The Rising Scythe

by S G Dunster

  The room faded again. It was a nightmare. Only freeze and burn, over and over. She couldn’t take it. The pain was too much. If there could only be a stop to existence, a fading out into soft black.

  Please, she formed the words in her mind slowly. Please let me die.

  She had moments of sense—a surety of Guzal’s small hand, passing a wet cloth over her shoulders. Her father’s sleek beard on her cheek, the smell of sulfur from the powder he used to fire his cannons. His arms bulging with her weight, pressed tight against his chest.

  As time passed—Thessaly wasn’t sure how much—the moments of sense began to thicken and spread like droplets sliding together to form a deeper pool: Guzal feeding her something sweet and mild. The brush of bedclothes over her legs. The painful tug at her scalp as her hair was brushed.

  The pain didn’t recede, but she began to be able to push above it, to rise and gasp a breath of sanity under her own will, once in a while. The sweet on her tongue, the metal rim of the spoon. She focused with all the intent she could muster, and was able to savor a bite. Then another. “This is lovely,” she slurred.

  Guzal dropped the bowl and grabbed her shoulders, and another wave of pain drowned her.

  She heard a conversation next—her father and Umbra, clearly. He was shouting, and Umbra was responding in the booming, queenly tones she used to argue back.

  “She’s torn,” her father cried. “You’ve torn her!”

  “It was not me who couldn’t make up her mind to choose!”

  “She’ll end just like Thessalia. Oh, God,” a sob took over, and his voice was muffled. “I vowed I’d save her from that. Promised her, as a babe of three, after her mother flung herself over . . . . I said I’d not let a bit of that into our world. I’d keep her safe from it. When my own sister started teaching her seeing and wells, and I saw how she fell in, nose first like a little dolphin, I swept her up and brought her here. I gave you explicit instructions, Umbra, to keep her away—”

  “You cannot keep a dolphin from the water, Tonio,” Umbra said, her voice softer.

  More sobs followed.

  Thessaly sat up. Waves of heat and cold rocked her still, but she could touch the blanket, feel the softness of it under her fingers. It was her own, from the ship. It smelled of cloves and sage.

  She let out a shuddering breath, and as another wave of ice hit, she flinched against it instinctually, using an envelope of the warmth that sizzled through her periphery.

  And to her great astonishment and relief, the cold softened and became warm. The comfort was so good, it ached. What had she done? How had she done it? She scrambled inside to figure it out and found the envelope of fire—the bound magics. Somehow, she’d bound the loose, for just a moment. How?

  A wave of fire was coming. The silver sizzled and spread.

  She was going to burn in a moment.

  Could she do the same? Bind the bound floes with the loose, somehow?

  How?

  Tentatively, she reached for the glimmer of gold within, so cold she could barely stand to

  touch it with her inner sense. She drew on it, pulled it, swarmed it around the building fire.

  The fire touched its gold frame, pushing, prodding, but stayed contained. Just for a moment, it didn’t spread out to her skin and bones and veins, burning through her.

  She gasped in a breath, a trickle of saltwater dripping off her nose. Sweat or tears? Did it matter?

  For that moment, she felt comfortable.

  As the fire swirled inside its cage of ice, she felt . . . warm.

  Only warm.

  But now the ice was building, crackling out like a crown of thorns, about to spread to where she could feel it. She drew on the fire, broke it free, and enveloped the ice.

  A hint of stabbing cold, and then . . .

  Warm.

  She felt only warm.

  She took a deep, gasping breath, staring at the fresco on the wall opposite where she lay—a small yellow cat, surrounded by a frame of blowy thistles. She hadn’t noticed it before, hadn’t noticed anything in this room other than pain.

  She was here.

  Alive.

  Growing fire. Oh, no. Thessaly grasped for the loose floes and bound it carefully.

  Then as the ice spread, took from the bound floes and melted the thorns.

  It was like learning how to breathe again. She thought, as she tensed cool floes to cover warm, and brought warm floes to dim the cool, over and over again.

  A rhythm. An automatic inner movement. But one that she had to will, each time: an intense effort of inner sight, unlike anything she’d ever experienced. After hours, the weariness that took over was almost as overwhelming as the fire and ice pain had been. For a moment, she was tempted to let it go, to burn, to freeze.

  She closed her eyes and steadied it, counting to keep herself from breaking stride. I have to live. I have to live.

  She lay there, concentrating, not acknowledging anyone who came in or out. Just focusing.

  This is it, she thought. This is my only chance. I’ve chosen them. I have to contain them.

  She sweated, and tears leaked from her eyes. Contain with ice. Contain with fire. Contain with ice.

  Breathe.

  “Papa,” she managed to say, when he walked in bearing a tray, just as the light was beginning to change its colors from late-noon to evening.

  Talking, containing, at the same time. It was like trying to talk underwater—letting out breath badly needed until one surfaced.

  At her voice, Antonio flung the tray aside, rushed in and grasped her hands. “Are you well, then, child?” His voice shook.

  Umbra had come in after him. She moved swiftly to Thessaly’s side and felt her cheek with a warm finger.

  Warm. Hot. Hot. Umbra’s finger, burning like a brand as the bound magics in her leapt up to meet it. Thessaly closed her eyes and moderated the heat with cold. Contained it.

  Some of it leached into her skin and spun into her aunt’s finger. Umbra hissed and pulled it away. “You have found it,” she said, staring at her, eyes wide.

  “What?” Thessaly managed to ask, bringing back the flare of heat into a growing cage of cold, and enveloping it with more heat. Layers, and layers. Hot, cold. Hot, cold.

  “You’ve found the working. The balance, the . . .” Umbra shrugged. “Damn me if I know. What a

  wonder that is.” She stepped back, drew her hand across her brow, closed her eyes. “And a relief.”

  “She’ll live?” Antonio asked, desperation sharpening his voice.

  “She shall, and retain her wits as well, I think. If she can keep it up.” Umbra’s dark eyes bored into Thessaly’s. “But it is no small task. What color am I wearing, girl?”

  “B…brown,” Thessaly replied, diluting ice with fire.

  “And where are we?”

  “Castle Sforza?” She looked around, processing with her eyes even as she looked inside, and controlled fire with a cage of ice. It was two things at once: one very difficult, requiring most of her attention, and one more idle, the outer world needing only a bare modicum of focus to take in.

  Yes, the brocade drapes and arched window, the herbs peeking through the garden window. It was the blanket from the ship, but the room at the castillo.

  “And how much trouble do you think you’re in, now you’ve recovered your senses?” her father asked, his voice raw.

  She stared into his eyes—hurt, fear, she saw there. Worry. She grabbed his face, hands on either side, touching the bristle that had grown up on his cheeks where he usually shaved it smooth, shaping his beard according to fashion. He was grizzled, torn. He was the one who was torn.

  “I’m sorry.” Cold, cold. Add the warm. “I’m sorry, Papa,” Thessaly said. “I . . . didn’t want a cage.”

  He laughed—half laugh, half sob. “Dove,” he muttered, pulling her tight to him. “We all of us dwell in cages of one sort or another.”

  “Yours is magicks,” Umbra said, he
r mouth twisting wryly. “You will never again be able to let loose, Thessaly. Your tutelage from now will be control. You’ve chosen an incarceration. Inside, and out.”

  Thessaly met her aunt’s eyes. “Do you wish me to apologize to you as well?”

  Umbra’s mouth tightened. “I don’t wish you to lie. Do you like your punishment?”

  Thessaly was getting a grip now. She was weary, but it was like muscles worn numb from work, plodding along on an unending path. Keep moving, and you can continue. Stop, and you can’t.

  Breathe in, release the byssus. Breathe out, release the cereus. The two forces tingled there, glowing orbs of gold, of silver, ready for her to take, to use. To weave. “I may like it, once I’ve learnt the depth of the stripes I’ve been given.”

  “They’re deep,” Umbra said immediately. “All the way through.”

  Thessaly nodded, sat back, arranged her blanket so it smoothed around her belly, which was oddly flat. Caved in, even—a pit of ribs and hip bone. She’d lost weight. She must look a small girl, she thought, with these spindly arms. “How long has it been since I chose?”

  “Three weeks,” Umbra replied when her father, still leaning there, his hands supporting him on the bed, couldn’t. “Thessaly, you have to know. Not many of those who have chosen thus have lived. You have lived—there you’ve achieved more than most.” She took something from her pocket and handed it over silently.

  The byssus cord. It gleamed now, even in the shadowed room. Strung on it was the silver filigree locket, stuffed full of cereus fibers. “What you have inside is beyond my expertise, child. Beyond your Aunt Margarida’s. We do not know how to help you. You have only yourself to learn from now.”

  Thessaly nodded, sliding the cord over her neck. The locket settled in the hollow between her breasts, a warm lump on an icy cord. They trilled with her waves, turning icy, burning, then moderating together.

  It made it easier, Thessaly thought, feeling it on the surface and knowing. Making it happen.

  “Your waves are good, child.” Umbra seemed to ponder for a moment, tapping a long nail to her chin. “But you will have to learn to bind your floes tight at your center so that you don’t blaze like faceted gemstone, scattering magicks all over.”

  Antonio gave Umbra a dark look, then seemed to melt. He nodded. “It is perhaps best. To learn this one. Just this one,” he added sharply.

  “They can be bound? Floes?”

  “It’s not easy. It’s a practice most often taught at the end of a certain sort of apprenticeship.”

  Hope was spreading through Thessaly, warming her. She was growing too hot again. “I shall learn it fast.”

  “Pain,” Umbra moved forward, grabbed Thessaly’s chin, looked into her eyes. “You will know pain, child.” She let go, stepped back, and shook her fingers, hissing out a breath. “You burn and freeze, and yet you talk and breathe. You are a wonder, it can be said. Though what sort?” She shrugged, turned, and walked to the door. “We shall see.”

  “How are...” Thessaly hesitated, then felt angry at her own reluctance to ask. “Uncle and Aunt. What have they been told?”

  “Only that you are ill. They are staying well away. There has been an outbreak of rat fever in the docks.”

  “Convenient,” Thessaly murmured, earning a dark look from her aunt.

  Thessaly was able to eat. Carefully, slowly, timing her containments with her breaths, she managed to get down foods. They were simple, certainly not the usual fare at the Sforza tables, but they tasted marvelous. Guzal watched eagerly as every spoonful went to her mouth, and when she was done, she exclaimed over her, wept, and brushed her hair while she spooned up her own supper—a mild custard with raisins, pausing occasionally to take a draught of white wine. Thessaly had some wine, too. She drank rather too much. It helped dull the burns, both hot and cold, and Thessaly found herself drifting. She lost sense enough to quit moderating the waves that came, and they painfully woke her.

  I cannot sleep, then, she thought. I need to will myself contained, and my will recedes with sleep. How shall I sleep?

  I need this binding Umbra spoke of. She must give it to me.

  I shall go to Umbra’s tomorrow, she thought after she fell into another doze and woke with a gurgling shriek as ice splintered clear to her skin. I’ll tell her to teach me the bloody secret to tying all these floes.

  “I’m fine,” she told Guzal, who’d leapt up, running to her side for the fourth time inside an hour. “I’m fine. Sleep and ignore me. One of us should be able to.”

  But she grew too restless for lying still. Eyeing Guzal, who sloped limp in her chair by the fire, Thessaly stood shakily, and, counting steps rather than breaths as she worked to contain, contain, contain, she donned a light dress over her shift and soft slippers. She tied her hair up in a silk scarf and walked out of her room.

  Umbra would be asleep and wouldn’t brook being wakened. Now was not the time for demands. But she needed something different to focus her. She was so tired she would drift off as soon as she grew still.

  Thessaly took steps up and down the hall, feeling better and better as she was able to keep the tides at bay, even while walking. Walking itself grew tiresome, though—her legs were weak from the weeks in bed.

  Library, she thought, and immediately quickened her pace, moving through the corridors. Could I perhaps read? I could try.

  It was clear on the other side of the castillo, close to where the Sforzas kept their other treasures. Ludovico, Thessaly’s grandfather, had been an enthusiastic collector of books and had a library of 800, almost as large as the Pope’s. He had taken great pride in it. As a young girl, she hadn’t been allowed to touch any of them.

  I’m a scholar now, Thessaly thought, making the rounds of corridors, stepping past closed doors, nodding at the sentries that dozed at the entrance of the gallery outside the great library door. They let her through wordlessly, watching with what seemed to be puzzlement.

  Thessaly shrugged it off and walked in, stopping suddenly in the middle of the room.

  So many books. Bound in leather, bound in vellum. Bound in silk, some of them. One bound in a thin, flaky substance Thessaly worried might be the skin of an actual person; it eked strange floes and feelings. She skipped over it.

  Thessaly went to a lower shelf, brushing her finger along the spines. I could stay here, she thought, in a court where women can debate Plato, where I have an aunt with power to influence a pope, where there are books enough to keep me reading all the rest of my life.

  She selected one, sucking in her breath as a wave of cold began to best her. She moved the fire to moderate it and sat, studying the first page.

  Greek.

  She didn’t know enough Greek yet to make out the passage quickly. It took concentration. Her brain was halved, then—much more than it had been in simple conversation—as she tried to decipher Greek and contain waves. She even allowed a couple of waves to crash over her, preferring pain to an interruption in her translation, focusing blade-sharp on word meanings against the pain.

  It was a sermon by Constantine, emperor of the Great City, before the Moors took it over. Once she’d figured that out, it was a slightly easier read, and she relaxed into her breathing and reading.

  “A hoary bit of doctrine for so young a girl,” a warm voice interrupted her study. She turned, carefully arranging her skirts, and looked at the man standing in the library entrance. He was slender, with broad shoulders, a dusky complexion, and brown hair swept away from his face in a brown velvet bow. His clear eyes were startling against his brown skin, and he watched her with an interest and intentness that made something inside her warm a little.

  “Looking for a bit of Chaucer as a nightcap?” she returned, standing and tipping her head slightly. Cold began to break over her. She brought out the fire and kept her focus on his face so that it didn’t show on hers.

  He bowed back gracefully—a full bow, bended knee and all. “Aye,” he said. “That or Dante
.”

  “A rather spicier bouquet,” Thessaly said, going to the shelf. “I thought I saw it here, though.” She lifted out a thick volume, bound in black hide with elegant red foil lettering, and handed it to him. He took it, smiling down at her, and Thessaly was oddly caught. His eyes reminded her of Isabella’s—pale gold in a face tanned by sun. Not a pale indoors Dom.

  His hands, while elegant, were muscled, and a scar crossed the base of his thumb. Without thinking she touched it, then stepped back hurriedly. A tide of fire was rising in her; she quelled it before it burned her and she made a spectacle of herself. She sat back down in her chair. “My father won’t like me talking to someone to whom I’ve not been properly introduced.”

  “Then I shall have to seek him out to make it proper,” he replied. “But just here, in this quiet and companionable reading of ours, know me as Luz.”

  “Luz,” Thessaly said, eyeing him. “Short for Ludovico?”

  He laughed, then opened his book on his knee. He wore hose—obviously leftover from the feast that evening, as they were embroidered all over in gold thread—and low boots, laced to the wide bulge around the toe, which was the current style. Over the finery he’d donned a simple linen tunic and a leather vest, unlaced. Thessaly stared at the visible muscling below his breastbone a moment, then caught herself and turned back to her Plato.

  She cursed herself soon after, trying to make out letters while her mind was engaged in two other places, one utterly frivolous—this was too much. She couldn’t divide her mind so. Not yet. The waves were overcoming her, and she was starting to bite her tongue and lip to keep her exclamations of pain under control. Finally, one escaped—she swore under her breath and stood.

  “Trouble?” Luz asked, looking up from his reading.

  “Oh,” Thessaly said. “I spoke aloud. I’m sorry.”

  “I was certain that word did not come from Constantine’s sermon,” he said. He held out his hand for the book. “Shall I?”

  “I am just learning the Greek,” Thessaly admitted, handing it to him. “Thank you.”