by EF Joyce
Her breathing slowed, the magic taking hold. The heavy, wet air of the south pinned her clothes to her skin and strands of hair to her cheeks. She saw the moon, a mere sliver in the clear sky, the viscous flower smell subtly disparate from her memory, spring blooms instead of winter ones. Regardless of the season, the south had eternal gardens, never chocked with ice and beaten to death by rain.
An abrupt bang and her bed materialized under her, the reality of her bedroom slamming into her with surprising force. Her eyes snapped open, an audible gasp escaping her lips. One of the balcony doors had somehow come unlatched, whipping open in the wind and slamming into the wall. Rain blew furiously onto the rug, pelting her with sideways drops as she hurried to shut the door, the curtains settling. She had latched that door, she was certain.
Repositioning herself on the bed, she tried again and again to bring Dalga back, but no matter how clear a picture she painted in her mind she could not make it real.
II
"What do you have for me?" Anaka asked Ronan, once again pacing in front of his dead father's desk like a caged creature, his deep green eyes brewing worry. She traced the outline of the dagger on her arm, taking comfort in its solid presence through the silk of her sleeve, the muted feel of its swirling magic.
"He's up to something big, and it involves General Balkin."
"Of course it does," she muttered. There were few people around that hated her more; those who did usually didn't live long.
"They met four times last week, always at night and outside palace grounds. I couldn't get close enough to hear what they were saying, but they were willing to stand in the rain for nearly an hour to discuss it."
"Alright, start following Balkin instead of Grayna. I want to know what they're up to."
Quinton Balkin. The day she'd made an enemy of him had been a hot one. The damp heavy air of the south had been impossible to banish from the cramped inn room, and for the first time Anaka found herself missing Yeraz and its storms. She'd sat still on the narrow bed, the stolen dagger in her hands, her small fingers tracing the indents on the blade and the violet jeweled pommel, glowing and pulsing with magic unknown.
I'm going to betray Yeraz and everyone in it. Could she? She had to. Then Quinton had burst into the room, one of the ten soldiers who had accompanied her to Dalga in order to assassinate the emperor. Or so she had told them. He'd walked right in without knocking, his pallid, pockmarked face flushed with the heat, his thin, greasy hair tied back.
"I want you to marry me, Anaka." The last thing she'd ever expected him to say, she'd almost cut herself on her own dagger as it slipped from her hands and landed on the mattress with a soft thud.
"What? Are you playing a joke on me?" They hadn't seen each other in more than a year, since an assignment in Ujumbe.
"Of course not. We belong together. I know I've been away, fighting in the east, but with my promotion to general, Grayna has me stationed back in the capitol. We can build a house, we can–" At this point, she'd had to cut him off before he made a worse fool of himself. Anaka wasn't sure why she'd started the affair with him in the first place; for practice, out of curiosity, because he'd been the only man who'd seemed interested in her. Never for love, or even affection. How could he not have known?
"Quinton, I am with child," she told him.
"So?" he countered. "We both knew this would happen. It's your duty as Handmaiden. But after the future queen is born, you are free to do as you like, to marry, are you not?"
"I am, but..." she trailed off, having no idea what to say to him.
"But what? What could possibly deter you from accepting me?"
"I don't love you," she said. His already ugly face contorted with rage, a grotesque mask.
"This is because of him, isn't it? You think you're so damned special now just because he fucked you? That wasn't his choice any more than it was yours. Now that you're pregnant, he's never going to touch you again. But Anaka, what I am offering is real. We could be together, we could be happy–"
"This has nothing to do with The Ilahi. I don't want you. Is that so difficult to understand?" she didn't know how else to make him see; she'd never had a problem with men wanting her too much. Quinton was wrong, though. Stellan had been sharing her rooms for a year now; they were inseparable, in love. She had always known she would have to bear his child someday, but nothing had gone as she'd expected. They had fallen for each other long before her current pregnancy.
"You're making a huge mistake. Do you think anyone else is ever going to offer? Your face isn't pretty, and under those clothes you're hideous. Do you think any man is going to want you when they see all those scars? A woman's skin should be smooth, like petals, not rough and uneven and disgusting like yours."
"If I'm so revolting, then why do you want me at all?" she asked, calm as a puddle after a rainstorm. His words had been meant to provoke her, but Anaka never gave into emotions so easily.
"Because I can see past all that, to who you are," he was begging now, his voice a soft whine.
"And who am I?" who would Quinton think she was? A girl worth marrying? As if the Handmaiden and the Black Hand required a husband.
"Just a lost girl who has been forced into a role she doesn't belong in. You were never meant to be a murderer, an assassin. You close up, shut everyone out and refuse to speak because you can't handle it, and you want everyone to think you can. But I can free you from that life, I can save you."
Anaka nearly laughed in his face, immediately recalling the first time she had ever killed someone. She had been nine-years-old. The sun had been shining over Yeraz, a rarity in itself. Her mother had forced her into a dress against her will, and she'd gone out, walking along the gardens in the sunlight, touching the tips of rose petals as she'd wandered. A boy had found her there, alone in the garden, the son of a palace kitchen worker or some other nobody. He'd called her a filthy Wakati every time they met, but this time there were no adults to look after them, to stop him. He had cornered her and shoved her down, punched and kicked her, rubbed dirt in her face.
She'd never been more furious; she'd thrashed and screamed and scratched him, but she was just a little girl and he was older and stronger. Finally an adult walked by, a courtesan from the palace. Anaka had cried out for help and the woman had looked right at her, had seen her, and she'd turned around and walked deliberately in the opposite direction. The boy had laughed, kicked her again and then yanked down his pants and pissed on her and her ruined dress.
Once he let her up, still laughing to himself, Anaka had marched right into the palace gates, past unseeing nobles and servants, who either thought her filth or an unfairly up-jumped slave. She walked straight to the chambers she shared with her mother and took the Wakati knife from the table, the one her mother used to peel apples. She then returned to the garden, no one having stopped her or even bothering to ask what had happened and why she was such a mess, because she was Wakati and no one cared.
She found the boy on the other side of the gardens, digging up plants. She'd stood next to him, her shadow falling over his hunched form like an omen.
"What do you want, Wakati filth? You haven't had enough?" he spat in her face and she stabbed him in the throat; one fluid motion that didn't miss. Blood poured from the wound and he clawed at the hilt, buried in his neck. A red river flowed from his mouth and he collapsed, choking and wheezing and finally dying. She'd wrenched the blade from his throat, spat on his corpse and walked back to the palace.
"You have no idea who I am. Get out," she'd said to Quinton, who'd flapped his mouth open and closed like a fish before finally retreating, slamming the door so hard that the cheap wood had splintered and the frame cracked.
"Do you think they will try and move the treaty?" Ronan asked, bringing her back to the present. "Or has that been done already?"
"It hasn't. Sebastian has ordered an immediate strike on Kinjia. He's pulled all the sorcerers from the school, even the underage ones. They were sent
out a week ago with orders." Ronan let out a low whistle.
"But Kinjia is just outside the Bronze Gates. If we take it, we'll be blocking Tibre from the rest. Even if we can't penetrate Tibre's defenses, we can close the route between the two, Dalga would starve just as we are."
"You're forgetting something, Ronan. Dalga has survived just fine for hundreds of years without Tibre. They have their own food supplies, which are beyond our reach. Their capitol city, which lies behind the Hündür Mountains, stands between us and their farms. Taking Kinjia will be a blow, but it's not enough for the council." And in the meantime, she had a day, two if she got lucky, to warn Alaric that the sorcerers were on their way.
"And have you warned him about Kinjia?" Ronan whispered, reading her mind.
"I only just found out. Don't worry, I'll find a way," she said. "I want a report by the end of the week on Balkin, sooner if you find something." He nodded and they left the office, Ronan headed toward the city barracks and Anaka to the Sehrli Tower, the operational base of Yeraz's few remaining sorcerers.
The Sehrli Tower was second to the Queen's Tower in height, and only by one floor. Anaka was out of breath when she reached the top, panting and aching and cursing. The day she got her old body back wouldn't come soon enough. During the past few weeks she was constantly exhausted, weak, hungry and emotional. Three more months of this seemed an eternity.
Anaka took a shiny gold key from her pocket and unlocked the dark oiled door at the top of the spiral staircase, where only the council members and Head Sorcerer were given access. The room was completely open to the elements, the stone floor meeting pillars that held up an unnecessary roof. The wind rushed in and out of that space, whistling and singing, slicing through her with cold, roaring in her ears. She used the same key to unlock a cabinet set into the wall next to the door and removed a sliver of enchanted parchment.
Sorcerers in Kinjia. Will strike. She carefully folded the page in a star shape and wrote Alaric's name on the front, the ink soaking into the note until it vanished. Creeping to the edge of the tower floor, she peered down at an unimaginable drop, the rocks below as thin as needles. With one hand on the pillar for balance, she used the other to cast the message into the wind. It sailed away and then back again, whipping past her ear and hurtling in the opposite direction from its destination.
Anaka whirled around to see Maurice Sundry, the nervous old Head Sorcerer standing tall in front of the door, her message in his hand. Time stopped as he opened it, reading and studying the parchment carefully, a smile spreading slowly on his thin, pale lips. She took a step closer to him, and another, but it was useless. He stood between her and the only way out, unless she was willing to throw herself onto the rocks below.
"I believe the little girl playing politics has gotten in over her head!" he shouted at her over the roar of the wind. Three steps closer. She didn't stand a chance. He would use some sort of magic on her, or toss her over the side, or send the note to Stellan before she could move another inch.
"You knew?" she asked, creeping closer, keeping him talking.
"I suspected," he dropped his voice now; they were maybe four feet apart. "No one notices you. Somehow you slip everyone's mind. The one who is never watched can get away with anything. But I watched. I noticed." He closed the distance between them and grabbed her by the collar, his fetid breath misting onto her face. "You weren't surprised when Tibre fell. You expected it. I could see it in your eyes. I knew in that moment that you were a traitor, I just needed proof. Now I have it. Let's go, Handmaiden," he yanked on her shirt, meaning to pull her along.
A breathless laugh escaped her then grew into a mad sound, snatched up by the howling wind. With all his talk of seeing and noticing her, he had failed to see her for what she really was. He'd looked right at her, studied her, and had still only seen what he wanted to. Perhaps she truly was invisible. The old sorcerer was definitely watching her now, with uncertainty at her crazed laugher.
He tightened his grip on her shirt just as she pulled back, the fabric ripping soundlessly in the wind. The dagger hidden in her sleeve was in her hand and then buried in Sundry's chest in the space of a few seconds.
His eyes were gray, she had never noticed. She had never been this close to him before. The pupils of his eyes contracted then expanded, blood tricked from his mouth in a stream thin as his lips. A dry sound escaped his throat and then he collapsed onto the wind polished stones, his eyes staring into the oncoming storm with the comprehension of a charlatan's crystal ball.
Chapter 8
I
Elixa wandered the twisted, ashy ruins, tracing the metal skeleton of a long collapsed structure with her pale fingertips. She'd longed for Dalga, to imagine its capitol to dust; she could crumble it away and leave the people still inside. Instead she'd ended up here again – her broken ghost kingdom. The air was still as a tomb, neither warm nor cold, not humid or dry. This place was nothing and nowhere, a world between worlds, the plane of dreams.
"This place is not for the living," a voice like thunder just behind her, as if reading her mind. Elixa turned and faced a man dressed in white robes of the ancient magi, like her father had once been, though the rest had all died thousands of years ago. His long hair was the color of moonlight and his eyes the color of sorrow. Their strange familiarity calmed her, soothing her haunted soul. There had never been any sign of another here, only her and the dead starlight shining mutely over polished bones.
"Who are you?" she gasped.
"These ruins are the remains of a great nation. The Kingdom of Dreams. One of the Three Kingdoms, a place of learning and peace. Your father ruled here, the son of an escaped convict and a magister's daughter."
"I am aware of my father's history," Elixa snapped, standing taller, becoming every bit the Queen of Dreams rather than the surprised girl she'd been thirty seconds earlier. She had not known what this place was, its location or what it meant, but she wasn't about to let this strange man know. "Who. Are. You?" she demanded once more.
"A mage of great power, much like yourself," he answered cryptically, stepping closer to her, his bare feet leaving no prints in the dark ash.
"Thousands of years ago," the mage said, examining their grim surroundings, "The Three Kingdoms entered a terrible and bitter war that ended in their utter destruction."
"You still haven't told me who you are," she said.
"I am the ruler of the kingdom you seek to crush," he responded, his face concealing all signs of emotion.
"Alaric Eide?" she questioned, just daring to believe it. Another mage of her caliber might be able to block the Sphere's magic and stop her from taking Dalga – it was actually the only explanation that made sense.
"The very same," he said. "I have received your treaty and personally would like nothing more than to sign it, but such things are rarely so simple." He circled her slowly, like a wolf with a sharp smile, the unmistakable scent of magic clinging to him like musk.
"As I was saying, thousands of years ago the Three Kingdoms entered war. Two magi stood above the rest, their powers stronger than all others for it came from a forbidden source. Though these two men were born in enemy kingdoms, raised to hate one another from birth, they allied against an even greater threat, one that was bent on destroying everything they knew, the very world in which they lived."
"That's a lovely tale, but I can hardly see how it impacts our current situation," Elixa argued, struggling to keep her voice calm. Grayna had taught her negotiations, long ago as a child. Confidence! He'd like to say, shouting it at her until his voice was rough. Never allow the enemy to unnerve you. Fear is a natural thing, just don't allow your enemy to discover it in you. Stand strong! Face like a stone! Never let them know what cards you're holding. But what cards did she hold anyway? They were all spread out on the table: Eide held Tibre with an iron fist and her empire was starving. No good in pretending otherwise.
"This tale has everything to do with us. You see, these two magi no
matter how strong, could not defeat their enemy. So they searched and experimented until they uncovered the secret to immortality. But even that was not enough. They could not defeat their enemy, and so they imprisoned it in a tower, one fortified with enough magic to hold forever." He pointed toward the twisted ruin, the dark tower spiraling upward to the starry sky.
"But their peace was short lived. My father betrayed yours, and he paid the price. You know the cost of immortality – the loss of the immortal's magic. Relieved of his power, your father locked mine in a chest and thew it into the depths of the Haddash Sea. He escaped thirty-five years ago, and lost in his lust for vengeance, he unlocked the tower and released the horror inside." Elixa's stomach twisted in dread. Her father had never told her any of this; that there had been a second immortal, a terrible war, an unbeatable enemy.
"My father hates yours, he will do anything to kill him, and you. He sent me here to weaken your empire in war and observe your strengths before he marches upon it and grinds it to dust, a monster at his side. He wants me to negotiate with you, to manipulate you into turning against your father and getting rid of him for us. But I am not his slave and I possess my own agenda. He was wrong to unlock the tower, wrong to unleash this evil on the world.
"My magic alone is not enough to stop it. Join me, Elixa, and we shall stand together against my father. We will throw him back into the sea, vanquish evil and claim this world for ourselves." He smiled his toothy grin, waiting for her response. Madness! Could he be serious? Clearly he had powerful magic that he'd been using somehow to prevent her dreaming of Dalga. Getting close to him could be just the edge she needed to overthrow her father. Not even the great Ilahi could stand against two magi. But what of the mysterious force? The monster freed?