Prism Cloud

by Jeff Wheeler

  The crunching sound startled her as her father easily leaped the distance, landing above her. She couldn’t resist glaring at him, but she felt a throb of victory that she had made the jump after all.

  He reached down to help her up, and she hesitated before taking his hand. Rising to her feet, her knees trembling, she stood on the roof beside him. He then let go of her and stepped up onto the tiles, sure-footed and graceful as a cat. She emulated his walk, but her boots kept jarring the tiles. The air smelled musty on the roof, and she had red dust on her palms from the roof shingles. He reached the apex, the spine, and followed it to another intersection of roof, which was an easy step up. She continued to trail him until they were at last on the highest peak of the estate, the highest point on the grounds. He stood, arms folded again, overlooking the countryside of Genevar.

  Cettie joined him, feeling an interesting carefree sensation. She’d never walked rooftops before. Even though she had been the keeper of Fog Willows, she had never dared to explore the estate in such a way. She could only imagine how it would feel to climb the roof of a sky manor. The thought made her giddy.

  With his eyes gazing far away, he said, “For many years the poisoner school has been here. There are other compounds like this one, schools that teach different skills.” He gave her a brief look and then continued to stare out at the city. “These practices were moved from Pisan because too many people learned of the school. Yes, there is a poisoner school there . . . it’s important to keep up appearances . . . but when too many people know a secret, it is a secret no longer. To protect itself, it spread its roots elsewhere. There is so much that people don’t know about what we are and what we do. Every kingdom needs people like us, Daughter. To do the filthy things that must be done and cannot be undone.”

  He sniffed in the breeze. The cooks were hard at work in the kitchen. The scent of the savory meal wafted on the breeze through the chimney. It made her mouth water.

  “I watched you at Muirwood,” he said, still looking far away. “I watched how they treated you. You were a pariah. You will always be one to them, to those cunning hypocrites who preach mercy and then grind the faces of the poor.” His voice was thick with contempt. “You know of what I speak.”

  Cettie swallowed. “They weren’t all that way.” And yet he wasn’t wrong. Yes, she’d been shunned. She had been ridiculed. They had all studied from the same books, yet so many of the students who’d been born to riches, to cloud manors or estates in Lockhaven, used the Mysteries for personal gain. It was possible to do this. But it wasn’t right.

  “Of course not,” he said, turning to face her. “Look out at Genevar,” he said, jerking his head back to the vast city. As she’d observed before, it was so very different from Kingfountain. Although it was a mighty fortress, it wasn’t crowded and choked with buildings. There was room for gardens and manors, for orchards and vineyards. It was beautiful, though that couldn’t possibly be what he meant. “How many roofs can you see? In the harbor, how many ships? Too many to count. Now imagine this, Daughter. How many millions live on this world? Each one is a person. Each one has hopes and dreams. Isn’t it tragic that the vast majority are satisfied living beneath their potential?” He smiled, but it was a sad smile. “As children they imagined themselves growing up to be something better than what their parents were. If they even had parents. But in time, the cruelties of life weighed on them like so many stones. And like water, they follow the path of least opposition. And then they will die, never having achieved a tenth of what they dreamed as children. Life crushes all ambition from them. Only the brave lift up their heads and demand more. And when you make demands of life, it is forced to pay you. Most settle for pauper’s wages when they could become kings.”

  She could see he believed what he said. His tone of voice, the wrinkle in his brow. The stern cold look of a man who’d been beaten down over and over, a man who had gotten up just as many times. A strong curiosity filled her. She longed to know more about him. Yet at the same time, she struggled with her antipathy against him, the man who’d shot her true father while hiding like a coward.

  “Where did you come from?” she asked him.

  “Do you seek to know me, Daughter?”

  “If you’ll let me. What made you so hardened?”

  “I am from this world,” he answered in a low voice. “I served a man, a duke. It doesn’t matter where.” His face filled with anger, with resentment. “He beat his wife. He tormented his children, made them feel inferior . . . weak. To the world, he presented the trappings of success.” He snorted. “When they went to court, he was the epitome of style, sophistication, happiness. His entire family helped create the illusion. But as soon as they went home, he raged at them for their shortcomings, for thoughtless things they had said or done. Or that he had imagined them doing. He was a monster. A selfish, self-important swine. What he did to those children . . .” He sniffed and shook his head. Then he turned and looked her in the eye. “One night, he was raging and hurting his wife. She screamed for help. I thought . . . I thought he was going to kill her. To kill them all. Pity drove me, but hatred too. I went to their room, and I killed him. I strangled him with a piece of cord from the curtains.” He frowned at the memory. “His wife . . . accused me. Said I had tried to seduce her and had killed her husband out of contempt. When the officers came for me, I fled, but I was caught. I had a wound on my face from where he had gouged me as I choked him. Justice was swift. They took me to the gallows. My pitiful advocate could do nothing. My words were insignificant compared to the lady’s.”

  He turned around, shoulders bunched. “Rather than lose her wealth or the family’s reputation, she sacrificed me instead. She spoke against me, said all sorts of lies. That is what hurt the most. The injustice of it. Surely his corruption was widely known. Yet rather than wrinkle the linen, they chose to hang me for his crimes.” He looked at her, his eyes dark and brooding. “I hung. I died. Or . . . they all thought that I did. Before I was taken up the steps to the gallows, I was given a drink to quaff. I didn’t realize at the time that it was poison. I was dug free of a common grave while the crows were still picking at the other corpses. And they brought me to Genevar where my name was taken away. Now I am a kishion. And I have had my vengeance.”

  Cettie couldn’t help but pity him for his tragic story. She had experienced her own moments of injustice. Memories of Mrs. Pullman were still raw and bitter to her.

  This man had helped injure Fitzroy. He may even have been the one to kill him. She hadn’t asked, for fear of the answer. But didn’t she carry part of the blame for Fitzroy’s death? She was the one who had helped them cross the mirror gate. Had she not played her part, her true father might still be alive. So she deserved, in the end, to die a traitor’s death. Maybe that would be the best of all outcomes. But either way, his story moved her hard heart with compassion. Her anger softened, almost against her will. Her hatred began to shrink.

  Together they stared at the sky, watching the sun go down. They were still standing there when the gong sounded across the compound.

  “You didn’t look very hungry last night,” Jevin said as he approached her the next afternoon. They were in the gardens for their lesson. He had been unfailingly kind to her since her arrival. Always ready to explain something she didn’t understand. It was a boon that he spoke her own language, unlike the other girls who still tried to befriend her. But Cettie was attempting to learn Genevese, and she set down the book of grammar she’d been studying before his approach. While she knew magic could help her speak languages, she secretly wished she could find another way to escape, one that didn’t involve dependency on a kystrel. And if she did, it would help to know the language of the local people.

  “I was a little sore from jumping roof to roof,” she admitted, rubbing her stomach.

  “Why didn’t you see the healers?” he asked with curiosity.

  “I don’t need to be cured of every ailment,” she answered.

>   “It’s not the pain that is troubling you, then,” he said, sitting down on a stone wall a short distance from her.

  She shook her head no, and he sat there, waiting for her to speak on her own.

  Jevin was a very patient listener, which made it easier to tell the tale. “I had a long talk with my . . . father. You know his story?”

  Jevin nodded sagely, still saying nothing. His brow wrinkled in concern.

  “I don’t want to become like him,” she said. “I don’t think . . . I’m very confident that I don’t want to kill anyone. That puts me . . . in a difficult situation.”

  Jevin nodded again, looking at the ground. “You’re not the first to have said those words in this place,” he said. “And you won’t be the last either.” He smiled. “I don’t think it was wrong that he killed the duke. And it wasn’t wrong that the duchess had him executed for it. We each have motives for what we do. You’ll probably find, as I have, that most people are petty, dishonest, and self-interested by nature. But that does not mean you have to be.”

  Cettie looked at him in concern. “What do you mean?”

  “Have you ever heard the tale of Ankarette Tryneowy?”

  Cettie frowned and shook her head.

  “Her memory has faded over the centuries. She probably wanted it that way. You see, she was a poisoner who served one of the ruling families of Kingfountain. She became known as the queen’s poisoner. She used her training . . . the skills she learned at a school like this in Pisan . . . to help preserve life. Yes, when someone tried to kill her, she would often kill them instead. But that wasn’t her first instinct, and she was exceptionally clever. We’re not training you to be a murderess, Cettie.”

  Her brow furrowed. “What are you training me for?” She knew she was to become a hetaera, but she no longer knew what that would entail.

  He sighed and folded his hands together. “You’re not ready to hear it yet. That will come in time. It depends on how well you adapt to life here. Your possibilities are only limited by your choices. Don’t you wonder why we’ve made you test the limits of your endurance, especially your fears? I mean, jumping across to a rooftop would have been so much easier with a kystrel around your neck.”

  “But I don’t want a kystrel,” Cettie said forcefully, partly to counter the swelling urge for one that growled inside her.

  “I wasn’t suggesting you take one. I was only trying to make you think. If they can banish fear, wouldn’t one be useful in such a situation?”

  Cettie couldn’t deny that it would have helped. “Yes.”

  “Emotions are what drive us. And they are inextricably linked to memory. Have you noticed this? The stronger the emotion, the more it impresses itself on the clay of our minds. You learned this at the maston school, no doubt, just as I learned it at the sanctuary where I was taught. Your earliest memories of feeling fearful, feeling desolate, are probably the strongest. When you become a hetaera, you will be able to use your own memories, your own past emotions, and inflict them on others. You will also be able to draw on the confidence you have gained here at the school. Those memories will empower you. Your fears will disable someone else.”

  Cettie’s throat tightened. The ability to do this, to channel the emotions that had once crippled her, become more powerful for them, fascinated her. It made the itch in her mind grow stronger, something she’d experienced before, when handling the kishion’s kystrel. “Could you . . . could you show me how it works?”

  Jevin shrugged. “If you want.”

  His eyes began to glow silver.

  CHAPTER TWENTY−NINE

  KYSTREL

  The sight of his glowing eyes made her remember the fear she’d experienced when her father had come for her at Vicar’s Close in Muirwood. Part of her wanted to flee. It was a visceral reaction, an instinct that danger was near. Magic had always had its own music for her, and this tune was slightly dissonant and off-key. Still, there was undeniable beauty in the sound—a plaintive cry, a melody that made her want to weep.

  “Tell me about the Fells,” Jevin said, his eyes shining. “Something you remember. Something that made you afraid.”

  That was not a difficult request. She had feared the cesspit in the basement of the tenements. She had feared being slapped. Not because of any wrongdoing, but because Miss Charlotte was drunk and angry. But nothing had frightened her as much as the ghosts, particularly one of them. The tall one. Just remembering it brought back the cold shiver from the past. The prickling sensation on the back of her neck, the awareness that it was coming, and then the horror of its eyeless face. She knew what it really was, a Myriad One, but she was loath to reveal that information. Part of her still had a lingering loyalty to the Aldermaston of Muirwood and the training she had received there.

  “That’s a strong memory,” Jevin said, nodding.

  “You can feel it?” Cettie asked in surprise.

  “Yes, my kystrel is like a bridge between us. You were very young. I cannot see what happened to you, but I can feel what was in your heart. Tell me more about this memory.”

  She didn’t want to. She was always quick to drive away memories of that time. He was asking her to indulge in them, to summon them closer and examine them.

  “Why?” she asked, her voice quavering.

  “Because it has so much power over you,” Jevin answered. “When we share a secret, when we share a trouble, its grip on us loosens. You’ll see. Tell me.”

  Cettie’s heart was beating frantically now, but she mustered her courage. “I was very young when I first began to sense them. Something inside me opened, and I realized there were . . . ghosts.”

  “Go on,” he encouraged.

  She felt sick to her stomach. “They terrified me. As I grew older, I could sense their thoughts. Their menace. They were always nearby, especially one. It was taller than the others. I couldn’t see it clearly at first, but I sensed it. Like a shadow in the smoke. The older I got, the more vividly they appeared. The tall one kept coming back, even after I’d been moved to another place, as if it were hunting me.”

  “Your thoughts were summoning it, I think,” Jevin said. “We always summon our fears to ourselves. That is because what we desire most is on the other side of fear. So this being, this entity—your ghost—kept coming for you. What happened when it found you?”

  His words sent a whorl of emotions through her. As a young girl, she’d always tried running from it. Always. She’d never wanted to know more about the Myriad One. She’d only wanted it to go away. What did Jevin mean? Was he suggesting that she embrace it?

  “When I was little, it . . . it kept trying . . . it wanted to touch me.”

  “Even though it wasn’t real. Not a being of flesh.”

  “Yes. I would surround myself with . . . with the little ones. When they were near, it couldn’t reach me.”

  “You used others to protect yourself. I see.”

  “It wasn’t like that. They were a . . . barrier. But I always knew . . . I knew it would get me. When Fitzroy found me and brought me to Fog Willows, it even found me there.”

  “Up in a sky manor?”

  “Yes. I thought I’d be safe there. But I wasn’t.” Mrs. Pullman had allowed the monster inside the sky manor. Memories of that awful woman flooded her, making the pain in her heart grow more intense.

  “People always disappoint us,” Jevin said. “It’s sad but true. There are barriers at schools like Muirwood, though. It keeps such things out, but I’m sure it wasn’t far away, seeking you out. It could hear you calling to it.”

  “But why? Why would it pursue me?” Cettie asked in frustration. She had faced it in the woods outside Muirwood. She’d banished it even. How many conversations had she had with Father about it? He’d always reassured her that she was strong, a beacon of light. That was the reason it was attracted to her. But she’d still feared the darkness inside herself. A darkness that was growing now.

  Jevin reached out and touched her shou
lder. “It was drawn to you because of who you are. Each of us is a mixture of dark and light.” He removed his hand and pointed to the moon rising on the horizon. “In each world, there is perfect balance between light and dark. Always moving toward it and then away. You have always embraced the light part of yourself. You’ve shut out the other half of your nature.” He shook his head sadly. “But all is in balance. You cannot deny the whole of who you are.”

  Part of her believed he was lying. But another part wondered if perhaps there was truth to his words. Life had seemed so clear and structured while she was living the way of the mastons. Now she had lost her bearings.

  “So you’ve summoned your memories,” Jevin said. “You’ve brought back that painful ghost from your past. You’re that shivering little girl again, hiding amidst the younger children to protect herself. I can almost see it in my mind. The ghost is coming and reaching for you. And then—”

  She felt it happen. Suddenly the fear was gone, almost as if it had been shoved out of her body. There was a tingling sensation inside her, a thrum of power. It was the Mysteries. She was not invoking the power, but she sensed it exuding from the kystrel Jevin wore around his neck. Her fear had been ripped away from her, replaced with a feeling of power, a feeling of confidence.

  Cettie gasped at the suddenness of the transformation. Her mind reeled, but she thought she understood how the kystrels’ magic worked, and the revelation made her shiver with excitement. “It’s like a magnet,” she said.

  “A what?” Jevin asked in confusion.

  “Magnetism . . . it’s one of the Mysteries of Wind. I studied it at school. It’s difficult to explain, but some iron is charged one way and some is charged another. They either attract each other or repel each other, depending on which direction they face.” She rose and began pacing, her mind spinning dizzily. “When you used the kystrel, it turned my fears away. It repelled them from me.”