by K. M. Hade
“Pebbles!” Blood shouts from inside the structure.
The Fells have been patching up the holes in the wall with what looks like clay, and something has been on fire recently. It’s also dark in here now that the holes have been patched and the only light is from the door.
“Watch your step.” Blood slides his arm through mine before I can fall into a big bowl they’ve hollowed out in the corner. “But that’s what we need you to deal with.”
“Deal with it how?”
“Coat it with crystal. Don’t fill it. Just coat it.”
“Why?” I pull myself free.
“So we have water. We don’t have anything else to use as a glaze.”
“How the hell did you dig that? We also don’t have shovels.”
“Rot disintegrated the clay.” He pointed at the patched ceiling. “We have water, dirt, and ScatheFire.”
I would not have thought of that. I contemplate the bowl. If I fuck it up, I’ll put a spear through the ceiling, and that wouldn’t be very convenient. In the distance, some ominous thunder quite unlike any I’ve heard before rumbles. “But the crystal can’t be destroyed. What happens when someone finds it?”
Blood shrugs. “Like when someone finds the crystal forest you created stealing ScatheFire back from an Old One? Would love to hear those rumors ripping through court. But that would mean we’d need to be alive to hear the gossip.”
I lick my cracked lips. So far, everything seems to be going pretty well… compared to how it had been going, which had been terrible. I haven’t managed to accidentally kill anyone. Yet.
Blood moves behind me, teasing the blood in my veins with a gentle caress that tugs the fluid like satin ribbons.
I approach the bowl—which is deep enough the water probably would come up to about my thigh. I lick my lips again, reach for my magic, and try to summon it without yanking crystals up through the bottom of the bowl.
I deliberately try not to reach for Blood or Atrament’s help to do it. Their magic would make it easier, but half of the effort is spent keeping my magic from latching into the Heart bonds. I’m not going to push the issue, even if it means more work for me, or limitations on my powers.
I’m breathing hard by the time I’m done, but I’ve managed to glaze the basin with a lumpy, brilliant coating of crystal.
“I should not be able to do that,” I say, still haunted by the fact my crystal doesn’t disintegrate like it should. It just should not do that. I shudder. I don’t want to be a demigod. I don’t want to be anything except a good Mage. I don’t want to be great, or special, or some godlet who doesn’t even know Her own name.
“But you can.” He heads out the door and shouts to ScatheFire and Rot that the basin’s ready.
Outside, the storm is whipping up.
I weave a few balls of Aether light. It’s so much easier… much easier than it should be. And are the balls still the same color, or are they more yellow? I squint. It’s hard to tell in the red-clay structure.
Rot and ScatheFire lug in water with crude leaky clay buckets that Rot and ScatheFire managed to create out of the dust. There isn’t anything to use as a door. I scout around the immediate area and find a couple of largish-rocks to pile in front of the opening to hopefully guide any runoff out of the structure.
The thunder rumbles. Lightening cracks so bright the world flashes green and the air crackles.
Atrament’s shadows slide into the structure, then he’s revealed by my Aether lights. His shadows slide over the walls, and for a brief second, I’m back in that solitary box.
“Lady Heart,” he says quietly, standing very close, his shadows sliding over everything.
“I’m fine,” I tell him. “Don’t worry about me.”
He turns his gaze to the outside. Dust swirls as the storm kicks up, and thunder crunches across the sky again. Bitter cold comes on the breeze. “I can feel it coming. Can you?”
“Yes,” I say softly.
Rot steps in next, followed by ScatheFire, then Smoke, and finally, Blood. The Captain tells us, “The first drops are starting.”
“How long do you think it’ll last?” I ask.
“If we’re lucky? A day. If we’re not lucky? Three or four days.”
ScatheFire steps over the threshold and deposits a few more rocks in the center of the room. With his magic, he heats them up like coals. The temperature is dropping fast. I sit down, shiver, and think about the pellets in the saddlebag behind me. The others settle in while I draw my knees up to my breasts and pick at the fabric over my shins. ScatheFire plunks himself down next to me, and his cat crawls up out of his boot and sits on his lap.
My familiar slithers over to bask by the hot rocks.
“Don’t be scared of the rain, Pebbles,” ScatheFire says with a grin.
What I’m about to suggest doesn’t feel all that easy to say. “Since we’re going to be here a few days… I could take the thing the mudwitch gave me.”
It feels so heavy to say that. I know I have to do it, but the thought of doing it makes me feel empty and gutted.
Atrament watches from his corner, just a pale face like the moon behind clouds.
Blood doesn’t even pause in pulling out his filthy plait. His fingers deftly separate strands while he thinks. Smoke murmurs, “This may be the best time and safest location to do it.”
“My concern is the lack of water.” Blood nods towards our little makeshift well.
“That will be a concern as long as we are in the ruined lands,” Smoke says.
“The longer she waits, the worse it will be for her.” ScatheFire strokes his familiar.
“I was hoping we could wait until we’re out of the ruined lands,” Blood says. “If something does go wrong, there is no chance of us finding a Verdance.”
“You think we want to be within a thousand miles of a Verdance?” Smoke raises a brow.
“Midwife, Verdance, someone who knows more about this than us,” Blood retorts. “And being thirty miles from a town with a midwife is better than being out here.”
“The longer we wait, the greater the risk something will go wrong.” ScatheFire tucks his cat against his chest like a baby. It purrs and licks his neck.
I had not wanted to turn this into a thing. It’s already such a thing. I resist the urge to run my hands over my face and cry. I know what I’ve got to do. Atrament watches from his shadows, ghoulish and stricken. Why is this so hard? We both know what has to be done. We agreed to it back in the Pit.
Smoke says, as if it’s final, “Everyone here is forgetting we are the Empire’s most wanted criminals. We can’t risk getting captured. Getting closer to Verdances and midwives and plentiful water means risk of capture. If she’s captured, the Empire will make her have the baby. Then they’ll ship her right back to the Pit with Atrament and possibly us to repeat the cycle over and over and over. Rainy days in the ruined lands is the best we’re going to get.”
I gulp down a sob. It’s got to be this way. I dig the small pellet out of my saddlebags before I can think about it too much or anyone can formulate a counter. Rot and ScatheFire and even Blood sort of pull against me, doubtful and worried, and Atrament flickers with guilt and anguish, while Smoke withdraws into his usual proverbial corner, acrid and aloof.
I close my eyes and gulp the pellet down before anyone can stop me.
20
ATRAMENT
She is bleeding. And suffering.
Atrament watches from the wall, unable to disappear completely into the shadows with her Aether lights drifting around the ceiling. He clings to the wall with shadowy fingers, trying to hold his magic and his body very still.
Outside, the storm tears at their shelter. Cold fingers dig into every crevice and crack they can find. Rain pelts the side of the building, punches into the sodden ground, splatters a fan-shaped area beside the entrance. ScatheFire’s hot rocks drive away the chill, and the clay walls capture and radiate the warmth. It is tolerably warm in the
shelter, unless you are sitting beside a draft.
The rain burns and scalds. The horses sensibly cower from the rain. Watering the horses requires two people and a clay bucket. It has been two days.
At first they had thought that the pill would do nothing until a single terrifying cramp struck her. To him, there seemed to be too much blood, although Blood stated there was not that much, and Rot—who had no experience in this but apparently had midwifed for horses and goats and sheep and such—assured him blood and pain were the way of it.
Rot had not been lying when he had said that, but he had not been as confident as he had sounded. Rot’s words and meaning beat against the tendrils between them like moth wings.
It is no comfort, being compelled to watch her curled up in a little ball, shaking with pain, the effort of her breathing committed to holding in cries of pain. He watches, transfixed and horrified that he had done this to her, pregnant or not. That it is because of him that she is having to endure this at all, either as wretched necessity or horrifying precaution.
Surely, there had been a time he could have resisted. There could have been some lie he could have concocted. Something to have avoided this.
She did not blame him for this. Not at all.
The others do not blame him, but not for the same reasons. To them, he is the Warden’s ghoul.
There is no reason to think he is not, except Lady Heart believes he is not. To her, he is Atrament, and with that she strips away all the silent numbness. The existence. The doing the Warden’s bidding because there is nothing but the Pit, save for the times when he was trotted out to amuse guests. The only thing that had kept him sane was that the Warden himself was such a mystery, and that there was nowhere for a creature like him in the Empire.
She is his Heart, and stitching that Fell thread into her chest had spun itself from his own heart. Every stitch had been guided by drinking in the beauty of her soul, having permission to bask in her presence.
Even though he had been stitching her. Even though she had been screaming.
He had fallen in love with her the instant she had entered the Pit. He had sensed her. Felt her. It had been a little thing at first, the love, he had not even realized what it was. His shadows had basked in her presence. He had not been real until she had illuminated the Pit. He had not realized it was love, not even the first day he had seen her at the demonstration, she had barely been real even then. It had been when she had sat on his bed in his grotto, and looked at him with those soft, desperate eyes, her Aether dizzying, and the feeling in his soul had not matched what he should have been feeling in that moment. It had only been in contrast to the expected emotions had he realized his true emotions.
But he is not worthy. He had not existed before her, not fully, not really, and he did not deserve to exist at all.
He is not worthy because he selfishly saturated himself in her while he stitched her. How he had complied with the Warden’s monstrous request knowing it was monstrous, but he had still hardened easily and pleasured himself to thoughts of her. How when she had invited him to touch her he had savored every moment of it.
He is a monster, and his love is probably monstrous, and he will only get in the way. He knows nothing of living outside the Pit except what he learned as a child and what the Wardens needed him to experience. He is as much a construct as anything the Wardens stitch together.
Her life is difficult enough without him getting underfoot. And how will she ever forgive him for enjoying any part of what happened in the Pit?
The other Fells, though. ScatheFire and Rot, they have accepted having a Heart, but they have not embraced it. Not the depth of what she offers, what she has to give them. Blood sees it for what it is, and resists and struggles, and he yanks back every time he catches himself falling into step with her song, which she feels, and absorbs the tearing pain of it without complaint. Smoke simply rejects the idea. And Lady Heart? She does not even wear her proper name; she shies from it like a beaten dog, and the Fells do nothing to comfort her, and she excuses and forgives all of it, again and again.
They should love her more. They should love her like she deserves. She deserves to know she is loved.
His love is filthy and warped.
Rot strokes her hair while ScatheFire warms the stones. She’s naked, her back to him, the stitching of her Aether shining blue-white as it travels down the back of her spine. Her skin is slick with sweat, her hair a matted multi-shaded pewter. Her thighs are splashed with blood. ScatheFire uses dust to soak up the blood that trickles down the back of her thigh. Sometimes there is a clot or clump.
Perhaps they are simply clumps and clots. Perhaps they are something else. It is too early for it to be anything resembling a baby. But are some of those too large? Too pale in the Aether light? Too much like tissue?
Perhaps that is his guilt twisting his heart, the whispering of the Blight.
The waiting is terrible.
She shifts onto all fours and curls into a little shaking ball, her breathing rough and tearing. She tucks her face into her forearms. Rot freezes for a moment, then hesitantly reaches over and rubs the small of her back.
Blood uncurls from his place, goes to their makeshift cistern and scoops up water with one of the shallow cups that Rot and ScatheFire made before the storm. He kneels next to Lady Heart.
“You need to drink,” he tells her.
Rot hooks one thick arm under her, prying her out of her little knot. She whimpers and braces herself on his big shoulder. “Yep, that’s right, just lean on me,” he tells her. Her other arm clutches her lower belly. She’s thin and gaunt from her time in the Pit. Atrament forces himself to look. Her face is a ghoulish mask of pain.
“Sip,” Blood tells her, steadying the cup at her lips with practiced ease. “I swear, Pebbles, you’re sweating so much we could water the horses with it.”
Atrament hides a scowl, but she manages a tormented smile/grimace and a little sound like a moan and a laugh. His heart breaks. He should be the one helping her drink, but he is too filthy and ashamed to touch her. If only the others would love her, even just one of them loves her. Let themselves love her, admit that they love her.
She sips the water and then bows her head against Rot’s shoulder. ScatheFire rubs the small of her back. “Is it letting up any?”
“I think so,” she rasps. Her lips are cracked and bleeding. She shakes as another cramp ripples through her body. “Are the horses getting enough water?”
It’s the first question she’s asked since it’s started. That must be a good sign. He twists his ring on his finger. She’s probably coming through the other side.
“The horses are fine,” Rot says. “You’re not really drinking that much water.”
“But you need to.” Blood grips her hair and pulls her head back so he can press the cup to her lips again.
Atrament clenches his teeth. She is not some prisoner to be wrangled around. Lady Heart, however, does not protest the stern hand.
He only wants one of them, just one, to love her like she deserves to be loved. Because she already loves all of them, and neither she, nor a single one of them, realizes it.
21
CRYSTAL
I’m not sure how long the pain and bleeding lasts. It’s not really bleeding, like when I had my monthly cycles before being given the usual cocktail that suppresses that for adult women, it’s more like… shedding. Whatever was inside of me came out, be it the lining of my womb or something unspeakable conceived in the Pit.
The storm has eased to a miserable drizzle. I’m sweaty and sticky. There’s no soap, and not enough water to sponge even the blood off me. They stripped my clothes off once the pain knocked me into a useless little ball. Never thought I’d think of those rags as “clean” but here we are.
“Where are you going?” ScatheFire grabs me as I stagger under my own weight. “Wait a second, you stupid Aether.”
“I,” I tell him, “am going to go stand in what�
�s left of the rain and let it scald the grime off me.”
“You are going to sit back down.”
I growl at him. “I can handle a little light scalding.”
“A few moments won’t hurt her and will get the blood off her,” Smoke says from his corner.
A little unsteady, I wobble towards the exit, mindful of my tender insides, step over the rocks, and into the drizzle. It instantly scalds my skin, like getting splashed with cooking oil from a pan. It sizzles against my Aether and cuts rivulets through the layer of grime.
“Oh,” I say softly, taking in the landscape. The ruined lands have become a deep, angry red, like a wound. The rain has cut deep trenches and punched pock marks in the terrain. The storm front seems to have dissipated towards the east, with the usual low-hanging maybe-it-will-rain-and-maybe-we-just-hate-you clouds replacing it. The breeze is warm, not cold, and the oppressive heat will be back soon.
I close my eyes and let the stinging drizzle slide over me.
There’s a clarity in the pain. A forbidden sweetness. My insides still feel like they’re full of sharp, hot, angry rocks. I’m exhausted and thirsty and hungry and sick all at the same time, but the rain is a sweet, sharp, clear pain.
My familiar twists itself up around my ankle and hisses.
ScatheFire grabs my wrist. I jolt out of the spell.
“You stupid Aether,” he growls, hauling me back into the shelter. “You’ll melt your blessed skin off!”
“It’s filthy skin!”
“That doesn’t mean you burn it off!” he snaps. “For fuck’s sake… we can’t leave you unattended for an instant.”
Cradling my abused lower body with one arm, I look at the other arm. Red scald marks and peeling skin like a minor sunburn. “It’s not that bad.”
“That’s not the damn point. The damn point is you… you do this sort of…” His fingers curl into my upper arms and he restrains himself from giving me a few solid shakes. Frustration burns and flickers in his eyes, casting strange shadows on the skin around them.