by Jean Lee
“Damn you, with Liam! Liam, your mother commands you to submit. Now!”
Liam screams back at the grinding, the YOUR MOTHER. His eyes fly wild around the room until the window holds his gaze. That story happened, and it happened to him, and his heart’s fire flares so brightly the blood dagger sparks against his neck, and the stone finds its note at last, a tenor, rich and glorious.
Father freezes, pales.
The fire on Darra’s blood dagger spurts out. The red silk falls limp about Liam’s body, leaving him to stagger to his feet, pull out his blood dagger…and the cowslipped stone.
“What is he doing?” Darra asks.
Mother hears the song, lunges but trips on her stilettos—
Lord Aleron giggles like a madman—
Keller leaps, blood dagger high—
Liam brings dagger and stone together, and golden light erupts with a hurricane’s power. It tears across Rose House, from one wing to the other, and dies the moment it reaches the remnants of Arlen’s rose bushes. The tenor fades with the light, revealing Rose House’s library covered with cowslip flowers, their stems and leaves like vines, braiding in and out to create a living blanket of emerald and yellow over everything and everybody. All breathing creatures in Rose House now lay strewn about, asleep.
Save for one.
Liam carefully pries the original cowslip roots from the stone and lays them upon Rose House’s floorboards. “Thank you,” He says, with a gentle hand-press upon the floor. The House cracks a door open beneath the stained-glass window. He pockets the stone, eyes the sleeping Artairs and Alerons, last of all Darra. “That is what good a little plant can do.”
47
Dwindling Embers
Liam’s bones wiggle inside him like jelly. His skin is crisped as a cooked fowl’s. But so long as his heart’s fire burns and his inner wings beat, he’s able to drag his feet into the clearing with blood dagger drawn and chin high. Six Celestine, each half the size of Rose House, surely, created of cosmic dust and ice—they surround a now silent circle of light. “Hail, Lords of the Heavens.” Liam may be hoarse, but defiance adds a powerful depth to his voice, and it causes a few to turn. The air fills with the sound of tinkling and shattering as the shards of their beings break to reform curious expressions. “If it is a battle you seek, then turn to me!” Liam wraps his hand around his blood dagger’s blade. The blood sword sings as it leaves his flesh behind, his blood a delicate adornment to the sparks of the feathers, eager to ignite and burn all they touch.
The Celestine do not move. It is…strange, how they watch him with their eyes of night. But the circle of light they surround now dissipates. If I can but distract them long enough for Arlen and Dorjan to escape—but Mac an donais, this battered body will not run. “Or are you such cowards you will beat the unarmed instead?” Liam drives the blood sword into the ground.
A fissure races away from him, splitting the clearing in two, cracking Darra’s precious matrignis and the surrounding earthen benches. The fissure tears along, breaking the Celestine circle in twain, sending a few to stagger back, the shards of their legs flying free a few moments before bonding back into place. One reaches for its hip and unhitches what looks like coiled lightning. She whips it to the side. It’s blinding-bright, thunder-loud, but freezing cold—all grass beneath the whip turns white with frost.
“You.” The voice is feminine, edged with malice. “You were walking with the Artair woman. You are one of them.” She cracks her whip again, this time toward Liam. The tip snaps mere feet from his head.
Liam does not flinch. “Release my kin, and you may live.”
“THANK YOU!” The Celestine watch—watch, not kill?— as Dorjan runs out of the circle with arms wide. “I knew you’d be the only one with the guts to come out here. Thought we’d die by screaming more than anything else. It seemed the only way we could separate you from your mother’s clutches.” He slows, a look of horror spreading across his face. “What did they do to you? You look like a deer mangled by coyotes.”
Liam leans on his blood sword. His legs, they cannot work, not when…when Celestine let Velidevour live?! But all the stories, all the cautionary tales…all the times he himself had been chased by the star-folk…
“Are you not going to fight?” It asks, malice waning. Arlen appears, shoulders drooping with relief.
“No, he’s not, Disraeli. Aether knows he’s seen enough.” Arlen’s hands feel blissfully cool against Liam’s forehead. “I can still feel the echo of two ring-songs in you. Those damn fools would rather destroy their own flesh than see you walk…” the words devolve into growled curses.
“Charlotte.” Battle over, the peck peck peck returns with a vengeance upon Liam’s belly, embers, mind. “I need her, Arlen, please, just—”
“She’s with Captain on the eastern edge of Aranina. Where are the Alerons and the others, in the Pits?”
Liam manages a quick nod towards House’s trap door. Dorjan peeks in, whistles. “Aether’s fire, man, you knocked them all out with an ocean of cowslips!”
Arlen smirks. “Bombastic, but effective.”
Shatterings deafen as Disraeli bends down to peek in over Dorjan’s shoulder. “Gah! Don’t do that to a princeborn with your whip out. And your chin’s chilly, do something about that, too.”
Disraeli slowly coils the whip. “You speak truth. A pity we cannot bury them within Rose House.”
Liam finally pulls his blood dagger free of the ground. Disrael pulls back with her whip, but he only sheathes it and says, “I need to see her. I need…” he cradles his stomach to keep the peck, peck, pecking from poking right through his skin. “Arlen, I’ve never known a pain like this. Please, I need to see her.”
Arlen’s brow furrows as he runs his own fingers along Liam’s stomach and chest. Dorjan kneels next to them, confused. “Another of Treasa’s curses?”
“No, though heart’s fire knows she was pouring all that veli down…your…gullet.” Arlen’s eyes spark as bright as his sudden smile. Liam’s not seen such a look since his first year with Arlen as a boy, when he worked his first healing spell upon a bird’s broken wing. “Oh Aether. I understand it now. Foolish I did not think on this first.”
“Well now we’re all idiots, Uncle, thanks for that. What are you talking about?”
“That Liam does not exaggerate when he says he needs Charlotte.” Arlen motions to Dorjan to help Liam to his feet. His bones, where did his bones go that he stands so poorly even with help? “I’ll explain at Aranina. Disraeli, I do not trust Liam’s body for the journey. Can you carry him for us? I need Dorjan to gather some yarrow and comfrey.”
Disraeli hitches her whip into place but remains a few feet distant. “I will help no member of such a war-hungry House.”
Liam finds enough feeling in his hand to pull the stone from Arlen’s old ring out of his pocket. It still carries a little violet glow. “I cannot surrender my blood dagger, not when it can protect Charlotte. But I will surrender this.”
Dorjan’s blue eye flares, but Arlen shakes his head. “Its power has never belonged among the breeds of Earth. I have a feeling,” he takes the stone from Liam and holds it closer to Disraeli, “that after centuries underground, it’s ready to return home.”
Disraeli’s face-shards bend and curve. With great care she uses three of her long, pointed fingers to pick up the stone from Arlen’s palm without freezing him. Their breaths all turn to white smoke as Disraeli bows her head to them. “A fallen Celestine heart returned. Not since the Kingborn Age has there been such an act of kindness from your breed to mine.” Her body breaks in a thousand places to reform for walking towards the other hunters, the stone held high. Her mouth opens, and a trail of lit dust escapes and splits six ways to reach every hunter. Soon after, the five bow towards the three men, and in their bows break apart completely.
Limbs crumple, heads vanish, every shard condenses until jagged orbs float once more. One starts his ascent while a second waits for Di
sraeli to place the stone inside it. The other three start to circle the clearing while moving in and out of their infinity loop. Disraeli nods, turns to the others. “Some will watch lest the Artairs wake. They still seek retribution for the other hearts taken to become weapons. But to honor the return of a fallen Celestine to his people, I will do as you ask.” She holds out her folded arms.
And shatters them.
Finer, finer, until every shard is dust. Disraeli now stands with two clouds instead of limbs, thin and long like cots. “The ice should not kill him now,” she says, kneeling.
Together, Arlen and Dorjan lead Liam to the cloud and lower him to sit. It has the feel of cotton not yet seeded, a prickly softness he finds easy to stretch out upon. Disraeli stands and walks with terrific sweeping steps towards the lake.
“Mind you don’t clock him with a tree branch!” Dorjan calls after them.
Liam’s not sure whether to curse Dorjan or thank him.
Peck peck PECK.
48
A Second Matrignis
Charlotte shivers upon Aranina’s eastern shore next to Captain, her eyes following the Celestine light around Rose House. Flecks of color flitter just above the tree line—probably just Charlotte’s eyes from staring at the light too damn long. They’re not golden or eagle-shaped, so she just can’t bring herself to care. Even though Captain carried Charlotte across the lake with the speed of a motorboat, Charlotte’s the one who feels exhausted from the cold, the day, the everything. “What are the star people d-doing?”
Captain’s stony eyes remain dark, but the beaded water upon her skin reflects starlight down her chainmail. “Only one’s by the house right now. The others seem to be waiting.”
“Of course, they are.” She kicks the sand. Waiting. That’s all Charlotte seems to do. Waiting to see when Uncle Mattie would come after her. Waiting to die at school. Waiting to die here. Waiting for Liam to stand up to others. Now fucking waiting for Arlen and Dorjan to come—
A telephone game of sea-speak clicks across Aranina’s surface. Captain straightens up, spear at the ready. “Company is coming.” Her mouth swirls into a star shape, battle-ready.
Charlotte can see through Captain’s fin as the mermaid waves at the flecks of color flittering closer, one small and bright, one drab and awkward. “Ember! And…the other one. Peat. Hope Devyn is okay.”
Sergeant shoots out of the water and tosses a medium-sized heap of chattering fur onto the grassy shore. “This one was swimming without permission.”
Dust and fur erupt and fall immediately, still damp as the rest of the now human-form of Judoc, cursing in Mawdre and holding one ear. “I thought we were working together, not whipping mini-arrows at each other!” He spits the last words at Captain and pulls his hand away to reveal three needles stuck in his outer ear. “What in Aether are these?”
Charlotte pulls them out one by one. “They ain’t arrows, I’ll tell you that,” she mumbles. Gives Captain the stink eye.
Captain’s mouth swirls before settling into a long, thin line. “Why are librarians joining the Aranina Guard, Sergeant?”
He rakes his kelp hair into a loose knot at the nape of his neck. “Some volunteered.”
“The librarians are not trained for conflict.”
“They’re not trained to handle a living princeborn child, either.” Sergeant lets out a confused melody of whistles, then adds for Charlotte, “If this is the Velidevour’s masterplan for invading our UnderSky, it’s salty brilliant. The little one had three of them cornered in a cell when I left.”
“I believe it,” Judoc says, and stands. He’s got a little more age than the others, with a tight face lined by a fading red-blond beard. “It’s no worse than Aine with a bad temper. She had quite a reach when I saw to her as an otter, even with that black thing tied to her leg.” Blood threads into the thin stripe of silver hair marking his temple.
Charlotte snorts. “What about Cairine?”
“In conference with Queen Avo and the High Sage,” Sergeant says. Another mer-head peeks out of the water further away, letting out a quick string of sea-speak.
Captain glances at the tree line behind them. The grassy strip of shoreline is narrow and secluded. They hardly left the water to be under the cover of one old maple’s reaching branches. “I must select watchers for the shores. I trust you’ll be safe now?” She and Sergeant leave with hardly a splash to mark their exit.
Ember gives a small chirp before changing at the base of a nearby maple. “The others are on their way. Devyn, it’s…” she coughs, “it’s harder, with his wings burned.”
Judoc gives her a gentle squeeze on the shoulder. “Don’t worry. Devyn’s invulnerable.”
Ember curtly shakes her head, curls hardly a’bounce.
Charlotte cringes at the loud honk Peat let out before changing by Judoc. “Whose big idea was it coming to this place?” he asked, flapping the last of the dust and feathers from his arms. “We’re nowhere near Rose House or any veli or even a blackberry bush. The orchards are far nicer now.”
“Thought you guys went over the Wall to hunt.” Charlotte sniffs the air, paces in the shadows. There’s still that one starry light, Disraeli, probably, moving through the trees with a gait—she’s walking. Carrying something—a dark something, a long something, a person-lengthed something No no no no.
Calm yourself! The Voice pulls Charlotte’s heart back into a less panicky rhythm. Look now—see Arlen on the beach talking to the Stellaqui. Another’s gone to fetch the barge. Dorjan is there, moving, breathing.
“I’m not taking orders from some addled oaf of a princeborn,” Ember snaps.
“Not that Lord Aleron seemed to care about anything we did,” Judoc says, watching some of the star-people float up, up, and up. “I think he just wanted to shut his daughter up.”
Pretty damn freaky, seeing what look like full moons just floating around a mile or so above the ground.
Still higher than Liam could fly in River Vine.
Oh, Liam…now you’re in the arms of those star transformers. At least Disraeli Prime’s got one helluva stride. She’s already halfway here. Dorjan and the commoner critters are throwing something onto the barge by Arlen—plants, probably—while two Stellaqui hook ropes to it. Herbs for Liam, must be, meaning he’s hurt— “What happened to him?”
“An explosion!” Peat’s throat bobs as he waves his hands in the air. “All the lights in Rose House went nuts before blacking out.”
“You didn’t see the tyrants drag their son inside.” Ember’s words trickle out as water from a crack in the ice. “The Celestine swarmed Dorjan and Arlen, and we thought all was lost, even Devyn. We could hear the ring-songs, Liam screaming, and”—she chokes, coughs, continues—“there was this light inside the library, and then silence. He staggered out alone. Despite all their powers, he…he broke free.”
Disraeli’s close enough for Charlotte to see Liam’s feet hanging over the edge of some sort of cloud-cot.
His bare, free feet.
Charlotte’s chest doesn’t just prickle.
It burns.
For a whole new reason.
She runs along Aranina, in and out of its waters whenever the trees overtake the shoreline—he broke free—jumps over a fallen maple—he broke free—waves at the barge blazing by with Poppy giggling like a maniac—until she blocks Disraeli’s path. Her lungs breathe deep the smell of…mint? Hell, Charlotte would have rejoiced at the aroma of puked mac’n’cheese. Anything was better than that unripe tomato stink of Momma Artair. “I need to see him.”
The cloudbank breaks. Rain hisses upon Disraeli’s head, giving her steam-tendrils of hair. Liam still doesn’t move. “His eyes closed as I walked. His warmth is almost gone.”
“It’s his heart’s fire!” Arlen calls from the barge’s landing. “It’s been doused by too much magic. Bring him here, it needs rekindling.”
The Stellaqui untie their ropes and swim a little way out, their eyes just above th
e water facing Rose House. Dust, feathers, and fur erupt upon the barge as the rest of the scouts, even Remus, help Dorjan and Arlen carry the yarrow and comfrey off the barge.
Poppy’s another matter. “Eeeew, he’s all deadish. Can I tickle him?” And she would have, if not for Arlen smacking her hand away.
“Surely more veli is needed,” says Lily. “I thought the masters’ guests brought more. I could fetch it, perhaps with the aid of his brother—”
“There’s no returning to Rose House, girly.” Nettle squats by the beach, emptying her pipe. “Not tonight. Only a fool would want to trip upon whatever this princeborn did to hush those rings.”
“Take some of my embers,” says Dorjan, without hesitation. “Had he not shared his own blood after the fight with Campion…just, take some of mine.”
“No. It cannot be you. Or me. Or any commoner.” Arlen says. He, Dorjan, Ember, Devyn—all look at one person.
Charlotte.
Disraeli kneels, and her ice-cloud-hands dissipate beneath Liam, leaving him on a bed of grass. The sound of her body breaking and reforming is loud enough to wake the dead, oh FUCK no, not the dead, please Liam.
Charlotte’s heart stops beating at the sight of Liam’s mangled body. Her hand locks tight around Liam’s while the other holds his face, thumb stroking his lips. “Liam, what did they do to you?” She chokes back the sob because she cannot cry, not if she can do something, anything to save him.
Arlen unbuckles Liam’s harness and peels back his shirt. The skin over Liam’s chest is now an ashen grey. “Damn.”
Dorjan’s blue eye leaks a tear of panic. “I told you, Uncle, cut me open.”
“No. Get the herbs. NOW,” Arlen barks. “Charlotte, his blood dagger. You’re going to need it.”
“What?” Charlotte’s hardly got a voice to ask. Oh, she does as she’s told, releasing Liam’s hand only long enough to lift his curl-less head, but she can’t stop staring at that chest, grey and lifeless as charred wood. “Liam’s the one who did all the spells last time. I just hold the dagger.” Liam’s grip is so frail and his eyes hardly open, without focus. I can’t do this without you, Liam. I can’t face this darkness without you, please. “I don’t know any magic, I—”
