Black as diamond, p.7
Black as Diamond, page 7
As she drew closer to whatever awaited her at the source of the scent, she prayed—hoped—they were worth it. Spirits, she thought, this time more reverently. Between apologies for the previous night’s delay, Palenisa dutifully asked the Zodiac for guidance. I pray I’m close—I do this all for you.
Wren
Wren tried—with very little effort—and failed to still his bouncing leg as he pored over the primer before the hearth. He went from page to page, skim reading the text for something, any answer that would solve the problems he’d caused for himself.
The brand throbbed over his heart at the thought.
He lowered his head miserably and rubbed his hot eyes, trying not to cry. It was only fate that his mistakes would eventually culminate in something he could never take back. A violent response as the world lashed out at his foolishness, his unthinking audacity.
Always failing. Always making a mess of things. But this was more than a mess, wasn’t it?
This was backlash, a violation of the three cornerstones of khetry. And he didn’t even have enough heart to argue that he’d been tricked by the primer, for the fault was his alone. Curiosity was a vicious monster endlessly eating at him, feeding his inability to know when to stop, when to think, when to feel the danger simmering in the air.
The worst part was that the consequences were not his to bear alone.
A lump of regret formed in Wren’s throat as he glanced at Asaru pacing by the window with a contemplative frown. A stranger whom he’d saved and condemned in the same spell. He’d summoned the eresh keyel and, in doing so, bound them together in the worst transgression known to khetry.
A punishment shared by two.
What use am I to anyone? Dark tendrils of a familiar melancholy began to invade Wren’s mind. His heart turned to lead, and he wondered if he could sink into the floor, disappear completely, and ease the lives of those he cared for.
Compared to his current lot in life, the dropwort incident had been an innocent accident. Though he wondered what the guild would have to say to him when he brought another poison conundrum to their gates. His misdeeds tended to mark him permanently. His hand rose from his chest as he grimly clasped the side of his neck. The wrinkled scar gave under his touch, though it was slightly firmer in some places. It had grown taut over the years, but there would always be a tenderness to the skin.
As if sensing his stare, Asaru turned to him, still frowning, and Wren looked back at the primer. Words swam in his vision. Nothing-letters with nothing-meanings. He pressed a hand to the page, willing it to steady him. Meditation would have been the best thing to do, but he could hardly clear his mind even for a second.
The trapdoor to the rooftop garden swung open, and his mother climbed down, carrying a basket of flowers. Kestrel strings were wrapped around her wrists, with knots that represented the Estyrians’ Six. Despite her distaste for the death god Disan, she still wore the costume of Kestrel yearly at the end of the sun season. “Too much worship of death,” she always complained, “not enough of nature, not enough of life.”
Shame darkening his cheeks, Wren immediately shut the primer and shoved it inside his satchel. Sabine’s curious gaze turned to him, and he could only look away as the horrible son he knew he was. The best mother in the world deserved much better than him. Even though she’d pop him lightly on the head if she ever heard him say that around her.
As Sabine carried the basket into the kitchen, Wren tentatively approached Asaru, slowly, like one would Dakazna when she was half asleep.
“Can, um, can I . . .” he stuttered, already tripping over himself. By all that was sacred, he was a true mess. Asaru seemed to think the same, tail whipping in what had to be agitation as he stared at him. He was a decent bit smaller, though he had the aura of someone twice as tall and ten times more aggressive—no doubt that was true too. “Need to reapply the salve on it. Your injury. If that’s, um . . . OK?”
“As you wish,” Asaru huffed. Settling down by the open window, he tugged off the tunic Sabine had given him and set to watching the fireworks. Exasperation radiated from his tense form, which Wren knew was directed at him. Any other time, he might’ve complained he didn’t deserve it—but he most certainly did.
Crouching, Wren examined the garish patch. Sallow purple lines flared from the raised entry wound. It felt warm as he rubbed in a tacky kingsbane salve. It indicated the man’s body was pushing itself to heal as best and as fast as it could, despite the poison. As Wren worked, he was reminded again of the guild, of his aborted study to become a healer. He loved healing, loved helping people. Wished to have it all back, a time and a place when he knew what he was worth.
“Are you done?”
“Ah. Yes.” Blinking from his stupor, Wren pulled away to eye his handiwork. The clean bandages were tight on Asaru’s lower stomach, separated by a small strip of skin from what appeared to be a binder. The bandaging would be serviceable for a short while but would need to be reapplied as the poison spread. Unless they reached the guild before things got considerably worse.
“It is getting late,” Asaru said testily. He pulled the tunic back on, chain belt at his waist clinking with the movement. “You said a few more days, I gave you a few more days. You said the evening, I gave you till the evening. Let us be going before my patience fully runs dry.”
Asaru’s intricate braid rested over his shoulder, auburn tip brushing the pale scars on the rest of his honey-brown skin. The marks of a warrior. Wren wondered what kinds of remnants he’d fought to receive them.
“Soon?” Wren looked over at the water clock, willing time to move faster than this sluggish crawl. “Yes, soon. I promise.”
Dakazna trotted over to them. The wolvencat patted insistently at Asaru’s calf until he picked her up. Her body lolled long and liquid across Asaru’s lap as she flicked a pink tongue out at Wren. He returned the gesture. She was such a spoiled little thing.
“Anemone?” Sabine called, strolling from the kitchen, hands fisted on her hips. “Remind me again where I put my needles—”
“On the table, D’ya. Where you left them yesterday.”
“Ah, maiks vuti, I’d lose track of my mind without you!”
As Sabine passed by Wren to her workstation, she cupped his chin in gratitude. She pulled out her ironbone needles and rolled a slate cloth over the sewing table. As a seamstress, she performed similar tasks daily, but every so often she needed him to remind her of the little things. Sabine pinched a thimble onto her thumb and rolled up her sleeves. Black dahlias common to their tribe, the Rosatay, were stitched into the meat of her forearm by an expert hand—hers. They twined with her tattoos, depicting a cornucopia of thorns piercing rhodiola flowers. Tugging a thread from her wrist, she drew it through the needle and, with nimble fingers, began to sew a spell circle into the fabric spread over the table.
Ever since Wren was a child, his mother had preferred to sew her spellwork into objects rather than simply drawing them. She claimed that blood, water, and charcoal were far too messy. A quick glance down at his hands proved her somewhat right.
“Anemone?” Asaru asked.
“It’s my, um, blessed name. All Norvatti get one at their naming celebration.”
Asaru hummed. It made an intriguing picture to watch him scratch Dakazna’s curled horns a moment—almost domestic, a silly little part of his brain supplied before he summarily quashed it.
A soft glow arose from the circles Sabine had stitched as she charged the spell. Spiderwebs of khetry clung to her wrists, glistening like dew. Light rose and she flicked her wrists, casting the spell. What once were simple swaths of cloth now resembled snakeskin capes. Gray with faint dappled bands across their length, fading in and out of visibility as his mother held them up to the light.
The sight made everything much more real. Not that the brand wasn’t real enough, but Wren found himself snapped back to himself with a cold discomfort, as if his mind were a stranger and he an unwelcome intruder.
“Refraction spell,” Sabine explained to Asaru as he slid his on. It fell to his knees and had slits cut into the back to allow his wings to stretch. “Stick to the shadows and you should be relatively imperceptible. Be careful, it isn’t perfect. Light has a way of uncovering most unexpected things.”
Wren clutched his cloak and blinked, surprised to find his eyes damp. “Are you sure?” he asked quietly.
“Scavite,” she sighed dramatically. “I’ve gotten tired of seeing your face—you’re sixty, it’s time to permanently leave the nest, vye?”
“D’ya,” Wren said gently.
Sabine’s impish smile faded, and she wrung her hands, toying with her fede ring as she often did when her mind wandered. Her crow’s-feet deepened around her eyes, and in that moment, she looked decades older. “Just watch each other’s backs. And please hurry to the guild, all right? No need to worry your dear d’ya any further.”
Elsewhere in Sika, a water clock spilled over with the sound of rain pattering against metal, and a bell rang. Asaru’s ears perked, hazel eyes alert. “It is evening. Let us go.”
He moved to the door and looked back expectantly, but Wren was rooted in place, seeing the glassiness in his mother’s eyes, the invisible yoke across her shoulders. She inhaled, exhaled sharply, and enveloped him in her arms. He wanted to stay there forever, where it was warm and where he was loved despite all the many careless things he had done wrong. He buried his face against her shoulder, breathing in the peppermint of her hair.
Pulling away, Sabine pressed her forehead to his in a Red Desert kiss, cradling his face as though she held the world. Like the rings of a tree, the marks on her hands spoke to her years. The scar from when she first taught him to use a needle, the healed-over traces of many sewn spells, the calluses from her work.
Since being cast out from their clan, they’d been alone, but they’d been alone together. The first, and only, time they had separated was during his stint with the guild, and they had not been apart for long since then. All they had was each other.
“Dorai, randu tios vua’foms’is,” Sabine whispered. I shall see you, my son. Then she let him go, slowly, as if it pained her, and touched her cheek. “Come back to me.”
Words were hard to come by, so Wren nodded. No tears would be shed. That felt too final. This wasn’t to be their last goodbye. For as much as he yearned for the guild, he knew he’d come back. He always did.
“I always will.”
Sika was in the throes of revelry.
Fluttering streamers in various shades of red hung across the road between boxy mansard roofs. Ropes were knotted for the Six, and scarves of fox feathers were looped around hexes. Music blew in like wind, and fireworks, flashes of sudden color, burst in time with the beat of distant drums. During Kestrel, Disan took on a lighter mask, smiling with the knowledge that fate would inevitably lead all life into the wide net of his arms.
Wren and Asaru passed hawkers at street corners trying to sell last-minute costumes. They passed vendors pulling sticky sheets of taffy and handing spun raspberry cream to children in cones of crosshatched waffles. Wren led them through Sika Major to Nastradona. They clung to the shadows, hurrying along a familiar path he could probably chart with his eyes closed. But even under the cloak, he remained wary, his gaze eagle sharp, scanning for signs of the Black Order. Some sentinels were wraiths, but thankfully, most were not Aspects. They truly were the stuff of lulaik nightmares.
As they trekked up the hill to the apothecary, Asaru seemed to grow agitated. Wren glanced back and found the other man glaring, his eyes almost aglow under his hood. “What is this, why are we wasting time here?” he hissed as Wren unlocked Nastradona’s back door with the key atop the lintel.
“Need to grab some supplies our garden didn’t have,” Wren replied, biting his lip and pushing the door open. He winced at the creaky scream of the hinges that always accompanied it. Zanna had told him more than once to oil it out, and he was regretting putting off that particular task. “What I have now won’t last all the way to the guild. It’s not a particularly . . . brief trip.”
Inside, the room was dimly lit by the city below and the wide-eyed moon above. Familiar shapes in the near darkness turned to obstacles, which he felt along to avoid. The door to Zanna’s apartment was shut tight, but he moved slowly anyway, pausing between each step to lessen the risk of drawing any attention, from her or the other establishments nearby.
Though “quiet” did not necessarily mean “safe.”
As politely as he could, Wren searched the cabinets above and below the mixing bench. Though he was not a healer, he knew the tools of the trade, being that he almost was one. More kingsbane, along with marigold and geranium, a roll of silk as thick as a fist for wraps, vials of oils. The entire time, Asaru loomed at his back, tapping a clawed foot as he muttered in impatience.
Wren wanted to apologize again but found himself distracted by the sound of shuffling outside. Wood bowed as the back door creaked in a sudden wail. A warning blared in his brain. Instinctively, he grabbed for Asaru’s hand. It seemed they both did, palms pressed tight by some base instinct.
A jolt traveled through their bond, and Wren gawked at the falcon wings protruding from the slits in Asaru’s cloak. They fluttered, injured wing drooped slightly lower with broken feathers. A breath later, Asaru not so gently snatched his hand away. His brow dipped into something more frazzled than a frown. The points of his ears flickered the same way Dakazna’s did when she was caught off guard.
“Do not do that,” Asaru said curtly.
But you reached out for me too . . . “Sorry.”
“Wren?”
Zanna stood in her doorway, holding a candle. Her eyes bounced in disbelief from Asaru to Wren and back again, caught on the massive twitching wings. Asaru folded them away and met Wren’s gaze with a look of mild inconvenience.
Why had he ever hoped for this night to go well?
“Miss du Allopei, I can—”
“Don’t.” She bit her lip and raised a hand. Frowning, she hummed for a moment. “Don’t tell me. Despite your inadequacies as an apprentice, lulaik stick together. Take what you need and leave before anyone else sees him.”
But it was too late.
One of Nastradona’s nosier neighbors must’ve peered in at the initial commotion and spotted Asaru, or perhaps Wren’s luck was worse than he had already assumed. The sound of sentinels stomping their way up the mound filled his ears. Panicked, Wren clutched his satchel, unsure. Afraid. His ears rang, each tone building like concentric circles in water. Louder, larger, until he barely felt himself in his own body.
Asaru shoved him out of his spiral. “Focus.”
“Go. Down the other side of the hill, to the woods.” Zanna gestured hurriedly, pushing them out the back door.
Wren’s heart pounded loudly in his ears as they raced into the Kingswood, where cobblestone merged into underbrush. Behind them, the sentinels rounded the corner of the mound road, torches and swords in hand. Silver steel glistened in the moon’s light, hungry to whet its edges. A shout sounded, an unintelligible cry as the unit noticed them fleeing. The faster of the two, Asaru sprinted ahead, cloak streaming behind him as he ducked beneath low branches and leaped over logs. If he’d had his wings spread, he’d almost look like a beast.
Chancing a look back, Wren shuddered at the sight of an archer behind the rest of the Black Order unit. With strong, skilled arms, the sentinel pulled back on her longbow . . . aimed . . .
Wren called out a warning, and they both ducked in time to avoid the steel-tipped arrow, which embedded itself in a nearby tree. Thick trunks obscured every possible juncture of the wood, and she still managed to almost hit them. She must have been trained by the Chain Archers, the most accurate and deadly in the world.
The archer nocked another arrow, advancing after the rest of her unit. They were trained, armed, deadly, and at this rate they would overtake him.
Liquid panic coursed through Wren’s veins.
Asaru slowed his pace and spun on a heel, growling at Wren to keep running. He brought both hands to his jaw and khetry brightened, thickening, warping—almost singing. Sudden exhilaration overtook Wren like a free fall as Asaru breathed out a wide arc of fire. Golden flames cut a line through the earth before the archer could release the second arrow. The tongues roared, a lion rising to lick the canopy and the sky between him and their pursuers. The wall of fire forced the sentinels back. The sentinels skidded to the side to avoid being burned where they stood. But it didn’t stop them completely. The thought of them closing in had Wren swallowing down stomach acid with the fear.
Their distraction, if only momentary, gave him and Asaru time to disappear into the tall grass. They ran farther and ducked beneath the drooping veil of a willow. In the tiny clearing obscured by its low-hanging branches was an inconspicuous entrance to Birinuyi, set against the trunk of the false tree. Accessible only to those who knew where to look, the underground tunnels of Birinuyi were a many-armed creature. In this one thing, at least Wren’s father was—had been—useful, for the trunk was marked with a distinct crossed-out circle, originally set aside for him and his mother should they ever have need of it.
“Do what you must, but hurry.” Asaru tilted his ear up and stepped closer to the tree. He barely seemed to have broken a sweat, while Wren came to a staggering stop by the trunk. “They recovered faster than expected.”
