“Look who’s finally up.”
Knot. Cinzia sat quickly, looking to the door of her tent. She could not make out his face; the daylight streaming in behind him was too bright, and she saw only shadowy features. But she did not need to make out the features to recognize who it was. The shape of his frame, the sound of his voice, even his presence was enough.
“You’re all right?” she asked immediately.
“I’ll be fine, darlin’. Back to my usual self in no time.”
“Astrid?”
“Also fine, and still annoying as all Oblivion.”
“How long have I been…” Cinzia hesitated. Asleep? Unconscious?
“Three days, if you can believe it,” Knot said. “We’ve had medical folk monitoring you around the clock, and I’ve been in to check on you… more times than I can count, I guess.” His face twisted up in a half-smile. “Glad I was the first one to see you awake, though.”
Cinzia’s face flushed. “Me too,” she said.
The two remained there for a few moments, unmoving and silent. Cinzia reveled in the silence, the comfort that existed between them, but could not help but be conscious of the tension that underlined it all.
Then, still unsure of herself, Cinzia cleared her throat, looking down at her hand.
“How did I get here?” she asked.
“Some of the Odenites found you outside of the city, unconscious,” Knot said. “We’re lucky they found you, and not someone else like the Denomination. While they seem to have stopped their open hostility toward the Odenites, they sure as Oblivion ain’t our friends. And the Beldam’s people have been more hostile toward us, too, since…”
Since I left her for dead? Cinzia thought, unable to say the words out loud. Her face grew hot, this time from shame.
“They found you with a nasty wound on that hand,” Knot said, inclining his head toward Cinzia’s large bandage. “Don’t suppose you remember how you got that?”
Cinzia looked at Knot, hesitating. But the hesitation only lasted for a moment. This was Knot. This was her Goddessguard. This was her friend, for Canta’s bloody sake, the man she probably trusted most in the entire Sfaera.
As she opened her mouth to tell him everything, another thought skirted across her mind. Cinzia looked down at both hands once more, though she knew neither held the item she sought. The gemstone. Canta’s Heart.
“Did they find anything with me?” Cinzia asked quickly. “A red stone. Or… perhaps a dagger?” Goddess, was her mind failing her? She could not remember whether she had brought a gemstone or a dagger from the Vault. She could have sworn it had been a stone, and yet she sliced the skin of her hand with something, banished Luceraf from her body with something…
“Was it that?” Knot asked, nodding at the makeshift table beside Cinzia’s cot.
Cinzia followed his gaze to a plain wooden box.
“Look inside,” Knot said.
Cinzia did, lifting the lid of the box.
“Had to keep it out of plain sight,” Knot said, “due to its… properties.”
A sigh of relief escaped Cinzia’s lips as her eyes took in the crimson gemstone in the box, glowing darkly, its size shifting impossibly.
“I take it that has something to do with the cut on your hand?” Knot asked.
Cinzia nodded slowly. She closed the box, and turned her eyes back to Knot.
“It does,” Cinzia said. “And… with any luck, I think it can help us defeat the Nine Daemons, once and for all.”
Then she told him everything.
INTERLUDE
A Tale of Ten Monarchs
A tiellan folktale
ONCE, A LONG TIME AGO, the Nine Tiellan Kingdoms stretched across the face of the Sfaera. Tiellans were far more numerous, then, almost double the population of humans, and they directed everything from trade to technology to art and much more. Nine tiellan monarchs ruled these kingdoms, and each of them was beloved by their people; each did their best to rule fairly and justly.
Humans occupied a place in this world, too, but with a much smaller footprint than the great bloody boots with which they traipse the Sfaera now. An empress ruled the humans, with a fist and will of iron. She was not cruel, but had learned the best way to love her people was to keep order among them.
The human empire and the tiellan kingdoms lived in harmony for some time, until one day, quite suddenly, that harmony ceased. A war whose cause was forgotten by the legends we have forgotten today, broke out between the human empire and one of the tiellan kingdoms. Soon other tiellan kingdoms came to the aid of the one, and eventually the entire Sfaera was at war.
The nine tiellan kings and queens witnessed what this war did to their people, the pain and terror that violence wrought, and chose to treat with the human empress so they could finally end the war. The empress, too, witnessed the suffering of her people, and agreed to meet. But while the kings and queens prepared to compromise for peace, the empress had other plans.
When the ten rulers met at the Heart of the Sfaera, they quickly agreed on the horrors the violence between them had caused, and formed a pact of peace. Each of them walked away happy, satisfied the violence had ended and they could once again return to a life of harmony.
But, one by one, the tiellan kings and queens fell ill. The poison coursed through each of them, twisting their bodies, scarring their faces, changing them until they were no longer themselves. What these former kings and queens did not know, what they did not suspect until too late, was the poison the empress had placed in each of their goblets as they sat together, discussing peace.
When the tiellan kingdoms did not recognize their kings and queens, they fell into chaos, and the empress was quick to consolidate her power, assimilating each tiellan kingdom into her empire, creating the largest, greatest civilization the Sfaera had ever known. The tiellan kings and queens, now beggars and pariahs, were cast out, never to be seen or heard from again.
And, for many, many years, there was peace.
Eventually, the empress faded away, as if nothing but a dream in the minds of her people, and the humans and tiellans lived alongside one another. Left to their own devices, small wars and skirmishes broke out, and eventually the humans enslaved all tiellans, taking away their freedom and culture, robbing them of their power, and forcing them into submission. And so the wheel turned.
But as all things must, the Sfaera itself began to grow weary, and buckle, and break. The end of all things had come, and all people feared and trembled. Lightning fell from the sky like rain. Liquid fire burst forth from the mountains. The seas boiled, and all life seemed on the verge of one final, terrible death throe. The worst of all these disasters came in the form of nine terrible monsters, misshapen and ugly, and the people began to wonder whether they had been dead all along, whether this was just some torture dreamed up in Oblivion.
And then, in a burst of light, the empress returned to save her people, one final time. She fought the nine monsters, her light against theirs, but even with her great power and glory the nine matched her equally, and eventually the two sides destroyed one another completely. No trace remained of the empress, or the monsters she fought so valiantly to defend her people against.
And yet, when the empress took her last breath, evaporating into a beam of light, and the monsters sank into the earth in death, something changed.
The Sfaera began to heal.
The Sfaera began to heal, and the people with it. Tiellans and humans, for the first time since the dawn of time, lived as equals and accepted one another. The world knit itself back together, and while there was not always peace, there was, more often than not, love.
In the midst of the remade world, nine great trees grew forth from the Heart of the Sfaera, each one different, each one similar to the other, and each one blossoming and growing and offering shade for weary travelers for many, many ages to come.
PART III
UNREDEEMABLE TIME
30
The Fellhome Bar, Triah
CODE TOSSED BACK ANOTHER whiskey, hardly having time to taste the stuff as it burned its way down his throat.
“Another,” he grunted, slapping the bar. The innkeeper grunted in return, reaching for the most accessible bottle, and poured another swig into Code’s glass.
He had a lot to think about. This business with the vampires, first of all. Goddess be damned, he’d never thought the creatures had such a presence in Triah, let alone that their powers could be so… broad and terrifying and peculiar, all at once. He’d informed Kosarin about the details he’d gleaned of the Coven, of course, and he was sure the Nazaniin would investigate the presence further. Code just hoped he wouldn’t be part of it.
Breaking into Canta’s Fane had been exciting, until Cinzia had insisted he remain outside the bloody door. He hadn’t even been able to go with them to the Triunity’s quarters, let alone the Vault itself. And he’d been curious about it, too. Damn the ex-priestess for ordering him around, and damn himself for letting her do it.
He still had no evidence of who had brought Alain and Morayne to Triah, though he suspected one of the Triad members had a hand in it. Alain and Morayne had mostly stayed out of sight, thank the Goddess. It wouldn’t do to have the former crown prince of Maven Kol strolling about Triah during all this chaos. The two of them wanted to visit the Odenites, and the tiellans on the cliffs, of all things. Code would be damned if he let them go more than a few blocks away from their inn, let alone out of the city.
Then there was the business that had gotten him involved with these insane people to begin with: Knot and, ultimately, Winter. He still had yet to make contact with the tiellan woman—Oblivion, Knot had yet to make contact with her, and the two were married. Code had informed Knot of Winter’s presence on the cliffs just the other day, but instead of going to see her, he’d remained in the Goddess-damned Odenite camp. There was no way Code could reach the infamous Chaos Queen until Knot did so.
Which, he was slowly beginning to realize, was fine by him. Kosarin’s orders appealed to him less and less, lately. Other things appealed to him far more.
For that matter, there was the ex-priestess’s claim that he had come to her, confessing his sins, some Penetensar years ago. That didn’t make sense at all. He could remember doing something vaguely along those lines when drunk, once or twice, but he was sure he would have remembered Cinzia. Beauty aside, Cinzia had something about her…
Code shook his head, and knocked back the glass of whiskey that had been waiting for him, the burn calming him all the way down into his gut.
“Let me guess: you’ve had a long day.”
“Long day isn’t the half of it,” Code muttered, slurring his speech slightly. He wasn’t as drunk as he appeared, but he didn’t want to have to pretend to care about whoever in Oblivion was talking to him any more than he had to. Hopefully his disoriented air would throw them off.
“I can help you with that, if you like.”
A woman’s hand on his wrist, then the fingertips slowly making their way up his arm toward his biceps. Code fought the urge to snap out of her grasp and twist her arm behind her body, incapacitating her. His mind knew she wasn’t a threat, but his body didn’t, and right now the two weren’t having the best of times communicating.
“Mm-married,” Code lied.
“I don’t see a ring.”
Goddess, there was no quality more annoying than persistence.
Code turned to get a good look at her, taking in her features. Round face, small nose. Alizian, almost certainly— come to think of it, he should have known by the slight lilt to her accent. Dark hair and dark, narrow eyes, with tanned skin. Something of an ageless visage; she could have seen twenty summers or forty, and Code would’ve believed either. Her simple dark dress, not modest but not particularly revealing, didn’t scream harlot. The strong scent of perfume and painted face could have indicated anything from a noblewoman to a merchant experimenting with new beauty products. But the way the woman’s fingertips grazed back along Code’s forearm told him enough.
“Left it at home,” Code said.
That brought a smile to her face. “Must be a reason for that.” She sidled up onto the barstool next to him, one foot positioned strategically on one of the stool’s crossbars, the leg nearest Code draped casually, the slit of her dress open nearly to the hip.
An exasperated sigh leaked out of him. “You’re not giving up anytime soon, are you?”
“I know what I’m looking for.” Her delicately laced boot grazed his foot.
Code almost left the bar right then. He had no interest, not at the moment. Too much on his mind. A few weeks ago something like this might’ve been a welcome distraction, but… he tried to envision himself with this woman, tried to see their bodies together. She was attractive, objectively speaking, but when he closed his eyes, it wasn’t her he found himself tangling with.
“I don’t have any money,” Code said, his throat dry despite the drink he’d just gulped down. He nodded to the innkeeper. “Another.”
“You’ve got enough money for all the whiskey you’re downing. What’s a few more silvers?”
Code cursed inwardly. His guard was down, just slightly, and he didn’t know why. Just enough for him to make a stupid mistake by saying he didn’t have any money and then ordering another whiskey in the same breath.
That little ex-priestess has got you all out of sorts.
“Look,” Code said, finally meeting the woman’s eyes, “I’m not interested. You’re an attractive woman.” He nodded around the room. “I’m sure you could have any bloke in here. No need to go after me.”
“All the more reason,” she said, a smolder in her eyes that almost made Code uncomfortable. One of her feet brushed up against his, and even after the touch was gone Code still felt the echo of it there, tingling against him. “These other men would treat me as an object. I’ve had my fill of that. You would treat me like a woman.”
Code snorted.
“I’ve been at this a long time,” she said. “I’ve had my share of… unfortunate encounters. We all do in this business.” She rolled her shoulders back, standing a little taller. “I choose my customers, now. And I sure as Oblivion won’t be going back to what it was like before this.”
“None of that means I’ll be taking you home.”
She seemed confused. “You really are different, aren’t you?”
Code rolled his eyes.
The innkeeper, who’d been helping customers at the other end of the bar, finally made his way down to them, pouring Code another glass of whiskey. He nodded appreciatively, and slung it back, his throat and mouth burning.
“Goddess, you’re a poor whiskey drinker. You can’t even taste it like that.”
“Don’t care about tasting it,” Code said. I just want to get drunk, go home, and forget for a while.
The innkeeper was already pouring him another glass.
But the woman didn’t move away, and the silence began to bother him almost more than their conversation.
“Different how?” Code finally asked.
“Sorry?”
“No need for games with me,” he said. “Goddess, it’d be refreshing to drop all the pretense for once.”
It’d be nice to do that with Cinzia.
“That’s how,” the woman said, inclining her head toward him. “You speak plainly. No honeyed words.”
“Every woman’s dream, I’m sure,” Code muttered.
“You’d be surprised.”
“I’m not always this plain-spoken.”
“I’m just that lucky?”
“Guess so.”
Code swirled the glass of whiskey the innkeeper had most recently poured him. He’d reached his limit, but here it was in front of him, and he didn’t fancy wasting a passable whisky. A conundrum for the ages.
“There’s more than that, though, if you care to hear it,” she said.
“I asked, didn’t I?”
“I’ll tell you a little something about fucking,” she whispered.
Code spluttered into his glass. “Shouldn’t we at least tell each other our names first?”
She smiled at him—was that the first time he’d actually seen her smile? Really smile, anyway, not the fake smile that so obviously came with her profession. With his profession too, for that matter.
It’d be nice to see Cinzia smile like that, wouldn’t it?
Goddess, he was obsessed. If Cinzia knew he thought about her this often, she’d probably never speak to him again.
“Enura,” she said, extending a narrow arm.
“Code.” He took her forearm with his hand, and she did the same. He liked that, too. Not a greeting with a kiss on the cheek or a demure glance, but straightforward and to the point. Businesslike. Perhaps he could like this woman after all— although when he pictured it, once again it wasn’t her body he saw himself moving with, pressing against.
This is what she does for a living, he reminded himself. She discerns people’s weaknesses, tells them what they want to hear.
Goddess, that’s what he did for a living—though he doubted her profession left the trail of dead bodies his did.
“You were saying?”
“Yes…” Enura cocked her head to one side. “What is it about, do you think?”
“What? You mean what you do for a living?”
“And what everyone else lives to do. What is the point of it, for you?”
The point of it. Oblivion, no one had ever asked him that before. “The point… would be fairly obvious, wouldn’t it? To get you both… er, both parties involved, to… um…” Code blushed. He could not remember the last time he’d done that. The embarrassment itself was refreshing.
Enura’s soft chuckling added to both his embarrassment and delight.
“What?” he asked, unable to stop one side of his mouth from creeping up in a half-smile. “I’m not the one that should be embarrassed, it’s you who’s asking the question.”
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