The Mirrored City (14 page)

Soren stammered, “But if that’s so… then why was someone in there my first night?”

Instantly, he knew he had said something incredibly stupid.

Sybil placed a hand against her chest and rose to comfort Soren. “You’re not in trouble. That’s not what this is. In fact, we think there’s a home for you here. A real home. And a real family. We’ve been waiting a very long time to meet someone like you.”

Soren stepped back. “Really?”

Sybil nodded and smiled. “Yes. In fact we’d like you to help us with management.”

Soren regarded her skeptically. “I just hand out keys… and you want to put me in charge?”

Her fingers brushed his cheek. “More than that. But I can’t tell you—I have to show you.” She withdrew a key from a pocket in her dress and dropped it into his hand.

Soren flinched. It was twenty-six.

Sybil smiled. “Haven’t you ever been curious about what happens in these rooms?”

“I’m not a curious person,” Soren said meekly.
Or a very smart one.

Sybil smiled. “You are like a young oak that thinks itself a weed. You’ve lived so long in the shadows of others that you feel small, weak, insignificant. But you are not, Soren. There is power and potential in you. You’ve felt it since you came here. I know you have.”

Soren nodded. “Keltis gave me medicine that helps.”

“You don’t need that poison.” Sybil ran her fingers up his arm. He felt a slight tingle and a chill as his hairs stood on end. “We can show you something much better. We can make you whole.”

Soren smiled. “Thanks, but I’m fine. I’m happy to just work.”

Sybil laughed and cast a glance back to Ryon, who was sitting motionless and stone faced on the couch. “He’s precious, isn’t he?”

Ryon stared at Soren blankly with dark empty eyes.

Soren stepped backward and stumbled into an end table, sending it crashing to the floor and tearing through a paper screen that divided another sitting area. He turned quickly and set it right. Fumbling, he turned back around to see Sybil and Ryon standing right there, side by side.

“Ah!” Soren shouted.

Sybil intoned, “I cannot allow the person you are destined to be to never exist because of fear.”

Ryon grabbed for Soren’s arm, but he twisted away, knocking the table over again and leaping backward.

Sybil and Ryon calmly walked toward Soren, each taking a different route. The exit lay behind them. They were closing him in, and his heart pounded. The key, the room of screaming, the feel of her touch on his arm… something in his bones knew this was wrong.

He bolted around the edge of the room as fast as his legs could carry him. He never ran as a child—he got winded too quickly—but something else inside him took over. A need to survive. He dodged the furniture and vaulted over couches.

Sybil and Ryon tore after Soren. They were fast and spread out to catch him between them. Soren dove for an opening, but Ryon reached it first and loomed in front of Soren. He skidded to a stop and fell over, trying to avoid slamming into Ryon.

He reached for Soren.

“No!” Soren shouted.

A blast of unseen force knocked Ryon backward, hurling him toward the railing of the second floor of the atrium. Soren was so stunned it took him a moment to realize the power had come from him, from his outstretched and trembling hand.
I don’t have magic. They tested me in the orphanage.

Soren scrambled to his feet, but Sybil grabbed his neck and lifted him off the ground like he weighed nothing. He kicked his legs and flailed his arms uselessly. Above, Ryon recovered calmly and removed a bloodless wooden banister from his gut. He glowered.

“You had more secrets than I imagined,” Sybil whispered. “It’s a pity I will never know what they are. But sometimes a mystery is more rewarding than an explanation.”

Her hands tightened around his neck, and he heard his spine shatter. He blacked out almost instantly but had enough time to realize he was going to die.

He tried to scream but couldn’t.

F
OURTEEN

Room 26

M
ADDOX

I Z G I A Z M V H K J H F R A

N S R E S S A P S E R T Q E R

C B N V G R D R E A E Q Z W Q

U S L I T B D N K Q N U E O G

B P D Y W C O D A S P A W R M

U T L G T T X B R I J D A R B

S R I P E U W T P W L N C A H

B A V Q P I I M P R D L E H S

U W C C Y Q L B O D O K I U X

O O I N T S L E E C S T B U Y

M A U K Y G D S F V X U E E Q

J Y E Z W B I Q T O C H L A A

T Z Y X Q G E J A C M B W N N

F G I V N G E G U E N H P A D

Y V G L Q F X S C H I M E R A

—
A GRAMMATOMANTIC LETTER SQUARE. IT IS SAID THAT A SKILLED DIVINER COULD SEE HINTS OF THE FUTURE FROM THE RANDOM PLACEMENT OF THE LETTERS

FROM THE OUTSIDE
, The Palace of Keys was a nondescript windowless tower three stories tall. The inside was like walking into another universe. Where the outside was monolithic, the inside was an open atrium with balconies to dozens of rooms. The architecture curved organically. The Sword’s memories thought back to the architecture of the old empires, where straight lines and right angles were no longer the foundation of everyday design. Or support beams—when the Long Night happened most of these architectural wonders collapsed under their own improbable dimensions when the theurgy was disrupted.

He approached one of the attendants, a strapping young blond boy with dazzling blue eyes.

Maddox spoke, “I hear you hand out keys or some shit in this place.” The Inspector had begrudgingly shared information about the place when he had pestered her about it.

“I can do that,” the boy said after a pause. He didn’t sound very smart, but he was fucking gorgeous. Maddox didn’t like paying for sex, but he would have gladly made an exception.

I’m working, no distractions.
A job he wasn’t being paid for and no one really asked him to do, but Maddox figured if he was immortal and his best friend was being a dick, he needed an outlet besides drinking.

After what seemed like an overly long time, the boy hesitantly passed him a long golden key.

When Maddox took it, he felt a spark of static. The boy stared and did not let go of the key. He looked like he wanted to fuck.

Maddox yanked the key and muttered, “Thanks.”
Maybe later.

He adjusted his trousers, grabbed a bottle of wine off one of the tables, and headed to room twenty-six.

Finding it was harder than he thought. None of the numbers were in the correct order. Each door was painted red and done in a different architectural style. Room seven featured a mechanical gateway that wouldn’t have been out of place in Rivern’s bank. He passed by several more doors as the laughter and chatter of the atrium floated up. From above, the place looked more like a social club than a brothel.

He passed two men who were whispering heatedly about an upcoming vote in the Assembly. He couldn’t have cared less as he uncorked his bottle and chugged.

He stopped in front of a green door. The only green door. It was room twenty-six. “Fuck.”

In Maddox’s experiences with the Guides and Harrowers, nothing good ever happened behind green doors. He finished more of the bottle and braced himself for an unpleasant death. It was a plain door that in the reddish light almost looked black, like a shadow.

He used the key and went inside.

The overpowering smell of white rose incense hit him in the face. The room was dimly lit by a few candles in red glass lamps. It took his eyes a second to adjust. The walls were covered in paddles, whips, chains, and other instruments of discipline. A muscular man in a leather mask loomed over a narrow bed. He was stripped bare to his waist and in very good shape.

“Strip,” the man commanded.

“You don’t want to chat a bit first?” Maddox shrugged and unfastened his belt.

“I tell you when you can speak!” the man ordered.

Maddox set the Sword on the floor and proceeded to tear his clothes off. He stood naked and awaited further instructions. The Sword was not particularly keen on being ordered around, but Maddox’s cock responded to it appreciatively. It was going to be difficult to gather any information as he was commanded to get on his knees, crawl, and clean the man’s boots with his tongue.

As Maddox worshipfully polished the leather with his mouth, he was called all manner of disgusting and degrading things. The boots were already clean and smelled of linseed oil and something else. It was impossible to tell with all the fucking incense, which was giving him a slight buzz.

When his task was finished, he was ordered to lie down on the bed. The man affixed abraevium manacles to Maddox’s wrists and legs. The metal bands were snug but slightly stretchy, fastened by thin nearly unbreakable filaments to the posters of the bed. That much material would have cost a fortune.

To Maddox’s surprise, the man climbed on top and removed his mask. He was attractive, with wavy red hair plastered to his head by sweat. He grinned. “I’ve got a treat for you, for doing such a good job on my boots.”

“Actually,” Maddox said, “what I’d really like to know is if— ”

Before he could finish his sentence, the stranger’s mouth was covering his, exploring with tongue. Maddox abandoned himself to passion, and it was glorious. It had been months. Heath refused to even look at Maddox, let alone touch him, which made it painful. Until this point, the Sword never considered that it had anything like emotions independent of its host.

Maddox groaned with pleasure as the stranger’s tongue pressed deeper into his mouth. And deeper.

Somehow the man’s tongue was sliding into Maddox’s throat. He flailed against his manacles as he felt something squirming and making its way down his esophagus. His stomach responded by trying to vomit, but the mass wouldn’t let him. He could barely breathe as it choked the life out of him.

Maddox flung the stranger off and against the wall and pinned him there with the power of his seal. Maddox heard and felt the sickening rip of whatever was inside him as part of it was torn away with the red-haired man. His mouth was full of writhing purple worms with hungry toothless orifices.

The wriggling horror still inside Maddox tore into his insides, and the pain nearly knocked him unconscious. Whatever it was, it was eating him alive, and he had no way of getting it out. He tried to scream, but all that came out was a raspy strangled noise.

The man laughed. Actually laughed, with worms coming out of his disgusting mouth. “It will all be over soon. You’ll be one of us.”

Maddox could feel a cold alien presence boring into his mind. He did the only thing that made sense.

He willed the Sword through the air and, with a quick motion, severed his own head, killing him instantly.

Maddox awoke on a cool stone floor in total darkness. He curled into a ball at the memory of the revolting encounter that, to his perception, had just happened mere seconds ago. He felt sick and started dry heaving the contents of his, thankfully empty, stomach. The sounds of his retching echoed in whatever place he was, giving the sense of a medium-sized room with an open ceiling.

It reeked of decomposition, old and new.

“Sword…” Maddox reached frantically for the blade but recoiled when his hand came down on a body.

“Yeah,” he heard a young man’s voice say. “I’m right here.”

Maddox froze. The voice sounded familiar. Maddox asked, “How is that possible?”

“I can’t understand it either. I’m a fucking priceless ancient relic, and they just toss me down here with their corpses? My alloy alone is worth half a million ducats at least. But that’s not even the strangest part.”

Sword’s blade started to glow. Maddox recognized the young boy who had handed over the key. He looked skinnier, more sickly. The soft glow of the blade cast shadows over his face that made him appear even more gaunt.

“This also happened.”

Maddox blinked and looked around the room in growing horror. He saw several dead bodies and a shitload of bones in the corner of a deep stone pit. The edge looked a good thirty feet up, with no ladder or rope in sight. Beyond it was more darkness. People were kept and bred in the pits like animals. “The Sarn slave pens.”