Tethiel must’ve only pretended to fall from the tower, she thought. He does love his entrances.
“Wait!” The jewel duper waved his arms up at the Lord of the Feast. “We surrender. Our lives for your antidotes.”
“I can cure us. I….” Hiresha slumped. Pain cut through her like a blade, and she gripped her neck, worried through her daze that her head had fallen off.
She started the descent to sleep, but ooze covered the stairway in her mind. The stinking sludge corroded away her boots. Attempting to reach her dream laboratory in time would be a risk.
Opening her eyes, she saw Fos leaning on his sword. He gripped the side of his head and gaped up at the Lord of the Feast. The colossus’s skin shimmered like moonstone, his hair of burnished silver wire, and Hiresha thought of his eyes as the largest onyx gemstones she had ever seen, their depths filled with dark promises and fathomless mystery.
The Lord of the Feast’s words rumbled around her. “Will you accept the thief’s plea?”
“I don’t trust him.” Her voice was a murmur.
“You can trust his fear for her.” The crocodile let Emesea slip, and she dropped into the worm’s pit of a mouth only to be snatched out again by a reptilian maw closing on her leg.
“I poisoned all of you with Green-Blood venom. Three…” The jewel-duper doubled over and hacked. He gasped, and his voice was shrill. “Three lives for three conditions. We live. We leave here free. With an enchantment that cures me.”
Emesea howled, either in outrage, at something he had said, or in general appreciation for the Lord of the Feast’s monstrosities.
Hiresha’s lips curled away from her teeth. As she lay sprawled over the tower, her breath came in angry rasps. Inannis doesn’t deserve a cure. He should die for what he’s done. And the traitorous novice with him. She wanted the Lord of the Feast to devour them both, wished for terror to color the threads of their souls even into the afterlife. The desire alarmed part of her, but she did not regret it.
“And,” the thief said, “you’ll know where I hid the Academy’s keystones.”
As much as Hiresha wanted to accept, she believed that letting Inannis and Emesea go free would be an insult to the Opal Mind. He desecrated her academy. Over the last days Hiresha had committed minor, necessary blasphemies: taking jewels from the Spire of Magical History, tipping shelves in the Hall of Crystalline Records, and breaking windows. Enchanting a jewel to cure Inannis would be her greatest crime.
Gods smite him! He said he used Green-Blood venom. She wished to believe he lied, but if he truthfully used the blood of humans twisted by hexing magic into poison-spitting abominations, she could not hazard curing it herself. By the thief’s earlier words, Hiresha worried that Tethiel had also been poisoned. I can’t let Fos and him die, even if right now Tethiel appears immortal.
Her lips stung as she hissed two words. “I accept.”
37
The Void
Fos dragged Emesea and Inannis into the rector’s armory, each pair of their hands fitting into one of his own. Their wrists and ankles were bound by jewels. As Inannis slid between the statues and down the winding corridor, his voice rasped.
“Your word demands you let us free.”
“After the enchantresses have control of the Academy, you may leave by the Skyway.” Hiresha rubbed the side of her head. The venom’s antidote had left her with an aftertaste of migraine. “Of course, you’ll have to tell me first which dark corner you used to hide the keystones.”
“I was carrying them.” Inannis’s throat rattled between his words. “After finding the chancellor’s amulet again, I returned them to the spire crypt. But in a lead box. I understood from Emesea that lead is a metal that blocks enchantment.”
He glanced at the traitorous novice, but she refused to look at him. Hiresha could only suspect Emesea disapproved of the terms of surrender. Then we agree on one thing.
Fos set them against a pedestal, like he had left the blind archer. The spellsword said, “So you hid the gems where they should’ve been all along? That’s clever.”
Hiresha was not amused. When dangling from the Spire of Magical History, she had been so close to the jewels that would heal the Academy. Not that I could’ve opened the vault then. Her hands strayed to the vial of diamond dust in her pocket. By gem or blade, we will have to best Sheamab to take back that amulet.
“What I wish to know,” Hiresha said, “was how you stole the keystones in the first place.”
Again Inannis looked to Emesea, but she stayed as silent. The thief said, “The chancellor loaned her amulet to Emesea.”
“I can’t believe that,” Hiresha said.
“Emesea told the chancellor she’d use it to leave something damning in your chambers, Enchantress. The chancellor wanted you discredited.”
This, Hiresha could well believe. “So the chancellor died of her own foolishness. Fitting.”
The enchantress tossed a few more jewels to lock the prisoners motionless then left with the spellsword. Outside the closing doors of the armory, the Lord of the Feast joined them in a burst of searing wings. Each copper dagger was a facet of inferno. Metal dripped after him as they walked down the hall in a trail of molten beads. His face looked like Tethiel again, though younger and unblemished by the black triangle.
“Not everyone need know you freed the Academy with the help of the Lord of the Feast,” he said, in answer to her unspoken question.
“Right,” Fos said, “now you look like a perfectly normal Feaster. And even the townsfolk must have heard your booming outside.”
“You will find that much in life is a matter of perspective,” he said. “From the perspective of those below us on the tower, the night would’ve appeared strangely devoid of three-headed lords.”
Hiresha swallowed, but the foul taste of accepting the thief’s terms remained like a slime mold creeping down her throat. “Once we’ve secured the Academy, once we know Inannis told the truth about the location of the keystones, I want Fos to return to the armory and remove them both from the Lands of Loam.”
“What?” Fos asked. “Kill them? But you gave your word.”
“While dying of venom,” she said. “A promise made under duress is no promise at all.”
“I cannot accept that, my heart.” Tethiel gestured to her with a wing that did not reflect light but seemed to absorb it. The blades streamed with reds and oranges but left the rest of the hall in shadows. “Promises are only ever made under threat.”
“Perhaps promises made around you,” Hiresha said.
“Besides,” Tethiel said, “Inannis has proved useful to me.”
His comment about working with the thief disgusted Hiresha. It was a burr in her brain, chafing, scratching deeper, and she suspected if she but paused to think on it she would come to hate Tethiel.
Fos peered behind them. “Shouldn’t we be going the other way? Up to the Hall of Refreshment then down the other side?”
“Sheamab may have laid another ambush for us in the tower.” Hiresha hurled a jewel at a window. The crystal folded downward in a shattering crash. Stars shone through the opening. “This is the direct way down.”
“Uh,” Fos said, “the window had a latch.”
Hiresha blinked. “So it does. Did.”
Fos rested a hand on her shoulder as she leaned out. This side of the tower curved in an overhang, and she had a good view of the Prehensile Observatory. The brass spire bent at its top, pointing in the direction of the Crystal Ballroom as if in approval of Hiresha’s choice of destination. Below, the plateau was a sheen of silver, and beyond, the valley a dark sea of emptiness.
“It is a straight drop.” Fos latched his sword behind his back.
Hiresha wrapped an arm around the spellsword’s waist. “Fos’s greaves are designed to Lighten him and whatever he carries. I should know. I enchanted them. Tethiel, you can follow us on your wings.”
Tethiel peered out, and though his wings blazed, the window s
hards reflected only the blackness of their smoke. “I’m embarrassed to admit, my heart, that I’ve never flown before.”
“I’ve seen Spellsword Sagai use those.” Fos nodded to his wings. “Lift your head and chest up before you land. It’ll slow you down.”
“That sounds dangerously close to good advice,” Tethiel said. “Never give good advice, or people might expect you to begin following it yourself.”
“Gliding is not so difficult. I mastered it quickly enough in my dream studies.” Hiresha brushed broken splinters from the sill with a sleeve. “If you try to control your speed, to decrease it, you’ll lose control.”
“Naturally,” Tethiel said.
“Slow down too much,” she said, “and you’ll fall backward. You’ll spin and crash. You’ll impale yourself on your feathers, and every bone in your Lightened body will disperse into powder.”
She stood close to Tethiel’s wings, she could not feel their heat. If anything, they seemed to pull warmth toward them, and she found herself shivering.
“And the moral would be,” she said, “not to make deals with Inannis.”
“How fortunate that I am immune to morals.” Tethiel turned to Fos. “Are you certain you can stop yourself and Hiresha from decorating the stone below? Your consistency has been most inconsistent.”
Fos hoisted himself onto the window sill. “This is easy. You can’t activate too soon. Actually, I’ve always wanted to try this.”
Hiresha stepped after him. “And you’ve been much more successful in timing your leaps.”
His eye glanced at Tethiel then upward. “I might’ve been thinking less about the when of it.”
“Less thinking?” Tethiel asked. “Most intelligent of you.”
Fos wrapped an arm under Hiresha’s shoulders. Lifting her, he carried her across his chest, her hair and feet dangling to either side of him, his hand tucked beneath her bent legs.
“Hold her tight,” Tethiel said.
Hiresha felt comfortable in Fos’s practiced hold, though her heart still raced. What if Tethiel misses his landing? A stray gust could—
The spellsword kicked off the window ledge to jump backward into the air. Windows swept past. Before the tower could curve away, Hiresha tossed the rector’s dagger and a jewel of Attraction. The weapon key was bound against the slope of the wall, secure and hidden, and Hiresha could stop worrying about the thief and traitor being released if she herself was captured.
Hiresha and Fos fell away from the tower, her shoulder braced against the heat of his chest. Stars turned overhead. Excitement twirled within Hiresha, along with a jolt of fear. Could the enchantment in the greaves fail?
Fos was staring past her legs, to the incoming ground below.
No. Absolutely not. I empowered them myself.
Hiresha tensed, waiting for the punch of air when Fos Lightened them. Hiresha’s hair stopped lashing about and instead flowed above her in curling and twining locks, and it felt as if they no longer plummeted but sank through sand. The RecurveTower and Prehensile Observatory circled around them as they drifted downward. A feeling of heaviness returned to Hiresha, and she noticed Fos now stood in snow to the ankle.
She had expected Fos to jerk them to a stop midair, as she had seen him do often enough by himself in training. He activated the enchantment in stages, slowed our descent for my benefit.
“I’m not fragile as a sphene jewel.” She patted the hand that still held her legs to encourage him to set her down. “But it was masterfully done.”
He took two deep breaths, chest swelling against her side. Her eyes were drooping, and despite all she had yet to do, she worried she would fall asleep unless he set her down at once. Fatigue had always been her closest companion, and she wondered if her practice of pushing on through exhaustion had aided her in the ordeal of the last few days. The Academy towers were fading in her sight.
Fos righted her, and snow shifted under her boots. She took a breath of alertness. Their eyes met, then darted upward.
Hiresha thought she should have seen Tethiel’s wings in the night sky as burnished flames, if he had jumped. Next she wondered if she would only see darkness from his light-hungry fire, a shadow sliding over the stars.
“I don’t see him,” Fos said.
“Let’s not both of us have our eyes on the sky.”
“Right.” Fos’s chin lowered, and his head turned right and left.
Each moment spent waiting to see the flash of wings deepened Hiresha’s worry. Sometimes Tethiel is overcautious. Will he not have the courage to jump?
Hiresha had been taught as a child that stars were the tears of the moon god, lights of divine sorrow that sometimes fell to the Lands of Loam as diamonds. That explanation had not impressed the Minister of Orbiting Bodies, and to Hiresha’s trained eye, the stars did not resemble diamonds, bright as they were. All luster, no fire. These stars did not twinkle, not in the thin air of the mountains, but shone constant and pristine. The sky was white with them.
“As a girl, I didn’t believe the moon could have cried so many stars. So many gems.” She pressed the red diamond in her pocket. The hardness of it pinched into her side. “Now I could believe it. The world is so cruel that even the gods weep.”
Fos switched his weight from foot to foot. His brow drew down, and then he took Hiresha’s hand. All her fingers fit within his palm.
He said, “Looks like a straight run to the Crystal Ballroom. I hope my eye doesn’t frighten Alyla. We’ll have everyone safe soon. We have this.”
“We had better, after everything I’ve gone through,” she said. “What all of us have gone through.”
She still saw nothing of Tethiel. Did he jump right after us and fly off the plateau? Like Fos said he would? She did not think Tethiel would leave her and the Academy. Not now.
Fos tapped one finger at a time against his shoulder, closed his fist, then unfolded a finger and thumb. “By my count, we’ve bested five Bright Palms, one viper with a bad cough, and one typhoon of a woman. That’s seven. How many were there?”
“Eleven. No, twelve.”
“So five left,” he said. “Doubt they have another Emesea.”
“They have Sheamab. And I’d rather face the rest together again than her. None of us will be safe until my jewels have crumpled her, or you’ve knocked her off the cliff.” Hiresha was beginning to think Tethiel would not come. If he flew off course, I hope he reaches the valley floor safely. She stepped closer to Fos.
“All I’m trying to say is that I don’t think we need him.” Fos nodded up to the night sky. “If you stop Bright Palm Sheamab, I could take the other four. One or two at a time.”
“We needed Tethiel on the tower’s roof. I trust him.” It frightened her to say it aloud, doubly so with the Lord of the Feast nowhere in sight.
“That’s the part that doesn’t fit with me. Not when you’re who you are, and he’s what he is.”
“I don’t expect you to trust him. Perhaps it’s best if you do not,” she said. “Yet Tethiel and I have overcome much together, and you and I, we’re another potent combination. I think we all three need each other.”
Hiresha had to take a breath to organize the swirl of her thoughts. She worried she would not find the proper words for what she felt. I never do. Fos was gazing straight down at her.
She pressed a hand over his heart. “Losing either you or him would be a calamity. I couldn’t countenance it. And I would sacrifice any number of jewels to save you.”
After her last words, he blew out a long breath, and his shoulders dropped into a relaxed pose. “Can’t say I’m happy to be fighting shoulder to shoulder with the Lord of the Feast, but if you trust him, then there’s that. Never known you to be wrong.”
Her lips drew back from her teeth as her neck and face tightened. Hiresha hoped she would not disappoint him. If I am wrong, I make a point not to be wrong for long.
Starlight drained from the snow, leaving it dark as soil, and the stars winke
d from the sky. Wings burst into view in a curving set of flaming scales.
Hiresha stared at Tethiel. She was not certain whether to be relived at seeing him or suspicious that had been listening hidden for minutes.
“Why are you both standing about?” Tethiel motioned them forward with a flap of feather blades. “We have Bright Palms to snuff.”
“I can’t see anything, now,” Fos said. “Except you.”
“Perfection,” Tethiel said. “Now you can follow my bright star to….”
“The Crystal Ballroom,” Hiresha said. She let go of Fos’s hand.
As they jogged after Tethiel, Fos muttered. “Don’t think I’ve met a star before that so needed to be seen.”
“The star that burns twice as bright is remembered thrice as long.” Tethiel appeared to fly ahead of them in a void, his wings rippling sheets of molten copper. “But the point is that at this juncture the Bright Palms cannot see us. Not yet. Ready your sword and gems.”
A blob of light pierced Tethiel’s darkness moments before a Bright Palm appeared. The glowing man with the round face and short nose lacked the ability to look surprised. His brows never lifted in shock. His hand never darted to the scimitar at his back. His eyes did lock on Tethiel, but it was Fos’s sword that cut him in half.
The stone blade circled overhead, and Fos brought it down again.
“Four.” He wiped droplets of light from his face. “Four of them left.”
Hiresha asked, “How close is the Ballroom?”
Tethiel breathed in as if smelling freshly baked bread. “The women inside are quite close. Most sleepless with worry.”
Hiresha had a sense that Fos and she ran over nothingness, under a sky of shadows. Her world was restricted to Tethiel, burning in flight like the sun god worshipped in the western continent. In truth, I suspect he walks.
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