by CS Hale
“What is it?” I asked.
Valemar blinked and his hand cupped my face. The corners of his mouth turned up briefly before they fell again. “You’ve got me to wondering about the succession.”
“Do you have any moon children?” I asked. Valemar shook his head. “I’m sorry.”
“So even if it weren’t you … our incompatibility … I …” He stopped. Valemar picked up and kissed my hand. “That’s why I wanted you. Her. Create new life.” He smiled “I’d hoped the Moon Princess would give me children. That this curse hanging over my family would finally be lifted. Orbach Carbrev had three sons and a daughter.”
“Yareena,” I said.
“You’ve been studying my family tree.”
“It’s come up.”
“So you know that Dönal only had Ӧtten and Lareen —”
“Who married Adzil.”
“And Ӧtten only had Caparen, and Caparen only had Enartin, my father, and my father only had me.”
“One hundred … one hundred fifty years of loneliness,” I said.
Valemar sighed. “I think that’s why my father gave the land to the Cordair despite what he says in the treatise. He feared our line dying out and what the Cordair would do then.”
“Surely one of your grandfathers had a plan. What about Toren’s children?”
Valemar frowned. “An heir would probably need to come from there. I doubt the Alfari would accept a R’Keshan king.”
I opened my arms and drew Valemar to me. “I’m sorry I brought it up.”
Valemar stroked my face. “Why do you look so sad Astrid? It’s not your fault.”
“No,” I said. “It’s not.”
But I could only think of one way to fix the problem, and it was all tied up with the rest.
I VISITED THE Cair and offered blood with my prayers. Before Crenfor, I’d found the idea somewhat abhorrent. But now I understood. Words were easy: things tossed out. A hope. A wish. A prayer. All fleeting moments. But allowing yourself to be cut took courage. Giving away part of yourself made it more meaningful. Blood spilled made something more valuable.
Just like the marriage mark on my finger. A ring was easily slipped off. Part of the reason some cultures tattooed theirs on. I’d been told tattooing was painful. But my cut with its butterfly-like scar …
I’d offered myself. Opened up myself. And mingled my blood with my husband’s. Everything marriage was — is — was represented in that scar. No taking it off. It would always be with me. It couldn’t be erased, just like time couldn’t be erased.
Four guards escorted me to the Cair. Four guards escorted me back. I’d feared what people in the Low might think of me, but any haters appeared to have left. The people I encountered wore serious expressions, but I didn’t see suspicion in their eyes or the smoldering resentment I’d feared.
I changed into my practice clothes, had Iree braid my hair, and went to join Valemar for jaldun.
“We may have a lead on where the Hormani are staying,” Valemar told me when I arrived.
My stomach dropped. I went over to the rack to select my blades. “In town or on their own?”
“On their own.”
I nodded and wrapped my hand around a knife. “Astrid.” Valemar laid a hand on my shoulder. “Tell me what you’re going to need to do. We need to prepare you.”
I reluctantly removed my hand from the knife. I was stronger with them in my hands, but I wouldn’t — couldn’t — be carrying them with me when I did this. “I need to get onboard their ship. Hopefully it is a ship. Finding a comm panel could prove difficult.”
Valemar rubbed my shoulders. “And then?”
I sighed. How I’d ever accomplish the next part without being discovered, I didn’t know. “There are a couple of places a comm panel would be. The bridge. The sick bay. And the captain’s quarters.”
“So you’re going to need to move through the ship? It wouldn’t be something just inside a door?”
I looked over my shoulder and smiled at him. “‘Yes’ to your first question and ‘no’ to your second.”
I had expected the impossibility of my task would frightened him, but Valemar just nodded thoughtfully. “Then we should have you practice moving quietly,” he said. As if that were my only problem in the scenario. He patted my shoulders twice then gripped them. “Come. You won’t need your blades. Let’s find you someplace to rehearse.”
Rehearse what? I wondered.
I stared at the shields laid out on the floor. “This isn’t exactly what I meant,” I said to Valemar.
“You said the floor was metal.”
“Of a sort. It has a composite on it that keeps you from slipping.” With my leather soled shoes, the “floor” before me was basically a skating rink.
“Then you’ll be overprepared,” Valemar said practically.
“Ballet dancers at least get rosin,” I muttered.
“What was that?”
I raised my voice. “Graceful dancers on Earth get to put dried tree sap on the bottom of their shoes so they don’t slip when they’re on stage.”
“You’re not going to be dancing,” Valemar said.
“No, I’m going to be doing the splits,” I said under my breath. Handle side down, every shield was a curved tray. Valemar was right about one thing. If I could silently and efficiently traverse a room of these, getting down the hallway of a Hormani ship would be easy. Except for the part of being seen.
I tiptoed out and cautiously put one foot then the other onto a shield. The jaldun practice had helped my center of gravity. My knees bent. The muscles of my core engaged. From the corner of my eye, I saw Valemar lean back against the wall and cross his arms. I reached out a foot for the next shield.
Thunk … thunk, thunk, thunk. A ringing clang filled the room as I swiftly moved one foot then the next, racing to keep my balance as the shields rocked under me. “The floor of the Hormani ship will be stable,” I said. My arms windmilled, and I heard Valemar chuckle.
“Overprepared,” he said.
I carefully turned. “You may not have noticed this about me, but I have been known to trip over my own feet.”
Valemar’s eyebrows rose. “You’re joking.”
“No, I’m not.”
Valemar frowned in concentration. “Must be an Earth or space thing. You’ve been fine here.”
I sighed and turned back around. “When I fall and break my nose, at least you’ve been warned.”
But I didn’t fall. The exercise was much like jumping out of the boat. There were moving parts and my balance to get right. After the first five minutes, I gave up trying to be quiet and just went for being efficient. I didn’t trip. I didn’t fall. And eventually my hammering, elephant-loud feet became just a patter.
Valemar took my arm and pulled me off when my limbs began to shake. He brushed the flyaway ends of my hair from my flushed and sweaty face and kissed me. “See. Nose still intact.” I didn’t have the breath to argue with him.
Niah and Reez were married the morning of the Blood Moon. Valemar and I attended dressed in our full regalia. When the Möd cut Niah’s finger, Valemar’s hand found mine and held it tight. I winced with Niah, remembering the pain, but the joy on her face when Reez joined his hand with hers and they moved forward to offer their mingled blood to Father Sea made my heart swell. I’d been so frightened, so in over my head and just hoping to survive at my own wedding.
I leaned against Valemar and squeezed his hand. Now I would willingly go through it all again. My vows would be real and not just words.
I had been very lucky. Valemar had always respected me. I was sure that was what had made the difference. He could have used me poorly. Married me and then imprisoned me. Kept me as a plaything. Or sent me somewhere to languish in neglect while he claimed the title of Consort to the Moon Princess. I would like to think I would have sensed those intentions. Just like I had known from the moment I saw him that Raislos wanted me dead. But instead, I had a hus
band who loved me. And in return, I would do anything for him.
The wedding feast was a wedding luncheon. In different times, it would have been a wedding dinner with all the guests drifting away to mate. But a cloud of fear hung over Aedenfal. Many of the inhabitants had asked for the draught, wanting their wits about them when darkness fell, just in case the Cordair chose to attack.
Valemar and I ate dinner in our rooms, and I brought my husband to bed as evening fell, before the full flush of moon lust was upon him. The moon came out as he climaxed, leaving him shuddering in my arms but quickly recovering. He kissed me, slipped from bed to dress, and went to join the patrols.
I lay on my back after he’d departed, and a half-forgotten conversation with Amy, my sister-in-law, brushed at the edges of my mind.
My doctor says to cross my ankles, bring my knees to my chest, and try and keep Finn’s seed inside me as long as possible.
Finn and Amy had spent more than a year trying to get pregnant. Even though science could tell a woman when she was ovulating, fertility could still be a problem. Amy had done everything to avoid the hormone injections and mood swings that would follow. And something eventually worked, for the next time I saw them Amy had been expecting Henry.
What the hell. I crossed my ankles, brought my knees to my chest, and tipped my hips. I’d made my own pledge at the wedding. And while Valemar’s dream was impossible and nothing would come of the attempt, I owed it to my husband to at least try.
Seven days after Reez and Niah’s wedding Valemar led me through the dark recesses of Aedenfal’s basement levels, deeper than the karawack nursery, to a locked door that stood at the end of a passageway. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled. Everything about it said, Dungeon. My limbs began to shake as Valemar took out a heavy key and unlocked the door.
“Do not speak to anyone of what you see down here,” he said to me.
I managed an “okay” and followed him past the threshold onto a small landing at the top of a dark, narrow staircase. Valemar locked the door behind us and led the way down. A low-ceilinged passageway extended about forty feet from the last step to another heavy door. A substantial lock sat beneath the handle of this one as well.
But it wasn’t locked. Valemar pushed the door open and stood aside. A large room lay beyond it. Empty wooden cages sat in stacks four-high around most of the room. I walked in, and the hairs on my arms joined those on the back of my neck. A humming noise filled the air, almost like electricity. Two men seated at a table at the far end of the room rose at our entrance. One was a member of the King’s Guard. The other I’d never seen before.
The table before them was piled with tubing and needles. But there was no antiseptic smell of medicine here. My nose caught the crisp smell of leaves and something sweet. An odor that reminded me of animal sweat. Like horses, but not.
Valemar placed a hand on my shoulder. “There are few who know about this place, and the information needs to stay that way. If you can’t —” Valemar’s voice trembled, and he broke off. “If you can’t handle the secret it contains, you will be drugged and sent back to Reina.”
Involuntarily, I took a step back and bumped into him. “You can do this, Astrid. But this secret is worth your life.”
“What is here?” I asked. Medical experiments, my mind screamed. And you’re next!
“The secret that has allowed us to find the Hormani ship.”
“What?” I looked over my shoulder. Pride glowed in Valemar’s eyes.
He took my hand. “Look around. What do you see?”
“Cages,” I said. “Lots of cages. And tables of medical instruments. Chairs. That cushioned bench. Boxes of what smell like leaves. Those two gentlemen.”
“And what do you sense?”
I removed my hand from Valemar’s and locked my fingers together to stop their shaking. I slowly surveyed the room. The humming noise lifted and vibrated along every hair on my arms. I had the sense I was being watched. I had the sense of fear.
“We’re not alone,” I whispered.
“No. We’re not.”
“What’s here?” My eyes darted around the room. Something, no somethings were hiding here. In the corners? The dark recesses were empty. Everywhere I looked was empty. But there was a presence, the humming noise, and a palpable sense of fear in the room.
“Something we’d wondered about for hundreds of years.”
The gentleman who wasn’t with the King’s Guard picked up a pail from underneath the table, set it on top, and took off the lid. It was full of a substance that looked like milk or white paint. He pulled on a pair of heavy leather gloves and walked over to one of the cages. The humming noise increased. The man reached in and a frightened squeak filled the room as straw went flying.
I gave a startled gasp. “There’s something in there!”
The man returned to the table, his hand clamped around nothing but air. The squeaking continued.
“Oh, my God,” I said, and looked around the room. Even before he dipped his free glove into the paint and started to wipe it onto the nothingness in his other hand, I knew that there was some kind of creature there. That none of the hundred or so cages were actually empty. My hands covered my mouth. All the cages contained something that was the best chameleon I’d ever seen.
“We call them heichdar,” Valemar said.
I watched in mingled horror and amazement as a small, furry creature began to appear beneath the paint. Perfect cloaking technology existed but was illegal for use by everyone except the Shororato. This animal had some way of making itself as invisible as the best of their technology. The secret that has allowed us to find the Hormani ship.
“I need to sit down.” I took a seat as far away from the table and the crying animal as I could. “What is he painting on the heichdar?”
“Liquid chalk,” Valemar said. “He needs to be able to see the animal to insert the needle.”
“Needle?” My stomach rolled, and my mouth filled with the sour taste of bile.
“There’s something in their blood that makes them invisible,” Valemar said.
I clenched my jaw and willed my stomach contents to stay put. “So … this King’s Guard …”
“Alill,” Valemar said.
“Is going to have to drink the blood?”
“Directly from the animal.”
Sweat broke out on my forehead and I felt somewhat faint, but I forced myself to watch. Valemar didn’t say it, but I knew where this was going.
The wrangler picked up a tube, a needle already attached to one end, bent the open end over his fingers, and found a vein or artery in the animal’s hind section with practiced ease. Alill took the end of the tube from the wrangler’s fingers and drank when the blood began to flow. He shuddered slightly as he swallowed. Just a few times, and then the wrangler removed the tube and replaced the animal.
Alill took a seat on the cushioned bench and closed his eyes. He slowly breathed in and out but I could hear a rattle to it. The wrangler removed another animal and the process began again.
“It generally takes three animals before the body begins to produce the wax that hides them,” Valemar said.
Alill drank again. His breathing became labored and his body began to shake. “Alill doesn’t have fur. How will he hide his clothing, his hair?” I asked. I sincerely hoped he wouldn’t strip. Even though I wouldn’t be able to see him, I still didn’t want him naked in front of me.
“He drank heavily before he came down. He’ll use the wax in his saliva to comb though his hair. When he’s had enough of the blood, his body should produce enough of the wax to work it into the light fabric of his clothing. His boots he will cover with saliva as well.”
Alill groaned and sat down again on the bench as the second animal was returned and a third brought out. His teeth chattered as he rose and went to stand again at the table. Every swallow became obviously difficult. The wrangler removed the needle. Valemar moved forward and took the tube, held it
between two of his fingers and forced the last of the blood down it and into Alill’s mouth. Valemar held Alill’s chin up as he swallowed one last time, then held Alill’s arm as he sank to the ground shuddering.
And suddenly, pieces of him weren’t visible anymore. Skin first, then parts of his clothing rippled away like a growing puddle. Slowly, Alill’s breathing returned to normal. Shortly after that, patches of his braid began to disappear and, lastly, his shoes. “Did I get all my hair?” he asked.
“Yes, I can’t see any of you,” Valemar said.
The wrangler went to one of the boxes, took off the lid, and placed a handful of leaves in each of the three crates of the heichdar that had been bled. “Let’s get him up,” Valemar said to me.
It was a strange journey. Valemar and I reversed our trip from the dungeon-like room, though he frequently delayed, giving Alill time to move with us. I never saw Alill. I never heard him. All the way up to the courtyard we went.
Conmel, one of the guards who’d been with Heymond when he brought me back from Vanerife, sat on a darana next to a mounting block. Valemar took the animal’s bridle as it began to shuffle its feet nervously.
“Same report from the steppe, Conmel,” Valemar said to him. “Remain vigilant.” Valemar released the darana’s bridle. Conmel gave a nod and turned his mount’s head for the gate. Valemar tucked my hand around his arm, and we strolled inside.
We didn’t speak until we were back in his study. I sank down onto one of the chairs in front of his desk. “You’ve found the Hormani ship,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Using your invisible scouts.”
“Yes.”
I swallowed heavily. “How does it work?” I asked, both curious and wanting to delay where I knew the conversation would go next.
“Through experimentation over the last four years, we’ve found how to harness the heichdar — the ‘forest whispers’ as they were called of old — we’ve found out how to harness their camouflage ability.” Valemar sat next to me. “For thousands of years, people heard whispers in the canopy of the trees. Occasionally, they’d find a dead animal. But a living one was never seen. Then a boy, climbing in the canopy, happened to put his bag on a nest. He brought the creature home. His father contacted a King’s Guard —”