Black as diamond, p.4
Black as Diamond, page 4
She collapsed face up in the middle of the road. Fellow wraiths—with snow-white hair, dark skin, and ears pointed like dainty leaves—stepped over her, but she could not bring herself to move.
To think a thing is fine; to speak it aloud made it thus. So her mind predictably returned to her loss, encircling it with the coils of an obsessed viper. She couldn’t help but think about how it had immediately rent her in two. One’s title within the coterie was a legacy passed down from sister to novice, but she needed it more than the rest of them because she’d done worse. Her misdeeds followed her like an omen she believed only service to the coterie could heal.
The sun baked Palenisa a deeper brown as she collected herself and banished the thought of omens with a quick, furtive prayer to the chaos spirit. I still have the Zodiac always watching over me.
As usual, the capital city was a crush of noise and movement: dusty streets packed thick with all manner of vehicle, hawkers carrying wares on their heads, and open-air establishments, eateries, and tavernas. Structures built into the base of Ilon’s abundant trees climbed all the way into the canopy, where a tangled net of rope bridges swayed as people moved from branch to branch. Stalls unfurled like flowers to display goods of gold and thunderstone, synthetic hair and an eclectic rainbow of wax cloth, dyed Mauriidan rugs, and fish marinating in baskets of salt.
As she sat up, the heat made itself known in the form of an insistent drop of sweat rolling down her spine. The cloak that pooled around her like a circle of night didn’t help, yet Palenisa donned her hood, then tugged her sleeves down to her palms until none of her was visible, save for her fingertips and mouth. She felt at her back for her staff, tucked in its holster to charge, and along her thighs for her daggers. Then, with a grunt, she stood and wiped off as much of the gutter as she could.
As she picked her way down the street, the points of her ears twitched at the occasional whisper from an onlooker who recognized her. They knew her as Sister Gleissa. Before long, the news would spread and she’d forever be the former Sister of Faith. She clenched her fists hard to stop herself from lashing out, her nails biting into her palms. This didn’t stop the worst of her hangover from settling in like the initial icy-hot searing of a fresh wound. It was becoming harder to think, and she needed to forget again—at least for a while.
Palenisa stole her way around the side of a familiar taverna. Well, it seemed familiar enough—maybe it was one of the many she’d been at the previous night, but they all blended into a kind of inebriated slurry. Waiting for the barkeep to disappear back inside, Palenisa hung in the shadows behind the taverna. Before the door swung shut behind him, she darted forward to grab it and slipped inside the dark storeroom. She grabbed as many bottles as she could carry, leaving a stack of aur as payment in the place of each one. Her dignity was already torn to shreds—to shreds—so there was no need to add guilt and shame to the mix by stealing.
Bottles hidden within her cloak, Palenisa made her way down to the shore. Head held high, she ignored the stares, even as the overwhelming miasma of being watched suffocated her. She let out a breath she knew she’d been holding and melted into the crowd as a tall, formless black shadow.
The beach was more of a small spit of sand just large enough for four, maybe five wraiths to splay out comfortably. It had the Lizardwood for shade, beached flotsam, and an obscured view of the kharess’s manse. The beach wasn’t empty when she arrived. Where sand bled into dirt, a couple sat hunched together beneath ashen cloaks in hushed conversation. Ignoring them, Palenisa pressed her cheek to the moderately sized driftwood at her side. The scents of brine and piss wafted from it. Even though she wasn’t alone, the secluded view made it all worth it. It was why the previous Sister of Faith had shared this spot with Palenisa. It had been their little secret reprieve when she was still a novitiate.
She missed Ada with the force of a million suns, almost as much as she missed her mother. The latter grief had healed in time and blood. The former simmered in her stomach, some days drowning her in a bright grief where she saw the older woman in everything.
Against her will, Palenisa found herself thinking of the way her sisters had hissed at her when they’d taken her emblem. They’d turned into a den of snakes in a split second, black hoods and moon-pale hair surrounding her as eleven pairs of electric-blue eyes glared her into submission. Shaking her head, she uncorked a bottle and drank the memory away in a sweet wave. The tears she’d tried to hold back earlier spilled in earnest.
She cried, she imbibed. She cried some more and imbibed the day away, watching midday shade to afternoon, and afternoon into evening. Spirits, she was a fucking mess. As twilight approached, her streaked cheeks were wet again. The sun had almost lowered beneath the horizon. Fading light streamed across her face, momentarily dazzling her vision.
Her head lolled away, and she was too spent to do much more than take another deep pull that dribbled from the side of her mouth. Palm wine was too weak to dull her enhanced sense of smell, though she tried. Seven bottles lay empty at her feet. She had really tried. As sleep threatened to lower her lids, Palenisa ran a claw around and around a large whorl in the driftwood trunk she was leaning against. Faint voices arose where her bare skin touched it, the wood reaching out to speak to those who could listen. An ability all earth Aspects were blessed with.
Humming, she listened as the wood recounted the aural ring of its history in a hushed croon. From growing unfathomably large among its kind to the people it had met in its time: a couple seeking solace under the forgiving shade of its leaves, a foreign orphaned child clambering through its branches, the woodcutter whose axe had downed it with a single reverent swing. Listening to what was once living earth speak, the haze in her mind grew, a creeping line of comforting mist.
Until it came to her. That smell.
Startled, Palenisa sobered up almost immediately. The world practically slowed to a crawl as the pungent smell of khetry came in like a bolt from the blue. Like spiced water, like iron and water-beaten stone after a thunderstorm. An unappealing combination. Beneath the khetry was the undertone of blood, rich and heady.
For such intensity, there had to be lulaik in the vicinity.
Palenisa vaguely noticed the wraiths at the other end of the beach sit up when the smell grew stronger, surging in strength before dropping to baseline. Vertigo overcame her, like waves crashing against a cliff. It took all her waning strength to dig her claws into the driftwood, unbalanced by the sudden change.
Raising her chin, she sniffed the air, and her nose cleared, as did her languid mind.
The smell lingered in the near distance, like gazing at far-off mountains. It resembled the sensation of the sun’s warmth on one’s skin—always there but never noticed unless searched for. It wasn’t close so much as it was pervasive, shot from elsewhere and leaving her to track its aftershocks.
So if the lulaik was not close by, then where was the smell coming from?
She pivoted, trying to pinpoint a direction. Not south to the badlands, nor to the Lethean Sea ahead.
There, north. The realm of Estyria.
For the scent to carry so far, someone—multiple someones—must have been casting an incredibly strong spell. To what end, she did not know. Perhaps they wanted to die or were simply unaware that their actions would catch the noses of Aspects so far south. Did group spells even exist? She knew very little of lulaik save what khetry smelled like. But as she examined her thoughts, a plan began to coalesce.
After becoming a sister, she’d sunk into her faith and vowed to protect—in Ada’s memory. The previous night was a failure, yes, but one she could rectify. Anything made through spoken word could be reversed by an act of devoted commitment. This was her opportunity. She’d wallowed, and now it was time to take back what she had foolishly lost.
Palenisa rose and closed her eyes. Bathed in dusk, she was formed of pure senses—smell, touch, sound. Her braids fluttered in the sea breeze. The dregs of the sun’s glow called to her connection with the sunlight spirit.
Her eyes snapped open. A thrill rushed through her.
Somewhere out there, the most powerful spell any Aspect living had ever sensed had just been cast. She needed to find its source, find the lulaik before another Aspect could.
It was time to repent.
For the Vana. For her disobedience. For the spirits. She would—she must—do it for the spirits. With their approval, Palenisa could show the coterie—and the kharess—just how deserving she was of her stripped title.
Redemption was a bramble path. And she had just taken her first step into the dark. All it took was just one.
Rishé
The Silk Screen temporarily closed for two hours every single day; brothels were open continuously, but even those who sold sex needed sleep. Not that they turned away any patrons who came in during the “after hours.”
Rishé was sitting behind the front desk fifteen minutes before one such closing. The Screen had a front desk because Erazill, its often-absent owner, was a real visionary; he wanted customers to see a kind face before slipping into the arms—and between the legs—of his Butterflies. Rishé, on the other hand, didn’t care too much for all that.
Instead, she was hunched over, focused on her lap rather than the small coffer of aur she needed to sum for morning pickup. The golden coins were piled neatly for her counting pleasure, in magnetized stacks of five and ten.
Technically, she was doing the brothel’s books. In reality the thick accounting ledger sat propped up on the desk to shield where her focus truly lay: the pamphlet on her lap. Across the pages that hid her were neat rows tabulating finances from the many years she’d been working at the Screen after amicably parting ways with the guild.
Her eyes were drawn back to the pamphlet, which was a study published by the Dugantu Archives in Ilon. She’d been waiting to read this particular issue for a while, but responsibilities had piled up, and unfortunately it had tumbled all the way down her list of priorities. So she had to carve out any time she could to get her reading done. She leafed through thin pages in fascination as her teeth worried at a fingernail.
Absently, Rishé reached up to brush aside the hair from her forehead, remembering at the last minute that it had been messily cut into a short crop at both sides and front. Her fingers looped around one of the three braids behind her ear as she read.
Past the dry abstract, she avidly soaked in any and all knowledge the pamphlet had to offer, eager to reach the details of the study.
Considering such unusual characteristics, it is not too implausible, then, to speculate on some power arising prior to the spirits-blessed Aspects of Peskelos and the Ilonese protectorate, or even khetry—that most ancient of substances, which eludes the sight of all sapient beings but eresh keyel and lulaik.
It had been moons since she’d sent a missive to the Dugantu Archives inquiring further about this theoretical third power. And this article only served to further her theory that her necklace was more than just a unique stone. Rishé lifted it to scrutinize the pendant—a bright red stone covered in silver whorls that resembled writing. It didn’t look particularly ancient, but that was half the thrill. Uncovering the depths of what appeared, at first, to be mundane.
As she squeezed it, a phantom heat warmed her palm, feeling almost like another hand in hers. As the necklace was the one thing, aside from her face, that she carried in memory of her mother, she wanted—needed—to know if there was something deeper to this, Jarha’s last gift to her daughter. It was all she could do to keep her mother alive beyond the impassable borders of death.
Rishé thought back to her last conversation with the madam. The accounting of sex was a dependable business, but not her final vocation; as such, Parianne had offered to fund her higher education in Fa Djain. Though a gracious offer, Rishé had dithered, politely asking for time to consider. She wouldn’t have been the first person employed at the Silk Screen to be extended a change of scenery. One of the former Butterflies, Rayet, had become a pirate, last she heard. Perhaps accepting wouldn’t be such a bad idea. The University of the Commonwealth was known to have a robust library, and red stones—often called thunderstones—were slightly more common in the south. Yes, it almost sounded appealing.
But Estyria was her home. Even with a father she hardly ever spoke to, this was her home. Where her mother lived on in memory.
At the sound of footsteps, she glanced with amber eyes over the top of the accounting ledger. The last patron of the night, rosy cheeked from imbibing Anticarta-imported topalinca, shuffled out as he tucked himself back into his trousers, ignoring her completely. Once the door shut behind him, Rishé’s stolen reprieve was over. Butterflies melted from their rooms to fill the space like water in a bucket. Topless, bottomless, draped in glitter, feathers, and missing a heel or two. Verdant hemplock smoke wafted to the ceiling from long pipes, to cover the scent of sweat and spent bodies.
Rishé brought her knees up. She quickly skimmed over a few more words before she could no longer ignore her duties. Hard to do when Butterflies kept flitting over to the desk. They draped themselves over her back and ruffled her hair as she half-heartedly listened to them gossip about their clientele. When it became nearly impossible to focus on the words on the page, Rishé slipped from the chair. She slithered through the swarm and ducked past a curtain of shells into the dimly lit hallway. A few Butterflies lingered there too, chatting quietly in the low light as they passed a pipe between themselves.
Grabbing a broom, Rishé quickly swept through each of the empty rooms. They’d been themed after different species of butterflies because Erazill was nothing if not consistent. The monotonous drip of a water clock accompanied her routine. She shuffled the pamphlet between her hands while juggling sheets, silk garments, and the occasional shoe shucked off to the side and forgotten. Folding what she could, she set the rest to be laundered or discarded as appropriate.
As she worked, Rishé found herself thoroughly entranced by an intriguing line of theory in the text. Carrying a precarious armful, she shoved the back door open with a foot and collided with an equally surprised figure. It was the madam, hands on her hips, only half as amused as the smile on her lips would otherwise suggest.
“Rishé.” Parianne sighed, tossing her scarf over one shoulder. Tiny bells sewn along the ends rang with the movement. “Distracted, are we?”
Pausing, Rishé shuffled her haul—pamphlet under her chin, arms overflowing with cloth that trailed on the ground behind her.
“No, Madam,” she signed, shaking her free hand with three fingers clasped. Signing was automatic: a language she was fluent in since her mother had been hard of hearing. When her hands talked, part of her mother still lived. “Some light reading.”
Parianne regarded her with cool coral eyes. She appeared ageless in the way that any guess of an exact number was always off by a few decades. Parianne paused a moment before she signed back. Not many were proficient in Eslang. Some, though, like Parianne, knew enough words to speak with her. Slow but understandable, and very much appreciated.
“Join me for tea?”
Rishé would rather lock herself in her room and read the entire pamphlet cover to cover while furiously jotting notes in her journal. But she prided herself on her affability, her ability to adapt to people after watching them, and it wasn’t like she could say that to Parianne’s face. “Busy.”
Clearly not believing her, Parianne hummed in fond exasperation and turned crisply on a heel to enter the Screen. Rishé lolled her head at the door, huffing softly. She gathered up her bundle and picked her way to the laundress a few streets over.
A chill rolled in across Carbon Bay. The cliffside cities of Ausre often grew icy at night, but this night was more humid than most. Wisps of hair clung to the side of her neck, and Rishé tasted salt on the back of her tongue. She walked a dangerously thin road between cramped buildings and the stone barrier at the edge of the cliff. The path was lit by lanterns strung between windows, candles flickering on doorsteps, and early-morning revelers smelling of mead, with fusion globes in hand. A glance below revealed Porto Goniver, its ruins reclaimed as the dwellings and establishments of common folk. The rest of Ausre was much the same, cities dotting the sheer cliff faces of the mountains that bordered Estyria’s western coast.
Stars winked in the Sky Court, a wide net of darkness. Along the horizon was a faint band of blush light.
Dropping off the bundle was a quick affair, the laundress already expecting her, though she was none too pleased by the tackiness that bound the cloth together. Rishé smiled apologetically and rushed out, her nose already buried in the pamphlet once more.
She paused beside a hexe, utterly engrossed in a passage theorizing about the “hidden mental powers of gemstones,” when the watery mumbling of voices caught her attention. Not the voices, but the language they were speaking: Inachie, the Ilonese tongue. They grew louder, closer. The conversation came in snatches of what she could understand.
Lowering the pamphlet, Rishé watched the wraiths. One held a blue ball of starlight above their palm—a starlight Aspect, then. And both were clad in green capes pinned with the golden crocodile of the Ilonese standard at their shoulders. They, on the other hand, barely seemed to notice her in the shadow of the hexe. One of the many advantages of not being so vertically gifted.
