‘Sounds like we’re going to be the best of friends,’ said Aurelia.
Terietta scowled again.
No wonder she has so many wrinkles, scowling like that all the time. ‘What about my companion, Chrysaora?’
‘The thrall?’ spat the major-domo.
‘Yes, the thrall.’ Suddenly she felt protective of her bodyguard.
‘She is in the penitentiary for the time being, until it can be determined that she poses no harm to Argentor or any of its citizens. Or you.’ She hardly paused before continuing with her spiel. ‘Keep to yourself. Stay in your rooms if you can help it, it’s simpler that way. The Duke will send for you when he is ready to speak with you again. Do not cause trouble for me, and I won’t cause trouble for you.’
Terietta glared at her, just long enough for it to feel personally uncomfortable and then turned on her heel and left.
With Chrysaora in the gaol, Aurelia was alone for the first time since she had fled Theris. She intended to have her bodyguard freed and at her side as soon as possible; there was no way for her to be certain of security here. She was a political enemy and it was more than likely she would find she had enemies, possibly intent on assassination. However strained their relationship, Chrysaora was her only friend right now.
She looked around her rooms for the first time; at least six rooms, beautifully sculpted in white marble, trestles everywhere, her own private baths, and she could see a terrace from where she stood. Not the worst place to spend your time as a prisoner, and possible the most sumptuous place she’d ever spent any time in.
But that was the word. Prisoner. Despite the freedom, despite the nice rooms, and despite the terrace, she was still a prisoner. How do I begin to build an army while I am stuck here under lock and key?
The answer, she thought, is gaining trust. She needed to share and influence. My knowledge of the real enemy will be my advantage. It didn’t stop the crushing weight she felt again at the thought of the impossibility of what she needed to achieve.
‘Don’t worry about Terietta,’ said a male voice, ‘she seems mean, but she’s a softy once you get on the right side of her.’
Aurelia whirled about in search of the voice. A young man stood in the alcove to her bedroom, framed by the light coming from the open terrace archway. He was handsome and fair skinned, only a few years older than her. Maybe twenty.
‘Who are you?’ she said, amused but petulant. ‘What are you doing in my rooms?’
The young man smiled. ‘Well, that would be telling now, wouldn’t it? Who are you?’
‘I’m not about to tell you who I am without your name first.’
‘Well then that puts us in quite a situation, doesn’t it?’ He approached her slowly. He was tall, and though not exactly muscular, he was still well-built. A sapling, considering his age, rather than a sturdy oak.
‘What are you doing in my rooms then?’ she tried.
‘Being nosey, really. I came to see who the new resident was. Big furore about a new guest.’
‘Well you’ve seen her, now leave.’
He was a little too close now. Aurelia found she had to look up to meet his eyes. They were lively and bright blue. She found them full of curiosity, but not malice or deception. ‘I didn’t expect her to be quite so beautiful.’
She ignored the remark, not having a clue how to react.
‘People who won’t share their names, would seem to have something to hide,’ she said.
‘Alright,’ he said smiling. ‘I’ll give you a name.’ He pretended to search about for a moment. ‘Marcus. Happy?’
‘Obviously it’s not your real name.’
‘Obviously,’ he mocked, gently, ‘it will have to do. What’s yours?’
‘Liath,’ she said, without preamble. Two could play this game, though she doubted anyone in the city didn’t know who she was. Word would have got around. That said, pretending to be someone else, meant she didn’t have to be Aurelia, the displaced Empress who had lost her city. She could just be herself. There was something to be said for that.
‘Liath,’ he said. ‘I am truly sorry to intrude.’
‘I don’t think you are somehow.’
He squeezed past her, closer than necessary, moving slower than necessary and ambled to the door. ‘No, I’m not. I got what I came for. I got a look at you.’
Aurelia did not know what to make of this Marcus, for want of a better name. He was arrogant and self-assured, but she supposed she would have been if this were Theris. What was really disconcerting was that he seemed to like her. She didn’t know what to say. Male attention was something she had little experience of as a cloistered princess; the only man she’d known to be interested before was King Stauros, but he was a conquering womaniser and she just another prize to go with his other two wives. The attention of this young man was a welcome distraction, but she felt guilty for feeling it.
She turned and he was already at the door, stepping through to leave. She tried to think of some last thing to say. Something witty.
‘How do you get on the right side of her?’ she called.
Marcus stopped. ‘Who?’
‘Terietta.’
‘Oh, that’s easy. Don’t do anything I would do.’
Chapter Eight
Totelun
Lying awake on his rigid pallet, Totelun stared at the rough stone ceiling, hardly registering, eyes barely open. He was listening intently to the guard who wandered through the dark hall beyond the bars, administering a cursory check of each cell. If the occupant was asleep or at least in bed, he moved on. Totelun remained still, eyes almost completely closed. He kept his breathing even, feigning sleep; he didn’t want to arouse any suspicion that might give the guard pause.
The man came to halt across the hall, spending just that little too long staring at the girl with the long black hair. Totelun began to wonder if there was something wrong, but the guard eventually moved on. When he strolled to Totelun’s cell he barely paused before continuing his rounds. His mind was probably still on the girl, Totelun thought.
He was up immediately; the guard would never turn around. He was finishing his shift; after he’d cleared the rest of the hall he would head through the door at the end of the row to get some food. After a few minutes his replacement would enter, and the day’s cycle would begin again. Totelun grabbed the knife that he’d thrown in the corner behind the bed, and began working the rusty blade against the ropes that bound his wrists. Someone had been in his cell while he’d been with the High Cleric; the body of his cellmate Mengu had been cleared away, but they hadn’t done any kind of thorough search for weapons, despite the injury. The thralled guards weren’t terribly observant or bright.
Totelun’s vision swam; the Medusi venom Harling had drugged him with had made its way through his system and only its aftereffects remained, but he still felt dizzy and slightly high. He could concentrate enough to plan the tasks he had set himself, but once he was beyond the dungeon he wasn’t sure how things would play out.
The ropes came free with a scratch of rusty blade that drew blood. Now for the lock. Totelun worked the blade into the space between the lock and the door and watched for the guard. As the man opened the door at the far end of the hall and disappeared, Totelun began to saw. The noise was horrible; a high rasping screech, metal on metal. It was a desperate idea and he knew it.
Thankfully the noise didn’t travel far. Only his immediate neighbours woke or looked up.
Totelun didn’t acknowledge them. He stared at the blood stain on the floor and thought of his home in the Floating Islands. There was a way back, if only he could get out of this cell. Out of the palace. Out of Theris. He had to escape before Harling returned to drag him in front of the Goddess; Totelun didn’t know how long he’d been out since the torture, but his guess was she was here already.
He jiggled the knife, checking his work. He was making progress, the knife clearly made of harder stuff than the lock, but it was minimal
. To saw all the way through was going to take some effort, and time.
Time he didn’t have.
He could already hear noise beyond the door, even over the screeching metal. Others heard it too, other prisoners waking up, looking at the door. Totelun tried to work quicker, saw faster, to finish before the door opened. If he was caught with cut bonds, they’d take away the knife and he wouldn’t get another chance.
The door opened, spilling stark light into a dark hall; a robed figure in silhouette, a long shadow cast across the floor. Totelun squinted. Was it Harling? He stopped sawing immediately, stowed the knife behind him. If it was Harling, he would let him open the cell, and then stab him through the neck, just as he had done with Mengu.
But it wasn’t Harling. Harling wouldn’t hide, like this figure did; he wouldn’t need to move this furtively and he’d have an entourage of thralled Cephean guard. This was a rogue, a wild card. The figure crouched, dragging something, a body maybe, into the darkness and then closing the door. It was hard to make anything out in the dark after the brightness, especially with the afterimages still repeating on his eyes, but it looked like they deposited the body in a vacant cell and re-emerged with keys jangling.
He watched as the figure stalked up the hall quickly checking every cell. What were they looking for? Who? The prisoners were standing, watching.
The figure reached his cell, stood before it for a moment, then reached up and pulled down their hood, revealing Nausithorn’s leathery old face grinning at Totelun in the half-light.
‘Overlords,’ cursed Totelun in a whisper. ‘Am I glad to see you!’
The old man looked like he’d been through it in the last few days, but Totelun doubted he looked much better. ‘The pleasure’s all mine.’ Naus rifled the keys and opened the lock on Totelun’s door. The latch section sheared off as he twisted it. He looked at Totelun quizzically.
‘I might have been about to escape.’ Totelun produced the knife.
‘Well, please, don’t let me get in your way.’
Once they were out of the hall, Naus led him down towards the servant’s quarters. Totelun remembered the basic layout of the palace, and he doubted that was where Harling would have set up his offices.
‘How did you get here?’ he whispered.
‘Can we save the questions?’ said Naus. ‘This place is heaving with Clerics and I need to get us back out alive, and preferably unseen.’
‘Well, how did you get in?’
‘Though the servant’s access. It’s actually a separate building with an underground tunnel connecting them. A rebel helped me in.’
‘There are rebels, already? That’s great.’
‘We’ll have to leave them to it, I’m afraid. We need to meet up with Cassandra upriver a short ways.’
‘What about the Empress, and Chrys?’
‘They’ve gone on to Argentor. Aurelia had this crazy idea that she could convince the Duke to use his army to fight the Medusi. Chrys went with her, to keep her safe.’
‘And what, Cassandra was left on her own?’ Totelun stopped in the middle of the corridor. ‘She’s deaf and partially blind in daylight.’
‘Keep your voice down,’ said Naus turning back. ‘She is hidden away in an abandoned farmstead. Safe.’ Irritably he added, ‘She’s probably the safest one of us at the moment.’
‘She can’t hear.’
‘All the more reason to get back there quickly.’
Totelun realised he was shaking his head in disbelief and stopped himself. How could Naus have just left her? How could her own sister? Naus had done it to save him, but Aurelia? She was clearly under stress, but there was little excuse.
‘Come on,’ said Naus. ‘It’s down here, then we take the underground tunnels.’
‘We can’t leave yet.’
‘What, why not?’ Naus stopped.
‘We have to do something first.’
‘You were just complaining that Cassandra was left alone, and now you want to put your own rescue in danger. Should I have just left you to rot in there?’ Naus stalked back over to Totelun as they heard someone coming, pushed him into a side room, which turned out to be a small office. He shut the door quietly. ‘Listen, the Medousa has arrived with a bloody army of Clerics and acolytes and thralled spies of every kind. We need to get out of here now, while our heads are still on our shoulders, while our minds and bodies are still our own.’
Totelun shook his head. ‘This is bigger than our immediate safety. We need to get the crystal back.’
Naus’ hand went to his brow. ‘That crystal again! You have got to be kidding me?’
‘I’m not. The High Cleric, Harling, tortured me a day ago, maybe more. He was intent on that crystal, Naus.’
‘Well, I’m sorry you were tortured.’
‘That’s not the point. He is a bio-engineer, a scientist, under that cult exterior. He created the Cephean. He has designed a torture device that uses Medusi venom. He told me about experiments he did on an acolyte called Abrax that allowed him to become thrall to a Celestial, the very one that chased us across the continent. Do you really want to leave the crystal in the hands of someone like that? When he was interested in what it does?’
It was the most he’d said aloud in ages, not just since being arrested. But it did its job. Naus had calmed and listened.
‘We don’t know what it does,’ Naus said.
‘No, but he may be able to find out. We never knew the how of the prophecy. The only thing we know for sure is taking those crystals is enough to kill a Celestial. What if the crystal is more important than we realise?’
‘We can’t leave it with him,’ agreed Naus with a sigh.
‘Exactly.’ Totelun was glad to see the old Naus back; the man who had come through a thousand terrible situations and lived to tell the tale. Confident and sarcastic and capable.
‘Where would he have stored it?’ Naus said. ‘Did he mention where he had taken it?’
Totelun shrugged. ‘I don’t even know where I was tortured.’
‘It would make sense the Clerics taking offices on the upper levels, where the studies and chambers of the nobles and the royal family already exist. We just need to look for the biggest one.’
Carefully Naus led Totelun through the palace avoiding Clerics the few times they saw them, and a gaggle of young acolytes. The thralled guardsmen were the most vigilant, slowly patrolling corridors and halls throughout the upper levels. Totelun was grateful it was dark, the few windows they passed showing a clear night. One window was more than a little disconcerting, obscured by a huge slimy-looking tube, which for a moment, in the darkness, Totelun couldn’t identify. Then it hit him.
‘The Celestial is above the palace?’
Naus turned back and nodded.
‘And its tentacles are what, wrapped around it?’
‘Correct.’
‘Creepy,’ Totelun said.
‘Very.’
‘Abrax is alive, Harling let that slip. We could just follow any tentacle that is on the inside and we’d find where he is recovering. And then.’ He mimed a stabbing motion in the dark.
Naus disagreed. ‘We are already going too far into the heart of this place looking for your damn crystal. It’s too risky. I’m not announcing our presence by trying to assassinate people too.’
‘He’s not a person anymore.’
‘You might want to examine that assumption,’ said Naus. ‘You think the same about Chrys, or Cassandra? Are they not human?’
Totelun didn’t respond, and Naus continued. ‘If they’re human, then so is this Abrax.’
Naus was right. Totelun was sharp enough to realise that. He couldn’t have one rule for Abrax and another for Cassandra or Chrys. Cassandra was still human, he was sure of that, so Abrax had to be. But Harling had said there was some fundamental difference in the sizes of the Medusi they were thralled with; a Celestial was orders of magnitude larger than a defenceless Cephea, so maybe there was a difference bet
ween Abrax and Cassandra. He hoped so. He’d have to talk to each one to decide for certain, and he never wanted to talk to Abrax.
‘Here,’ said Naus, peeking his head round one door they passed. ‘This looks right.’
The inside of the room had already been decorated in red hangings, surrounding a large desk, and a number of bookcases. There were glass cases with priceless artefacts inside; the private collection of the High Cleric. In the centre there were a couple of tall tables with vials and canisters arrayed. Some of them held specimens.
‘You know what this reminds me of?’ Naus asked.
‘Yeah,’ agreed Totelun, thinking of the mansion they’d cleared of Medusi in Naetlsk. There had been a study where they’d found the experiments of an unfortunate noble. ‘We can only hope the same fate befalls everyone who meddles with Medusi.’
In the centre of the second table was the crystal; the Heart of the Celestial that Totelun had sliced from inside the still-living creature while on a hunt with his father; the prize that had resulted in his plummet from the lands of his family and tribe to the surface world below; the focus of the High Cleric’s interest. It was the size of a human head, cylindrical in shape and glowed with a dusky yellow light from within. Around the base was crusted a cartilage-like conflux of hacked tubes, hardened like dead coral.
‘You’re done, let’s go,’ said Naus, beckoning from the door.
But Totelun had seen something else. He, as much as the crystal, was the subject of Harling’s fascination – the boy who would destroy the Medusi somehow. On the main desk lay his belt pouch, which he took and secured round his waist. The crystal slipped into the pouch like it was made for it. Next to the belt and arrayed on an examination board were his two piton daggers; sharp blades with an incredibly durable core that doubled as climbing picks. Each had a leather handle, and a strap that secured it to the wrist. This was so that while hurtling through the clouds on the back of a Thunwing, you didn’t lose your weapons.
Totelun took both and strapped them on.
Embrace of the Medusi (The Overlords Trilogy Book 2) Page 12