House of Falling Rain (Eyes of Odyssium Book 1)

by C. A. Bryers

  Of course they’re coming out now. Of course, he thought, cursing his foul luck.

  When she came around the bend, Iriscent’s whole body jumped. It was only an inch, perhaps, but it might as well have been to the top of the corridor as far as Salla was concerned.

  “Tallas.” Her eyes were wide, cheeks flushed. She gave a fleeting glance back the way she had come, her red braid whipping back and forth. Suddenly, she laughed, but there was a nervous edge to it as she batted the heel of her palm against her forehead. “Oh, that’s right. We have to get you down below. Silly me. Come on.”

  The walk to the stairs and the trek down each creaking and groaning metal step was filled with a one-sided conversation. Iriscent’s nervous banter was one acrobatic leap from random topic to random topic, a stream of noise designed to bury what she likely feared Salla might have seen. For Salla, it only served to cast a stronger beam of light upon it.

  Once outside the hollowed-out pair of cells with the temporary restora pool at its center, Iriscent painted on a timid smile. “Here we are again. Miss it down here?”

  He shook his head in the flickering light of failing bulbs. “It has fewer people named Joht who seem intent on making my life miserable, I’ll give it that. But no, I don’t miss it much.”

  The process surrounding his tephic bath was the polar opposite of the walk leading up to it. Iriscent did not speak a word its entire duration, silently performing her tasks. As the process went on, the rigidity of her short frame loosened, and the tension slipped from her face the same way it ebbed from Salla’s own body as his limbs went numb. He let his awareness melt away, to become as formless as the liquid enveloping him in the cocoon pool.

  ***

  He wasn’t even aware he’d slept until his eyes opened and saw Iriscent’s beaming smile shining down on him, indicating her work was complete.

  Most of the feeling had crept back into his limbs, and he sat upright. “Done already?”

  “All I did was run some tephic probes through this thing here.” She patted him on top of his wet head. “Both times we came down here this week, I haven’t done a thing to moderate the energies inside of you. Figured it was worth a try to see if, you know, anything happened.”

  Salla blanched. “So you were using me as some kind of test subject to see what happened?”

  Iriscent laughed. “Please, Salla. What do you think I’ve been doing this entire time since I met you? You have an ancient power locked inside of you coupled with traces of an ancient spirit, and the two fight like crazy old ladies. Do you think there’s some dusty old guidebook laying around that’s gonna tell me how to treat that kind of problem?”

  “I suppose you have a point.”

  “But come on, you’re missing the point of what I just told you.” She leaned closer, overenunciating her words as if explaining something to a child that could barely comprehend words. “I didn’t fix anything. You did.”

  “Wait. So—” Salla hesitated to speak the words. “So you’re saying I’m cured?”

  “That might be overstating it, but it kind of looks like our plan is working. Opening a tephic channel and learning even the basics of controlling it has…” She twisted her lips in thought. “It’s taught your mind how to self-moderate other flows of energy within you. Don’t get me wrong, you’re still terrible with actually using tephic, but that doesn’t matter. Internally, you don’t even know you’re doing it once you learn. It becomes as natural as running around naked on the last night of the year.”

  Salla arched a brow.

  “So you’re stabilized, sure. Cured?” She made a pained grimace. “No. The powers of the Eyes of the One and the Magsem aren’t about to run off and sip cocktails together in Costa Ojo anytime soon. They’re still there, and they still don’t seem to get along too well. For all I know, they might not be able to leave your body until, well, you’re a body. A dead one. You know what I mean.”

  Salla sat up in the portable cocoon, wiping the slimy liquid away from his face. “If we’re being honest about how terrible I am with tephic, I should be honest and let you know you’re terrible at talking to people sometimes.”

  Iriscent let the remark fly past her as if he hadn’t said a word. “It’s not like you can leave here today and just quit what you’re doing, though, and think you’ll be fine. I wouldn’t recommend it, at least. The Eyes and the Magsem are nice and quiet for the time being, but maybe they don’t like being suppressed like this. Maybe one or the other will get sick of it and start wriggling around in you, looking for some way to push back. Get some sort of dominance over you and the other energy in there. I don’t know. Your situation is just slightly unique.” She winked. “All I can advise you is to stick with your training. Make it as strong as you can.”

  His brows lowered in thought. “So if I have these energies under control, does that mean the Eyes might work the way they used to?”

  She made a deflating noise, throwing her hands up in the air. “Another question I don’t know the answer to. But I do know you don’t have these energies under control, Salla. Like I said, what this appears to be is suppression rather than control. Given that, no, I don’t think the Eyes will work the way they used to. Maybe more specialized training could, you know, let you sort out a way to tap into it again, but right now it looks like your Eyes are getting a little shut-eye for now.” She shrugged and flashed her usual effervescent smile. “But on the positive side, at least they’re not killing you at the moment.”

  Salla stood, beginning the arduous process of sloughing off the thick liquid clinging to his skin. As he showered, lingering memories of Iriscent’s clandestine rendezvous in the House’s filing room floated into his thoughts. The urge to ask her about it rose up almost to his lips, but never came forth in actual words. It was for the best, he thought, returning to the task at hand. Whatever he’d stumbled upon, it was her business, not his.

  Still, there was something about it that struck him as wildly hypocritical. There was no need for the man to have turned around in that cramped room for Salla to know his identity. He reflected back upon the day he’d first met the man, who, when telling Salla the rules of this House, had said men and women shared the barracks. They were trusted to behave, he’d said, as they were not animals.

  The rules, however, did not apply to him, it seemed.

  Pulling on his gray House garb, Salla almost had to laugh. His pretty little harem of assistants makes a lot more sense now.

  Outside the cell, Iriscent was there waiting for him.

  “So, I’d say that’s that as far as your dips into this particular bowl of goop go. Just let me know if you start feeling like something’s coming on again, you know what I mean?” She spun about before he could answer, and started back up the stairs. “Oh, I’ll still be giving you your implants, though, just to make sure nobody messes it up in there and accidentally wakes up either of your friends.”

  “Good to know,” Salla said, but he felt a small sense of disappointment. He had grown accustomed to their routine and genuinely liked spending time with Iriscent. Sure, what he found disturbing and what she found hilarious seemed to be one and the same, but that was all part of her quirky persona.

  Once at the top of the stairs, she faced him again. “I have to get back to the office. The other girls are probably waiting.”

  He nodded, a sense of reluctance bubbling through his chest. It was time. “Can you do me a favor? That girl who brought me in, Rainne. Can you mention something to Delflore, or—”

  Iriscent’s expression blossomed in surprise. “Good for you! I always pegged you as the squishy sort that can’t hold a grudge against a pretty girl.”

  “Well, you have been digging around in my head for the past few weeks, so if anyone would know, it’d be you, Iris.”

  She wagged a finger reprovingly. “Nope, nope, not yet.”

  “Really?” he said with a smirk, almost admiring her stubbornness. “I still have to call you Iriscent?”


  “Nothing personal, remember.” She grinned, giving his shoulder a playful shove. “But no, I wouldn’t have needed a pinch of tephic to know you’d come around eventually. You’re hardly the toughest person to read, Salla Saar.” With that, Iriscent started backing away across the foyer toward Adjutu’s Path. “I’ll send word to Delflore, but only to appease her curiosity. I think she’s been wondering how long you’d hold out.”

  His eyes narrowed. “What do you mean ‘only to appease her curiosity’?”

  “Rainne’s coming in a few days. Lochmore has you and pretty much everyone else scheduled for review and rho observation. Exciting, isn’t it?” She bounced twice, spun about, and was gone into Adjutu’s Path.

  Standing alone in the crumbling old foyer, Salla wasn’t so certain. “We’ll see.”

  22

  “Joht.”

  Joht Tavross scarcely heard him. Instead, he pressed forward, channeling tephic to streamline his movements to flow as liquid, to bolster his strength with iron. Trigg shuffled backward, his short, stocky frame struggling to remain upright in the face of Joht’s relentless assault. Joht had him by the wrist, twisting it in a blinding flash with one hand, grabbing him underneath his bent abdomen with the other, and tossing him with ease. Before Trigg could even rise to a knee, Joht had him again, wrenching the smaller man to his feet. With one spin, Trigg was sent flying again.

  “Joht, ease up!” Trigg pleaded from the ground, impotently thrusting a foot at his rampaging sparring partner.

  Joht snatched him by the foot, dragging his thrashing partner back to the Iron Grounds’ battle ring. Backing away from the downed man, Joht grinned as he summoned the tephic. It pulsed through him like a second, stronger heartbeat, reverberating up and down each of his limbs. With his bracer held forth, he watched the smaller man’s body go taut as he began to lift off the ground. Within seconds, Trigg was over ten feet in the air, wobbling precariously.

  “Joht—Joht—Joht!” the other man cried, trying to twist his body about to brace himself for the impending fall. “Put me down, and do it gently, man, will ya?”

  But Joht was in what he perceived to be an archsentinel’s mindset now. Trigg’s wide, terrified blue eyes, the shaggy, sweaty brown hair plastered to his head, it all vanished into a featureless mask. This man was a threat to the Gran Senji, and it was Joht’s duty to punish that transgression without a shred of remorse. He thrust Trigg higher, the drop the other man faced so perilous now that serious injury was almost certain.

  At once, yellow lights on the bracer started pulsing in rapid succession, a warning that he had reached the limit of the device’s safety restraints. He drew the enemy to him then, catching the vaguest glimmer of the ill-shaven features of Trigg’s round face as it clenched in dreadful anticipation for the next attack. When he was hovering within reach, Joht grasped him about the neck. Trigg threw a kick against Joht’s side, but the tephic was pouring through him as if fed by a geyser. He didn’t even feel it.

  “Joht, s-stop it. You—come on, man, you win.”

  A second later, Trigg was no longer a faceless enemy. The face he wore now was Tallas Corso’s, and Tallas had just attacked the Gran Senji.

  “You are archsentinel, Joht Tavross. An archsentinel holds no mercy for his enemies in his heart, nor does he ask for their mercy.” Orrock’s voice rang through his mind as vividly as if his monstrous rho was whispering his dark philosophies right into Joht’s ear. “Ever.”

  No mercy, thought Joht as a malicious grin rose to his lips, his mind racing for some way to shatter the restraints of the bracer, to allow him to deliver permanent damage, or perhaps worse.

  I am archsentinel.

  Tallas’s expression tightened in the air before him, eyes starting to bulge in horror as he struggled for air. In a tiny corner of his mind, Joht was only marginally aware that the others in the Iron Grounds had gone silent.

  “Die now, Tallas. Die.” The words were pushed out in a quiet hiss through clenched teeth.

  “Joht, stop it.”

  The voice that spoke didn’t sound like Tallas’s or even Trigg’s. It was someone else. He shrugged the command aside.

  “Joht!”

  Another voice. He shut it out—shut them all out until all he could hear was Tallas Corso’s choking anguish.

  “Die,” he whispered, pushing the tephic to close tighter about Corso’s throat.

  His bracer was lit up now in strobes of yellow light at the end of his arm.

  Abruptly, an open palm cracked against his face. Stunned and blinking, Joht looked down. Ciracelle stood in the narrow space between him and Trigg. She reached out and laid her hands on his chest, eyes searching his to find the man she knew behind the formidable wall of the archsentinel he wished to be.

  A few feet beyond the flashing lights of his bracer, Trigg was breathing now, his horror-stricken face his own once more. Eyes flicking left and right in sudden self-awareness, Joht set Trigg down. Ystolt and Kanoh rushed in to catch the beaten man as he crumpled to the ground.

  As she propped the fallen man up, Ystolt grinned in admiration. “Good form out there, Joht.”

  Kanoh made an irritated sputtering noise. “As if we don’t know what you mean by that, snow-skin.”

  “What, are you trying to earn a medal in ‘conduct unsuitable in the Order’? Keep it up, and see how old you are when Lochmore finally lets you out of this junk heap,” the Esharic girl shot back.

  Ignoring the pair, Joht snatched Ciracelle by the arm and started walking away from the others. “I need to talk to you.”

  “Yes, Joht, I think you do.” She tugged her arm free. “Hey! My legs work, you know.”

  They stopped at the yard’s back wall, near the discarded heap of exercise equipment that was too rusted to use, or broken beyond repair.

  “What was that, Joht?” Ciracelle stood a few feet away, but it might as well have been a mile.

  Joht noticed, stepping forward to close the gap.

  She took a guarded step backward. “Joht, I’m serious. Whatever’s going on in your head, you’ve got to get it under control. You could’ve killed Trigg back there.”

  “Trigg?” He repeated the name, blinking again. He replaced the momentary look of uncertainty with one of stiff resolve. “So I might’ve taken it a bit too far. But come on, Ciracelle. We both know Trigg’s not going to be around a lot longer. Sure, he wants to be a sariff, but so what? Just because your parents were both sariff doesn’t mean you’ll make a good one. Look at him. He’s got a soft build no matter how hard he trains—he can’t even keep up with the training. Who’s gonna take him seriously out there if it comes to a fight?” Joht wiped a bead of sweat hanging from the end of his nose, sparing a moment to glance over at the object of his mockery. “He’s tougher than he looks, at least. I’ll give him that. He’ll be fine.”

  Ciracelle watched Trigg step away from the others, his thick legs as wobbly and uncertain as an infant trying to walk for the first time.

  Joht grabbed her by the jaw, redirecting her focus. “Look at me.”

  “I am. I am,” she said with a start.

  “I’m—” He let go, swallowing hard. “I’m sorry. It’s…it’s Tallas. We need to do something about him.”

  “You do, Joht. What you need to do is to let it go.” With a reluctant step, she moved closer, grabbing his hands in her own. “He’s not a bad person, you know. Think back to that first day you saw him. Who pushed for that fight?”

  Joht tugged his hands free. “That doesn’t matter. And you really think he’s a good person? Really? What do we know about him? Nothing, that’s what. Oh, I’m sorry, we do know a few things. Tallas Corso isn’t his real name, and his mind is jammed full of tephic blocks so nobody can see what’s really in there.” He nodded over and over, reaffirming his own stance. “I think I know enough. I know he’s a liar, and I know his entire presence here is a lie. Tell me I’m wrong.”

  Ciracelle started to speak, but only a fragment of a
syllable emerged.

  “Now you see, don’t you? Something has to be done. We have to be the ones to do it. This man could be anyone. Who knows if someone in the Majdi Order even put those tephic blocks in there? What if it was a rogue? What if he’s some sort of immersion agent sent to spy on us, or to get close enough to a Majdi of power? Maybe one of the candidates to replace Eleskar as Gran Senji?”

  She turned away. “Now you’re just being paranoid, Joht.”

  “Am I? This is how I have to think as archsentinel, Ciracelle. You tell me why he’s here, then.” He spun her back about. “This is up to us—you and me. And just think—if you prove there’s an infiltrator in the Order, you’ll never be back to this House again. If I expose him, that will launch me right out of here and put one enormous mark in my favor as a protector of the Order.”

  “I don’t know.”

  He moved closer still. “And Ciracelle? When I’m archsentinel, there will be a place for you, if you want it. Archsentinels live like those Odyssan royals used to live, you know that. A palatial home, sprawling training grounds, a staff of our own—just think about it. That can be yours too.”

  She shook her head. “That’s not why I’m in the Order, Joht. I’m here to help people who need it.”

  “Then help your Order. Expose the lies that this Corso’s buried himself behind. Find out who and what he really is.” He stared long and hard into her eyes, looking for a sign that he was starting to get through to her. “I don’t pretend this isn’t at least partially driven by my vendetta against him. I’ll be honest with you about that. But can you tell me that it isn’t the right thing to do?”

  Then, he saw it behind those brown eyes, the failing of her defensive walls. He’d seen it a dozen times before, inwardly thrilling as he watched those walls tumble down in one powerful rush.

  Hesitantly at first, Ciracelle shook her head no. “What do we do?”