Deus Necros

He could not act outright. Too many people present, and a single misstep would turn the chamber into a slaughterhouse. Fighting the Lustful Death here would be an instant mission fail. Necros had not asked him to cut her down in this place. Only observe. Only walk the edges of a blade without letting it drink.

Ludwig turned to the redhead without ever quite turning his back on the presence at his side. He let his attention split, one half for the prince whose scent of steel and politics clung even through simple clothes, the other half for the woman whose nearness pressed like warm breath through a veil. The Death at his shoulder was getting far too touchy for someone who was already married to the crown and to the palace walls. The air around her tasted faintly of sugar cooled on marble and of something older that lived under locked doors.

“Your highness, who is this boy.” she let the question ride a calm tone and kept her posture unworried. Anything louder would have rung like a challenge.

“Sereti. Leave our guest alone,” the prince said. The name slid through the room and made three attendants stiffen. “He was the one who discovered the demon that escaped even your eyes.”0

“That is what makes him more interesting,” she replied. The answer touched the ear like a fingertip. “Because even I could not sense it.”

Ludwig kept his face still beneath the mask. He could not believe her words. How could someone like her fail to sense a weak demon hiding under her own nose. Either the thing had worn a skin no ordinary sense could grasp or she was lying for the pleasure of it, the way a cat rearranges the facts of a bird’s last minutes.

“Which brings me a great deal of envy,” she said, and her hand came down on his shoulder as if the gesture had been agreed upon beforehand. Rings were warm through the cloth. “Because someone else managed to do what should have been my job. Young lad, how about a talk. A private one, after you are done with his majesty. I have many things to ask.”

Absolutely not. The thought crossed Ludwig’s mind and sat there with its arms folded. Private talk with the Lustful Death was not talk. He remembered the vision that had seized him like a net, remembered the press of her weight, the breath at his ear, the merciless rhythm that had ridden him into silence. Many men would accept such a death and die happy in the lie. He still had too much to do in this world and a debt to a former one. He would not trade a long road for a candle’s moment.

“I will see what I can do,” Ludwig said. He let the words fall in a polite shape and gave them no promise. He turned his focus to the king.

She left the room like a breeze. Leaving nothing but her scent wafting behind her.

“By now,” the sickly king said, “you might be wondering why the queen is so rampant and rude and doing whatever she wants. Why this king simply does her bidding. Why he cannot control the gestures of his wife.” The voice had a tire’s hiss under it, the sound of breath that has learned to climb a slope every day.

“I can already tell,” Ludwig said as he approached the bed. He did not raise his voice. He did not whisper. He allowed the words to be what they were. “You are a royal puppet. A facade. A man with little power.”

Metal moved in a single cold wave. Every sword in the chamber found a line to his throat or a rib to test. At that moment the power behind the royal guards revealed itself. Aura rippled through the room like heat above a road. Every single one of them was a complete master of that discipline. They did not need to shout. The glow of intent around their bodies spoke for them.

“this is the second time now…” Ludwig sighed.

Tull and the prince both sweated like men who had just remembered there were cliffs on both sides of the path. The king’s guards were extremely agitated. Neither of those two belonged to this crazed man’s party, and they knew it, yet the statement that had just been spoken had left no place for neutrality. They realized that Redd had some sort of kinship with the masked stranger. That only made the moment sharper.

Redd’s eyes narrowed. His weight shifted half an inch to the ball of his right foot. His jaw worked once like a man who tastes iron and knows it is his own blood. The guard captain raised one hand with a veteran’s steadiness and tried to calm the blades without insulting them.

“Stop,” the king said. He did not raise his voice. Everyone heard him. “It is rather sharp. And extremely rude. To hear it said that way.”

“But is it wrong,” Ludwig asked. He kept his hands away from hidden hilts. He let the room see his empty fingers.

“Nay,” the king said, and the word sounded like relief that someone else had lifted a stone he could not. “It is completely true. Not that I mind.” A cough took him. He swallowed it and looked back to Ludwig. “Still. Tell me. How did you find out about the demon.”

“You were suffering from demonic energy predation,” Ludwig said. He stepped to the side of the bed and did not cross the invisible line that would have put him between the king and the nearest guard. “The demon that came to you every day was spreading his essence into your body. Everyone was paying attention to the food and the wine and the water cups, so of course he would not tamper with them. He infused his demonic essence into your bathing sponge. That allowed more direct contact. If he had finished what he wanted to do, you would have been a puppet of their own. Double puppet. I suppose that is the term.”

Each time Ludwig used the word puppet the guards tightened. It was visible in the wrists, in the minute rise of shoulders, in the twitch of a thumb near a pommel. They were a hair’s breadth away from tearing him to rags. They all stopped at the king’s raised hand. The old man coughed again, from sickness or as a signal to disarm the room before it broke itself.

“It is amazing that you figured all that in the few moments you walked in,” the king said. “One would think that you knew too much.”

“Do not try to hint that I am part of them,” Ludwig said. He kept the heat out of his voice. “If I were a demon I would have done nothing. There would have been no reason to show my hand. Also, I could not stand the stench.”

“Oh. I was unconscious,” the king said, “but I did hear that there was a powerful stench when the thing was in my chambers.”

“I am not an expert in demonology,” Ludwig said with a small shrug. “So I do not know the source.”

“It is the Yellow River,” Tull said.

Every head turned. A moment ago the two had been background figures, kept to the edges of the carpet. Now Tull sounded like a man who had found a familiar track in a dark wood.

“And what is that,” the king asked.

“It is a river in the demon world,” Tull said. “A separate world from ours that is not accessible to humans. For a demon to come here, it must cross the Yellow River first. Then it either finds a crack in the world that lets it enter in flesh, like the one the young man killed, or it is summoned in spirit to possess someone or something. That gives it a latch on our side.” He spoke without ornament. He spoke the way a man recites a rite he has had to learn in order to live.

“You seem to know a great deal about demonology,” the king said. He did not accuse. He sounded curious that a peddler could recite the passages of a book not sold on open streets.

“For a peddler, yes. That would be the thought,” Tull said. “But my family members died to a demon. Twenty years now.” He did not try to harden his voice. He allowed the plain grief to be heard and let it close again like a door.

“You said your name was Tull,” the king asked.

“Yes.”

“And you, sir. What might your name be,” he asked. The eyes of the room narrowed as one. The moment turned a shade heavier.

“I am Ludwig,” Ludwig said. The word dropped like a stone in still water. “Ludwig Heart.” He lifted the mask and let the light touch the scarred face. The mark that lay like a pale arc from cheek to cheek told its own story.