“I do not enjoy keeping you here,” he said. We were standing under a tree with cascading, enclosing branches; alone together in the world, yet again. I said nothing. Watched the moonlight speckle his hair like moving jewels.
“If I did not fear for your safety I would have taken you to the castle weeks ago—for you are ready.”
I shook my head, partly because there was a dull, throbbing ache settling into the back of it, where it had hit the door. “But you’re not afraid for the other students who are already there. If they’re safe, why wouldn’t I be?” As I spoke, I thought, I should have asked this before; maybe the bump has made me cleverer.
Orlo was silent for a long time. I imagined he was gazing at me, but there was not enough moonlight for me to be sure. “There is another thing,” he said at last. “Another reason why I need to keep you a secret, for now.”
This time the silence went on long enough for my cleverer mind to grasp at a possibility. “The Bloodseeing,” I said. “You aren’t allowed to teach it to your other students. You need me to be separate so that you can teach it to me.”
His teeth glinted as he smiled. “Yes—good, Nola. You’re far more special than the others; that is precisely why you must stay here.”
“But what does this mean?” The panic that was rising in me made my voice rise, too. “How long will it be before you teach me the rest? When will you take me back with you? Because you promised to—you promised! But it’s been months since you took me from the brothel and I haven’t been outside this house once, and if I have to stay here alone for much longer I’ll go mad.”
“You won’t,” Orlo said. “You have more strength than any other student I’ve ever had—and that is why I chose you. I will need someone strong, when the time comes to reveal my work.”
“If I’m so strong,” I said quickly, “let me prove it—let me use my power to help you. I could hunt Prandel with you. We could find him together, and now that my bleeding has started I could really help. We could hurt him even more than you could by yourself. But let me go out—let me leave here with you to do this. It will be enough. I won’t need the castle yet. Just a walk in the streets . . .” I had not realized how badly I wanted this, until now. I was breathless, stinging with tears.
Two steps brought Orlo even closer to me. He raised his hands and sank them into my hair and eased my face up so that I could not look away from him. “Soon,” he said. His thumbs were moving, stroking the arcs of my brows. “Patience, my sweet, stubborn girl. So much will come to both of us, in time.”
He bent down. His lips brushed my forehead, back and forth, back and forth, lightly, trailing goosebumps and fire. “But”—warm, damp words, muffled against my skin—“there is more I can teach you now. This is what I have been waiting for, and it’s why I was angry. My own kind of impatience, and I should not have let it hurt you.”
My body forgot its exhaustion. It leaned into his fingers and his lips with a weight I had never felt before. “Show me,” I whispered.
He drew back, and I cursed myself for having spoken. His hands slipped along my cheekbones and down to his sides. “Not now,” we both said together, and he threw his head back and laughed. “Mistress Saucy Seer,” he said, smiling still, “respect is one thing I have obviously not taught you. No doubt it’s too late.” He took a deep breath, and when he spoke again his voice was serious. “I am as eager to begin this next lesson as you are. But you are tired—no! Do not protest! You are tired. And you will need all of your strength for what I will be showing you.”
He took my shoulders and turned me around so that I was facing the way we had come. “Go on, now. To bed with you.”
We walked back together, over the blossoms and the pebbles. A cool wind had risen, and I lifted my face to it. I was free, for just a moment—unbound by walls of stone or iron, humming with a need that hurt only enough to remind me that I lived, and that I was glad of this. Then my gaze fell upon the house. There was a light burning in my room, and a shape in one of its windows. A shadow, but I knew him, saw his features as clearly as if he had been standing in sun.
I halted. Orlo took a few steps past me and stopped, looking over his shoulder at me. “Nola?”
“My window,” I said slowly. “There’s . . .” But even as I spoke and Orlo turned, Laedon’s shadow melted away. Orlo arched an eyebrow at me and I shrugged. “I am tired,” I said, and tried to smile. “It was nothing.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Transformation.”
I blinked at Orlo, and the candlelight seemed to swim around him. I had been in bed most of the day, resting but not really sleeping. And when he had arrived—not too late, tonight; just after sundown—he had had me drink a flagon of wine with him. So the light was swimming, now—everything was, gently, around the edges.
“What does it mean, Nola? Transformation.”
I swallowed. The wine—sweet, amber like Uja’s eyes—had made me thirsty. “Change,” I said.
“Yes. And where have you seen this word, recently?”
“In the book—the red one with gold pages.”
“Yes. You wanted to know what it meant; what it had to do with Bloodseeing.”
My turn for “Yes,” as the tingling began again in my belly.
He walked to the cabinet and set the key to the lock. “Choose,” he said, “and I will show you.”
I picked the smallest one, this time. Its tiny teeth would likely be useful only for sawing, but it had a beautiful tip, which would work nicely. (I could already see the vein, green when it was beneath skin, red when it opened above.)
“Your bleeding has begun,” Orlo said. He was smiling at me. “Your new power awaits you. When you cut Laedon now, you will do more than see his Pattern. You will control it.”
I was smiling too. He came to me, touched my lips with his fingers, held flat.
“I will tell you what to do, this first time. When you have had more practice you will be able to guide yourself—but for now you must listen to me. Now, and when the vision takes you.”
His fingers slid down my chin and away. “I will,” I said. “Tell me what I must do.”
His smile widened. “What is your favourite cake?”
I laughed. “Apple,” I said, remembering Bardrem peeling and slicing while Rudicol shouted about spilled batter and not enough rum in it.
“Very good. Apple it will be. Imagine it, when you are in the Otherworld. Imagine it as clearly as you can.”
“All right. But what—”
The door opened. Laedon shuffled in, his hand trailing along the wall. I started, but I was not afraid, as I had been last night when I saw him in my window. I felt no fear, no anger; just a deep, waiting quiet. The knife was cool in my hand. My skin was cool, though the wine had warmed me, within.
Orlo put an arm around Laedon. “He’ll feel this one, if you do it right. Not as pain, exactly, but he’ll feel it. You’re used to it, though, aren’t you, Lae?” A little shake of the old man’s shoulders. Laedon’s eyes did their rolling dance.
“Now, then. No tools, Nola: the vision would be too strong. Just his blood. And I will stay very close, to help you remember what we talked about.” He winked at me. I did not smile back. I was already walking toward them.
It was not so easy, this time. Maybe I had the angle wrong; it was a smaller knife, after all, and I had not had time to get used to it. I pushed its tip against Laedon’s skin—exactly the same place as before, because I knew it. The skin puckered inward but did not break. I pushed again, and again. Anger surged through me. I pulled the blade back, then jabbed down. His arm jumped. I had not found the same place, after all, but that did not matter: blood spattered and flowed.
“Show me,” I said, and gasped, because it felt as if there was a knife in me too, slicing from my thighs to my belly and up, up until it rested behind my eyes. I doubled over. At first all I heard was my own whimpering, but as I breathed I heard something else: Uja, whistling high, sweet notes
that seemed to turn the agony into aching.
I straightened. I saw Laedon’s blood, dripping onto a piece of white cloth (Orlo must have put it there). I saw Laedon, staring at me from behind a crimson gauze that wrapped him. Everything I looked at was crimson, except for his eyes, which were diamond-clear, all colours. I stared at his blood again—a single spray and the rest droplets—until it spun and blurred and the world around me vanished in red.
A silver road cuts through the red. I move toward it as I have moved in other visions, expecting to feel myself a bird or a vole—but I am myself. My own feet are beneath me, bare, sunk into the soft, warm stuff of the path. The Path, I think, and see that it stretches on and on, over red hills and along the bottoms of red canyons, and that it ends in Laedon’s clear, bright eyes.
I walk slowly, because I feel heavy and strange. The Path ripples, and I dig my toes in, between steps. When I glance to either side I see other roads—so many, too many; which is the one I should follow? They are silver snakes, writhing, making me even dizzier. They all wind up to Laedon’s eyes. I stop, sway.
“Choose, Nola.” Orlo’s voice is so close that it is nearly inside my own head, but he is nowhere I can see. “Choose one and make it the only one.”
I do. It looks like all the others, but when I hold it in my gaze it stops its wriggling. I think, Walk, now—but my feet (so solid and near) will not move. I whimper again.
“Nola. Stay still—it is all right.” I take a great gulp of crimson air. “Concentrate. Imagine tomorrow. Imagine tomorrow, and the thing you described to me earlier.”
Tomorrow, I think. Imagine . . . The sun rising into blue sky, not red. Sunlight on the dark green leaves that brush against the kitchen windows. The kitchen—the cake. Apple slices laid in a circle; batter poured. A round, brown cake on a windowsill. I see it, but only for a moment; it is too silly, a thing from my world steaming in the Other. I laugh and the cake vanishes, as do the leaves and the light and the window glass. I laugh at my bare toes, and at the road that squirms away from me like a snake. I look along the road and see the diamond-flash of Laedon’s eyes and my laughter turns to pain.
When I opened my eyes I was in bed, in my room; I guessed this from the wobbly shadows, then squeezed my eyes shut again. I was spinning. My insides throbbed, and I remembered red, pulsing hillsides, red sky. I hardly felt myself moving, but I was—I was across the room, retching into the bowl that was supposed to hold only fresh water. When I was done I sat on the floor. I could tell that there was wetness seeping between my legs, but the ache in me was so huge that I didn’t think I would ever move again.
I must have dozed; when Uja pecked at my fingers I started and flailed my arms. She sang the four notes of her “calm yourself, little chick” song, over and over, until I said, “Thank you, Uja—I’m fine now.” Though I was not. I could hardly see her; she was a shadow like the other things in the room, her glorious colours smudged to black.
She picked up the edge of my dress in one of her talons. She tugged. “Oh, Uja,” I said. My voice burned my throat, which was bitter with sickness. “I can’t go anywhere with you. I can’t get up.”
She tugged and tugged. She gave a piercing whistle, right into my ear. She scratched her beak along my palm. “Stop, you horrible creature! Stop! Leave me alone!” But I was up. I was standing, my arms out, balancing on the ground like a marketplace tumbler atop a tall, wavering pole.
Uja did not let go of my dress. She was holding it in her beak, now. “I should change,” I said. “There’s blood on this dress. . . .” She pulled. I shuffled after her. Pull, shuffle, pull, shuffle, all the way out the door and down the hallway.
She allowed me to rest on the stairs. I sat, breathed, edged myself down, sat still again. She burbled and popped her tongue, as if she was not sure whether to praise or scold me. By the time we reached the bottom my vision was a bit clearer; her red feathers looked pink. I stood with my forehead against the enormous mirror until my ragged breathing smoothed. I pulled back and caught my own eyes, and I made a sound like one of Borl’s puzzled whines. My eyes were dark. It was not just the remnants of Othersight: they were dark blue, nearly black. They were Chenn’s.
I hardly noticed myself walking, this time. Uja led me slowly, though she nipped my fingertips whenever I stood still. I thought, She did it too—of course she did—Chenn used the Bloodsight and he taught her to—of course, of course.
I lifted my head, when we got to the kitchen door. Uja scratched at it with her claws. “Why do you never open this one?” I said, and opened it myself.
I smelled it first: a sweetness of fruit, butter, sugar. I had never smelled this particular sweetness here, and for a moment I expected to see Bardrem, elbow-deep in flour, and Rudicol sucking in his thin cheeks, preparing to shout. I saw Laedon instead, standing by a window. Its two panes had been unlatched and opened (though they could not open far, because of the iron bars). I stared at his eyes, which seemed to be staring at me, and then I looked down at the cake that was sitting on the sill beside him. It was perfect: brown, round, so hot that the air around it shimmered.
“Orlo told you to do this,” I said, loudly, because I did not believe it. I did not believe that Orlo had told him; I also did not believe that I had. I walked to the window with Uja clicking along behind me. Laedon’s gaze stayed on me as I drew closer, but I ignored him. I looked at the cake. I touched its apple-pitted top and drew my fingers swiftly back before they scalded. A few moments later I reached again. This time I dug my fingers in, heedless of the heat. I gouged out a piece that left a shallow, unsightly hole, and I put it in my mouth. It burned along my tongue and all the way down my throat, but before this burning numbed me, I tasted it. It was delicious.
“Othercake,” I said, and I laughed until I cried.
You would think that there couldn’t possibly be any more blood. But there was—so much more, in fact, that all these memories seem washed in crimson, just as that vision of Laedon was. If this were not my own story, I would roll my eyes and grumble something about exaggeration.
So—the next blood.
I was desperately impatient that day, waiting for Orlo. I had been unsure about talking to him when my bleeding began, but now I paced and paced, afire with the need to tell him about a cake. Of course, since I wanted this so badly, he did not come. Not that evening, nor that night. I woke at dawn and padded through the house with a candle, thinking he might have returned very late and decided not to wake me, but I found only Uja, perched on the highest branch of her cage with her head beneath her wing. I sat and waited for her to wake up. When she showed no signs of doing this on her own, I rattled the bars and called her name and gave some piercing whistles of my own. “See?” I said when she finally shook her head erect (all its feathers puffing, then subsiding). “It’s unpleasant, being woken up like that. If I could get in there with you and pull on your feathers, I’d do that, too.” She blinked at me, her head cocked, and I groaned. “I’m sorry. But Orlo didn’t come and I couldn’t sleep. Please come out?”
She did not move.
“Ah,” I said. “You won’t come out—which means Orlo’s on his way? Why haven’t you ever shown him that you can leave your cage on your own? Why do you not like him?”
I talked and talked, while she regarded me calmly. I talked about Orlo, and eventually about Chenn. My words about her were even quicker than the rest. “He taught her too. He was showing her about Bloodseeing—that’s why she didn’t want to tell me about the cuts on her arms—it was a forbidden art, and she was afraid to mention it to me, just as she was afraid to mention Prandel.”
The day passed. My meals appeared in the kitchen, as usual, but I did not see Laedon. “Where does he go?” I said to Uja when I returned to the lesson room in the late afternoon. “Is there a secret room here somewhere? Or maybe when he closes his eyes he becomes invisible.” I giggled—a silly sound, and it went on too long. I felt half-mad with waiting.
I paced and sat. I
changed the cloths in my underthings more often than I needed to and washed them in a bucket in the kitchen. I stared out the second-storey windows, because although the streets beyond the house were hardly visible (the trees were tall, and the house was at the top of a hill), I might be able to see him—just a glimpse of him, opening the gate, coming up the path to me.
He did not come at sunset, nor in the hours after. “If he never came back again,” I whispered to Uja, “if something happened to him, we’d all die in here.” This thought had not occurred to me in daylight; now, in darkness, it made my head hum with fear.
I fell asleep, somehow. I had been pressing my forehead against the library window, staring at the moon, which hung fat and white among branch shadows. I was aching with solitude, and, with the stubborn contrariness of the young, I was making it worse—forcing myself through memory after memory of Bardrem, Yigranzi, Chenn, the Lady, the spindly courtyard tree. I was consumed, certain I would never know peace of any sort, ever again—and then I was asleep.
And then, with a start that drove me to my feet and backward, I was awake again.
A sound had woken me. I had not heard it, with my sleeping ears, but I had felt it, and I felt it still, as I stood shaking by the door: a violent, echoing crash. “Orlo?” A thread of a voice that he would only have heard if he had been beside me, which he obviously was not. I eased the library door open and peered into the hallway. The lamps I had lit earlier shone on emptiness. I waited for a moment—for more noise; for him, approaching, explaining—and then I crept out into the corridor.
By the time I reached the entrance hall I had convinced myself that I had heard nothing. A dream, I thought. Maybe the beets I ate for supper are to blame. . . .
I was relieved enough that this thought of beets made me hungry. I walked to the kitchen, scuffing my slippers loudly on the floor so that I would be able to imagine I was not alone. I raised my hand to turn the knob—but the door was already open a crack. I pushed on it, just a little, and as I did I heard another sound.
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