Shadows of Ivory

by T L Greylock

  No answer. Hands reached for her. Her limbs went limp, the will to fight forgotten, though her body shuddered and spasmed against the floorboards. The hands held her fast, but not unkindly.

  “Make it stop.” The woman again.

  “I can’t.”

  The voices seemed to echo around Manon, coming from all directions at once.

  “She’ll be all right. I’ve seen it before. Just give it time. Don’t let her hurt herself.”

  “Some light would be nice.” The acerbic tone was creeping back into the woman’s voice as the shock slipped away.

  “Right. I forgot.”

  “What, don’t tell me you can see in the dark, too?” Silence. “Fucking gods, Luca. What are you?”

  The man gave no answer.

  Manon felt her body still, saw a match catch, saw the hearth flare with fire once more from the corner of her vision. Her screams had turned to whimpers and she had never before wished so completely to die.

  As the light from the fire grew, two faces looming over Manon came into existence. The woman was frowning, whatever concern she felt tinged with impatience. The man was smiling pleasantly and leaned closer to peer into Manon’s eyes. She tried to twist away, moaning, tears spilling from her eyes unbidden, but their hands kept her from moving.

  “She’s coming out of it,” the man said. “Her pupils are returning to normal size.”

  “Just kill me,” Manon mumbled, exhausted from endlessly reaching for the fire that wasn’t there.

  The man grimaced. “Why would we do that?”

  “Please.” A final spasm shook her body. “Please,” she tried again. “I can’t live without it.”

  “Oh. Your gift. I understand. It’ll be back.” He smiled again. The void inside Manon pulsed, as though taunting her, and she shivered from fear and doubt.

  The woman, Manon realized, had vanished from sight, and her voice called over to the man.

  “She wasn’t lying. There’s a pass here. Looks to be in order.” A pause. “She has four days to study the stone circle.”

  “I hope you’ll forgive me,” the man was saying, apparently unconcerned with his partner’s rummaging. “I don’t like doing that to people. But you seemed unwilling to compromise.”

  Manon’s eyes rolled up in her head and she felt sick. She coughed, choking on the bile rising in her throat, and the man turned her on her side.

  “Don’t worry. That happens,” he said, as pleasant as ever.

  Manon heaved out the contents of her stomach and when she had finished, the man lifted her into a sitting position. She swayed in his grip. She tried to speak, wet her lips with saliva she didn’t have.

  “What did you do to me?” she croaked.

  “Let’s get some water down you first.” The man stood and caught the water flask his partner threw, then knelt quickly to prevent Manon from pitching over. “Ah, now you’re dizzy,” he said. “Everything is progressing as it should.” He held the flask to her lips and, though a great deal of it dribbled down her chin, she managed to swallow some. The dizziness didn’t abate, but Manon focused her concentration and grabbed the man’s wrist before he could move away.

  “What did you do to me?” she repeated, wishing she sounded less desperate and more forceful. Still she grasped for what wasn’t there, her hysteria rising.

  “I hate to say it, but I’m with her, Luca.” The woman stood near the hearth, hands planted on her hips. “I think you need to start talking.”

  The man’s face, a melted, blurry version of it, swam before Manon. “Have you heard of Carrier fever?”

  Manon shook her head and was rewarded with a fresh wave of dizziness.

  “The blood curse?” The man lifted her as he spoke and deposited her in a chair. “Espahdiza’s Haunting? I think that’s all the names for it. All the names I know at least.”

  Manon shook her head again. “I don’t care what it’s called,” she rasped. “Tell me.”

  “I can take away a Carrier’s gift. Temporarily, of course.” The man shrugged. “I don’t know why or how or what exactly it is I’m doing.”

  “When?” Manon asked.

  “When will your gift return? It’s different for everyone, I think.” He looked at Manon closely, hesitating for the first time. “I’m told it’s nearly unbearable.”

  Manon wanted to scream, wanted to hurt him the way he had hurt her, but there was nothing she could do to him to make him feel what she felt, nothing she could do to rip away his very existence and leave a shell of himself to understand what was lost. She seemed to convey some of this in her glare, for the man reddened slightly and turned away.

  Manon closed her eyes. She couldn’t stop searching for the spark, to do so was as natural to her as breathing, but she could feel her balance and strength returning.

  “I can’t believe you kept this from me, Luca. We’re supposed to be partners,” Justina said.

  Luca stood up from where he had crouched next to Manon’s chair. “You made it abundantly clear you weren’t interested in a partner, Justina. I think that gives me grounds for keeping secrets. Especially secrets that could get me killed.”

  “What’s Espahdiza’s Haunting? Who’s Espahdiza?” Manon said, interrupting the tension between the two.

  “Espahdiza? No idea. Some long dead woman, I’d wager,” Luca said. “It’s just one of the names I’ve managed to discover for the loss of a Carrier’s gift. Carrier fever is the more common name, I think, but it’s a rare thing, and I’ve found that asking too many questions about it puts more interest on my head than I care for.” He crouched next to Manon once more. “How are you feeling?”

  Manon glared again. “If I had my gift, you’d be ash already. Does that answer your question?”

  To her annoyance, Luca smiled. “Well enough to threaten me. I’ll take that as a good sign.”

  “Who are you?” Manon asked. “And what do you want with me?”

  “We’re hunters, guardians of the Principe’s estate. We keep an eye on the animals, herd health, pack numbers, that sort of thing,” Luca said. “Oh, and we track down poachers.”

  It took Manon a moment to realize the implication. “If I were a poacher, why would I take shelter in the Principe’s own lodge?”

  “You might be surprised at what they think they can get away with,” Justina said, crossing her arms in front of her as she stared down at Manon. It was enough to recall the earlier standoff, knife against fire, and Manon shivered with anger—no, helplessness, she realized. She held Justina’s gaze, though, determined not to let her weakness show, willing herself not to be the first to look away.

  “Did you know the old stories say the stone circle is a doorway that drags malicious spirits of the dead to the afterlife?” Luca was studying Manon’s pass, oblivious to the silent standoff between the two women. “Folk have been passing down those stories in this region for generations. Seems like nonsense, if you ask me.”

  Justina rolled her eyes. “A fine thing for the man who can steal Carrier power to say.”

  Luca frowned. “I don’t steal it. That implies I keep it for myself,” he said. He turned back to Manon. “I’d give it back if I could.”

  His apologetic expression was genuine—indeed, his face didn’t seem capable of subterfuge or shadowing his thoughts—but Manon could not forgive what he had done. She looked back at the fire.

  “Still raining,” Justina said. “Harder, if my ears aren’t lying and if that’s even possible. Think you can stop fussing over her long enough to help me fry up a meal?”

  “You’re staying?” Despite herself, Manon turned in her chair.

  “I’m certainly not going back out in the storm.”

  Luca seemed to notice the tension this time and he stepped between them. “Plenty of rabbits to go around. Apples, too. And bread, fresh from the oven this morning. Might be a bit soggy, though,” he said, trailing off.

  It was that moment Manon’s gift chose to return, surging through her
with such ferocity, such wildness, that flames blazed from her hands unbidden, a deluge of fire to rival the storm outside. Manon twisted in her chair, falling to her knees, dizziness overcoming her once more as she wrestled with her gift—wrestled and lost as the lodge began to burn.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “I don’t recall there being skill involved.”

  Eska coughed.

  Her lungs burned. Water spewed from her mouth. Another cough. More water dribbling down her cheek.

  Her eyes flew open but she could see nothing other than bright light. Another cough wracked her chest.

  A voice. Faint. Disembodied.

  A hand on her back, keeping her on her side, another hand on her waist.

  At last her eyes processed the shape of a head leaning over her. Warm eyes. Dark hair. Silver ink curling up his neck. Eden.

  She became aware of something digging into her hip and tried to shift away. Eden helped her sit up, his hands seeming to hold her ribcage together as a fit of coughing surged through her chest.

  “Breathe. Just breathe,” he whispered in her ear. “You’re safe.” Using his foot, he shoved away the diving helmet and the metal buckles on which Eska had been laying. The rowboat rocked gently. As her coughing subsided, Eska assessed her body. The diving silks were nearly in tatters, stingers protruded from her skin, and here and there blood oozed from her many tiny wounds.

  “Is it dead?” she heard herself ask.

  Eden let out a hoarse, strained bark of laughter. “Quite dead. Somehow I’m not surprised you know how to use a knife.”

  “I don’t recall there being skill involved.” Eska tried to laugh, but the sound her throat emitted sounded rather more like a sob. Eden’s arms wrapped around her and for the first time Eska was aware of the warm sunlight shining down from a clear sky. She also became aware of the third person in the rowboat.

  Bastien was staring at the water, tear marks visible on his pale cheeks, hands clenched in his lap as he knelt in the bottom of the boat.

  “My lady,” he said, fresh tears spilling from his eyes. “Forgive me. Forgive me.”

  Eska stirred from Eden’s embrace, reaching out weakly towards the younger man. Their fingers met and tangled together. “Bastien, you are not to blame.” His hand trembled in hers and he didn’t meet her gaze. “Look at me,” she said. After a moment, he did as she asked. “There was nothing you could have done.” Eska tried a smile. “And don’t even think of saying you should have been the one to make the dive. That would be nonsense and you know it.”

  He nodded and wiped at his tears, but then his gaze dropped once more, this time landing on the diving helmets.

  The glass masks stared up at Eska. The leather of her suit was studded with spiny needles and rent through in multiple places.

  “We seem to have ruined your invention,” Eska said, glancing over her shoulder. The Regatta Master sat on the rowboat’s stern, his gaze fixed somewhere over Eska’s head. He drew in a long breath, but rather than speak, he dropped backward over the edge.

  “No!” Eska shouted—or tried, but it came out as a weak gasp. She made to scramble across the rowboat, but dropped to the bottom, her lungs burning, hands grasping her chest. “No, no,” she repeated. Stricken, she looked back at Bastien. “What is he doing?”

  She knew the answer of course. He was going back for the reliquary. Her mind raced, trying to calculate the depth of the lake and how long a diver could hope to hold a breath, trying to fathom how he could find the vault in time, with no stones to speed his descent and no light to see by. But every scenario she could imagine ended with him thrashing somewhere in the depths of Lake Delo, the last of his air escaping from his lungs as his body sank down to rest in the mud. A Carrier gifted in the ways of water could control it, conjure it—but not breathe it.

  The horror she felt was written across Bastien’s face. Eska wanted to cry out, wanted to dive in and follow Eden, but she was helpless and could only grip the sides of the rowboat and stare into the deep blue of the lake.

  They waited in silence, the moments dragging on, each beat of Eska’s own heart a cruel reminder of the air she could breathe but Eden could not. She scanned the surface of the lake continuously, her mind tricking her into thinking she saw a shape rising from the depths. But there was only the quiet lapping of waves against the wooden hull of the rowboat.

  She was crying, she realized, tears coursing silently down her cheeks, marring her vision. Too much time had passed. No one could survive that long. Eden San-Germain had died for her.

  The lake heaved under the rowboat, nearly capsizing it and sending Bastien overboard. They reached for each other, Eska fearing a second creature come to seek its final revenge.

  But no scaly body emerged from the lake, no stingers pierced the bottom of the rowboat. Instead, as though riding an invisible wave, the Regatta Master surged above the surface of Lake Delo, his black silks gleaming in the sunlight as water streamed off him, and—Eska’s breath caught—an ivory and gold reliquary box in his hands.

  ***

  “Impossible.”

  It was not an especially erudite statement, and as observations go, the evidence in Eska’s hands proved it to be utterly false, and yet when she had regained the use of her tongue some moments after Eden San-Germain had returned to the rowboat and deposited the precious reliquary in her hands, that was all she could manage to say.

  Eden ran a hand through his wet hair, a smile that Eska could only describe as apologetic on his face.

  “Can you,” Bastien spoke up, then hesitated, his gaze dropping quickly when Eden looked at him.

  “No, I can’t breathe water like a fish,” Eden said, the smile broadening.

  They drifted on the lake, none of them yet thinking of taking up the oars and returning to shore. Bastien could not take his eyes from the box and Eska, well, she was hardly better off. As for Eden, the smile aside, he seemed to be utterly at ease, lounging against the side of the rowboat, soaking up the sun.

  “I take it you know how to open it?” Eden asked.

  Eska turned the box over in her hands—as she had done more than a dozen times already. “It’s different from the other,” she murmured. “But yes. Eventually.”

  “The other?”

  Now it was Eska’s turn to smile, though her lungs still ached. “It seems I have made a habit of coming across these. But I got lucky with the first one. Somehow I don’t think I was meant to be able to open it while traversing rooftops in Arconia.”

  Eden raised an eyebrow. “Rooftops. A second box. You are a very interesting woman, Eska.”

  Eska looked him in the eye. “De Caraval.” He waited. “That’s my name. Eska de Caraval. I’m not sure why I kept it from you.”

  Eden shrugged, his face tilted to the sun. “We do what we have to do. You had me at a disadvantage when we first me, thanks to our mutual friend.” He stirred at last and motioned for Bastien to give up the rower’s bench. “Come. Your friends will begin to wonder.”

  Eska laughed. “If they haven’t already assumed the worst.”

  Their return to shore was greeted with excitement, followed quickly by consternation when the state of Eska’s diving silks was noticed. It was Gabriel who first caught sight of the nearly severed air hose and stingers in the leather suits, but to Eska’s relief, the engineer kept his lips firmly pressed together. The others exclaimed over the ruined equipment and it was Bastien who began to tell the story, the bits and pieces spilling forth in a jumbled confusion until at last the oldest member of the small crew, Ilius, begged him to slow down and tell the thing properly.

  Eska smiled and drifted away to her tent, eager for a moment of peace and desperate to tend to her irritated skin and lie down and rest. She had removed the stingers and felt she could, by that time, safely assume there was no toxin coursing through her bloodstream, but the red bumps the darts had left behind burned sharply. She didn’t notice Eden had followed her until she, kneeling in front of he
r small trunk and unable to find the salve she was looking for, kicked at the trunk in frustration and then promptly cursed her toes for having the gall to hurt. Eden’s laugh drew her attention to the tent entrance.

  “You may have just done something rather heroic and splendid,” Eska said, “but unless you can rip my skin off in one piece like a shedding snake, I’ll thank you for not laughing.” She stood with her hands on her hips, aware the shredded silks and her half-dried hair made for a wholly disheveled picture.

  He was still grinning. “I don’t think such extremes will be necessary. But I do think the best place for you right now is a hot bath followed by a liberal application of indicca oil.”

  “That’s a fine suggestion, but I have neither of those things.”

  “But I do.” Eden, seeing her gaze shift, stepped between Eska and the table bearing the reliquary box, breaking her line of sight. “The box can wait.”

  And so Eska, after riding to Cancalo and entering the Regatta Master’s home for the second time—by the front door this time, found herself soaking in a tub in a beautifully tiled bath chamber, steaming water up to her chin, the pleasant smell of eucalyptus and mint wafting around her head, suspended in that delicious place between wakefulness and sleep.

  After drawing the bath—the man still appeared to have no serving staff—Eden had left her in peace, and when Eska felt refreshed and clean and as steamed as a clam, she ventured out of the tiled room, pulling on a silk painted robe he had thoughtfully left for her as she went. There were two doors to the chamber and Eska chose the one she had not entered through, opening it to reveal a room that was the twin of the one on the opposite side of the courtyard—green and lush and full of billowing white curtains and dark wood screens—except for the addition of a large bed sunk into the floor with a small, burbling reflecting pool at its foot.

  Eden stepped from the balcony. He was once again wearing nothing but the sheer robe she had first seen him in. Without a word, Eska untied the belt on her robe and let it fall to the floor, then she closed the distance between them until she could feel the faint flutter of his breathing.