Invincible Read online

  Ink recited, “‘Sampo ei da Counsallierai emantanti der dictuunuim, es payanciim, es emonim der teriminatuum ou da cloite sei grachenscuta pandeimaenous delvanessi.’”

  Graus Claude’s expressive glower went slack. Veins pulsed along his eardrums as his teeth ground together with the sound of scraping saws. His surprise bloomed into a deep, red outrage.

  “YOU—!” he roared, forcing Joy to step back. The blood rushed from his face and colored the towels with spots of red. “That CANNOT—!” All four hands grasped the air, fisting open and closed in impotent fury. His massive head swung back and forth. “It is simply imp—” The words gagged him. He swallowed gulps of fury. Joy knew what was happening—he could not say that which he knew was untrue. She touched the wall behind her cautiously, carefully, making no sudden moves.

  His breathing slowly settled into a low, bellows thrum. His bloodshot gaze flicked between Joy and Ink. His voice was a deep accusation, “You are certain of this?”

  Ink nodded. Joy barely moved. She had no idea what was going on, but it didn’t sound good.

  Graus Claude leaned back on his haunches and crashed to the floor, his legs splayed beneath him.

  “By the Swells...” Graus Claude murmured, discreetly translated by the eelet in Joy’s ear. Her strange gift from the Siren’s widower, Dennis Thomas, had proven to be more than just a pretty shell—the tiny creature inside it could translate Water Folk Tongue into English. She’d learned quite a few of the Bailiwick’s favorite curses.

  Joy reached for Ink again, but he flipped the straight razor like a shield between them. She stopped, stunned. The silver chain swung gently at his hip like a warning.

  “Ink—?”

  “Don’t!” Ink snapped. “Do not come near me. Do not...” His anger cooled as his arms sagged. His voice softened. “Do not come closer. Please.”

  Tears welled in her eyes. The Tide’s betrayal, the gala, their harrowing escape—something had happened to Ink and she’d missed it. He looked torn, pained, ready to bolt. Joy wanted to touch him but feared his reaction.

  She spread empty hands. “Ink, please—”

  “I cannot stay here,” Ink said.

  Graus Claude rumbled. “Of course. Mistress Inq is missing. I quite under—”

  “I cannot stay,” he said again without lifting his eyes. He swept a line of fire through the air, peeling back a flap of nothing at all. “I have no oath to bind me,” he said to Joy. “And you have foresworn all armor.” He turned and stepped one foot through the breach. “Bailiwick,” he murmured. “You are bound by your word, your claim and your Name.”

  The frog inclined his head. “I have foresworn it.”

  “Wait! No! Ink!” Joy cried. “Stop!”

  He didn’t turn, but paused on the edge of the void, the lip of this world flapping in a foreign breeze. His crisp, clear voice slipped over his shoulder. “Find the loophole, Joy,” he whispered. “Do it soon.”

  The door zipped closed behind him.

  Joy stumbled forward, touching empty air. Hot tears dripped off her cheeks.

  “He can’t—he can’t just le—!” She gagged on the word leave. He could and had. She desperately fumbled to hold on to their last words like a frayed thread. She spun on Graus Claude. “What’s going on? Why did he—?” She could barely put words to the look on Ink’s face. She’d never seen him look at her that way—not when he’d caught her in an act of betrayal, not when she’d stood between him and revenge. He’d been holding himself back, warring with himself, warding her off for safety’s sake, but she wasn’t sure whom he’d been trying to protect: her or him. He’d left her without an explanation, leaving behind only riddles and an injured frog. Anger obliterated her hurt confusion and she slapped her hand against the counter. Hard. “Who does he think he is?”

  The Bailiwick sighed. “Your enemy.”

  THREE

  JOY FROWNED AT THE hunched pile of clothes and towels and bloody frog.

  “Ink is not my enemy.” She didn’t know much, but she knew that better than she knew her own missing heartbeat.

  Graus Claude heaved himself up on swaddled feet. “Perhaps it is more accurate to say that he believes you are his enemy,” he amended. “And not just his enemy, but all of the Twixt’s.”

  “What? Why?” Joy demanded, following the Bailiwick as he squeezed into the bathroom and fiddled with the taps. “Is it because I’m the most dangerous human—or half human—in the world? Because I was born with the Sight? Because he gave me his scalpel? Because I can erase Folk marks?” Her voice rose above the splashing water. “We know all that already! It’s why I accepted a signatura to protect my True Name—to take my place and be part of your world, to prove that I’m no danger. It’s why I agreed to join the Twixt!”

  Graus Claude turned off the water and patted his hands dry as his upper two hands rubbed the hand towel over his brow. He ignored the mirror. It ignored him back, showing no evidence of a giant frog in its reflection.

  “There may have been some misinterpretations concerning your person that had been previously unimagined or unnoticed, and have therefore gone unaddressed,” he said. “As your sponsor, the fault is mine, although I can honestly say that the possibility was quite beyond my capacity to theorize or even imagine, given the circumstances.” His icy blue gaze regarded her uncomfortably, his four hands wringing the hand towels into ropes. “In fact, I must confess that without the oath that Master Ink required of me, I would find myself sharing his conflicted loyalties.” He folded the towels into squares and set them down in a neat stack. “But you can rest assured that you have nothing to fear from me, Miss Malone, as he has ensured that you have at least one ally, one neutral party, until we can sort out this sordid affair.”

  Joy exhaled slowly. “I have no idea what you’re talking about and I am really getting tired of it.”

  The Bailiwick sniffed through flat nostrils. “Tired? Indeed, I imagine you are.” He glanced out the window at the paling blue sky. “It must be only hours until dawn. It has been a long night. A very long night...” The Bailiwick plucked at his ruined clothes. “Might I request that we sit down for the remainder of this conversation? I find myself quite exhausted by the evening’s events.”

  She knew—knew, mind you—that he was manipulating her by using the proper rules of etiquette, decorum and polite society that he’d drummed into her head during their tutoring sessions in order to prepare her for the gala, but she still felt guilty for badgering him when he was clearly in pain. Joy bowed slightly and led him into the hall in silence.

  The Bailiwick might be invisible, but even with Dad gone, she didn’t feel comfortable sitting out in the open. She pushed open the door to Stef’s room and stepped aside to allow Graus Claude to enter. After contorting himself gently through the door frame, he ambled into the bedroom on toweled feet and eased himself onto the bed. The springs groaned in protest. He sighed in relief.

  “Can I get you anything?” she asked.

  He leaned back. “No, thank you, I think I can—”

  “Good,” Joy said, cutting him off and shutting the door. “Explain.”

  The Bailiwick threw her a rueful glare, but it was harder to wield an aura of commanding authority while sitting on her brother’s bed.

  “Very well,” he said. “You might as well make yourself comfortable. It is likely the last time you will be able to do so again.”

  Joy grabbed the desk chair and dragged it closer. “That sounds ominous.”

  Graus Claude nodded. “It is.” As she settled into her seat, he lifted his legs into an odd sort of lotus position, pillowing his bandaged feet beneath him,
his knees bent behind. He rocked forward, putting the bulk of his weight on his belly. “Master Ink was good to remind me of my oaths, both to you, as your sponsor, as well as those mandated by the King and Queen as a member of the Council.” He paused. “As you know, there is no oath that requires loyalty to the monarchy—it is part of the rules they spoke into being, the very words that created the Twixt.”

  “Yes.” This was nothing new. So why did Graus Claude look so serious/uncomfortable/afraid? His gaze didn’t look so much at her as through her, as if he was avoiding direct eye contact, speaking to her from a great distance.

  “The oaths we take when we swear allegiance to the Council are designed to align us to the safekeeping of our world.” Graus Claude hunched farther into his squat. “Do you know what we say about the origins of the Twixt? Even without the memory of the King and Queen who spoke the world into being, we somehow managed to remember enough to know that the Twixt was a place of safety, of rules and order cleaved from the Elemental Wild.” Joy nodded. She’d heard the phrase before. The Bailiwick looked at her expectantly. She raised her eyebrows. He demurred. “It is an apt description, if not expressly clear when employing proper nouns.”

  Joy frowned. He’d lost her. “I thought ‘Elemental Wild’ meant that the Twixt was made back when Earth was forming, full of volcanoes and glaciers and stuff—mountains growing, oceans receding, dinosaurs dying and all that.”

  Graus Claude was surprised enough to chuckle. “The Twixt is hardly that old,” he said. “Remember, humans and Folk used to share this world and there was a peace between us, reflected in your stories—we shared magic and technology, knowledge and medicine, land, children...” He sighed. Joy knew there had not been children born to the Folk for nearly a thousand years. “There was a time when there were alliances and oaths and bonds between us, before our True Names were used to force us into servitude and retaliations became swift and dark and dire. That is when myths were born. The brightest daydreams became the darkest fairy tales, horrors whispered around the fire. Those were the dark times, when there was war between us.” He shook his head. “No, that is not when the Twixt was made. It was made when the King and Queen decided to create order, rules to govern the land and our people in order to protect both humans and non—before we tore the world apart. Those who agreed to obey these laws became the Folk,” he said. “And those who rejected order, preferring chaos and the battle of wills, they were called Elementals and their part of the world was called the Wild.”

  Joy tried to wrap her brain around this new information. She swallowed before speaking. “So they were Folk?” she asked. “Wild Folk. Folk without rules?”

  “In a sense. Yet they were like another thing entirely—older, primal, powerful and proud, with deep ties to the physical world, preserving the shape of what’s real. From them, we took our courtly names: Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Aether...you are familiar with these.” His gaze slipped to the window where morning painted the clouds late-summer colors, pink and purple and bronze. “They were the first ones, crafty and cruel. They did not seek to ally with humans nor did they have any interest in peace. On the contrary, they enjoyed sowing chaos and encouraging wrath among mortal creatures.” He sighed again, sounding tired. “The Old Ways were forged in that time when life was lawless, swift and absolute, when mischief presaged violence and violent ends. The Elementals were eager to stoke the fires of dissent and sought no compromise. They would not bend to the rules.” He undid a button at his collar, which was equivalent to the noble toad collapsing into an inelegant heap. “They were prepared to undo everything forged between our peoples, everything the King and Queen hoped would protect future generations on both sides from folly and death. But the Elementals were unapologetic, rigid, unwilling to be tethered by logic or laws.” He paused. “Once the King and Queen declared themselves sovereigns, the Elementals were deemed enemies of both human and Folk.”

  He was speaking in excuses, platitudes. Joy felt nauseous. “What happened?”

  The Bailiwick lifted his eyes to hers. “They were hunted down. Destroyed. Rooted out for the good of us all.” He rumbled like a whisper of distant thunder. “It brought about the Age of Man. The Twixt was forged in their blood and on their bones.”

  Joy shuddered. Genocide. Her voice was very small, her fingers twisted into white knots. “I thought the Folk didn’t kill one another.” The words fell like bricks between them—the beginnings of a wall.

  “They were not Folk. They were Elementals,” he mumbled gruffly. His fingers squeezed his shins and the points of his knees. “We needed peace. We needed rules to govern and protect. We needed to create order out of chaos if any of us were to survive. That is why Master Ink reminded me of my Council oath—not simply to serve the Folk of the Twixt but, specifically, to stand against the ‘Elemental Wild,’ to protect our world from the threat of Elementals and the chaos they sowed in their wake.” He shook his head again. “I did not think they meant it literally—it was a figure of speech, an old saying left over from the days of my mentor Ironshod and his kin.”

  “Sort of like the Imminent Return?” she guessed.

  “Yes,” Graus Claude said. “That traditional salutation survived Aniseed’s spell of forgetting, but we were ignorant of its deeper meaning until you broke the chandelier in the Grand Ballroom, releasing our collective memories of the King and Queen. We had forgotten about the promised Return of our people from their refuge beyond this world.” The Bailiwick looked heavier, grim. “We forgot that they were waiting for the Council to send word that peace had been restored and to open the door.” He touched a palm to his belly. “Centuries of waiting, wondering what had happened to the world they’d left behind, their families and friends... I cannot imagine the suffering I caused.”

  Joy wanted to remind him that it was Aniseed who had tricked him into casting the Amanya spell, erasing the memories of everyone in the Twixt so that she could lead her coup against the Council, violating the Folk’s unswerving loyalty...but she couldn’t. It was true—Graus Claude was the one who’d cast the spell for his lover, Aniseed, not knowing of her planned betrayal. Joy twisted her fingers together in silence.

  He looked at her strangely. “But you saw it, didn’t you?” he asked with a spark of hope. “The world beyond the Bailiwick?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you opened the door?”

  “Yes.”

  He leaned forward, his voice low. “Did you see them?”

  Joy flushed, uncomfortable with the memory. “Y-yes.”

  His eyes were barely slits of sapphire light. “Tell me.”

  She did, and the story came spilling out as if she could explain away everything that had happened. “After I removed Aniseed’s signatura, I used the scalpel to cut through the other sigils that locked the door...” Joy trailed off, uncertain how Graus Claude would react to her erasing the Council’s sacred safeguards, but he didn’t comment. “The princess ran through as soon as the door was open. And there was an army camped on the hills.” She knotted her fingers in her shirt. “The King and Queen saw us—Ink and I—in the doorway. They said—” She faltered, but they were not words that she would ever forget. “They said, ‘Behold the Destroyer of Worlds.’”

  Graus Claude sat up, his spine pressed against the wall. He blinked twice. “I admit that does not sound like the most fortuitous of greetings,” he said slowly. “What happened then?”

  “They said to come closer,” she tried to explain. “I didn’t
want to, but I—”

  “You obeyed,” he said. “You could not help but obey. They are our monarchs, after all. Those are the rules.” He tilted his head at her expression, which felt oddly lopsided on her face. “And yet...?”

  “I don’t know. I stepped through the doorway,” she said. “And the ground cracked.” Joy could feel the give of the earth under her toes, the sudden lurch of lost balance and dread. “It split right under my foot. Ink grabbed me and pulled me back.”

  The Bailiwick stayed silent for four long breaths. “And then?”

  “The army charged,” she said. “We ran.”

  He folded two sets of arms. “A wise course of action.”

  “And you know the rest,” Joy said, shoulders slumping. “The door is open, the Folk remember, but the King and Queen have not Returned. Now Ink is upset, the Council’s pissed off and you’re giving me a history lesson in my brother’s bedroom.”

  “Yes, well...” Graus Claude had the grace to look uncomfortable, shifting his towel-wrapped toes against the mattress. “Circumstances are hardly ideal, but I have graver concerns.” His gaze slid sideways. “Do you know what that place was beyond the door, those verdant fields and succulent mists under a milk-and-honey summer sky?” Joy shook her head. The Bailiwick hung his. “You were in Faeland, Miss Malone.”

  “Fairyland?” Joy said. “I thought that didn’t exist.”

  “Not Fairyland like some children’s tale,” he snapped. “Faeland. Where all Folk eventually make their Imminent Return.”

  Joy frowned. “What? Like Heaven?”

  “Heaven is a human concept,” Graus Claude said mildly. “And—who knows?—perhaps it is a human reality. However, none who cross those pearly gates ever return to confirm or deny its existence, yet all the Folk know that they have a place in Faeland when all is said and done.” He turned his massive head with a palsied shiver. “Immortality is a concept that far exceeds our physical firmaments.”