Chelen City: Interlude 7: Kieron

 Notes: And he's awake again! But not without some complications. Let's just read on and...not kill me.

Title: Chelen City: Interlude 7: Kieron

***

Interlude 7: Kieron

 

Kieron opened his eyes, blinked them against the too-bright light, and grimaced at the gritty feel of his lids scraping against his eyeballs.

“Consciousness achieved.”

Oh god, was that the autodoc announcement system? What the fuck, why was he in the autodoc?

“Initiating final scan.”

Final scan of…what? Why…where was everyone? He looked around the room blearily, but apart from a second regen tank that was still humming merrily along, there was no one else in here.

“Applying restoratives.”

Restorative wha—“Fuck,” he shouted as a mobile arm suddenly spritzed his eyes with moisturizer. Then he almost gagged as a straw was thrust in his direction fast enough to go not just into his mouth but close enough to his damn throat that he barely even tasted the water.

“Safety measures deactivated. Welcome back to perfect health, Kieron Carr.”

“Perfect health?” he spluttered. What had gone wrong with his fucking health? What was this? And why…why didn’t he remember anything?

He’d barely gotten past sitting up when a small, dark-haired woman ran into the room. She was wearing a full-length dress that had a silvery gleam, and black shoes on her feet even though they were indoors. Her anxious expression melted into a smile as she saw him. “Kieron, you’re awake!”

“I…” He knew her, he knew that he knew her, her name was… “Xilinn?”

“Yes!” She came over and extended her hands in a gesture of welcome, but didn’t touch him. Not surprising—it felt like half his skin had been regenerated. He was a patchwork of hypersensitive spots laid next to normal functioning ones, and even though he couldn’t see the difference between them, he could clearly feel it. “Oh, I’m so glad you’re awake. It’s been five days, we thought you would be back with us after three, but the damage went deeper than Elanus had anticipated. He—Kieron?” She frowned as she looked a little more closely at him. “What’s wrong?”

“Is Elanus my doctor?” Kieron asked cautiously.”

“No…” Xilinn said. “Kieron, where do you think you are?”

“I have no clue,” he said honestly. “When I saw you I thought Trakta, but I feel like—” The second he considered it, he knew he was wrong. “We’re not allowed there, though. Are we.”

“No.” She shook her head. “No, we’re not. Lizzie?”

“Yes, Xilinn?”

Hang on, whose voice was that? The house AI? But it didn’t sound like the standard house AI. It wasn’t professional and dispassionate. This voice sounded…concerned. Plus, who named their house AI Lizzie?

“Has Elanus been alerted to Kieron’s status change?” Xilinn asked.

“Yes. He should be here in ten-point-two-five minutes.” There was a pause, and then, “Kee? Are you okay?”

Kee? Was that him? When had this person given him a pet name? How were they close enough for her to give him a pet name? No one outside of Zak did that.

And Zak…Zak was dead. Kieron wasn’t sure how he knew that, but it felt incontrovertible. Zak was dead, and Xilinn was here instead of with her other spouses, and Pol was—

“Where’s Pol?” he asked.

Her face brightened. “You remember Pol?”

“I do. And…” He was going to ask about [name], but he already knew that she wasn’t here. Wherever here was. “Where are we?” he asked with a very unsubtle pivot.

“In Chelen City,” Xilinn said. “On Gania.”

“Gania…” That was a planet he hadn’t thought about in a long time, if ever. Kieron knew of it, sure—he knew it was a planet founded by convicts, he knew it was populated by a very wealthy elite, he knew they had weight and money to throw around outside the Central System…but none of that explained why he was here. “Who do we know on Gania?”

Xilinn sighed. “Oh my. Kieron, what goes through your mind when I say the name Elanus Desfontaines?”

Kieron let the words wash over him. He sat with them, let them roll about in his head, finally let them settle, and…

“Nothing.”

“Fuck.”

Kieron knew he shouldn’t stare, but he’d never, in all the time he’d known her, heard Xilinn swear like that. “Xil!”

She pulled back and began pacing. “Oh fuck,” she repeated. “He was worried about this. You took so much damage to the [part], and he got you into Regen quickly but there’s only so much it can do when it comes to preserving memory as well as function. Fuck.” She stared at him determinedly. “Well. This is unacceptable.”

“What is?” he asked, completely lost.

“It’s just, it’s not—Lizzie,” she said, “you have to make sure Elanus knows about this, all right? Don’t let him rush in here blind, I don’t want him to get hurt.”

“I’ll inform him, Xilinn.”

“Get hurt why?” Kieron demanded. He was starting to shiver.

“Oh, Kieron.” Xilinn noticed his discomfort. “Hang on, let me get you fresh clothes. I’ll be right back.” She vanished, and Kieron took advantage of being along again to dry himself off with the towel that had been provided by the regen unit—weird, most of them didn’t bother—and wrack his brain over what the fuck he was doing on Gania some more.

It felt odd to be so unmoored in his own mind. Kieron didn’t know where he was supposed to be; he couldn’t think of where he’d just been or the last thing he remembered or what he was meant to do next. He remembered Xilinn quickly enough, and through her Pol and Zak, but trying to visualize Lizzie was giving him a headache.

Gania. Good grief, why had he come here? Whoever Elanus was, was he the reason Kieron had decided to come here, so far from everything he’d ever known? What purpose did he have in a city on a planet full of giants owned by hedonists and criminals? What the fuck was he doing here? Why the hell had he—

Kieron heard steps running in the hallway. He kept the towel across his groin so he wouldn’t scandalize Xilinn, then looked over at the door and—

A person skidded to a halt in the entrance. Not Xilinn—not Traktan. Ganian. A man, over seven feet tall, with close-cut brown hair shaved in skintight whorls from the tip of his chin over the top of his head. He was handsome, in a long, lanky kind of way, and when Kieron met those [color] eyes in the face that was trying so desperately hard to be stoic—

Fuck, what was this emotion? Why did it feel so overwhelming to look at this man? What was happening inside his chest, an ache so painful and sweet all at once? Why did he…why did he…

“I…love you,” Kieron said, sure of how he felt even though it was such a novel emotion—maybe because it was such a novel emotion. “I don’t—I don’t know—how do I—Elanus.” He reached out, knowing it was stupid and he’d probably be hurt, but then…

Elanus came to him and enfolded him in his arms, pressing his lips to the top of Kieron’s head. “Sweetheart,” he said, and Kieron hid his face in Elanus’s chest and tried to understand why he was crying.

He didn’t, but it didn’t seem to matter. Elanus held on anyway.

Chelen City: Chapter Twenty-Two, Part Two

 Notes: Back to Elanus, yaaaay! Have some internecine coup plotting :)

Title: Chelen City: Chapter Twenty-Two, Part Two

***

Chapter Twenty-Two, Part Two

 

Restaria, thankfully, was a problem that could be put on ice for now—literally, if Elanus wanted to. Maybe a nice icy stasis bath would help clarify xir new situation to xir, but Restaria wasn’t the type to fight xir own battles either. Xe worked best in the shadows, an unseen opponent. When confronted face to face, xe almost always ran or sought assistance from someone else, Elanus and particularly Kieron being cases in point. So right now, xe could sit in the modified call he’d created in the empty storage room off the docks and fucking like it. Elanus had more pressing problems to deal with.

The biggest, much as he hated to even think about it, was Moreno. President Emilio Moreno was an institution on Gania, as crooked as he was beloved. Everyone knew he was for sale and no one really cared because a), the people in power got their way, and b), this was Gania and it had worked like that since the penal colony was founded. His great, great, great grandmother was the architect of one of the biggest ponzi schemes the galaxy had ever seen—she’d auctioned off entire, nonexistent planets and their insubstantial natural resources, for fuck’s sake. These weren’t dumb people.

Moreno had stayed in power by cozying up to everyone in just the way they liked best, making just enough promises to keep them on his side, and ignoring the plight of everyone he didn’t care about. It all came down to measuring the odds, and Elanus was a little ashamed to say that he’d turned a blind eye to it for a long time.

“People can become used to anything,” Xilinn said on the second night into Kieron’s recovery as Elanus shared some of his reluctant plans with her. He was startled at how good it was to have another adult to talk to, actually, one who didn’t have the same preconceptions about him that a Ganian would. “On Trakta, we let ourselves be ruled by archaic religious laws that have only served to reduce the satisfaction of our people, but it happened because our leaders successfully preyed on fear. Here, your leaders prey on greed.” She sighed. “It’s so much easier to take advantage of humanity’s weaknesses than shore up their strengths, it seems.”

“It is.” And yet…Elanus was in a position to do just that. He’d already purified the Regen units in the hospitals and removed all traces of Elfshot Disease from the treatment centers. In a few months, that would start to make statistical waves. He could claim credit for it…or…

“Do you want to rule Gania?”

“Fuck no,” Elanus said before he even really processed the question. “I mean—” He coughed into his hand. “No. I don’t think I’d make a good leader.”

“Why not?” Xilinn asked calmly.

“I don’t have the temperament for it.”

“What temperament does a leader of Gania need to have?”

“Tolerance for insane amounts of bullshit,” Elanus said. “The ability to gladhand. A personality that could win over a rock. The kind of money that makes other people’s money irrelevant so that you don’t have to kowtow to them, and yeah, that I’ve got, but the rest of it…no, there’s no way. I’d never be able to keep that up, not even knowing it was better than the alternative. It would just…kill me, Xilinn, it would kill me and then I’d never get to marry Kieron and that would be a damn shame.”

Xilinn smiled and shook her head before asking, “Who would make a good leader, then?”

“Shit, I don’t know. Anyone except who we have now.” But that wasn’t true, and the longer Elanus thought about it the plainer the answer became.

“Someone you know,” Xilinn said, looking out the window with a peaceful expression. “So that you could trust them, or as close as you come to it. Someone with the ability and reputation to rally the people behind them. Someone who would appeal to both the lower and upper classes, with the strength of character to go through with their promises. Someone who had a strong connection to the press and could drum up support, and of course…” She glanced at him and smiled. “Someone whom you’d like to owe you a favor, perhaps.”

“How are you so good at this?” Elanus asked with genuine awe. “How are you—I had no idea you were so good at reading people, you’ve never even met the ones you’re talking about, how did you figure all of this out?”

She laughed. “Oh, Elanus. I was in a four-way marriage for years! Do you think a relationship like that has a chance of lasting if you aren’t in close emotional connection to your partners?” Her smile faded. “I suppose that’s the real reason it ended the way it did. We lost our connection. After Zakari’s death, I just—I couldn’t move on. Perhaps if I’d had time to come to grips with the closure Kieron provided us, but my spouses were so ready to date other people and reopen our quad, and I just—I couldn’t do it.”

“I’m sorry,” Elanus said. “I don’t know the first thing about relationships, in all honesty, but I can’t see myself moving on easily if I lost Kieron, so…I think I know a little bit about how you feel.”

“You’re basically responsible for a coup as a result of wanting to rescue Kieron, I think you understand more than a little bit, Elanus.”

He heaved a sigh. “Yeah, I do. Shit.” Ugh, there was so much he needed to handle now. Moreno needed to be blackmailed into resigning—not hard given the incredible amounts of dirt Elanus had on him—and Restaria needed to be declared missing, or better yet, dead. Dead would be nice.

Then he had to woo Caria Jayde into accepting the run for president, with his backing of course, and persuade Fritz that giving her positive airtime would make his own star go from rising to shooting. He’d have to help plan a fucking campaign, ugh, and make sure her platform included new provisions for the integration of refugees and systemic reviews of all public programs to cut back on the pork. It was going to be so much work.

Good thing he had two darling daughters to help him with it. “Catie,” Elanus called out. “Lizzie.”

They came on over the intercom almost instantly. “Yes, Daddeee?” “Yes, Elanus?”

“How would you girls like to learn how to manipulate the political system of an entire planet?”

“Sounds fuuuuun!” Catie said.

Lizzie wasn’t so quick to buy in. “Would Kee like it?” she asked.

“Maybe not, but he’d know it was a necessity,” Elanus said. “This is how we take down the people who tried to get him killed.”

There was that low, dark hum again. It made Elanus want to shudder. “Show me,” Lizzie said.

Excellent. It was time to get to work.

Sharp as Scarlet preview!

 Notes: Darlins! My brain is chock-full of plotting and my time is crunched, so forgive me for no blog story today. Instead, I'm going to share the beginning of the next newsletter story with you--Seamark is over, so it's time for something new. Never fear, I'll have more Chelen City ready to go next week--we're getting so close to the end!

Title: Sharp As Scarlet: Chapter One

Blurb: Rainer Blake lives a simple life running an old antique store gifted to him by his guardian. He's a mostly normal human being in a slightly abnormal world--a world that can be breached by other realms, invaded by fae both light and dark.

Most fae can't stay long—modernity is poison to them—but not even the threat of iron will stop the Erlking's Hounds from tracking down Scarlet, the beautiful, dagger-fingered faerie prince who stole a great treasure from his father before fleeing to the human realm.

Only Rainer knows where Scarlet is. That means the Hounds' target should be easy prey.

But it doesn't pay to underestimate someone who's captured the heart of a heartless prince.

***

“The Fairy in Winter” by Walter De La Mare

There was a Fairy – flake of winter –
Who, when the snow came, whispering, Silence,
Sister crystal to crystal sighing,
Making of meadow argent palace,
Night a star-sown solitude,
Cried ‘neath her frozen eaves, “I burn here!”

Wings diaphanous, beating bee-like,
Wand within fingers, locks enspangled,
Icicle foot, lip sharp as scarlet,
She lifted her eyes in her pitch-black hollow –
Green as stalks of weeds in water –
Breathed: stirred.

Rilled from her heart the ichor, coursing,
Flamed and awoke her slumbering magic.
Softlier than moth’s her pinions trembled;
Out into blackness, light-like, she flittered,
Leaving her hollow cold, forsaken.

In air, o’er crystal, rang twangling night-wind.
Bare, rimed pine-woods murmured lament.

 

Chapter One

 

NOW

Shaw’s Cabinet of Curiosities and Antiques sits a little ways off the main streets of the city, down an older, semi-residential block that’s only now becoming afflicted with coffee shops and modern kitsch. It’s not far enough away from downtown to make it hard for customers to find, but it’s not on one of the major thoroughfares either, which means that most of the people who do end up there are deliberately looking for it.

The Cabinet specializes in small, holdable antiques—the sort of thing you can tuck under your arm or put in a bag on your way out with no one the wiser. You can find everything from bespoke East Coast cufflinks to Chinese nephrite teapots to Peruvian Nazca sculptures there, none of it quite fine enough to be hunted down by truly avid collectors, all of it beautiful enough to enhance a normal life. About ninety percent of the people who walk through the door are satisfied with a lovely gift and leave happy.

The other ten percent are looking for something entirely different, and happiness is unfortunately never assured. Rainer does his best, but helping fae adjust to the human realm isn’t easy. He’s seen it all: tears, screams, curses that do their damndest to stick despite his protections, even the occasional assassination attempt. None of them have ever worked, obviously, but it’s something he has to be on guard for.

Desperate people are hurt people, and they’re not always careful about who ends up sharing their pain. Several bad experiences have instilled in Rainer a sense of caution that Scarlet calls paranoia, but Shaw was always supportive of it. Better safe than sorry, lad, he used to say. Shaw was small fae, with small powers, and he appreciated a good back-up plan.

Inheriting Shaw’s caution might be the only thing that kept Rainer alive after what happened next.

When the bell above the door rings five minutes before closing, Rainer barely notices it at first. He’s too busy collecting the few paper receipts he’s generated today and taking pictures of them to upload to his accounting software—some fae can’t handle being in close proximity to modern technology, so he tends to save this for the end of the day. It’s the reason he uses old-fashioned lamps to light the store instead of LED bulbs and hasn’t upgraded the radiators yet. The older, the better for his real customers.

“Welcome in,” he calls out, not looking up. A wash of cold air blows across the shop, making the hairs on his arms stand on end. It’s not quite winter yet, and Rainer pauses for a moment as the smell of petrichor wafts in along with the cold.

He sets the receipts aside but keeps his phone in his hands, being very careful to keep his eyes down even as he lifts the phone enough to see through the camera. “Anything I can help you with?” he asks as the door closes with a ding. He captures a photo of a man with a close-cut gray bears wearing a long, heavy leather jacket before actually looking up.

The man smiles. “Not as such.”

Rainer smiles back. The expression feels frozen on his face, but he knows it doesn’t come off that way. He can conceal the truth as well as any fae out there. “The shop closes in five minutes.”

“Oh, we won’t linger long,” the man says.

We… It takes too long for Rainer to register the fact that there’s another set of footsteps wandering around the shop. The other steps aren’t a pair of shoes, either. Rather, it’s the click-click-click of nails on hardwood; there’s an animal moving around the shop.

A big one, from the sound of it.

The man comes up to the counter, staring down at the jewelry on display beneath it. “You’ve an eclectic assortment of goods here.”

“Thank you,” Rainer says mildly, sending the picture off without looking at the phone. “It’s a collection that’s taken a long time to put together.”

“I can tell.” When their eyes meet, Rainer is momentarily stricken with fear. These eyes are blue, normal, average in every way except in which they seem to be capable of staring straight through Rainer. “I wonder if you might have something I’m looking for.”

“Maybe.” Rainer sets the phone down on the counter and lowers one hand to the scarred wooden surface of the ancient display case, the other one falling casually behind it. “What are you looking for?”

“A ring,” the man says. “A signet ring, in fact.”

Rainer shakes his head. “I’m afraid we don’t—”

“Let me finish, boy.”

Rainer shivers violently, then shakes off the compulsion. The man continues like he never used one in the first place.

“It’s a signet ring made from obsidian, engraved with a silver crown on the surface,” he continues. “It belongs to a very powerful person who would like it back. I was told this would be a good place to begin my search for it.”

It takes a moment to father the breath to respond, but Rainer manages after a few seconds. “I’m sorry. I don’t have anything of that sort here.”

“Mmm.” The man nods in understanding. “I see. But perhaps you know someone who does. I have it on equally good authority that you’re quite…close with the bearer of this ring.”

A message comes in on Rainer’s phone. Then another. And another. It dings with notification after notification. “Just let me get this first,” Rainer says, but the man reaches out and slams a hand down on the phone before he can pick it up.

“No more dissembling between us,” he says, the blue in his eyes beginning to melt into silver. The click-click comes closer, then stops. Rainer risks a glance at the end of the aisle and sees a massive hound staring at him. At first it just looks like a big breed of pitbull, but a second and then a third glance reveal the leonine mane around its head, and the massive spread of its claws and jaws. It’s tawny and muscular and drooling a pool onto the floor. The drool steams lightly. “Tell me where to find the prince, and I’ll spare your life.”

He's fae, so Rainer knows that he’s telling the truth. But looking into those eyes, he also knows that if he were to tell this man where Scarlet is, he would end up in such incredible pain and suffering that he would wish he were dead.

Fortunately for Rainer, he has absolutely no intention of giving up Scarlet.

“Get fucked,” he says in a pleasant voice instead, then slams his hand down on the emergency button beneath his desk. The fae is reaching for him, the creature is coming for him, but as the cloud of tiny gray particles puffs out of the special drawer he installed in the cash register years ago, both of them pause, then begin to cough.

Have some iron lung treatment, you bastards. Rainer swipes his phone up, sends out one last text, then shoves it into the back pocket of his black jeans and leaps over the counter. The fae man reaches out for him again, light fizzing for a moment across his fingers, but he doesn’t make contact. Just a few more feet and Rainer will be out the front, and then—

The bell above the door dings with alarming merriment, and a face pokes in from the outside. This one isn’t even trying to maintain a glamour—this is the head of a hound bisected in two, the middle gaping with redness but not actively bleeding as the mouth splits even wider, showing off three rows of terribly sharp teeth. It sticks its shoulders inside the storefront, beginning to crouch, silver claws digging gouges into the wooden floor.

Rainer acts instantly, uncoiling the long leather bracelet from his left wrist in a snapping motion as he pulls his tactical folder from his front right pocket. The slender bracelet extends into a short whip, and he lashes the beast with the whippy, iron-studded tip, making it recoil long enough for him to get close enough to slash it across the face with his knife.

The beast roars and rears back, letting the door fall shut as it begins to paw at its new wound. It’s only a few feet away, though; Rainer will never escape it if he tries to use the front door.

Time for the back, then.

He coils the whip up and turns for the back door, narrowly evading a paw swipe from the leonine creature. It’s still trying to clear its face, but it lets out a yowl of fury as Rainer dances by, letting him know that his lead is temporary at best. He’s got to go faster…or slow it down.

Without hesitating, Rainer shoves the carefully curated shelves onto the floor behind him as he passes by. Tchotchkes smash into shards, elegant antiques are sent tumbling, and the occasional very rare and precious curio is shattered without a second thought as he runs for the back of the store. He can hear the yowls become growls, hear the beast picking its way through the wreckage. Worse than that, he can hear the fae who came in with it begin to laugh.

It’s the sound of a raven on the edge of a battlefield, the sound of thunder rumbling in the distance. It’s the sound of doom impending, so full of menace that Rainer can barely force his limbs to move.

“Make the chase a good one,” the fae calls out as Rainer darts through the back door, slamming it shut behind him. He turns then, just in time to see the leonine beast smash head-first into the heavy slab of black walnut, nearly breaking the vertical glass inlay in it right then and there. Silver eyes stand out even across the entirety of the shop, glowing with malice.

The beast growls again and gathers itself for another attack.

Rainer runs.

Halfway across the world, a man grips his phone hard enough to make the plastic groan, staring down at two little words: They’re coming.

 

 

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