Red Tigress

by Amélie Wen Zhao

Ramson vowed that he would never give Kerlan the satisfaction of hearing him scream. Yet as he was dragged to the edge of the ship, the waves below black and impenetrable, he found his resolve wavering, his entire body beginning to shake against his will. But his frantic, scrabbling fingers met nothing but the smooth metal of his cuffs, and the weights chained to him were hard and unyielding.

  In his last moments, images flashed through his mind. His father, eyes flat and black as an abyss, as he waved for the guard to kill Jonah. As he ordered Ramson’s arrest. As he slashed his blade through Sorsha.

  Kerlan, jamming the hot brand to his chest, taking the broken, jagged pieces of him and sculpting them into something cruel and ugly.

  And Ana. The way she had looked under the moonlight that night, seadust shimmering over her skin, lovely and bright. How she made him feel like a boy again, wretched and inadequate and fumbling and awkward.

  How desperately, desperately he had wanted to kiss her.

  A splash as the weights were hauled over the edge. Ramson barely had time to draw breath before Kerlan’s foot slammed into his stomach and the ground fell away from him.

  The sky and the sea wheeled overhead as he hit the surface of the water. For a moment, he floated, and a wild, irrational part of him thought that if he kicked hard enough, he would stay afloat, he would escape.

  But then he felt a sharp yank and the next thing he knew water, cold and black, closed in over his head, and he was being dragged down, down. And then he could only watch, his lungs on fire and his head spinning, as the surface drew farther and farther away and the light of the moon became a faint sliver, and then nothing at all.

  Pressed against a pillar in a room of blackstone and chains, Linn felt as though she had been thrown back into a nightmare. The chamber had the septic smell of drugs mixed, Linn could tell now, with a rotten metallic stench that sent nausea spiking through her.

  Linn edged forward until she could see the white robe of the scholar, the leather heels of Sorsha’s boots. The blond girl was slumped in between them.

  Sorsha was facing a shelf; when she turned back, she held something in her hands. It resembled a bracelet made of a material that looked like jade and lapis lazuli interwoven. Like…searock.

  Sorsha spoke some words, low and crooning, to the scholar before her. His head snapped up sharply, his eyes widening in fear. “Nen,” he said, raising a hand and backing away a few steps, gabbling some other words that Linn couldn’t understand. “Nen, nen—”

  Sorsha lunged at him, teeth bared, dagger drawn. The scholar might have been physically bigger than her, but he was no match for Sorsha’s violence. He shouted as she knocked him against the wall.

  Click.

  The bracelet closed over his wrist, the sound echoing across the chamber in the sudden stillness. The energy around them seemed to shift for a second.

  The band shrank, tightening around the scholar’s wrist until it seemed to meld with his flesh. It shimmered with what Linn might have believed was the ancient magic or sorcery that her elders had spoken of. It looked as though an entire ocean had come alive in that band.

  The scholar had collapsed against the wall. He’d covered his face with his hands, and his shoulders shook with sobs.

  Sorsha knelt by him. In a motion that could almost be described as tender, she lifted her blade to his throat and murmured words in his ear. Linn could only hear the man’s sobs of nen, nen, nen—the Bregonian word for no, she had learned—pounding a desperate fear into her chest.

  Sorsha grasped his wrist and turned to the girl. With the casualness of slitting an envelope, she drew a gash across the girl’s neck. The girl gave a muffled moan as blood pooled and began to seep crimson.

  Sorsha pressed the scholar’s searock band to the girl’s blood.

  The effect was instant. The girl jerked as though every nerve in her body had been drawn taut. Her eyes widened and veins bulged from her forehead as she opened her mouth in a scream.

  The scholar tilted his head back, lips parted in what resembled equal parts ecstasy and equal parts pain. The girl’s blood, Linn noticed with horror, had stopped dripping; instead, it seemed to be flowing into the searock band. The veins in the scholar’s wrist began to turn black, spreading up his arms and to his neck, bleeding into the whites of his eyes like ink to parchment.

  It was over in a moment. The gold-haired girl sprawled on the ground, her skin pale like wax paper. It was her eyes, though, that would come back to haunt Linn: utterly empty, as though her soul had gone.

  Monsters, King Darias had said. There are monsters beneath my floors.

  The scholar was slumped against the wall, trembling violently. And as he did so, the glass bottles and containers on the shelves began to shake, too, filling the entire chamber with an ominous thrumming that grew louder and louder.

  Sorsha’s face cracked into a smile. She crooned something into the scholar’s ear. In response, he covered his face with a hand and raised the other.

  Glassware exploded all around them, splintering into thousands of fragments that arced through the air. For a moment, everything seemed frozen in time: the glittering shards, Sorsha’s mouth parted in wonder, the scholar’s face slack with terror.

  And then it all came crashing down.

  Amid the shower of glass, Sorsha took the scholar’s hand, gently stroking the searock band.

  And then she slit his throat.

  The scholar’s arm dropped to the floor, the searock band clanging as it fell off and rolled to a stop. Slivers of darkness writhed across its surface.

  Sorsha picked up the band. Even her movements were tempered, as careful as though she were holding a newborn infant. “The siphon is ready,” she said. She spoke in Cyrilian now.

  It was then that Linn saw something stir in the very back of the chambers, outside the glow of the lamps. She’d thought there was no one else in here with them, but the overwhelming amounts of blackstone here had blocked her connection to the air currents in this room.

  A figure stepped forward, and Linn felt her knees grow weak.

  “Godhallem, then.” Kaïs’s voice was colder than ice.

  Sorsha cackled. Carefully, she looped the searock band—the siphon, as she’d just called it—onto her belt. “Oh, Kaïs, you forget, we have a dear friend to find first. A certain little Blood Bitch.”

  Kaïs’s face was emotionless. “Very well.”

  “What a good soldier you make,” Sorsha crooned. She slunk past him, stroking a finger along his chin in an insolent gesture that Linn had never thought he would tolerate. Do not do this, she thought, pleading silently for him to move, to lash out. Fight back. “Even dogs know to be obedient once they’ve tasted pain.”

  Kaïs remained standing, still as a statue carved of stone.

  Sorsha slid her bloodied dagger into its sheath and turned. “Come, then,” she said as she moved toward the doors, her steps clipping sharply. “We have a feast to attend at eight bells.”

  Linn shrank back as Sorsha swept past the spot where she was hiding. Her heart was pounding so fast in her chest, she thought it would burst. Under any normal circumstances, a yaeger would easily have sniffed her out, and she would have been discovered. But Kaïs must not have sensed her Affinity because of the blackstone in this place. It must have blocked his power as much as it did hers.

  For a moment, Kaïs paused right before the doors, his muscles tensed in a way that she’d grown to read. He began to turn his head, as though to turn toward her, but then gave himself a small shake, stepped forward, and disappeared through the doors.

  Linn didn’t lower her dagger until long after the echoes of their steps faded.

  Ana felt as though her entire world had shifted. “The artifact steals Affinities,” she breathed, the words sounding surreal even as she spoke them aloud.

  Scholar Tars
chon nodded. “The siphon drains a magen of their power and lends it to the bearer.” He held out his hands, palms upturned. “The principles of alchemy hold: to give, one must take. The mageks stay within the siphon; the bearer merely channels them.”

  Ana felt sick. She thought of what Linn had told her of the man with two Affinities they had witnessed in Cyrilia, the way her friend had spoken with such fear.

  Scholar Tarschon’s gaze drifted to the book in her hands, the page on which it was open. “Long ago,” he said softly, his voice echoing beneath the holy paintings, “the gods parted from our world. Yet they left traces of magek in their wake. Gossenwal, wassengost…and in us, in the magen. Cyrilia received the gift of blackstone. And Bregon…we received searock.

  “Nearly two decades ago, a man by the name of A. E. Kerlan discovered searock and began to mine it.” Scholar Tarschon nodded to the tome Ana held. “You know the rest of the story. Kerlan discovered its magical properties of absorption, and he developed that into a potent weapon capable of absorbing magek.

  “When Admiral Farrald found out what he was doing, he reported it to the Bregonian government. The former King Rennaron declared this an act of cruelty against the magen in those experiments. He had Kerlan exiled forever, and all of his research and siphons destroyed. All…but one.”

  Ana felt like she’d stepped into a dream—a nightmare. Tarschon’s words came to her as though from very far away.

  “Unbeknownst to the King, Admiral Farrald preserved a single siphon, and began to experiment with it privately. It took him a long time to catch up to where Alaric Kerlan had been. Once he understood their power, he established a research unit in the Blue Fort…to develop the perfect siphon, and to create the next generation of magen.”

  The information swirled in Ana’s head. “Why are you telling me this?” she whispered. “Why haven’t you tried to stop it?”

  Sadness crossed his features. “My father was the first scholar who worked with Admiral Farrald on these experiments. He was killed in an accident with a siphon, and so Admiral Farrald appointed me as his successor.”

  It made sense, then, that Tarschon had been appointed Head Scholar at such a young age.

  “He threatened to reveal everything to the government should I not comply,” Tarschon continued, bowing his head. “I never had a choice.”

  His words reminded her of Kaïs, when she’d confronted him in the town square back at Novo Mynsk. She thought of him, of Yuri working at the Palace as an apprentice to feed his mother and sister down south, of the countless others who’d suffered under a greater power.

  Ana realized then that choices were a luxury. “You made a choice just now, Head Scholar Tarschon,” she said softly. “And that choice will come to define you.”

  He looked at her for a long moment from behind the panes of his spectacles. The great library had gone quiet, the murals of the gods above watching.

  And in that silence came another sound: the unsteady click-click-click of heels tapping against stone.

  The double doors at the end of the hall swung open and Ana and Tarschon spun around.

  “There you are.” Sorsha’s smile was sharp as she stalked toward them. There was something different about her, almost as though she were filled with a new energy.

  Ana bristled, turning to face the girl. As she did so, she caught the unmistakable presence of blood staining Sorsha’s navy-blue uniform. “What do you want?” she snapped.

  “Oh, I was looking for you.” Sorsha feigned innocence, pouting. “Isn’t it time that I escorted you to your meeting in Godhallem? All of the Three Courts are gathered for this party!”

  Ana was about to respond when a second figure appeared at the doors. “Kaïs,” she called, relief sinking into her as she hurried forward.

  “But first, let me deal with our Head Scholar,” Sorsha said, and something in her tone gave Ana pause. “Dear Tarschon, ever the noble fool. I was beginning to wonder when you’d start spilling our state secrets.”

  Ana whipped around just as Sorsha plunged her blade into the scholar’s chest.

  He gave a soft cry and stumbled back, crashing into the shelves on the wall. Blood bloomed across Ana’s senses, blossoming red over Tarschon’s robes. “No,” she gasped, watching as the man who held the answers to saving this world began to bleed out before her.

  Ana lashed out at Sorsha with her Affinity—

  —and then it was gone. A familiar presence had entered the back of her mind, clamping down on her power like cold metal. Ana gritted her teeth, the sudden disappearance of her power disorienting her.

  She turned to see Kaïs watching her calmly.

  The realization clicked. “You.” A snarl tore from Ana’s lips. “I should have known.”

  Sorsha cackled in delight. “There’s nothing I love more than a little shift in alliances!” she shrieked, and slunk up to Kaïs, cupping his cheek. He held perfectly still, his expression unreadable. Her voice was a low, mocking croon as she caressed his face. “Tragic, how our love and loyalty make servants of us.”

  A flash of emotion across Kaïs’s face, so brief that Ana thought she’d imagined it. “What are you talking about?” she growled. “What do you want?”

  “What do I want?” Sorsha whispered, and then screamed, “What do I want?”

  Ana flinched as the girl tore open the collar of her shirt. With a movement that could almost be described as tender, she touched a finger to the smooth band of her black collar. “My father handed me to the scholars on my eighth birthday,” she said. “He hated me, you see; he wanted to kill me, for I was evidence of his impotence. A daughter, instead of a male heir, was evidence that the gods were mocking him.”

  Sorsha pushed up her sleeve, flipped her wrist, and Ana saw something for the first time: a band resembling searock, undulating in the light in ripples of blue, green, and teal. “But there was one thing I had that he didn’t: a magen. A powerful one, to iron,” Sorsha continued. “You see, he’d begun experimenting on a rare material in Bregon. And he began to test it on me.

  “I alone survived, out of thousands of his subjects. I was the sole bearer strong enough to endure the siphon’s power. Killing me was the only way to remove the siphon from me, but my dearest father didn’t want to risk that. You see, he’d begun to think of me not as his greatest failure but as his greatest weapon.” Sorsha’s face stretched into an ugly smile. “When you deem someone nonexpendable to you, you become weak—and that was where Daddy Dearest erred. He wanted to keep me, but he also wanted to control me. So he put this lovely collar on me.” She dug her nails into the scars stretching from beneath the blackstone collar. “Little does he realize that power cannot be fettered forever. I will show him what I can do. I will finish what he has taught me my entire life. To destroy.” Crimson dripped down her neck, wetting her collar, staining her nails. She let out a crazed laugh. “And he will watch as I bring down his kingdom.”

  Sorsha spread her arms. Above her, in the last scene of the mural, the stallion, the eagle, and the seadragon seemed to encircle her in a perfect imitation of the painted mage, as though she were part of the scene, one with the great Bregonian gods.

  Then she turned her obsidian gaze to Ana. “You came to warn us about Morganya coming after our siphons. It’s too late, Blood Bitch.” She spread her arms. “Behold.”

  “Don’t do this,” Ana whispered.

  Sorsha straightened and sheathed her blade. “As much as I’d love to play a while more, Blood Empress, I have other things to do. A grand plan is in motion. The fun will come later.” She winked. “In the meantime, I’ll leave you to our friend here. Don’t be late to the party.”

  She raised a hand in farewell and flounced down the hall. As she reached the entrance, Ana heard her call back to Kaïs: “Escort her to Godhallem. I’ll be joining shortly for the main event.”

 
; The front doors shut with a clang. Ana turned to Kaïs. The pressure in her mind held steady, her Affinity still unreachable. “Just tell me.” Her voice cracked. “Just tell me why you’re doing this.”

  A muscle twitched in his jaw. “I have no choice.”

  In a corner, Tarschon had pressed a hand over his chest. Crimson seeped between his fingers, and he grasped the bookshelf to stop his swaying.

  “We always have a choice,” Ana said quietly.

  Kaïs hesitated. “No,” he said. “I’m sorry. If I fail, then—” A flash of emotion across those pale blue eyes. He composed himself and steadied his voice. “I must escort you to Godhallem.”

  A new voice rang out. “Then you will have to go through me.”

  A wind stirred throughout the hall of the Livren Skolaren, sending the lamplight flickering. In the darkness outside the Livren Skolaren, a shadow appeared, cutting through the night like a knife.

  Linn stepped into the halls of the great library, her blades drawn. “I have long waited to fight you on equal footing,” she said, and raised her knives. “Be ready, for this time, I will not surrender so easily.”

  In the darkness, there came light. And with light, there came pain. A burning, fiery kind of pain that ached somewhere deep inside.

  The next thing Ramson knew, he was leaning over and throwing up on the ground. His body spasmed as he gasped in lungfuls of air. His head spun. His arms ached from just holding up his own weight.

  “Take it easy. Breathe, breathe.” The voice was familiar. A hand rubbed his back.

  Still wheezing, Ramson turned. A figure sat before him. The faint moonlight silvered her braids, her bright eyes and strong brows that were, at the moment, creased in worry. “Daya?” he choked.

  “Thank Amara,” she breathed. “You’re alive.”

  The world had settled around him. It was still night, and he was splayed against a wooden jetty beneath a familiar-looking ship. The Black Barge bobbed in the waves next to him as a cold wind swept clouds over the moon.