by JM Guillen
I remembered my mother, and that had been her.
“Ysabel, your mother’s bloodline is very old, more than simply one of the clans. Somewhere, someone in your family was gifted with the silver flame.”
“I see.” That was quite dubious. Not only was he the Sabre of the Riogiin Line, but now I had wyrding blood?
“Tell me what you know.” He gave me a small smile.
“My da kept me in books, so I’ve read a lot.”
“Tell me what you’ve read then.” He glanced from the ring to my eyes again. “It’ll be easier if I know what I need to explain.”
“I know that, when the Shroud first came, Aeldred the Drae grasped the silver flame and led the ancient Du’ainn from the Einholt after it fell. I know of the red star. I know the bearers of the silver flame crafted the bounds.”
“Yes.” Captain Argent sat straighter. “But not only the bounds.”
“No.” I couldn’t help but stare at that ring glinting in the soft light of the room. “They built things like the Aedneas Construct and probably most of Eld Calyptia.” I gestured around the crystal and stone room. “This place, most likely.”
“You have a solid education.”
“Yes.” I smiled. “My mother used to sing me the cantos of the Lord of Wind and Roads. Or Faelin, the Lady of Earth and Song, and her entourage. I’ve loved their stories since I was bitty.”
Captain Argent’s face softened into a smile. “I’m glad you’re familiar. I was also interested in their stories when I was young. Particularly the stories of the silver flame.”
Silver, argentiim in Thyriin… The obvious connection to his name slid into place for me then, but I said nothing about that.
“I read about the silver flame too, but no one ever explained what it was.” I unleashed a small, hopeful smile. “I’ve always yearned to know.”
“You may yet find out.” Captain Argent’s voice was enigmatic.
My eyes grew large. “How? Have you found something…?”
“You.” He cupped the ring. “Your mother sent me, and I found you.”
“Wh—?” I grew tired of my own questions, but they were all I had.
“Ysabel, it’s going to be simpler if you trust me. We have a lot to do, and our time is short.” He sighed, weary. “I would have left the ring on you out in the bidder’s field, but I was told that it would awaken easier in certain places.” He handed the small, silver band to me. “It’s the reason I requested this chamber. It’s supposed to awaken far more readily near one of the constructs.”
I ogled at the ring as if it were a serpent. “A talisma?”
“Wyrd-wrought by your mother and delivered to you.”
I stared at it. “I’ve read of such things, but it’s always conjectured that they were extremely rare.” If what I had read were so, that was putting things mildly. Talisma were ancient trinkets that manifested myriad uncanny and fantastic wonders. Some academics speculated they were toys that the ancients created for their children, while others claimed they were gifts from long silent gods.
In the stories talisma seemed to be created from things I could hardly touch—like music and starlight—thus I hadn’t imagined them to be real.
“Put it on, Ysabel.” A subtle hint of command wove through his voice.
I slipped the silver band onto my finger. It gleamed brighter than it had any right to be, and I squinted at it, trying to see past the purple-tinged gleam. I could make out faint, looping glyphwork that scrawled delicately across the center of the band.
Then, the thin traceries of crystal within the walls pulsed softly, a small touch of ghostlight. I felt that blossoming sensation in my mind stronger this time, a dizzying burst of memory.
“— will be as if I am with her.” Iryniå leaned closer to me, pressing the silver band into my hand. “She has not had any training, I am certain. But as long as she wears it, I will be able to guide her.”
“Even from a thousand leagues away?” I was unconvinced.
“The world is not shaped as you imagine it to be, Argent. Calyptin Station will likely fall. If you have my daughter with you, there is a chance it will not.” She paused. “Even if you fail, you will have found an additional bearer of the blood. That alone is success in a way.”
“You know…” I weighed her somber expression for a long moment. “I think maybe you just want me to go after your daughter. You know Calyptin will fall, and you want her rescued.”
“Of course I want her to be safe!” My mother’s face blossomed in a soft smile. “But we have looked into the heart of the Shroud, you and I. We both know there is no safety in this world, not anymore.”
“She’s not dead.” The words were iron beams that I placed to brace my heart to hold me upright.
“No.” Argent placed one hand on mine. “Think about when she left, Ysabel. Your mother knew what she was and where she was needed. When the Riftingwar began, she made the most difficult choice of her life.”
“—many places within Calyptia still hold some of the constructs. Find one and give her my talisma.” She paused. “Her awakening will come easier in one of these places.”
“And then she’ll become magically acquainted with how we can save the bounds of the city? By putting on a ring?”
“No.” She seemed irritated.
“I feel like that’s what yer selling, after a fashion.” I took the last sip of my drink. “I’ve never met one of your ilk who speaks plainly, Iryniå, but I think you’d best start.”
“I am acquainted with what must be done.” The slender woman leaned closer, and her words were as sharp as they were soft. “Get her my ring, and I will guide her. Perhaps it is not too late. Perhaps it is.”
I studied her, but her expression gave nothing away. It was a mad, foolish plan. Saving Calyptin Station was beyond us now, all of our sources agreed.
It was exactly my kind of mission.
“It’s just a ring.” An odd horror crept through me. “A ring and some wisps of memory. I can’t possibly—”
“You can.” He leaned closer and brushed a stray hair from my face. “Quiet now, Ysabel. We don’t have time for fear, neither of us.”
“—will remember this, as certainly as you do.” She smiled. “She will know you speak the truth just from memory alone.”
“That seems unlikely.” I peered around. There were two gentlemen at a table across the way, playing a game of rout to divert attention from the fact that they listened in on our conversation.
“I must speak to that memory now.” Her voice grew soft. “Be quiet, please. This is for my Ysabel.”
She looked into my eyes then. Mine, not Argent’s, though it was through his remembered thoughts.
She spoke a word that wasn’t a word, a word that boiled and twisted in my mind. I felt like I was reaching to hear it, like I could catch the sound if I tried.
It was a word that held secrets. And music.
The faintest strain of melody trickled through her voice, melding with the word, infusing it with power and meaning that remained just outside my reach. The word itself burned into the very center of my being, a silvery brand that blazed and roiled, raged and boiled.
“What?” I reeled, as if from a physical blow.
My mother spoke as the wind, as the waves upon the unknown shore. The sound of her voice made the earth under my knees ripple and flow like a river, yet nothing in the room moved even a hair’s breadth.
“I can’t.” I shook my head from side to side, not even certain of what I was saying.
“You can.” Her voice chimed like crystal shafts vibrating in the depths of the cavernous ground. It speared through me, piercing me, pricking me all over. My flesh rose in shivering pimples, and I gasped as my blood thundered in my ears.
This wasn’t mere memory. This was happening now. My mother was touching my mind, and my heart wept with joy.
The world shimmered before my eyes like peering through flame. The music that flowed through
everything swelled, a lyrical melody that encompassed all I knew and more. It was wild, wordless, yet somehow poetic. It spoke of love, of belonging, of bereavement. It told me of arousal and contentment, of disdain and apathy. It wove itself around my heart, telling the story of entirety.
The Melody was all, every little thing, separate and individual, entwined and conjoined. It was one. It was everything all at once, there and not.
I reached out to grasp it, to try to understand and claim it for my own, but when I tried to touch it, I found my hand pressed to my heart.
The Melody shimmered there, glinting silver sparks just behind my breastbone. It lived there already.
I sighed, and it grew, a haunting, silver strain that tantalized me with all the knowledge it held.
I gazed deeper. The Melody held all the answers I had ever sought t—
The world cracked beneath my feet.
“What!” I spun around, looking to Captain Argent, who had leapt toward the doorway. The sound came again, like the cracking of a deep lake of ice—a lake I happened to be standing upon.
I screamed then, blue pain blossoming in my mind as the sound came again. The room trembled, and as it did, some of the crystal that wove through the far wall shattered.
“Ysabel!” Captain Argent called. He stood now, agape with horror at the hateful, awful light. The room around us shined with the ghostlight again, but this time it was sickly and wan.
Then, another vein of the eldritch crystal cracked, a shattering sound that sliced at my mind.
Pain like winged, biting flame swooped in from the shadows to dart and prick and eat away at me. It whispered as it struck, foul words that dripped venom and bile. It ate away at me, stripping me down, wearing me away.
“I—” My voice fell to a tremulous whisper. “I can’t—”
“Yes. You. Can.” My mother’s voice was a bladed hiss. “You can hold. You will. You will hold because you must, because you are strong, because you can do anything. There is no pain you cannot take, nothing you cannot do.”
My eyes teared. I couldn't tell if it was from the pain or from the golden certainty in her words.
“Someone is sundering the bound, Ysabel. Deep beneath the city—”
“—need to hurry, Captain.” Banabas had stepped back into the room. “It’s worse than we believed.”
“Yes, mother,” I whispered, though my voice trembled like a leaf in the wind. “I can hold.”
I gritted against the pain, taking deep breaths as my body clenched and my very being was pecked away bit by bit. Each bite felt like teeth, like embers touching my soul. I wanted to retch.
Soon only a small island of me remained, an oasis of silver sitting in shadows that shifted like the sea. I quailed. There would be nothing left, only pain, only darkness. Oblivion waited a breath away.
Golden light gleamed. A mote, brighter than anything I had ever seen, danced in the distance. It pulsed and quavered but grew from a mote to a flash to a beam. It rose into the sky like the sun, banishing the darkness.
“I will not be able to finish our work, Ysabel.” The memory of her seemed more solid than mere memory, but it quavered along with the crystal in the room. “They’ve shattered more than we knew.”
“Who?”
“You are unsung, Ysabel. Dhakirah may be able to help you. You need another construct. A breathing construct.”
“Breathing? What do you mean?” Frantically I reached toward her, but she faded away.
Only a flash of silver answered in the far distant places of my mind.
“We have to go.” Argent’s hand gripped mine, pulling me to my feet.
“She didn’t—” Groggy, I felt as if every bit of me had been wrung dry. “Not finished.” I noticed his pistol in his other hand. The ground trembled again, and the crystalline walls cracked further.
“No time.” Captain Argent pulled me outside.
The city teetered on the edge of oblivion.
Behind us, the crystalline room began to collapse in on itself.
7
The midday sky darkened with smoke and boiling clouds. A wind cut at us the moment the door opened, and it reeked as if death rode upon it.
“Captain!” Barnabas turned toward us, a revolver in one hand and a shortblade in the other. In the distance, fires burned the hovels and squats of Tupton Square. Greasy smoke filled the air, giving the savage gust a foul taste to accompany the rotten scent.
“I said to come for us if it got worse!” Captain Argent swore under his breath, gazing to the Station’s outer rims. Obviously, ‘worse’ was in fact happening.
Barnabas, however, hadn’t had time to step back inside. At his foot the body of a man lay in a slowly spreading, crimson pool. The man’s fingers twitched, but he didn’t move.
“I nearly didn’t see him.” Barnabas’ eyes narrowed as he lowered his weapons. “He came around the side.”
“If there’s one, there’s more.” Captain Argent stepped over to the corpse, nudging it onto its back.
I gasped, even though I had known what I would see.
This was not a man but a shaedr-ghůl lost to the darkling dreams of the Shroud. The veins beneath his skin had turned the black of long rot. His skin was pale, even more so than those who smoked too much resin. A portion of the blood that came from him wasn’t quite liquid, like curds of rotten cheese.
The taint was one of the first curses upon those who dwelt in the hinterlands. The people left there were half-dead, their minds shattered by dreams that crawled into them, broken things that changed what they were.
They were taken and never awakened.
“We need to slip away.” Captain Argent peered into the distance. “We can sneak by them easily enough, but if we run through empty places, they’ll suss us out.”
“How are they here?” I struggled to wrap my mind around their intrusion. “The bounds should keep them out!”
“When the front lines received word of saboteurs in Calyptin Station, your bounds were already almost worn away.” A dark anger edged through his frustration. “I’d hoped we could find you, then deal with the traitors, but the damage to the bounds seems worse than we anticipated.” His features softened as he faced me. “We didn’t expect to find you a debtslave, Ysabel. Royce caused more problems than he knew.”
“Royce…” My hands crept up to the collar around my neck. What with all the clamor about my mother and the collapse of the room, I had actually forgotten.
“The key. This collar will choke me! It was supposed to be returned to Royce. I grabbed the key before I ran.” My pulse pounded as I realized what I had done. “I took the key. But then, when you tackled me…” My voice trailed off as I stared out to the bidding field.
The key lay out there. Somewhere in the open field.
“You don’t have it?” The captain’s tone turned heartsick. “You lost the key that would get that monstrous thing from your neck?”
“You were the one who tackled me!” My skin flushed as I spoke. “How was I to know—?”
“I don’t have to tackle girls who don’t run.” He ran his fingers through his short black beard. “Well, not on the typical.” He grinned. “It will be fine, Ysabel. We’ll figure this out.”
Barnabas examined the open bidder’s field, then shook his head at the captain. “If we’re after that key, we won’t be avoiding open spaces.”
That was a fact. The place where the captain had caught me had to be seventy strides away, in the middle of the widest field for blocks around.
“We’re going. We’ll be quick.” He paused. “There and right back.”
“Yes, sir.” Barnabas began reloading his pistol, a three-peater with brass accents. “Say the word, Captain.”
“Ysabel, stay here.”
“No.” I gave him a dark glare. “More than no. Shroud furling, no. I’m not standing back here with no weapon, waiting for the menfolk to save the day.”
“It will only be—” He cut himself of
f, and I thought the man was going to bite through his own lip. “Fine.” He gave me a grin. “I suppose I should have known that. Stay between us.”
As soon as Barnabas clicked his weapon closed, we ran.
I tried to watch the ground as we went, hoping that perhaps I had dropped the key before he had borne me to the ground. It was next to impossible, however, as quickly as we moved.
“Captain.” Barnabas wasn’t remotely out of breath, impressive for such a large man.
Catching a note of warning in his tone, I glanced up and my heart fell.
A twisted shadow of a figure hovered near the corner of the rude fence that enclosed the bidder’s field. Two others hovered near her, their backs bent as they slumped nearer.
Captain Argent slowed his sprint, and Barnabas and I slackened as well.
One face flicked our way, then another.
“They’ve seen us.” I breathed the words, caught by the red, furious gaze of the ghůl. A slow, wicked grin spread across her face. It was a mad, lost smile.
Whoever she had been before the Shroud was gone.
Both Barnabas and Captain Argent raised their pistols and fired. Barnabas shot true, but the creature he struck was only momentarily slowed. Captain Argent missed entirely and fired twice more before cursing.
“Tainted eyes!” He spat in frustration.
They were just so fast.
I was horrified to see how graceful the creatures were, how they were able to spring toward us with fierce, lupine grace. They half ran, half scrambled across the ground, their eyes wide with cackling madness.
As they came, I felt them on the edge of my mind, a crackling, whispering darkness, as if part of my mind could sense their alien otherness, as if their minds wore against mine like a dark river eroding stone.
I shuddered.
Captain Argent had his scimit drawn and ready before the first of the slavering creatures fell upon us. It had been a young man, but now his skin was covered in deep gouges, cuts where he had rent at himself with his own nails, carving eldritch runes into his own flesh.
