Mutable: Chapter Twenty-Eight, Part One

Notes: Uh-oh. Prepare for shit to go down!

Title: Mutable: Chapter Twenty-Eight, Part One

***

Chapter Twenty-Eight, Part One

Amiru was alone when they got to him. At least, he appeared to be alone. He was the only other person there, as far as Cas could tell. But he wasn’t alone in his own head. That much was clear from the moment they walked into the room.

“Brother.” Amiru smiled at them as they walked in through the door.

“You’re not my brother,” Rone said coldly.

“In a sense that’s true…but I wasn’t talking to you.” Amiru looked straight at Cas. “We’re the only ones left, you know. The only Delacoeurians with phages.”

“How do you know that?”

Amiru shook his head. “How do you think?”

“You…” Cas considered it for a moment. “You got into—into the heads of our own people. Pendry, and Kaske, and Marigo. The ones who sold us out.”

“The ones who held us back, Cas,” Amiru said intently. “The ones who should have cut us free a long time ago. Our folk rotted in Shyne for over a century, and what did the people in power do about it? Nothing, as long as we kept them in power. They would rather have squatted on a dirt throne than risk their lives battling for the sun.”

“You hated Shyne.”

“Of course I hated it. It was a cesspit, and everyone in it who refused to fight for their freedom deserved to die there. But not enough people agreed with me to make my vision for the future come true. Our erstwhile leaders didn’t, not until I wore down their reserve.” The edge of his teeth glinted. “They were alert against potential phage infections, of course. It took years for me to get close enough to them for them to let their guard down. But eventually, it worked.”

“You’re talking about aiding and abetting the enemy in murdering us,” Cas insisted, his words rough-edged in his throat. “Our people are practically wiped out thanks to what you did.”

“They weren’t truly our people, Cas.” Amiru looked at him pityingly. “They were never ours. We were always meant for more. The phage makes us great. We shouldn’t bow to anyone, to anything. Especially not to a pompous, puffed up buffoon like this man.” He pounded his own chest with a fist. “Look at him! Coddled and cosseted all his life, born into the ultimate privilege, and all he can do with it is lounge around on his planet and revel in his superiority. Disgusting. These people might once have been innovators, but they’ve lost that quality, Cas. They’re hidebound now, rulebound. Caste bound, too—just look at their petty restrictions on their own ambitions. Lords of Metal, Lords of Mind…stupid rules to keep slightly more important sheep in line. Even their riots are an embarrassment to the word.”

“What, and you’re not an embarrassment?” Cas snapped. “You’re living as no more than a parasite—a host pretending to be the very thing that makes her special. You’ve given away so many pieces of yourself that I’m amazed you can even hold another person’s shape any more. And the more they die, the weaker you’ll become, until one day you can’t even remember your own name because you’ve carried so many.”

Amiru scowled. “Better than skulking around wearing my baby brother’s face and pretending to be in love with the king’s bastard kin just so I could escape Leelinge.”

Cas felt incredibly tired all of a sudden. “That’s not why I did it.”

“You can tell yourself that, but I know how much you disliked it there.” Amiru leaned back in his chair by the table and steepled his fingers under his chin. “Even if I could have persuaded you to take on the Leelinger elite with me, you would never have been satisfied on that planet. You and I, we were destined for this.”

“For Imperia?” Cas scoffed. “Coming here was just a means to the end of finding you, which I’ve done now. I’m tired of talking to you. You can leave that body, or I’ll force you out of it.”

“Cas…” Rone said, low and warning.

“You can’t just kill me,” Amiru said with a pleased tut-tut. “And that one know it. I’m the king, after all, and this is being recorded. No matter what justification you present, you’ll be sentenced to death.”

Cas squared his shoulders. “We don’t need to kill you. We just need to purge you.”

Amiru’s eyes glinted. “And you think you’re finally strong enough to do that, do you? To purge me from a thrall? You can’t even make thralls yourself, so what do you know about it?”

“I know that you’ve spread yourself so thin that you don’t have any more foot soldiers to throw at us,” Cas said. “I know that wherever you are, you’re weak. And in him, you’re weak. And I’m not going to let you have him.”

“Oh, Cas.” Amiru sighed with an air of satisfaction. “You’ve shaped your mind like a spear, slashing straight at whatever you see. If you really wanted to kill me, you would have taught yourself to think like a noose. It always helps to be a little bit more…flexible.”

What happened next happened so fast, Cas could hardly track it. Rone grunted, and a second later he was jerked backward off his feet. Cas spun around to go after him, but had to jump away when Amiru pulled a—what was that, a crossbow of some kind?—from behind his chair and fired it at him. The house’s prohibition on energy weapons didn’t stop a ballistic one, and the tip of the arrow slashed through the fabric at Cas’s collar, nearly cutting his throat. Blood welled up and spilled from the cut, but Cas had no time to focus on stopping it.

Rone was on his back, the cord that had lassoed his neck and pulled him down still there, and Riina—Christala—was crouched over him, her long-fingered hands bracketing his face. She hovered like an eel over its prey, latching onto his mouth with hers like a suction cup. And Rone…didn’t fight it. He didn’t move.

He didn’t even twitch.

And by then Cas knew what was happening, and he ran toward them but fell when he took an arrow to the back of his right thigh. Amiru laughed as Cas sprawled onto the floor, the pain of the wound intense but the agony of what he was watching, of what he felt in his heart, immensely more terrible.

Rone! RONE! “RONE!” he screamed, and dragged himself toward his husband. Another arrow struck by his head—just a warning shot, he knew that much, a message to leave well enough alone, but he’d fucking had enough. He rolled onto his side, pulled a dagger free from his belt and hurled it with all the force he could muster from his compromised position straight at Amiru. The knife hit him in the shoulder, sinking deep into the meat of it, and Amiru grimaced and dropped the crossbow.

“It doesn’t matter!” he called out after Cas. “It’s too late to do anything to stop it! He’s mine now, Cas! You had your chance at him, but he’s mine now!”

“No,” Cas muttered as he crawled. He was so close. She needed more time to transfer the phage—it didn’t want to leave the host body, didn’t want to risk it in a new shell. It would be reluctant, he just had to—

And then Christala gasped and fell back, and Rone sat up, and as he looked at Cas the purple sheen over his eyes drowned in an inky pool of blackness. The phage was within him—in enormous quantities, for it to manifest so clearly.

“Hello, sweetheart,” Rone said, and Cas wanted to scream again. Because that was his voice, the voice of the man he was married to, the man he loved.

But it wasn’t him. Not anymore.

“I think we need to talk.”

On Deadline

Darlins!

So here's the thing--I have a novel due at the end of the month, and I'm nearly there. I haven't been able to write anything else as I'm closing in on it, not even Mutable, but! I'll write an extra-long post for next week, at which time the novel will be turned in and out of my hands.

Please enjoy an excerpt, and I'll be back with Mutable next week--which is also nearing its end, holy smokes! My writing life is a roller coaster right now (my everyday life is pretty much the same--Baby Girl has learned how to get a trot going, and she can move surprisingly fast with it).

***

I should have known I was going to fuck it all up.

Eye contact. Why had I made bloody eye contact? I didn’t look like myself right now, not a version of myself I would recognize, in the fatigues and the cap with a gun at my hip. Alex had told me to keep my eyes straight ahead, not to stop for anything, and we would be all right. Only—only I saw someone I thought I knew, in the foyer, and I’d glanced his way.

It turned out, the Beninese Minister of Culture and History had an excellent memory for faces.

“I asked myself,” Minister Adjoukoua said as he led the way downstairs, “what could a curator for the famous British Museum be doing here, in Lomé? Working for Mademoiselle Corday it seemed, but surely not you. You might have been demoted, Professor Armstrong, but you are still a man of great principle. Not the sort of person to whore himself out to a treasure hunter like our auctioneer. Then, when I heard the noise from inside the room, and your companion nowhere to be seen? Well.” He smiled broadly. “I thought you might be here to render the rest of this day meaningless. I couldn’t have that. Mademoiselle!” Minister Adjoukoua called out to Corday, who came in from the next room wearing a smile that got broader as soon as she saw us. She wore feathery, fluttering red from shoulder to shin—blood red. “Mademoiselle, I have a surprise for you, eh? Two people who should not be here sneaking about.”

“You have a sharp eye, Minister,” she said graciously, but there was ice behind her beaming smile. “Where did you find them?”

“Upstairs, at the end of the hall.”

“Alone?” Anyone else might think it was an idle question, but I could hear the tension in her voice, as soft as a breath of air but as furious as a hurricane.

“There was no one else that I saw.”

“Ah.” She was likely wondering if we’d killed Fawkes, and if so, where we’d stashed the body. I glanced at Alex—he, minutely, shook his head. He hadn’t killed him, then. That was a relief. “Well, then. Allow me to dispose of these irritants and we’ll get down to business.”

Dispose of—surely she wasn’t going to just murder us. The bleak look in her eye suggested she was ready to do just that, though, and neither of us had a gun any longer—they were all in the possession of the enormous bodyguard holding a gun on me. Oh god. Oh god, I was going to be killed—I was going to get Alex killed, no, this couldn’t be—

Mutable: Chapter Twenty-Seven, Part Two

Notes: We meet the enemy! Kind of.

Title: Mutable: Chapter Twenty-Seven, Part Two

***

Chapter Twenty-Seven, Part Two

They entered the front of the palace with no problems. That in and of itself was suspicious—there had just been a bloody massacre outside, it should have prompted more of a response from the palace staff, at least. But no one came to them.

“We need to get back to their living quarters,” Rone said. “It’s the most defensible place in the house. That’s where Amiru is likely to be, with Tiyana and the kids.”

The kids. Of course, his own children wouldn’t be infected with the phage but that didn’t mean they weren’t still pawns in this. If Christala could make Amiru threaten them, hurt them—Rone wouldn’t let that happen. He might give in, to keep the children from getting hurt. What would Christala ask for? And would Cas be able to keep her from getting it?

And speaking of the children, what were they going to do with Lilah and Shar? “What about—” Cas began, but he was interrupted a second later by a muffled pssst. He turned to see a young woman in a sturdy brown uniform, with tight black curls and dark skin, motioning to them from the hall on the right-hand side.

“Riina?” Rone said, sounding surprised.

“Riina!” Lilah made as though to run for her, but Cas held her back. Riina. The nanny. The one that Tiyana said was sick.

“It’s okay,” Riina encouraged, correctly—or at least, partially correctly—interpreting Cas’s hesitation. “I put the boys in the panic room before I came back to look for Tiyana. It’s gone crazy here—the king ordered everyone to leave, almost everyone! He kicked out all the staff and guards and set the doors to keep them out.”

“How did you get in?” Rone asked.

Riina shook her head. “I never left. I’ve been in the infirmary for the past few days, but I was the only one there apart from the doctor, and he didn’t come to work today. I hid while two of the king’s bodyguards checked the infirmary an hour ago—something just didn’t feel right. Something’s happened to King Amiru! He’s not acting like himself!” She sounded genuinely distressed. “When I went to the nursery and found the boys alone, I knew something was seriously wrong. I put them in the panic room and came back to try and get their mom.” She held out her hand again. “Lilah and Shar can join them, Gale will let them in. I’ll take them.” She glanced hesitantly between the two of them. “Or—or you can bring them yourselves, that’s fine. I just—they need to be safe. Please, I’m telling the truth!”

She was telling a partial truth, at least. Cas grabbed Rone’s wrist and held him back as he began to move. “How long were you sick for?” Cas asked.

“Um, a few days…why?”

“And you’ve been here the whole time?”

“Yes…”

“So if the prince here decides to check the log in the infirmary, he’ll see that you haven’t left the building for at least the past forty-eight hours.”

“Yes, but.” She looked in confusion at Rone. “Why would you need to do that?”

Now he heard it—the movement just beyond her, the faint sound of shifting weight. Their guns were useless now, but that didn’t mean the guards themselves were.

“Please, come this way,” she begged, looking almost behind herself in a panic. “Hurry! Before we’re caught! I’ll, I’ll leave the kids alone, you can see them go into the panic room with Gale and the baby, just—” A split-second later a dagger was sailing through the air, heading straight for Shar’s forehead. Cas snatched it up and resisted the impulse to throw it right back at her. He might need it, after all.

Two more projectiles followed, and he blocked one while Rone blocked the other. A moment later Riina—Christala, he corrected in his head, because this was her work and probably her body—was gone, but two of her thralls had charged into the front hall, each one wielding a long, deadly blade. Rone stepped out in front and Cas let him, putting the children behind him and readying his newly acquired dagger.

He didn’t need to bother, in the end. Rone leaped toward the closest guard before the man could bring the blade to bear, hammering a powerful punch into his throat before immobilizing his arm and taking the sword away. The man fell to the ground, choking on his own crushed throat, as Rone used the sword to parry the other guard’s stroke. She actually showed some finesse with the blade—she knew how to move with it, how to strike and block and search for weaknesses, but it didn’t matter. Rone wasn’t trying to duel, he was trying to kill his enemy as quickly and efficiently as possible. He dodged her next strike, cut flicker-fast along her forearm until her tendonless hand dropped the weapon, then swung his own sword hard at her arm, cutting it off just above the elbow. The next strike took her head.

The corpse fell to the floor, blood forming a macabre pool around the remains. The other guard was unconscious now, probably nearly dead himself. There was no need to comfort this time around. “We have to find her,” Cas said.

“She won’t be far from my brother, now that the first part of her plan has failed.” Rone sounded grim. “You should take the children to another part of the palace, somewhere on the other side of the building.”

“I don’t know my way around here!” Cas protested. “And you can’t take her on by yourself. You don’t know everything she’s capable of!” Cas felt the kids move a little way back, possibly disturbed by the argument. He wanted to turn around and assure them that it was all right, but the truth was, he couldn’t say that.

“I can’t allow my children to walk into harm’s way!”

“And I can’t allow my husband to run headlong into that harm without any support!” Cas snapped. “You think you’ve seen the worst of what she can do, but you haven’t, not by a long shot, and I won’t let you—” A strange, soft hiss from behind Cas made him turn, dagger raised, ready to kill to protect the children.

They weren’t there, though. No one was there. “Lilah?” He almost dropped the blade as he spun around. “Shar?”

“We’re fine.” Lilah stuck her head out of a frosted vitrine beside the wall. “We’re gonna be in the tunnels, okay? So you two can stay together.”

“Tunnels?” Rone sounded as surprised as Cas felt. “What tunnels?”

“The ones Aunt Tiy put in last year.” She wrinkled her nose. “They’re not as good as the ones at home, but there are a bunch of them. Gale showed me how to get in.”

Cas turned toward Rone. “What is it with you people and tunnels?”

“They make for useful escape hatches, obviously. And the ground here is igneous rock, so a lot of the tunnels are built into the foundation.” He glanced inside the vitrine, then nodded. “Stay close. No wandering into places you haven’t been before. If you don’t hear from Cas or I within the next hour, I want you to get out of here and head for the base. You understand me?”

“Yes, Daddy.” Shar nodded as well.

“Good.” He kissed both of them on the forehead, then stepped aside and motioned Cas forward. “Make your goodbyes quick,” he said.

A little surprised, but grateful for the chance, Cas bent down and touched each child on the cheek, a fast, gentle caress. “If we don’t say ‘noodles’ when we’re calling for you, then it’s not us, even if it sounds like us,” he murmured. “Okay? Don’t trust us otherwise.”

“Okay,” Lilah said with perfect seriousness.

“Good.” Cas moved away and she closed the vitrine.

Noodles? Rone mouthed as they listened to the children scuttle down into the floor.

“It’s an inside joke,” Cas said. Rone smiled, and for a second it almost felt normal between them. Then the blood reached Cas’s shoe, and he swallowed and stepped back.

“All right,” he said firmly. “Let’s go find the king.”