Ruby Ruins

by J M D Reid

  “He’s going to give you the immortality speech,” Ōbhin growled. His blade sliced again. “He thinks you’ll find it acceptable to hop from body to body, living forever by stealing from others.”

  Avena shook her head. The words didn’t shock her. Nothing about Dualayn would ever again. They only saddened her. How did we work so close these last few years since Chames’s death and completely misunderstand the other? Maybe we just wanted to see ourselves in the other, a mirror to our own desires? We’d interpreted everything through our own bias.

  “This is a travesty,” groaned Dualayn. “These could be used for other purposes, Avena, and he’s destroying them. We could communicate across the world. Instead of taking months for messages to travel from here to Ala’i”—the capital of the Empire of Democh lay on the far side of the world—“it would be as fast as you could snap your fingers. Don’t you see what you’re allowing him to destroy? Progress!”

  “Why would I want your ideas to spread?”

  She watched as Ōbhin went through the storeroom, destroying every last one. Her mind drifted to other problems. She had to tell Joayne and Jilly about their loved ones’ deaths. Then there was the dread the Brotherhood’s meddling in Lothon’s politics churned in her. War loomed on the horizon . . .

  Something Dualayn had said when she’d encountered him in the Crystal Sheriff Hall resonated in her mind. When she’d found him by the artificial mind, he’d asked if Bran was with her. It was like Dualayn had only cared about the youth. Not Fingers. Bran. She stared at Dualayn and realized he knew that Bran had been replaced by No One.

  Her loathing swelled.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Three or four days after Avena had climbed down the ropes into the ruins, she pulled herself up and out of them. Her body ached. Her stomach rumbled. Food had grown tight on their journey out of the ruins. They’d had trouble retracing their steps. Dualayn’s plan of leaving markers behind had fallen apart after the carriage house.

  They found the exit. Eventually. They made a few false starts, but when they rediscovered the large carriage house where they’d almost died, they’d found their easy trail back. Now, as Avena emerged into what felt like midday, summer sunlight, she whooped for joy.

  She staggered and sank down onto the red grass, careful not to fall on her backpack and break the delicate antenna. Their camp was still here. The wagon was secure, the food they’d hung from a tree out of reach of predators looked unmolested. The one thing they feared was the horses, but they were still hobbled by the pool of water at the far end and looked healthy.

  The red grass had not harmed them.

  “I want to take a bath,” she groaned to Ōbhin. Grime coated his hair and streaked his face. His gloves looked more gray than black save in cracks at the joints where they had creased. He nodded to her as he stumbled out and fell to his knees.

  One by one, they climbed up until only Dualayn remained. With grumbling, they hauled the old man out of the ruins. The scholar spilled over and panted on his back. He lay there for a few minutes before he stumbled off to the water, fell to his knees, and dunked his face into it.

  Ōbhin stood by the hole as he pulled up the rope. He stared down into the dark. “I doubt he’ll be stopped by this,” he said, “but why make it easier for No One?”

  Nobody objected.

  In the dark, there hadn’t been much chance for a private conversation. She hadn’t had a chance to confront Dualayn on her suspicions of No One nor had she found the privacy to tell Ōbhin about her dreams. But most of all, she wanted to speak with her father. To let him know she didn’t hate him.

  She glanced at her father who was sitting on a rock and staring at the swollen knuckles of his hand. Now wasn’t the time. She needed to clean up. Put on fresh clothes. She had to feel alive before speaking of her feelings.

  And she needed all the men to stay behind a small hillock so she could bathe without being watched.

  Well, Ōbhin could watch, she thought and warm fantasies of bathing with him, washing the dirt from his muscular body, filled her mind.

  Later, as the sun set behind the trees, she saw her chance to speak with Dualayn. The others were cooking dinner, laughing in the way of men who wanted to prove that danger and death they’d endured hadn’t affected them. The scholar was sitting on the wagon bed, writing in his journal.

  She crept from the fire, her skirt whisking about her legs. It felt strange to wear feminine garb after what felt like a lifetime in the dark of the ruins. The bodice felt snug about her bosom, restricting her breathing. She reached the wagon and scrambled up with ease.

  “I really don’t have much to say to you if you are just going to berate my methods,” Dualayn said, not looking up from his writing. “I made peace with it a long time ago.”

  “You knew that thing had replaced Bran.”

  Dualayn paused. “Yes.”

  “That thing killed Smiles and Bran. Do you care?” She leaned forward. “They were your employees. Bran grew up at your house. He was a little brother to Chames for a while.”

  Dualayn closed his book. Pain flickered across his face. “I did not . . . instruct the infiltrator to kill them and replace them. I was only made aware of what happened to Smiles after he was dead. There was nothing I could do.”

  “So you do care. About some things.”

  “I care about many things. I have failed many times. I am grieved by each one. I am not happy that your transference wasn’t as seamless as I’d hoped. The interference pattern wasn’t supposed to happen.” He looked up. “I thought I had it all worked out.”

  “And those you were supposed to heal?”

  “I healed more than I killed. I performed my experiments on the poorest of Kash. On the vagabonds. The sickly. The deformed. Those who were already parasites upon society. I couldn’t help most of them. I ensured their deaths weren’t in vain.”

  “Like Smiles’s and Bran’s were?”

  Dualayn sighed. “The infiltrator is astounding. It can not only change its shape to any form, but it can adopt the truth of a person’s life. Become them. It is my greatest work, and I can’t even take all the credit for it.”

  Avena shook her head. “No, no. Dje’awsa made him.”

  Dualayn snorted. “That sorcerer? I studied what he did with Ust. Crude. Unrefined. No true artistry. No understanding of how gems can be fully utilized. His is a savage practice. It is keyed off blood, I think, and the use of obsidian. I don’t fully understand it. It seems to violate all natural laws. I created something more elegant with the infiltrator. I created a network of jewelchines within him, all bound by black iron wires. That’s the true key to most of his abilities. Emeralds for strength, topazes to heal him, heliodors to give him speed.”

  “And to change shape?” asked Avena, loathing her curiosity. She worked her tongue across the roof of her dry mouth. Why did this last revelation shock her? How could this monster produce one more hurtful truth? Memories of fatherly gestures, comforting hugs, a shoulder to cry upon swam through her thoughts. They sought to blunt her hatred, to dull it.

  She honed it on fresh anger.

  “That was the White Lady’s doing.” Dualayn shifted. “I do not understand how she did it, but it was part of my arrangement with Grey. He wanted the infiltrator for his business among other things. The White Lady pointed me in the direction and gave the infiltrator the ability to embrace another’s truth.”

  “When?” asked Avena in confusion. “The White Lady didn’t visit our estate until after Ust’s attack.”

  “Ust delivered the infiltrator to my labs,” said Dualayn. “Pharon facilitated. Let him in through the gates. He had the keys to the postern gates, you know. He liked to slip out into the grove to meet his lover.”

  “I . . . knew that,” Avena said, her cheeks warming. Memories rose of the night she’d caught her promised locked in a passionate embrace with Pharon.

  “I worked on the infiltrator for days. I hardly slept.”r />
  “Who was he?” Avena asked, struggling to remember. Dualayn had spent so much time in his lab. Especially after they’d returned. He was obsessed with his recorder and his macabre experiments. And I was busy learning to fight so I could spend time with Ōbhin. I didn’t even realize my attraction to him.

  “It was that associate of Ōbhin. What was his name . . .?” Dualayn leaned back.

  “Carstin?” gasped Avena. “He died! I was there when he passed away in your lab.”

  “Did he?” Dualayn stared at her. “I almost thought you knew I was up to something when you questioned the ingredients I used to make the anesthesia. I taught you too well.” He chuckled.

  She glared at him.

  “Anyway, it put him into a deep coma, and he was sustained by what the White Lady’s kiss did to him.”

  Avena’s forehead tingled. The White Lady had kissed her on the temple, and her body had trembled like a note had hummed through her flesh.

  “Whatever she did to him, it let him survive being buried alive and now allows him to change into another person. He’s rather unique. I tried to duplicate him several times, but it takes a healthy person to survive the implantation. The problem with using the poorest of the sick for—”

  She slapped him. Hard. Then she whirled around and hopped off the end of the wagon bed in a flurry of skirts. She hadn’t tried so hard to keep Carstin alive just so he could be turned into a monster with no identity. What was the point of all the anguished nights she’d spent keeping him alive? She had been taught to heal the sick by a man who secretly delighted in butchering them.

  She found herself at the edge of the clearing. The red-stained birch tree rose above her, its bark bleached white as bone left in the sun. She leaned against it, feeling her forehead tingle. Had the White Lady done something to her? Was that why she dreamed about the enigmatic woman’s past? How she’d glimpsed the loved one that Raya wished to save, and why she would work with dark people like Dje’awsa and Grey?

  Like Dualayn?

  “He understands what it means to strive to reclaim what was lost and fix past mistakes,” the White Lady had once said about the man.

  “Avena,” Ōbhin whispered.

  She whirled around. The sight of Ōbhin lit by the Virtue’s red moonlight struck her. The scar on his right cheek gleamed crimson against his brown skin. He wore a linen shirt and clean pants, his hair no longer a tangle of filth. She threw herself at him.

  Beneath the birch tree, away from the others, she poured out what she’d dreamed, what she knew of the White Lady, that she might have been alive since the Shattering, and that the man she wanted to save was trapped in a healing wound, surrounded by darkness.

  “I don’t know what will happen if she frees her lover from the weaving,” Avena whispered, “but it can’t be good for the world. She’s working with the Brotherhood. With that pus-filled roach Dualayn. And Dje’awsa. What will his magic do?”

  “Don’t know,” Ōbhin said. “Something to worry about tomorrow.”

  She bit her lip. She held back about Carstin. It would only cause the man she loved more pain if he knew what had happened to his friend’s body. That thing, No One, wasn’t Carstin any longer. It was a mirror reflecting the last person it had killed, stealing their truth. One day, Ōbhin might have to fight No One.

  He couldn’t be distracted. He couldn’t hesitate. Not if it would cost him his life.

  “There’s something Dualayn told me,” Ōbhin said. His arm tightened around her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Avena.”

  “What else did he do?” she demanded. “Did he replace the baby growing in Jilly’s womb with a darkling or a grumliicho?”

  Ōbhin took a deep breath. “When Chames was sick, Dualayn spent days trying to heal him, right?”

  “No,” she croaked as the weight of his words fell on her. She gripped his shirt. “He didn’t. Don’t say that. Chames died of spring fever.”

  “Dualayn called it a mistake. The arrogant roach thought his experiment would work. He tested on his son.”

  Avena kept finding new reasons to hate Dualayn. She sobbed against Ōbhin’s chest as she remembered her last dream of Chames. If it had been his spirit she’d dreamed, he had tried to tell her. Warn her. She just hadn’t understood.

  She clutched to Ōbhin and longed for the end of pain.

  *

  Twentieth Day of Patience, 755 EU

  No One kept his distance on the return to Kash. Ōbhin knew it was pointless to think it had been trapped in the ruins. The thing would have found a way to claw out of the darkness. But it was a problem for the future. He wasn’t looking forward to the steps he’d have to take to ensure those around him weren’t replaced.

  After three days in the ruins, he found it strange to be in the summer heat. No clouds marred the blue skies. The drought worsened. The fields they passed on the four-day trip back to Kash were wilted and browned. Farmers drained streams and ponds for water to keep their crops alive. They simmered in the heat, displaying defiance against the king. Green adorned every last hamlet they passed. Soldiers moved in platoons. Knights rode in companies.

  Lothon boiled.

  Finally, their wagon reached the outskirts of Kash. They passed the village of Reed Bend and took the turnoff at the Porcelain. The city’s walls formed a dark haze on the horizon while belching smoke from the factories stained the blue sky a leaden shade. Lake Ophavin’s waters had retreated even farther, exposing more drying mud.

  Ōbhin rode on the wagon beside Avena and Miguil. Dualayn sat in the back. He had behaved the last few days, lost in his writing. No one talked to him. Fingers and Dajouth rode on their horses. Bran’s spare mount trotted behind the wagon, looking forlorn without its rider.

  Cerdyn manned the gate. The burly man pushed out of the shadows. His eyes flicked over them and a tightness increased in his face. “It didn’t go well?”

  “No,” Ōbhin said. “We lost Bran.”

  “And Smiles? He went with you, right?”

  Ōbhin hesitated. He glanced at Avena.

  “Yeah,” Avena said. “They’re both dead.”

  Cerdyn spat to the side, his dark brows furrowing. “Elohm polish their souls and lift them to the light.”

  Avena nodded, her back straight, shoulders bristling. Ōbhin recognized the tension, and the anger, in her expression. Her brown hair fluttered loose about her face. It was longer, brushing the edges of her shoulders now.

  He missed her braid. He almost regretted taking her to Dualayn, but she would be dead if he hadn’t. Her brain might reside in a glass jar, but at least she still lived. Was still herself. The obsidian mind hadn’t done anything to her personality.

  It just stopped working sometimes. Twice on the journey, she’d slipped into strange dreams of the distant past. Of the Shattering. It stunned him to think that the White Lady, who looked no older than Avena, was thousands of years old. That she had witnessed the mythical cataclysm. Maybe even helped to cause it.

  The wagon clattered up the driveway. Sheep wandered aimlessly across the brown lawn. The rhododendrons drooped, shriveled blossoms falling to the withered ground. On the porch, several women appeared. Jilly, Joayne, Kaylin, Layni, and Hajina. Jilly clutched her stomach, her neck craning. Joayne rubbed her hands together.

  “Where is he?” Jilly shouted. She darted off the steps. “Where’s my Phelep?” Her eyes were raw and wild. “What happened to him?”

  “And Bran?” asked Joayne. The older woman’s face paled. She trembled on the steps. “Did he . . .? Where is he?”

  Miguil reigned up the wagon. He looked at his feet. Avena squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. “Jilly and Joayne, I’m sorry, can we . . .?” She swallowed the painful emotion choking her throat. “Can we talk in private?”

  “No,” Jilly said, shaking her head with violent jerks. Tears spilled down her cheeks. “He’s not dead. My Phelep wouldn’t abandon me. Us!”

  Joayne seemed to flow off the porch. She took Jilly by
the shoulders. The older woman’s eyes grew liquid as she whispered something. Then she turned Jilly away and took her inside. Avena climbed off the wagon in a swirl of her dark-brown skirts. Ōbhin leaped down after.

  Jilly’s sobs led the way. They passed the others on the porch. Kaylin, the older cook, had a confused look on her face while Hajina held her hand, a fierce anger burning in the younger cook’s eyes. Plump Layni reached out a hand to Jilly then pulled it back. Layni clutched her clasped hands to her breasts, looking stunned.

  “Is it Dyain?” Kaylin asked. “Is he hurt? I haven’t seen him today.”

  “He’s fine, Kaylin,” Hajina said.

  Ōbhin glanced at the cook. She looked around like she didn’t know where she was. Dualayn had removed her mind and put it back in her body, damaging her in some fundamental way. Sometimes, she knew her husband was dead, other times she looked for him. Only in the kitchen did she have any normalcy.

  And she’s losing that, Ōbhin thought. I won’t let her stay here. No one should ever be around that bastard.

  In a small sitting room off the main entranceway, Jilly broke away from Joayne. The young maid faced Avena and Ōbhin. She rubbed her hands together. She looked frail, made of spun glass. So delicate, a single touch would cause her to shatter. Joayne wasn’t much better. Bran’s mother squeezed her hands tight together. Her knuckles grew white.

  “Where is he?” Jilly demanded. “He went with you. He told me he was doing that.” Her gaze shot past Ōbhin. “Right, Fingers? You, Bran, Dajouth, and Phelep all went after them.”

  “Well . . .” Ōbhin glanced back to see Fingers standing in the doorway. Avena had revealed her suspicions of the man. Now that Ōbhin knew, he could see the resemblance between them in the ears, a hint in the brows.

  Fingers cleared his throat and said, “You see, Jilly, Bran, Dajouth, and I went with them.”

  “No, Phelep had to have gone,” Jilly said. “He wouldn’t have abandoned me. He loved me.”

  “He did love you,” Avena said. “This isn’t easy to explain, but . . .”