RE: Monarch

The cloud cover had receded and the stars were out by the time the charity kitchen closed down for the evening, the last few patrons filing out with full bellies and squinting eyes.

Kilvius strained the water from the rag and cleaned a cheaply made bowl with calm, counterclockwise motions as we worked side by side, as we’d done many times at Maya’s small home in the enclave. He treated each receptacle and surface with careful care and focus.

When we did this previously, usually after a long day of study or training in the enclave and a filling meal, an odd sense of tranquility would wash over me. It wasn’t that I particularly enjoyed cleaning dishes, but Kilvius did—there was something about the ritual of it that appealed to him—and that simple domestic satisfaction was contagious.

I felt none of that tranquility now.

I’d had time to think, in the hours since Kilvius entered. At first it made little sense that he was here. I’d seen him in the enclave shortly after repairing the dimension gate, his son Agarin on his shoulders. But now that I thought about it, I wasn’t completely certain it was him. He was far away, in the middle of a bustling crowd, and I was under an enormous amount of pressure.

“Does Maya know you’re here?” I asked. Kilvius’s rag stopped, a single drop of water hanging precariously at the bottom.

“No,” Kilvius said flatly. “And if you’ve ever cared for me, you’ll keep that between us.” With that he continued to wash the bowl, leaving me with more questions than before. It wasn’t a huge stretch to connect the dots. From what little I knew of his background, his wife—Nethtari—had pulled him onto the straight and narrow. Insistently. Their relationship and family had formed in the aftermath, and as far as I knew, Kilvius had never strayed.

At least, until now.

If I was right, Persephone—the de facto ruler of the enclave’s underworld—ran Schism. Beyond the retrospectively glib name, it was the only possibility that made sense. Kilvius wouldn’t have run off from the familiarity of the enclave and joined up with some random crime syndicate in Whitefall. It was much more likely that he’d fallen back in with Persephone, who subsequently sent him here to work with the group in some capacity.

My thoughts turned to Maya, so close by, yet completely unaware that her father was here. “She’d probably love to see you.”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Kilvius.”

The bowl in the infernal’s red hand clattered to the floor, and he gripped the basin, staring into the distance. “I didn’t approve of the direction my daughter wished to take her life and she deemed my guidance unwarranted and unnecessary. There was an argument. And despite my many attempts to mend the resulting estrangement, we haven’t spoken since.”

Oh.

For the not insignificant time I’d lived in the enclave, Maya and Kilvius had never argued. It wasn’t Kilvius’s style. As fathers went, he was the opposite of mine. You wanted to listen to him purely based on the softness in how he spoke, for fear of missing a single word, because he never wasted them. I couldn’t imagine him arguing with anyone, let alone his daughter.

“Now, can we please move on.” Kilvius’s pale eyes bore into me. When I nodded tacitly, he returned to work.

“Persephone’s presence here creates something of a question. Is she trying to help, or is it a neutral reminder that she still exists?”

“Wise to question the motives of a parent whose child you’ve thrown into peril.”

The words landed like a slap, leaving me breathless. “I—didn’t know how bad it would be. Is there anything I can do to make it right?”

“No.” Kilvius put the rag and plate aside and stood in front of me. “Because if she were ever to learn you asked her to return home at my behest, our estrangement would no longer be temporary. Now. Why are you here?”

“Why are you?” My brow furrowed. “Thought you’d left this behind, grown beyond it and Persephone both.”

“Maybe I got lonely. Things at home have been quiet.” Kilvius snapped. If his previous comments had stung, this one tore right through me. He seemed to recognize this and straightened, some of the hostility draining out of his face. “We don’t know what happened to Kieran. There was an appointment he neglected to reschedule. When we followed up, it was like he never existed. Just went to sleep and fell from this plane. No one saw him leave his house, and there was nothing inside that suggested he intended to leave.”

“Uh.” I grimaced, still shaking off the aftershock of his earlier comment. “Kieran seemed to think that nonhumans were being taken. His wife among them. Any truth to that, far as you know?”

“Tracking every bad thing to happen to a demi-human residing here would be a tall order. Most folk need little excuse to invoke their baser instincts. But there is something to Kieran’s belief, yes. What sets these incidents apart is the bloodlessness. And therefore, the lack of trail. Kidnappings aren’t often clean, nor are they quiet. In most cases, someone out there sees or hears something, it’s only a matter of finding them.” Kilvius looked troubled.

“But it’s been quiet,” I filled in.

“Bizarrely so.” He studied a blank patch of the tent’s canvas, lost in thought. “Dozens of cases like his. Nonhumans vanishing across Topside and greater Whitefall, and yet, no one’s come forward.”

“Any commonalities?”

Kilvius raised an eyebrow. “Other than the obvious? No.”

There was a lot to absorb. I was having trouble finding equilibrium behind the kind-hearted Kilvius I knew and this more rational, distant person. “Persephone and I will need to talk once I wear the crown. Now though, whatever else you’re doing for her? It’s none of my business. Regardless of the source, if there’s some sort of organized effort looking into who or whatever is spiriting nonhumans away, let me help. I bring a lot of resources to the table, and I can insulate you from further exposure.”

“And in the interim, shine a spotlight on my head.”

“What do you mean?”

Kilvius stared at me. “It was probably a mistake coming here at all. You are a person of great interest. A little chalk dust in your hair will not change that. And—” He cut off mid-sentence, stone-faced as he left the counter and straightened the outer chairs.

“And?” I prompted, following suit.

“No.” Kilvius shook his head. “I may be angry with you and displeased with how things have shaken out, but I will not put that on you. You were little more than a child.”

“I’m not a child anymore.”

His mouth tightened. After a moment, he relented. “When I was doing this before I met Nethtari, one of the first hard lessons I learned was to be careful who I worked with. There was the usual coterie of undesirables: men who killed for pleasure and would take any excuse to do so, individuals caught in the glamour of various substances, and those who couldn’t be trusted with even the little trust we showed them.”

“Reasonable.”

“But there was a fourth group.” Kilvius slowly looked over to me, his expression grim. “And they were by far the most dangerous. In part because they didn’t really do anything out of line. If anything, they tended to be more cautious than the rest, and possessed a healthy dose of paranoia that would typically complement that line of work.”

“But it didn’t.”

“No. Because their wariness didn’t matter. Don’t get me wrong, everyone has bad days, times where the cards come up against them. When you play fast and loose with the rules, that’s an inevitability. But the people I’m talking about? It was like they were cursed. Every day was a bad day. I thought it superstition and ignored the rumors. Then watched as they left a trail of destruction in their wake, and rained misfortune down on everyone who spoke to them.”

That was damning. There wasn’t even an argument I could make against it, if I was so inclined. More than a few people I cared for in the enclave and before it had their lives drastically altered, if not taken away from them altogether.

“But as I said,” Kilvius breathed a long sigh, “you were a child. And hardly the only one to blame, if you can even call it that. Once you met Persephone, I should have intervened directly rather than advising from the sidelines. I didn’t. Instead, I clung to the hard-won domesticity I worked for only to lose it, regardless. And while others might blame you for bringing that trouble to our collective door, demons rebel. The arch-mage was always going to come for us, eventually. It was only a matter of time.”

The absolution was a balm to my aching chest. Yet curiosity, compelled me to dig the hole a little deeper. “The cursed men you mentioned. Any of them ever turn it around? Find their way out of it?”

Kilvius smiled thinly. “We should talk more, but not here. Come on. There’s something you should see.”

/////

As Maya’s father led us into one of the better organized, less cramped sections of Topside, Alten grew visibly nervous. As we entered a gray building, unremarkable beyond the newness of its door and general lack of disrepair, a sheen of sweat beaded on Alten’s forehead.

“Problem?” I asked.

“Thought you’d never heard of Schism,” Alten said. His eyes darted furtively around, as if expecting ambushers in every dark corner.

“I hadn’t,” I answered. I’d been as surprised to see Kilvius as Alten was.

“Then why are we following one of their people to a second location?” He asked. “That’s a special kind of madness. The soon to be dead kind.”

“Relax.” I clapped a hand on his shoulder and leaned in. “Kilvius and I have history from before. He’s on our side.”

“If you say so,” Alten said, looking anything but confident.

I felt for him. Some of my companions had a more rocky start in comparison, but I’d thrown a lot at Alten in a relatively brief span of time, under the guise of a simple job to ease his transition out of bondage. If he decided it was all too much and cut his losses? I wouldn’t blame him.

We found our destination in something that—other than the oversized map of the city on the back wall—looked like more of a clerical office than a syndicate’s planning den. Kilvius, seeing my confusion, smiled and shook his head. “At this level, it’s all a lot less cloak and dagger than you’re imagining. More bureaucracy and number crunching too.” As something of an afterthought, he approached my bodyguard and stuck out his hand. “You’re the Alten, I take it.”

There was an awkward silence and exchange of glances at Kilvius’s words

Alten’s eyes narrowed. “Frequented the pits?”

“No.” Kilvius also looked at me, confused. “Wait. You didn’t tell him? You trust him, right? Because if you don’t and just brought him into the lion’s den, we have something of a problem.”

“Something you’ve been leaving out, Prince Cairn?” Alten pressed, his expression darkening by the second.

I pressed my hand flat against my forehead. “Elphion. Kilvius, it’s not really something I lead with. He already thinks I’m mad.” When Alten looked ready to either flee from the room or fight both of us, I relented. “I… am… something of a seer.”

Whatever Alten was expecting, it wasn’t that. He frowned. “Like… the old men who see things?”

“Exactly.” I recited the story, designed to convey as much information as possible without mentioning anything forbidden that would wipe Alten or Kilvius’s short-term memories. “Like them, from time to time I see visions of the future. It began years ago, with a vision of my coronation and a disaster soon to follow. And in the throes of that terrible day, you were the only one who stood by me. Even though I didn’t deserve it. Fought like hell in the face of grievous injury. Showed more loyalty than I deserved. At the end, we were forciblyseparated, and I told you I’d find you in the next life. So it was only natural to seek you out.”

“Uh… huh,” Alten said.

Kilvius nodded. “Far-fetched as it sounds, his short-term predictions are remarkably accurate. Once he sees it, the only reason they don’t come to pass is because the variables leading to that outcome are altered.”

Despite his initial misgivings, Alten was decidedly less skeptical than most people I revealed this to. Instead, he peppered me with questions about my previous life, on the nature of our relationship, the way my “visions” worked, and many, many questions about the arch-mage. It felt like instead of doubting me, he was already taking Thoth’s measure, looking for weaknesses to exploit. As Kilvius seemed to wait patiently, I answered Alten’s questions to the best of my ability.

“So. You only get the visions if something terrible is about to happen. Sometimes it’s imminent, sometimes longer,” Alten said.

“As far out as a month. But they’re not consistent. There will be times we could be in mortal danger and I wouldn’t have a clue.”

He shifted his head from side to side. “Hells, even if you hadn’t paid off my indenture, I think I’d have stayed with you just for that.”

“Really?” I asked.

“Better to know than not know.” Alten scowled a little. “My life would be very different if I had your gift. Would have never gotten on that boat, for one.” He poked a finger into my chest, suddenly irritated. “Stop pulling that shit from earlier. Don’t matter how much you think you owe me. Can’t protect someone who tries to ship me off somewhere safe every time it gets a little heated. Try that again and I’m gone.”

“Done,” I sighed. “Anything else?”

He studied me, hand on his chin. “With the way you were talking about danger, I was already thinking of teaching you a few things. Eventually. If I liked you. But given that you were actually underselling how bad things were going to get, I think we start on that. Sooner, rather than later. It will be difficult. And you may not like me very much by the time we’re done.”

“I’ll learn everything you’re willing to teach me,” I said, doubting his final few words. Except for Ralakos, the best teachers I’d found since waking up in the wagon were mad, eclectic, or strict. And occasionally all three. I would not throw up the white flag if Alten rubbed my nose in the dirt, especially after what I’d witnessed. The man was one of the best technical fighters I’d ever seen besides my father, and that was gilded company to find one’s self in.

Kilvius cleared his throat quietly, ending the aside. From Alten’s lingering gaze there was more he wanted to say, but what I’d already revealed had answered his more pressing questions. At least for now.

With a rap of his knuckles, Kilvius drew our attention to the map of Whitefall. There were dozens of marker stones in violet, orange, and green. “This is a visual grouping of all the reports of disappearances we’ve received. Note my wording,” he said, stroking his chin with a grim expression as he surveyed the board.

“You think there’s more,” Alten filled in.

Kilvius nodded. “Same as the statistics in every city. For every incident we know about, there’s likely a half-dozen we don’t simply because they haven’t been reported. People who relocated here alone, others who reported only to the city guard either out of fear, or because they didn’t know how to reach us. We’ve tried to spread word, widen our net, but a fraction will always fall through the cracks. So our information is—at the very least—incomplete. The violet stones are infernals, green are elves, and orange are dwarves.”

I took in the board. From a glance at the multitude of green stones, it was obvious the elven folk had the highest number of disappearances, with infernals and dwarves forming a close second and distant third, respectively.

I frowned. “Does the disparity align with the demographics of nonhumans in Whitefall?” From the short time since I’d returned, I’d seen far fewer dwarves than any other race, but the elves didn’t seem to outnumber the infernals by such a staggering degree.

Kilvius nodded approvingly. “A solid thought. And, coincidentally one of the first we looked into. Though our findings are not nearly as reliable as an official census, the short answer is no. The elves outnumber the infernals by a small margin, but not nearly enough to explain the elevated number.”

“Why does that matter?” Alten asked, puzzled.

“Because it means whatever the source of the disappearances is, it’s selective.” I answered, still unsettled by the sheer number of reported incidents. “They’re targeting elves and infernals first, and only occasionally grabbing up dwarves.”

“I… see…” Alten said, sounding very uncertain.

“The only upside of all this being, you and yours are probably in the clear.” Kilvius indicated toward me, then rubbed at his forehead, showing hints of fatigue. I wondered how long he’d been at this, and how much else he was juggling beyond it.

“Really? You don’t think humans have a hand in this at all?” I asked. My first thought had been the indentured servitude of House Westmore. The house was brazenly and openly exploiting a loophole to sidestep the laws. It wouldn’t have surprised me if they had much grayer ventures involving nonhumans behind the scenes.

Kilvius shook his head. “Wouldn’t go that far. At this stage we can’t afford to rule anything out. But when it comes to prejudice, those who are furthest from the ‘norm’ are generally targeted before anyone else. By that rule, infernals and dwarves get the worst of it in human cities. Elves blend in better than the rest of us. It’s always been that way.”

An uncomfortable series of connections formed in my mind. There were no small number of creatures in the sanctum who—somewhat paradoxically—posed more of a threat to stronger magicians than weaker ones. There were large treks of areas a weaker group could traverse freely with no issue, where a stronger group would be constantly harried, and drain themselves dry fighting through even a fraction of the territory.

The explanation was a disturbingly simple one.

“Mana density,” I realized.

Kilvius pointed a finger at me, the corner of his mouth pulling up in a tired smile. “Quick as always. The more we’ve learned, the higher the likelihood that there’s some sort of infestation at the core of this. A monster, or group of monsters the source of the kidnapping.”

I shook my head. “If that’s true, there’s not a long list of possibilities. I know humans in Whitefall seem ambivalent to the other races at best, but not to the extent they’d simply turn a blind eye if something monstrous was grabbing elves and infernals off the street.”

With a grim nod, Kilvius wrote on the gray expanse to the left of the map, composing a series of points.

Primarily targets elves and infernals.

Most active in the early mornings and early evenings.

Bloodless abduction.

Victims were either being seized too quickly to fight back, or followed the abductor willingly.

“A short list, indeed,” Kilvius said.