Exsanguinated

by D. K. Holmberg

  Sam abandoned the attempt at the augmentation and decided to vault herself onto one of the rooftops nearby. Doing that didn’t require an augmentation, and she had enough strength in her to launch herself onto the roof, kicking up with the staff so that she could swing herself into a position where she could observe the street below.

  Given that it was still daylight, movement like this was almost guaranteed to draw attention. Sam hated that she might, but she didn’t have much choice.

  When she landed on the roof, she pulled her canal staff up and rested it on her knees. She looked around, surveying the street below. There was no movement.

  That wasn’t entirely true. There was something, but it was what she would have expected. There was the activity of people who belonged here, that of merchants and a few highborns. There were even a few lowborns. Though they were better dressed than most, Sam could still tell. The clothes couldn’t disguise the way they carried themselves. Lowborns know their own kind.

  Maybe Bastan had a point about her clothing. It announced where she came from in a way she didn’t necessarily want.

  Thinking of Bastan sent a surge of irritation through her, but also determination. She would find him. She would help him.

  Once again, she had a sense of movement behind her.

  Sam shifted, glancing over her shoulder, and was almost too late.

  Two men approached.

  Both carried canal staffs.

  Sam vaulted into the air, pushing off with her staff, and attempted to reach for an augmentation.

  It didn’t come. She was just too tired.

  She spun her staff, bringing it around, trying to fight, but she wasn’t fast enough.

  One of the staffs caught her on the leg, sweeping her feet out from under her.

  Sam rolled, bringing her staff around, and was rewarded with a gentle thunk as her staff connected with one of the men on his leg. It wasn’t as solid a blow as she preferred, but it was enough to elicit a soft cry of pain. Even without augmentations, Sam was able to generate enough strength to cause injury.

  “Get back,” she said, swinging the staff around.

  “I think that you are mistaken in our intentions,” one of the Kavers said.

  She realized too late that he was behind her.

  He swung his staff around and connected, catching her on the back of the head.

  Sam fell forward, losing the grip on her canal staff, and her vision went black.

  14

  Bound

  Pain throbbed in Sam’s head. It had been a while since she had been beaten quite like that. Long enough that she had almost forgotten how much it hurt. She tried to blink open her eyes, but they were sticky, either gummed closed or coated in blood. When she attempted to move her arms, she couldn’t.

  They were tied over her head, and she was bound, trapped and unable to move.

  Over her head?

  The thought jerked her awake more than anything else did. Her heart hammered in her chest. The same thing had been done to other Kavers.

  Were they going to bleed her out the same way they had the other Kavers? Was this what Helen wanted them for?

  She managed to pry her eyes open and looked around. She was in a small, sparsely appointed room. She was indeed suspended from the ceiling, her arms spread wide, like Camellia’s, her legs not able to reach the ground. She kicked, but to no avail.

  She was trapped.

  Her heart hammered again.

  Had they already cut into her arms to bleed her out?

  If they had, she might already be dead. No one knew that she was here. No one knew that she had come to this section. No one would know what happened to her.

  She’d made a mistake moving through the city so openly and freely. After the attack, she had thought herself essentially safe, and no longer worried about hiding her presence, or hiding the fact that she was a Kaver, but she should have known better. She should have known that with Helen and the others roaming the city she wasn’t safe. She should have known that there would be no safety until Helen was stopped.

  “Help!”

  Even as she screamed, it sounded weak in her ears. She tried to yell louder and to put more force into her words, but there was none.

  She looked up at her arms, fearing that she would see blood dripping down her skin and that she was dying, but all she saw were her arms spread, suspended above her head.

  Not bleeding out, not yet.

  She tried to kick again, thinking that if she could flip her legs up, she might be able to hook her legs somehow and release her hands.

  That didn’t work.

  Could she pull on an augmentation?

  When she had tried up on the rooftop, she had been unable, failing because of fatigue and everything she had been through. Considering that, it was likely to be more of the same, but she had to try. If she didn’t, Alec would never know what happened to her.

  Sam focused.

  She thought of what she wanted: strength, skin that would resist injury, and speed so that she could escape.

  Her head throbbing made it difficult for her to focus on those augmentations. Even as she tried, she knew she would not succeed. She had no more strength or ability to focus, not anymore.

  Kyza. She hated that she was trapped.

  She hated that she would die like this.

  The door opened, and someone entered.

  Sam was facing the door and expected to see Helen.

  “Lyasanna?”

  The princess approached, a slight grin parting her mouth. “I told you that you would not be able to hold me.”

  “How did you get out?”

  “There is much you and your Scribe have failed to understand about your abilities, but there is much more you have failed to understand about others who live in the city.”

  Sam frowned. “Where is Bastan?”

  “You demand to know where your friend is as you hang here like this? I don’t think you’re in any position to be demanding anything, Samara.”

  “I will get out, and I will—”

  Lyasanna darted forward, and faster than Sam could react, she slashed at one of Sam’s wrists.

  The pain was unbearable.

  It burned through her. Warmth ran down her arm, and a trickle of blood that dripped from her wrist landed in a bucket below.

  Lyasanna darted back, holding a bloody knife.

  “What is it that you will do? I think you will provide the answer to many of our problems.”

  “How?” Sam could already feel her strength training from her. There was no way she would be able to place an augmentation, not now, and not as the last of her strength was fading.

  “One common misconception is that Kavers are needed for augmentations.” Lyasanna leaned close, and she grinned. “When it’s truly all about the Scribe. The Kaver’s blood adds strength to the Scribe, but the Kavers themselves aren’t necessary, not for what must happen.”

  “Why are you doing this? Why are you attacking others like this?”

  “It’s time for a reckoning. We were thrown out, but now, we will return and be more powerful than ever before.”

  “Thrown out?” Sam wasn’t sure whether it was her weakened state that made it difficult for her to understand or whether it was something that Lyasanna was saying that made her struggle to comprehend. “What do you mean you were thrown out? The palace?” That had only just happened, so that couldn’t be the reason Lyasanna and Helen attacked this way.

  “It’s the secret the Anders have long hidden.” Lyasanna came close again, and Sam was afraid that she was going to slice her other wrist with the knife and drain her more rapidly, but she didn’t. “I didn’t want Elaine to know. I was afraid she would reveal this secret.”

  “What secret?”

  “It’s the secret only the Scribe Council has known. The Scribes were sent away. Exiled. The Anders were merely their defense, the Kavers who protected them. But the Scribes have always ruled in the city.”
/>
  “Exiled from where?” Sam asked. Even if she were to die, she needed to know. She needed the answer.

  “Exiled from our homeland.”

  She darted forward and slashed the sharp blade through Sam’s other wrist, and hot agony burned once again.

  “And now, we will return. With Kaver blood, we will be able to overpower everything they have done to prevent our return.”

  Sam licked her lips. Even her tongue was weak. Her mouth didn’t seem to want to move the way it should, and there was a strange lightheadedness that worked through her, almost as if she were swimming.

  “You could have had peace with the Thelns,” Sam said. “Marin told me it was within your reach. You could have returned.”

  “We could have returned and been subjugated,” Lyasanna said. “The conditions of the return were such that we would never hold the position of strength we deserve. And now? Now with Helen’s help, we have gained enough knowledge and insight that we will be able to overpower anything they can think of to prevent our return.”

  Sam tried lifting her head, but it was too heavy.

  “You should be thankful. You will be a part of it. Integral, even. Your blood will help us defeat your precious Trayson.”

  “He should have been your precious Trayson.”

  The princess chuckled. “He was never precious. He was a means to an end. He was meant to be a bargaining chip, but when that failed…”

  Sam couldn’t move. Lyasanna was a horror. A monster. She had intended to use her child as a bargaining chip? But then had she not, would Sam have known him? Would she have known Bastan? Would she have…

  Her thoughts started to jumble together.

  “You were formidable, Samara. Much more formidable than I think Helen anticipated. Marin did well concealing you from us and training you in her own particular way.”

  “Marin?”

  “Unfortunately, even Marin won’t be able to help you now.”

  Sam tried moving, but her arms were too heavy. Her legs were too heavy. Her head was too heavy to even lift.

  Was Lyasanna still speaking?

  She didn’t hear her.

  All she heard was a steady sort of swishing, a heaviness in her head that thudded within her.

  Her mind went blank.

  The only thought she had was that she was dying, and with it came a certain sense of disappointment. She would die, and she wouldn’t know anything more about what happened to Tray. She wouldn’t know anything more about what Helen planned for the city.

  And she wouldn’t know any more time with Alec.

  “Alec…”

  “Shush, Samara.”

  Was that Lyasanna?

  She thought she was being moved, but she couldn’t tell. If she was, were they bringing her down because she was already gone? But if she was gone, why would her mind still be running like this?

  Maybe it wasn’t.

  Maybe this was the After, and perhaps she was with Kyza, though she doubted she deserved that blessing. With everything she had done during her life, could she really be granted a blessing to spend eternity with Kyza?

  She tried to open her eyes, but they didn’t open for her. Once again, all sensation began to fade around her. There was blackness, and then there was nothing.

  15

  Understanding the Book

  Alec stared at the pages of the Book of Maladies. There was some way to activate the writing, there had to be. Otherwise the Book was useless. Yet without understanding the symbol and the intent behind it, there was no way for him to know the purpose behind the Book.

  His father flipped through the pages in one of the smaller books of symbols, trying to come up with an answer. He had the page on which he’d copied the symbols from the wall of the palace prison in front of him, and every so often, he would glance up, a crease wrinkling his brow as he studied it.

  “None of this will make sense without some way of interpreting it,” Alec said.

  “I still believe it’s all about the pattern, and not the actual translation,” his father said. “I think if we can discover the meaning to the pattern, we might be able to get a sense of what Helen intended, if nothing else.”

  “Even if we figure out what she learned from the books, we don’t know how she was able to do it. She shouldn’t have been able to place these patterns from a distance.”

  His father frowned and set his hands on the table and finally looked up. “From a distance.” He breathed out in a heavy sigh. “You’re right. How is it she would be able to place them from a distance?”

  “That’s what I’m saying. It doesn’t make sense. That’s not how augmentations work.”

  “What if it wasn’t from a distance?”

  “What do you mean?”

  His father glanced from the book to the page and then up to Alec. “What if it wasn’t from a distance? What if the symbols are on the wall, but the other side of the wall. Could they have somehow pressed them through the wall?”

  Alec’s breath caught. He hadn’t considered that possibility, though now that his father said it, there was a certain sort of sense to it. It was possible that the markings could have been made on the other side of the wall, but if that were the case, it meant someone had access to the palace—at least to the part of the palace where they were confining the princess.

  “I need to go and see what I can come up with.”

  “You go. I’m going to keep looking at this, and I will see if there’s anything here I can discover.”

  Alec glanced at the Book. There was a part of him that thought he should take it with him, but doing so wouldn’t be of any help. He had no intention of attempting to use it, and worse, he had no way of understanding what was written within it. Until they figured out the key to the symbols, they might not be able to determine what each page in the Book referred to. It might be that there was no way for them to understand without having someone from the Theln lands who could explain it to them.

  He made his way out of the apothecary and hurried toward the palace. When he reached the university section, he glanced over, thinking about stopping in, but decided against it. Doing that would only delay him, and right now, he wanted to uncover whatever he could to see whether Lyasanna had some way of actually escaping the prison. She shouldn’t be able to, but then, she knew the palace much better than he or anyone else in it.

  Alec hurried across the bridge and was quickly waved through. He hadn’t expected to be stopped, but even as he went across, he glanced back to see if he recognized either of the guards but didn’t. Were they Bastan’s men? He had managed to secure much of the city himself, which both impressed and troubled Alec. The fact that Bastan had so much control was surprising, as was the fact that he was able to use it so effectively.

  He reached the palace and raced toward the back. Once there, he nodded to the guards, and they waved him through. Had he been here enough that they recognized him?

  Once inside, Alec stopped.

  The cell was empty.

  Lyasanna was gone.

  “Kyza!”

  Alec never swore, but this seemed to be a time for it if any was.

  How had Lyasanna managed to escape?

  Alec yanked the door open and yelled to the guards. “The prisoner escaped. Send word to Marin.”

  One of the guards looked inside, and his eyes widened before he hurried off, disappearing down the hallway and into the palace. The other followed Alec back into the row of cells.

  Alec pulled on the door to the cell and found that it was unlocked.

  He turned his attention to the wall. Marin had masons building another wall, creating a barricade that would prevent Lyasanna from escaping, but obviously that hadn’t been as effective as it needed to be. Somehow, Helen had managed to gain access and had broken her out.

  He still didn’t know why. There was a benefit to having one of the Anders, but it had to be more than that. How was Lyasanna important to what Helen planned? She was a Scr
ibe, but Helen had other Scribes.

  There were so many questions. And now they wouldn’t have answers.

  “What happened?”

  Alec spun. Marin stood behind him. She carried her canal staff as she strode forward, an augmentation obviously in place with the fluid way that she moved.

  “She’s gone.”

  “I can see she’s gone. How?”

  Alec shook his head. “My father and I were wondering if maybe there was another way she could have been placing augmentations on the wall. Is there space behind this?”

  Marin studied the cell before turning to the wall, not stepping over the new wall they were building. “There shouldn’t be anything behind that wall.”

  “We need to excavate it to find out.”

  Marin went to one of the guards and whispered something to him. He raced off.

  “What did you say to him?”

  “I want to summon an excavator.”

  She guided Alec through the cells and into the room that had been formed by the new wall. There wasn’t any sign of where Lyasanna could have gone here either. She had simply vanished.

  “I presume she didn’t go out through the main part of the palace?”

  “If she had, I would’ve heard,” Marin said. “I should have kept closer tabs on her. Or maybe I should have moved her, but Sam was confident that we would be able to hold her here.”

  “She didn’t want to hold her. She wanted to draw out Helen.”

  Marin tapped her staff on the ground, the sound ringing out. Her fingers wrapped around the wood, squeezing much harder than necessary. “We wanted that. It was something we discussed and decided on. In that, Sam was right. To find Helen, we had to draw her out.”

  Alec traced his hand over the symbols that were on the wall. There were more now than there had been before. Each of them was thick, and he had seen some of them in the books that they had taken from Helen’s home, but he didn’t know what they did other than create some way of getting in.

  “You think they weakened the wall in some way?”