Xander de Vine Tempest

Tempest

chapter one: the house of glorious dead

The House of Nyctos, home of the original Lord Nyctos who served as Bone Warden to the first Emperor, stuck like a growth of black crystal out of the surface of Deimos. It was a sprawling gothic manor with a heavy emphasis on dark corners, the Glorious Dead and skulls. The family were traditionally necromancers, so this was no great surprise. They were also the unopposed spymasters of the empire, up to their elbows in the political secrets of the solar system.

To any of the other grand families, they were mysterious and untrustworthy and dark and sexy. But when you’d been working in the house as long as I had, you stopped seeing the smoke and mirrors. They were as catty as any other noble house, far too interested in gossip, far too quick to get involved in servant drama if they were bored enough, and far too vain.

In the portraits gallery, it was clear to see the genetic through line, dark haired, angular cheek bones, dark eyes and a creepy little smile. After a few years working in the house, I was pretty sure I could pick out a Nyctos at three hundred paces. It was the sneer I think, when you’d stretched too far to wipe down a gilt frame and your back started to twinge, you’d end up making eye contact with one of the painted dead and their knowing little smirk.

Of course, the paintings were preferable to the living members of the family. Stepping out of the portrait gallery took you nearly directly onto the main living quarters of half the family. Not the Lord and Lady and Heir themselves, they were sequestered deeper into the mausoleum-like

house. No, this was the realm of the shitty cousins and snooty extended family. I didn’t understand how anyone needed a family this big, I just had Kostas, and it seemed far easier than the balancing game they all played with each other.

I say game, I mean more of a war. The Nyctos family was often at war with itself, the apparent downside of being entirely populated by sneaks and spies. Alliances came and fell, once in a while a servant would be recruited and then promptly murdered. Luckily, I was kept out of it, but not by any well meaning benefactor. I was kept out of it because legally speaking, I wasn’t even a person.

I am Imus, the non-caste. The untouchable, undesirable. Slave caste. Not even a rung on a very long ladder. There were no Imus families, we were delivered by shuttle a few weeks after birth and raised by other Imus at the compound. We were expected to fulfil our tasks and be back at the compound before the curfew bell, and to stay there until the morning bell. Our jobs were mainly manual labour, though some of us managed to get assigned to the house. My assignment here came after a very long sentencing at the factory, which definitely had a name, but we’d always just called it the factory.

There were thin scars on the back of my hand, disappearing up into the dark blue-grey sleeve of my house uniform. If you’d followed them, you could have seen the scars all the way up my arm, across my shoulders and down my spine, where the neural connectors had been. There were machines in the factory that needed that nervous system connection to work, and I was lucky I still had all my sensations.

Lost in reverie, half-way into a hidden fuse box, I didn’t notice the thin figure ghosting towards me until they had stopped beside me. Now, normally, a servant would have to follow the protocol of turning and bowing before greeting the member of the family by name or title.

I turned, kept my head down and dropped to one knee, making no sound. Silent and obedient, exactly how we were expected to be. When I first came to the house I found it humiliating, but now I just wanted

whoever it was to move on, so I could get back to cleaning or fixing or whatever it was I was told to do.

“Good morning, Sticks. You may stand,” said a voice with practiced levels of amusement and benign authority.

So I stood, still keeping my eyes downcast, but I didn’t have to look at him to know who he was. Thaddeus Nyctos, cousin of the Heir Apparent to the seat of Secret and Bone. He was one of those people who could put you on edge just by standing there, with a thin little smile on his mouth. A year or two older than me, but still a good three inches shorter than me.

I waited for him to speak again, but as moments ticked by, I realised he wasn’t going to. Was he waiting for me to speak? I couldn’t speak to him without permission – was this another Nyctos game? A trap that meant another beating or dock in scrip?

Without thinking, I glanced at him, looked directly into dark purple eyes before staring intently at polished wooden floorboards.

“Don’t be so coy, dear, it doesn’t suit you,” he drawled and I could just picture his thin, disgusting, white little smile that let you know he thought he was the most charming person you’d ever met. “I just wanted to speak with you before my wonderful cousin has a chance to drag you off to the training hall again.”

Dread ached through my body, another endless session of training for nothing with Mare Georgina Palatine Nyctos. I must’ve grimaced, as Thaddeus clucked at me.

“Oh don’t look so sad darling, it’s not the only thing I’ve come to warn you about. They’re moving the Capturio to tomorrow after all.”

At this I did look up into his skinny, sharp face, matching his little grin with confusion. The Capturio had never applied to me, never applied to any Imus. It was a chance for those better than us.

“Yes, I believe there may be some news tonight that won’t go over very well. But of course, it doesn’t apply to you. Not anymore.”

His words were stilted and awkward, then he stood there, smiling his stupid smile, before winking and walking off. This was how most

interactions with staff were in the house, especially when the family were playing a game. I only wondered briefly where I was supposed to take this piece of information, before realising it was probably meant to be delivered to Mare. No idea why, but I’d probably get in trouble if I didn’t.

Still, if I could avoid training for as long as possible, I would. So I went back to fiddling with the fuses and wires inside of the walls, one of the aunts had been complaining that the flickering light was giving her a headache. So, here I was to fix it in a wonderful waste of time, there was nothing wrong with the light. Instead, I fixed in the best way I could: by making a grand show of fixing it with a great number of tools that weren’t necessary, taking out, cleaning and putting the fuses back in with great gusto and then cleaning everything my filthy below-caste hands had touched.

It’d never failed me yet, and the decorative fuse box lid clicked satisfyingly back into place. I’d finished packing up my tools and was about to head to the nearest servant’s corridor, my hand resting on the hidden handle of the faux stucco pillar, when yet another voice called out to me.

“Sticks.” Sharp as iron, colder than the grave, more the voice you would ascribe to some ancient evil come from the soil to render it barren and murder kittens.

I considered keeping moving, the voice had frozen me in place, sure, but I was right outside the servant corridors. They were a warren of tight passages no Nyctos would be seen dead entering (they had their own, nicer secret passages after all). I turned the handle and opened the door and was promptly yoked back at the neck.

Struggling, I craned my head around to see that a skeleton’s arm had grown from one of the many osseous features of the house and grabbed the collar of my jacket. The false pillar swung out of my hand and clicked shut, very dissatisfying.

The skeleton hand gripped the back of my neck and forced me to look at the Heir Apparent, who was pursing her lips and striding towards me. Mare Nyctos was five foot five and full of a seething hatred she could’ve

used to grow another few inches and be just as tall as her fellow high castes. Instead, she tended to direct that boiling rage at me, as it had always been ever since we were kids. She was thin faced, with short black hair clipped at her jaw, though a thick streak of white reached all the way from the crown of her head and over her eyebrow. Almost like someone had taken a brush of whitewash to her as a baby.

Mare strode right up to me and fixed me with a frozen glare of sea-glass green eyes, which in any other face would have been beautiful. I, in turn, checked that no one else was in the corridor, that I could hear no other footsteps approaching, before reaching behind my head and crushing that skeleton arm in my fist.

“Don’t fucking do that again,” I said, keeping my voice low.

She watched the crumbling pieces of bone fall out of my fist and then rolled her eyes.

“Dramatics don’t suit you. Come, we have work to do.”

This further cemented my position that no one in this house could talk like a normal human person.

With very little choice, I followed Mare. -

Two hours later, I was still standing in their ‘Grand Hall of Combat Engagement and Duelling,’ which was a fancy way of saying: “This is where the nobility beat each other up.” It was certainly ornate, with tastes taken straight from the family crypt. The grinning craniums of the vitally challenged looked grimly down on me, whether true bone or carved or warped out of a Ferrarius’ metal weaving hands. Weapons of all make and calibre lined the walls, but I was only trained in two. The partial flamberge zweihander and two blood-iron sickles for more personal attacks.

I didn’t like the sickles very much, hard to like them when you knew how they been made. There was a reason it was called blood-iron, after all. Might’ve even had mine in it.

You’d get ninetwelve to twelvenine of your healthiest workers to gather around a cauldron and bleed, any way you could make them. Then,

when they were nearly dead, you sent them off to a medical drone, before bringing in the next batch. The necromancers would take the blood away and weave it into weapons, stronger than regular iron, sharper than obsidian, and perfect for death wizards.

Today, they were the weapons I would be practicing with, as apparently I couldn’t hide my distaste for the things well enough. So, obviously, Mare had to force me to use them.

“Hands higher,” the last daughter in Nyctos’ venerable line barked at me.

“Piss off,” I hissed back, leaping out of the way of one of her honestly disturbing metal-and-bone constructions.

Despite my ire, I raised my hands. The sweat on my palms was making the grip slide, which wasn’t good when you were wielding two curved blades sharp enough to cut a finger clean off without noticing.

Erin Hosegood

Erin Hosegood (they/them) is a queer writer writing queer characters with (mostly) happy endings.

They grew up in the Middle-of-Nowhere, North Devon with only cows and books for company, so it is no surprise that they ended up studying a BA in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. Whilst there, they fell in love with writing for children and the bustle of the city. Once they graduated with a first-class degree, they refused to leave and enrolled on the MA in Writing for Young People.

When they’re not writing, they spend my time taking photos of books in unusual places, making Spotify playlists, and desperately attempting to learn the ukulele.

erin.hosegood@outlook.com / @erin_writesgood

About For The Record

Struggling musician, Alex Blake aka. alex in wonderland, is offered a fasttrack to fame as the support act for breakout band of the year, AntiSocial. The catch? Quinn Thorn – AntiSocial’s bassist, the music scene’s darling, and Alex’s ex-boyfriend.

Is this opportunity of a lifetime worth reopening the wounds he’s been trying his best to ignore?

Alex will have to decide how far he’s willing to go to achieve his dreams. And exactly what he is prepared to lose.

For the Record is a coming-of-age story about achieving dreams, falling in love with yourself, and doing what’s right for you even if it hurts.