“My name is Ree,” she whispered, breaking the kiss. Her breath was sweet. “That secret is yours to keep, brave boy.”
He gasped and jerked back as hot pain bit into his ear. He touched it and his fingers came away bloody.
She brought the dagger down from behind his head. A smear of blood stained the blade, and she made it disappear behind her back.
He swallowed down a dry throat, touched the notch she had made in his ear.
“A kiss and a cut,” she said. “For your collection and mine. Do not come back here or I’ll keep more than a fleck next time.”
She took his hand, her fingers strong and calloused, and led him to the door. She opened it to the Fairmist night. The walkway spiraled to the ground where the world was dizzyingly sideways.
“Go,” she said. “The Faia will not let you fall.”
He started down, holding his ear, dizzy from the kiss, from the pain, from his body turning slowly with each step. He had never felt so confused. Floating water touched his face and dripped down, and the world slowly righted itself. When he was on flat ground, she spoke.
“Grei.”
He turned. She stood in the doorway, lithe and beautiful, sideways against the misty backdrop of the city.
“You are a protector. You just don’t know it yet,” she said. “That is the secret you seek.”
She closed the door.
Chapter 2
Ree
Ringblade Ree returned to the imperial city of Thiara under the cover of darkness. Ringblades trained for the dark, and Ree’s night vision was excellent. It was one of the first tests for initiates. More than half of them failed there and did not proceed.
She rode to the northern edge of the great city, tethered her horse to a limb of the cypress tree and went to the red wall of Thiara, which was constructed by human hands out of blood granite. If Fairmist was the city of water, then Thiara was the city of sun, with her crimson walls, gold-veined marble towers shining in the daylight, and the blazing Sunset Sea behind it all.
She didn’t worry about the horse. One of the Ringmaids would come along and properly stable or sell it.
She found the correct stone on the dark blocks and tapped out the sequence.
The secret door opened on silent runners, falling back and sliding to the side just enough for her to slip through, then reversed its course and began closing.
The moment she stepped through she slid downward at a steep slant. As she had been trained, she kept her feet and her balance. The drop was far, at least three stories in the scant light. But she knew the count. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven.
She hit the ground and took the expected impact nimbly, stepping into the twenty-fifth Ringdance and counting again to seven. There were seventy-seven dances altogether. The last, the seventy-eighth, was death. Of course, as Ringmaids she and the others had joked about the seventy-ninth dance: paradise.
The twenty-fifth was one of the shortest dances, made for entering through this, the Poison Door. She placed her feet perfectly. One slip and she would die.
The dance ended exactly at the count of seven, just as the door far above thumped shut, plunging Ree into absolute blackness. She was on her tiptoes on a tiny shelf one inch above the floor. Her back pressed against the wall, and her fingers hooked through the steel rings set in the blocks for just this purpose.
A quiet hush filled the tight space as poison poured out of four spouts at the base of the walls. It spread smoothly and quickly across the steel grate, only half-an-inch deep, before sinking through. The poison was harmless as long as it only touched the metal of the grate. If it touched something living or once-living, like bare feet or the leather of boots, it became a gouting fume that would kill a person in seconds.
Ree waited for the count of seventy-seven, when another quiet rush reached her ears as the neutralizing oil poured over the poison.
She stepped down, beginning the first step of the twenty-sixth Ringdance, weaving through the dark and past the triggers of the thorn axe and the scorpion net. The dance came to an end, and she reached the door at the far side of the corridor. The last motion of the twenty-sixth was a leap straight up to brush the lever in the wall above the door.
No sound came from the lever, but she knew it alerted those on the other side. Ree swiveled and put her back against the wall as she regained her breath. Sometimes Selicia required a Ringblade to fight to gain entry. Training was never over. Ree must be ready.
A hatch in the top of the door slid aside, and the shaft of bright light would have blinded her if she had been looking at it. As she had been trained, she stared at the base of the door as her eyes adjusted.
“Who calls?” came a voice that Ree recognized well. She smiled.
“Your Ringsister,” Ree answered.
“I cannot see you.”
“A Ringblade moves, but is not seen,” she repeated the Ringblade creed.
The latch clicked and the door swung open. Ringblade Liana stood on the other side, a coy smile on her face. Ree loved the way that woman smiled.
“Welcome back, Ree.”
“It is good to be home.”
Liana leaned down, and they kissed. Ree luxuriated in the fullness of the woman’s lips. She let the kiss linger. The fate of the empire could wait for a good kiss. Finally, since Liana obviously would not be the first to stop, Ree gave her a playful nibble on her lower lip and pushed her away.
“How was Fairmist?” Liana asked, as if she hadn’t just taken Ree’s breath away. The tall, dark woman seemed invincible with her wide shoulders and muscled body. Her short hair and striking lavender eyes were exotic and delicious.
“Wet,” Ree replied, thinking of the mysterious Grei and smirking at her private joke. Liana raised a jet-black eyebrow, and the corner of her lip quirked.
“You have an adventure to share?” she asked.
“You’d like it.” Liana was the best of them at the forties, the dances that dealt with sensuality, sex, and snaring an opponent’s mind by offering the body. Liana and Ree had grown close through the sharing of those tales. She and Liana had been Ringmaids together, the only two of their year’s fourteen initiates who made it.
“Then you must be anxious to tell it to Selicia,” she said, but her tall body blocked the way. Liana came from far over the Sunset Sea, even further west than Venisha, a small kingdom called Shalar. She was as tall as a Benascan, though the physical similarity ended there. Ree brushed her lips against the rich, black skin of Liana’s shoulder.
“Duty first,” she said.
Ringblades reported to the Ringmother first, all others after. And the news that Ree possessed could change the empire. Ree might have found the one they were all looking for.
After re-setting the latch on the Poison Door, Liana escorted Ree past the open arches to the dance rooms. It was unnecessary but sweet, a gesture of deference to Ree, as though she had not grown up in these halls, as though she didn’t know every corner, every shadow and spark of light.
Three Ringmaids strained through dance fifty-one, Ringblade Zela watching with a stern eye. Zela looked up, saw Ree, and smiled briefly before glaring back at her charges.
Ree had missed the quiet solitude of the Sanctum, deep below the city. She missed the vaulted ceilings and the quietly flickering lanterns. The polished red walls shone. She ran her fingers along them, feeling their cool smoothness. This was safety, tucked away under the city with only her Ringsisters around her. She missed their companionship, their quiet conversations and late-night dinners. She missed the practice rooms, smelling of exertion, where the few Ringmaids trained each year. There was a mix of alertness and security in this place. This was the only place a Ringblade could let down her guard. This was where they all looked at the empire from inside the womb and contemplated where they would move events. This was home, more than her parents’ mill in Moondow. This was where Ree Gell had become a woman, where she had learned what being female meant and the power it held
.
She and Liana fell into stride together, enjoying the companionable silence.
They passed the row of Ringblade apartments, each blocked only by a red velvet curtain. The dusky walls were adorned with familiar art. She had grown up with those paintings and wall hangings. Some showed bloody battles, meant to shock the viewer. Some were quietly forbidding scenes, like the lone woman standing naked in the field of long grass before black skies, or the woman approaching the engulfing dark of the Jhor Forest. Each painting’s unspoken story centered around a Ringblade, whether large and bloody or tiny against the world. Ree’s favorite depicted a Ringblade dancing in the Sunset Sea, a wave towering behind her. The colors were stunning. Blues and greens of the fierce ocean rose in front of the rosy sunset for which the sea was named. The bronze figure of the Ringblade was a small but powerful contrast to the elements.
They passed the row of paintings and Liana stopped at Selicia’s curtain. She turned and bowed low to Ree as though she was the imperial princess.
When she straightened, Ree shook her head, suppressing her smile. By the Faia, it was good to see her.
“Does Selicia know about your dramatic streak?” Ree asked.
“A late dinner, Ree? I’ll wait up for you,” Liana suggested.
“That would be the Seventy-Ninth. Thank you.”
Liana moved silently up the low hallway, hips swinging. She gave a brief backward glance before she turned the corner and was gone. Ree grinned at the display that Liana had put on, Ree was sure, just for her.
Ree took a deep breath and turned to the velvet curtain that hung at the threshold of Selicia’s room, embroidered with the empress’ gold symbol.
The entrance to the Sanctum was fraught with deadly barriers, but within, there were no doors and no locks, only soft curtains. There were no secrets or theft here. The respect of her Ringsisters was the most important thing a Ringblade owned, and they were free to share the information they gathered, as long as they shared it with Selicia first. No Ringblade had ever betrayed the sisterhood as far as Ree knew, not in the three hundred years it had existed.
Ree did not knock. She did not clear her throat or clap, nothing to indicate she was there. Selicia said that if a Ringblade was not aware enough to sense someone outside her own room, she deserved to be surprised.
Ree counted to seven, then stepped through the curtains.
Selicia stood in the center of the room. A dun-colored nightdress draped from her strong shoulders to mid calf. Her long, black braid almost touched the floor. She usually had it coiled and clipped to her shoulder. She had either been sleeping, or was about to do so.
But there was no drowsiness in those depthless black eyes or anywhere on her angular features. The puckered red scar on her cheek was still bright, twisting the left side of her face from eye to jaw, just above the vein in her neck. Jorun Magnus’ blade had come half-an-inch from killing her before she brought the legendary warrior down.
The Ringmother exuded strength. She was small, but her presence filled the space, made her seem taller. The Ringmother could be surrounded by a dozen Lianas and still seem like the largest Ringblade in the room.
She was in her forties, lean and muscled, and she could spin through any of the Seventy-Seven Dances with more precision and power than her youthful counterparts. Ree couldn’t imagine facing her in combat. Jorun Magnus had been unbeatable; only one woman in the world could have taken him down. This woman.
“Welcome back, Ringsister,” Selicia said in her soft contralto. “Would you like to sit?” She waved a graceful hand at the three red silk cushioned chairs around a small table in the corner.
“My thanks,” Ree said. “I have been astride a horse for two days. I could stand.”
Selicia gave a ghost of a smile, there and gone, as though she had expected the answer. Probably she had.
Ree was excited to share her news about Grei, the boy who could apparently either flaunt the magic of the Faia or was somehow chosen by them. He might be the Whisper Prince, someone for whom the emperor had been searching for quite some time. The Whisper Prince was the key to an old Faia prophecy that was of interest to his imperial majesty. So Ree had notched him and saved the blood. No matter where he went, she could find him.
Ree waited for Selicia’s word to report. Ree had been sent to Fairmist several times over the last two years to see if there was any new Faia activity. Never had she returned with anything to report. Never until now.
But Selicia did not speak the ritual words. She did not ask Ree for her report, and suddenly Ree felt there was something wrong.
Selicia’s lips pressed into a line, and she said, “I have news for you, Ringsister. I urge you to listen to it, then take a late dinner with your friend as she suggested, and later sleep. When you wake, I wish to talk more of it, if you would.”
Ree’s heart began to pound. She immediately thought of her parents, wondering if something had happened to them. Benascan raiders? But they had not come as far south as Moondow since just after the Slink War.
Selicia watched Ree with those black eyes, perhaps reading her mind, then she said, “Your sister, Salandra, was chosen.”
Ree’s heart lifted for an instant as she thought Selicia meant her sister would become an initiate in the next cycle, would be brought to the Sanctum to pit her wits and her body against the Seventy-Seven Dances. But Ree’s heart dropped at Selicia’s solemn expression.
“No,” Ree said, her voice barely a whisper.
Selicia took a long, even breath. “I am so sorry.”
“The Debt,” Ree said, her lips numb.
Selicia held out her arms to Ree. It was the first time the Ringmother had ever done that since Ree had been initiated. It was the first time Ree had ever heard of Selicia making such a gesture. She did not cross the room as a friend might, but only made the offer, which meant Ree could refuse.
Ree remained where she was.
“When?” she asked.
“Last night.”
“Selicia, you must intervene,” she said, knowing what the answer must be, knowing that it was treason to even ask. “Just this once.”
Selicia watched Ree, never once breaking eye contact. She lowered her arms, answering without words.
Of course not. If the emperor would not intervene on behalf of his own daughter, no one would intervene on behalf of a Ringblade’s sister. Salandra was dead.
Ree clenched her teeth. She was expected to hear the news, to grieve silently, as Ringblades did everything else, and to bury Salandra as though she had died in an accident, or from a raider’s axe. She mastered her emotions, and nodded.
Selicia watched her eyes, and Ree saw caring there, but also duty. Always duty first.
After what Selicia must have decided was an appropriate amount of time for Ree to collect herself, she returned to the normal. To the routine. To duty.
“And what words do you bring to me, Ringsister? What tales of the unseen?” She spoke the ritual words.
Ree’s tongue had turned to stone. Salandra was dead, never to be spoken of again, and Ree was left with routine and duty. She had served the empire faithfully, and the emperor had killed her sister. Ree’s obligation dictated she trust in the wisdom of her emperor and, most importantly, to report on her mission to Selicia.
“Fairmist continues as ever, Ringmother,” Ree lied smoothly, as they had trained her to do. Except lies were for the outer world. Never in the Sanctum. Never against the Ringmother. “The Faia remain absent.”
Selicia nodded, and her eyes turned concerned again. “Then let us speak more tomorrow.”
“Yes.” Ree bowed her head, feeling as though she had swallowed something rotten. She turned and moved through the curtains. She did not think of Liana even once. She did not think of a late dinner.
She had left a horse tied to the giant cypress tree. The Ringmaids had almost assuredly not taken it yet.
And Ree might yet reach the Imperial Wand before he reached the slin
k caves.
Chapter 3
Kuruk
Kuruk hunched his thin shoulders over the table, focusing on the tome. He worked to keep his fingers cool as he handled the pages. The old paper was made for the plump sacks of water humans used for fingers. His claws would poke burning holes if he didn’t concentrate, and it required more effort to maintain his concentration with every month that passed. The pressure had increased; every day was a battle. He fought them all, had held them in check for seven years, but in each moment there was a chance he might lose control. In each moment, he fought.
He reached the end of the page, slid a translucent claw between the brittle sheets, and flipped to the next. The old human histories calmed him, settled his mind.
“Kuruk,” Malik said from behind him. His brother entered the cavern, flame rising from the top of his blond hair. Kuruk wanted to say something, but he restrained himself. Malik had poor control, and control was the only thing that kept them alive. Once they brought their brothers home, they could allow themselves to be careless. But not until that moment.
He and Malik had once been human, and their boyish faces resembled children unless they projected something else into their enemies’ minds. They could have passed among humans unnoticed in their natural forms except for their translucent claws, and of course, their eyes. Their eyes told every nightmare they had endured.
“A crusader approaches,” Malik said.
Kuruk felt the news like another sack of sand laid on his shoulders. The onslaught was constant, and he was weakening. There was no respite. That would make two this year already. Two too many. The humans must be so afraid that they did not dare approach the slink cave.
Kuruk rose reluctantly, concentrating and closing the cover of Emperor Cozelt’s second history without burning it.
“You have read that before,” Malik said, looking at it.
“Something caught my interest. Their history—our history,” he corrected himself, “is vital. It calms me,” Kuruk said.
Malik nodded, but Kuruk could feel his brother’s doubts.
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