Black as diamond, p.6
Black as Diamond, page 6
“You have no idea how sorry I am.” Wren sounded miserable. His shoulders rose to his pointed ears, and then he hunched, as if trying to make himself smaller. He looked a wreck, with dark bruises beneath his glassy eyes, his hair limp as seaweed, and a tiny, cruel part of Asaru deemed it good. A larger, kinder part of him—that sounded suspiciously like Alvarys—thought better of it.
A flurry of noise erupted outside, slashing through his thoughts.
In the sliver of sky visible through a nearby window, Asaru made out fireworks exploding against the setting sun. A ribbon, the wavy shape of a snake, a bouquet of flowers—all burst like colored jelly across the sky, disappearing in sparks.
“Words will not fix this.” He ran a hand through his loose hair and down his nape, ignoring the triangular protrusion among his halo stones there. “Very little can fix this.”
Asaru dully picked at his leg wraps. They would have to be redone like the ones on his arms. There were flecks of dried blood in the cloth. Red blood. Red. The color mingled with visions of gold and the feeling of static. The lingering possession gripped him by the throat. Warm eyes glinted luminescent with terror as a silver blade rent flesh. A scar in the ground wound serpentine over an ever-watchful eye.
He shook the images from his head. “I have to go,” he said, looking at Sabine. He’d forgotten she was still there, too caught up in himself and Wren—and their unfortunate bond. “I need to find my brother.”
Sabine frowned. “Look. I apologize for the backlash my child has caused. I can’t begin to understand the enormity of your task—losing a sibling must be a terrible thing—but as lulaik, I feel as responsible for you as the sun is for the earth. And as a mother, I’m telling you, you aren’t running off anywhere half dying of oleander poisoning like that.”
“You do not have to,” Asaru said, frustrated. “You do not have to help anyone but yourselves.”
“I want to.” Sabine made to touch him but thought better of it. “We can if you let us.”
He pressed the heel of a palm to his tender forehead. “I cannot. I did something regrettable. I killed your king—”
“He was not our king,” Sabine snapped, her voice a venomous barb.
“But he was a king,” Wren said weakly. He focused on Asaru. “Regardless, you should rest. Let us heal you as best we can. I don’t have the materials to make an antidote for the poison, but . . .” He touched his scarred neck almost absently. “There’s a place where I can get them. If that’s, um, what you want. And then I . . . can help you find your brother?”
Wren looked at his mother. A conversation composed of raised brows and squints took place across their faces. Sabine held her child’s cheek, pressing their foreheads together before standing. She moved to the corner of the room, by a tapestry of a figure lying on a bed of clouds, and pulled down the ladder to a trapdoor. A square of the sky opened in the ceiling, and she disappeared through it, leaving the two of them alone in tense silence.
“Fine.”
Wren blinked. “What?”
“Fine,” Asaru repeated. Though reluctant, he wasn’t foolish. Legends of khetrical backlash may have been just that, but the brand felt every bit as real as the wound that twinged at his side. “You bound us together, much as I am loath to admit, but even I am not willing to further test my luck with khetry.”
The other man seemed to perk up at that.
“Oh!”
Then he slumped.
“Oh.”
He dithered, charcoal-black hands flexing around the bowl on his knees. Then as if remembering himself, he thrust the bowl at Asaru, startling the creature in his lap. It yowled and swiped a paw at them.
“Scavite, Dakazna,” Wren apologized as it stalked off, tail swishing. He shyly passed the bowl over. “This is for you. Um, to eat, I mean. Obviously.” He cringed, mouth shutting with a click of teeth.
Asaru reached for the bowl, and their fingers brushed, a simple light touch that was like a cold shock to his system. He froze, then recovering just as quickly, he took the bowl and turned away. He felt as though he’d been mercilessly thrown into a frigid lake, forced to swim his way to safety. There was familiarity in this unfamiliar space, and the dissonance rankled him.
The bowl had cooled to a pleasant warmth that seeped into his hands as he ate. Savory, the paprikash was flavored with peppers and garlic. Chunks of meat swam in the sauce, and there was an almost rose-lemony aftertaste. Asaru ate ravenously and soon found himself drowsy. Setting the bowl down, he stared at the lulaik long and hard. He was reminded in Alvarys’s voice that even for all his anger, he’d still been healed. They hadn’t needed to grant him such kindness.
“Thank you.”
Wren’s head shot up. “You . . . you’re welcome?” He looked at him strangely. “I’m sorry, I still don’t know your name.”
“Asaru.”
“I’m Wren!”
Asaru raised a brow. “I know.”
“R-Right.” Flushing, Wren ducked his head. He took a well-loved quilt from the stack that surrounded them and raised it. “Um, may I?”
Asaru shrugged and let the man adjust the blanket over his back. Before the lulaik could leave, he grabbed Wren’s sleeve, careful not to let their skin touch, and pulled him down until their eyes were level.
A frisson ran through him as their gazes locked. The brand prickled, and Wren winced as though he sensed the same. Asaru looked between Wren’s mismatched eyes, searching. One strand of khetry stood out from the rest. An unbroken line of red, it was knotted into a loose braid, a clear sign of the brand connecting them. Life to life, Wren to him.
It wasn’t something that could easily be undone, easily untangled.
“I pray you do not forget the consequences of your actions,” he said, freeing the man. He did not wait for a response, deciding to curl into himself despite his injury. If Wren left, he did not notice.
Asaru let the open window draw his attention again, to the violet sky interspersed with dim rays of sun that filtered into the room. An orange band of light shone across his thigh. As the medication turned his bones to lead, fatigue lowered his lids to half-mast. His heart slowed until it beat in time with the dripping of a nearby clock. The brand still throbbed, but the less he focused on it, the more its itch faded.
He watched motes of dust flit through the air and tried not to think of his dream. Tried not to think of Alvarys, too far to catch. Walking to a place he could not follow. Walking past the veil.
Soon the colors of sleep welcomed Asaru back into their many intangible hands.
Palenisa
Palenisa trudged through the Ausran city, already-thin streets constricting as she went. Grunting, she struggled to keep her unsteady feet in line with her cottony mind. Both staggered sideways, so she pressed against the rocky walls for balance and took a breath. She swallowed down the taste of the absinthe she’d been—very much counterintuitively—drinking to keep her going. Or perhaps she’d been using it to try to make herself forget about anything that wasn’t solely forward movement.
Her body was wired and her head spun. She’d been traveling almost nonstop for a number of days—three, four? She couldn’t quite remember. The only thing that kept her on her feet was the Zodiac, and the smell. That smell. It still hung in her nose with an all-conquering air, guiding her north, and then farther north.
Regardless, she had made good time and passed quickly through two provinces. At this pace, a few more days might find her in Valyn. For a moment, she let herself wonder what she’d do if the scent took her to Sterrock, heart of Norvatti country, where the eresh keyel were said to have first made contact with humans centuries before the Founding War.
Can’t be. It wasn’t a thought she let linger long. Running on the instinct of her senses more than any accurate form of wayfinding, it didn’t quite seem plausible. She doubted lulaik in the valley—if they settled rather than traveled in clans—would be foolish enough to cast such a powerful mass spell. Well, she hoped they weren’t.
That night, she found herself in a small seaside town called Porto Veli. It was set low enough into the Ausran mountainside that the Lethean Sea lapped at the walls, spraying over the cliffside barrier to slick the cobblestones. Half of it jutted out into the water atop an uneven tumbling of rocks and the remains of the long-destroyed city of Porto Goniver.
Pinks, blues, and oranges turned the sky into a painter’s palette. Under the setting sun, blurry figures filtered up and down pathways carved into the cliffs, moving among flat buildings set into caves. From a distance, the cry of violins and an incessant bell reached her ears.
Estyrians all across the kingdom were celebrating the first night of Kestrel, dressed in their finest clothing and bearing red strings on their hands to commemorate the coronation of their king. Or maybe it was to celebrate their gods. She knew little about the other faiths on the continent save for their names—the Zodiac were all that mattered to her, all she needed to know.
The salty air was sobering her up faster than she liked. Her vision cleared as the taste of aniseed fled her mouth with the evening winds. Clutching her head, Palenisa groaned against the sudden awareness of her body and all its aches. Her blistered feet, her screaming calf muscles, the twinge in her lower spine, and the horrid scratch in her eyes. Even her own musk threatened to envelop her.
She grimaced, half wishing she still had aur to find lodgings in a taverna. If only so she could scrub herself clean, rinse, and do it all again. But the last of her coin was back in Okiro, perhaps still glittering in a dark storeroom. No matter—better to remain inconspicuous. With wraiths uncommon in Estyria, better she kept on her way.
The sun dipped below the horizon, and the last reserves of her energy faded with it. Sunlight Aspects needed sunlight, so without its rays, she felt like a boneless sack. A thing made from dusk and twilight. With the sun gone, she was steadfast and unwavering, yes, but also dead on her feet, falling asleep between blinks. She hoped the spirits wouldn’t begrudge her a short rest for the night. Even a cave would do; so a cave was exactly what she found.
It wasn’t a particularly comfortable cave, not that she imagined they tended to be. It was one of many dotting the beaten cliff face overlooking Carbon Bay. Palenisa crawled inside, careful to avoid the foul water, which was dark from the carbon leaching out of underwater caves. It’s why Ausre was known even in Ilon as the hottest place on the continent, despite the badlands that lay within its own borders.
Wincing at the sight of the choppy waters, she slid away from the lip of the cave. Sometimes accidents happened—most times the consequences were a fate of one’s own making. But better safe than sorry.
She tilted her head against the wall, closed her eyes, and just let herself . . . breathe. Her heartbeat slowed, but her mind spun in a slow stew of mild intoxication and bitter images.
Screaming Vana, hissing sisters.
A nest of vipers writhed in her gut. Forlorn, Palenisa touched her braids where her emblem would—should—have been. She’d always used it to tie her hair up, and without it, the braids swayed loosely around her waist.
Palenisa unslung her staff and twisted it open at the middle. It split in half. From one end she pulled out a small tube no longer than a finger and no thicker than two and brought it between her eyes. When empty, the solar battery more resembled glass than the hard light it was made of. She curled her claws around a single point to generate a faint ball of sallow light. It flickered with her weak connection to the sunlight spirit, tenuous whenever the moon rose. Barely there shadows rose on the wall opposite her.
She pressed a finger to the tube, and it filled with solar energy. Once the battery was fully charged, she pushed it back into the staff and twisted it shut.
As she set it aside, her vision swam. Cradling her face in her cool palms did little to quell her headache, which throbbed like dancing bones. The pulsing heartbeat in her head from that mild use of power reminded her—very much against her will—of how deeply tired she was. It was as if she were already asleep, just waiting for her body to receive the message and catch up.
She removed her cloak, folded it, and set it down to rest her head. Still on the fringes of being tipsy, Palenisa swayed forward, backward, forward—and suddenly her senses sharpened.
She dodged the silver-blue ray of starlight that shot by, inches from her nose. It whipped past with the tail of a comet, so cold and so close her cheek burned. Out of the corner of her eye, Palenisa caught the glittering ray as it faded into the rock and formed a crack. Then another. And another. Until the wall was a net of lines, and the cave filled with a dangerous rumble.
She heard the earth cry out beneath her palms before she saw it.
Palenisa snatched up her cloak and rolled aside, avoiding the wall’s collapse as part of it imploded in a growling spray of rock. Carbon dust rose from the rubble that composed the back of the cave. Throwing on her cloak for cover, she whipped around to glare down the figure climbing into the cave after her.
A freelancer. She seethed. There was no one piece of distinction that identified one as a freelancing Aspect, but from her encounters with them, they always had a tell up close. On this one, there was a line of raised scars along the freelancer’s forearm, from the starlight suvaugram on the back of his hand to the inside of his elbow. She didn’t doubt each one counted his completed kill contracts. Surprising how few there were for someone who came at her with the force of a brash, young lion.
His stern eyes met hers over the unwavering point of his lunar spear.
“Well met, Sister—former Sister Gleissa,” he said with a tilt of his head. A faded cloth tied his matted locs into a waterfall over his shoulders. Palenisa’s lip curled back at the practiced slowness of his voice, and she knew he was most definitely green, and she began to doubt the veracity of the cicatrix tally on his arm.
“Can’t say the same. What’s the damage?”
“Got a contract to fulfill, Gleissa.”
“I’m no longer of the Crocodile Coterie, nameless freelancer.” There was a pause as she steeled herself against the hurt of admitting it out loud—not just to herself in the quietness of her tears. To speak something makes it so. She laughed, a bitter half sob of a thing. “I have it on good authority they want nothing to do with me.”
The freelancer didn’t waver. “Special contract. The client wanted you informed of the details before completion. Strange, but nobles’re eccentric like that. Does the house of Da’Sanjam ring any bells? Chiroyn?”
Palenisa’s eyes widened to shocked rings of blue.
That was a name she hadn’t heard in well over twenty-five years. Once she ended Chiroyn and the other pathetic men who had murdered her mother, their names had faded. They hadn’t crossed her mind, because they were nothing to her. Just targets of revenge. But Ada had washed her clean of holding on to that memory by giving her solace in the coterie. So it was a uniquely cruel game the mind played that she was able to recall his face, burned in lines of sunlight, more easily than her own mother’s.
Clenching her fist, Palenisa prayed that the spirits were on her side in this. Sought comfort in the knowledge of the presence of the Zodiac.
She reached for her staff, but the freelancer was faster.
He vaulted over the cave debris, sliding and knocking the staff to the side. The steel rod rolled to a stop near the edge of the water, hanging precariously close to the waves, and a sheer, sudden drop. Starlight shot past her ear again as she dropped to the ground to dodge the crescent ray. As the energy impacted with the rock, her mind snapped into focus. A razor-thin line of blood oozed from her hairline. Violet, it dripped onto her lips and trailed down her chin, a pale imitation of her tears.
The freelancer’s spear glowed a dull blue, the edges of his form fading as he drew on the power of the night, making himself invisible. “Have to say,” he said mildly, “I look forward to seeing how fast a sister of the coterie can die.” The freelancer twirled his spear and drew into a defensive stance, open hand splayed out with a ball of starlight floating above his palm.
Palenisa’s eyes narrowed. From her throat came a hiss like crackling embers. The sun had set and yet still she burned. Blood had been drawn. There was no time for dawdling bullshit. Fine, she had no staff—Don’t need it. She would make do. She would kill this man with her bare hands if she had to. A vicious smile threatened to overtake her face as she pulled a dagger from her thigh. She planted a hand against the floor, and the calls of the earth surged up to meet her. From the clarity of their voices, she could tell most of the alcohol had left her system.
Good.
Aspects worked better clearheaded. Plants and stones and metals were her domain. Even if her dagger failed, the earth spirit would not. Palenisa dashed forward, blade aloft, a furious bolt of sun in the night.
s
Dawn always brought with it a sense of rejuvenation. Morning light brushed Palenisa’s face tenderly. One would think sunlight Aspects would be early risers; but as in many things, she was, most days, an odd exception. She yawned and cracked her back in a feline stretch, rubbing sleep from her eyes. A particularly forceful flick of her tongue prodded where her canines had split her lip, opening the wound afresh.
The taste of blood unsettled her gut, violently and with horrific speed. She rolled over, scrambled to the ledge of the cave, and vomited the sparse contents of her stomach into the bay. She spat bitter acid and held still a moment, waiting for the nausea to pass. As she glanced over the ledge, she grimaced at the freelancer’s corpse floating face down beside the rocky shore. Soon it would sink beneath silent waves, and all trace of him would be gone.
“Fuck me sideways,” she cursed.
She sat back, scrubbing blood that wasn’t hers from her forehead. Salt and blood and brine mingled in her nose. The scent may have stretched thin but was still within reach beneath it all, like a beacon on which her entire being was locked. Standing, Palenisa kicked up her staff, then grabbed and holstered it. She swung on her cloak and donned her hood, taking comfort in being covered nearly completely. She felt almost like herself and knew soon enough she’d need to get drunk again to forget that feeling.
