Colorless

by Rita Stradling

  “I forgot your mother worked in the house. Her name is Eda?” I asked. I’d remembered Annabelle giving me the title ‘Eda’s rake’ when she’d spoken with Marc.

  “Unfortunately, she works in the house with her sister. Mother hasn’t really been the same since it happened, you know. This will be good.”

  We lapsed into silence as the forested dirt road turned into cobbles, before returning to the packed dirt of the neighborhoods adjacent the slums. The sun sat due east by the time we stopped, leaving a grayish light over the remainder of the sky.

  “Give me a moment, and I’ll get you that dress,” Jane said.

  “Where did you put it?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?” She spun on her heel and headed down an alley between houses.

  The moment she was out of sight, I slipped my fingers into my pocket and pulled out a glass vial half as thick as my pinky finger. Glancing around me at the deserted neighborhood street, I picked off the wax seal enclosing one end.

  I knew I should wait, but my impatience to see inside the vial wouldn’t let me.

  When I’d finally managed to pry the wax seal out, I looked inside to see a coil of paper.

  Spilling the letter into my hand, I unrolled it carefully, finding a thin strip of parchment.

  Words were scrawled across the paper. The first word I knew only because it was also a letter that I knew, the letter ‘I’.

  “Dylan?”

  Quickly, I stuffed the parchment and vial into my pocket and looked up just in time to see Jane reemerge from the alley. She held up a servant’s dress exactly like the one she wore. “Don’t break this girl’s heart. If you do, I’ll feel as if I played some part in hurting her.”

  Taking the dress, I walked backward and told her, “For you, Jane, I won’t break her heart.”

  She pointed into my face. “You better not, Dylan Miller, I’ll hold you to it.”

  “Make sure you come to me next time you need a little instruction, yeah?” I said with an exaggerated wink.

  “Oh, go stuff your face in the Hutchings,” she called over her shoulder as she headed up the cracked steps of her tenement.

  I jogged to my house, the dress folded up under my arm. I avoided more than one shower of waste from a second-story tenement, jogging as close to the center of the streets as I could estimate. The familiar smells of boiling stock and grease mingled with the tangy, noxious smell of the Hutchings greeted me as I wound my way deeper into the slums.

  A rock propped the door to our house open, so I didn’t slow my pace, just ran directly inside, aiming for the stove. When John jumped out in front of me, I smacked into him. He flew back with me on top of him, getting an elbow straight to the cheek.

  “Damn it, John!” I shouted as I rolled off him.

  He sat up, rubbing his head. “By the gods, Dylan, I wanted to tell you something.”

  I jumped up, grabbing the dress off the floor. Dust had caked all the way up the side, and I furiously brushed it off. “Is Sophie up?” I asked, really meaning is Sophie in her body? I didn’t wait for an answer, but turned to the stove where Sophie sat, clearly elsewhere in her mind.

  John jumped up beside me. “No. But she was for a minute—”

  “Yeah, okay, I’ll be back in a minute.” I crossed over to the stove.

  “Wait! I’m trying to tell you, Dylan. The lady isn’t down there anymore. Sophie woke just as I came in, told me that if the lady was intelligent, she was on her way to the Congregational Library and that Joseph left with her.”

  I dropped the dress and ran straight back out the door.

  Daily Devotion to the Goddess Nirsha

  In the darkest hours of night, I seek nothing from the Goddess of the North, but that my spirit would serve her evermore in her realm beyond the living. I seek not to emulate her wild winds of emotion, for they are the provenance of the goddess alone. I seek instead to be even-tempered and, above all, obedient to the will of the gods and their servants.

  I will fear the gods, worship the magicians, and forsake the iconoclasts forevermore. Let it be so.

  17

  The Reaping

  Annabelle

  I pressed myself against the stone wall as tapping footsteps echoed through the corridor I stood in. Seconds later, another monk turned the corner, moving quickly in and out of the illumination of the sconces along the wall. Turning my head to the side, I squeezed my eyes shut. As the footsteps grew louder, my uninjured hand started to smolder. It was exactly as I’d felt before in the stables, as if a coal had lodged into my skin, scorching my hand from the inside out. A gust of wind marked the monks passing and I slumped forward as the burning subsided.

  When the sound of the tapping had faded, I stumbled back into the center of the corridor.

  The Congregational Library was nothing like what I expected.

  The twisting black gate opened almost immediately after Joseph had yelled that he’d found me. No one had stood there to propel the gate forward; it had simply opened to reveal a smooth stone road leading up to what could only be described as a hill of black marble. It was perfectly symmetrical, as if it was truly a sphere mostly submerged in the grassy ground. Its smooth exterior had no break or entrance.

  Joseph and I had approached slowly when a monk circled the building, ascending some unseen slope. Joseph’s gaze had connected with mine for only an instant before he returned his focus to the monk.

  I’d given the monk a wide berth as I aimed for where he’d appeared from. A high, pointed arched corridor sliced into the side of the marble hill, descending at a curve and out of sight. It was about four feet wide, making the tall, narrow corridor look as if it was made in the likeness of a knife.

  I went down immediately, finding no library, but instead a maze of interconnected passageways with no features to distinguish one from the next, except the angle at which they descended or ascended. I stuck to the descending tunnels, knowing that way I’d have some cognition of the distance I’d gone and the direction which I’d taken.

  The invisibility had crept halfway to my elbow, but I didn’t know if the invisibility was moving at a steady pace or speeding up. Truly, it might have been hours I’d been running in here, or only mere minutes.

  I would not look at my arm again. I would not think about it.

  Carefully, I regained my forward pace, circling once more around an unknown space. “One hundred and forty,” I counted as I turned onto the next corridor. Further and further down I went, hoping at some point I would descend to the bottom.

  A light tapping came again. I slowed to a stop and clamped my hand over my mouth and nose, quieting my heavy breaths so I could hear the direction from which the monk approached.

  The tapping came again from ahead. I backed to the wall, directly beside a wall sconce. Across from me, flames reflected, licking up the black marble.

  The sound grew louder, as if more than one monk approached from that side. My back pressed hard into the marble. I squeezed my eyes shut and then opened them, looking to the direction I’d come from. It was hard to hear over the many sets of feet coming from ahead, but I would have sworn that I also heard a second tapping, coming from behind me.

  “Damn it!” I whispered.

  I rushed forward. It had been some time since I’d seen a corridor, and before they had been at least somewhat regular. I ran toward what must have been several monks from the echoing of their footfalls.

  A corridor came into view just seconds before the monks did. Though I could only truly see the first monk in the line, crimson robe after crimson robe reflected off the arched ceiling above, showing more and more of them rounding the curve of the corridor.

  I sprinted for the opening in the wall, finding it to be one that ascended steeply, perhaps too steeply for my heeled boots. I took it anyway, almost sliding on the marble in my haste to turn.

  Trying to stay on my toes, I rushed upward, pressing my gloved hand into the wall, though the smooth surface provide
d little support. I was only a few paces upward when echoing footfalls reverberated through the corridor.

  I picked up speed, running on my aching toes. I looked frantically for another corridor, but this one only continued as a straight shaft upward. Their tapping grew in volume and I knew they were gaining on me. I didn’t know if they were actually giving chase, or if their strides were just that much faster than my fastest run.

  My feet screamed with pain and my sides burned as I leaned into the sprint.

  Suddenly, the corridor curved before opening in every direction. The marble curved upward and outward, opening into a great space as wide and tall as the Templum of Weire itself.

  I rushed out of the corridor and into open space. Spinning around, I found monk after monk spilling out of the corridor after me. They took no notice of me standing just before them, though, feeding to each direction and walking along the edges of the wide-open space. When perhaps thirty had exited, and no others followed, I turned slowly to take in my surroundings.

  At the center of the sunken templum, a fire burned in a brazier as wide and tall as Sophie’s house. The reflections of the flames flickered up the entirety of the black marble walls, as if the entire space was engulfed.

  Behind the fire was a giant glass sphere almost identical to the one in the Templum of Weire. Though the sphere was just before the fire, it conspicuously did not reflect the flames. Around its base, hundreds of crimson-robed monks stood. Even the ones from my party had streamed around the fire to assemble around the great sphere.

  Aside from these two large features, the space stood empty. The Congregational Library held not a single book, not even a scrap of parchment.

  I watched through the flames as the monks assembled in synchronized motions, forming two perfect circles around the sphere. Even so close, they made no reflection on the glassy black surface. It was as if the object was a sphere made of gathered darkness. Suddenly, that darkness moved. Dark clouds undulated within the sphere, swirling around the space before it thinned to wispy chords that dissipated to nothing.

  Beneath the clouds, eight magicians were revealed. They stood almost as tall as the sphere itself, thirty feet, maybe more.

  I rushed toward the corridor I’d come from, but as their cool gazes passed over the space, not one gaze lingered on me. Each of their gazes eventually settled on the monks, who looked strangely short at only something near eight feet tall.

  The magicians wore the robes all the portraits portrayed. They wore the same robes whose threads had come alive to bite off my finger.

  “We are here to rule,” they said out of sync, their voices booming throughout the space.

  “We’re here to obey,” the monks replied in perfect sync.

  “Yes, you are,” one of the magicians said. He stood a little ways ahead of the group. I recognized him immediately, Potestas, the head magician.

  In most ways, the magicians were nearly identical, their gaunt faces hollow and severe. Yet, Potestas had a vivacity in his light blue gaze the others did not quite hold, as if he had a greater share of magic within him. He said, “It has been another three more hours; have you found the right candidate, yet?”

  “We believe we have,” the monks said.

  “Let us hope that this selection is better than the string of unacceptable options you’ve wasted our time with,” Potestas said.

  “Lord and Lady Dolce.”

  “No!” one of the magicians barked out. “They hold too little power. It will not suffice.” He waved a hand in negation.

  Potestas shook his head. “The options you give us are unacceptable. You must choose only among the greater lords. What is the power balance for Lord and Lady Stewart?”

  “Of the powers we can see, they both favor Ester strongly with only traces of Sun and Weire’s power.”

  “Ester could bring balance back. Our power strongly favors Weire,” one of the ones in the rear of the crowd said.

  “We calculate that their son, Collin Stewart, holds a significant risk of favoring Nirsha’s power,” the monks said. “He is passionate and holds the affection of many.”

  “You’ve been wrong before,” the thinnest magician said, his voice higher pitched than the others. His lips pursed into a look of disgust before he added, “You clearly said that Anthony Klein had a considerable risk of color molting, and our records say you predicted a minimal risk for his cousin.”

  The words stung me like hundreds of little bees. I found myself wandering toward the fire as a slow burning simmered hotter and hotter in my palm.

  Potestas grinned mirthlessly. “Perhaps you are as ineffectual at assessing risk as you are at catching a wounded child hiding in a manor.”

  “The girl will be reaped soon,” the monks said.

  Potestas leaned toward the edge of the glass he stood in. “Do not use our power lightly. If you release the dire wolves and she is not captured, the consequences will fall on your congregational hive. You can be replaced, easily and quickly.”

  “We advised against harvesting the lesser Lord Klein,” the monks said.

  “For his low yield, not for the risk,” a slightly less gaunt magician, perhaps a younger one, said as he slashed his hand through the air.

  The head magician raised his hand as if for silence. “The lesser Klein lord needed to die—however, we only chose to reap him on your assessment. We do hope that these errors in judgment are not turning us away from a truly necessary reaping. Need I remind you what is at risk if our power fails?”

  A pulse of heat scorched through me, born in my right palm but growing quickly up my arm. My entire body shook with rage. My vision blurred as fury surged up through me, filling my entire body like a windstorm trapped in me.

  “You do not need to remind us. We live to serve you,” the monks said.

  “We will give you two more hours—but do not try our patience again. Evaluate only high lords with enough power and influence to suffice us entirely in one reaping. If you do not find an alternative that is satisfactory this time, we will reap Lord Klein as we originally suggested.”

  “We do not recommend that, Your Magnificence. The Klein line is the strongest Weire line in Domengrad.”

  “Perhaps that is the problem—the line is too dominantly Weire. It might be better to be ended all together.”

  I didn’t know how it happened, but somehow, I’d run forward. Before I realized it, I was halfway around the fire.

  They’d killed my parents.

  No, they’d reaped my parents—whatever that entailed. But the truth of it was that the magicians had killed my mother and father, not only as a punishment for heresy, but as a harvest of power. And they hoped to do it to my cousin as well.

  I ripped my glove off with my teeth, spitting it out onto the floor. When I reached the monks, my body burned so hot it was as if I no longer felt on fire but instead that I was the fire, a funnel of flame, charging for them. At the first crimson-robed back, I pushed.

  Somehow, the monk flew into the air and crashed down onto his companion. The second monk I hit flew forward, smacking into the sphere and sliding off. The monks all surged toward me, but I dove forward. In three leaping steps, I closed the distance, reached forward and hit the sphere with my still-burning hand.

  Cracks shot out around my hand and over the surface of the sphere.

  Potestas yelled, “What is—”

  A deafening whistling sound filled the library, blocking out the remainder of what he said.

  The sphere exploded.

  A wave of energy blasted out, and I could feel sharp stinging all over my body. Bodies collided with me on all sides. Closed as my eyes were, I did not see the monks coming until I was buried in their crimson robes.

  “We feel her here!” many voices echoed.

  “Damn you! Damn you all!” I screamed, and then I started hitting them. As my hand connected with skin and cloth, they flew away. A great gust of wind blew them back, one after the other. But there were always
more. I was in a crimson tide of bodies, pulled under their wave.

  And then suddenly, all the bodies flew away from me, blasting in every direction as a great wind ripped through the space.

  “Let the wind take you, Annabelle,” a voice so like my mother’s whispered on the wind.

  I staggered to my feet as the gale pummeled my back. The monks had scattered in all directions, and though some had managed to their feet, they made little progress against the wind that beat against their face and bodies.

  “I cannot slip past their hold for long, my daughter; let my wind take you,” the wind whispered again.

  I did, running with it instead of fighting to stand still. My boots crunched over the wide circle of glass that littered the ground where the sphere had once been. No magicians lay there, only small bits of translucent glass.

  The wind pushed me across the length of the marble floor, urging me toward a high, arched passageway at the end. The moment my boots hit the marble of the corridor, the fire in my hand extinguished, taking most of my energy with it.

  “You can’t slow now, child. The monks are fighting my wind too hard. I can only give you some distance, but they will catch up.”

  As my legs wobbled under me, the wind pushed harder, practically lifting me down the downward slope of the corridor. As we came to another passage, the wind whipped me to the left.

  “Are you my mother or are you Nirsha?” I yelled into the wind as I ran the way the wind took me.

  “In most ways, I am both. In some ways, I am neither. You are welcome to call me by either name,” the wind whispered.

  I flung myself into the power of the wind, sprinting with the last of my energy in the directions she took me. Up and down we went, weaving through identical black-pointed arched passageways.