Ruby Ruins

by J M D Reid

  “You okay?” Fingers asked.

  She nodded.

  “Perhaps you’d care to go for a walk, Avena?” Dajouth asked. “The night has cooled off and the moons are out. They’re bright tonight. Along with the stars.”

  “If you have the energy to ask a pretty girl to a promenade, then you can check the perimeter for any sneak thieves trying to crawl over the wall or swim across the lake,” Fingers growled.

  “But . . .” Dajouth snapped his jaw shut, a petulant twist curling across his lips. “Right away, sir.”

  Fingers shook his head as the young man stomped off. “You’d never think Bran was the younger of those two. You might only have a winter on Dajouth, Avena.”

  “Maybe,” she said, a tingle fuzzing her hand. It felt distant from her, alien. She rubbed at it, struggling to remember it was her hand. The smothering weight grew, the emptiness widening to embrace her.

  “Are you really okay? I’m worried about you, lass.”

  The tingles raced up her hand. Her body felt remote again. She wondered if she was about to drift off into another strange dream while untethered from her flesh. What if she wasn’t real at all? Was she actually Avena? Did she belong here?

  “Avena!”

  A strong hand seized hers. She gasped, suddenly aware of all her flesh again. She was half-crouched. She shook her head, her breath coming in ragged gasps. Fingers gripped her, the rough pads of his digits anchoring her. She felt tethered to her body.

  “You almost fainted.”

  “The heat of the day was too much,” she said as she straightened.

  “No, that’s not it at all.”

  She paused. She normally didn’t speak of it, but the words tumbled out. “My emptiness is getting worse. I think it’s devouring me. I don’t think my mind healed right.”

  “Nothing Dualayn can do?” Fingers asked, guiding her out of the guest bedroom.

  “He saved my life. I shouldn’t be here. I should be grateful for what I have.” She forced a smile. That was what she should do. It took such effort. Nothing seemed to matter much at all. Helping people was important, but she didn’t have anyone to help. She just had herself.

  That wasn’t nearly enough.

  Ōbhin would be . . .

  “I just need to sleep,” she told Fingers. “Would you walk me to my room?”

  “Of course,” he said with gentleness, pain in his voice.

  He’s thinking of his wife again. How could this tender man have hurt her?

  Avena didn’t know. But she was grateful for his presence. He had a solid aura about him. Stout and dependable. How had she never noticed this quality about the man? She’d thought him crass. Lazy. A man whining about an unfaithful wife and running away from responsibility. A coward.

  Yet he had this core. A foundation. Something good could have been built upon him. How had it gone wrong? The thought stayed with her after she bade him a blessed night, closed her door, and sunk onto her bed in her dressing gown.

  How could good lives go wrong?

  Chapter Twelve

  Eighth Day of Patience, 755 EU

  After two more days of watching Avena drift like a ghost, Ōbhin had to do something to help her.

  He hadn’t been protecting her. He’d crushed her. Fingers joked about a wife who cuckolded him because he hated himself for hurting her. Ōbhin understood. Each time he saw Avena’s pale form, he despised himself a little more. He thought he loathed himself for killing Taim, but this was worse.

  He loved her and caused her this misery.

  He lounged at the main gate, taking his turn at watch. A bead of sweat ran down his forehead despite being in the shade provided by the arch. The sun sizzled. No rain had come for a week. The gardeners carried wooden pails full of lake water. Its shores had retreated, exposing drying mud dotted with pools. Those swarmed with tadpoles trapped in dwindling life. The gardeners poured the water to keep alive the rhododendron bushes while the lawn yellowed.

  Avena emerged from the front door, left open to move air through the house in an attempt to cool it. She wore a lighter dress than normal, pale pink without her usual layers of petticoats to give volume to her skirt. She drifted down the path towards the stables.

  You have to do it, Ōbhin told himself. You have to let her know you made the second biggest mistake of your life. Invite her to train. Remind her that she’s got passion. She’ll hate you, but you deserve it.

  “You got the gate, Bran?” he asked the youth leaning on the other wall.

  The boy grunted, his face a mask of sweat, lank hair matted to his forehead.

  Ōbhin stepped into the sunlight. Summers grew warm in Qoth, but they were short affairs, a few weeks of heat between a cool spring and autumn. Winter ruled the mountains. He kept his back straight against the sun as more sweat trickled down his face.

  Avena emerged from the stables with Miguil. He nodded to her and headed back inside. She glanced at Ōbhin then jerked her gaze away. Her pace quickened on the way back to the house. He broke into a jog, leather jerkin clinging to his sweaty chest.

  “Avena, may we talk?”

  She stiffened. She turned to face him, no color in her cheeks. A sheen of sweat glistened on her forehead. Her light dress clung to her in several damp spots, perspiration bleeding through beneath her armpits. She wasn’t wearing any of the cosmetics she’d normally applied, subtle rogue and a brightening to her lips.

  Even so, she made his heart beat faster.

  Her eyes wouldn’t rise to meet his.

  “What do you need?” she said politely.

  “We have to talk,” Ōbhin said again, his tongue growing leaden. His throat tight.

  “You said that. About?”

  A loud clatter and jangle drew his attention as Miguil led out one of the draft horses pulling the small cart he used to fetch supplies from town. The groom gave Ōbhin a supportive look. Everyone was worried about her. Fingers fretted while the thing pretending to be Smiles spoke endlessly about Jilly and the maid’s concerns. Only Dualayn, still locked up in his lab with the two sick patients, had failed to notice Avena’s transformation.

  A shadow hung over her. Thick, obscuring her brightness.

  “Listen, I wish to apologize,” he said, his words stiff. “I was . . . harsh when you recovered. Too harsh.”

  She shook her head. “I let you down on the raid.”

  Confusion rippled over him. “Let me down?”

  “I can’t remember what I did wrong.” She looked up. “I try, but my memories aren’t clear, so I can’t fix it. Besides, I can’t trust myself anyways. So you have nothing to apologize for. I do not belong in your world. Women shouldn’t fight. We don’t have the temperament for it.”

  Ōbhin’s jaw dropped.

  She started to turn, but he grabbed her shoulders in his black-gloved hands. “You didn’t do anything wrong on the raid. You didn’t make a single mistake; I did.”

  “What?”

  “And if anyone has the temperament for fighting, it’s you. I’ve seen men with far less of a backbone than you possess. Plenty of cowards slink through the world. I don’t think your sex is a hindrance. Niszeh’s Black Tone, you invented a jewel machine to give you more strength than a man. I saw the aftermath. You took on two dozen ruffians and left them bound and with broken bones. They’ll be nursing their injuries for weeks more. Some of them pissed their britches in terror of you. I could smell the stink of it.”

  “But . . .” She stared at him. “How did I get hurt? I took a sword to my head. I must have done something wrong. You were disappointed in me. Like you were after I got Smiles injured during the riot.” Her eyes swam with tears.

  “I pushed you away because I got you injured.” The pain tore at his heart. His words grew tight, emotion burning the corners of his eyes. “I heard you racing up behind me when I was dueling Creg. He swung at me, and I cut his sword in half and dodged the severed end out of instinct. I could have taken the blow on my shoulder, but I l
et it spin past. You had the bad luck to step in the way as you were trying to help me. When I turned around and saw you on the ground, it was the most terrifying moment in my life. I had to run and run holding you as you twitched. I didn’t think Dualayn could do anything, but I had to try because I couldn’t be the one to get you killed.

  “If you died because of my mistake, how could I live with myself? I drove you away because I didn’t want to destroy you.”

  *

  Avena trembled as she stared at Ōbhin. His eyes gleamed with pain. He gripped her shoulders as he trembled. A strange sense of foolishness swept through her. Fingers had explained to her what Ōbhin was doing, and Deffona had agreed. It wasn’t Avena’s fault at all, but after she lost control of her body, she’d accepted her fears that she was too weak. A hindrance.

  After all, she’d collapsed in an alley and was robbed. She could have been violated. Murdered. It still terrified her. Even now, she could feel that emptiness swelling in her. The alien feeling prickling through her. She swayed again.

  “I’m so sorry for making you feel worthless,” Ōbhin groaned. “I never wanted to hurt you. I wanted to keep you safe. Keep you away from me. I only hurt those around me. I dragged Foonauri from her home only to abandon her in a foreign city. Can I even blame her for having to find other ways to survive? And you . . . I just wanted to push you onto another path, not crush your spirit.”

  “It’s not just you,” Avena said. She grabbed at his leather jerkin with foreign fingers. The numbness was spreading. “There’s something wrong with me, Ōbhin. Something that terrifies me.”

  Confusion spread across his face.

  “I’m losing control of my body and . . .” The fuzziness slithered down her flesh. Her fingers went numb. It prickled across her cheeks. Her lips. “Ay ahm pahshing auwt.” Her words slurred, tongue thick. Her mind retreated. The fear built inside of her as she struggled to hold onto him.

  “Avena!” he shouted, his voice so distant as she retreated further and further away.

  The senses from her body grew muted. She forced out a final word, a croaking plea: “Help!”

  “Avena!” His words sounded so far away, echoing through a misty expanse. “Someone! I need Dualayn!”

  She sank into those strange dreams, a refuge for her terrified thoughts cut adrift from her body.

  *

  Her last word had come out clear but soft. Help.

  Avena slumped against him. Her entire body was limp. Her eyes were open, pupils dilating so wide they swallowed her brown irises. Her arms fell limp down his body, her fingers no longer clutching him. If he hadn’t been hugging her, she would have struck the ground.

  “I need Dualayn!” Ōbhin cried. This frantic fear rose in him, a dark tide. He shifted her weight and lowered her to the grass. Her chest rose and fell with soft breaths like she slept, but her eyes stared up at nothing. He lightly slapped her cheek to rouse her. “Avena! What’s wrong?”

  He grabbed her shoulders, shaking her. Her head flopped to the side, limp. Her eyes stayed open. Horror squeezed his heart, a mighty fist threatening to crush the pounding organ into pulp. He shook her harder.

  “Avena!” His shout cracked, half-choked by the fear clawing at his throat.

  “Ōbhin?” a motherly voice said. “What’s wrong with Avena. Is it the heat?”

  Ōbhin shook his head as Jolene, Bran’s mother and nurse to Bravine, appeared. She knelt down, skirts rustling. She tilted Avena’s head to face the sky and gasped. “Her eyes are open.”

  “I know,” growled Ōbhin. Dualayn said there might be complications. Is this what he meant? His mind struggled to parse thoughts, to remember what to do. Shock rooted him in place. He hadn’t trained himself for Avena to collapse mid-conversation.

  Heavy footsteps thudded up and then stopped. A hoarse groan burst from Fingers as he stood a cubit away, hands balling into fists, accentuating red, swollen knuckles. A few popped as he trembled, color draining from his weathered face.

  “Is she . . .?” Fingers asked.

  “She’s alive,” Ōbhin muttered. “She’s breathing, but I can’t rouse her.”

  “Elohm’s damned Colours,” groaned Fingers. “The other night, she almost passed out on me. I thought it was just fatigue. She’d been working in the labs with Dualayn, and you’ve seen her. She ain’t been right since she was healed.”

  Because I made her think she’s weak, echoed through Ōbhin’s mind.

  “We need to get her to Dualayn,” Jolene said.

  Her words were the first that made any sense to the addled Ōbhin. Think! Where is Dualayn?

  Where he always was.

  Ōbhin scooped Avena up in his arms. She weighed even less than last time. Her arms dangled limp. She didn’t spasm. She didn’t have a length of metal sticking out of her head, but the same fear gripped him. A hopeless terror.

  He couldn’t lose her. Wouldn’t.

  He raced across the lawn, booted steps pounding for the house. Jolene and Fingers followed, her skirts rustling and his steps heavy thuds. Ōbhin reached the open doors and burst into the cooler interior, his boots squeaking on the polished marble floor as he changed direction for the lab. He swept by the stairs and hurtled toward Dualayn’s door.

  The sign hung from it asking for no disturbances.

  *

  The world melted in Avena’s dreams.

  Disharmony burst through the notes, assaulting Avena’s ears. She tried to pull back from the diamond right before her. It resonated with a single tone, singing against the shattering chaos that exploded all around them.

  She glanced at fear at her dream lover. He screamed but she couldn’t hear the sounds he made. The obsidian gem bubbled and flowed, spilling over his hand. Across the walls of the pristine room, cracks appeared. Rents of darkness that split apart reality.

  The screeching, off-tune note cracked through the air. The other seven gems blazed with their light. Seven stars shining against the black chaos surging all around them. The ground shook beneath their feet, a mighty shattering bursting through the room. Wires connecting the gems sizzled and snapped.

  The black rents didn’t rip the walls apart, but the very fabric of the world. She could see something alien on the other side, segmented eyes, chitinous bodies. Mandibles twitched. Avena tried to pull her hand free of the diamond and reach her lover. The obsidian ran over his arm like oily water.

  He howled while her diamond grew brighter and brighter. Its note surrounded her, resonating with truth and light. It swept about her as the world shattered around them. She could see beyond this room as the walls split apart physically now, destroyed by the umbral cracks. People fled from the spreading chaos. Some were touched, their skin blackening into obsidian, hardening them in place. The roof exploded outward, revealing the sky above.

  Stars twinkled and whirled. The cracks burst upward, soaring high up into the sky, reaching for the heavens. Something hung over the world, a shadowy orb blocking out the stars around it. She could see a faint outline of it, almost shiny, like looking at obsidian in a dark room.

  A black moon?

  Her lover fell to the ground, engulfed by the molten obsidian. It coated him and flowed for her. It hit the light of her diamond and sizzled, smoking away. The diamond glow protected her from the cataclysm. She didn’t understand what she witnessed.

  The humming from the diamond buzzed through her bones. She gasped as her skeleton harmonized with the gem. She rang with that same tone. She could feel all two hundred and six bones in her body vibrating. Her flesh screamed in agony. The shaking threatened to melt her flesh, to tear her sinew apart at the most basic level.

  The black moon above exploded in a burst of dark fire. She didn’t hear a sound, but she could see the pieces spilling off of the massive shape and streaking across the sky. Rising on the horizon, Honesty appeared; only her white face was pristine. It lacked the crater-like valleys Avena had seen every other time she’d gazed upon the white moon’s face. />
  The diamond hummed louder as the cracks tearing apart the world widened. The things she glimpsed thrust sharp limbs through, black-armored flesh covered in hard, bristling hairs. They pulled themselves through into her reality.

  Avena screamed in horror, trapped in a cocoon of liquid truth.

  *

  Ōbhin kicked the door and shouted, “Dualayn! Open up right now! Dualayn!” He kicked the door harder, rattling the solid oak. He distantly felt pain throbbing through his big toe. “Come on! It’s Avena!”

  “Dualayn!” bellowed Fingers, his tone almost frantic. The big man came up alongside Ōbhin and pounded a balled fist on the stout door, rattling hinges. “Elohm’s Colours, open the door. She’s dying!”

  Dread struck Ōbhin. She couldn’t be dying. She’d just fainted, but those words set a panic. A frantic fear he needed to master and couldn’t. He kicked the door again. It held. But Dualayn should hear them. The lab was a converted dining hall. It wasn’t that large.

  “Take her!” growled Ōbhin, thrusting Avena into Fingers’s arms.

  He took her with a gentleness, cradling Avena’s limp form.

  “Why isn’t he answering?” Jolene asked, her voice tight.

  Ōbhin shook his head as he drew his resonance blade. The tulwar whisked out of its sheath. He pressed the button on the hilt. The emerald flared green, the sword humming, blurring the edge. With a series of quick slashes, he cut around the lock, slicing through the door and the stone frame. He slammed his shoulder into the door and burst it open, the locked knob clattering to the floor.

  Ōbhin swept into the lab and cast his gaze around. A bloodstained sheet was draped over the large, central table. Discarded bandages lay about the floor. A few gems were strewn on counters and the workbench. The vault, where Dualayn kept all his jewels, was unlocked and open, the shelves lined with the precious stones, many bound in wires.

  “Niszeh’s Black Tone,” Ōbhin muttered as he deactivated his sword. “Where is he? The door was locked. He has the sign out.”