Spark

by Anna Holmes

  “So he doesn’t fall off the table. Energy isn’t all graceful quiet.”

  “He’s going to bounce a bit,” Elle translates.

  “Aha.” I already feel wobbly-kneed, like maybe I should be rethinking my choice to observe so there aren't two unconscious people in here instead of one. When Jori comes into view, however, I solidify again, draw myself up. I unfold the earring and put it in place before facing her. “Before we do any of this,” I tell her, “you swear that everything you do here will help him and that you will do him no harm. By his standards, not yours. I don’t care if it’s to him, to me, to your gods, mine, whatever you actually revere, but I will hear those words from your mouth or this goes no further.”

  “You’d kill him with your stalling,” she snaps.

  “You’d kill him to spite me,” I return. “Swear, if he means anything to you.”

  Jori's jaw clenches, and her eyes shut. At last, tersely, she says, “I swear.”

  “You swear what?”

  She growls, “That I will do him no harm, that I will help him, by his standards, not mine.”

  No noise. I nod to Riley. “Do it.”

  He grabs hold of the join of her cuffs and fits the key into the lock. As each manacle falls away, she rubs at her wrists, flexes her fingers as I’ve seen Alain do. Riley gives her a brief look, then comes around the other side of the partition with the canister of the stones Alain pulled from the lake. He sets his hand to my shoulder for the briefest of moments, then turns to the others. “Ready when you are.”

  Kai settles a large block of lead encased in glass on Alain’s chest, then straps one last thing to Alain’s hand. It’s very much like what Professor Thorn attempted to use after that first collapse. This one is larger, weightier, more awkward. He taps the glass vial attached, watches the green liquid inside slosh until it settles. “All right,” he says. “As we discussed. Bannon moves first. Then the focus. Then the pours. They need to be timed right. I’ll be monitoring. If the canister malfunctions, we abort. If the gauge reads badly, we abort. Other than that, we’re full steam ahead.” His face grays a little, and he steels himself a little, nodding slightly. “On my command,” he orders, watching the gauge. “Release.”

  Riley twists the canister with a pair of loud clicks. As he sets his hands to either side of the container, light begins to filter from the stones and pulse in the glass channels looping the canister. It spills out of a small spout opening in the bottom, forming a concentrated ribbon at Riley's direction. It shimmers through the air almost like a fish, brightening at some curves, dimming at others. It arcs toward Alain, settling in his chest for only a moment before Kai calls, “Focus.”

  Jori grasps the handles, angles the gem’s facet toward Alain, and starts pulling at the air as though winding it around her fingers like a skein of yarn. The light draws back out from Alain and threads into the gem, where it catches. She whips it around and aims the point back toward Alain. This time, it shoots out in a concentrated beam. “First fluid,” Kai orders.

  Gavroth balances a glass container with a milky liquid on Alain’s lip, waits for the beam to make contact again, and starts pouring. Kai watches this intently, and after a solid few seconds, seems reasonably relieved. Behind Gavroth, Elle mixes something furiously. Every few seconds she pauses to hold the flask up to the light of the alchemist’s fire in the globe on the wall. Gavroth watches, and after a moment, he says, “Here, take over. I’ll bind that.” She sets down her mixture on a table and grasps the cup, the color gone out of her face. “Change nothing about the rate of pour,” he tells her, easing his hands off. “Back in a second.”

  She nods, eyes darting back and forth between the flask in her trembling hands and her brother's face. I glance back at Jori, who is seemingly still absorbed in her raveling, and dart forward to Elle. I whisper, “Breathe. You have this. He knows you do.”

  She sets her small jaw and steadies. I step back to allow Gavroth room as he clasps his hands around Elle’s mixture, closes his eyes, and a light pulses from his palms into the liquid. He edges up closer to Elle, holding his flask out. “Binding successful, Doc. Doing fine, kid. I’m going to let you finish that one. Be ready for the switch.”

  “O-okay.”

  “You can handle it.”

  Kai looks at the gauge, frowning slightly. “Need to speed this up. Shifting to amended experimental formula. On my mark.” He watches a moment longer, leans his head back a bit at a time, then nods. “Now.”

  Gavroth adds his mixture to Elle's just as she empties her flask. She nearly tosses the empty to the table and rushes toward me, flinging her arms around my waist and pressing her face into my shirt. I pat her back. “You did great.”

  At first, I think she’s mumbling an answer, but what she’s repeating is “please, please, please.” Gods, I know that feeling.

  Riley calls out, “Rye, slow your pour.”

  “Can’t,” he answers. “The rate needs to stay constant.”

  The table groans and slams as Alain’s chest begins to jerk upward. Kai whirls, looking at Jori. “Pick it up.”

  “Doing my best here,” she snaps, her hands winding around themselves faster, cramming the wispy cryst discharge into the focus. “We have a backup.”

  Kai glances at the gauge. “All right, Bannon, give me an eighth less flow. Crow, keep at it, and Rye—” He takes a quick breath in and says, “Slow it.”

  Gavroth looks up, alarmed. “But that will—”

  “I know.” He reaches over and checks the gauge again. “We built in a few seconds of wiggle room. We need it. Slow to twelve fluid.”

  Elle’s fingers clutch harder at my shirt. Gavroth tilts the flask back ever so slightly. Within seconds, the thrashing grows more violent. Alain’s breaths come harder, faster as the blue crystals seem to overtake much of his skin. He lets out a sound like a cross between a growl and a yell, and one arm snaps through the strap keeping him bound to the table. His freed hand claws at the gauge, his shoulder pulling for release.

  Jori throws out a hand. “You stay down.”

  His arm snaps back to his side as though an invisible grappler has him pinned. Elle’s pleases have turned to sobs. I wrap my arms around her harder and rock a little involuntarily, unable to stop watching as he thrashes and writhes against the remaining strap and Jori’s magic. All the while, those crystals grow sharper and longer until I can barely make him out at all. The lump in my throat grows apace.

  Alain’s snarls have taken on a strange guttural tone with a sharp whine on top, like he has two voices. Gavroth leans in. “He’s starting to express,” he says in alarm.

  Riley looks back at me, his face pinching in anxiety, then at Kai. “Nuthatch, we have to abort. This isn’t going well.”

  Kai shakes his head, looking around the room. “Not yet,” he shouts back over Alain’s howls.

  “Look at him,” Elle shrieks.

  “We stop now and he’s dead.”

  “If we don’t stop now, we might all be dead!”

  Kai shakes his head again and holds up a finger as he dashes around to the other side of the table. He ducks under Gavroth’s arm and fumbles around the table for something. At last he emerges, holding a glass tube with a point at the end. He darts back around. “I’m tilting his head toward you slightly,” he tells Gavroth. “Be ready to move with it.”

  "If you touch him—”

  “I know,” he blares. “Finish the infusion.” Kai steels himself with a breath, then with a solid shove to Alain’s head exposes his neck. “Don’t explode on me, you tenacious bastard,” he mutters, and jams the tube directly into Alain’s gill.

  The fluid inside drains slowly, and Alain sputters. When the mixture is completely gone, the crystals encasing Alain shatter. Shards fly outward in all directions, and a blast of force follows, knocking us all back. Kai sags to the floor, shuddering amongst the fragments. His skin gives off a yellowish glow, almost like mine. This is no natural evolution, though. Riley l
ooks down at him, eyes wide. Gavroth says, “You heard him. Finish it.”

  Elle releases me and rushes into the corner for Kai’s bag. “Bloody self-sacrificing idiots, the lot of you,” she mutters. “I’ll doctor the doctor. You fix my brother.”

  Riley firms his grip on the canister again, looking back at Jori. I don’t think I’ve seen her this floury, but she nods, adjusts the focus, and starts again. We’ve arrived at the last little bit of light, the last bit of fluid coating the glass, probably the limit of what Alain’s body can handle, and certainly at the fraying edges at my nerves. But I can see his face again, and it’s his again, not some crystalline creature’s. “Almost there,” I say shakily.

  “Watch that gauge for us?” Gavroth requests.

  I edge closer to the table, try to steady my legs. “What am I looking for?”

  “That can’t go completely green,” Riley says. “Tell us if it tries to.”

  Simple enough for me to get it, I guess. The shards crunch under my boots as I arrive at Alain’s side. His eyes are still closed, his breaths shallow and fast. Bits of crystal are still falling away. “Listen, you,” I tell him quietly, leaning over to look at the gauge. Very green, but not all the way. A clear bubble floats just at the top. “You still owe me a dance, yeah? Don’t think I’d forgotten.”

  Gavroth says quietly, “Getting down to it. Less than half a fluid.”

  Riley reports, “Adjusting to stop.”

  The light beam fades, the focus squeaks away, Gavroth sets his flask down, and Alain’s body falls back against the table despite an occasional spasm. We all share uncertain looks. Riley discards his canister and crouches to help Elle with Kai. Gavroth observes Alain carefully, tilting the gauge toward him and counting something in his head. At length, he pulls the tube from Alain’s gill and the clamp from his nose. He’s not exactly as I remember him. The crystals that grew over his body left small ridges on his cheekbones. Scales have stuck on his forehead and under his eyes, like a mask. And he is still blue. But he’s still here and still breathing, and that is enough for me. I finally manage to find my voice around a mouth as dry and dusty as the High Plains. “Did it work?”

  Gavroth says, “When he settles, we’ll know.”

  Eventually, all we can do is watch, wait. Jori steps out from her barrier. This seems to remind Elle. “He wanted that destroyed,” she recalls, looking at me over her shoulder.

  That I can probably figure out how to do. Jori’s brow furrows, but I give her a look and stalk past her to look at the construction of the thing. A gem on a swiveling metal post. A reasonably thin one. I take hold of the handles, still warm from Jori’s hands and the magic that moved through the gem earlier, and aim kick after kick at the thinner metal above the telescoping join. It bows, weakens, droops like a wilting flower on a stalk. At length I get tired of looking at it, this symbol and instrument of the Legion’s hubris, and pull my sword. It’ll mean some sharpening later, but I don’t have it in me to care. I swing it with both hands and behead the damned thing with a horrible shriek of metal on metal. The focus falls to the ground and breaks into pieces, some as long as my finger, some mingling with the dust itself. I stare at the remnants for a moment. “Never again,” I yell at them, then turn my gaze to Jori. “Never again.”

  She only meets my eyes for a moment, then looks up with a start. It passes in an instant, but I swear there are tears in those eyes that I know to be so cold. His eyes are opening. “It worked,” she breathes, moving toward him. “You’re all right. Gods, Alain—”

  Slowly, his head turns to me and his fingers fan out, reaching for mine. I rush to meet him. She pulls back, and Riley binds her wrists again. “Come on,” he says.

  “Try me, Bannon,” she retorts, turning back to the bed.

  Alain’s arms are wrapped around me now—not at all strong yet, but I feel him squeezing, pulling me to sit next to him. I do, placing kiss after kiss in that glorious mess of glossy black hair and rocking back and forth. Maybe if I don’t let go, we’ll never have another day like this again. I can hold onto this victory, so gracefully won by the genius around me.

  I glance up and over the jungle of the strands of his hair, I catch her stare as Riley pushes her to the door. I lift my head. It may not be smart, but it needs to be said. “Thank you,” I tell her. And I mean it.

  She holds my gaze for a moment longer, her face mottling, her jaw twitching, then whirls to storm out on her own power, as she always seems to. Alain’s grip on my waist tightens for a moment. I know. He’s chosen me, and she is sorely aware of that fact. Soon, I’m sure that will become dangerous, but for now, all I can do is hold him, bobbing back and forth like a boat on a rough tide, and convince myself that this win, I will hold onto. Alain has not been taken from me.

  The doctor is in no state to fly. Elle and Gavroth are reasonably sure that he’ll recover from his cryst poisoning, but for the moment, he’s sprawled across Fran’s bench, weak, listless, and periodically anxious. His hair is also falling out in places—not enough to cause huge bald patches, but enough to frustrate him when he rubs at his forehead and comes away with a not insignificant number of long brown strands. I swat his hand. “Stop playing with it. You’re making it worse.”

  “Maybe you are a tyrant,” he mopes.

  I hand him a bowl of broth. “What you did was both brave and stupid and I’m grateful. I’m trying to help you here, but you’re not listening. I’m sure you’re not new to obstinate patients.”

  He gives me a wary glance and nods. The pupils of his eyes still aren’t entirely black, swirling with the cryst energy he has yet to discharge. “How is mine?”

  I glance back to the tiny cabin, where Alain’s long legs are partially dangling off of the short bed. “Still asleep.”

  “Good.” He grunts, settling back against the pillow we have him propped up on. “He underwent a substantial transformation, for lack of a better word. He needs it.”

  “And you do, too.” I stand up. “So I am going to stop talking to you so you can eat that and rest. I just—wanted you to know. He’s still here because of you. You have my thanks. In whatever form you wish it.”

  “Safety,” he says, clearing his throat. “For my family.”

  I nod. “On my life.”

  He settles back and closes his eyes. “Thank you. Your…Highness.”

  It seems he got used to referring to me with unflattering titles, too. Alain has morphed that habit into pet names. I’ve never fussed about titles, but his using it is touching, somehow. I pat his over-warm shoulder gently and head over to the helm.

  Tressa flies in much the same way she’s been walking—extremely cautiously, with some bumps, uncertain every moment when Alain’s spell is going to finally drop, and because she has to. Riley sits in the copilot’s seat, hands not very subtly clenching around the edges of it. Tressa does not notice, as her focus is whetstone-sharp on the skies in front of her. “How is it?” I ask them.

  “Can’t talk,” she says. “Don’t want to kill us all.”

  I can appreciate that. “It’s going fine,” Riley says with the tiniest bit of a smile. “She thinks it’s not.”

  Tersely, Tressa returns, “I think that because the only practice I ever got when my backside was not small enough for this seat was purely at an imaginary helm. We talked about building something I could fly. We never did it. Now shut it so I can get us home before Alain’s weird blasted magic decides to put me back the way I was.”

  It’s honestly a valid worry. Even if she didn’t grow her second set of legs back when he was unconscious because he wasn’t really unconscious, now he’s asleep. Usually that shuts whatever spells he was holding onto right off. Kai doesn’t think it could possibly be permanent, even if his power is behaving strangely. So we wait, roll up a spare pair of Riley’s breeches for her, and hope that her human shape holds up long enough to make it to the Royal City.

  It does. The landing isn’t Fran's smoothest, but in the end we manage
to touch down on the castle’s landing port. Stretchers are rushed on, guards take an unusually subdued Jori away, and I’m immediately immersed in everything I haven’t had time to think about while Alain is taken to his own bed without me. Jarven keeps pace along the hallways. “We’ve had several skirmishes at port cities with Legion soldiers in plain clothes. All easily put down.”

  “Exploratory parties. We thought that might happen ahead of the envoy.” I rub at my head. “Casualties?”

  “A few injuries. None critical. Most are in custody, the rest disengaged and headed back toward Rosalian waters.”

  Low stakes. A distraction, probably. “I assume Hawke and Moira have cooperated?”

  Jarven gives one of his light chuckles. “It was tense, at first, but by the last incursion they seemed to have figured it out.”

  “Any word from the Envoy?”

  “She was difficult to persuade away from the Northern Shore, but we remained firm that if she wished to meet with you, it would be here.” He waves a pair of guards out of our way to the cabinet room, then holds the door open for me. “We have two days to prepare.”

  I count in my head. “That’s later than her original proposal.” I’d be relieved that I don’t have to meet with her in the morning, but the change of plans seems suspect.

  “She still intends to make her planned visit to the Shore. She will, of course, be watched.”

  “Good. I want her movements reported. Even if there’s nothing unusual about them.” I look up to find the rest of my cabinet, minus Riley, waiting expectantly. “Friends,” I acknowledge.

  One by one, with minimal arguing, they report. I feel almost a little faint, hanging onto the edge of my desk. After months of every meeting turning into a struggle, I don’t quite know what to do with this. “I am—impressed,” I manage. “My attention has been elsewhere lately, but I came back and find this place cantering along. It’s a welcome relief.”

  Jarven looks at his compatriots a little sideways, but smiles. “Perhaps we’ve had to learn to get along a little better in absence of your firm hand.”