"Where... what was he doing when you last spoke to him?" he asked, a mixture of dread and anger settling in over his grief.
He was in Trunk'n Tusk, Mik replied somewhat hesitantly. He had a line on some Shadowers in the merchant community, with connections throughout the Eastern Shores. Last I heard, he was headin' t' Morningsun. Why d' ye ask?
"Bastion's on the quickest land route from Stormhold to Morningsun," Retzu said, more to himself than to Mik. "He would've passed through here on his way. And he would've invited himself to stay with D'prox for a night or three. But D'prox never mentioned..."
I know where yer goin' wi' that, boy, an' I don't like it a bit.
"I don't either, Uncle, but shol'tuk masters don't just die, and their blades don't just appear in the Granite Spire. I don't know who to trust," he snapped, grief and confusion mixing into something resembling anger. He stood dead center of the street, hands akimbo, arguing with the air around him as far as the rest of Caravan could tell. Even the amethyst Unmarked would have a hard time seeing the tiny blue chip, buried under the scar on the assassin's neck. He knew he looked ridiculous, and creeping up on insane, but he didn't care a whit. "Crafter take it, there's only so many ways Kaleb's sword set could've gotten to Ysre, and fewer that wouldn't involve my sen'sia in some way. And if D'prox did know, there are still fewer reasons why it wouldn't be the newest of news to share with his sodu. What? The Great Recluse comes out of hiding, and D'prox doesn't want to gossip? You and I both know him better than that."
So because he didn't mention Kaleb, you think that suggests that he murdered him, Mik concluded, largely dropping his effected accent and replacing it with dripping sarcasm. And how, pray tell, did Kaleb's swords wind up in the Granite Spire? I didn't realize that they were lettin' shol'tuk in now.
Retzu readied a biting comment... and bit it back. How did the swords wind up in the Spire?
When he had stood in silence for a moment or so, Mik continued, accustomed accent firmly in place. Sure'n Kaleb's rests this eve in the Gentle Sea. I'm not arguin' that he ain't, or that maybe D'prox knew somethin' of it. But a'fore ye go slingin' yer knife around, tryin' t' impress the man what learnt ye up... Have a care, son. They was brothers, Kaleb and him, long a'fore ye were even born. There's no one in all o' Te'ra that those boys loved more'n each other. Even me. Use yer head, son. Don't go off wi' yer arrow half-nocked.
The old man was right. It galled Retzu to even consider the possibility of D'prox having a hand in Kaleb's death, and with good reason -- it was utterly inconceivable. The two were brothers, so much more than any two others in the Fellowship. For Retzu to even consider the possibility...
The assassin silently went over his hilts, one by one, from rawhide to gold. Finally, his quickened pulse slowed, the initial shock of finding Kaleb's swords having passed. A cold calm asserted itself over his outrage and grief. There were questions that needed to be answered. He knew that. Blessed Crafter, D'prox had taught him that! No matter what you thought of your mark or the situation they were involved with, honor demanded that the shol'tuk first determine the marking to be righteous. Assassins were killers, sure enough, but they were not murderers. Every kill must be justified, or the shol'tuk would be worthy of a mark himself. Whatever the truth was, Retzu needed to find it out before justice could be served.
"We'll speak later, Uncle," he said, tapping the lump on his neck, severing the connection before Mik could respond.
* * *
"What was that?" Marissa demanded.
"I don't know," Sal said defensively. "I was messing around with the tassel and the sword melted. I didn't know how or what to do about it, and you were gone, so I had to get him. Who would know better that him about shol'tuk stuff?"
"It melted?"
"Yeah, it mel..." he paused, the reality of the situation finally hitting him.
"It melted!" they shouted as one, and lunged for the table.
For the past week, they'd been mixing and matching blindly. Not having any clue what spells were on the sword, they could do little more than guess. Now they dove into their piles of copper runes, separating them out as best they could, looking for Tile concepts that were similar with the Granite ability to become one with the earth.
"How about diffusion?" Sal said, selecting a sapphire rune. "Two liquids becoming one?"
"Good," Marissa said, selecting an amethyst rune. "We can add continuity to that."
"And heat transfer?"
"Too much movement back and forth. Thermal equilibrium would be better," she argued, indicating a lone rune at the edge of the ruby pile before turning her attention to the emerald runes. "Where is it? Where... Ah!" She held her find up for Sal to see.
"Sex? Really?" he asked, trying not to laugh.
"Not sex. Well, not exactly," she amended, her cheeks coloring. "Conjugation. It's more like symbiosis, where two living things become one."
"Sounds like sex to me," Sal chuckled, stacking his runes with hers.
Marissa bumped and twisted each rune on the stack slightly, aligning them as she had the others to make room for their granite counterpart, if it existed. Satisfied, she reached into the granite pile and drew out the first one, laying it gingerly on the stack.
Sal sighed. "Nothing."
Wordlessly, Marissa swapped the rune for the next one in the stack, gently twisting it into place.
"Nothing," Sal said again, his stomach starting to cramp with disappointment.
Marissa exchanged runes again.
"Nothing," he repeated as she laid the rune down. "It's the same crap as---"
He nearly choked as Marissa bumped the granite rune and the stack coalesced into a single concept -- MERGE.
"Sal? Sal! What do you see?"
He could hear Marissa shouting at him excitedly, but distantly, disconnectedly, as he picked up the granite rune. He examined it, turning it this way and that, trying to pry its essential meaning from the metal that gave the concept form. The other four runes that they'd discovered weren't terribly helpful to him. They had embodied fairly abstract, arbitrary concepts, but this one -- "becoming one" with something, as the granites referred to it -- this was something he could work with. He thought for a moment how best to proceed, then finally touched Amethyst.
Merge... Continuity...
His diamond eye took on a violet tinge as mana filled him, and he switched from normal to secondary sight. The copper rune stood out brilliantly against the now-skeletal hand that held it, but Sal looked past the x-ray image, seeing it instead in terms of energy. As he looked deeper into the rune, he saw where the copper's kinetic energy was in balance with its potential energy. He focused on these places of continuity, where the transfer of energy back and forth equalized. Finally, he considered these places in terms of structure, where matter and space met, where strength and weakness met.
His gemstone eye exploded in stabbing pain, driving daggers back deep into his skull, but he forced his eye to remain open, delving the depths of the copper rune. He was dimly aware of Marissa shaking him, calling his name, but he ignored her. All that existed was that balance between matter and emptiness, the structure of it, the order of it. His violet-tinged eye grew muddy, clouded, but still he persisted. His finger nails bit into his palms, and he locked his jaw to keep from screaming out in agony. His gemstone eye continued to darken until everything nearly faded to black... only to be revealed again. Differently.
The pain slowly subsided, oozing out like blood from a paper cut. It seemed to take an eternity, but finally, the pain stopped, leaving behind a strange... coldness. He felt drained, in a way, not of heat but of emotion. Everything -- his magic, his relationship with Marissa, his situation on this planet, the Cause's fight against the Highest -- everything seemed to reduce down to logic, calculation. He knew it was likely an effect of Granite, similar to how the other soulgems affected him. Ruby stirred his zeal, his drive. Sapphire soothed him. Emerald bolstered compassion within him. Amethyst energized him.
Suddenly, he realized exactly what Granite offered. Control. Order, as opposed to chaos. Everything was logical, intentional, because everything had a structure to it that could be quantified. Even the randomness that he saw in the world around him could be broken down logically and accounted for. Sal thrilled at the discovery -- correction: he allowed himself to be thrilled.
He opened and closed his eyes in succession, right to left, left to right, fully gauging the differences between his natural sight and his newly acquired granite sight. Then he cast his diamond eye -- his granite eye -- around the room. He noted the soft of red of the water in his deep blue metal cup, and the red-orange of the drying chowder in Marissa's yellow wooden bowl. The blue-black of his katana's steel. When he looked closer, he noticed that everything had a certain grit to it -- the bits and patterns that Keth had talked about. Atoms, strung together to form molecules. Though he couldn't see the atoms themselves, he could see the patterns, shining up from the bits as surely as he saw the word MERGE, shining like a beacon from the diamond rune on the table.
Where the colors around him spoke to the strength and weakness of matter, the bits and patterns spoke to matter's structure. He could tell the subtle differences between the steel of his sword and the steel used in their dining utensils. He could see the complexity of the chowder, versus the simplicity of the water. And Marissa...
She was an insane amalgamation of colors, with her natural image superimposed over the orange of her skin and yellow of its underlying bones. Though her red hair did stay a complimentary shade of orange. Small blessings.
"Sal? Can you hear me?" she asked, her voice thick with worry. "Are you alright?"
"Yeah, I'm good," he said. And he believed it.
His eyes fell to the table before them -- the yellow-green of hardwood, covered with green-blue copper runes, including the completed diamond rune that still said MERGE. Looking to the table, he saw the bits that made up the wood. More, he saw the spaces between the bits. Raising his hand, he found those same spaces between his own bits. Trying not to think too much about it, he touched his hand to the solid-seeming table and wielded. In his natural sight, the table rippled, but in his granite sight, both the table and his hand grew shadowy, without substance. As he pushed down with his hand, he found that the bits in the table rendered no resistance, instead parting to allow the bits of his hand to pass between them unhindered.
"Sal!" Marissa gasped.
Sal raised his hand to his face and ended the flow of granite magic, his hand solidifying before his eyes. He nodded his satisfaction. "One more hurdle down," he said, releasing his hold on Granite. "Next, I think that we---"
Marissa shouted and rushed forward. "Sal!"
She's saying that a lot, he thought absently, as the world tilted and went black.
Chapter 19
Mik chewed his mustaches in silence while Denis prattled about his prize milkcow, Clera -- some asinine story about the heifer licking the nuggets out of his brother's nose. Mik could almost prefer the rumbling din of livestock and wagons, creaking along the dusty highroad toward Bastion, and whatever waited beyond. Anything but the simpleton's incessant jabbering.
Kaleb's sword set. In the Granite Spire. Displayed as trophies? Mik huffed. There was no way that D'prox could've been involved. None at all. They were like brothers, those two -- always had been, ever since Mik found them as urchins in Soleis Harbor. Well, Kaleb was the urchin. Young Proximo was just dirty.
From the start, both had been enamored with the old man -- the one with the katana that was so different from other shol'tuk swords. A katana that he was allowed to wear openly, without challenge from "real" assassins! They'd heard fearful whispers about Mik, the sailor who was an assassin... but not. A man that even Shadow Magers feared.
Mik chuckled. He'd heard those rumors too.
The boys had been persistent, following him around for hours before he finally deigned to acknowledge them. Hours more before he spoke his first word to them.
He stayed in town for little more than a week, doing... things that they suspected him of doing. Occasionally, he would gift them with a tale or two, for their amusement.
Who was he fooling? He loved those stories as much as they did!
His tales were tall and carefully crafted, chock full of adventure but cunningly lacking in gore. The boys were enthralled, silent and gasping and cheering at all the right moments. He was quite likely the most excitement that they'd had in a long time.
When his task was completed and it came time for him to leave, the boys thought to stow away on Mik's ship. Nobody would've missed Kaleb -- the vi'zrith lad had lost his parents years before and wasn't able to make his way back to his village in the Maw. Proximo, on the other hand, would be greatly missed. His House, du'Achi, wasn't very influential as far as merchant houses went, but it wasn't insignificant either. Mik was able to do what he did largely because of his relative anonymity, and Proximo's absence would draw attention that would... complicate things.
He thought the simplest solution would've been to return the boys. A little night dust in the eyes, a parting of the ways. No muss, no fuss. Alainan, the shipman patriarch of House du'Achi, would awake to find his son unceremoniously dumped on his front stoop, together with his scalawag friend. Simple.
Not the first mistake in Mik's long, long life, but it was no less tragic.
The shipman held his son to certain standards -- standards that stowing away on an assassin's ship didn't meet.
Oh yeah, Proximo told his father. He told the old buzzard everything, and with the bite of a boy who'd outgrown his father. More's the pity for the young man.
As it happened, Proximo's purpose for stowing away was two-fold. He had been intrigued by the assassin-that-was-not, true enough, but he had also been looking to run away from an abusive father. Mik merely provided a likely excuse. He was bellied up at a wharf-side tavern, sipping his pay for a job well done, when Proximo and his cohort tracked him down once more. Apparently, Proximo's mother had come to his defense, and the good shipman felt the need to express his... displeasure in her. Proximo leapt to her aid, wielding a kitchen knife. Alainan relented, but the Lady du'Achi chose to side with her beloved husband, attacking her son for daring raise a knife to the man she loved. Failing to end his father, the boy tried to enlist Mik's aid.
Mik did consider helping him, but only briefly. Though du'Achi's crimes were many, they weren't worthy of death, so Mik declined. With no other choice, Proximo appealed to the constabulary. The night ended with Alainan du'Achi being taken to the stocks for the night, and Proximo being found homeless, disowned by his worthless father and abandoned by his haplessly devoted mother.
That night, Proximo du'Achi died, and D'prox Brightblade was born.
Kaleb's story was far less interesting, to hear him tell it -- separated from his family when he was little more than a tadpole. But the long and short was that the orphan and the disowned adopted each other, and Mik adopted them both. Just as he would the Children du'Nograh many years later.
Mik nearly choked at the parallel -- one brother dead, and the other...
He prayed fervently that D'prox had as little to do with Kaleb's death as Retzu had to do with Reit's. But he was just as far from D'prox in his time of need as he was from Retzu. And he couldn't do either of them any good until he finished what he had come here to do.
Whatever the case with D'prox and Kaleb, the truth would ultimately bare itself. Setting his resolve, he quickened his steps, leaving Denis to prattle on behind him. General du'Chapin was a couple hundred yards ahead of him in the procession. Mik had wasted far too much time already, scheming his way into the general's work detail. It was high time he put his ef
forts to use.
* * *
Pain. Just... pain.
Dear God, not this again...
But no, it wasn't his eye. It was... something else...
A loud crack echoed through his skull, and the pain renewed itself, followed this time by an off-beat counterpoint -- "Sal! Sal!"
"I'm here, I'm okay," he groaned, warding off any further attacks with one clawing hand while pressing the other to his temple, still throbbing with whatever his eye had put him through. "Stop hitting me before I ain't okay."
"Sorry," Marissa said sheepishly, then allowing steel to creep into her voice. "That was really stupid, you know that? What if you had... I really didn't want to sit by your bedside again, waiting a week for you to wake up."
"How long was I out?" he asked, pushing himself up shakily.
"Just a few seconds this time," she shrugged, hedging her argument. "But it could've been a week."
"Yeah, well, I'm fine, okay? Better than fine, actually. I touched Granite!"
"I saw," she said, sitting back on her ankles and crossing her arms in front of her. "I'm not impressed. You could've killed yourself, you rock-headed oaf." As she ranted, the irritation drained from her face, until sympathetic curiosity took its place. "Did you learn everything you need to to touch Diamond? Or do you have to be stupid again?"
Sal snickered. "Yeah, sorry. I gotta do some more stupid. See, I---"
"Sal? What happened?" Jaren demanded, blowing through the tent flap like an errant wind.
"Holy deja vu, Batman," Sal quipped. "Didn't we just play this scene?"
Fractures (Facets of Reality Book 2) Page 30