It wasn’t until the next day that Gerubem learned what had happened, by which point it was too late. Goram came to him, sheepish, to report that the mortal queen had taken her own life. He felt a pang of sorrow for the woman, who hadn’t deserved her fate. A flash of guilt, as well; it might be that he could have laid the truth out in less unbearable fashion, had he not wished to punish her for trying to use his grief as a lever. It had been unfair to be angry at her. Of course she had been willing to try it, anyone would be. It hadn’t been her idea, which he’d known.
It was only in the midafternoon, as he was finalizing the details of the sale with the buyer’s castellan, that he learned the whole of the truth. They were sitting in his office, both of them staring at the scale on which a pile of precious jewels that would take two hands to hold wasn’t balancing the way it should against the opposite pan. One fraction of a hair of inequality would be bad. It would give him the appearance of being unreliable, in a world in which the customers never forgot anything, and this wasn’t one fraction of a hair.
He was short a lot of souls; that or he had misplaced one exceptionally valuable one. Their naïve queen had killed herself in the middle of the night but it shouldn’t signify, her soul was still Cenuwa’s, which meant that it was Gerubem’s. The only thing that could possibly change that—
“Fuck,” he snarled, standing up. The demon across his desk was watching him owlishly and he forced himself to bow. “Forgive me, madame, it seems my debtor is cheating me. Please take the difference back, plus another ten percent, with my apologies.”
The client consented, thankfully, and it was all he could do to stay still and hold in a scream while she showed herself out of the office. He was ringing his bell as the door closed at her back. Then he turned furious laps of the few feet of space behind his desk while he waited for his partner to appear.
When Bialla finally entered, she was sauntering. She always sauntered, unless she was in the midst of a duel. “The queen is dead!” he shouted when she was still halfway in.
She raised her brows, only mildly interested.
“And now I find we’re grossly short on inventory.”
She tossed herself into the chair before his desk, looking bored. “It’s not likely it’s connected. She didn’t strike me as the sort of person destined to quit the wheel.”
“But until just now Cenuwa still had hold of all his people’s souls.”
She sat up straight again. “He wouldn’t dare.”
“Maybe not, but the mortal would. What did she have to lose?”
“She’d have to know how this all works and no one does.”
Gerubem sank into his chair and bowed his head, digging his hands into his hair. The silence was electric with suspicion and his sister only sat on her doubts for a minute, she was never good at hanging back. “Unless someone told her. Some fool who’s too distracted to use his brain anymore. You did, didn’t you? You told her her god could remove her from the reckoning.”
“I didn’t think…”
Anyone else, in this world or the other, would have taken the opportunity to say something there, something snide to the effect of: obviously. Bialla wasn’t one to point fingers, though. Certainly not at him. Life hadn’t been kind to them and they had never had anyone but each other; they knew better than to beat each other up, with everyone else so keen to pile in. “You should have just slept with her.” She stood and he jerked back. “I guess we better check.”
“Check?”
“The auction house.”
Gerubem gasped.
She bent forward, placing her hands on his desk and squinting at him. “Ger, maybe you should sit this one out. I’m supposed to be the reckless one but that only works for us because you’re not. Someone has to think things through and if you’re this rattled, this is the time for us to retreat. Lay low and keep our heads down until you get yours on straight.”
He was already brushing past her and called over his shoulder, “Let me confirm it first.”
His sister sighed heavily, making sure he heard, but chose to fall in at his heels without further argument. “I’m coming too. It’ll be fun!”
Gerubem was too stressed to protest; anyway he could use the company. He had been an idiot and wounded their interests because of it. He needed to get this debacle under wraps as soon as possible and Bialla was right that he wasn’t thinking straight: he required a minder to make certain he didn’t charge forward into further mistakes.
They took a litter to the city center, carried on the shoulders of their people while they sat stiffly upon the cushions, too tense to recline. Neither of them spoke; until they knew what precisely they were facing, there was no point discussing it. Gerubem wasn’t sure what he was hoping for. That this hadn’t happened, that it not be his fault. Those dreams being unattainable, he didn’t know what his next-best was.
The City was as it always was: filthy, dark. Its wending ways adrift in trash and huddled semi-human forms, cobbles cracked and like to turn beneath the feet. The buildings loomed, doubling down on the shadows’ depth or falling back unexpectedly. Making space for pointless yards where flowers couldn’t grow nor birds peck and roost, filled with cold stone statuary.
You might have thought it would become overcrowded; you would be wrong. The ways weren’t empty but nor were they jostled by busy crowds the way the streets would have been in a mortal city. What people there were, were often content to stay at home for days on end, for years, for small eternities. When hunger wasn’t a factor, when you couldn’t die of sickness or even time, only boredom drove you forth. Boredom or the fear that your neighbors might be closing in, their teeth bent on your throat.
The auction hall was as grand as it was simple, a great stone wall so tall the tallest giant couldn’t step over it, spiraling in on the market at its heart. They left their litter-bearers in the dusty park, walking in by themselves because they would look like cowards if they brought a guard. A useless guard that couldn’t protect them anyway, but Gerubem’s shoulders twitched with nerves and he saw the way his sister’s hands hovered near the blade at either hip.
The whole was open to the sky, labyrinth and market both, although why anyone had thought that wise was mysterious: the sky here was black and horrible. There were no stars to comfort those in the Afterlife. No pretty glisters to lend credence to fairytales, no Out There to give one cause to hope. This dirty, rocky, black-lit barren hilltop was the outer limit of what there was, and you could deal with that or kill yourself and deal with it in another life.
As they were getting on toward the central arena where a new auction was even now taking place, they stepped aside, making for a desk cached against a wall. The demon seated behind it was small, its large ears triangular, dog-like, its face attentive. It wore a pair of spectacles perched upon its nose, conveying an overwhelming impression of studiousness. “Masters,” it commented, not quite a courtesy, but a request that they explain what brought them here.
Bialla was craning her neck to get a glimpse of the auction block in the next room, but Gerubem wasn’t interested. “Information on a soul newly-removed. Senrien the Destined…”
“Who Rises Like the New Sun Over the Peak of Mother to the East,” his sister supplied, attention still not on them.
“Destined, Destined,” the fox-demon muttered as it scanned its list. “Ah, yes,” it went on, and its tone was neither bright nor triumphant. Simply satisfied that it could answer their question. “Passed through here hours ago.”
“Who purchased her lot?” This wasn’t the usual sort of request and he laid one hand flat upon the desk as he said it.
As he withdrew his hand, the fox-creature slipped its own into the space where it had been, judging the merit of the gift. He had been generous and it answered immediately, “Fior.”
“Fuck,” Bialla chimed in.
“There has been better news,” he agreed. Giving the clerk a nod, they quit the auction house, rewinding the path of the maze in brooding silence.
“There’s nothing to do but take the loss,” his sister said as they reemerged into the, for lack of a better word, day.
“I hate to let someone get one over on us. We look like fools and everyone will be aware of it by the next turning of the jar.”
“If we look like fools, it’s because we were. Not a lot we can do at this stage but learn from our mistakes, that and cope with the consequences.”
She was right, and if he didn’t like it, he had long since learned that his desires were irrelevant in the larger scheme of things. Life had made sure of that and death had put the polish on it.
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