The Shadowglass

by Rin Chupeco

  Kalen’s aim was true. The sword cut cleanly through the beast’s neck, sending small jets of blood into the air. The headless creature fell but continued to thrash on the floor. A glint of silver caught my eye. There was the spark of a heartsglass embedded in the deceased Deathseeker’s stomach. Kalen spotted it at my cry and swung his sword again, digging the stone out of the creature’s abdomen. The monster groaned and finally laid still.

  “Kalen,” I sobbed. “How—how—”

  A rune flickered to life before me, the only real light in the cell as Kalen forced through the lock that barred me from leaving. “We have to get you out of here.”

  “What?”

  “Empress Alyx wants to speed up your trial, but Mykaela scried on the elders. They intend to drag you out tomorrow and have you executed without the queen’s knowledge.”

  “Did they… Levi—?”

  “I don’t know. If they’re responsible for this too, I…” His voice broke. “Now’s not the time.”

  Without waiting for a reply, he lifted me up and swung me on his shoulder. I made no protest, still in a daze. I remembered the last time I fled in this manner, under threat of death. It was in Odalia. I was imprisoned by Kalen’s own father, the Duke of Holsrath, and made to flee with the others like thieves with consciences, desperate to return to Kion and ensure both Princess Inessa’s and Prince Kance’s safety. It felt like I was in a series of cyclic chapters that only foretold the same endings, no matter what forks in the road I faced.

  The guards who were watching over my prison were dead, no doubt at the Levi creature’s hand. I recalled their bodies as Kalen ran down the corridor and out of the palace. Likh and Khalad stood by the entrance, horses saddled and ready. Mykaela and Inessa were there too, as was Fox. My heart twisted.

  “Likh and Khalad will come with us.” Kalen settled me atop Chief. “The others must stay behind.”

  “Where are we going?” I choked out through my emotion.

  “The city-states of Yadosha,” Mykaela said. “Seek out First Minister Stefan. He will give you sanctuary in my name. Now, hurry. You must leave before any outcry. Shadi and Althy are running interference to hide your escape from the others for as long as possible.”

  “They took Levi, Mykkie,” Kalen said hoarsely. “They blighted him. He slaughtered the guards.”

  Mykaela closed her eyes. “The poor man. The gods rest his soul. He’s our problem now. Yours is to take Tea safely to Yadosha.”

  Inessa stepped forward, reaching up to hug me tight. “I bring nothing of importance to this conversation,” she said softly, “beyond shielding Mykaela from suspicion. But I wish you all the best, and I hope we can bring you back here, absolved of all guilt.” She turned to my brother. “Fox?”

  My brother said nothing, his head lowered. I reached out to him. The Veiling still stood between us, but I could sense faint stirrings of emotions—betrayal, anguish, mourning. Anger. So much anger. I trembled. He was not yet ready to forgive me. “It’s all right, Inessa.”

  Kalen settled himself behind me; Likh and Khalad mounted their own horses.

  I love you, I said softly. Something shifted on Fox’s end, but he made no reply. I let Kalen wrap his cloak around me, hiding my face from view, and watched as he took the reins. Soon, all three horses were racing down the road at breakneck speed.

  “We might need assistance with the guards,” Khalad told me. “Are you up for it?”

  I nodded and focused. I reached out with Scrying, letting it drift toward the city gates. I found a soldier’s mind. Ignore us, I ordered, weaving Compulsion into the mix, and felt it settle. I spread out farther afield, calming the thoughts of every soldier I could find. Without anyone chasing us or sounding the alarm, it was easier to escape this time.

  Open the gates, I told the last guard, and the heavy doors creaked before us. I held my breath, expecting someone to let out a warning, for the army to mobilize and surround us, for all this to be a trap, but all I could see as we headed out of the city were the gate tower fires and blinking lights of wayward lampposts as we left home for the last time.

  “You let her get away!” Lady Altaecia is a different person when she’s angry. Her bobbed hair rises up like the inflamed comb of a rooster, and her round proportions suddenly become oddly angular. “Why didn’t you call for us? What possessed you to rush to the graveyard—not with a handful of soldiers or Deathseekers, but with a bard you endangered! You knew you could not take her on your own. Any elder with enough malice could claim aiding and abetting!”

  The older asha had reason for her ire, but Fox was implacable, emotions disguised to prevent scrutiny. He had been reading part of the Dark asha’s letter when the older woman barged in, and he’d smoothed the papers on the table, fingers lingering on the final words of one page, before focusing his attention on her.

  “You were busy elsewhere, as you recall.” By contrast, he sounded almost meditative. “I had nothing to go by beyond gut instinct. Tea set up a Veiling barrier on leaving Daanoris. I have no access to her thoughts, only assumptions. But even with all the asha in the Willows standing behind me, I doubt they could bring in Tea. She’s different now, Althy. She would sacrifice more in an instant if she had to.”

  “Are you suggesting we do nothing?”

  “No. I’m suggesting we track sightings of her azi. We need eyes and ears to tell us where the rest of her daeva have gone. Kion was a distraction. Where are the other six? That’s where we must be.” His eyes hardened. “She doesn’t want us in Drycht.”

  “For once, I am tempted to agree with her. They don’t call it the desert kingdom for nothing. The only way into the Dry Lands is through the Drycht cities, and we’ll have our hands full there. Even if we are successful, the trek to reach the Ring of Worship will kill our soldiers. I trust you, Fox, but you will forgive me when I say few people have reason to when your sister is involved.”

  “We’ll figure that out when the time comes,” Princess Inessa broke in. “Our army is to meet up with Kance in the Hollow Mountains, where he believes Aadil has taken up defenses. From there, only a sea voyage separates us from Drycht. And you know as well as I that the elder asha would have let Fox languish in prison with or without the Veiling. He saved me, and he saved my mother and Hestia. That was what convinced them of his loyalty. If Tea is postponing her quest for shadowglass to hunt down Druj, we have time. We must find him before she does, and it is possible he is still with Aadil.”

  The asha scowled. “Very well. We will send scouts for the other daeva. We have far too much to do to argue about a moment long passed. The Yadoshans offer their support, and we are running out of room to house visitors. As for Kance, the King of Odalia is not in his kingdom. The boy has gone off with his army again, and we know how that turned out last time. I am still disappointed in you, Fox. Do not presume that I would have turned down the chance to talk to Tea myself.” Her tone grew mellower, wistful. “I helped raise her too.”

  “Your Highness and Empress Alyx were in danger?” I asked the princess quietly after Lady Altaecia had bustled away to address some new concern.

  “The Deathseeker, Levi, was not the only casualty of the Blight runes. A sudden spate of blighted folk followed in the days and weeks after Tea and the others had fled. One of—one of my handmaids changed in front of my very eyes in the middle of the throne room, followed quickly by three more courtiers. We were clearly intended to be the targets. But Fox killed them on his own.” A small smile graced her lips. “He was incredible.”

  “Inessa,” Lord Fox began, a touch of embarrassment about his person.

  She waved him aside. “But Hestia, in a moment of madness, accused him of an assassination attempt and confined him to the dungeons. Word was quick to spread among the soldiers and Deathseekers, and they rallied to his cause. Only Dark asha can complete the Blight spell, and Fox, while a familiar, could not draw
in the Dark. Her unjust punishment of him worked to our advantage. Enough people in the city protested—I told you all our charity work was more than show, Fox—and the association was forced to release him. Several weeks ago, there was another wave of blighted, only this time Fox saved Hestia as well.”

  Only for the elder to die a horrible death in Daanoris. “But was the Dark asha’s name cleared?”

  “In a sense, yes, but so were the elders’. They could not complete the spell on their own. They claimed withholding the forbidden runes was to prevent a wayward Dark asha from getting her hands on them. We could never prove the case for Mykkie’s heartsglass, but even Mykkie thought them innocent. Tea was out of Kion’s borders and too far away to cause mischief. It was an impasse of sorts.”

  “But not the murder of her sister?”

  The princess’s smile wobbled. “No. Not that. But…Fox was the only witness. Without him, the case against Tea was weak. In the end, that’s what finally convinced the elders that he wasn’t on her side. It was the only charge they could lodge against her that we couldn’t successfully argue against.”

  “I had to confess everything to Mykkie, to ensure she had all the resources she needed to defend Tea.” Lord Fox was stony eyed, impassive. “I had to. But that meant informing the elders of what truly happened. In the end, it didn’t matter. One of my sisters is dead. Killed by our own sister. There is no side to take.” He flipped through the rest of the bone witch’s pages. “We’re taking too long,” he snapped at his own impatience. “If there is a clue here, then surely we should see it to the end…”

  He stopped and spoke my worst nightmare. “These pages are unfinished. The last page—it breaks off in the middle of a sentence.”

  “What?” It was my turn to stand, to rush and scan the pages myself.

  He was right. We didn’t have the complete story.

  10

  “It will do you good to eat,” Likh reminded me, carefully placing perfectly grilled fish before me. Likh, I soon discovered, had packed with the intention of turning every veldt we wandered into a home, to domesticate every plain and mountain we camped on. The food he made was simple but with the same caliber of an Arhen-Kosho chef’s.

  In the first hours after our unexpected flight, I also learned that Likh had done my packing for me, that I had no scarcity of zivars and hua. He, Kalen, and Khalad had been planning our escape from the instant they learned of my impending execution. I knew I should be grateful, but part of me wanted to laugh at the insanity of it all. I had killed my own sister—clothes and trinkets were the last things on my mind.

  I accepted the stew but continued to stare numbly at the horizon, fighting the urge to cry or throw up. I had never seen Mithra’s Wall this close before. I had never been to the Yadosha city-states. From my perspective, the mountain ranges were an imposing fortress, shaped like a nanghait’s profile. They stared back at me, almost literally—each peak a more repulsive face than the next. Nature had once been an inexperienced sculptor, and Mithra’s Wall was one of its first attempts. It was not like the elegant snow cliffs of the Bayevik Mountains that skimmed Istera’s Ice Knife. It was not the slim, majestic cliffs of the Hollow Mountains that guarded Odalia’s south, nor was it even the bullish, armor-like mountains of Daanoris’s Haitsa range. It was not a popular destination for tourists who preferred their scenery genteel and refined, but its ugliness was what most Yadoshans loved about it.

  Monstrosities had monstrous legends to explain their monstrous natures, and theirs was of the Great Hero Mithra lifting the earth to impede the newly resurrected nanghait’s approach into Yadosha. Its burial mound was located on the other side of the range, which seemed to support the story, but I don’t have much reason to believe in old tales nowadays.

  At Kalen’s urging, we had ridden for the rest of the night, not stopping until the darkness rewarded us with the glimmer of dawn. He wanted distance between us and the city before he would allow me to summon the azi, knowing the sight of it would alert others to our escape, if they hadn’t discovered it already.

  All talk of my killing the azi had faded; the daeva was our only chance of outrunning any pursuers. Kalen sold our horses at a nearby village, keeping only Chief, as no other steed, save Kismet, had ever willingly mounted the daeva.

  I called for my beast familiar but remembered little of the flight until we landed a few miles away from Thanh, the closest Yadoshan city to the Wall. We took time to refresh alongside the Five Rivers, one of the many streams running through the city-states, and Khalad and Kalen caught some silver-backed trout to break our fast, which Likh had duly cleaned and cooked.

  I knew they were doing their best to put me at ease, and I applauded their efforts, if not their success. All throughout the night, Daisy’s lifeless countenance swam before my eyes, and nothing could shake the image of her dead in Fox’s arms. The visions I had seen with uncomfortable frequency during my time in the dungeons had disappeared, and only her face remained. Not even my memories of her helped.

  I stared down at my heartsglass. A beautiful swirl of black grew on silver, a cluster of stars slowly being consumed by darkness.

  Likh chattered on, sketching out the rest of the details they’d worked out while I’d been imprisoned. “The plan is to lie low while Mykaela and the others fight on our behalf back in Kion. Zoya and Parmina believe we’ve still got a good case. All we need to do is to—”

  “I killed her.”

  Likh paled. “You can’t say that, Tea. We don’t know what really happened.”

  “What else is there to prove? She is dead, because I had stabbed her with my own knife.” And then I began to laugh. “What else do we need to know what happened? Is my testimony not enough? Was Fox’s account insufficient? My knife, my hands, my blood—I killed her, and you should have let me stand at the scaffold and hang by the neck. I’m worthless, and I killed her. I killed her. I killed—”

  I didn’t see him raise his arm, but the blow was hard, snapping me across the cheek. I recoiled, stunned and blinking.

  “They’re going to find you innocent,” Likh said calmly, like he had done nothing out of the ordinary, “and we’re going to hide in Yadosha with their leaders’ blessing. A newly resurrected nanghait’s been skulking about, I’m told, so they’re more than likely to welcome us. The asha association’s reach doesn’t completely extend into the city-states, so they’ll have a harder time influencing people there. Yadoshans are an independent, rather stubborn folk, and they don’t take to being told what to do if they don’t want to do it.”

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  “Don’t be. I’m only sorry we couldn’t figure out a better way to do this.” He grinned at me. “Besides, I’ve never been to Yadosha before. I’ve always wanted to explore more of the world.”

  “Why are you here? Your asha training hasn’t been fully… Won’t they be worried about—”

  Likh’s face hardened. “I won’t be missed in Kion. Kalen has Zahid’s blessing, and Khalad pretty much goes wherever he wants to. Master Narel, the old Heartforger—his condition hit Khalad harder than he lets on, but I don’t think even his master would disagree with Khalad’s decision.”

  On any other occasion, I would have been proud of Likh. He was no longer the shy, doe-eyed assistant working in Chesh’s shop, offering pretty zivars and dreaming of dancing. But there was something wrong with Likh. There was a strange silence around him that I was still too sluggish to comprehend. “What were you doing in the Isteran library that night? I’ve been meaning to ask.”

  Likh froze. “That’s—that’s strange to be changing the subject so abruptly, don’t you think?”

  “Nothing about our situation is normal.” That night had been a blur to me; I remembered the dream I had more vividly than its aftermath. But even so, finding Likh there had struck me as odd. “Were you doing more research about the blight?” Focus o
n Likh. Focus on Likh. Don’t think about sisters or brothers or blood. Focus on Likh.

  Likh gazed down at his stew. “Remember when you said that there could be runes for spells we haven’t even thought of yet?”

  “I do.”

  “What if—what if there was a spell no one thought existed, but you’ve been thinking of for the longest time, long before you were even an asha? And what if you thought maybe the rune does exist, only that no one’s been looking for it?”

  “I don’t understand, Likh.”

  “I’ve always thought that I was born wrong,” Likh whispered. “In the wrong body. I was wondering—I was hoping—that maybe there were other people who thought like me. People who felt different, like me. That maybe there was a rune where we could—where I could—change to be more me than I am right now. To occupy a different body more in keeping with my mind.”

  “Oh,” I said, puzzled at first. “Oh…oh. Likh, have the other asha been giving you trouble in the Willows?”

  He looked embarrassed. “There’s a lot of teasing. Some are lighthearted, but others…aren’t. And I haven’t been getting a lot of work in the evenings. A lot of clients stop asking for me when they—when they realize I’m not a girl or after they’ve grown used to the novelty of—”

  “Oh, Likh. Why didn’t you tell me?” I wrapped my arms around his waist, pulling him closer. “You should have told me.”

  “You’ve already done so much. You’ve made the impossible happen for me. I still don’t know how to repay you for that.” Likh gulped back tears. “I wanted to figure this out on my own.”

  “And you thought that meant coming with me to Istera to see if there were any spells that could help you?”

  “Was it too wishful a thought?” The poor asha sounded so dejected.

  “No. I wished you’d told me earlier, Likh. Is that why you chose to come on this journey? To help protect me? I can’t ask that of you, Likh. You’re a new asha, and you have a good career waiting for you in Ankyo. Zoya and Shadi will help you find better clients, make your own—”