A House Divided (Astoran Asunder, book 1)

by Nicole Ciacchella

  Focusing, Kila wrestled his abilities back under his control, ignoring the extraneous details. The manner in which Enforcers experienced their abilities was some indication of the extent of their powers. Some described the flow of information as a trickle while others experienced a flood. Kila experienced his more like a sudden plummet into a lake. Getting his feet wet didn't affect his perception much, but sometimes information inundated him like water closing over his head. Crowded places typically brought on the plummet.

  A short distance to his right, a diminutive young woman stood conversing with a handsome, tall man. The medals pinned to the man's coat, the pale highlights streaking his hair, and his tanned skin indicated that he was a Seafarer of rank, probably a captain, if Kila had to hazard a guess.

  However, it wasn't the man who had captured his attention, it was the young woman, though he couldn't say why. Scanning her, he took in her delicately embroidered sage green silk gown, the froth of dark curls crowning her head, the candlelight catching on the strands of red threaded through them. Something about the shape of her mouth, the violet hue of her deep blue eyes, stroked at his memory with elusive fingers. She wore matching silk gloves, and the turn of her wrist struck him as familiar. Frowning, he averted his gaze before she caught him staring. His gift tugged at him, urging him to take a closer look at her, to tease out what it was about her that made him feel as if he knew her.

  "That man over there is Captain Lachlon Stowley, the youngest captain in House Staerleigh history," Burl said, pointing at the man talking to the woman who had caught Kila's attention. He slanted a glance at Burl, wondering if she had noticed him examining the woman, but if she had she gave him no indication. Cursing himself, he vowed not to be caught off guard in front of Burl again.

  "Over there, to the right of Captain Stowley, is Elder Borean, and he's speaking with Daerwyn Wyland," Burl said, skipping over Stowley's companion. Continuing in a circle, she pointed out other illustrious personages to him, and he tried to commit them all to memory.

  She had just finished when Daerwyn Wyland approached them with a welcoming smile. "Officer Burl," he said. "How good of you to come."

  "I was honored by the invitation," Burl said, giving him a short, stiff bow, which Wyland returned.

  "I'm not acquainted with your companion," Wyland said, his eyes flicking to Kila.

  "This is my new partner, Officer Kila an Movis," she said. "Kila, this is Daerwyn Wyland."

  "Pleasure to make your acquaintance," Kila said, mimicking Burl's bow.

  "Likewise, I'm sure," Wyland said, sounding as though he were chewing the words.

  "I see Captain Stowley has returned safely," Burl said.

  The comment pleased Wyland, who beamed. "He has indeed. That's my daughter, Cianne, he's talking to." His tone was so pointed that Kila didn't need to be an Intentionist to catch his meaning.

  "Ah, yes, Miss Wyland," Burl said. "She looks well. Might we pay our respects to her and to Captain Stowley?"

  "Of course," Wyland said, looking even more pleased, if that were possible.

  This is a man of ambition.

  Taking note of Wyland's attire, Kila filed the information away for future reference.

  "Cianne, Lach, you remember Officer Burl?" Wyland said.

  "Yes, of course. How do you do?" Stowley asked, bowing to Burl.

  "Officer Burl," Miss Wyland said, with a slight incline to her head.

  She doesn't like Burl. Interesting.

  "Allow me to introduce my new partner, Officer an Movis."

  The expression lasted a split second, but Kila caught it. His name made Miss Wyland's face go rigid, and when she turned to look at him he could see her fighting for control. Her uncanny blue eyes were wide, but she covered up her discomposure with a tepid smile.

  "Officer an Movis, it's a pleasure to meet you," she said.

  "It's a pleasure to meet you as well, Miss Wyland, Captain Stowley," Kila said, bowing to them both.

  "If you'll excuse us, I should introduce Officer an Movis to the Elders," Wyland said to his daughter and Stowley.

  "Of course," Stowley said. He didn't seem to mind at all. As it was, his eyes had barely strayed from Miss Wyland, though he had been very civil with both Kila and Burl.

  Kila could have sworn he felt eyes on the back of his neck as Wyland ushered them away. Venturing a glance over his shoulder, he saw Stowley talking to Miss Wyland in animated tones, her attention focused on the captain. But Kila could have sworn he had seen her eyes dart away just as his landed on her.

  Chapter 7

  Heart seizing, Cianne tried to beat back the wave of dizziness that swept over her. Her pulse pounded, her blood roaring in her ears like Cearus's wrath. Over the years she had become good at marshaling her emotions, concealing her thoughts, but the shock of seeing Kila was so great that all her training had gone out the window as she was catapulted back into the skin of her twelve-year-old self.

  ***

  Her nightly forays into the city began shortly after her mother's death, her need to escape overruling all sense.

  Daerwyn treated her as if she were an unwelcome stranger. Overwhelmed by his grief and his need to control it, he put on a good show outside of the manor, projecting an image of dignity and strength to the other House members. Inside the manor, he had no room for his daughter's pain, unwilling to offer her anything to help her navigate it.

  Coupled with his grief was the bewildering challenge of determining how to raise her on his own, a child he already found so unfathomable he didn't quite know what to do with her. He had counted on Annalith to be there for him, to see to it that Cianne didn't become the wild, feckless creature he feared would disgrace him and their whole House.

  Lach was more than kind, though. Annalith had been like a second mother to him, and his affection for her had been genuine. His sense of loss was keen, if not quite as keen as Cianne's. For the first few days after Annalith's death they had spent the bulk of their time together in one another's arms, sobbing over their broken hearts. But no matter how hard he tried, no matter how desperately he wished he could do so, Lach was unable to help her find her way through her despair.

  House members crowded the manor, demanding recognition for their own suffering, and she wasn't merely beyond being able to accept the possibility that they were hurting too, she was indifferent to their pain. Who were they to lay claim to her mother? What did they know of her? What did they know of the hole her mother's absence had punched into the universe?

  Annalith's funeral was lavish, and Cianne felt in her bones that her mother would have hated it. Clad in the customary deep green, the color of the sea at its most forbidding, every member of the House had crammed into the Council Hall. Funerary rites were read, offerings were made to Cearus, and many House members took their turn to say some words about Annalith, but Cianne was aware of none of it. Her eyes were fixed on the empty, gilded casket, as if they might catch sight of that beloved face one last time if only they could bore through the wood.

  She never would see her mother's face again, no matter how hard her eyes strained. Annalith had been swept away while at sea, during a violent storm that had left her vessel severely damaged and Cianne's life destroyed.

  When the casket was carried to the sea to be borne away on the waves, Cianne collapsed. Her world had fallen in on her, and she was powerless against the pain.

  Her mother's casket was long gone by the time she woke. Cianne regretted that she hadn't been able to watch it disappear, to imagine Annalith being carried out to Cearus's embrace. Perhaps the peaceful image would have cured Cianne of her nightmares. Every time she closed her eyes, she watched the greedy waters swallowing Annalith's lovely, kind face, her silken ebony curls.

  The walls of the manor pressed in around Cianne, threatening to crush her, making her skin crawl with the need to get away. Outside the enclave walls she could be alone with her thoughts, could probe the pure, jagged edges of her grief without fear of witness. />
  She waited until her father locked himself in his room and the servants had gone to bed before she crept down the stairs. She and her mother had made a game of sneaking up on one another, and so Cianne had long since learned which steps to avoid so that she wouldn't make a sound. Slipping through the door of the manor was child's play, and avoiding the night guards wasn't much more difficult. She loved climbing and snuck away to do it whenever she could, so although scaling the enclave wall was a challenge, it was not an insurmountable one.

  Skulking through the city streets alone at night was dangerous, she knew that, particularly in the sections of town she preferred to haunt. She didn't much care. A sense of recklessness seized her, and she had to choke back hysterical laughter as she spirited her way along the docks, pausing every so often to peer into the unsavory taverns lining the street. She watched a group leave one house hung with lurid red lanterns, catching a glimpse inside of both men and women wearing shockingly few clothes.

  She walked for hours without anyone noticing her, though this was probably more a testament to the extreme levels of their inebriation than it was to Cianne's evasive skills. Still, she was small and able to slip into tight nooks and crannies, which was a decided advantage.

  At last, she found herself ghosting along a row of modest rough stone houses. An uneven wall of jumbled stone closed the dwellings off from the street, and when Cianne tested it she found it had excellent hand- and footholds for someone whose fingers and feet were as small as hers were. She began climbing. The wall was higher than she had thought, and when she reached the top and stood staring down at the street below, her heart raced, the first non-grief burst of emotion she'd felt since her mother had died. Vertigo kicked in as her eyes measured the ten feet down to the ground, and she swayed a bit.

  "Whoa there," a soft voice called from below.

  Whirling toward it, Cianne teetered again, this time coming much closer to falling. Her arms shot out perpendicular to her sides and she didn't draw another breath until she'd managed to steady herself.

  "What are you doing up there?" the voice asked. She could tell it belonged to a man, though she couldn't see his face. He was standing too close to the wall, and the shadows obscured his features.

  "Climbing," she said, her voice cracking. She tried to remember the last time she had spoken to another person and couldn't. Even with Lach her responses had become mostly non-verbal.

  "Obviously," he said in a droll tone. "However, you seem rather unsteady on your feet, so perhaps climbing isn't the best thing for you to be doing at the moment."

  Crouching, Cianne lowered her bottom onto the uneven surface of the wall. Stones poked into her rear, but she ignored the discomfort. Dangling her legs over the edge, she braced her hands on the stone, scraping her palms for her trouble, and leaned out over the wall, trying to see the man below her.

  "Why don't you come down?" he suggested.

  Like any cautious parent, Cianne's mother had warned her about strangers. It didn't matter that this man sounded nice, he was someone she didn't know, and the prudent thing to do would be to go back to the enclave and return to her bed, where she belonged. With any luck, she might even manage to do so without anyone noticing she'd left in the first place.

  But something about talking to someone she didn't know felt good. This man didn't know her mother had died. He didn't know that she angered her tutors by skipping her lessons. He didn't know that her father had averted his face at the announcement that his daughter had failed every aspect of her Adept test, trying to conceal the mingled disappointment and disgust that had curdled his mouth, though not quickly enough. He didn't know that ever since then, and especially now that her mother was gone, her father could barely stand to look at her.

  She was as much a stranger to this man as he was to her, which meant he knew nothing at all about her. After spending the last week around people who thought they knew everything there was to know about her, this realization was oddly comforting.

  "I shouldn't," she said, not wanting to give the appearance that she had caved so readily. "My mother told me never to talk to strangers."

  "That's wise of you, and you're right to listen to your mother. I am a stranger, that's true, but I'm also an Enforcement officer."

  An Enforcement officer. Cianne chewed her lip, her stomach twisting. It was good, because it meant that he was a safe stranger, but it was also bad, because it meant that if he found out who she was, he would have to report her to her father. The last thing she wanted was for her father to find out what she had been up to, not so much because she feared the punishment that would ensue, but because she knew discovery would make it impossible for her to ever sneak away again. Her father would see to it that every guard in the enclave was on the lookout for her, and her one means of escape would be cut off forever. She wouldn't be able to endure that.

  "Prove it," Cianne ordered, hedging, trying to buy herself some time.

  "All right, I will. Don't go anywhere," the man said. She could hear the reluctance in his voice, and he moved slowly away from the wall, heading toward a cracked door that was spilling a thin sliver of yellow light out into what she now saw was a garden.

  It was a small garden, and the light illuminated his face when he opened the door wide enough to pass through it. He glanced back at her over his shoulder, watching to see if she would run away, so only his profile was visible, but what she could see of it looked kind. His thick, shoulder-length dark hair was pulled back into a tail. His eyes appeared to be dark too, though in the low light of the garden it was impossible to tell. Judging his height from her vantage was difficult, but when he went through the door she could see his head passed beneath its frame with just a few inches to spare, which told her he was rather tall. Something about his appearance made him distinct, and his voice—his accent, to be precise—gave away the fact that he wasn't from Cearova.

  He disappeared into the house for a moment and Cianne began worrying at one of her nails with her teeth, another habit of hers that drove her father to distraction. What to do? Should she try to slip away while the man was getting his badge, disappear down a dark alley never to be seen by him again?

  But it had taken her several moments to scale his wall, and she had a feeling that if she tried to flee he'd simply go out through his front door and catch her in the act. She didn't want to risk that.

  At any rate, would running away make her seem timid or would it make her seem criminal? What if he thought she was a thief who'd climbed the wall to better case the residences? As an Enforcement officer wouldn't he feel obligated to chase her down and take her to the Enforcement station for questioning? She couldn't suppress a shiver as she imagined her father arriving to pick her up from the station. That scenario wouldn't do at all.

  She was still debating when the man returned. He left his door wide open, and a wedge of light illuminated a portion of his garden as well as his figure, though it cast shadows that made it difficult to see his face again. He held one hand out, palm up, so that she could see it was empty, and in the other hand he held aloft something that caught some of the light.

  "This is my badge," he said, lifting his hand higher. His movements were slow and deliberate, which made her feel more skittish. He was treating her like he would an edgy criminal, she was certain of it.

  Afraid to focus on any one part of him for fear that he would be moving before she could react, she darted several quick glances at the object in his hand. It did appear to be a badge, but she had no intention of getting any closer to him to find out for certain.

  "I should go," she said, not moving, waiting to see how he would react.

  "It is late," he said, lowering his badge but keeping his other hand up.

  "You're not going to follow me, are you?" she blurted, angry with herself for showing him her hand.

  He didn't say anything for a moment, deliberating, and she could hear the conflict in his voice when he said, "It's dangerous for you to be out on the
streets alone at this time of night. I could escort you home, see you safe."

  "No," she said, the word coming out sharper than she had intended. Taking a breath, she tried to calm herself. "Thank you, but I'll be fine. I know the streets very well." It wasn't entirely untrue. After several days of exploring, she knew them much better than she ever had before.

  He was quiet for another moment. "Even so, I think it best if—"

  "No," she said again, more forcefully this time. "Don't follow me." Tears sprang to her eyes and she spoke through gritted teeth.

  Heedless of caution, she yanked her legs up in a flurry of movement and scooted to the other side of the wall. Scrabbling down more rapidly than she had ascended wasn't wise, thanks to her shaky legs, and she ended up falling the last couple of feet. Letting out a muffled cry of pain, she picked herself up and pelted down the street just as the man emerged around the corner of his wall.

  "Wait!" he called out, but she ignored him. He ran after her, but she ducked and dodged, paying no attention to direction, taking whichever alleyways she could find, the darker the better, and he either lost her or gave up after a short chase.

  Escaping had been her only thought, and when her legs began to give out and she was forced to stop, she was surprised by the pounding of her heart, her heaving breaths, her tear-soaked face. Sinking to the ground in the safety of a dark corner of a shop's alcove, she buried her face in her knees and allowed herself to sob.

  She made it home, slipping into her room just before the sun rose. No one bothered her the entire day, and she wasn't certain whether she should be relieved or hurt.

  I am invisible.

  But the man last night had made her feel as if she weren't so invisible after all.

  ***

  "Cianne?" Lach asked, his face creasing. "Are you well?"

  "I-I'm fine," she said, flashing him a quick smile.

  "Are you certain?" he asked. Worry knitted his brow and his eyes were alight with concern as he stared at her, and she realized it was the first time in years that he'd witnessed her truly losing her composure. She shared more with him than she did with anyone else, but even with Lach she had her mask to wear, and she usually wore it very well.