With the Abyss pounding in his brain, his own common sense sounded like an alien voice, distant and unfamiliar.
He needed to hunt. No, he needed to eat. He was showing all the signs of power addiction, which wasn’t surprising since he suspected he had gone weeks without ever properly grounding his power and reaffirming his tie to the mortal world. The edgy hostility would pare back if he could pull his power in.
You need help.
He couldn’t ask for help.
Finding Ginger poking about in the kitchen lifted some of his simmering irritation. When she had trudged home late the night before, he had worried he would only ever see her again when she came to take the brand. Now he smiled to see her.
“Morning,” he said, using a yawn to hide his grin and putting a pleasant tone into his voice with less effort than he feared it would take. It helped that his relationship with Ginger was neither antagonistic nor sexual. His power had no interest in her, so he was able to more easily view her as a human being would. “It’s chaos in the next room, if you hadn’t noticed.”
“Probably my brother, with more of his high-handed holier-than-thou big-brother-knows-best-so-bow-down-and-worship propaganda,” Ginger spat, with enough venom to take him aback.
“I take it your conversation with him last night went . . . badly.”
Ginger nodded to the corner, where a battered travel bag sat. “I can stay here, right?”
The last word was soft and desperate, and made his heart ache for her. His irrational rage at Cyan’s rejection had been amplified by his magic, but it had originally been caused by genuine pain. The look in the sailor’s eyes when he turned from solicitous lover to skeptical accuser had been worse than a knife. What would it have been like to face that from his own family?
“You can stay here. I’m sorry about—”
“People don’t choose to have magic, right?” Ginger demanded. “I mean, I could choose to take the brand, and be rid of it that way, but there’s nothing I did that gave it to me.”
He shook his head. “Some people just have it.”
I have spoken to you and crafted you like a blade since your earliest memories.
“Celadon says being around magic users can cause it.”
Naples shrugged. “That might be true. There do seem to be more sorcerers born in areas where they gather and study. But we don’t know anything for sure.” Modigliani would probably know, but Naples never had the sense to ask any such scholarly questions when in the Abyssi’s intoxicating presence.
Ginger sat down hard in one of the chairs. “Well if that’s the case, it’s Celadon’s fault, isn’t it? He has magic. And he’s got Serves on his side, now, too.” At Naples’ confused look, she explained. “Serves was courting me. He was worried I was so late getting home last night, so my aunt said he could wait with her for me to come home. I told him where I had been, and he and Celadon both started yelling at each other, and it was like when Dahlia left.” She bit her lip, and added in a soft voice, “Celadon really doesn’t like you.”
“I know.” There was an understatement.
“Serves said a lot of nasty things about you, too.”
“He’s a sailor?” Naples asked, assuming the ignorant fool in the next room and Ginger’s Serves were the same man.
“Sailor and doctor,” Ginger answered, with what looked like a habitual smile, which quickly faded.
“There are a lot of true things he might have said, and a few nasty not-true things,” Naples admitted, remembering Cyan’s accusation that he had raped and tried to kill Celadon. Given Serves’ occupation and the fact that he’d been in the Cremnitz home at the time, the accusations he had slung about probably had less to do with Celadon and more to do with Naples having fucked half the sailors in Kavet. The Followers of the Quinacridone frowned on such libidinous behavior, especially when it included two men. “But whatever he said, it looks like you decided to come back here.”
“Yeah, well . . .” Ginger paused, and had thankfully turned back to the cabinets when she said, “Whatever. It’s not like you’re having sex with my brother.”
The expression she missed on his face was paired with a sudden bout of coughing from the doorway. Naples turned, with an over-solicitous, “Mother. That cough sounds . . . terrible . . .”
Maddy drew a wheezing breath, coughed once more, and cleared her throat. How much had Henna told her about what she had seen? Enough, apparently, that she had tried to smother an inappropriate laugh.
“Yes, came on me very suddenly. Just then.”
When she sat, though, the wince that crossed her face was genuine.
“Are you all right?” Naples asked. Damn it, Henna had said many of the others were afflicted with these power-driven wounds, but it had never occurred to him to worry about his own mother.
She nodded. Naples saw the lie in it, but she was his mother. If she felt the need to hide her pain at that moment, to appear strong to Ginger and perhaps to him, he couldn’t force her to do otherwise.
“Ginger, it’s good to see you here again,” she said instead. “Are you hiding from the foolish debates in the next room, too?”
“The shipyard debates aren’t foolish,” Ginger retorted. “Jade is a good captain, but he’s an aristocrat, and a lot of sailors object that he was given his position and didn’t earn it. If the vote goes with him, a lot of people will wonder if that’s just because Dahlia was behind him, and that will damage his authority even more. Cyan’s considered one of the best prospects. His interest in sorcery makes a lot of the Silmari nervous, but those who have served with him say he is stern but fair.” Her gaze slid to Naples. “Mikva is also vying for the position, but there are rumors that she sailed pirate when she was younger. Some of those rumors work for her, since she knows how to handle herself in a sea fight, but Kavetan and Silmari sailors are mostly men, so her sex works against her, too.” Noticing that both Naples and Maddy were looking at her with surprise, she shrugged and blushed. “Serves talks about the captainship campaigns a lot. I listen. It’s interesting.”
“Would you rather be out there following the debates, then?” Maddy asked. “Or participating? You’re not of age to vote yet, but Gobe forced them to pass a measure saying everyone over the age of twelve has a right to speak.”
Ginger shook her head. “They’re going to elect Jade, especially once the rumor gets out that he’s asked Mikva to serve as his first mate if he wins, or has offered to serve as hers if she does. Whether or not he is the better captain, there’s one thing he can offer that Cyan can’t ever match.” She held up her hand and rubbed three fingers together in a familiar sign for “money.” “He’ll be able to draw credit from the first Silmari-allied port the ship stops in, to repay Kavetan merchants who are providing supplies, and pay for any trade goods we manage to get aboard. That’s probably why Cyan didn’t bother to show.”
It’s not my fault, Naples thought with relief.
“I wonder—” Maddy didn’t finish before she started to cough, for real this time. The racking coughs doubled her over, and when they ended, she left dots of scarlet on the handkerchief she used to blot her lips.
“How bad is it?” Naples asked.
Maddy stared at the crimson smear on the handkerchief, then carefully folded it and tucked it away again. “Not as bad as it looks,” she said.
“Let me see?”
She shook her head. “Healers haven’t been able to do anything.”
“He healed Henna,” Ginger reminded her. “Maybe you should let him try.”
“Henna’s wounds were made with hot power,” Maddy pointed out, with the gentle tones of a teacher correcting a student’s misconceptions.
But when Naples reached to roll up her sleeve, to further reveal the wound he could just barely see past the cuff of her shirt, she didn’t stop him.
Thick bands of ruined flesh twisted their way up her arm, sunken like scars but ashen and chalky-black like frostbite. Naples had met sailors whose
fingertips looked like that, but he had never seen such extensive damage so high up a limb. It wasn’t in patches, as if the skin had been exposed to the cold by a gap in clothing, but in twisting lines as if caused by ropes colder than ice.
There had to be something Naples could do.
He had to swallow twice to control his revulsion and force himself to gently touch his fingertips to the worst of the injuries he could see. Then he closed his eyes, trying to visualize the extent of the damage the way he had with Henna. The blood on her lips meant something inside was hurt.
With anyone else, it would have been impossible without the help of similar magic, but this was his mother. He had been born of this body.
He had barely touched the edge of the silver power he could feel deep within her before a jolt like lightning went through him.
He heard a crash. The thump of something heavy hitting the ground. People calling his name.
When he opened his eyes, he was on the floor. Modigliani was licking his cheek, and Ginger was grasping his hand. Only a heartbeat had passed; his mother was still laboring to push her sore body out of her chair to come to his side.
“Stupid,” the Abyssi said.
“Naples, Naples, talk to me!” his mother said, as she knelt stiffly beside him.
He raised the hand Ginger wasn’t squashing. “I’m okay. That was unexpected.”
“Because you’re stupid,” Modigliani provided. “I wouldn’t let the Numini touch you. Why do you think they would let you touch one of theirs?”
Naples waved away Ginger’s and his mother’s help, wary of touching anyone with cold power at that moment, and stumbled to a chair on his own. Modigliani stayed behind him, wrapping him in his tails to warm him from the chill of divine magic.
“I’m sorry,” Naples said.
“Don’t you dare apologize to me!” his mother snapped, fear making her voice shrill. “And don’t ever try that again or I swear to Numen I will set you over my knee like—”
“Don’t.” His eyes widened. Just for an instant, he had seen her power flare, silver and gold like a halo, visible even to his usually cold-blind eyes.
“Don’t . . . what?” she asked, aware that he wasn’t objecting to her frightened threat.
“Swear to Numen,” he said. He understood a little, suddenly. “One of the Numini is what has its claws in your power. When you invoke them, you make it stronger, and it hurts you more.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Maddy objected, but Naples saw Ginger nod thoughtfully. What he was saying wasn’t far from what the Quin had been warning them all of for years.
“Just . . . don’t,” he said. Everything hurt.
“We should feed,” the Abyssi suggested.
Yes, that would be a good idea.
No. He was going to eat.
He needed to move, though. The kitchen was thick with cold power, like a rising field of static electricity that would shock him if he dared touch anything. He needed to get away from it.
“I’m going to go out for a while,” he announced, pushing himself up. “Maybe I’ll . . .” He trailed off. If this had been a simple case of power exhaustion or addiction, he would have gone to Henna. Could she help him against an Abyssi? “I’m going to the market.” He could find something to eat there. Something that once ran on four legs.
That was his plan, but it wasn’t the central market his feet took him to. Despite the rain, which was no longer cascading down in sheets but still maintained a steady fall, he took familiar streets down to the dockside fishing market.
His once-usual haunts were strange and bleak, a strange juxtaposition of rubble and new construction. The fire had gone out long ago, but his magic responded to the memory of heat trapped in the charred debris that hadn’t been fully removed, and the shadow of soot that remained on buildings that had been near the blaze but hadn’t burned.
One of the few buildings that appeared complete and open was a wharf tavern whose sign read Crawdiddy. The symbol of A’hknet was proudly displayed via a stained-glass panel in the front window that Naples thought he remembered seeing on another building previously; it must have been salvaged from the fire.
Inside, Naples ordered a plate of salmon and a hard cider he barely tasted as he sat alone, listening to a nearby bard singing “The Seduction of Knet,” which described how a “creature of fire” had been wooed and won by a “creature of ice” and transformed into the entity from which the Order of A’hknet took its name. The original Tamari versions of the song never used the words Abyssi or Numini, but Naples had heard translations that did. He shook his head now to hear it, considering all the things Modigliani had said, and trying to imagine what mad circumstance would lead to an Abyssi and a Numini even speaking to each other in reasonable tones, much less bedding each other.
“Naples?”
Lost in thought, Naples hadn’t noticed Cyan’s approach until the sailor stood across the small table, hands on the back of the chair on the other side.
Naples felt himself hunch like a cornered animal, and tried to force his body to relax. “Cyan,” he managed to say, before his throat tightened and he could say no more. It probably sounded curt.
“Can we talk?” Cyan asked.
Naples shrugged, and gestured toward the empty chair.
“You know they’re looking for you at the captainship vote?” Naples asked as Cyan sat down.
“Gobe found me and I sent him back with a message. The vote’s a sham at this point, anyway. It was decided the moment Mikva said her family has a letter of marque that will earn them safe passage through the territory of the Twelfth House, and Jade said the Chanrell fortunes could safely secure any debt the ship incurs before she leaves here. I can’t compete with blood, not for this voyage, so I figured I’d save myself a walk in the pouring rain.”
Naples winced, taking the words many ways. He hadn’t forgotten their conversation about Kavet’s version of nobility, or that Naples was part of it.
“I’m sorry.”
“I am what I am. I’m proud of what I am. I worked my way up to second mate on the Blue Canary on my own merits. I’ll be third on this vessel, for now, but I don’t think Jade will last long as captain. He’ll want solid land under his feet before the year is out.” Cyan shrugged, then sighed. “And you are what you are. I spent a lot of time since I saw you last consulting with A’hknet witches about sorcery. None of them practice your kind of magic, but they knew enough to give me some perspective.”
“And what did you learn?” Naples asked guardedly.
“That men can be assholes when you blue-ball them.” Cyan’s blunt words startled a laugh from Naples. He added with more seriousness, “But I knew that already. I didn’t understand how dangerous your power can be. There have been rumors lately about sorcerers being mauled or even killed by their magic. And I spoke to a guy named Wenge who went into pretty grisly detail about the balancing act your people must perform, between using your power and being used by it. When I asked you about a charm for the ship, I didn’t realize that kind of spell might be as risky for you as my running the rigging in a storm.”
Naples drew a breath, but instead of speaking, took another sip of his cider. He wanted to apologize, but how could he explain the terror that came from lost time, the fight with the Abyssi, or the way it had returned to claim his supposed “offer”? How could he possibly describe the way being in Cyan’s arms had made him feel safe and cared for and clean again—or the agony of having that taken away abruptly, replaced by a reflection in Cyan’s eyes of everything Naples felt about himself?
On the second attempt, his voice worked.
“I’ll tell you the whole story,” he said, “if you want to hear it. But not here.” He didn’t want these words overheard.
“We could go back to the Cobalt Hall?” Cyan suggested. “It’s slowed to a drizzle out there, and Gobe said they would hold the vote after the lunch break, so it’s about time for me to go show my support for the
future captain. Afterwards, you and I can find somewhere private to talk.”
Talk. Right.
Naples shook himself. They would have to find somewhere not too private, if Naples wanted to get through the whole story. Maybe he would be brave enough to ask Henna to join them, not only as a chaperone but to help him explain and maybe just to help him, once she, too, understood what was happening to him.
Or maybe not yet. He didn’t think Modigliani would see Cyan as a threat, but he might see Henna as one.
He walked beside Cyan to the grand hall, and considered whether he would be able to stay long enough to watch the vote and be supportive without picking a fight. He had no intention of taking this sham of an assembly seriously unless Terre Verte deigned to join them, but many others clearly felt differently. Even his mother, though she wasn’t currently in the room; maybe she was still working with Ginger.
“We were going to hunt,” Modigliani purred, appearing after Cyan had given Naples a kiss on the cheek and stepped forward to join the others voting on the ship captainship. “That is better than wasting our time listening to talk.”
The refrain was old and tired, but there was a new note in the Abyssi’s voice. Anxiety? What could the demon have to be anxious about?
“Maybe later,” Naples said.
“We should go,” it urged, and this time it was definitely worried. Naples stretched out his awareness, trying to catch whatever power was unnerving the Abyssi, since he couldn’t imagine anything else it feared.
Finally, the smell reached him, like ozone. The hairs on his body lifted and a cool breeze licked the back of his neck.
“It’s not our concern,” Modigliani said when Naples turned toward the private area of the Hall, the source of the errant power.
“My mother is back there,” Naples argued. “That makes it my concern.”
Henna had tried to glaze over her description of Helio, and what his body had looked like, but she hadn’t been able to control her expression, and Naples had seen the horror there. If this inexplicable spike in cold power was about to claim a victim, it would probably be the most powerful magic user left in the Cobalt Hall: his mother.
Of the Divine Page 36
