Deus Necros

“Sir,” a knock echoed behind the door to Ludwig’s room. The sound carried clean along the grain of the wood, a polite firmness that did not try to hide its nerves.

Ludwig’s reply was immediate. “What is it?”

“His majesty has woken, and wishes to meet you.” The servant’s voice hovered at the edge of a whisper. He measured each word as if the wrong one might cost him his tongue. Everyone in this wing had heard the story about a single sentence and a severed head. Fear travels faster than gossip inside a palace.

“Wait there for a minute. I will come with you.”

Ludwig turned to the Knight King. This was a situation that required more than strength. It required tidiness. The palace would not appreciate a giant of ebony iron stepping through its corridors beside a foreigner who already alarmed half its guard. He looked at the broad black helm and at the tower shield that swallowed lamplight, then at the book on his side. Where was he going to put this massive knight of ebony.

“I will return to the book,” the Knight King said. His voice had the calm of a man who had already considered the path and marked the stones that would carry the weight.

“Can you?” Ludwig asked. The Codex had felt pliant in the ritual, but he had not yet tested this trick of storage and recall. He did not want to discover a rule he had missed when a chamberlain waited outside the door.

“I still sense the tether. It is bound to you, but proxied by the Codex Necros. I should still be able to put my body there.”

“Let us try it,” Ludwig replied. He placed his palm on the Codex. The leather woke beneath his hand, warm and eager, and the iron clasps clicked apart with the tiny satisfaction of a lock obeying its owner. The book fluttered forward in the air as if a silent servant had lifted it and held it at the perfect height. Pages turned of their own accord to the illustration that had once been only a memorial. The Knight King touched the leather cover. The contact made no sound, yet the air changed pressure. At once the whole armored body drew inward and fell into the parchment like a shadow being folded. Only a breath later, an armored outline of dark blue stood remained where the armor had been.

The Knight King’s spirit form hovered over the carpet, clear and steady. There were no joints to complain, no iron to creak, yet the old poise remained.

“What in the world,” Ludwig said. The words left his mouth before he caged them. For a heartbeat he almost panicked. Had the soul been torn free. Would he have to build the house again and call the owner into it by force. Rituals do not respond well to clumsy hands and he had no wish to anger the power that had helped him. He can’t redo the whole thing from scratch.

“Oh. That is much better.” The Knight King stretched an incorporeal hand as if checking whether phantom fingers still remembered the length of a sword hilt.

“How is this better. We are back to the start.”

“No,” the Knight King said, and the tone eased the tightness in Ludwig’s shoulders. “I can return to my body whenever now. The tether is obedient. And this form is much more comfortable to move in. Iron is honest but it is heavy. And this form is better for amassing information.”

“Good then.” Ludwig dusted the last flake of dried blood from his palm and wiped his fingers on a square of linen. He checked the room with a quick glance. No rune residue showed. The purple dome had left no stain on the air. “Let us go meet this king, shall we.”

****

The sound of footsteps echoed through the marbled halls of the palace. The servant went ahead with small steps and careful hands, holding his sleeves close as if afraid they might brush against something sacred. Ludwig followed, the Knight King a pale flicker at his shoulder that no one would see, and the shadows of spearmen slid along the walls like the strokes of tall brushes.

The guards watched them the way men watch a door they have been told can open on anything. Helm visors dipped. Fingers tightened on hafts. No one spoke. The air carried oil from lamps, polished stone, and incense that had gone cold hours ago. Between the breaths of the corridor there was the whisper of fine carpets underfoot. Piles of wool so dense that steps sank half an inch and rose again as if the floor itself breathed.

At the entrance to a side chamber two guards crossed halberds. Their eyes moved to Ludwig’s belt. “Please hand over your weapon.”

“That might be difficult,” Ludwig said. He kept his tone even, patient without being meek. “You never know when another demon could be hiding. Or when the demon is asking me to hand over my weapon so that he can backstab me.”

“I am no demon,” the nearer guard said. He said it too fast. Men who are certain do not rush the words.

“You think a demon would admit to being one if he wore your colors.” Ludwig tilted his head. The mask hid the curve of his mouth but not the little change in the air when he smiled.

“I. I.” The guard’s eyes flicked to his partner’s face as if seeking a script. None arrived.

“I am only teasing you,” Ludwig said. He let the guard see his open right hand. “Though I meant what I said about backstabs. And I meant what I said about demons.”

He drew Durandal and offered it hilt first. The blade breathed a note you only hear with the bones when it leaves its place. The guard took the sword with one, disregarding and automated. As if he had done this hundreds of times.

The weight pulled him to the floor at once. The tip sank through carpet and bit a finger’s depth into the stone flags with a hollow ring. The guard’s knees bent without his consent. His elbows bowed. He did not fall because the floor caught him first.

“Yes,” Ludwig said. “I forgot to mention. My sword is really heavy.”

The second guard stared as a man stares at a tree that has decided to move of its own will. He tried to help. Together they wrestled the blade up and set it point on a bronze stand at the wall. The stand protested with a tiny groan and then accepted its ridiculous burden like a mule that has seen this load before.

Their gazes returned to Ludwig with an uncertainty that had nothing to do with fear of weapons. How does a man who looks like a lean traveler carry a slab of iron with a single hand as if it were a cane. The question stood between their brows.

Ludwig waited. Patience fits a guest better than pride inside these walls. He let his eyes measure the door. It had the thickness of a city gate. Metal bands crossed the carved wood. Lapis and tinted glass ran like a river through the patterns. The hinges were so well made that when the wings began to swing inward they made almost no sound.

The gates opened to a well lit room. Not a throne hall. A private hall. The lanterns were placed in careful pairs along the walls and the light they gave did not flicker. The floor lay under woven crimson like a level field after harvest. Only one piece of furniture ruled the space. A large bed of carved cedar, its headboard fitted with panels of beaten silver that reflected the glow in soft sheets.

A sickly looking man sat upright against the pillows with his back to the carved head. He looked like a man who had been taken apart and put back together without appetite. His hair showed white in a way that did not belong to old age. He watched without moving his head, as if any motion that was not necessary would cost too much.

Several guards stood within a breath of the bed. None of them blinked. Their attention lay on Ludwig the way a dog places its jaw on a bone and waits for the command to bite. The guard captain was present, cleaner than before. The priestess stood at the bed’s right hand, calm as a night sea, her eyes thoughtful in the veil of her hood.

There were other faces. Some were new. Some were familiar. Very familiar.

One of them sniffed the air and turned toward Ludwig with an expression that balanced shock and assessment, not fear but the kind of surprise a hunter allows himself when the quarry he expected turns out to be bigger than his old stories.

Redd stood there with two men. The first wore plain clothes that tried to lie about him and failed. His hands betrayed him. They were the hands of a man who had split a thousand hairs down the same line and had not been scolded for doing it. His posture did not once argue with the floor. Swordmaster sat on him the way a hawk sits on a wrist. The second man was the reason a swordmaster would present himself with no crest and no flourish.

Alexander Lufondal. The third son of the emperor. The enemy of the sickly king. The one whose absence could start wars and whose presence usually ended negotiations.

The clothes were wrong for arrogance. They were wrong for a visit. The way they stood was wrong for conquest. He wore peddler clothes and drabs, ones you’d never see in a royal hall.

And seemingly, no one recognized them. The very man that he was ordered to ’babysit’ was standing right in front of him now that Ludwig is a ’traitor…’

“Is this the young man.” The King’s voice was a tired reed across a bowl. It sounded like a man who had used every reserve for sitting upright and had no interest in wasting the leftovers on vanity.

“Yes, your majesty.” The reply belonged to a woman who wore secrecy like perfume. A voice shaped behind veils and screens. “It seems that he has eyes no one in the palace has.” She stepped forward. “For a blind man that is…”

Silk answered silk as she walked. Her veil moved like water in a breeze. The Lustful Death slipped into their shared light and let the world see what the world could survive. The eyes were enough. A gaze that fed on certainty and was never satisfied. Her presence sifted the air, found the edges in a man, and pressed a finger against each. The perfume did not belong to a garden. It belonged to a room where windows never opened and the floor remembers every foot that fell upon it. She did not look at Ludwig at first. It would have been too loud. She allowed the silence to grow like a spider web. Then she tilted her head a fraction and acknowledged him as one acknowledges a candle at noon.

She sniffed him the way a cat sniffs a bowl left on the floor by a stranger. The motion was little more than a change of attention, yet it set the guards near the bed to swallow hard. She knew what he was. She worried that he might know what she was. He felt the conclusion cross her face like a shadow from a cloud. He felt the weight of a game extend its board a few more squares.

[You are in a Hostile Environment]

Ludwig stopped himself from gulping hard. The two of them seemed to recognize that each of them is a danger to the other, but neither has reason or proof to act upon their discovery.