She paused for a moment. A pang of fatigue struck her, and when she spoke it was slower and quieter. “Then I will be miles ahead of him when I confirm it.”
“Amelia…”
She drew out one of her vials of Hearing Oils and offered it to Athers. He did not reach for it, but looked steadily into her eyes.
“It has a twin. They can carry sound to each other, so we can talk,” she said.
“There’s nothing I can say to keep you here?”
Amelia did not reply, or shake her head, but after a moment Ather’s eyes dropped.
“You understand … I cannot come with you,” he said.
“I know.”
“Do I need to speak loudly into this?” Athers said, finally taking the vial from her.
“A whisper will do. I will be listening for you. If Verandert leaves, or puts the thumbscrews to Gillis or you…”
“You will know.”
Athers fixed his eyes on hers, his expression smooth and calm except for a small twitch of a muscle in his jaw. Heat crept up Amelia’s neck, and it came with a growing urge to look away. She glanced at the floor, then at the window. “Keep your eyes open. Keep safe.”
Athers nodded. Without meeting his gaze, she left him standing there in the sunbeam. As she rounded the corner, her neck still feeling warm, she was struck by a thought of Min-Yu. If the Mordenari were truly able to escape and live freely, and if Min-Yu were such a one, then perhaps Choson’s knowledge would be of use. First, she would have to find a Dreyen—not Athers, perhaps Lief—and ask what was planned for the prisoners.
Chapter 11
Ardent Momaenta
I am ever-living by the grace of Momaentum. The ley-lines of its marks show on my skin: phosphorescent tattoos that only the drawing of blood can tell. No weapon can bring me lasting hurt, and no pestilence can plague me. I am bathed in the holy light of Momaentum, and it is through Momaentum that we Mordenari perform our sacred tasks. There is no living God, but there is me.
Verandert
Roos strained on a plank of timber wedged between two bars in their dungeon door, while Choson sat on his bed and watched, his expression flat.
Pieces of the table that had been intact an hour ago lay strewn about their feet. Roos’ face went deep red as he pulled and a vein snaked across his forehead. The timber groaned deeply. Roos lifted a foot to press on the stone walls and strained with new vigor. The metal bars of the door, thin as they were, did not bend in the slightest. The straining sound of the timber rose in pitch, and he pushed ever harder in response. Long splinters appeared at the bend in the timber as a cracking sound filled the room, then the timber broke entirely and sent the giant sprawling. He bellowed wordlessly and pounded at the ground with his fists.
“Look closer,” a now-familiar female voice said from behind them.
The two men started, and sprang to their feet. A shadow crossed their window, and once more Amelia plopped down to lie on her front and watch them through the bars.
“Look closer at the bars and tell me what you see,” Amelia said.
The two men peered at the bars. Roos, still gaping, felt the wrought black iron with a rough hand.
“They are metal, but they are thin,” he said. “They should break when I do this, but they do not!”
He clenched both meaty fists on the bars and attempting to shake them. They remained unbent and unmoving.
“They have writing on them … writing that is too small for my eyes,” Choson said.
“Aye, that they do,” she said. “Enchantment inscriptions. The ones on the bars before you are basic: they strengthen iron.”
“I take it you did not come here just to tell us that,” Choson said.
“I am sick of her,” Roos said to Choson, then he turned to Amelia. “Break us out or leave us be!”
“Actually, dear Roos, breaking you out was precisely what I had in mind,” Amelia said.
The two men stared at her for a stunned moment. Roos moved swiftly and pressed his face up to the bars. Choson moved slower toward the window with his head cocked, and drew himself up as best he could to see her, given that there was no longer a table to stand on.
“Why would you lock us up here only to break us out?” Choson said.
“I have information that may ease you into trusting me. At dawn you will both be hanged. I learned that on the way here. What I can offer is that instead of certain death tomorrow, you come with me and take your chances.”
“Do you jest with us?” Roos growled.
“No, here’s a jest: you’ll be getting medals and accolades for trespassing on the mountain and attacking us. The King himself is on his way to shake your hand!”
“Enough. I am tired of games. The noose may not be a fine end, but I have little hope that you mean well,” Choson said.
Amelia pulled up some grass and hissed through her teeth. “What is wrong with you? I’m saving your life!”
“My life is less precious than some things. I would have an honest and clean end, not a knife in the back. I discovered more here than I ever dreamed I would,” Choson said. “I did not avenge Jun, but at least I know now he spoke the truth. I must accept defeat.”
“Stop pitying yourself, you idiot! Roos, slap some sense into him,” Amelia said.
Roos raised a huge hand, paused, then caught Choson’s expression. Roos glanced down at his hand, bemused.
“I will not slap you, I think. But she is right. I tell you not to give up how many times? When you are moping, and saying ‘so be it’ all the—”
“Roos, enough. I have said all I will say.”
“If we tracked down this Min-Yu, what then would you say?” Amelia said.
“I would question the benefit you see in it. You only care for what you could gain.”
“I would know more about her.”
“Why? You had no interest before.”
“Because she is doing something I need to do.”
“Slaving?” Roos growled, and clenched the bars.
“No. Never,” Amelia said earnestly. “The truth is, if there is a hanging tomorrow I may be joining you, as I have bent some rules. Min-Yu lives outside the Monastery—she is not even in the records. I need to have some idea of how to do it if I’m to leave this place.”
“We would be outlaws, then?” Choson said. “No more than a band of prison runaways?”
“For a time. We can begin our search for Min-Yu once away from this blasted rock,” Amelia said.
“After we find her, we part ways. I don’t relish putting up with you lumps a day longer than I must.”
“We still cannot trust you,” Roos said.
“I know. You may never fully. But you can at least do me the favor of hurrying up and deciding to let me break you out. We all know choosing to hang is not a real option for you. I’ve seen death a thousand times over and only the weak choose it,” Amelia said.
Choson ground his teeth together and stared at the grey wall of the cell.
“Do it for Jun,” Amelia said.
He met her eyes, and in their shared gaze was the same fear, the same determination that glowed like a hot coal for a time, and then the moment passed. Choson looked to Roos. Roos clapped an enormous hand on his shoulder. Just as a new, glowing feeling of hope burst in Choson’s chest, it collided with a nervous writhing in the pit of his gut. His thoughts swung, pendulum-like, between the prospect of catching Min-Yu and his certainty that Amelia was somehow fooling them. He drew in a breath, met her eyes, and nodded. She jumped up from her window and, unseen to them, noisily broke into the next cell over where their weapons were.
When she returned to their window, she retrieved a rag from her satchel, and ran it along the length of the black iron bars. As they watched, smoke and bubbles issued from the bars and rusty sludge trickled down the sides. Very quickly they weakened enough that Amelia was able to pluck them out like rotten teeth. She helped the men lift themselves out the window and gave them their weapons. Befo
re they started down the steep and rocky way, Amelia held up a hand to halt the pair and looked them both in the eyes.
“Remember our first meeting; you can’t surprise me. Don’t ever get any ideas that you can best me, and we shall get along fine,” Amelia said.
Choson and Roos shared a grim-faced look at her words when her back was turned. As a new freezing wind came and whipped against them, they started the climb with numbing fingers scrabbling in the cracks of the rocks, down the untamed part of the mountain, far out of sight of the path at its front.
****
At the end of his day’s work in the kitchen, Gillis had heated a large bowl filled with water and carried it back to his room. His fingers had been stiff in the cold kitchen all day, and he hoped the steam would do him good. He set the pot down on his small table, hunched with his knuckles close to the clouds of steam that rose from the water, and breathed deeply. The stone walls of the Monastery and the thin mountain air robbed enough heat from the steam that it felt clammy when it reached his face. Sitting there with little else to look at but his stiff fingers, his thoughts were drawn to the death-blow that had broken them and the guards he had killed. His neck grew hot, as though it, too, was giving off steam. The business at Pauloce’s Keep had not been at all clean, or quiet. Two guards, the Prime Steward, and Beldas—four deaths on the path to killing one man. Pauloce alone had broken the Laws. He slowly flexed and straightened his fingers, watching the wrinkles at the joints move. Inefficiency was offensive to him. He told himself that was why the images of the dying men arose again and again, in brief flashes while waking, or frozen for what seemed like hours in nightly dreams. The guilt of being inefficient weighed hard on him. The guards and the Prime Steward were inefficient mistakes, yes, but Beldas was a proper target. Why is his the face that lingers most in the dreams?
Gillis thrust the bowl away, spilling a little water, and stood. He closed his eyes and felt for Momaentum—you were supposed to feel it lapping like the rippling of a brook; it was supposed to be calming. He reached up and out for the Momaentum to gather it around his hands and move with it, but not a trace appeared. There was not even a hint of the cool feeling that had been present when he had last reached for it. He was like a blind man in full sun: the Monastery was a powerful place indeed, and flooded with Momaentum. The problem was Gillis’ lack of talent.
There was a knock at the door. He let his hands fall.
“Enter,” Gillis said.
Amelia peeked her head timidly inside. Her face was clammy and white, and her movements soft and stiff. She said, “My friend, you must help me.”
Gillis beckoned her to come in. “What’s wrong?”
“I fear that suspicion of me is growing in the Monastery,” Amelia said. “Do you know anything more of it?”
“I have not heard, nor have I asked anyone,” Gillis said. “Truth be told, I’d prefer you left me out of whatever this is.”
Amelia’s eyes grew wide, and she stared at him with an intensity he had never seen before. “You don’t … you don’t know what I did, do you?”
Gillis narrowed his eyes. She may have been unpredictable, but this was something else. Has she gone mad with Pauloce dead?
“I liked things better when you called it a trifling matter,” Gillis said. “Or even when you mentioned going to Gweidor.”
“I don’t think it’s trifling, it’s a grave matter. How many must suffer for what I’ve done?”
Her eyes were wild, and her manner was so intensely earnest Gillis decided it must have been her way of play-acting. Her ideas of fun and mocking were often askew like that.
“Amelia,” Gillis said. “I am too old to keep pace with you in games like this. Go to Athers—he’s the one who’ll speak in codes to you. He did to me.”
He made to usher her from the room, but she grabbed his arm and they stopped. She was far stronger than he had guessed.
“The strain has gotten to me,” she whispered.
He wrenched his arm from her grip. “That is clear.”
“I cannot keep track of my words. It was Athers and I … you do not know what we did? I have not told you?”
“No, and leave now before you tell me and tangle me in it. Speak to Athers if you must, or the prisoners—anyone else but me,” Gillis said.
“Athers and the prisoners,” she breathed.
Suddenly she whirled and put both hands on the door handle, began to pull on it, then stopped. Gillis watched for a few moments, unsure of what to say. Just as suddenly, she turned back to him.
“I cannot speak to Athers. He threatened me. It has shaken me, and I didn’t know where else to turn,” Amelia said.
“Are you alright? Why did he threaten you?” Gillis said, but inwardly he thought, Why did you blabber about all that before if this was on your mind? Have you gone mad and dreamed this threat up?
Amelia shook her head, and though her face was smooth and her eyes wide open, tears leaked from them and ran down her cheeks.
Gillis asked haltingly, “What—whatever you two have done ... would Athers harm you to cover it up?”
“You must help me,” Amelia pleaded. “He will kill me. I need your help.”
“I will, I will. What can I do?”
“I will hide now. Please, see that Athers doesn’t sniff me out. Do what you can to help me.”
Without another word she pulled open the door and left.
Gillis shook his head and rubbed his eyes while muttering about bizarre conversations. The longer he stood there in his room without Amelia in it, the more it seemed that Amelia had played some kind of prank on him. Or, he thought grimly, she has been taken by some madness. Not uncommon for the over-strained among us. Despite this, he could not entirely dismiss the possibility that Athers had made such a threat.
He paced around his room, rubbing his stiff fingers to keep them warm. His bowl of water had gone cold.
There was a slight rustling noise in the corridor, of cloth on stone. Amelia had left the door open when she left. Gillis leaned out to look up and down the length of the corridor, and saw the silhouette of a man of Athers’ height and build whip out of sight at the far end. Gillis crossed the room to retrieve his dagger, then closed his door behind him and stole along the passage barefoot in the direction of the shadow. This would turn up nothing. Then why take the dagger? he thought. He shook his head as though to cast off the thought. If it was Athers, they would talk and nothing more. More likely than not, it was all part of Amelia’s prank. He half expected her to jump out of a shadow and yell ‘Boo!’ But his hand did not leave the dagger handle. He reached the corner, but there was nobody in sight in any direction. To the left was a long corridor ending in a stairway, and to the right were dormitories. Athers did not sleep on this floor.
He took the corridor to the stairway, going as fast as he could without making a sound. Air rushed by his ears, so he paused at regular intervals to listen. Once at the stairs he heard soft footfalls. Gillis took them two at a time. After a dozen such steps, the sounds came to him from two directions: one above and one below. He stopped dead to listen. As he returned to the foot of the stairwell, passing nobody, he found the source of the noise: a drop of yellow liquid on the second-to-last stair. He pressed his ear close to it and heard an indistinct voice along with shuffling footsteps.
Once again he sprang up the steps two at a time. When he was halfway up the stairwell, he found that the torches lining the walls were all extinguished, though still giving off smoke. It was still daytime, but the sun’s light did not reach this place. He continued regardless, one hand on the wall, one step at a time.
“Amelia? Amelia!” came a voice above him.
He ran, keeping on the narrow part of the steps near the center until he was dizzy and feeling his heart hammering in his neck. Up ahead was torchlight spilling down the steps, so he crept and leaned close to the stairs until he saw Athers standing with his back to Gillis.
Gillis could not understand what
he was seeing. Amelia had come to him saying that Athers had threatened her. Here he was calling her name in her Hearing Oil. None of the facts made sense. Gillis crept up another stair and leaned around the center column to look closer at Athers. At that moment, Athers turned and saw Gillis.
“You!” Athers yelled.
Athers sprang down at Gillis, who scrambled backwards. In a moment, Athers held Gillis against the wall, then pressed a dagger point to his throat.
“You’ve threatened Amelia? Why?” Athers spat.
“Stop,” a cold female voice rang against the stone walls of the stairwell.
Athers and Gillis looked up to see Amelia descend the stair to them, almost regally, with her chin held high. Athers’ dagger point wavered away from Gillis’ throat and his grip relaxed. As they watched, Amelia’s face contorted in a bizarre expression, and then distorted and blurred and stretched. Her shoulders grew broader, and her hair receded into her scalp, until finally Verandert stood two steps above them.
“So the deception ends,” Verandert said.
“It was you,” Gillis breathed.
Athers stuttered something indistinct, trembling, and fell to his knees.
“I know all that happened,” Verandert said.
“Verandert, believe me, it was I alone. Do not hang Gillis or Amelia—I forged the writ,” Athers said.
“It took three to kill Pauloce. Excuses do not forestall judgment. But first, give me the vial.”
Athers held the Hearing Oil out with a trembling hand, and Verandert took it. He gripped the vial, looking it up and down, then gave a sharp whistle that stung Gillis’ ears. The yellow Hearing Oil turned sky-blue before it froze solid. Verandert dropped it on the stairs.
“We do not want eavesdroppers,” Verandert said.
“Gillis never knew.”
Gillis’ each heartbeat pulsed in his ears. The writ to kill Pauloce had been forged. They were all to be hanged, just as Duvelt had been, for breaking the Fifth Law. Gillis swallowed and said, “I did not know, Verandert.”
The Tyranny of Shadows Page 13