I have to admit, other than the fact that it’s filled with terrible, awful water, it’s a nice city. That’s the best I can do; my apparent and sudden hydrophobia just will not let me like this city. The buildings are white marble and colorful coral, with twisting spires and fluted columns and kelp swaying with the gentle motion of the deep water and I hate it so much.
Fish swim alongside us, across us, above us, lighting blue and electric yellow and bright pink. The ocean floor is packed dirt and the bones of various sea creatures ground into it. When we take a step the dirt puffs and swirls around our feet before settling around us.
The people in the city look more or less like Kell, with a few variations in skin and hair color. They wear scraps of clothing here and there but modesty doesn’t appear to be as important as freedom of movement and ornament. They have bits of glass, clouded and colorful, along with shells and teeth woven into necklaces and hair ties. Everyone is shiny and smiling and I can’t help but notice how much happier they are than the people from my city; how much healthier. The glass is woven into some of their clothes as well; instead of dyeing cloth, they decorate it, which makes sense for people who live in water.
Our steps are buoyant and I try not to think about why. “Because you’re under water and you’re going to die down here,” part of me whispers. That’s not helpful. I think about Kjiersten and the kiss instead. I think about it so hard that I barely notice when we get to a part of the city that has a giant statue out in front, and wide marble steps that lead up, and then we’re inside a palace and walking up to a throne and there, in front of us, is the King under the Sea.
◆◆◆
I thought the people outside looked like Kell but with the King it’s like looking at Kell when he’s older. He is huge, and muscular, but with a belly that hangs over his canvas shorts. He’s got a beard with glass braided into it and on his head are giant locks, locks he must have been growing his whole life because they are so long and thick, with bits of glass and shells and even serrated teeth woven into them. His eyes are hazel, not as green as Kell’s.
“Grandfather,” Kell says, and bows.
Of course.
“Your Majesty,” the rest of us say and bow as well.
“What have you brought me, Kell?” the King asks. I expect Kell to introduce us but instead he walks up the steps to the throne and drops the net of fish.
“Fish that swim only near the mainland, grandfather,” Kell says, and bows again before returning to stand next to us.
The King strokes his beard and looks pleased. He has a greedy gleam in his eye.
“And you, strangers from the mainland, what have you brought me?”
We look at each other. I think of everything I’ve been collecting in my pack and I dig through it until I find what I’m looking for. Kell gives me a nod so I walk up to the throne and hand the King a small pouch of polished beads from the Night Market. Kjiersten looks surprised as I walk back down.
The King opens the pouch and spills the sparkling glass beads onto his palm. He grins, his big white teeth lighting up the throne room, and then he tucks them back into the pouch.
“And the rest of you?”
Zair gives him a ruby from his stash of remaining jewels. The King squints at it and then sets it on the arm of his throne. Kjiersten gives him one of her arrows; it has a black tip and when she hands it to him she leans over to whisper something in his ear.
Only Alexsi is left. He looks around helplessly. He has nothing with him. I try to think of something I can give for him, but nothing comes to mind. I don’t think it’s allowed. I wish Kell had told us about this part so we could have prepared. The King, instead of looking disappointed, gets that greedy look in his eye and leans forward.
Alexsi gives Kjiersten a desperate look and holds out his hands. He closes his eyes and concentrates. A twig sprouts out of the ground in front of us, and then a leaf. I’m impressed by his quickness of thought but I don’t know if the King, who looks like he wants to eat us, will approve of a twig as a guest gift.
But Alexsi isn’t done. He clenches his jaw and the twig grows, and grows, and grows, until it is three feet tall. Then he gives it branches, and more leaves, and then tiny buds that turn into flowers, and then the flowers turn into nubs that grow and then I realize what it is. It’s a miniature lemon tree, filled with ripe lemons, right here in the King’s throne room.
Kell looks terrified but the King claps in delight. “Very nice! You must be a son of the Forest; I thank you for this excellent gift. Now, please, introduce yourselves.”
We do, and this time everyone gives their proper titles. Kell’s face tightens when he realizes that Alexsi and Zair are princes but to be fair, he didn’t tell us he was a prince either. The King shows a special interest in Kjiersten when she gives her name and says she is the Archer, Protector of the Forest, but she doesn’t mention that the Undying is her father. Zair confidently announces that he is the Prince of the Air but the King doesn’t react. I’m surprised. I’m even more surprised at how he responds when I give my title as an assassin of the guild, Hand of the Gods; his eyes light up with a terrible anger and he looks at Kell, enraged.
“You brought an assassin into my Palace, grandson? How could you?”
Kell shakes his head. “I didn’t know, your majesty, I swear it. I would never bring an assassin here.”
I’m confused; assassins are respected because we carry out the will of the Gods. Why are they reacting like this?
“I knew we shouldn’t have trusted The Joker. The damned Gods and their games.” The King stands and drops my gift on the floor. “I reject your guest-gift, assassin,” he hisses, like it’s a dirty word, an insult. “The rest of you can stay, but this one goes in the cage.”
Everyone just stands there, not knowing what to do, and Kell looks at me like I’m a viper he found in his dinner. I start to turn, to leave, and then someone hits me in the head and I’m falling down a hole again except this time there is no bottom.
◆◆◆
My dreams this time do not make sense. The Flaming Man is walking across a sky full of stars. The Joker appears, holding a knife in one hand and a snake in the other. My mother walks by, holding a plate of fry-bread. “You too are made of stars,” she whispers. Water is rushing in to drown me and Alexsi is laughing, laughing while Kjiersten is dancing with Kell and Zair accuses me of killing him.
When I wake I am, in fact, in a cage. It looks to be made from the ribs of a giant sea-creature and it has no door. There is a wizard sitting by my cage, out of reach, and his eyes are a cloudy silver as he watches me.
“Where are my friends?” I ask him, and he shakes his head. I’ve never heard a wizard speak.
“Your friends are fine,” Kell says, walking around to the front of my cage. He looks wary. “Why are you here, assassin? Why did you come to us?”
“I told you, we need your help. We need to find the Fifth Family. We need to get someone from each of the Five Families to the Unseen Realm.”
“That’s just a fairy tale, Alinya. No one believes in the Five Families, or the Unseen Realm. Those are all things that the Queen of the Air uses to control you and the rest of her people.”
“No,” I say, shaking my head and grabbing onto the bone bars of my cage. “That can’t be true. I talked to the loremasters. I found the Undying. I rode on the Night Train! All the stories are real, Kell, they are real and we can change our story if we can only get there.”
“I would never help Air,” Kell grits out. “I would never help the people that stole our land and put it into the sky because of one woman’s vanity. I wasn’t sure about you before, Alinya, but now that I know what you really are - what kind of monster you are - I hope you die down here. I hope the Gods-spell fails and you drown in this cage. Your kind is an abomination.”
“Why are you saying that? Why? What have I ever done to you?”
He’s shaking with rage now. “We’ve heard how they make you. They fe
ed you poison that steals your feelings; they take away everything that makes you human, and then you kill whoever they tell you to kill.” He leans close to my cage, close enough for me to kiss him or kill him. I’m horrified at what I’m thinking. “They train you to sneak into hidden cities and murder people’s parents right in front of them, don’t they, Alinya? Because that is what happened to me; an assassin came here, to our sacred palace, and killed my mother and father in front of my eyes. I saw them die. And I forgot, I should have remembered when I first saw you; they were wearing black leather clothes, just like the ones you were wearing when you came to the beach.”
And then I say exactly the wrong thing. “If an assassin killed them, it’s because the gods ordered it, Kell. Assassins don’t kill on their own.”
He slams his hands on the bars. “I hope you die down here, murderer. And before you do I want you to know one thing.” He leans closer, and his beautiful green-topaz eyes are completely mad now. “We don’t care about the gods, deep under the sea. We don’t care about you, or your quest, or whatever you think you’re doing. We live apart for a reason. If you’re lucky, your friends will get out of here alive, but you - you will never leave.”
CHAPTER 24
Kjiersten comes to visit me, and then Zair, then Alexsi. They tell me how they are trying to win over the King. They think they are making progress but I know he’s just humoring them, honoring guest code until he can make them leave or they die in an unfortunate accident. Kjiersten tells me she is training with the harpoon - a giant arrow, she explains somewhat inaccurately.
Zair visits me the most, while Kjiersten is busy training and Alexsi tries to win over the king. I think Zair blames himself for all of this happening, which I can’t quite figure out. He’s apologizing to me again and them, finally, I’m exasperated enough to snap at him. “Are you apologizing for not dying, Zair? Do you feel bad because you didn’t let me kill you?”
He looks startled, then looks at his feet. “No, but if you’d never met me, you wouldn’t be here right now.”
“If I hadn’t met you I wouldn’t have seen the world, Zair. I’d still be just another girl on the ground, living in the City Below, killing whoever the Masters told me to kill. I wouldn’t know about ice dragons or fairy fire; Kjiersten wouldn’t have kissed me under the sea. I wouldn’t trade this for anything.”
And I wouldn’t. But when he’s not there, when I’m all by myself, I sit and I cry and I admit that I’ve failed. I’ve failed the quest; I’ve failed my friends; and the King knows that I’m the monster everyone else pretends I’m not. But I am. The Masters stole my life; they stole my choices; they turned me into a killer. I may not have killed Kell’s parents but I have killed parents. Not in front of their child - never in front of a child - but there are orphaned children out there because of me.
◆◆◆
I’m bored in the cage. I can’t run, I can’t climb, I can’t practice or train. All I can do is think, and wait, and eat. The palace guards bring me fish and salty greens that grow in the sea. Alexsi surprises me by bringing me a lemon from his lemon tree. Kjiersten brings me small sticky candies. She doesn’t kiss me again but that one kiss was enough; even though I want more, it is already more than I ever thought she’d give me.
I think about failure. I think about our ancestors, flying through the stars to find a new home, only for most of the colonists to end up slaves so that one family can take all the magic. I know I can’t give up but I just don’t know how to get out of this. Everything else has gone so easily; sure, the journey was hard and we had to fight our way through at times, but it’s like we were on a direct path and now there is no way forward. Like the gods were guiding us and now they’re not.
My friends won’t leave as long as I’m here. With all the time to think I’ve realized something; I am not at all necessary to this quest. Sure, it’s my quest; but the Undying didn’t say “The Five Families and a random assassin will break the bargain,” just the Five Families. I don’t need to be there, they do. I need them to go; just like we said earlier, sacrifices would need to be made.
I open my assassin’s kit and dig through the selection of poisons the Old Master gave me. Had he known it would come to this? I look for one that will give me an easy death, something not too messy. They left me my kit because how could I harm anyone from this cage? Wizards can’t be threatened or bribed and the King doesn’t care if something happens to me.
I find the one I’m looking for and hold it up to the light, then I notice something in the kit. Nestled in the small poison compartment is a small white packet; I open it and find five golden transport spells and a note. “Sack up. -J”
I sit back down and wait for Alexsi to come visit.
◆◆◆
I tell Alexsi what I’m thinking, what I want, and he shakes his head. “I can’t do it. I’ve tried.” He leaves.
◆◆◆
The next time Alexsi visits he brings Zair. They both argue with me. “It won’t work,” they say. “Just take the transport spell and leave.”
“I am not leaving you here,” I say hotly. “The King is insane, and he’s trying to make Kell as crazy as he is. The longer you stay here, the more likely it is that you will have some sort of accident.”
Zair looks down, ashamed. He opens his mouth. “Do not apologize again,” I hiss at him, and he closes his mouth.
“Maybe it’s time to give up, Alinya.” Alexsi says, holding up a hand before I can argue. “We need the Fifth Family and they aren’t coming around. We can’t do this without them, and they refuse to help us. I’ve tried everything.” A shark swims by, watching us. He’s been visiting more and more lately.
“Alinya, if you want me to, I can…” Zair trails off, not wanting to say it. It takes me a minute to realize what he means.
“No, Zair, no. We can’t do that; that’s part of the reason the world is the way it is. No more shortcuts; no more controlling people. That’s not the path we should be on. That’s not how we fix things.”
“We could kidnap him,” Alexsi suggests, and it’s funny to me that kidnapping is somehow more acceptable than mind control.
“No,” I say firmly. “Well, probably not. First you must try again. We are not leaving without someone from the Fifth Family.”
The boys try everything to bring Kell around. Alexsi tells him about being sent away from his own family; Zair tells him about being marked for death by the Priestess. Nothing they say gets through to him.
And then, just when I’m starting to warm up to the kidnapping plan, Kjiersten shows up with Kell. He looks troubled.
“Your friend here tells me you refused to kill the Prince; that you stood against the Priestess.”
I know I need to tread carefully. “I don’t want to kill people anymore. They were just...faceless before. But after I failed to kill Zair, and I traveled with him and got to know him, I didn’t think killing him was right.” I don’t tell him that there were times that Zair made me want to kill him; he was really a pain and quite arrogant. Kell doesn’t need to know that.
“And then I thought about other things that weren’t right, too. The Masters took me from my family when I was a child. They told me we have a noble calling; we carry out the Gods’ will.” He starts to look impatient so I move on. “But the orders often come just from the Priestess; most of the time, she’s the one deciding who dies. She has too much power; the Queen of the Air has too much power, controlling us whenever she wants. Using us to farm magic so she can keep her island afloat in the air. The Queen and the Gods are the problem. And yes, I was their tool for a time, but now I am awake - I will not do their bidding. I will not kill. I am here to break the cycle and start everything over again, not be part of the system that keeps everything moving.”
Kell stares at me. “I have an offer from my grandfather,” he finally says. I start to relax, thinking we’ve found a way out of this. “We will help you, but you must do something for us first. You must kill
the Queen of the Air as an act of good faith. If you do that, we will go with you to the Unseen Realm. We will be the ones who make the new bargain with the Gods, and after it is done you will kill the Prince of the Air and the Priestess. Their line must be wiped out. They cannot be allowed to corrupt the new world we will build together.”
Kjiersten stands there and says nothing. I move closer to the bars and I look the Prince of the Sea in the eyes.
“I will not trade one master for another. I will not kill the Queen, or the Prince, or the Priestess. Let me tell you what will happen instead. I will take one representative from each of the Five Families to the Unseen Realm and together we will bargain with the Gods. I will be part of that bargain, representing the descendants of the colonists. The Five Families will not rule over this world any longer; we will not set one person over another, or one family above the others, and the families will not decide for the rest of us as to how things will be. We will do this together and this will only end when all the peoples of this world are equal. Do we have a deal, Kell?”
Kjiersten looks proud of me, which helps lessen the sting when Kell merely shakes his head and walks away without a word.
◆◆◆
The shark is circling my cage again. The wizard sits in his chair. They both watch me. “Care to let me out?” I ask the wizard, who says nothing. I’ve been hatching ever more creative plots on how to destroy the cage, how to escape, but of course that’s not the point. I could use a transport spell to get out if I really wanted to, I seem to have plenty of those things, but it will not do me any good without the Fifth Family. I wonder if there are any other children, any aunts or uncles.
Zair arrives and brings me a new kind of fish. I’ve discovered, in my time down here, that I quite hate fish. Then Kjiersten arrives with a piece of candy; I wonder where she gets them. It’s sticky and chewy and tastes like freedom. When Alexsi arrives with a small lemon I start to worry. I eat the lemon anyway; I need the vitamins.
Empire of Sky Page 16
