As he got within touching distance, she twitched an arm in his direction and he paused.
“What do you want?”
“Dinner is in Hive Inyades and so I am your escort this evening.”
“I’d rather be forced to eat my own entrails.” The answer was immediate. A scent was coming off of him, tempting and sweet; she found herself leaning forward to get a stronger whiff. She jerked back almost immediately—it was fragrant on the edge, but when it entered her throat there was rot all over it. She turned her head to the side and hacked until she spit out a sour glob of saliva.
Alchemy.
“What are you up to?”
The smile didn’t drop from his face. In fact, it got even more brazen. He took a step closer and laid his hand across her arm. The syllable flew out of her mouth without conscious thought. The word from earlier in the hall, weaker but still primed in the air, snapped closed. Haydn’s eyes rolled up in his head and he slumped to the ground.
“Well.” She stared at his lump of a form and kicked it hard, once. She didn’t have time for more.
He was going to be out for at least the next twelve hours and she could not be late for dinner tonight. She had to see June. She wanted to leave him where he was and go, but she worried it would cause trouble. She did not want him in her rooms, near her sibs. She could ask Arel and Jagi to hide him but she would have to stay here while they did that. Either way she would be late.
She had no other allies but Arel and Jagi. She stopped.
That wasn’t strictly true.
But was it possible to call them? She’d never had to before. At Kandake they had always just been there ready to help when she needed it.
Feeling completely foolish, she spoke into the dark hallway.
“Hello? Nif?”
She sighed and it almost turned to a scream when something warm and silky fell across her shoulders. Lil recognized the feeling in time to stifle her voice. They lay across her like her nightly cloak.
Perhaps Lil should thank them but they were a double-edged sword. They helped her but that help also aroused suspicions and turned others further against her. At the moment, however, there was no one about and she felt no qualms asking them for help.
“Can you take him and hide him somewhere? Please.”
The stole boiled on her shoulders like hot oil and one corner lifted into the air before spiraling down toward his body, the connection between it and the mass on her shoulders growing thinner and thinner. When the droplet reached his unconscious body, it began to quickly spin and spread out in cocoon around Haydn. Soon he was no longer visible. The connection between the cocoon and her stole snapped and the mass holding Haydn began to slowly hump its way down the hallway. It looked like some monstrous worm had swallowed him. Lil couldn’t stop thinking it was exactly what he deserved. She turned and made her own way to dinner.
She nodded to the few Antes she passed as she entered the main hall and then out into courtyard. In the brightness of the three moons she could see one of the Hives was near completion. The other one that had just been starting when they arrived now climbed high in the sky with no signs of ending. Still only the scaffolding was visible now. She moved toward Hive Inyades. It sparkled in the light like a gemstone.
Lil stepped toward it. The closer she got the more translucent and unreal it looked. The door, if she could call it that, was a mass of white light shining from a shifting purple gemstone. Facets broke apart and reformed as she watched. She reached forward slowly and her hand met no resistance. She stepped through the whiteness and found herself on an endless expanse of white sand.
The warmth of the sand radiated through her suddenly bare feet. Tables made of different glowing gemstones punched up through the beach. Dotted among them were pools of water, some so large they should not have been able to fit into the Hive and some so small simply fitting one of her little sibs in it would be tight.
June was easy to spot, with lit-up skin reflecting a hundred different colors that held a group of Antes in thrall to a story. A Turms sat on the chair next to them, which surprised Lil, since their bloodline did not need to eat and rarely attended the dinners as guests. Lil squared her shoulders and approached. The stole of Nif shuddered and flowed down her back into a cape. Mayer and Riana were seated with Razel at a table to her right. They would all be watching her tonight. Krezida was notably absent.
None looked up as she stood by June’s table, so she cleared her throat and tried to force her cheeks not to show any embarrassment. As soon as she made the noise June looked up. The snake had known she was there. She smiled too wide at him and nodded a hello.
“I simply came over to say hello but I can see how busy you are. I’ll leave you to your little story.” She turned to leave without waiting for a reply and faced the table the two Holders and Holder-Apprentice were already seated at with blank faces all around. She could easily read the anger under the surface.
“Wait, lovely lady.”
She resisted the urge to grind her teeth at the description. She had a name and June knew it, but she turned back to them with a bright smile.
“Yes?”
“What kind of white snake would I be if I did not offer you my hospitality?”
“A poor one.” She only spoke the truth but June laughed all the same.
They turned and nodded to the Turms next to them and the tiny red and white Ante slid onto the ground and headed over to the corner, where a number of its bloodline were gathered. She smirked at June to show she saw exactly what they had done, and they smiled back. Lil draped herself in the chair and admitted only to herself that June was a charmer. Even without the lights turned up full blast, they were beautiful.
She was contemplating her opening gambit when her lips twisted open of their own accord, her tongue started to curl, and she recognized the shape of it. She clamped her jaw down on the word and swallowed. Again her mouth opened of its own accord and again she snapped her lips shut.
This was not like the other times. She was not tired or distracted. She was in control of herself. Why was the Babel trying to slip free?
There was slight burn in her arm. She looked down at the place where Haydn had touched her, only for a second. The skin looked shiny, and now that she was paying attention she noticed an ache spreading from the point.
Damn that piece of shit to the creeping dark! What had he done?
“I was hoping you would attend tonight,” June said.
“Have I not been here almost every night?” She struggled to control her mouth.
“Yes, but there is a special performance planned by the delegation from Adlivu tonight. A show of power disguised as entertainment. I thought it might have scared you off.” June smiled.
If she was honest, she had forgotten that the Ruling Courts of Zebub were hosting a delegation of Antes from the bay tonight. Now that she looked more closely at the pools of water, she saw tentacles and fins and giant maws of needle-thin teeth rising and falling within the waves.
She forced a smile. She had too much riding on her tonight to worry about the “entertainment”—currently her greatest worry was inadvertently speaking a word of Babel at a Ruling Courts dinner and earning sanctions for Kandake, or much more likely her death.
Was that why Krezida was absent?
“It will be interesting at the very least.” She forced out her words and then took a bite of the food on her plate to occupy her mouth and tongue. What had that loathsome toad done to her? Alchemy was about the body’s functions. Changing them and charging them. Forcing a body to live forever or turn sick and die. To fall in love or rage and attack and in this case have her speak Babel in front of everyone. She thought as she chewed, biting her tongue a few times when it attempted to force her mouth open. Not just any Babel though; it would have to be something big, something dangerous. Something Krezida did not want to be around for.
The sounds of eating and chatter rose around them as the show began. The pools of
water shook, and surfaces began to ripple in violent patterns. Some boiled while others began to frost over. Still others simply dissolved into a veil of mist. She was not the only one to scream when the pools simultaneously exploded, but she was the only ’dant and so the sound carried a bit, especially as it turned to the beginning of a word. She clamped her mouth shut before the word could complete and felt the build up still the air around her.
She looked over to Mayer, who was staring at her with a horrified face. She widened her eyes at him. He had definitely felt that. There was no way to avoid doing what Alchemy wanted of you. It was a temporary power but a strong one and it would not stop until the body did what it had been convinced it needed to do.
The pools were now all fountains shooting water high into the air, not quite high enough to touch the Icarii, Suyucant, and other flying Antes, but she noticed more than a few flying higher just in case. Then the water began to bend over those on the ground. The air had taken on a noticeably damp quality but no actual water dripped from any of the spouts.
June leaned in. “Perhaps you can tell me what exactly you want?”
“What do you mean?” she said through a mouthful of food. She was not surprised June had caught on to her sudden attempt to play nice. It was smart of them to start the conversation now when everyone was too busy watching the performance/threat happening in front of their eyes.
“Come now. It’s clear you want something. You did an excellent job. When you’re as old as Mayer you might actually become skilled, but I’ve been doing this since before your grands were born.”
Lil merely hummed in response and watched the spouts above them as they bent toward each other and met in the air. It was impressive, the way the water both merged and retained its individual current at the same time. Boiling water and sludged ice water spouts steamed as they touched one another but maintained their temperatures.
“I might be in need of information.” She forced out the words. It was getting harder to say what she wanted.
“Really.” June’s voice became a surprised purr. “Information is my favorite aphrodisiac, but what could an Holder-Apprentice in one of the last great centers of information need of me?”
The pillars of water were now joining into a latticed dome above their heads. She glanced around and saw some of the Antes were moving their eye stalks, sensory appendages, and other basic vision centers all around. They were caged within water. Even if most of it was not steaming or freezing, touching one of them did not seem like a good idea. It reminded Lil of capturing mizzene around the Athenaeum with an upside-down bowl. Of course she’d never had it in her to kill the little things and had simply released them outside. Something told her these bay Antes would not have the same scruples. Still, no one at the center tables, where the most powerful Courts were gathered, seemed worried, so Lil tried to follow their example.
“History.”
“History of what exactly?” June sounded wary and Lil could not blame them.
“Anything that could help us find out what this creeping dark is. It cannot have appeared out of nowhere and yet know our weaknesses so intimately. It must have been here before.”
June was silent and the Babel came to Lil as she watched the dome above them become solid. Slowly the flying Antes were blocked from view. The words danced through her brain and on the tip of the tongue. A simple thing to bind June in any number of ways with Babel. No need for the blood she had gotten from Arel and Jagi. And so many different bonds with a simple word change, she could bond June to not speak of this, or except in her presence, to forget the conversation ever happened. So many options danced through her brain and she struggled to push them back.
Why not do it? Wouldn’t it just make everything easier? She turned to glance at Holder Mayer and he was staring at her, mouth open, standing. She pushed the power away and did not speak the words. It was the hardest thing she had ever done. The need boiled inside her and no matter how she fought, she knew it was only a matter of time before Babel came bursting forth.
“Okay, but I need a favor as well.”
Lil nodded. She had expected no less. She’d rather have this be an exchange than have a favor hanging over her head.
“What?”
“I need you to look for something in the Ossuary.”
She froze. Several Antes behind them were discreetly trying to disrupt the wall of water they were seated under. Lil found it better not to look at the water at all. Shapes were swimming through it. Things that should only exist in nightmares. Things that could have no other use than killing.
“Don’t look so worried, Holder-in-training. I do not want you to take it from the Ossuary. Merely to confirm that it exists.”
Lil thought about it. It did not violate any of the rules she had been given. In fact, she was supposed to be looking for something to help them all. If finding this thing would allow her to get information that could save them, it would be the best use of her time. She nodded.
“Lovely. I will come to your rooms after dinner and we will discuss the details. For now I think I should join my brethren.”
Many of the Antes were no longer seated but were up and attacking the barrier with their own powers. The others continued to simply eat and watch. She remembered what June had said about this being entertainment and threat. It was a test. Many of the Antes were having mild success in dissolving the water barrier, but it reestablished itself in seconds.
Lil could still feel the dampness in the air. It was the obvious way for the water to replenish itself.
There was no way to break Alchemy, but she could subvert it. An idea formed in her mind that might allow her to burn the order out of her system. She swallowed the food in her mouth and looked around to make sure no one was watching her. Even Mayer had turned his attention to the wall of water that was slowly shrinking around them.
She let the word start to form and then used all her strength to stop after the first syllable. She studied the curl of her tongue, examined the way her mouth was primed to open. Something that started with that syllable, she thought as her mouth struggled to complete and she held it back. Finally she smiled and allowed a word to slip from her lips. Whatever had intended to form fought against her control but in the end she won.
The word came out cracked and with the wrong emphasis, but the effect was noticeable at once—a dry desert wind began to swirl about in their cage, yanking the dampness from the air and drying it out completely. In minutes the air was so dry she felt her lips cracking as the air around them absorbed moisture from anywhere it could. The Ante’s attacks against the water became much more effective and the surrounding barrier looked like Swiss cheese. The shapes that had been floating in the dome quickly fled back into the pools, and finally, when the last remnant of water was scrubbed from the air?
All the Antes began to clap at the show.
Lil joined in, proud of herself until she saw Mayer’s face at the next table. It was blank to anyone else, but she could read the banked rage there. Even if he had not seen her use it, he must have felt the echo of Babel in the air and made the obvious assumption. She kept clapping and deliberately turned her face the other way. The yelling and punishment would come soon enough. For now she was proud of herself and would continue to be for the rest of the night.
She picked up a spoon, suddenly ravenous, and started spooning soup into her mouth. It had a distinctly fishy taste and she couldn’t help but wonder if she was eating the relative of one of the things in the pools.
MAYER
He had no chance to talk to Lil as dinner ended; she moved past him much too quickly. As much as it burned him to just let her go, she was on a mission for Chayyliel and they lived at Chayyliel’s sufferance right now. But they would discuss her use of Babel in the dining hall. Technically the visitors were included in the vow not to use the language on any Antes, though they could argue it had not been directed at anyone, which was obviously what Lil was counting on. However, what
worried him the most was that she had used it so easily, had countered so much power at once.
As he wandered, up to her room to confront Lil, Krezida came out of the dark.
“Holder Mayer.”
“Holder Krezida.”
She was a thin woman, yet still she seemed to take up the whole of the hallway. She did not move at all, but gave the impression of coming forward and filling his personal space.
“Something I can help you with, Krezida?” His mind whirled to Babel and he painstakingly began to form a word that would push her back.
“Your Holder-Apprentice.”
“Yes?”
“She did something to my Holder-Apprentice.”
“Did she now? I assume you have evidence of this besides his word.”
“I’m sure—”
“No, of course you don’t, because if you did you would bring this before both myself and Riana.” The word finally came to him and he forced it through his throat, scouring it raw. She was blown back by a force stronger than wind and took refuge against the wall. “Every one of us knows your Holder-Apprentice is the lowest of the low. We all know the crimes he was accused of before he sought sanctuary at Enheduanna. His talent cannot be enough to make up for all of that, can it?”
Krezida rose from her crouch, unsure.
“Do not dare to judge me. You have no idea of my plans. The boy is useful and as long as he remains so he shall remain at my side. At least I am assured of a Holder-Apprentice who will not try to rise above himself and usurp my place. Can you say the same?”
“Lil does what is ordered of her.” He would not show any suspicions otherwise to this woman.
“Yes. How convenient her orders allow her to make so many important connections with Antes far above her station. How long until they begin to believe it will be easier to deal with her than with your old crotchety self?” She was again moving toward him, cautiously but steadily. “She may not have to do anything directly. Just get enough of them to like her.” She reached for his face and he grabbed her wrist in his hand and turned it over to observe the paste on the underside of her nails.
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