by K. M. Hade
ScatheFire flips them over in his palm and ruffles through them. “Damn, Pebbles. They shuffled your company around. What’s this? Eight or nine position assignments in a year?”
I shrug. “Guess so. Seems like we were always getting the order to move out. So much for people telling me war’s a lot of hurry up and wait. If we didn’t have stitches, we had blisters.”
Rot runs his fingers over my company assignment. “Not that I didn’t believe you when you said you were in that company, but… I believe you now. Someone wanted you dead.”
Blood cranes his neck to see. “Damnit, Pebbles, why can’t you just do what you’re supposed to do for once?”
Snickers at the joke. I crack a smile. I hadn’t heard of the company I’d been assigned to until I’d been assigned to it, and it’d taken me about three months to realize they were the cavalry company every other cavalry company (respectfully) called those crazy motherfuckers.
I crack the Aether lock with a flick of magic. Lavender and sage rush out, even though I haven’t opened my trunk in two years. I kick over the lid. My gear is all still here: armor, tall boots, surcoats, medical kits, spare bits and bobs to repair tack, sewing kit, and even a fat bag of coins. Blood reaches in and dangles the sack between two fingers. “Looks over the legal limit, Pebbles. Some contraband right here.”
ScatheFire snatches the bag and yanks it open. He pulls out a handful of coins. “I’m shocked. Shocked.”
Rot clutches his heart and gasps. “A Mage with coin?”
“We should throw these right into the pond,” Blood tells ScatheFire with large, innocent eyes. “What would a nice Aether like her know about having all this coin?”
“Aethers can have coin.” I roll my eyes.
“Not this much. This is contraband, young lady.”
“That was my survival bonus when I got transferred back to the Academy.”
“Survival bonus?” Blood laughs. “I thought that was a cavalry legend.”
“It’s not officially a thing. It’s why I had to take it in coin. The company always pays it in coin if you survive to transfer out. The company bursar just handed me the coin like if anyone asks… but I don’t have an account to deposit it into so…”
“Nobody really thought this let’s-turn-an-Aether-into-a-cavalry-officer through did they.”
“Guess we better spend it on the way to the Capitol.” I sort through the contents—everything is exactly as when I’d last seen it. Nobody had tripped and reset the locks or gone through it. Just dumped here.
“Let’s get it up to the barn so we can start packing it.” Rot grabs one handle. Smoke grabs the other. They tote it away.
Blood looks around. “So Atrament says your parents fucked up your conception. You think we’ll find anything incriminating in the house? Because I’d feel better if we had a bit of leverage to use at Court. Besides your good looks, of course.”
“I have no idea. TasselWood is where my parents dump things they don’t want around, but if there’s any evidence, you’d think they’d have destroyed it. We can look?”
28
Crystal
Blood rounds up the other Imperial Fells to ransack the house. Atrament and I mostly just look on, totally bemused, at the process. Apparently, there is, in fact, a process to searching a residence for items of value.
“What are they looking for?” Atrament looks at the ceiling as things thump and tear.
“Anything that might explain what my parents did,” I say.
He glances at me, but does not speak.
“I thought you would be curious.”
“It clearly offends you when I indulge my curiosity.”
“It frightens me.”
“Because I am a baby with a knife?”
“Sort of,” I say softly. “But I don’t want to be Luminous, Atrament.”
“You know you are,” he says very softly.
I shake my head. No, I don’t know that, and to even suggest it without being sure is beyond dangerous. The Empire will just take that information and run, assuming my parents even cooperate, which they probably won’t. And what about Atrament? What if there had been a thousand babies before him, and they were all warped and ended up in the Pit as research. What if I had been an experiment? What if I could have ended up a Fell, or some mangled something?
What if I had ended up like the Warden?
And honestly, if I’m supposed to be something like the God-Forged, I’m supposed to be some great hero and do amazing things and… I’m about as far from amazing as can be. I’m doing pretty well not destroying random stuff and killing Mages at the moment.
Hesitantly, he extends his hand to me. His shadows slide over us like water reeds. As his shadows move over my skin, my skin glimmers with a soft light, not like candlelight, but not my old opalescent glow. Something different: tinged with a gold-green like Rot and ScatheFire. It looks, in the shadows of the house, like sunlight.
“You are whole now, as I am whole. I was not real until the moment I felt you enter the Pit. But I remember feeling the shape of my shadows for the first time. Before you came, I was formless darkness. But you are Heart. There does not need to be a discussion about anything else.
“I am not worthy of you,” he says, “I am a monster. But you are my Heart, and I will do my best to never hurt you. I can’t promise I will succeed. I am, as they say, the baby with the knife and not well socialized.”
I pick up his hands in mine. He tries to pull away, but I hold on to him. “You aren’t a monster, Atrament.”
“I am,” he says, pressing the meaning of it against me, dark and silky, secrets of what he had done back in the Pit, the doubts and questions he now has about it all. “I have always known I was little better than a Blight-construct, but now I understand what that is. And we don’t know what the mudwitch might have done to you. I didn’t want…”
I hold tighter to his hands. We hadn’t had a choice, and even if the mudwitch had warned me, I would have done it all the same, even if it curiously causes my heart to hurt thinking of this. I’d never contemplated children before. It’s not like I ever thought I’d live long enough. “We’ll find a midwife or Verdance to ask about it.”
“But—”
I shift to my toes and press my lips to his.
He freezes.
“Stop worrying,” I tell him, my lips brushing his, as I push my magic around him, into him, savoring the way it falls into his silky darkness. He quivers all over with pleasure, and my skin shivers in response. It feels like the piercing, pure cold of winter snowfall. “The team is everything, the team is sacred. Now. Put this arm around me.”
“I—”
“I know you want to.”
“I am too filthy to touch you.” The writhing, knotted churn of his emotions presses itself against my Aether.
“That’s not true because I say it is not true.” I take his hand and plant it behind my back, and move along him. “There. Enjoy it.”
“I—”
“Oh, hey, we interrupting something?” ScatheFire drawls. “Someone get Smoke. Entertainment’s about to start.”
“Atrament’s shy.” Rot punches ScatheFire in the arm.
ScatheFire oofs and rubs his arm. “You mean he’s not a depraved fiend like us?”
“He’s practically a virgin. He doesn’t know a thing about depravity.”
“Maybe you should take him aside and teach him a thing or two.”
“He’s not really my type. Blood though…”
“Stop pimping out my ass,” Blood says. “The Empire does that enough.”
Atrament is blushing. Except his cheeks don’t blush, his magic does. Like bashful shadows.
Blood slides between Rot and ScatheFire. “You two need a few minutes, or you want to come see what us street rodents found?”
My magic runs cold. “You found something?”
ScatheFire winks at me and saunters out of the room.
I gulp.
&n
bsp; “I am with you.” Atrament’s whisper is like silk.
We head into what would be considered the lady’s parlor. I can’t recall my mother ever having hosted anyone in here. It looks more or less like a storage room for battered furniture. Two of the walls on both sides are massive windows, and the afternoon sunlight comes through the grimy windows and faded sheer curtains. Everything is covered in a layer of dust and faded from years of sunlight.
“My mother never used this room.” I search my memories for ever seeing her in here and have nothing. She had preferred to host whatever guests were at the estate outside, or in other rooms. She’d disliked this room for some reason. Something about it being for proper fainting ladies or something, and she’d always been offended by the notion. My mother liked her gowns and jewels and fine wine and society and such, but the Named Gods help you if you implied she was a delicate flower or that she had a female disposition.
“Pebbles?” Blood inquires.
“Oh, sorry.” I jolt out of thinking, “Was just remembering stories about how courting my mother was apparently quite dangerous.”
“Why?” Rot asks.
“Story goes, if you tried to flatter her with the usual courtly nonsense of praising her delicacy or femininity, she’d take it as an insult and meet you in the morning. I don’t know if that’s true, but I do know there is a saber for a lady’s hand over the mantle with my father’s back at the Capital.”
They exchange astonished looks.
“Why am I not surprised,” ScatheFire says.
Blood bursts out laughing.
“So what did you find?” I would rather not talk about my mother.
Smoke brings me a very small pot. It’s a beautiful orange enamel with silver trim, with a matching domed lid with a tiny silver knob. It’s as covered with dust as everything else and looks unremarkable.
I move to the windows and twist it around, and in the sunlight a very faint and distinctive opalescent hue is revealed in the enamel. The enamel was made with Aether dust. I turn it over: a few maker’s marks on the bottom. I only recognize one, but not the other two. The only thing unusual about it is how much Aether is ground into the enamel. “These are common, though. They’re used to store cosmetics or medicines or anything else that needs to be kept pure. I’m not surprised one got left here?”
Smoke takes it from me and turns it over. “These marks. Look at these two. They look like maker’s marks, but they’re not.”
“Then what are?”
Blood shifts against me, grim and taunt. “Port-marks.”
“Port-marks,” I echo.
“They’re meant to look like maker’s marks, but they’re like seals,” Blood says. “A way to make sure that the item of value got into the right hands. Trafficking. Piracy. Illicit goods.”
I frown. “How does it work?”
Blood’s presence is dark and pulls far, far away from me, like he’s covering himself. “It can work a few ways, but what probably happened was a deal was struck to sell whatever was in that container. So one mark is probably the person who made the deal—they marked the bottom to show they had handled the goods—while the other mark is the buyer, or the buyer’s agent, who marked it so the container could be returned to the seller as proof of delivery. There was probably some correspondence to negotiate the expected marks beforehand.”
“Your parents did a dirty deal,” Rot translated.
Atrament approaches. “May I?”
Smoke passes him the container.
Atrament opens it, sniffs it, and then puts his finger into it. His shadows slide over the crevices and shapes. He closes his eyes and after a moment, inhales deeply.
I catch the scent and taste of soft oranges and a sweet, pure taste like light.
Sweet Orange Blossom.
A jolt goes through me.
The other Fells all twitch as well.
“Holy shit,” ScatheFire says.
Blood smacks his lips. “That’s… disconcerting.”
“S-sorry,” I say. “I didn’t—”
“Nevermind.” Blood waves it off. “What was that taste?”
“Sweet Orange Blossom.” Atrament replaces the lid and hands it to Smoke. “One of the most precious and critical and rare reagents to creating Aether Mages. Specifically, Crystals and Storms. I understand that it is impossible to get from anywhere but the Clergy, as it is highly illegal to own due to how valuable it is.”
My heart sinks.
And sinks.
And sinks.
“My parents sold a reagent,” I say, like I can’t believe it. Because I can’t.
“It had to have been replaced, though,” Rot says. “A breeding without that reagent won’t give a Crystal or Storm, or much of anything. They’ve been trying for centuries to find a substitute.”
Sweet Orange Blossom is from sacred orange trees in sacred orchards. The trees have to be a certain age and tended in a particular way to flower, and the nectar is gathered, dried, and refined into a fragile powder of insane value with near-miraculous properties. It’s so insanely valuable that to possess it outside of using it to conceive an Aether is wasteful treason, one of the highest crimes you can commit in the Empire, and a Pit-level offense.
Smoke turns the container over in his hands. “We don’t know how this fits together, but it is a clue. We know your parents trafficked Sweet Orange Blossom. It would be easy to make some disappear. The clergy did not monitor every attempt at conception, did they?”
I shake my head. The entire process of creating an Aether is beyond my ken, it’s complicated and intricate, but from what I know, there is the opportunity for a couple to abscond with reagents. If no pregnancy or no Aether results, that is simply part of the process itself, and the failure wouldn’t be cause for alarm or suspicion.
“So what do you do with an Aether-imbued container powerful enough to transport Sweet Orange Blossom illegally?” Blood says. “You hide it as a common perfume box in your derelict mansion with everything else you don’t want and are too snobby to sell, gambling no dirtbag Imperial Fells come along and spot what it really is, or what it was used for.”
Smoke says, quietly, “If they sold the Sweet Orange Blossom, and were later supplied with more by the Clergy under the presumption the earlier attempt simply did not result in a pregnancy, then would their guilt be enough to cast a shadow over her?”
“Come on, they can’t be the first family to do some shady shit with their reagents,” Blood says.
Rot and Atrament exchange looks. “Maybe?”
“Intent and specifics would matter, I think,” Atrament says. “Avarice is usually a disqualifier as the Blight devours avarice.”
“So are we seriously going to fling this at the Empress’ feet and make accusations?” ScatheFire asks. “What if she used the blossom to strike some deal for the good of the Empire?”
I sigh and don’t bother correcting them for the millionth time my mother isn’t the Empress.
“That would be an interesting twist,” Rot says.
Atrament nods. “If true, it would also make re-creating Pebbles nearly impossible. The scope of such a… sacrifice would be beyond normal means.”
“Put it back where it was found,” I say.
“Pebbles,” Blood says.
“We aren’t taking it. We aren’t going to make accusations at court over this. We aren’t going to breathe a word of it. We’re going to play this card with my parents in private.”
“It’s theft,” Blood says. “It’s fucking treason.”
“Exactly, and accusing someone in public based on that container will just make us dead. Remember what you said about dangerous secrets? I’ve got a better idea.” I dig around in the old desk for some paper. Miracles of miracles: there’s some old paper, some charcoal, dried-up ink, and wax with a TasselWood seal.
Smoke raises a brow. “Blackmail?”
“Not exactly.” I use the charcoal to make a few rubbings of the marks on the bottom
. I make two copies for us, and then a third, which I fold up like a letter. “Come here, ScatheFire. Melt this wax for me.”
Blood says to Rot, “I don’t know what evil court conniving bullshit she’s up to, but I’m aroused.”
“She’s so hot when she’s sly.” ScatheFire holds out one finger and a green dancing flame rises off it so I can melt the wax stick.
Rot adjusts his pants.
I dig around and find a small leather envelope. It’s ancient and cracked and that’s fine. I summon a small shard of Aether crystal, then tuck it into the envelope and seal it all with the wax. “We’re going to send this to my parents in the Capital. Let’s just say it’s a little insurance policy if we run into the Military before we intend to.”
“And how do you intend to send some personal correspondence, dear Mage?” Blood asks with a wicked grin.
“I’ve got a plan for that too.”
29
CRYSTAL
Arrem and Jela wait with our horses in the courtyard outside the front house: three horses each for the Fells (except for Rot), one saddled and bridled, one in light packing gear with grain and roughage pellets in panniers, and the third unburdened. A pony line connects the packhorse to the lead horse, with the third horse tethered to the second.
For me there is my favorite hunter—a plain bay gelding—and behind him, my three chargers, tethered neck-to-haunch, and behind the last charger, a packhorse in full pack rigging, and my nicest palfrey: a showy palomino mare with four white socks, a big blaze, and a white mane and tail. It is a lot of horseflesh to trust to not act stupid. “I don’t need the palfrey, Arrem.”
“If you question me again, I’m giving you a pony to take too.”
“I don’t need a palfrey or a po—”
Blood pulls me back against him by the shoulders. “She will take the palfrey, Master Arrem.”
“Excellent choice deferring to my wisdom on such matters.”
