“And you won’t.” Dahlia tried to keep judgment from her voice as she spoke the words. Was she in the crowd Celadon referred to, the ones who cared more for Terre Verte’s return than the cost?
“I don’t know,” Celadon replied. “That’s what frightens me. When I first reached for the palace door, I had that same sense, like there was a voice in my head telling me no. I let them convince me it was the right thing to do because they know more about magic than I do. Now that voice is ten times stronger and I still don’t trust myself.”
She couldn’t see what Celadon could see, so she fell back on the same method she had used over the past six weeks, when others asked for her leadership on a matter she knew others were better equipped to handle. She asked, “What do you think is the right thing to do?”
He didn’t answer at first.
Dahlia pressed. “You’ve told me all this. Maybe because there’s no one else you can tell, but I like to think it’s because you have some trust in my judgment.”
He nodded. “You’ve led Kavet this last month and a half. Yes, I trust your judgment. And your strength.”
“So tell me: without fearing what other people will push you to do, or how the others in your order will respond—or those of the Napthol—what do you feel is the right course of action?”
Again, he was quiet for long moments. His gaze traveled back to Terre Verte.
“Celadon?”
“There isn’t an inch of me that doesn’t believe I should put a pillow over his face and send him back to that other world,” Celadon replied. His voice was so soft Dahlia could barely hear him—but it was absolutely sure.
Chapter 32
Henna
Henna brought Naples to the kitchen entrance so they could avoid the constant crowd. She had briefly mentioned that the front areas of the Cobalt Hall had been used for the council’s work the last few weeks, but she doubted Naples fully understood the scope. Naples was used to the Cobalt Hall being an inviolate sanctuary to members of the Order of Napthol. This political incursion would take some getting used to.
Her goal was to find Maddy first. Maddy would want to see her son, and Henna desperately wanted to know the results of their search of the palace.
Fortunately, Maddy was in the kitchen, bouncing Clay on her knee as he whimpered in toddler-unhappiness. Her eyes were cast down to her son, heavy with exhaustion, but she glanced up at the opening door and her face lit with joy and relief.
“You found him,” she breathed, coming to her feet and lifting Clay into her arms with barely a wince. “Naples!”
Maddy threw her arms around her son, though Clay attempted to wriggle back with uncharacteristic shyness toward his big brother. Henna saw Naples flinch, as so many of their order did lately, but he returned the embrace fully.
“I’m sorry I frightened you,” he said. “I didn’t mean to be gone so long.” He touched Clay’s head affectionately, then pulled back when the toddler’s gray Terre eyes widened and his lips started to quiver in a way they all knew could be prelude to a tantrum. Six weeks of separation was a long time in an almost-two-year-old’s life. “I’ll explain all I can once—”
Naples broke off, looking past his mother. Henna automatically turned to see what he was looking at.
Across the room, Celadon stood at the hearth, frozen in the act of spooning porridge into a bowl. Dahlia had a hand on his arm, as if she had been about to urge him from the room.
Naples shrugged off his mother’s hug and observed dryly, “This is an interesting happy family.”
“We never would have made it into the palace without them,” Maddy defended hastily, while the two men looked daggers at each other.
Henna could see on Naples’ face the battle between his desire to say something nasty to drive the outsiders away and his desperate need for answers. At last he swallowed and said, “You got into the palace. Did you find the Terre? The Terra, is she—What did you find?”
“I’m sorry to confirm that Terre Jaune and Terra Sarcelle are both dead,” Maddy said, only the faintest hitch in her voice. “From the looks of it, they have been dead for weeks, since the time the palace was sealed.” In the silence that followed, Maddy added in a small voice, “The spell is too old for me to make out, and Celadon doesn’t have the training. But if I had to guess, I would say he gave his life for his son’s.”
Henna felt the floor shift, like a ship deck during stormy seas. “Verte?” she whispered.
“He’s alive?” Naples said, his voice hollow. He clutched at the doorframe to steady himself. “He’s alive?”
Maddy nodded. “Dreadfully weak and still injured. I think Jaune—” Her voice hitched on the name. “I think Verte’s father must have put up those shields to keep his son’s soul from escaping. To keep him from dying, and to keep scavengers from the other planes away. Only it took all his energy, and when it was done, Verte didn’t have the strength to break the shields, so he’s just . . . been there . . .”
Henna gasped in horror as the truth struck her. “We left him there. We left him trapped there for weeks, hurt and starving and—”
“None of you knew,” Celadon asserted. “You had no reason to think he could possibly be alive, or that Terre Jaune could have created such a trap.”
“Since when do you defend members of the Napthol?” Naples said sharply.
“Shut your Abyss-damned mouth,” Celadon snapped back. “I may not approve of sorcery, but at least I’ve been here, helping, while you’ve been fucking around and—”
As Henna’s mind went to the wash of blood she had found at Argent’s farm and her instant certainty that no one could have survived it, Naples crossed the room in a bound and slammed both hands against Celadon’s chest to shove him against the wall. “You have no idea what I—”
Before anyone else could intervene, Celadon struck out, not physically, but with a burst of power that echoed in Henna’s head, eerily familiar to the one that had pushed her away from the palace doors. This time it was Naples who went flying, white streaks of ice forming across his skin.
“Never again do you get to put your hands on me,” Celadon spat.
“Why?” Naples growled, pushing himself up and stalking back toward the Quin. There was a knife in his hand now. Where had it come from? “You seemed to be having fun before we were interrupted last time.”
“Stop it!” Dahlia shrieked. Everyone in the room jumped, and Naples and Celadon both looked at her.
Dahlia stepped boldly between the two men, eyes flashing with the same irritation Henna remembered seeing when she had followed Celadon and Maddy out of the Turquoise and berated them about their petty arguments.
“Naples, put away the knife,” Dahlia said, in the same soft but inarguable voice she used to give instructions at assembly meetings.
Naples glared at her. Celadon shifted his body, clearly not wanting to undermine Dahlia’s attempt to end the conflict, but fighting the instinct to put himself protectively between her and the hostile sorcerer.
Dahlia didn’t know what she was facing.
Henna had assumed Naples’ knife was some kind of work tool when she saw him strap it on, so hadn’t given it a second thought. But now, having seen it better—an elegant, waved steel blade, clearly designed for ritual—she could only imagine what Naples planned to do with it in this situation. He didn’t intend to throw punches.
“Naples,” Henna said, adding her voice to Dahlia’s command, “put it away.”
Naples hesitated, too long. Then, thank the wind and sea and all the powers beyond, he tucked the knife back into the sheath at his waist before disdainfully brushing frost from his arms and the folds of his shirt.
“You’re becoming remarkably adept for a Quin who swears magic is the bane of civilization,” he remarked to Celadon.
“And you haven’t changed at all,” Celadon replied.
“Naples, maybe you should get some rest,” Henna suggested firmly. She had to get these two men out of t
he same room.
“I’ve had plenty of rest,” Naples spat. “It’s a shock finding rats in the kitchen, is all.” He deliberately moved past Celadon; the preacher held his ground as Naples examined the food on the hearth, then served himself a heaping bowl of porridge.
Maddy handed Clay to Dahlia, who instinctively moved to cradle the toddler protectively, then stepped between her older son and the preacher. They weren’t actively fighting anymore, but Henna could understand why Maddy wanted to add a barrier between them—and why she didn’t want to be holding Clay while she did it. “If it weren’t for Celadon, we never would have broken through the shields on the palace,” Maddy repeated, adding, “All your power wasn’t enough. Neither was mine, or Henna’s.”
“A mortal can’t fight the Numini,” Naples murmured thoughtfully.
“What?” Maddy asked.
Naples shook his head. “Never mind. I’m going to eat upstairs, and then maybe take that nap.” He turned to go, only turning back at the last minute to say, “Mother . . . I did miss you.”
Maddy nodded, her expression torn between gratitude for her son’s return, and distress over his behavior.
Naples didn’t stay long enough to hear her say, “Welcome home, son. Welcome home.”
As soon as Naples walked out, Clay began to weep. Dahlia held him closer, rocking him and whispering to him, unmindful of the tears and snot that marred her shoulder.
“Don’t wanna go away,” Clay whimpered.
“You’re not going anywhere,” Dahlia said.
“Kwicwone said go away.”
At first the word sounded like nonsense, but then Henna ran the sounds through her mind again, slowly. “Quinacridone?” she asked.
Clay’s apparent power, combined with his inability to communicate his thoughts, continued to be both frustrating and ominous. He was as likely as any toddler to babble randomly, but he had also, somehow, been afraid of the Abyssi for hours before the Terra had summoned it. Henna and Maddy had both been driving themselves mad since then, trying to decode the child’s words, which tended to be as inscrutable as rune stones in mundane hands.
This time, Clay nodded, seeming excited she had understood the word.
“Do you mean Celadon?” Henna asked. Celadon was the person most likely to be referred to as some variant of “Quin” around Clay, but Henna couldn’t see him threatening a small child, even before he had gained his recent measure of calm cooperation.
“No!” Clay shouted, his favorite word these days. “Cel’don pretty.”
A dry chuckle drew Henna’s attention to where the subject of their conversation was still standing, leaning against the doorframe.
“Thanks,” he said, sounding tired. He looked up at Maddy and added, “I’m sorry about that. I didn’t mean to do anything so . . . extreme.”
Henna had never told Maddy how she had found Celadon and Naples together that day, and to her knowledge Celadon had never shared it with anyone, either. Given the limited situations in which she could imagine the reserved, socially staid preacher ending up body-pressed against a male Order of Napthol sorcerer ten years his junior, she suspected his response wasn’t extreme at all.
“I didn’t realize you knew how to do anything like that.” Dahlia tried to keep her tone carefully neutral, but couldn’t quite manage it.
“I . . .” Celadon looked at the two sorcerers in the room with the wariness of a cornered dog. “I don’t know how. It just happened.”
“When you’re ready,” Maddy said, “I can help you understand how it happened, and stop it from happening unexpectedly. You’re safe enough in the Cobalt Hall, since any of us can step in if needed, but I don’t think you would want one of your Quin followers to see you do something like that in the middle of an argument.”
Clay hiccupped again, then said, “Brek’st? Pease?”
Celadon accepted the distraction with obvious relief, looking away from Maddy and scanning the kitchen for Clay’s food. Soon, Henna thought, he might decide that accepting help to control his power was worth it, but he wasn’t ready yet.
He spotted the toddler’s plate on the counter and asked Maddy, “Is this his?”
“Is it cool now?” Maddy asked. “He’s extremely sensitive to anything hot.”
“Brek’st!” Clay said again. “Brek’st!”
“Looks like an omelet, little guy.” Celadon quickly checked the temperature, moving as confidently as if they were in his own kitchen. “That’s related to the power, isn’t it?” he asked, his tone overly casual. “People with cold power don’t mind the cold, but are sensitive to heat. People with hot power can stand a lot of heat, but not the cold. And his power is like the Terre’s.” As he spoke he placed Clay’s breakfast and spoon in front of Maddy’s chair.
“Thank you,” Maddy said, sinking into the chair with Clay on her lap. “Yes, that’s right. There’s no way for us to test his strength when he’s this young, but Jaune said . . . he said Verte was like that, too.”
Celadon nodded and his questions stopped, though Henna could see the thoughts continuing to percolate behind his eyes.
Henna wanted to stay, to tell Maddy more about what she had seen when she found Naples, but she didn’t want to share the story in front of Celadon and Dahlia. Instead she leaned down and embraced Maddy lightly. “Be gentle with Naples when you talk to him. I’m not sure he knows what’s happened to him.”
Argent had said Naples had “lost time.” Henna suspected that was an understatement.
“I will,” Maddy said. “Verte is in the second room in the recovery hall,” she added, referring to a handful of rooms kept for guests with serious illnesses or injuries who required more than a few minutes of time from the Cobalt Hall’s healers.
Straightening, Henna nodded. “How . . . how is he?” she asked. She couldn’t help remembering the blood splashed around Naples’ body, or the wounds that had killed Helio. Could she stand to see her lover like that?
“He isn’t well,” Maddy answered with gentle honesty. “We haven’t been able to get him to wake yet, or respond to us at all. He was trapped for weeks in the palace, without anything to sustain him but the magic. But Jaune kept him alive. If he could do that much, I have to believe we have the power to do the rest.”
Henna nodded, her heart racing. Maddy hadn’t said “I do believe,” but “I have to believe.” Henna too found she needed to believe that. Otherwise, she didn’t know how she would face the guilt of having left him behind, or the terrible, anxious hope for his return.
Faith was all she had. She hurried to his side.
Chapter 33
Naples
Did it kill Helio?
That thought, above almost all others, left Naples unable to close his eyes to sleep. Henna had kept her description of Helio’s death vague, either to protect Naples’ sensibilities or to avoid reliving it herself, but the fact that she believed Helio had been killed by the same power that left Naples bloodied and unconscious in Argent’s house told him all he needed to know. Henna and the rest of the Order thought some kind of “wild magic” was responsible for the death, but they didn’t know an Abyssi was walking free in the mortal realm.
He stood up, dressed, and climbed the stairs to the temple. Later he would go see Terre Verte, but he had work to do before he could bear to stand before his prince. Also later, he would go to the Terra’s private ritual room, since almost everything he knew about Abyssi and their realm had come from her. But he didn’t have the nerve for that yet, either.
The Terra is dead. She was probably dying when I saw her last. “I need to rest” was the last thing she said to me. Maybe the last thing she said to anyone. I walked away from her.
Terre Jaune is dead. He put everything into trying to heal his son.
Helio is dead.
He hadn’t known Helio well; their powers had been too diametrically opposite, so Naples had never studied with him. But he was a familiar face now lost, in a time when too many touchsto
nes had gone missing.
Did I kill Helio? Would I remember if I had?
He hadn’t been in the city. He had been twenty miles away in Brockridge.
Why would the Abyssi have killed Helio?
What else could have killed him?
He was alone in the temple, which seemed odd at this hour, but lucky, since the methods the Terra had taught him were often at odds with the ones the Order advocated. He needed to find a way to protect himself against the Abyssi. Eventually he needed to find a way to throw it out of the mortal realm entirely, but for now, he would settle for some way to keep it from overwhelming and overpowering him.
He thought back to the charm he had made Cyan to ward against the Osei. Could he use similar magic against the Abyssi?
Would it have helped Verte if he had been wearing a charm against the Osei?
Why did I waste my efforts on a sailor, when I knew the royal family was—No, they knew what they were doing. It would have been presumptive . . .
“Damn,” he whispered. Too many stupid and terrible things had happened without his having time to process them. He knew they only seemed so close together because he had lost time, the time the others had used to mourn and recover from the shock.
He forced his mind back to the problem at hand. He had used iron against the Osei. What was an Abyssi’s weakness?
He paced the temple before the shelves of tools. He knew what nourished an Abyssi: blood, heat, pain, and lust. He knew it couldn’t eat anything but newly killed flesh and blood, and that once a carcass was cold it was what the Abyssi called “dirt” once again.
Of the Divine Page 27
