The Imbued Lockblade (Sol's Harvest Book 2)

by M. D. Presley

  “Tell Father his daughter has returned.”

  The servant ushered her inside to a sitting room before quickly departing without a word. The speed of her step heartened Marta a bit as she breathed in the room her mother always favored for her salons and suddenly knew, deep in her bones, she was finally home.

  ***

  Luca made good time despite the weight of the unconscious girl over his shoulders. His legs refused to tire, spurred on by his hope as he followed the ley. The road appeared, as he knew it would, and provided him an even quicker path to Gatlin. The late hour ensured it was deserted, and he strained his ears for any approaching disturbance.

  Caddie sighed, and Luca halted. He feared she was already awakening, but the girl’s breathing remained regular and her eyes shut. He was relieved they did, afraid to meet her blank stare. Returning to his trot, Luca suddenly found the silence stifling.

  “I don’t regret this. I honestly don’t, and that’s the marrow truth. And you’ll understand when you see her. That too is the marrow truth.”

  But his words rang false, and Luca increased his stride to race the encroaching silence home.

  ***

  Marta missed the footfalls, so the doors swinging wide to reveal her mother took her off guard, as did Cecelia Childress’ fading smile upon seeing her. It returned a second later, but Marta caught its flicker as her mother approached with her hands outstretched.

  “If I had known it was you, Martita, I would have sent for sweets.”

  Having escaped the rough wastes of the state of Lacus to join the Cildra aristocracy, Marta’s mother seldom used the Ispan-influenced words of her homeland, the only exception being the diminutive of Marta’s name. The familiarity touched Marta’s heart, but she could not help but notice her mother did not embrace her as Cyrus had. Marta grasped her mother’s soft offered hands in her rough ones.

  “Which daughter were you expecting?”

  Cecelia Childress flinched away, her smile again disappearing. “One can always hope, dear. Against all this,” she gestured with a flair of her shoulders, “sometimes all we have is hope.”

  Her mother’s dress seemed familiar, Marta recalling it from before the war. The elder Childress straightening under her daughter’s stare, both women well-aware of the dress’ age. Marta’s eyes trailed to her mother’s face. It too was worn, the new wrinkles and gray laced into her dark plaits, making her stare even more severe.

  “And you, Martita? How have you faired?”

  Seeking to escape her poor upbringing, Cecelia Childress always projected proper formality, yet it always rang false to Marta’s ears, not quite matching the aristocratic cadence she grew up in. Instead, it sounded like an upstart putting on airs. Instead of real emotion, her mother offered rote pleasantries, a pattern she sought to shatter as Marta doffed her hat to display her Traitors Brigade brand.

  “Well. Yourself?”

  Her mother met her eyes steadily, actively ignoring the scar. “That… was regrettable.”

  “Unnecessary was what it was. And cruel. Carmichael’s kind of cruel.”

  “You will not speak ill of your brother!”

  Her mother’s constant siding with the monster Carmichael kindled Marta’s rage, but she tamped it down. To froth and fume would only diminish her further in Cecelia Childress’ eyes, and Marta refused to give her mother any additional ammunition.

  “Then we have nothing more to say. Where’s Father?”

  Her mother glanced away, a sure sign of a lie. “At his kennels, of course.”

  “The kennels are gone. Burned.”

  “The old ones, of course. We have been forced to rebuild since last you were here.”

  Some untruth still swam in her mother’s eyes, but Marta could not quite uncover it with her squint.

  “So I see.”

  ***

  Luca disappeared into the dark beside the road upon hearing the approach of a carriage. A fancy contraption, it nearly passed him before Luca recognized Petro’s bald head and a familiar crate tied to the back. Fearing the bieta did not hear his first call, Luca sprung from the darkness to be greeted by the man pulling the horses to a halt.

  The carriage did not come to a full stop before Jaelle exploded from the door, nearly causing Luca’s heart to burst. Her skirts gathered, she ran for all she was worth. He wanted nothing more than to race into her open arms, but her beauty arrested him. Even adorned in mourning black, she stole his breath. His lips futilely tried to form her name, but were rendered alien things until she pressed hers to his. Only then did time return as he melted into her.

  Everything he had ever aimed for was finally within his grasp, only the weight of the girl upon his shoulders keeping him from holding Jaelle in his arms. Gently setting Caddie down, he grasped his love around the waist and found her eyes. Somehow they had grown even lovelier, and it was all Luca could do to look away from them at the black she wore.

  “She insisted on mourning wear.”

  Simza’s voice took Luca by surprise, and he wondered how long he had been captivated by Jaelle so as to miss his matriarch’s approach. Simza spied his surprise as she drew the two into her arms. “They kept all the suitors away.”

  “As I waited for you,” Jaelle finished.

  Tears tickled Luca’s eyes, his voice choked off under Simza’s embrace. She eventually released him, though her daughter did not.

  “Isabelle?” Simza asked, her hand reflexively grasping at something under her dress.

  “She is… We have gone our separate ways.”

  “A shame.”

  “It is,” Luca whispered. All eyes fell to the unconscious girl at their feet.

  “You always bring the best gifts, my dear boy.” Simza’s head tilted as she considered him again. “Or should I say, my son?”

  Her praise was welcome as desert rain, and Luca demanded more as he produced the luz jar with the buzzing amethyst Breath. Puzzlement creased his matriarch’s forehead.

  “The Blessed Breath of the greatest living Render. Another gift for you.”

  It was Simza’s turn to be tongue-tied as she accepted Graff’s stolen Breath. Both of Luca’s thefts were priceless, but he traded them away without a second thought as he pulled Jaelle closer.

  ***

  In her youth, Marta played spot-the-lie along with all the other Cildra children. In the early iterations of the game, half the children would turn their backs while the others snuck up to touch and select one of them. Then they would assemble in their own line, the two sides facing each other. The touched children then asked each of the others if he or she was the one to pick them. Those questioned would all, of course, answer no, and it was the duty of the touched players to ferret out their specific liar. As the children grew older, the lines disappeared, two Cildra scions sitting opposite each other and seeing how many lies they could unload in an apparently innocent conversation without being caught. Never as skilled as her siblings, Marta took solace in that her mother never honed her own lies through the Cildra crucible.

  “I saw Carmichael not two weeks past.” In spite of herself, Marta’s mother could not hide her interest. The fish now chasing her line, Marta reeled her in. “His position clearly wears on him. Makes him far too wan. He could hardly keep down more than broth.”

  The last line was an intentional lie to see if her mother spotted it.

  “It does not surprise me. Carmichael was always above such baser things like food.”

  Not countering Marta on the clear misinformation might mean nothing. More skilled opponents were known to weave intricate lies into their truths, but that was never her mother’s way. She instead withheld information, and Marta could see Cecelia Childress leaning forward with each of her deceits. “He kept rubbing his eye. Headache, I imagine. Driving him to distraction. That’s probably why he’s been making so many mistakes.”

  Cecelia snapped back upright as if slapped. “You will not speak ill of your brother, will not ever second guess hi
s judgement! He has been our one constant, our rock, our singular success!”

  “While Oleander and I the failures?” Marta replied as coolly as she could. Her mother sputtered at mention of her youngest, and Marta smelled blood. “But then why is it Father relies upon me rather than his golden child? Why is it he doubts Carmichael’s judgement so?”

  Again it appeared, the flicker of indecision, but Marta still could not reckon its meaning. “You know, don’t you? You know Father’s mind and his doubts, and so you fear for your son. That he’ll become a failure just like your daughters.”

  Just as suddenly as the indecision appeared, it was gone, her mother’s mask back in place. Unsure where she stepped incorrectly, Marta chewed over her words as her mother smiled. But it was not the smile of a victor, rather something brittle and unbalanced. The weakness was palpable.

  “You will have to ask your father yourself.”

  Suddenly the answer appeared in Marta’s mind. In truth, it had been there since she saw the burned-out kennels, but she had refused to acknowledge it. She still refused, and thrust the idea away like an unclean thing.

  “When will Father arrive?”

  “Why now, of course. He has just returned.”

  Her father always sang on his way back from the kennels, his baritone reaching home long before his body. It was possible this habit too disappeared after the Grand War, but Marta had heard no doors opening. With that realization, the final illusion fell away and she could no longer ignore the clear truth of her mother’s mental instability. The formally dignified matriarch of the Cildra clan was no more, Cecelia Childress reduced to blind delusion instead of embracing cruel truths.

  “Where is he now, Mother?”

  “His study, Martita. You know I refuse him his pipe anywhere else. Not that much has changed since you left us.”

  But it had, the former grandeur of Hillbrook Manor now reduced to nothing but mockery. It was all an obvious farce, she realized. Yet Marta had played her role in her father’s pantomimes all her life, so she saw no reason to shirk her duty now so near the end. Trudging to his study, she did not detect the familiar scent of his tobacco staining the air. She could see the flickering light coming from under the door, however. Proper manners demanded that she knock, but she knew the occupant would be incapable of opening the door for her. Summoning her empty palm, she picked the lock to her father’s study, slowly opening the door to greet the awaiting gast.

  Chapter 22

  Weodmonad 13, 563 (Four Years Ago)

  He did not believe she would survive the trek, yet Luca bore the Ingio girl back to camp. She was such a slip of a thing, all gangly limbs and jutting angles. Sure each of her shallow breaths would be her last, Luca fought back against oblivion with his silver tongue. He babbled to the unconscious girl about anything and everything, telling her every Dobra tale he knew before inventing a few. When the stories deserted him, Luca regaled her with his life, leaving nothing out. He hoped she would answer him, if just to shut him up, but her only utterances were both guttural and guttering.

  Turning the nameless girl over to Simza and Jaelle soon as he reached camp, Luca learned she went into paroxysms as soon as he left. It took all of Simza’s esoteric arts to keep the girl’s tenuous thread from snapping and her Breath from returning to the flow. Even Lela joined the fray, the three women working through the night and then the next few days. Finally sure she would not survive, they brought him back to Simza’s vurd to say farewell. Unsure how she learned his name, the women insisted the girl muttered “uca” numerous times.

  Sat beside her in the stuffy wagon, Luca looked over her ruin. Based on the bruises, the girl’s assailant took more than her mutilated tongue, but Luca refused to acknowledge her pitiful state as he laid his hand across her forehead.

  “That’s enough of your malingering. Time to get up and show everyone the stuff you’re made of.” His bluff ringing false even to his own ears, Luca leaned in close. “You’ve had it rough, rougher than anyone rightly deserves. And holding on, it’s hard. So if you find it’s too much, you just let go. There will be other lives for you, so no reason to cling to what’s bitter. There is other sweetness out there, and you just need to let go to find it. So please, just let go.”

  A hand clutched his shoulder, Luca looking up to find Jaelle beside him with tears mirroring his own. Following her gaze to the girl, Luca thought she might have finally succumbed to her piteous state. Yet no Breaths rose from her corpse, and he found her hand in his to wait out the next night as she slumbered peacefully.

  ***

  A sleepless week wore on as Luca watched over the girl. The women did the real work, but Luca never left her side as she slowly crawled out of her convalescence. Her increasing consciousness never a continuous thing, the four Listeners did their best to piece together her past, though it was Luca who gathered her name. Her surname confused them as either Fitzer to Waioot, but her first name was easy enough to ascertain, Luca welcoming Isabelle back to awareness every chance he could.

  The girl did not think in Acwealt. Instead, it was an Ingios tongue no one could get their heads around despite hundreds of Acwealt words littered about her head. In the disarray that was her Mind, these words were scattered debris she was forced to hunt in her rare moments of lucidity. Having encountered others who spoke different languages, Simza assured them this was normal and that they would be able to glean much from the impressions in her head. A cup could be called many different things, she said, but was still just a cup when imagined.

  Yet Isabelle still confounded the other three.

  Luca understood her though. Her foreign words made no sense, but as he strung them into sentences, he discerned her story. It took several weeks of recovery to weave it together, but he eventually learned her father hailed from Newfield, his name Edward Fitzer and a man infected with a strain of wanderlust Wanderer Dobra knew all too well. Setting out with a hunting party, a sudden summer storm washed them over a cliff. Edward was not the only survivor, but he was the only one to remain with the Nahut tribesmen that rescued them. Why her mother, Merda Waioot, married him Isabelle did not understand any more than why she accepted his proffered Newfield names for their children instead of Nahut ones. Unlike the Ikus, which reasoned all children belonged to the mother that bore them rather than the man who sired them, the Nahut maintained the father to be the progenitor. So although she grew up among them and knew no other world, to the Nahut she was one of the Newfield folk that continually chased their herds farther away from the mountains they called home in the state that still bore their name.

  As his oldest of four children, Isabelle was the apple of her father’s eye and constantly heard of the big cities that he had once called home. These stories held no call to her, but she loved her father, so when he wished to return to visit his kin, she accompanied him. Their goal was Cobre Oaks, a tiny town on the edge of Ingios territory, but the chi-hoo-atgo set upon them long before they arrived.

  It took Luca several sessions to discover the meaning of “chi-hoo-atgo,” and when he realized she described a glassman, he shivered. Wearing the clothes of a Newfield citizen and bearing a scar across his face, the monster spoke with her father in Acwealt for quite a while before attacking. Unconcerned by her hardy father, the monster that wore a man’s face took its time with Edward Fitzer, plucking first his hands then his forearm before tearing the whole arm away at the shoulder.

  She should have run, but Isabelle drove her stone knife into its side with all her strength. The chi-hoo-atgo only cocked his head, ignoring the jutting knife as it caught her. It again spoke in a language she scarcely knew before laughing a cruel peal Luca understood all too well. The girl did not comprehend the words, but Luca caught them in her memory.

  “You will tell no one of what you won.”

  Then it tore out her tongue with its bare hand. Discarding the maimed girl beside to her dying father, the scarred glassman then departed to let time finish her off.

/>   Luca could piece little else together except Isabelle believed she would not have survived had he not rescued her. He assured her this was not the case, that he had done little other than transport her to Simza to administer the real rescue. Upon his assurance, the girl bowed her head and concentrated as hard as she could in her indecipherable language.

  Luca felt Simza beside him extending her Mind, the woman eventually shaking her head. “What’s she on about now?”

  “She swears herself to your service.”

  “Hmm.” Simza shrugged. “Best we put the little dear to work, then.”

  ***

  The work in question remained a question for nearly a month. Although more than willing, the girl was still too weak to do anything of any use. She offered to hunt squirrels with a sling she fashioned from some castoff leather, but Luca pointed out such little morsels would not serve the whole wolari. So she followed him like a puppy at heel, silently soaking up every word he said. As she was an outsider, he could not properly explain the reasoning behind Simza’s tasks, so he simply said “because Simza says” every time she mentally inquired.

  His training of the boys in the art of the lockblade intrigued her, the girl with the audacity to pluck her own stick to join the fray. But each boy begged off sparring with her, saying she was still too wounded to make it fair. In true Dobra fashion, they spoke around the truth, but Luca knew Isabelle understood they believed it unseemly to overcome a girl.

  If nothing else, she was clever, as she demonstrated by latching onto Acwealt words with aplomb. She still thought in the language of her people, but at least she increased their shared vocabulary despite lacking the syntax.

  The other Listeners still found it difficult to unravel her thoughts though.

  That did not stop Jaelle from taking to her, insisting Isabelle share her wagon as she decked the girl out in her outgrown clothes. Simza argued against it, but could not dissuade her daughter, and so Isabelle seethed at remaining in the vurd Luca wished more than anything to inhabit. Jaelle truly cared for Isabelle, of that he was certain, but treated her like a pet—a position not lost on Isabelle—and for the life of him, Luca could not understand how his Listener love remained oblivious to this fact.