Bounty (48 page)

Then the wind spilled through the trees, fanning out and unfurling blossoms as it went. The grove bloomed as they stood there, the petals evolving to perfection as the current dissipated and died away.

“For you, your highness. A new season as a gift to you.”

“Please,” she said, awe-inspired tears glistening in her eyes. “Call me Cat.”

A smile painted its sunrise onto his face. “Cat,” he murmured in compliance, and he felt the shadows disappear with the wind and the earth steady beneath his feet.

E
pilogue

G
odren perched on the balustrade of Cat’s balcony as another evening came to a lengthening close. The days were getting longer, honoring the sun’s demand for glory as summer announced its transformation in the cycle. Warm, pleasant breezes circulated around him, appeasing his senses. He never got tired of the sensations the wind had returned to him; even the little things were a wonder, as if he were discovering the world and its pleasures all over again.

A whisper tickled by his ear, and as it attempted to dash away again on a particularly playful breeze, he closed his eyes and breathed it back to him. As he concentrated, the current became loyal to him, lingering around him, and the voices it carried intensified and spoke to him in human tones. No one else would hear it, but it was as if the room that hosted the conversation had come to surround him, to immerse him in the essence of its reality.

“They are wed, Mastress,” a familiar slave voice announced.

“He’s been successful at outdoing himself, has he?”

“If I am not mistaken, it is not himself he has outdone.”

“Mm. Indeed,” Mastodon replied absently. “Very clever, Godren. Very, very clever.”

“Shall I rally my kin for leave-taking?” Evantralis asked.

There was a pause. Godren envisioned Mastodon casting about fruitlessly for an alternative. “Make a clean sweep,” she agreed, and only a hint of resentment rang in her words. Mostly, she had resigned herself to it. “Clean out the annexes, see to my chamber, and send me an aide for my study. We are underway for departure. Execute operation abandonment. I’ll gather the men.”

The steady feed stirred and broke up, and Godren opened his eyes.

So Mastodon was packing up. His ploy had successfully made her coexistence impossible, and she was taking the according steps to do herself in.

A pair of arms wrapped gently around him from behind. Having not heard Catris’s approach over the voices of the wind, Godren glanced close over his shoulder in acknowledgement.

Cat smiled warmly at him.

“Mastodon is leaving the city,” he said.

By now she had grown accustomed to his dealings with the transcendental. “And taking her men with her?”

Godren nodded.

“Then you were right. And now you have nothing to worry about.” She kissed his cheek. “How does it feel?”

Looking out over the gold-touched city, he felt an absolute peace come over him. “Like summer is finally here.”

*

Having come to the palace for the wedding, Ilsa and Carra packed up and left after an extended stay in the luxury of the guest wing. They returned to Wingbridge escorted by an assigned guard that was to remain with them until the reopened murder of Wingbridge was solved and put safely in a drawer. The palace’s own esteemed experts of investigation were stationed in Wingbridge looking into the matter.

To Godren, there were no loose ends left unresolved. Everything was as it should be, or better, or on the right path.

Seth, however, had one thing still keeping him up at night. Something that kept eating at him, and kept him out chasing one last personal goal that just wouldn’t rest.

When he caught Ossen, Godren declined the offer to deliver his old rival his due retribution. All he wanted was to be through with the dirty work of old, and he was sure Seth could handle being left to ‘ruffle Ossen’s petals’ his own way. He did go down to witness the event, however, and was a bit surprised to find Catris engaging in the infliction.

He walked up with quiet conviction, lingering at a slight distance as a bound and gagged Ossen glared at him from his knees in the grass. A great loathing dripped down the air between them, but Godren did not add to it. He remained expressionless – if anything, the slightest bit grave – and maintained the peace he was sheltering inside himself.

Seth acknowledged his arrival, coming over to engage in a quiet exchange.

“You sure you don’t want to do it?”

“I’m done, Seth,” Godren maintained. “And besides, my contract forbids me to tamper with Mastodon’s circle. I can’t touch him.”

“Alright, then. I can’t complain. Just wanted to give you the chance.”

Godren nodded, and Seth returned to his place preparing Ossen’s fate.

“So – welcome to the palace, Ossen,” he began cheerfully. “I’m sure you’ll find the gardens, terraces, entertainment courts, and villas to your liking. We’re famous for them, you know. Oh wait – you do know. You’ve taken advantage of the estate’s hospitality on more than one trespassing occasion, haven’t you? I think her highness has something she’d like to say about that.”

Having been standing off to the side fiddling experimentally with Ossen’s confiscated dart gun, Catris drew it into its firing position, took aim, and fired a dart straight into Ossen’s chest over his heart.

Godren masked his surprise. Seth must have been teaching her.

Shock bloomed in Ossen’s eyes, and his breath cut short with the impact, though it was probably due more to alarm than force. A panicking sweat broke out from his temples, and he was quickly blinking it from his crazed eyes.

“Don’t worry,” Catris said without pity, “I reloaded it with an empty missile. It won’t kill you. No poison involved.”

Senseless relief crashed over Ossen, and he resumed breathing, though his lungs worked with great, heaving convulsions. Anxiety still ravaged his nerves.

“That, however, was just for effect,” Seth said, taking the gun as Catris handed it to him. Redevising the contraption’s deployment system, he had the gun reloaded with his own choice dart in expert seconds. “We had the royal specialists analyze traces of the poison that I kept upon removing myself from the Underworld, and they’ve altered its qualities. The lethal factor was foregone for long-term paralysis, which then only slowly wears off.” Moving to stand directly by Ossen, he pressed the gun into his neck, but then paused absently as if having something else occur to him. “Of course, this is the first time we’ve tried it on anyone,” he admitted thoughtfully, and then turned his focus back to his victim. “So really, you’re kind of an experimental run.”

Stricken with fresh panic, Ossen thrashed to get away, but Seth halted him with a boot grounding his toppled form and pulled the trigger in his hand. The dart caught Ossen in the shoulder, and though he struggled to escape still, going mindless with the instinct to get away, the poison took effect and gradually stilled his writhing efforts. Fatigue clouded his face as fighting the restrictive substance grew increasingly harder. Sweat trickled from his temples, and his breath grew inconsistent and strained. He spasmed with resistance, muscles bulging in his neck, and then the ultimatum of irreversible stillness spread slowly throughout his body.

When it was over, an expression of mortal terror was frozen in his eyes. It was nearly impossible to tell if breath still entered his lungs, but it was a state of being further immersed in the void between life and death even than hibernation, and did not require more than a trickle of sustenance for preservation.

Seth knelt by his head in the grass. “You probably won’t be feeling much for a very long time,” he said to the motionless man beside him. “I know it’s the pits, but…look at it this way: at least it doesn’t hurt you any. Lucky for us, you can still process what goes on around you, so we can come by and taunt you any time we please. Other than that, don’t worry – you’ll be well taken care of. Just trapped in a confining madness of stillness and silence that will pass like an eternity. Rather like being buried alive, I imagine, only you’ll have to endure it for the entirety of your sentence. Any questions?”

Not even the slightest response twitched from Ossen’s body. His frozen, terrified eyes just stared into the world.

“Good. Then we’ll leave you to settle in.” Rising, Seth moved away to take his leave from the scene, and Catris glanced at Godren before turning to follow.

“It’s done, Godren,” she said, pausing beside him. “There’s no point in dwelling on it. You wanted justice; he will suffer the poetic folly of the painless hell he first inflicted on another. It will release him in time.”

Inclining his head in acceptance of Catris’s reassurance, he waited until a moment after she continued her trek back toward the palace before letting her words ring true and leaving it be.

Empathizing was no way to go about delivering justice. Especially not when the only reason he could empathize was because he’d suffered the relevant effects by the corrected offender’s own hand.

Leaving his old rival lying in the grass, he walked back toward the great symbol of architecture that was his new and enduring home, granted once again the beloved compensation of an unyielding peace that persevered over the memory, and the terrible just infliction, of turning everything but a man’s heart to stone.