by J A Hutson
“She’s treated me well –”
Xela cuts me off with a slash of her hand. “She knew what she was doing. You saved her nephew and she could easily have asked for the emperor to intercede and end your life debt. But you had something she wanted” – she gives me a long, measuring look – “so instead she kept you in shackles.”
She jabs a finger into my chest. “Go back to your chambers. You’re in the Sword quarters, yes? I’ll join you shortly.”
“I –”
She’s already turning away. With practiced ease she scoops a clump of darkness from behind an ornate candelabra and begin slathering it across her arm, which is soon sheathed in rippling darkness.
“Go,” she says again. “And gather your things.”
I’ve worn a furrow in the carpet of my bedchamber when the door finally opens and a shadow slips through it. A hazy pink is just visible beneath the black, like something submerged beneath dark water. With a shake, bits of shadow drift away, revealing Xela’s sharp features, and she quickly rubs at her limbs to remove the rest of the clumped darkness.
“Did you speak with her?” I ask her, and she stares at me for a moment like I’m an idiot.
“Of course not. We’ve been estranged for five years – I’m not about to have you be the first thing we talk about.”
“Then what –”
I gasp as Xela withdraws a small silver sphere from a pocket of her robes. There’s an answering thrum in the circlet around my ankle, as if my shackles also recognize this thing.
“You found it?”
Xela nods, looking satisfied. “It’s the only one she bothered to keep in her vault of most precious treasures. Well, I assume it’s yours.” She crouches down beside me, holding the sphere pinched between thumb and forefinger.
“What if it’s the wrong one?”
She shrugs. “I suppose the circle might snap shut. I’m not sure, to be honest.”
“Then perhaps we should wait . . .”
But she’s already pressing the sphere to the silver anklet; it quivers violently, and for a brief, terrifying moment I’m sure I’m going to lose my foot, but then the circlet snaps open and falls away.
By all the dead gods, I’m free. I jerk my leg away from the inert circle like it’s a venomous snake. A tingling sense of unreality passes through me, and I can’t keep myself from shuddering. After all this time, my life is my own again. The horrible helplessness I’ve felt since that night in the slaver’s tent is finally gone.
I want to find my friends.
“Thank you,” I say to Xela, my voice cracking slightly.
She gives me a lopsided smile and runs a hand through her silky black hair. “Let’s get moving. I know some people who will be excited to see you again.”
We slip from the Orthanos manse cloaked in shadow, climbing over the low walls that seem more decorative than practical, and move through the city as the late afternoon light gilds the great towers rising around us. Xela peppers me with questions as we push through the jostling crowds and dodge trundling carts. What happened in the grasslands? Who bought my life debt from the Zimani slavers? What was the undercity like, and what happened the day I rescued her cousin from the depths?
She gasps when I tell her about the attack on the caravan by the grass kraken – apparently, the ladies had stumbled across the detritus from the ambush, smears of blood and great ballista bolts buried in the earth. But they had only been sure I was alive when Fen Poria sniffed my scent at one of the campsites hacked from the grass – I remember Ximachus letting us out to attend to our needs, and I wonder how I would have felt at the time if I knew that was what would let my friends know I was still alive. Thinking of that night reminds me of Bright Eyes, and I feel a stab of sadness. I tell Xela of the kvah, and the pirate mucker Shalloch and Vesivia, and the strange things we encountered under the teeming streets of Zim.
Xela glances at me skeptically when I speak of Bright Eyes, but she does not interrupt. I want to make her understand the depths of the kvah’s honor – sacrificing herself to save a child of the people who had murdered her family and enslaved her – but I can’t seem to put my feelings into the proper words. At least she does not scoff when I tell her of the friendship that had grown between us.
I want to ask the shadowdancer all sorts of questions – about her noble past, her reasons for joining the Umbra, and what led to this rift between her and her mother, let alone why she traveled south to serve the Contessa – but before I can begin my interrogation she announces that we’ve arrived. It’s a ramshackle structure in an insalubrious part of the city; the towers that bristle in the richer districts have become sparser, the roads here are pocked and broken, and the listing buildings sag against each other like exhausted drunkards.
An inn, I think, though there’s no sign above the doorway, which is recessed within the bony jaws of some long-death behemoth. A few yellowing teeth the length of my forearm curve down from the top of the doorway, though the remnants of the thing’s mouth is large enough that they still wouldn’t come close to touching my hair if I passed inside.
The strange entrance draws my attention, but there’s something happening in the road outside the establishment. A crowd has gathered around a pair of circling warriors – one is a Zimani clad in the rich vestments of a noble or fop, a silver rapier in his hand, and the other is a pale man with dark hair and darker eyes, his clothing little more than sewn furs. In his hands he twirls a pair of double-edged battle-axes, flourishing them as he shuffles his feet in the dirt.
“Oh, more idiots,” Xela sighs. “How tiresome.”
The hooting crowd is showering the duelists with demands for blood, and for a moment I think this must be some Zimani tradition I haven’t encountered yet. An accepted way of settling grievances, perhaps.
Then I see her. Seated at a small table on a balcony hanging over the roaring bones, a bottle of pale green liquid in front of her. Deliah’s not paying attention to the circling warriors, but every once in a while, one of them steals a quick glance over to see if she’s watching yet.
Oh, gods. Of course this is what would happen.
The women of Vel must cause chaos wherever they go – preternaturally beautiful, known as insatiable companion lovers to the greatest of men . . . what talented warrior would not try and impress a lamias?
These two aspirants suddenly come together in a clash of steel – whirling axes push back the overdressed Zimani, but his slim silver blade flickers out, scoring the pale man’s side. They separate again, the Zimani smirking as a thin trickle of blood seeps from a tear in his opponent’s armor of spotted hide, but the wound doesn’t seem to slow the warrior at all as he comes in again, axes flashing. A chorus of gasps goes up from the onlookers as the Zimani is pressed back, his rapier a blur as he turns aside the crashing ax-blades.
Fools.
I’m pushing my way through the crowd when Deliah spots me. She leaps to her feet, upsetting the bottle of sap in front of her, long red fingers fluttering to her purple lips.
Her reaction doesn’t go unnoticed. My eyes are on the warrior goddess, but from the sudden absence of grunts and shrieking metal I can tell the duel has stopped.
“Talin!” she cries, rushing to the edge of the balcony and leaning over. Her red hair tumbles over her shoulders, framing her perfect, shocked face.
Silence. I can feel the gaze of everyone slide from Deliah to me in mild astonishment.
Slowly, I turn back to the crowd, already knowing what I’ll see.
The pale warrior and the Zimani fop are striding towards me, nearly shoulder to shoulder, their enmity forgotten. From the looks on their faces, they are not pleased with Deliah’s reaction.
Sighing, I draw my green-glass sword, and uncertainty flickers in their expressions as my blade slips from its sheath accompanied by a crystalline chime. The crowd is scrambling back now, realizing that the somewhat civilized boundaries that were in place for the duel have now been breached. I set
myself in a defensive stance, reaching for the core of calm in my soul.
A thump from behind me, and surprise shows in the faces of the warriors. Then I’m being grabbed roughly, whirled around so hard I nearly drop my sword, soft lips pressing to my mouth. Gods, she tastes so good. Despite knowing that I’m now open to being skewered from behind, I can’t seem to extricate myself from Deliah’s embrace. Her kiss is hungry, and I can feel every curve of her body.
Finally, she pulls away, and I’m immediately lost in her amethyst eyes as she studies me.
“You look older,” she says finally. “And you smell different.”
“I was in the sewers.”
A loud throat-clearing makes us turn. The two hapless duelists are standing there, weapons in their hands. In a few brief moments their faces have gone from determined to angry to surprised . . . and now I just see a look of uncertain confusion. Blood is trickling from the cut on the ax-man’s side, making a small puddle in the dusty road. He’s swaying slightly, and I don’t think he has very much fight left in him. The Zimani appears to be more ready to continue, his silver rapier raised.
Deliah glances at them dismissively. “Go away,” she says, and it’s like two bladders of air have been pricked. All the bravado and bluster of this pair leaks away, and Deliah turns back to me, ignoring them. I give them a final shrug just before they slink back into the crowd. How humiliating.
All thoughts of those two vanish as Deliah enfolds me in another embrace. Her mouth finds my cheek and my neck, and she asks me excited questions between quick little kisses.
“Where have you been? What happened? Did Xela find you? Why were you in the sewers?”
From over her shoulder I can see the crowd gawking at us. Xela is standing in front of them with her arms crossed, wearing a look of bemusement.
“Let’s go inside,” I tell the lamias, and without another word she turns and starts dragging me towards the looming jaws. I stumble through the entrance, and am immediately plunged into a hazy gloom. I get a brief glimpse of many surprised faces clustered around a few low tables in a common room, and then we’re clattering up a rickety set of stairs and hurrying down a hallway.
When she bangs open one of the doors lining this corridor I’m half expecting to be flung down upon a waiting bed, but though there is a rumpled pile of tattered blankets on a sleeping pallet, that’s not why she’s dragged me up here. Bell is seated at an ancient desk facing an open window, her back to us. Books and papers are strewn across it, and she doesn’t turn around at the commotion we’ve made.
Instead, she raises her arm in a gesture that looks like she’s shooing us away. “I’m busy,” she says, not glancing from the open tome in front of her. “This translation is like trying to get a cat to –”
“Bell.”
At the sound of my voice she leaps immediately from her chair and flings herself into my arms from across the room. I’m staggered, and only Deliah’s hand on my back keeps me from falling over.
“Talin!” she cries, and there’s wetness where her face is pressed into the hollow of my shoulder. Then her small fists are beating against my chest. “Where have you been, you fool?” she snarls, and I catch her wrist just as her open palm is about to slap me across the face.
“I can explain,” I tell her. She glares at me angrily, then tries to hit me with her other hand. I catch that one, too.
“I think we all want to hear that tale.” Xela has slipped into the room and is leaning against the wall, her arms across her chest.
Still holding the scientist’s daughter’s wrists, my gaze travels from Xela to Deliah to Bell. They’re all watching me expectantly. I let go of Bell, and she finally lets her arms drop.
“So, a lot has happened . . .”
The women listen raptly as I describe everything since being swept off the cliff and into the river below the mountains. Bell returns to her chair, sitting on it backwards with her head resting on her arms. Deliah settles herself cross-legged on the sleeping pallet, staring up at me with wide eyes. Xela stays where she is, smirking as she leans against the wall in the shadowed recesses of the room. I tell them of being discovered half-dead by the slavers, about the circlet that Ximachus had fitted on my leg and which kept me from trying to escape, the terrors of the grasslands and our entrance into Zim. Bell asks a few questions about the muckers and the undercity – apparently, those who delve beneath Zim have something of a legendary reputation outside the Twilight Empire. I tell them of Bright Eyes and the other muckers, the rescue of the Orthanos scion from the Pale Man, and my initiation into the Swords. Xela seems intensely interested in the Pale Man – questions are clearly on her lips, but she lets me finish my tale. She does snort, however, when I gloss quickly over my time as a Sword in the Orthanos household. Clearly, she’s well aware of all the duties Shields and Swords perform for the matriarchs and patriarchs of Zim. I can see interest kindle again in Bell’s eyes when I describe what happened in the court of the Purple Emperor, and the revelation that Valyra was now a ward of the Umbra.
When I finally finish, Deliah’s face crinkles in confusion. “I don’t understand – did Xela find you in the Orthanos manse?”
I glance at the shadowdancer. “Yes.”
Deliah turns to her. “What were you doing there?” She pauses for a moment, as if seeing her for the first time. “And what are you wearing?”
“You look like one of the Prophet’s Daughters,” Bell says.
A hint of embarrassment flickers across Xela’s face. Her fingers clutch at her pink robes. “If my mother saw me in my shadowdancer garb that would have been like putting my hand in the lion’s mouth.”
“Mother?” Bell asks, staring at her blankly.
Xela sighs. “Auxilia Orthanos, matriarch of the Orthanos family.”
A moment of stunned silence, then Deliah slaps her thigh hard. “I knew it! When you gave that innkeeper on the other side of the wall that token, I was certain you had to be of noble blood!”
“You’re the daughter of Auxilia Orthanos?” Bell’s voice is heavy with shock.
“Estranged daughter,” Xela adds quietly. “We haven’t spoken in years.”
Deliah makes a show of looking around the dilapidated room. “Wait, why are we staying here if you’re a noble?”
Xela shifts, frowning. “When my mother found that I was blessed by the Darkness she refused to let me join the Umbra. I was young and rebellious and ran away to the monastery. She traveled there, actually, and we had a terrible fight, with dozens of my fellow disciples watching. She demanded I return to Zim, and it was only the intervention of the abbess that kept her from dragging me back home. She disowned me after that.”
“Then why . . .”
Xela cuts off Bell’s question. “Because I was desperate. We had been in the city for nearly a month looking for any trace of him.” She jerks her chin in my direction. “We’d asked questions in every inn and hostel and tavern and gambling den, but it was like the trail had just vanished. But my mother has powerful connections. I had finally worked up the courage to ask her for help.”
“And there you found him,” Deliah says in mild astonishment. “How fortuitous.”
“Until the Orthanos discover he’s gone missing,” says Bell. “I take it you didn’t ask your mother for his freedom.”
“She is no doubt raging right now,” Xela says. “In fact, I would suggest we leave the city as quickly as possible.”
“The sooner the better,” I interject.
“Well, we’ll have to wait till Fen returns.”
“She’s returned.” We all turn in surprise at this new voice. Fen Poria is crouched in the open window, her features shadowed. Her white hair has grown out since last I saw her; it nearly touches her shoulders, long enough that she almost looks like a young woman rather than an urchin boy. “So you’re back,” she says flatly.
“I am.”
She sniffs loudly. “You smell terrible.”
“I was in the
sewers.”
Her large green eyes blink in surprise. “I guess that’s why I couldn’t find you.” She uncoils from the window frame and slips into the room.
I glance uncertainly from the murderous feral to my companions. They seem unperturbed by her presence. “So . . . she’s been helping you?”
“Fen tracked you,” Deliah replies brightly. “After you went off the cliff, we didn’t know what to do. We thought you were dead. But we had the Cleansing Flame behind us and no one really wanted to go back over the mountains. Bell thought we should try and find the girl you were looking for, the healer we’d heard rumors of in Ysala. So we decided to go to Zim. We’d just entered the grasslands when Fen here showed up at our campfire. At first there were a few grudges that had to be settled.” She glances meaningfully at Xela and Fen Poria. “But after that, she explained why she’d come to us. She said she’d smelled you on a river bank, but given that your body wasn’t there she thought you must still be alive. Fen found other little traces as we traversed the grasslands, but when we arrived at the gates of Zim it was like you’d vanished.”
I squint suspiciously at the feral, once again wondering why she’d taken such an interest in us. Fen keeps her green eyes lowered and scuffs at the floor with her boot. “Why did you do all this?”
She shrugs, looking uncomfortable.
Bell rises from her chair. “Fen has proven herself, at least to me. She’s loyal and has tried her best to find you. We might not have made it to Zim without her help navigating the grasslands.” A vigorous nod from Deliah, and even Xela inclines her head at this.
Apparently, Bell has forgiven Fen for abducting her father for the Marquis. Well, if she can move past that, I suppose I should also put behind me getting knifed by the feral in the manse of the Red Trillium Trust.
“Thank you,” I say to Fen, holding out my hand. She hesitates for a moment, and then clasps my arm briefly. “For everything.”
I’m sure I see a touch of red in her alabaster cheeks. “Never mind it,” she mutters, then shoves her hands in her pockets and recedes into one of the corners of the room.