by K. M. Hade
Atrament glances at me. “Are you well, Lady Heart?”
I shift my weight in the saddle. The rock-like discomfort in my lower body really hasn’t improved, and it’s not helped by the growing knot of unpleasent feelings in my heart. I hadn’t told them anything (despite my claims to tell them on the way) since we’d left the tavern. “I know this area of the country very well, but I’ve never been up this far, and I’m not sure if I’m disappointed or not that I never came here on my own.”
“I’m sure your chaperones would have had a fit if you’d tried to wander into the ruined lands.” Blood runs his hands across his hair and tilts his face up to the rain. He presses water across his hair, and it runs off the strands in a pink-red wash. “Fuck. That is glorious.”
Chaperones. I almost laugh, but don’t, because I’m not in the mood to sob over shit from the past. I pull it all away and deeper, out of sight from where they can see it, and shove it where my birth-name is stitched under all my thread.
Atrament holds out one hand. His familiar perches on his palm and bathes in the little puddle on his palm. My familiar shifts into animal form and slithers across the saddle and up my arm to experience the rain. Its tongue flicks out to catch drops.
“It’s not getting better?” ScatheFire asks me.
“I think it’s getting better, just slowly.”
“She probably needs to be somewhere for a few weeks to really recover. That was rough on her,” Rot says.
Smoke mops hair out of his face. “We can’t stay on the main road. This might be a remote area, but they came up far enough to post bills in the ruined lands.”
“I’m not worried about us not being able to handle bounty hunters,” I say. “I don’t want to kill anymore Imperial Mages, and I don’t want anyone to know we’ve been spotted. We need the element of surprise. I want to spread some rumors that we’ve gone across the Vast Dark.”
“Oh, that’s an interesting twist,” ScatheFire says. “Does your plan involve us going across the Vast Dark?”
“The Vast Dark was not part of the deal,” Blood says, annoyed. “I do not want to be a pirate.”
“I dunno, pirate ship covered in glowing skulls is a look,” ScatheFire says.
“The rumor that we’ve fled the Empire entirely,” I say. “Anyway, let’s head out. The season’s late. We can get where we’re going and hammer out the rest of the details.” Everything kind of hinges on this next step, so no point bothering them with the details if this goes to shit.
“Where are we going?” Blood asks.
“South along the road.”
ScatheFire shakes out his hair and orders, “Ride two by two. Once we get to the forest, Pebbles takes the point. Anyone looking for us is going to expect five, not six, so hopefully they’ll assume we’re just on the same business they’re on.”
Blood’s petal dragon crouches in his hair, fluttering its wings in the rain and kneading happily. Its master says, “Atrament, if we bump into anyone who wants to talk, you take the point. There’s not an Atrament in the Imperial service right now, but chances are nobody out here will know that, and they’ll be looking for a Fell team that doesn’t have an Atrament. Heart, you’re soaking wet and filthy. Pass yourself off as a Metal or Stone if you can.”
It’s so strange to be called Heart once again. It doesn’t feel like my name. I don’t feel like a Heart.
But what’s a Heart supposed to feel like? All snuggles and cuddles and hot tea and cookies?
“Because she can pass for a Metal even covered in a month’s worth of grime,” ScatheFire says dryly.
“Unless the Army’s sent out a bunch of Aethers, we’re going to bump into people stupid enough to think they can take five runaway Fells and the greatest Aether criminal in the history of Aethers,” Blood’s tone is just as dry. “They’re also going to be stupid enough to believe a dirty Crystal is a Bone or Metal. They’ll be so stupid I won’t even feel bad if we have to kill them.”
“I’d rather not kill them,” Rot says, shifting with deep concern and distaste at the idea of killing anyone. “I like being an Imperial Mage.”
Smoke’s bindings to me shift and twist. I don’t.
“Then turn your back and I’ll do it.” Blood’s grim impatience rattles like the grim set of a jaw. Atrament’s satiny silence agrees.
Since Imperial Mages either travel with no remounts or at least a remount apiece, we set our most tired horse free. One spare horse between us would appear odd.
I fall into formation next to Smoke. I don’t touch him, but the proximity still feels like the brush of a soft breath against us. He tenses, resists, his soul pulling away from mine. Hard enough Atrament turns his head towards us. After a second, Smoke shifts his reins to one hand, and with steely resolve, caresses my nose with a tickle of smoke. It smells like burning pine chips.
It’s ten miles to our turn, and it’s still raining when we get there. ScatheFire peers up at the signpost. There are a couple of battered, crooked wood arrows nailed to it, each having some destination burned into their surfaces. The road is just some wheel ruts and hoofprints cutting through overgrown grass and greenery and marches towards the thick forests in the distance. “Is this where we’re turning? Or are we going farther down?”
Blood peers through the rain. “I think this road continues south, but there’s that turn off that heads back west and will take us to whatever the name of that big town is about fifteen miles that way. Everything to the east of this road is just farmland and nothing.”
I point at one of the battered, crooked arrows on which is burnt our destination’s name. “There it is. TasselWood.”
Doubt and skepticism travel the bonds between us. Blood’s the one who speaks. “Pebbles, you going to tell us about this place, or are you just looking forward to seeing our faces?”
“More to the point, what is TasselWood?” ScatheFire asks.
“I’m guessing it’s a little town the size of my boot.” Blood says.
Time to get this over with. “It’s my family’s hunting estate and vineyard. Come on. Let’s go. I know exactly where I am.”
“How far is it?” Rot peers down the road.
“About twenty miles. We can be there by dark.”
“Is your family going to be there?” Blood inquires.
“Not a chance. My parents and their parents weren’t much for the rugged hunting estate as entertainment. They refuse to sell it because it’s family land, you know. My older brother used it for the occasional wild escapade when he was a bachelor.”
“But it still has staff, doesn’t it?” ScatheFire asks.
“Barely, and they won’t give me any trouble.”
“They can rat us out.”
“They won’t.”
TasselWood has been in my family for many generations, although in this remote part of the Empire, there’s not much here. Impoverished estates, little hamlets, hunting lodges, farms.
“This is probably where we’d get granted our lands,” ScatheFire tells Blood dryly.
“Probably,” I agree.
The fences haven’t been tended to and are falling down or scattered. The fields are overgrown with the determined descendants of the last fruit and squash crops that had been planted years ago. The orchards are overgrown and littered with overripe, fallen fruit. The smell of burst fruit and squash is thick.
The vineyards are a tangled, matted mess of vines that hit the ground when their trellises snapped from neglect. Now they crawl everywhere in a tangled mat, spewing grapes for the birds. If it wasn’t raining, feral chickens would abound. Escaped sheep stand out like little white blobs, their massive fleeces engulfing them, heedless of the rain.
“This is fucking depressing.” ScatheFire’s voice is rough and angry. “Your family just leaves this to rot into the ground.”
“Yes.” Shame slimes my insides.
Rot rides off the road into the vineyard we’re passing, dismounts, and plucks a couple of bunches of grap
es. He feeds a few to his horse, then remounts, and heads back to us to pass out the bunches.
Grapes are something none of them grew up having. An exotic delicacy that they, at best, had in the liquid, fermented form of shitty wine. And my family leaves it to rot into the ground.
The closer we get to the main house, the more groomed things become: neatly tended hayfields and horse pastures with fences in good repair. On the other side of the property, there will be small, neatly tended gardens that the resident staff keep.
The main road becomes groomed gravel, which is well tended just in case my parents ever decide to show up. There should be beautiful, luxurious flower gardens and such on either side, but it’s just grass now. It’s also fenced in so childhood ponies can graze and keep it short. Nobody is going to come by with a scythe and trim it.
It’s dusk and raining when the main house comes into view: three stories of yellow-red local stone dotted with many windows decorated with beautiful masonry work and once-beautiful wood trim that is now rotting from neglect. There is a broad, stone stairway that sweeps out like a lady’s train, leading up to the stone veranda that wraps all around the house. Once all of this overlooked a groomed central yard and spectacular gardens with their inset pools and water features and the decorative fish ponds.
“Huh.” I pause my horse as we pass the central fountain in the courtyard. The fountain’s been dead for years, but now it appears to have been blown apart. The pool is half-filled with disgusting green slime and water. “Lightening strike, I guess.”
The house is completely dark. Down the lane past the house there are lights: one of the barns. There are multiple barns, of course, that is just the one where we’re going to put our horses for the night.
“Come on,” I say, “Let’s put the horses up.”
“You sure we can just waltz in here, Heart?” Blood asks warily. “This looks too quiet.”
“You mean vaguely abandoned? That’s how it always looks.”
The main barn is illuminated by bright Aether lanterns. I send Atrament in to scout the situation while we wait outside in the drizzle. Rot mutters to no one in particular, “I’ve seen churches smaller than this barn.”
Atrament sticks his head into the barn. “Hallo!”
A moment later, the stable master, Jela, appears in the golden light of the barn. He’s carrying a pitchfork as he walks straight over to Atrament. “There’s nothing good that brings a Fell Mage all the way out here on a rainy night.”
Atrament shows his hands, palm up. “We mean no harm. We need to put our horses up for the evening.”
“This isn’t a livery, Fell. This is a noble estate, even if it looks like it’s been abandoned. Squatters got no place here, and we don’t have to lodge Imperials. Turn around the way you came, take the road five miles up, and turn at the big pink quartz rock. That’ll take you somewhere more useful.”
Nobody else shows themselves, there’re no lanterns moving in the distance, or voices calling to ask about us. I dismount, wince as pain spikes right up through me, and throw back my cloak. Smoke tries to stop me, but I shake off his hand and go into the barn.
Jela’s eyes widen and the pitchfork almost falls out of his hands. “Lady—Heart? Cr-ystal? T—”
He almost says the name stitched under my Aether, catches himself.
“Hello, Jela.” The barn smells like hay: sunlight, gold, clean, pure.
Jela tenses all over, like a deer not sure if it needs to run or not. “What are you—I heard…”
“That I murdered my Aether team and was sent to the Pit?” I meet his gaze directly.
He closes his mouth with a snap. “I don’t believe it. Can’t be true. You wouldn’t have done it. You aren’t a killer.”
I am a killer, but now’s not the time to debate the nature of Imperial Magery with Jela. “Thank you. I’m not alone. This is Atrament, and that is Blood, Smoke, Rot, and ScatheFire. You can call me Crystal. It’s the name you’ve called me by the longest.”
“But—” Atrament protests, then shuts up.
The other Fells come into the barn, dripping wet and looking like they’ve been pulled out of a trough. Jela gives them all a skeptical look.
I say, “Jela, don’t believe what you heard. It’s far more complicated, and I don’t need to tell you how the imperial court loves a scapegoat.”
He nods grimly.
“Did my parents send my chargers and gear back up here after my murder trial?”
Jela yanks his attention back to me. Then a weary, bone-deep chuckle that I know all too well. “Yes, Lady Crystal. You know them. Never stoop so lowly as horse trading. Master Arrem’s been keeping them sharp because they are too fine to waste, although your younger brother has some idiot notion he’s going to throw a leg over any of them.”
My oldest brother will inherit almost everything, and my younger sister will require an appropriate dowery to net a politically advantageous mate, so my younger brother’s lot is a military career. Fortunately, he’s keen for it. He’s wanted to be an officer since before he ever knew he was going to have to be an officer. There is, however, not a damn chance he’ll get to ride any of my horses off to war.
Even thinking of my family is draining. I’ve still got to confront the house itself. “Our horses are tired. If anyone asks about us, just say we overpowered you and stole everything.”
He frowns, hesitant. “I don’t like to lie, Lady Crystal.”
“Jela, I found out why I couldn’t control my magic, why I got sent to the front, why there was a BlightWorm at my trial. It’s all too dangerous to tell you.”
Atrament, mildly, says, “But I will tell you that the BlightWorm was transported from the Pit as a small creature and grew under the Capital for many months before the trial.”
Jela went ash-pale. “W-what?”
ScatheFire puts his arm around Jela. “Because, dear man, very powerful people needed her dead. The kind of people willing to kill the scions of five noble houses to cover up the truth. The kind of people who will come burn down all of TasselWood if they even think you know anything.”
Jela’s eyes are wide. He looks at all of us, then at the loops and braids and stitches on the Imperials in their armor, and says to me, “Are you trying to get justice for your Aethers? I heard losing a team drives a Heart crazy. And you’re not a Heart anymore. Did losing them break you?”
My Aethers had been terrible to me. I can see that now, as hard as it is to look at. But they’d also been lied to as well, and told it was my fault. The Academy had known what I was, and… my heart broke over and over. My voice is raw and strangled with knots of emotion. “They didn’t deserve what happened to them. They lost their souls over this. They suffered a fate worse than death. The Emperor and Empress need to know what happened. Their families deserve to know what happened. And it needs to never, ever happen again. But we need time to plan how to make it happen. The entire Empire is looking for us, but they won’t look here.”
Jela’s eyes shimmer. Is he going to cry? He coughs and says, “Bring those horses in out of the rain. We got plenty of room.”
The horses seem grateful to be out of the rain. The condition of their hooves is shameful.
Jela admires Rot’s familiar, spots the bad hooves, and says to no one in particular, “Why are you lot riding a bunch of palfreys into this hard-boned state?”
Blood feeds his familiar a little drop of blood. “Because they were available to commandeer. We’ve ridden them from the Pit across the ruined lands. Good horses. They deserve grain and a curry.”
Jela pauses. “Wait. Is that true? You escaped the Pit, Lady Crystal? I’d been told you’d been sentenced to the Pit but you—they—”
I grin. “First time in history. The Fells aided my escape.”
He laughs.
“Would be a shame if I didn’t escape TasselWood after escaping the Pit,” I add, trying to make a lame joke. I shouldn’t bother.
Jela dismisses this with a
grunt. “Your parents haven’t been here in seven years, nor your brother since that party before his wedding. The couriers bring coin for taxes and wages twice a year. You’re the only one we’ve seen. You know we have a soft spot for you.”
My heart crunches again and pain trundles up out of the dark recesses where I keep it bound up with Aether thread and a name I no longer have. “Same, Jela.”
He takes my bay horse. “I’ll put up the horses and get your others. Go into the main house. You can let yourself in, I imagine. I’ll tell the others to let it be. I’ll turn your horses away into the pasture and just tell anyone that asks they’re more cast offs from your family. You know how it is here. Nobody asks questions when something new appears.”
24
CRYSTAL
“So your parents don’t sell horses?” Rot asks as we slide in through the kitchen entrance to the main house.
“They think it’s lowly to sell horseflesh. As if anyone has the right to inspect it and question its quality or worth. So when they’re done with a horse, they send it up here to eat grass.”
“That’s some old Empire attitude,” Blood says. “They just feed them until they die?”
“Pretty much. They get turned into meat and leather and such when their time comes. My parents are breeders of horses, but they refuse to sell or trade. The most they’ll do is gift a horse.”
Clatter!
“I want to not break my leg tripping over shit,” ScatheFire mutters. He kicks the offending bucket into some dark corner.
The shadows suddenly grow very dark. Atrament says, “Lady Heart, you can light a lantern now. My shadows will cover the windows. It will look dark from the outside.”
I summon a ball of Aether light. “Damn… that’s so easy now.”
Too easy.
The soft holy light illuminates the kitchen. Everything neat and tidy, like the staff has just gone to bed for the night. Minus the dust, of course.
“Here, let’s do this instead of having to have Atrament block Aether-light.” ScatheFire takes two lanterns from their hooks by the door. A snap of his fingers, a spark, and warm light.
