The Heartstone Blade (The Dark Ability Book 2)

by Holmberg, D. K.

  “You said you suspected from the time you recovered?” she asked. “You didn’t think we had a right—a need—to know? And that he might come after Rsiran?”

  “But he didn’t! He came for Lianna, didn’t he?”

  Rsiran laid a hand on Jessa’s arm. “I’m sorry she’s gone, Brusus. We all cared for Lianna. You know that we did.”

  Brusus took a deep breath and then sighed. “I know you did. I… I shouldn’t let emotion take me like that. It’s just…”

  “I know,” Jessa whispered.

  Brusus looked at her with an unreadable expression that slowly softened. “Tell me what you remember from the night you broke into the palace.”

  “We told you everything that happened already. What more do you want to know?”

  “I know you did. Just tell me again. I want to know how much fits with what I have learned.”

  “Which part? The part where Rsiran Slid me to the top of Krali Rock where I nearly fell off and died or the part where we snuck into the palace?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re unbelievable! You’ve been hiding a danger to us—to Rsiran—when you knew what we went through. And you know why we did it!”

  “Do you know why you did it?” he asked.

  “Because you were lying at Della’s, trying not to die.”

  “But you know Josun planned that. Once he learned of Rsiran’s ability, he planned that attack to encourage Rsiran to play a role.”

  “What if he hadn’t?” Rsiran asked.

  She turned to him. “No, Rsiran. I’ve told you how I feel about this. Brusus needs to know the same. We can’t keep helping him if he wants to keep us in the dark. How many people need to get hurt by Josun? You? Me? Haern?” She shook her head angrily. “No. No more secrets.”

  “If Rsiran hadn’t agreed to go to the palace, I suspect Josun had another plan in place.”

  “What if we hadn’t gotten in?”

  “But you did.”

  “Brusus—”

  “Then he would have staged it to look like you did.”

  “Is that why he poisoned the council?” He knew little about the poison that Josun had given him to use, other than what Della told him. Whistle dust would have made the council sick, but would not have killed them. But, introduced into the blood as Rsiran had done by pushing one of his knives through the powder and into Josun’s leg… that was supposedly deadly. Only maybe it had not been. Della said it was possible to recover from whistle dust poisoning. And somehow Josun had found the antidote.

  Unless he had it all along.

  Rsiran hadn’t considered that before, but Josun had been the one to give him the poison.

  “You were able to Slide within the palace?” Brusus asked.

  “Short distances.”

  “And Josun?”

  “He Slid.”

  “And he told you that he poisoned the rest of the council?”

  “He thought he had us trapped. Damn, Brusus, he practically killed me while we were waiting!” Jessa snapped.

  “But he didn’t.”

  “Only because Rsiran threw one of his knives at him.”

  Brusus ran his hand through his hair and shook his head. “But that’s what I’m getting at. What if none of it happened the way we thought it did?”

  “Why do you think that, Brusus?” Rsiran asked.

  Brusus let go of the sjihn tree and started pacing. Rsiran had seen him do the same when trying to work through a problem or when he was having a particularly bad string of luck with dice. “After you escaped from the palace, I kept waiting to hear that something had happened. I suspected some of it would be covered up. Either the Elvraeth council getting poisoned or the death of one of the Elvraeth. Maybe even both. But too much happened that night for all of it to be suppressed. Nothing leaked out of the palace about the attack on Josun. Nothing about the council. And I heard nothing about a break-in.” He stopped pacing and looked at Rsiran. “And I should have heard something. When I didn’t, I started to wonder what I might be missing. That’s when I started using the knives to trade,” he told Rsiran.

  “So?” Jessa asked. “What did you find?”

  “That’s just the thing. I didn’t find anything. No evidence of anything happening that night. As if none of it happened.”

  Jessa reached for her neck where Josun’s knife had drawn blood. “It happened.”

  “I know it happened. But I don’t know why I can’t learn more.”

  “Then what? What does Josun want?” Jessa asked.

  Rsiran thought he knew, just not why. If Josun lived, and he was the same Elvraeth he’d overheard on Firell’s ship, then he wanted lorcith. But what for? Lorcith would not be useful for Josun, not as it was for Rsiran. How did that help his rebellion?

  “I don’t know. And that bothers me. You wonder why I’ve been so secretive? Well, I don’t want either of you to get hurt. If Josun is still out there, he knows about Rsiran, knows what he can do, and…”

  “Why send us to the warehouse?” Jessa asked.

  “I sent Rsiran to the warehouse.”

  Jessa frowned. She gripped the charm he’d given her. “Do you know what we found?”

  Brusus’s eyes narrowed slightly. “You know which crate was missing?”

  “Not missing,” Rsiran answered. He would let Jessa tell Brusus her theory on a crate added to the warehouse. “Just my knives.”

  “Josun?” Brusus said.

  Rsiran shrugged. “Someone used my knives. It was dark. They were probably Sighted. Lorcith suddenly appeared. Then I felt the knives.” At the time, he hadn’t connected it to Sliding, but it made sense now.

  “He Slid and then attacked?” Brusus said. “I had been there just the day previously. Never had a problem. I didn’t even notice any sign of someone else there.”

  Jessa still didn’t say anything about how a crate might have been brought onto shore rather than from the warehouse. What was she hiding from Brusus? Rsiran wouldn’t say anything—not without knowing why she remained silent—but she clearly had a reason.

  “What have you been doing?” Jessa asked Brusus. “You said you’re trying to understand what Josun wanted with the warehouse, but this is more than that.”

  “It’s always more than that.”

  “Is that why he went after Lianna?” Jessa asked.

  Brusus didn’t answer. He simply turned and started back into the forest.

  * * *

  The walk back to the city took most of the night. None of them spoke much. As they neared the outskirts of the city, as the trees begin to thin, massive sjihn trees slowly giving way to elms, Rsiran felt strong enough to Slide.

  When he told the others, Brusus turned to him and said, “There’s something I must do. Please take Jessa. Return to your smithy. Wait for me.”

  “What are you going to do?” Jessa asked.

  He smiled at her sadly. “Nothing foolish.”

  “Brusus—”

  “Just promise that you’ll wait for me.”

  As Brusus started away from them, Rsiran realized that he hadn’t told him anything about Firell or the lorcith he’d felt on his ship. “Brusus… there’s something else I haven’t told you that you need to know.”

  Brusus turned and waited.

  “We went to Firell’s ship.”

  Brusus’s eyes still looked reddened and deep wrinkles lined his face. “Why?”

  Jessa frowned. “When we couldn’t find you and you didn’t come to the Barth, we went looking for you. I’m sorry we cared enough to be concerned.”

  Brusus seemed to bite back a response and let out a soft sigh. “And what did you find?”

  “Crates of unshaped lorcith. Some of my forgings.” At least now, he knew how the forgings might have ended up there. If Brusus was using his knives to trade, Firell could have gotten them anywhere.

  “Lorcith?” Brusus seemed puzzled by that. “What would Firell need lorcith for? The only value is in Elaeavn.”<
br />
  “That wasn’t—”

  “Just… wait for me,” Brusus said, interrupting. Then he turned and headed into the city.

  Jessa stared after Brusus. She sniffed softly at the flower tucked into her charm. “There is more here than we know.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “If the knives he has you forge are so valuable, then why wouldn’t other smiths outside the city value the pure lorcith?”

  “It’s the same reason that I can hear the lorcith, the same reason my father wanted to send me to Ilphaesn,” he suggested. “Our smiths can use lorcith and others can’t.”

  But what if there was more to it than that? Rsiran could hear the lorcith, could shape it into whatever form it demanded of him, but that didn’t mean other smiths couldn’t simply work with it too. He remembered the one conversation he had with his father when he learned that others heard the lorcith, that most within the smith guild could hear it. Did that ability make them better smiths? That didn’t seem likely, especially since his father had wanted him to ignore the song of lorcith… unless other smiths didn’t ignore it. But if that was the case, why was Rsiran the only one to make weapons with it?

  Jessa squeezed his hand. “You know more about it than I do. Are there any other uses for pure lorcith?”

  “Not that I know. The metal itself is pretty hard. And as you know, it takes much higher heat than any of the other metals I work with to get it to the point where I can even shape it. But lump lorcith? I can’t think of any reason.”

  “Other than to limit supply?”

  “It’s already limited—”

  “How?”

  “The mining guild controls what comes out of Ilphaesn. They are the only guild directly controlled by the Elvraeth. Once it reaches the city, lorcith is distributed to the smiths by orders. Even lump lorcith is expensive, though, so there are a few smiths who won’t work with it. My father figured they didn’t want to risk a forging not working. But if you can secure a commission, the return is more than enough to pay for what you’ve used.”

  But lorcith was even more limited than that. The supply depended on actually successfully mining it from Ilphaesn, and when he had been there, the boy had stolen lorcith from him to prevent larger nuggets from being found.

  “So maybe Firell just had it to sell?” Jessa said. “But to who if not the guild?”

  Since learning about the lorcith on Firell’s ship, he’d wondered what it could be used for. At first, he’d thought it might be meant for him. When it became clear that it was not, he wondered if maybe lorcith had been moved to drive up the price. But if Josun was involved, it changed the possibilities.

  He remembered how Brusus had described Josun the first time he’d mentioned him. Layers. If he could peel back the layers, they could reach better understanding. Only, he had no way of knowing what layers to peel back.

  Then there was the issue of the lump of soft metal he’d found. If Rsiran was right, if it was meant to be used in the alloy of lorcith, how would that help Josun? The alloy created a barrier, but was that all that it did? What if Josun had a darker intent?

  There was one place to find out more about the alloy, but it was a place he didn’t dare go: the alchemist guild. He had never met one of the alchemist guild willing to share anything they knew. They were secretive, nearly as protective of their secrets as the Servants. Yet, if he didn’t find the answer, he feared they would continue to be one step behind Josun, always looking over their shoulders, fearing what he might do next.

  Chapter 21

  Rsiran Slid them to the smithy. Doing so drained the rest of his strength, but not nearly as much as when he’d Slid with them all to the Aisl. Jessa let go of his hand and hurried to where he left the lantern hidden and covered, pulling the sheet off of it. Soft bluish light filled the smithy.

  “Why do you think it’s blue?” he wondered. The color of light the lantern emitted always seemed strange to him, so different from the one in the mines. The lorcith of the lantern pulled at him, an awareness different from what he felt from lorcith he shaped.

  “Sight. It doesn’t hurt the eyes of someone with Sight like orange light. Even as bright as it is, I can still see clearly.”

  “The lanterns in the mines let off orange light.”

  She shrugged. “Orange makes it harder for someone with Sight. Everything becomes dulled. Probably done on purpose so the miners wouldn’t run.”

  “There wasn’t anywhere to go,” he said softly. His time in the mines had scarred him, and not just physically. The long scar on his neck still throbbed at times, but not nearly as much as the nightmares he had of being stuck in the depths of the mines, left wandering and injured. “They kept the entrance locked.”

  Jessa slipped her arm around his waist. “You got out.”

  “I did.”

  “What now?” she asked.

  “Brusus wanted us to wait for him.”

  “I’m supposed to believe you intend to comply with his request?” A grin spread across her face. “And I never said that I would. Besides, you want to know what Firell is up to.”

  He let out a long breath. “Just let me—”

  “You need to rest. I know how hard that Slide was on you. And getting us back here surely took whatever energy you had left.” She pulled her arm away from him and checked to make sure the knives he’d given her were still tucked into her belt. “At this time of night, I can move easily. And there are things that only I can see.”

  “I… I don’t know if that’s safe.”

  She smiled. “Probably not. But neither was you Sliding us onto the ship.” She leaned up on her toes and kissed him on the cheek. Her lips felt warm and wet and tingled where she’d touched him. “We all take risks, Rsiran. That’s the price of what we do.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “I didn’t ask you to.”

  * * *

  Jessa locked the door behind her, leaving Rsiran standing alone in the smithy. He needed rest. His body felt weak and run down, but his mind rolled through what he had learned. Too much had happened, too much that he had no answers for. And he should feel scared—just knowing Josun Elvraeth still lived should worry him—but partly, he felt relief learning he hadn’t killed someone.

  Working the forge would help clear his mind, but he didn’t have energy enough to do that now. He didn’t want to simply sleep, either. If Josun was the one who attacked Lianna, that meant he was ready to reveal that he still lived. And maybe ready to move forward with whatever else he had planned.

  Rsiran would need to be ready. That meant practice.

  To reach the level of skill Josun had, he needed to build up his stamina to the point where Sliding no longer exhausted him. Even if that meant practicing when he felt overwhelmed with fatigue. So he Slid.

  Just a step. Taking small steps required little energy, but after what he’d done earlier, he felt the effects. Another step, then another. Each step a small Slide, each taking him around the shop.

  Small steps would not be enough. For him to build his endurance, he needed more. As tired as he felt, he had a sense of urgency to do this. What if Josun Elvraeth Slid to the smithy? What if Rsiran was too weakened to do more than simply Slide himself to safety? He needed to have the strength to defeat Josun. But he didn’t know how hard he could push.

  So many questions and he had few enough answers. There was one person he could ask, but he worried about the timing. The Great Watcher knew he had imposed on her enough since meeting her… but she had imposed on him, as well, though he suspected she meant it to help him.

  Before thinking about it too much, he Slid, emerging in Della’s home. All the times he’d Slid there made it almost as easy as reaching the smithy. After the attack in the palace, he’d made certain to leave a small candleholder he’d forged in her home, an anchor of sorts so he could make the Slide even when weakened.

  Della sat before the fire, rocking in her chair. She did not look up as he entered
, simply waved a hand at the other chair. “Sit.”

  “You felt me Slide.”

  She adjusted her scarf and nodded. “The ripples.”

  “Can I learn to do that?” he asked, sitting in the chair as she instructed. How useful would it be for him to feel when Josun Slid near him? Then he would have less reason to fear him.

  “What do you feel when you Slide now?”

  Rsiran leaned back in his chair. Fatigue from the day was starting to catch up to him, but this was the time when he wanted to push himself, use it to build his endurance. “I feel the sense of wind. Sometimes colors flash when I step.”

  Della nodded. “Do you know how it is that you Slide?”

  When it first happened, Rsiran did not know how he had Slid. Even now, he still didn’t know what he did to make traveling from one place to the next happen as he did. He simply saw it—or imagined, if he had been there before—and was able to step there. In his mind, he considered it stepping between planes, because he knew there was something in between, but did not know how he did it.

  “I just Slide.”

  “You just Slide. And I feel the ripples. That is all I can tell you about what you do. Just as you cannot explain how you Slide, I cannot explain how I feel the ripples. But still—the ripple happens with each Slide. Especially tonight. There were great ripples around Elaeavn earlier. I suspect that was you?”

  Della turned and stared at him. Deeper lines etched the corners of her eyes than the last time he’d seen her. Redness rimmed them. Rsiran suddenly knew that she had been crying.

  “Brusus came to you.”

  She nodded slowly. “He came. Told me what happened to Lianna.”

  “There was nothing he could have done.”

  Della closed her eyes and sighed. “I know that. And I think he does too. But Brusus is one who sometimes lets his heart get in front of his head. I worry about what he plans.”