The Crescent Stone

by Matt Mikalatos

  In the aftermath of Break Bones’s escape, she and Jason had been more or less under house arrest. They could wander the hallways, the kitchen, the great hall, and the grounds of Westwind, but they couldn’t leave the castle walls without permission. There were chores to be done, of course. Stone floors to wash. Tapestries and rugs to beat with a broom, trying to get the dust out. Laundry. Dishes. Stalls in the stable to be mucked (a task left most often to Jason because of his insistence on remaining with Dee). But when she had a free moment, what she loved to do was climb one of the towers and watch the city outside Westwind’s walls.

  Someone knocked on her door, loud and insistent. Madeline threw the sheet over the mirror and pulled on a jacket to cover the spread of the bracelet on her forearm. She kept her gloves in her pocket when she wasn’t wearing them, now. She slipped them on before opening the door.

  Jason stood outside, panting. “Let’s go,” he said.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “The knight just came in through the eastern gate. He’s headed this way. He sent a messenger bird ahead.” Jason shouted this over his shoulder, already running down the winding tower staircase.

  “What’s happening?”

  Jason stopped, gasping for breath. She was in much better shape than him—she had taken to running every morning along Westwind’s walls, early, before everyone else got up—and he had just run up the stairs too. “Shula. He found Shula.”

  “What?” She ran past him, taking the stairs two at a time. Jason yelled for her to wait, but she couldn’t, she just couldn’t stop. She burst out the bottom door of the tower and raced through the great hall before speeding across the courtyard and toward Westwind’s front gate. Although the knight had come in through the eastern gate of Far Seeing, there was only one gate into the castle compound, on the western side. So he would be riding around the entire property to get in.

  Ruth was at the gate, a somber expression on her face. A ten-foot-tall mirror stood at the entrance. She held her palm up as Madeline came rushing forward. “You cannot leave Westwind.”

  “Is Shula okay?”

  Ruth raised her face toward the sunlight. “I have seen a path for you, Madeline. It is narrow and treacherous, and on every side the possibility of injustice, pain, and heartache. Remember the advice given you by the lady in the garden.”

  How could Ruth possibly know about that? “I passed out as she said it. I didn’t . . . I don’t remember her exact words.” It was something about changing the world. Change the world, change the . . . She couldn’t quite remember.

  “I walked in the garden beside Archon Thenody’s palace today. The Garden Lady came to me through a grove of trees. I could smell the citrus on her skin. She asked me to remind you. She said, To change the world, change first a heart.”

  Yes! That was it. To change the world, change first a heart. She had no idea what it meant, but she remembered it now. She wouldn’t forget again.

  The Knight of the Mirror appeared, galloping across the cobblestones, a blanket-wrapped form in his arms. He dismounted at the gate’s threshold, placing Shula gently on the ground. Madeline dropped to her knees beside her old roommate. Shula’s hair was tangled around her face. The scar on her face looked pale, and her cheeks sank under her black-rimmed eyes. A sizeable bruise bloomed beneath her left eye. She shivered as the blanket fell from her shoulder, and Madeline quickly covered it again. “Help me get her inside,” she said.

  “I fear she will need a healer,” the knight said.

  Madeline, confused, shouted, “Let’s get her to a bed while we’re waiting for the healer.”

  Ruth said softly, “The Knight of the Mirror does not allow magic within the walls of his castle, Madeline.”

  Jason arrived and flopped on the ground, gasping for breath. “Made it,” he said.

  “Jason, I need you to run for a healer,” Madeline said.

  “But—”

  “Look at her, Jason!”

  “Okay, okay,” he said, climbing painfully to his feet. He stepped across the threshold of the gate, but the Knight of the Mirror blocked his path.

  “Sir Knight, you have to let him go,” Madeline said. “Unless—have you already sent word?”

  “I cannot entrust you—either of you—to the streets of Far Seeing. There are too many Scim here as servants or even as reformed citizens. I do not know which can be trusted and which may wish you harm. You see what they have done to your friend.”

  “No offense,” Madeline said, “but the only way you’re going to stop us is if you harm us yourself.”

  “Gilenyia comes,” Ruth called.

  The Elenil woman swept up the street, resplendent in a red dress and white elbow-length gloves. Two Scim flanked her, looking a great deal like the strange one they had seen on the tower on the night of the Bidding. A “civilized Scim,” as Hanali called them. One carried a leather satchel, and the other two carried long sticks wrapped together with cloth.

  The Knight of the Mirror did not greet Gilenyia. He stood before the gate mirror, speaking under his breath, his fingers running through his hair. He seemed unconcerned now for Shula or Madeline or Jason or anything at all.

  Gilenyia surveyed the scene. “Ah. The burning girl has returned to us. Day Song, set up my work space. New Dawn, prepare yourself.” She spared a glance at the knight. “Gone into some other world,” she said. “Madeline, I require your assistance.”

  The Scim rolled the cloth out from between the two long sticks, forming a sort of wall. He looked behind himself, as if gauging the amount of room, and drew the cloth out further. He took a ninety-degree turn, then another, then another, and formed a sort of square out of the cloth, which seemed to keep coming no matter how far he pulled it. In a matter of moments he had made a ten-by-ten room, complete with a cloth roof and a folding door. Madeline followed Gilenyia inside. Two long, flat beds had somehow been set inside already. Day Song entered, carrying Shula. He set her down on one of the beds. New Dawn lay on the other and closed her eyes, breathing deeply.

  Shula moaned. Her skin burned, and she flinched when Madeline touched her.

  “You are not to live with me,” Gilenyia said. “And yet I wish to teach you as much as I may about healing. You know how this process works, do you not?”

  Jason had followed them in. “What is going on? Is this place sanitary? Did you people even wash your hands?” He was rubbing his hands, bouncing from foot to foot. She hadn’t seen him so nervous before.

  Madeline nodded. “I know how it works.”

  “Then remove your gloves,” Gilenyia said, her voice even and calm. “It is time for you to try your own hand at healing.”

  Madeline hesitated, then looked at Jason. “Maybe you could wait outside.”

  “Ha,” he said. “I’ve seen your naked hands about a million times. They might not understand it here in the Sunlit Lands, but you and I were chemistry partners back in the real world. That’s a pretty tight bond, you know. Covalent, even.”

  Fine. There was nothing to be done about it then. At least she wouldn’t have to hide it from him anymore. She pulled her right glove off, and then the left. Jason gasped when he saw the silver tracings curling up over her fingers.

  “Whoa,” Jason said. “How did you get—”

  “Hush,” Gilenyia said. “Let her concentrate. Sit in the corner.”

  Madeline put one hand on Shula’s chest. Her heart beat distant but strong, and her body felt feverish but otherwise normal. She put her right hand on New Dawn, who convulsed lightly at the touch, then fell still. She almost asked if New Dawn was doing this willingly, but what difference would it make? For Shula, she would do this again, just like she’d done for Jason with Night’s Breath on the battlefield. And, yes, she would allow Gilenyia to teach her how. In this strange world of Scim and Elenil and masked children and giant wolves, she needed to be able to protect herself and her friends without relying on knights or Elenil or anyone. The sight of Shula’s broken
body told her that much. She couldn’t go along with the flow, trusting everything was going to be okay. She was going to take care of her own friends.

  “Now,” Gilenyia said, “reach out through your bracelet. Find Shula’s bracelet and use that to guide you to where she is broken.”

  Her bracelet. It was more than that now, though, wasn’t it? It was a sleeve. A glove. She felt power rush through her, like hot liquid into the veins of her tattoo. The magic reached into Shula but found only flesh. No magic, no connection. “It’s not working.”

  “Take hold of her bracelet,” Gilenyia said. “Perhaps that will make it easier.”

  She moved her hand to take Shula’s wrist, and instantly, like water pouring from a bucket, felt her power move into a flow with Shula’s magic. She felt the branching, slow growth of her magic join in with the sudden bonfire of Shula’s. Shula’s felt jagged, bright, terrifying, and dangerous, where Madeline’s was slow, consistent, building to something.

  Moving past the magic, a deeper connection eased into place. Madeline’s face ached from Shula’s bruises. She felt the fever, the cracked dryness of her lips and tongue, the skin of her face. She was badly dehydrated. Her legs hurt so much she could scarcely keep from crying out. Taking a single breath took a week’s energy. It hurt to move her eyes.

  Then, somehow, an even deeper well. Shula Bishara. She didn’t know anymore if that was her name or someone else’s. She remembered her baba and mama, her little sister, her big brother. She saw a building collapsed into rubble and people pulled from the wreckage, the color of dust and blood, some still breathing, others laid out in a careful line. A tank sat outside their home, firing shells at the other side of the city. She remembered the little Christian church her family attended, and how crowded it became as the refugees flooded from one side of the country to the other, and how even Muslims filled the pews, desperate for a bag of rice, a roll of toilet paper, a place to lay a sleeping bag. The soldier’s knife which had cut her face flashed beneath the streetlight. Her neighbors in the fire leapt out of the flames, towels and scarves covering their faces.

  “You’ve gone too deep,” Gilenyia said softly. “Come back. Now take New Dawn’s wrist.”

  Gilenyia’s voice came from so far away, and untangling her own hands and arms and thoughts from Shula’s took a moment. She reached her right hand over, taking New Dawn’s wrist. The moment she touched the inky tattoo of the Scim, it sucked her in. A gravity pulled at her, taking her deeper into the Scim woman’s world.

  New Dawn’s body pulsed with strength. It had been bridled, controlled, and channeled by the Elenil, but she had strength enough to tear a person into pieces. Nothing hurt. Nothing ached. Her heart beat steady, regular, in perfect time. That strength reached through Madeline, questing. It touched on Shula’s pain, her aches, her broken places, and latched onto them, urging them to flow back through Madeline’s body and into the Scim woman.

  Madeline pinched the connection. She didn’t want to do that, not yet.

  She wondered if she could go deeper, like she had with Shula. It might be good to know the Scim better. She pushed on the link to New Dawn, but instead of a deeper connection she found a wall—long, thick, and impenetrable. Gilenyia was saying something to her in the world outside, but she could not make out the words, nor was she trying. A weak spot in the wall caught her attention. She couldn’t break it, but she could squeeze into it, she thought.

  Her name was not New Dawn. That was her “civilized” name. Her Elenil name, so they would know she bowed the knee to them. Nor was it Shatter Stone. That was her war-skin name. Her true name she would not share, not even here. It was not right that the human asked for this, too, when she was giving so much already. In time she would heal . . . faster than a human. Gilenyia would credit her, and she could help her family in the Wasted Lands. One more humiliation, one more burden to carry so the human children could frolic and live without consequence. So give her the pain. Did Madeline think she could not shoulder pain? Did she not know the Scim? This exploration, this hesitancy was more painful than the healing itself. She would not wait any longer.

  The sucking gravity from New Dawn increased. It pushed through Madeline and felt for the pain. Felt for broken places and fear, touched on fever and aches. Madeline’s own pain increased. The bruise under her eye, hot and swollen, pierced her with blinding pain, then slid to New Dawn. The fever crept through her. The aches and throbbing, the brokenness passed through their connection like swallowing glass, leaving behind only a bone-deep exhaustion.

  New Dawn tried to take even that.

  Let me keep at least the tiredness, Madeline thought. Let me carry that one small piece.

  Another presence glided into their shared space. Cold and ancient as a shark, unblinking, and revealing nothing of itself. Madeline’s connection to New Dawn broke in a terrified moment, as if a magnet which had been attracting another magnet had flipped and now pushed her away.

  Madeline gasped, her eyes flying open, just as Shula sat up, also gasping. Gilenyia’s bare hand covered Madeline’s. New Dawn lay on her back, her face bruised, one eye swollen shut, glaring at Madeline with the other.

  “Do not go so deep,” Gilenyia said. “Not with your friends if you can help it, and never with a Scim.” She leaned toward New Dawn. “Did she harm you?”

  New Dawn closed her eyes. “She shouldn’t have gone so deep, mistress.”

  “Indeed not. Are you well?”

  “Of course, mistress.”

  Gilenyia gave Madeline an appraising look. “Well then, take your friends and run along to the knight.”

  Madeline stood halfway before her legs gave out. Jason rushed to her and helped her to her feet. “I can help,” Shula said. She stood, obviously shaky herself, and pulled Madeline’s other arm over her shoulder.

  Gilenyia tapped her fingers to her lips, then pulled her gloves on. “New Dawn. Did you neglect to take the exhaustion from the girl? To heal someone is quite taxing, and this was her first time.”

  New Dawn’s eyes flew open. “Mistress, she would not give it to me.”

  “Hmph. Very well. I will adjust your credits accordingly.”

  New Dawn glared at Madeline again, but she could scarcely keep her own eyes open. Jason pulled back the flap on the tent, and the three of them made their way out, a hodgepodge of legs and arms, like people in a three-legged race. The Knight of the Mirror stood at the gate, still looking at himself. He dragged his gaze away unwillingly, but when he saw Madeline’s state, he came to them and scooped her into his arms like a drowsy kitten.

  “One more thing,” Gilenyia said. “I happened along here because I was sent by the archon. He desires to see you both again. He requests your presence tomorrow night at the palace. I trust you will be rested by then, Madeline. Next time, do not be so foolish as to shoulder a Scim’s burden. They are able to carry more than a human.”

  Perhaps Gilenyia was right. The knight carried her through the castle grounds and the castle itself, and then up the long stone stairway to her solar, where he laid her on her bed. He noticed the sheet over the mirror, frowned, and pulled it off.

  Shula, who had just returned from captivity and a hard desert journey, sat by Madeline’s bed. Jason sat outside the door and could not be persuaded even to go to the stable, and Ruth fell asleep curled beside him on the stone floor.

  “A human can carry quite a lot when they must,” the knight said before leaving her room, as if correcting Gilenyia, or maybe praising Madeline. It was the last thing she heard before she slept.

  In her dreams that night, Madeline shuddered at the memory of the cold-eyed presence of Gilenyia during the healing connection. She shuddered and pulled her covers close. She cried out, and only the gentle reminder of Shula sitting beside her bed calmed her. She slept again, and remembered it only as a vague unease when she woke.

  19

  MUD

  If truth is not your companion,

  death walks beside you.
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  A KAKRI PROVERB

  Jason was not an idiot. He’d watched Madeline perform the healing and seen the bruises go from Shula to Madeline to the Scim. Which meant his own wounds, which Madeline had described as near fatal, had been transferred to someone else. He suspected the words Night’s Breath were significant in this regard. His chest had been caved in, that’s what Madeline had said. Could a Scim survive that? He knew they healed faster than humans. He suspected that Night’s Breath was a name. He wondered if there was a way to meet him, the Scim who’d saved his life. The other possibility—that Night’s Breath had died as a result of Jason’s wounds—filled him with unimaginable dread. Madeline wouldn’t do that to him.

  “Pay attention,” Ruth said.

  He shook himself aware. Ruth Mbewe, the weird kid with the blindfold, held his arm with one tiny hand. He had stepped into a puddle on the road. Ruth, despite having her eyes covered, had stepped around it.

  “It’s amazing how not being able to see makes your other senses sharper,” Jason said.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Ruth snapped. “I have average smell, taste, and hearing. I just use them. Unlike you.”

  Jason closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He tried to sort through the smells of the Court of Far Seeing. He didn’t smell anything disgusting, now that they had left Westwind behind. The toilets at Westwind were just holes in the floor that fell several stories into the moat, which smelled like something hairy had exercised vigorously before falling in and dying. It backed up Jason’s First Rule of Magic: poop has to go somewhere. Those magic toilets in Mrs. Raymond’s place weren’t eradicating whatever went in them, they were transporting it. He didn’t know how (that’s what made it magic), but he suspected it wasn’t going to the archon’s palace.