Black as diamond, p.21
Black as Diamond, page 21
He licked the perfumed nectar from his fingers and hummed. “Thank you.”
Wren’s flushed smile came out crooked with a glimpse of his fangs. “No problem.”
Asaru finished the last slice. He quite liked nectar apples—he thought Alvarys would too. Aedyton didn’t have such fruits, since dendrites didn’t grow anything on their crystal branches. He reminded himself to bring one to his brother when they met again.
Nibbling at a piece of bread, Rishé cleared her throat. “So, I learned something,” she said between bites, explaining what she’d gleaned from Brunoth about the Chronicler.
“I have to ask,” Palenisa interjected. “What is this Chronicler, actually?”
Rishé lifted her hands to reply, but Asaru cut in.
“All I know is what I was told,” he admitted, recalling the circumstances of his assignment.
The warden’s office was a gleaming bubble of unblemished glass in the Odeum, floating with the icy clouds that formed the topmost ring of Aruu. He’d come directly from the field, covered in remnant blood and smelling ripe. Not that the warden had cared, being a retired warrior herself. In the same homely tone that had landed her the position in the first place, Xerqet placed a hand on his shoulder and told him of his brother’s fate.
Missing, embassy—find him.
If the beacon, she’d said, was gone, he must point himself south—and fly. To the badlands, where he would find salvation nestled at the farthest end of the desert, beyond the point of reasonable journey. That was where Khensu had been traveling. Where Alvarys likely was. The abode of the Chronicler. Hidden almost in plain sight.
“They hold the archive of our history. Aedyton, eresh keyel, khetry.” Asaru clawed at the speckled smoothness of his curse-marked arms. The cloud of pain floated at the back of his mind. Sighing, he met their gazes. “And, Triumvirate willing, Black Diamond too.”
There had to be some record of the curse from the eras before Unification. History, as he had so often been told, was a serpent eating itself.
“We can’t go to Ilon,” Palenisa said firmly.
Rishé snorted, ignoring the flat-lipped scowl sent her way—or not caring. Asaru glanced between the two.
“But we must.”
“He,” Palenisa said, pointing to Wren, “is under my protection. My home crawls with rogue Aspects, and while I handled two of them, I can’t take that risk. Not before my promise has been fulfilled.”
“Well, you promised to follow me to whatever end,” Wren added quietly, pressing two fingers together in an unbroken line of black. Asaru felt the tremor of his apprehension like a sharp and sudden wave. “And I want to go.”
The candles on the windowsill flickered, a line of four, sloping in height to the smallest, which burned, scarcely there.
Palenisa twisted her lips and huffed.
“Fine.” She pinched out the tallest candle. “We leave right away. Your master healers may have given us a whole night, but I don’t trust the people here.”
Though he hadn’t seen any viridian lies, Asaru felt much the same. Alert for a threat around every corner.
Light gilded the tips of Rishé’s short-cropped hair as she rose to her knees. “I agree.” Palenisa shot her a look. “Bartramians may not have loved the king as much as other provinces, thanks to Governor Devall, but Asaru’s bounty is worth a lot. And rising.”
Asaru nodded, a wordless decision made. “An hour, then?”
“I’ll steal some bread from the tearoom.”
“Rishé.” Wren frowned.
“Brunoth will cover for me,” she said gaily as she left them to gather themselves.
Inclining her head toward the door, Palenisa asked, “Should we be worried about that?”
“Don’t ask me,” Wren sighed. “She was here longer than I had the chance to be.”
Palenisa tossed a shrug his way. As she glanced around the room in mild interest, Wren leaned forward. His intent eyes flitted up to Asaru’s face, down to his bandaged stomach, then up again, a question in those gold and brown pools.
Holding still, Asaru let the hands check over his wound. And much to his displeasure, his senseless tail was once more wrapped around the man’s ankle. An abrupt rush fluttered in his belly, and a sensation he couldn’t quite name prickled his brand.
What was that—what had changed? Was this strange sensation camaraderie—the likes of which Alvarys shared with the Tetrarchia? He wasn’t sure. It felt like he was wading in a sea with no bottom.
After a short while, Rishé returned, woolen hood drawn, satchel bursting with supplies.
“Ready?” she chirped.
As always. Asaru swung his legs off the cot. The steady balance of the ground filled him with a renewed sense of purpose. Time was a dire, precious resource, spilling between spread black palms. In his heart he knew the path forward—it kept him moving, perpetually in motion toward the horizon of a goal just within reach.
As he stood with the others, khetry shone. Edges faded like a tense rope rising from the depths of opaque waters. He waved a hand through the red substance, twining a thread with his smallest finger. It thrummed, alive, as he tugged it.
Life—he was still alive. For as long as he had left.
Wren
Intermittent lamps burned along the perimeter of the inner ward as they made their escape. Rishé led, followed by Asaru, then Wren and Palenisa.
Beyond the wall walk, spikes jutted into the ember-strewn night.
They slunk through the shadows, avoiding the scanning eyes of the Chain Archers. Time hung suspended as an archer passed overhead, heels clicking on ironwood. The door to the Overlook shut, and Wren released a sigh that cracked loud like kindling. An elbow caught him in the side, and the flash of Asaru’s brilliant eyes silenced him.
The compound was asleep, though Wren knew there would be a few healers working sleeplessly in the Hanging Gardens and journeyers milling about, passing flasks of watered-down wine between them as he once did. Alcohol never sat quite right with him, turning the gray thoughts in his head black. Flipped his stomach so his throat tasted more of bile than cloves.
A light burst to life in Acorn House—the guild master’s quarters. Urusy. A gauzy shadow passed the window. But they were gone before the light died, slipping through a loose slat in the unending ironwood wall. It shut behind them, Rishé smoothing the seam into place to leave no trace of their secret egress.
It was black only a second before a torch flickered, Rishé’s face bobbing above flintrock blue. Wren met her eyes in the night as she passed to the front and guided them down a set of too thin, too narrow stairs onto the hidden paths and alternate ways through Birinuyi, discovered during their time together. Rishé had tried to teach him twice or thrice when they were training, but Wren was always more interested in his studies—healing. No chance at getting that now: helping people again. At least not without—he brushed the needle, a reminder that rested over his branded heart. He was trying. His hands shook, and he was thankful the antimony kohl hid the scars on his fingers.
The stairs spilled them out onto a low shoreline, dusted with chalky sand. Above, the shadow of the guild sat on spindly stilts that burrowed into a concave cliff face, stained with rogue sea spray. It looked more precarious from this angle, as if a single childish finger could knock it all over. Though Wren knew its firmament was stronger than that, as firm and unyielding as the millennia it had withstood. Since the Age of Heroes, the era in which Mator lived. Curious, the names history remembered. Gentle healers. Gentler than he.
“How did you find this place?” Wren asked, then immediately regretted the question as Rishé doused the torch in the sea. She stowed it behind two rocks and dusted the chrome-stitched hem of her suman.
“Went exploring after you left. It’s called the Poisoner’s Gullet.” Her lips tugged upward wryly. “Fitting.”
Fitting.
Wren’s face burned with the memory of fresh dropwort twisting and wrinkling the flesh. The twin screams. Two forms falling away from the upturned bottle of pale liquid as it seeped into their skin, tainting brown to violet in an instant. Had it gotten into their mouths, they would have died without a single trace. Instead, it left Urusy bedridden, and him—gone halfway through the week that he should have spent healing.
A tap on his shoulder snapped him back to the present.
Palenisa cocked her head over her shoulder. Rishé and Asaru were farther down the shore. Ahead, the beach bled into Furtumbér’s midnight dwelling, that thick strip of trees where primeval forest met the jungles of Mysme and Thryme.
Wind whispered through the bower of the Lizardwood as the quartet passed below and journeyed even farther beyond.
In the far distance, the rhythmic thumping of merchant ships could be heard.
Another life, somewhere else.
Night passed, then morning and another day until the sky shaded once more into evening. Wren’s feet ached, and his eyes were sticky with sleep. He could only imagine what the bags beneath them looked like.
Not a thing moved in this part of the Lizardwood, the world silent and still. The worn path darkened at the edges like fading vision, and he slowly realized why.
This was the Trail of the Taken.
A treacherous trail that curled through the Lizardwood like a constricting serpent. One that had stolen many lives from the Norvatti. Some said the forest itself snatched the mind during slumber, leaving empty bodies. Others claimed it was the work of Sirrah, the tiny, winged trickster who led children away to the tune of its violin. Or maybe it was just easy to lose oneself in the gloom, so thick he could barely see a few steps ahead even during the day.
But he didn’t really know. The Ingoscu clan had never traveled this far south, preferring to stick to the hinterlands. Rishé’s clan had, though. And she formed a sign over her chest as a result, pushing out with clawed fingers to repel the dreary omen of the trail.
“You do believe in superstitions,” Palenisa said, her voice dripping sarcasm.
Lowering her compass, Rishé rolled her eyes and snapped back, “I don’t. It’s a cultural thing.”
Palenisa hummed indulgently and glanced sidelong at Wren. “Why do your people fear this place?”
Wren lifted his gaze to the dense canopy as he stifled a yawn, then told her of Sirrah and its malicious, mischievous music.
“Just a story,” Rishé interjected, spinning on a heel to walk backward. Her hands slipped through the signs with a fervent passion as Wren interpreted her words. “To explain away the pain of rogue Aspects ravaging the Vana during the Crusades.”
“That’s not entirely true . . .”
“True enough.” She shrugged. Wren’s gaze followed Rishé’s in time to glimpse Palenisa’s stricken face before she ducked into the shadow of her cape.
After that, only their footfalls filled the silence with the crunch and sigh of underbrush. They trudged on quietly. They passed trees, trees—more trees—and altars sheltered beneath blankets of greenery dotted with tiny white flowers. Artifacts of centuries of countless Norvatti, followers of Nature and Light, passing where they passed, walking where they walked. Separated by the span of a few paces, each altar was more thoroughly wreathed in plant life than the last, each one was larger than the last, older, until a strange sight sprouted from the brush.
At the end of the line of altars crouched a lone statue, so worn by the ages that the fine sculpting of its jade steel features was barely discernible. Even so, through the veil of moss Wren could make out the smooth face of a woman. From her stony back, a pair of crumbling wings protruded, and tumbling down on either side of her clasped hands was carved hair adorned with the bodies of small, writhing beasts.
It looked nothing like the shrine statues he’d seen before.
“Madib?” Asaru said, confusion lilting his tone. He reached out as if to brush the leaves from her shut eyes, paused, then pulled away. Without the poison running through his veins, he looked in better health, though the marks of the curse did their best to dampen that brightness.
“Your people’s first warden?” Rishé signed. “Queen Mab?”
He nodded after Wren interpreted. “She never wanted to be called a queen.” Asaru picked a petal from her splintered head with a hum. “Or a goddess. I do not know why humans turned her into one.”
He threw the rosy petal aside and swept forward after Rishé. They left behind a goddess with many names to many cultures. Madib, Mab, Ela Prinâza: one gone, one myth, one whom Wren believed in.
The sky split open, and a droplet fell onto his cheek.
“Rain,” Rishé said.
“Astute observation,” Palenisa replied.
Rishé glowered at him—no, at her, but Wren felt as though her narrow eyes corroded him all the same. He shook off the stare and looked around. A crimson shadow flitted through the towering trees. Wren squinted and saw only the fluttering of red-breasted birds.
Soon they came upon the overgrown remnants of what was once a settlement, ringed with a rotting fence. Around it the Lizardwood had waned, if only temporarily, against the man-made intrusion. Yet nature had come to snatch back what it was owed. Ivy crept through dusty windows, over a once-roof hunched like Sika’s rolling hills, and up fallen beams between which Wren saw only shadows.
Rain-slick hair fell into his eyes and dripped down his nape.
“We need to keep moving,” Asaru said, making to walk past the ruin. “Before we lose the lead on the beacon.”
Lifting a vine, Palenisa peered inside. The rough stone floors were covered in dust—thankfully dry. “Show of hands, who wants to keep going?”
Asaru stopped, turned, pursed his lips. His slackened tail went shock straight. When Wren recalled the way its fur felt, he glanced up before his ears could warm.
Smirking, Palenisa brushed the rest of the plants away with her earth Aspect abilities, coiling up her arms like gentle snakes as they slithered away. It still sent a frisson of fear through him, and Wren found himself pressing away from her when they settled in the cramped entryway.
Thunder cracked somewhere far away. Even through the foliage, a cold spark of lightning lit the forest floor aglow.
Asaru placed four fingers to the sides of his neck. Breathed in air, then khetry flared, and he breathed out flame. Broken bits of the building that had fallen into a cold ring hearth lit with a cough.
“Thanks.” Rishé moved her hands over the fire like she was casting a spell. “But you have got to quit worrying. Once the rain stops, we’ll be that much closer to the Chronicler, and your brother.”
There was little space between the four of them. Wren was close enough to hear Asaru draw in a short, tight breath.
Rain drummed the roof, a soothing sound that did little to balm the turmoil inside him, while a cool breeze crept along the floor, snarling at their fire. It snarled back when he cupped it. Sparks licked his fingers like the pinch of a needle drawing blood.
As the others rested their eyes, Wren fiddled restlessly with his sleeves, trying to count the flowers his mother had embroidered there. Pushing them back revealed the red outline of stitched dahlias. They should have been black for mourning, all things considered.
He shifted away to hide the shame of his actions and placed the primer on his knees. Khetry wrapped around his wrists as a slow, unraveling spool of blood threaded from his fingers to the bone needle. It drank the red like a thirsting beast. He held the crescent of his necklace between his teeth in concentration.
“Wren.”
He looked over.
Asaru stared into the flames, his knees drawn up, his irises turned to orange islands in pools of black.
“I am sorry.” Asaru’s tone was husky. “For almost breaking it. Your necklace.”
The pendant fell from his mouth. “It’s fine; it’s just a necklace.”
Wren’s gaze trailed over the side of his face. Down the furrow of his scarred brow, the curve of his scarred nose, vehemently past his scarred lips, to land on the scarred ring of his halo, amethysts afire.
He wondered how they would feel to touch . . . His face warmed and his gaze shot away, chest fluttering. Where had that strange and foolish thought come from?
“Regardless, I apologize.” Asaru hummed into his knees. “It was not . . . kind.”
The slight sensation of fear-tinged sadness trickled thinly through their bond.
“If anyone should apologize, it’s me.” Wren pressed the red tip of the needle to his thumb. “For summoning you, branding you, causing the backlash.”
Exhaling, Asaru shut his eyes. “I still am not happy about that.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
Fire spit in the ponderous lull. The sky thundered. Petrichor wafted from the muddy ground outside.
“Do you miss him?”
Asaru tipped his head against the old, creaking wood. “More than anything. I just need to find him. The Chronicler. Do something about this curse. Anything.”
Wren hated the pain he had caused. The faults of his own sick, selfish resolve bandied through their bond. His hurt was minuscule compared to all the rest he’d caused.
Before an apology could fall from his lips, the prick of a needle startled him out of the exhaustion. A half-formed shout caught in his throat and a hand snatched his. The touch was hot. Blazing. All too much, yet equally not enough.
In what must’ve been instinct, a sudden absent motion, Asaru had joined their hands. Soft, black fingers intertwined.
Wren froze and felt Asaru do the same. Face warm, the words—any words—stuck in his throat, and his chest was thick. Raising his head, he found Asaru staring wide-eyed at their single point of connection.
