“Your sibs are safe at the Ruling Courts.”
What little color had been there drained from Liliana’s face and Razel had to hold herself back from moving forward and offering her sympathies. The idea of safety for a ’dant in the Ruling Courts was laughable and terrifying.
Liliana said nothing and Mayer finally looked to Razel.
“What happened?”
Razel pointedly looked at Riana and waited until the woman nodded before she spoke. She was not Mayer’s and it would be best if he remembered that. The sour twist of his mouth said he did.
“She came down Gotha with two other children. Street kids by the look of them. They were almost to the door when the creeping dark appeared and attacked. The two others were devoured. She made it and some of it shattered against the Athenaeum doors.”
No one said anything, simply looked at one another. Silence swallowed the room.
LIL
Lil felt her cheeks grow wet as the other young woman called Wade and Antny street kids; such a way to brush off two lives. They had been brothers and they might have become her friends and they were dead because of her.
There was silence, and Lil slipped just a little bit further into the muffled tunnel that made everything easier to deal with.
Suddenly someone was pulling her. She went limp and would not move.
“Lil, you must rest.”
“Yes, child.”
“In the morning—” She recognized the first voice as Mayer’s but the rest simply slid away as unrecognizable.
“I will not rest until I have Min and Davi with me.” Her voice shook and she could still taste blood when she spoke, her whole body ached, her throat from the Babel she had used, her muscles from the desperate shoeless flight through the city.
Through the long divide with her parents she’d always imagined it to be temporary, that at some point in the not-too-distant future they would be family again. She had clung through the sick feeling of hurt that rose in her stomach when her father flinched from her or her mother rescued Davi from holding onto her knee.
These would now forever be the memories she had of her parents.
The voices had started again, but she’d retreated too far down the tunnel and could only hear them as mumbling echoes. Occasionally someone tried halfheartedly to get her to move but she would not. The care of her sibs was the last thing her parents had trusted her with.
Chayyliel’s voice broke through to her, layered with all its voices.
“We intended to move all Holders and their Holder-Apprentices to the Ruling Courts in the morning. I see no harm in doing so a couple hours early. Already Yanwan begins to rise and the creeping dark retreats.”
Voices rose up in argument and Lil let herself fade away again. It did not seem they had known of what was happening. She had and she understood the danger.
She did not care.
She glanced around, barely seeing anyone until her eyes lit on the woman who had guided her through the Athenaeum, Holder-Apprentice Razel. Even with the traditional Apprentice tunic and pants turned into a jumpsuit, Lil recognized her. She looked at Razel’s right arm. The lower half of her arm ended six inches below the elbow. Where the dark brown skin ended, an arm and hand of silver and red was attached.
Her torc of office, altered and repurposed.
She met the woman’s black eyes and Razel nodded at her.
Lil was drowning inside, knew that if she lost it completely she would pass out, and she could not allow that to happen. She focused on Razel, took in the girl’s dark eyes that were staring into her own, looked at the hair, curlier and thicker but much shorter than hers. Razel’s warm, dark mahogany skin glowed against the white of her outfit and showed off the small scars that littered her exposed skin, a small burn on one finger, a line down the side of her face, another disappearing into the collar. She was covered in scars and Lil wanted to touch them, feel the rough smoothness beneath her fingers, the new pink ones and the ones so faded they were almost invisible. She was the same height as Lil but wider, with muscles and curves that pressed against the fabric of her clothing as opposed to Lil’s straight up-and-down frame.
She met Lil’s gaze with no hesitation or fear but instead with a confidence that seared through Lil’s body. She looked like a ’dant who got things done, one who was never afraid, who faced challenges but did not let them stop her in the least. She looked like the kind of girl Lil wanted to be, one who did not care if her parents feared her, did not care about what others thought or said.
Lil looked away as there was another tug on her. She resisted before Mayer’s voice came to her. “Come along, Lil. We are all going to the Ruling Courts.” She heard the reluctance and strained anger in his voice and knew that he spoke the truth. Assured that she would see her sibs soon, she gave in and let the grayness enfold her.
MAYER
Mayer did not often allow himself the luxury of anger; it was sloppy and led to mistakes. However, tonight the anger was at himself and no matter how he tried to ignore it, it still reared up in him. He had known of the danger and still sent Lil home. The oracles had been screaming for weeks that Zebub would be the next to be attacked. He should have spoken to her about the darkness that was attacking other cities. She had read many of the books in the library more recently than himself and made interesting leaps of logic at times. His current theory was an attack from another dimension; there were rumors of smaller universes that stronger Antes had spun off from this one. Many of the books were from these other dimensions, traded for with the Ruling Courts.
He looked at his Apprentice’s limp form and sighed.
The meeting was meant to be Holders only, but he should have never trusted Riana and Krezida to leave their Apprentices at the Athenaeums on their own. Still, he looked over at his Apprentice, her head leaning against the warm wall of the crike’s body, her form swaying with the movement, eyes open and staring straight ahead.
Something had changed in the girl this evening. Even in her shock he could feel it. He had taken her for her early proficiency in Babel. Her own excelling in the language had pushed him harder and faster to stay ahead of her, to stay in control. He was sharper than he had been in centuries and she was the best Apprentice he could hope for—studious and meek. He liked her; she would never challenge him.
The other Holder-Apprentices watched her, the Hypatia girl openly and the Enheduanna boy with a sad attempt at stealth. Riana and Krezida were silent and reading, the former from an electronic device, the later from a book that looked worse than even the oldest book at Kandake.
“What do you look at?”
The girl simply turned to meet his eyes while the pale boy jumped in his seat and too late tried to turn his eyes to his lap.
“She is interesting. Unexpected.”
The girl turned her eyes back to his Apprentice, having said all she intended to, apparently. The boy was still looking down at his lap, eyes hidden by his fall of brown, limp hair. Mayer did not believe the act for a second; he’d heard the rumors about the boy. He narrowed his eyes until the boy nervously rose and crossed to sit closer to his Holder.
“Apprentice Liliana.” He snapped it.
“. . . Yes, Holder.”
The response was slow and loose but appropriate. He was glad.
“What happened this evening?”
From forward in the crike, Chayyliel’s head turned 180 degrees to stare at them. Lil sighed and her body became straighter.
“Something came, something hungry and dark and it froze us. I freed us with Babel and then we tried to get away. My parents did not make it.”
There was more, details she wasn’t sharing. Some that might be important, but he was wary of pushing her too far this evening and breaking her apart. He would be tested in the coming days not just by the creeping dark, but also by his fellow Holders and by the Ruling Courts, and a broken Apprentice would do him no good.
He watched as she slumped into her vacant stare ag
ain.
The trip from the Athenaeum to the Ruling Courts was swift. Kandake was the closest Athenaeum to the city center. In the distance he saw some small plumes of flame. People trying to put the creeping dark to the torch? Fire would do no good.
His breath caught in his chest as it always did when he entered the shadows of the Hives. There were eleven arranged in an uneven circle, all of them towering masses that spread into the lightening sky. That was all they had in common, though; one looked carved out of a single black stone, outcroppings that frowned and moved and crawled along its surface. Another Hive, one of the oldest, belonging to the Court of Sorrow and Riches, sprouted pink and fleshed from the land as if growing, several tendrils of it flowing from the ground and rising twinning and branching and pulsing into the sky. Some were beautiful, as the one that resembled a forest of blue foliage grown into a spiral that rose ever-thinner and higher into the sky. Some were simply puzzling to his mind, such as the shaft of light that throbbed in a beat along its bulbous sections and levels.
They were all deadly. Some even showed it on the outside, like the Hive composed of a humping mass of knives shifting and piercing each other regularly.
This was far from his first time here, but he had never brought Lil before. He looked over to gauge her reaction but it was if her eyes saw none of it.
He turned back as the crike passed under the huge arch of metal and jewels that represented the current Courts. There were other more dangerous gaps to enter the circle through, places where Hives had once stood before being burned down or cut off, gaps where allied Courts had built their Hives nearer to one another in the circle. A stupid fancy. No alliances lasted in the Courts.
There was a touch on his arm and he started, yanking away from Riana’s hand. Foolish of him to get distracted—what if it had been Krezida who touched him?
Riana simply nodded out the other side of the crike and he followed her gaze to the two sites of new construction. Two new Hives going up. He wondered which factions had made enough of a play to be elevated and who would be leading them. If they survived the building, there would be thirteen Courts before long.
An auspicious number.
Though anyone’s guess how long it would last.
He roused Lil as the crike came to a halt and lowered itself to the ground. She followed, her eyes finally bright with awareness, scanning the busy space inside the circle of the towers. Yanwan rose bright above them, setting some of the Hives alight with brilliant halos.
Suddenly there was a scream, barely recognizable as Lil’s name, and two tiny streaks came barreling out of the shadow to the right. Mayer was turning, ready to speak, Riana had a weapon of some kind in her hand, while Krezida was secreting something back into her jacket.
It was two ’dant children. The girl was darker than Lil, her skin a walnut rather than the topaz brown of Lil’s face, thick black curls rather than the dark brown of Lil. The youngest’s skin was somewhere between the two of them, a sepia that set off the red tones in his tight mahogany curls. Their faces were the same, same chin and nose, same sense of loss haunting their eyes. Lil crouched down and they wrapped themselves around her, the girl babbling a mile a minute, the boy simply burying his face in Lil’s neck. She held them and rocked them, and her strength seemed to leave her all at once. Two figures emerged from the same darkness that the children had.
Mayer recognized Arel and Jagi as they caught Lil before she could crumble to the ground. He only hoped she would be recovered by morning; they had much work to do and no time for distractions. He frowned at the two children still clinging to his Apprentice.
SAN FRANCISCO
TAE
Erik was not what he had expected. He was a mix of wariness and desperation for friendship. His betrayals hung in the air for everyone to see. His mission would just be seen as another one, as would Tae’s lies. He did need more training in the physical side of combat but his prodigious Ophde abilities were more than enough to compensate. He felt bad for lying to Erik and Melinda, but he had enough friends and some of them were in trouble. If Maestra Luka said this would help them, he would do it.
Erik was not cooperating, though. He was smarter than Tae had expected. The research he had done had told him that berserkers were often not . . . intellectually gifted. The focus of their power usually turned them away from academic pursuits and made them easy to befriend and easy to fool. However, the way Erik watched him, even now, closely, not missing an expression on his face, spoke of someone who didn’t trust easily. He was happy to treat Tae as a friend but he never really relaxed.
After a few more minutes of talking, Tae yawned widely and told them he was off to take a nap. He stepped out into the hall and ran into Maestra Luka. She gestured for him to follow and he entered her bedroom, glancing both ways to make sure they were not seen. While the other bedrooms in the place were identical, Maestra Luka’s was twice the size and covered in elaborate decorations. The walls were a bright, cheery yellow and the four-poster bed had bedding and drapes in a lighter shade. Hangings were placed at regular intervals around the room. In one corner, an old oak bookshelf sat filled to overflowing.
“What do you think?”
“I think that harming him would be a huge mistake and nearly impossible.”
“A mistake. Why?”
Tae sat on the chair facing the bed. She watched him from the mattress and crossed her legs.
“As I said, I have very little confidence a strike will succeed, and if it did it would be taking out one of our potentially most effective weapons against the Angelics. It would also turn Matthias and the rest of the independents more firmly against the Organization. Even if you were able to keep any stink of it being an Organization job quiet, Matthias would always suspect and would be more likely to work against us.”
Maestra Luka sighed, but it was not a sigh of disappointment; more of confirmation, as if Tae was only telling her things she already knew.
“Some of the other Maestres wanted this option explored. I was not one of them.”
“Why would they want this?” Tae asked. He wasn’t naive enough to think the Maestres wouldn’t get rid of someone who made themself a problem, but as far as he knew Erik had done nothing.
Luka was silent for a time, staring at one of the tapestries hanging from the wall. Tae turned. It was a depiction of the Sundering, the war that had killed Ophde and the other old ones, their forebears. The slaughtering of them by some of their children. The hunting of the bloodlines who would not turn and the curse and exile of the Angelics from this plane.
“Things are moving. The oracles have seen darkness on the horizon, but every time they try to focus and get specific, they slip into unconsciousness. The Angelics have been coming through and harassing us more and more often, taking more Blooded. Erik is a powerful new piece on the board. Many are unsure how he will affect everything.”
“To get rid of someone simply because they might act against your interests seems most wasteful.” He did not say what he wanted to, which was that it sounded like something an Angelic would decide to do. He could not keep the disgust from his eyes completely, though he dared not voice it. There was no way to know from which Maestre the idea had started. Even perhaps his own father.
“I agree. For now, continue to observe, and if you find a way to make him more sympathetic to the Organization, do so.”
Tae nodded and rose to leave. He let out a long breath as he stepped into the hallway. He would do as she asked . . . until a better option presented itself. Sometimes the crosses and double-crosses and triple-crosses—all for the greater good—made his head spin, but what good was seeing possible futures if you didn’t try to guide everything to the best option? But it was hard. Especially as the details got fuzzier and fuzzier farther out. Something big was coming. Something with the Angelics, as Luka said, but Tae knew more than that.
In all of his visions, there were four people who would be crucial to the fight. Their faces had been
shrouded, always invisible to him. Except for today. He had recognized Erik as one of them.
The child Melinda as another.
He would continue to work all the sides he could until more information became clear. For now, Tae retired to his own plain room to sleep off the migraine that filled his whole world.
ERIK
Erik choked back nausea as they were led into the odd white room by their Counselors. Melinda and Tae were not doing any better. The Counselors had gone pale though they still walked with a steady gait.
“This is the training room.” It was Elana who spoke, the only one who looked completely unaffected by the room. “You will notice that gravity is decreased here. The gravitational pulls also have a tendency to change direction and strength on a whim. You will train until you can handle this. One of the Angelics’ favorite tricks is to change the angle of attack so that from your perspective you’re now fighting upside down or from left to right. They’ve shown this ability across bloodlines, so we think it’s something artificial.
“This will help you get used to the sensation so it doesn’t take you out immediately. Demonstration.” She clapped her hands, though there was no actual sound. Matthias and Daya stepped forward. Before their eyes Matthias blurred and faded into the wall. Daya’s own olive-tinted skin became darker and grayer, more like concrete. Her face became less human and more of an abstract statue, with her features more hints than anything solid or distinct.
Erik shivered but remembered that Matthias was her target. Daya’s head swung left to right, trying to locate Matthias. The audience followed her lead, trying to find him as well. They only noticed him on her back when Daya jerked around, trying to reach him. She almost caught him but he dropped from her back and Erik lost sight of him again. Daya leapt into the air, hit the ceiling, and stayed there. Erik was suddenly aware of how nauseated he was, as if he were hanging upside down. Melinda gasped and staggered into Erik, who steadied her with a hand on the shoulder.
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