on it.
“I know,” he said.
“And you’d do this anyway?”
Antal leaned against the railing, river roaring at his back.
His city lay ahead, bright and warm and alive.
“Do you recall why Avroz sent me to the Winter Plane?” he said. “Why he claimed to send me here, that is. We both know it was a punishment.”
Yme’s mouth thinned, her tail uneasy.
“To learn responsibility,” Antal continued.
“To become more worldly. And I have, azaevi. I’ve learned that fear is a poison.
I’ve learned that humans are clever, hard-working.
Kind, when given a chance. Thomaskweld’s energy exports have increased threefold with this new system, its population growing. I’m honored by my place beside them.”
Yme fell silent too long. Long enough that Antal knew.
“You don’t understand,” he said.
“No.”
As expected. Still, it stung. His own mother, looking upon all he’d built, unable to see—
“But I’d like to,” she said.
Antal’s head tilted, confused by the earnest sentiment. And equally distrustful.
“Perhaps I could visit more often,” Yme said. “If you’d have me?”
“Azaevi…”
“I could see more of your city. Your people. Maybe then I might understand better.”
Antal wanted to say no. To be strong, like Fionamara had told him to be.
Yme stepped closer.
“Please, Antal.” Her tail brushed his, not the casual welcome she’d offered before, but tentative. Entreating. “Fifty years has been too long. Let me take this step to start fixing things.”
She’d been like this for as long as Antal could remember.
She said she loved him—but hadn’t visited in fifty years.
She claimed she’d do anything for him—but hadn’t said a word when Avroz had killed Razik, had pretended Antal would be fine when he could barely bring himself to eat in the months after.
Every scrap of hurt and neglect festering in Antal’s chest urged him to say no.
To hurl this injustice back at her like sharpened claws.
He couldn’t. Not when his mother looked to him with such wide eyes, a mirror of his own. Not when she brushed a knuckle to his cheek, as soft and comforting as it used to be.
“I have conditions,” he said.
Yme brightened. “Of course. Name them.”
“If you need food, you’ll ask me. You will never harm any of my people.”
She nodded. “You have my word.”
“And if you touch Fionamara…” Antal bared a fang in emphasis. “I’ll never speak to you again.”
Yme blinked in surprise. Then came that probing look, a subtle crease on her brow.
“What Avroz said is true,” she whispered. “That human woman. Antal, yzir virso, surely you don’t—”
They were interrupted by a commotion down the street. A clatter of hooves.
Fionamara sat astride her Void horse, urging the scaled beast as swiftly as the crowds allowed, face set in a scowl Antal knew well.
Void and Veshri have mercy on whoever earned the brunt of that scowl.
She brought her horse to a halt beside them. The beast snorted, flaring finned ears.
“What’s wrong?” Antal asked.
“A busy day on the Winter Plane,” she said in pointed daeyari. Her boots thudded stone as she dismounted. “Another daeyari has been spotted in the Glacier Crest Valley. The telegram just came through. They need you. Now.”
“Another daeyari?” Antal reeled. Unheard of. Any visiting daeyari should have come directly to Thomaskweld to make their intentions known. His kind didn’t skulk in each other’s territories without permission. They knew the penalties: imprisonment, banishment.
“Yes,” Fionamara said. “A real coincidence, don’t you think?”
Yme scowled at Fionamara’s accusing glare—flinched, when Antal matched it.
“I had nothing to do with this,” she said, indignant. “I came alone, Veshri as my witness.” She touched the highest tip of an antler.
Antal huffed. Subterfuge or rotten luck, either way…
“They said now,” Fionamara ordered. “Let’s go, Antal.”
Yme bristled at the command.
Between daeyari partners, such things were encouraged, equal dominance seen as healthy for lasting bonds. But Fionamara wasn’t a daeyari. She was a human, daring to speak so harshly to her better.
Antal could gnash his fangs over the hypocrisy later.
“I beg your leave, azaevi,” he said curtly. “It was good to see you. Perhaps, as you said, we can talk more later.”
Yme’s mouth was tight as she nodded.
Fionamara held out her hand, impatient. Antal took it and visualized dark roofs, the rutted clearing of the Glacier Crest Market.
They were gone in a snap.
They emerged to frozen mud. Shoveled snow. The Glacier Crest Market filled the narrow valley, a cliff of ice looming overhead, warmth below, the sheltered ravine packed with shops and trading carts, humming with people—not haggling like usual. Humans huddled in defensive groups beneath the tarps.
A man emerged from the crowd.
“Lord Daeyari,” he greeted. “A swift response. Thank you. Thank you.”
“Mayor Peryate.” Antal met him with head bowed. “You’ve spotted a daeyari? Where?”
He pointed to the trees.
Antal and Fionamara set off alone up the snowy path. They climbed toward the ridge, shiverpines dark above them, a smell of ash on the air.
Fionamara bristled. Her energy simmered, a current teasing her fingertips as she gripped the hilt of her sword. Too eager. Antal would have to keep an eye on her. He’d prefer to settle this peaceably, depending on why the other daeyari had come—
They both froze at a clearing.
A lone figure stood amidst trampled snow. His antlers, high and sharp. His robes, dark as pitch. The familiar smell of hoarfrost and old stone, enough to paralyze Antal.
No. By the endless reaches of the Void, not here.
The visitor turned, and Antal bared his fangs.
“Ah,” Avroz greeted. “The Lord Daeyari has arrived already? Your humans are swift.”
Antal felt Fionamara’s stunned silence in his bones, felt the same hot panic in his chest.
But then, the rage of seeing his father here. On his Plane. His territory. Land and people Antal had sworn to protect. He drew himself up, claws at his sides. The display earned him a quirk of Avroz’s brow.
In the clearing lay the rubble of a building, burned to ash.
“What is this?” Antal demanded.
“A fire,” Avroz said.
“What are you doing here?” Antal advanced. “What have you done? Are you so petty that you’d—”
“Enough,” Avroz growled. And to Antal’s shame, he silenced. “You think I did this?”
“Who else?”
“Smell it, Antal. You can smell it, can’t you?”
Antal sniffed the air. He smelled fire, long extinguished, woodsmoke smothering everything. Subtler, a scent of burnt fabric. Burnt flesh. The resident hadn’t gotten out in time.
But then, beneath it all…
Something hot. Not like flame. Piercing as sunlight, old as dust, a honeyed aftertaste that turned his stomach. An instinctive shudder crept up Antal’s Void-woven spine, a smell he’d never known in person. One he’d been taught.
One that all daeyari were taught.
Avroz bared his fangs. “An aedari was here.”