Bronze Gods Read online

  BURNED

  Spread-eagled, she lay atop a reflective sheet of metal. All around, an elaborate arrangement of mirrors and lenses had concentrated the sun’s rays on her. With a small sigh, Mikani knelt next to the body and ran his hands over her, not quite touching.

  There is no anger, here. Strange. Mikani smelled the girl’s fear, feeling her agony in phantom shivers and pain. Terror, shards of emotional memories screamed against the very stone. But of the killer . . . the mirrors and lenses were clear. Empty, as if they’d known no human touch.

  And yet, there is purpose . . .

  He saw her struggle, as aftershocks of terror rather than visual images: the taste of blood from a bitten tongue, the pain of constraints against wrists and ankles, harsh stone against the girl’s back, and the sickening scent of the charnel house her body became. That would be so much simpler—to see, rather than feel. Shivering, he turned away. Already, his head pounded in protest, and from a detached place in his mind, he knew that when he came down, he’d pay dearly.

  BRONZE GODS

  A. A. Aguirre

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  For more information about the Penguin Group, visit penguin.com.

  BRONZE GODS

  An Ace Book / published by arrangement with the authors

  Copyright © 2013 by A. A. Aguirre.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors’ rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Ace Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group.

  ACE and the “A” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-62238-4

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Ace mass-market edition / May 2013

  Cover illustration by Cliff Nielsen.

  Cover photograph © iStockphoto/Thinkstock.

  Cover design by Judith Lagerman.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  For our beloved children, who put up with us while we wrote this

  Acknowledgments

  First, Andres and I would like to thank each other. When I asked him who he wanted to mention in the acknowledgments, he said, “You, woman. I love you.” Obviously, I feel the same. I’m glad I could help make his dreams come true, as he’s been doing that for me for years. Other married couples have said they didn’t think their marriage could survive a similar collaboration. Ours did, and, if anything, it’s stronger. We created this together; it’s forever, and Bronze Gods came out beautiful in the end.

  Along the way, a number of people contributed to polishing this diamond. See, we wrote the first draft ten years ago, and since then, this book has changed faces more than Mystique; it’s been rewritten more than eight times, and when we were on deadline, we penned two-thirds new material to make it live up to Anne Sowards’s high standards. So that’s where we’ll begin.

  Anne loved the world and the characters, but the plot was problematic, and she made us perform. We feared revisions might defeat us, but ultimately we got the job done, and we’re so proud of this book. So thanks to her for being a demanding taskmaster. Bronze Gods is infinitely better for her input.

  I suppose now it’s time for the usual suspects. Thanks to our friends and family for understanding why we had no time while we were working on this. Thanks to the Loop That Shall Not Be Named for being there when my sanity was imperiled. I bow to Cliff Nielsen for a gorgeous, perfect cover and give gratitude to the whole Penguin team. Thanks to Enrique for always listening to Andres and being awesome. Kudos to the Schwagers, who are the best copy editors ever. Many, many thanks to Tricia Sullivan, an amazing writer, who read our book and helped us whip the timeline into shape so Anne didn’t kill us. Much love to Laura Bradford for being a wonderful agent, and who doesn’t know it but will soon be asked to sell our epic sea monster story. (Not really.)

  Heartfelt thanks, finally, to all readers who take a chance on this book. And us.

  Turning and turning in the widening gyre

  The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

  Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

  Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

  The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

  The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

  The best lack all conviction, while the worst

  Are full of passionate intensity.

  —W. B. YEATS

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Epigraph

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  About the Authors

  PROLOGUE

  LONG AGO, TEN PRINCES LIVED ACROSS THE WATERS AND through the mists in a land called Hy Breasil. They governed the wild, fey folk who dwelled in that place, where every rock, tree, blade of grass, ripple of water, and whisper of the wind contained powerful magic. The Ferishers were terrible and immortal, but they were few. Yet even in those small numbers, they divided amongst themselves into two Courts.

  • • •

  THE SUMMER COURT embraced all those bright and beautiful while Winter plotted against them in briars and darkness. Into their eternal struggle came the barbarians: the bearded folk from another world—a sweeping, enormous one—outside the safe confines of Hy Breasil. In that land, ships went missing from time to time, their cargoes and crews simply vanished, no wreckage found. And so the conquerors came to Ferisher lands with their relentless drive, cold iron, and incomprehensible ways. With them, they brought mortal bloodlines.

  • • •

  AFTER THE LONG and bitter Iron War, both sides hovered at the brink of annihilation. The bearded ones bred quickly; they had numbers while the Ferishers had magic. Auberon, the most powerful of the princes, chose the loveliest of the human flotsam to keep the peace. His siblings followed suit. Those treaty-born marriages created a lasting peace and a new people. Thus the fir
st ten great Houses were founded, though some failed to withstand the test of time.

  • • •

  THAT COURSE CREATED a schism in the Ferishers. Some felt it was better to fade and leave the physical world than to defile pure bloodlines. The two Courts fell into disarray, and eventually, eons later, only a handful could claim more than a flicker of fey blood. Hy Breasil changed forever, and the centuries marched on.

  • • •

  ONLY THE WIND knows what happens next . . .

  CHAPTER 1

  WAKING HAD NEVER BEEN EASY FOR JANUS MIKANI; WHERE others merely dreamt, he was seduced. His Ferisher blood brought visions of a different world than the one in which they lived. On rousing, he was left with a lingering headache and a sense of loss. That afternoon was no different as he wound his way through the thinning crowd toward South Ward Station, affectionately dubbed Southie. He paused at the corner to let an omnibus clatter past, blue eyes narrowed and hat braced against the breeze from its passage. Cradling the weathered cane under his arm, he resumed his trip and let his mind wander while force of habit guided his steps.

  In his dreams, he was a gray knight, fighting for the honor of an icy, untouchable queen. By night, he wore dark, rumpled suits and fought against an unstoppable tide to control the city’s sins. Most members of the Criminal Investigation Division had trouble adapting to sleeping during the daylight hours, but he was, in truth, more at home in the darkness. Sometimes he wondered if his dreams weren’t truly glimpses of the world before, before the bearded strangers landed and the Courts splintered during the Iron Wars. Rarely, he’d heard of people dreaming future events, but never of the past.

  Ah, well. I was ever backward.

  Mikani shunned the steam coaches and hansoms that wound their way through the busier city streets, their rattling din mingling with the invective of pedestrians. The clamor had always seemed particularly out of place among the redbrick homes of South Ward; their tall, peaked roofs and simple lines had, for him, always evoked a time before steam and steel ruled supreme. A hansom chugged hard, then puffed out a cloud of tawny, bitter smoke and shuddered to a halt. Cursing roundly, the driver got out to check the boiler and ember sphere assembly, which drove all steam engines. The Houses kept close the secrets of binding fire elementals into the devices; other than what he’d once learned to keep an engine running smoothly, Mikani cared little for the hidden details. He moved past the driver and down the worn stone steps of the station.

  Unlike most, he preferred the underground, likely from a combination of the comfort he’d always derived from dark places and his voyeuristic tendencies. After work, he sometimes surrendered to sleep as he rode the rails home, cocooned in the fading darkness until the rising din of the packed cars drove him out to find his way to his quiet cottage on the weathered cobblestone street, half-asleep and lost to the lure of dreams. It was a dangerous habit—an idiosyncrasy that would earn him an appointment with the headquarters mental examiner, should anyone report him. The demands of life as a Criminal Investigation Division inspector had wrecked more than one man’s mind; Mikani would claim it was the work that kept him half-sane.

  His reflections were less grim half an hour later when he emerged from the fading warmth of a half-empty car and stepped onto the scuffed marble floor of Central Station’s main platform. The still air was redolent with oil and the scent of humanity. Wending his way through milling knots of people waiting for their trains and past columns whose carved reliefs he’d long since memorized, Mikani spotted a slender figure across the platform.

  Celeste Ritsuko took the same car to headquarters each night, and she sat in the same seat. She wore her shiny raven hair parted on the left and bobbed neatly at chin level, and Mikani sometimes teased her that she used a slide rule to measure it. She used peach lip rouge to protect her mouth from the elements and nothing more in the way of adornment. She’d told Mikani that paint was a waste of time, better spent on other things.

  Looking at her, it’s hard to believe she keeps a knife in her boot.

  As she did every evening, she checked her attaché case and credentials. Her glance wandered over him from across the platform, and she pursed her lips in faint disapproval. But he reveled in his slept-in chic and resisted her efforts to improve him. Wearing a faint smile, she crossed to his side.

  As they went up the stairs and into the cool night, he said, “The darker it gets, the prettier she looks.”

  He gestured at the somber, baroque tower housing CID Headquarters, looming high above the neoclassic buildings and palazzi at the near edge of the park. HQ at Central was a relatively desirable assignment, second only to the Temple Constabulary Office. Other wards had higher crime rates, worse felons, and token law enforcement.

  “Mmm.” When Ritsuko took that particular tone, she was already obsessing about work. The solitary trait they shared was the tendency to be consumed by the tragedies that filled their nights. They just dealt with it differently.

  “Mind if we stop for a drink?” he asked.

  Ritsuko checked her timepiece. “It’s fine. I’d hate for Electra to go a day without your pretty face.”

  Mikani laughed. “True. It would be criminal.”

  He had been buying his coffee from Electra for years. His favorite waitress was no delicate flower; her dark hair flowed to the small of her sturdy back. She had strong features, a sharp nose, and a determined chin, which probably contributed to her outcast state. As a daughter of the Summer Clan, wanderers who mysteriously appeared on the isles a scant century ago, she wasn’t supposed to settle—to serve drinks or read cards in the same places year after year. But Electra did as she pleased, part of the reason he liked her. With such incredible power through their control over the shipping and transportation industry, the Summer Clan could easily force her to comply with their edicts, but so far, they’d let her sow her wild oats. Mikani was sure the patriarchs imagined she would get rebellion out of her system and return to the fold in due time.

  “I’m glad I stayed late,” the waitress said to him in greeting. “You’re a mess.”

  “Espresso,” he ordered, grinning. “You know how I like it. But then you know that I’m always a mess, too.”

  She fetched his drink, her brow furrowed. “A different mess. All red, black, and violet, frayed about the edges. That means bad things are headed your way.”

  Beside him, Ritsuko made a scoffing noise. Mikani didn’t bother to read Electra, as she made her living from dire pronouncements. Half a dozen people would panic at such news. He wasn’t one of them as he’d seen her trick forty silver crescents from a mark, only to have some mundane tragedy revealed.

  He shook his head. “No reading today, thanks.”

  “Tomorrow,” Electra predicted.

  Laughing, he took his drink in the ceramic cup she trusted him to return, one of the benefits of being a favored customer. He turned to Ritsuko, who said, “So tell me what you did last night.”

  Mikani knew his romantic history fascinated his partner in a horrific sort of way. “Went home to an unmade bed and a note. Jane’s gone to visit her brother. Or so she claimed. I doubt I’ll ever hear her complain about my job again, though.”

  He’d been first to bring his relationships into casual conversation; it had since become a ritual of closure. Over the years, his partner had met a few of his women, and Mikani remained friends with a scant handful. The disappointment never lasted for more than a week or two.

  Awkward silence reigned between them for a few seconds. Then Ritsuko touched him on the shoulder. All around them, tradesmen and heirs, dilettantes and nouveau riche made their way to and from their gorgeous homes, their days finished with the encroachment of evening. Mikani paid them no mind.

  “Surprise. I have a story, too. Warren moved out last week.”

  He arched his brows at that bit of news. The memory of Jane’s angry eyes receded as he glanced over at his partner. “Warren?” They drifted apart as they rounded different sides
of a gaggle of bodyguards and sycophants holding some noble scion in their midst. When they resumed their side-by-side position, he continued. “I’m sorry to hear that.” Even in sympathy, he couldn’t call her by her given name. “I thought nothing could come between the two of you.”

  She watched a hansom rumble past before she answered, her steps matching his. “You were right. God forbid I ever say it again, but you were right. You know, all the times you said we were just using each other?” She sighed and juggled her bag unnecessarily. A telling cue, because Ritsuko did not fidget. “We just looked at each other over dinner one night and knew. That it was pointless.”

  Mikani nodded. “I’m glad the two of you realized that in time. Now you can go and find someone worthwhile to build a future with. Someone completely unlike me.” He winked and touched the tip of his hat to her as he turned to HQ’s massive front doors.

  “I feel guilty,” she said.

  He paused midstep and angled a penetrating look at her. “Why?”

  “Because I denied my grandfather’s dying wish . . . to see me settled with a respectable man. I followed my heart. And it led me to this.” Her almond-shaped brown eyes conveyed rueful sorrow. “I’m a ruined woman, unmarriageable by contract now, and for what gain?”

  “I know it’s traditional for you to . . .” He trailed off, unsure how to best express the custom of choosing a mate from a buffet of dossiers compiled by the bride’s family.

  “It’s the only way to safeguard our heritage and cultural identity,” she said.

  But he could tell she was only parroting her grandfather; and her regret came from disappointing the old man in his last days. “For what gain? Freedom. If you’d accepted one of the choices your grandfather offered, you’d be bound for life, no matter how you felt.”