by Cate Glass
On this morning, my friend was neither lost nor uncertain. His courtesy was bound with threads of urgency. His back and shoulders were tense, the shifting colors of his eye more intense than I remembered. Nothing about him spoke of whimsy.
“Your brother is well?” he said, as I filled the pot with water and set it on the reawakened fire of the brazier. “And your noble friends of the Chimera?”
“Indeed so. Everyone will be delighted to hear you’ve come back to Cantagna. Dumond’s wife, Vashti, our quiet sage, has felt cheated that she had no chance to meet our other friend from distant shores.”
“Someday.” His smile was fleeting.
At my invitation, he moved to one of the stools beside my table. I offered him a biscuit and some grapes left from our last market foray. He declined.
“Not eating or drinking this morning?” I said. “Is it your eye? I hope the problem is only a passing thing.”
“It is not so much a problem as an inconvenience,” he said, slipping the patch from his face. “The covering is protection until new ink is properly set. What do you think?”
A new mark encircled his left eye. A delicate lacework of small spirals in silver that glinted in the light. Impossible to make out more details of the design without moving too close to be polite.
“Beautiful and mysterious. It suits you.”
And it demanded attention. The patch would remain beyond the setting of the ink, I guessed, as long as he was among strangers. I could not help but contrast it with the horrid red mouths that marked the sniffer on the Academie footbridge.
“A new mark means you’ve learned something new,” I said. He had told me that the inked symbols were reminders of joys or sorrows, of stories, people, beliefs, or lessons learned. It just happened that the particular symbols his people used were only seen on fading mosaics and painted urns from centuries past.
“Indeed, I’ve remembered many things, though not all. I’m confident, however. I found Domenika.”
“Your mother’s servant!” As far as he had been able to tell us, Teo had been sent by his family to meet this woman in Cuarona. But on his journey from the distant isles of his home, he had been waylaid by thieves who had beaten him to the brink of death and thrown him in the river. I had blamed the beating for Teo’s faulty memory, though Placidio, ever the frustrating well of privacies, believed there was more significance to the gaps in Teo than a bruised head.
“Aye. She took charge of me—and my education—which was my family’s intent all along. We will continue with that until I return home to Lesh. She also took custody of your captive assassin. He lives, and in time will be given opportunities to learn and improve himself. As I promised, he will harm no one else.”
But had Teo recalled what he’d been sent here to find? Placidio and I had concluded that the object of his search was a mysterious antiquity—a small bronze statue of the god Atladu, the monster Dragonis, and a third, mostly missing figure, that I had come to believe was Leviathan, the mythical sea creature who had enabled the gods to imprison Dragonis. The statue had not depicted the three as combatants, as was usual, but rather as companions in a hunt or a footrace. We had chosen not to tell Teo of our conclusion until his faulty memory was improved. Thus the statue remained safely in the possession of the devout and scholarly grand duc of Riccia-by-the-sea. Unless …
“Have you come back to Cantagna to take up your search?”
“No.” Though yet sitting, he stretched taller. He’d been waiting for my question. “Romy, you are in terrible danger.”
I scooped crushed leaves and herbs into my cup, added the steaming water, and set it on the table to steep. Then I sat across from Teo. “I’ve lived with danger all my life.”
He leaned forward, his somber demeanor demanding that I heed. “This is not the danger you know—from your own kind—but something far worse. You must come with me to Domenika. Today.”
“Today? Certainly not.” The air shifted, as if a crack had opened between the seasons, mingling shards of winter with the warm smokes of autumn. But I could pay no heed. Two young people sat at Perdition’s Brink—their futures and our city’s in the balance, and our knowledge as yet incomplete. And even afterward … “My life is in Cantagna. My family … my friends … our work is here.”
“Were you dreaming, friend Romy, just now before you woke?”
All warmth vanished from the sunlight. “No, I—”
Denial died on my tongue. Attention to the matter raised the memory, as if I’d opened a drapery obscuring a window. The man with golden skin and sun-blazed eyes had led me from the ruins into a vineyard, stealing grapes to pop in my mouth as he whispered secrets in my ear. Each fruit, plump and ripe, had burst with tart sweetness that lingered on my tongue even now. You and I, my lovely, shall reclaim my birthright, he’d said. Or had it been the woman again? Her voice like a river of honey. Her lips brushing mine to taste the juice of the grape …
“Feel my hand.” Teo’s words yanked me back. His slender hand held steady in the center of the table, and as if drawn by invisible strings my fingers touched his.
“Cold,” I murmured, shuddering. “You’re cold as the night I pulled you from the river.”
He shook his head. “But I’m not. Not this time. Let me show you.”
He held my finger and plunged it into my steaming tea. It felt no more than tepid. Teo’s gaze did not leave my face, though a part of my seeing yet beheld that other face, smiling indulgently and setting my blood and flesh on fire. In truth?
I jerked my hand from Teo’s grasp and clutched my unscalded finger to my chest. Squeezing my eyes shut, I willed the dream away and reopened them to his somber visage.
“Spirits of the Night Eternal, Teo! How did you know I was dreaming?”
“When I arrived here this morning, you were trembling in your sleep, flushed … as you are now. As anyone would be when encountering the Enemy.”
The Enemy! I would not speak the name that came to mind, lest it shatter the structures of logic and reason. “It was only a dream!”
“I doubt that.”
Rueful, he was, and firm, and gentle. He gathered my hands and cupped them in his. Not so cold now. Or was it my own flesh had cooled down.
“The important question is— Please tell me that this morning was the first time you dreamed like this.”
“No,” I murmured. Resentment and anger simmered in my gut. “And certain, I know it’s no ordinary dream. But it isn’t always the same. Not even the same person in the dream every time. I see no … monster.”
“The Enemy is many manifestations bound into one being. This one learns what draws your interest. That one speaks words that have meaning to you. In dreams they discover your weaknesses, your strengths, your pleasures, your guilts. But it is only the one being.”
I reclaimed my hands, planting my elbows on the table and my chin on their folded knot.
How dare this man tell me I was a tool of his Enemy? Though he’d not actually said the word tool, the implication was clear. But the stories he referred to were myth. There was no Enemy imprisoned beneath the earth or the sea. No gods had ever manifested themselves outside of tales, so how could the other stories be true? No Gione returned to bless the harvests—bountiful or lean as it might be. No Atladu responded to prayers to make the Venia recede when it flooded half the Beggars Ring or opened his mighty hand to grant us rain in the years the vines withered. So how could there be a Dragonis? Or Leviathan …
And there I stumbled. Only three months since, I had installed Teo into the myth of Leviathan. He bore an abiding love for the sea, and could swim impossible distances against the current of the Venia. He believed his duty was to prevent monsters from hurting others. He refused to lie. He wore these ancient markings on his skin, and the language that came to him most naturally was Typhonese, which had not been spoken for uncounted centuries. In hours, he had healed himself of injuries that would kill an ordinary man.
Placidio cl
aimed that Leviathan, the mythic sea creature who lay dormant waiting for the world’s need, was sometimes portrayed as a human, naked like Atladu. Naked, as I had seen Teo on the night he dove into the river with a vicious assassin—a captive human monster. And Placidio, a man of secrets who was not one to be swayed by lies or storytelling, had bowed to Teo and said his people and their secrets and customs were worthy of respect.…
“All right, these dreams are not ordinary,” I said. “They’re terrible and unusually vivid…” Neri’s crushed bones. The painted walls of a prison. The touch on my hair that tingled long after waking. The simmering resentments and the anger that gnawed at me even now.
“Tell me, friend Romy.” Teo’s voice was soft. Apologetic, as if my growing fear was his fault. Unyielding, though. “By the bright universe, you must tell me everything.”
My gaze met his. In the fathomless iridescence of those eyes was his change most vivid. So much knowledge. So much worry. Curiosity and wonder had fled along with his confusion. In the span of three months, he had aged years.
I lurched to my feet to ensure I kept them solidly on the floor. “This is about the earthquake, isn’t it?” I said. “Everything started after the earthquake. No—just before. That was the first time, though not a dream. On that day it was only rage.…”
Pacing, circling the confines of my house, I told him everything. About the pain in my head on the day of the earthquake. About the continual, worsening dreams of ruination and death. Of the first where the woman appeared and told me I had a purpose. Of the man who whispered of hopes and longings that I understood but could not recall, for they were in a language I didn’t know outside the dream. Of the vision in the woolhouse—perhaps not a dream because I was searching for magic and had tried his own technique of turning inward. That was where the woman had been painting the landscapes on the walls of her prison. I told him of her lingering, seductive touch on my hair.
“My skin burns after the dreams,” I said, “and I think— No, I can’t think. I’m always exhausted. Certain, I know they aren’t simple dreams. They leave my soul twisted in anger, and … oh blessed Sisters … my body aroused. Even now, I resent your waking me and forcing me to tell you these things, and yet I know I have to tell and want to tell. Spirits, Teo, what’s happening to me?”
He caught my hand in his cool ones again and drew me back to my stool.
“The walls that imprison the Enemy are ancient and many, built with power no longer within our reach. Think of concentric rings much like these that shape your city. I could tell you of some of them, but not all. Not yet. Domenika is not yet finished with me.”
“So Domenika the historian is also a teacher.” I said.
He had told me a historian was one who unraveled the winds of time. My skin prickled with the wonder and mystery of those words, just as on that starry night when Teo had first spoken them. Was the mother she served the woman who had birthed Teo or was it Theía Mitéra whom Teo had invoked when he lay dying? The goddess mother—the Unseeable Gione. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear that answer.
“Taskmaster is perhaps a more accurate description. One might think of Teacher Domenika as a kind and gracious mentor. One would be wrong.”
For a moment, I glimpsed the whimsical humor of the traveler I’d introduced to noodles and tomato broth, to demon dancers and other Cantagnese customs. To sniffers and to the ramifications of the First Law of Creation.
But clouds reclaimed that moment’s glimpse of the sun. Sober, he continued, “The lawmakers of the world claim that descendants of the Enemy—sorcerers—plot to break those encircling walls, but it is doubtful anyone living could set out to break them all, even if they knew how, even if they had reason to do such a thing. Time and the workings of nature are more like to erode them. But there is another way the Enemy can escape captivity. In every human soul, gifted with magic or not, there exists a barrier between truth and lies, between the woven fabric of the world and … chaos. We call it the Singular Wall.”
“Placidio says your people never lie,” I said.
“We dare not. Perceptions of untruth that take on the mantle of truth weaken the Singular Wall, much in the way a tossed pebble can nick this stone that surrounds us here. No single blow is fatal to its existence, nor even ten at once, but over time…”
“… could wear it away.” Logic whispered must come next, rousing a dread that stifled every other sensation.
A dip of his head acknowledged my point. “The more immediate danger arises when the talents we share with the Enemy—the very power that enables us to protect ourselves and do whatever work nature calls us to—are of the kind that dissolve the Singular Wall.”
“Like mine,” I said, my dread confirmed. “Because when I become someone else, I pour all the power I have into the impersonation … the lie … until I believe it myself. Are you saying that this Enemy—assuming such a person does exist, which I am not accepting as yet—can somehow creep through a door I’ve created into my own soul? And then, what? I become the Enemy or release that Enemy into the world?”
By the Unseeable, what did I believe? For my entire life, I had skated between belief in the gods as they were taught to me and skepticism born of logic and reason. And here was Teo, himself a singular wall between belief and non-belief, telling me that I’d been wrong to doubt.
“We don’t know what form the Enemy will take or the nature of the inevitable attack,” he said. “I wish I could tell you. But there is so much knowledge that has been lost, so much that even Domenika cannot revive in herself or in me, but from what you’ve described—that you experience the Enemy’s anger and resentments and desires and find them influencing your actions—I believe we have ample reason to worry. Unlike the talents of your brother and friends, your magic separates your soul from this world. The world is altered. In that fragment of time, Romy is not here, only the other person of your creation. And yes, I believe this recent earthquake was the Enemy’s first move in a new attempt to get free.”
The Enemy … Dragonis. Beloved eldest of the gods whose loneliness had drawn him to lie with human women and men and seed them with magic. The monster who raged at his imprisonment. “Night Eternal, Teo, did I cause—?”
“No!” Teo enfolded my hands to reclaim my attention. “Here is what Domenika believes. There has been a confluence of events that have their root in the hours I lay in this room so near death that in order to maintain my existence, I had to lower every protection I had ever learned, every barrier I’d been taught to hold. You later told me of your belief that you had shared my dreams in those hours. I told Domenika of this, for I am required to be entirely open with her that she might guide me in my learning and my duties. And I told her of your talents as your friends explained them to me, and of what I perceived on that night of your adventure, when you became someone else.”
The night we’d gone after the Assassins List.
“She was concerned. Was it you or I who enabled the transfer of dreams? Does your talent necessarily mean your Singular Wall is fragile or did I somehow damage you while I was so weak? She was still searching for answers until this tenday ago when the earth shook. Domenika and I both perceived that it was not the shiftings of nature, but the Enemy who raged that day. And she knew that if your Singular Wall was compromised, it might have been further damaged by that assault. What you’ve told me suggests that possibility. That you are slipping into dream even when you’re not abed affirms it. Clearly it’s getting worse.”
Dragonis had caused the earthquake … and I, one of the demon-tainted … was at least a witness to it. Just as the Confraternity claimed. A part of me rebelled at that hateful conclusion. But only a part.
I rose and, without intending it, backed away from Teo. Was this what had dimmed his good humor, believing I was a danger that had to be eliminated?
“So Domenika wants me brought to her for what? Examination? Confinement? Execution? That would be a certain way to prevent whatever you fe
ar.”
“Oh, my friend Romy, never harm!” His brow had creased so deeply his new mark near vanished. “Domenika will teach you to strengthen your Singular Wall. To recognize the wiles of the Enemy. To protect yourself on the occasions you use your power. The frequency of your encounters tells me we have no time to waste. I can help as we travel—stand watch, so to speak. Keep you as safe as I am able. But every hour is critical. We must go now.”
I turned my back on him. His very presence—those eyes that testified to truths beyond those I knew, the honesty and generosity still genuine despite his changes—made it impossible to dismiss the story he told.
But once released from the sight of him, lingering skepticism scoffed at my overwhelming relief. Stories. Myths. Certain, to rid myself of the dreams, whatever their true cause, would be a gift, and the idea that I might learn more of Teo and his people, their magic, and why they believed as they did was most enticing. But the Chimera had two young people trapped in holes in the ground—and Neri with them, suffering an untreated wound that could cost him his arm, if not his life—because we wanted to protect Livia di Nardo’s future and prevent the Confraternity gaining a chokehold on our city.
Even such brief exposure to Livia’s mind as I’d had, filtered as it was through Nis’s perceptions, justified Sandro’s determination to protect her. And everything Livia had told me argued against Teo’s tale of a monster under the earth. The triumph of reason could mean freeing those with magic to live without fear, to openly explore the wonders of our gifts. In the best case, Livia and Donato’s decisions over the next days could change the world for the better. And the worst? Teo couldn’t tell me.
No matter what came of it all, I had just delivered a message that would bring matters to a head two days from this. My partners were waiting for me to help unravel the mystery of our captives. I certainly could not abandon them to reap the consequences of risks we had already taken.
“I cannot go with you today,” I said, pivoting back to my friend. “We’re in the middle of a new venture. A young woman’s life, and likely many more, depend on us getting it right. Surely two more days won’t make that much difference. By then our work will be done for good or ill.”