by S. M. Boyce
“Call someone to draw her a bath, then. There is more that she and I must discuss.”
“She needs to rest,” he said, grumbling. A second later, his warm hand rubbed Kara’s shoulder. “I’ll be back after you’ve had some time to yourself, if you would like my company.”
She set her chin on her knees and forced a smile, but the only thing she wanted at that moment was the bath. He walked out of the room and shut the door without looking back. Adele continued speaking as if he’d never been there in the first place.
“Has the Blood requested your presence?”
“Come on, Adele, I just woke up.”
“She will want to speak with you soon, regardless. Yakona royals aren’t sympathetic. You must be careful, Kara. You will not have many allies here, and I will not always be able to help you. I am not supposed to be here, even now.”
“I’ll try.”
Her voice softened to barely a whisper. “Garrett trusts Braeden, though I can’t bring myself to do so. I concede that he alone saved you from Deirdre. It’s clear that he will protect you, but what worries me is that I don’t know why he wants you safe. I fear that it’s only because he hasn’t figured out how to control you, but Garrett disagrees.
“Because of Garrett’s trust, I must urge you not to speak of Braeden’s past. If he were to be discovered, they would kill him without a second thought for his many years of service, and you would be without a guardian. Ourea is a vicious world. Though the two of you are unlikely friends, you must protect each other.”
“I won’t say anything.”
“Good. Be cautious.”
Adele shifted in her seat and changed form. Her copper skin shrank into tawny feathers, her body rippling until she was a tiny sparrow. She chirped once, pecked at Kara’s shoe, and shot through the still-open window.
Kara stared at the flapping shutters and ran her fingers through her hair. She threw herself backward into her pillow, dirty and sweaty and finally alone. A blue light glowed from under her chin, and when she touched her neck, her fingers fumbled across the cold clover pendant. The rays of the stone’s blue light danced as she moved her fingers over it.
In an effort to figure out how she’d summoned it before, she imagined the Grimoire in her hands. The memory of its soft leather cover filled her palms and prickled her fingertips.
Dust sprang from the pendant. The blue light in the gem faded to nothing as the funnel of shimmering ash pooled in her lap and congealed into the familiar and very solid red cover of the Grimoire.
Without waiting for her to ask a question, the book flipped open to a picture of the hooded Vagabond. He leaned against a dead tree, its naked branches marking the foreground of the image while a dark forest consumed the landscape behind him. There was no text. She picked at the corner of the page with her fingers.
“You didn’t tell me it would be this bad.”
The Vagabond’s lips twitched into a smile. Her heart jumped. She shifted the page for better light, but the smile was gone when she looked again. Shivers raced up her back, but she took a deep breath. It could have been a play of the light, or even her eyes shifting from her exhaustion. She was hardly at her best.
“So what do I do now?”
The pages flipped again with their own fitful intensity and finally settled on a page that had only one line of neat, handwritten red text.
Find the Vagabond’s village. The secrets there will make you stronger.
“How do I find it?”
A single page turned.
There is a map which will lead you there, but it was broken into four pieces to keep the village’s location safe. Each piece is hidden in one of the four kingdoms the Vagabond visited. Once assembled, this map is your key into the village. Find all four and you will find your way.
“Man,” she grumbled, rubbing her neck. She didn’t want to find a village. She didn’t want to keep this book. She wanted to go home, to go back in time, to forget all of this.
The pages flipped again and settled on a thick chunk of text.
A Vagabond’s Purpose
Journal Entry #537
When I became the Vagabond, I sought to restore the peace treasured by the lost city of Ethos before its great collapse, when it crumbled from within. Ethos was a mighty city where all of the yakona kingdoms lived as one, but even in my day it’s an ancient legend. Now, war is endless and hopeless.
I am feared because I have no blood loyalty to my Hillsidian king. For a yakona, loyalty isn’t a choice. The Blood can control his subjects at any moment and, if powerful enough, from afar. It’s a dangerous and frequently abused gift. My freedom is therefore both envied and loathed.
I am an orphan and was raised in Hillside, but left the city to travel and learn. I discovered Ourea’s wonders and its failures, writing of them in the journal I later adapted to become this Grimoire. This book has a life of its own, can think for itself, and has no limit to the number of its pages. To sort through my entries, merely ask the right question. Its pages will find the answer.
Above all else, I learned this: in all things, there must be balance. I sought to teach this to the world, to remind all yakona of the greatness with which we once ruled Ourea, but my teachings were misconstrued. Those who listened heard only that I had no loyalty. I was allowed to travel to every kingdom except for the Stele, but only because I was seen as a novelty. A curiosity. I was tolerated.
There were a select few who I came across in my journeys who wished to be free from the loyalty which enslaved them, and I gave them that freedom. They became vagabonds, though they never had Grimoires of their own. Some stayed to help me in my journeys, while others continued on with their own lives; either way, they were free to do as they pleased. You, too, will someday learn to create vagabonds as I once did.
The Bloods misinterpreted my intentions when I made some of their people vagabonds. They thought of me as a threat, however fervently I insisted otherwise. I wanted peace, but all they could understand was war. I was forced into hiding because of my actions, but I don’t regret what I did. I never will, as freedom so often comes with a price.
Rumors spread that my book could dominate entire kingdoms, which I thought to be ridiculous—at first. I had simply not yet asked the right question. Once I did, I realized my studies had, indeed, found the weakness in each of the kingdoms except for the one which I was never permitted to visit: the Stele. My quest for knowledge had brought forth a weapon that could destroy all but the most savage way of life.
If you are to take my place, you must trust no one who has a blood loyalty. The time will come when you will doubt everything you stand for, but you must push forward and never stop. Don’t let others speak for you, or you will lose your voice forever.
Kara leaned back against the headboard but didn’t lift her eyes from the pages. They began to flip again, one after another, until the book turned to the back cover. A single sentence was carved into the hard binding, written in a crooked and hasty script.
You are the last of us.
Questions
“You didn’t hear a thing I just said, did you?”
Kara jumped at the voice and pulled the Grimoire to her chest in her surprise. She had tuned out everything else in her room at Hillside as she read, and it took her a moment to get her bearings.
A slender girl in a simple green gown with no sleeves stood at the foot of the bed, hands making dents in the soft blanket as she leaned on the comforter. The Hillsidian girl had rich black hair, brown skin, and a wide smile that covered most of her face. She laughed.
“I apologize if I scared you! My name’s Twin. I’ve actually been here for a good five minutes, just talking away. I thought you heard me come in. I brought you clothes.”
Twin held up the dress in her hands.
“Oh, thank you!”—Kara paused—“I hope this isn’t rude, but may I please have some pants?”
The girl laughed as if it had been a moderately interesting joke and dr
aped the dress over the mirror, blocking the view of the forest. Kara closed the Grimoire and settled into the bed as Twin closed the window.
“Braeden asked me to help you while you stay with us in Hillside, so if you need anything, just let me know.” Twin glanced over a shoulder. “What book are you reading?”
Kara cleared her throat. “It’s nothing.”
“That sounds exciting.” Twin giggled and walked into an adjoining room behind the mirror, which Kara hadn’t noticed before. The rush of water filling a tub resonated across the room’s tile.
Kara rubbed the small diamond in her pendant and wished the Grimoire away. The red leather glowed and broke into dust that spiraled into her pendant. The diamond gleamed, blue once more.
She stood, wincing as she put weight on her feet. The throbbing in her muscles worsened. Standing was painful, but she hobbled to the window in a stubborn effort to look out onto the forest. Beyond even the most distant line of trees were towering, snowcapped mountains, where clouds scraped the summits and reflected sunlight from the noon sky.
“Well, that should be ready for you,” Twin announced as she came back into the room. “I will let you control the heat as you please, of course.”
“Is there a temperature gauge or something?”
“What?” Twin paused, rubbing her hands together and waiting for the punch-line.
“You know, a knob. A handle, or—”
“You can use whatever method of water-warming you prefer, but I have never heard of this knob technique.”
“What? Oh—” Kara laughed. “I’m human. I don’t know magic, or at least, I’m not very good at it. So unless there’s a knob in there, I can’t really do anything.”
“You—You’re human?” Twin’s cheeks flushed green.
“Oh. Um…” Kara bit her lip. Was that supposed to be a secret?
Oops.
Twin gaped, unable to move, and Kara sighed deeply. That had been stupid. There were gentler ways of introducing herself.
“Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t think it would matter,” Kara said, brushing Twin gently on her bare shoulder to reinforce the apology.
The light in the room drained, dissolving into the same darkness that had preceded Braeden’s memory. Gold and white wisps sprang from the floor and circled around her, streaking across the black horizon in thick strokes as they painted the tree line of a forest. Other wisps carved out a path and created a tall woman with a small nose. She was muscled, with a thick sword at her waist, and she wore a tunic with loose pants. She snapped her head to the side and pulled out her sword, glaring into the forest as the wisps of light finished drawing her.
This memory was a year old, though Kara wasn’t sure how she knew that or why it was important. The trees’ delayed movement streaked through the air with slow trails of golden light that shuddered and disappeared on an imagined wind. The world slowed to an unnatural crawl. Her limbs moved for her, forcing her to walk forward.
The woman spun and shoved Kara into a bush.
The rough branches scratched her cheeks as she fell, but she was completely hidden when, seconds later, a man charged into the clearing. He was built from gray veins of light that burned and dissolved around him like smoke. His black eyes had no whites to them and their lifeless glint made her shudder, even in this half-lit world of memories. He lunged at the woman with the sword.
Kara couldn’t move from her hiding place, even when every inch of her body screamed to jump up and help. The woman swung as he attacked. She missed his neck by an inch. He ducked and drew his own sword, swinging at her with quick, sharp jabs. She parried. He pulled a dagger from his boot and aimed for her throat, but she punched his jaw and knocked him backward.
He rolled, recovered, and shot toward her, hiding the dagger in his hand. Even though the woman saw the threat and tried to duck out of his way, she couldn’t move fast enough. The small knife dug into her chest, and she fell to her knees. The man backhanded her into the grass.
Her chest heaved in a desperate attempt to breathe while her nails dug into the skin around the wound. A new color bled into the dream world as a thin trail of green poured over the golden wisps that comprised the woman’s fingers. The strange man grinned and knelt, tearing off a key that dangled from a chain around the woman’s neck.
Panic ate into Kara’s mind when she saw the necklace, corroding all sense of self-preservation. That key was important. It involved all of Hillside’s safety.
Her legs bolted forward on their own while her fingers reached for the dagger in her own belt. She jumped on the man and stabbed his eye before he even saw her move. He screamed and dropped the key, staggering and falling to the ground more than once as he retreated into the shimmering forest. She could still hear his howls of pain long after he had disappeared into the trees.
She crawled over to the woman and grabbed the hand now stained with green light. More of this new color smeared across Kara’s fingers as she lifted the cold hand to her mouth and kissed it over and over. She didn’t know what else to do.
The woman squeezed Kara’s hand and looked around with unfocused eyes. Trails of hot breath hung in the air as her chest rose and fell in irregular bursts. She watched the sky until her breathing shuddered and stopped completely.
Kara was left alone in the field, the only proof of what had happened smeared across her palms in dark green streaks.
Light returned in a sudden, intense stream as Kara pulled free from Twin’s memory and returned to the bedroom in Hillside. Twin was on the ground, tears streaming down her cheeks, so Kara bent down to help her up. The girl screamed and scooted back against the wall.
“What are you?!”
“Look, Twin, I’m sorry—”
“How—why did you make me relive that?”
“What did I just see?”
Twin’s wide eyes quivered until she threw an arm over her face to hide the tears. She pushed herself to her feet and used the wall to regain her balance before she bolted from the room, tripping over her own legs in the process. She ran out and left the door open.
“Twin! Wait!”
Kara’s body still ached, but she hurried for the door and stared out into the empty hallway. Thick red carpet with gold detail covered the floor. Red and gold wallpaper lined the walls, and countless wooden doors filled the corridor. Framed portraits of regal men and women in furs and silks hung in the space between each door, and two open staircases with thick railings descended from either end of the hallway. At the far end was a larger door, with green filigree etched into its frame. The air outside her room was still and undisturbed, without even a soul on the stairway. Twin was gone.
“I need to learn to control that,” Kara said to herself.
She slapped the doorframe in her frustration, but the thick wood swallowed the noise. She shut the door and headed for the bathroom, grabbing the dress as she walked by the mirror. A sash fell onto a pair of boots, so she grabbed whatever clothing she could find and threw it all in a pile in the restroom before she closed that door as well.
White tile covered the floor and walls of the bathroom, which held a tub, a wooden dresser with several drawers, and a sink. The bathtub was nestled into a corner of the room, its edges lined with perfumes and soaps. There was no faucet—no way to add water at all, actually—and yet it was somehow filled to the brim. She combed her fingers through the clear water and grimaced. It was lukewarm, just barely hot enough for a bath, but the dried blood on her arms and neck cracked with her every movement. The simple fact was that she smelled like old sweat and this bath was not just for her own benefit.
The topmost dresser drawer sat slightly open and contained two white towels, so she pulled them out and sat on the edge of the tub. She braced herself and began removing her bandages, the linen pulling at her healing cuts as she unwound each one. Tattered cloth after tattered cloth piled beneath her until all of her scabbed-over wounds were exposed. She unzipped her jeans, yanked off what remained of her shir
t, and slipped into the water.
The lukewarm bath soothed the hot skin around her scrapes and cuts, even if it did make her want to shudder in discomfort. She leaned back and stared at the ceiling, reliving the murder that Twin had witnessed.
Kara had an unconscious guess that the woman had been Twin’s sister, though she didn’t know quite how she could tell. She had sensed a similar bond between Braeden and the woman in his memory; the jarring panic at their deaths gave the familial relationship away.
The man in Twin’s memory, however, remained a mystery. His skin had smoked, which suggested that he was a Stelian, but there was no way to know for sure unless Twin confirmed it, and that wasn’t likely to happen. Kara blew bubbles beneath the water to distract herself from the guilt.