Blood Solace (Blood Grace Book 2)

by Vela Roth

  Her little brown-and-white goat sat on his foot. The black-and-white kid wandered off to nibble on any scrolls within reach, which Lio had already bespelled to withstand caprine cravings. Zoe played quietly with one of the glass figurines Lio had made her while he went back to his writing.

  He took refuge in their contentment, and it kept his hands steady as he wrote words that would shake their world on its foundations.

  Sometime later, Zoe departed in answer to their mother’s call. Neither of their parents came to ask Lio what he was up to. Mak and Lyros let him be. The handful of his loved ones who knew it was not Imperial libraries that occupied him had given him the gift of uninterrupted time.

  He was surprised when he came to the end of it and realized his work was complete.

  Lio set down his pen. For the first time, his hands shook.

  The furor of his inspiration drained out of him all at once, and he realized how thirsty he was. He did not have the focus to repaint Cassia in light and ask for her approval of his work. Instead he looked at his less ephemeral portrait of her, his account of her deeds, which he had kept right next to his scroll as his primary source the entire time he had been writing his new proposal.

  However his own people reacted to what he proposed herein, Cassia would understand. She would see his strategy more clearly than anyone, grasp its logic and know how to use it to her advantage. He hoped—he dared believe—she would approve.

  Moon Hours waned. Lio had a little while before Veil Hours to settle his affairs. He would need that time to seek strength in the Drink from his parents and prepare for tomorrow. Tomorrow and the inaugural Firstblood Circle of the season, at which he was to deliver his proposal before the Queens, their Master Ambassador and the heads of every bloodline in Orthros.

  It hadn’t even taken that long, just the time between one moonrise and the next. In one night, he had written the proposal that would secure his place in Hesperine history. Whether that legacy would be heroism or infamy, he must leave it to his people to decide.

  To Make this Era

  Lio stepped directly to the back portico of Kia’s residence, avoiding the rest of House Hypatia and any possibility of delay. He paused at his Trial sister’s closed door to ascertain whether there would be magefire to pay if he interrupted her.

  Since she had unleashed her latest theory on the world and earned promotion to full mathematician, the name Eudokia Hypatia had been on scholars’ lips from here to the Empire, and she had been very busy. Lio wondered where she found all the energy she devoted to her next great work and her visiting colleagues. At the moment, her open veil indicated he was not in danger of disrupting her research or her extracurricular adventures with one of her admirers visiting from the Imperial university, so he let himself into her study.

  The travel desk that was the center of her world on journeys and at home now stood deserted in the middle of the floor, surrounded by a pile of cushions and the bespelled tablets she used to scrawl and erase calculations. Her coffee pot sat abandoned on its geomagical warmer, filling the room with the aroma of her favorite blend of Polar Night Roast and bitter cacao.

  In the pot’s heat basked her familiar, tasting the air with a forked tongue. Sophia was longer than Lio was tall, but somehow the serpent had managed to slither most of herself into a coil on the copper tray of the coffee service.

  Lio glanced around, then up. Kia herself was at one of the shelves near the ceiling on the opposite side of the room, levitating some distance from the ladder she only kept to oblige her mortal visitors. Lio expected her to offer him a greeting and a prescient inquiry without looking up from the scroll in her hands. But she rolled up Laskara’s The Geometry of Art and thrust it back into its rack on the shelf.

  “Lio! I’m so glad to see you.” She dropped to her feet, tossing her mantle of turquoise-and-white silk more securely around her shoulders.

  Lio had often seen Zoe mimic that gesture with her own scarf. “It’s good to see you too.”

  “Would you like some coffee?”

  “No, thank you.” It would be an injustice to her coffee indeed if it ended up regurgitated on her silk cushions. “Actually, I’d like your opinion on something.”

  “Better than coffee.” She beamed, and her keen blue gaze went to what he carried in his hands. “A new writing of yours?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s about time you came to visit me with something worth several hours of conversation. I’ve hardly seen you lately. As much time as you spend with Zoe, you’re seldom there when I come to give her lessons.” Kia shoved her blond curls out of her eyes and held out her pale, ink-stained hands.

  But now, at the last minute, Lio hesitated before giving her his proposal. It was difficult to hand over his heart and soul to anyone, even Kia. “I haven’t shown this to anyone yet.”

  She eased the scroll out of his hold, unsmiling now. “What are you so worried about? I promise I’ll be a gentle critic, even if you do take Axioprepes’s side of the argument in the Discourses on Dung Beetles.”

  The reference to their long-standing private jest did nothing to cheer him. “I think I shall let the proposal speak for itself.”

  She pursed her lips. “This isn’t your Imperial libraries proposal, is it.”

  “No.”

  Her face lit up again. “It’s your firsthand account of the Summit? You’ve resumed work on it!”

  “Actually, that project is still stalled.” He had no heart to pen the travelogue he had boasted of to Cassia when he must omit her from it. His record of her deeds had become the only account of Tenebra that mattered.

  Kia frowned. “When will you add your own primary source to our histories? You said yourself it’s your most important work to date, and I agree with you.”

  “No. I think the scroll you’re holding is my most important work. Possibly ever.”

  “You look like you need to sit down.” She gestured to the cushions.

  Lio sank down onto a large tasseled pillow to await her verdict. “You may want to be sitting down as well.”

  “I’ve read every word Phaedros has ever written and lived to tell the tale. Nothing from your honorable pen can possibly shock me.”

  “Do tell me if what I’ve come up with is worthy of the most notorious and only criminal in Orthros’s history. I should warn you, after I make this proposal to the Circle tomorrow, they may brand me mad as Phaedros and sentence me to join him in exile under the midnight sun.”

  The Blood Union became vibrant with Kia’s ferocious curiosity. She unrolled the scroll with relish, and her eyes began darting back and forth as she devoured the text.

  One, two, three heartbeats passed before her jaw dropped.

  “You are shocked,” Lio said. “You!”

  “No,” she breathed. “I am…” Another few heartbeats. The scuff of the scroll against itself as she unrolled it further. “Deukalion Komnenos, I am honored to be the first person you chose to read this.”

  “Honored?” he repeated.

  She did not speak another word until she came to the end of the scroll. At last she met his gaze, her aura alight with what he could only describe as joy. She held the scroll out toward him, and her feet lifted off the ground. “Lio! This is history! Thank Hespera she ordained that we should live now and make this era.”

  “Is that really what you think?”

  “You don’t need to ask me that question. And I don’t have to ask you if you know what you have done here. You know exactly what you’re doing, you have laid out your case with perfect precision, and you could predict the consequences for the next sixteen hundred years with the same undeniable reasoning. I am holding pure brilliance in my hands. Cup and thorns, I cannot wait for Circle! As soon as Mother and Father get back from the Observatory, I will tell them I am going with them tomorrow.”

  Kia’s enthusiasm engulfed Lio, and he couldn’t help feeling it. He was almost too relieved to speak. “Will you do me another favor?”
<
br />   “Anything. Allow me to declare myself your first partisan. You will need help with this.”

  “All the help I can get. It would mean a very great deal to me if all of you were there tomorrow. You’ll help me convince Nodora and Xandra to attend as well?”

  “Attend what?” came Nodora’s voice from the doorway.

  “Lio is going to change the world tomorrow,” Kia informed her. “You won’t want to miss Circle.”

  Nodora strolled in with, as always, a musical instrument in her hands. Tonight it was a shamisen, one of the three-stringed instruments she lovingly crafted in the tradition of her mortal foremothers.

  She turned her big, brown eyes upon Lio and gave him her sweet smile. “Lio changed the world once already last year, when he saved the entire embassy and the new sucklings. Do you mean to say he’s at it again?”

  Lio returned her smile. “I hope so.”

  “You know so,” Kia corrected.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” Lio said to Nodora. He saw that she was wearing one of her ocean-blue work robes and no cosmetics on her fair skin. “It looks as if you’re not on your way to a performance. I was going to pay you a visit right after seeing Kia, but do you have a moment now?”

  “Certainly,” Nodora answered. “I came by for opinions on a new song. I gather you could use my opinion on something as well.”

  “Please. Tell me what you make of my mad plan.”

  Nodora’s smile became a grin. “I suspect I’ll be writing commemorative songs about tomorrow’s events. I shall be fortunate indeed if they are as well-received as my composition about the Summit. You’re very helpful to our reputations, Lio.”

  Lio shook his head. “It was your original piece in the style of the Archipelagos that secured your initiation and your reputation as the only Hesperine expert on the music of your human homeland. I will not let the spotless name of Menodora Kithara be cut to pieces by Glasstongue. That’s no way to thank you for giving me such an epithet. You should hold off planning songs about tomorrow until you know what I’m getting us all into.”

  “It sounds more like you need me to keep you from slicing yourself to shreds, Guilttongue.” Nodora came to stand by him and rested a hand on his shoulder. “Of course we’ll all be at Circle.”

  “Mak and Lyros already know,” Kia guessed.

  “They know how much is at stake for me right now. I’m going to tell them exactly what I’m planning when I go to training after this. I know they’ll come tomorrow.”

  Nodora raised her brows. “If Mak and Lyros will be willing to sit through Circle for it, it must be important.”

  Kia waved his scroll at their Trial sister. Nodora set her shamisen carefully aside, then swept her long, straight black hair out of her way before settling onto one of the cushions with the scroll. She studied his proposal in silent concentration, her aura withholding judgment. In suspense, Lio watched her read.

  At last she met his gaze, and her concern enveloped him. “Lio, are you sure you want to do this?”

  Kia glared at her. “How can you ask him that?”

  “She has every right to ask. Every Hesperine in Orthros has the right to ask. What I will say to the Circle tomorrow is the greatest act of presumption anyone of our youth—anyone at all—has taken it upon themselves to commit in the history of our relations with Tenebra.” Lio’s prediction of the future he dreaded most worked its way out of him. “The Circle will almost certainly be scandalized by my proposal and vote against it unanimously to save the Queens the trouble of refusing.”

  “The firstbloods would be fools not to leap at your plan!” Kia declared. “They cannot deny your argument. You are right, Lio. This is the only way.”

  “It’s also the most dangerous way,” he said. “You know how they are about safety. It will be a battle to get any of them to agree.”

  “Overprotective traditionalists,” Kia scoffed. “This proposal is just the kind of shock they need to get them off their seats.”

  They were all accustomed to Kia’s irreverent outbursts, but Nodora still took it upon herself to be the lone voice of conciliation. “How can you say that about our elders? We owe everything we have to their power and protection. It’s with good reason they are so cautious to act.”

  “All my proposal may change is the history of my career.” Lio’s shoulders slumped. “By shortening it.”

  “That’s what I’m saying,” Nodora told them patiently. “This is ultimately the Circle’s decision. However they vote, whatever does or does not come of Lio’s proposal, he will have already made his decision. For him, once he comes forward with this, there is no going back.”

  “The first heralds of change always face persecution, but in the end, their opponents eat their words and erect statues in their honor.” Kia pointed to a marble bust of Alatheia.

  Now it was Nodora’s turn to glare. “Kia, Alatheia was the first mage of Hespera executed for heresy.”

  “Yes, and we could bestow no greater honor upon her than the epithet history has given her: ‘the First Heretic.’ Her refusal to recant before the Akron’s inquisitors was the seed that grew into the unwavering tree that is Orthros. Tomorrow, our elders may put Lio to the figurative pyre, but just wait until the night comes when they all pretend they never disagreed with him. He will be too kind to say ‘I told you so,’ but I shall not.”

  “What advice did your uncle give you, Lio?” asked Nodora. “With him encouraging you to proceed, I cannot imagine anyone would call for your resignation, no matter how many good opinions you sacrifice among the firstbloods.”

  “I haven’t told him,” Lio admitted.

  Nodora fell silent.

  “Of course he hasn’t told his uncle,” Kia said. “Good for you, Lio, for not giving Argyros a chance to talk you out of it.”

  “I’ve made up my mind I’m not going to warn any of the elders beforehand,” he said. “I don’t think it would be appropriate to give them prior knowledge of the proposal. My argument must be judged for what it is, without bias or leniency. I’m going to let my family find out with your parents and everyone else.”

  Nodora offered sympathy to him in Union. “That must have been a hard decision.”

  “I wish there was some way to soften the blow to my family.” His mentor would have no forewarning before Lio put to the axe everything they had worked for together. With their peers as witnesses, Lio’s parents would watch him throw away all the respect and opportunity his position as Firstgift Komnenos afforded him.

  “I certainly can’t promise this will go well for you,” said Kia, “but I can promise you this. You will be able to look at yourself in the mirror while the firstbloods cannot because you were brave enough to speak the truth. And we will be proud of you.”

  Nodora wrapped Lio’s hands around his proposal. “No matter the consequences, you have our support.”

  Lio might stand before the Circle tomorrow opposed on all sides, but he would not stand alone. “You have my gratitude.”

  “I hope you’ll be all right.” Nodora didn’t let go of his hands. “You’ve worked so hard to get where you are, and I know how hard you will take it, whichever way the Circle votes tomorrow. I worry that success may be an even greater weight on your conscience than failure.”

  “How could it? Success would be—” Just the thought of actually seeing Cassia again made his skin shiver. “I won’t care what it costs me, as long as it works.”

  Nodora’s brow furrowed. “You’re staking everything on this. This must be why you’ve been so troubled since you came home. Have you been working on your proposal all this time?”

  “No. I wrote it tonight. My proposal is not the cause of my troubles, but my path to the cure.” He took a deep breath. “I mention her by name in the proposal, in fact.”

  Nodora’s lips parted. “Lio, do you mean to say…”

  “Thank the Goddess.” Kia flopped down on a cushion. “You’re finally going to tell us you met your match in Tene
bra.”

  “Wait, what?” Lio stammered. “You knew?”

  “I spent your first month back in Orthros researching the few diseases to which Hesperines are susceptible, malevolent magic to which you might have been exposed in Tenebra, and mental illness, which was my original hypothesis regarding your condition. As I ruled out possible explanations based on your symptoms, it quickly became obvious you are suffering from the Craving and not telling us due to the paranoid behavior induced by your addiction and your natural inclination toward secrecy when you have made what you perceive to be a mistake. I confess, I didn’t consider there were political motivations for your reticence to discuss her, but now I realize you mention only one woman in your proposal who could possibly be the person you mean, and you would most certainly keep her identity a secret to facilitate the political goals you have been pursuing in coordination with her since the two of you first formed your…alliance.” Kia grinned, flashing her fangs.

  Nodora’s happiness bloomed on the Blood Union. “Lio, you met her in Tenebra?”

  “I didn’t tell anyone else,” Kia appended. “Of course I would not take it upon myself to make such a momentous announcement on your behalf.”

  “Yes,” he told Nodora, smiling. “Lady Cassia Basilis.”

  Her face fell. “Oh, Lio.”

  He winced. “Yes.”

  Nodora pressed a hand to his forehead, much as his mother had done. “Six months! Have you been to see the healers?”

  “No,” Kia answered her. “He’s been faking his exams with Javed.”

  “Lio!” Nodora cried.

  He raised his hands in surrender. “I have heard all of this from Mak and Lyros already, and from my parents.”

  “Oh good.” Kia sighed. “They will have talked some sense into you. Who else have you told?”

  “No one.”

  “Please tell Xandra,” Kia and Nodora said in unison.

  “I was rather hoping—”

  “No.” Kia crossed her arms. “We will not tell her for you, you coward.”