by Cari Z
“The prodigal one returns.”
“Mina,” Rafael called, ignoring Daeva for the moment. The girl didn’t respond to him. “Mina!”
“She can’t hear you,” Daeva replied calmly, shuffling the papers in front of him before lifting one up and showing it to her. It showed a picture of a water lily drawn in charcoal, its roots dripping down the page. Mina let out a low hum as she saw it and her brow creased a little. She continued to stare straight forward.
“I knew you would come back,” Daeva continued, seemingly ignoring the girl. “When I learned your fate, at first I thought he must have killed you, but my sources told me otherwise. The more I learned, the more intrigued I became. I realized that you were changing the game, Rafael, not just moving the pieces around. I want to play chess and you want to play marbles, but I won’t allow your transient loyalties to ruin my plan this late in the game.”
“What have you done to her?” Rafael asked, moving slowly to Mina’s side.
“I’ve captivated her,” Daeva said. “She’s thinking wet, clinging thoughts right now. I could make her picture butterflies and open fields, but I think I’d rather she see this.” He held up another piece of paper. This one was a drawing all in red ink, sharp slashes that didn’t seem to delineate anything to Rafael, but Mina moaned and a moment later began to cry.
“Stop it!” Rafael knelt down beside her and reached out to turn her head, to cut her free, to do anything, but Daeva’s voice stopped him cold.
“Touch her and you’ll destroy her mind.”
“What magic is this?” Rafael muttered desperately.
“Not magic. Hypnosis,” Daeva corrected. “Very specialized hypnosis, aided by a few choice hallucinogens. I’m the only one who can release her safely from her trance, and only while not under duress, I might add. Any interruption in her focus will produce very messy results.”
Rafael stared at Mina, helplessly watching the tears roll down her cheeks. “You said you would leave them alone.”
“That was before I thought you really might betray the cause.”
“It was never my cause!” Rafael shouted. “All I wanted was to kill High Ones, not sign on to your self-serving revolution!”
“Then you’re a fool for letting me use you.” Daeva smiled unpleasantly. “And you were planning on killing me, weren’t you? I would have gone after you, had our positions been reversed. As it is, I have you now, and I’ll keep you, won’t I? Otherwise I’ll have to do some cruel things to this poor young girl’s mind.” He held up another piece of paper, this one all black except for one bright red spot in the center of it, and when Mina saw it she began to scream, her eyes widening with horror.
“Change it!”
“Not yet, I think,” Daeva replied. Mina began to pull at her bonds, writhing frantically. Her wrists were being rubbed bloody on the rope he had used to tie her down.
“Fucking change it!” Rafael yelled, less of a demand than a plea as he reached for her hands to hold them down, keep her from damaging herself further.
“No touching,” Daeva reminded him. “And I will change the image, once I have your assurance that when the High Ones come here, which I’ve no doubt they will, you will fight for me. I particularly want you to make sure Myrtea is taken care of. I have no desire to see her again while her head is still attached to her body. Kill her, and I’ll release the girl.”
“Agreed.” Rafael had been planning on it anyway. He simply had a more pressing reason to do it now.
“Good.” Daeva raised another sheet, this one cream colored with splotches of yellow and green. Mina quieted, relaxing back into the chair, but her complexion was turning sickly.
“What have you done now?” Rafael asked.
“Many subjects interpret this image as illness,” Daeva said. “It will keep her docile, none of that distressing screaming and crying, and it will keep you from getting any ideas as well. If she retains this image for too long, her body will start to fail.”
Rafael stared at Daeva, sitting so smug and calm in his chair. Daeva thought he knew what to expect when the High Ones came, he thought he had the advantage of numbers…but Rafael knew, with utter certainty, that no matter what happened tonight, Daeva would die. Rafael also knew right then that he wouldn’t be the one to kill him, and it helped him to relax some.
“Comforting thought?” Daeva inquired in polite tones as Rafael sat down on the low table just behind Mina.
“Quite.” He didn’t bother to explain and Daeva didn’t waste more breath asking.
“Would you care to tell me how you escaped from the Upper City?”
“You’ve seen the fire, haven’t you?” Rafael asked sarcastically.
“Yes, quite the explosion. And at full noon, too. You know, you probably killed more High Ones in that single moment than in all your years of hunting them for me.” Daeva sounded pleased.
“I know.”
“Is that how your master perished?”
Rafael shook his head. “I have no idea where Xian is now,” he said truthfully. “The sun or the fire could have taken him.” Hadn’t, hadn’t, hadn’t, his mind repeated anxiously. “He and Myrtea seem rather intent on destroying each other, from what little I saw.”
“Ah yes, the flip side of love and hate,” Daeva sighed. “How well we both know it. Given the strength of our own passions, how much worse must it be for them, who have had centuries to feel for one another? The sensations must be…” Daeva closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. “…absolutely excruciating.”
Rafael said nothing, just kept his eyes on Mina, watching sweat break out on her brow and neck, and her chest hitch alarmingly. After a moment of silence, Daeva went back to his paperwork.
Jill periodically came to relay news to her leader, her anxiousness having absolutely no effect on Daeva. Nearly one-quarter of the upper city had fallen apart, and two-thirds of the dividing wall was also gone. No bodies of High Ones had been retrieved yet, but several had been seen bursting into flames. Daeva tutted regretfully at the waste but otherwise remained silent. Rafael listened and watched Mina, and silently prayed that Xian would arrive before he was driven to kill Myrtea, and in doing so leave Mina alone. If Daeva didn’t kill her, a High One would.
The shadows came, darkening the room, slowly darkening the city. Every minute was another chance for Xian to arrive, but every minute turned into another false hope. When the sun set entirely, Rafael felt his heart drop out of his chest with it. Xian wasn’t here. It had been more than enough time for him to have recovered, and he could move in the dangerous dusk, but he wasn’t here. Either he was dead, or captured or… It didn’t matter. Rafael refocused his thoughts with a wrenching effort. Mina. He had to think of Mina. Rafael had an hour to get her free or Feysal would come here and he would die.
Pounding footsteps thudded up the stairs and raced down the hall. “Daeva!” Jill shrieked, throwing the door open. “They’re coming! The High Ones are coming, and some of them are… They’re glowing!”
“Glowing?” Daeva frowned. “In what sense?”
“In the sense that they’re lighting up the sky like fucking fireflies, that’s what!”
Daeva turned toward Rafael suspiciously. “What sort of magic is that?”
“I’ve no idea,” Rafael replied. “Magic has never been my interest. I assume it’s something bad for you.”
“Get the archers ready,” Daeva said to Jill. “Fire arrows. That element seems to be particularly troublesome for High Ones this day. And if some of them are glowing, it simply makes them better targets in the night.” Jill fled and Daeva changed his focus.
“You”—he pointed at Rafael—”go down and find Myrtea.”
“I think I’ll wait for her here,” Rafael said with as much nonchalance as he could muster.
Daeva’s eyes narrowed. “Do I need to remind you that I can kill this child at any time?”
“If I leave, you might indeed kill her at any time. Then my motivation to help you
would be gone. If you want me to fight for you, I have to be assured of her continued existence. For that I need to be here until Myrtea is spotted.”
Daeva looked uncomfortable for the first time, even worried. “If she gets into this room, it will be too late for all of us.”
The sounds of battle began now, shouts of expectation turning to fear and pain. The clash of weapons rang into the night, rising above the dissonant cries, and the glow of fire began to spread.
“Go and find her.”
“No.”
“Go and find her or I put the girl in such agony that she will scream her mind to pieces before she dies!” Daeva threatened, his eyes wild now.
“No.” It wasn’t Rafael who spoke now. Both men turned toward the door and the dark-robed nightmare that stood there. It was Xian, and Rafael wanted to go to him immediately, but there was nothing he could do now except hope that his master could get them out of the twisted coil Daeva had bound them in.
“I thought you had to be dead,” Daeva muttered. “Your lovers would not dare leave you alive to torment them.”
“You are a clever man, very well informed,” Xian said softly, stepping farther into the room and shutting the door then bolting it. “You think like a High One with centuries of practice at looking ahead. Yet you’re not quite perfect, Daeva. You’re hindered by your own emotional limitations.” He moved to the long, thin glass window that looked out over the courtyard and unlatched the frame, then swung it open. The screams of strife rose more clearly to their ears. “If you can’t picture doing something yourself, you have a hard time imagining anyone else doing it. You know obsession but not willing sacrifice.”
“Is that what this is?” Daeva asked, his voice harsh and anxious. “Your apprentice sacrificing this girl, sacrificing himself, so you could kill me?”
“Not even close.” Xian moved away from the window. “This is about teaching you a lesson. Expanding your horizons, so to speak. Giving you a chance to become that which you never imagined you could be. A willing sacrifice.”
“You cannot force me to go down there,” Daeva blustered. “Not with the girl like this! Soon she will die if I don’t free her.”
“I have no intention of forcing you to do anything,” Xian said. “I have no need.”
A note rang out in the courtyard, a clear, pure tone that somehow lifted above the killing and penetrated the small room. Daeva froze.
“Your mistress is calling you,” Xian told him, his voice low. “You should go to her.”
No… Daeva’s lips shaped the word but his mouth wouldn’t speak it. The tone sounded again and his eyes turned unwillingly toward the door.
“Not that way,” Xian murmured. “The door is locked, it will take too long. She wants you now.”
The fear was still there in Daeva’s eyes, but now not even his lips seemed able to move. He took one slow, shambling step toward the window.
“Yes,” Xian praised him. “Exactly. That’s the way. You have to go now, Daeva. Myrtea is calling you.” The tone came a third time, and whatever had been activated inside Daeva at the sound was now wholly in control of his body, if not his mind. He moved out from behind his desk, went around Mina and Rafael and stood in front of the window. The opening was shorter than he, and slender, but Daeva’s ascetic frame could squeeze through, and after another moment he did so, stepping into the aperture and standing there for a moment, wavering. Then he jumped, falling forward into space and down two stories to the crowded plaza below. He didn’t scream. He didn’t make a sound.
Chapter Twelve
“Xian—no, we need him to—” Rafael finally found his voice, too late to do any good.
“No, we don’t,” Xian assured him, stepping over to Mina and kneeling beside her. Her skin had gone gray, her eyes had rolled back into her skull and she was trembling unstoppably. “If we were to try and bring her out with hypnosis, yes, but we aren’t. There is a simple spell that can break this, with enough power behind it.” Taking up his athame, he sliced a thin line over the back of his hand. “Give me the quill from his desk.”
Rafael handed the plume over and watched raptly as his master dipped the pointed nib into his blood, then raised it to Mina’s face. He drew dark lines beneath her eyes and across her temples, a thin one down the length of her nose and over her lips, and after another dip he drew a circle on her forehead, thick and heavy. “Get out the blood.”
Erran’s blood. Rafael hated to touch it, but he withdrew the vial from where it was secured. Xian handed him the quill. “Put one drop on the end of this, then put it away. Carefully, pet.”
Rafael worked the edge of the stopper up, prying at the lead until there was a small hole. The scent of immortality filled the room, celestial flowers and warmth and love and the sharp acridity of suffering. Rafael touched the edge of the nib to the vial and watched a drop of silver liquid adhere to it. He handed it hurriedly to Xian, then folded the lead down again, securing the precious liquid as best he could before returning it to its pocket beneath his tunic.
Xian took the quill and dropped the dot of Erran’s blood in the center of the circle on Mina’s forehead, then placed his hands on her cheeks and kissed her lips, whispering something into her mouth. The marks glowed brightly for a moment, illuminating both their faces with a pale radiance before dying out. As the light disappeared, so did the blood itself, until all that was left was Mina, lifting her head and looking at them in confusion.
“What… Rafael?” She made as though to lift a hand toward him, then looked down where her wrists were still tied. “What happened?”
Xian cut the ropes holding her down and Rafael helped her up, bringing her quickly into an embrace. “You were taken by an enemy, but you’re fine now,” he told her. “We have to get you back to Feysal.”
“If we want to avoid another conflict with Myrtea, we’ll have to go fast,” Xian said, glancing down through the open window. “She’s nearly finished with Daeva.”
“I thought he was dead!”
“Just broken, after that fall, and not even that would keep him from her at this point. He has to respond. She built that fail-safe into him years ago. Myrtea has always had a talent for planning ahead.” He turned back to Rafael. “You keep the girl safe, I’ll cut us a path out of here. We’ll go out the back, I think. There are fewer High Ones that way, and the last thing we need right now is to be mobbed by falling stars.”
“Falling stars?”
“The glowing ones, pet. They’ve overdosed on Erran’s blood, it makes them incredibly powerful but incapable of much thought beyond a simple directive. Be ready to move fast.”
“All right.” Rafael felt entirely out of his depth now. He hadn’t known his master could do magic, had thought in fact that Xian disliked having anything to do with it outside necessary uses for his craft. It was another illustration of just how much Rafael didn’t know about Xian, and it didn’t help his confidence any.
Xian came close to him and kissed him briefly, almost chastely. “I’ll explain everything when we’re safe, pet. I promise.” Then he turned and unbolted the door, and Rafael followed him, keeping Mina close.
The fighting had broken inside, and there were already bodies to step around as they made their way down the stairs, but it was the work of moments for Xian to clear a way to the front door. They stepped into the courtyard, darkly drenched with blood and bile and vomit, and Rafael saw that Jill was right. There were High Ones there that glowed, the silver of their hair and the whiteness of their eyes startlingly luminescent. They fought like demons, nearly mindless, taking ridiculous damage that healed almost instantly as they hacked and hewed. There was madness in every movement, and when one of them lunged at Xian, Rafael wondered if he’d be able to respond in time.
He should have known better. Xian’s athame blocked, his saber swung up, and with one rending blow the falling star was separated from his head. Not even the incredible amounts of magic he’d ingested to make him so bright and un
stoppable could bring him back from decapitation. Then Xian was moving and Rafael pulled Mina with him and followed.
They made their way toward the closest exit, a small, dark portal that led into a drainage ditch. Xian killed anyone in their path, normal human or High One, and Rafael focused on keeping Mina safely out of harm’s way. He glanced back once, just once, and saw for a moment Myrtea standing by the larger entrance, her skin repaired, her expression bland as she drew Daeva’s trampled body to her breast, holding him as if he were a child. His broken arms wrapped around her as best they were able to, but Rafael could see his face, and it was a mask of pure terror.
“Rafael.” Xian’s voice drew him out of his transfixion, and Rafael turned and handed Mina down the long drop into the vile ditch below the slaughterhouse, then followed.
Getting back to Feysal was difficult, but only because there were so many people moving against them. Mina was exhausted from an ordeal she didn’t remember and couldn’t have handled going to the rooftops, and so they fought their way through the crowd, Xian using force when he had to but thankfully not needing to kill, and finally they made their way back to Little Heaven.
Feysal was outside waiting for them, dressed and armed and clearly prepared to do his own mad dash through the city after his daughter. When he saw Mina the relief that spread over his face was beautiful, and when he had her in his arms and was hugging the breath out of her, Rafael let himself share in a little of that relief. He hadn’t completely failed… Feysal had his daughter back. That was something good, even if Rafael hadn’t been the one to save her in the end.
“Thank you,” Feysal choked out, his hands petting his daughter’s hair over and over again as he kissed her head.
“Are you prepared to leave?” Xian asked, ignoring the thanks.
“There’s no way for us to get out right now, the boats are all full,” Feysal said, collecting himself enough to look at Xian. He did a double take when Xian removed his hood, curiosity warring with urgency, but urgency won out. “Even if we could find a way out of Clare tonight, everything we own…all our money, all our goods are tied into my business.”