The Darkest Bloom

by P. M. Freestone

  Soon, Ash’s eyelids begin to droop.

  “No sleeping,” I remind him. I’m about to prop myself under his arm when he slumps over.

  “Ash?” I give his shoulder a shake.

  He doesn’t stir.

  Fear quickens as I gently roll him on to his side. He’s still breathing, though it’s shallow. I check his pulse. Slower than it should be.

  I’ve got to hold my nerve. If I try the antidote too soon, before all the symptoms appear, we’ll never know if the poison was the same as what felled Nisai. We’ll be back at square one. It’s the last thing Ash would want, especially after all he’s suffered.

  Yet every moment seems to stretch longer than the last. My fingers on his wrist begin to tremble as his pulse weakens. And still no sign of the key symptom – darkness spreading across the skin.

  I check his eyes. Nothing.

  I snatch up the first of the cure liquids. We’ll have to find another way to test it.

  My hands shake as I try to work the stopper free on the anti-venom distillation. I’ve got to get him breathing the antidote sequence. Now.

  But the stopper is sealed so tightly my fingers can barely get purchase. Why in the sixth hell didn’t I loosen it earlier?

  Sweat slicks my palms. I wipe them on my robe and try again.

  It’s not working.

  I glance to Ash. His chest is barely rising and falling.

  I pull my knife from its sheath and wedge the blade into the hairline gap between the vial and the lid. Gritting my teeth, I try to put the same pressure on bracing and lifting. The knife slips, catching the end of my thumb where it holds the vial, slicing through the nail and into the flesh.

  A hiss of pain escapes my lips and I only manage to hold on to the vial through sheer will. I stick my bleeding thumb in my mouth, tears of frustration pricking my eyes.

  Then I notice it.

  At the centre of Ash’s chest. Darkness. Growing and twisting like a vine’s first tentative tendrils.

  I set my jaw and add the first liquid in the oil burner. The scent is horrid as it heats – simmering blood and something worse. I double over my scarf and tie it around my face, then struggle to lift Ash back into a sitting position, mimicking the tent he made with his cloak, this time so he’s engulfed in steam.

  In sequence, I add the ingredients, one after the other. It reeks worse with every addition, so that I have to run to the window and gulp fresh air for fear of passing out. Finally, I add the last liquid. A drop of pure dahkai essence.

  All scent vanishes from the mix.

  When enough steam has risen that beads of liquid run down Ash’s face, I fling his cloak aside and lower him to the mattress. Then I watch. And wait.

  The veins of darkness spread down his sternum.

  Dread clenches my stomach. No. It’s not supposed to be like this.

  The poison is winning.

  I can’t lose him. Not now. But what can I do?

  I could run, run as fast as I can back to Atrolos’s store. If I knew what to ask for. If we even have enough zigs left. If Ash could survive that long.

  I grab for my satchel, pulling out vial after packet after jar, searching for anything that might at least act as a temporary inhibitor, something to buy us time.

  My fingers meet the tiny faceted vial Sephine dropped the night she died. The liquid inside is almost black, though holding it up to the candlelight reveals it’s the darkest blue.

  I’ve grown up despising the temple, hating Sephine for how she turned her back on my mother. But what if I’ve been short-sighted? What if I wrote off the powers Sephine revered because my grudge was more important, filling the spaces of things I’d lost, things I’d never had.

  If Sephine could buy Nisai time, could I do the same for Ash?

  What had the Chronicler said? Back at the Library of the Lost? If you survive “the first imbibing”, you can use it to “channel the will of Asmudtag”. Use it to heal.

  Questions whirl. Will it kill me? How does this stuff even work? Once I’ve taken it, what am I supposed to do?

  Now shadows seem to move under Ash’s skin, as if they’ve broken off from his tattoos and are seeking a different home. Is that real? Or is my panic imagining the demons of impending death?

  It doesn’t matter. His life ebbs away before me. I have to do something. Even this. I wouldn’t have got half as far alone on this quest, and I’ll never make it into the Ekasyan palace without him. But it’s not just that. I want him healed. I want the cure to beat this poison for him.

  Because, with Ash, things are different. I’ve had people around me my entire life – you can never escape them in a village. But I’ve always kept myself apart. A volatile essence, too mismatched to mix with anything else. Yet getting closer to Ash has felt as natural and grounding as the scent of pure cedar.

  It’s worth the risk.

  I work the stopper free from the Scent Keeper’s vial. Before I hold it to my nose, I’m tempted to pray for the first time in my life…

  Ash stirs under my other hand.

  I rock back on my heels. Is it wishful thinking? Or has the blackvein halted its spread?

  No, I’m right. It’s receding.

  I feel for his pulse. Each beat throbs stronger than the last.

  It’s working!

  I lose count of how many times I watch his chest rise and fall into a settled rhythm. Slowly, tentatively, I lower and recap the vial.

  After a while, Ash drifts in and out of a doze, mumbling in his sleep. Something about shadows and never being able to find an answer. I reach for Nisai’s notebook from Ash’s pack and thumb through the pages, wondering at the sketches, even if most of the text is lost to me. What answers did Nisai seek in Aphorai? Why did he want to believe so badly? And what did Sephine know of it, if anything?

  “Rakel?” Ash blinks up at me.

  I guiltily hide the notebook in the nearest place – my satchel.

  His eyes are beginning to focus. “What happened? It’s cold. Why’s it so cold?”

  He’s shivering, his teeth chattering between his words. I crawl on to the mattress beside him, drawing the blanket over us. Carefully, I tuck myself under his shoulder, hand on his chest, hoping my body heat will seep through him.

  His arm tightens around me.

  I sigh in relief, finding his hand under the blanket, lacing my fingers in his. Tears well behind my closed eyelids, one escaping to roll down my cheek. He’s still here. He’s still with me.

  Our nightmares could soon be over. We have what we need to cure Nisai.

  We just need to make it back to Ekasya. To somehow convince the imperial family to let the two fugitives they think played a part in the Prince’s attempted assassination try to undo it. All in less than a moon from now.

  It’ll be a sniff.

  CHAPTER 36

  Ash

  We spent two more nights at the inn. I wanted to leave earlier, but whenever I mentioned it, Rakel would fold her arms and tell me I could go on ahead if I truly thought I’d be useful to Nisai keeled over in a roadside ditch before even coming within sight of Ekasya. We must, she insisted, be sure the threat from the poison had passed.

  I sat by the window in our room at the guest house, watching the sky as I worried at the braided leather of my prayer band and willed my strength to return. The Lost God’s moon was almost full as it arced across the stars of the Tozran constellation. It sent a chill through me.

  Next time it passes, it will be completely full.

  The lion will be crowned.

  Nisai will die.

  When we finally leave Lapis Lautus, that knowledge makes the journey to Ekasya seem the longest stretch since leaving Aphorai. I turn to look at the skyline of the smugglers’ city one last time, still amazed at how different the reality was to the tales I’d heard of cutthroats and chaos.

  After retrieving Rakel’s horse from the farmer, we risk taking another smuggler’s barge upriver. We spend two days in the wake
of the hypnotic rhythm of oars, two nights watching the moon. With Linod’s Elixir proving less and less effective, my mood swings like a priestess’s incense censer. Morbid to hopeful. Calm to agitation.

  We make land before the River Junction, and take lesser travelled lanes, some not much more than a goat trail. I chafe at the delay – the imperial road is the swifter, more direct route. Continuing upriver would be better still. But we saw how that went last time, and by Kaismap’s eyes I won’t let us be apprehended before we make it back to the capital. There’s only one person I’ll be handing myself over to once we reach Ekasya. One person I trust to hear me out – if I can just get to her.

  Nisai’s mother.

  Shari.

  The terrain becomes flatter and drier as we travel on to the central river plains. Soon after, irrigation channels begin to web the land like veins. We’re getting close to the capital.

  We pass a group of people straggling by on foot. Judging by their plain-spun robes and the worn state of their sandals, they’re pilgrims. The stench of putrefying flesh announces several are also Afflicted. I’d wager they’re making a tour of every pre-Empire temple – or what remains of them – an ancient, meandering journey that takes more than a turn.

  A small child riding on her mother’s hip stares at me. Her lip trembles and she bursts into tears. I have no idea what to do, which way to look, so I look back to Rakel. She leans down from the saddle, pokes her tongue out and crosses her eyes. The child’s crying bubbles into laughter.

  Further up, an old man rests in the shade of a scrawny tree, leaning on a cane as knotted and gnarled as his wiry frame. His eyes fix on me as closely as the child’s, though the knowingness in his gaze is far more unsettling.

  He raises a pointed finger, a tremor shaking his hand. “You are of the shadows, boy.”

  The sun is warm, and, with no sign of Rangers, I’d been chancing some time without my cloak. While the fanged jaw etched over my scalp is becoming concealed as my hair grows back in, the Aphorain lion of Nisai’s forebears claws from my shoulders and down my arms, the ink marking me as Shield.

  The old man states the obvious.

  “No, no, no. Not those shadows.” He grins as if he has just delivered the punchline of a joke.

  I stiffen. There are fortune tellers working the alleys of Ekasya who say they can read minds and see beyond the realm of men. Soldiers visit them before leaving for battle, seeking assurance that this will not be their last. I won’t be played by their ilk. It’s sacrilege, presuming to know the will of the gods. I would have expected more from a pilgrim.

  “Explain yourself,” I demand.

  His only reply is a high, rattling cackle. Despite the heat, it sends a chill through me.

  I walk on, quickening my stride.

  When the pilgrims are behind us, Rakel slides from her horse. “What was that about?”

  “He … said he saw shadows around me. How could he know?”

  “Probably just meant your tattoos.”

  “No. They’re believers. Intrigued by anything that hearkens back to the edge of memory. Same as the quartz hanging in the doorways back in Koltos. It was something more.”

  She sniffs the air. “More likely they were just overwhelmed by your magnificent cologne.”

  “I’m not wearing cologne.”

  “Then I guess it was just your natural aroma.” Her nose wrinkles, but not before her lips twitch into the hint of a smile.

  The next night, we make camp away from the road, in a copse of trees marking the boundaries between one landholding and the next.

  “Just for a few hours,” Rakel says. “We need at least some rest.”

  It’s a balmy evening, the breeze a warm caress, both moons waxing bright above us. With no need for a fire, we’ve set our bedrolls up side by side and lie on our backs, staring at the sky. If only I could think the sight beautiful, rather than a marker of Nisai’s ebbing life.

  “Look,” I say, trying to find a distraction. “We caught the jackal chasing Esmolkrai.”

  “We did what now?”

  I stretch an arm up. “See that bright star? It’s the eye of Esmolkrai, the serpent, who rises each night and sets like a snake going into hibernation. There’s arguments between the university and the temple about whether it even is a star.”

  “What would it be otherwise?” Rakel moves closer, so that her hair tickles my shoulder. I inhale deeply. The scent of desert rose calms and stirs my blood in equal measure. How is that even possible?

  “Another moon,” I say, voice hitching in my throat. “Or a sun. Or even another world. Whatever it is, where I lived as a child, people say it’s a good omen. An auspicious time. Anyone who lives in the slums needs all the luck they can get. And so do we. May as well try to think of the vial as half full.”

  Rakel lets out a low laugh. “Someone’s swapped bitter yolketh for purrath blossom.”

  “Someone was a good influence.” I reach out a hand, searching. Our fingers meet, entwine. Her palm is cool against mine.

  It’s then that I realize I’m sweating. Profusely.

  She pulls her hand back and sits up, her silhouette turning towards me. “How are you feeling? Any lingering effects from the testing?”

  “I can manage.”

  I should tell her. Explain that it’s not the poison, that I felt restored from its effects following the first night of full sleep after the test in Lapis Lautus. I’m quick to heal, after all. What’s stalking me now is very different. It runs in my veins. It’s as familiar as the fine lines criss-crossing the backs of my hands.

  I told her I’d not had an episode since I was a child, and that’s true, but I’ve been close. I’m taking more and more Linod’s Elixir and yet it’s doing less and less to suppress those feelings. I’m losing control.

  Parts of me that have long been dormant are stirring.

  “We can’t have you just ‘managing’. You need to be at your best. And if there’s something that’s gone wrong with the cure, a slow side effect… We don’t want to put Nisai in further danger.”

  The last thing I’d want to do is put myself between Nisai and a cure. Especially now, with just days on our side. But after what happens in Ekasya, I may never see her again, let alone together like this. Would it be so terrible to enjoy this last night of being the closest to happiness I’ve ever been?

  Then her words come back to me, the ones from when we were in the mountains, waiting for our clothes to dry after the ordeal with the butterfly pupae. Broken trust is the hardest wound to heal, she said. It always leaves a scar. Always.

  As I look up at her, outlined in stars, I realize in my blood, my bones, that I can’t lose her. In her trust, I’ve found something I sacrificed to duty and never thought I’d deserve again. Something I’ll never even have with Nisai.

  Because I’m not Rakel’s Shield. I don’t have to guard against everything the world could throw at her.

  I don’t have to protect her from myself.

  She is my freedom.

  “It’s not a side effect.” My throat constricts, voice so thick it could be a stranger’s. “I keep taking my Linod’s dose and don’t feel any steadier for it. Like I’m chasing an equilibrium that’s no longer there.”

  Every muscle goes rigid but I force myself to admit the shameful truth: “I need more.”

  My confession hangs for an eternity in the darkness between us. Each heartbeat aches deeper in my chest.

  She gives a long, audible exhale.

  “Rakel?”

  “You’re spiralling.” Her tone is concerned but devoid of judgment. There’s no admonishment, no scorn. “It happens to everyone who uses Linod’s for a long time. You need to ease off. Deliberately. Methodically. And most importantly, slowly. It’s won’t be easy, but you have to start. Soon.”

  “Not yet. I must be in control when we get to the palace.”

  “Ash, if you increase your dose, or even keep up your current levels, it could kill you.�
�

  “How long?”

  She lays back down, this time beside me, her head on my chest. “I can’t say for sure. A moon? More? Less?”

  I don’t respond. What else is there to say? All I can do is hold her until her breathing evens into sleep.

  Gazing up at the stars, I pray to each of the gods in turn that I’ll be able to keep myself together long enough to fulfil my duty. To find freedom for all of us.

  I reserve a final prayer of gratitude to merciful Azered, for at least one of the knots in my stomach has unwound, knowing I won’t have to face tomorrow alone.

  Somewhere in the night I find rest, because when I open my eyes the sky has turned pre-dawn grey. There’s a small fire nearby, dug into a pit to conceal it. Rakel must have been up for some time.

  “Glad you got some sleep,” she says, pressing a cup into my hands. “Inhale the steam then drink it. All at once. It’ll taste like a slurp from a tanner’s vat, but it’ll restore you. At least in part.”

  I do as she says. She’s right. The tincture is vile. “What was in that?”

  She gives me a wry smile. “You don’t want to know.”

  “I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t.”

  “Believe me, you don’t.” She grins.

  I never thought I’d be so relieved to be mocked. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

  Her smile widens.

  “I thought you were all about healing people, not relishing their suffering.”

  “Eh, I get my thrills where I can.” She moves off to ready Lil for the ride to the capital.

  Funny thing is, once I’ve finished stowing my bedroll and splashed water on my face, I do feel a little better. I decide not to increase my Linod’s dose for today and shoulder my pack.

  “Ready?”

  She nods.

  Ekasya Mountain is the only major uprising out of the plain between the Alet Range, the north Trelian coast, the Losian Wastes and the Edurshai Basin. The border of every province lies in view of the capital, and it is where the gods reside when they visit the mortal realm. If there is no time or space for your prayers to be lost on the wind, you must burn them on the great stepped pyramid of Ekasya.