“Is it Lord Sandson who asked for me?” he said as he scanned the hall. He couldn’t see any sign of the man but maybe he had sent someone else on his behalf. Such was the prerogative of important men.
The soldier holding him snorted. “No one gives a laisok’s rear what Sandson wants.” Behind a pair of smudged spectacles he eyed Viktor up, crow’s feet deepening. “I don’t know why she wants a scrap like you but what does an old dog like me know, eh?”
Through another corridor he found himself poked and prodded and he glared at the old man – for in the bright light of day he could see the man was lined like a crumpled paper bag, skin course like leather, and his eyes a bright but clouded blue. Nevertheless he possessed a reedy kind of strength in his wiry limbs and exhausted and disorientated as he was, Viktor struggled to fight him off.
The next thing he knew he was stumbling into a small office room, little more than a cluttered desk and a chair by the window. Behind the desk was a woman. Tall, elegant, wearing a long finely woven kobi in a rich crimson red, she stood as soon as they entered, clasping her hands in front of her with a gasp. Her expression was stunned, brown skin blanching as if she had seen a ghost. To Viktor she was at once familiar and strange; the kind of face that whispered to some distant recollection in the back of his mind, but to which his recent memory could not place. It was the teeth-clenching feeling of a word on the tip of the tongue. Like he should know but could not find it.
“I must confess, to see you with that face has me lost. It is you, is it not, Vallnor?”
The name triggered a flood of memories. They were filmy, flimsy things – flashes of days past, of training in the garden, running through the palace, shouting angry voices and sinking ships. They were so hazy they didn’t feel real, like he’d conjured them in some feeble fever dream and they had left enough of an imprint on his consciousness that he had plucked the images from somewhere deep within. Viktor ran his eyes across her form, matched it to the green eyed girl he could picture in his mind’s eyes.
“You’re her. Fyera.”
The smile spread across her painted lips. The face she wore was different now, nose wider, freckles clouded across her cheeks, but the expression struck familiar and her eyes still shone the same vibrant shade of green in the light from the window. “You remember.”
The door clicked shut as the attendant left them and suddenly the room felt too small, confined with just the two of them. Although he recognised this woman, he did not know her. It was discomfiting to feel like he should be doing more – should be saying something – but he did not know what to say. She was his sister. She was a stranger.
Licking his chapped lips, he said, “I don’t really remember anything. I have pieces but…” His hand worked at the frayed thread of his shirt.
Nodding, the smile slipped from her face. “That’s only to be expected after so long. But Vallnor – to think that I’ve finally found you. That we’ve found each other. I can scarcely believe it. I had hoped for so long, you know? I searched and searched but I just couldn’t find you.”
“It’s Viktor,” he said quietly.
She froze, eyes raking across him once more. “That’s… all right. Viktor, then. It fits you, I think.” She ventured a step closer, eyes flickering over him as if he might startle. He had to admit it was a possibility.
There was an entire spectrum of emotions he should probably have been feeling in this moment, standing across from a woman he could finally call family. After all this time, so long spent alone and lonely, so long searching for somewhere to belong, he had finally found a face to put the feeling to. And yet as he stood there he could only pull an exhausted kind of relief from the pool of his emotions. He would not die today. He would live to see another day and he would do it with someone who knew where he came from. Who knew who Viktor was.
But there was still something to be taken care of. “There was a girl down there with me. I can’t just leave her down there.”
Fyera looked momentarily taken aback but the expression vanished in an instant, replaced with a stoic expression he could not read. “I will have it sorted out tomorrow,” she said. “But first I would like us to get to know one another.” She took his hand, skin soft and warm, and gently tugged him towards the door. “I want to know everything about where you’ve been? Tell me.”
Viktor frowned at the interest in her eyes. The truth of it was, he had not been anywhere interesting. All he had done was stagnate in a place he was quite certain she would look down upon, from the broken shards of his memory he was able to smash together. “I have not been far. I grew up on Yllzlo, in a city called Nirket.”
She turned to him as they passed through the hall. “So close? To think you’ve been so close to me all this time.” With a click of her fingers she drew a harried servant dressed in black. “Prepare the boat. Take us home.”
“Yes, Don.”
Viktor followed her into the street, drinking in the hazy sky against the black and white of the buildings around him. He felt hesitant, unsettled, as if he was gazing upon a different world from the one he had known for so long. Seeming to sense his trepidation, she smiled and took his arm, leading him further down the street towards the canal, calm and clear but for the gentle froth of a carriage pulling into the platform at the water’s edge. Two long necks curved out of the water, beady eyes hollow and dark. Lykki were thought to be some distant cousin of laisok but they possessed flippers and the inky iridescence of duck feathers that allowed them to cut through the water with ease. For her to possess her own water carriage meant she must be terribly wealthy, but then, apparently she was royalty.
“After you,” she said, gesturing.
Viktor looked at the short gap between boat and land, remembering the incessant sway of the ship out at sea and the way he had lost control. Rain pouring from the heavens, cold and hot in equal measure, and the dark presence below the waves that lurked in slumber. There would be nothing like that creature in a canal but the gentle waves rolling across the surface tickled the memory enough that it took him a few moments before he made the jump, a yelp escaping him as it rocked under his body weight.
Fyera laughed, high and pealing, lifting the edge of her robes to calmly cross, and then led him into the carriage below. From the slitted windows he could see the city pass them by as they pulled off, striped in black, white and blue. He gripped the leather seat tight beneath his hand and wondered exactly what he had just wandered into. Here he was wandering off with a stranger just because she felt familiar. But by the Locker did she feel familiar, he thought, as he dared to flick his gaze over her face.
“I’m taking you back to our ancestral home. Do you remember it?”
He shook his head. “Our… home?”
“Yes. It’s where generations of Siklos were born and raised.” She sighed, resting her head against the headrest. “It saddens me that you do not seem to know any of this, brother. We were really something to behold back then. But it seems time has changed even the everlasting.”
“I don’t really understand. Anything. How are we – this? I thought they were all dead. You’re supposed to be dead?”
She blinked at him, eyes sharp like a cat’s. “You haven’t figured it out? Vall-Viktor, where do you think the Night of the Phoenix came from?”
He tried to loosen his hunched shoulders but they remained stiff. “I tried very hard not to think about everything.”
Her lips curved into a smirk and nodded. “Ah, it seems not everything has changed, then. You were always like that, you know. But do you really not remember? That connection – your bond. I felt it so many times recently. It’s how I knew I could hope again. Because I knew you were still out there. Alive.”
Viktor shot her a weary glance.
She huffed a sigh. “Viktor, we are bonded to the phoenix, one of the great guardian riftspawn that keeps the gates to this world. You are reborn – you have been reborn several times over. This body is not your first, nor is
it likely to be your last.”
He had known, somewhere deep down, but to hear it was another thing. Vallnor Siklo was a name he knew, vaguely, as a figure of history, but he did not know him. Viktor was him. Those were two facts he could not reconcile in his head, for if he was not Viktor but this centuries-old prince, then what happened to the life he had grown up with, scrapping and scraping on the streets of Nirket? Did they get written over, scrubbed clean by memories of days long past? Would he soon forget who he had been, to become this other man? What in the Locker did it mean?
“Please, do not worry so much. It is a good thing, don’t you see? We are reunited at last, brother. We can finally reclaim our rightful place in this world.”
“Our what?”
“Once upon a time we were worshipped. We were rulers. The most powerful people known to mankind. We were more than man, Viktor. We were gods.” Her eyes slid to his, the curtains slicing up the sunlight so that it illuminated the green in her irises, swirling like their shared fire. “What do you say, brother? Are you with me?”
Viktor opened his mouth and then closed it again. He did not know what to say.
“Do not worry. It will come to you, in time.”
Viktor wished he could share her certainty.
*
Conscious came to Seeker in spurts, at first only opening his eyes for seconds at a time until he worked his way up to staying awake long enough to process his surroundings. He felt awful, like he had been dropped from a great height and had the pieces of himself mashed back together the wrong way, his head pounding, the whole room spinning. So out of sorts was he that it took him a while to realise he was moving. He was in some kind of cart, rumbling along an uneven road that caused the wagon to bounce and jerk every second heartbeat. Groaning, he instinctively reached out to connect with Niks only to find the connection gone. Like a well gone dry, he couldn’t tap into the source, suddenly bereft of the intricate threads of energy that connected the world around him.
Seeker panicked. Ripping his head out of the canvas door, he gazed around at a blur of buildings in chalk white, blue roofs fading against a dusky sky overhead that rippled with red and gold. The street was wide, flanked by water on both sides, and busy with pedestrians and carriages alike. His grip tightened on the wood before him as he was nearly jostled from the cart, his arms too weak to hold himself up properly. It was as if the life had been drained out of him and he had regressed to childhood, everything suddenly so much harder, limbs ungainly and uncoordinated. Was this the effects of having his connection severed? Without his riftbond he felt blind, groping through a world numb to the sensations that had once been opened up to him. His human sight was not what it had been before, everything blurred and distant.
Voices sounded from inside the cart and he turned to see the male riftkeeper poke his head through the gap on the other side. The man froze, eyes widening, and Seeker scrabbled into the corner, raising his hands. Instinct called to the bond but he couldn’t tap into it. Instead he faced down an enemy without a weapon, without his powers, without the voice in his head that lent him his strength. Fear seized his limbs. He couldn’t move.
“Stop the carriage!” the man yelled behind him.
It jolted to a stop, jarring his bones. Sensing his chance, Seeker pushed himself backwards and slung himself over the edge, collapsing in a heap on the ground below. The man’s cursing echoed behind him as he scooped his jellied limbs into order and launched into a run. Pedestrians swerved out of his way with harried yells as he weaved his way through their numbers, not daring to look back. He was too weak. He couldn’t possibly hope to outrun them.
“Stop that man!” It was the woman’s voice this time.
Seeker was unfit, his body lagging before he’d really begun, but he continued to dart between bodies, looking for somewhere he could hide. It was too open. Water cut off any escape route, leaving the city too open and exposed. There were none of Nirket’s nooks and crannies here, and he span desperately, looking for somewhere to run. A line of trees on the horizon gave him something to aim for, fiery red leaves shining like a beacon in the setting sun. Pushing more into his legs, he bolted in their direction, huffing as he did so. He couldn’t get enough air into his lungs.
The canopy of red leaves cast shadows upon the ground below and Seeker weaved between them, relieved that the street narrowed here, canals threading away in different directions. The hill sloped upwards, framed by terraces of black and white, turned a soft peachy pink in the fading light. Overhead the sky rumbled, clouds heavy with the promise of rain. Seeker thought it would almost be a comfort, to feel the storm break over him. But the storm was no longer his. The man was all that was left.
Panting, he kicked back against the rough bark of the tree to launch himself and then jogged up the incline of the road. Shouts still resounded behind him, loud enough now to spur him onwards even as his body failed him. In this scenario what would Niks do? She would fight. Flatten them all and leave them for nothing. Seeker longed to do just that but his body no longer responded to the call. A gasping sob exploded from his chest, doubling over. His vision was fading, black spots swimming across his vision.
Fight. Fight, he scolded himself in the familiar voice of his companion, but he did not have it in him. It was all he could do to catch himself with his palms as he crashed to the ground, rolling in pain as he lost his grapple with consciousness the same way he lost grapple with his limbs. The last thing he saw was the sunset blush of sky and two pairs of eyes blinking down at him. Then his vision faded to black.
*
The more time passed the more anxious Rook grew. Viktor had been gone for half a day now and she had no way of knowing where he had gone or who had come to collect him. The creeping doubt in her mind reminded her that if it had been Sandson to be the one to rescue him, then surely by now he and Kilai would have ensured her retrieval as well. Or so she hoped.
Down in her cell all by herself it was lonely and her skin itched with the incessant need to move. Tapping her toes had grown irksome and anything more strenuous was difficult with her leg chained to the floor, so she had taken to braiding the matted bush her hair had become, teasing it out with her fingers and then yanking out the knots in her frustration. Clumps of pale hair fell around her, until her scalp was raw and stinging. It was always in these moments that the voice in her head set in, reminding her of her power.
Rook started to hum again, trying to drown out the cawing in her mind. When she plucked the next knot from her hair, it floated from her hands as a silky white feather and she exhaled sharply, following its slow descent to the floor. She couldn’t let The Rook win. For if she could not find strength in her weakest moments then her best moments meant nothing at all. “I will not bow to you,” she said, voice echoing in the cell. “I am your master not your servant.”
The scrape of a door stole her attention and she shuffled closer to the bars to get a look as a pair of soldiers hauled a body down the stairs, light tumbling down from the crack in the doorway, warm and inviting. Curious, she watched as they unlatched the door to the cell next to her and slung the figure in, slamming it shut with a resounding clang that vibrated through her own cell. It reverberated in her skull and she clenched her teeth to stop them rattling.
“Got something to say, girl?” sneered the bigger soldier, pressing his face to the bars.
“Just excited to meet my new friend. I was starting to get a little bored.”
“Some entertainment could definitely be arranged if that’s what you’re after,” he leered.
Rook flashed him a grin, eyes lighting up silver white as she drew power from her spirit bond. “Please,” she said, “I’d love a little entertainment right now.”
“Witch,” he hissed, backing away, “Pjurrei.”
“I can show you some tricks, if you’d like.”
His companion nudged him and directed him back to the door before he drew the weapon he had placed his hand atop of. Soon the two o
f them were gone, precious light swallowed up by the stone door. With a sigh she let herself relax, turning to peer at the lump curled up in the cell next to her. She couldn’t detect any spiritual energy from him, so she wasn’t sure why he was here. It appeared from how empty the cells were that this was not a normal prison but somewhere to keep the likes of the pjurrei. She did not know what it meant, that apparently the soldiers found them dangerous now, instead of merely a nuisance to their order. Nothing good, she suspected.
As night descended, bringing with it fragile moonlight from beyond a thick bed of clouds, she heard a snuffling noise and turned to see a head rise from the lump on the floor. His hair was ruffled, tinged a silver white in the dim light, and when he turned she gasped in recognition at the familiar face, only more drawn and streaked with mud. It took his eyes a few circles around himself before they landed on her and he recoiled back, scooting all the way until he was pressed against the wall at the back of his cell.
“I know you,” she said, then frowned. “Why can’t I sense you?” The last time the power from his signature had been meteoric. Now, nothing. She could not sense a drop of energy from him. But it wasn’t like with those who had never brushed the touch of the otherworld. Rather it was like there was an absence of feeling, crackling in her mind when she cast out with her senses.
For a long time he said nothing, silence descending over them as the clouds smothered the last of the moonlight above and sunk them into a dreary gloom. Rook soon gave up hope that he would speak, settling back down in her own space with her knees tucked into her chest. She was beginning to think she would be stuck down there for the duration, for who would come for her? The Riftkeepers were gone, to where she did not know, and now all she had promised the others was gone. She did not know how to stop the coming tide of the rifts. Sooner than she had even predicted, it seemed they would rupture completely until there was nothing left of the world she knew.
The Reaping Season Page 19