Riana turned and observed, making a humming noise in her throat. “It is almost as if he views her as a threat. That is an opening we should exploit. Make friends with his Holder-Apprentice. See if this is a plan or a rift.”
Razel nodded and then gasped.
A flood of black fell from directly above Lil as she hovered at the barrier, unsure of her welcome with her Holder. The mass slowed as it fell until it hovered gently in the air, then it started to separate. A thousand perfect black butterflies peeled away and fell to cloak the young girl.
“Nif?”
Razel heard the question in Haydn’s voice but did not answer. She was too focused on what was happening before her.
LIL
Fear froze her feet to the floor. She wished to turn and run but knew it would be no use. She had everyone’s attention, as Arel and Jagi had said, and if she was to make an impression one way or another, let it be a good one. She took a breath and tried to recover the calm she had felt as Arel and Jagi had worked on her hair and face. Her body relaxed as she focused on the feeling of comfort and safety. She felt her fear settle. Her position protected her more than most. She would not shame it or her parents by acting as prey.
Her head came up and she scanned the room. Her gaze lit on Mayer but he was paying no attention to her. She knew that her decision to check on Davi and Min before dinner would anger him, but to visually repudiate her in such a manner? Her confidence began to crumble at the public humiliation, but suddenly she felt a feather light touch on her shoulders. She was surrounded by butterflies. They sparkled in the pale light of the three moons as if made of onyx. They covered her shoulders first, and then she felt their coolness as they fell along the line of her body like a cape until they brushed the floor.
She recognized them as Nif right away, though she had never seen them take a form other than the small humanoids or pools of shadow they preferred. They radiated a soothing cold and she felt her fear lessen further. They shivered and she felt pressure on the small of her back and stepped forward, the butterfly cloak fluttering and flaring behind her as she moved.
She saw the other Holders and Holder-Apprentices in one place and would have joined them, but the Nif pressured her the other way. To the seat beside Mayer. Even as she neared, he did not turn to face or acknowledge her at all. She sat in the empty chair beside him and released a sigh when no one objected.
The tongues that flew around her were nothing like the language the ’dants of the area spoke. Mayer was conversing somewhat freely, gesturing for the words that were too complicated for his human tongue to curl around or too broad for the width of his throat. Lil was not nearly as skilled, could not converse in nearly as many of the dialects, but she could understand well enough.
As she sat in the seat, the Nif parted around her body and draped to the floor on either side of her chair. She picked up her spear and knife and began to cut away at the huge slab of meat on her plate. The leafy vegetables she also speared, but the odd squishy white block she pushed to the edge as politely as possible. The babble of their voices fell over her as she ate.
“The idea of allowing ’dants into the Ossuary is horrifying. The longer you find nothing, the more suspicion will fall.” The language sounded like running water and the literal translation would actually be four times as long because of the nuance and many, many metaphors. It came from the bulbous Ante across from Mayer, a oblong ball of blue flesh that had additional globules of various colors attached to its outer layer.
Mayer replied in the same tongue, a tiny trickle of drool escaping the corner of his mouth as his lips struggled to flap properly in the wind of his breath. “True; however one cannot expect the tadpole to mature in minutes.”
The reply sounded like ’dant laughter but was actually a lengthy description of how the speaker had amused them. Lil smiled politely in case the Ante looked in her direction. A number of Antes at the table snuck glances at her, or took information about her in through other senses. She could feel sensory apparatus pointed at her and it made her shiver. The Nif thickened around her collar and warmth suffused her body.
The scent of dead eggs wafted to her, followed by the crush of roses and then the fading scent of general decay. An Ante of the Muriil bloodline intruded into the conversation. Lil, through a mighty effort, kept chewing through the volley of smells Mayer and the Ante threw at one another until something hit her nose, sharp and commanding without an actual scent attached. It was like there was something that should have been there, a scent so unobtrusive it was obvious among the stronger ones simply for the relief it provided.
It was asking about their progress in the Ossuary, but the scent itself reminded Lil of the feeling of the darkness as she and her family stood there frozen waiting to be devoured. The fear shook her into speaking.
“Have there been more attacks?” Mayer and the Ante froze and Lil bit her tongue. It was a mistake to interrupt a conversation in the Ruling Courts, especially when you had no formal title. But her heart was in her throat as she remembered that ever-creeping dark and how it had swallowed ’dants and places she had known all her life. She had to know how many more had suffered as she had.
Some of those around her understood but it was obvious some did not. Antes who did not have much contact with ’dants never bothered to learn to comprehend their language. Those who did not understand turned to Mayer, waiting for a translation. He grimaced and his face froze. She knew him, knew he was calculating how much it would hurt his own status to ignore her.
He had not started to translate when a scent rose up around her, from her. The musky marking of a desert cat and then the same dark scent of nothing she had just experienced. A small fluttering sound made itself known, and she cocked her head in shock to see that the Nif butterflies that covered her shoulder were emitting the scent and flapping their wings steadily to spread it.
The table erupted into a dozen conversations conducted in so many different manners Lil could not keep track. Scents exploded, as did voices in dozens of different dialects; skins flashed through colors; and fingers and tentacles and appendages Lil had never seen before beat questions onto the tabletop. The babble did not pass their immediate vicinity but it became clear that something was happening, and other sections of the table fell silent as they tried to figure out what it was.
Lil was frozen, trying to concentrate on picking one “voice” out of the din to find out what happened. The idea and answer that was repeated over and over through sight, sound, smell, and touch was Nif. Lil realized none of the talk had anything to do with her asking a question or interrupting—it was all about what the Nif had done.
Mayer leaned over toward her, his usual pale cheeks flushed an uneven, shiny red, making the dark stubble on his cheeks stand out. He hissed at her in a voiced designed not to carry.
“What have you done?”
Lil was shocked by the way his face turned into something monstrous, the thinning of his lips, the deep valley that appeared between his narrowed eyes. He had never spoken to her like this, not even when she disobeyed, not even when she had to be punished. Lil could see the fear that was driving the expression across his face but the Antes did not seem angry, just confused and curious.
“Nothing.” She hissed it back trying to fit all the injured dignity and indignation she felt into the word, though she could not suppress the thread of fear. It was automatic on some level; Mayer had been her protector and teacher for years, and his fear triggered her own. The few times he’d shown fear in the past had been her cue to feel the same.
Slowly the fervor died down and conversation continued in its myriad different ways. This time, however, Mayer was forced to include her in the conversation at the insistence of others. Though he was now unnecessary, she could already understand most of the dialects around the table, and the Nif took care of expressing her thoughts in the languages she had yet to learn to “speak.”
She was asked about her training and managed to be vag
ue, mysterious, and threatening all at once. It was the first time she’d received a smile out of Mayer all evening. The Antes murmured approval.
When asked about her family, she was able to remain stoic and discuss how happy she was to spend time with her sibs, while steering clear of any mention of her parents. They all knew of her parents’ death. Little remained secret from the Courts, but to mention them would show weakness and she could not afford that. However, by focusing on her devotion to her remaining family, she showed how much she cared for her bloodline.
For conversations conducted in sound, whether voice, grunt, or rhythm, she was able to hold her own. When the conversation turned to lights or smells or the creating of wind currents, languages in which she had understanding but which she had not yet been taught to manipulate, the Nif still cloaking her conversed for her, reading her intentions and relaying them more or less intact.
Her anxiety flared when the Nif added a scent of flirting in a reply to an Ante that was nothing but a mound of moving, grinding fingernails. However, it collapsed all over itself in an ear-melting grind-shriek of what she took to be laughter, so she smiled along. They broke into smaller and smaller conversations as the night wore on and the guests moved from table to table, switching chairs in some complex dance they were excluded from but surely had something to do with power and hierarchy. She sighed. She would have to learn it all if she was to become Holder herself one day. Why had she not already learned it?
“Why do you sigh so sadly?”
Lil nearly jumped at the voice, calling on her training to maintain her calm outward facade. It was a dialect she knew, but the accent was something she had never heard before, a blurring of the consonants so that all the words were soft and welcoming. The Ante who had spoken was shaped like a ’dant superficially, except that their skin looked like smoky glass. Things floated through them, diffuse lights and vague shapes and colors traveled across forehead, then down neck and through uncovered androgynous chest. Soft and hard and beautiful, but neither male nor female. Their pants hid whether the effect covered all of their body, but Lil was sure it did.
She shook herself from following a particularly beautiful teal pulsing light across their cheek and pulled her mind back to what had been said. Before she could think up a suitable reply, they spoke again.
“I have never seen the Nif act so for a ’dant.”
She snapped her attention from the gold traveling through two plump pursed lips and said casually, “They have acted this way before, though?”
“Yes, it’s not that unusual. They are sometimes forced to act as interpreters for Ante without the ability to represent some of the languages.” They waved it away with a perfect hand. The nails were hard and white, opalescent in the light. “However, them doing the same for a ’dant, and of their free will? Now that is a surprise.”
Lil felt as if there was something she was supposed to remember, but the color of their eyes was fluctuating so fast that all her focus was taken by identifying the color they were at that very second.
The Ante leaned forward and reflexively she began to do the same, but something outside held her back, a tightness in her shoulders. Still, even that little bit closer she felt as if the lights under the skin were brighter, moved faster.
“You have half of the Ruling Courts more fascinated with the Athenaeums than they have been since the war.”
That sentence snapped her wholly out of whatever trance she had been falling into. Now she understood at least some of Mayer’s anger at her. Tensions between the Athenaeums and the Courts were always ready to explode. If not into all-out war—they had not had a true warring conflict in over five thousand years—then into something almost as unpleasant. Sanctions, hassles by the Courts agents, both official and unofficial, up to and including vandalism of the Athenaeum.
Only five years ago Mayer had done something that had set the Courts up in arms. Lil had never learned all the details, but she had arrived at Kandake one morning to find the building sunk into the suddenly softened ground up to the top of the first floor windows. She’d spent two weeks living muddy on the second story and translating texts for the Court of Feedings so they would raise it again.
“Why?”
“There is power in you. Anyone with sense can see it.”
“It is only the same ability that Holder Mayer possesses, nothing new.” He had taught her everything she knew, so why did her words feel like a lie?
“Perhaps not.” The Ante shrugged and looked away. “However, you yourself are new and that is enough to make you interesting to some. Do you have a special relationship with the Nif at your Athenaeum?”
Lil thought about the quick broken shadows that moved through the lit halls of the Athenaeum, that appeared without request to help her. The ones she had give names to—lugh and eri, iles and ayl, coo and woge, xex and defi—acts that were not unnatural, but odd all the same.
The lies died on her tongue as a shooting star of silver light cascaded across the Ante’s forehead and down one cheek; it exploded and reflected through their face. Suddenly she felt comfortable, relaxed, as if she might slip out of her chair. The Ante was no longer a stranger but an old friend.
She smiled and opened her mouth, happy to answer all their questions. There was a tightening around her neck and shoulder and her tongue twisted in her mouth, against her will, a single word falling from it before something freezing cold spilled down her back. She leapt to her feet, just managing to refrain from calling out. She turned around and found a Turms, identical to the one that Arel and Jagi had summoned up to the room upon her exit, holding a small glass of liquid that sparkled, leftover drops crawling up the sides as if it were alive and wanted to escape.
It bowed its head in apology and Lil tried to indicate it was no problem but the Ante she’d been speaking to spoke up for her.
“No, I believe I am the one who owes the young lady an apology. We so seldom see ’dants in the Ruling Courts that I forget the effect that I tend to have upon them. I take my leave of you, young Holder. Until we meet again.” The Ante stood and bowed low.
Lil begged exhaustion and Mayer seemed delighted to see her leave; at least now she felt she knew why. She made her way back to her rooms, walking slowly, nervous, thinking of the word that had slipped past her lips. She had felt the others lined up behind it, a string of words that had burned with power in her throat, but what had caused it? Was it Babel itself? Mayer had warned her that Babel was not like any other tongue; it was a living, willful language. That was why you had to fight to shape it, but nothing like this had ever happened before, Babel coming without her call. She longed to ask Mayer about it but hesitated to share anything with the ’dant he’d become.
What effect would the entire phrase have had? She shivered at the thought of calling up any Babel at all among such a large group of Antes.
Arel and Jagi were pacing, a million questions and explanations swimming in their eyes. She was too tired for any of it.
She raised her hand and the two of them subsided. She ripped off the clothing they had so carefully placed on her, threw it on the couch, and moved into the bedroom. She shut the door and crawled beneath the blankets, wiggling her way between her two siblings. When she was surrounded by the scent of family and the heat of two small bodies, she tried to drift off to sleep.
However, she could not stop thinking about that feeling, her own body betraying her will. She stayed up long into the night, trying to understand the word of Babel that had slipped past her lips, but it was beyond her lessons. She fell into an exhausted sleep much, much later, her body betraying her once again.
AREL & JAGI
They stared at the closed door.
“Why is the white snake involved?”
“Your guess is as good as mine but it is most certainly nothing so straightforward as belonging to a side. The white snake has its own plan in all this.”
“And other than that?”
“It could have go
ne better.”
“It also could have gone worse.”
“She did not inadvertently reveal herself.”
“If what we believe is true.”
“Let’s hope it is. Then we may have some chance against whatever the creeping dark is.”
They slept in the small front parlor, wrapped in each other, alert for any movement or danger.
SAN FRANCISCO
MATTHIASS
He lay on the ground outside the house beside two unconscious bodies, Erik still with the gruesome remains of someone else tied around his waist, a white skull held in his palms, and blood slowly dripping from the place one of the Angelic’s tongues was still lodged in his side. He had been waiting at the bottom of the stairs when Erik and Tae had been launched down them and directly into him. He’d dragged them outside and only a minute later all the windows on the second floor silently exploded and showered them with glittering glass. Now they simply lay on the tiny scrap of grass in front of the house, his power covering them from wandering eyes. His body healed more the longer he lay near his aspirant.
He tried to figure out how the mission could have gone so badly. The build-up to bring through an Angelic that large should have been noticeable for at least an hour before the thing came through. Alarmers should have notified the Maestres in the area, who in turn should have spread the word and sent Blooded out to monitor the situation.
The sound of a roaring motor and the skidding of brakes finally forced him to raise his head. The small crotch rocket came to a sudden stop on the sidewalk only feet from them. As soon as he saw Elliot jump off the back and Daya kill the engine, he flopped back down to the ground and let his hold on his powers dissipate.
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