by Rabia Gale
“It’s gone,” Fitz whispered. “The noise is gone. I can’t hear ka at all. It’s not ringing in my head anymore!”
He threw back his head and howled with laughter.
Justus said, through gritted teeth, “That’s not a good thing, idiot. You were so busy hurling rocks, you didn’t even notice the anchoring devices the guy put all around you. Magebane in your blood and a block-spell keeping you from ka. Dope.”
Fitz spread his arms out, grinning at Furin’s frowning face. “I don’t care,” he said. “I just. Don’t. Care.”
And so saying, he toppled forward onto his face in an ungainly sprawl of limbs.
“Idiot,” Justus said again. “Hey, you, aren’t you going to put my shoulder back together?”
“Aren’t you the prince?” muttered Coop, but he knelt by the boy anyway.
Wil drooped where he stood. Furin stared at Fitz a moment longer, then tilted his head towards the mechanical noise in the distance.
“Take care of these two.” Before Coop could answer in the affirmative, he strode away.
To look for his son, no doubt.
Isabella
Voya swept through krin-space, a knife-blade of void. It touched the krin substance twisted through the twins’ spell and sucked it up. Free of her bindings, Isabella struck out through the blue gloom, straight for the kayan pair.
They weren’t there.
One moment, they were ahead of her, the next they appeared below to what should’ve been her left.
Max.
It came to alertness.
Guide me.
There are no words to describe how to move through krin-space, it began tentatively. I’d have to take control… it trailed off.
Do it. Isabella steeled herself as its black substance threaded her muscles and veins. Get me at those two.
Her body moved, in a jerky kind of way. For several moments, both Isabella and the krin fought for control as they sorted out who was piloting what.
This sharing of control isn’t easy, Max commented.
You have no idea, Isabella replied. Even in this odd space, her skin crawled with revulsion at the thought of letting a krin take control of her. She stamped down on the visceral reaction; right now, it wasn’t going to help her at all. She had to get out of here.
Actually… began her co-pilot.
Can it. Isabella glided through the thick jelly. When it’s time to fight, don’t interfere.
The twins appeared again in front of her, two centers in a matrix of krin stuff. Isabella felt Max’s horrified disgust as an icy ripple all over her body.
She had to turn its emotion into action.
Even if Voya sucked up all their spellwork, would you find a way out?
If I combined my strength with others of my kind… but on my own, weak as I am… It gave the equivalent of a shrug, not accusing, merely resigned.
If I give you some energy? Isabella suggested, and she let down her mental wall long enough to let Max see what she had in mind.
Its discomfort was a warm squirm in her belly.
They’re already dead, she told him. And we aren’t.
Would you eat the flesh of your dead children to sustain you? Max asked her in turn.
Isabella’s pragmatism had its limit. No, she said without hesitation. But I have no special love for the krin to take reverent care of their remains. If you wish to chalk this up to my barbaric practices and hate me forevermore, you may do that… after we get out.
No. Max gathered itself, resolve hard and cold and slightly lemon-scented against her spine. If I do this, I’ll take responsibility.
Then be ready to open a passageway back to where Rafe is.
Understood.
Isabella swam around the twins. Both turned to keep her in their sights. Their faces were fish-pale in the eerie light. Their bodies hung lax, toes pointed.
They resembled nothing so much as puppets.
Maybe it was better to think of them that way than as children. She’d held back on Renat Island because of their age, but she daren’t let Karzov have his way.
Not now, not ever.
She used Voya to manipulate the krin-stuff around the children, not letting the dark dagger drain it away into whatever dimension it channeled krin. She left it in clotted clumps, fighting Voya’s fierce urge to consume. Her right hand trembled, she steadied it with her left. Hot and cold waves swept over her body in turns.
Max nudged her arms and body, moving the clumps this way and that.
What are… began the twin girl.
… you doing? finished the boy.
Together they said, We will stop you.
Sticky strands oozed towards Isabella. Bright spots filled her vision.
She was running out of time.
There was no time to even fight. Isabella turned her back to the strands. They wrapped around her left shoulder and arm, staying away from Voya. The feeling was like spiders in her mouth and rats on her skin all in one.
You had better… began Max.
No time. Isabella thrust Voya into her belt and drew Eya. The moon dagger, Rafe called it. His face flashed into her mind for a second. She shook it clear, annoyed. I’m coming, she told it, with no expectation he could hear. You do your job, and I’ll do mine.
Then she thought to Eya, eager in her hand. Blaze.
Krin died, rather explosively, when light struck them. Their substance was not immune to the effect.
Eya shone out into krin-space, turning the medium a bright white tinged with blue. The kayan twins hung there, eyes and mouths open wide. Heat seared in bands across Isabella’s arm and back. She smelled burning hair.
Now! Isabella shouted at Max. Without thought, she dived for the astonished twins, their shielding spell shriveling around her. Sparks peppered her face, her shoulder was an agony of pain.
Isabella threw up all her kyra in a silver shield as a series of explosions tore through krin-space. Her world screamed white, then faded to black.
Chapter Twenty Six
Rafe
RAFE STOOD WAIST-DEEP IN the rapids of poisonous ka, a rush of lurid magic released by the Tors. Attracted to the two kayan, it had pooled around them, nibbling hungrily. His armor, a chainmail of twisted grass-green and lavender-purple, corroded at an alarming rate. He’d set up an automatic spell to replenish it, but its continual ticking was a small distraction at the edge of his mind.
Ka tentacles shot out at him through the rainbow mist. Rafe barely got his magic blades up to shear them off, then had to turn and bludgeon the three snake-like tendrils slithering behind him.
Surrounded by magic, both his and Aliki’s workings were partially camouflaged. And the boy was frighteningly fast. Rafe had barely time to sense ka come together into a construct before Aliki attacked with it.
Rafe released sapphire butterflies with amethyst markings. Several shredded in the toxic environment, but enough made it to mark his opponent’s position. Aliki swatted at them with appendages; a distraction which gave Rafe enough time to send golden fish with orange bellies dragging a net after him. The net was made with as tainted ka as Rafe could handle without passing out, the better to hide it in the roiling tide.
The small trick worked. Aliki turned from butterfly to fish, taking out two with muddy yellow shots. The rest leapt past and above him. The net billowed up and wrapped itself around the boy in swathes of heavy, sticky strands.
Rafe surged after it, feeding it spells of distraction and disorientation. Let the boy think he was being tickled with feathers and dunked in syrup. An annoying jingle—a children’s song used by generations of young Oakhavenites to drive their elders half-mad—rang out in Aliki’s head.
Rafe held sleep spells, like a fluffy pair of mittens. He had to get close to the boy to apply them. Quickly now, while he was immobilized.
Aliki stood very still inside the net, not panicked, not struggling.
Darn the kid’s composure. How could he do so while the sensation
of being tickled soft-pricked his nerves?
Nearly there.
The net around Aliki rippled, then bulged outward.
Then it burst apart in a myriad tiny strands of ka.
Hundreds of sharp blades, almost black with an oily sheen, exploded out from behind it.
Rafe had barely enough time to throw up a surge of ka in front of himself. Dozens of the projectiles shriveled in the great wave, but just as many got through. They tore holes in his armor and sizzled against his skin. One grazed his cheek, opening a cut which stung as if doused in lemon juice. Rafe winced and changed direction, splashing to one side. The sleep spells, already fragile constructs, dissolved in a spray of ka. Rafe shook out his stinging hands.
Dark ka boiled and bubbled around Aliki, surrounding him in an oozing pustule. The boy’s favored spell, the ka-appendages, heaved out from the writhing mass, fanning around his body.
Rafe eyed them sourly. The boy’s discipline and resilience were extraordinary. He himself was winded and panting. His eyes smarted, his hands trembled, and his knees were jellied. He felt very old.
The words of Aro Gaar, the former leader of Monaria’s shahkayan, echoed in his head. What a kayan we could’ve made out of you if we had gotten you young!
I’m not even thirty yet, you old stick-in-the-mud. Rafe shook his head to clear away the memory of the black-robed master, his brown face covered in tattoos.
Memory. Wait! That was it.
Rafe considered his opponent, still sprouting a formidable array of nozzled arms and thick whips. Aliki had shown himself to be facile with an entire array of ka, unlike Fitz and Justus. But there were two colors he avoided: purple, which incorporated memory, and orange, with brought about change.
Come to think of it, all of Aliki’s constructs, though well-made and skilled, lacked imagination. His arms came into two models: mechanical and jointed, and smooth and muscular. Most likely it was due to his upbringing in regimented Blackstone and whatever training he’d received under Karzov’s direction. The boy probably had no access to the books and experiences that had fired a young Rafe’s imagination. He’d never picked berries in an agri-cave or fished in cold, clear streams or spent hours studying insects in the grass.
And it showed in his spellwork.
But Pyotr had been his grandfather. Aliki must’ve visited Moon Alley at least, that small enclave in Blackstone where the fierce, rebellious spirit of his people still lived.
Memory and Moon Alley.
Could he reach past the boy’s stony face and shuttered eyes with this?
He had to try. Rafe realized with cold clarity that he fought with a disadvantage. He had not the will to kill his opponent. Aliki, on the other hand, did not suffer from the same weakness. With them being matched as they were, it was only a matter of time before Aliki broke through Rafe’s defenses.
Rafe had to disable him first.
He reached deep into the ka and called the purple to him. It came in ropes, almost black with taint. It stung his hands and lashed across his soul. Memories rose like bile, sour in Rafe’s mouth. His father disapproving… his mother sighing and disappointed… Uncle Leo’s face with no warmth or approval in it… Bryony’s twisted visage and harsh laugh… “I always hated you!”
Ka, picking up and imprinting his own bad memories.
I don’t have time for this. Aliki would attack soon. I need to hide while I do this. But where?
The solution came to him, crystal clear and breathtakingly stupid.
He could just hear what Isabella would have to say to his plan. She’d probably sum up her opinion in one word: Idiot.
Well, yes, I am that, he agreed.
And then he dropped all his spellwork—his tracking butterflies, his corroded armor, his purifying constructs—and immersed himself in the currents freed from the Tors.
Magic roiled around him, in waves of hot and cold. It was spicy on his lips, numbing to his toes. It touched his skin with acid fingers. Rafe brought his kyra to harden and protect his body. His essence responded sluggishly, resisting every step of the way. He just didn’t have Isabella’s facility with kyra.
Isabella. He could ignore the emptiness at the end of their bond, but he could never forget that she wasn’t there.
He had to get her back. And for that, he needed the kayan. He wanted to grab Aliki by the shoulders and shake her location out of him.
The boy’s voice came to his ears, slightly echoing. “Where are you? Are you afraid? Come out and I’ll promise to make this quick.” He sounded dead serious.
Rafe made a soft, scoffing sound. How had the boy mustered so much confidence in so short a time? Rafe had trained as a kayan for about the same length of time the youngster had, but he was under no illusions about himself.
No matter. Rafe put his mind to work on the purple ka, shaping it into something usable. Like the shahkayan had taught him, he kept his mental barriers up, preventing it from seeping into his mind. He didn’t want to end up like the ahimet.
The ka turned to a lavender mist, paling as he stripped it of taint—and potency. There was so much within reach, he didn’t need to be careful of preserving every bit of strength. It was like peeling an apple—he could take some flesh off with the skin and still have enough for what he intended.
He drew deep into his own memories, calling up his own visit to Blackstone, the one that had changed his whole life and started him down the road to being a kayan. He sketched Moon Alley in his mind, in charcoal shadows and pallid colors. He focused on the feeling of its cobbles under his feet, the accumulated odors of burning oil and simmering one-pot dinners, the pressure of decaying buildings leaning in close over his head. He pictured the narrow stalls, in shadow under their awnings. His palms remembered the weight and pressure of their wares, irregular shapes and deeply-scored lines, full of hidden passion.
And as he remembered, he wove the ka into a tapestry.
Moon Alley appeared before him.
Standing on the other end of it was Aliki.
Rafe strained to feel something of the boy’s reaction—anger, recognition, curiosity, sorrow. Nothing.
He sketched dark figures behind the stalls, the half-remembered men who’d tended them. He gave them caps pulled low over their eyes and scarves tugged over their mouths. It had been cold that New Year’s Day, and his illusions breathed out clouds of mist.
“Alik,” he called, using the boy’s proper name instead of the endearment everyone else called him by. No matter his age, the boy was another kayan, a peer, an equal. “Do you remember Moon Alley?” Rafe gestured around him.
“You think this will work on me? You are truly scrabbling at the bottom of the barrel, Rafael Grenfeld.” Alik’s whips lashed out, sweeping crockery off tables and smashing them into lemon-lined shards. The pieces flew at Rafe; he turned them aside with a gesture.
It was the first display of emotion he’d seen from the boy.
This was a good sign.
Alik advanced, debris crunching under his feet, clouds of dust rising around him. Rafe thought the details were a good touch, but they appeared to enrage the boy. Alik slammed his hand down among stacks of dishes. They cracked and broke and fountained into the air in jagged pieces.
Alik shook his hand. Blood beaded in several small cuts.
Rafe frowned. That was not part of his illusion.
“What are you fighting for, Alik?” Rafe dodged the spray of magic the kayan’s nozzled arms aimed his way. “Why are you taking orders from the likes of Karzov?”
“I fight for Blackstone. For her glory and her greatness.”
“Do you think Karzov feels the same way?” asked Rafe. “Ask yourself: Is he doing all this for Blackstone—or for himself? Isn’t Blackstone just a stepping stone for him?”
“What would you know, Oakhavenite cur!” spat the boy. “You, who betrayed your own country! What would a traitor know about loyalty!”
“I know that one can be loyal to one’s country, but not t
he regime. Ask yourself this: is your father a loyal Blackstonian or not? What of Pyotr, your grandfather?”
“I have no father! Nor grandfather!” Alik wrenched knitted scarves hanging from a nail and threw them to the ground. His arm brushed against scrap metal wind chimes and set them jangling, their music surprisingly sweet despite the discordance.
Wind chimes? Rafe knew that he hadn’t put those there.
The humanoid shadow that lurked behind the stall came forward, gaining definition with every second. A broad-shouldered man in a much-patched jacket and plaid scarf looked down at the boy. His face was craggy, his nose a beak, his eyes deep-set.
“Aliki,” he said, in a voice wholly unfamiliar to Rafe, “why do you wreck my stall?”
Rafe couldn’t see the boy’s face, but Alik’s voice rose with panic. “Go away, Mikal! You’re not real.”
The illusion’s face saddened. “Have you really forgotten me, then, Aliki? Don’t you remember how I gave you piggy-back rides and seed cakes and let you watch me work? Remember when you fell off the—?”
“I said, ‘Go away!’” Alik vented all his fury on the hapless illusion, who vanished in a purple mist.
Rafe looked around. His illusions had gained more detail and solidity. His breath hitched in realization. Alik was doing this. Subconsciously, his memories fed into Rafe’s spellwork, filling in all the blanks Rafe had left.
Other figures surrounded the boy, their voices a chorus, reminding him of pleasant afternoons and communal meals, of the pranks and travails of his childhood.
And there. Yes, there was Pyotr’s house.
Rafe focused on the door, memory and magic working together.
A moment later, Pyotr stepped out.
Rafe had known Aliki’s grandfather as a frightened old man. Later, he’d seen him as a krin-killed corpse. Neither of those were images he wanted to show the boy. So he took the anxious frown from the man’s face, smoothed his brow, and straightened his shoulders.
A soft implosion caught his attention. Alik stood alone in a dissipating purple haze, facing his grandfather.
