Of the Divine

by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

  Naples raised his brows at that. Even he knew the Silmari made the best steel in the world, but the Osei strictly regulated the trade of any iron-based material across the ocean. Cyan claimed iron could repel Osei, and maybe even poison them; many Silmari wore an iron ring in order to differentiate themselves from the shapeshifting wyrm. That was easier to do in Silmat, which had vast iron mines, than it was in Kavet, which had exhausted its meager iron veins centuries ago.

  In short, this little blade was probably even more valuable than one of Naples’ hot foxfire spheres.

  “Thank you,” he managed to say, past his nerves and surprise.

  “We don’t need as many tools and accoutrements as the old magic and cold magic users, but a good blade is indispensable. Now, it’s time to work.”

  And work they did.

  The Terra wasn’t much of a teacher; she rarely bothered to explain her actions in words, but instead demonstrated a technique and impatiently waited for him to replicate it, or simply threw power at him and sat back to see if he would drown. The only time she was cautious was with the spell for the Osei, where she took charge, ruthlessly using his power to supplement her own instead of letting him anywhere near the delicate strands of the enchantment itself.

  At one point, she stepped out to consult with Terre Jaune and left Naples alone in the ritual room, saying on her way through the door, “Look around if you wish. I may be a while.”

  The door disappeared behind her, leaving him to realize she hadn’t yet explained how to open it. He wondered how hard it would be to figure out if she didn’t come back, but decided not to worry yet—not when he was surrounded by so many fascinating tools and tomes.

  He immediately went to the bookshelf, where he found the Terra’s work journal. He shook his head as he flipped through it; the notes were irregular, full of half thoughts, ellipses, and questions. Naples would have been ordered to sit down and rewrite the entire thing if it were his journal.

  He grinned, realizing he might never be forced to revise another ritual report for his mother’s discerning editorial eye. Then the smile slipped, as he considered how he would tell her he had found other instruction and was going to leave the Cobalt Hall.

  More protests from the Quin, the Terra had written at one point. They accuse us of stealing our power from the dead . . . from the divine and infernal realms. Fools. No one claims it’s evil or even theft when a flower uses energy from the sun or a mill uses energy from a river. The sun and the water are not lessened and the flower and mill benefit. What does the source of the power matter?

  Naples snickered. He too was tired of that debate. No one knew where a sorcerer’s power came from, why cold power had appeared a few decades ago or why yet another form of magic had accompanied the Terra to Kavet. The surge of new talents had, unfortunately, been matched by an exponential increase in the number of ignorant and judgmental non–magic users in the population.

  Naples hesitated again on a scrap of prose near the beginning of the bulky leather-bound journal that had nothing to do with sorcery: Weeks of false labor . . . finally rewarded with such a tiny creature. My Verte. We nearly lost him so many times. The midwife says he never turned, that he was born with the cord around his neck. I don’t remember it. If not for Antioch, I would have bled to death on the birthing table while Jaune struggled to keep our son alive. I would not have blamed him. I will battle the Abyss itself to keep this frail child—

  Naples snapped the journal shut hastily. He had only been looking for the Terra’s notes on her sorcery experiments, not to snoop on such a personal memory.

  “Thank you, Antioch,” he murmured as he put the journal back on the shelf, wondering who he or she had been. The name sounded familiar. A healer from Cobalt Hall, perhaps?

  No, that wasn’t right. He was strangely certain it wasn’t a name he had heard spoken about at the Hall as a well-respected older member, or someone he had known as a young child who had passed away or moved on. In fact, the more he focused on the name, the more he noticed creeping tension tightening his back and shoulders.

  Nothing conscious. Nothing he could explain. As if it were a name he had heard whispered in a dream—or a nightmare.

  “It’s nothing,” he said aloud, his own voice seeming loud in the Terra’s study. He was jumping at shadows.

  Chapter 7

  Dahlia

  After two days of travel, and most of an afternoon riding uphill, Dahlia watched the sun sink into the far horizon with alarm. She didn’t want to be caught on these isolated roads after dark.

  “When do you expect to camp for the night?” she asked, trying to keep the doubt from her voice. She wasn’t sure if they were traveling as fast as Celadon had expected. Dahlia was confident on horseback, but hadn’t ever spent an entire day on one. Celadon sat comfortably in the saddle, like a man who traveled long distances often. If many of the breaks they took were for her benefit alone, it may have affected his timing.

  “We’ll reach the Overlook Inn soon, just over the crest of this hill,” he promised. “They’re expecting us. With weather this clear, you’ll be able to see the city from there,” he added.

  At the top of the promised hill Dahlia paused, reins slack in one hand as she idly patted her horse’s mane and drank in the sight before her with unquenchable thirst.

  Her hometown of Eiderlee was a large, sprawling village in acreage, but it was small in population. Even the “busy” town center held few imposing buildings; the school where Dahlia had worked and the attached chapel were the largest structure, though they lost in a size competition with the great silos and barns in the surrounding farmland.

  The city of Mars was still hours away, but Dahlia could see it now stretched out beneath her, at the heart of a spider-web of converging roads that wound out from the darkness of dense trees. The rusty sunset painted the city’s tangled streets and crowded buildings in sharp angles and shadows.

  Farthest away, Dahlia could see the misty edge where the land ended and the sea began. Fog obscured the ships in the Mars harbor from her eyes, but she could see them in her mind.

  She scanned the skies instinctively, expecting to see winged figures—but that was silly. The Osei could often be spotted from the south and west banks of Kavet because those bordered territory that belonged to the giant wyrm, but there was no reason they would be flying here off the north bank. These waters belonged to human sailors.

  “The Overlook Inn has a sign in the lobby that claims this is the highest point in Kavet,” Celadon said. “After this, the land falls away until the city itself is just above sea level. If it weren’t for the tree farms and natural forests between here and there, one good storm could wash half of Kavet down this slope to bury the city, royal house and all.” The quirk of his mouth suggested that wasn’t an entirely unattractive notion.

  I won’t let him ruin this for me. “We’ll be there tomorrow?”

  “Late morning, most likely.”

  From here, the great city looked like a toy she could reach out and play with. Dahlia wished they could push on until they reached it, but trusted Celadon that it was farther away than it seemed.

  The Overlook Inn was inviting, squat and square except for sloped roofs designed to shed the snow, ice, and rain. Its door was painted a white so pure and crisp it was startling against the rest of the sedate, red-brown exterior. Its side yard boasted a trio of apple trees, their newly opened blossoms an explosion of pink against the sunset.

  Anywhere in Kavet, a white door indicated welcome and a safe place to stay. There was no formal inn in Eiderlee, but farmers with extra space they were willing to rent to travelers often painted their doors or doorframes. Out of habit, Dahlia looked for the nearest window and saw an oyster shell, turned with its iridescent side up, on the inside sill. That more discreet sign, hidden by the curtain once inside and thus easy to miss unless one looked for it, indicated the inn had a Quin owner, or at least was welcoming to Quin guests.

  Despite t
hose signs of safety, anxiety made her jittery and restless at the Inn the way she hadn’t been the night before, when their first long day of travel had ended with them still surrounded by farmland and they had stayed overnight with a shepherd who knew both Dahlia and Celadon. Surrounded by the shepherd’s large, rambunctious family during dinner and then by his sleeping eight-, nine-, and twelve-year-old daughters that evening, there had been no space for nerves.

  The inn was comfortable and clean, Dahlia supposed, but she awoke the next morning feeling less rested than when she had gone to bed. She met Celadon downstairs and hated him a bit for the brightness in his step.

  “I’ll admit, I’m looking forward to being home,” Celadon sighed, once they had saddled their beasts, mounted up, and started on the final, downhill path to the city. “I’ve been away too long this time.”

  “How long have you been traveling?” She should have known he hadn’t made the three-day journey from Mars to Eiderlee just to escort her to the city, but she had been too focused on her own plans to consider what else might have brought him to the area.

  “Six, almost seven weeks now,” Celadon answered. “I spent the end of winter in Wyrm’s Shadow, or what used to be Wyrm’s Shadow. I’m bringing a petition to the city from the residents asking to change the town’s name to Quin Towers, in honor of the completion of the monastery there.”

  Dahlia was familiar with the town, and had even been there once. Wyrm’s Shadow, so named because it was situated a stone’s throw from territory owned by the Third Noble House of the Osei, was on the far southern tip of Kavet. It offered poor anchorage for ships even if the Osei hadn’t controlled the waters off the coast, and the land wasn’t as fertile as places like Eiderlee, but it was the birthplace of the Followers of the Quinacridone—perhaps because it was so far away from the capital city, and thus received little attention from the royal house.

  “Have you visited since they’ve started working on the monastery?” Celadon asked. “It’s an incredible building, an architectural wonder. I know you said you’re sick of teaching, but with your credentials, you would be an incredible asset. You could create your own curriculum, and teach advanced topics that might interest you more.”

  “Mmm.” Dahlia had already been invited—repeatedly—to join the newly rising monastic order, so she could dedicate her life to teaching good Quin children while also helping manage the flocks and fields the order kept. Her parents had considered it an opportunity and an honor, and had encouraged her to accept despite how far away it would take her. Realizing her noncommittal response was hardly polite, she added, “I’ve been once, but at that point they only had plans and part of the foundation laid. Is that why you were visiting?”

  “Partly,” Celadon said. “I also had a meeting with one of the princes from the Third Noble House of the Osei. He wanted to confirm that we did not intend to create docks that would trespass on their waters.”

  “You spoke with . . .” She trailed off as she imagined standing before one of the Osei and trying to hold a conversation with a creature that massive. One lash of a long, serpentine tail could surely throw a horse and cart across the square, and those talons could rip a man in half like a soggy biscuit. “How?”

  “They’re creatures of pure magic,” Celadon explained, his tone surprised, as if everyone knew this fact. “When they want to communicate with humans, they take human form.”

  That made Maimeri’s outlandish theory of their eating humans even more unlikely.

  Dahlia hoped.

  “Why did he speak to you and not the Terre?”

  “The Terre don’t pay any attention to that place as long as they get their taxes paid,” Celadon scoffed. “The Osei would never have waited for one of that line to drag themselves away from their parties and politics to meet with them.”

  If her incredulity hadn’t put Dahlia so off-balance, she never would have brought up the Terre. She knew better. Celadon, who normally seemed so affable and relaxed, tensed and practically snarled whenever the royal house was mentioned.

  “You were born there, weren’t you?” she asked, recalling one of the many stories she had heard about Celadon and trying to return the conversation to safer waters. “Why did you move to Mars?” If you hate the royal house and all it stands for so much, why do you choose to live in the capital city?

  “I can accomplish more in the city,” Celadon said. “Besides, my youngest sister, Ginger, is apprenticed to one of the best chandlers in the country, who unfortunately keeps his workshop and storefront in Mars. She needs someone to keep an eye on her, and my aunt is too busy minding her own store to manage.” He frowned, as if imagining the trouble the girl might have found or created while he was away.

  “Do they bother with Festival here?” she asked as the city gradually became larger, trying to keep the ambivalence from her tone. In Eiderlee, the spring agricultural celebration was a light-hearted, jovial time, full of games for the children, the unearthing and exhibition of every craft and odd talent possessed in theirs and the surrounding villages, and late-night barn dances. Dahlia had been grateful to dodge it this year, since it was also a time famous for meddling matchmakers, but now she felt a nostalgic pang. It was hard to imagine a city with no green places celebrating the blooming fruit trees, the birth of spring lambs, the return of the eider ducks for whom Eiderlee was named, or new growth in the fields.

  Celadon’s mouth pinched into a disapproving line. “Yes,” he answered, each word measured, “but it isn’t the same. The city fills with foreigners and locals alike carousing. For a young lady like yourself, it’s a good time to stay inside.”

  Young lady.

  She only realized she had scoffed aloud when Celadon shot her a sidelong look. She said mildly, “I’m twenty-four.” And you’re not much older, mister!

  “I’m aware,” Celadon replied. “And if you pardon my bluntness, a celebration where any sailor in port can buy an enchantment to make him irresistible is not one where a pretty woman is safe.”

  The warning—and compliment—both would have been easier to accept if they hadn’t been spoken in such a patronizing tone.

  Perhaps seeing the pique on her face, Celadon continued, “If you want to see for yourself, you’re welcome to come with me. I lead a group from the local parish that goes each year to try to educate people, and protest the dangerous use of sorcery inside city limits.”

  “I’ll consider it.” She could start the evening with them. If it looked as dangerous as Celadon described, she could stay with their group or ask someone to escort her home. If this was just a matter of the same kind of Quin overprotectiveness she had occasionally encountered at home—well, she was a free woman and had the right to leave to explore on her own any time.

  She was so deep in thought, sifting through all she had heard from people at home and all Celadon had told her, she almost didn’t notice where they were until he said, “We’ll leave the horses here. They aren’t allowed inside city limits.”

  She started, lifting her gaze to discover they were at a large, well-maintained stable at the edge of the city. Two grooms approached; one politely took the reins of Celadon’s horse while he dismounted, and the other offered a hand to Dahlia, which she declined. The day she couldn’t get on and off a horse on her own was the day she would decide she had been in the city too long.

  “Isn’t Ash usually working this time of day?” Celadon asked, one hand lingering on his horse’s neck possessively.

  The groom in front of Celadon shook his head, and shot a concerned look to the other, who dismissed him with a wave. “Ash quit about a month ago,” he answered, voice clipped. “Would you like to hire a porter to deliver your bags to your residence?”

  When Celadon didn’t answer, but continued looking around as if hunting for something, Dahlia said, “Yes, please.” Celadon had explained earlier that they would probably hire someone with a cart after they gave up the horses, so she knew it was an expected expense and not an extr
avagance. She didn’t fancy carrying everything on her back, no matter what bee had found its way into Celadon’s bonnet.

  The groom—head groom, Dahlia decided, based on the way he had dismissed the other—looked at her and gave a strained smile, then summoned another groom to start undressing Dahlia’s horse.

  “Is that all, sir?” he asked Celadon, who still had his hands on the reins as if he might refuse to turn the horse over. “If you would prefer to see to your own horse’s care, that is of course your right.”

  Celadon looked at Dahlia as if evaluating his options. Now that they were finally at the city, she was anxious to be off and explore, but courtesy made her say, “I don’t mind tending the horses, if you want to. I always have before.” She knew people who were adamant that a rider should always perform all pre-and post-riding care himself, even when given the option of professional help, but hadn’t expected Celadon to be one of them.

  As if her permission had unfrozen him, Celadon said gruffly to the head groom, “I’d like them in the old stable. Is there space?”

  “Plenty,” the groom said, the expression on his face blandly controlled, “and the monthly fee is less. Would I be presumptive to assume you would also prefer not to make use of the other upgraded facilities?”

  “Not presumptive. Thank you.”

  For a moment, Dahlia thought he was being cheap—frugal, she told herself. Then she spotted the sign on the barn door, only half visible from where they stood, announcing the stable had been upgraded to include the new warming foxfire to help maintain a steady and comfortable temperature for the livestock. Once she knew to look for it, it was easy to see the enchantment’s tell-tale glow from within the building.

  Sorcery.