Creatures of Light, Book 3

by Emily B. Martin

  He wouldn’t laugh that way now. He’d smile, close-lipped, and even though it would be a genuine expression, it would carry gravity in it.

  Was his face a mask, like Mona’s?

  Or was that eager happiness simply gone?

  I was snooping, I knew it. This portrait had been taken down and hidden behind the trunk for the same reasons Celeno had taken ours down, and I had no right to examine it now. I looked back at Ama once more. She smiled at me as if she had every confidence in my ability to face the heinous thing that had been done to her by my own inaction.

  “I’m going to try to set it right,” I whispered. “I don’t know that I can, but I’m going to try.”

  They both continued to smile.

  Carefully I turned the portrait around and slid it back behind the trunk, shifting everything into its former place. I stood back, casting one last look around the room. My gaze lit again on the blank wall, and then moved past it to the bookcase in the corner.

  There was a stack of blank parchment on one of the shelves, along with ink and quills. I set the sheaf of my letters and Ama’s ring down on the foot of the bed, and then went to the shelf. I shook one of the bottles of ink and popped the cork off, dipping a trimmed quill.

  I worked carefully, thinking before each stroke, envisioning its look on the page. The nib scritch-scratched over the parchment. I left things loose and a little messy, embracing the quill’s finicky nature. It was better to be a little sketchy, I thought. It helped disguise the fact that I had never drawn an iguana before.

  I gave its back and tail a serpentine curve to it, its clawed legs drawn loose against its body like I recalled from the few illustrations I’d seen. I drew spines and detailed its blunt face, adding the suggestion of scales and defining everything with my mother’s directional hatching. A few bubbles and quick strokes hinted at the surf around it.

  I leaned back and examined the sketch. It wasn’t anything that would receive acclaim in a biology pamphlet, but it was decent enough. I tapped the end of the quill against my lips. I wished I’d read more of The Diving Menagerie to know how the verses were structured. After a moment of pondering, a thought occurred, and I bent over to scribble in the margin.

  I’ve heard of a lizard that dives in the sea.

  Haul away, mates, each your line.

  It does it despite what we think it should be.

  Heave away, mates, and haul down.

  Blushing at the childish work, I corked the ink bottle and stowed everything back on the shelf. Carefully, I rested the sketch on the mantel. It looked small and silly in that big open place, and I wondered if Colm would even be allowed back in his room, or if a servant would sweep the parchment up and pack it away somewhere. I turned, leaving the swimming iguana on its perch, and gathered up the ring and my letters. Tucking them in my pocket, I cast one last look around the room, cold and quiet, and then headed back to the foyer door.

  I listened at the crack for a moment or two, not wanting to explain to any guards what I was doing. When I was sure the way was clear, I eased the door open and slipped out.

  There were guards on the landing, but they were facing away from me. I tried to set my footfalls a little louder so they would hear me coming. One turned his head and regarded me with eyebrows raised.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  “I was helping Queen Mona,” I said. “But I’m done now—I’m going back to the guest wing. Would you prefer I was accompanied by someone?”

  The guard hesitated. “No,” he said. “The queen has not given orders to escort you, and any part of the palace you shouldn’t enter will be guarded. But I’m not letting you back into this wing unless I have word from my queen.”

  “I understand. Thank you.” I passed them and headed down the steps, sharing a similar conversation with the guards at the base of the staircase. I first headed to the healing wing, but finding it dark and empty, I continued back to the guest wing. It was dark as well, with no guards outside Celeno’s door. Hesitantly, I pushed it open and went inside.

  The windowpane Celeno had broken to distract his guard had been tacked over with a wooden board, and a tendril of cold air seeped around it. I stirred up the fire in the hearth to try to coax a little heat into the room, and then I carefully laid out my letters on the bed. My gaze scanned each one, remembering each emotion at the time of writing them. The first was written with barely contained shock, still reeling from the loss of Lumen Lake and unwilling to believe this incredible piece of news that had arrived unexpectedly on my desk. My second was more coherent, rife with fervent speculation. And the third . . . the third was the longest, full of hope and plans and promises—all diplomatic in nature but tinged by a kind of passionate optimism not present in the others.

  I laid the fourth one out, a short, tense note explaining that his last letter had indeed been too late, and that we had already sent our ambassador on her way to Lumen Lake. I smoothed the last page on the coverlet. When Celeno came back—when they all came back—I’d walk him through each one, laying to rest any last questions about my mistakes. I didn’t care what the outcome was. I had no illusions about forgiveness or trust rebuilt. I just wanted him, finally, to have the whole picture.

  At first I paced to stay awake, chased from one end of the room to the other by my anxious thoughts. When my toes started catching on the rug and my eyes blurred with exhaustion, I finally took a seat, perching stiff-backed on the edge of the armchair. I forced my brain to think of something academic and landed on my thesis—despite it being ages ago, I could still recount the basics of my abstract and methods. When I reached my results section, I realized my head was resting against the wing of the chair. And then, my discussion section seemed to blur oddly with iguanas and call-and-response work chanties.

  I’ve someone who’s waiting with eye on the storm.

  Haul away, mates, each your line.

  We’ll weather far worse if we stand it alone.

  Heave away, mates, and haul down.

  When my eyes opened again, the edges of the window curtains were tinged with gray light, and Celeno sat cross-legged on his bed, his gaze on the sheaf of my letters in his hand.

  I straightened too quickly, and my neck seared in protest. I sucked in a breath, and he looked up.

  “Good morning,” he said.

  I tried to roll the kinks out of my shoulders as I staggered out of the armchair. “When did you get back?”

  “About fifteen minutes ago. I think Ellamae wanted to cuff me to the bedframe again, but in light of the approaching ships, she rushed off.” He waggled his boots back and forth. “It’s nice to have some freedom of movement.”

  I stood a few paces away, studying him. He was dressed in the clothes he’d worn through the cave, but they’d been washed and pressed. After several days of damp Lumeni nightshirts, seeing him back in a black bolero and a dark red waist sash was strangely relieving. He looked more like himself than he had in weeks, and it wasn’t just the wardrobe. There was a flush of color in his cheeks, perhaps from the hours spent in the winter air, and his hair tumbled loosely around his ears.

  “You’re looking at me like I’m a specimen under a glass,” he said.

  I shook myself, flustered by my sudden awakening and his drastic change. “I didn’t expect . . . you look well.”

  “I feel terrible,” he said casually, rifling a few of my letters. “I puked three times, twice up and once down. My head feels like it’s roosting pigeons, and I think I could probably sleep for a month.” He squinted at something on the page. “But for some reason, none of it is actually bothering me at the moment.” He looked up, and his eyes were clear. “I saw the petroglyphs, Gemma.”

  I wavered slightly, and he set down the letters. He patted the mattress next to him.

  “Come sit with me,” he said.

  I hesitated, haunted by our last conversation, but then walked around the other side of the bed and crawled up next to him, leaving a foot o
f space between us. Together we stared at the fire, which had burned low, leaving only glowing fragments of wood in the hearth.

  He reached into his bolero pocket and withdrew a creased piece of parchment. I saw the edge of a cypher written in charcoal in one of the folds, but he didn’t open it just yet. He turned it slowly in his fingers. The anticipation in my head was shot through with weariness—I couldn’t even muster impatience. I was just tired.

  “We are creatures of the Light,” he said, “and we know it imperfectly. That part Colm had right.”

  “And the next line?” I asked. The one that had words before his title, the one that we’d been unable to decipher.

  The one that had dragged me over, under, and through three countries, chasing its ephemeral possibilities.

  “The next line,” he said, each word measured, as if he was still digesting it. “The next line says, During the reign of the seventh king of the canyons, one will rise to bring the wealth and prosperity of a thousand years.”

  I turned my head to face him. He gazed at the fire, his eyes bright. “During the reign?” I repeated.

  He slid his finger into the crease of the parchment and unfolded it. His writing was less even than Colm’s was, but the cyphers were all formed boldly and with surety, each one clear in its meaning.

  Sure enough, the second line began distinctly with those words. During the reign of the seventh king.

  I took the paper gingerly from him. “That makes it sound . . . like . . .”

  “A time frame,” he said. “Not a title. A mark on a calendar.”

  The fire popped. A log slid slightly in the grate.

  “Which means . . .” he began.

  “You’re not the fulfillment of the Prophecy,” I said.

  “No,” he agreed. “Someone else is. And sometime during my reign, they’ll do something great.”

  I leaned my head back against the headboard, my mind picking apart each new word. During. The. Reign. One. Will. Rise.

  He pointed to the next three lines on the page. “Did you see the final name?”

  I had, but I could only process so much at once. I read the new lines again, lingering on the final word, the one too faint to be legible in Callais.

  Peace will come from peace. Wealth will come from wealth.

  I am a Prism, made to scatter light.

  Syrma

  Below it was the human figure, arms and legs bent at right angles off the body. Above its head were three dots, the ubiquitous mark in Alcoro to denote a woman, the foundation of the three-gemmed star bands every girl wore from infancy.

  “Syrma,” he said. “The Prism was a woman.”

  Whether the Prism was a man or woman or neither didn’t matter. What mattered was that she had traveled, leaving her words scattered throughout the Eastern World. What mattered was that her words were different from what we had believed for centuries.

  “They match up with the fragments we saw in the cave,” he said. “There was a d root before my title, remember, and the remains of a few other cyphers. During the reign.” He said it slowly, as if still coming to terms with its implications. “Yesterday you said you researched the traces of other Prophecies. Do the others match up?”

  “The bits I’ve pieced together—yes,” I said. I was tired, so tired. “None of them were as complete as this one, but they all support these new lines.”

  “Then we were wrong,” he said. “Our translation is wrong. The Prelate was wrong. Even if Lumen Lake is the key to fulfilling the Prophecy, pursuing it in my name means that it was wrong.”

  He was gazing at me. I couldn’t turn my head.

  “You don’t look relieved,” he said.

  Carefully I folded the paper, hiding the new cyphers. “I’ve been through too much in the last six months to trust in relief.”

  “We’re going to have to go back to Alcoro,” he said. “We’re going to have to set things right. But I think it will be easier now.” He tapped the folded parchment. “These make it easier. Once we get down to the river, and stop our folk from sailing in to the lake, we can bring some of them up to see them. After that, everything will be easier . . .”

  He trailed off, still looking at me, watching for a reaction. I found I still couldn’t turn to face him. In the hearth, an errant spark found an uncharred fragment of wood and sent up a little flare.

  There was no divine force guiding his hand, giving him authority.

  My choices were just as valid as his.

  That should have made me happy, or at least satisfied. But all it did was take away the rationale I’d come to rely on—that all my work failed because it didn’t have the Prophecy behind it. Now his didn’t, either. And the only person I could blame for my own failures was myself.

  Maybe I’d suspected it all along.

  He shifted a little.

  “Gemma . . .” he said hesitantly. “About the healing wing. I wasn’t trying . . . to do the same thing as my mother. I just wanted the pain to stop for a little while. I didn’t mean for it to go that far.”

  “I’m sorry that’s what it took,” I said. “I’m sorry I couldn’t help you more.”

  “You’ve always helped. I know I haven’t always been grateful, but you’ve always helped me. And I know . . .” His gaze dropped to the letters in his lap. “I know that’s what you were trying to do here.” He rifled a few of them. “Are these all of them?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “And when we got here . . . that was the first time you and Colm met in person?”

  “Yes.”

  “So there was nothing . . .”

  I was silent, and for some reason my heart was sadder than when we’d begun.

  “Yes,” I said. “There was something between us. I didn’t realize it until the past day or so. But the thing is . . .” I ran the back of my hand across my eyes. “He listens. From the first letter, he listened. He answered my questions and expanded on my thoughts. We were in sync right away. And so . . . instead of coming to you, instead of trusting you with this thing, I went to him instead.”

  The fire popped slightly, spitting a few sparks.

  “But these are all the letters?” he asked again.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you love him?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t know him well enough to love him. But I do trust him. And for that, I feel like I’ve let you down.”

  He shifted. “You’re allowed to trust other people.”

  “At your expense?” I asked.

  He drew in a breath and smoothed the letters out in his lap. “You know what Ellamae did on my ship while we hunted you down in Cyprien?”

  “She broke her lock a few times, didn’t she?”

  “Well yes, but aside from that,” he said. “She was questioned over and over, sometimes by the Prelate, sometimes by the ambassador. But twice, I questioned her, alone. And somehow, by the time both sessions were through, she was questioning me. Asking me why this and how that—when did we start tracking the Prophecy, how did we know exactly what it meant, why did I drink that foul-smelling tincture all the time. And . . . she listened, too. Oh, she was brisk about it, don’t get me wrong—you know how she is. I’m sure her kindest opinion of me is that I’m a reckless idiot.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “But at least she listened.”

  I nodded, staring at the fire. “Folk don’t often listen to us.”

  “No,” he said thoughtfully. “They obey, but they don’t listen.” He turned his head to me. “And, it seems, somewhere along the line, we stopped listening to each other, too. We grew apart. Didn’t we?”

  “Folk pried us apart,” I said.

  I could feel his gaze locked on my face.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “We were dangerous together,” I said. “We made big things happen when we combined our efforts. The origin of meteors, the reclassification of the cicada—those were warning flags. Together, we were able to change science. W
e could have changed the country.” Unstoppable. “And that was dangerous. The Prelates have always had a vision for the Prophecy. It needed to be upheld. And so we needed to be separated.”

  He was silent. I didn’t turn to meet his eyes.

  “I . . . don’t believe that. I can’t believe that.” His voice changed—he repeated his words, but they took on a new meaning, one of dawning comprehension. “I . . . I can’t believe it.”

  “I can,” I said.

  “It’s . . . sinister—laughably so.” The creeping shock in his voice conveyed no mirth whatsoever. “It’s fairy-tale-villain stuff.”

  “It’s what the Prophecy necessitated,” I said. “I’m sure Shaula believed she was helping to guide you back to your true purpose, away from my bad influence. She doesn’t think she’s evil—nobody does. She believes she’s helping you do what you aren’t strong enough to do on your own.”

  His silence was longer this time, his gaze drifting over to the fireplace. “She’s wrong,” he said finally. “That’s what you’ve always done.”

  I pressed my lips together. My throat started to tighten. Stress crying.

  He shifted sharply, turning back to me. “I’m sorry, Gemma. I do wish things had gone differently here—that you had been ready to trust me with Colm’s first letter. But I know why you didn’t. And I’m sorry for pushing us to that point. You’ve been there for me since the beginning. You were there when my father died, when my mother died. You were there when we took the lake and when we lost it. Despite everything, through everything, you were there for me.”

  His voice kicked a little, suddenly infused with a ghost of his old excitement. “And now . . . Gemma, now it doesn’t have to be like that. I’m not in charge anymore. I don’t have to be. The stupid Prophecy, the petroglyphs, Shaula—it’s all different now. I’m still king—I’m just not a special one. And that means I can just as easily transfer my power to you. Gemma . . .” It was as if all the ramifications of the past five years were sweeping up to him at once, and I actually leaned away slightly as his words tumbled out. “You can lead Alcoro—let me help you. We can be strong together again—we can go back to how we were before.”