Untethered

by KayLynn Flanders

  Maybe Redalia’s magic ran out, like mine. It would take longer because of her experience and her artifact, but still. Why Riiga? Why Janiis?

  And what was Koranth’s role in all this? Was the wedding Redalia’s idea? What could Janiis possibly have to offer her? But if Koranth hadn’t been destroyed when Jenna killed Graymere, and he held Graymere’s shade blade, did that mean…Graymere was still alive in a way? In Koranth?

  It was the only thing that made sense, the only reason Redalia would be getting married to the king of the smallest kingdom on the Plateau when the Continent had always been the mages’ goal. Why Janiis would listen to Koranth, would come when Koranth summoned him.

  Which also meant the mage who’d tried to kill my entire family was still alive. And had sent Brownlok north. Toward Jenna.

  Glaciers.

  The carriage jostled, and another servant strode by, grumbling about bringing a horse up again. Cynthia and her dress occupied most of the carriage, with Chiara and me squished together on the other bench. I didn’t mind the close quarters. Especially when the beginnings of panic bubbled up.

  The carriage lurched forward suddenly, and we pressed back against the seat, away from the tiny window. “Will the driver check inside once it’s at the stables?” I whispered as we swayed along. If there was only one location to keep animals, it would probably be guarded. And I still didn’t have a sword.

  Cynthia paused. “I…I hadn’t thought of that.”

  I rubbed my leg and leaned closer to the window. We’d passed from the wall onto the city streets. “We should jump out.” Neither of them made a sound, just stared at me. “I don’t have a weapon, and it will be harder to fight our way out of the stables. We’re in the city now. I say we jump.”

  “We can’t jump from a moving carriage,” Cynthia said, one hand on her heart.

  The carriage slowed to take a tight turn. “See?” I said. “Wait for the turns. I’ll help you down.”

  I unlatched the door and eased myself onto the step, pressing into the side of the carriage. I held my hand out. “Cynthia, come on,” I whispered.

  She shook her head and pressed farther into the corner. Chiara put her hand in mine instead. I held her close, one foot in the carriage, one foot out. “On the next turn, I’ll lower you to the ground. Go immediately to the wall of the nearest building and wait for me to come to you.”

  She nodded against my chest. “Just…don’t drop me,” she whispered. The carriage slowed. I held her wrist, and she held mine, and I lowered her carefully down. She hit the ground running and ducked into the shadows.

  I stepped back in and held out my hand to Cynthia. “See? Not so hard. I’ll come with you.” She cowered away. Every second took us farther from Chiara. So I grasped Cynthia’s arm, wrapped it around my shoulder, and forced her to stand.

  “Don’t let go,” she said over and over. Her nails dug into my skin.

  I eased onto the step again, the wind whipping into us. There weren’t any turns coming. We were already too far from Chiara, so I jumped onto the street. Cynthia didn’t run when we hit. Her feet dragged and caught, and we both tumbled to the cobblestones. I rolled with her into the shadows and held my breath. Had the driver seen us?

  But the carriage rumbled away, the door still hanging open. I should’ve shut it.

  “Comfortable?” Chiara asked from above us, a note of annoyance in her voice.

  I pushed Cynthia off me, though she clung to my shirt until a seam ripped. “You were supposed to wait for us.”

  Chiara helped Cynthia up. “You were getting farther and farther away. I didn’t want to lose you.”

  “You won’t,” I coughed, wishing my magic wouldn’t heal these new bruises. I needed a store of magic more than I needed pristine ribs. “You won’t lose me.” I pulled myself up off the ground, hands on my knees, body aching. Leaned against the wall.

  Get to Luc, and then get everyone out of Riiga. Find Mari.

  Then I’d deal with the mages.

  * * *

  “Not that way,” Cynthia hissed, tugging on my already ripped sleeve. “We need to go this way.”

  An icy wind slithered against my skin, raising chills along my neck and arms. The cold here was different from back home. Here, it soaked into your bones until you dissolved.

  Everything looked the same—narrow, rocky roads, buildings that loomed on either side. And the silence.

  There were no people out. Not even a stray cat. All the windows shuttered.

  Chiara scooted a step closer to me.

  Heat flared at my chest, sudden and painful. I gasped, and Chiara wrapped her hand around my elbow.

  “Keep searching!” a voice echoed, followed by boots running along cobblestone. We pressed ourselves flat against the cold building. Two soldiers marched past the alley we hid in.

  After two more turns, the looming buildings hid more and more twilight as night stole through the city on the heels of the wind. Cynthia stopped. Three paths opened to us—one leading up a steep set of stairs and curving around the building in front of us, another to the right, another to the left.

  “Which way?” Chiara whispered.

  Cynthia shook her head and bit her lip, studying each path. Her shoulders rounded and she squeezed her eyes shut. “I can’t remember.”

  A dog barked close by. I pressed the Medallion into my chest. Which way? But it felt the same as it always did—a gentle heat buzzing a warning into me.

  Cynthia wrung her hands. “The market is off the main square in the middle of the city. Luc’s hiding on the cliff side of the square, one street over, two stories up,” she repeated from memory.

  Raucous laughter broke the night, approaching from the left.

  “Come on,” I whispered, pressing the Medallion harder. The path up could keep us away from searching guards, but it could lead to a dead end, and there wouldn’t be anywhere for Chiara and Cynthia to run if there was a confrontation.

  Chiara snatched my hand from my chest. “You, Ren. I trust you. Not some relic.” She put her hand in mine. “Which way should we go?”

  My instincts said turn right. But nothing here was like Hálendi.

  I grabbed Cynthia’s elbow and tugged Chiara’s hand, pulling them into the street to the left. Their steps padded behind me, light and quick. More laughter approached. I kept running, then darted to the left again, into a tiny alley.

  We pressed against the walls, chests heaving, as four men strutted by, swords at their sides, bellies hanging over their belts.

  “Don’t know why he’s making such a fuss. How are we supposed to find a single man and his servant in a city full of mangy beggars?”

  He, meaning Janiis—or Koranth?

  Chiara and I locked eyes. They’d discovered us missing. Had they discovered Marko’s absence yet?

  “Doesn’t matter,” another guard continued as they passed out of sight. “I don’t want to give her any reason to summon us—she gives me the shivers.”

  The men continued on, never once looking our way. We followed the alley, and when we came to the end of it, Cynthia put her hand out.

  “It’s there!” she whispered, pointing toward the alley on the left. “On the corner!”

  We crept along, following Cynthia through a doorway with nothing more than a ragged strip of cloth covering it. We paused, getting our bearings in the dark interior. Broken furniture piled in the corner, barely illuminated by the moonlight through a gaping window. Dust and cobwebs swirled in the wind, but the floor was swept clean.

  Cynthia took off, running toward the stairs.

  “Wait!” I hissed, and snatched for her hand, her dress, anything, but she raced up the stairs. I pushed Chiara behind me and followed Cynthia, trying to keep my boots quiet on the creaking stairs. She ran right to the top and burst into a dark room.
r />   A sword swooped down at her. I shoved Cynthia to the side and jumped out of the way.

  “Easy, Luc!” I growled.

  Something smashed against my shoulder and I spun to find Aleksa, wide-eyed, the neck of a ceramic vase clutched tight in her hands. “Sorry,” she whispered.

  I winced and rolled my shoulder back. “Good arm.” Heat from my magic traveled from my middle up to my shoulder to ease the ache. I already wanted to curl up in a corner and sleep for a day. I could handle an ache. But the magic sensed the need and slithered through my shoulder until it had been repaired.

  I leaned against the doorframe. Chiara brushed by me to Cynthia, who lay sprawled on the ground. Had she fainted? I shut the door, shaking my head to stay awake. Now wasn’t the time to pass out.

  Luc kept his sword raised and peeked out the window, but all remained quiet below. “Are you insane or just stupid?” he growled at Cynthia, his rough beard and slitted eyes making him look more bear than man.

  She scooted so her back was against the wall, her dress sweeping a path through the dust and dirt. “I’m sorry,” Cynthia murmured, hand over her heart. “I…I didn’t think.”

  “Use your head, girl, or there won’t be a next time,” Luc muttered, and sat on a rickety stool by the window to keep watch.

  “Ease up,” Chiara said to him as she knelt by a bed tucked in the corner. “She didn’t understand the risk, and now she does. She’ll do better next time.”

  Chiara defending Cynthia. Huh.

  Aleksa went to the bed and sat, wiping a man’s brow. Marko’s. The blankets moved up and down with his breathing.

  Moonlight alone lit the room, shafts of soft light filtering through the tattered rags at the windows. Wind blew freely through the cracks in the walls and through the broken windows.

  I studied Luc again. Deep grooves were etched around his eyes that I didn’t remember. He looked like he hadn’t slept in weeks. His clothes, once a clean, pressed uniform, were wrinkled, dirty, and had some suspicious-looking tears, like he’d come too close to a blade. He snatched up a blanket at his feet and wrapped it around himself.

  I rested my hand on his shoulder, my eyes drawn back to the mound on the bed by Chiara. “Are you hurt, Luc?” I asked quietly.

  He shook his head, still focused outside. “No, Your Majesty.” He darted a glance at the bed, then back to the window. “Never better.” A muscle ticked in his jaw as he studied the rips and stains in my shirt and trousers. “You?”

  “Good as new.” I swallowed, not wanting to ask, but needing to know. “And the king?” I asked even quieter.

  Luc sighed, a long breath that rustled the threadbare curtain next to him. “He’s…” His mouth opened and shut a few times, and he swallowed hard. “I’ve given him everything I can think of to ease the pain. But his mind—I don’t know how to fix that.”

  “Did you get the message out about the attack?” I asked. Enzo would need all the advance warning he could get.

  Luc maintained his watch out the window. “Yes. It was a clever riddle. I haven’t made many contacts I can trust here, but one had a boat. I sent the message up the coast with him. Not sure Enzo will get it in time, but it was a better option than the pass.”

  “Do you have an extra sword?” I asked, painfully aware of the lack of one at my side.

  Luc rubbed his forehead. “I had to sell my spare—these Riigans trust me less than I trust them. They won’t sell me anything, and swords are a precious commodity at the moment.”

  I squeezed his shoulder, then made my way to Chiara. I’d find another way.

  Chiara held her father’s hand as he rested. His beard and hair had been trimmed, though not expertly, and he’d had a bath. Lines of pain were carved around his mouth and eyes, even in sleep.

  I brought a chair closer so Chiara could sit and still hold her father’s hand, then helped her into it. She never took her eyes off him, and I wished I could use magic to somehow transport all of us back up the cliffs and into safe territory.

  Maybe I should have let Jenna come—she could hide everyone, or use her magic to fight our way out. At the moment, all I could do was heal a few bruises. I didn’t even have a sword.

  “What do we do now?” Chiara asked, careful to keep her voice low.

  Luc responded first. “We must get King Marko out of Riiga, but I don’t know how to get him past all the guards Riiga’s paranoid king has posted.”

  I sat in the middle of the floor, too tired to pace. “It’s not just Janiis. Koranth is alive and controlling everything from the shadows. I think…I think, because he has Graymere’s shade blade, that Graymere’s magic, or maybe even Graymere himself, could be inside Koranth.”

  Chiara took off her cap and unpinned her braids. “His eyes are black now. He doesn’t posture like Koranth always postured.”

  “And,” I added, piling on the gloom, “Janiis’s betrothed is another mage. Redalia. The one who killed my father.”

  “Cavolo,” Luc muttered.

  I lay flat on the floor, too tired to even sit. “There’s another way into Turia—a way we came down. A set of stairs and ropes set in the cliff farther east. Is he strong enough to make it up?”

  Aleksa wiped the king’s brow and dipped the rag back into a basin of water. “The ascent is harder than the descent. You need your wits about you—” She cut off with a sharp glance at Chiara, who put her face in her hand.

  My eyes closed and I pinched my leg to stay awake. “I could try healing him—”

  “No,” Chiara said. “You don’t have the strength.”

  I rubbed my palms into my eyes. She was right. I hated that she was right.

  “Can we smuggle him out by boat?” Chiara asked.

  Luc grunted. “Storm season is here, and the seas get bad the farther north you try to go. But maybe. We’d have to find someone we can trust. And a place to hide, away from the city, in the meantime.”

  Cynthia spoke up hesitantly. “I overheard most of the guards will be pulled into the palace tomorrow for the wedding ceremony and that citizens are required to attend.”

  I put my hands under my head, adjusting my shoulders as Sennor’s shirt stretched too tight across my chest despite the rips. “You could get Marko to the cave while the mages and guards are busy with the wedding. Hide while Aleksa finds a boat.”

  “What about you?” Chiara asked, whipping around to face me.

  The rags at the window above Marko swayed in the moonlight. “I’m not leaving Riiga until I’ve dealt with Koranth and Redalia.”

  “No.” She stood, her chair scraping along the wood floor. “They’re in a heavily defended palace, with an entire kingdom of soldiers at their disposal. You are not staying here to confront them on your own.”

  I lifted up onto my elbows. “I got Redalia alone once; I can do it again. I’ll figure out a way to get to Koranth, too.”

  Chiara wrinkled her nose and crossed her arms. “If we all go back to Turia, we can regroup and come back with our own army. And”—she swallowed hard—“we need to find Mari.”

  I lay back down. Mari. “What do you know about her disappearance?” I asked Luc.

  He grunted. “Only that she’s missing from the palace.”

  Not enough to make a plan, even if we were in a position to help her. For now I’d have to trust that Jenna and Enzo would find her.

  “There isn’t time to leave and come back,” I said. “Riiga can’t be invaded with enough troops to stand against the mages. Storm season prevents a sea attack, and they control the passage at the cliffs. I’m here now. The Medallion has been guiding me south for this. So I can—”

  “We can lure them to us.” Chiara’s hand went to her pocket, and she started pacing. It made me dizzy, so I closed my eyes. “What if we follow the clue, get the third key now, then lure them to wherever
we want to confront them? A wide-open space with our armies.”

  “That might work,” Luc said, tossing a threadbare blanket to Cynthia, who shivered in the corner. “I’m assuming this third key is in Riiga?”

  I sighed and squeezed my eyes shut tighter. Too tired to think.

  “What is the key to?” Aleksa asked from her spot by Marko.

  I cracked an eye open—Chiara pulled the book with the illustration of the Turian key from her pocket. The one I’d given Jenna as a birthday present, and then she’d given away.

  “It’s to the Black Library—the ancient store where the first king of Hálendi hid all of the mages’ learning and artifacts,” Chiara said, pacing faster as she warmed to the topic. “The mage Brownlok stole the Turian key, Hálendi has the second key, but there’s a third key.”

  “You think,” I muttered.

  “Three mages?” Aleksa groaned.

  An idea came to me. A memory long forgotten. I scrubbed my hands through my hair and forced myself to sit up. “There might be an artifact in the Black Library that can heal your father. I learned about it long ago, and remember thinking it would be easier to have an artifact to heal others so I didn’t have to get so tired. I don’t know its limitations, but—”

  “We find the key, find Mari, defeat the mages, get the artifact from the Black Library, and heal my father!” Chiara said, loud enough for Luc to shush her.

  Marko had been kidnapped and imprisoned. He’d lost all memory of his family, his home, his self. Because of Koranth and Redalia. Because I hadn’t acted soon enough when the Medallion urged me south. Because I’d left my father alone in the castle when I knew there was a traitor in our midst.

  I shook my head. “That’s a massive oversimplification, but yes. You all need to get to Turia safely before Riiga attacks. I’ll find the key and meet you—”