“I taught you logic, thank you, not the other way around.” He drummed his fingers on his knees. “I know you’ll do whatever you want, but please, please, keep in mind that if you die, it will take more from our people than their heir. You are the youngest of us, Lilani, the last born, and you represent hope that there’ll be other children in the future. Do not take away our people’s hope, I beg you.”
She found that slightly overblown and more than a little manipulative, but she had to agree. “I have no intention of throwing my life away.”
“Remember, no matter what you’ve seen, you do not know these humans. You can’t predict how they’ll react to you or anything else.”
Predict, no, but she could imagine and dream. She wondered if Vandra ever wandered off by herself. From the vigilance of her guards, Lilani thought not, and that seemed a shame in one way and a relief in others. If they did meet alone, Lilani was certain Vandra would want to talk rather than fight.
Probably.
“Go, Faelyn,” Lilani said. “Mother will send the Guard, and I’ll be waiting.” After a final nod, he departed. The thought of her mother’s guards didn’t bring Lilani any particular comfort. They’d collect the information she had then take over. She wouldn’t be ordered back home, but she would be politely encouraged until she wanted to scream, and she’d end up obeying just to stop all the suggestions. If she didn’t, her mother would come collect her, and the ordering would begin in earnest.
But Lilani had more to worry about than what her mother might say. She followed the humans to their camp and climbed high in a tree to watch them. Moving slowly, her magic tight around her, she tried to get close enough to hear. All seelie children learned some of the human language, enough to recognize it and run. She’d made further studies, learning from those who’d actually spoken the human language of Citran at one time. She knew enough to converse on a variety of topics.
But only if she had to.
Probably.
* * *
After they made camp, Vandra hesitated before opening the lead box. The metal’s mere presence was enough to turn her stomach, but she would push through in the name of alchemy. She donned her gloves again, hoping they would help. She bit back her disgust as she turned the piece of metal over in her hands, suppressing the urge to throw it away.
Fieta grimaced at it from where she and Pietyr cooked dinner, but she didn’t say anything. After the yelling and then the crying, they’d tried to be cheerful but had finally lapsed into silence. Everyone was polite, but Vandra sensed fragility between them. She didn’t know how to fix it, but she couldn’t wait for it to pass.
Vandra opened her pack and pulled out her metal shears. She set the metal between them and squeezed hard, teeth gritted. The metal was thin; she should have been able to dent it, but nothing happened. She set the shears on the ground and brought her hand down hard on the grips for extra force. The metal piece shot away with a loud ping that echoed through the trees. Vandra blinked, trying to stop her ears from ringing. Shockwaves traveled up and down her arms, and the shears fell over, the tips blunted.
Pietyr jumped to his feet. “What in the name of the gods was that?”
Vandra shook her head. “It’s tough.”
Pietyr swore and walked a tight circle as if he had too much energy. And he was the calm one. If he was upset, Fieta should have been shouting and grousing and all but rolling on the ground, but she only frowned in concern.
Vandra crawled into the brush and found the metal piece unmarred, resting tranquilly against a clump of grass and gently pulsing with malevolence. She wanted to try to score it with acid, but if it resisted a strong hit, it might resist the acid, too.
Or it might fly around the forest and kill them all, or anything else in the entire realm of possibility. No, the place for experiments on the unknown was a laboratory. With a sigh, Vandra put the metal away. Pietyr had gone back to cooking and grumbling. Fieta still stared with that slightly constipated look. Vandra wanted to yell at them to be normal, but of course, such behavior from her wouldn’t be normal either.
“I want to check the next pylon,” Vandra said. “If we hurry, we should be able to get a look at it and then get home only a little after we’re expected.”
The twins nodded and said nothing.
Vandra fidgeted, unable to stand so much silence. Strange. She usually loved it. “Ariadne would tell us to check, even though she also wants us to hurry. It won’t do any good to walk all the way back to Parbeh then have her send us out again.”
Another nod.
“So…we’ll do that. Maybe whoever tampered with this pylon started here and is moving their way inland, just…replacing pylons as they go.” Vandra scuffed at the dirt. “Who knows how many pylons they’d have to take down to open a large breach? Single creatures are clearly able to come through now, at least for a little while.”
Fieta snorted. “By single creatures, do you mean the hideous monster with the face in its mouth?”
“You saw that, too?” Vandra said. “I wondered if my eyes were playing tricks!”
“Oh no,” Pietyr said. “Face-mouth was real.”
Vandra grinned, relieved, though she couldn’t explain why; maybe because they were talking at last, even though it was about something ludicrous and repulsive. She burst out laughing, a reaction caused by mental and emotional exhaustion and a depletion of adrenaline.
It felt so good that she didn’t care.
The twins joined in, laughing like fools until they were wiping tears from their eyes. When silence descended again, it felt nice, comfortable, and they smiled as they ate, brought together by thoughts of a nauseating creature from the tattered lands.
Vandra supposed that was irony.
“Are you sure this weird metal is connected to the pylon going out?” Pietyr asked. “It’s not just something from the tattered lands that appeared out there.”
Vandra had to shrug. “I won’t know until I can do more tests, but bits of metal don’t appear from the air.”
Fieta frowned as she chewed. “Could something have thrown it out of the tattered lands?”
“It was partly buried,” Vandra said. “If it was thrown, it would have been on the surface. Besides, could something like that creature even throw an object?”
“Face-mouth does whatever it wants,” Pietyr said.
Vandra snorted a laugh. “It didn’t have hands. At least, I don’t think it did.” She tried to remember, but the memory caused too many shivers.
“If it does have hands, the gods only know where it keeps them.” Fieta seemed about to take another bite, then frowned and set her bowl on the ground.
Since the piece of metal was outside the tattered lands, someone from this side of the border had to have buried it. Unless another creature had broken out just to bury a bit of metal. She shook her head. The tattered lands corrupted the outsides of creatures as well as the insides. Even a corrupted human wouldn’t have the wherewithal to break the pylons, disguise them, then bury the evidence.
But how had someone from this side of the border gotten metal that felt as tainted as the tattered lands? Vandra sighed loudly and set her own bowl down.
Pietyr gave her a sympathetic look. “You hate not knowing.”
“I love working on a complex problem, but there’s too much at stake here.”
“We’ll check on this pylon tomorrow before we go to the next,” Fieta said. “Maybe spending a night away from that metal will have it back to normal.”
Unless the field was full of such metal, but Vandra didn’t say that. It was a nice hope. Completely impractical, but nice. She also didn’t mention that if this one hunk of metal was enough to destroy a pylon, they shouldn’t be carrying it around with them, although it seemed part of a larger piece. Maybe it had been broken off during…
What? And what could break something so strong that it dented her shears?
“Pietyr, can you hang this from a nearby tree?” Vandra said
, tipping the lead box into a sack. “I don’t want to sleep next to it.”
“Good idea.” He cinched the bag with rope. “I like the number of faces I have.”
Fieta laughed and chucked a stick at him as he walked into the dark. “Another face might be an improvement on the original!”
“Ha ha,” he called back. “We look almost exactly the same, dummy.”
She snorted. “Van, are you sure we should be taking that metal anywhere with a lot of people and syndrium?”
“I don’t see another choice.” The university would want to study it, even if they never found out what it might have done to the pylon. And if Fieta was right, and the pylon was fine tomorrow, they’d never have to know. There’d be no need to tell this story, just the need to make sure it never happened again.
* * *
Lilani sat in a tree and listened to the humans’ plans. They were going to seek out the next closest pylon. That lightened her heart. But they didn’t say they were coming back to this campsite afterward to have another conversation so she could listen. If there was a road close to the next pylon, they’d probably take that home. Then Lilani’s mother would have to send a seelie expedition to the next pylon, and that group might be drawn into a confrontation, especially if their shrouds failed.
So, in order to prevent a catastrophe, she had to follow these humans. She didn’t think Faelyn would appreciate her logic, but he wasn’t there.
Lilani laid her head along the branch. She smiled when the humans laughed. Even in the midst of a crisis, these three seemed vibrant, animated. She wanted to sit with them, share their fire, and ask questions. They were so much better than books, realer than any tale.
She knew the stories about the hurt that humans could do; she’d heard them often enough. But every human from every story was long dead. Humanity was ever changing, even over the course of one human lifetime.
Lilani couldn’t help but feel as if she was changing, too. Maybe humans were what her people needed to keep them from becoming living statues like the elders. Humans would give the seelie much to think about, and animated human lives might spark something in the seelie, a new need to learn, to explore. Children might be born who would know humans over the course of their whole lives, meeting generation after generation. Lilani imagined humans inheriting seelie mentors who would guide them and keep them from the mistakes of their forbears. She pictured the delight on seelie faces from seeing human children scampering in their midst. It would provide them an excuse to exercise their famous patience.
Faelyn would have sneered at every one of those thoughts. She almost sneered at herself. She could hear him calling her naïve, asking when she’d gotten so twee and jolly, and sarcastically offering to tie her hair up in ribbons so she could caper properly.
She rolled her eyes both at the imaginary retorts and her own need to romanticize the humans in order to justify what she was about to do. She would keep her promise to Faelyn tonight. But if the Guard didn’t arrive by the time the humans left, she’d follow them. Faelyn and her mother would just have to understand.
Chapter Seven
They woke early the next morning, and Vandra couldn’t shake the feeling of unseen eyes staring at her. After taking the box containing the tattered metal down from where Pietyr had secured it, Vandra dropped it into a second bag, then wrapped that up in a third, but the feeling didn’t fade. Maybe there weren’t enough bags in all the world to cover it.
Or maybe the feeling stemmed from something else. As the twins packed, Vandra watched the forest, the image of the seelie female large in her mind. Purple eyes and blue hair wouldn’t have made sense on a human, but on that delicate face with its high cheekbones and pointed ears, the color worked. At the time, Vandra hadn’t paid attention to the seelie’s clothing, but as usual, her unconscious mind had captured the image and replayed it for her, showing the seelie in a green wrap top and tight, doeskin trousers. The sleeves on her shirt had scalloped edges that fluttered in the breeze with her hair. Every inch of her seemed soft to the touch.
Last night, Vandra dreamed that she and the seelie woman had shared a cup of hot chocolate under an ocean of starlight. Few women could drive Vandra to whimsy, and it’d been a long time since she’d dreamed about anyone. Her past three lovers had been just like the rest of her life: practical. She was always too preoccupied to pursue objects of fantasy.
And now? Vandra shook her head. She already had one quest. She couldn’t go roaming the woods looking for romance.
The packing done, the three of them set out again. Vandra couldn’t look for the seelie now, but maybe the opportunity would arise someday. The seelie had to know something about the pylons. Ariadne would eventually contact them, and Vandra could make certain she was part of that mission. She’d already met a seelie, after all. Sort of. And Ariadne would owe her a favor. Maybe there was a way to let the seelie know she’d be back.
“We should leave a message,” she said, staring at the trees from the road.
“For your imaginary woman?” Fieta asked. “That doesn’t sound insane at all.”
Vandra gave her a dark look. “You grew up with the same stories as me. You know seelie can vanish.”
Pietyr shook his head. “If it was a seelie, why save you then disappear?”
“A fleeting moment of kindness?” Vandra recalled the look of wonder on the seelie’s face, wonder directed at her, as if they were equally fascinating. Heat rushed to Vandra’s cheeks, and she breathed deep, trying to slow her heart before the twins noticed her embarrassment.
Pietyr crossed his arms. “I guess you could call out and hope she hears you.”
Vandra tried to imagine what would happen, but there were too many variables. “Maybe she’ll answer.”
“Or attack us,” Fieta muttered.
Vandra walked toward the trees. “It’s worth a try.” She cleared her throat and tried to think of what to say, what would move her if their positions were reversed. “Hello?” she called.
When only the wind sighing through the branches answered, she was almost relieved. She might have jumped out of her skin otherwise. She had no idea what to say to a woman who could knock her senseless.
But now she was just talking to trees. “Ah well,” she said softly. “Might as well fully commit.” She cleared her throat and called, “Is anyone there?”
The twins had gone quiet, flanking her. They had their hands on their weapons but didn’t draw them. Vandra hoped that if the seelie was watching, she wasn’t put off by the show of wariness.
“My name is Vandra Singh,” she said, feeling foolish introducing herself to a forest. “I’m an alchemist from Parbeh. These are my siblings, Fieta and Pietyr. We’ve come to check on the pylon. It seems it has…died.”
She couldn’t help another blush, her embarrassment growing. And now she was talking to trees about a dead lump of stone. Special, magical stone, but still. “We’re trying to fix it. Please, if you know anything, have seen anything, will you tell us?”
No one answered. Vandra didn’t want to go on yelling at nothing. And it was possible there were other humans hiding nearby, listening. The brigands from the day before had vanished, but they might be close. She couldn’t go shouting all her plans to the world.
“Well, that’s that.” With a strange mix of disappointment and relief, Vandra started toward the pylon they’d visited the day before, anxious to see if a night without the cursed metal had brought it back to life. Best to put the seelie out of her thoughts. She had enough to worry about.
As soon as they reached the pylon, and she felt no hum, Vandra knew nothing had changed. She took a few readings to confirm and found only lifeless rock. If the metal in her pack had done something to the pylon, it appeared to be permanent.
“On to the next,” she said, taking comfort in properly repacking. With a great deal of effort, she avoided looking at the mist, though she caught Fieta and Pietyr staring at it. She could go her entire life without seein
g it again, but they had to follow the border to the next pylon.
And looking at it was inevitable. Vandra sneaked glances from time to time. As they traveled farther from the dead pylon, the wall of shifting gray shrank farther into the distance but still seemed closer than she remembered. No sound came from within, not even the hum of insects. Nothing moved within the roiling mass, and Vandra tore her eyes from it. She smiled when the next pylon reared into view. Taking out her syndrium detector, she picked up the pace, grinning when the needle swung in the pylon’s direction.
She opened her mouth to tell the twins, but the needle slowly swiveled. Vandra stumbled to a halt, despair rising. Was the pylon dying before her eyes?
“What is it, Van?” Fieta asked, looking over her shoulder.
Vandra frowned as the needle pointed at her briefly before swinging toward the pylon again. “What?”
“The tattered lands?” Pietyr asked.
Vandra shook her head. “I need to get a better reading.” She took off her pack and put it to the side. The needle stayed fixed on her, ignoring the pack.
Not on her. Behind her. She turned, and as she thought, the needle pointed to the pylon, then swiveled to pick up something back the way they’d come. It couldn’t be the other pylon. She’d taken a reading an hour ago, and it had given her nothing. Plus, it was too far away.
“Are we moving, fighting, or what?” Fieta asked.
Vandra didn’t answer, glaring at the detector. No one was standing nearby with a load of syndrium. The land was so barren, she could see the pylon in the distance and the forest beyond that. No one stood in between.
The forest. She’d detected syndrium inside. Then the seelie female had saved her, so the seelie had no doubt been watching the entire time Vandra had been in the forest.
Then she’d felt someone watching her that morning.
Vandra raised a hand, pretending to cough. “The seelie are following us.”
The Tattered Lands Page 8