Summernight

by Sarah K. L. Wilson

  “And this is where you slaughter your sacrifice,” she said coldly.

  “One could say so. Follow me.”

  He led her to the other side of the room where a railing was set up even though the wall was only an arm’s width away.

  “Look down,” he said as they reached the rail and suddenly the reason for the rail seemed to make sense.

  The floor fell away in an arch as if the rock were rounded and this wall didn’t quite meet the rounded arc of the rock. In the narrow drop between them, a bright light filled the space revealing a drop so far down that Marielle could not see the bottom.

  Magic swirled heavy in the air – so heavy that Marielle was almost blinded by the scent, but underneath it was something else – something faint, something she couldn’t quite place.

  “I know that Scenters can’t see colors,” the Lord Mythos said. “So trust me when I tell you that the light you see in that crevice is bright red. It’s the breach in the dragon’s scales and the way to tap his magic. It’s the wound that must be kept open by the added sacrifice.”

  Marielle had heard of something else that might explain an open, roiling bright wound like that. Something else could explain the way it felt hot and the way that the rock around it was smooth and dark. She had heard tales of volcanic openings before. She was not such a fool as to think that they were wounds in the back of a dragon. Everyone knew they were made of lava bubbling and boiling from the belly of the earth.

  “And I am showing you this,” the Lord Mythos said, “to help you in your investigation of the crimes in our city. Because if you fail to solve this crime – if for some reason the Lady Sacrifice is not sacrificed on Summernight, or if so much magic is drawn away that her sacrifice is not enough, then I want you to know that I care more about this city than anything else. Do you understand that, Marielle?”

  The gleam in his eye was hypnotizing, like looking into the eye of a snake.

  “Yes,” Marielle said, her head whirling from the scent of magic and her vision swimming with it.

  “And I know exactly where I can find a backup sacrifice, Marielle.”

  A wash of cold ran over Marielle as his meaning penetrated through the fog of her magic-drunk mind.

  “And I’ve been told that Variena – that’s the name of your mother, isn’t it? – is open to negotiating a price for just about anything. I wonder what her price would be for your blood?”

  Marielle did not know, but she was just as certain as Lord Mythos was that with Variena, anything could be negotiated for the right price. Something pulled at her like a string leading from her belly to the floor and it felt as if all her blood was rushing to her feet.

  For the second time in the week of Summernight, Marielle’s consciousness fled, and she dropped heavily to the floor.

  19: Byron Bronzebow

  Tamerlan

  BY THE BLOOD OF THE dragon, move!

  Byron was yelling in Tamerlan’s head – as if he had any control over his own body. Ha! He was nothing but a ghost haunting his own body.

  Byron leapt from the gondola, grabbed the top of a pole held by the surprised gondolier beside them, swung in a full arc from the pole, his feet slicing through the air like a knife, and then rolled into a flip while airborne to land on a third gondola. His feet slapped on the wood of the boat as he ran from stern to nose, kicked up on the bow and leapt to the peak of the ferro, balancing there for the barest sliver of a second before kicking off to summersault forward through the air to land on the deck of a houseboat pulled against the canal wall.

  They were going the wrong direction! They needed to go to the palace! This was their only chance to get through those doors with an invitation in hand. No guards to stop them. Nothing to turn them around!

  First, we right this wrong.

  What wrong?

  He was already scrambling up the sheer stone face of the canal wall, his fingers and toes finding cracks to climb that he hadn’t even known were there.

  He reached the top of the wall, climbed onto the street rail and began to run down the narrow rail with the balance of an acrobat, sprinting into the darkness in the exact opposite direction he wanted to go. What could possibly be down here?

  This.

  Below him were two Watch Officers. One of them – a red-headed woman with short hair – seemed familiar. They both held axes in their hands, grim expressions on their faces.

  In front of them, a Waverunner family boat filled with water while the family desperately tried to pull chickens and heirlooms and bedding from the boat as the water filled it. They hung from the sides of another house-boat, the people in the second boat all speaking in a loud jumble while someone wailed at the top of her lungs.

  “It’s our home! Don’t you understand?”

  The red-headed guard was speaking. “You are hereby in violation of City Law 214-a stating that all boats in the City of Jingen shall – ”

  Tamerlan’s mind was flooded with a much louder voice.

  SEE? Injustice! They take from these people their homes and livelihood. Those are The Forerunners of the Retribution!

  We just called them Waverunners.

  The sacred people of Queen Mer. They are relentlessly peaceful. Killing them or taking anything from them used to be a crime punishable by death!

  They weren’t the only people who had been pulled up to the small jetty where the City Watch Officers stood. A small craft that looked like a gondola but was smaller, narrower, and sleeker was pulled to one side and the other guard held up a writhing boy who stood on the deck of the sleek craft a long oar in his hand.

  Tamerlan leapt from the wall, landing between the guards.

  “Unhand the boy!”

  “On whose authority?” the red-headed woman asked, her eyebrow arching arrogantly.

  “The authority of the Real Law,” he said. Where was Bronzebow getting this stuff? He sounded like a story.

  “We’re the law around here,” the redhead said coolly. “There’s no room for the boy on that houseboat. Take him to the Watch House.”

  “Please!” the boy begged. He was maybe fourteen or fifteen. “If I leave the water I can never return. Please!”

  “You should have thought of that before you forgot to pay your watercraft tax,” the guard said, pulling at the boy.

  Tamerlan’s jaw snapped shut and he gritted his teeth as his fist balled at his side.

  No! This was a bad idea! Don’t do it!

  And then his fist crashed into the guard’s jaw and the guard’s hand dropped the boy at the same moment that the houseboat suddenly sunk the last few inches into the canal with a loud glop.

  The guard cursed, but he wasn’t fast enough. Tamerlan grabbed his truncheon from his belt with one hand, seizing his cloak with the other and pulling it over his head before whacking him hard on the skull with the truncheon.

  There was a moan of pain and then Tamerlan spun just in time to duck under the swinging fist of the red-headed guard. She spat at him, drawing a wicked knife from her belt, but he shoved the other guard at her so hard that they both staggered over the edge of the jetty and into the murky canal water.

  “Boy!” the boy was calling him, gesturing urgently. He was small and thin, his skin covered by nothing but a pair of baggy breeches tied around the waist with a bit of red rope. “Come on, boy, before they get you!”

  “Be safe on your way, good citizen!” Tamerlan said, rolling his eyes internally. No one talked like that. No one.

  I do.

  But as Tamerlan straightened, chest thrust out, a look of satisfaction filling his face, the guards began to pull themselves back up onto the jetty.

  “You’d better not be there when I get up on shore,” the red-head warned, ringing her watch bell above her head.

  From the distance a second bell replied. Reinforcements were on the way.

  “Come on!” the boy called. “They get you and you’ll be locked up till they send you sinking!”

  And he w
as right. A favorite execution style was to tie a man to a rock and sink him into the river.

  Tamerlan shivered.

  He shivered. Not Byron Bronzebow.

  The blood drained from his face and his head was suddenly light. He knew it was bad that he hadn’t managed to breathe a full lungful of the smoke.

  The Legend had already fled his mind.

  He looked around, frantic as the first guard climbed wetly up the side of the jetty, throwing murderous looks at Tamerlan. With a half-disguised yelp, he dashed to the boy’s boat and leapt aboard.

  “Hurry!” he called.

  “That’s what I’m, saying, boy!”

  They darted into the night, the craft so fast that every stroke of the boy’s oar took them four times further than any other boat.

  “Your names and faces will be on every Watch House notice board in Jingen!” the redhead called. “Justice will be served!”

  They skimmed along the water, heading toward the river, dodging spills of colored lights along the way. With so much traffic, their boat was soon lost in the shoals of gondolas going to and from parties all over the city.

  The boy clung to the shadows, even shooting the locks along the canal like rapids in a river, ignoring the shouts and raised fists of the lock workers. From the spine of the dragon where the Seven Suns Palace was to the river, it was all ‘downhill’ but even still it was a wild ride when they shot over a full lock into one already at the lowest point, the bottom of the boat slapping the water when it hit.

  Tamerlan clung to the ferro at the front of the little boat, stretched out across it like a rug along the floor. The boy seemed to know where he was going. All Tamerlan could hope was that he really did.

  Nothing had gone according to plan and now he had only two nights left to try to save Amaryllis before it would be too late.

  20: Scent of a Name

  Marielle

  IT HAD BEEN GRAY THE morning that Marielle’s mother had taken her to live in the Scenter Academy. Marielle’s emotions had been the spring green of anticipation, leaving a taste on her tongue like cilantro. Her mother’s had been the soft pink and orange blossom of infatuation.

  “Why can’t I stay with you,” Marielle had asked.

  “You’re a big girl now, honey frog. You’re big enough to learn and grow. Scenters have good lives. Useful careers. You have more options. You won’t have to live behind a red door.”

  “But you aren’t going to live behind a red door for much longer, are you?” Marielle had said.

  “Not if Hez’ng does what he promises,” her mother said with a smile, the melting pink of her scent, sweet as honey cakes, drifting through the air.

  “Why do you love him so much?” Marielle asked. “Jazmeer’s mama says he is not a nice man.”

  “Oh, honey frog, we can’t choose who we love. Someone who other people might think is bad could be just the right fit. Someone other people can’t see as precious might be just life and water to you. You just see the good in them, the human part no one else can see, and you just can’t live without it.”

  “But you can’t bring me with you when you go live with him, can you?”

  “The Scenters will be good for you, honey frog,” Varienna had said, kissing Marielle on the forehead. Her scent told Marielle that her mind was already back on Hez’ng and the future they would have together.

  Marielle had gone to live with the Scenters, but the next time she saw Varienna that scent was gone, and the red door was back. And Varienna never spoke again of love – or at least not in connection to herself.

  MARIELLE STRAIGHTENED her tunic for the third time as they waited at the door of The Copper Tincture. She still felt rumpled, hours after dressing and hitting the streets with Carnelian.

  “Remind me again why I found you in bed still dressed like a partier?” Carnelian asked with a smirk.

  Marielle blushed. She’d fallen asleep in the pretty dress when she’d stumbled home and cried herself to sleep. There was no hiding from fate in Jingen. She of all people knew that. There was nothing a Scenter couldn’t sniff out, nothing the Watch couldn’t unearth, no place that rumor did not touch or that prying eyes did not see. If, in just two days time, the chosen Lady Sacrifice was not killed and her blood sprinkled on those warm rocks Marielle had seen, then they would come for Marielle. And there would be no stopping them.

  She had shivered all night from the cold and from that thought, tossing and turning, sweating with fear and horror. All these years, she’d known what they did to girls on Summernight. All these years, she’d tried not to think about it, but it was coming for her now – or it would if anything happened to stop the sacrifice of the girl they’d bought in the countryside.

  Had she been sleeping like Marielle? Had she been tossing and turning in her bed as the hopes and dreams bled out of her long before the life did? Had she cried every tear until even tears abandoned her? Marielle had clung to the sweaty sheets, shaking like a leaf, knowing right down to her bones that there was no way she could hide from this and no way she could outrun it. If she failed to keep the Lady Sacrifice safe from whoever was stealing this magic, then she was going to die in just two days.

  “Remind me again why we’re out during the daytime when we are on Night Watch?” Marielle replied. She was too tired to let Carnelian push her around. She hadn’t slept a wink last night.

  “You’re sure that the scent led here, right?” Carnelian asked with a grimace. She’d dragged Marielle up out of bed, barely waiting for her to dress before marching her out to a jetty along the canal in the Government District and demanding that she catch a scent there. “I don’t lose criminals. At least not for long. And those two escaped from right under Dacrin’s nose while you were out galivanting!”

  Carnelian had been there, too. But it wouldn’t be very wise to point that out to her. Just like it wouldn’t have been wise to mention it on the jetty where Carnelian had raged about the fool she’d been partnered with and how she’d slipped out of first place on the tally board because he’d let some shadowy figure get away.

  “It’s up to you to track him!” she’d demanded, shoving Marielle forward as if she wouldn’t have been able to smell that scent from across the canal, never mind right on the jetty.

  But that was the problem. She smelled two scents.

  One, was the heady, intoxicating scent of magic – the scent from the Library and under the Sunset Tower – the scent that the Lord Mythos insisted was the key to keeping his ceremonies safe. The scent her very life hung from like a last petal on a dying flower. Lilac and vanilla, turquoise and golden sparks.

  The other scent was the one she’d smelled before: bright and golden like hot honey but mixed with a ginger popping orange and in this case, a soft lavender of compassion. And stranger than finding both scents there – distinct and yet together – was the feeling that despite the addictiveness of the magic scent, what she really wanted was to follow the gold and orange and lavender.

  “Of course, I’m sure that this was where the scent led,” she said, admiring the carvings in the door of The Copper Tincture. They told the story of Xe’li and her desperate desire to stop time, how she drank a tincture of copper and was youthful for a thousand years. But the day she told a lie, her youth fell away and she crumpled into dust. And now, as Marielle ran a finger over Xe’li’s intricate robes, she was lying too. Because she hadn’t taken Carnelian to where the golden scent led – streaking away from the conflict like an arrow from a bow, but rather to where the turquoise and gold of the magic had come from. The lilac scent of it still hung in the air like a banner.

  “If it is, they’ll be able to identify the picture,” Carnelian said.

  “Picture?”

  “Dacrin’s good with a pen.” Carnelian pulled a folded parchment from her pocket and shoved it at Marielle.

  She was still unfolding it when the door opened, and a smiling young man greeted them.

  Marielle felt her eyes widen at the pi
cture in her hands. Dacrin was good. He’d drawn a perfect likeness of the face she’d seen in the crowd when she first caught a whiff of that intoxicating golden honey scent. Her eyes traced the face in the sketch, trying to burn it into her mind.

  Carnelian snatched the parchment away from Marielle.

  “Jingen City Watch,” she said to the young man in the doorway. “Do you know this man?”

  She handed him the parchment and the young man took it in trembling hands.

  “Is he hurt? Dead?”

  “Not that we know of,” Carnelian said curtly. “What’s his name.”

  “That’s Tamerlan,” the man said. “Tamerlan Zi’fen of the Zi’fen Landholds. He’s an apprentice here.”

  Marielle swallowed. It was as if the name made the scent more real. He was a real person. An apprentice here at this Alchemist House. And somehow, he had brought magic from this place but lost it on the jetty when he fought with Dacrin and Carnelian.

  Where did magic go when it left? Did it waft away like smoke, or melt like ice, or did it still linger like the scent of death? Perhaps, they were about to find out. She felt excitement frizzling through her like bubbles in water. They were about to finally get some answers.

  “We need to speak to the Master Alchemist here,” Carnelian said.

  “And we need to see Tamerlan’s room,” Marielle added, trying to look calm when inside she was anything but calm. The residue of magic washed out the door all around the young apprentice’s scent of ochre and smoked paprika worry, overpowering the smell of metals and chemical mixtures in the Guild House beyond.

  “Of course,” the young man said, looking shaken.

  He led them into the Guild House, past a stylish anteroom, and down a long corridor to a room where things in glass bottle bubbled and smoked. Marielle had known to expect the smell – she’d wrapped the veil around her face four times to try to combat it, but it still rode over every sense so that she had to stay outside the room, clutching the wall for support as Carnelian went inside to speak to the master.