by Sara Wolf
“Will that work on her Heartless body?” Yorl asks, and I’m simultaneously flashing eyes at him to shut up and curious about it myself.
“We’ll use the formula intended for large game.” The scholar motions to the other silver robes on the wall, and they scatter out and back in, wheeling a tray with multicolored bottles on it. “It’s not as if overdosing will kill her.”
“Good point.” I flash a wink at Yorl as the scholar tips a bottle into my mouth. The taste is scathing tar and ferment, but it works almost instantly—all the muscles in my body unwind like coiled snakes, and I sink into the black rock throne far more relaxed. Yorl is an ochre blur above me, the muscles in my eyes drooping.
“I’ve gotta say, Ironspeaker, this stuff is way better than what you used to give me.”
“Shut up,” Yorl says, not an ounce of anger in it, only gentleness.
“Not quite yet.” The scholar steps in, holding either side of my face in his hands. “You have your painless time, Heartless. Now tell me; do you hear the song?”
I have no filter anymore, my thoughts spilling out faster than I can make them.
“I hear both songs. Glass and bone. But the bone song only ever in my dreams.”
He blinks. “The Heartless hunger is not the song.”
“It is,” I argue, my head lolling uselessly back as he lets go of me. “I’ve heard them both. They’re the same thing. Different notes, but the same music, deep down. I can feel it.”
“That’s—that’s utter nonsense.”
I laugh, rolling my head to look at him. “I sound a bit like a valkerax, don’t I? But don’t you know? The Old Vetrisians split the Tree of Souls.”
“Of course.” He pulls a shining scalpel out of his pocket, testing my skin. “But it’s been more than a thousand years. By all deductions, the Trees’ connection to each other should’ve completely eroded at this point.”
I go quiet, watching the silver blade split my skin and hot blood ooze out. Yorl holds my wrist softly between his paws, steadying the work. I want him to push the hair off my face again, but he’s Yorl. He has a job to do, and polymathematics to aid. It’s enough for me that he cares enough to be here, that he came to this at all. I’m starting to slip in and out of consciousness, the world blurring on the edges. Better to pass out, I suppose, because I’m not particularly fond of the idea of being here when they take my slice of brain.
to be together, the hunger slithers. to undo what you did, weak things afraid of death.
“They want to be together again,” I mumble. “More than anything. So they sing. They sing to punish us…to—to guilt us. To make it unbearable. To make us undo what we did.”
The darkness claws around me, but softly, folding interlocking talons one by one over the light until there’s only shadow and the hunger left—two hungers, same but different and both ringing clear as winter rain in my head.
together.
TOGETHER.
The feeling of someone’s leathery pads pushing my hair off my sweating face gingerly, and then nothing.
As with most people I’ve met, once they have what they want, the scholars of the Black Archives are far nicer to me. In that they leave me the afterlife alone.
“Humans really are humans, no matter where they are or how smart they think they are,” I groan, massaging my head as Yorl undoes my restraints. When I wake up again he’s the only one left in the room, the instruments and blood all cleared out and cleaned up. It’s like nothing ever happened—like I just sat down here and fell asleep. With leather wristbands on, but still.
“The entry hole closed almost instantly.” Yorl jerks his hairy chin to where I’m massaging my skull. “In a way that suggests your new witch is either very powerful, or very attentive to you.”
“I want it to be the latter,” I admit. “But I think it’s more likely the former.”
“Or a combination of both,” Yorl suggests.
“I forgot I can always rely on you to be the stark realist,” I tease, poking his wet nose lightly with one finger when my hand works free. “Yes, it’s true. I’m in love with my witch.”
Yorl mechanically undoes my other restraint, not a single twitch on his face.
“No applause, please,” I add.
“Wasn’t planning on it,” he deadpans, offering a spare shift. “Do you want new clothes, or what?”
“Here I am talking about direly important things like love,” I huff. “And all you want to talk about is which burlap sack would look best on me!”
“I doubt your love’s going to appreciate it if you come back looking like that.” He motions to my blood-smeared everything, and I sigh, grabbing the shift.
“You’re right.”
“I usually am.”
Ignoring his infuriating confidence, I slip behind the throne to change.
“So,” I start, pulling blood-soaked cotton over my head carefully. “How’ve you been? What’ve you eaten? How many other girls have you experimented on while I was gone?”
“You’d think a recent death experience would make you less chatty, not more.” He sighs. “Come. We need to vacate the surgery.”
I walk around the throne, now far drier and cleaner-looking. “Personally I’d call it a dungeon, but all right. You’re the boss. Although apparently not enough of a boss. Do you always let the other polymaths in here push you around?”
“I’d like you to realize earning a kingsmedal whilst also bypassing initiate and going straight to adjutant is a feat no one has accomplished in the history of the Black Archives ever.”
“Goodness! Both firsts in history, the two of us.” I walk out with him, his silver robe swishing along the floor. “When will I get my results back?”
“They aren’t yours to get back,” Yorl says evenly.
“But you’re going to tell me what they think about them.”
“Obviously,” he agrees. “Depending, of course, on how long you plan on staying here.”
“As long as it takes to translate a book we stole from the High Witches,” I say. “We think it’ll tell us how to stop Varia and the Bone Tree.”
Yorl’s quiet, the white mercury lights of the hallway glittering in his large green eyes. “I hope you don’t expect me to feel guilty.”
My laugh bounces off the walls. “Nah. I’m done with guilt, too. We did what we had to. But say that enough times and it starts to sound like a terrible excuse, so I’ve started to tell myself ‘what’s done is done’ instead. Convenient and catchy.”
The comfortable quiet that fell between us all those times walking down to Evlorasin’s arena falls now. He’s not the type to talk unless excited about something, so when he starts, I know it’s important.
“When I was helping Varia get the Bone Tree, I didn’t anticipate I’d make Arathess’s first nonhuman Heartless.”
“I mean, I’m still human.”
“Yes,” he starts slowly. “But not entirely. You’re also technically valkerax.”
“Because of the blood promise, right?” I ask. He gives me a dull obviously stare, and I laugh. “Fine, sorry. Continue, master polymath.”
And so he does, between sighs.
“I told you before—blood promises are like conversations for valkerax. They communicate thoughts, concepts, entire memories through ingesting one another’s blood, given willingly.”
“Right. But if a mortal ingests their blood, they die.”
He nods. “But if you survive… We don’t know what happens if a mortal survives. We didn’t know. Until you.”
“Six eyes, it turns out. And a weird connection to the Bone Tree.” I smirk.
“A connection?” Yorl frowns.
“I can…” I pause. “See Varia. Well, through her. In my dreams. And she can see me. Any ideas what that might be?”
“Your gues
s is as good as mine in that regard. It may very well be the Bone Tree sensing the valkerax blood promise in you and tying you to itself.” Yorl’s sigh is practically thunderous. “I underestimated the power of the blood promise. I thought—because you were a Heartless—that your witch’s magic would overturn the promise. Valkerax blood promises work because they remain in the blood—but a Heartless’s body is constantly regenerated by magic. And by that, I mean you’re not like a human.”
“You don’t say,” I drawl.
“Mortal blood is very efficient.” He ignores me. “And their bodies only replace it with fresh blood when blood loss occurs. Their heart pumps the new blood around. But as a Heartless, your blood is replenished by magic. That’s how you survive—not through circulation, but through constant magic replenishment.”
“So you thought the valkerax blood promise would be cycled out of my veins eventually,” I finish, and Yorl’s sigh this time is pleased.
“You’ve gotten mildly smarter.”
“And you’ve gotten slightly longer with your explanations,” I tease.
He snorts, but I know him enough by now to know that’s his version of laughter. The hall becomes familiar eventually, going thin and entirely lined with dozens of doors.
Yorl pauses before our door, looking over at me. “I’m…I have to confess. I’m nervous.”
I cock my head. “What? Why?”
“Your friends are in here, aren’t they?”
I pat his broad shoulder. “One of them’s out here in the hall, too.”
The flicker of his lashes against the gloom of the hall tells me everything I need to know—surprise. He’s not one to be easily surprised, Yorl. He’s like me. He knows things, and accounts for things, and predicts things ahead of time. To keep safe, to accomplish goals. We’re both planners, schemers, and that’s what I like best about him. Us. As I push the door open and Lucien bolts up from his chair and Malachite hefts off the wall and Fione grips her cane and stands, all their eyes fall on me, not him.
Lucien’s over in two strides, taking my hands, glancing his way down my body as if studying me, his gaze heavy with onyx concern.
“Did they—”
“I managed to wheedle some painkillers out of them,” I lilt. “So ease up on the worried look, okay? It doesn’t suit Your Highness.”
His laugh is small, but the kiss he leans into and gives me is anything but.
“I warned you about that title,” he murmurs when we part.
“And I warned you about kissing girls,” I whisper conspiratorially back. “Who knows what’s going to happen after this. I might even fall in love with you.”
“Here we go again.” Malachite rolls his eyes to the ceiling. On their way down they catch on Yorl. “Who’s this?”
“Yorl,” I pull myself out of the intimate spell of Lucien and motion to the celeon. “He’s my friend. And, by some stroke of luck, he works here.”
“Luck had nothing to do with it,” Yorl snorts, then realizes everyone’s looking at him. He makes a quick, polite bow. “Yorl Farspear-Ashwalker, Adjutant of the Black Archives. I was—” He shakes his mane. “I am the one who aided Varia in getting the Bone Tree.”
“Ah!” Malachite muses. “I knew you looked familiar. You’re the guy I helped catch the valkerax for.”
“One and the same,” Yorl agrees. “Thank you again for your aid.”
“Psh.” The beneather waves his hand. “That was nothing. I could capture valkerax in my sleep. With eleven other beneathers also sleeping,” he adds.
Yorl goes stiff upon seeing Lucien, and I remember their flash of a confrontation, back before the Bone Tree was found. But this time, Lucien nods at him, and Yorl eases into a nod back.
“You’re all right then, Zera?” Fione’s frown crumples her heart-shaped face.
“Right as rain, Your Grace.” I tap my cheek. “You can kiss me too, if you want.”
Her expression lightens minutely. “No, thank you. I’m saving them for someone.”
It goes unsaid, but it makes both of us smile. Varia. The Varia we’ll get back when we translate the book. The Varia who’s this much closer now that I’ve returned and given the Black Archives what they want.
Fione turns to Yorl, then, and puts on her best Vetrisian smile.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you at last. I’ve heard much of you from Varia, and more from Zera. Both of them seemed to insist we’d get along.”
“I have likewise heard of you.” Yorl nods at her.
“Show ’im the white mercury dagger, Fi,” I urge.
Yorl’s eyebrows instantly shoot up. “A white mercury weapon—it can’t be.”
Fione, shier than I’ve seen her in months, pulls the dagger out and unsheathes it before Yorl. He leans in eagerly, whiskers twitching.
“It took a little reconfiguring of the mathematics,” she admits sheepishly. “My uncle thought it was the metal’s ratio to the mercury from which the common base had to be built, but in actuality, it was the gradual introduction of the ore compound through acid—”
“Through acidic methods,” Yorl finishes for her, and as he looks up at her from the dagger, his eyes widen. “How did you realize that?”
“I had help,” she assures him, a blush on her cheeks from all the attention.
“From whom? Who else would know? The smithing methods have never been recorded. Which means…you discovered it on your own. You’re—” He pauses. “You’re incredible.”
“Oh.” Fione makes a high, wavering laugh. “Well, I wouldn’t go that far—”
I lean in and elbow her with a wicked grin. “I’ve never once heard him use the word ‘incredible.’ I didn’t even think compliments were in his dictionary. Live it up.”
Fione pauses, Yorl’s eyes shining at her, and when she looks up this time, all the sheepish modesty is gone. Her face is set, ready.
“Will you help me, Sir Farspear-Ashwalker?”
“Just Yorl is fine,” he hurriedly insists. “Help you with what, Your Grace?”
She holds up the green-bound book in one hand, and our kingsmedal in the other. “This. Seven hundred pages of Old Vetrisian, some of it mixed with Qessen, and half of it near-illegible.”
“We’ll have to wait for the results of Zera’s testing, but…yes. Gladly. It sounds a true challenge.” Yorl laughs. Really laughs, a soft growl-purr under his breath. Fione looks equally pleased, eagerness beneath all her iron willpower. The celeon looks back at me, at Mal and Lucien and me, and nods.
“This may take a while. Let me show you to the beach.”
21
THE LITTLE
ROOM BY
THE SEA
The island of the Black Archives—Rel’donas, Yorl calls it—is the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen. But I said that about Vetris once upon a time, didn’t I? Maybe I’m just the sort of person to be easily impressed by shiny new places. Even taking that into consideration, Rel’donas does nothing but impress; Yorl leads us out through a door of the Archives that guards a staircase cut straight into the side of the black volcanic-rock mountain, zigzagging and switchbacking until it reaches a black sand beach at the very bottom, the emerald waves lapping at mollusk-eating birds with mind-bendingly long beaks and hordes of minuscule horseshoe crabs the color and texture of glossy pink confectionaries in a box. Thickets of mangroves guard the litmus between sea and sand, their roots like bark soldiers standing alert and waist-deep in gemlike water.
But it’s the sound I like most.
No one tells you the ocean sings. They say it’s there, and that it’s big and dangerous and deep, but never that it has its own orchestra, constantly playing a soothing symphony as the waves scrape across the shallows and back again. It’s almost like breathing, like the world of Arathess itself is breathing.
“It’s—” I pucker my lips,
my hands wet with cupped seawater. “It’s salty!”
“Of course it’s spiritsdamn salty!” Malachite shouts from his place stalwartly far away from the water’s edge. “It’s the ocean! You were on a ship for like, three days! How’d ya miss that?”
“No one threw me overboard to taste it!” I shout. “That was your job!”
“Come in, Mal!” Lucien calls, his pants rolled up as he wades the shallows with me.
“So the two of you can pull me under and drown me?”
“With love!” I insist. “Drown you with love!”
“Ugh.” He wrinkles his nose. “Pass.”
Lucien shoots a sly look to me, and I to him.
“On the count of three?” the prince proposes.
“Absolutely,” I agree.
“One, two, three—”
We dash out of the water and make a beeline for Malachite, and he tries to run to the safety of the tidepool rocks, but with Lucien holding his arms and me grabbing his weak spot ever so slightly (ears), we manage to drag him down the beach.
“You little—” He quickly pulls his sword off and throws it in the sand as the water approaches, desperately trying to do the same to his chainmail. “The salt’s gonna ruin my armor—”
“And we’ve had quite enough of you ruining our fun!” I chide, helping him unhook his chainmail and tossing it in the sand. With his massive strength, he could fight us off anytime he wanted, ear-captured or not, and that’s how I know he’s all right with it. Secretly. Deep down. Where no one else can see.
With Mal shed of his metal, Lucien smirks at me in an unspoken plot as he cries, “Heave, ho!”
We crash into the water face-first, dragging Malachite down with us. Salt floods my ears, my nose, the ocean so much warmer with the sun on it. It’s not bathwater, but it’s close, and the sensation of the tide pulling and pushing is perhaps the closest my unremembering Heartless arse can come to recalling what being a child in a crib was like. Malachite squirms, and I let his ear go, Lucien releasing his arms, and we surface, the waves tossing us as playfully as we splash the beneather’s face relentlessly the second he comes up.
