***
The chase only seemed to last moments, but Marta estimated she covered over three miles by the time she returned to where Caddie had been taken, the spot marked by Marta’s discarded haversack and the cawing Creature. The plans to the Armor dwindled with each step, and she feared if she took her attention from them even for a moment they would disappear totally. Her will diminishing, only through concentration could Marta keep the strange form around her as she set the girl down. Caddie immediately reached for the discarded bix sticks as Creature pecked at Caddie’s hands, the sticks, then her hands again. The girl roughly brushed him away.
Listening to Creature’s intermittent caws, Marta felt another strand of the foreign plans slip away. She lost another as she scanned the wood, her Shaper Armor flagging under the added effort. Hunting in the form had been effortless, but now that its need had expired, maintaining her defenses was becoming untenable.
An unusual bird hoot sounded from the tree line, and Marta wheeled. Luca’s straight-blade bared, Isabelle approached. Upon seeing a companion, Marta almost released her Armor. Then the memory of the black Breath returned, and she kept the fading Armor up and her body between Caddie and the half-Ingios woman. Isabelle did not seem to notice, and the only sound to disturb them was Creature.
Luca appeared a few minutes later from a different direction. His grin seemed strained, so she kept herself between him and Caddie as well. His eyes flicked between hers and the strange Armor around her.
“Where was she?”
“Glassman took her.”
Luca cursed again in the language she did not understand. “Can we ever shake her?”
“She can feel Caddie. Like a dog with a scent. She won’t ever stop.”
Marta saw Isabelle smile from the corner of her eye, an altogether unpleasant expression. Luca looked to her then nodded slightly.
“Then we best return her Breath to the flow. Can you kill her with that?”
“Yes, in a straight fight. Maybe. She doesn’t want to play at straight though. Attacks from our flanks, which means she’s not stupid. And she knows what we’re capable of now. Means she won’t bother to feint next time. She’ll go straight for our throats.”
“You’re sure of this?”
“It’s what I’d do.”
Luca cursed again, harsher this time. “Means we’re stuck on the ley all the—”
Creature’s cry of alarm spun Marta around. She fully expected another attack, but the sight still took her aback. Clutching Creature by the neck, Caddie held him aloft as he thrashed. The child ignored his beating wings to stare at her other hand and the splotch there. The wound was not much, no more than a peck with a bubble of blood just starting to swell.
“Caddie?”
The bubble burst, a slight stream of red running down the girl’s hand to tarnish her woven ring. Caddie’s head tilted as she watched it flow.
Marta was almost to her, but it was too late as the girl grasped the bird’s head. The swift twist of her hands seemed sure, practiced, and Creature twitched once before he went still.
“Caddie…”
The girl paid Marta no more attention than the crow’s corpse she held as she stared inches above it with unfocused blue eyes. Marta feared the girl had again succumbed to the battle fugue, but then the two Breaths rose from the bird’s body to hover where Caddie’s gaze already aimed. Afraid to break the spell by touching the girl, Marta watched.
Caddie inhaled, and blew the Breaths apart on her exhale. The two flew away like the dry heads of a dandelion caught in a gust of wind, speedily sailing several feet away until they lost their momentum and again began to drift. Without so much as another glance, Caddie dropped the bird’s body and returned to the bix sticks.
Luca and Isabelle now flanked her, but Marta ignored them as she crouched next to the crow’s corpse and indifferent girl.
“Caddie? Look at me.”
The girl continued to pick up the colored sticks in her indecipherable order. Very few remained when Marta caught Caddie’s wrist. Only as her hand enfolded the girl’s did Marta realize her Armor was gone. Caddie resisted, straining against the woman’s grasp, but she was just a child and Marta held her tight.
“Why did you do that?”
The blue orbs turned to bore into her. Usually they were blank and motionless, but now they wavered as if some behemoth thrashed beneath the waves and threatened to surface.
“Caddie?”
The child’s scream took Marta by surprise, Caddie shrieking louder than Marta would have thought possible. Inches from her, it was all Marta could do not to retreat. She almost did, but her eyes, locked with the child’s, saw the storm clouds draw back long enough to catch a glimpse of intent. Whatever was swimming deep in the girl’s mind was not unknowable, as Luca had intimated, rather raw and no better than an animal’s awareness. Caddie meant to frighten her, and to her shame, Marta realized she had flinched at the girl’s outburst.
That her hand not holding the girl reared back to strike Caddie took Marta even more by surprise. Her mother never resorted to blows, and she realized her reflexive response to violence with greater violence was not learned at home. And as that clarity came, she also recognized where the girl had learned to kill over a slight. She did not know how to respond with equal force, only to immediately escalate from the examples she had witnessed from Marta.
To strike the child challenging her authority was a trap, one she almost fell into, and with great effort, Marta lowered her hand. True, she had flinched, but she kept her voice steady and flat.
“You broke Creature, and now you won’t have your toy anymore. Two more rounds, and if the bix sticks aren’t picked up, I’ll break them myself. Then you’ll have nothing.”
Without waiting for a response, Marta rose and turned to the two adults as if the matter was settled. Yet she listened until she heard the slight clack of the sticks being picked up. Isabelle appeared amused; Luca aghast.
“I’ve seen too many unnatural things since I’ve met you, Marta Childress.”
This said from the man employed by her brother amused her as she wondered if any of Carmichael’s unaware instruments ever realized their tiny role in the Cildra’s grand game. Her brother again on her mind, she frowned.
“To dig through the dirt, one cannot expect to come out entirely clean.”
Luca’s forehead creased, but Marta did not let him ponder Carmichael’s favorite phrase long. “We travel again on the Vandiver Line, all the way to Broad Baird. I have kin there that will get us to Ceilminster, glassman or no.”
His eyes sought Isabelle’s before he nodded. “Can we ever sleep again now the bird’s gone? He could sense Waer’s black Breath.”
“For all the good it did us.”
Marta thought she saw worry cloud his smile for a moment, but then he turned his gaze to the crow’s corpse and grinned. “Still, it’s a shame. Do we bury or eat him now?”
“Leave him to rot. We don’t have time to cook anymore.”
Chapter 16
Iulius 20, 560 (Seven Years Ago)
Simza favored her bieta Bo in all things except bargaining with Saban. That duty always fell to Luca’s silver tongue, Simza allotting him an amount with the understanding he could keep half of any remainder. As such, his sessions with Saban became exercises in endurance, each politely inching the price pennies at a time until a consensus was reached that neither was particularly pleased with. Armed with an exorbitant amount and only the instructions that his capper be silver and worn against the skin, Luca made sure to bring a bottle of rum with him to cloud Saban’s judgement. The old man courteously thanked Luca for the gift, placing the bottle within his vurd to the bieta’s chagrin. Their session began at dusk, ending well into the night. Angling for a smaller, and therefore cheaper, ring, Luca finally handed over his cash to receive a silver bracer and thin smile from Saban.
A cat’s yowl greeted Luca as he returned to find Bo hitching up to Simza’s
largest vurd, the black animal’s green eyes tracking him from a cage barely big enough to contain it. Such one-on-one meetings with rich gaji intent on receiving a personal bix stick reading from the Ikus matriarch was not unusual, but the animal and Simza’s quick examination of his procured bracer without asking for any change certainly was. Luca hesitated a moment before handing the money over, Simza barely noticing before waving it away. Staring off into the deepening night, she ignored both her bietas until Bo climbed up to the seat.
“No.” Both men froze, unsure as she again perused the stars. “Luca will accompany me tonight.” Bo blinked incredulously, Simza cutting him off before he could raise his objection. “I need another Listener tonight.”
Bo handed Luca the reins, only to be surprised again when Simza stepped to the seat and gestured for them to help her up. After much lugging, she finally perched high on the seat.
“Your pocket watch,” she said to Bo to earn his horror. “We’ll return it soon as we’re done.” Swallowing his hurt, Bo handed over his prized watch, Simza ignoring it until Luca took it.
“East,” she said. “Follow the ley until the nearest nodus, but go slow. We need to arrive shortly before midnight.”
They made their slow curl through the darkness in silence, only the cat daring to disturb them with halfhearted mewls. Although the Dobra were considered neutral in all things, a disagreeable necessity to the citizens of Newfield, Luca always felt more welcomed in the East. But their wolari currently resided deep in the West on the outskirts of Hayfield. Few of the welcoming Weavers lived this deep in the Walshvan state, only Render kirks scattered among the towns. And while he was sure no one would accost them, the Dobra’s real safety came in numbers.
Finding the ley was easy enough, Luca using its light to navigate the road, but staying far enough away to avoid headaches. The hardest parts were keeping the horse’s pace so artificially slow and not asking what they were about. He could feel Simza’s disquiet beside him, but dared not intrude.
A second glow ahead signaled the nearing nodus, and Luca checked the proffered pocket watch. “Thirty minutes until midnight.”
Simza emerged from her thoughts with a snort. “The man we’re meeting with, he adheres to the Render way. Quite fervently at that. He hates us, Luca, with all his heart. Yet he wants something imbued and I do not fully trust him. So you will Listen to him with me, and if you sense any ill-intent, we will walk away without another word. If he still has words with us, you will silence them.”
Luca nodded, tension climbing into his shoulders, only to dissipate when they arrived at the clearing around the nodus. Even the churning lights between them could not bestow color to the man’s pale face, his hollow cheeks deepened into caverns by the flickering shadows. Considering how he struggled under the weight of his satchel, Luca saw no reason to fear him, though Simza held up her hand at the man’s approach.
Light-blind from the nodus, he peered a long while. “What’s your man doing there? You said we meet alone.”
“No,” Simza intoned with a hard enough edge to halt his hand halfway inside the sack. “I never said such a thing. We have never met, you and I.” The man seemed confused as she looked over the clearing and addressed the trees. “And as we are just met, I ask that you prove you mean us no harm by opening your Mind to my son here. He is a Listener and will be able to tell if you harbor us any ill will.”
“Outrageous!” the man huffed. “What sort of upjump Dobra hugger-muggery is this? Do you think yourself Guardsmen that I would allow you into my head? You aren’t even citizens, no better than Gazers. The sheer affront of it!”
He might have gone on, but Simza fished Bo’s watch from Luca’s pocket and checked the time. “You’ll forgive us if we depart. It’s nearly midnight, and it’s ill fortune to attend the ley crossroads at that dark hour. Only Waer stalks them then, ready to make a deal with the desperate. As we are not desperate, we can only assume you to be Waer and will bid you and your deal a goodnight.”
With a nod from Simza, Luca drew the reins up to snap upon the horses’ backs.
“Wait.” The man hurried over. “Do whatever you will. I will not fight you.”
Up close, Luca did not need to be a Listener to see the man’s need. If an actor, he deserved to be lauded for his performance, and Luca sensed no deceit when he pressed into the man’s open Mind. What he found instead was the sickness, an illness eating him from the inside. Not two months ago he had been hale and hearty, but now wasted away by the hour. The sickness consumed not only his body, but his mind as well, the man’s thoughts never traveling in any direction long before lurching back to the idea of his impending death. The fear of that inevitable eventuality consumed him hand in hand with the wasting sickness, making him desperate and dangerous, but not deceitful.
“He is alone and ready to deal,” Luca announced, happy to be out of the man’s rotting head. Simza handed him a key.
“Inside, to the left of the door, you’ll find an altar with a sack. Bring me those and touch nothing else. And step quick, it’s nearly time.”
Without waiting for his assistance, Simza heaved herself off the seat and toddled to the man with the cage in hand. Luca scurried to the back of the vurd to throw open the door. An odd, sweet scent of herbs and dust tickled his nostrils, but Luca averted his eyes from their sources as he found the small stone altar and sack. Despite both its weight and his intention to avoid tarrying too long, he still spied Ostelinda’s box and his skin crawled. He felt like a trespasser in Simza’s sanctuary, a swimmer diving too deep into an alien and unwelcoming realm.
Straining under the weight of the small shrine, Luca waddled to Simza and the impatient mark. She did not share his state as she casually turned several more pages of his offered book before indicating to Luca where to set the altar down. Drawing a dagger and several draughts from the sack, Simza splashed the latter onto her hands. Then, speaking in a language Luca did not know, she anointed first herself and then the man. With a flourish, the silver capper Luca acquired appeared in her hand, Simza gingerly setting it into the slight concave indentation of the altar. Visually tracing the altar’s edges, Luca noticed the grooves.
In ages long past, it was said men sacrificed animals to Sol, returning to him his own Breath from hapless creatures as if that might somehow please their dead deity. Those antique ancestors were clearly savages, the tradition of sacrifice eventually disappearing from Ayr with one exception: for the imbuing of objects. Every Dobra the world over claimed to deal in such gramarye, but only the Ikus spoke marrow true, and only a select few. Over his twenty years, Luca caught sight of five objects he truly believed to be imbued, but never expected to actually witness the process with his own eyes.
“Attend me there,” Simza told the man, indicating the far side of the altar so his back was to the nodus. Not waiting for him to comply, she reached in to catch the thrashing cat by the throat.
“Black. The black work requires blackness first.”
Cradling the cat with one arm under its chest and her fingers splayed around its throat, Simza shushed at it several times to no avail. But when she spoke in the strange language again, the cat quieted, its eyes watching her and not the knife she wielded in her other hand. Her slice was quick and clean, nicking the neck and letting the cat bleed out rather than attempt a beheading. The creature struggled less than Luca anticipated, quieting as its life drained away until Simza held it upside down by the feet to let the last of the blood cover and pool around the silver bracer. As the altar’s grooves did their work channeling the blood away, the bracer emerged slick, shining, and almost black in the light of the nodus.
Now clearly enunciating and nearly singing her strange language, Simza snatched the bracer and replaced it with the dying cat. Bathed in its own disappearing lifeblood, the sacrificial cat finally breathed its last and two Breaths escaped its corpse. Rather than naturally floating as if caught in separate invisible currents, the Breaths rose straight into the
air, as if drawn by Simza’s chants. Each passed, one right after the other, through the silver bracer dyed red with cooling blood before returning to Sol’s flow towards the nodus.
“It is done,” Simza announced. Instead of handing the imbued bracer to the anxious man, she gave it to Luca to pass along. Still slippery with blood, the bracer was so cold it hurt Luca’s hand. “The black work is done and the charm complete. So long as you wear this against your skin, you will live out your natural life. I cannot say how long that will be, only that it will not be the wasting sickness that severs Sol’s threads holding your Breath together. You will, one day, return to the flow. But it will not be for many years and not from what currently eats away at you.”
Still holding the bracer out of the dying man’s reach, Luca did not need to Listen to know Simza held their mark in her thrall. Had she instructed him to murder his wife for the promise of a few more years, Luca knew he would. This Render adherent was her utter servant, and Luca did not know why he suddenly hated some nameless man for simply doing Simza’s bidding as he handed the imbued bracer over.
“Shake the pedestal, but don’t bother to wipe it,” Simza told him. “Let the blood stain it a bit more.”
The altar already looked black enough to Luca.
***
Stricken by what he saw, Luca presumed Simza kept her silence in shared solemnity to the sacred event they both partook in. Now a witness to the Ikus’ secretive bloodletting, he felt more a part of the tribe than ever before. Every grubber Ikus bragged at owning an imbued object, but no grubber could truthfully state he had seen one made. Luca, in no uncertain terms, had, which put him on a level equal to Bo, if not above.
The weight of the realization pressed down upon his shoulders, a yolk binding him to Simza that he might yet wear as a mantle. Setting a much quicker pace back to camp, Luca still considered what his new status would be when Simza broke into coughing fits. Fearing she overexerted herself during the ritual, Luca reached for her before he realized his mistake.
The Imbued Lockblade (Sol's Harvest Book 2) Page 17