Glimmer of Steel (The Books of Astrune Book 1)

by K. E. Blaski

  Truth potion could help him in other ways, too. He could give it to Jennica and . . . no, he already knew how she felt about him. She hadn’t been lying when she’d said she’d never forgive him until he apologized. And he could never apologize for something that he was glad had happened.

  He’d saved Nyima because she was his only friend, and to assuage some of his guilt for having made it possible for Noble’s soldiers to find and capture her. Those were two of his truths. His third truth was one he dared not say aloud:

  He was glad that it was Jennica’s soul now inside Nyima’s body.

  JENNICA

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  AUNT KORNELIA

  Jennica’s lips cracked and bled whenever she moved them. Her throat felt like she’d swallowed shattered glass. She needed more water. Sucking fluid from her meager food portions, cupping rainwater in her hands from the window, it wasn’t enough. If she didn’t get water soon, it wouldn’t matter what she had to say to Noble Tortare, she wouldn’t be alive to say it.

  If only Marcis could slide water under the door. In addition to his notes, he’d managed to get all kinds of things through the narrow gap. He slid aniello to her, sliced so thin she could see through it. There were sheets of parchment coated in salve, pressed flowers, flattened segments of fruit. Each gift encouraged her to last a little longer, just knowing there was someone on the other side of the door who cared if she survived.

  She suspected Marcis had a crush on her. What else could explain the way he acted around her? Back in Portville she would’ve thought he was too old for her—he had to be at least thirty—but here in this world, he was exactly what she needed: someone strong who could stand up to Noble, who wanted to take care of her, who didn’t seem to be using her.

  He risked his life each time he helped her. He’d saved Coralee when she’d asked him to. Marcis was one of the good guys.

  Not like Damen, who told her the truth only because he had to. The jerk still refused to apologize for what he’d done to her. He hung around her only because Noble wanted to make sure she wasn’t lying. How lame was that? Yes, he’d done some nice things for her; the bereket handkerchief bordered on magical. But was he being nice because whenever he looked at her, he saw his friend Nyima? He’d called her Nyima, for God’s sake! Twisting his robes in his hands. Looking at the stupid watch all the time with his bright, sad eyes, his girly lashes brushing the tops of his cheeks. Talking to her with his velvet voice. Touching her hair with his long fingers.

  Jennica stuffed her head into a pillow.

  Moments later, she got up again to check for deliveries from under the door. Nothing. And where was Damen all this time? Ugh. Damen again. He was everywhere even when he wasn’t there.

  She felt stupid now for having hung on to him when the hawk freaked her out, when she should’ve been able to handle the situation by herself. She handled them by herself now. After a couple of weeks locked alone in this room, her feelings about the hawks had evolved from heart-pounding shock into equal parts disgust and annoyance.

  They hadn’t visited her window since yesterday. Tired of being chased off with Damen’s knife, she supposed. They kept leaving her raw meat, which she just pushed off the ledge. Who’s to say they weren’t pieces of Noble’s latest victim? Some poor scientist or castle servant he’d sucked the soul out of before chopping him to bits. Better to starve than eat what those horrid creatures brought.

  But she wasn’t starving—thanks to Marcis. Just . . . thirsty.

  The word thirsty kept slamming into her consciousness. To occupy herself, she did math, copied down poems she’d memorized, sketched everything she could think of, and tried to move. Marcis told her in his notes to keep moving, but she didn’t get very far. She kept getting light-headed. After eating what Marcis slid under the door, with the little bit of energy it gave her, she’d try her kata. The hand and arm motions were easy, though raising her legs to any height was difficult, even with the help of the salve. Of course, until the salve made its way under the door each morning, even those few movements were unthinkable.

  She marked off the days with notches carved into the bedframe: four marks before the wedding, sixteen marks since. Thanksgiving had come and gone. Twenty days felt like a lifetime. She was sure the days and nights were longer in this world. On the first day of her room confinement, she’d counted by thousands to mitigate the pain in her legs—sixty thousand for every minute, three million six hundred thousand for every hour. If her counting was correct, days here were fourteen hours, and nights fifteen, for a twenty-nine hour cycle in total.

  How her parents would’ve loved it. They were always looking for more time in their busy day. All it meant to Jennica was that her month-long sentence was one hundred and fifty hours longer. Plus, they used the moons to determine the months. She wasn’t sure how many weeks that worked out to be.

  Luckily, she had the round hole in her cell—room—the only window on this side of the tower. When she wasn’t sleeping, counting, writing in the books Damen gave her, or thinking about Damen, she watched the city.

  And what an amazing sight it was. Oxen the size of elephants pulled wagons filled with bolts of cloth, produce, weapons, and bags of who-knew-what to and from the castle. Skinny dogs, like greyhounds, flanked the wagons, nipping at the heels of anyone who came too close. The other day, she’d seen a caravan of strangely dressed travelers with rainbow-painted wagons led by two men on what looked like giant antelopes, their horns spiraling several feet into the air.

  In the morning, the wind carried the scents of animal musk and manure, dust and decay, and spoiled fish. At night, if she listened carefully, she swore she could hear the rhythm of the ocean and wooden boats creaking on the waves.

  But there were sights definitely missing from this world. She expected gulls and sparrows, but she never saw any birds. She heard the hum of insects but never saw a moth or mosquito. The only creatures flying were Noble’s child monsters. And there weren’t any horses, either. Pigs, yes. Enormous cows, yes. A herd of animals that resembled fluffy brown sheep. But there wasn’t even a pony as far as she could see. She wanted to ask Damen about horses. She wished she were a good enough artist that she could draw one for reference.

  The city was crowded with people, though, of every size and color, some in tunics, most in robes, but none as garishly made up as Nyima’s family and the other wedding guests. They must save the wigs and face paint for special occasions.

  When she crawled into the window to watch, people would stop in their daily business to stare up at her. Or at least she thought they did. It was hard to be sure, like watching ants take a break—did it really happen, or was her lonely mind just playing games?

  Her room was near the top of the tower; at least twenty stories separated her window and the smooth limestone walkway below. Today, looking down made her dizzy. She was probably dehydrated. No, definitely dehydrated. There was a hole in the corner of her room that Madam Meilyn had showed her on her first day. A hole she was supposed to squat over. She hadn’t peed in the hole since yesterday.

  Back on the bed, she stared at the ceiling, running her fingers through the sheets, imagining she was floating on a raft, dipping her hands in silky cool water. She bunched the sheets into ridges and waves, caressing them with her fingertips. Amazing sheets of water.

  The sheets! Why hadn’t she thought of it before? There were at least four sheets on Nyima’s giant bed. There’d be enough, right? She’d knot them together into a rope, tie the rope to the bed, and then climb out the window. With renewed energy, she stripped the bed and started knotting the corner of one sheet to the corner of another. She strained to pull the knots tight. Six sheets later, she tied one end to the bedframe and tossed the other end out the window. Her makeshift rope ended halfway down.

  She tried to move the bed, to add more sheet length down the wall. The room was huge; if she could move the bed right next to the window, she might get the sheet rope close enough to whe
re she could drop the rest of the way. Her metal feet might be able to absorb some of the impact.

  Yank. Push. Pull. All while digging her feet into the floor. She had to keep stopping to catch her breath and clear her head. But it didn’t matter: all her efforts failed. The bed wouldn’t budge. Storm clouds gathered outside as she attempted to use the table as a lever against the bed. A leg snapped off in her hands.

  Thunder clapped and covered her groans of frustration. Rain pelted against stone and she yelled up to the sky. She pulled up her stupid, ineffective—

  The sheet rope was drenched! Completely soaked in fresh, delicious water.

  She wrung an end over her mouth. Water ran down her face, quenched the fire on her tongue, and soothed her throat. She chewed on the sheets, her teeth squeezing out more of the precious rain. A faint taste of soap coated her tongue, but it didn’t matter. This was much better than trying to catch rain in her hands. Much, much better.

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  In her dreams, Grandma Lorinne stroked her hair and told her everything would be all right.

  I miss you so much, Grandma. I worry about you, and Grandpa, and Uncle Ed. I worry about you worrying about me.

  “My sweet girl. I know you’ll find a way,” she thought she heard her grandma say.

  Wrapped in damp sheets on the stone floor, Jennica felt a breeze rush across her cheek. Grandma Lorinne’s fragrance filled the room. Her voice soothed Jennica like chimes on a summer’s eve. Disoriented at first, she bolted upright. A cross breeze could only mean—the door was open. The lanterns flamed brighter, illuminating Grandma Lorinne. The door thudded shut and shadows slid across her grandmother’s face.

  “Thank God. You’ve come to get me out of here.” Jennica stood, the sheets pooling at her feet.

  “Come, Nyima. I will make it all better. Come to me.”

  Relief crashed over Jennica. Without thinking, she went to her grandmother and threw her arms around her. Finally, someone was going to rescue her and take her away from Noble and this damned castle. She didn’t see the knife until she felt the tip against her windpipe. Panic surged through her veins. She grabbed at gloved hands, pushing and straining to keep the knife from puncturing her throat.

  Adrenaline cleared all traces of sleep from her eyes and she saw who it was she was fighting: Nyima’s Aunt Kornelia. Her arms shook; her hands throbbed as the knife pierced skin. Warmth dribbled down her neck, and fear took over. She stomped on Kornelia’s foot.

  Kornelia lost her grip, and the knife slipped to the floor. She lunged for Jennica’s neck. Her gloved hands encircled it. “Why couldn’t you behave like all the rest? A Rosen girl should know her duty is to her husband.”

  Purple stars swarmed in front of Jennica’s eyes as she sputtered and wheezed. Then a different voice broke into her consciousness: Shohan Sato. The eyes. Go for her eyes. Jennica released her defensive hold on the gloves and pushed her thumbs into Kornelia’s eyeballs.

  Kornelia stumbled backward, moaning. Her eyelids squeezed shut as brick-colored fluid seeped from the corners.

  A knife. Damen’s. Kornelia’s. Any knife. Jennica fumbled on the floor. Kornelia’s blood-scarred eyes popped open and she sprang forward. Jennica’s fingers closed around a heavy handle—the hairbrush.

  She threw it at Kornelia’s head and missed her completely. The brush smashed into a lantern. The glass shattered; sparks flew outward in a miniature explosion. Pinpricks of white light swarmed and buzzed where the lantern used to be. Like lightning bugs, each the size of her thumbnail.

  The tiny lights gathered into a cloud of phosphorescence, obscuring Kornelia’s head. She shrieked and batted uselessly at them while they stung her face and hands. She flailed, faltering toward the window, pitching backward and—out.

  Jennica rushed to the window as fast as her feet would allow. Her throat on fire, her breaths like sandpaper. Blood still trickled from her neck; she wrapped her hand in her sleeve and pressed it against the wound to stop the flow. Kornelia lay sprawled on the limestone walkway, far beneath the window, her doll eyes reflecting the tiny dancing stars that still clung to her like a shroud.

  “Release my brothers, Jennica.” A small voice vibrated from the windowsill. The lightning bug . . . spoke to her. Only it wasn’t a lightning bug. It was a tiny sphere of white light.

  “Did you . . . say something?” Talking to a ball of light was a reasonable thing to do. Right?

  “Release my brothers, Jennica,” the voice repeated.

  “You know my name? And you talk?”

  “We see and hear as well as you do—though our prisons are smaller than yours.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me. All the lanterns? In this whole castle? Have you little guys inside?” Just when she thought she had Planet Insanity all figured out, a new craziness blew into her life. Or in this case, glowed.

  “I am Aingeal, guardian of light, from the tribe of Cidra; not a little guy, and certainly not a willing servant to Noble Tortare. You released me by accident, but now that you know the injustice my people endure, you can choose to free the rest of us.”

  “Cidrans. Oh my God. The Cidran rebellion in Casilda. That’s you guys? But you’re just tiny balls of light.”

  “You know of the injustices inflicted on my people. Free us, Nobless. I can guarantee our gratitude, and a debt to be repaid.”

  She was doubtful—how could these tiny glowing things help her?

  Aingeal added, “We saved you from the woman who tried to kill you.”

  True. Without their help, she’d have needed the knife. And whether she could have used it to kill Kornelia, she didn’t know. Castle Torture was changing her—making her full of rage, desperate and unsure of herself. The cocky girl Madam Meilyn had marked had disappeared when the tin man’s feet went on. She bounced between rampant fear and unrestrained anger. Anger felt better.

  Now she had something else to be angry about. Didn’t they have fire on this planet? Trapping creatures inside glass to gain a few hours of light was wrong. She bashed the rest of the lanterns in her room with the hairbrush. Glass sparkled on the floor like scattered diamonds as the Cidrans darted about, then out the window. Hundreds of small voices rejoiced in the night.

  Her room was dark now. The clouds cloaked the moons and stars. Rustling drew her attention back to the door. She fumbled her way over, broken glass crunching beneath her metal feet, and felt along the bottom of the door. A piece of paper and a charcoal stick, shaved flat, had been stuck through the gap.

  She set her new gifts on the window. Hopefully the clouds would part and she’d be able to read the note, but the only light came from the city, too far away to be useful. She’d have to wait until morning.

  It started to rain again, a light drizzle this time, coating Kornelia’s shadowy body with a slick sheen. How soon before someone discovered her? And why’d the woman attack her like that? It wasn’t the skin this time; Kornelia’s actions were something else entirely. Kornelia had wanted to slice her throat. And who had let her in? And why hadn’t anyone come to help during the struggle? She didn’t know what to feel looking at the woman’s corpse. She didn’t want Nyima’s aunt to die, but she didn’t want to die either.

  She held out her cupped hands until they were wet. She lapped at them, getting very little, and decided to hang her sheet rope back out the window to collect more water for later.

  “I’m Joss. I’ve been sent by Aingeal to light your way.” Jennica whirled around to see a ball of light hovering by her head. He darted to the paper, and the glow expanded until the paper shined—her own personal flashlight.

  What happened? was scrawled along the top of the paper in Marcis’s imprecise script.

  Underneath his message, Jennica began to write about her night and about the sheets, but not about Nyima’s aunt. No, she kept that news to herself. And the Cidrans—she purposefully failed to mention them, while Joss glowed steadily beside her.

  JENNICA

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TW
O

  THE TRIBE OF CIDRA

  Jennica hardly recognized her own giggles as Joss raced along the complex loops and swirls on the ceiling in a dazzling stream of light and sparks. Faster and faster he sped, like car light trails filmed at night. She became pleasantly woozy. The web of spun gold faded before Joss at last settled on the pillow next to her.

  “That was amazing. Your home must be beautiful with all of you circling around like fireflies. Or is it more like this castle—hot and mean?”

  “Our villages extend along the Valley of Esperance. The sky stretches endlessly across verdant meadows.” He brightened. “When the wind blows, the grass sounds like rushing water. And your land? Is there beauty?”

  “There is. Lots of it, amber waves of grain, purple mountain majesties. But plenty of ugliness, too.” She’d turned off the news years ago, tired of war, terrorism, murder. Earth had mini-Nobles crawling all over its surface. Without the soul-sucking feature, of course. She couldn’t even imagine what someone like Noble could accomplish on Earth. Plenty of minions to recruit. Plenty of innocent people with souls to consume.

  “Life seeks balance. Where there is good, there must be evil. Where evil exists, so must good. Shadows cannot exist without light.”

  “Yes they can; it’s called night.” She propped her head up on her hand and stared at the tiny pulsating star on her pillow. “I don’t believe for a second you have enough good on this planet to make up for all the bad. Your planet is so unbalanced I’m surprised it can spin on its axis.”

  “You must want to see good for it to reveal itself. Instead of debate, let’s talk about you. Tell me about your place in your world.”

  “My place?”

  “Your purpose—why you were put there?” His voice was sleepy, his light ebbing against the encroaching dark.

  She yawned. “I don’t know. I wasn’t there long enough to figure it out. I wanted to be an oceanographer, a pilot, a math teacher. I hadn’t even decided what college to go to. I’d have wound up at Portville Community for the first two years anyway. Now I’m trying to figure out my place in this world. Surviving is my purpose here. How ’bout you?”