by J M D Reid
He brought the vibrating blade closer to Dualayn’s throat, a finger’s width away.
“There’s a way!” Dualayn croaked. “A way to make sure she doesn’t pass out. I can’t put her brain back, I truly can’t, but I can make sure the signal’s strength never fails. She won’t feel alien. So long as her mind remains safe in the jar, she’ll be normal. She’ll have all her senses. Her full faculty. She won’t have to fear losing control.”
“How?” The words came out a deadly whisper. The rage brimmed in Ōbhin. He would cut this Black-damned snake down if he said the wrong thing.
“We need a proper antenna.” An acrid stink filled the air. Snot bubbled from Dualayn’s nose. “We can find one in Koilon, the ruins where we met. But if you kill me, you’ll never discover it. I know where they can be found in the city. I know what they look like. How they work. Kill me, and she’ll be vulnerable for the rest of her life. Please, please, just let me fix her. Let me make her whole. I want her to be whole.”
“You just said you can’t make her whole!” The sword’s humming edge came within a hair’s breadth from Dualayn’s pudgy neck.
“But I can make her functional,” Dualayn said. “What’s the difference?”
Ōbhin glanced at Avena. Her brown eyes burned, emotion gleaming across the whites of her eyes. Flecks of gold reflected in her irises. Pain swam in them. She loved him like a father, and he’d butchered her. How could another parent betray her?
With almost no effort, the resonance blade would part Dualayn’s head from his body.
“I can make it so you never notice your brain isn’t in your body,” Dualayn said. “See the other jewelchines? They will never run out of charge. They are balanced perfectly to sustain your mind for the rest of your life. Let me live, let me save my wife, and I will fix you. Please, child, I only did what I thought was best.”
“You’re a selfish, lying roach scurrying through pig excrement!” she snarled. “I should have Ōbhin step on you. How many others have you butchered?”
“Saved!” he insisted. “All I have done was to save. To improve. I can fix you, child. Trust me.”
Avena’s lip curled in a snarl. She glanced down at her brain held to her chest. Then she nodded with savage finality.
“Deal!” Ōbhin spat, disgusted he’d ever desired to protect this man.
He wrenched his blade from Dualayn’s throat and turned off the emerald. The man collapsed to the floor, panting, the front of his pants soaked with his urine. He brought a shaky hand to his head, rubbing at the sweat.
“Here,” Avena said. She placed the brain into Ōbhin’s black-gloved hands, entrusting her very essence to him. “Let me see if I can save the poor man on his operating table.”
“Filthy, pus-filled, dung-eating roach,” Fingers snarled. He seized Dualayn and hauled the man to his feet. “Let’s go tell everyone upstairs what you’ve done to poor Kaylin and Avena.”
Ōbhin stared down at the brain of the woman he loved. Tears misted his eyes. “We’ll fix you.”
Chapter Fourteen
Despite everything Avena tried, she couldn’t save the last patient’s life.
She covered him with a blanket in the secret laboratory she never knew existed. There were other rooms off this one she was scared to open. She didn’t want to know what horrors they held. The storeroom disgusted her enough.
She felt Ōbhin’s eyes on her as she headed to the washbasin and the aquifer. She activated the sapphire in the faucet; the cool stream of water fell into the basin. It had a drain that must lead somewhere. She shoved her hands into the stream; watched the blood spill away.
How many died unnecessarily down here? she wondered. She heard the thoughts in her own head even though her mind was twenty cubits away in Ōbhin’s hand.
“We’ll see he’s buried,” said Cerdyn.
Others had come and gone. Jilly had taken one look at the storeroom and vomited in the corner. Then she’d ordered every maid to stay away. The guards had filtered in, Bran looking as green as kelp while Dajouth fought to keep from adding his own lunch to Jilly’s. Fingers and Cerdyn had carried the female patient upstairs for her to recover.
“We’ll bury him on Blackberry Hill,” Fingers said as he guided the strange stretcher they’d found. It was covered in heliodors. When activated, it floated, explaining how Dualayn brought his patients down here alone. Avena had no idea such a jewel machine was even possible. “Okay, Avena?”
She nodded, emotion brimming in her. She kept washing her hands, keeping her back to the two men. Cerdyn and Fingers worked with only the occasional grunt. Then their heavy footsteps thudded away, the yellow glow from the heliodors dwindling and then vanishing.
She shut off the aquifer and turned around, her hands dripping with water. Her eyes found Ōbhin’s, unable to fight the pain of what had been done to her. She ached for the numbing paradise of her emptiness. She understood why she’d retreated as a child into the hollow silence of her soul. It was so much easier than facing the betrayal from a person she’d thought loved her. Cared for her.
Ōbhin set down her jar with care on the vacated table. He crossed to her in moments, arms opening. She collapsed into his chest, pressing her face into his leather jerkin as her entire body shook. A keening wail, a long, piercing shriek of violated horror burst from deep inside of her. His arms were around her, strong, protective.
He rocked her, one hand stroking her hair at the back of her head, the supple leather rasping over her silken strands. The tears flowed. Her throat choked with emotion. She couldn’t breathe through her nostrils, sucking in ragged breaths from her mouth between the shuddering sobs. More and more grief poured out of her like pus from a suppurating wound. She had taken another painful gouging to her soul.
Her arms tightened about him. She clung to his solid frame. An anchor against slipping into that unfeeling emptiness. To retreat from the pain of this world meant fleeing from him, too. From what she felt with him. What she desired.
It would mean Dualayn had taken one more thing from her. She wouldn’t let him hurt her any longer. Rob her of anything else.
“I’m sorry,” Ōbhin whispered after an eternity.
She stiffened at his words. “For what?” she croaked, her throat raw. She stared up at him, viewing him through a world blurred by her pain. “For what he did to me? Or that you got me injured?” Their conversation from before she’d collapsed sharpened in her mind. “Because that was an accident, you hear me?”
Avena seized his face.
“I’m not going to let you run away from the chance I might get hurt, Ōbhin!” She stared into his dark eyes. She tightened her grip on his cheeks, her pale fingers brushing across his brown skin. “You hear me? You don’t get to decide what’s too dangerous for me. I do. I’m not going to let you go with Dualayn while I just stay here waiting and wondering. It’s my existence that’s in peril. It’s my life that’s going to be impacted if something goes wrong. So, what are you sorry for, Ōbhin?”
She awaited his answer.
*
He stared into her fierce, hazel eyes. The little flecks of gold glimmered in the diamond light. The stubbornness thrust out of her soul. A half-buried rock which would break your toe if you kicked it, thinking it would move where you wanted.
His emotions harmonized into a single melody. “I’m sorry that he betrayed you. You didn’t deserve what he did to you. It’s a crime. If I could, I would strangle the life from his body. I would leave him gloveless in a blizzard and the door barred against him.”
“That’s it?” she asked, her eyes searching his. Her fingers seared his face, her touch setting his heart to pounding. “That’s the only thing you’re sorry for?”
“I won’t stop you from coming.”
Her expression softened.
“I’m also sorry for trying to put you in a cage,” he continued. “I can’t protect you by locking you up. You’re not a songbird to sing for me when I want it. You’re a falco
n. You should fly free over the mountains and use those talons of yours. I’m sorry for the things I said to you after you were ‘healed.’ It was inexcusable how I treated you. I was a coward running from my own fears.”
Her forehead furrowed. Her lower lip quivered. A noise rose in Avena’s throat. Then her hands tightened on his cheeks. She jerked his head down. Her mouth claimed his with a fierce passion. He closed his eyes, melting into the kiss. Her hands slid from his face to his hair, clutching at his short locks and pulling his mouth against hers.
His arms were around her again. He held her in his arms, rejoicing at the feel of her pressed against him. The taste of her. Feel of her. A sweetness he didn’t deserve. He squeezed hard, knowing she wasn’t a glass diamond, fragile and easily shattered. She was the real thing. Hard. Her soul bright and clear.
His gloves creaked as he gripped her back.
A salty flavor seasoned the kiss. Tears spilled from her eyes. She kept kissing him, refusing to let go as her body shuddered in his arms. Through the joy of this moment, a dark rage sang a sour note of discord.
He hated Dualayn more than anything in the world. A man who deserved to be killed.
A man he couldn’t kill.
He wasn’t sure how long they kissed before she broke it and pressed her face into the hollow of his neck. Her entire body shook as the grief spilled out of her again. He kissed the crown of her head, feeling her silken strands on his lips.
“I love you, Avena,” he whispered, giving words to all those feelings that had been swelling in volume, the joyful tones resonating through his soul.
She tightened her arms around him, clinging to him.
*
Avena held Ōbhin in her embrace. The alien sensation rippled through her body. Her brain was only a few cubits away, and still she could feel the connection between her mind and flesh growing tenuous. She held tight to Ōbhin.
She could trust him to protect her if she went limp.
“I love you,” she said, her tongue feeling numb, sluggish.
He squeezed his arms around her. The fuzziness surged throughout her flesh. Every nerve in her seemed to prickle like she’d slept on not just her arm but her entire body. She clung to him.
“I’m here,” he said, such care in his eyes. His gloved hands stroked her back. “If you fall, I’ll catch you.”
She smiled.
The sensation passed a moment later. She felt firm again. In control. She sighed in relief and kept holding him anyways. His arms around her made her feel safe. They would be heading to Koilon soon. Tomorrow. Maybe even today. There were still hours left before the sun set. Soon, they would venture into those red-stained woods and down into the ruins. Last time, she’d only ventured in a short distance. This time . . .
It would be dangerous, but what choice did they have?
Chapter Fifteen
“There!” hissed Jilly. She threw down a pile of clothing before Dualayn and spat on them. “There’s the clothes you’ll need.”
This was the sight that Avena found when she emerged from the lab with Ōbhin. Her face was still sticky from the crying despite her best attempts to wash her cheeks. Dualayn stood before the doors, rubbing his hands together as he faced Jilly and the other maids. They were all on the stairs, looking fierce.
“Pack them yourselves,” said Jilly. “Layni, the trunk.”
The plump maid heaved a traveling trunk past Jilly. It hit the floor. The wooden frame, wrapped in leather, bowed in place as it slid across the marble flooring.
“How could you harm Kaylin?” hissed Thoni. She and the other kitchen-workers stood in the hallway leading to the east wing of the house. “She’s so sweet!”
“She’s a dear!” a cook named Avinane snarled, her eyes rimmed red. She threw a turnip at Dualayn. It missed and burst into pulp against the far wall.
“Kaylin wasn’t my most successful attempt,” Dualayn said, “but she’s mostly fine.” He put on a smile. “She still cooks just as—”
Angry screeches burst from all the cooks. A young one named Hajina, her hair in a pair of long braids, brandished a sharp knife, murder in her eyes. Dualayn shrunk back, stepping on the pile of his clothing thrown down by the maids.
“I was just doing it all for the betterment of mankind,” Dualayn protested. “I made mistakes with Kaylin, but I learned.”
“And with Avena!” demanded Jilly. “Makes me wonder how your wife ended up as an invalid. What experiments did you perform on her?”
“I never harmed my wife!” Dualayn roared, a sudden anger seizing him. He glared at them all. “You work for me! All of you. I pay you. Put a roof over your heads. This is how you thank me for the fair wage I’ve given you? For mending your wounds? How many of you had relatives I fixed? For free! Tell me!”
“Wot did you do to them?” hissed Chobay. “When you healed my ma, did you cut her open and play around with her insides before you put her back together? Is her brain down in that horror collection? Joayne told us all about it!”
“Disgustin’!” screeched the cook brandishing the knife. “My uncle died when I brought him to you. Did you really try? Or was he just another victim of your madness?”
“I have never deliberately harmed—”
“You cut out my brain!” hissed Avena, marching up and leaving Ōbhin behind. She stalked out before the rest of the servants clustering around Dualayn. “Don’t spin your lies and pretend you were just helping us. All you care about is fixing your wife. That’s why you did it. That’s why you experimented on those you were healing.”
“For the good of—”
She slapped him. Her pain fed the rage in her. The stinging mark blazed across his cheek.
“Don’t even speak those words,” she growled. “You are a selfish, disgusting, loathsome man. You had us all fooled—all of Kash and the rest of Lothon with your noble savior act—but you’re just a roach scurrying in the dark. You run through excrement and filth, then tell the rest of us that you don’t stink. You are stained by the Black worse than anyone I’ve met.”
Dualayn wilted, the piggish pain in his eyes only infuriating her more. What did he have to feel pain for? Grief? He stared at her like she’d betrayed him. She wanted to keep slapping him. To drive him to the floor and vent all her fury on him.
I’ll be better than you.
She whirled around and faced the servants. “Ōbhin, him, and I are traveling to the Upfing Forest. We’ll be gone for a while. Maybe a half-month. Thirty or more days.” She didn’t know how long they would be roaming through the ruins to find her antenna. “Until we return, you can live off the estate. Joayne, will you manage that?”
“Of course,” the nurse said. She was at the top of the stairs. “I can’t abandon my charge no matter who she’s married to.”
“Joayne,” Dualayn groaned, wincing.
“Ōbhin and I have locked the vault,” Avena continued. “What’s down there is disgusting. None of you need to see it. Before we leave, I’ll have Dualayn write you out letters of recommendation so you may find new jobs.” She whirled around to face the man shoving his clothing into his traveling trunk. “Glowing letters. Right?”
He gave a sullen nod, his upper lip bleeding.
“Joayne will see that you each receive severance pay to help you out until then,” Avena continued. “You are, of course, free to keep working for this pus-filled roach. I won’t.”
“I want to go with you,” Smiles said.
Her stomach tightened as she turned around to find all the guards crowding the porch, watching through the open doors. Behind them, the summer sun shone bright on the withering lawn, a few sheep nuzzling for some shoots to eat. The fake-Smiles, at the front, looked so much like the man she’d known for the last three years; that friendly face, broad smile. A new anger burned through her, one tinged with disgust and horror.
“Me, too!” Bran said, standing beside the impostor. “We’ll make sure you get better, Avena. Won’t let that Black-cursed ba
stard do nothin’ more to you.”
“He’s a knave,” Dajouth added. “I am horrified that he would do somethin’ so foul to one as beautiful as you. You have my pledge to guard you and protect you until such a time as you’re made whole and fair.”
“I’m not fair now?” she asked, exasperated with his flirting, especially after kissing Ōbhin. She no longer had any doubts about her ability to love another. She knew she’d loved Chames, and now loved Ōbhin. Perhaps had loved him since their first encounter when his contradictory presence had captured her attention.
“I didn’t mean that,” Dajouth said. “I mean, you are fair, but you’ll be . . .”
“It’s a trap, boy,” Fingers muttered. Then he stepped up and declared, “I’m goin’, too.”
“You’re not leavin’ me behind,” Miguil said. He pushed up past Fingers. Her former promised stared at her with pain in his handsome face. “I know the horses. I don’t trust this bastard with them. Who knows what madness he’ll try? Won’t let them out of the stables without me.”
“They’re my horses,” protested Dualayn.
“Keep packing,” Avena hissed. She studied her former promised. They couldn’t let Smiles come. They couldn’t trust him. Which meant they couldn’t let any of the guards come along with them, but Miguil . . . “Of course you can come, Miguil. Thank you. I know you’ll take care of the horses.”
“Then it’s set,” Smiles said.
“You’re not coming,” Ōbhin said. “None of the guards are. There are still riots in the city. For now, the cooks and maids will be living here. They need watching over. Especially your wife, Smiles. She’s pregnant.”
The thing pretending to be Smiles gave a sheepish grin. “You’re right. Sorry, Jilly, my love, I got a bit carried away.”
“You do that,” Jilly said, a fondness in her tone. “It’s one of your redeemin’ qualities. But we’ll be fine. Go ’n help them.”
“No, Ōbhin’s right.” Avena glanced at Smiles. “Who’s going to cause us problems? Ōbhin’s more than capable of protecting me.”
