by K. M. Hade
Rot wraps me up in a big, meaty-armed, grimy, smelly hug.
“I’m clean,” I wheeze as he squeezes.
He releases me. He touches my arm.
I twist it a bit so the scar is more visible. “See? It’s under my Aether now. Good as new. Hasn’t bothered me in years.”
“We’ll sleep in a different room,” he says.
“This is fine, don’t make it into a big deal,” I tell him, embarrassed.
“This was a prison. They boarded you up in here,” Rot says.
“I’ve been in prison.”
ScatheFire, his arms wrapped up in sheets, heads out the door. “We’ll go find some other dusty old room.”
“What, were we all going to pile into the same bed like a cuddle puddle of puppies?” I ask.
“We’re not sleeping apart,” Smoke says.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s not safe. This house is too big for us to get spread out. We’re used to being together anyway,” Rot says gruffly.
“We’re also used to not being naked, and I feel pretty naked even if I’m not.” I look down at my shift. It’s thin linen. At least it’s not see-through.
“Are you lot coming?!” ScatheFire bellows from down the hall.
He’s chosen one of the other large suites on the other end of the hall, one that’s usually given to guests. My brother probably was the last person to use it, given some damage to the wall that hadn’t been repaired. ScatheFire throws a sheet at Smoke.
“These beds are large.” Atrament observes. This bed, while not as massive and imposing as the other, is still big enough for a whole damn family.
“I think I’ve lived in shacks smaller than that bed,” Rot agrees.
Blood saunters in with just a towel clutched around his hips and nothing else. “Change of plans?”
“Yeah,” ScatheFire says.
“Apparently Pebbles’ parents used the master suite as a prison for her as a kid,” Smoke says over his shoulder.
“A prison?” Blood echos, a cavalier comment hanging on the end of his tone.
“Her mom broke her arm clean through, then they locked her in here. Boarded over the windows and everything.”
Whatever jib he was going to make, Blood doesn’t say it. Rot throws the sheets at Blood and heads off for his bath while ScatheFire grumbles, and Smoke murmurs to Blood about what I’d revealed. Atrament has disappeared somewhere. Once the sheets are smoothed over the mattress and more or less tucked in, I crawl up onto the bed and deposit myself in the center.
“Oh named gods.” I groan as the mattress—old and slightly smelly as it is—cradles my body. The sheets smell of lavender and pine and dust. I roll over onto my side and face the foot of the bed, where Smoke and ScatheFire are standing. “This is amazing. You need to try this.”
“Clean people only.” Blood gets on the bed as well.
Smoke and ScatheFire roll their eyes. ScatheFire says, “I’m going to go find food. There’s food somewhere in here, right?”
“Head back down to the kitchen. It should be stocked with something or other. Never know when my family is going to be here.” My stomach gives a half-hearted growl, but my joints are too happy being on the mattress. I’ve eaten in the last day. I have not had a proper bed in months.
Blood settles down behind me.
I freeze.
“Not tonight, Pebbles.” He slides a hand along my arm and fits his wiry body against mine. “Not when you’re still hurting.”
“I—”
“None of us are beasts. Not like that, anyway. I think we’ve both spent enough time sleeping in uniform.”
“There’s a whole bed,” I say uncertainly.
“But there’s only one of you.”
“You haven’t given me your secret to hold yet.”
“Maybe one day.” He gathers up the hem of the linen shift I’m wearing and folds it slowly up my thigh and past my hip. He caresses the line of my hip with his fingertips. “I had you wrong, Pebbles.”
I twist to look at him. “Oh?”
“Fells are easy to understand,” he says. “We’re all scarred and broken in various ways. Aethers are pampered, coddled, reared gently, then cured like leather at the Academy. You were the one I could not solve. You were the one that did not make sense.” He traces the scar on my arm.
“Do I make sense now?” I ask softly.
Sadness—real, coppery sadness, like blood from a wound—washes over the connection between us. He kisses my arm. Half-dry strands of his hair slip over my breasts. He caresses my cheek, silently vowing he will never abandon me, and sealing it with blood.
26
CRYSTAL
Blood refreshes my wine. He checks the label on the bottle, then sets it down with the other bottles. “Decent.”
“Not really,” I correct in my snobbiest court tone. “Really. Show some breeding.”
He flicks me with droplets of wine. ScatheFire throws a piece of jerky at me.
“Once this was decent wine,” Blood corrects.
“Once.” Now it’s half vinegar and full of grit and tannins. According to the label, it’s safely over a hundred years old. My family’s never been known as vintners. A hundred years hasn’t been kind to this wine.
“But it is wine.” Smoke sips his.
ScatheFire sighs contently. “I haven’t had wine for years.”
“I think stealing a noble’s wine is punishable by a year in jail,” Blood says.
“It’s arguable this is still wine.” The rain patters against the windows, muffled by the extremely heavy curtains, and the house is covered in cloths and dust and we’re sitting around two lanterns drinking vinegar and eating jerky and raisins from the cellar. Identifiable food and something that isn’t water or piss-beer: height of luxury. I stretch my back and put my feet up on Rot’s thigh.
Atrament wraps his elegant fingers around the stem of his glass and leans forward. “We cannot stay here too long.”
“That’s why we keep you around, Atrament. You state the obvious so eloquently.” ScatheFire pops a raisin in his mouth and chases it with a swish of wine.
“You keep me around because we have the same Heart.”
“It was a joke.”
“No one is laughing. Not even on the inside.”
Blood barks a laugh and Rot snickers. I lob a raisin at Atrament and favor him with a caress of Aether along his strands to me. He shivers like a hummingbird, his eyes darting uncertainly in my direction.
New trick. Will have to practice that one. But not too much. Touching them on the inside like that probably crosses the same boundary that putting my finger up their ass without their say-so crosses. Just because we all have to be more or less naked around each other doesn’t mean free-for-all touchy-touchy. The love a Heart fosters isn’t always sexual—it’s just as often fraternal or friendly. Ours is just not currently sexual due to the level of filth we’d been enduring, and my insides feeling like they’d been trampled by a bunch of chargers wearing grass studs.
“We could lay low here until spring,” Rot ventures. “We’re all beaten up, and Pebbles needs to recover. A few weeks of her not riding is probably going to let her body actually heal.”
Atrament sorts himself, like a bird ruffling its feathers into place, and says, “Our next destination needs to be the Capital. The Warden believes Heart’s not with us, and anyone who knows I exist at all isn’t sharing that widely. Once people learn we’re all together, we lose our chance at surprise.”
I nod. “My plan hinges on surprise. We need to keep moving. I’ll hold up. Sorry you guys are celibate.”
Blood dismisses it with a gesture.
“You can just make it up to us later.” Rot grins.
I blush.
“We do have a hell of a good hand of cards,” ScatheFire says. “So spill it, Pebbles. What’s your grand plan?”
I circle the rim of my glass with a finger. “We don’t have as good a hand of cards as
you think. We’ve got a dangerous hand. So we’ve got to be very careful and we can’t get greedy.”
“What’s greedy when you’ve got the winning hand?” ScatheFire asks.
The tension in the line to Blood releases. He folds his arms. “She’s right. Our hand is the secrets of a lot of powerful people that we’re supposed to take the fall for. How long did squealers ever live?”
Rot compresses his lips and tilts back in his chair. “The imperial court isn’t the streets.”
Blood snorts. “It’s worse. She’s right. Going after the Emperor and Empress, or even getting a little blood on their silks, is a stupid play. We’re going after the people who make the rules. We have a good hand, but they can just leave the table.”
I sigh at him. “I don’t plan on going after the Emperor or Empress.”
“Why not? Your parents are the ones who put the damage in you.” He points at my chest.
“I’m not a princess.” I can’t roll my eyes any harder.
“Whatever you say, princess.”
“You want to wager on it?”
He sips his wine and smirks. “Sure.”
Oh, he’s in for a rude surprise.
“You need to learn to stand up for yourself,” Rot grumbles in my direction.
“I am standing up for myself,” I shoot back. “But we’ve got to be careful what we say. I’m not doing anything that involves telling the court how Atrament and I were made. They’ll try to make more of us.”
“A lot of little Aethers might end up with broken arms,” Smoke says.
I look at him sharply. “What?”
Atrament shakes his head. “Mages are born, they are not made as children.”
“You don’t know if her getting imprisoned and abandoned here didn’t put a Fell flaw in her.” Smoke jabs his finger into the table. “You ever been abandoned by a family you thought loved you?”
Atrament tilts his head slightly. “No. I just don’t believe that is what put the Fell flaw in her.”
“We aren’t going to confront my parents,” I say. “For the sake of every Mage-child current and future, we cannot put it into anyone’s head this is how you make a more powerful Mage. Break their arm? Abandon them? Breed them in the Pit? Do something else? We can’t do it. We can’t.”
Outside, thunder grumbles and a crack of lightening rattles the windows.
Blood drags his finger down the label of the bottle. “We can’t turn the entire court against us, and we can’t reveal the truth. So what are we going to do?”
“The Empire is going to want someone’s hide for this.” Blood tilts his wine glass. “So who’s it going to be?”
I pinch a raisin between my thumb and finger. “The Academy is the weak spot.”
Atrament asks, wary, “How? The Tailors that tailored me died long ago.”
“We aren’t going to mention how old you are. You’re clearly Tailored. We’ll accuse the High Dean of knowing about you. We’ll mention that the BlightWorm for my trial was ordered months before it would normally have been. And that it was matured under the city. The Court will be in an uproar. The Dean will deny knowing anything about you, which may or may not be true, but that’s not really our problem, is it?”
Atrament steepled his fingers. “And you think the court will be satisfied with just the Academy?”
I flicked the raisin. “Satisfied? No. But what will happen is the court will be in an uproar about you. About me. The implication my team was set up. Anyone who actually knows anything isn’t going to say a goddamn thing. Nobody will defend the High Dean. We won’t get the Warden, since he isn’t the one who created you, and everything he did to us was legal because we were prisoners, but he’ll find himself with very few friends. In fact,” I point at him, “you’re going to make it sound like I was stitched in the Pit, that it was the Warden’s idea, and imply that’s why we had to run. Not because of… the other thing. Not unless we have to tell someone about the other thing.”
Which we might have to do.
“We cannot lie,” he says.
Oh, dear, sweet Atrament. “We aren’t going to lie. We’re just going to avoid mentioning specific details unless directly asked. Be vague. The court is great at making up their own ideas about things.”
“But there are people at court who know about my thread.”
“And they aren’t going to say a thing. If the Empress already knows, we’re fucked, but I’m guessing she has no idea.”
Blood chuckles and ScatheFire salutes the table with his drink. “She’s right. Nobody will confess to having anything to do with this, which will leave the Dean to take the fall. All we have to do is act shocked and watch it happen. Excellent play, Pebbles. Remind me to never play cards with you.”
Rot scowls. “But it’s not justice. We got thrown in the fucking Pit for no reason. Pebbles got abused and kicked around for years. And nobody’s gonna fry for it?”
Blood’s violence simmers dark and cruel within me, sliding along the bonds to the others. “If we start making too many accusations, we’ll make too many enemies. All we have to do is tie the meat around the Dean’s neck and set the hounds upon him. We will have to take our justice served quite cold and in small portions.”
27
CRYSTAL
My old riding instructor, Master Arrem, is still lithe. I’d just seen him over the winter holidays, because I’d been shipped off to TasselWood since my Aethers had gone to see their families, but he’s got a dangerous occupation training horses, and he doesn’t bounce like he used to. He’s about a head shorter than I am, still dressed in battered tallboots, riding leathers, a linen tunic, and a pouch of treats hanging from his belt. Stains from oiled leather have ground into the crevices of his hands and cuticles.
“Lady Heart.” He clasps both his hands around mine. He squeezes hard, his eyes bright. “I never believed what they said. Never.”
I don’t correct him calling me Heart. “It’s only true on the face of it. We’re going to make those who are to blame accept the burden.”
“Good. I’ve been keeping your chargers fit. Your parents sent word your younger brother would use them, but I told them under no circumstances could that brat throw a leg over them. They are still angry at me for speaking the truth.” He shrugs one shoulder. “Your younger brother has no regard for his horses. How long will you be staying?”
“We’re leaving tonight. I need my chargers, a hunter, and a pack horse. Can you mount the Fells from my string? Except for Rot. He has a horse familiar.”
Arrem appraises the Fells and centers on Atrament. “That one’s not Imperial.”
“Atrament can ride passing well.”
“So not well enough for me.”
“Nobody rides well enough for you.”
“You might one day.”
ScatheFire laughs.
Arrem shrugs once more. “I can’t give them horses from your string, but your parents stopped asking for an accounting of what horses we have here years ago. I will give them more suitable mounts.”
“We aren’t horse thieves, Arrem.”
Arrem laughs, bitter and grim. “I stopped reporting foals to your parents the year they left you here. Then I stopped branding the young stock. The culls have just been getting ‘loose’ since I can’t sell them and won’t waste time training them. The local farmers are quite pleased to ‘find’ them, although everyone knows where they come from. Your family only cares that when they want a horse, I supply one.”
I sigh hugely. “What an absolute waste.”
“It’s to your benefit today that they haven’t cared about this place or anything in it for so long. If I must, you showed up and demanded your horses, and who was I to refuse the demands of Mages? I was so shaken that I think I may have mixed up a few. We do have many bay geldings.” He delicately places a strong hand against his throat.
I offer him my hand. “We’re going to go gear out, and we’ll leave sometime after dark. Two remounts each, if
you can manage it. We’re going to ride hard.”
“I know how to outfit a military team,” Arrem says with mild reproach. “You aren’t the only cavalry officer breathing this air.”
“So who is that guy?” Rot asks as we head into one of the outbuildings.
I have to pop the Aether locks on the door. It’s old, but stout and reinforced, although frankly, I don’t know why anyone would bother. The armory is a sad state of affairs and has been for years. “He’s the riding master here. He used to be part of the household staff as my parents’ horse master. But when my parents left me here, he made the mistake of arguing with them. When I went on to the Academy, he was sent here as riding master and they hired on someone else for the household.”
“He could do better than this. Clients who care.”
I wrestle with the second lock. It cracks and I punt the door open. It groans on metal hinges. Something skitters in the shadows.
“You think your gear is here?” ScatheFire asks.
“My chargers are, so my armor is somewhere. It wasn’t in the house, so someone threw it in here, I’ll bet.”
ScatheFire lights the lanterns and the armory is reflected in ghoulish disarray. Bits and pieces of armor and training gear, all covered in dust, rusting, moldy. TasselWood hasn’t been seen war or combat in hundreds of years. There’s some halberds on rotting wood poles, warped bows, decayed arrows, rusted training swords.
“Your parents really do put a priority on home defense.” Blood picks up a sword. It crumbles in his hand.
“What is anyone going to steal? Those barrels of wine? Ugly couches? Candlesticks made out of deer horns?” Rot kicks a helmet. It bursts into dust.
Mingled in with the detritus of wars long ago is a large chest. It sits off to the side, crooked, and been deposited by people who didn’t care. I brush my hand over the dusty top. Embossed into the leather was the arcane symbol for Crystal. Between the metal bars that reinforce it are strips of thick horse-hide leather. On the uppermost corner is inked with the name and number of the cavalry company I’d been assigned to. A leather tag is tied to a metal loop on one reinforcement. Other tags like it are tied to one of the handles on the side.