by J M D Reid
“What?” Ōbhin asked, frowning.
“The jewels store potential energy in them. When turned into machines by the application of wires, they unleash that energy in different forms: thermal, kinetic, restorative, conjuration. It only makes sense that the universal Tones are generated by something and it is putting out a steady amount of potential work. The more jewelchines taking that potential, the less there is at any given time. So if you could generate your own potential work, much like we can make a fire to generate heat and light, that would be a boon.”
“So it overloaded or something?” said Ōbhin, shaking his head. “And killed all these people?”
“And probably unleashed the demons on the survivors,” Miguil muttered. “I haven’t seen any scaly things frozen.”
Dualayn nodded.
“Let’s keep going,” Ōbhin said and limped forward. The soothing love from the topaz faded. The soreness in his ankle swelled as he walked. His boots crunched on the dust and detritus covering the ruby road. His limp worsened.
“Perhaps we should camp,” Dualayn suggested. “We’re all tired. We can take a few hours rest and push on. I think we are still some distance away if we are near the Wave Resonance Beacon.”
Ōbhin paused. Avena was out there, alone with the impostor. She might be hurt. Dying. She needed him to find her, but he had no idea how to do that. How could he locate her in this maze? He could only keep pressing on to the Hall of Communication and pray that she’d found her way there.
“I think he’s right,” Miguil said. “My feet are throbbing and my legs feel like lead. Your limp is worsening, Ōbhin. It’s not smart to keep pressing on.” The groom clapped a hand on Ōbhin’s shoulder, pulling him up short. “If we’re tired, we’ll miss things. Set off a cave-in. Maybe blunder into one of those crystalmen.”
Ōbhin stiffened. Fatigue nibbled at his thoughts. He could feel the effect of its drain on him. He wanted to keep pressing on; he did. He wanted to find Avena and hold her in his arms, but he was never going to do that if they got themselves killed.
“Fine,” he said, a bitter taste staining the back of his mouth. Failure and fear. He felt like he was abandoning her to a cruel fate by giving up, but a dull ache throbbed across his skull. His ankle burned with every step.
She’s smart. She’ll find you. She’ll deal with the impostor, too. He smiled for a moment as he thought, She’s too stubborn to let anything stop her. Not even losing her mind holds her back much.
*
Avena couldn’t sleep.
Not since Fingers gave Bran the watch. Their soft talking had roused her from exhausted sleep. She lay on her back, the hard floor providing an uncomfortable bed. She rolled onto her side, and she spotted the impostor. A dark figure crouched in the dark. They’d covered the lantern with Fingers’s gambeson, wrapping the padded garment around it. Only a sliver of light bled out, a razor-thin strip of light spilling across the ruby floor.
She glared at the dark figure. The impostor.
Fingers’s sawing snores rumbled through the kitchen. The thing that had killed two of her friends now stood watch over her. Avena didn’t like having her life resting in the monster’s hands. Bitter rage and grief swirled through her. Thoughts of pregnant Jilly and motherly Joayne danced through her mind.
She’d have to tell both women the truth. I did nothing about this thing, and now Bran is dead. She focused on him with such intensity, wishing her eyes could become flaming columns and immolate him. Give me ruby jewelchines for eyes, and I’ll roast his foul flesh!
The figure shifted. “Avena?”
She didn’t answer.
“Avena, is something wrong?” It crept towards her. His features grew sharper as he stepped out of the shadows. Bran’s boyish face, smeared in places with dust but wiped mostly clean, became visible. He wore only a loose linen shirt, his gambeson stripped off. He crouched by her. She could smell his sweat. “Avena?”
“Yes?” she hissed.
“You’re staring at me like you’re mad,” he said. “What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong?” Her anger flashed hot through her. She felt like an igniter activated, heat sparking to life inside of her. She bolted upright and glared at the youth before her. “You want to know what’s wrong with me?”
“Well, yeah,” Bran said, wounded pain in his voice. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“Who are you?” she demanded.
“What?”
“I asked who you really are!”
“I’m Bran.” He smiled. “Who else would I be?”
“No, you’re not Bran!” Her voice echoed through the room. Fingers’s snoring stopped. “You murdered Bran just like you murdered Smiles! Who. Are. You?”
“I’m Bran,” he said again with complete confidence.
She balled her right hand into a fist and pressed the activation button. The emeralds on her glove flared to green life as she threw her punch. Bran gasped in shock. She struck him before he could pull back. The shattering of his jaw resounded through the room. He stumbled back and fell, pulling the gambeson off the lantern.
White light flooded the room, shining with the Colour of Elohm’s Honesty.
Bran’s jaw rippled white. The bone popped as it set back into place. He worked his jaw, grimacing for a moment. Then he was whole again. He rubbed at his face and gave her a sullen look, full of shocked pain.
“Bran couldn’t do that!” Avena hissed. She grabbed her binder and stood up. The amethyst flared to life. “What are you?”
Fingers sat up, his face half-shadowed.
“Tell me! Who are you? Who made you?”
Bran shrugged. “I’m No One.”
“You killed him, didn’t you?” Her voice cracked. Grief fed her anger, the emotion shining through her soul. An ugly light.
“I became him.” The impostor smiled in that boyish fashion. “I am Bran.”
“No, you’re not!” She leveled her binder at him. “You’re a thing posing as him. You were planted here to protect Dualayn by the Brotherhood!”
The impostor grimaced. “Yeah, but I don’t like it.” The thing spat. “I hate Dualayn for what he did to you, Avena. And to Kaylin. She used to be stern, but she slipped me sweetmeats and pastries when I was a child.”
“You are not BRAN!” Avena boomed. Her rage echoed around them. She didn’t care about the consequences. “Don’t talk like you are.”
“Avena,” he said with such sincerity in his voice. He pled with his eyes, staring at her like a youth who knew he was in trouble but only wanted to earn forgiveness.
The look in his eyes, like the pair of them were friends, offended her. This wasn’t Bran. This wasn’t the boy she’d watched growing up. “Stop pretending you are him! That you have any feelings for me! Drop this act!”
“I do care for you. I saved your life, remember?” His head cocked. “I pushed you clear of the carriage. It hurt real bad when it hit my head.”
Fingers stood and drew his binder. He activated it.
“You don’t care for me!” she snarled. “You just saved my life because it was part of your mission.”
“My mission is to protect Dualayn. I saved you because you’re my friend. You—”
She swung the binder at him as hard as she could. It hissed through the air, emeralds blazing on her gloves. He moved back with a blur of speed, retreating faster than Bran—a human—could. His face twisted with pain. Emotion shone in his eyes.
“I’m your friend, Avena,” he said. “I’ll always be your friend.”
“You killed my friends!” she rushed at him, tears spilling down her cheeks. He retreated and hit the wall.
She slammed her binder down. His cheekbone shattered as the purple bond snapped around his face. His flesh went white and modeled like clay. He kept staring at her as she drew back the binder.
“You murdered Bran just like you murdered Smiles, didn’t you?” She swung again.
CRACK!
His arm snapped. Bo
ne broke through the skin and pressed against his linen sleeve. The binding gripped his torso, pinning his limbs to his side. She sobbed with incoherent rage as she cracked the binder down on him again and again. She heard his collarbone snap. His forehead fractured. She broke his arm again and again and again. She bound him in a cocoon of purple energy.
Not once did he stop looking at her with pain. With betrayed hurt. His body healed faster than she could break him, than she could avenge her two friends.
She threw down her binder and punched him. Her enhanced fist slammed into the purple energy binding about his head. The force shattered it and broke his nose. Blood spurted. It splashed hot across her face as she cocked back her arm. She screamed out in pure pain and grief, vision blurred by hot tears spilling down her cheeks.
Her fist crashed into his face again and again. Green light streaked across her vision, blurred by the ferocity of her blows. She felt his cheekbones crumple. His jaw broke. He spat out bloody teeth. He sobbed, snot bubbling from his nose and staining her earthen gauntlet. Pain swam in his eyes.
“Stop staring at me like you’re Bran!” she screeched, her voice echoing. “You’re not him! You murdered him!”
His eye socket cracked, skin tearing across his temple.
He healed. His skin went white and molded faster than she could slam her fist in him a second time. A third. Fourth. New teeth grew to replace the ones she’d broken. She couldn’t hurt him. Couldn’t kill the thing that had stolen away two of her friends.
She grabbed the front of his shirt and stared at him. “Why! Why Bran? He was a sweet boy! Why did you murder him?”
The impostor Bran hiccuped through his sobs as she swayed before him. Then he jerked out of her grasp and ran for the doorway, his torso gripped by the bands of amethyst energy. Her knees buckled as he fled into the darkness of the ruins.
She collapsed.
Fingers caught her. His strong arms swept around her and pulled her into his chest. She couldn’t stop the grief from gushing out of her. She could finally release the anguish for Smiles she’d buried deep in her soul. It mixed with horror for poor Bran. Fingers rocked her. She turned and pressed her face into his broad chest, her entire body shaking from the force of her grief.
He stroked her hair with a large hand and whispered soothing words. No different from a father comforting his child.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Miguil shook Ōbhin awake.
His eyes snapped open. Miguil’s normally handsome face looked grayed and wearied, bags weighing beneath his eyes. Ōbhin groaned as he sat up. His ankle throbbed, though the pain didn’t feel as bad. He was mending.
“My watch?” Ōbhin groaned.
Miguil nodded. “Been a few hours. I think. He’s no help.”
Ōbhin glanced over to see Dualayn at a window of ruby. The man sat in a crystallized chair, once padded and comfortable. She stared at the transformed glass as though he could see any detail through the translucent gemstone to the city of Koilon beyond.
“Wouldn’t trust him if he was,” Ōbhin said. “Okay, I’ll take over. Get some sleep.”
Miguil nodded. He stretched out on the gemstone floor near Dajouth. The younger man lay on his side. His arm was out of the splint. Though the healer had run out of energy, it had mended his bone. They were good at repairing simple things. It was the complex injuries, delicate work, that they were not so good at.
How many people did you kill to figure that out? wondered Ōbhin as he took his post by the door. He was only a cubit or so from Dualayn.
“I am glad we didn’t go deeper into the ruins last time,” Dualayn abruptly said. He leaned back in the chair. “I would have gotten her killed.”
Ōbhin’s spine stiffened. “Don’t pretend that you care about Avena. You cut out her brain!”
“I had to experiment,” Dualayn said. “I had to know it worked on others. I had refined my procedure to the point I was certain it would do no harm to her.”
“And Kaylin?” Ōbhin asked. Everyone spoke of the cook as a lively woman before her husband’s death when her mind was sound. Now she was confused about everything. Only while cooking did she have any focus. “Were you certain she wouldn’t have been harmed?”
“Certainly,” Dualayn said. “Another failure, I am sad to say. But I had the opportunity to use her. She came to me needing something to help her sleep after Dyain’s death. It would have been a disservice to my experiments not to study her.”
Disgust roiled through Ōbhin like the hurtling of snow down the mountainside. An avalanche of offended rage. “Why do you even need to cut out their brains? It makes no sense . . .” Ōbhin shuddered as a horrifying thought struck him. “You want to give your wife a younger body. You already learned from Avena that you could regenerate Bravine’s damaged mind, but that wouldn’t undo what the years have afflicted upon her body.”
Dualayn glanced back to the ruby window.
“Maybe you would have stolen a younger body for yourself, right? Niszeh’s Black Tone, that was what you were going to do. You just needed someone to perform the operation. Someone you thought would understand. Someone like Avena.”
“She should understand,” Dualayn said, anger thick on his tongue. “She’ll be immortal. So long as the jewelchines are not disturbed around her mind. When her body wears out, she’ll just have to find another. Young. Strong. Healthy.”
Bile rose in Ōbhin’s throat. It wasn’t just horrified disgust he had for Dualayn, but that the man had worked with Avena all these years and didn’t understand who she was. “You think Avena could do that? Could steal another person’s life for her own?”
“Some people are better than others.” Dualayn lifted his head. “A natural nobility, not one inherited from your parents, but one found in your flesh. Immutable characteristics that make you brighter, more talented, possess skills that only a few others have. Like you.”
“Me?” Ōbhin growled.
“You are a skilled swordsman.” Dualayn glanced at him, eyes hard in the diamond light. They looked like agates with black pupils swallowing eternity. “It’s beyond your blade. You are a master at fighting. You know how to move, when to act and react. How to read your opponents. That’s a talent few others have. Avena is no different. She’s intelligent. As smart as my son. If he had lived . . .” Dualayn shook his head.
“You didn’t?” groaned Ōbhin. “Aliiva’s Motherly Tone, say you didn’t do that.”
Dualayn glanced down to his lap. His hands rubbed together. “I learned a lot from Chames. I was so certain I had it all figured out. I didn’t think I needed any tests. I was so wrong.”
“You killed your own son?” Ōbhin croaked, his hand drifting to his sword.
“He was sick with spring fever. I had him sedated in my lab. I had it all worked out. I had practiced on cadavers. I was certain I could remove his brain and insert the obsidian mind without incident. I hadn’t developed my heart pump. That’s important. It’s a ruby jewelch—”
Ōbhin’s sword whisked out. His hand trembled as fury gripped him. Avena suffered so much guilt believing it was her fault Chames had died. She castigated herself time and time again for begging him to take her out of the house and on their picnic. All that blame she’d piled on herself. She’d buried herself in the garbage heap of self-recrimination. She thought she was as foul as the refuse she covered herself in.
She wasn’t. Dualayn was.
“I wish the mob had killed you that day in Kash,” snarled Ōbhin. He loomed over the scholar. The man’s pudgy face whitened. Sweat broke out across his temples. “I wish they had torn you apart. I killed and maimed for you that day. I butchered frightened men to protect your life because I thought you were someone worth guarding. That you were making the world a better place.”
“I am,” he protested. “I made a mistake with Chames. Like I had with my wife. I hired the wrong man. He was supposed to fix her.”
“You were supposed to fix Chames, and look what hap
pened.” Ōbhin brought the sword closer. “And Avena? You were only supposed to save her life, not butcher her. Now, look at what is happening to her. She has obsidian in her skull.”
“It’s harmless. Wives’ tales. Superstition. The eighth gem is no different from the others.”
“To her, it is everything foul and wicked, and you put it in her brain when you were healing her.”
“I will fix her,” Dualayn objected. “That’s why we’re here. I learn from all my mistakes.”
“No, you don’t. You still think people are just things you can play with. That you can use for your own gain.”
“Progress has a price.” Dualayn looked away from the sword. He trembled, sweat beading on his upper lip. “I didn’t always believe that. I had to be taught this lesson. It’s regrettable, but I won’t apologize for it.”
“I don’t see you paying the price.” Ōbhin’s thumb rubbed against the button set in his sword’s crossguard. All he had to do was press it . . .
He did.
The sword hummed to life. Dualayn flinched. He threw wild eyes at the blade.
“I can cut your brain out right here,” Ōbhin said, his voice a harsh whisper. He leaned in. An intimacy had fallen over them. Something private. He moved the sword closer. “Huh? I can vivisect you right now. Let’s see what I can learn from direct observation.”
“Please,” Dualayn said. He shrank back into the chair. “You need me. To fix Avena. To shut down the crystalmen.”
Ōbhin pushed the button again. The sword’s buzzing stopped. The razor edge of his tulwar gleamed in the light. He pressed it lightly against Dualayn’s scalp, just enough to let him feel it. “One day, you’re going to pay progress’s price.”
*
Avena’s crying slowed. Stopped. Fingers held her the entire time. She found comfort in his arms; a different sort than Ōbhin gave. She held Fingers back, her arms barely able to wrap about his wide girth.
