by Rabia Gale
And here it was, acting like one. A hurt and pained one.
I can help you. He breathed his thought out through his kyra, let each word roll off like dew from a blade of grass.
Drip-drop. I. Can. Help. The words dropped onto the sphere casing and sank through, urged on by a combination of ka and kyra manipulation he only half-understood.
And the ka brightened, just a bit.
Very gently, Rafe reached in and touched the ka. He thought of other ka he had known, the wild free ka of the Tors, the warm seas of it in the Talar, the clean and bright feel of the fibers he wove into his cane. I can help.
And slowly, ever so slowly, the ka responded.
It listened.
Carefully, he untwisted the worst tangle of it, unpicked the worst of the knots. It was slow work, requiring a light hand and a coaxing attitude. Much of the ka ignored him, but he had enough on his side that he could break the device and remove the cloak on his own abilities.
He hesitated. The use of brute force on the ka and the complete disappearance of the cloak would assuredly raise some alarms. The ka-system, abomination though it was, was complex and probably filled with booby-traps. He didn’t, for instance, like the core of it, which resembled a maze incestuously twined in on itself, presenting a spiky exterior, and he didn’t have time to understand how it worked.
But he didn’t need the entire cloak gone, did he? No, he needed only a hole that he could slip through. He could live with the headache of the device being turned on, if he could lull the Blackstonians into complacency and still use ka.
He worked the ka he’d co-opted into gentler loops, more generous curves. He felt the veil around his abilities change as he did so, went from black and thick and uniform to grayish and tissue-thin in some parts, cunningly hidden in the still-dark folds. To a cursory examination, the cloak would be unchanged.
The tear he made in it was almost invisible.
Rafe staggered back from the device, pulling back his senses. They’d been curved around the device, and as they bounced back, they bumped into a thin tube that led from the center of the device and up along the ceiling.
A rubber tube, instead of a chain.
Rafe angled his sight to examine it and saw that it contained a dark red liquid. He let his touch follow the tube, his vision and hearing also tracking it.
The tube was cool, filled with pressure. Brackets in the ceiling held it into place before it plunged down to where the cell’s occupant lay. A box-like shape with rods and bags around it was shadowy in his sight and the soft hiss of some kind of pumping machinery came to his ears.
Rafe’s foot—or his foot’s touching sensation—bumped against the figure, and this time it stirred and pushed the blanket off its head.
Rafe froze, pulled his senses back closer.
A man sat up, raised shaking hands to his scruffy, dirty face. Chains clinked. They fastened the man’s wrists together and shackled him to the wall. He peered about.
“Hullo?” he said, in a rasp that nonetheless had a hint of familiarity to it. “Anyone there?” It was a ghost of a voice, a once-hearty, cheerful, bumbling kind of voice.
It had an Oakhaven accent. And Rafe knew it.
Theo!
Rafe didn’t have a voice, of course. He hadn’t thought to bring it along. And it was probably not a good idea to shout Theo’s name in this cell.
He’d frighten his brother half to death.
Theo scratched his straw-thatch hair, grey with filth, but so similar to Rafe’s own. His eyes were narrowed with a squint—he was near-sighted and his spectacles had obviously not survived his incarceration.
The blood-tube emerged from under the cuff of one wrist.
Oh, Theo. So that’s why they took you. To get to me.
They were using his brother’s blood to keep the cloaking spell Rafe-specific.
And he knew exactly who had suggested using Theo and kidnapping him for this purpose.
Bryony. Their full sister.
And as Rafe looked at his trembling brother, his once-solid body shrunken, with the lines of pain and weariness etched on his face, anger sparked in the bleak, black hole Bryony had left when she’d betrayed Rafe.
She was striking back at the entire Grenfeld family and all of Oakhaven in punishment for the fact their father had declared her illegitimate. She’d teamed up with the evil Blackstone regime and the ruthless Karzov to do this. She was determined to topple governments, start wars, and kill people in order to have her revenge.
And he was furious with her for it.
It felt good to give into the feeling—this red anger that burned away his guilt for not having seen her true feelings, for not having done more to help her before she joined with Karzov. For the first time, he felt no remorse when he thought of her. For the first time, he didn’t shy away from the pain of her betrayal.
He relived it, unflinchingly. He let the anger flow into every cold, dark, and lonely place in his soul, let its fiery radiance suffuse him.
Bryony had done all this. There were no more excuses for her.
Rafe looked at the wraith his brother had become, still peering around blearily.
Don’t worry, Theo. I’ll come get you out. And then I’m going after Bryony.
And he stepped back into the cloak, which turned to mist around him, and back into his body.
Chapter Nine
Rafe
RAFE EXPLODED INTO ACTION—or tried to.
Unfortunately, his body had tilted to the side and his muscles had cramped up during the time he’d sent his kyra out from his body. What Rafe actually managed was flail out with his arms as his legs refused to stand. He hit his head against the wall and then slumped back down.
Aches and pains queued up for his attention. The cloaking spell was a background rasp of dull pain, like the throb from a hit over the head. Stabs went all the way up and down his legs, and his cane had fallen to the floor.
But he could see. Glory be to Selene and the Hidden God and whoever was out there—he could see.
A small empty chamber, full of shadows.
A narrow doorway leading out.
It was dingy and drab to his kyra-sight.
Not so with his ka-sight, which showed him currents of ka, streaming all over the place. Boundaries of green, fountains of red, sigils of blue and purple, waves of yellow.
He noticed a dearth of orange and wondered what it meant.
Orange ka, which he used for transformative magic. Not something that he had a good handle on yet. Orange, like the purple for memory and senses, was subtle and hard to control.
Rafe found his walking stick—the ka inside it was warm, familiar and responsive to his touch—and levered himself to his feet.
He was glad that neither Mirados nor Furin were there to see him.
Once, he wouldn’t have wanted to let Isabella see him in his moment of weakness, but they’d gone beyond needing to prove their strength or courage to each other.
Rafe was grateful for that.
And now he needed to help the others. He reached with his kyra, touched the cool silver that was Isabella, felt her recognition of him. Rafe?
I’m coming, he sent out. I can see again. I’m coming.
This place was designed for kayan.
Rafe didn’t know what the others had seen—blank walls, most likely. But to him it was a feast of color and movement.
Ka swam through all the walls, trickled across the floor, flooded the ceilings. Waves of ka, locked inside quartz, jewel-toned rivers rushing on forever. Rafe’s fingers tingled with the desire to reach out and take some for himself. When his hand reached out, involuntarily, it met resistance—a cool, membranous, slightly wet barrier. Rafe dropped his hand to his side, and pressed on.
Here and there the ka funneled away, rushing to parts and systems unknown. How much of it there was! Usable ka, more than he’d ever seen, sealed away on this island. Even the shahkayan of Suranyar with a thousand criminal sacrifices c
ould not create as much as this. The abundance of it nearly made him drunk, reckless with the proximity of power.
Once in a while, he came upon a break in the ka stream where something ugly and mechanical and mass-produced was jabbed into the wall. The ka wriggled away from these devices, but some of the magic was sucked inside. Rafe put his hand on one of the ka-collecting boxes; they were crude versions of his own faceted and polished smoky grey quartz, made of the same alloy as the device in Theo’s cell.
Blackstonian make, collecting ka for Blackstonian mages.
His hand tightened. Metal edges bit deep. He was tempted to rip it from the wall, to let the collected ka spill and seep into the walls and floor.
No. That might alert any guards. Save these symbolic gestures for another time. Instead he siphoned off a little ka from each collecting device, adding it to his own store.
He liked being prepared.
He kept his kyra-hearing ahead of him, alert for any signs of Blackstone guards. There were none, though at one point his foot clanked against something metal that scooted and plinked against the wall.
Rafe bent and groped for the object. His fingers closed around it. He couldn’t see the details, but he didn’t need to. It was a metal badge, shaped like a fist.
The badge of Blackstone’s Secret Police.
The back of his neck prickled. Rafe straightened and cast his kyra-sight around. But no Fist lurked in an alcove or waited around a corner to jump at him.
Someone dropped his badge. He had a hard time believing it, though. The badge he’d held in his hand the day the Oakhaven embassy had been arrested in Blackstone so long ago had taken blood and time and sweat to acquire. The Secret Fist were the elite assassins of Blackstone.
They didn’t just drop their badges.
Unless Isabella happened.
The thought cheered him up immensely.
Rafe slipped the badge in his pocket, started forward, then stopped. There was a break in the corridor, a place where the wall curved inward into a narrow niche, then flowed back out to the hallway. A narrow slit, less a door and more a cut, filled the back of the alcove.
A scent of aged air, vast spaces, and distant ka came from it.
Rafe hesitated, then pushed through. He stepped onto a narrow gallery, a rail-less ledge that ringed a vast, circular pit. Only a lip of stone prevented a potential misstep into the air beyond.
There was very little ka where he was. Threads of it flickered here and there on the wall, writhing away with a kind of urgency. Rafe edged out to the ledge, and felt hot, moist air on his face.
There was ka down there. Far, far away—so far away that he couldn’t see it at all, just feel the tug of it upon every ka-sense he had. He had the impression of great movement, in slow and stately currents. Once in a while, ka bubbled and fountained, sparking like distant fireworks. Definitely orange, maybe red, maybe purple.
There was more than just a reservoir of ka down there. It was a system. A system so big and complex that it was an entity on its own. It exhaled, and Rafe felt the cling of static on his face.
For all of its vast motion below, it was confined. Not dormant, no, but not agitated either.
He didn’t want to see what would happen if it boiled up. Rafe crept away from the pit, quiet and quick, lest he awake the thing by accident.
He might be a foolish, inexperienced kayan but even he knew better than to probe into some things.
Rafe heard the man’s stealthy footfalls and low breathing as if they came from right beside him. His skin crawled; he couldn’t help but glance around, even though he was blind. His kyra-sight was a few feet ahead while his hearing hung around a corner behind him.
This was too confusing. How could Isabella even do this? Disoriented, Rafe leaned heavily against the wall. He reeled his vision and hearing back to himself and strained.
Silence. The creeping man made no sound loud enough to reach his ears.
It was spooky.
Rafe teased out purple and yellow ka from his quartz crystal and wound it into a ball. He turned around, tossed it toward his pursuer, and watched it unspool.
A rush of shadow, a pounce. Glimpse of dagger, but Rafe was already springing. His walking stick cracked smartly across the Secret Fist’s head. He followed that up with two quick kidney jabs. The Fist kicked back, tried to smash an elbow into Rafe’s stomach. Yellow ka overexcited the air around the Fist’s hands, burning and stinging.
Rafe used the opening to poke him in the back of one knee. The man staggered, but grabbed the stick. There was a brief tussle, which Rafe won as the protections on his walking stick threw the man back.
No one touches this!
The man was a crouched shape on the ground. Instinct told him the Fist was going to pounce again. Rafe moved to the side and threw a ka net, stiff green and gummy yellow, over him. While the man struggled with the invisible strands, Rafe felled him with another blow from his stick.
Knocking out an alert, adrenalin-fueled adult with ka required a finer touch than Rafe could manage so far. In the meantime, the cruder techniques still worked.
Rafe prodded the prone body with his toe and debated whether another strike would ensure the man stayed still.
“Nice job.” Startled, Rafe swept the stick around. Isabella sidestepped it, her hand out. The stick smacked into her palm and she closed her fingers around it. Held it in place, despite the ka fizzing against her skin. He deactivated his spell.
Rafe breathed hard, his heart still racing. Her presence painted the surroundings with color once more, showing faded paint on the walls and grey stone shot with blue underfoot. The Fist was a heap of dark uniform and messy blond hair.
He didn’t look bloodied, to Rafe’s relief. Rafe wasn’t squeamish about getting rid of enemies, but he’d hate to have accidentally killed someone.
“Good to know that I can still sneak up on you,” Isabella commented. “Also good to know that you don’t need babysitting.” She looked pointedly at the fallen goon.
She still did not let go.
Rafe straightened from his crouch. “Nice of you to help out,” he said dryly, trying to tamp down that sudden rush of aggression. The heady rush left him a little shaky.
“You’re welcome. Especially since he had a friend.” Isabella let go of the walking stick, and Rafe tucked it back under his arm, still feeling ridiculously vulnerable.
All the crutches he relied on. The kyra, the ka-sight, the stick…
“We can’t leave a trail of unconscious bodies as we go,” said Rafe.
“We’re not here much longer. Mirados found it.”
“He what?”
If Mirados could find the scepter thing so quickly, why in Sel’s name did I have to come?
“Come on.” Isabella slipped away, down another corridor. Rafe followed, casting out his kyra, both sight and sound.
He didn’t like this. Not one little bit.
“Where—?” he began, then stopped as Isabella led him into an alcove. Mirados and Furin crouched there. Mirados smiled when he saw Rafe, held up a short staff with a quartz ball set into protective branches atop it.
The smile said, We didn’t need you after all.
“You sure this is it?” asked Rafe. He felt nothing of power from the staff. It was as blank to his ka-sight as a chair.
The smile disappeared. “Of course this is it!”
Isabella looked a question at Rafe. He replied, “I see no ka in this. It feels empty to me.”
“Maybe Kayan Rafe is not the world’s authority on ka,” drawled Mirados. “Because I feel the spells within this.”
Rafe looked again, closely, probed at the cloak that hedged him around still, to make sure it wasn’t blocking him. He shook his head.
“If Rafe says—” began Isabella.
“Then you are welcome to stay here with him to help him find it. I have what we came here for, and I’m going back to the submersible.”
“I’m not. They have my brother he
re. They’re using his blood to create specific magic against me. I’m not leaving without him.”
“Neither am I,” said Furin, quiet but firm. “Not until I know if the young kayan are here.”
“Now, look here—” began Mirados, his voice rising to a bellow. But Isabella interrupted him with, “They won’t go until they’ve seen to their family. You’re wasting your breath arguing.”
Mirados inhaled sharply, chest swelling. “Fine,” he hissed out, low and angry. “Ruin our expedition by running off on your own personal errands—“
“You should leave,” Rafe cut in. “If we’re not back in—”
Mirados pulled out a timepiece. “One stage, only.”
He left the alcove.
Isabella said, looking after him, “I should see him safely back. I’ll come find you.”
Be careful, Rafe thought to her. She hesitated, then responded. You, too. She, too, went away, soft-footed. The kyra bond stretched between them; they’d be able to find each other again, though his world was back to shadows now.
“I’ll need your help with Theo.” Rafe told Furin. “He’s in bad shape.”
Furin nodded. “You will keep your senses open for the kayan, yes?”
“I will.”
They mounted a marble staircase, whose carved railings were warm and humming under Rafe’s hands. The corridor here was broader and the ka took the shape of murals, dimmed with time, etched in the walls. To his left, a woman with white hair, brown skin, and startling blue eyes held a giant horn of plenty. The woman was dressed in a chiton very much like what the Monarians wore and her cornucopia overflowed with luscious peaches, spherical grapes, and a yellow crescent-shaped fruit Rafe could put no name to.
And yes, fruity scents wafted to his nose as he passed it.
There were doors to his right, snugly fitted within their doorways, made out of the same material as the paneling. To his ka-sight they blazed in showy colors—glittering greens, frosty blues, fiery reds, and heated pinks. An intricately-made icon covered each door. Rafe suspected they showed what kind of room each of the doorways led to. That stylized book covered in vines surely indicated a library of sorts, the emerald and sapphire waves lapping the sides of their oval frame might mean baths.