Sheamab leaned over the bridge, and her staff cut downward with a whoosh. Hiresha cried out, tried to kick herself backward in the air.
The wind was faster, jerking her forward, past the Bright Palm’s staff, past the bridge, up, up, faster, colder. She rode on a stream of snow that twirled its way through the falling white, capturing more and more flakes. Hiresha sympathized with the snow, battered about and crushed together as was their lot.
Curtains of storm parted, and the crest of the tower curved into view. All the windows were dark. The uppermost arch of the bent spire was bare. The Bright Palm I trapped there must’ve climbed down by now. If I can reach it I’ll be safe.
The air felt thick as ice water as she paddled her legs. She pawed it with her hands, but the wind only pushed her sideways. Snow hit her in the face.
Hiresha wormed her way around as the tower departed below her. A gust of wind from another direction battered her downward, toward something giant and pink.
Tentacles reared around her, the tree-sized appendages coiling and smacking against each other with booming thuds. Their skin was of pink-dyed canvas, and each rippled, the tendrils branching from the upper reaches of a swaying building. It was the Somnarium, the center of soft-enchantment studies in the Academy. Never had the anemone-shaped enclave of self-satisfied ninnies looked so appealing to Hiresha.
A tentacle arched toward her, and Hiresha strained her arms. As the wind blew her closer, it also pushed the tentacle out of reach. Hiresha flipped herself upside down, fingers wriggling, but the moving pink tower did not accommodate her.
A flapping section of the building cracked into her back, knocking her out of her gust. She had not seen it coming, and the tentacle hit her Lightened body with such force that she felt she would split in two. Red centipedes of color raced over her vision. When she shouted, one of her ribs scraped against her lungs.
“You nightmare construction of nitwits! Ahhh!”
She hung in the air until the next gale captured her. Another tendril bent close enough for her to hope. A window plugged its tip, reminding Hiresha of a monstrous black eye. She reached for it, touched it.
The wind ripped her away, pelting her upward, dropping her in sickening plunges.
A break in the clouds revealed her fate. Peaks of unforgiving white scraped at the sky, a desolation of rock, a maze of mountains. Some were so steep that not even snow could cling to them, these black claws on the horizon.
Hiresha may have screamed at the SkiarriMountains. If she did, it was but another note in the chorus of winds.
One more unexpected dip, and something sharp thrust itself out of the downrush of snow. A glassy spire slashed at the air, fins of crystal catching the wind with a whirring sound.
Wonders! The Spire of Magical History. Oh, please, closer, please! Yes, yes!
Sheets of crystal fanned between spines of transparent blue and orange. Hiresha was swung between these, and she reached out. Her fingers touched rills in the spire designed to snare the wind.
Hiresha caught on. And she held.
Joy was a stinging sensation on her face, near her eyes. She pulled herself to lie flat against the crystal. Within the spire, she could see the central pillar she had walked up. Was it only yesterday?
The fennec’s ears snapped outward as he peeked from her coat, his fur gold against the white of her collar. She grinned down at him. He started chirping in trills.
“Hush now.” She pressed her cheek against the fur between his ears. “As long as none find us here we’re safe. Relatively speaking.”
Snow swirled around her in such thick gusts she thought the storm was turning into a blizzard. Surrounded by white, clinging to the top of a tower, Hiresha counted herself fortunate. She even had a warm coat.
Then she shifted her tongue in her mouth. From one side of her teeth to the other she searched, then each cheek and below her tongue, too. Nothing.
Either she had swallowed the red diamond, or it had dropped from her mouth in the wind and was lost.
Inannis set the chisel against the goddess’s head. He smashed down, and a crack ran into the skull of the ice sculpture, a wrinkle of white crossed into the cluster of opals of the divine brain. His next hit further clouded the statue’s blue skull.
The metal of the chisel chilled his fingers even through his gloves. Tucking his tools under his arms, he rubbed his hands together then shook them to encourage what little blood he had to flow to their tips.
A woman in the teal wraps of a novice sifted into view through the storm. She balanced an obsidian sword on one hand, the pommel resting on her upraised palm. The wooden shaft wobbled, the obsidian serrations fitted into the sides of the weapon like black teeth. The instrument of stone razors turned with the wind. Inannis might have mentioned that a chance gust could have shoved the sword down to split her own skull, but Emesea would have only laughed at him.
She did not even wear gloves.
He positioned the chisel against the statue’s icy eye. “Don’t you have enchantresses to spy on?”
“I’d rather spy on a thief.” She propped her sword on her shoulder, seized Inannis’s head, and pressed her lips against his in a violent kiss.
Her touch scorched him, his heart quickening, a hot bloom in his chest from blood seeping into his lungs. As always, her boldness in the face of his divine curse thrilled him. Emesea never minded the taste of his blood in her mouth.
“You only spy on master thieves, I trust.” He brushed a lock of her hair away from her golden-sunburst eyes.
“Only those honoring the Obsidian Jaguar, yes.”
Inannis frowned at this. “I didn’t spend a year planning a heist to humiliate one god only to serve another.”
“The Obsidian Jaguar is strength and stealth, life and decay.” She pressed the warmth of her hand against his chest. “He blesses you doubly for attacking the false, desert gods.”
“None of the gods are false. That’s my chief complaint against them.” Inannis turned from her to knock his hammer against the statue again. “I’ve been thinking. What if you were one of the first to fall?”
“Would’ve sung all the way to the bottom.” Her smile was full of crooked teeth but broad. “See if I could’ve made echoes against the valley walls.”
“I never would’ve forgiven myself.”
“As the priests say, ‘Forgiveness is when you realize the sunset is in truth the dawn.’”
“I wish we could’ve had this without the deaths.”
“Blood in war, blood in honor.” She spun her obsidian sword in a figure-eight motion and around her back.
“I’m certain honor in death was foremost in their minds, savage warriors that the enchantresses are.”
“Every person in an empire has blood on her hands, no matter how many doilies she hides it under.” Emesea tapped the flat of her sword against her chin. “Did hate to see the warden walk off the cliff. I was proud of her, too. The best die first. Ay?”
She slapped Inannis’s shoulder.
“I could live with being second best,” he said, rubbing the shoulder. “As long as we take down the Lord of the Feast—”
“Heard Mavin winged him,” Emesea said. “Hope he doesn’t bleed out before I meet him good and proper.”
“I—ah—hope you’ll not leave the Bright Palms behind in your hunt.”
“Wouldn’t try to fly without wings.” She dug an elbow into Inannis’s ribs. “Say, are you done pecking at the Opal Mind? Stand yourself back.”
With a sweeping leg, she spun, and the serrated blade raked the air with its speed and lopped off the statue’s head. Opals burst upward, chunks of ice spraying.
Inannis dropped his tools and snatched two of the opals. Two will suffice. He brushed ice from gems that resembled spheres of snow with jewels hidden inside, flashes of orange, blue, and green. Inannis planned to give one to the first beggar he met. The other he would smash and sprinkle fleck by fleck into each shit hole he used.
&n
bsp; The opals moved in his hands, shifting in his grasp, trying to escape his fingers. Fright stampeded through Inannis, but he held on. The goddess knows!
He lurched forward, the gems zipping away. Other opals raced through the air, arranging themselves back above the decapitated statue. Snow and slush condensed around them to reform the goddess’s face and head. Her white eyes stared down at Inannis.
Emesea was doubled-over laughing.
Inannis said, “More enchantments are working than I would’ve expected.”
She wiped her eyes then jogged over to the cliff edge. “Nope. No spellswords are coming up yet. I’ve been daydreaming about fighting them all year.”
The thought of men in enchanted armor with swords taller than he sent a deeper chill through Inannis. Sheamab would massacre all the enchantresses then, and there’d be blood and death and no escape for any of us. The air scraped his throat, and a desire to cough built up in him as if maggots crawled in his chest.
Emesea sliced through the goddess’s arm. Ice stuck between the razors of obsidian protruding from the sides of her wooden sword. A new arm reformed out of the nearest snow. Emesea whirled and slashed at the gathering flakes.
Inannis said, “I think you split a snowflake in half there.”
“I’ve missed my long arm.” She patted the sword.
He brushed powder from his shoulders. “As valuable as Skiarri ice is in the cities, I keep thinking this place is ankle-deep in gold.”
Emesea propped her sword against the arch overhanging the ice statue. Brushing snow from the words etched in its stone, she climbed up its side. “Heard that the provost was making Sheamab scurry.”
“I did warn her about Enchantress Hiresha.”
“Do you think she should be the one?” Emesea’s dark hair fluttered as she sat on the arch above the goddess.
Inannis repressed both a cough and a sigh. He scrambled up the arch to sit beside her. “No, no, with a little of not-a-chance on the side. First, you could never hold the provost captive on the journey. Second, she would never agree to enchant land ships for the Dominion of the Sun.”
“She might teach other women.”
“Hiresha would see it’d lead to war.” Inannis imagined a fleet of enchanted ships sailing over the desert that separated the two countries, packed with Dominion warriors like Emesea, with hexers, and jaguar knights.
The wind keened, taking on screeching notes that sounded to Inannis far too close to a woman’s grief.
He coughed into his fist. “You don’t know enough to enchant a ship yourself?”
“It’s amazing how little you can learn at a year of school.” Emesea gazed with him into the swirling emptiness past the cliff. “What if the provost wants to leave? I heard her arguing with other elders. The Sun Dragon’s priests would let her do whatever she wants.”
“So long as she crafted them war ships,” Inannis said.
“We’d be battling against the gods you hate.”
“For the sake of gods that are no better.”
She wrapped her hands on either side of his chin, moving his head so they stared eye to eye. Leaning forward, Emesea rested her brow against his. She blazed with heat. “Inannis,” she said, “Sheamab promised me one enchantress.”
He held her golden gaze, though it was hard with the sharp ache in his chest. What do you do when the one you love is wrong?
“And I promise you,” he said, “that I won’t let you bring an enchantress to the Dominion.”
“Try to stop me, stick bug.” She shoved him from the arch.
He caught the lip of stone with both hands and lowered himself enough for a safe fall. Emesea scooted down and jogged back into the storm with her sword.
Inannis loved arguing with her. He liked less the thought of having to poison her into a stupor to stop a war. The craze of mind-bloom extract may not slow her. Sap of the poppy would be the gentlest way, but she’ll not forgive me for that.
He turned back to the statue of the Opal Mind. He thought it fitting that the goddess had a brain of gemstones but no heart to be seen.
If I cannot take from the goddess then I’ll leave something behind. He hammered the chisel into her frozen chest.
22
RecurveTower
Hiresha hoped her winter-bear coat would hide her among the snow drifts. Her black hair had been tucked in. She squinted through an old skyscope, counting the Bright Palms around the Grindstone.
One hiding beside the stairs…the blind archer below the bridge…there’s Mister Jewel Pox, that’s three…and Sheamab herself. Four then, with a fifth patrolling the cliff. Hiresha thought they were waiting for Tethiel to try to leave with the coming dusk. She could only hope he heeded her and waited until she arrived to open the door with her red diamond. Thankfully, she had only swallowed the jewel.
When she had been able to, she had descended the Spire of Magical History and rested inside. She had retrieved the diamond with what some might call an indelicate use of magic and now kept it in a more conventional place, her coat pocket. She had considered implanting it once again in her chest, but she could not say she felt well enough about Tethiel just then to commit his gift to her skeletal structure.
In the Spire she had also acquired the skyscope contraption of lenses and brass. By her count, only five Bright Palms remained in the RecurveTower to guard the hostages, along with possibly the thief Inannis as the eleventh. She started to crawl that way. One Bright Palm had mentioned something about a twelfth invader, but Hiresha had counted in her laboratory mirrors. Only ten Bright Palms, and one thieving jewel duper.
Hiresha tended to think the twelfth had to have been the chancellor. She must have played a role in their coming, though Hiresha doubted Ringwold had known the extent of the invasion. Neither could she be certain of the chancellor’s motive and involvement. Hiresha decided to take the cautious approach. She had enchanted more jewels to be safe.
“This may be our best chance to extract the novices and enchantresses.” Hiresha whispered it in the fennec’s ear. He made cooing bird noises.
To reassure herself, she ran a finger over her jewel sash. She had split the heliodor in her dream into four gemstones then taken another dozen from the Spire of Magical History. Some of the jewels she had borrowed had been unenchanted. In other cases, she had needed to annihilate the records to replace them with impact enchantments. No longer could an enchantress see the wealth of their information flowing about her in a cascade of ideas.
The pain of having to destroy knowledge hurt as if she had swallowed splinters of crystal. The Bright Palms had scarred the Academy, and Hiresha worried that even if she could drive them out, this sanctuary of thought and magic would never feel the same.
For that reason Hiresha felt not a morsel of remorse when she hurled three Lightening gemstones at the pair of Bright Palms guarding the tower entrance. The heliodor hit the one who looked like an adolescent boy, and he began drifting away. The other, the woman with the face speckled with moles, caught his ankle, but that gave Hiresha the opening to dash past them.
Standing to the left of the portal caused the diamond to flare red through her pocket. The door descended from the ceiling and closed. The enchantress knew that Sheamab could use the chancellor’s amulet to open it, so Hiresha dropped two orange sapphires of Attraction against the base of the door then jumped away. The back of her coat flipped up as she ran, and the door made a grinding noise from the enchantments sealing it shut.
Her magic would bind the door closed for half an hour. Hiresha suspected she had even less time than that. Sheamab might try to cross the Lofty Bridge, or enter the tower through the Somnarium passage, if she knows the way.
Down one corridor, a shadow stooped over a smoking brazier. The jewel duper, Inannis? When she neared, she saw no one, but from then on she took to looking over her shoulder.
The Bright Palms in the Hall of Visitation seemed to have had warning. They had their weapons in hand, a scimitar that glin
ted yellow, and rods of bronze lashed to a stick as a flail. She dealt with them as readily as the first pair.
A white smear clouded her vision to the right, like an aura before a migraine. Hiresha knew something was wrong, but she did not react before a Bright Palm leapt out of a doorway with a whirling kick.
The red diamond shone through her coat, activating from the onrush of metal in his belt. The reactive enchantment Burdened him to smash against the floor. She tossed another jewel of Attraction to keep him there. He was the tight-mouthed man she had bound hours before on top of the RecurveTower.
“The view isn’t as sweeping here,” she told him, “but you should’ve learned your lesson the first time.”
Her red diamond activated again, and a dart plinked onto the tile. The next second she felt a sting on her neck, and she pulled out another dart. Jewel in hand, she whirled but still saw no sign of Inannis. The fennec squeaked at one column, and she thought the thief must be behind it. When she approached, a figure did indeed sprint away down a passage.
She flung his needle to the tiles in distaste. Muscles in her face and neck twitched, but her red diamond pulsed again, its enchantment protecting her from the poison. She had to feel a little smug, having predicted Inannis would use strychnine, a paralytic and an antidote to the toxin he had dispensed with such generosity in OasisCity. One poison cured the other, and she had deduced he would have both at his disposal. Proper preparation is paramount.
Opening the guest rooms, Hiresha found enchantresses and novices cramped together. A few women with haggard expressions played Sands, the board between them a profusion of colorful streaks. The musty smell of unwashed bodies prickled Hiresha’s nose. The enchantresses cast her looks of confused hope.
“Hiresha?” The Rector of Rarified Armament squinted toward the light of Hiresha’s earrings. “Wherever are your gowns? Did they force you to wear that coat?”
Adjusting her winter-bear coat, Hiresha noted with some indignation that the Bright Palms had allowed the rector to keep her ornamental daggers. Hiresha ran her left hand over the notches of wounds in her fingers.
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