Perigee - Chapter 34: Chapter 34

Hell was the sound of Quentin's breathing.
His condition had deteriorated within a day. A fever of 103, Imani had said. The blood transfusions weren't working anymore and the last one had somehow induced a series of violent seizures that, thankfully, Jaylin wasn't around to see.
The medic with the glasses had been called back for help, and he paced around the room in a drought of silence, recording vitals, taking blood samples, examining the corroding wounds. When Jaylin was finally allowed to see Quentin, a ventilator had been strapped over his mouth, oxygen pumping through the endotracheal tube inserted into his windpipe.
Since then, his breathing had sounded almost mechanical. A breath taken, a breath given, each of them hissing through the tubing of his mask like an old, rotting engine.
There had been a deep fracture in Jaylin's chest from the moment he saw it. And for a long time, he sat there, listening to that awful sound, watching what small bit of Quentin's sleeping face he could see beyond the mask. Reality had been severed its ties with him and he lost his grip on the Earth, floating mindlessly in a desensitized pool of soft-spoken words as Imani and Lisa whispered hushed things in the next room over.
"I'm sure you wouldn't want to think about it."
"Think about it?" Lisa's frigid voice shivered. "Why would I want to think about it? I don't want to talk about this. We aren't there yet."
"I wouldn't be doing this if he didn't ask me to," whispered Imani. "You're the main recipient of his life insurance policy. His only request was that you use the money to buy the house."
"Fuck the house," said Lisa. "Fuck the money."
Jaylin felt deadened. Too numb to cry or feel the warmth of Quentin's still hand beneath his fingers. Something else built in him. Something he'd been feeding for three days now.
"He wants you to be prepared, Lisa. That's all."
"Well, I'm not," she said. "I'm not."
Jaylin lifted Quentin's hand and pressed his lips to the knuckles, and then laid it to rest gently on the bed. The whispers all but withered the moment he stepped into the living room; Imani watching him pass, Lisa staring down at her white knuckles—the both of them gone silent. He moved past them briskly, to the front door of the Watch.
"We don't turn in the front," said Imani. "Go to the back and stay within a three mile radius. The forest is smaller than it looks."
Jaylin paused only long enough for her words to come and pass. Then he shoved the door open and shed his shirt from his chest.
Becoming the lich was one of the most painful things he'd ever experienced. It was like cracking himself open and removing his skeleton, bone by bone. But each time he broke free from his flesh, that pain was less. He could turn quickly now—one fast, agonizing burst into a hulking black beast. The lichund. The reason Quentin was dying—the reason several wolves were already dead.
Jaylin hated the lichund in him. He hated it. But he knew that a distance gained between him and the beast was one less footstep in motion. If he was going to put an end to Ziya, he needed that monster in him.
"We are not wolves ourselves," Nicon had explained. "We don't share their DNA. We don't become them because we are them, do you understand what I'm saying?" Jaylin never understood what he was saying. "What we do share with the wolves is a shell. We share a space with their spirits, you see. You've dreamed of their heavens, surely. For me, it's a vast desert canyon at twilight. These are the places our wolves lived their lives. In times of need, they take us here. We respect them and they'll guide us in the direction we need to be guided."
How could he respect something he didn't understand? Something that had ruined his life time and time again.
He wasn't a wolf, he was a demon.
"So be it," Nicon had told him. "What matters is finding a way to control the reigns. To break the beast. It's a simple matter of appreciating the relationship you have with your curse. If you want to turn, turn. If you want to hunt, hunt. These are yearnings of the spirit. These are the offerings we give them."
As far as spirits went, Jaylin wasn't sure if he believed Nicon's wisdom. But he was powerless on his own, so he let the lichund guide him, and once the beast took over, Jaylin was gone. Whatever conscious ties he had to the lich were cut the moment it took over his body. It wasn't this way for the wolves, but maybe that control was something he would gain over time. The ability to recall where he'd been—to know where he was going. For now, it was like he was sleeping, and ever so often he'd dream faintly of the forest.
He woke an hour later, beside the body of a mule deer—its flesh gnawed away, down to the bones of its ribs. Jaylin hated the sight of it, but he took a moment to admire the horns, branching out of its skull. Once upon a time, this very thing happened in a nightmare. Those dreams he used to have before the Bad Moon—an image a half-dead baby deer on the stony shoreline. They were more foreboding than he ever imagined—but there was no time to cope. It wasn't the first he'd killed, anyway. Last time, he'd taken the head off of a mallard, and nearly cried when he woke beside the body.
When he returned to the Watch with the bird in his hands, Nicon saw the despondency in him.
"Wolves hunt, Jaylin. It's life for them—each one of them, down to the souls inside of us. We can't interfere with that."
That crushing guilt was wanned this time, if only because of Nicon's words. He still felt sorry for the gutted deer, but he wasn't the one to kill it. It was all due to the monster he carried.
At the least, he wouldn't waste the meat. He carried the beast back over his shoulder—a feat he would have never managed without the strength the curse had thrust on him. The creature had to of weighed the same as Jaylin himself, and yet he was only somewhat winded by the time he reached the Watch. Izzy doused him clean of blood with the garden hose, and Elizabeth hurried out of the house with a knife to skin the deer.
His shower couldn't have lasted more than thirty minutes, but by the time Jaylin stepped outside, what once was a setting sun was now a stark night sky. The fireplace had been lit, soft classical music flittering from a speaker on the mantle. A few of the sentinels were hurrying about the kitchen, tossing spices in with the venison stew.
"Miranda, are you just now cutting the carrots? They won't soften in time!"
"Whatever, I'll boil them separately."
"Guys. This doesn't taste right."
Not a moment later, the front door to the watch batted open. Alex, Matt, Sadie and the witches heaved their things inside, looking wasted from the flight over—Matt most of all, who flopped back on the couch, fanning himself with his baseball cap.
Sadie crashed into Jaylin with a hard embrace.
"Thank god we're home," she croaked. "I never want to even look at an airplane again."
"Rough flight?" Jaylin asked, letting Sadie slip from his arms to wedge herself on the couch beside Alex and Matt.
Before any of them could answer, the soft pitter-patter of Tisper's feet hurried down the stairs and she peeked around the corner, her old band camp T-shirt tied in a knot at her hip. "Good, you guys are back. What'd you figure out?"
"Um, well..." Sadie murmured.
"There might be a way we can save Quentin," said Alex.
Matt was quick to add, "Keyword: might."
"What do you mean might?" Jaylin asked, sinking down into the recliner. The chair heaved back as Tisper dropped onto the arm rest.
Sadie fanned the heat from her face as she recited the line, "Kill the queen and her blood is as good as water. That's what Qamar told us."
Jaylin knew better than to get his hopes up, but that little flurry of something other than despair tingled behind his ribs. "Killing her will save Quentin?"
"Jay," Matt's cautionary tone was an anchor. "It's not as easy as it sounds, alright? I don't want you disappointed if it don't work out."
He opened his mouth to speak, but Tisper planted a hand on his shoulder and gave him an assuring squeeze. One that said clearly, Matt's right for once. Jaylin knew he was, so he let that pang of something good in him die, and reached up to grip at Tisper's fingers.
Sadie popped open her bag and extracted a wad of paper. "We went all through Qamar's library—found information about the birth of the twins, the way the land had been split to accommodate their ruling. But there was really only one book that talked about killing a queen."
"Okay," Tisper drawled, "so what does it say?"
They all hesitated, each of them casting their gaze to the pages in Sadie's hands. Then Alex admitted, "We don't know."
Aster—still standing by the door—frowned and gathered up all the bags around them. "I'll just... take these to your rooms. I'm sorry I can't be of any help."
The little witch hurried up the stairs after Devi and Jaylin disregarded the hungry groan, gurgling about in his stomach. The venison didn't smell like much more than wafting meat, but hunger had come to him in recurring waves since he'd started to welcome the lich. Quentin would have kicked every sentinel out of that kitchen if he knew they were desecrating perfectly good venison.
His stomach groaned again and Jaylin clutched at it. "So you're saying you have the answers, but you don't know the answers?"
"They ain't really straight up answers, alright? More like passages," Matt said. "From some kinda puzzle or poem. Problem is they're not really about Ziya, y'know. They refer to the queen, in general."
"That and we're having trouble deciphering them," Alex said.
Sadie flattened the paper down on the coffee table. "We think they were written this way for a reason. To put the information out there without catching the queen's eye, you know. Like... if someone were to want to start a mutiny."
"Well, then lets go over them together," Tisper proposed.
Matt nodded in agreement and Alex wiped his tired eyes with the neck of his t-shirt.
Sadie cleared her throat and began, "The first passage says, 'the largest of roses will wither when the rain can no longer reach its roots, but a rose without will can shed its petals and be uprooted by water and wind'."
"We've kind of figured this one out," Alex said. "We think it means that a queen can successfully die if she chooses to. Either by self-neglect or suicide."
Jaylin took a deep breath and Tisper's fingers squeezed at his shoulder a second time.
"And the next?" she asked.
"'A tortoise who favors the wicked gallows will one day lose her shell to the throwing stones.'"
Jaylin pushed a pair of frustrated hands up his face. There was no chance in hell Ziya had suicide on her agenda, and this one made no sense to him at all. "What's the next?"
Sadie took a deep breath and read, "The sun doesn't mind the trees that die by its fire, but it is the trees who rise from their ashes, for only the trees can grow tall enough to slay the sun."
The lot of them went quiet after that. Partially because none of them knew the answers to the riddles and partially because they all knew that finding the answers before they lost Quentin would be nearly impossible.
Jaylin felt the tears surge him, suddenly and unexpected. Maybe he'd only been holding them back all this time because a part of him was hoping for some kind of hail Mary solution on their return. It was hopeless—three days gone, and this was all they'd come back with. He could hear Quentin's shallow breathing in the next room over. He could hear it when he wasn't in the room—when he wasn't in the house. He could hear it when he slept, and when he was miles away, laying bloody on the forest floor. The sound of Quentin's breathing was a ghost in his head, and it would still be here. Long after he was gone, Jaylin would still hear it.
He couldn't stand to be touched right now. He pushed Tisper's hand from his shoulder.
"Jay..." Sadie whispered.
And then another voice said, "It's corruption."
Jaylin lifted his head to the bleary small frame of her. Yui stood there, palm held out wide. Sadie delivered the paper to it and she read, "'A tortoise who favors the wicked gallows will one day lose her shell to the throwing stones.' It's talking about hypocrisy and corruption. These aren't poems at all, they're proverbs."
"What do you mean corruption?" asked Alex.
"Listen to it," said Yui. "'A tortoise who favors the wicked gallows'. They might as well be talking about a corrupt king who likes to see his people punished. And then the next part reads, 'will one day lose her shell to the throwing stones'. The king's broken his own laws and now he's facing the repercussions that his people faced before him."
"But how does this relate to Ziya?" Jaylin asked.
Yui's brow scrunched together as she read the line over again. "I'm not sure. Let me try the other. 'The sun doesn't mind the trees that die by its fire, but it is the trees who rise from their ashes, for only the trees can reach high enough to kill the sun.' This one's strange, but it's obviously talking about revenge."
"Ziya's the sun," Jaylin said, "but who are the trees?"
Yui laid the paper back down on the table and frowned. "I'm sorry, I don't know. These are very cryptic pieces."
"We've got one," Tisper said. "We'll figure it out, Jay." She was so reassuring; the sound of her voice, the hand that raked back through Jaylin's hair—but it was all so far from his mind. He was back to being numb.
"I can't sit here waiting until we do," he said. "I'm going to find Ziya."
"Hell no," Matt said. "That creepy bitch can control you like a puppet. It already happened once, remember?"
"I know, but I can't sit here doing nothing. If we can save him, then we have to save him, Matt." He couldn't explain his feelings, he just needed Matt to look. To stare into his face and know, because that's what friends did. That's what they'd always done.
After a long moment, Matt heaved out a breath and pulled his cap from his head to run a hand through his sweat-lick locks. "Shit. Shit, alright. I'm comin' with. But how the hell do we even know where she's at?"
"Not the brightest bunch." In the doorway of the kitchen, Felix stood, Nicon at one side and Bailey at the other. He had an arm hooked around Bailey's neck, and the hound didn't seem so happy to be locked in the embrace.
Felix gave him a hard pat on the chest for emphases and said, "Ye've got about a two dozen wolves right here at yer disposal, pissed about their alpha. Use 'em."
"Unless any of you know where she is, that's not really going to help us," Alex said.
With his free and, Felix pointed to his forehead. "Think. Who's got connections to Ziya? Who put Quentin in that bed? Who used her blood to do it?"
"Andre," Jaylin realized.
"There ye are." Felix served Bailey a hard shove into the room. "Take this one, he'll sniff'em out."
Bailey whirled around. "Says the fuck who?"
"Don't give me tongue, pup," Felix said. "You're already in the shitehouse. But if authority's what ye' need I'll call for Imani."
Bailey slumped—just a slight slouch, but more than enough to tell he'd already taken her lashings and he didn't want another one. "Fine."
"They should still be in California," Nicon said. "They have to have some sort of stronghold here, judging by all the weaponry they carried."
Sadie looked shaken. A bit pale in the face. "Guys, I don't think I can—"
"You don't have to," Jaylin told her. "None of you have to come."
"You know I'm coming right?" said Tisper.
Jaylin took her hand in his again. "I know."
Yui raised her pale palm to the moonlight, glowing through the cracks in the curtains. "I'd like to come also."
"Then I'm going too," Alex said, a little too quickly. "I mean, I'm also coming. Independently of her."
Nicon lifted his chin and gave it a ponderous seat between his thumb and index finger. "I don't think it would be smart to bring too many along. We want to corner Andre alone, not go all in on a gang of men with very deadly weapons at their disposal. You three—" his finger came to point at Jaylin and Tisper, and then with his other hand he aimed one at Matt, "—will be sufficient."
"Us three?" asked Tisper. "More sufficient than a wolf?"
"These men know wolves too tell. But you... you know archery." He turned his head to Matt. "You know guns, yes?"
"I mean... sure?"
"And you," he said to Jaylin, "have motive. Passion. You have the drive to find Andre and to make him speak. Bailey will lead us there. I'll be behind you all."
Jaylin looked to that tall, pointed man, hair braided down to the small of his back and his shirt folds pressed in just the right places. He was so strange—a night prince from a grim fairytale. Too proud to dig his fingers into the dirt, but valiant enough to stand in at the forefront of war. Jaylin never really expected his help—not in an attempt to murder his queen, that was for sure. That was why he had to ask, "You're coming?"
"Despite what he thinks," Nicon said, "I never wanted to be Quentin's enemy. He'd kill me with his own two hands if he knew I was sending you out to find Andre. The least I can do is ensure that you make it back."
"When will you leave?" asked Alex.
"In the morning," Nicon said. "The earlier the better. We'll leave at six. Are we in agreement?"
Sadie was the only one on the couch who didn't nod in approval. She looked instead to the hands in her lap, a seasick wave washed over her.
"Oi, Princess," Felix piped, shoving himself from the door frame. "Wake me before you go."
Tisper peeped an uncertain, "Okay." And as Felix disappeared up the steps, Jaylin caught the way her shoulders rose above her chin. She tucked a lock of hair bashfully behind her ear and tugged at a stray thread on the hem of her shorts.
"You know he's like thirty, right?"
"Shut up."