“Like betraying your entire world to slavers?” she asked, ears flipping out.
Val paused, then shook his head. “No, that’s the sort of act that proves the truth of it. If you’re going to break the rules, you break them in the biggest way possible, in a sweeping, dramatic way. You make a statement. You can’t make statements by crawling around in the innards of a building like a menial.”
“Okay, I can see that.” She shivered. “Tell me we’re there.”
“Almost.”
Her elbows scraped against the unfinished stone of the wall. “How are we going to get Araelis through these things?”
“I think the easiest answer to that is, ‘we don’t.’” Val stopped, lifted his lantern. “We hope the Queen’s Tams and her Swords arrive in time to allow us to lead them out the normal way. Quiet, now. This is the door, I think.”
“You think,” Irine muttered.
“I’m not at my best in the dark.”
She grinned suddenly, her anxiety dampened by the retort she thought but didn’t share. Of course it didn’t matter; she saw Val’s head swing toward her, his arched brows.
“Just wondering,” she said, innocent. “A girl can wonder, right?”
He shook his head, grinning, and touched his fingers to his lips to encourage her silence before exerting a gentle pressure on the door… just enough to crack it open. He squinted through it, then slid away and gestured for her to look.
The audience chamber was smaller than she had been imagining, and it was full of Eldritch seated and bound… full of them, and no one else. Irine frowned and eased the door closed again. “I don’t understand,” she whispered. “Where are the guards?”
Val’s expression was some amalgam of amusement and wariness. “If I had to guess… they’re outside the room, guarding the only entrance. If they stood inside the room—”
“—a room full of twenty or thirty people, then it doesn’t really matter if you think they’re securely bound. If any of them got free and got someone down, she’d have a weapon.” She nodded. “I guess it makes sense if you don’t have enough people to post in the room to make sure it’s not worth the risk. And there’s always a way around bondage, unless you’re really, really good at immobilizing people.” She rolled her lower lip between her teeth. “But there are more people in there than I was expecting. And that green and goldish color. Isn’t that…”
“Asaniefa’s mark? Yes. But I imagine if Baniel imprisoned her, her personal guards would take issue.”
She frowned. “If we let them loose, they may hurt us.”
“Or they may ignore us and go rescue their mistress,” Val said. “Confusion to our enemies.” He squinted through the crack. “We remain unworthy of notice, and I will hold that cloak over us until we assess the situation. I am going to open this door, Lady Tigress. If you are ready.”
“As ready as I’ll ever be.”
He nodded and pushed it open.
It was a ridiculous plan, Irine thought, and it shouldn’t be working… but she was sure there was time for it to go horribly wrong. She snuck in after Val, staying close, and true to his promise no one so much as looked their way. Olthemiel and his Swords, much the worse for their imprisonment, were bound wrist and ankle in one corner, and Liolesa’s remaining supporters in another. Asaniefa’s unfortunate loyalists were near the throne… and what a throne. Irine stopped to stare at it. So much gold filigree and carving should have looked overblown and tasteless, but the lines were so delicate and the velvet so lush against it that she couldn’t help but appreciate the set-up. The Eldritch were like that, she thought. At turns glorious and ridiculous. She could appreciate the whimsy of it.
Val was bent alongside Olthemiel, whispering something as he worked on the captain’s bonds. But he stopped abruptly at something the captain said, face growing hard. Startled at the change in expression, Irine stole to his side. “What?”
“Help the Captain,” Val said, and was over the nearest body before she could ask. Frowning, she started working at the (badly planned) knots securing Olthemiel.
“It is the acolyte,” Olthemiel offered. When Irine looked up, he said, tired, “He is a priest, and defied them. They did not treat with him well.”
“Oh no,” Irine whispered, and looked for Val. She found him bent over a body. The white and pale blue of Belinor’s robes made the blood streaking them devastatingly easy to see. “Is he….”
“It is fortunate you’re here,” Olthemiel said, grave. “Your medicine can save him. Ours.…” He shook his hands, flexed his fingers. “I will see to my feet and my men. Do you go to the women, now.”
“Right,” Irine said, biting her lip. Poor Val. And Belinor. She liked them for one another, and wondered if that would ever happen. Probably not… but they had to get out of this in one piece so Belinor could live to make the decision, one way or the other. Leaving Olthemiel to free his Swords, Irine stole to the hostages and looked for Araelis, and couldn’t find her. Frowning, she scanned the group for the most expensive-looking clothes and went to that woman instead. Was Val’s ‘don’t notice us’ field still in force? It hadn’t worked on Olthemiel, but Val had been addressing him. Bending in front of the stranger, she said, soft, “Can you see me?”
The woman had been looking past her, and now her eyes snapped into focus and she inhaled. “Goddess!”
“Just a Harat-Shar, I’m afraid,” Irine said, and started on the rope around the woman’s wrists with the knife Maraleith had given her. “Who are you? And where’s Lady Araelis?”
“I am Fassiana Delen Galare, head of the northern branch of the family,” said the woman, her Universal as clear as Irine’s own. “And… I do not know what happened to Lady Araelis. She was not brought here with us. You are our rescue?”
“One very small bit of it,” Irine said. “The rest of it should be hitting the palace a few minutes ago.”
“A few minutes… ago?”
It was incongruous, the stream of men in white with bared swords filing past the proofing counters. Hirianthial stood aside with the servant who’d let them in, waiting with Narain, Bryer and Sascha until the Sword’s Second halted before him. “Go meet with Olthemiel,” Hirianthial told Beronaeth. “Kill the enemies you encounter. We cannot risk their rising again in our wake.”
“We go, my Lord!”
“Well they’re taking off like kits in trouble,” Sascha observed. “That leaves us to figure out the rest of this operation. Where are we going?”
“To find your captain, and anyone else my brother might use against us,” Hirianthial said.
“And the four of us are going to be enough to handle any trouble?”
Hirianthial arched his brows.
Sascha said, “Right. Man who shut down a battlecruiser by thinking at it.” He looked at the kitchens. “What direction, then?”
“Where do you suppose?” Hirianthial asked. “If you were cruel and wanted to rub salt in someone’s wounds.”
Sascha wrinkled his nose. “I’m not really into cruelty. Different wiring, I didn’t get it.”
“You were there when she found me.”
All the Harat-Shar’s fur stood on end. “Okay. Yeah. That makes sense. Let’s go.”
They reached the narrow stairwell leading to the catacombs when the sounds of the fight started echoing down the cold halls, but those noises were distant and diffuse compared to the sudden scarlet that spilled through his awareness, like blood from a severed artery. Beronaeth had the fight in hand, from his sense of the confusion; he left the Sword to it and gave himself to his own.
The first priest in the robes of the killing sect went down beneath the Alliance’s obedient sword, and the blood hissed off it in a mist on the backswing. Behind him Narain and Bryer took on two more approaching from the rear, and Sascha remained flush to his side, untrained but guarding his flank in answer to an instinct older than sapience. The Eldritch in the catacombs did not carry any foreign weapons; they had given themse
lves to Baniel and the Lord’s works, not to Surela and the pirates, and it made the fighting fair—more or less. What the priests lacked in weaponry they made up for in numbers, and as their screams rang through the halls, they brought fresh groups to replace the dead.
“How many of these people are there?” Narain barked, smacking back against a wall to avoid a knife swing before putting a boot to his attacker’s middle and shoving him away.
Hirianthial swept the head from him for the Harat-Shar and said, “The sect of the Lord? I don’t know. Most of them will have been centered in the Cathedral at the capital.”
“Let’s get this over with before we kill them all. Groups of three or four are fine. If they decide to rush us, that’ll be trouble.”
“Not enough trouble to stop us,” Hirianthial said, and led them around the turn into the final hall. Quiet: until he sensed the packed masses in the rooms lining it. “’Ware the doors!”
And then there was time for nothing but the fight, and for the first flickering exchanges it was all physical effort. Then one of the priests pushed with his mind, and it became a weaving of light and will: identifying those who wanted to cripple with their thoughts before they could succeed while keeping the ones closest to him from stabbing him. He broke through the back of the pack before Narain and Bryer had finished with the middle and paused. They had it in hand, so he took the key down from beside the only door that mattered and flung it open. The light from the corridor flooded the bare floor, raced over the woman sitting in the corner, arms tight around her knees. She lifted her head and he felt her heart stumble, and then the phoenix blaze of her joy, rising twined with streamers of disbelief and hesitation.
He answered the latter by crossing the room in two steps and gathering her face in one hand. A pause long enough to meet her eyes and be sure of his welcome, and then he kissed her, like coming home, because he was, at last.
CHAPTER 19
Surela hadn’t come back.
Reese thought she would have been glad about that; Surela wasn’t great company, and as one of the authors of this mess Reese was still nurturing one of the famous Eddings grudges against her. But the silence in the cell was far more oppressive than Surela’s company had been, and the darkness once the candle burned out felt closer and colder, and she hated having too much time to think… about whether Surela had succeeded in stabbing her rapist, or whether he’d found her out and killed her first, about whether anyone was coming to rescue her and if Baniel would kill them for it, and most of all about herself and whether she’d ever been fair to anyone she loved, enough to make them want to rescue her.
Which of the twins had it been that had accused her of being more prickly than a cactus?
Reese rested her cheek on her knees and tried not to hate herself for all the things she’d left unsaid. She hadn’t told the twins she loved them for their irreverence, and their love of life, and their acceptance of her. She hadn’t hugged Kis’eh’t and thanked her for being the steady core around which everyone else revolved. She hadn’t made it clear to Bryer that his advice had always helped her—maybe he already knew, maybe Phoenixae were a little psychic themselves that way. Allacazam… what would he do without her? Would he miss her?
She hadn’t apologized to her mother. Hadn’t even realized she owed her mother an apology, because as much as Martian custom had imprisoned her, it had given her mother and grandmother and aunts and nieces a structure that made sense, that they valued. Defying it hadn’t made her better than them. It had all been a sad misunderstanding, one of those ugly times when people’s needs conflicted and no one won. If she got through this, she would send the money back that she’d borrowed. It wouldn’t replace her in their hearts, but she’d promised she’d make the money back for her family, and it would be the least she could do to make up for what she couldn’t give them.
And Hirianthial.
All the things she hadn’t told him. All the things she hadn’t apologized for, the verbal abuse and the anger and the fear, the distrust he had never earned, her condescension at his frequent failures because she’d never understood—never been willing to admit—that the things he was striving against were so huge that failure was possible. Reese had never let herself try at anything bigger than the Earthrise. Maybe because fleeing Mars had been the very least she could do to maintain her sanity, and she’d been too frightened to aim for anything bigger, to really chase her dreams, dreams that involved someplace to call home, someone to love her, children sung to sleep by their father as well as their mother.
She’d flubbed it all, and Baniel had thrown her in this cell to force her to face it, thinking it would hurt her… but she’d needed it. Needed this moment with her back to the wall and no way to make excuses for anything.
Reese lifted her head and breathed in once, slowly, the way Bryer would have recommended. Out again, letting it all go.
All she had to do was survive this. If she did, she promised herself and all the other faces hanging in her mind’s eye, if she did… she would be braver. And she would trust other people to forgive her for the mistakes she’d inevitably make, trying to do something more honest than get by.
Now if only she would survive this.
Her epiphany energized her, and she took to pacing. Reese counted the width of the chamber (sixteen steps, toe to heel), and the length (thirteen and a half). She felt along the walls again for any discrepancies or hidden doors, and earned herself only friction burns on her fingers. She examined the door again and found it annoyingly impervious to her plans for escape. Running out of things to do, she returned to pacing until she got tired of hearing the sound of her own boots on stone. Then she sat, and the hours crept on, and she lost track of them. She napped and woke and slept. Paced and sat and hugged her knees and cursed and waited and hated the waiting.
The door twitching in its frame made her look up. Surela, maybe? Another chance to rush the guards, at least. She was just thinking it when the door swung open completely, something her captors had never allowed. Reese blinked in the sudden light, frozen, until the shape in the door resolved into familiarity. An Eldritch—her Eldritch—streaked in red and holding a holo-sword still active, its length coruscating with lilac sparks and weeping webs of blood.
He was the finest thing she’d ever, ever seen, and she was about to tell him so when he crossed the room faster than she could find the words. That hand that cupped her face was long enough to stretch from jaw to temple, and the thumb on her chin shocked her senseless. But she was aware enough to understand the look he gave her as a request, and with all her heart she answered it.
He kissed her.
There was fighting outside in the halls, distant sounds of effort and violence. The stench of blood and sweat and the uglier smells that came with death clung to him. The palace had to be convulsed with battle for him to be here, looking like this.
And yet, ridiculously, the only thing she thought was that she’d never been kissed, that Hirianthial was kissing her, and that it was better than anything she’d ever, ever, ever felt and blood in the soil but the twins were going to crow, and did she mention he was good at kissing?
She became aware that the kissing had stopped and that he was shaking, his brow against hers and his mouth… he was smiling. He was trying not to laugh. Her own lips were trying to turn up too. “What?” she asked. “What is it?”
“Thank you,” he said, and the husk in his baritone almost distracted her from the words. “For the evaluation of my performance—”
Reese flushed. “Ah, I didn’t mean for you to… well… um—”
“Given how long it’s been since I last practiced, the endorsement is appreciated—”
“Hirianthial!” she exclaimed before he could keep going and make her light-headed from blushing, and now she was laughing. “Blood, would you stop that?”
He grinned against her cheek and gathered her into his shoulder. “Ah, God and Lady, Theresa! You aren’t harmed? They didn’t—
”
“Nothing. They haven’t done a thing to me except throw me down here to entice you to come, and you have and, oh freedom—”
He touched his fingers to her lips. “Enough. I know he’s waiting. Our allies are clearing the palace, but all their efforts will be meaningless if we leave Baniel free.”
“He’s a killer!” Reese blurted.
“Yes.”
“No, you don’t understand.” She gripped his arms. “He can do some of the things you can do, I saw it—”
He was staring at her, frowning. “Wait. What is it that I see in your eyes, that is not you?”
Reese froze. “W-what?”
“Sssh. Be still.” He touched his fingertips to her brow and she felt something… pulling, stretching, an ache like a splinter being tugged from her body. It dragged and then suddenly was gone, and Hirianthial rocked back on his foot, eyes wide. When he focused again, he said, “Val. The man who contacted us. You trust him?”
“He died for us.”
“For a dead man he’s remarkably mobile,” Hirianthial said. “And clever, to put a warning in you.”
“He did what!”
“Later, Theresa. Reese.” He ran his fingers down her cheekbone. “Later for everything. If… you are willing?”
“Oh, God, yes,” she said, catching his hand. “Please?”
“Then let us deal with our Queen’s enemies, and make the time.”
“Yes,” she said. And then, because there was every possibility they might die, she finished before she could lose her nerve, “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to, but oh, I’m in love with you—”
That made him very still, but not one of those bad stillnesses. This one was like… like… someone who’d seen a unicorn in a forest, caught fast by something unexpected but longed for, something beautiful. Hirianthial brought her fingers to his mouth, kissed the back of her hand, and the warmth of his breath on her skin raised all the hair up the back of her neck. “Oh, Theresa. I love you also. And I find I am not sorry for that, so do you not apologize. Never apologize.”
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