They both froze when they saw me.
“My—Jarldis Sölbói!” Kolorma exclaimed. “I—I’m so glad you received my summons. Let her pass.”
The spear stayed in place a moment longer than necessary, before the guard shifted it back in line with is body. His eyes flicked to stare straight ahead.
Spraki glanced at me and then hurried down the corridor. Kolorma waved me inside the hallway to her apartments. I moved past the guard, irrationally convinced that his spear would strike me down as I passed. He remained motionless.
As soon as the door shut behind me Kolorma grabbed my forearm and all but dragged me down the hallway and through a high door into a grand salon. My eyes flitted about, taking in the décor—typical palace furnishings, all in orange and burnt red tones.
“What are you doing here?” Kolorma hissed.
“Did Spraki tell you about Liut?”
She gave me a quick nod, released my arm, and crossed her own arms over her chest.
“He warned me Reister plans to betray me,” I said.
“And how would Liut know anything about that?”
“I suppose he’s been spying on Reister.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Does it matter? He’s dead. He died minutes after he gave me the warning. Isn’t that proof enough?”
Kolorma sighed. Releasing her arms, she pressed her fingertips to her temples. “Reister, betraying us?”
“It’s really not so hard for me to believe,” I said.
“But Myadar, Reister wants the konunger dead,” she breathed.
“Liten said the same thing. I don’t know what he’s up to, I admit. I don’t care to find out.”
“What are you planning to do?”
I hesitated. If I said I wanted to leave Helésey, abandon the cause, Kolorma would not understand. Liut’s warning, and his death, were not enough to panic her. I had to admit, before my revelation about the baby, it would not have been enough for me, either. But I had been able to take such risks knowing that my child, Bersi, was relatively safe. I could not continue to take these risks and endanger my unborn. Did I trust her with my secret?
I supposed Liten would tell her, even if I did not. Better that she understand my motives.
“I’m with child,” I announced.
Kolorma blinked and her expression slackened. “You can’t be,” she said. Then her eyebrows drew together and she grabbed my hand.
I cocked my head to the side. “I assure you, Kolorma, I very well can be, and in fact, considering my activities of the last three months, it shouldn’t have taken me this long to realize it.”
She dropped my hand and spun away from me, covering her face. “Luka’s chains,” she muttered.
“I have to leave,” I said.
Her body stiffened, and she turned just enough to look at me over her shoulder.
“I have to—to collect my son, and go,” I said, my voice breaking as I thought of Bersi, poor Bersi, who had waited so long for his mother to come for him. I had thought that I owed it to Kolorma to carry out her request—or at least, I had thought I was doing the right thing, trying to bring down the new order. No, I thought with a shake of my head. Neither of those excuses were true. I had let my thirst for vengeance drive me. It had kept me from rescuing my son. First despair, then hatred had prevented me from doing what was truly right. But no more. I would wait no longer.
“Will you help me?” I asked.
Kolorma closed her eyes, and when she opened them again she moved to face me. In the span of a breath, the air in the salon electrified, and Kolorma’s eyes darkened as she stepped closer. I caught my breath in my throat. Every feeling from that strange moment at Liten’s estate when she took me to my bath returned full force. How could I have thought that I imagined it? Her lips parted and she raised her chin slightly, staring down at me with heavy lids.
“I will help you,” she said, her voice shaky with emotion. “On one condition.”
I wanted to protest that I had already tried to meet her condition, that I had done my best and failed, and that I had no more time to try again, but instead I answered, “What is it?”
A breath moved through her body, heavy and strong as a gale. She closed her eyes again and licked her lips before she replied. “Let me come with you.”
It was not what I had expected, and yet some part of me recognized it as the only truth possible. For one fleeting moment a rejection crossed my mind, but it flew out as fast as it came in, for it was not the answer of my heart. I raised my hand to her face. She rocked her head to the side, pressing her cheek into my palm as she closed her eyes. With a sigh she opened them again, and in a heartbeat her arms were around me and my body was pressed to hers, her mouth crushing mine. Her kiss sent a thrill through me.
“Myadar,” she whispered, pulling away no more than a fraction of an inch.
As our foreheads brushed against each other, my mind whirled and my heart raced. Fear warred with desire. I had loved Liut, only to be betrayed. Could I trust her? But my body didn’t care about such questions. She kissed me again and then her mouth was in my neck, her hands on my breasts, and I gasped and let my head roll back, closing my eyes.
I saw Bersi waiting behind my lids. My eyes flew open and I pushed away from her.
Shock and hurt crossed her face, and then her expression went neutral. I could not allow her to misunderstand. I reached for her hands and caught them even as she would have turned away from me. I brought them to my lips, kissing the backs of her fingers.
“Kolorma,” I whispered. “Promise me you’ll come with us when we go.”
I saw her mind clearly. Her brow furrowed with confusion as she teetered between two impulses: to reject me, to deny her feelings, to protect herself from me, and to accept me, to embrace me, to surrender to her hope that I was not trying to trick her.
“Kolorma, I—I have such feelings for you,” I confessed, throwing caution away. “I never thought to have such feelings for a woman, but I do. And I would wrap myself in your arms right now if I could, but Bersi—Bersi has waited so long—”
Her face relaxed. “Of course,” she sighed. She was so beautiful in that moment, the glossy sheen of her auburn hair catching the light, her dark brown eyes soft, her full lips parted. Her hands felt strong and smooth clasped with mine.
“You’ll come with us, then?” I confirmed.
As she smiled, her beauty blossomed until it was almost painful to look at her. I saw such hope, such vulnerability in her expression. “I would have followed you even if you had wanted me to stay away, I think,” she said with a soft laugh. “Myadar, I’ve loved you… almost since the beginning, since the first night we met. Do you remember it?”
“On the steps of the opera house,” I said.
She nodded, and then she kissed me again—tentatively this time. I returned it gently but firmly.
As we parted, a thought hit me. “Leika,” I breathed.
Kolorma’s brows drew together.
“Is that why she wanted me?” I asked.
Coughing out a bitter laugh, Kolorma nodded. “Ever has my sister wished to own everything I ever wanted. Envy is her master.” Her eyes met mine, crinkling at the corners in amusement. “Oh how you must have upset her when you did what you did, Myadar! I was jealous, I admit, but pleased as well.”
I gave her one more kiss then. “No one owns me,” I whispered. “But I give my heart to you, Kolorma, for safe-keeping.” It was a silly thing to say; something out of the romance epics and plays I’d seen in my youth. But it made her smile in that lovely way again, so it was worth it.
“Go find your child,” Kolorma said, and I realized that everything I had once dreamed of, back when I was in love with Liut, was finally going to come true. It was my turn to smile. Kolorma continued, “I will make arrangements. You must meet me in the machine as soon as you have Bersi, and we will flee the city.”
A laugh of joy bubbled up from my hear
t and I gave her hands a squeeze before releasing them.
~~~
Because I had left my things there, I had to return to the machine in order to disguise myself again. I considered presenting myself to Froddis Illugi at the School of the Holy Hand dressed as a jarldis, to demand that my son be released to me, but there was no time for such a detour if Illugi refused, which I felt certain she would.
As I made my way out of the palace I took great care to ensure that no one was following me. Every time since my return to court I had taken such precautions, but tonight of all nights the need to avoid detection weighed on me. Tonight would be the last night that I donned the Raud Gríma costume, the last night that I prowled Helésey’s streets. I could not be captured. Not when the nightmare was going to end at last.
The Undergrunnsby was quiet but something in the air made the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stand up. Rather than running through as I usually did, I crept slowly through the tunnels, following my usual path to the machine. Nothing happened. Nothing had changed. The sewage flowed in the gutters. The messages shouted from the walls: “BALDR LIVES,” “REMEMBER FRIGGA,” and many others, among them multiple downward pointing arrows. Here and there, some I’d never seen before, that made me flush with pleasure: “The LUKAN WILL RISE,” “BEWARE RAUD GRÍMA, USURPERS,” “HAIL RAUD GRÍMA,” “LUKA WILL FREE US,” and simply “RAUD GRÍMA.” I could not be sure that the Lukan messages referred to me, but I suspected they did. The red of my mask, after all, was sacred to Luka, and I believed that the original Raud Gríma, whoever he (or she) was, must have been Luka’s acolyte as well. I wondered if the annals of Helésey’s history recorded the strange change of some courtier’s hair to the color of flame, as mine had done. If I ever wanted to know Raud Gríma’s original identity, I would have to search them for such an observation.
My unease somewhat soothed by the messages I saw, I continued a bit more quickly through the tunnels. I reached the machine without incident and let myself in. Unless someone was in the laboratory, the place was deserted. I had no need to go beyond the door in the high wall to check. My bag lay on the counter where I’d left it. I sorted through everything, laying the few tools I had left on the counter beside the bag, and chose what I would need. Making haste, I pulled off my clothes and dressed myself, for the last time, as Raud Gríma.
Pressing the nub by my eye, I peered into the laboratory. Liten sat on a stool by one of the tables, using an eyedropper to add drips of a brown liquid into a glass of what looked like water. He was alone. I released the nub.
As an afterthought, I put everything back in the bag, even the things I didn’t think I would need. They hardly added any weight, and I could always abandon them later if I decided they hindered me somehow. With a glance at the screens, which showed the usual uncanny views of hallways and rooms inside the palace, I left the machine behind. My new task outweighed all the rest, and I felt a mixture of gleeful anticipation and twisting fear that I would fail. I could not fail. This would be the last, and I must succeed, for it meant the fruition of all my hopes: Bersi in my arms again, safe from all those grasping Heléseyans who would try to mold him into one of them; Kolorma at my side, at last a partner who truly loved me; and the city behind me, nothing but a horrid memory.
By the time I surfaced onto the Avenue of Wheat, my clock-pendant read eleven. I kept to the darkest shadows as I made my way to the avenue’s junction with Sunburst Street. All of the buildings down Sunburst Street had carved, stylized hemispherical suns with lines radiating out from them like rays in the archways over doors and windows, made visible in the half-light of streetlamps. When I came to the Boulevard of the Inns I turned right, nerves jangling. If anyone was going to be out and about at this time of night it would be here. I had heard talk among courtiers in the last few days concerning the upcoming Tyrablót, and the influx of visitors to the metropolis. Sure enough, I spotted people and robots moving to and from shining automobiles in the neon glow of the inns’ signs up ahead.
With a sigh I abandoned the direct route and doubled back, cutting through alleys and delivery lanes to avoid the Boulevard of Inns. Finally I reached Sacred Comfrey Street, having taken maybe twenty minutes longer due to the detour. It couldn’t be helped. As impatient as I was to be done with it, caution was necessary to my venture, and I was under no strict deadline like the night I first stole a convoy truck. No one expected me anywhere, except Kolorma at the machine, and we had set no fixed time for our meeting.
As I crossed the distance between the beginning of Sacred Comfrey Street and the wall of the School of the Holy Hand my heart began to thud against my ribs in excitement. Bersi. Bersi, at last. I approached the wall, unslung the bag from my shoulder, and produced a grappling hook and rope from its limited contents. Swinging the hook reminded me of three years spent breeding cattle in Söllund; the undertaking had ended with a loss in profits for our estate, but I had learned rope-work and for that I was grateful now. Throwing a loop around the horns of a bullock was different from flinging a grappling hook to lash it around the branches of a linden tree that overhung the wall, but I found that translating the gesture was not so difficult as learning something new.
The grappling hook struck the wall and fell down to the ground the first two times I attempted to hurl it. The third time, it flew up past the branch, dropped over the other side, swung once around, and caught. Hoisting myself using the rope, I climbed the wall. As I came to the summit, I stopped, crouching, and took in the layout on the other side. A simple stone courtyard with statues of Tyr in four different poses in each of its corners. No guards; but why would there be guards? This place housed children, and not those of the most fashionable court families, from what I had gleaned over the last few weeks. Reister had chosen Illugi because she had no qualms taking a child from a protesting mother, not for her school’s unparalleled reputation.
I had to stand to reach the hook and unwind it. I put it back in the bag, stooped, and dropped down into the courtyard. Striding up to the door that led from the courtyard to the school itself, I had a moment of regret for not saving any of the acid paste for this door’s lock. No matter. If I had any intention of maintaining my masquerade and remaining in the city after tonight, subtlety would be my choice, but since I would be leaving as soon as I returned with Bersi to meet Kolorma, why bother?
With a grunt of effort, I kicked the wooden door with all of my strength. It buckled, splintering around the lock. I hit it with my shoulder next, using all of my weight against it. It bent inwards, more shards and splinters popping out along the grain of the wood. Another kick, and the door broke free of the lock and slammed against the inside wall.
As I entered the small room beyond, already I could hear movement past the next door. It was just as well. I would not find Bersi quickly if I had to search all the rooms myself, even with my mask’s special ability. Pulling the gun from the holster under my arm, I crept beside the interior door, my back to the wall. As soon as someone opened the door and came through, my free hand whipped out and yanked the person by the collar towards me. Surprised and unbalanced, they teetered and rolled an ankle, crying out. I locked my free arm around the person’s neck.
It was a man wearing a nightshirt and housecoat over it; probably one of the ones who’d come to our apartments months ago and taken Bersi from me. I could not see his face to make sure. It was just as well. I didn’t intend to actually shoot anyone if I could avoid it, but if I saw the face of one of those men, I might change my mind.
He started to struggle. Pressing the end of the gun to the skin behind his ear made him slacken in my grip. As he raised his hands to show his surrender, I moved us away from the doorway, facing it.
Another man in a dressing gown burst through. I didn’t recognize him. He stumbled to a halt when he saw me holding his colleague. Behind him, yet another man arrived, and the second man held up a hand to stop the third. I gazed at the third man, rage beginning to bubble within me. Him, I
recognized. I remembered his foul hands clutching me when I would have gone to my son. I remembered Bersi screaming for me as this man held me away from him.
“Bersimund Sölbói,” I hissed into my hostage’s ear, keeping my voice as deep as I could manage.
“Wh—who?” the man I held stammered.
I gave him a little shake. “Bersimund Sölbói. He’s five.”
“He’s—he’s not here,” the man answered.
I tightened my arm and pressed the gun into the soft flesh behind his ear. “Give me Bersimund and I may let you live. Refuse me and you will surely die.”
The man’s body began to tremble. I could not see his face, but I could hear the smacking sound of lips as he opened and closed his mouth like a choking fish.
“Bersimund Sölbói!” I shouted, jerking the man. “Bring him to me!”
The man moaned and the other two shifted their feet. “We haven’t got him to bring,” one said plaintively.
“Take me to Froddis Illugi,” I demanded, beginning to feel shaky myself. If it was true, and they didn’t have my son—where was he? I would see them dead if they would not tell me.
The two men turned and led the way immediately, which made my heart tighten. Their cooperation in this was not a good sign. Either they had some sort of trap they were leading me into, or it was true that Bersi was not here, for they would not be so willing to take me to Illugi if resistance to my demands was their aim. I could not worry about the former—if it was a trap, I could not now avoid it, for I must know what had happened to my son. If it was the latter, I would force them to tell me where Bersi was.
The two men climbed a staircase. Moving the muzzle to my hostage’s back, between his shoulder blades, I shoved him ahead of me. “If you seek to trick me, you’ll die first,” I hissed at him. He shuddered but made no response.
The two men stopped at a door. “This is Froddis Illugi’s private chamber,” the one I remembered said. Taking care to keep my eyes on them, I pushed the bump by my eye and looked in. Sure enough, a bed chamber lay beyond the wall, with a shapeless form in a large four post bed.
The City Darkens (Raud Grima Book 1) Page 38