Chapter 11 #2
Sesto had never outright counted, but he reckoned he was close.
“Oh, about eighty or ninety days. We have four. Springtide, autumnwhile, winter, and midwinter. We used to have summertide, but not for many generations. Here?” The answer should have been four as well, but everyone in Rivenholde acted like the place was in another world entirely, and he would learn more by entertaining that notion.
“Fifteen,” Daire said. “Oh, when the stalls are open later, you must try this mulled wine, Sesto! It’s the very best you’ll taste. The grapes are imported from Curia Rosedown, which is my home.” He frowned slightly. “Was my home. Still my prominence.”
When he turned, Sesto saw the glowing mark on the back of his neck: a circle filled with smaller circles.
He had an urge to touch it and feel whatever magic was imbued, but he recalled how small and invisible he’d always felt when men tried to touch his bald head or ask him what it was like not to have testicles.
“And Rosedown, is it far?”
“Two peaks down the range. A day’s ride or so, weather depending.”
“How did you come to be here?”
“Oh.” Daire stopped walking and was solemn. “You won’t want to hear that story. It’s not very magical or happy.”
Sesto laughed bitterly. “Could it be worse than castration, torture, and being sold to the kingdom’s spiritual authority for a life of involuntary servitude?”
Daire’s pale eyes turned to saucers. “You’re a eunuch.”
Sesto’s natural defensiveness crept forward, but Daire’s expression was full of kinship, not pity. “Yes. I am.”
“Me, I’m...” Daire glanced around, but everyone close was too busy setting up their shops to pay them mind. “I was born with the parts of a man and a woman. Cursed, my father said.”
Sesto had heard of androgyne individuals but hadn’t met one. As Daire had said, such an “affliction” was seen as a curse by most, and he had a sense he knew where the story was going. “They abandoned you, didn’t they?”
Daire tucked his long blond hair behind both ears and looked down. “I was a blight on their household. I can’t blame them for bringing me here and then leaving without me. I would have starved to death if not for Ryquin.”
Sesto had a far less charitable take on the princeling, but the tendency to relate with a subjugator was common in servitude. “Why did your parents bring you here? Just to leave you?”
Daire shook his head. “Rivenholde is where necromancers come to practice their talents. They... I believe they thought they could sell me, but there were too many necromancers here already. I wasn’t worth much.”
“A necromancer is...”
“One who communes with the dead.”
“Speaks to them.”
Daire nodded.
So Jesstin was not so unusual after all. The correlation was too neat to be coincidence, though connecting any of those threads was still beyond Sesto’s reckoning. “That must be exhausting.”
“Merely sometimes. I only talk to them when Ryquin asks me to.”
Sesto thought of Jesstin’s agony the night before. “You don’t hear them all the time? Were you trained to block them out?”
“No, necromancers have to focus to hear them at all. Some of us can only do it with complete silence or meditation. The stronger ones can do it at will, but we only hear them when we want to. Those who live in the crypts of the sept live in a constant state of focus so they can be conduits for the pretor and his family.”
It made sense that Jesstin’s magic would hold to different rules, since his had not come from the Seven Sisters, but in learning this, Sesto had only opened up more questions his new friend would not be able to answer. “Is that where you live?”
“Sometimes, but I stay with Ryquin most nights. He cares for me.”
I’m sure he does, love. “What does he want from the dead?”
“Answers, of course.” Daire skipped back into motion, pointing at a new row of stalls with gold-topped tents. “Would you have your cards read, Sesto? Or your astral alignment? Oh, it’s always such a treasure to open doors to our future!”
“My what or what?” Sesto shook his head in bewilderment. “What answers, Daire?”
“Hm?”
“Ryquin. Your consort. What answers does he seek?”
Daire’s expression clouded. Sesto worried he’d pushed too far, had been too obvious in his fishing.
“Ryquin has been under assault from would-be assassins for years. It’s horrible.
Really horrible. Every consort he’s taken, except me, has eventually tried to kill him.
They’re all dead themselves now, of course. ”
“Indeed?” Sesto tried to look as shocked as Daire expected, so the man wouldn’t pick up on how much he’d revealed.
“Necromancers, all of them.”
“And he wants to know why?”
“He’s the son of the pretor,” Daire replied. “But he doesn’t believe they intended to kill him.”
“I believe an assassin has but one job.”
“He believes they all loved him until they were corrupted by influences who want to hurt his family. He wants to know who hired them, so he can put a stop to it.”
Delusions of grandeur. “Oh, but of course he does.”
“He can rest easy with me. I’d never kill anyone.” Daire sighed. “I know he may not seem so, Sesto, but at heart, Ryquin is a romantic. Love will save us all, he says.”
The arrogant turkey. “Ryquin is full of wisdom, isn’t he?”
“He’s...” Daire smiled softly in reverie, but as it faded, his expression darkened. “He wants me to ask you about Jesstin.”
Sesto swerved to avoid a large cart full of live swine and cattle. “Jesstin?” Naturally, Sesto had noted the man’s interest at supper the night before—or whatever that was, for it was like no meal he’d ever endured. “What is this about?”
Daire stopped at the intersection of two market roads. “Ryquin knows he’s a necromancer, like me. But... not like me. His magic has a different source. He wants to understand the differences.”
“Oh, how interesting. Any reason why?” Sesto prodded. The other question brewing—and how long has Ryquin known this?—was too soon to ask. If the answer was anything other than since last night, then they had a far larger conundrum to dig out of than he’d realized.
“I... I don’t know.” Daire looked away, wincing into the distance.
He lies even though he knows he’s terrible at it. “That’s all right. I’m sure he has his reasons.”
Daire brightened. “He always does. Ryquin is very wise. He knows more than everyone here—except his father, that is. He should be pretor next, not that temptress Lexsea, but she has her father twisted around her dainty little fingers.” He grew serious.
“And do not look into her eyes, Sesto. She can do things to a person. Make sure Jesstin knows too, before she turns him into her little marionette.”
The layers of that family, their world, were coming into focus. Sesto knew from his many years of stalking shadows at the Reliquary how important even incidental words could be. “I’ll take the advice to heart and ensure he does as well.”
Daire exhaled in relief. “She’s done enough harm. But Jesstin...” He clapped his hands together. “He can speak to the dead?”
Daire’s forthcoming, guileless way would not last without some reciprocation. Ryquin already had the easy answers anyway. “He can, though he’s not met anyone where we live who shares his gift, so in truth, he knows very little about this ability.”
“Oh?” Daire looked disappointed. “Hm. Ryquin thought...”
“Thought what?”
“It’s nothing.”
Sesto touched the man’s arm. “You can tell me.”
Daire lifted one shoulder. “He thought Jesstin might be the one to finally do it. To finally visit Infinita Mori.”
“Infinita what?”
“The netherworld.” Daire seemed confused at Sesto’s confusion. “Do you not believe in it?”
Believe in it? He’d never even heard of it. He still wasn’t even sure they were standing in the same world he lived in. “I’m... not familiar, no.”
“Oh.” Daire nodded to himself. “It’s where souls go after death.
It’s supposed to be a place of transition before they are sent to the Halls of Ilyn, where they either spend eternity or reawaken and be reunited with loved ones.
When the dead are still in Infinita Mori, we, the necromancers, can speak to them, but once they move on, they’re gone. ”
“You said supposed to be.” There was no such fable where Sesto was from. “How long are they in... Infinita Mori?”
“Time is different there.”
“If you were to make it relative...”
“I couldn’t say. No one knows.”
“But it’s temporary?” Sesto wasn’t even sure why he was probing so hard. He pondered how to pose a question he was almost afraid to have answered. “There are far too many soul lumens for that, aren’t there? There are tens of thousands just from what we’ve seen so far.”
Daire made a noncommittal nod but immediately cleared it with a shake of his head.
“Many years ago, someone cursed Infinita Mori. They turned it from a place of peaceful furlough into a nightmare of frightful horrors. The dead are supposed to travel the Mori until they reach the other side, but they can’t reach it anymore, so they cannot leave.
It’s a terrible, terrible thing, and no one knows how to fix it. ”
“Well, who cursed it then?”
Daire shrugged. “No one knows. There is an upside though.”
Sesto waited for him to explain.
Daire leaned in and lowered his voice to a sharp whisper. “The coffers have never been fuller at the sept! Appointments with the dead cost close to a year’s wage for many, but the necromancers cannot keep up with the requests.”
And there it was. Sesto smiled, nodded, and offered something meaningless in response, but a critical patch of the tapestry of Rivenholde had been woven.
It had to be the pretor’s own ancestors responsible for the curse. They’d created a supply that finally matched the demand, so they could grow their wealth at the expense of the restless dead.
And if Ryquin was asking about Jesstin’s ability to travel to such a place, they must be planning something far, far worse.