Pale Kings

Chapter 1 - THE TRICKSTER AND THE CROW

It was eleven o'clock, and that time of year had come again.

He stood on his penthouse balcony, and looked down at the world of stone below. The city turned and turned beneath him, blurring into hues of green and black and gold, and all Thomas could do was look on. Times would pass, and the world would change, but nothing could touch his life.

Behind him, inside his dark and lavish apartment, his assistant spoke into a sleek silver phone, her voice a soothing murmur in the emptiness, as she made all arrangements necessary for the meeting to take place. Rowena Corvus had been with him for over twenty-five years, loyal to a fault and dedicated to nothing but his comfort and happiness. In his opinion, the poor woman had been fighting a losing battle for too long, but he couldn't bring himself to do the right thing and let her go.

Alone inside a world of others is never truly alone. The words came to him as the whisper of a distant memory. Or perhaps it had been a dream. In either way, it was a voice long silenced to him. He searched the streets below for some familiar sight, a face, a voice, but nothing known returned to him in his lofty heights.

"Have I ever told you that I hate it when you're in one of your contemplative moods?" Rowena muttered, leaning her slender form against the balcony doors.

"Have I ever told you that you look lovely when you're cross with me?" Thomas shot back over his shoulder. "I mean that. The tiny furrow between your eyes is giving me palpitations." He smirked as he dismounted the stone railing, his movements much too fluid for a man his size. He towered over six feet, with slim muscles that belied his true strength, and smooth fair skin which sometimes, at night, seemed too pale.

Rowena gazed at him with disapproval, and the tiny furrow between her eyes grew larger. Thomas wiggled his eyebrows suggestively, and just like that, Rowena's dowdy front vanished with the cold night air. She couldn't help but smile up at Thomas, the man to whom she had dedicated her life, even though he was nothing more to her than an employer. This thought made the smile disappear from her face, but in consideration of the night Thomas had ahead of him, the frown didn't return.

"You should take yourself more seriously, Thomas, and if not that, then at least do me the honor."

"Ah, yes. Seriousness above all," his own imitation of a smile faded, and he cleared his throat. "So, on to business, shall we?"

"Yes, let's do business tonight. I heard that tonight is a good night for business. The right kind of moon is out, or something like that," she answered.

"And where did you hear that, darling?" Thomas inquired with a raised eyebrow.

Rowena half-turned to him, and Thomas was treated to the near perfection of her profile. Her high cheekbones, the delicate slope of her nose. She had the look of a bird. Not the robust exotic beauty of tropical birds, with their feather splashes of a thousand colors. Rowena, with her fair skin and white blond hair, had the fragile intensity of a carrion bird. One silver-gray eye gazed at him, as Rowena cocked her head slightly to the right.

"I have my contacts."

Her response didn't surprise him. At times, Thomas believed that Rowena knew more about this sordid world behind the shadows they both inhabited than he did. She had gotten into this by force, but he dared say she remained in it by choice. She had found out how adept at keeping things hidden she was, and had never looked back.

And so, here they were.

"Very well, your contacts have indicated that tonight is the perfect night to take care of this. So, let us do just that," he said, walking past a startled Rowena into the kitchen.

She had thought perhaps Thomas would put up more of a fight. It was no secret that he despised this night of the year most out of all the others. And yet, this year she had missed all the planning and plotting, the escape attempts, the whining excuses. There had been nothing but silence from him on the matter. If you didn't know Thomas, perhaps you wouldn't have noticed anything amiss. But Rowena did know him. And she could spot the strangeness in his behaviour a mile away in the dark.

There was only one reason why Thomas would have acted this way on the eve of the night of kings. He had a plan.

Rowena had spent years of her life looking after Thomas Dark, and she wasn't about to let him ruin all of her hard work over a childish whim. She had to find out what Thomas had planned for tonight. And she would stop him. Before all was destroyed.

She walked into the kitchen, and found Thomas staring at the blade of a knife.

He seemed lost somehow, in thoughts she had no hope of ever defining. She wondered if he saw something behind the glint of steel in the blade. She was about to speak, to ask him what he was staring at with such intensity, when he raised his eyes to hers and asked, in a quiet, even tone:

"Hungry?"

He lowered the knife towards the marble-topped counter and sliced out two thick chunks of whole wheat bread. He used the same blade to spread a healthy helping of mayonnaise over one of the slices.

"I'm making a sandwich. Want one? I'm not going to ask again," he warned.

"No, thank you." Rowena didn't look amused. "I thought we were going to talk business."

"So, talk. I promise I'll listen," he replied, turning around to rummage through the refrigerator. "To almost everything you say."

"I wish, just once Thomas, you could take this night seriously."

"I am being serious, darling." He continued to build his sandwich. "And in case you were wondering, I have by now learned to handle nights like tonight rather well. I don't know why you're worried. What makes tonight different from all the others we've survived together, Rowena?" he asked, hoping she would give an honest enough answer. He sliced a tomato, and contemplated adding avocado to his sandwich's third layer.

Rowena stared at him through narrowed eyes, measuring her words before speaking them out loud.

"I think you're hiding something from me, Thomas," she answered in a whisper. "And whatever it is you think you'll change with your machinations, I want you to know that it won't be your fate. You were born to be this, and can choose nothing else. Understand that Thomas. It will all be better after that." She took a deep breath, and braced herself for what was surely coming.

Thomas was silent for several minutes. He didn't look up at Rowena. He stood there, in the middle of his fancy modern kitchen, and he was as pale and still as a statue carved from the finest white marble.

At last, after what seemed an eternity of bated breaths, his eyes rose to hers and he opened his mouth. He lifted the enormous sandwich up so she might behold it like art.

"My masterpiece of cheese and ham!" The exclamation rang across the kitchen and through the spacious apartment. It was an exaggerated ode for an exaggerated snack. Rowena gawked at him, her mouth hanging open. She didn't know whether to be amused, or angry, or even scared of Thomas at that moment. This night of kings would forever be for her a night of firsts.

"We should get a move on," Thomas mumbled between bites. "It should be going on midnight about now."

He strode out of the kitchen, and when Rowena did not follow, he stuck his head in through the small window which looked out of the kitchen and into the dining room.

"Oh, and before I forget, will you get a hold of the coffin maker's daughter. I believe we might require his services soon."