She must have fallen asleep drinking in that forbidden scent because she woke to rough fabric wrapping around her face. She tried to scream, but a hand clamped tightly over her mouth and nose. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t smell who was attacking her. She tried to gasp in a breath, but the hand was too strong. Worse, there was something on it – or on a rag it was holding – something that smelled suspiciously like aniseed oil. Her eyes teared up and her head began to whirl as she began to slip away from consciousness. She felt her body being lifted up and carried, but she heard nothing. No sound to alert her friends to what had happened. No tell-tale cry of someone waking in the night to enemies. Nothing.
Her head spun from lack of oxygen and the overpowering scent and she balled her fists, fighting against her attacker, but her punches were weak, her strength fading. Suddenly, the hand shifted, covering only her mouth and she sucked in a deep breath through dank wool. It wasn’t helping. It wasn’t clearing her mind fast enough.
Through the smell of aniseed she thought she might b smelling Etienne – mandarin oranges and cloves. But it was tangled up in the fierce turquoise and gold of magic and ... something else and so much aniseed that she wanted to be sick. And the voice that whispered to her wasn’t Etienne’s at all.
“Sleep, little child. For this night is written as the night of your capture and the beginning of your doom.”
Her heart was in overdrive. He must be joking if he thought she would sleep! She would fight until the oxygen stole from her lungs. A fresh cloth was applied to her nose – a larger does than before. Her thoughts faded as she spun to blackness.
She woke to inky darkness.
Woke to wind whipping around her as she jostled step after step in the most awkward position. Her hands and feet were bound and she was slung over someone’s back, her legs tied tightly around his waist. His hip bones dug into her thighs with every step and his bony shoulder blade crashed into her cheek. There was a glow that barely lit the grass around them.
“Awake little child? I sent you back into your sleep and then we leapt forward here. I can’t jump far, but I can still jump a little and this body is fine and fit.”
She hated the wheedling high-pitched tone that wavered in the middle of sentences, like an old man trying to be cunning but forgetting what the secret was that he was supposed to keep hidden.
“Did we walk all night?” she asked, as he strode through river reeds. They stroked her hanging hair and slipped across her smooth cheeks with a whish whish sound.
“Not yet. Time is running out. We must hurry. The boat is lost, but the will stays strong!”
Then it was almost Spellbreak. The last day of Dawnspell. If only this spell could be broken and whatever had seized Etienne could be forced to let him go. If only she could escape his clutches somehow.
“What do you want with me?” she asked boldly.
“Your blood, little child.”
She shuddered. It always came back to blood.
“Any Dragonblooded will do, but you are the one he knows about. And you weren’t far away. That makes you perfect. We won’t take it all. Just a drop. Just a drop. It’s only as a back up in case the plan doesn’t work.”
“That’s what they all say,” Marielle said bitterly. “’It’s only as a back up,’ they say and then they chain you to feed a dragon.”
He laughed a horrible wheezing laugh like a man on his last legs – not at all like Etienne. “We won’t be feeding any dragons today. But yes, your life might be required. It usually is.”
She could smell his certainty. And she could smell that there was no pity mixed in it. No regret. No hope for her at all.
“Oh, don’t sulk. Some lives are worth less than others. I’ve seen yours written out and it’s not all that spectacular. You won’t be missing much. In fact, you might even thank me because I’ll give you something in return.”
“Oh yeah? Are you going to give me your life?”
This time his wheezing laugh was so deep it bent him double. “I almost like you.”
His scent said otherwise. He was just as indifferent toward her as he’d been before she spoke
“But no, I’ll be keeping my life. Enough of that has been stolen already. Yes, I’ll be keeping that. But I’ll give you my immortality.”
“Just like that?”
This time the wheezing went on and on and on.
“You say that like you think it’s a gift,” he choked out eventually. “Instead of the curse it really is. Wait until you’ve stood frozen in a clock for a thousand years, conscious, thinking, but frozen in place. So bored you would chew through your own mind just to be free, like a trapped animal will chew off its own leg. Just wait for that. Then you can thank me for your immortality.”
“I’d ask you to put me down, but why make your job easier?” Marielle said.
“I’d ask you to stop with the barbed comments,” he wheezed, “but then how would I have my fun?”
Marielle gritted her teeth as they trudged on. Already the hours seemed endless, and she wasn’t even stuck in a clock yet. She wondered if Etienne had any power at all under the grip of this spirit – Grandfather Timeless, if Tamerlan was right – or if he was as helpless as she was in the thrall of this horrific Legend.
31: Desperate Times
Tamerlan
Tamerlan’s dreams had been nothing but nightmares. He’d tossed and sweated through dreams of Marielle in trouble. The last dream had been the worst. He’d been too late in the Grand Hall and they’d slit her throat right in front of him. As her scarlet blood fountained onto the scales of the dragon his own sister had laughed, clapping her hands in delight.
Tamerlan woke with his hands balled in fists, his teeth on edge. But it hadn’t happened that way. Others had died while he’d saved her life. The dream made it all feel so fresh – like he was reliving it again. And this time with a different decision. But choosing the other option didn’t make him feel less guilty. It didn’t still the angry voices in his head. He woke to dry lips and aching muscles and a strange dull orange glow in the sky. And then silence.
He sat up.
Marielle’s place in the boat was empty, her blanket gone. Orange light danced across the empty place where she should be sleeping. He looked to Jhinn. The other boy was wide-eyed as he struggled to sit up. He licked his lips nervously.
“You didn’t hear her leave?” he asked.
“No,” Tamerlan breathed.
“She had no reason to go on her own?”
“No,” Tamerlan agreed. But without her, they had no Scenter, and no way to track her or anyone else. “She must have been taken.”
But who would have taken her?
Grandfather Timeless can have an interesting perspective on morality, Lila said in his mind.
A thief thought that his morality wasn’t up to snuff?
It’s easy to mistake writing people’s fates for being the one with the authority to change their fates. We used to have names for him. The Grandfather. The Fatemaker.
He sounded charming. But where would he be taking Marielle?
To the clock. To his avatar.
“Are you worried about that light?” Jhinn asked mildly, pointing to the orange glow in the sky to the north.
“It looks like a big fire. Like a city burning,” Tamerlan said, running his hand through his hair. What now? How could he track Grandfather Timeless and Marielle without her ability to Scent and with Jhinn confined to the boat?
“I think it’s H’yi. The glow is in the right direction.” Jhinn coughed. “I hate to say this.”
Tamerlan watched a smirk form on his friend’s face in the faint glow of the distant fire.
“Somehow, I doubt that.”
“You need to smoke your stuff. You need to call the spirits to help. We aren’t far from the city but with it on fire and our Scenter gone, it’s the only chance of catching up.”
Tamerlan gritted his teeth. “I said I’d never do that again.”
<
br /> “And yet, you did it to steal the amulet.”
“In a controlled environment! When I knew you could shut things down if they got out of hand!”
Jhinn laughed. “Yeah. Like I could have beaten that Pirate spirit if he attacked me. No. Not even with the sword. But you came out of that unscathed.” He paused. “Except for the part where you nearly drowned.”
Tamerlan cleared his throat. Why did it feel like there was a ball lodged in it?
“Come on. Just a little bit,” Jhinn urged. “Keep the roll up in your hand and refresh it when you need to.”
“I won’t do that. I won’t be able to get my own body back.”
“Okay, then keep the pouch of them handy. If you run out of spirit, just smoke again and you’ll be back. I don’t think you’re going to have trouble finding a fire to light it with.”
Tamerlan nodded. They were already settling at the oars and pushing off. He shivered in the night as they sped into the darkness, the bobbing light of the lantern on the ferro lighting the way.
“Do you think the dragon is back?” Jhinn asked, just as a gust of wind rocked their gondola to the side.
A shadow crossed the moon. It was the shape of a dragon.
They rowed harder.
They hadn’t rowed far when the first boats came into view, heading downriver with the current.
“Turn around,” the boatman called from a family boat racing by. “Save yourselves before it’s too late!”
A moment later a barge passed.
“You’re going the wrong way!” the barge master shouted. “Turn around.”
And then they were weaving through a steady stream of boats – family boats stuffed with tired people calling out to them to flee, barges laden with goods or wild-eyed people, even gondolas packed with passengers and all of them calling to them.
“Flee while you can! The city burns! H’yi burns!”
At the next bend in the river, it was obvious why. Smoke wreathed H’yi – glowing orange in the night as flames leapt up. Anyone could be forgiven for thinking the whole city was ablaze. But as Tamerlan peered into the smoke, he thought that it was only a few buildings right now – some of the larger ones, certainly, but only about a half-dozen.
“Drop me off on the bank and I’ll go the rest of the way myself,” he called to Jhinn.
“Ha! Let’s not play this game again,” Jhinn said, rowing harder. “You know I love the adventure and you’re not leaving me behind!”
“It looks like hell in there,” Tamerlan called through gritted teeth. It was becoming more difficult to weave through the boats on the glutted river. Every craft in the city was fleeing.
“I’ve told you before that everything out of the water is the land of the Satan. This time you see it burning, next time you’ll think it is safe, but to me, it is always deathly dangerous.”
How did you tell a friend to stop being so selfless in a way he would obey? He was going to have to think up a better way for next time.
Smoke and char puffed in irregular clouds across the water as they reached the city. They had passed the last boat a moment ago – a rotting hulk that was only barely floating. But any boat was safety right now and anyone who owned one was fleeing in it. The canals ahead of them were shockingly empty. And above them, noise filled the city as people fought the fires sweeping across their city. Hopefully, more had fled by land.
Tamerlan scanned the sky, but it was still too dark to make out the dragon unless he crossed the moon. Up there somewhere, Jingen soared through the darkness, reveling in the chaos and terror below. Up there somewhere, the dragon was plotting revenge for a thousand years of captivity.
Tamerlan felt tension growing in his belly when they hit the first set of locks. There was no one manning them. No way for them to climb through the city via canal.
Jhinn cursed, maneuvering the boat to where the chains and hydraulics were located in a little cabin beside the canal.
“Go in there and raise the water level,” he said.
“How?” Tamerlan asked.
Jhinn shrugged.
“Right. Land of the Satan. That’s my territory, right?” Tamerlan asked, but he leapt out and ran into the cabin immediately.
Fortunately, the locks were made to be operated by people happy to sit and watch a canal all day. They were simple to operate and after a single false start, the water rose up to the next level.
Tamerlan leapt from the canal edge into the gondola as Jhinn sped onward.
“Which way?” Jhinn asked.
“I think the clock is in the Government District,” he said.
Think again. Who in this city worships clocks?
And as if drawn by Lila’s words, the bells of the city began to ring the hour. Three o’clock.
“Scratch that. Go to the Temple District,” Tamerlan said. If the Timekeepers worshiped Time, it stood to reason that they would have the clock with his avatar.
Precisely.
Dragon. Dragon. Dragon.
Ram was growing louder as they passed the first burning building, a tall smokehouse in the Spice District. Just like in Xin. The dragon certainly had a favorite target. Tamerlan shivered as he watched buckets of water thrown at the spiraling flames as if that could possibly do anything to stop their rampage. Already, the roofs on either side of the smokehouse were wreathed in flame.
He leaned over his oars and rowed, the heat of the fires searing his skin as they passed. Steam rose up off the canal in steady swirls and the gondola hissed as the wood dried in the intense heat. They were past the fire in moments, but each moment had felt like an eternity. Already, Tamerlan was slick with sweat as he fought the oars, leaping into the little cabin the moment he saw it at the next lock.
They rose up to the Temple District, flying down the canal. Above them, long lines of Timekeepers strode down the street above them, holding bells.
“What are they doing?” Jhinn called out as they passed the white-cloaked worshippers.
“Spellend,” Tamerlan said. “On Spellend the Timekeepers wake up at the first hour and parade through the streets ringing bells until dawn when everyone bathes in cold water to signify the end of Dawnspell and the washing of the past to start new. Surely, you must have seen that in Jingen.”
“Yes, but usually not when there’s a raging fire right in their district!” Jhinn pointed down the canal to where the tallest temple – a Timekeeper Cathedral burned. Only the tower was on fire – right now. The tallest spire flickered as the flame spread. How long would it take a building like that to burn? And where was this clock he was looking for?
In front of that cathedral. That’s the Cathedral of the Clock.
Tamerlan felt his mouth go dry.
32: Cathedral of the Clock
Marielle
If the city hadn’t been in chaos when they arrived, someone might have noticed a woman being carried on a man’s back. They would have noticed that her hands and feet were tied. They would have noticed she was fighting as hard as she could to get free.
If the city hadn’t been burning, then the Watch would have stopped Etienne – or Grandfather Timeless – or whoever this was who was carrying her through the night into the glorious city of H’yi. If the guards at the gates hadn’t been watching the sky, crossbows trained on the night, watching for the flicker of moonlight on scale, then they would have stopped them and asked questions. If the shoals of terrified people weren’t pushing out of the city like a surge of loose farm animals, desperate to escape the sound of their own slaughter, then someone would have at least noticed.
But no one did.
She coughed and choked on gouts of smoke, fighting against her captor. She couldn’t choke him – not with her arms pulled so far forward and held in place by one of his hands. More than once, he cuffed her in the head to make her stop fighting, but she wouldn’t stop. No one grabbed girls and tied them up for good reasons. No one was ever tied up and then brought to a cheery room full of fresh fruit and a
door opening to wide fields or a secluded forest and told. ‘Just enjoy yourself and leave when you want.’ That didn’t happen.
What did happen to girls who were grabbed and tied up was more like what she and Carnelian had found on her first patrol. Marielle had smelled what was below before they even broke down the doors in the fish market. She’d been on the side spilling her breakfast all over the street long before they dragged the bodies out of the hull of the barge that had been stowed under the fish smokers. But that hadn’t stopped her from dry heaving when Carnelian told her that some of those girls were still alive.
She’d vowed right then that she’d never be taken alive. Better to die fighting than live to watch yourself die in some worse way. It was the waiting that she thought would be the worst part – the endless waiting knowing that death was your only way out. And yet, here she was, still alive despite fighting so hard.
“Fight all you want,” that horrible high-pitched voice whispered to her. “It will only tire you. And I want you tired for what comes next.”
Her belly lurched at his words, but she fought harder, biting his shoulder with her teeth until she tasted blood and thought he must be leaving a trail of it behind him. It didn’t even slow him.
She heard bells ringing the fifth hour of the night as they pressed through thick bodies and the swishing of robes. She smelled the Temple District. The smoke of the Smudgers – mostly sage but with other additions – still hung in the air long after the practitioners had left and mixed with the dust and bronze of the Timekeepers. Religious sanctimony and a thick band of deceit colored the snatches of cobblestones and robes that she saw. She’d heard that the Timekeepers always wore white, but to her eyes, they wore pride like a violet robe and deceit like a greeny-yellow scarf. She almost gagged on the thick emotions of this place. At the height of Dawnspell when all of the rest of the Dragonblood Plains were cleansing themselves, the Temple District stank like midden with rotten power and misused souls.
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