Roh rubbed her temples, a headache starting to bloom behind her eyes. ‘The practicality aspect of the criteria is basically redundant,’ she sighed. ‘I need to build something. What can I build?’
Odi rolled his shoulders. ‘Maybe it’s not a matter of what you can build, but what we —’
The door to the workshop creaked open, and young Jesmond poked her head in. ‘Busy?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ Roh replied curtly.
But Jesmond, as she always did, ignored the social cue and strode in, a money purse bulging proudly at her belt.
‘I wouldn’t go wandering around with that on display,’ Harlyn muttered as Jesmond joined them at the bench.
Jesmond grinned, patting the pouch fondly. ‘Plenty more where that came from.’
‘Profiting off the back of the tournament, are you?’ Roh asked, eyeing the purse.
The bone-cleaner-turned-gambler gave a dark laugh. ‘Isn’t that what you’re aiming to do, Roh?’
‘Jes, what do you need?’ Orson asked gently. ‘We’re in the middle of something here.’
‘As a matter of fact …’ Jesmond produced a wrinkled sheet of folded parchment and a short quill from her pocket. ‘I thought Roh here might have some insider tips for me.’
‘Tips?’
‘That’s right. On the other competitors. On the inner workings, you know, to help me point my … clients … in the right direction. You and your human look pretty chummy. A good dynamic forming there, that works in your favour.’
Roh scoffed in disbelief. ‘You’re not serious.’
‘When it comes to the exchange of our beautiful currency, I’m always serious.’ Jesmond spoke with a straight face and now stood patiently waiting for Roh to divulge tournament gossip.
‘Oh, get out of here, Jes.’ Harlyn waved her off.
‘What?’ Jes looked genuinely perplexed. She shrugged off Harlyn’s protests and pulled up a stool, turning her attention to Odi. ‘You, human … How are you feeling about the pending trial? What do you think your odds are?’
Odi looked the younger fledgling up and down, and burst into laughter. The sound came from deep within, his shoulders shaking.
I’ve never heard him laugh, Roh realised. Like Orson’s, his laughter had a contagious nature and Roh soon found amusement on her own lips.
‘Well, I don’t know about odds,’ Odi was saying, eyes watering. ‘But I do plan on living a lot longer than the next four weeks.’
Jesmond’s expression was still utterly serious as she put quill to parchment and noted down his words, nodding to herself. ‘Good to know,’ she said.
This only incited more laughter from Roh and Odi, with Harlyn and Orson joining in as Harlyn got out of her seat to shoo the youngster towards the door.
Jesmond tried to evade Harlyn’s arms. ‘You’d stop me from making an honest living?’
‘Your honest living is cleaning bones,’ Roh called after her as Harlyn finally got Jesmond to the door —
Both cyrens had frozen on the spot.
‘What is it —’ Roh stopped when she saw. It wasn’t a matter of what it was, but who.
Finn Haertel pushed past Harlyn and Jesmond, and with his burly human close behind, strode into the workshop as though he owned it. As though he owned everything anyone had ever touched.
‘Where’s Master Ames?’ he demanded, his harsh lilac eyes going straight to Roh.
Roh gritted her teeth. ‘What do you need Ames for?’ she said quietly, remembering the last words she’d spat at the highborn, remembering what he’d done to Odi’s token and all that had nearly happened because of him.
‘That’s none of your concern,’ Finn retorted, scanning the room. ‘Where is he?’
Roh’s talons itched to be unsheathed.
‘He’s not here.’ Orson stepped in, her voice soft and calm. ‘You might find him in the mentor quarters, two levels up.’
Roh elbowed her. ‘What are you doing?’ she hissed angrily.
Finn eyed her with utter disgust, his gaze lingering on the fresh pink scar that now marred the old one on her cheek, before he turned on his heel and left, his human trailing behind him. Roh’s fingers went to the cut that had now healed over, though she still remembered the sharp slice of the coral through her flesh.
‘Roh,’ Orson said, her eyes full of reproach. ‘You might be competing against him, but to us, he’s still the son of a council elder.’
The frustration in Roh deflated and she gave Orson a grim smile. ‘I know. Sorry.’
‘What’s that lech doing, showing up here, anyway?’ Jesmond dropped into Harlyn’s seat and made herself comfortable, despite Harlyn’s protests.
Roh sighed heavily. ‘I don’t know, but I can’t say I like it much.’
Three days went by in a blur and Roh was no closer to deciding what to build for the second trial. She spent much of her time pacing back and forth, in her chambers, at the workshop and at the Great Hall in the early hours of the morning, when she found it deserted. But no matter the amount of walking, no matter how many great feats of architecture she exposed herself to, her mind remained blank. She was at a complete loss, and her growing anxiety took her from one scattered thought to the next, always dismissing her ideas as reckless, stupid or unoriginal. She felt the walls of pressure closing in around her, leaving her with less and less room to breathe.
The bathwater had grown cold as Roh lay fuming in the tub, her arms draped over the sides. She had thought a long soak might force her to relax and consequently unlock some brilliant idea at the back of her mind. She’d been wrong. All the solitude had done was feed her obsessive worries, and though she hadn’t acknowledged it aloud, Finn Haertel’s appearance at the workshop had unnerved her more than she cared to admit. Alone in the bath, she could no longer deny it to herself. Seeing him there, pristine as ever and making demands, had made her skin crawl. His presence in the Lower Sector, standing before her friends, in her workshop … Her worlds were colliding and it made her gut clench. He and his poisonous ways did not belong there. He brought an icy coldness to one of the few places in Talon’s Reach that held any sort of warmth.
Roh let herself sink to the bottom of the tub, submerging herself completely in the cool water, pretending just for a moment that it was the salt-kissed sea. She watched the bubbles of air float leisurely from her mouth up to the surface, where they broke. It had been a long time since she’d used her cyren ability to breathe under water, but the skill was instinct. She closed her eyes and took a breath.
The warlocks, male and female, were preserved in the state they’d been in when they broke into the prison. They wore frayed travelling cloaks and heavy boots, coated with blood and dirt after whatever skirmish had taken place. Some of their fatal wounds could be seen – a slashed throat, a dagger embedded in the side of a neck and a gaping hole in a gut. Others were hidden beneath layers of blood-soaked clothing. Eerily, the warlocks had been propped up in standing positions, their eyes frozen open to stare dead ahead, some of their mouths twisted in agony or surprise. One warlock, a female, held a scythe at her side in a bloodied hand, while the one that stood directly across from Cerys’ cell … Roh found him the most disturbing. His frozen half-snarl, the smear of red on the quartz dagger clutched in his hand …
Roh broke the surface of the water with a gasp. Her dreams had been addled with scenes like this of late and they always left her with a keen eagerness to visit her mother, drawing her to Saddoriel’s prison like a sailor to a cyren’s song. She got out of the tub and pulled on one of the soft bathrobes hanging on the back of the door, its fluffy material softer than anything she’d ever owned.
She opened the door a crack and called out to Odi: ‘I want to visit Cerys. Get yourself ready.’ She didn’t wait for a reply before closing the door. As she towelled her hair dry, she thought of her last visit and wondered if she might see the queen down there again. For a moment, the queen hadn’t been Queen Delja the Triumphant, she’d been a sad cyre
n who had once known Roh’s mother, centuries ago. A cyren who knew things Roh had only ever dreamed of knowing. Sighing, she pulled on her undergarments and clothes over her damp hair and caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. The days of endless anxiety had made themselves known in the deep purple smudges beneath her moss-green eyes, and despite the superior food of the Upper Sector, she had lost weight, her collarbone jutting out from beneath her loose shirt. She made a note to herself to eat a second portion of dinner that night. The last thing she needed was her strength wasting away.
She entered the main quarters, braiding her hair down one side to find Odi sitting at the window bench as usual, his expression far away with the delicate notes of the fiddles playing somewhere beyond.
‘Are you ready?’ she asked him, searching for her boots.
Odi continued to gaze out the window. ‘About that …’
‘About what?’
‘I don’t think we should go to the prison, Roh.’
Roh folded her arms over her chest. ‘Since when?’
Odi turned his head, taking in her combative stance. ‘Since ever, actually. No good comes of it.’
The tips of Roh’s fingers tingled, her talons ready to spring free. ‘How would you know?’
‘I’ve been there with you. I know better than anyone. Why do you want to go?’
Roh had asked herself that question a thousand times, but it had never been posed aloud. What did she want? A mother. A father. Answers. The constant ache of loss she carried in her chest didn’t make sense, because how could she miss what she’d never known? Before she could answer, a knock sounded at the door.
‘Don’t hate me,’ Odi said, turning his gaze back to the window.
‘What? Why —’
The door opened and Ames entered, his expression stern.
‘What are you doing here?’ Roh asked, forgetting herself.
Ames closed the door behind him with a click. ‘I was informed that you wished to make one of your unofficial visits to the prison.’
Roh shot an incredulous look at Odi, who was pointedly ignoring her. ‘Informed? You’ve got my own human spying on me?’
‘Your own?’ Odi laughed darkly. ‘I am not yours to own. And I did it out of concern. Last time, we saw the queen down there.’
‘You what?’ Ames’ lilac eyes flashed and he took a step towards Roh.
‘It’s nothing.’ Roh waved her hand dismissively. ‘She said she often goes down there.’
‘If Queen Delja is visiting the prison cells of Saddoriel, it’s certainly not nothing.’
‘But, Ames —’
‘How many times must I tell you, Rohesia? You should not be visiting Cerys. It’s dangerous.’ Ames had never raised his voice to her before; Roh had to fight the urge to cower beneath its deep rumble. She fell quiet, face burning.
‘She has nothing to offer you,’ he said, gentler this time. The older cyren went to her and squeezed her shoulder. ‘I do not say this to be cruel.’
She sniffed. ‘I know.’
‘And you know that reality is long lost to her, don’t you?’
Cerys’ off-kilter smile and hacked, uneven hair came to Roh’s mind. ‘Yes.’
‘Good.’ Ames released her shoulder and went to the settee at the foot of her bed. ‘Now tell me of this trial.’
Roh sighed, massaging the ache that had begun to pulse at her temples. ‘I have to build something,’ she said. She would rather be thrown into the fray of another hunt than turn up to the second trial empty-handed.
Ames clasped his hands in his lap and looked to Odi. ‘I see.’
Roh frowned. ‘See what?’
‘Odi,’ Ames said. ‘What do you make of it?’
‘I think the trial, and your whole damn way of life, is barbaric.’ He said it with a venom Roh hadn’t heard before, and she waited for Ames to snap, to preach the virtues of preserving the cyren culture.
‘True,’ Ames said, to Roh’s utter disbelief. ‘But nothing can be done about that. Yet. So tell me, what do you make of the second trial?’
Roh watched Odi eye her mentor with a steady gaze before he shrugged and turned back to the window. Roh could have sworn a glimmer of disappointment crossed Ames’ face before he stood and met her eyes.
‘Promise me you won’t return to the prison?’
Her stomach churned uneasily as she grappled with herself. Finally, she ground out the words: ‘I promise.’
‘Good,’ he said, before something caught his eye. The book on Roh’s bedside table. He picked it up and turned it over in his hands, running a taloned finger down the thick spine. ‘I’m glad to see you’re taking some interest in the Law of the Lair.’
Roh frowned. ‘Why do you say that?’
‘For one, you’ve always had a difficult disregard for authority. Two, knowing what restricts you can also highlight that which liberates.’
Clicking her tongue in frustration, Roh snatched the tome from her mentor. ‘Can you elaborate? This thing is one of a million volumes. I can barely get through the first. Even if I could, there’s no way I could remember everything.’
‘True,’ Ames mocked. ‘You do have a rather narrow mind.’
Roh glared at him.
Ames adjusted his collar, covering up the small patch of discoloured skin that had started to show. ‘Just keep reading. You never know when a piece of knowledge will serve you well.’
When he had left, Roh watched Odi carefully. He still hadn’t moved from where he was perched on the window bench, his brow furrowed in concentration. Roh hadn’t really taken a moment to consider what it had been like for him down here amongst the cyrens, forced to partake in something that he didn’t believe in and that regularly jeopardised his life. And yet, he had committed to it. He had proposed as many ideas as Harlyn and Orson had. And he had saved her life during the first trial.
She approached the window bench and waited for him to move his legs aside so she could sit. He didn’t budge.
‘Why did you tell Ames I wanted to go see Cerys?’ she asked, leaning against the wall instead.
‘He told me to send for him if you were in trouble.’
‘How?’
‘There are water channels.’
‘What do you mean?’ Roh demanded.
‘Channels that Ames uses to communicate, mainly with your kind —’ Odi cut himself off. ‘I can’t tell you more than that.’
Roh’s brows shot up. ‘What? You and Ames have secrets now?’
‘I gave my word, Roh. He cares about you. More than you know. Let it go.’
There was something about Odi’s tone that made Roh acquiesce. ‘I wasn’t in trouble,’ she muttered.
‘It felt like … It felt like you might be on the brink.’
‘Of what?’
‘Making a bad decision. You had this look in your eyes, like no one could stop you. And seeing Cerys – seeing your mother – it’s not done much good in the past, has it? You need to be focusing on this trial. Not running off chasing ghosts.’
Roh let herself slide to the floor, tilting her head back to rest against the cool surface of the wall. He was right. Deep in her bones, she knew he was right, and yet she still couldn’t escape the harrowing temptation of those tunnels.
‘Odi?’ she asked quietly.
‘Hmm?’
‘Do I look like her?’
The human turned his amber gaze to her, taking his time to study her features. She watched his eyes scan her own, then her nose, her cheeks, her jawline … ‘Sometimes,’ he allowed.
‘Only sometimes?’
Odi gave a nod. ‘Most of the time, you just look like you.’
Later, they ate on the floor in their quarters, an array of hot dishes and bread spread out before them. But the rich stews and roasted vegetables may as well have been gruel as Roh chewed mechanically, tasting nothing, unable to shake the feeling of despair that had blanketed her. It had been days since Arcelia had given her the instructions and she sti
ll had nothing, not an inkling of an idea of what to build. Each hour that ticked by took her further and further away from her dream. Her dream of freedom, of power, of a better Saddoriel for her friends and herself. A place where cyrens were encouraged to explore without fear of retribution or judgement. A lair that was generous with its magic and music, no matter in which sector a cyren resided. A Saddoriel that offered its inhabitants choice, real choice. Choices that Roh and Harlyn and Orson had craved all these years. She sighed. She had taken to flipping through the law tome in silence, hoping that some random image or sentence would inspire a groundbreaking idea.
‘What?’ she snapped without looking up, feeling Odi’s gaze linger on her.
‘Why was Ames asking for my opinion of the trial?’ he asked.
Roh gave an irritated shrug. ‘I thought that was something you’d know, being his new best friend and all.’
Odi rolled his eyes. ‘I’m serious.’
‘So am I.’
‘Has it ever occurred to you that the other cyrens might not utilise their humans’ strengths and skills?’
Slowly, Roh lifted her gaze to his. ‘You said you were a … shopkeeper in your realm. What sort of shop?’
Odi placed his wine carefully on the floor. ‘A craftsman, really. It’s my father’s shop. We sell and fix instruments.’
Roh sighed with frustration, picking up her goblet and taking a long drink. ‘Well, we have to build something from scratch. Not mend something that’s broken.’
‘I didn’t just mend them,’ Odi told her quietly.
‘What else did you do, then?’
‘I made them.’
Roh blinked. ‘Made what, exactly?’
‘Pianos.’
‘And what is a piano?’
‘What? How do you not know what a piano is? Your lives down here revolve around music.’
Roh refilled both their goblets with a generous pour of wine. ‘Just tell me.’
‘It’s a musical instrument. It … Well, you sit down at it, you play it with your fingers on what we call keys.’
Roh tilted her head. ‘Keys? Like money?’
A Lair of Bones Page 19
