A Whisker Behind (The Worlds Behind Book 1)

  A WHISKER BEHIND

  THE WORLDS BEHIND

  BOOK 1

  W.R. GINGELL

  Copyright © 2022 by W.R. Gingell

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover Art by Natasha Snow

  For Suzannah,

  who prefers her penitents kicking, screaming, and unwilling in the face of glorious, implacable grace

  (Or, at the very least, self-sabotaging)

  CONTENTS

  1. Swords on the Gyeongui Line

  2. Fox in the Hallway

  3. Boy in the Kitchen

  4. Blood at the Villa

  5. Pigeons in the Park

  6. Blood in the Temple

  7. Enforcers in the Sitting Room

  8. Deception in the Morning

  9. Decisions in the Afternoon

  10. Sacrifice in the Evening

  11. Chaos in the Café

  12. Promises in the Dark

  13. Tea in the Sunroom

  SWORDS ON THE GYEONGUI LINE

  There was something about the Gyeongui Line Park Walk at twilight. It was not what might have been called a park in Australia, where the word would have denoted a colourful, toy-strewn and grass-lined area full of life and children—or a sprawling botanical garden that took hours to stroll through if one wished to get a full sense of what was there. In Seoul, a thin strip of grass and trees barely five metres wide was enough to be considered a park, so long as there was a path between the trees upon which to walk, and people enough to walk along it.

  So it was along the Gyeongui Line, which at its Hongdae appearance was known colloquially as Yeontral Park. A parallel continuity of two paths with a section of greenery between them that softly and slowly morphed into one path surrounded by greenery as it left Hongdae, it was a small, fresh-scented line between brightly coloured cafes, vintage stores, and old, crumbling housebacks that were dwarfed by the three- and four-storey buildings around them and surmounted by the inevitable creep of death by vine. The Park Walk had once been a railway line, and that line with its twin metal tracks appeared every so often along the path, as if surfacing for air. It lent a feeling of lost ages to the otherwise bright atmosphere.

  In Australia, a twilight walk would have its gentle air of melancholy, especially as the summer sank toward autumn; Athelas, accustomed to taking his walk exactly when that air of melancholy suited his, had found his walk a very different beast in Seoul—and especially around Hongdae, in which area he had once again found himself by the simple expedient of following the Gyeongui Line a little too far west.

  There were too many dogs around Hongdae for a decent melancholy; there was also somewhat too festive an air to the place. Perhaps that was his fault for securing a lodging in nearby Gongdeok, whence he had walked. Young professionals and college students only really came alive after seven or eight—as did the Gyeongui Line between Gongdeok and Hongdae, when couples, tiny dogs, and friendly senior citizens rendered the walk hideous to Athelas. If he had known, he would certainly have arranged for lodgings in a quieter part of the city than the brass-and-blue, skyscraper-lined streets of Gongdeok.

  More importantly, if he had known that the house he had leased under the impression that he was leasing the entire house, was not, in fact, his alone, he would have never set foot in the place. Athelas had had housemates before, and he remained firm in his wish of never having them again—especially human ones. All three of his current housemates looked human, and although Athelas suspected that one of them was nothing of the kind it did nothing to endear her to him. He was just as little inclined to share a house with whatever humanoid behindkind inhabited Seoul as he was to share it with human Seoulites.

  Passing a yellow boxcar-inspired container that had been set down between the now-dual footpaths, with softgrass in a pale gold brushing like silk against his tweeded legs, Athelas’ gaze flitted past the carved wood sign that said library and then past the book-backed reflections of the round-edged windows as well. He didn’t allow his eyes to linger there, but that fleeting look was enough to confirm his suspicions that he was indeed being followed by two young men of the very Korean variety; grey suited, tidily groomed, and confident in their looks, they strolled together with their shoulders back and their chins up, laughing and talking together.

  They looked human, but Athelas was quite certain they were not. He took his hands from his pockets and slowed as he sent a lingering look toward the conveniently placed mirror-display that he next encountered, adjusting his blue silk tie. This time, the reflected scene behind him that bulged around the curved edges of the convex mirrors showed just a little too much grey suit and shoulder for a human, and the slight tinge of green to the hair of one of the men. Both paused to look through the windows of another boxcar-inspired shop that had wood-work sculptures on shelves within, formed and tied together with bright string.

  A troll, then, thought Athelas. He was not very much concerned about trolls: humans, in his experience, caused all the trouble. They had caused all of the trouble in his life thus far, and he was quite certain that they were responsible for the trouble that was currently following him, troll or otherwise. He had once, for a fleeting moment, almost had a life; he had forgotten that fae in his line of work weren’t able to have a real life, and he had found himself disastrously fond of the human it would have been far better to have killed quickly and gently to prevent her from upsetting his plans.

  He had not killed her, but he had nearly destroyed her—along with himself, the world, and his previous master. He was no less alone now than he had been then—no less cut off from his previous family—but at least life had become slightly more comfortable again.

  Now it seemed as though it was about to become less comfortable once more. Athelas was well aware that there was a bounty on his head as a result of that brief time in his life that he had had a family; he wondered if the terms it bore would be dead, or alive—or perhaps the ever-perennial dead or alive. He moved on from the mirror display, faintly smiling. A troll and another behindkind wouldn’t cause too much trouble if he could only discover how much they knew—and dispatch them before they could tell anyone else what they knew. But if they had been sent by the new Lord Sero, already aware of his presence in Korea, that was a far greater problem.

  He could, of course, continue along the park line and try to lose the behindkind. Athelas had always lived in a world made from layers—like trifle, his human had once told him—with the real, raw and dangerous world of the fae Behind, the human world in front, and the world Between existing somewhere in the middle. Things—and people—could pass between the worlds, morphing into different shapes as they came, and although the two figures behind him looked like men, they would certainly become less believable as humans if they attacked him out in the open. It would be dangerous for the behindkind as much as humans, and Athelas doubted they would try to attack him outright. But just as behindkind could walk through the layers of the world, they were capable of edging him somewhere that couldn’t as easily be seen by human eyes. The world Between was convoluted and many-layered in its own right, and humans were very good at seeing only what they wanted to see in the layers of shadow around them. It would be better to fight and win than to run.

  Athelas lengthened his stride just slightly but slowed his walk to keep the same pace, stretching out his hips and loosening his shoulders. He might look as though he was in his forties as human standards went, but in fae years, he was far older, and he hadn’t had a good fight in a few months. Two behindkind shouldn’t be a problem to him, but he had only ever seen the sense in taking risks when the rewards were suitably impressive.

  There was a coldness to him that prompted the need to know whether or not these behindkind knew where he lived. If Zero, otherwise known as the newest Lord Sero, or the king already knew where he lived, he would be unable to return back home. The behindkind could be merely opportunists who had chanced to see him and know of his bounty, but Athelas wouldn’t like to wager on the surmise. Under the impression that no one would know that he was in Seoul—or even likely to be so—he had been less careful after he arrived. If he had picked up the behindkind in Gongdeok, where he had begun his walk, they undoubtedly knew where he lived.

  Ahead, a group of twenty-somethings clustered toward the left side of the tunnel he was approaching. It arched over the park line, cars and scooters passing by overhead, and shadows lingered beneath it. Athelas skirted around the humans in a leisurely sort of way, stepping lightly over the train tracks to avoid the metal that would be uncomfortable even through his shoes, then took a sharp left under cover of the group as he left the tunnel.

  Vines that grew along the outside of the tunnel brushed gently against his sleeve as he passed through the narrow street that passed between red-brick buildings toward the main road; Athelas turned left again and found himself in a narrow alley that passed beneath another arch of the tunnel and dog-legged slightly. It would, if he remembered correctly, end in a grassy heap of old, brown kimchi pots and overgrown planters with the swell of dirty white concrete underfoot unevenly meeting the edges of concrete houses that were older than the tunnel itself.

  He took two steps into that
unevenly concreted alley, and the world changed. Now, with the framework of the greying human buildings sketched around him and filled in with things that protruded into the world Between from Behind—things that shouldn’t exist in the human world—Athelas felt more awake and alive; he felt more in danger. That was a familiar, stimulating feeling! As he emerged from beneath the curve of the tunnel, the sagging blue-tiled roofs around him that were patched in places with corrugated iron seemed to grow more vines than they had had a moment before; they were still barely higher than his eyeline, but now he saw vine and smog beyond them instead of building and smog.

  There were things he could have picked up to turn into weapons. Any of the planters clustering around every wall of the alley had cane training sticks that could have turned seamlessly into swords if he had cared to draw them into the world Between from what they existed as Behind, in fact. But Athelas never travelled without his own weapons if he could help it, and he was already well prepared.

  He strolled right to the end of the alley and sat on the largest of the kimchi pots that was still intact and marginally clean, greying concrete at his back; then he crossed his ankles and waited. Unless they tried to take off across the roof-tops, it would be difficult to get out of an alley where everything seemed as if it were made of concrete, or had been overlaid with concrete. The part of the tunnel he had emerged from was already becoming solid once again—no humans, at least, would be able to wander in while he took care of business.

  It took only a few minutes for the two behindkind to find their way into the alley, their bodies softening and flickering as their soles touched the twisting threads of Between that laced the alley and changed the very air around them. They stopped a little way down the alley, catching sight of him and insensibly, uncomfortably aware that their prey shouldn’t have been as relaxed as Athelas knew he appeared.

  “You’ve been tracking me,” he said pleasantly to them. “I fear that you’ve mistaken your quarry, however.”

  “We know you’re the Steward,” said the bigger of the two behindkind. “Don’t try to convince us that you’re not.”

  Athelas adjusted his cuffs with a short, smart tug that loosened his knives in their sheaths. “I shouldn’t dream of it.”

  “You left enough trace for a child to find,” the smaller of the behindkind said. He was fae, unlike the figure at his side, who was beginning to look distinctly trollish, as Athelas had expected. Tall and well-muscled, the cover of Between that had made him look like a young, business-attired Seoulite was very nearly gone. “If you’d avoided leaving trace on the plants, you might have given yourself a few more minutes, but I doubt it.”

  “Did I so? How very unfortunate. I wonder,” he said, rising lightly, exultantly, “exactly why I did that?”

  He no longer felt old or tired. Athelas was ready—no, aching—to fight. He knew to within a second how long it would take to disarm the two behindkind who were reaching for their own weapons, and that knowledge was one of the sure, delightful things in his mind. There was no need for thinking—there was only absolute knowledge.

  These behindkind, of course, had to die. The Steward was a name from his old life that would only cause trouble if it surfaced again, and disarming wouldn’t be enough. Once it was widely known that he was in Seoul, Athelas would have a great deal more to worry about than finding the right wedding hall to stake out. He would need to go completely undercover and re-evaluate his entire approach to the particular job he had set himself. He would need to worry about a certain pale, white-haired and very large fae coming to find him—if, in fact, Zero wasn’t the one who had set these two on him.

  Athelas started forward as the troll produced a mace of truly impressive size; he flicked both wrists outward to send his blades slicking softly down and out, and snaked his fingers around the leather-bound grips as they dropped. The fae saw the knives and dropped into a proper fighting stance, his rapier wary and light.

  Athelas laughed beneath his breath and darted forward, feeling the grit of cement and Between beneath his feet. The movement caught both of the behindkind by surprise, and he danced lithely between the two of them as the troll swung hard and fast with his mace. The fae restricted his swing to avoid cutting his colleague, and Athelas slid smoothly beneath the mace, slicing the troll’s hamstring as he went through. The troll, unable to stop his swing and lurching off-balance from the cut, shattered his own companion’s head with a direct hit that sent blood and hair flying.

  Athelas turned on the ball of his foot just in time to see the arc of blue and raised a brow at the mess. He could have taken the troll down with another quick slice at his good leg, but Athelas had begun to enjoy himself. Instead, he waited as the troll staggered around and stared at him with red, dazed eyes, then at the scattering of brain matter and blood on the alley wall. The mace, hanging by the troll’s side, dripped with queasy regularity onto cement.

  “I do feel,” said Athelas gently, “that this may have been a misstep in your friendship.”

  The troll resettled himself, injured but ready to fight on, and said shortly, “More money for me. That idiot didn’t know how to keep out of the way.”

  Bright, dangerous thoughts crystallized into words. “Ah, so you have heard about the bounty here, too. What’s the offer?”

  “Everyone has heard about the bounty. We were just the lucky ones who saw you first—none of us knew you were in Korea. I told him it was a good idea to come to Hongdae today.”

  “Hence my difficulty,” Athelas sighed, relief blossoming in his chest. Neither Zero nor the king knew he was in Korea—it had been dumb, blind luck on the part of these two behindkind. “I really would prefer it to remain that way.”

  The troll shifted slightly, all his weight on his uninjured leg. “That’ll be hard, when I’m taking you in.”

  “Dead or alive?” he asked the troll, circling lightly to avoid a darker patch of damp-darkened bricks that had an oil-slick shine to them. He was rather sure he already knew, but it would be nice to have it confirmed.

  “The king doesn’t care.”

  “Delightful,” said Athelas—and, as the troll rocked back slightly to lunge forward, he leapt forward and upward, catching the troll around the shoulders with his left arm and sliding his right-hand knife through the troll’s ribs with the momentum of the leap.

  He took that lumbering body down with him as it spurted blood, and landed lightly on his feet as the troll hit the ground, releasing the bloody shoulders. The troll stared up at him, coughing on blood and breathing too fast, as if he understood as well as Athelas exactly how many seconds longer he would be alive to continue doing so.

  Through the blood in his mouth, the troll jeered, “There’ll be more of us coming.”

  “How very enlivening. I’ll be sure to greet everyone with the same level of hospitality I showed to you.”

  The troll was already dead by the time he finished talking. Athelas made a perfunctory check of the bodies to make sure they were both as dead as they appeared to be, and as he knelt by the body of the fae, a shadow flickered along the uneven concrete-and-brick surface of the alley.

  Athelas dropped face-forward with his hands flat on the ground, body taut, and pushed himself back on his toes through the blood and oil as something dark and sharp hissed overhead. Iron, chipping brick, slammed down between his extended arms where his lungs would have been a mere moment ago, and stuck where it was for a life-saving moment.

  He thrust himself upward from the ground, snatching his knives as he did so, and rolled away in the same motion, barely avoiding a coating of blood and oil to his jacket. Another shove into the concrete had him rolling backwards and onto his feet, then straight into a short leap backward to avoid a slash from the axe that had been buried in the bricks between his arms.

  Athelas lunged forward to take advantage of the follow-through, but was rebuffed by the blunt edge of a hefty and none-too-sweet-smelling wing. He staggered back but caught himself, flicking away a trail of blood that wasn’t his own from one of his knife-points, and took stock of the harpy in front of him.