Soul of Cinder

by Bree Barton

  Problem was, Stone had exceeded her expectations. He showed up every morning, wrists wrapped, raring to go. Absorbed her lessons like a bread roll absorbed gravy. He was a good pupil—and she was a good teacher. It made her happy, watching him improve.

  But the more he learned how to defend his body, the more frustrated she became that he couldn’t—or wouldn’t—defend his heart. The boy was an open book. He’d tell her every single thing he was thinking and feeling, or gush about some new teacher or guest he adored.

  What if his next teacher saw that hunger—and exploited it? Pilar had been fifteen when Orry and Morígna came to Refúj: Stone’s age. So trusting, so naive. She’d left herself vulnerable to attack.

  How could she teach him to protect himself from the people who would try to hurt him?

  In other words: How could she keep Stone from turning out like her?

  “Oh, hello!” Nell waved from a nearby table as Pilar and Stone strode into the Swallow. “It’s my two favorite fighters. Come join us! We’re just finishing breakfast, we got a late start today.”

  Mia sat beside her. Still pale from all the vomiting, but otherwise none the worse for wear. Pilar felt happy to see her. The feeling came as a surprise.

  But it clearly wasn’t mutual. Rose had suddenly become very interested in chasing pulped eggplant around her plate with a piece of flatbread.

  Fine. Pilar shoved her warm feelings aside. She jerked a chair from the table and spun it around, straddling the seat.

  “Welcome back to the land of solid food, Rose.”

  “Thanks.”

  Silence. Not that Pilar was angling for a conversation about food and vomit. But Mia’s curtness still hurt.

  Stone whipped a chair around and sat backward, too.

  “We’ve been sparring for hours. Sorry if we smell.”

  “I can tell, you’re both glowing! How’s my brother, Pilar, is he giving you any trouble?” Nell hesitated. “Thank you for what you’re doing. I haven’t seen him this happy in a long time.”

  “You haven’t been here in a long time,” Stone countered.

  Pilar swiped a golden shrimp from Nell’s plate and dipped it in tangy garlic sauce.

  “It helps pass the time.”

  Mia stood. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I was actually on my way out. I don’t want to be late for the circle.”

  “What’s so great about the circle?” Pilar munched loudly on the shrimp, well aware that Mia did not approve of her table manners. “You sit on pillows chanting and humming.”

  “It’s not about humming and chanting!” Stone cried. “I mean, that’s not all it is. I told you, it’s one of those things you have to experience to understand.”

  Pilar shrugged. “I’d rather eat Nell’s shrimp.”

  Stone rolled his eyes. “I won’t force you. Mumma says you can’t make people go to the circle, they’ll find their own way when they’re ready.”

  “Everything’s your choice in the House of Shadows,” Nell chimed in. “That’s the Shadowess’s creed! From the way you like your eggs, right down to how you heal.”

  “Then why don’t you go to the circle?”

  Nell laughed nervously.

  “Great sands, I’ve been to enough circles to last a lifetime! Might as well let other people have a go.”

  “Goodbye, then,” said Mia. She picked up her plate, scooped a strange wooden disc off the table, and hurried out the door.

  “Can’t get away fast enough,” Pilar muttered, watching her go.

  “I’m sure it’s not personal. She’s thriving here, she really is, I’m happy for her.”

  There was a slight shift in Nell’s voice. Subtle, but Pilar caught it. Their cheerful hostess didn’t seem as chipper as she had that first day.

  “Hello, Stone!”

  They all turned.

  A skinny pale girl with wavy blond hair and a cute button nose stood beside the table, wearing a white dress that frilled at the knee. Stone’s age, but an inch or two taller. The one Pilar had caught him swooning over.

  The girl smiled. Waited. After a moment: “Won’t you introduce me?”

  “Oh, right, yes. Right.” Stone swallowed. “Shay lives here. Her mumma is Celeste.”

  That explained the button nose. Pilar braced herself, waiting for the onslaught of kaara-akutha kisses. But Shay only smiled.

  “And you’re Pilar. Stone’s told me all about your sparring sessions. He said you’ve brought the Gymnasia back to life! Maybe I can come sometime?”

  Pilar sized her up. If someone as much as breathed on Shay, she might keel over.

  “Not to spar!” Shay said, cheeks flaming. “Just to watch.” She smiled at Stone again. “If that’s all right with you.”

  He looked panicked. “I’m not very good.”

  “I’m sure you’re better than I would be.” The smile was permanently stuck to her face. “I’m going to the circle. Maybe I’ll see you there?”

  “I . . . I . . .”

  Pilar took pity on him. “Sadly, Shay, we’ve got a sparring session this afternoon.”

  “Oh.” For a moment the girl looked crestfallen. But she recovered quickly. “Maybe next time?”

  Stone nodded, a little dazed.

  “I’ll save a seat for you!” she said, beaming, then practically skipped away.

  Nell and Pilar exchanged a look, each fighting back a smile.

  Stone glared at them.

  “What?”

  “Don’t what me, baby brother. You like each other!”

  Pilar slugged him in the arm. “Look at you, charming the ladies of the House.”

  “She isn’t . . . I’m sure she wouldn’t . . . it’s not like that.”

  Stone blushed fiercely like the liar he was.

  “Well I think it’s sweet,” Nell said. “She’s certainly less obnoxious than her mother, don’t you think, Pil?”

  So she wasn’t the only one who found Celeste unbearable.

  “Sure,” Pilar agreed. “But it’s not hard to be less obnoxious than Celeste.”

  Nell laughed, delighted. Pilar felt a flicker of camaraderie. She’d been at the House long enough to trade inside jokes about its Keeper. It gave her a warm buttercup feeling.

  “I’m starving,” Stone said.

  He got up from his chair, spinning it back around the right way.

  “While you two make jokes about my love life, I’m going to get food.”

  Chapter 17

  Your Own Blood

  MIA WAS BLEEDING.

  She had never been enamored of her menses. She disliked the aching throb around her lumbar spine, the irritation that made her quick to bicker, and the inevitable stains on her undergarments and the rags she used to catch the flow. Still, she knew the blood needed out. So when she woke to find dark red smears on her inner thighs, she grudgingly accepted it.

  “Mia?” Nell rapped on her sfeera door. “Are you in there, are you awake?”

  “Don’t come in!” she cried, waddling over to the bath bucket. “I’m . . . indisposed.”

  “Are you all right, did you get sick again?”

  The door to her room swung open. One thing Mia had learned during her tenure at the House of Shadows was that Nelladine did not abide the implications of a closed door.

  Mia stood poised between bed and bath bucket, fingers sticky with blood. Face red-hot with humiliation.

  “Oh, I see! You’re bleeding—why didn’t you just say so?” Nelladine flopped down on the bed. “Do you have bloodmoss?”

  “Is that the same as bloodbloom?”

  Mia glanced at the wooden charm beside her bed. She’d been breathing with it several times a day, though to her disappointment she had not yet mastered the magic. The Shadowess’s tree had grown to the size of a human skull. Mia’s was no bigger than an eye socket.

  “Your mother said the flowers on a bloodbloom tree have healing properties.”

  “It’s not like your monthly bleedings need to be heal
ed! The moss that grows on the trees is different from the flowers, it’s remarkably absorbent. Women use it during their moon cycles, keeps their undergarments clean. We have loads in the Curatorium, would you like me to bring you some?”

  Mia envied her friend’s insouciance about bleeding. She could still recall how frightened she’d been the first time she bled. She ran to her mother, who held her close and stroked her hair. Your body is a woman’s body now, my red raven. You have nothing to fear from your own blood.

  Oh, Mother, Mia thought with a heavy heart. There were so many things for us to fear.

  “I’d love some bloodmoss. If you don’t mind.”

  “Bloodmoss and clean rags, coming right up.”

  Mia leaned over the bath bucket, splashing water on her hands. Once Nell left she could splash a little lower down.

  She chastised herself. Mia had spent years studying the human body. Why did menstruation embarrass her? Was it because, in the river kingdom, a woman’s menses was shrouded in shame? The prevailing theory was that women emitted a vile vapor while bleeding, so noxious that jam would not set and bread would not rise. Why had she not interrogated this superstition?

  Mia felt a fierce, sudden longing for her anatomy sketches. She missed Wound Man. Or perhaps she missed the girl she used to be. Delighted by tibiae and fibulae. Engrossed in the way veins shunted blood through the body.

  “Wait, Nell?”

  Nelladine paused in the doorway. “Yes?”

  “Do you think I could go with you to the Curatorium? I know we walked by it that first day, but your mother said maybe we could—”

  “Why didn’t you say so? Of course we can! Now I’m remembering, Mumma told me to take you, there’s just been so much going on, I . . .”

  Nell waved away the thought.

  “Come with me. We’ll stuff your undergarments full of moss and have ourselves a grand adventure.”

  As they made their way through the House, Mia’s chest swelled with excitement. She’d been wildly curious about the Curatorium. She often took the longer way back to her sfeera just so she could steal a glimpse through the glass. But she’d been too shy to go in, for reasons she didn’t fully understand.

  “Important question,” Nell said. “Have you been taking the elixir?”

  Mia nodded. Since her first breathing session, she’d gone to see the Shadowess twice a day. She would walk to the House’s westernmost wing and wait in a room where a cerulean tank teemed with live fish. Across from it were seven doors: one for the Shadowess, one for the Keeper, and the others for the five members of the Manuba Committee, an exclusive group of highly esteemed scholars who appointed the Shadowess or Shadower every seven years—and whom Mia had never seen.

  Once ensconced in Muri’s working chambers, Mia spoke with a frankness and lucidity that surprised even her. The Shadowess was easy to talk to. She had a wry, disarming sense of humor. At their third session, Mia described the elixir her mother had tried to give her.

  “I know that tincture,” the Shadowess had said. “It originated here, in fact. Nell tells me you’re a scientist. At the House we welcome and encourage experimentation. That tincture shows a lot of promise, but the truth is that it’s relatively new and has not been widely tested. When it comes to the health of the mind, I prefer to err on the side of caution.”

  Mia appreciated this approach. Every hypothesis deserved a set of controlled variables.

  The Shadowess opened a drawer and handed her a vial. The viscous liquid was a deep, ocean blue; when Mia tipped the bottle from side to side, it coated the glass.

  “We’ll start with two drops. One with breakfast, one before bed. From there we’ll go up as needed. This tincture is one of my favorites. They’ve been fine-tuning the formula far longer than I’ve been the Shadowess. It’s helped a good many people.”

  Muri handed Mia a notebook with a bright orange melonfish on the cover.

  “Feel free to use this however you like. Sketch, scribble, daydream. I encourage you to track your progress. The science of the mind is like any other science: we must measure and adjust. Just don’t expect immediate results. It can take several weeks before you feel the effects.”

  But Mia had felt the effects. At least, she thought she had. The sensations were still intermittent, but they lasted longer. She had savored the tart lemon tang in a bowl of jomos and the sweetness of fig-pistachio cake drenched in almond syrup. She’d smelled the smoky aroma of roasted piglum and the woody, floral scent of her bloodbloom charm.

  If she couldn’t attribute these things to the elixir, then to what? The House of Shadows? Nell?

  Now, as they walked past the Rose Garden, Mia explained to Nell how the elixir had made it easier to sustain certain tastes and smells.

  “I’m glad to hear it. Though in light of where we’re headed, that could be a good or bad thing, depending.” Nell gave her a curious look. “You know I tried some elixirs myself.”

  “Really?” Mia said, surprised. “You’ve never mentioned it.”

  “It was years ago, before I left Pembuk. I was fourteen, my emotions were hard to control, so volatile! Sort of the opposite of you—you want to feel more, and I felt too much.”

  “Did it work?”

  Nell shrugged, but Mia saw the muscles tighten in her jaw.

  “Not really, no. I wanted it to, I wanted that so much. I’ve been really hopeful it would work for you, so I didn’t say anything, didn’t want to taint your hope. As Mumma says, it’s different for everyone.” Nell imitated Muri’s thick Pembuka accent, “You get to choose your own elixir, and it may not be the kind in a bottle. We all find our own path to healing,”

  Mia laughed. “You sound just like her.”

  “Yes, well, I’ve had some practice. She can be terribly irritating, can’t she? Just imagine what it was like growing up with her, imagine having the Shadowess for a mother!”

  A bitter seed of envy settled in Mia’s stomach. She did imagine it, every time she met with Muri. She loved their sessions. Sometimes they breathed together with the bloodbloom, sometimes they talked, but whatever they did, she always left feeling more centered than she had before. What would it have been like to have a mother that honest, that real?

  Deep down Mia knew it wasn’t her mother’s fault. Wynna had simply been trying to survive. But it still stung that once her mother had survived, she had not chosen to come back.

  “And here we are,” said Nelladine, as they approached the Curatorium. “I warn you, you may soon wish you had not recovered your sense of smell. The Curateurs do their best to clean up after the animals”—Nell smiled mischievously—“but they are animals, after all.”

  Nell wasn’t wrong. The Curatorium had a distinctive odor, an earthy cocktail of sweat and bile and blood, and perhaps a few less savory humors.

  Mia did not mind one bit.

  The space was far vaster than it appeared from the outside, revealing whole miniature topographies: grassy enclosures, small sand dunes, and a modest grove of bloodbloom trees no taller than Mia’s hip. Other than the transparent glass facing the corridor, the walls were pearly white, casting an opaline glow that felt somehow familiar.

  In the foreground, the Curatorium was partitioned into neat surgical stations stocked with bandages, knives, and bottles of dwayle, taxonomy tables and anatomy plates hanging from the walls. But there were also gemstones glowing in every imaginable color and elixirs smoking and churning of their own accord. Mia was struck by how science and magic coexisted happily, no division between them.

  “Noisy, isn’t it?” Nell asked. Mia was so mesmerized by the sights she’d been oblivious to the sounds. Now she heard brays, bleats, howls, and growls. She took in the menagerie of patients around them: furry dogs and house cats; harlequin birds in aviaries; reptiles and amphibians in gigantic vivaria, sunning themselves under orbs of magic-breathed light.

  She saw other animals, too, genera she hadn’t even known existed. Giant wildcats with serpentine tongu
es. Sea creatures boasting wolf heads. Four-legged equines with yellow stripes.

  “Queen zybras,” Nell said. “Aren’t they beautiful? I’ve always loved them. Here, this is for you.”

  She held out a handful of spongy brown fibers she must have collected while Mia was staring slack-jawed at the wonders around them.

  “Thanks.”

  Shyly, she stuffed the bloodmoss in her pocket.

  “The human patients get a little more privacy.” Nell gestured toward the back of the Curatorium, where the white walls tapered into a corridor.

  “This is incredible, Nell. Did you come here all the time when you lived in the House? I could spend hours here. Days.”

  “No, I spent most of my time in the Creation Studio. There was less . . .” Nell hesitated. “When the animals first come here, they’re in pain, they’re suffering. The people, too. I found it all a little overwhelming.”

  If this was overwhelm, Mia decided, let her never be underwhelmed again. She watched as Curateurs in midnight-blue robes moved deftly between the creatures, wielding various tools and tinctures. Sometimes the injury was obvious—a broken leg, a cut gone septic. Other times a wound was not readily apparent, and the Curateurs would gather to discuss.

  In one such station, a small pink creature crouched on its muscular back haunches, wriggling its black nose. A corresponding anatomy sketch hung from the wall. Mia vaguely recognized the animal’s shape, though she didn’t know why; she was quite sure she’d never seen one in Glas Ddir. Three Curateurs crowded around the sketch, pointing, arguing.

  But this was no ordinary sketch. It was as if her beloved Wound Man had come to life. At the Curateur’s touch, ink became blood, blood flowed through arteries, and skeletal muscles contracted. She realized the Curateurs were testing a hypothesis. Conducting an experiment on the creature’s effigy before operating on the creature itself.

  Mia gave a start. She’d seen this kind of magic before. Lord Kristoffin Dove had shown her a moving map on the wall of his laboratory. Meanwhile, beneath their feet, he’d milked the suffering of seven innocent children to fuel the kingdom. Well, six children, plus Pilar.