Chapter XI | Happiness Petals

“It wasn’t us,” Lana texted Claude over the night. “I swear on my pride.”

“I know that…” he muttered to himself, squeezing his phone so hard the glass cracked. “But what am I supposed to do?”

The Endwolves had a traitor, or possibly multiple traitors, among them. Claude knew it for certain now. Not only were the emblems on their cloaks identical to the real deal, but the weapons they’d used were his. They were the firearms he offered to Lana’s family himself, marked just in case something like this happened. A traitor, but who? They had a rigorous vetting process, and they were all born and raised in the Undersea District.

“Your Grace,” Sir Kamran said from outside the tent. “Lord Timothy Tom and your uncle are here to speak with you.”

“Let them in.”

The tent flaps opened, and the two men walked in. He hadn’t spoken to his Minister of Intelligence a single time since he appointed him, so his appearance now surprised him. And his uncle was there too, of course. He had a way of getting into affairs he had no real authority for getting into.

“Where’s the bride?” Lord Timothy asked.

Claude hung his head and turned his phone off. “Asleep in her father’s tent. It’s been a long day.”

“Good,” Timothy said. “It’s prudent the High Priest not overhear what I’m about to say.”

“Have you finally started on that job of yours or something?” Claude said, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Listen, Claude,” his uncle demanded. “For once, just listen.”

Hearing his uncle speak again for the first time in days made him exhausted. No, it made him finally feel the exhaustion that had been accumulating in him ever since his coronation. He rubbed his eyes and squeezed the bridge of his nose and realized that all he wanted to do was sleep. He wanted to see his bride, who was kept away from him, and Lana, who no one would approve of, and… He had no other friends. It was a startling realization. Those two were the only people in his life that he actually felt close to.

“The attack done today was not orchestrated by the Endwolves,” Timothy said. “We have insider knowledge that you can trust, so please… trust. It was the Church. The Lord August Caecilius himself hired some random street rats to do this for him.”

“Do you have proof?”

Timothy stepped forward. “Two of their JANITORs confessed everything. That’s all the proof we need.”

“Do you really believe that?” Claude chuckled. “You have a voice recording, I’m guessing? Oh yeah, we could leak it to the public, and they would whisper. But then what? August would climb up to his podium in front of his audience and preach, and they would forget it in a moment. Because otherwise, none of them will be saved in death. Besides, do you know how many of August’s men were killed in that attack? Six. They’ll never believe your proof. And neither will the court, of course. All we have is the word of a couple of nameless JANITORs who probably have it out for their leader anyways.” Claude finally looked up at the two of them and found their faces locked in frustration. He smiled at that. “I could always just kill him. Think that would solve everything?”

“Maybe…” Timothy began to say, but Claude slammed his fist on the bedding below him, and the earth quaked.

“It wouldn’t! Even if I could… do you think she’d ever forgive me for that?”

“Then what do we do?” Timothy said.

Claude sat in silence and refused to meet the eyes of the other two men. He sat for many minutes until Timothy and Morris took a seat as well, and all in silence as they sought solutions in the night. Then finally, a spark. “Do you know who’s at the Head Church in Layer 1 right now?” Claude asked.

The entirety of his Upper Clergy had all come to attend the wedding ceremony and were among the many camping out now, so the answer was one that Timothy and Morris arrived at simultaneously. “Nobody important,” they said.

“Tell nobody where you’re going,” Claude commanded. “Leave now and be quick. Take anything that looks remotely incriminating. Any vital information at all that we can use to lure him out. Understand?”

They nodded.

“Then go. Now.”

Compared to the obnoxious rabble of the wedding parade, the Head Church near the center of Layer 1 was almost completely barren, especially now at night on the cusp of dawn. The only sound that remained in the area was of the massive fountain before the church building, where a detailed sculpture of the Goddess herself summoned an infinite falls from the urn she lifted. Timothy paused to admire the gorgeous figure of her, his gaze wandering up from her marble toes to her marble chest, where they stopped and lingered until Morris elbowed him in the side.

“Eunin men are all the same,” he said whilst shaking his head.

Timothy slapped Morris on the back and countered with, “All men are the same,” before moving along to the doors. Morris hung his head, which prevented him from noticing how the neck of the statue craned to look at them, and how its detailed marble pupils dilated as it captured the two in its gaze.

“Something’s wrong,” Timothy said, pausing right before the doors. “The power is off in the area.”

Morris furrowed his brows and looked around. “How can you tell? The fountain is still running.”

“I’m augmented, remember?” Something seemed to capture Timothy’s attention then and he dashed off to the side of the building, where he caught an injured fake-wolf skulking about. He was already limping and bleeding from his arm, but Timothy kicked his knee in and sprained his leg. “He’s the only one here.”

The fake-wolf had remained silent through the whole ordeal, and continued still as Timothy cuffed him and threw him to the dirt again. The criminal only ever glared at them, with eyes like a feral cat’s. Morris felt instinctively that he did not want to be left alone with this man, but he found he had no choice as his only partner was already gone in the building through a window along the wall. He wondered what he should do. Stay and guard the man to ensure he not get away, or take him into trusted hands himself. And if so, which hands? The Great Spire was the closest, but only the ministers were there now. He trusted the false wolf with neither the Baron Kavesta nor Tristan the Train for almost completely opposite reasons.

Struck with sudden decision paralysis, Morris merely unholstered his E-15 energy pistol and chose to wait there until Timothy had finished his search.

Lana had been watching the wedding on the communal television, live with Rubin and Tucker and several other wolves as well. Besides them, the rest of the room was full too, corners stuffed with a truth that she had kept hidden from Claude when he first came to visit.

Nearly every endtowner in Pyraleia, including the wolves, had become addicted to the petals of the ailia flower over the past few years. So much so that many made a living off of harvesting them from the fields every morning to sell to a variety of distributors that could reach every nook and cranny of their endlayer. Now in every hallway of every steelhouse, and in the alleys between, you could find someone chewing on the colorful petals, scrunched into a ball with a blissful smile on their face. It produced a happy chemical in the brain. Extremely potent.

Rubin spun one such blossom between his fingers while they watched. “It’s not visibly apparent by those who eat the blossoms, but each bite contributes a change to their body on a cellular level.” He then held the flower up to his mouth and bit into a petal.

“Hey!” Lana exclaimed, slapping it from his hand. “You just said—”

He smiled pleasantly at her, something he almost never did, and held up his hands in innocence. “At the average rate of consumption, the cells are able to revert to their typical state before anything noticeably harmful occurs. Of course, if it’s taken in large amounts over perhaps decades… I’m sure it’d then be obvious what had been happening.”

“How did you figure all of this out?” Lana asked.

“In the lab, I ground up the petals to increase the concentration of the drug by a little over a hundred times. I fed the dose to one of my resident rats, and the result… wasn’t pretty, to say the least.”

Lana scratched her head in silent anguish. She already had a hundred things on her plate, and this was yet another thing to worry about. Another thing that was practically impossible to deal with in any capacity on her own. The drug was too widespread already, and the people loved it too much. Even if Claude himself outlawed it, they lacked the manpower to enforce it. “Rubin, can you synthesize a version that keeps the high but hinders the negative effects?”

“I can certainly try,” he said, picking the flower back off the ground to munch on it some more.

“It’s the best we can do now,” she thought, placing her attention back on the television. They had been watching the wedding parade on Channel 11, which was the one that seemed to have the clearest visuals, and had also given them access to what the bride and groom were saying. Moreover, her patron, Tristan the Train, had told her the channel was an ongoing pet project of his, and to keep an eye on it. In all honesty, she’d found that she spent less time with the little minister than she either wanted or expected, but the little time she did spend with him was invaluable in teaching her how to navigate the political world of the Upper District. Tristan didn’t trust Claude, and Claude didn’t trust Tristan, but through her, they could work together.

The attack had been broadcasted live on every channel, and the 11th was no exception. When it happened, Lana, Ulysses, and Tucker had been rigorous in their investigation. There were no traitors, no matter what Claude had claimed. Every wolf had been in the Ends when it happened, and the firearms he had given them were all left unused in their containers. Claude told her to especially keep an eye out on Rubin, but Lana insisted that it was far more likely to be a spy in his own ranks. He had yet to respond to that.

She had known Rubin her whole life. They were about the same age, and had even learned to walk and talk together. As a pair of kinless souls in this nest of kinless souls, they were as close to real family as you could get. More than that, Rubin had little interest outside of the lab, and his hate for the Church ran deep. It couldn’t be him, Lana knew.

Either way, she didn’t let the attack bother her. The Church framed and defamed them for all sorts of lies, and it never hindered them in any real way before. With Rubin having left to experiment and the broadcast over for the day, Lana left to the public restroom, where she rinsed her face of all her worries. The girl who stared back at her in the mirror looked more tired than she felt, with dark circles under her eyes that she would need to hide with makeup in the morning to visit Tristan in the Great Spire.

She tried a smile, and it felt faker than usual. Had she forgotten how to do it? Really? It was near to the only thing she had complete confidence in. “Am I losing control? Why does it feel that way?” But—she glanced around to make sure no one was around—the frozen carnation still sat cold to the touch in her pocket. She pulled it out to admire, there in the mirror, and held it up to her breast. Her smile brightened. It was proof that he trusted her. She couldn’t betray that trust.

The flower itself in its frigid state was not particularly fragile, but as a flower she worried it would become damaged if she left it alone in her pocket as she had. She couldn’t yet pin it to her breast for true, as she hadn’t yet been officially named, so she wondered if it would be better to store it in a box until then for safekeeping. A glass encasement would be preferable, but she had no such thing. Nor even a box to store any jewelry. Despite how she preened herself for hours every morning to become the desired lucky she finally became, jewelry was never an expense she could afford.

Ulysses would know. He had complete control over the scrap trade in the Ends, and there was certain to be glass about somewhere. The day was dead, and the night was old and aging still, but this little detour before bed couldn’t hurt. His room was not far.

There was a simple knocking code that they’d established, so they would know if the JANITORs were after them. Five knocks with melodic intervals if it was safe. But she’d known Ulysses since she was a child, and the old man often left his door unlocked out of carelessness, so she simply twisted the doorknob and walked in.

The scent of burning candles and incense struck her right away. Ulysses never burned incense. He disliked the smell, and it reminded him of his time as a slave to the JANITORs.

The opening of the door creaked loudly, almost as if the wood wanted to warn her not to enter. But she still did, barely suspecting a thing, and found the old man she considered her father knelt before a table, surrounded by a circle of melting candles, and praying over a lambskin tome. The heel of her boot pressed into the loose floorboard beneath, and it screamed at her entrance. Leave! Leave! Now!

The old man’s neck craned to look at her, eyes wide and crazed like he couldn’t believe she was there. His face warped and shifted as she stared, from wrinkly to youthful, eyes from black to blue to green to brown. In a moment, he shifted between the appearance of Rubin, then Tucker, then to the face of a stranger she’d never seen before.

The transformation happened quickly. Barely more than a full second. Easily, it could’ve been a trick of the light. A slight hallucination from her lack of sleep. “Ulysses…?” she still said. She even took another step into the room.

“Ulysses isn’t home right now,” the stranger said, and he slammed the tome closed. The gust cast out the flames of his candles into smoke, and darkness enveloped them all at once. Lana gasped, and stumbled back out the door into the cold light of the narrow corridor, and the breeze followed her as the stranger rose to his feet in the shadows. The pipes squealed and a leak spat steam across her face. Run, the noises screamed, and she listened this time, bolting away back down the hall while a chill traveled from her heart and up her throat until she could scarcely breathe.

Claude had only managed to rest an hour at most before it was dawn again, and the wedding parade could continue. Almost too exhausted to move, he dragged himself from his tent, still disheveled from the hectic night before, but was pleasantly surprised to find the staff already at work to get things on the road again. Lilya was surrounded by her bridesmaids, who did nothing but fuss over her despite how perfect she already looked, though her eyes were empty and she didn’t seem to get any sleep either.

“Your Grace.” Lord August Caecilius approached from the side with a smile. He had assigned his Pillar RINGKNIGHT, Sir Adonis Calista, to watch over August under the pretense of protecting the father. He continued to trail him even now.

“When will the parade continue?” Claude asked as the priest drew closer.

“Oh, as soon as you make yourself presentable.” His smile widened to reveal his pearly molars, perfect as expected of such a holy man. Then he wrapped his arm around the king’s shoulders, and Sir Adonis placed a ready hand on the grip of his sword. Claude waved him down. There was nothing the priest could do to him here. But August pulled the Kid King closer and placed his warm lips right beside his ear. “Lana Rose; Tristan the Train’s lucky. She lives in the Eastern Wing of Layer 6, in Endlight Room 1040. You really thought I didn’t know?” Then he stepped back to admire Claude’s face, once so proud and strong, then reduced to a pale, sweaty mess. “Oh, you foolish, fragile thing,” he thought. “It’s true that we can’t defeat you, but the girl is ours, and with her, your carnation as well.”

It didn’t take long for Timothy to find what he was looking for. An exchange of letters, hidden in a locked drawer and beneath a false bottom in August’s office. They described the details of the hit, the team composed of particularly zealous JANITORs, equipped with suicide pills and arms provided by the Church. All members of the squad were to eat the pills immediately upon the mission’s end. Then what was that JANITOR outside the church doing?

The very last letter he skimmed through described something far more important. It was an inventory mismatch, penned by Nico Calista. It was addressed not to August, but to the Baron Jean Kavesta, incumbent Minister of Resources. Apparently, right before they left to depart for the HUNTERs, they found that two of their prized rootsteel bullets had gone missing.

Timothy understood the implications of this intercepted message almost right away. He shoved the letters into his pocket before dashing out his office door and down the ornate halls of the Church before clambering back out the window he’d entered in. Already, he started to grow his paleplate from his right hand while he pulled his sword from its sheath and commanded the old man to shoot.

Morris Morsylis still had his E-15 energy pistol primed and ready, but the JANITOR’s bullet left its cartridge first, scorching a hole through his black cloak where his own gun had been concealed. Timothy’s blade was raised at just the right angle for the bullet to strike it first—instantly shattering a web into the steel, beginning from impact and out across the rest in shards—before continuing into his shoulder. There, it penetrated his paleplate without issue, and bore a hole through his bare flesh before shooting out the other side.

The young lord cried out in pain, but continued on and shoved the small shattered edge that remained of his sword into the JANITOR captain’s neck. He choked on his steel for a moment before his eyes rolled to the back of his head, and he went quiet in death. Timothy left the hilt in the man’s neck and backed off, wiping the thick blood from his face with his sleeve, his other arm finally dropping to hang limp from the pierced shoulder.

“My paleplate had grown in time,” he said through labored breath. “It was a rootsteel bullet. They have another. We need to warn the king.”

Morris stared at the E-15 he had failed to use as his hands trembled. “We have no need to worry.”

“A rootsteel bullet can kill anyone.”

“Not Claude! You don’t understand, boy. You’ve never seen him like I have. He’s unkillable. That’s the whole point.” He looked away. “That was the whole point.”

Timothy released his grip on Morris and looked out across the perfectly flat and empty landscape of Layer 1. “Then what do we do?”

Lana slammed her foot into the ground to brake. Momentum piled the loose carpet up until her shoulder rammed into the aluminum wall along the tight corner. She kept on. Down the hall again to her room where she’d once carved a secret path to the plumbing alleys. From there, she could make her way to the end of the Ends, to the outer stairs along a structural support between layers. With those, she could make it all the way to Layer 2, where she could reach Claude for help.

Silence filled the hallway to her room, and the lights flickered at her appearance up until she reached her door and scrambled for the keys. Darkness. Light. Over and over until she found them and rammed the right one into the lock and shoved herself in. The door closed on its own behind her, and she pressed her weight back against it as her knees gave in and bruised as they hit the hardwood floor.

Ulysses is the traitor. No, they changed their face right in front of me. Where’s the real Ulysses, then? How long have they been there? Is their shapeshifting some sort of new technology? In that case, are they a spy for House Kavesta? But that book… Lana gripped her scalp and mussed her hair up until the racket in her head calmed back down.

“You made it here fast.” A woman with a face like Lisica Longrove’s, someone Lana didn’t know, appeared from the shadow of her room where she kept her secret exit. “I just finished sealing up your little path, but man… I really didn’t want to run into you again. We’ve known each other for so long, after all.”

“Four years,” Lana realized. “He’s been dead for four years?”

“Afraid so.”

“And the face you’re wearing now—is that your real one?”

For some reason, the question made the shapeshifter’s expression collapse. “Who knows,” she might’ve said, but Lana didn’t let her. She took advantage of the lull there and leapt to her bedside where her hammer leaned against the wall, its polished stone head almost gleaming at her to reach for. Her fingers brushed against the hickory handle before it was ripped away from her, wrist pinned behind her back and head shoved into the mattress.

“Don’t try it,” they said, voice shifting from feminine to masculine behind them. “They’re already here.” Gross hands ran down along her body until they reached her pocket and pulled out the frozen carnation from within. “I’ll be keeping this safe for you.”