by Rabia Gale
Leo made a dismissive gesture. “You will have your say at your trial. I am not to be your judge and jury.”
Trial? He could expect a fair trial during this time of heightened emotion? Rafe almost laughed aloud at the ridiculousness of the idea. “Even Blackstone,” he mused, “has trials.”
Leo’s lips pulled back from his teeth. The point had hit home. “That you would say such a thing,” he growled, “shows that you have forgotten what it is to be an Oakhavenite.”
“What I know,” said Rafe, “is that people remain people all the world over, especially if they are frightened.”
“Enough. I will not bandy words with you. You have learned to talk at least. Perhaps in preparation for a political career?” Leo lobbed the verbal grenade and turned to the rohkayan. “Well?” he barked.
One glided forward, his robes fluttering around his hidden feet. He held yet another chain of connected cubes, this one even more complicated than the one Verbana had produced.
“It’s simply marvelous!” the man trilled, waving the cubes in meaningless patterns in the air. His smile showed too many teeth and narrowed his eyes to slits. Rafe was instantly wary. “Even suppressed, his aura instantly reveals his identity and yes, I do see a remarkable resemblance to your own, First Minister! We shall soon know which soul threads to manipulate and then, dear sir, you will—”
Leo made a cutting motion with his hands, and the rohkayan, still smiling, fell silent, exuding smugness.
And then—what? What will Uncle Leo do? Something he doesn’t want me knowing about, obviously, and yet something very important to him. Personally so. The other people and the rest of the space retreated into darkness, as Rafe focused all his kyra-sight on his uncle. It was the same exhausting method he used to read words on a page; now he used it to read Leo.
His uncle had become rigid and his nostrils were slightly flared. Rafe knew that look—it was one Leo had worn when the Marquis of Rocquespur won a piece of art they were both interested in.
“Of course, we must not overrun ourselves,” continued the rohkayan. “First we must conduct a few tests.”
On me, of course, thought Rafe, resigned. Will this happen before or after the show trial?
“Then let’s not waste time,” said Leo brusquely. “Let’s go.”
Before, obviously.
Scorch it. Rafe had not expected this conversation to run smoothly, but all he and Leo had done so far was to spar verbally. He had to try again. “Uncle Leo—”
“In the future,” said Leo, coldly, “you will refer to me as First Minister.”
Now I’ve been removed from the family annals, eh? “First Minister, I request to speak to the Oakhaven Assembly and make my case to that body myself.”
If I can’t make him see sense, I’ll go around him. Get others on my side.
“Impossible,” said Leo.
“Why so? It is both lawful and customary for a man of my birth and rank to speak before an assembly of his own peers. Whether you like it or not, I am still a Grenfeld and only my brother has the power to remove me from the family. Which he has not done so.”
Leo’s face hardened. “You may be able to sway a soft-headed fool like Theo into dancing to your tune, but I know better than to give you a platform to sow discord within my government.”
My government? One little possessive was so very telling. “Surely you mean Oakhaven’s government,” said Rafe.
Leo’s hands clenched. “I will not hear such things from a man who went behind his own country’s back to gift the Tors Lumena to a foreign state.”
“Better than it falling into Blackstone’s hands. Realistically, Oakhaven had fallen far behind in the race for the Tors. Had I sent you word of the Tower’s location, would you have come quickly?”
Leo said nothing, but Rafe had his answer in the silence.
Not that this tacit admission was going to change anything between him and Leo. The rift went too deep, beyond the political and the tactical. It was Leo who had paid for Rafe’s army commission, Leo who had talked him into a government position, Leo who had mentored him. For years, Leo had come up with the policy, and Rafe had executed it with unhesitating competence.
Only in the matter of the Tors had Rafe gone his own way. They had never learned to disagree with each other cordially over smaller matters, so no wonder a significant affair had fractured their relationship to breaking.
“Falkor,” said Leo. Rafe’s ears were quick to catch the unwonted weary undertone. “This young man is a smooth talker, but I will not allow him to stall your work. We will proceed.”
The smiling man tittered. “Mayhap we can find a way to muzzle him. We brought a number of interesting masks from Shimmer-that-fell.”
“That will not be necessary.” Leo nodded at the guards. “Bind his hands.”
Rafe did not resist as they cuffed his hands behind his back, but the guards were overly zealous in making sure he was properly secured. Strong grips on his arms held him in place as they snapped metal cuffs around his wrists.
He was sure that one of them slyly pinched his forearm. Their enthusiastic obedience was not just for show—they really despised him as a traitor.
The thought was depressing.
Leo descended the steps, moving carefully, not quite hiding a wince as his heel struck concrete. The rohkayan crowded in behind.
Someone planted a hand on Rafe’s back and shoved him forward. His foot caught the carpet and he nearly fell face-first into the ground. A guard caught him by the upper arm and dragged him upright.
So much for the dignity befitting a kayan. There was a sharp ache in his head, right behind his eyes, as if someone had stabbed an ice pick down into his skull. His kyra-sight wavered as if he were underwater, in shifting shapes of grey. The men around him were human-shaped blobs. He had strained himself too much trying to pick out every nuance of Leo’s expression, in the hopes that reading his body language would help Rafe fine-tune his arguments.
It had been a spectacular failure.
No, not quite. The world tilted, but it could’ve been his oscillating kyra-sight. Then his foot stepped down, hard, and he realized the world, in fact, had slanted. They were descending a staircase.
He’d learned that his ka senses were not as out of his reach as his previous experiences with magebane had shown. He knew that Leo had an interest in figuring out how his abilities worked, probably to duplicate the process elsewhere.
And, given his own treatment, he suspected that Leo had accepted Ironheart’s overtures of alliance only to get Rafe into custody. The chances were good Leo would find some pretext to break off ties with the other state.
Scorch it. That one man’s animosity should stand in the way of friendly relations which would’ve helped both states was frustrating. Oakhaven’s constitutional monarchy had been set up to prevent one person from having so much power.
The Oakhaven Emergency Act had been the one crack in the system, and Leo had exploited it with a vengeance.
Not intentionally, probably. But Leo’s personality was so strong and his convictions ran so deep, he plowed over others without realizing it.
They descended into a steamy tunnel. Rafe’s clothing stuck to his clammy skin and sweat poured down his face. In contrast, his mouth was bone-dry and his throat parched. Footsteps rang and echoed in his ears, his escorts had turned to exotic shadowy shapes. They might’ve been krin for all he knew, the thought threading lazily through his head, which felt so light, it might detach and float away to the ceiling.
The idea amused him. He would’ve chuckled, if his tongue didn’t lie so heavy and swollen in his mouth.
And then the world snapped into color. Bright hues assaulted his brain. Details sprang at him, sharp in their clarity. The contrast was so sudden, so shocking, it took his breath away in an audible gasp.
A guard dug his elbow into Rafe’s side. “You all right?”
Rafe forbore to point out that poking someone in the ribs in
order to inquire about their health was rather a contradiction. “Thirsty,” he whispered, letting himself act as pathetic as he wanted.
The guard grunted, a noncommittal noise that could mean anything from Me, too to You wimp.
Rafe hid a smile. The guard ahead of him had a mole on the back of his neck. Copper wiring peeked out from the wide, baby-blue sleeves of the rohkayan next to him.
He knew what this meant.
Isabella was here.
Chapter Twenty One
Rafe
MAGICAL EXPERIMENTS ON RAFE always seemed to involve him lying on a flat surface, hooked up to quartz-studded contraptions with copper wires and rubber tubing.
This time was no different, though the vast cavern with its ages-old kayan machinery provided a unique backdrop at any rate. He knew at a glance that no rohkayan had made them. It made sense that such a place would exist in an old city like Oakhaven.
If things had been different, all this would have been my treasure-trove.
A haze of pale ka surrounded the machinery. In parts, the ka was combed and teased and ruffed up into points, rather like his hair had been at his first ball as a young man. Rafe still could not touch the ka, but being able to sense it was enough for now. This half-aware state was fascinating in its own right; he could see just how the magebane prevented him from accessing the magic, as if he were sheathed in a thick layer of slime.
Given enough time, he thought he’d be able to tear through the magebane coating. More worrisome were the spiky clumps of it circulating in his systems. They looked harmless enough, but Rafe was afraid this was just their dormant stage. How might they attack him if he did attempt to manipulate ka?
He never got the chance to find out. The rohkayan had barely snapped the cuffs embedded in the table’s otherwise smooth steel surface when all the lights in the cavern went out.
Rafe’s own kyra vision flickered. The world was washed in cool blues and etched in silver. This was Isabella’s night vision, and he saw himself through her eyes, lying spread-eagled on the table, stubbled, disheveled, mouth slightly open.
Not a flattering image. Rafe shut his mouth.
The glimpse through her eyes was brief. Message sent, his vision shifted back to a view of dark heads against a dim background, disappearing as they looked for the source of the disorder.
Twin blurs, one pale and shining, the other a light-sucking black, appeared in his periphery, moving first. They thunked into metal, impact shuddering up his arms. The cuffs fell open. Rafe grabbed Isabella’s daggers—they buzzed against his palms—and threw himself off the table. He hit bodies and ducked low, right before the guards lunged for where he had been, waving truncheons.
Leo roared, wordless; the rohkayan shrilled about delicate equipment. Rafe dove through the encircling forest of legs and out the other side.
Isabella was right next to him. He put her daggers in her hand. Her other grabbed his wrist and pulled him onwards.
The exchange was utterly silent and took barely a second.
They left confusion behind them, Rafe trusting Isabella’s sense of direction. She led them further back into the chamber, where the roughly-shaped rock narrowed into a tunnel. Their footfalls were oddly muffled and Rafe felt as if they moved in cotton wool. It took him a moment to realize the reason—an ancient ka-system held this entire place up, and they’d just burst through a worn and weakened patch of it.
It floated back into place behind them, still doing its job, but barely. Rafe half-turned to see if he could repair it, magebane or no. Isabella’s grip tightened. She tugged him onwards.
Leave it. We have no time for it.
His agreement was tinged with bitterness. If that chamber of ancient marvels collapsed, it’d give Leo yet another reason to despise him.
He turned over his wrist, took Isabella’s hand in his own. Clasped like this, they slowed to a quick walk, splashing through ankle-deep standing water.
It was so dark that even Isabella’s excellent night vision showed but the faintest hint of shape and curve. Air had lain thick and undisturbed in these cracks for centuries. Their passage stirred it up but a little and reluctantly at that. It pressed on them.
Isabella paused. He sensed she was consulting with the krin, and not very happy about doing so.
What does Max say? he asked. This was the domain of the krin, after all. They could not afford to be picky about where they got their information.
It says this place is riddled with krin passages, though it’s hard to tell if they’ll work for humans. It thinks so, but I find its notions of how people interact with dimensions fuzzy.
We can blast through rock if we need to. The magebane has almost worn off and I see enough ka to make it happen. Rafe lifted his free hand, though Isabella could neither see it nor the ka he’d begun winding around his fingers. A quartz crystal was a better storage device, but his walking stick had been forgotten in the chamber they’d long left behind.
Of more immediate concern, went on Isabella, are the krin that have been sleeping here for years. Our presence is like a light shining in their faces. We must be prepared to face them.
That’s why I always bring a krin slayer with me on underground expeditions, quipped Rafe, privately thinking that it was unexpectedly kind for Isabella to say our presence instead of yours. Isabella had spent years training herself to bury her emotions, mute her thoughts, and tread lightly on the paths frequented by the krin. Most people broadcast their mental state to the krin as if shouting while wearing neon clothing and holding massive signs. Isabella, on the other hand, could pass them by like smoke.
Don’t give me so much credit, Rafe. Isabella had caught the gist of his thoughts. I am angry much of the time these days.
She didn’t sound angry. Steely, determined, coiled-tight, yes, but not angry in the way he thought of the emotion, that suffusion of red heat, the eruption, the glittering hardness left behind.
He didn’t ask what she was angry about, though he was dearly tempted.
Later, he thought to himself, while knowing that, with Isabella, there might not be a later. She had a habit of shutting herself up tight, locking all doors, shuttering all windows. If she was a house, she’d be one out in the middle of the Barrens, hidden in a dip, presenting blank walls with arrow-slits and a solid door behind a portcullis to the world…
You should’ve been a poet… or a novelist, Isabella informed him. Your flights of fancy are just as likely to waken krin.
Or confuse them into a state of bewilderment. Why don’t slayers attempt to turn krin to more noble and uplifting emotions?
Because we are not playing children’s games here. Isabella was severe. She pulled Rafe into a side passage, rather unnecessarily hard, he thought.
Still. Rafe persisted, following that line of thinking. Why do they feast on fear, hatred, anger, lust? Why inflame the worst in us humans instead of inspiring in us the very best?
Because they’re krin, not beings of purity and goodness.
Seems like there ought to be creatures that are just the opposite, Rafe mused, to balance them out.
Then the krin inside Isabella spoke.
It said softly, like yesterday’s breath, through the kyra bond, L’amagio.
What? they both asked.
L’amagio. I… remember. Wonder suffused its voice. I remember L’amagio.
They proceeded in silence, broken only by the soft sloshing of their boots in water.
Isabella’s thoughts were opaque to Rafe, while the krin was a small, shadowy presence at the other end of the kyra bond. Were its thoughts turned to a time and a place where a person painted dreamy landscapes of flying cities and flowers in the desert and reveled in the possibilities of light?
What had a krin to do with a long-dead Oakhaven artist?
Isabella stopped, her vigilance raised several notches. They’re coming.
Krin. Rafe extended his own senses and thought he felt their approach as a nibble at the edge of his
thoughts.
And then they were just there.
Rafe was unprepared for the dark, vicious wave of emotion that washed over him. A bitter sense of failure. The secret fear that everyone who’d ever been disappointed in him—his father, Leo, Wil—was perfectly right to be so. The veneer of optimism ripped away to show the howling despair and futility that lay beneath. He had no chance against Karzov and his meticulous scheming.
He, who just made plans on the fly.
No! This is just the krin talking. Rafe tried to push them away. Feelings, fears, emotions—these do not define reality.
Voices whispered to him, You presume to know what reality is? You, who didn’t even know what your own sister was? You, who thought you could get your uncle on your side with a few words?
He was paralyzed in their midst. He remembered this, the way they twisted your own words and threw them back at you, scraped you down to your very nerves, amplified the voices in your head.
He could not battle with words alone.
Rafe had lost his connection with Isabella. He was in complete darkness with whispering winds all around him. The ka was faint and faraway, muted to grayish colors.
Chill gripped his heart.
Moments stretched by as Rafe’s blood cooled, his heartbeat slowed, his breathing became shallow.
The krin had him in their shadowy embrace. He felt their patience, as long as the ages. They would outlast him.
No.
Standing here, doing nothing, was a decision in and of itself.
The decision to let events take their course. To be a leaf on a stream or a fly in a wind.
No, even a leaf clings to the tree and a fly flaps its wings.
I have the power to change the world. I won’t let it end here. Not like this.
Heat rushed through him. Ka brightened in his sight.
He reached out, tearing through the last coating of magebane. Come.
It obeyed, arrowing towards him. The krin flinched as it tore through their essence. But they still clung to him, even as he wielded the ka like a whip, flaying and shredding.