Ninthborn (The Ninthborn Chronicle Book 1)

by J. E. Holmes

  She reached the edge of the dark and continued to inch out. At first, she could see her boot on top of the darkness. The dark-rain wasn’t a shadow cast, but it also wasn’t tangible. It didn’t have any feel to it, any weight, any mass. If you shined light on it, the dark-rain would fade, like water drying.

  “Issy,” Ediline whispered back. There was a torowood lamp just above the threshold into Isbeil’s house. “Can you make light?”

  “What?”

  “Your lamp. Can you make it brighter?”

  Isbeil looked back over her shoulder. Without a word, the gentle glow coming through the open door intensified into a harsh glare that nearly shook. Out from the doorway, the dark-rain along the ground began to fade and recede. New motes flitted down from above, clung to Ediline’s leg and shoulder, but then quickly faded and vanished from the bright light. The haven around the awning grew.

  Ediline looked back out toward the darkness beyond.

  There was a shape in the utter darkness, deep violet. It moved, slinking. A sound came, a scrape against wood, a drag-clack, and a sucking breath sound.

  Her heart nearly stopped. Isbeil strangled her arm in both hands and yanked Ediline back into the house. She kicked the door shut and screamed.

  Ediline fell onto her back and blinked up at the ceiling, the intense brightness.

  “You saw that, right?” Isbeil said, turning.

  Ediline nodded and sat up. She had seen it. A thing, moving within the darkness, not on top of it, the way she and Isbeil had been, but somehow in it. She’d heard it. It had made sound in the Everquiet, which just wasn’t possible.

  “If you saw it, then I didn’t imagine it. We couldn’t have both imagined it.” Isbeil paced the length of her entryway, never taking her eyes off the front door. “This is. This is. Shit. Lords, shit. Edi. It’s—”

  “Something impossible.”

  Isbeil seemed to finally realized that she had flung Ediline onto the floor. After helping her up, the light overhead dimmed—but only a little—and Isbeil started pulling Ediline toward the sheer curtain at the back of the room. “Come on, you’re sleeping with me tonight.”

  “You think you can sleep?”

  “I’m going to try, damn it, and you’re not going anywhere tonight.” She pushed back the curtain. The bedroom tucked away beyond was small, almost entirely occupied by the roundish bed. A large wardrobe took up the rest of the space. Isbeil cast another frantic glance back at the door. “Lords save me.” She hastily changed into an elegant nightgown and lay down.

  Ediline kicked off her boots and crawled up and into the bed with her. Even with the fear, even with the burning questions and the shaking adrenaline, she was touched by the gesture, even if it was entirely because Isbeil was terrified and didn’t want to be alone. No one wanted to share space, let alone a bed, with the ninthborn. But here was Isbeil, holding onto Ediline tightly, almost protectively, pulled up into the alcove of her bedroom, shaking in the dark, terrified of a slinking shape outside in the dark-rain, an impossibility.

  — Chapter 7 —

  “Loethe the Ninth Lord walked with shadows at his heels, yet was possessed so of deceit that none of his fellow Lords could see his machinations, despite Their foresight, to bring about the Desolation.”

  —The Words of the Lords, ed. xii

  It took a full day to shake the unsettled feeling that followed the night of the dark-rain. She didn’t go back to Isbeil. Her sister would be fine, and she didn’t want to tarnish the moments they’d had together where she’d felt that Isbeil actually cared about her. For the whole day, everything was overshadowed by the fright at what they’d seen, but by inches Ediline managed to convince herself that she had other things to worry about, and all else could wait. A full day, and a full night in her own bed with Marv, and all she knew was that she couldn’t wait any longer to see him.

  It was a long, nervous walk. The day remained warm and humid, even as the sun drifted toward the western line of trees. The dense clouds overhead, which had just rolled in, kept it from being truly skin-scorching hot, but the air was thick through. Ediline couldn’t get her mind to form the words she wanted to say to Javras. She didn’t know what she felt, she didn’t know how to put it into words, and she didn’t know who she was supposed to be when she tried to say it.

  She crossed the last bridge, arms swinging free at her sides, and stopped in front of Yithin’s manor. A different guard stood outside it.

  “Hello,” she called.

  “Are you here to see Sesér Teshtéshev?”

  Ah, so this one was friendlier. ”Yes,” she said. “Is he free?”

  “He is not in the residence at the moment,” the guard said.

  “Oh.” A strange hot-cold swirl of emotions sat low and heavy in her belly. Was it relief? Or disappointment? Was it fear, that with the time she’d spent away from him she’d lost her opportunity for good? “Do you know where he is?”

  The guard cleared his throat. “I do believe he is out looking for you, Princess.”

  “Looking for me?” He would go to Sladt, ask around for her, and fifty people would make up fifty lies about where Princess Ediline was because none of them cared enough to know yet none of them wanted to fail to give an answer. If she hoped to find him, she needed to stay in one place—a place to which he would certainly return.

  “Then he shall find me,” she announced. “I will wait for him here. Could you let me inside?”

  “Yes, Princess.” He hardly even sounded begrudging. Here was a guard acting the part he was meant to act. Somebody deserved to be promoted.

  “Are his keepers about?”

  “Just one, yes.”

  She doubted Wulfgar and Wien would be around, but it was a possibility. She quailed at recalling Wulfgar’s threat. It was almost funny in hindsight, but she had to believe he actually would turn her inside-out if she broke Javras’s heart. And that was a very persuasive thought. Whatever she decided to do, she had to do it in a way that didn’t hurt Javras.

  The guard opened the manor door, and Ediline entered. A new smell, full of savory complexity and sweet undertones, wafted over her. She saw Jinnrey again in the kitchen, though rather than busying about, he sat on a stool in front of a large brewing pot, and he wrote in a leather-bound book.

  He looked up, saw her, then looked back down. “The young Sesér Teshtéshev is looking for you,” he said. His voice was rolling and refined; he had a mastery of her language. As Ashwin’s personal servant, he probably was a master of many languages. But just what did the personal servant to a man like that even do, besides cook?

  “Your name is Jinnrey, is that correct?”

  “Yes,” he said. “And you are Princess Ediline, the eighth born of His Dominance King Maxen of Tithelk.” Then he shook his head a little. “Funny, I’ve heard curious schoolyard songs about your brother, yet they seem to have been written about a girl.”

  She went bolt cold, and her leg stopped mid-step toward the kitchen. “Is that so?” she said, retaining her vocal composure. “Well, you know how odd children can be, how calling a boy girl or a girl boy can be harmful to their strange little minds.”

  “I suppose that must be the case.”

  His undertones were clear. He wanted her to know that he suspected the truth. She began to calculate for the inevitable extortion that would follow, what she could feasibly do to convince him to remain quiet and how she might rush to avoid her own destruction if he didn’t. But he just went on writing. Her panic remained, low and quiet.

  “I’m not interested in talking about me,” she said.

  “Most excellent, Princess.”

  She waited. Jinnrey offered nothing more. “What sort of man is Javras’s father?”

  “A dangerous man.”

  “Has he always been that way?”

  “No, and yes.”

  Again he offered nothing more. Jinnrey was disinterested, giving her nothing. She decided on a different tactic. If that didn’t
work, she would move on.

  “Are you close to Javras?”

  “I am not.”

  “Ah,” she said. “What are you writing?”

  “A story,” he said.

  “Really? A fiction?”

  “Indeed.”

  And yet when he spoke there were so few words. “Are you a professional?”

  “In a sense.”

  “Are your stories read in Ronrónfa?”

  He chuckled a little, another carefully refined sound, with a hand over the mouth to accompany. “In Ronrónfa, as in Tithelk, there is not much demand for written fiction, and the languages, while efficient in some respects, do not demand it either. Thanks to Ashwin, however, my stories are read in Bannoch, Paar, and Morelek.”

  “You write in Mor?”

  “Indeed. Can you read it?”

  “Not at all. I can speak only a few words.” Greetings and swears, mostly. Please and thank you and not much else. “Why do you serve Ashwin? If you don’t mind me asking.”

  Jinnrey lowered his nose to the book. “I do mind, as a matter of fact. I am not a long personal friend of the family, or a caretaker of Ashwin’s children, if that is the sort of persona you are imagining for me. I am a writer, Princess, and this work provides me opportunities.”

  Thanks to Ashwin, his stories were read. Ah.

  Ashwin really was fearless, then. His personal servant saw their arrangement as nothing more than an opportunity to pursue his passion in his spare time. How easily Jinnrey could spy on Ashwin or assassinate him—that is, if Ashwin were anyone except who he was.

  “I won’t take any more of your time,” she said. “I would like to wait until Javras returns. May I?”

  “I could not and would not stop you, Princess.”

  “Thank you, Jinnrey. The food smells lovely.”

  “Thank you, Princess.”

  She passed through the entry room and began down the hall. Ashwin was just one week away. Whatever plans her family brewed would come together soon. In those eight days, what could she accomplish with Javras? She felt lost. If only her mother would agree to see her.

  She climbed the ladder to the second level. Inside, she didn’t hear the boom of Wulfgar’s voice. She didn’t hear any voices, actually. The room where Wulfgar had sharpened his knife was empty. Cautiously she leaned toward each of the two halls, and from both heard not a sound. Tiptoeing, she moved toward the ladder to the next house up. Javras had said his rooms were there. It would be rude to intrude, to climb up there and look around. She set one hand on the ladder, then another, and climbed. It would only be rude if he found out.

  Even as elevated as it was, Yithin’s manor was dwarfed by Sladt. Her father ensured that no structure in the city could reach higher than his own home. Nonetheless, looking over the city from her place on the ladder was enough to make her stop. She loved to look at it, the way it snaked around itself, the bridges spanning different heights, different districts, connecting the people of the city but keeping them comfortably apart as well. And it was all tucked within the trees, within the trunks and branches and leaves.

  At the top of this ladder, Ediline came to a long, narrow room. A thick wooden table spanned its center, flanked by chairs.

  At either end of the long room were two closed doors. One of them had to be Javras’s room. The floorboards creaked under her first step, and she flinched. Slowly, she let out her breath.

  She approached one of the doors. She tried it, and it opened, creaking also. “Hello?” she called softly. Then, summoning air into her lungs and standing straight with what she hoped looked like belonging, she nudged the door open and entered.

  Like the rest of the manor, it had been stripped of Yithin’s personal belongings. A bed remained, as did a grand wardrobe and chest, a desk, and a lounge.

  Upon the desk were rolls and sheets of paper. Ink bottles and pens had been pushed to the corner, and a great heavy book lay on one end. The bed was a messy tangle of sheets, clothes strewn about it and spilling onto the floor. A pair of boots rested in the corner.

  The boots and the clothes were some she’d seen Javras in. She’d guessed right.

  It was nice to know that Javras wasn’t the straight-up proper man he appeared to be, at least not in every respect of his life. A young man ought to have a terribly messy room; it suited Javras to have this part of his life. She felt a stab of guilt for intruding upon it.

  Just as she began to back out, she saw his sword on the lid of the chest at the foot of the bed. No, not just one. Two swords.

  Ediline eased forward, rolling her forward foot to the floor but not letting her weight rest too heavily on either one. Neither she nor the floor made a single sound. When she reached the chest, she bent toward the swords. Both were sheathed, one smaller than the other. It was thinner and, by the lack of wear on the hilt, newer. The larger one bore the impression of Javras’s hand. It was the one she’d held that day in the river’s mist.

  She slid her hand once again around the hilt of his sword, her fingers coming to rest where Javras had worn down the leather. The fit wasn’t perfect, yet it also was. Her heart pounded. Holding what he held, feeling an echo of what he felt.

  She gripped the hilt but didn’t lift the sword from the chest. Then she let go. Now, the other sword. Its leather grip hadn’t been worn down, but that wasn’t a bad thing. This weapon didn’t yet belong to anyone. Judging by the crispness of the sheath around the blade, it hadn’t been drawn much. It was waiting for someone. When she squeezed, the leather gave slightly under her pressure.

  “Princess.”

  She did not jump in surprise. She did not yelp. She did not hurl the sword in the direction of the voice while screaming a battle cry. No. Because she had prepared herself for being discovered. She did, though, let go of the sword posthaste and stand at attention. The voice belonged to Jinnrey, who stood in the doorway.

  “I followed you,” he said, “because I had not mentioned that Javras would, I believe, appreciate it if you did not go amongst his belongings.” He did not openly condescend, but his tone tilted down toward her—he clearly in the right, and she clearly not.

  “My mistake,” Ediline said. “Eighty apologies.”

  “Make none for me,” he said. Then he turned and left. She heard the creaking floor and then the groan of the ladder. He just wanted to tell her that what she was doing was wrong, that it might upset Javras. He couldn’t tell her not to do it, just imply that it was a bad idea.

  In the spirit of her own maligned existence, Ediline was often infatuated with bad ideas—but not this time. If she honestly wanted to pursue anything with him, digging through the papers on his desk would be far too much without his consent.

  She pulled back and left his room. When he came home, what would she tell him? Isbeil had said she should grab him and kiss him—or else tell him that their closeness was a mistake. But it wasn’t. Not to her, even if it had been foolish. She remembered vividly the naked swirl of anxiousness in her chest, like dry leaves in a hot wind. If she couldn’t tell him it had been a mistake, could she really just grab him and kiss him?

  She rejoined Jinnrey in the front room. He sat on his stool and wrote while dinner simmered, and she sat at the dining table and rubbed at the sides of her head.

  The sky darkened. No one came home. After a while, Jinnrey said that dinner was ready, that Javras would come home eventually, and there would be warm food for him, but he didn’t know when it would be. He offered her some of the soup, which tasted twice as good as it had smelled, and some bread. He did not join her at the table. She could eat in one of the rooms off the main hall, he told her. They were empty.

  So she took a bowl of soup and four slices of bread into a spare room, and she ate, trying to decide what to do. She ate under the dimming light of glowing oak, and she listened for the door, for voices outside. Nothing came. She waited, and Javras didn’t come home. She fell asleep on the unmade bed in the empty room, the light seeming to fade.<
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  — Chapter 8 —

  “Good intentions cannot be nurtured in shadow.”

  —A Truist proverb

  A rush like falling, but nothing. Amidst the absence of sound, there were voices. At first it was a murmur, indistinct and scattered like leaves.

  “Are you present?” said a measured woman’s voice.

  “Lost in thought, that is all,” said another. Even in the lightest comment, her voice had a conviction like a low-burning flame. Following, the murmur gained clarity and changed into distinct sources.

  “Stalwart though you may be, this cannot be solved with inaction,” boomed a man’s voice. “As you continue to do nothing, you will stagnate. We must fight it.”

  “Hmph,” was the reply.

  “It is a stone rolling down the side of a mountain,” said yet another voice, indecipherable. It brought a chill to the darkness. It was light, like wind; and sharp, like the blades of knives, like the point of a thorn. “Fall, or rise. Sit, or stand.”

  “If it is a boulder,” a second man said, “then I shall be the stalwart wall which stops it. Standing is not inaction, as difficult as that may be for you to grasp,” he added in a way that made it clear it was directed at the man with the booming voice.

  “Listen,” urged the woman whose voice was filled with conviction. It rose from her like a suddenly bursting fire. “Whether it is to stand in its way or to fight, you cannot make this choice for my people. We will not submit to you.”

  “This will not be decided by just one.”

  “And yet you would have me submit to your whim!” Her voice lowered. “You may put your trust in granted powers we cannot fathom, but my trust lies in steel and my own heart.”

  “You fail to understand the basic nature of the matter,” said the second man. “Struggle against the stone as you will, there is no reasoning with it. It will not listen, and you fail to understand it.”