Catastrophe Jones

This is Issue #77 of DeathWatch, Book II: tentatively called Heart Of Ilona, an ongoing Serial. Click that link to go find DeathWatch, the first in the series, or start from the beginning of Book II!

Happy Reading!

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* * *

She woke, exhausted, and found herself staring into the face of her husband. “You’re alive,” she said, reaching up to stroke his cheek. “Y’really are alive. Y’really came back.”

Nathan smiled crookedly, nodding in silence. When she turned and gagged, he rubbed her back, pulling her hair out of the way, and said, “Soon as you’re up to it, we’ve got to move.”

“Move?” Jules rubbed her eyes and moved to sit up. “Where we goin?”

“North. We’ll take shelter in the mountains, and maybe get picked up by a Krieg ship going back, so–”

“Going back? Are the Kriegs retreating?” Jules looked astonished.

“No, you dizzy nut,” Nathan snorted, kissing her forehead. “The day the Kriegs stand down is the day the sun burns black in the sky.”

“Then what are you talking about? Why would we leave?” Jules’s expression was pure confusion. She let herself be lifted; she leaned close to Nathan’s embrace. She wasn’t sure she couldn’t walk, but it felt damned good to be held.

“Because there is a war coming, Commander, and you were born the losing side.” Coryphaeus’s voice was sudden and irritable.

Nathan could feel Jules tense in his arms.

“Put. Me. Down.” Her voice brooked no argument.

Nathan complied as quickly as possible without dropping his wife.

Jules whirled on the Ilonan, pointing her finger angrily, “Legatus, don’t you even think za odnu chertovu sekundu–”

“Jules,” Nathan interrupted. “Language. The man is–”

“–that I’m going to let you sideline me while you–”

“Per caelo futuam propter, Jules!” Coryphaeus stood, redfaced, fists clenched. “For once, will you not do as you are bid?”

“Are you telling me you’re in love with him and he doesn’t even–” Nathan laughed aloud, looking at Coryphaeus. “Oh you poor fuck,” he said, shaking his head. “Don’t order her around. She’ll only do you the other way, so’s to prove she can.”

“I will not!” Jules said, putting her hands on her hips.

“Y’will. N’don’t argue with me for spite. I came all the way back from the dead for you,” Nathan said, cupping her cheek in his hand. For all the humor the words contained, Nathan’s expression was pained, his eyes dark and wide, watchful.

Jules stared him down, drank him in, and said quite simply, “I’m not running.”

“I ain’t makin you.”

“He is.” She cocked her head toward Coryphaeus, who could not help but feel both extra, in the conversation, and perhaps even mocked more than a little.

“No, he isn’t,” Coryphaeus said archly. “He is giving you exactly what you asked for.”

“Start making sense,” Jules hissed. She looked at Nathan, her expression furious.

“What?” He laughed. “Y’seriously want me t’argue with y’new igrushka mal’chika because he–”

“Boytoy?! Einin, don’t y’even start–”

Coryphaeus growled aloud at being called the ‘new boytoy’ and slammed his fist down on the table. “It’s already settled! You’ll get out of here; there are hundreds of thousands of people arriving for the coronation. You’ll be lost in the crowd. The Kriegs are bloodthirsty, but likely not willing to obliterate the pilgrims. From there, you can make your way to–”

“I’ve got a better idea,” Jules said. “Go fuck yourself! How many times do I have to–”

“Close your mouth, you insufferable pink skinned wretch.”

Jules spun, her mouth open, ready to deliver a stream of invective.

“My brother is giving you an entire ship to use as you see fit,” Nixus said, standing in the doorway with Sollerti, who was staring at Nathan as much as he could without gawking.

“I don’t need–y… What?” Baffled, Jules stared at Nixus, then at Coryphaeus. “What?” She looked at Nathan, who seemed not at all surprised, and gave him a not-entirely-playful punch in the chest. “You knew!” Irritated, she slapped him, and then whirled on Coryphaeus, who lifted his jaw and stared her down.

He would not be accepting a blow from her.

Jules paused, flushing, and released the tension in her shoulders.

“Is everything ready?” Coryphaeus looked to Nixus, expectant.

“It is.”

Jules turned to look at Nixus, her expression wounded, wary. “You tried to get me to run.”

Nixus nodded, her arms crossed over her shoulders. “And I would do it again, stultus. Your visions may be useful, and I plan on reducing the Kriegic army to tears, but your method of ruining men is not at all to my liking. I think giving up even a broken-down passenger ship for you is–”

“Summus.” Though his voice was nothing but polite, Coryphaeus’s expression was sharp as he stared down his sister. He turned his gaze back to Jules, and wished to whatever gods might still listen that his heart would not thunder so, to see her fierce eyes, would not break as it did, to watch them cloud with hurt and anger. “Jules,” he sighed. “Nixus will escort you to your ship. You can run in it, hide in it, fight in it — whatever you desire.”

“Thank you,” she said, and she tried her hardest to offer up in those simple words the earnest gratitude she honestly felt. When no other conversation was forthcoming, she turned to Nixus, saying, “Right, then. If you please, Summus? Only take us as far as is necessary. I won’t waste any more of your time.”

Nixus answered under her breath, “Oh, I highly doubt that.” Sollerti tensed as Nathan bristled; the two men stared at one another briefly, and then Sollerti slipped by, giving Nathan the sublest of nods.

Nixus glanced at Nathan, and then at Jules, and rolled her eyes. “If you think I’m intimidated by some half-man, half-machine beast–”

Jules looked at Nixus sharply, her eyes widening.

“Tace, soror.” The edge of Coryphaeus’s voice was sharp, and Nixus’s lip curled in a faint snarl, to hear it. “What’s done is done.”

“It’s never done,” Nixus growled. She stalked out, and Nathan went to follow her.

“Legatus?” Jules’s voice was small and sad as she took a step toward Coryphaeus.

The young man stepped back, away from hear nearness, her touch. There was something half-frantic about his expression as he glanced up at her. “Commander, just go.”

Jules sucked in a breath, mind reeling as she struggled to come up with something to say. Finding nothing, she shrugged, exhaling in disappointment, and left to follow the others.

Alone with his thoughts, Coryphaeus sank down onto the bed, and put his face in his hands. When he heard the front door pull shut, he decided to save his self control for something more worth it, and wept without shame.

* * *

NEXT

This is Issue #76 of DeathWatch, Book II: tentatively called Heart Of Ilona, an ongoing Serial. Click that link to go find DeathWatch, the first in the series, or start from the beginning of Book II!

Happy Reading!

PREVIOUS

* * *

Jules laid on the bed, her eyes glassy, her stare blank. Coryphaeus had turned her, so if she happened to vomit, she wouldn’t choke. He fanned her hair out behind her, the riot of red curls tangled; there was ornamental grass stuck in it, from where she and Nixus had rolled about in the lawn, on the flags, fighting their quiet, ridiculous fight.

He sat beside her, looking at her, looking through her, his eyes on her, his mind somewhere in the middle distance. “Do you have any idea… Do you have any inkling of what my life has been for the last half of a year, after having met you?”

She said nothing, lost in her own world, her lips parted, but not by words.

He continued, his expression shifting between pain and awe. “I spent my youth… apart. Less than whole, in the eyes of my father. I spent two years without any touch. I was supposed to have left for the army. I was supposed to get out, but I was a prisoner in my own home, in my own body. When I finally did manage to free myself, to make something of myself, to get into the army and secure a commission as an officer? Once I’d won the respect of my men, once I’d managed to claim victory over my own life, your heavens-damned backwards swamp of a country violated the sanctity of our borders. Your ship burned a swath through thousands of people,” he said, his voice gentle, regardless of the words he spoke.

If she’d been conscious, she might finally have held her tongue and simply let the misery come; she knows she could have done something. She could have stopped Abe. She could have done something more, somehow. She belonged to the army that likely would never have punished a man for doing such a thing. And so she’d have been silent, still — but not as silent as she was, then, her chest rising and falling in a slow, even rhythm. Almost like sleep.

Not at all like sleep.

He rubbed his face, shaking his head. “And you fell out of the sky, and you threatened my life more than once. Called me a monster. I’ve seen hatred and fear before, but the two of them on your face that day made me wonder just how far removed you cousins of ours had finally become. My prince had promised we would all be joined again, one day, that you would fall to your knees knowing the error of your ways and beg forgiveness to be brought back into our house.”

He took Jules’ hand and said, “The way my father imagined I might do. You made me wonder if we’d had it wrong, all along, if your freedom was simply your right. Or if perhaps, my freedom had been an error. You made me question things I had not imagined I could question. And then you threw my secret in my face, threatened me with something I am not certain you could comprehend.”

Coryphaeus paused then, and reached to cup Jules’s cheek in his hand, running his thumb over her lips. he was silent for a long time, before he jerked his hand back, as if realizing the intimacy, as if it burned him to touch her in that fashion.

He put his hands in his lap and watched them as he whispered, “I saved them, Jules. The rest of your crew. I didn’t want you to know I’d done it, didn’t want you to think it was to make you love me, or bed me, or even stay here in this place you could never belong. The ones sent to slavery, the ones given to the night watch, the ones that had been sent to be tongue-cut or bound in shackles in both mines and kitchens. I will never have forgiveness for those that died in the great room, never have forgiveness for those who died in the Hunt, never truly have your forgiveness for the hesitation, the cowardice, the hubris I displayed in denying your plea. Not really.”

Jules said nothing, slipped or unconscious or play the world’s cruelest trick.

He swallowed roughly, biting his lip, and closed his eyes. “Never, really. But I got two of your friends over the wall, and Nixus got them even further, and as for the rest, I called in every favor, paid handsomely, and in all honesty, thank the heavens my father is dead and I have come into an inheritance, because I had gambled on being able to pay for the rest somehow, and now I can.” He coughed, clearing his throat. “I saved them. I did what I could. I tried to keep my promise to you,” he said softly.

Tears spilled; he looked down at her, shaking his head, a pained smile tight against his lips. “I’m giving you your army Jules, giving you your men. I tried to save them, and I’m trying to save you, now, as well.”

He rose from her side, and left her there, in Nixus’s apartments.

* * *

“You’re not the face I expected to be seeing.” Nathan’s voice was low, easy.

Coryphaeus felt faintly infuriated that the man wouldn’t even seem tense, as though he had nothing to fear from the Legatus. “Very little comes as expected.”

“Mm. Like you, bein a halfway-decent guy?”

Then again, perhaps it wasn’t arrogance. Perhaps it was trust. Coryphaeus looked at Nathan, saying, “I have been known to be an honorable man.” He gestured that Nathan should come, and follow him.

“Lead the way,” Nathan said softly, and moved swiftly after the Legatus; it didn’t take long to make it to Nixus’s apartments. When Nathan saw her on the bed, he knelt at her side and touched her cheek with a reverence Coryphaeus wondered at. Did his own face radiate that sort of adoration? Was it so plain to those around him?

“Can you get her out?”

“Sure?” Nathan looked faintly perplexed. “She’s a slip of a thing; I can carry her while she’s down.”

Coryphaeus swallowed a desert of dashed hopes, closing his eyes. “Out of Ilona.”

Nathan’s brows lifted; he shared a cocky smile with Coryphaeus, chuckling. “You’re damned right I can.”

Turning his face from Jules, Coryphaeus opened his eyes and focused his gaze on Nathan. “F’I give you a ship, can you get the other two hundred of you out, too?”

* * *

NEXT

This is Issue #75 of DeathWatch, Book II: tentatively called Heart Of Ilona, an ongoing Serial. Click that link to go find DeathWatch, the first in the series, or start from the beginning of Book II!

Happy Reading!

PREVIOUS

* * *

“You are arrogant in a fashion I can barely comprehend,” Nixus growled, moving to get up.

Jules laughed without humor, breathless, nodding. “Yeah.”

“I want you dead,” Nixus added. The glower on her face turned her features harder, sharper; her gaze was a blade that could cut. “He trusted you. I trusted you.”

Jules nodded again, moving to get up as well. “Yeah.”

“You should go.”

“You really believe that?” Jules looked at Nixus, pained. “You honestly believe that? You tell me he still loves me, and you want me to just leave?”

“You’re a child.”

“I’m half again his damn age!” Jules’s voice cracked into exasperated giggles. “I’m old enough to be your port-mother, faith’n’fuck-all, Nixus!”

“I repeat, you’re a child. You know nothing of love, you–”

“Shut your mouth. I’ve loved longer than you’ve been alive,” Jules hissed. “You want to believe you have some kind of higher knowledge of something no one can dissect much less explain? Go fuck yerself, Nixus. You’re not better’n’me, an’ I’m not better’n’you. Love’s messy and stupid and full of fuckups. N’you don’t get to tell me of his heart, not ever, so–”

“I imagine I do.” Coryphaeus stood in the doorway, barely backlit, watching both women with an expression that was nothing so much as exhaustion.

“Ohshit–”

“I told you–”

“Stop. Please, the both of you,” Coryphaeus sighed. “Nixus, go find Sollerti. I have no doubt he was hoping for an evening with you before tomorrow’s… events.”

Nixus raised her brows, half-inclined to remind her brother that she took orders from no one save the Guardian now, but instead, she nodded, and went to leave the courtyard, purposefully shoving past Jules, making the woman stumble.

Jules sighed, smirking wryly after her, feeling relieved she would be able to plead her case. She turned around to look at Coryphaeus, but her shoulders fell as she saw he was already turning away from her. “Legatus?”

He paused in the doorway, one hand on the jamb, but didn’t turn back to look at her. He said nothing, but waited.

“I–” Her voice failed her, and she stood there, staring at him.

He didn’t even turn at first, sighing irritably as he spoke. “I swear upon the heavens, Commander, if you slip right now, I will let you fall and crack your skull bloody. I do not have time for even fate’s humor–”

When he did turn, Jules was there, staring at him in the dark. Slashes of ragged moonlight fell over her, spilling past the trees surrounding the villa plaza. “I’m not… I’m not slipping,” she said, and then cleared her throat, glancing away. “I just don’t–I just don’t know what to say.”

Coryphaeus shrugged. “I hardly know, myself. I am fairly certain, commander, that there is nothing that can be said that might make the situation less awkward. I assumed far too much about my importance to you, which was naive, considering our circumstances–”

Jules tried to interrupt, saying, “No, y–”

Coryphaeus pressed on, shaking his head, “I’m an Ilonan officer. You’re a Westlander. How am I ever to trust you? How could I possibly? What would have made me think you had true feelings for me? The only time you were honest with me, Jules, were the nights you begged me back into my own bed. You used me, and told me it meant nothing, and I should have believed you then. I was a classic fool to think otherwise.”

Jules stared at him, silent, letting those words hang between them. She looked pained as she finally held her hands up, empty. “It seems y’got me figured out, then,” she said, shrugging.

“I’m of no use to you now, Jules. Your husband is here. The army of your homeland is coming. You should go,” he said to her, looking tired. “Get out of this place before someone realizes you for the enemy.”

Jules’s eyes widened. “The enemy? I’d just lost my husband, Coryphaeus. How–”

“Well you’ve got him now.”

“Why… Are you doing this? Are you being cruel on purpose?”

“Is there any reason I shouldn’t be?”

“Do you think me that monstrous? Do you believe I orchestrated this? That I planned to break your heart? That I planned on breakin my own?”

Coryphaeus flinched and then forced himself to recover. He snorted, rolling his eyes. “Nixus was right. You talk of love like a child.”

Stung, Jules closed her eyes, wincing. “Right, then. I ran after you like a frightened child. I’ll give you that much. An’ maybe it was naive of me t’think you’d listen. I’m the one what ought to be listening.”

The legatus cocked his head to the side, and crossed his arms over his chest. “Oh?”

“You were the one who said he could tell me of his heart,” Jules said. “I’d –” She stared at him, trying hard to find the right words, any words at all, that would let him know how shamed she was for so many things she did and said, regardless of whether any of them were ‘understandable’ for the situation. What words could she give to him that would let him know her own heart was true, even if they didn’t speak the same language. “I’d like t’hear it, Cory,” she said, trying not to wring her hands.

Coryphaeus blew out a long breath, sighing, looking down at his feet. “I’m not sure I’m up for it, Jules.”

Jules waited, pained, until he finally looked up at her again. Earnestly, she said, “Moi deystviya ub’yut yego zerkova.”

Coryphaeus frowned slightly, saying, “I — what?”

“I couldn’t find the right words in Celd or –and anyway, I thought you spoke Kriegic?” Jules said, almost laughing.

“All I’m getting out of that is you’re going to kill a mirror,” Coryphaeus said, looking baffled. “If your plot is to confuse me instead of make my angry, Commander–”

“Call me Jules,” she whispered. “It — literally translated, it means ‘My action will kill its mirror’ but it–” Flustered, she reached out a hand to try to touch his cheek, to connect with him. Her heart thudded around in her chest, confused and aching. “It means I’m not your enemy,” she said. “It means I’m sorry.”

Coryphaeus looked away, gritting his teeth.

“Lyubimaya, my sweet one, I love you.”

That got his attention. He turned back to her, stunned, pained, but his expression softened. He wanted to believe her. He wanted it to be true. “But your husband–”

“Isn’t going anywhere, and you’d have to–” Her eyes lost their focus, momentarily.

His expression shifted, concerned now; he was listening to her but waiting for the inevitable as well.

She went on as though nothing happened. “–get used to him.” Her smile was pained as she rubbed her thumb against his cheek. “But my heart can hold the both of you,” she promised. “I–”

As her knees buckled, Coryphaeus broke his word, and caught her in his arms, cradling her so she wouldn’t simply dash her head on the flagstones.

“–thought you said you were gonna lemme fall–” Jules mumbled, one hand clutching weakly at his bare shoulder, fingers trying to dig in. Not yet not yet not yet—

Coryphaeus held her, careful and sure, pressing his cheek to hers and then lifting her into his arms. The last thing Jules heard was his voice, low and steady, determined. “Ego nolo nunquam patitur te cado.”

I will never let you fall.

* * *

NEXT

This is Issue #74 of DeathWatch, Book II: tentatively called Heart Of Ilona, an ongoing Serial. Click that link to go find DeathWatch, the first in the series, or start from the beginning of Book II!

Happy Reading!

PREVIOUS

* * *

The knock at Nixus’s apartment door was insistent; she couldn’t imagine who would dare to be there at such an hour — Sollerti would’ve commanded everyone to handle their own shit for the night. Tomorrow was the coronation — Kriegic intelligence would believe that everyone was busy celebrating, and wouldn’t realize that all the passenger ships were armed. They wouldn’t know that the parading pilgrims were soldiers.

They would not know that it is impossible to surprise Ilona.

Until then, however, Nixus had to keep her brother sleeping — she’d finally gotten him to drop off; enough wine and aetheris and promises that all would be well had finally seen him into dreams.

That knocking might make it all for naught, though.

She flung the door open, growling, “–had better have a good reason, or I’ll–” She stared.

“Oh, you’re here. Thank fuck you’re here. Nix, you have to help me find hi–” Jules didn’t finish her sentence, because she found herself on her hands and knees, her ears ringing, her head spinning. She blinked, staring down at the ground, tasting pennies, seeing stars. “How did–” She felt herself hauled up from where she’d suddenly found herself on the ground. “What?”

“Non invenerunt corpus tuum,” Nixus grunted, throwing another roundhouse punch that clocked Jules in the cheek and dropped her right to the ground again. They’ll never find your body.

A kick to Jules’s stomach had her gasping — she doubled up, rolling, and put her arms up, tears in her eyes. “Summus–” she begged. “Please. Please, is he all right?”

“Te nunquam teneo.” Nixus did not shout. You will never know. She didn’t want Coryphaeus to wake up. She grabbed hold of the woman by her hair and lifted her to her feet, twisting her until Jules was up on her toes. She pulled a small, but useful blade from her belt, and brought it up to Jules’s throat.

Juliana Vernon O’Malley stood there, throat bared, gagging from the pain, from dust in her throat, from the kick in her stomach. She didn’t fight, she only lifted her hands up, pleading.

“Nixus!” Jules begged. “Please. Please!”

“Did he beg? Did you make him beg?” Nixus wondered. “Did you make my beautiful, perfect brother weep? Did you think of all he has sacrificed, simply to be allowed to live inside his own skin? Did you think of anyone but yourself when you broke his heart?”

“Nixus, I love him!”

Nixus looked incredulous, giving Jules a rough shake. “And I say — Dico vobis mendax! I say you are a liar! I call you a liar! A liar of the worst kind!”

“It’s true,” Jules said, reaching to touch Nixus, trying to steady herself. “I love–”

“Te claude os meretricis tuum,” Nixus hissed, digging the point of the knife against Jules’s skin. You shut your whore mouth. “Love is not a feeling, you stupid child. Love is an action. Love is doing. And what you have done — what you have done, you spurcus, ineptus…” Nixus chewed on the words, spitting them out as though they were vile, themselves. Nixus paused, grinding her teeth.

Jules fell silent as well, and mostly still. She panted, staring at Nixus. They stared one another down for a long moment until Jules hung her head, shamefaced, trying to get her breathing under control.

“He loves you.” Furious, Nixus threw Jules to the ground and put away the knife. “You ruined someone beautiful. Congratulations, you wretched beast. You tore his heart out more savagely than our own father did. Our father scarred Coryphaeus. You? You shattered him. And he loves you still. Still!”

Jules looked up at Nixus, wild eyes wide with hope. He loves me, still? “Where is he?” She slowly moved to get to her feet.

“If you know what is good for you, Westlander, go.”

Jules looked at Nixus for a long moment, and then carefully wiped her tears away. Her eye was swelling shut, and her lip was split. A nick at her throat welled blood. “I can’t, because he is what’s good for me,” Jules said softly.

“Go. Go back to your freedom. Go back to your life. Go back to your maritus.” At the last word, Nixus all but spat in Jules’s face.

Jules didn’t flinch, but looked up at Nixus, saying, “Have you never loved more than one person at a time? D’y’not ken what it is t’feel–”

“Words!” Nixus shouted, stomping forward, leaning over Jules’s small frame. “You speak of feelings! Of words! Damn your words and damn your feelings, Westlander — love is not a feeling! Love is something you do. Love is a way you behave. You did not give my brother love. You took what he gave and you left him with nothing. I should gut you where you stand and give your heart to him.”

“If it would make him happy–”

Nixus shouted in wordless fury, bringing her fist around to drive it into Jules’s face.

This time, Jules ducked, and shoved Nixus to the flagstones. “Don’t,” she pled. “I do not want to fight you.”

Nixus rolled and got up, looking well-pleased. “Then you should’ve gone, like I told you before.” She charged Jules, lowering her shoulder at the last minute, and the two of them went rolling into the small plaza.

It was dark, and their fight was mostly silent, but it did not end quickly. Nixus tried to break Jules, tried to get her to stay down, and expected that Jules would fight back as furiously. Instead, she found Jules attempting to stop her at any given turn, trying to neutralize the fight, rather than get caught up in it.

For every blow she did land, there were ten that Jules ducked out of, and at least a handful of times she could have fought back, fought harder, fought more viciously.

But she didn’t.

They rolled on the ground, scuffling, tangled, snarling, until finally, Nixus shoved Jules away, hard, and laid back on the ground, panting. “What are you doing, Westlander. What.” There was hardly a question in it; she was furious and exhausted.

“Tryin t’not kill the sister’f th’man I love,” Jules rasped, also panting.

* * *

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