Wings Unseen

by Rebecca Gomez Farrell

  Serra gasped. She reached to give Janto a touch of comfort, but the Guj had pulled him too far away. The man forced an expression of contemplation onto his face. “Is that what did it, you think? Why your grandfather finally gave up the war? I expected more of a fight from him, in all truthfulness. But then, I did not expect an Albrecht to walk into my temple with a Meduan for an escort, no more than two guards, and a pair of women, either. Nouin!” The named adver shuffled over. “I cannot decide if I should ask for a ransom for this little prince. Should I kill him instead? It would be easier.”

  At that, Nap rushed forward, raising his sword in a charge. He slammed into something unseen and landed on his knees before springing back up again. A spell of defense then. Serra hated that she daren’t sight it.

  The Guj frowned at Nap’s display. Then he shoved Janto back toward the others with a hard poke of his finger and turned his attention to Vesperi. Menace emanated from him that reminded Serra of the claren’s quintessence, though he was a baser beast.

  “You cannot imagine how thrilled I am you escaped our silly trap earlier, Vesperi, though I think letting these others go was a mistake.”

  He sighed, wringing his hands together. “It would have been such a shame to ruin your potential before it could be harnessed. I suppose you know what you are now?”

  “From silver the weapon comes. Or so I have been told.”

  “By those superstitious Albrechts, I am certain. You ought to have done us a favor and killed them when you met them. Can you imagine how galvanizing it would be to take the other side of the mountains? Meduans seizing whatever they want, whomever they want. It’s always been a dream of mine, I’ll admit. I think you’d enjoy making it come true—I have heard much about you, you know. When something of value appears, I pay attention.”

  He reached a hand to her, and for the first time, Serra saw his age. Liver spots covered him, like a congealed bowl of craval pudding.

  “I have not come to join you,” Vesperi said. “I have come to destroy you.”

  “Like you did my claren pack?” The Guj waved his arm around. “Do you know how much time it took to gather them? Invisible creatures are hard to trap, but the wizards and I managed despite the damage to my advers—why, Nouin here barely escaped with his life after first discovering their handiwork. You were not there when I sent my envoy to collect—invite you to be Ralion’s bride, so I had no choice but to use the claren that appeared in your stead. It is a sign we are meant to work together, Vesperi, now that you have destroyed them. A sign from Saeth that now is the time to attack the Lanserim.”

  Lorne spoke, his voice haughty and sure. “Saeth does not exist. You don’t need to pretend with us, remember?”

  “He speaks, and yet no one hears his words.” The other advers laughed at the Guj’s pronouncement.

  Lorne sputtered, but Serra watched him shrug a smirk back in place like pulling on a favorite pair of gloves. “King Ralion heard me when I told him your plans, I am fairly certain. ‘The Guj seeks to wed you,’ I wrote to him from Sellwyn.” Lorne stepped away from the others to divert the Guj’s attention. “You see, I overheard the adver you sent to fetch Vesperi—you know the one, he’s lying on your dais at this very moment. I felt this overwhelming urge to contact my father’s old friend Ralion—and our blessed ruler, of course; I must not forget my pleasantries. ‘He will probably kill your sweet Rapsca to keep up appearances,’ I wrote. ‘Best decide whether to let that happen or take a stand for once, you lily-livered pansy. Yours sincerely, Lorne Granich.’ Penmanship is so important, don’t you think?”

  Lorne raised his elbows in deference to himself as he finished, and Serra nearly laughed at the pleasure he took in the show, eyes shining. “I may be only a young courtier, oh glorious champion of Saeth, but I have grown up at court, and we know things. We watch, we wait, and we use what we see. Ralion Suma may be your puppet, but he would never give up his man.” He sighed and pressed a hand to his chest. “True love. Sometimes it prevails.”

  “Take him out of here.” The Guj’s face reddened with anger, no tease left in his voice. He gestured at the Rasselerian, and Serra tensed. “Find out if there is anything else he knows.”

  The adver darted his tongue toward her as he walked past, but she had eyes only for the scene in front of her, not what he hoped to taste. Nap tried to bar the adver’s way, but his arm jerked back against his will as soon as he had raised it. The adver escorted Lorne out. All pretense had fled from their friend’s countenance, and he looked at peace, having done the part the Brothers had trusted him with. Yet he reached in his pocket and swallowed another sprinkling of fallowent anyhow. Serra prayed she would get the chance to thank him.

  The Guj zeroed in on the only person he prized in the room, not bothering to keep his temper in check. “Enough of this, wench. You will use your magic for me or I will kill each of your friends, and I already have a head start. When they are dead, you will be tied to a pole, and my advers will coat their dicks in levere dust and take you, every one, until there is nothing left of you to resist, nothing left of you but the power you should never have been given in the first place.”

  Vesperi bristled. “You think that is a threat? That was every meal time in my father’s manor.”

  Serra slowed her breathing as they fought—Lorne had made her way clear. The image of a farrowbird’s feather came to mind, and she focused her will on it. It took less than a second for the reddish-brown of it to divide into separate bands of color in her mind’s eye—white, brown, red, black all shining with the glint of unseen light. She opened her eyes and swept the room, her breath catching from the change in it now. There were no claren—that they had all survived so long was proof enough of that—but something else was there besides the defense spell that hung like a net of filigree around them. Wisps of a deeper blue seeped out of what looked like a seam ripped open. More blue shimmered from the ether beyond the seam. The opening was slim, but it was there. Janto is right. He is right! There is a fissure here!

  Her spirits soared, and Janto could tell, whether the attunement came from being heads of the same prophesied bird or from having known each other so intimately for years. Janto tilted his head toward her almost imperceptibly, and she shifted her gaze toward where the mist flowed out. The touch of his thumb on her arm was all the assurance she needed.

  It was perfect, what happened next. The Guj pushed Vesperi over the edge all on his own, unused to a challenge from any quarter, much less a woman. “You think you have any choices left, whore? Look around you. My wizards have made these Lanserim useless to protect you, and have no doubt, when they are finished with your friends, you will have all their attention. Breaking you will give me more pleasure than I have felt since cleaving Gelus Albrecht’s arm from his shoulder. When you have learned your lessons, you will pray for the day I finish draining that delicious power from you and toss you in the kitchens.”

  A spark appeared in Vesperi’s palm, and it danced back and forth from her index finger to her thumb. Serra grabbed her arm and pointed it toward the fissure. “Let it go. Hold it steady for as long as you can.”

  What happened next was neither expected nor perfect.

  CHAPTER 57

  VESPERI

  Magic surged through her, and Vesperi’s hair rose in the electrified air, jerking arrhythmically, a nest of eaglets trying to reach their mother’s worms. Time passed, but she had no awareness of it, no awareness of anything but the unbridled joy of release, the flinging of her anger, her power, and the trust she had in the person holding her arm up and pointing her hand. Smoke poured forth from where she aimed, and it parted around a strange mist lit by the radiance of silver flames. The sound of claren dying was louder than she had ever heard it before, but it came at a distance, as though the thunderous cracking was contained in a glass house like the one Hamsyn had described in his sister’s garden. All else was silver—brilliant, sparking silver.

  Too soon the rush of energy slowed to
the trickle the River Sell used to be rather than the raging water it had become in her absence. The Esye in her mind darkened into Onsic, and drained of power, Vesperi observed the spot where the smoke and mist hung thickest.

  Claren bodies poured out from the empty air. The loud clattering grew softer and quieter as the effects of her talent died down. Ash and shell surrounded her and Serra in a room of shambles. The rebounded energy had warped the sheets of levere, leaving burn marks. No more than a few sticks of furniture remained.

  “What happened to the others?” Vesperi was unsure whether to be proud or terrified of what they had done.

  “Our men crawled out on their stomachs as soon as I lifted your arm.

  They were out before the first magic bounced its way through the crack in the door. Their levere vestments protected the Guj and his men long enough to escape as well.”

  “Come.” Serra pulled Vesperi toward out of the room. “And stay angry.”

  The passages were worse. Only the levere-draped door leading to the fake bedroom was unscathed, though dying flames licked its edges. No ghoulish tapestries hung from the walls, and the walls themselves started to crack. The pillars too, louder than Thokketh’s ice walls at the end of summer.

  “Run!” yelled Serra.

  They did, finding no signs of their companions anywhere, nor of anyone else. For the first time she could remember, Vesperi prayed. Prayed they could run faster than the ceilings of Mandat Hall could fall, prayed the others had already made it outside. If she was responsible for any of their—she refused to think of it.

  Around every curve, the sight was the same. The cracking of walls echoed through the deserted building. They reached the grand entry hall, but the walls fell in earnest there, everything not made of stone aflame with silver. The magic must have just repelled through it, from one levere sheet to another.

  Someone screamed and Vesperi stopped to listen. It came again, from a door at the southern end of the hall. Then she slammed her hands against her ears as a huge fragment of ceiling tumbled down behind her—in the direction Serra had kept running.

  “Serra!” I cannot lose her. She is my sight, my guide. I need her. She needed all the insufferable Lanserim, damn them.

  A moment later, Serra rose on unsteady legs from the other side of the debris. “I’m all right. Come on!”

  Vesperi breathed thanks to Madel. Then she heard the scream again. “I hear someone—I have to go find them. Keep going!”

  Serra nodded and made her escape. Flivio met Serra at the door, taking her hand and jerking her through the narrow opening. Vesperi was relieved to see him. This world would be darker without his wit to entertain me. She ran toward the door the screams had come from.

  The room she entered was more ostentatious than any other she had seen at Mandat Hall and vast enough to fit a few hundred men. Flames of silver danced along the long tables. They would be an inferno soon; she could not linger there. Then she heard the scream again.

  It was the fat adver who had guided them into the Guj’s true quarters, on a stage in the front of the room. The Guj himself caused the terror. He wore a levere helm, a clenched fist rising from its apex. Then the ruler of Medua swung a mace against his thrall’s nearly torn-off shoulder from what must have been a many times repeated blow.

  “Stop!” Vesperi called Esye back to mind, though the Guj’s levere shawl lay flat against his body. She could not touch this man, not like this, and he knew it, but she could hold her talent at the ready.

  “You destroyed my wizards, you know.” Good. “They were not strong enough to survive your flare into the ethosphere, their tether to Madel too weak. They fizzled out of existence the moment your power went in.” He swung lazily at the adver as he spoke, bashing in his head and silencing the screams. “It wasn’t Nouin’s fault, all this, but I had to blame someone, you see. I cannot punish you. You are too valuable to destroy.”

  “You will never use me.”

  The Guj laughed, dropping his mace in the pooling blood beneath the dead man’s body. He knelt on the floor beside him. “Do you think it’s so simple, changing the world order? Did you think you could storm a castle and suddenly everyone and everything would welcome you? The Meduan lords will never accept a woman over them. They will never see you as anything but a weak, powerless gnat.”

  Something snapped. The Guj held one of the man’s fingers up to the flamelight and sliced the flesh from the bone.

  “If you join with me”—he finished the work in three quick strokes—“they will fear you. By my side, you will rule Medua. Think of it. Think of all those people cowering before you, showing you the respect that is your due as the weapon, the respect you have always craved. Your father was blind not to see it.”

  She did not ask how he knew of her relationship with her father, remembering Garadin rotting on the dais.

  “You can be their savior. You have removed the claren and you can bring them true peace, bind Lansera and Medua together with the might of your palm.” The finger disappeared somewhere into his cloak, and he made his way toward her through the thickening smoke. His voice grew more assured with each step. “We could rule it all, from Thokketh’s fortress to the snow-whipped shores of Elston. None can stand before you, unless they have one of these.” He tapped his fingers against his helm, not breaking eye contact. His eyes were soft brown as Hamsyn’s had been, and she wondered what this man had been like as a boy, wondered why he clung to an existence he hated so fiercely. Does power make it worth it?

  “With my guidance”—he had almost reached her—“you will be magnificent.”

  How small her ambition had been, limited to only one manor in one dusty, ruined province. She had been crippled by her infinitesimal worldview, a looking glass honed in on her father. The Guj promised her a wider target, but he wanted to extend it where he chose. He wanted her to bring him his kingdom. He did not know how far her aims had shifted when she watched a king gleam with hope and faith that outshone mere ambition. Besides, she knew better than to trust a Meduan.

  “I will never join with you. We are not equals. Look around you.” She gestured toward the disintegrating tables, the splitting stone walls. “Your kingdom is falling.”

  “You cannot do anything to me.” He was close enough she could see the silver flames engulfing the room reflected back at her in those human eyes. Does he see them in mine?

  “And as long as I remain, there will be a Medua,” he continued, looming over her, but she could not shake the feeling he was so very, very small. Her father had influenced all Vesperi did, and she had given him everything she had, never receiving anything in return. This man, this cretin who had tried to control her from afar, to wed her to King Ralion, thought he could influence her now? Her talent pulsed, and she wished she had the facility to strike at the space between his helm and his shawl on her own.

  And then she watched as an arrow flew right into it, cutting straight through his windpipe. The Guj’s eyes widened, and he stumbled to the floor.

  “She cannot kill you”—Janto jumped down from the urum drum he had climbed to take aim—“but the bird has more than one head.”

  A gurgle of blood came out as the dying jackass spoke. “You—you are—”

  “The slayer,” Janto laced another arrow onto the Old Girl’s thread. “I tracked you by the trail of blood your last loathsome act left behind.”

  Vesperi laughed then, laughed with pure amusement, letting the rage driving her talent die down until it was nothing more than a flicker. “You had not realized it, had you? You thought they used me as a pawn like you wanted to. You never considered I might be part of a team. I am a woman, after all.”

  “And the other?” The Guj gasped, his face turning purple.

  “The seer.” Janto loosed the second arrow at close range into an eye. “But I don’t need her to see the color of your soul.”

  The Guj was only a man in the end, and then he was not that any longer.

  “If yo
u two have finished gawking at your handiwork, we have a burning building to flee.”

  By a rounded door near the stage, barely visible through the smoke, stood Lorne. Vesperi couldn’t see it but she knew he smirked. Janto took her hand and they ran together into the tight passageway Lorne ducked into. Smoke billowed in after them.

  “How did you escape?” Vesperi asked as they ran. “Did you charm the robe off that froggy adver?”

  His consternation made it plain he had higher standards. “He proved my number one rule about advers as soon as your little fireball ricocheted into the stairway he had pushed me through, no doubt on our way to a cell below the temple. We fell to the ground, and by the time it was safe to move again, he had already gone on. So here I am, rescuing you.”

  “This does lead out?” Janto sounded dubious.

  “Patience, princeling.”

  Only a few more turns, and they tumbled through a rotting door and onto the grass of the hillside. Vesperi spoke between gulps of fresh air. “How—huuunf—did you know—hunf—about that passage?”

  The taller man sprawled beside her, finding his own breath. “You expect all—hasp—my secrets?” Lorne winked and went up on his knees. “I think the others are getting worried,” he wheezed. “If my squinting can be trusted, Napeler is about to hurl himself through a stone column to get back inside. We should probably let them know we survived.”

  Janto was already on his feet before Vesperi realized there were more people gathered on the hillside than just their group. Dozens of advers stood by themselves, shaken, as they watched Mandat Hall burn. Silver and blue mists rose from the smoke that poured out of it, reminding her of the waters of Call that Janto always went on about. She did not care what they resembled when he leaned over and kissed her on the lips. Then he grinned like a loon before pulling her off toward their friends.

  CHAPTER 58

  JANTO