Catastrophe Jones

This is Issue #27 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 last hunt,” he said. “Did you see it?”

“No,” Nixus murmured. “I was on maneuvers.” It was only a little bit of a lie — she hadn’t seen the hunt, but she also hadn’t been on maneuvers. She looked at him over the back of the curve-backed chaise upon which he rested, and took note of his nearly-empty glass. Plucking it from his hands, she said, “Let me refill that?”

“Pour some for yourself, too Nixie, and come watch.” It was hard, being around her father, who so obviously wanted things to be warm and kind again, but had no idea how to achieve it.

“Yes, Father,” Nixus murmured. She busied herself with the liquor, pouring herself little more than a splash, while she topped off the glass from her father by filling it with the aetheris from the shelf.

Her eyes flicked up to the vid screen of the highlight reel of the Prince’s last hunt. She stood quietly, watching the Prince she swore to obey lay a hand on her brother’s brow, as though in blessing, and then shift to thrust a blade into his chest. Her eyes went wide as she watched Coryphaeus twist just enough to evade the brunt of the blow, going down on his back, pinned, beaten.

She looked at her father’s face as he watched the Prince kneel against Cory’s hips, pulling out a knife and putting it to her brother’s throat. She had heard from others how close her brother had been to death in those moments, but she had not realized the full of it.

She moved to sit down with her father, her face expressionless as she drank when her father drank, stared when he stared, was silent while he was silent.

She watched his expression, so hopeful, so desperate, and her heart felt light to see the need in his eyes as her brother escaped death in that instant.

Her father’s face changed, however, when Coryphaeus whispered forgiveness quietly to the prince; something shaded his eyes, and she could no longer discern the emotion on his face.

“Right there,” her father said, shaking his head, all but spitting his aetheris. “Right there is when your wretch of a sister made certain our name would be forever stained,” he said lowly. “I’ve watched this a thousand times or more. Worthless stain in my line couldn’t even die with dignity. I guess it’s true what they say of twins — you split up what gifts you’ll have while still in the womb, hmm? You were given strength and brilliance, and there must’ve been nothing left for her.”

Nixus frowned slightly, watching the way Immanis pulled a knife and put it to Cory’s throat. She glanced over at her father, but before she could say anything, he laughed cruelly and said, “Don’t worry. I don’t think of you as a thief. Even if you’d left Phaedra anything, she wouldn’t have known what to do with it.”

“You called me,” Nixus said, to keep herself from calling Coryphaeus her brother. To keep herself from saying his name.

“I did,” Exosus Aecus said, turning to look up at Nixus. “I’ve found you a match.”

“What?” Nixus said quietly, feeling her knees weaken, feeling her heart cease to beat and fall, leaden in her chest. “A match? You were looking? I thought–”

“My darling Nixiana,” he sighed, smiling at her in a way that made her heart ache and her throat tighten. By heaven how she hated the sound of that name in his mouth.

“This war — the Northern aggressors will rape and pillage their way through our lands. You’ll be in danger on a battlefield. We both know your brother will never live up to being the rightful heir. I won’t live forever. I won’t have a son to carry on our family name, but I’ll be damned if our blood goes on only in bastards,” he explained, shrugging.

“But I don’t–” Nixus looked shocked; she had no plans to marry, to dress fine, to be a lady and attend court. She had battles to fight and men to lead.

“Hush now,” Exosus said, lifting up his glass. “He is a respected man. He is moneyed, and he will keep you far from the war front. Fill it again.”

“Far from the — no, father, I’m not–” Nixus felt bile in her throat as she took the glass, struggling to figure out a way to escape from this sudden trap.

“Fill it again, Nixiana. You are my daughter. Mine. You will listen, and you will obey.”

Silent, Nixus walked the glass back to the liquor, and poured a generous measure of aetheris into her father’s glass, her head aching, her breathing tight. She thought of the power he held over her, of his say over her future, and the fury in her grew. She stared down at the glass, as though the silver blue liquid within it might be able to tell her something perhaps comforting.

“One of you little whelps must give a legitimate man his due. I couldn’t pay a pauper enough now to bed Phaedra, and even if some drunken beast ruts with her, she’s fallow ground and couldn’t hold an heir,” he grumbled.

Nixus lifted her head and turned to look at her father, at the man whose blood ran in her veins. She tried, terribly hard, to find some measure of love in her heart for him, tried to understand his anger and maleficence toward her brother…

But she couldn’t.

“Give it here,” Exosus said, holding out a shaking hand.

Nixus stared at it, long and hard; the man was older than she’d realized. He’d grown grey and was well past his prime, while she was yet in the height of hers. He was a patriarch of some weight, with many allies, and many who feared him.

She was beginning to realize, however, that she didn’t.

“Give it here, you silly cunt,” he said, waving his hand. “Have you taken too many blows in the head? It’s a good thing I’ve found you a husband before you lose your mind and shame yourself like Phaedra.”

“He’s not fallow,” Nixus said, walking back toward her father, holding the glass in one hand.

“What? What are you talking about? Your match? Heavens no — he’s as virile as they come,” he lauged.

“No. My brother,” Nixus answered.

“Of all the ridiculous things you’ve said –” Exosus sighed. “Mirus was everything but fallow. He’s had how many bastards we’ve had to take in at this point–”

Rather than hand over the glass, Nixus drained the aetheris and closed her eyes briefly, picturing Coryphaeus’s face. She cleared her throat and smacked the glass down on the table near her.

The jolt of noise made her father turn his head toward her, his watery eyes narrowing.

“I’m not talking about Mirus,” Nixus hissed. “I’m talking about Coryphaeus, father. My brother. My twin. Your other son.”

* * *

NEXT

This is Issue #26 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

***

“How goes it?”

The only response was a grunt; Coryphaeus had not slept well in days — Jules was finally passed out, drunk on aetheris to the point that she could not stand of her own volition even if she wanted to.

“That well?”

“It is a fine line between drunk enough to keep her from vomiting after the visions, and so drunk she vomits from the whisky itself,” the Legatus said dully.

“You will need to break her of the drink. She needs to be sobered,” Nixus said, shaking her head.

“She needs to be aboard a ship. The aether engines would keep her from the misery that comes after the visions.” Coryphaeus raked dark curls back from his face and stretched, shifting, getting up to pace.

“I don’t like seeing you here like this,” his sister growled.

“Like what?” Coryphaeus wondered.

“Caged, like some trapped panther,” she sighed. “You look miserable. Get rid of her when she’s able to stand alone.”

“That is not the man I am,” Coryphaeus answered tightly, looking at Nixus. “And you know it.”

“I do,” Nixus said, looking irritable. “And for that I am both proud and concerned. You have more honor than half the Legios in which I have served. But it is the sort of thing that ends with you hurt.”

“I can handle pain. It has not broken me yet,” Coryphaeus shrugged, smiling.

“Father–”

“Only wounded this body,” Coryphaeus said, lifting his chin, looking stubborn. His eyes, brilliant but dark, defied Nixus’s words — he wore a look so challenging, even she took pause, frowning.

Finally, she tore away the silence. “He broke your heart, Cory,” she said. “You don’t have to lie to me,” she added. “How can a father not love his son? How could he have done what he did to you? What kind of man is that?”

“The kind of man the rest of the world is full of, soror,” Coryphaeus said softly. “The kind of man who only recognizes one of his sons, because he still sees the other as am abomination. The kind that would have rathered me dead than a stain on the family’s name.”

“He is a fool,” Nixus said, lifting her chin.

“Careful, soror,” Coryphaeus said softly. “I am outside his good graces, but there is no need for you to be.”

“Why do you do that?” Nixus wondered, barely keeping the exasperation from her voice.

“Do what?”

“That! That. That thing you do, where you blank out and you let him off the hook and you cower down? That thing where you make what he did small, and you act like you’re over it and it’s done?” Nixus hissed, obviously furious for the way her brother, whom she loves with all her heart, simply allows abuse to be laid at his feet and over his shoulders, a mantle for his identity as the Thing that Shamed his Family.

“It hurts less,” he said, looking down at his feet, “than remembering what he did to me.” Coryphaeus reached to splay one hand over his lower belly, fingertips digging against the scarred flesh. He closed his eyes against the tears that stung them, and breathed slowly.

Nixus watched the agony slide over her brother’s face, and reached out a hand to curl her fingers into his, to squeeze them. She leaned in and kissed his forehead, feeling the dull ache in her chest that only made her angrier and angrier. If it hurt that much for her, only to look, only to watch, only to see it… How much it must have hurt, how much it must hurt still, to have had to go through it, to endure and come out stronger on the other side?

* * *

“Welcome home,” called the servants who opened the doors and brought her into the villa. The broad marble stones were warm, sun baked beneath her feet as she strode through the carefully manicured gardens and went directly to her father’s study.

“Summus, Summus!” cried cousins, cried nieces and nephews gotten off the several mistresses her older brother had slept with. Children who had neither mother nor father, but were kept as wards by her father, who had their mothers silenced, so as not to bring down the family name.

Instead, her family was thought of as generous, as wardens of the peaceful and beautiful city-state, as high-born, well-bred men and women deserving of every bit of power and respect they had.

She smiled at the children — none of them deserved the anger she held in her heart for their father; none of them even knew him — and knocked on the door of her father’s study. Since his banishment of her twin, he had locked himself away more and more; at times, days went by before anyone saw him.

She didn’t even know if he would be in — a part of her hoped he wasn’t.

“Enter,” called the patriarch of the Aecus family.

Nixus went in, and shut and locked the door behind herself, saying. She found her father watching the vid screen, frowning. “What are you watching?” she wondered, pausing by the shelf containing bottle upon bottle of aetheris. Her father had received plenty from the Prince; he’d never opened them before — but now she could smell the tang on the air, and could count empty bottles amongst the untouched.

* * *

NEXT

This is Issue #25 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

* * *

Pain. Nausea. Even with the aetheris, the feel of going and returning — the slipping — was leaving Jules more exhausted than anything else had, ever.

“Tell me again,” Coryphaeus whispered quietly, rubbing Jules’s back.

“No,” she whispered, her voice hoarse. “I’ve told you a thousand times. I don’t know where they were. Outside the city somewhere. There was too much blood, too much motion.”

“Commander,” Coryphaeus urged. “I can’t let her fail. Tell me.”

“Legatus,” Jules pled, looking up at him from where she lay, sweat soaked and exhausted. “Please,” she panted. “She was one of thousands. I can still feel every one of their hearts stopping.” Her pale eyes tried to hold to his, but even as he cupped her face in his hands, her gaze faltered.

She slipped again.

* * *

Frantic hands held up her head, stroked her cheek. “Placere, placere, non, non, no no –”

She recognized the voice; the rough heat of it could be felt against her lips, her eyes. She forced the lids open and looked upon a bestial face through a haze of blood.

Something heavy was on her chest — something keeping her from breathing right.

She reached up a wounded hand to touch the masked face that looked down on her with love and horror. Her master’s face. Her Lord’s face. The face of the man she loved more than life. Fingers trembled, curled against the edge of the mask.

“Me permitte videam te,” she said, and Jet let the mask fall away. Let me look at you. She could taste blood on her lips, and she knew she didn’t have long, knew her last breath was soon, could be counted on her fingers. “Cum te amo animae meae,” she choked, and the blood in her mouth ran from her lips.

“Non sum dignus amore tuo,” Jet whispered to her. I am not worthy of your love, he wept, tears on his bloodied, painted face.

“Honoris erat servire te, custos mei,” she said, smiling.

“No,” the Guardian begged, looking down at her. “No, I forbid it,” he said, pulling the body she wore up against him, crushing her to his chest. She could smell the char of his sweat, the aetheric tang of his blood. She could smell the fire of him, feel his heat.

He laid her down and cupped her cheeks, moved his hands over her skin, her wounds, searched for a way to undo the damage, to give back the life that ran from her. “Non es passus ut moriatur, famulo. Do you hear me?” Jet cried, leaning back up to look down at her.

“Hac vice una, Domine, non me observas,” she said, and the laugh in her throat caught. She could not breathe, and she felt the world darken, tighten, squeeze its fist around her.

Jet, holding her, sobbed. “No. NO! Secta!” He begged, turning her face to his, looking frantic. “I would save you,” he said, pulling a knife from where they lay against his skin. He cut his hand open, cut Secta’s, and Jules felt the fire of it, and the way it burned as the wounds were clutched together. She felt the flat of the blade against her mouth, and watched Jet paint his lips with her blood, and then he was kissing her, and he could taste the very edge of his life as he tumbled away from it, as it came in a great rush from his mouth, a font of blinding red heat…

…and then nothing

* * *

Jules gagged as she came to, twisting from Cory’s arms, rolling to her side, spitting blood. She moaned, sobbing, and began to curl up in a ball. It was too much, to feel all of it, too much to live and die through all of these men and women, these Ilonans who loved just as she loved, who pled just as she would plead. She wept, for poor Secta, who had set her free, begging that she might see the good, the common humanity.

“Jules,” Coryphaeus breathed. He no longer tried to make her explain her visions; he simply stroked her hair back from her face, wiped her mouth, and offered her sips of aetheris when she was coherent enough to take them. “You’re safe,” he promised. “You’re safe, I’ve got y–”

And she was gone again.

* * *

“I’ll never be safe,” she said aloud, in someone else’s voice. It startled her, and she froze to hear her own thought echoed in another’s mind.

“That’s true,” came the answer, which was just as startling.

The voice was more familiar than she could understand, but before she could turn to face the speaker, before she could see his face, before it could be true, a great cold mechanical grip curled around her throat, and began to squeeze.

“You’ll never be safe, so long as you stand against our navarchus,” her attacker whispered. She felt his breath on her ear, warm, the scent of guns and leather, whisky and tobacco on his skin, and she wanted, more than anything, to lean back against him and just keep breathing him in, for the way he felt so familiar, so real, so right.

Instead, the body she wore tried to fight, kicking back, struggling, scrabbling at the metal arm, fingers catching in the piston slides, the gear teeth. She could not scream for the pain of her hands slowly being ruined as she was lifted off the ground, and hauled over the rail. Panic deafened the body to all real sense; she thrashed and clawed, nothing more than a frantic animal caught in a trap.

The hand around her throat tightened, and she felt something behind her eyes give — poppies flooded her vision, and then the world went dark.

* * *

She woke with the name of her killer on her tongue — the man had known it, had known him as a wild dog the navarchus only thought he had on a leash — but the taste of it fled like all dream things do, and as consciousness broke over her, the only thing left on her lips was a cry of rage and despair.

* * *

NEXT