Aki

The room was largerly bare. A single bed was positioned at the far corner beside an oak desk. It made sense in a way; Merkus never seemed the sentimental sort. Still, it wasn’t what I’d expected. I found it odd that his room didn’t match his chaotic brilliance. I envisaged books and papers strewn about the room, knots of tools and half-finished designs cluttered about his desk, signs of explosive experiments on the walls, a cache of exotic weaponry underneath his bed. Then again, this room didn’t belong to Merkus. No, this room belonged to Knite. Prince Knite.

Anger bubbled. Not the hateful anger I held for Kalin or the scornful contempt I held for those entitled brats from The Branches, but anger nonetheless. After Diloni…

I walked over to the bed and removed oversized boots from tired feet. I remembered his kindness then. Remembered his tolerance for my stubbornness. Remembered why he was late that very morning and how he had always treated me like an equal. That he called me friend. I found it hard to stay angry after that.

I lay on his bed, the bread and fruit and watered wine I’d found in the pantry comforting me like an inside-out embrace. It settled in my stomach and soothed my body, seducing me with promises of peaceful sleep. I closed my eyes. Just to rest them. Just for a…

Her smile. It haunts. I expect to see it. I don’t want to see it, but I expect to. I turn, and as I knew she would be, she is. Panic hits me. I tremble. Sweat cascades down my back and forehead. I drop to my knees, my thoughts too mired by injury to maintain the effort of standing. Lustrous teeth pull at me, demanding attention. Commanding it.

Her smile. It haunts. So I look down. She will take no more. I see her smile again, but it's different. The same, but different. This one frees me, untangling fear from my limbs.

I look up. It haunts. But her smile feeds me now, the panic becoming anger. Cold, deep anger. I look down again and my anger scurries away.

“Forgive her?” She asks in a language that I know but don’t recognize.

“No,” I reply in that same language. It is hard to refuse her and so it comes out angry. I love this woman, but she is weak. She’s not worthy of being listened to. She is not all of who I love, just most, just the better most, yet she is worth more than being listened to. She’s worth it all.

I shake my head. I must do this. She cannot divert me from this. Not this. She’s as good as dead. I love this woman, but she is already dead.

I see her first tear, shed at this moment for me. I cannot afford to listen, however loudly it rolls down her cheek. So I look up and find my anger.

Her smile. It haunts. But now I welcome it. Need it. To see it change. To watch it feel pain and to be the one to bring it about. She must die.

I look down for the last time. Her eyes are dead, but her smile is still bright. I know she’s no longer here, but her request is. It lays in that very smile, etched onto her face, confident I would follow wherever she led, wherever goodness was sure to rest. I study her face. It feels like it'll be the last time I see it. I promise myself that I will not forget her, whatever came next.

I look back up.

Her smile. It haunts. The panic is back. I know I cannot act. I know I cannot do as I please. Or maybe that is all I can do. The woman I hate stands before me. She wears my lover's skin, but she looks nothing like her. I feel the panic, but my gaze is steady, my will unbroken. Anger, my friend, is with me.

She approaches slowly, each step deliberate. I notice her shoulder and the mark thereupon. My anger flashes, peaking over my control. Her smile broadens.

“You are such a wonderful man,” she says, now standing over me as I kneel over my love. My dead love. “Always making it interesting. If only there were more of your like.”

I maintain eye contact. She may have broken herself, but not me. I refuse to be broken. I am heavy. Heavy with duty, with anger, with my imminent death. I stand. Best to die on my feet, unbroken.

A thought invades my mind as I reach my full height, giving me strength. What if? What if I can break it all? My love lays in my arms, dead. My hate stands across me, strong. I cannot let that be. I cannot bring my love back, but damn if I cannot make sure my hate follows her into death.

So, what if—

I heaved and wrenched forward, drenched in sweat. I thought I knew pain and hate. I was wrong. The dream had shown me the truth of it. Real anguish. The pain of lost love. The pain of hopeless anger. The hatred it bore.

The last I’d cried was eight cycles ago. The first two were difficult. Like most children, I was prone to childish hysteria, to an inborn notion that being loud enough for long enough helped solve problems. I got over that. The two after that I spent wondering why others didn’t outgrow it like they did bed-wetting. The following two I did unwittingly, until one day I’d remembered and wondered if I even could.

I could.

Details of the dream lingered, haunting me like a disgruntled ghost who raked my mind with nails of sorrow. The two women were a mystery. They were identical, yet so different. One was beautiful, eyes large and kind, a smile on her face even as she died. The other was hideous, her gaze loathsome, her grin a mockery of smiles.

I peeled off the blanket that covered me. A chill ran along my damp skin. Encouraged by the cold, I swung my legs off the side of the bed. I hadn’t slept long; it was still night. A snap of my fingers brought the lantern by the door to life. I stretched my back and shoulders, trying to work out the cramps and pains of adjusting to a comfortable bed, then lurched, my eyes flashing back to the lantern.

How?

A sudden pressure stole my awareness. It pushed against my temples, pulsing and growing into waves of tension that sought to evict my thoughts from their home. A bright light invaded my sight. I leaped from the bed. Death approached. I could feel it with an angry clarity. I stood still, eyes clenched shut, my rage gradually dictating order to my frantic mind.

“Raathi, garow, gelli, faqur,” I said, the language both familiar and unfamiliar at once. Explore, identify, trap, and execute.

My right hand moved of its accord. Power flowed from my soul and emanated from my forefinger, dancing into existence a glowing cube made of lines, curves, and a smattering of specks. A final, flourishing stroke and the cube began a dizzying spin, growing smaller and smaller with each rotation.

I stared at my creation—if I could call it that. It came to a stop and hovered before me. The design had shrunk with the shape, maintaining its original proportions so that the lines and symbols were hair-thin and the specks had all but vanished.

The tension behind my eyes reached a painful new high. I reeled back, clutching my head. The cube rushed towards me as though in aid. It penetrated my forehead with nothing but a warm touch, calmly settling behind my eyes.

The splitting headache slowly subsided. I opened my eyes. The cube hovered before me. Dark, viscous fluid had replaced many of the elaborate designs within. The tar-like substance pushed against the borders, rolling across the six faces. And though the lines of the cube bent with the thrashing of its occupant, they did not yield. I stared, fascinated and terrified by the prison and its captive. In the end, curiosity won over fear and I leaned in to study them both.

Suddenly, the cube exploded. I recoiled from the motes of light and tumbled into the bed, rubbing away immaterial debris from my eyes with the back of my hand. I clambered back until my head hit a wall, then slid up into a sitting position, my breathing short and hurried.

The lantern light had gone out. I strained my eyes against the moonlit darkness. Deep shadows scared me as they had when I was a child who knew no better than to believe they hid monsters, except now they did. Silence reigned. My sight brought me nothing of the inky creature but unassuming suspects of dark corners and deep contours.

I caught a flicker of a shadow. Once seen, the creature was hard to miss. Its bulging form rolled across the ceiling towards the window. Spider-like limbs protruded from its body, its silent movements a bizarre skittering of a dozen legs.

“Katar ka mala wag siyo,” I heard myself say in that odd language. “Audacity must not be rewarded with leniency.”

I got off the bed. My hand began another drawing of blue-tinged, white light. I could sense some of the knowledge behind my actions now, a vague idea of the concepts involved. I drew the minor functions, building them into a larger system, lacing the forces with sensus to protect the inscriptions as I solidified the intent. In a mere handful of seconds, I’d created two bowl-shaped matrixes.

My attentions honed back in on the naftajar. I knew it now. Knew it for the atrocity that it was: a cannibalized soul, a tool created and used by the collectors. I couldn’t recall who the collectors were, or the creature's purpose, but I knew what it was and with the knowledge came anger, a feverish and intractable storm unlike the cold breeze I was used to subduing.

The two hemispheres of my matrix sprang into action. Spiral forces slowed the naftajar to a crawl. It inched closer to the window, quivering in its struggle.

I pushed more power into the matrix. The naftajar slowed further, then stopped, then slid towards me, limbs flailing.

I heard the patter of hurried footsteps. My concentration broke. The influx of knowledge slipped away. Addy rushed in. The naftajar fell to the floor. The backlash from the broken matrix hurled me onto the bed.

Addy took in the room at a glance. Noticing the naftajar, she sighed. “Why? Why couldn’t it have been an intruder made of flesh and blood? Why must I deal with…” She sighed again. “I suppose we can’t have it wandering back to its master, can we?” She turned to close the door. I caught a glint of metal, finding the famous Pinmoon daggers hanging from her waist. One was dark grey, thinner at its base than my smallest finger, dull like it was made of charcoal—Pin. The other was a wide, crescent-shaped sliver of bright silver—Moon. “Guess we’re stuck here until Master gets back.”

“Knite?”

She looked at me over her shoulder. “‘Knite’? Rather presumptuous of you, wouldn’t you say?”

“How so?”

“Well, he is a prince.”

“He was a friend before he was a prince.”

“He was a prince before you were born.”

“Not to me.”

She shrugged. “Sure. It’s your life.”

“Why must we wait for him?”

Addy ran a hand through her short, greying hair—the only outward sign she carried more than a century. She was old even before Diloni was born, yet the privilege of power was great enough to afford her time itself.

“Letting that thing escape would be more trouble than Master would care for,” she said. “And it isn’t the kind of problem I’m well suited for. I was hoping you’d found some royal or other, preferably a Fiora. I haven’t killed one of them since—”

“You can be irritatingly vague.”

She smiled at me like a predator might smile at prey. “Why thank you.”

Undeterred, I asked, “Who sent the naftajar?”

Her smile widened. It made her look as mad as the stories they told about her. “Not sure, exactly.”

“Can’t we let it go and follow?”

“Not worth the risk.”

“You’re going to have to stop thinking of him as Merkus,” Addy said, settling in on the bed beside me. “Can’t say I’m not having the same problem, but I suppose knowing what it could cost me has me better motivated.”

“What cost?”

Her playful madness gone, she answered with but one word: “Death.”

“He wouldn’t …” I trailed off, knowing the words I intended to voice were hollow. He was my friend, but could a stranger be a friend? Did I know him enough to make claims on what he would do? Did I know him at all?

“It’s not that you don’t know him, it’s that you only know a part of him,” Addy said. “It’s not that he isn’t your friend, it’s that he is more. Much, much more.”

I looked away, ashamed. It had been some time since I’d been so easy to read without meaning to be. After years of practice and discipline, my armor of indifference was rusting away.

She waved a hand at me. “I jest. The Prince is the most honorable of the gods. Trust me, I’ve met plenty enough to know and too many not to care. Just remember, Master is as fearsome as he is honorable and it is madness to arouse his discontent—be they man or god.”

“We could leave and close the door behind us,” I said, changing the subject. “The naftajar doesn’t have much in the way of speed.”

“No,” Addy said, watching the naftajar. “What it lacks in speed it makes up for in suppleness. There might be paths of escape I’m unable to identify. I will not take the risk. Best to keep guard and be sure.”

“Where exactly did Knite go?”

“To salvage what remains of his plans.”

My hand reached for the back of my head. I stopped myself mid-motion. “And when will he return?”

“Before the first bell.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

She eyed me, the intense stare and silence a prelude to her answer. “There’s a reason I call him fearsome, Aki. You’d best remember that.”