27. Twenty-Seven
twenty-seven
Erqis kept his distance from his new wife for as long as he could stand it. He had longed to go to her, to see her. Hear her voice. Get her out of her clothes again. But Neira was still angry with him, and his court clamoured for his attention so loudly that he wasn’t even able return to his own rooms until after nightfall. Neira preferred her own rooms to his and now… well.
Now, another victim had been found, butchered in broad daylight like the previous one.
"It doesn't make any sense," Erqis said, impatiently tapping the heel of his boot against the ground. Despite the sun glittering on the bay, it was becoming somewhat chilly in the shade, and the trees were turning fall-touched. A long, mild autumn was what he hoped for, although the weather could be mercurial so close to the sea.
Qavor barely glanced up from where he was brushing his horse. "What doesn't?"
"The murders." Erqis leaned back against one of the stone pillars that held the stable's decorative arches, the small courtyard deserted. With the stable hands dismissed, it was as secluded a spot to speak in as possible, aside from locking themselves into a stuffy room. "They don't make sense."
"You know, that's just the thing about recreational murders." Qavor glanced over, one brow quirked. "they rarely make any sense to outsiders."
"No, I understand that, but… why now? Why them? A servant on her way to the kitchens, and a young, apprentice officiar? They have nothing in common."
"Perhaps they were lovers, and that made somebody angry."
Certainly that was the easiest solution to his problem; even if they never found who was behind it, at least no more people would die. Erqis fell silent. In the thick ivy winding along the arches, he watched little sparrows dart and preen.
What would the Dread King have said if, in another version of events, he had come to ask for Neira's hand instead of attacking the realm unprovoked? Not that he had known Neira had even existed before her guards had tossed her at him, all wild hair and feral rage.
Besides, the notes he had found indicated that Neira had refused all suitors offered to her. For what reason, Erqis didn't know – and he was sure his wife wouldn't tell him if he asked. But here he stood, having forced her hand in marriage.
Why was his stomach in knots over that?
And why was even thinking about his wife, when his control over his court was slipping so completely, people were being murdered, and he was pestered about ridiculous issues with his provinces at all hours of the day?
What kind of a king was he?
He cleared his throat and pushed himself off the pillar. "I'm going to ask Neira about it."
Qavor snorted. "Good luck."
Erqis was quite sure he would need a whole lot more than luck.
Neira wasn’t in her rooms. One of her maids was, although the girl didn't know where her mistress had gone. She rattled off a few options: the gardens, whichever ones Neira had chosen for today, the library, or the common sitting rooms, where the ladies of the court spent their afternoons.
"You think she'd go there?"
The girl’s smile was sheepish. "Invitations have arrived, but so far her Majesty has not accepted any of them."
That sounded like her. The library, then, and if that was a bust, he'd begin to scour the gardens.
The moment he pushed open the heavy doors, he could taste it – the tang of magic in the dusty air. Acrid, tart, familiar and foreign at the same time, his flames flickering with something like alarm. Erqis set his jaw against it and strode inside. The tale-keeper was nowhere to be seen, and neither was Neira, but he felt her, like a tether was pulling at him, like calling to like. He followed it, the tang becoming stronger with each step, and found her on her knees between two of the supporting shelves, hunched over, half hidden in the shadows.
"What are you doing?"
Neira started so violently that she dropped something, her dark eyes wild as she stared at him. For a moment, Erqis expected her to dart away like a small animal being startled, but then she rose, slowly and deliberately.
"Reading."
"Like this?” He hunched over, mimicking what he had seen. “There are more comfortable spots, surely."
Gods below, he loved how she looked when she was irritated. Her face seemed pointier, colder, with a defiant tilt of her chin and that line between her brows. Her spine had stiffened, her shoulders tightened. She was a woman hewn from marble by a master's hand.
"I was looking for a specific book. I don't have to explain myself to you."
"No, you don't. I was just asking." His fingers itched to be on her skin again; he could back her against one of these shelves, make her soften for him the only way he knew how…
"Well." She held her ground when he stepped forward, her fingers flexing by her sides, half-hidden behind the dark blue velvet of her skirt. "Good day, then."
Before she could turn away fully, Erqis grasped her arm. "Wait." He could see her indignation rear its head, but he held her firmly, his other hand coming to rest on her waist. Her eyes were of a height with his chin, and fixed on his mouth before she forced her stare upwards. "You haven't returned to my bed."
"You haven't come to mine, either."
"Rest assured, I will only come to your bed if wholeheartedly invited. I do value my life." The slight curve of her smile felt like victory, easily surpassing the thrill of his conquests. "But if you want to join me in mine…"
Erqis ran his hand down her arm so he could lift her hand and press a slow kiss to her fingertips.
"Oh, don't…" Neira winced, snatching her hand back like he had bitten her.
"Why? What's wrong?" Immediately on high alert, Erqis brought her hand up again to look it over. Her fingers didn't seem hurt – no scuffs, no cuts, nothing but a slight layer of smudge to her fingertips, but that could have easily come from digging around the dusty bottom shelves. "Are you hurt?"
"No, I…" She exhaled heavily through her nose. "It's nothing."
"Tell me." If something – someone – had hurt her, while he had given her space, left her alone … he could feel the flames licking at the inside of his throat.
Neira frowned. "You're not going to let this go, are you."
"Absolutely not, pet."
She shook her head, annoyance pinching the corners of her eyes, but she did step aside to show him what she had been doing – what she had been touching. A small mouse lay next to the shelf, with a stillness he recognised immediately as death. "I've touched that. With my hand."
"…what." Protective rage still clawed at him, not easily quelled, and made it very difficult to understand what she was talking about.
"You shouldn't touch your face when you’ve touched something dead beforehand."
"Says who?"
She stared at him for a long, silent moment. "How did you reach this age, Erqis? It's common knowledge."
"All right. Let's pretend that's the case. Why were you touching that?"
There was that cagey look on her face again – the same that had come over her when he had asked about that odd cat she had adopted.
"I was going to bring it outside before it begins to reek."
"I see. And why would you not tell one of the servants to do it for you?" Erqis tapped the tip of her nose, just to watch her scrunch it. "You grew up a princess, love. Don't tell me it never occurred to you to have servants do mundane tasks for you."
"Why do you care?" She snapped, side-stepping him, but he grasped her arm again before she could flee.
"I can tell when you're lying, you know. You get defensive, and you refuse to meet my eyes."
Neira's lips twisted with displeasure. "Just when I thought you couldn't get any more obnoxious."
"Just tell me."
She huffed, yanking her arm away. "I was trying to see if I could revive it."
There it was. Erqis grinned broadly. "Like your cat."
"How did you-?"
"That thing reeks of magic." And looked like it had died. Not in any gruesome way – the little body had been too fresh for decay, and the fatal injuries had been internal. But there was a lack of lustre to its coat, as if it was permanently dusty, and a small pinprick of a green glow deep in its pupils. Besides, he had seen death countless times. He knew it well. "You should have told me."
Something else passed over Neira's face then, skulked into her eyes like an unwanted visitor. Fear. True, bone-chilled fear. Her fingers, when she grasped his bare forearms above the wrists were cold – and trembling.
"I can't control it. It didn't even work on the little mouse. Perhaps it was a fluke, or… or I just had that one spark. It's not a threat."
He hated that she sounded as if she was pleading for her life.
"Well, I'd prefer if it was a threat." Erqis shrugged. "Threats are needed to bring order into this palace, and to hold the realms under my rule. The more threatening the better. So if you could find a way to harness this…"
Neira blinked, rocking back on her heels. "You… you want me to wield it."
"Obviously."
"It's not quite so obvious, since you killed my father for wielding this exact magic."
"I wasn't married to your father." Erqis grasped her face with both hands, tenderly. "Stop looking at me like that. You're safe with me, I swear it." Her lips pressed into a line, unrelenting even when he kissed her. Once, twice, chaste little pecks. "But we should find out how deep it runs."
"As I said…" Her eyes cut to the bookshelf. "It didn't work."
"Perhaps that's not fresh enough." Although the Dread King certainly had had no issue reanimating literal skeletons. "Perhaps mice don't have souls to bind. Perhaps what you inherited is… I don't know. A shade. A spark, as you said, of the power your father wielded. But it might be enough to help with the murder investigations."
"What do you mean?"
His thumbs stroked her cheeks before he let his hands drop to her shoulders. "The victims haven't been buried yet. We could go see them, try to ask them if they saw who attacked them." He could see her gathering her resolve, how she armoured herself with it.
"Let's do it."
Both victims had been brought to the nearest temple, a squat block of a building made of white stone and stained glass, halfway down the slope between the palace and the first market place. It was close enough to walk there, and the weather nice enough to warrant it.
"How are you coping?" Erqis watched Neira tilt her face into the sunshine, her eyes squinting; unbidden, his hand hovered by her elbow, ready to catch her should she stumble.
"What do you mean? With the palace?"
"And the…" He waved his hand, searching for the proper words to describe his meaning best. "The brightness, I suppose. The life of it. The colour, the noise, the presence of so many people just existing in your periphery."
Neira hummed thoughtfully. She took a few moments to articulate her reply, and he waited with more patience than he believed himself to possess. Rushing her would make her snappy, and as much as he enjoyed pissing her off, Erqis also very much enjoyed the quiet eagerness she held within herself now at the prospect of being useful, how it shone from her. As if she had been waiting for an opportunity to prove herself.
"It's a lot," she admitted, looked up at him.
Some men, surely, would have been intimidated by her. She wasn't tiny, or delicate, or demure. Neira was an imposing presence of steel and wit and violence, comfortable to speak her mind even if it didn't make her any friends.
She was formidable. And when she shared her thoughts with him, made herself vulnerable, placed those tiny kernels of herself in his charred, bloodied palms and trusted him to cherish them – it felt like victory.
Only it went deeper still, much deeper than simply besting her in their game of wits. And he didn't know what to do with himself aside from waiting for more of her words, more of her thoughts.
"I'm still getting used to the noise. Everyone who crosses my path has expectations of me. It's exhausting. So I…" She glanced at him again, gave him a flat smile. "I hide in my rooms." Just like he had accused her of, shortly before their wedding.
Erqis winced, covering the reaction with a half-grin. When he took her hand she let him tangle their fingers, loosely slotting hers between his.
"It will get better. I wasn't used to any of this when I came here, either. I learned. I adapted. You're smarter than me, so you'll figure it out quicker."
"Finally, words of substance from you." Her smile was a little hesitant still, but it transformed her face, lit it from within.
He laughed, the sound echoed back from the stone arches they walked under. "I'm not entirely hopeless."
"No, I suppose you aren't."
They walked in comfortable silence for a bit. Erqis led her across a narrow bridge over a small pond, through a garden gate she wouldn't have seen for all the ivy that was growing over it, and then they looped back towards the main road that led down from the cliff.
"Which deity did you give them to?"
"Iphila, the Voice in the Gloaming. Duskport's patron goddess. It seemed fitting." He didn't know where the victims used to bring their offerings, where they had been born, whether they worshipped at all, but out of the entire Malvean pantheon, Iphila was said to be the gentlest towards lost souls.
"Is she the goddess you serve?"
Erqis snorted. "I serve myself. Never been much of a disciple."
"No god or goddess tempted you at all? Ever?"
"Perhaps I was waiting for the right woman to devote myself to." He nudged her with his shoulder. "Now that you reached your queenly goal, how about becoming a goddess next?"
Neira rolled her eyes, but there was a warm flush to her cheeks. "You're ridiculous. And blasphemous. You should be careful about that."
"Anyone in particular who'll strike you down for your insolence? Who does Brightmere worship?"
She gave a soft little laugh, half a huff. "My father."
The silence that followed wasn't quite as comfortable anymore, and Neira broke it herself, as if she was sorry she had ruined the light mood.
"I grew up without worship of the gods. I learned about them, certainly, but I remember my father saying that nothing you can achieve lies in their hands, and thus they should not be considered as the patrons of your aspirations." Her mouth twisted again, that sardonic little smile she put on when something wasn't quite as funny as she presented it. "That was very shortly before he replaced me as heir."
"Well, he wasn't wrong, was he. You set your goals and made your choices." Erqis knew he should have left the topic alone even before he saw Neira's expression darken.
"I don't want to talk about it."
"Fair enough." He didn't let go of her hand, and she didn't pull away. Small victories . Erqis had never made it a point to think about what he was going to say next. He called it authentic – Qavor, many times, called it reckless. And worse.
For once, though, Erqis kept his mouth shut until they reached their destination. It was a decently sized temple, windowless aside from a grand, stained-glass mural of blues and purples and oranges to the west, stretching over two stories and honouring the dusk their goddess cherished. The doors were thrown wide open, beckoning petitioners into the foyer. One of the temple acolytes was happy to lead the king and queen to the room where they had laid out the dead, and bowed deeply before scurrying away again. Behind them, the heavy door fell shut.
Still holding Neira's hand, Erqis gave it another squeeze. "Ready?"
She drew in a shuddering breath. "Ready."