Glimmer of Steel (The Books of Astrune Book 1)

by K. E. Blaski

  He scarcely recognized the old woman. Half her face was paralyzed in a ghoulish grimace, and the fingers on her left hand hung like blackened twigs. He tried to focus on the unfrozen side of her face, but she darted around the cabin restlessly, making it impossible.

  The second shock was the blond boy, no older than Damen, roasting a bos calf on the fire. He didn’t look up or acknowledge Damen’s presence; his eyes remained fixed on the tasks of basting and turning.

  “Who’s he?”

  “My apprentice. You like? Does anything I need. Fixed the hole we put in my roof. Very handy. The son I never had.”

  “The slave you never had. How much did he cost you?”

  “He’s a gift. From the Order. In exchange for my experiment logs.” She pulled up a chair across from him and drew out a pipe from her robe. “Idiots. Can’t do it themselves.” She blew on the bowl, and a stream of smoke curled and licked the ceiling. “Begging me to do it again.” She pulled on the stem with her teeth, inhaling deeply. She let go, and a thin fog escaped from her mouth, engulfing her head. “As if I’d give it away!” Her laughs changed to coughs.

  Damen waited until her coughing fit passed. “You shouldn’t do it again. Ever.”

  “What? Is that regret you’re expressing? How is that possible? You got what you wanted.”

  “No. What I wanted was for Nyima to be safe. What I got was Jennica.”

  “Ah, yes. Her name is Jennica.” She continued to puff on her pipe. “Word is out about the silver-footed bride. Now that the messengers have latched on to the gossip, all the spired cities will know by the end of the moon cycle. This is how legends are born. I wonder how Telerune will take the news. That’s where the last Rosen girl was snatched. Her family of fools tried to hide her in a mountain cave. For them to learn the latest is alive and kicking . . . Hmm. But she can’t kick, can she?” She cackled.

  “No, she can’t. Noble has permanently maimed her, but it hasn’t stopped her will to live. She’s a fighter. Which brings me to the reason why I’m here. I need you to make more inhibitor. As much as you can.”

  She cackled again and then coughed so much the boy rushed to her side and started patting her on the back. “Naw. I’m fine. Fine. Go back to your work, Junius.”

  He returned to his place by the fire, occasionally peeking over his shoulder at his mistress.

  “So that’s how she’s stayed Rosen so long. You’ve been giving the inhibitor to Noble Tortare, haven’t you? And now you’ve run out. Aren’t you a sly one?”

  “Yes and no. Giving the inhibitor to Noble was Jennica’s idea. She’s very quick-witted.”

  He could see Argathe’s mind working out a deal. She never did anything unless there was something in it for her. He’d come prepared. Marcis’s silver scale lay at the bottom of a pocket in his robe.

  “Before we discuss terms, a few questions, I think. To determine what my product is worth to you this day.”

  Exactly what he didn’t need: another interrogation. Argathe enjoyed seeing him squirm. Her idea of fun had twisted over the years. He waited as she measured him with a fixed, one-eyed glare.

  “Who is the inhibitor for?”

  “Noble Tortare, Marcis Balázs, and myself. And anyone else who threatens Nobless.”

  “How long does Noble intend to put off raping his bride?”

  She was trying to shock him, to unnerve him. “I don’t know. For as long as what she has to say is useful to him.”

  “Is that so? And what could a mere girl have to tell him that’s important enough to keep his notorious libido restrained?”

  “On her planet, people can fly.”

  Her eye widened for a moment, narrowing again as Damen shifted in his chair. “That may explain Noble’s motivation. But what’s yours, boy?”

  “I don’t know what you’re asking,” Damen stalled, but the familiar anxiety welled inside his chest.

  “Laughable, how hard you try to avoid speaking the truth when I see it plain as Aprica’s light on your face.”

  She was doing it again—reaching inside him, twisting his nerves until he couldn’t take it, right before she wrenched the truth from his lips.

  “You haven’t told anyone yet, have you?” She grinned. “Because no one has asked you the right question. Have you even admitted it to yourself?”

  “What are you asking, Argathe?” How much more would she make him endure? His skin burned, flames licked along his spine. He jumped to his feet and sent his chair crashing to the floor. All his nerves screamed at him not to betray himself.

  Argathe only added to his struggle. “What would Nyima say if she knew how easily she could be replaced? Are you like Noble Tortare? It’s only about the skin—switch the soul—doesn’t matter—the Rosen skin is what you want.”

  “No! It’s not true.” Heavy air pressed on his body. He wheezed, trying to pull it down into his lungs.

  “Not the skin?”

  “It’s not. The skin. The skin doesn’t matter to me.”

  “Then something else?”

  Why did she have to draw out his pain? Why didn’t she just ask him and get it over with? “Yes. Yes. Something else.” He imagined silver scales shielding his heart, but Argathe plucked each away with a curved nail and a targeted question.

  “You love Jennica?”

  At last, he released the truth. “Yes! Yes, yes, yes.”

  The pain was unbearable, the effort to contain the truth, exhausting. He collapsed against the wall. If only he could take it back. How could he leave himself so exposed? Jennica would never love him in return. No one could ever love a Tovar, and if they did, they’d only regret it.

  Argathe’s laughter bounced inside his skull while the dark rocked him to sleep.

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  Shocked awake. His head cold. His hair wet. Junius stood over him with an empty bucket. “Dinner’s ready, sir.”

  “A cloth?”

  The boy tossed him one, then pulled Damen to his feet. The calf waited on a platter in the center of the table. Argathe had disappeared.

  “Where’d she go?” Still dazed and groggy, as Junius served him Damen tucked away the twinge of embarrassment he felt for letting Argathe push him so hard he’d passed out. Only she knew him well enough to torture him so.

  “She’s packing some of her things from the toolshed. The cart should be here within the hour.”

  “Cart? Where’s she going?”

  “We’re going back to the castle with you,” the boy said, as if the trip had been planned for weeks and it had simply slipped Damen’s mind.

  “We? Oh, no you’re not.”

  The side door banged open and Argathe dragged in a battered travel case. “Sit down and eat, boys. It’s our last meal in this hole.”

  Damen sat back down, reeling from Argathe’s questions and now her surprise announcement. “You’re not coming back to the castle with me.” Argathe and Noble Tortare would be a deadly combination.

  Argathe tore into her own plate of food. Spittle flew from her lips as she chomped and chewed. “On the contrary.” She grinned, meat hanging from her darkened teeth. “I’m the newest member of Noble’s council. Cassius Ezio came by days ago. He told me all about Alban Cato’s unfortunate accident. I, however, intend to keep my head.”

  Damen was stunned. “Why didn’t you say something earlier, when I first arrived?”

  “What—and spoil all the fun? Oh, don’t look so morose, boy. You’ll get the credit for bringing me to the castle. With me there, you’ll have an unending supply of inhibitor. And I will have access to Noble’s Urion. We all gain.”

  Argathe had played him. She’d had the advantage all along. Nothing he’d had to bargain with could compare to a spot on Noble’s council. He reached into his robe for Marcis’s scale. It was gone.

  “Looking for this?” Argathe held the thin metal flake. “Consider it payment in full. I’m sure to find some use for it. Grow my own improved metal skin from its cells, maybe? Imagin
e—impervious to bite, blade, and claw.” She had the faraway look of imagination run wild. “Why aren’t you eating?”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “You’re too sour. If you won’t eat, then at least make yourself useful. Finish my packing. The hare is in a cage in the garden—we’ll bring him too.”

  Damen shook his head. No living creature was safe around the woman. He was surprised the hare with the polecat soul was still alive. Maybe Jennica would like it for a pet. They had similar characteristics, after all: tenacity, intelligence. He rose to go get it.

  “I can’t wait to meet her. The silver-footed girl who stole your heart after you stole her soul. The romance of it all. You’d better hope Noble doesn’t find out you’re in love with his wife. I wonder what you’ll do to keep it a secret. Look how far you went for friendship. How far will you go for love, Damen?”

  He slammed the door on her cackling.

  DAMEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  THE SIX POISONS

  The last time he was in a cart surrounded by travel bags and cases, he’d been thirteen years old. The roads had been crowded then as the people who’d been displaced from their homes by Noble’s war had searched for safe haven. He’d been searching for safe haven too. Away from Argathe. Now he was moving Argathe into his home. This circle of his life might feel ironic if it weren’t so infuriating. Together again. Mother and son. His stomach churned.

  With Argathe living inside the castle, he’d inevitably run into her outside of the occasional mandatory meeting. And seeing her stirred up more emotions than he cared to deal with: exasperation, guilt, melancholy. That squirm of repulsion he got whenever he saw something rotting.

  He was tired of her manipulations. It was bad enough that he had to see Noble every day; now he’d be forced to spend time with the woman he’d spent the last four years avoiding.

  Argathe hummed at the rear of the cart, more rumbling grunt than melody. The dirge made the driver nod off, or maybe it was the swaying cart combined with the clomping hooves of two portly bos. The boy Junius lay curled at Argathe’s feet. The hare glowered through the bars of its cage and threw a well-timed hiss Damen’s way each time the cart lurched forward.

  The cases and bags, stacked and tied with threadbare cord, were loaded with herbs and chemicals, runes and bindings, measuring tools and star charts. Damen thought the pile resembled a group of drunken soldiers pretending to be acrobats. Aprica must have read his mind: one of the wheels dropped into a hole, the cart stopped, the cord snapped, and Argathe’s stack of belongings tumbled around them.

  Her cocodrilli case popped open, and a shiny vial soared. Argathe snatched it before it pitched into the road. “Careful! Are you trying to kill us all?” she yelled at Damen.

  “Like I put the hole in the road and forced the cart to drive into it.”

  “No, but if your head was bigger you could’ve blocked my case.”

  He didn’t argue. Insults were her customary language. “What are these?” He fingered the other five vials secured by wires in the cloth-lined case.

  “Poisons.” She held the vial she’d snatched from the air two finger lengths from his face. “When this one’s released, the fumes will suffocate you in seconds. Nasty side effect: makes your eyes bulge, like a rémy flopping on the sand.” She tied the vial back into the case.

  “This one”—she pointed to vial two—“is the most powerful of all but works more slowly. You have ten, maybe twenty minutes before your muscles freeze and your organs die. Your heart expires last. Thump, thump. Thump.” She slowed each thump, then poked him in the chest. “Thump.”

  She continued working her way down the row of vials. “This vial holds an acid that burns through the soul but leaves the body intact. Works from the inside out so you have to swallow or inject. Very painful. These two”—she gestured at vials four and five—“are catalysts to be combined with Urion. Until then, they’re inert.”

  “What happens when you add the Urion?” he asked.

  “This one deadens the senses. All of them. Taste goes first—most don’t even miss that one—then sight, scent, sound, and finally touch.”

  “Do they come back?”

  “No.”

  “Then you’re dead.”

  “No. Your senses are dead. You can still stumble around like a blithering idiot for the rest of your life. Now this other one, I’m still determining the effects. Just need a suitable subject for testing.” She grinned. “I’ll have a castle full at my disposal won’t I?

  “And last . . .” She took out the sixth vial and waved it in front of his nose. “My own version of Tovar blood. A single drop will make someone tell the truth.”

  “Why would you need that when you can get a Tovar to tell you if someone is lying?”

  “Your stupidity is why I never once considered you as an assistant. You can tell if a man is lying, but you can’t force him to tell the truth. I can. Without even asking the right questions, truth will spew out in a never-ending fountain. Not quite as much fun as pulling it out syllable by syllable, like I do with you, but effective. And even more interesting is the effect the poison will have on someone already compelled to tell the truth. Someone like you.”

  “What? It’ll burn holes in my tongue?”

  “Aren’t we gruesome? No, it won’t burn holes in your tongue. It will give your tongue a freedom it’s never known before. When you swallow even one drop . . . you can lie. Lie, lie, lie.”

  On impulse, he grasped at the vial, but she moved too fast, popping it into the case and snapping the lid closed. “How eager you are to join the rest of the deceivers.”

  The driver of the cart interrupted them. “The wheel’s busted, madam. Can’t fix it on the road. Three wheels will support the cargo, but I’m afraid you and your companions will have to walk the rest of the way.”

  “Incompetent imbecile,” Argathe muttered. “Let’s walk, then.”

  They piled out of the cart, Junius presenting his back as a stepstool for Argathe. The driver led the bos by their reins, and they in turn dragged the crippled cart behind them. Argathe carried her case of poisons close to her chest, trotting ahead of them like she was leading a victory parade. Alban’s mottled, decaying head stared down at them from a stake as they passed the great archway into Durand.

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  “I am here to serve you.” Argathe bowed to her new employer.

  Noble placed a clawed hand on Damen’s shoulder. “She lies,” Damen confirmed.

  “I will lie to you about many things, but I am the most capable dark scientist you’ll ever know. I’ll help you because it helps me.”

  “Truth, sir.”

  “To mutual self-interest.” Noble raised his goblet to Argathe. “Damen, your mother will fit in well here.”

  “I no longer consider her my mother.”

  “Good. I’d hate to cause you any discomfort when I take her head instead of her advice. Familial bonds are overrated. Felt the same way about my own dear, now-departed mother.”

  He turned to Argathe. “Argathe, we have work to do. I have come into possession of new information—revolutionary information.” He handed her Jennica’s binding. “I have a crew working on the designs now, but they need to harness Urion to get my transport airborne. You have a . . . reputation with Urion. In fact, one of your success stories now lives in the castle with us.”

  Argathe betrayed no reaction. Damen, on the other hand, had a hard time controlling his shock. “You know?”

  “Of course he knows,” Argathe retorted. “Noble knows everything going on under his roof. I swapped Jennica’s soul for Nyima’s. I conducted the procedure from my home in Elliot with the help of my assistant and twelve milligrams of Urion. No one else did it before me and no one else has done it since.”

  Damen didn’t understand why she failed to mention that he’d been her assistant. He was the one who’d stolen the Urion. Why was she protecting him?

  “And you will d
o it again,” Noble stated matter-of-factly, as though it were part of her job description.

  “Of course. If and when it suits me.” She drank from her own goblet. A dribble of wine escaped from the frozen side of her mouth.

  “I am persuasive,” Noble said.

  “As am I,” Argathe countered.

  Damen had had enough of their chest puffing. He wanted to check on Jennica, make sure isolation hadn’t driven her mad, make sure Marcis was keeping her in a steady supply of salve. See her fingertips as she reached for his notes. “If you don’t need me anymore, I’ll take my leave.”

  “You’ll leave when I dismiss you,” Noble snapped.

  Damen sagged against the wall. He was in for a long night. At least while Argathe kept Noble occupied, he wouldn’t summon Marcis to bring him another girl. Damen could be thankful for that.

  While Noble and Argathe argued the merits of the different pieces of machinery outlined in Jennica’s binding, Damen considered the six vials secured in Argathe’s case. He’d helped put the case away with her other belongings in a spacious room two doors south of the conference room. He could get to it with little difficulty, and just as easily find a use for all of the vials. Noble could be his test subject for the first five. He didn’t know what the contents of the fifth vial did, but he assumed, since Argathe had created it, it was sure to cause a sinister result. The sixth vial, however, wouldn’t do enough harm to Noble. Damen didn’t care about Noble’s truths.

  Marcis was a different story. Damen needed to know what Marcis’s plans were for Jennica. The soldier risked his life daily for her, had killed to protect her, and had endured permanent scarring for her. He insisted his actions were not a result of her skin. He must be up to something. A drop of truth potion and he’d know Marcis’s truths. A drop while Jennica witnessed, and she’d hear all about Coralee and the other girls.

  Damen was sure she would spurn Marcis after hearing what he’d done to those girls. She wouldn’t want Marcis anywhere near her, not once she knew all of his truths.