by Jaine Fenn
The two men exchanged glances. Dej stepped back, ready to draw her knife, or run. One of them said, “Wait right here.” Then he turned and marched into the dark corridor beyond.
The next blow didn’t land. Something fell across Rhia’s legs, and there was a shout from nearby. Weight rolled off her. She wished she had died, because everything hurt so very much, and the pain wasn’t going to stop until she was dead.
“Ree!”
She prised her eyes open – one stung like she’d got chemical fumes in it – to see the impossible vision of a new face over hers. Etyan’s. Except, not Etyan. “Ree, stay with me!”
Someone groaned, off to one side. Her dead brother’s face moved away. There was a scuffle, then Etyan’s voice, “Oh no you don’t, you piece of shit.”
Reality broke through the pain. Rhia forced herself to focus.
Etyan – it really was Etyan – was crouching over the rogue skykin, who was curled up on the floor. Her brother held a large stone in one hand, poised to strike. At that moment, Rhia wanted him to smash the bastard’s head to a pulp. But then Etyan stood, and kicked the skykin hard enough to propel him to his feet. Another kick and the skykin staggered away, swaying. There was a fresh, gaping wound between his shoulderblades, white bone visible through the blood streaming down his back.
“Get out!” shouted Etyan. “Get out and don’t come back.”
Etyan kept shouting, kept brandishing the stone, as the bandit staggered out of the cave. Etyan limped after him.
Rhia watched them disappear into the Sun’s glare. A few moments later Etyan returned and hobbled across to her. “How badly did he hurt you?”
“You’re alive.” Her voice was a rasping whisper. “You’re alive, Etyan. You’re alive!”
“Yes, I am.”
“How?” She reached up.
He caught her hand in his. “I don’t know. Whatever happened to me in Zekt, it changed me. I hadn’t realized how much.” His skin looked coarsely but regularly patterned, almost like scales.
“You survived… the Sun.”
“When I could move again I got into the water to avoid getting burned. But I was so weak the current washed me downstream. Washed me up somewhere with even less cover. It hurt like f–, like you wouldn’t believe. Burning, just burning, for days. Felt like days anyway. But I could feel my body changing. The Sun woke something inside me. Finally, the burning stopped, and instead of the Sun being painful it was… sustaining.”
“Your leg…”
“Knee’s still dodgy, though it’s healing fast. Other than that, I feel amazing.” He looked hard at her. “But you look awful, sis.”
“Thanks.”
She wanted to lie down and close her eyes but he said she had to sit up, and stay awake. He helped her get upright. The pain in her ribs put all the other small pains in the shade. Every breath hurt. Leaving the stone he had used on the bandit with her “just in case” Etyan went to fetch water.
Rhia put a hand on the stone – it was unpleasantly slippery, and she’d never lift it – then, despite Etyan’s warning, closed her eyes.
What a room! All these padded seats – and the furnishings! Mam Gerisa would’ve wet herself. Some of the fittings were, Dej noted, removable, like the dainty carved candleholders shaped like sitting dogs or the ribbon-tied herb bundles hanging in the drapery.
She had no doubt the man sitting across from her was the duke of Shen. Leaving aside the fact he claimed he was, his amazing if impractical clothes and the number of attendants fussing around him, there was how he smelled. Not just the smells a shadowkin could pick up, the soaps and spices and perfumed hair, but the more arcane scent of power.
She told him about the abduction and the landslide and the cave. He listened, fingers steepled under this chin, then asked Dej, “So, were you in the group that attacked the caravan, then?”
Rhia had warned her to be honest with the duke. “Yes, but everyone else who was is dead.”
“And how do you feel,” asked the duke, “about saving the very prize that got your people killed?”
She didn’t flinch. “Etyan and Rhia had nothing to do with what happened to the clanless. It was an accident. I have no people now.”
“And can you lead my men back to these red caves?”
“I could, yes.”
The duke raised an eyebrow. “You could? Meaning you might not?”
If someone had said to her, back at the crèche, that one day she’d be haggling with the duke of Shen, she’d have told them they’d lost their mind. From the intakes of breath around her, some of the courtiers would agree. “I didn’t say that. I’d just like you to do something for me in return. Please.”
“What sort of thing?”
They probably expected her to ask for a massive sum of money or a house of her own. “A really small thing. Nothing really.”
She explained.
The duke listened, nodded and then said, “Consider it done, Mam Dej.”
Dej grinned. No one had ever called her “Mam” before.
Chapter 60
Why no news? The caravan must have reached Shen days ago, yet still Sadakh had heard nothing.
Nothing regarding the prince’s reasons for sending men into the priory either. All he had got from the surviving intruders was the name of the now-untraceable third party who had hired them, and their orders to steal the Shenese boy from the infirmary. Did Mekteph know of Sadakh’s plan to assure an eternal caliarchy for Numak, and the young man’s unwitting part in it? A chilling thought.
And then there were the other intruders. Whoever would have thought one foreign lad, noble though he might be, was worth so much trouble? More importantly: where was he now? The agent given the job of recovering the boy was a feckless type, but even so–
“Akbet! You startled me.”
He rounded a corner to find her just standing there. She carried a stack of washing, so perhaps it was a matter of chance, but ever since he had told her not to visit his rooms he kept running into her.
“Holiness.” She dimpled, and dipped her head, and he knew he was meant to melt. Or harden.
This had gone on long enough. “Is your burden urgent?”
She blinked, as though just noticing the folded linen in her arms. “Oh no, I just, I was…”
“Then let us talk, privately.”
“Holiness.”
He led her to an empty prayer-room, from her expression not where she was hoping for. He took the linen from her, and sat her down on one of the benches. “Do you remember when we first became close?”
“It was the greatest moment of my life, Holiness.”
Oh dear.
Sadakh ignored his ghost. “And do you remember what I said at the time…?”
He had been putting this conversation off, knowing how it would go.
“That sex is merely part of life, and that either of us was free to end the relationship at any time.” Her eyes widened. “But this is different, Holiness.”
Save us from foolish children.
“I fear it is not.”
“No!” Tears began to roll down her cheeks. “I’ll do whatever you ask, anything at all!”
For a moment, he considered asking her to do something that would test her avowed love to its limits.
The animus, in its bath of warm blood, would not survive much longer. Unless he found it a new host. The difference between skykin and shadowkin was not as great as people believed, so a shadowkin might suffice. But even if it worked, he would have difficulty extracting the animus’s essence, as to access it he would have to operate on the host. Whilst working on bodies away from the priory, guarded by discreet servants, was concealable, it would be a different matter to operate, repeatedly, on one of his own people. Even one who claimed she was willing to do anything for him.
He held up his hands. “You have my prayers and my sympathy. You have given me devotion, and been hurt in return. But our relationship is over. I need you to accept that
.”
She looked at her clasped hands while tears fell on them.
“Can you accept it, Akbet? Are you strong enough?”
“Never!” She leapt to her feet and ran from the room.
Sadakh sighed. In some ways he envied Akbet, even as he pitied her. Perhaps one day he would feel that strongly about another person, and understand this deepest of human mysteries. Perhaps that was the last piece in the puzzle. Perhaps once he had felt mature and lasting “love” he would finally understand.
Or perhaps love was one of the many things that had been taken from him, and he would always be alone.
The response from his ghost was predictable and inevitable.
Not while you have me.
He went to find the guards, to order them to eject Akbet from the priory isle.
The next day one of his bodyguards handed him a note. He broke the seal eagerly, hoping for news of the Shenese boy, but it was from Tamen Ikharon, asking him to visit “at the earliest convenient time”. He had sent his treatise to the enquirer four days ago: a distillation of his notes on how the blood circulated in the head and body, culminating in an argument that the brain was the seat of bodily control.
After assuring Ikharon he would make time for his studies, to delay his visit could count against him. Besides, it would take his mind off his other concerns. He sent an immediate reply. Then he took all the usual precautions, and left the priory isle.
When he arrived, this time accompanied by a pair of disguised guards, Sur Ikharon insisted on serving him chocatl, assembling the drink himself as they spoke. “I was most impressed with your treatise, heh,” he said, as he poured the warm milk onto the cake of beans. “Not my area of expertise, but on initial reading, yes, very impressed.”
Creep. Would he say that if you were not the eparch?
Sadakh hoped he would, if the work justified it. Such was the nature of the enquirers. That was why he wanted to join them.
“However,” continued Ikharon, dribbling honey into the drink, “I am a little perplexed.”
“Perplexed? About what?”
“Well, to be frank, about where you got your knowledge from. One gets the impression some of it was acquired, heh, practically.” Ikharon stirred the drink with a wooden paddle and handed it over.
Sadakh put the bowl to his lips but did not drink; despite his love of chocatl and high hopes that Ikharon was what he seemed, he would never be so foolish as to accept an untested drink from a stranger. He put it back on the low table between them. “It was. I confess an interest in the workings of the body. I think of it as counterbalancing my interest in the immortal and imperishable soul. The body is the house of the soul, and hence of lesser concern, but still a fascinating subject in its own right.”
Ikharon sat back with his own drink. “I understand. I am assuming this is not a hobby you advertise, heh.”
“I am discreet.” Could this be a prelude to blackmail? Sadakh would be disappointed if it was. And Sur Ikharon would live to regret it, albeit not for long.
“Of course. I am merely curious. Such study stems from a comprehensive education, heh. And here, I fear, I came across an anomaly.”
“What sort of anomaly?” Sadakh kept his tone light.
“When new members of our network are not the sons or apprentices of existing enquirers, it is beholden on us to do our research. I would have been remiss had I not checked what the public records have to say of your history before you assumed your current position, heh.”
Oh, here we go.
“Please, Holiness, I hope I have not caused offence.”
“Not at all. You discovered, no doubt, that I was not born in Mirror.”
“I did. You came to the city in your late adolescence, from one of the villages.”
“That’s right.” To his knowledge the last person to check up on him was Prince Mekteph. One of his objections to Sadakh’s current position was that he had been born a peasant.
“Nine years after arriving you took up the position of eparch of the newly rejuvenated Order of the First Light. An impressive progression, heh.”
“The First called me. I did my best to answer.” Sadakh smiled. “But yes, it was quite a journey. One which still amazes me.” He had not initially sought power. But when he realized how easily people could be swayed by his words, it had been hard to resist – even as, at the same time, he tried to use his growing status to spread a genuine message of self-discovery. The support of the man who later became caliarch also helped.
“I would never argue with the will of the First. But given your priorities must be with matters spiritual, I find myself wondering when and where you developed your intellect and gained the more… physical knowledge, heh, as shown in your treatise.”
Tell him he just accepts you as you are or you leave now!
For once, Sadakh broke his own rule, and answered his ghost. No. I am going to give him the truth.
Her alarm manifested as a pain between his eyes.
“Holiness? Are you unwell?”
“Just a little tired.” Sadakh took a long, slow breath. “I did not get my training in Zekt. I was brought up, and educated, in the skyland.”
“I am not sure I understand.”
“I was trained to be a skykin seer.”
Ikharon’s eyebrows went up again, as they had when Sadakh first confessed who he was. “I cannot see how that can be. How you got from there, to what you are now, heh.”
“Do you know what a nightwing is, Sur Ikharon?”
“I have heard of them.”
“Pray you never meet one. I was trained as a skykin seer but my bonding was disrupted by a nightwing attack. I was the only survivor and my animus was lost before the process was complete.”
“Lost, as in… died?”
Sadakh nodded. The pain between his eyes intensified. He ignored it, pushed the ghost to the back of his consciousness. He was the master here.
“Yet you survived.” Ikharon looked thoughtful. “It must have been traumatic–”
“It was. I would rather not talk about it. But that is where I got my initial education. From the skykin.”
“Which means you would be a great authority on them, heh.”
“And perhaps I may share that knowledge one day. But not yet. I look to the future, Sur Ikharon, not the past.”
“I understand.”
Sadakh doubted he did, but concerns about what skykin secrets he might choose to share could come later. “So, will you put me forward to join the enquirers?”
“I will give it serious consideration, in the light of what you have told me. If I decide to sponsor you, the final stage is to send a copy of your treatise to the enquirers in the nearest six shadowlands.”
“And if you do that, would you be obliged to tell them my real name?”
“It is necessary for us to know each other’s real names in order to correspond.”
He had feared as much. “Could I not receive my writings through yourself?”
“You could, but were anything to happen to me then your conduit to the enquirers would be lost. At which point, that would be the end of the natural enquirers in Zekt, which is not an acceptable situation, heh.” Sur Ikharon looked thoughtful. “Perhaps, under the circumstances, I could confide your secret in one of my staff, so should the worst happen they could forward your enquirers’ correspondence.”
“No, thank you.” The fewer people who knew this particular secret the better. It was not as though any enquirers from other shadowlands would ever visit Zekt. “I wish to keep my work for the enquirers and my spiritual vocation entirely separate.”
You’re used to that.
Sadakh ignored his ghost’s observation. At least she had stopped torturing him.
Ikharon said, “There is one thing, rather delicate – and I promise I won’t return to this subject again, but now we have touched upon the durability of the network, I have to ask. It is said that the skykin do not live as long as we sh
adowkin, heh.”
“That is true. The animus burns bright, but fast.”
“I realize your animus, that you… this may not be relevant, but I need to know whether you, well, how long you might have, heh. I mean, you are only a decade younger than I, so if you live only a skykin’s span… You understand why I need to know this.”
“I do.”
“And can you tell whether your animus changed you in that way? Have you any idea at all how long you have left?”
Sadakh spoke from the heart when he said, “I wish I knew.”
Chapter 61
The duke wasted no time; his rescue party set out that evening. He provided a pair of solid-sided wooden wagons pulled by horses; the leader of the rescue party, Captain Remeth, rode alongside. One wagon was given over to the drivers not on duty – and Dej – to let them rest, while the other was full of equipment and supplies.
Captain Remeth and his four companions were militia. Dej had seen militiamen before, when two soldiers visited the crèche in search of a fugitive. That pair had been impressive enough to the children, with their cudgels and leather armour, but these were a different breed. They moved with quiet efficiency and carried diamond-toothed swords.
The men who’d come to the Harlyn house had been militia too. The steward’s wife had hurried to the palace claiming a rogue skykin was running amok in the household. The militia, not knowing any better, had turned out to deal with the threat. Rhia had been wrong to think everyone in her household could be trusted.
The soldiers treated Dej with a courtesy and respect that disconcerted her, until she saw how it worked with these people: they followed orders, and if that meant they were on your side you could be sure of their support; if not, you were in trouble. She was also valuable. She’d brought news of the lost nobles, and only she could find them.
They retraced Dej’s journey through the shadowland, reaching the umbral as dawn was approaching and waiting out the heat of the day in the shelter of the forest.
