by Tammy Salyer
“I removed the pins from the hinges. Let me put them back before you open it so the door won’t fall off.”
“No, wait, slide them to me. I can use them.”
Of course! Why hadn’t she thought of using them to pick the lock? Without hesitation, she pushed them under the base of the door, and her mother’s much, much more skilled hands had the lock tumblers falling in line in moments.
Her whisper came back through the keyhole. “It looks heavy. If I push it toward you, will you be able to brace it if it comes off the hinges?”
Would she? She’d have to. “Yes.”
“Okay.” The handle turned and the door cracked open, sliding slowly and deliberately. Isemay stepped back and got ready, but there was no need. She and her mother were narrow people, and soon the crack had grown enough that she could slide through.
“Stop,” she whispered and reached outside. When her mother took her hand, Isemay could have cried with joy.
The next moment, she slipped through, and though danger was very, very close, she could not resist the impulse to throw herself into her mum’s arms. “Mum, I thought I’d never…”
“Me too, darling child. I’m here now.”
“Da is here, in Arc Rheunos. I spoke to him.”
“I know.” Gently, she pushed Isemay back. “Before you say another word, we must get back upstairs. Follow me. Stay close.” Her eyes fell to the dagger in Isemay’s hand. “And put that somewhere safe.”
She didn’t ask me to get rid of it, Isemay noted with a tremor. Nervously, she imagined what would have to happen that would make her use it, but pushed that thought away immediately. She didn’t want to consider it.
Her mum paced up the tower’s staircase rapidly, and Isemay lost her grip of her hand and quickly fell behind. Symvalline turned back with a question in her eyes, but immediately her expression crunched into concern. “Are you hurt?”
“No, not hurt.” She panted slightly and braced an arm against the wall to catch her breath. “Just woozy, sick. It’s being here that’s causing it.”
Symvalline scrutinized her from head to toe, then she nodded, as if she knew exactly what the trouble was. “Here,” she said and put an arm around Isemay’s waist. “Let me help.”
Somehow, they ascended eight more stories like that, meeting no resistance. Symvalline led them into a dark storage room, shut the door, and helped Isemay sit next to the wall. She opened the nearby window and stood in the frame, holding her Mentalios lens out like a lantern. It began to glow brightly.
After a moment, she stopped but remained perched in the window, scanning the horizon.
“What are you looking for?” Isemay asked.
“A friend who’s helping us.”
“Where are we going to go?”
Turning halfway back, she gave Isemay a reassuring grin. “We’ll hide for a short while, somewhere safe, then meet Ulfric in the labyrinth. He’s coming, and he’s bringing the Zhallahs. The boy we met the first night, Salukis, is with him—”
“He’s with Da?” she blurted.
Her mum gave her a quick glance. “He is. And—do you know of the Equifulcrum?”
Isemay nodded. “When the three moons align.”
“Right. There will be fewer Minothians guarding the labyrinth then. We’ll be able to slip through as quietly as a silvflan and get you home, never to bother the Arc Rheunosians again.”
Her mum said the last part under her breath, looking away from Isemay. Since childhood, when her mum had told her things she wanted to hear but weren’t necessarily true, she’d done it in the exact same way. If she wasn’t so tired, she’d press for the real plans for what lay ahead, but she let it go. First, they had to get away from this loathsome tower.
Isemay’s eyes widened as a shadow filled the window. “Widin, thank the Verities you made it,” Symvalline said, and she relaxed. “This is Isemay. Please, get her back to the stables as quick as you can.”
Symvalline turned and Isemay got a better look at the man who’d joined them. He was wrinkly, with skin and eyebrows that drooped and sagged like an underwatered dalla flower. With a heavy sigh, she rose and stepped into the window.
The elderly man examined her. “You Vinnrics may not have the skin of a Rheunosian, but I can tell your color isn’t so good, child. Sick, are you?”
As Isemay began to nod, Symvalline cut in. “It isn’t the Waste. It’s being from another realm. She can’t harm you.”
Widin cleared his throat. “Didn’t say she would. You come here now. I’ll take you down.”
Isemay looked at her mum. “What about you?”
“I’ll be next. You go first.”
Her belly turned over again, from fear this time instead of illness. “I don’t want to leave you.” She sounded like a child, as if she was still four turns old and afraid of having her bedchamber door closed.
“He can’t carry us both, Crumb. Hurry.” She gave Isemay a small smile of encouragement and brushed her cheek with the back of her fingers. They were ever so cool, almost cold. They felt good anyway against her feverish face.
Now used to being carried by Salukis, she stood up next to Widin and readied to descend. It only took moments before she was alone, huddled against the heavy blocks of the tower’s stone in the shadows, counting heartbeats until her mum was back.
Both she and the elder were quickly down again, and they began loping along the rocky field toward a structure in the distance. By now, Isemay realized that whatever had drawn the guards’ attention before must have been her mum’s doing. It seemed to have worked well, as they were almost to what appeared to be a barn and nothing had gone wrong.
Yet.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
The three of them waited in the dark of the stable for Agatha. Their wagon was still outside, the urzidae still harnessed to it. In the stables, close to a dozen more shaggy, enormous urzidae grunted and snuffled in their stalls. They were quiet and complacent, barely even looking toward the visitors as they had passed through seeking out a comfortable, secluded place to wait.
“I’m surprised Agatha isn’t back yet,” Widin mused quietly.
Symvalline wondered, as she was sure he did, whether Agatha had been apprehended. The plan was to wait here for her until just before first light. But if she didn’t meet them here, she would meet them at the lower barrows, where the dead of the southern Minoth valley were put to rest.
“If she doesn’t come, that doesn’t mean something’s happened to her. She may have felt it best to go straight to the barrow,” she told Widin with a calm reassurance she scarcely felt.
Isemay leaned against her shoulder, all but empty of energy, it seemed. With effort, Symvalline put aside her concerns—as much as she could. They boiled below the surface like toxic oil, a mix of panic, anxiety, desperation, and compassion for her only child that threatened to burn her up if she didn’t control it. The time-honed wisdom and strength of being a Knight could not help her now, not here in this realm, under these circumstances. She realized she’d grown complacent in the power of her position in Vinnr, being honored and even sometimes revered as a keeper of Vaka Aster’s vessel. She’d forgotten what a common life was, its real threats and dangers. A simple cut that could infect the blood and kill a child. A fall that would break bones, rendering them crippled for life. An illness they could not recover from. Hundreds of turns had passed since Symvalline had experienced anything that could hinder her in these ways more than briefly.
Now, having a daughter whose makeup was still commoner, not Knight, and who could experience any of those ailments in the blink of an eye—this made Symvalline feel as fragile and inconsequential as she’d ever felt. More, even, than she ever had. She hadn’t known to expect this fear, this feeling of impotence, when she and Ulfric had decided to have a child. Her complacence had replaced her foresight in this regard. She had felt great compassion and a desire to save the Zhallah children she’d found in the Cosmoculous Tower. But though she�
��d once dedicated her life to healing the sick, she would kill anyone who tried to harm her own daughter.
As the night passed, she tried to reach Ulfric through the Mentalios but heard nothing in response. The wystic link would only stretch so far, and if he was on the other side of the maze and the mountains, he wouldn’t hear her. Slipping the pendant into her boot—in case she was caught and searched, perhaps it wouldn’t be found there—she rested her head against the wall and closed her eyes, holding Isemay’s hands in her lap and rubbing them, trying to warm away their clammy chill.
They waited an interminable time until they had to go. The urzidae were beginning to show signs of restlessness, anticipating their morning feeding, and finally Symvalline stood up.
“We can’t remain here any longer. Widin, please, wait with Isemay while I look around outside.”
They followed her to the barn’s door and stood aside as she cracked it and looked out. She could see nothing. Even the moons had moved around to the west. Cautiously, she stepped out and searched first along the west of the building, then the east, seeing no activity from person or animal.
Returning to the door, she whispered, “It’s clear. Come with me.” As they emerged, Isemay shivering and pale even in the gloom, she said, “Widin, you’ll have to show—”
Ice-cold hands clamped her throat closed and jerked her backward by the neck. As her feet left the ground, Symvalline’s right hand went to the claw-like fingers closing off her air, but her left found the dagger in her belt and yanked it free. She brought it with all the force she could behind her, burying it to the hilt into the flank of whoever gripped her. There was a breathless hiss in her ear, and her accoster’s hands loosened just enough for her to pull one free of her neck. Leaving the dagger in place, she used the other hand to try prying the second one off, too. Then she was shoved so hard from behind it felt as if an urzidae had charged her, and went sprawling a dozen feet in front of the stables, landing on her stomach and face.
She rolled over, yelled, “Stay inside!” and scrambled up.
At least a dozen Minothian guards who’d just a moment before been invisible suddenly materialized. They stood around her in a circle, none holding swords, but all carrying the bowed weapon that fired nets.
Slowly, Symvalline looked around at her enemy. Behind the guards, she saw the one she’d stabbed, a Deathless, enter the stable, heard a moment of scuffling, then he emerged, dagger still visible in his lower torso, with a hand clamped around the backs of Widin’s and Isemay’s necks. The Deathless pushed them outside, and Isemay went to her knees. Widin knelt beside her, reaching his hands out to her back and patting it gently.
With all the determination of a hurricane, Symvalline started to walk to Crumb, watching the faces of the guards she would have to push through. Everything she’d learned said the Minothians weren’t a violent or murderous people. They had no real enemies. Even the Zhallahs left them alone, despite whatever twisted rumors Tuzhazu spread. The only people she’d encountered here who seemed inclined to use force were the Deathless and the Archon. What would these guards be capable of if she challenged them?
She didn’t get far enough to find out.
“I knew you must have had some helpers, Vinnric, but even I am surprised at their…quality.” Archon Tuzhazu sneered the word as Symvalline turned back around. He now stood revealed outside the circle of guards, who moved aside enough for him to speak to Symvalline face-to-face. Agatha cowered on her knees at his feet, bleeding heavily from a deep gash in her head. Or she had been. The blood had begun to coagulate, Symvalline noted. How long had Tuzhazu had his hands on her? What damage had he done that she couldn’t see?
With deliberate, careful words, Symvalline said, “You didn’t need to do that to her, Archon. Not after what you did to her child.”
Tuzhazu’s eyes widened. He hadn’t expected such an accusation to be made aloud. Controlling the expression, he then gestured sharply with his chin to the Deathless who’d attacked her. She heard the guards shift as the Deathless jerked Isemay to her feet and pushed her and Widin to stand behind Symvalline. Symvalline reached back and gripped her daughter under one arm, holding her up.
Isemay whispered in her ear, “Your klinkí stones, mum. You can—”
“I can’t. He’s taken them.”
Isemay glanced up at her, confused, then began to cough.
“Search them,” Tuzhazu ordered.
After stripping her of her haversack, the Deathless began to pat her and pull at her clothing. Repelled by the inhuman creature, she was tempted to reach for the dagger still in his side, but something held her back. He was still a person, just cursed. She didn’t want to harm someone who wasn’t responsible for his actions. It wouldn’t be just.
As she’d hoped, her Mentalios remained unfound, though Isemay wasn’t so lucky with her own stolen dagger. The Deathless took their equipment and stepped back.
“Let them go, Tuzhazu, and just take me,” Symvalline tried to reason. “She’s only a child and sick, and he’s an old man. Agatha has done nothing but seek to aid someone you’ve imprisoned for no reason. They are not a threat to the next vessel of Mithlí. Or to any Minothian.”
“Are you admitting that you are?” He stepped inside the circle, pulling Agatha along with him. “What are you hiding, Vinnric?” He leaned closer to Symvalline, his tarnished-silver eyes boring into hers. “Your coming here is no accident. Where is my army? More to the point, do you have one of your own on the way?”
For a moment, Symvalline feared he knew something of her talk with Ulfric. But that was impossible. “You mean Balavad’s army?” she challenged. “That force is gone, you fool. Destroyed absolutely by those of my realm who stand on the side of righteousness and faith in the gifts of our maker, who would not become pawns to the wickedness of Balavad. Battgjald has been blotted from existence. That is what happens to evil and those who bow to it.”
He blinked. It was the only weakness she’d seen in him. Then he resorted to his true nature.
Reaching down, he enclosed the kneeling Agatha’s head in his wide palm. Clutching the Fenestros in his other hand, he held Symvalline’s eyes with his own and began speaking in the language of Battgjald again, the words low and unintelligible, foreign and breathy. Symvalline’s eyes dropped to Agatha.
The woman had turned whiter than a cloud, and the veins beneath her skin, so dark blue in the dawn’s light that they were almost black, nearly glowed through the translucence. Her eyes rolled back and she would have collapsed, but Tuzhazu held her up with the unnatural strength of his grip.
“Tell me the truth, Vinnric. Why did you come here? I’m not a fool enough to believe your realm or any cretinous Knight in it could outwit a Verity. Were you exiled? Does Balavad have grander plans I should know of? Or are you scouting Arc Rheunos for a takeover by your own kind?” His voice lowered until only she, Isemay, and Widin could hear him. Agatha looked beyond hearing by then. “Tell me now, and tell me the truth, or her death will be on your hands.”
Symvalline had to do something. He was stealing Agatha’s life the same way he’d once started to steal hers, using the Fenestros as some kind of life-force vacuum.
She looked around the circle of guards frantically, noting the discomfort and fear many of them didn’t realize showed in their faces. “Do you see what he is?” she cried. “Don’t your people regard the taking of a life as the most heinous of crimes? Is this the kind of beast you want as the Everlight’s vessel? What will become of you then?”
Several looked away from her, exchanging uncertain glances with their cohorts, all avoiding the Archon’s eyes completely. She was getting to them. But her flash of triumph was short-lived.
Isemay’s knees buckled, and she spilled to the ground with a wounded gasp, like a bird taking its last breath. Symvalline fell to her knees beside her.
“Isemay? Crumb?” She clenched her daughter’s shoulders, rigid and wracked with shudders. “Verities eyes, no,” she brea
thed, more helpless at that moment than she’d ever been.
“Archon, a messenger,” one of the guards in the circle said. Symvalline’s eyes shot to her, then to where she was pointing. A winged Minothian guard was just touching down nearby.
“Archon Tuzhazu, I bring word from the Everlight,” he said, bowing.
The Archon released Agatha and faced him. The Minothian woman fell face forward, outstretched and unmoving. “What does she say?”
“My liege, the Zhallah prisoners have escaped and have not been found. They could be…anywhere.”
The sound of many guards drawing shocked breaths was unmissable. Children, they feared children.
The messenger continued, “The Everlight commands your presence at the hall immediately. The people of Minoth are in danger. If the prisoners spread their pestilence—”
Symvalline couldn’t stand it a moment longer. “You really believe that children carry this disease? Or that the Zhallahs mean you harm? You have only to look to your Archon to see where this plague comes from. And where did you get it, Tuzhazu?”
“Be silent!” He closed the distance to her before she could blink and slapped her open-handed across the cheek. He was a large man, and the strike sent her backward several steps.
“Please, please don’t hurt my mum.” Isemay clung to the Archon, pulling herself halfway up his body using the satchel he carried. “Please…”
He looked at her with disgust and shoved her down with a hand to her face. Symvalline, her cheek a burning welt and her eye beginning to swell shut, ran back to her side.
“Close the valley gates, and send a runner to Aktoktos. None is to leave or enter. Under no circumstances will any gate be opened between now and the Equifulcrum.”
“Yes, my liege,” the guards echoed each other.
“Bind the prisoners,” Tuzhazu commanded. “Bring them to Everlight Hall.”
Symvalline stared up at him, and with venom that came from deep in her spirit, she promised, “You’ll pay for what you’ve done. If I have to kill you myself, I will.”
