Between Decisions (The City Between Book 8) Page 16

  “It’s likely,” he said, finishing his tea with terrifying speed. “Time can be fluid when one is dealing with matters inside one’s mind.”

  I had wanted to do this, but I still had some uncomfortable memories from last time, and there was a nasty little pit in the centre of my stomach. “Sure you don’t want a couple of bikkies and a refill?” I prompted him.

  His grey eyes dwelt on me for a moment before he said, “You may refill my cup.”

  “You’re not doing me a favour,” I said in some annoyance, but I got up and refilled his cup anyway.

  “No?” he asked, his eyes on the stream of tea. “As before, Pet, once we begin, there will be no stopping. Are you sure you wish to begin?”

  “Dunno what you think you’re gunna do,” I said to him. I stuck my nose in the air a bit, too, because I didn’t want him to know that I was already feeling sick and vulnerable. “I already know better than to let you into my mind again, and that little worm of yours isn’t gunna do much good when I’m not scared enough to—”

  “Might I remind you, Pet,” said Athelas, his voice terrifyingly cool, “that I have not yet done more to you than meddle a little with the inside of your mind? Might I also remind you that—”

  “No thanks,” I said hurriedly. “You already killed me six times, so you can count that toward the things you’ve shown me.”

  “I do not intend,” Athelas said silkily, “to kill you. I can do nothing with a dead body. Now. Shall we begin?”

  He didn’t give me much choice about it: he leaned forward over the tea tray and had me by the wrist before I knew what was happening, and if his voice was silk, his grip was iron.

  “Oi,” I said. “What are you up to? I thought you were gunna try to get in my head again.”

  “I thought we might try something a trifle more…tangible than that,” he said. “You seem to be able to grasp at things you should not be able to grasp at, so perhaps it would be best not to give you something to grasp at.”

  Something cold and painful pierced my ear, but I had no time to worry about that, because all of a sudden, the living-room walls flickered and displayed Zero’s face, close and terrifying. I felt a flicker of the memory within me—it was the first time I’d actually met Zero, and he had choked me to within an inch of my life. What was it doing up on the wall?

  That was all I needed: my memories plastered on the wall for everyone to see. I definitely didn’t like this turn of events.

  “Oi!” I said indignantly. “That’s not an important memory! What are you messing around with that one for! And how the heck did you get it up on the walls?”

  “Who’s to say what’s important and what’s not?” Athelas asked, gazing at the walls. “If you would like to see something more interesting, make it happen.”

  “I’m trying,” I said through my teeth. Mostly I was trying to figure out how on earth he was projecting memories onto the walls of my house. Once I’d done that, I could try and get the right ones out. “But you keep pulling up the wrong memories!”

  “Make them the right ones,” he said. “And stop blaming me for your own inadequacies.”

  “Inadequacies, my foot!” I said wrathfully, and somewhere within the turmoil of my mind, I felt a familiar little gnawing. “You put that worm in my head again, didn’t you? How did you do that when we’re still outside of everything?”

  “That is for you to decide,” he said. “But after all, you did ask for your memories to be examined.”

  “I asked for you to help me find the missing ones,” I snapped. I threw a look around the room, trying to find the focal point of the magic that was dragging memories from me, but every point of magic in the room seemed to go toward a different source, and it took me far too long to realise that they weren’t going toward different sources, they were going to different ends and coming from a common source: me.

  Everything was connected to me: my house, Between, the worm, the display of memories. And Athelas was using those connections against me—using my own house against me to power the worm, his control, the display of memories. Using a magic so familiar that I had never realised, until this very moment, that it was actually magic.

  “Oh, that’s not on,” I said, because it was my house. All the power and protection in it was mine, and he had no right to make it turn against me. Not for petty little memories that didn’t matter, anyway.

  “Then stop me,” he said, cold and amused. “Or shall we go onto other memories—there is one there that seems to be surrounded by a great deal of protection. Dear me! is that the vampire…?”

  I gritted my teeth and tried to find where the worm had gone, but all I could feel was the tug of the memories as they were dragged from me, and JinYeong’s face, very faintly flushed from kissing me, segueing onto the walls.

  Oh no. Heck no. That was not going to be displayed for Athelas’ distantly amused eyes.

  I fought it, hauling back on the memory to prevent it going out, but it slipped away from me, faster and faster, and the worm chewed faster and faster. Panicked, I saw the next part of the memory infuse itself into the wall, and I could do nothing about it because we weren’t inside my mind, where I could control that sort of thing.

  This time, we were outside of my mind.

  A surge of rage welled up in me, pushing me to fight, to strike out. To push Athelas and the worm out of my mind altogether. But that wouldn’t work here, outside my head, so instead, I let Athelas further in. I found the tug that pulled out my memories and followed it down into my own mind, leaving behind the outside of moving walls and bodies. I sank, and as I did, I dragged Athelas down with me until there were no walls or structure. No barriers. I used the magic of the house, the connections that all clung to me, to take us deeper and deeper, until we had followed the worm all the way down and back to its source: Athelas. He was connected to me, too—because everything was. The worm came with me, too, and I set it free.

  I saw a flash of despair in those grey eyes, but I couldn’t pull back. The worm burrowed deep into his mind in an instant, and memory flooded over me. I think…I know…I wouldn’t have pulled back even if I could have. I pushed forward instead, right into memory, until the memory was no longer a flat display but a world of its own; and this time, it wasn’t my memory.

  This one was Athelas’ memory. I was Athelas, and before me was Zero’s dad, bright and deadly. His eyes pinioned me and I couldn’t move; I felt the slither of something familiar and dreadful in my mind—a little worm that knew how to search for what it needed to know.

  “I did as you asked, my lord.” I felt a brief scuttle of memory within the memory: blood and heat and a wet, choking gurgle that Athelas’ mind smoothly pushed beneath the surface where it couldn’t be seen.

  “So I see,” said Zero’s father, and the cold calculation in his voice made me understand that he’d seen that memory too: Athelas had allowed it to come to the surface in order to prove that he had carried out what he had been ordered to do. “Your second assignment—”

  “My lord, you have other servants, I believe.”

  “It is not a request; it is an order.”

  I felt so tired, because this body, this mind knew exactly what was coming, and knew it had to say the words anyway. “I’m aware, my lord. I must refuse.”

  “Yes, so you said. I believe you were concerned about the effect on my son.”

  “Losing his brother—”

  “—who was already plotting against him,” interrupted Zero’s father.

  “My lord, I can’t take from him again. After tonight—”

  “Must I remind you again what will happen should you not obey?”

  I felt the stillness that came over Athelas’ face: the stillness of his limbs—almost a stillness of heart. He said, with a cold stab of despair, “My lord—”

  “Then I will take from you,” said Zero’s father, his smile beautiful and fearsome, “in blood and pain. And I will make sure that you pay for your disobed
ience anon.”

  I lost track of the memory in a sudden, hot and cold flush of desolation, and lost myself in Athelas’ mind for an aching, bewildering span of time that couldn’t have been more than a couple of minutes but felt like an eternity. When the memory came back, it came in pieces.

  Every breath hurt; every movement was fire. I still breathed, but barely; in my peripheral was the blue wetness of blood that pooled around my temple and stung my eye.

  “Now,” said that voice in a whisper in my ear, “I will attend to it myself. And I will take my time attending to it.”

  The sound of my breath—of Athelas’ breath—and blood bubbling in our lungs. The sound of a distant bell. Not church. Not here. An old-fashioned sound. A summons, said approaching steps beyond vision. Still, all I could see was blue, and all I breathed was blood.

  “Father.” That was a voice. It seemed old and whispery, but it had to be Zero’s half-brother, didn’t it? It made our hand twitch as if it really could move, could do anything to help. It was only a twitch. This body knew what was possible to do and what wasn’t possible: it was not a body used to helping people. There was no use.

  The air was stifling, so why could we hear the screaming so clearly?

  Sound was trapped, and I was trapped and we were trapped and the screaming—

  The screaming—

  The edges of the memory fluttered away like burning parchment, and I fell, sobbing. The screaming followed, torn into pieces and searing my mind as I fell into another memory.

  I looked down into my own face, the sight of it alien and not quite right. It took me a while to realise that the not-quite-rightness to it all was the fact that I was seeing myself from a higher field of vision than usual. The thin face; the dark, messy hair and big grey eyes that put a twist in the heart of this body I was in.

  “I do want it…very much,” Athelas said, through my lips. “Don’t tempt me.”

  I felt the longing in him: the sick, hopeless longing to be safe, to be cared for, to rest. The longing to be free from a darkness so horrible—a darkness so filled with blood and terror and death—that he couldn’t even think about it in a straight line.

  But I knew none of that showed in his face, because I could see it reflected back in my own grey eyes. I could remember from my own point of view.

  I would have followed that memory back where it went, but I was too late—or perhaps Athelas was just in time. Something seized me by the nape of the neck, or where it would have been if I were in my body and not in someone else’s mind, and fairly hauled me away.

  “Out!” said Athelas’ voice, grey and worn to a thread of itself.

  “I’m sorry!” I said, sick and horrified at how easy it had been to force the memory from him. “I’m sorry!”

  Maybe I hadn’t been speaking aloud, because the next moment I was on the carpet, and there was nothing in sight but the ceiling and a kaleidoscope of colours and movement. The shadows were all wrong, but I wasn’t sure if that was because it was so much later in the day than it should have been or because the shadows themselves had decided to make their own minds up about where they preferred to be.

  “Where’s Athelas?” I asked, slurring slightly. I wanted to apologise properly, not inside his mind where I had forced myself and from where I had taken memories I had no business taking. All I could see was the brilliance that was JinYeong and the cold, thready movement of my house around me as it bent and wove around the Between in the room.

  “Athelas is…taking a moment,” said Zero’s voice from the huge mass of icy-blue movement and shadow somewhere across the room. “What in heaven’s name did you do?”

  I stood, staggering, but JinYeong was there to prop me up, edging his arm against my back. He didn’t try to put the arm around me, which was good. I probably would have tried to do something about that, and I would probably also have fallen over while trying.

  Athelas was nowhere in the room, but I was pretty sure he was still somewhere around the house: there was a big mass of silver and steel somewhere near the back of the house—maybe the patio—that assured me he was still alive, at least.

  I drew in a small, shuddering breath, and said, “Reckon something went a bit wrong with the magic Athelas was doing,” I said.

  Only nothing had gone wrong with it. I had just figured out how to use it against Athelas instead of him using it against me. It was mine, and using it, I had taken from him what he would have taken from me.

  With a sick feeling in my stomach, I realised that the memory I had been looking at must have been the other side of the events Zero had told me about. Somehow that old distrust of Athelas that I had felt, cropping up again, had brought forth this memory as a result. Zero had said that he found Athelas barely functioning just after his brother was killed: had said that he was so far injured that it was impossible for him to have killed Zero’s half-brother in that state.

  “Sit,” said JinYeong, pushing me toward the couch. “Sit. We will have coffee, and then a talk with that old man.”

  “Saw the night your half-brother died,” I said to Zero, allowing myself to be pushed into the couch and staring without seeing at the cold teapot of tea and the abandoned biscuits. JinYeong seemed satisfied, because he disappeared into the kitchen. “Reckon you need to have a chat with your dad.”

  It had never occurred to me that the injuries Athelas had sustained that night had been because he refused to kill Zero’s half-brother. Or that it had been Zero’s father who did the deed. Ordered it, yes. Done it himself? No. But I’d definitely heard Zero’s dad killing someone.

  Zero’s face could have provided ice chips for a party full of people. “You shouldn’t have done that,” he said.

  “I didn’t do it on purpose,” I muttered, but I couldn’t help the pang of guilt I felt. The memory had been buried away carefully: deep and quiet, where it couldn’t easily be called to the surface by a curious worm or a smaller memory or two. If I hadn’t been distrustful of Athelas once again, I don’t think I would have been able to get to it, either.

  “I trust this puts to rest your suspicions,” said Zero. “I came upon Athelas mere moments after giving chase to the murderer—him and my old human nurse together. She was old, but she shouldn’t have had to die in that way. I found them together in what seemed like a sea of blood: Athelas knew she’d been with me since I was born, though she was just a child then. He was fond of her in his own way, and I suppose he wouldn’t kill her either. I would very much like to know how you were able to access that memory, because I’m certain he didn’t let it go willingly.”

  “He didn’t,” I said. “I figured out what he was doing with the house magic and turned it back on him—he sort of did it to himself. Maybe I can do that to your dad next time he tries to pick stuff out of my brain.”

  Zero opened his mouth but closed it again. At last, he said, “Before this moment, I would have advised against that. Now I’m not sure.”

  “Don’t know how you lot lived without me,” I said. “Isn’t it fun when all the stuff you thought you knew might not be true?”

  “No,” he said, but his eyes lightened with laughter. “But at least I have the comfort of knowing that my father has that particular surprise ahead of him.”

  Chapter Nine

  Athelas didn’t come back inside for the rest of the night. He sat on the back patio instead, drinking tea and gazing out at the backyard with one leg crossed as elegantly over the other as always. He didn’t refuse me whenever I brought a fresh pot of tea out; he didn’t speak to me either, though. Just before I went to bed, I wriggled in between the back of his chair and the wall and wrapped my arms around his shoulders for a few minutes.

  Athelas allowed that, too; I felt the brief pat as one of his hands touched mine lightly.

  He said, “Well done, Pet.”

  After that, I felt as though I might be able to sleep, so I gave him one last squeeze around the shoulders and went to bed.

  The next mor
ning it was as though nothing had ever happened—nothing with Athelas, at any rate. When I came downstairs to make tea and pancakes, I passed him as he sat in his chair, elegantly, eternally awake. He seemed peaceful and rather more cheerful than he had been the last week or so. JinYeong, on the other hand, was still prancier than usual: inclined to annoy Zero in a way that was as obnoxiously cheerful as his usual attempts were obnoxiously offensive.

  I made pancakes, which pleased everyone except Zero, for whom they were really made. I didn’t take offense at that because JinYeong was already doing a pretty good job at trying to rile Zero, and I didn’t blame him for having other thoughts on his mind. At last, to get a bit of peace, I made a batch of blood pancakes, which seemed to delight JinYeong so much that he gave up trying to annoy Zero in order to enjoy them, and I was able to sit down without fear of a food fight starting in my clean kitchen.

  “What are we gunna do after we clean up the sirens?” I asked Zero, plopping a few more pancakes on his plate. “You blokes said that stuff just keeps getting worse during the cycles—are we just gunna be trying to keep the streets clean? ’Cos that doesn’t leave us much time to be getting ready for the Heirling Trials, and your dad isn’t the only one circling the blood in the water.”

  “Only until the Heirling Trials begin,” Athelas said. “Once they begin, human life will again be safe—or as safe as it was previously. Things may be a trifle different this time, however, as it’s been rather longer than usual since our last king changed.”

  “How long, exactly?” I asked. There was a lot I didn’t know about the politics of Behind—and more that I did know and just didn’t understand. “All I know is that he killed the Heirlings the first cycle after he took control to make sure he could keep reigning.”

  “Five hundred years or so,” Athelas said, settling back with his cup of tea. “Cycles are long by human standards in most cases, but they were never meant to be so long. The standard length is more in the region of two hundred years or thereabouts.”