The Blade Bearers (Blade and Bone Book 6), page 15
Lily let out a laugh. “Why would something like that bother me? I don’t have any loyalty to anything here, and if the king decided that he wanted to force her into servitude, then so be it. I guess I’m more bothered by the fact that she didn’t want to admit that she was of the people, and hadn’t had an opportunity to learn what that means.”
“Like you learned?”
“I’m not going to apologize for how I ended up.”
“Oh, I wasn’t expecting you to. But I don’t want you to assume you’ll get an apology for how Isabel turned out either. We both know that had you stayed with the people, you would have been someone—and something—other than what you’ve become.” Esmerelda breathed out slowly. “And so… I think I will help. There are no guarantees of what I can do, or what that might do for you, but you have my help.”
“Thank you.”
Lily finally pushed open the door and stepped inside. There were simple protections around the building. She had placed most of them herself, and they were all talismans that were quite powerful, and certainly strong enough to hold any kind of magic inside. But they weren’t the only protections here. There were other layers of protection that were meant to ensure that anybody inside this building wouldn’t be able to unleash power. It was how she had hoped to protect the others in the city.
She found Isabel sitting in a chair, a bone resting on her lap. Lily had been teaching her so she could begin to understand the techniques involved in forming talismans, though she had encouraged Isabel not to use one of the Alainsith bones.
“It’s about time,” Isabel said, flicking her gaze past Lily and noticing Esmerelda. “I hear we’re getting ready to move?”
“Eventually. We need to do a few things before we leave, which is why we’re here,” Lily said.
“I haven’t been able to get anything out of them.”
“I didn’t think so, which is why I have asked Esmerelda to help.”
“I don’t have my husband, nor your approach. I can try something else, though,” Esmerelda said.
Isabel got to her feet and slipped the bone she was carving—something that looked almost like a snake—into a pouch that she slung over her shoulder. “I wish he were here,” she said with a sigh. “I have often wished that.”
“He has other responsibilities,” Esmerelda said. “But I think if you were to ask him, he would’ve felt the same way. He would’ve wanted your presence with him as well.”
“I don’t think he would. He made that quite clear repeatedly.”
Esmerelda watched Isabel, then shook her head. “Then you didn’t understand him. He wanted you to learn. The real question was what he wanted you to learn. Perhaps it wasn’t what you believed.”
Isabel frowned.
“Listen,” Lily said, getting in between them. “We don’t need an argument. Isabel, guard the door and make sure nobody gets inside until we’re done.”
Isabel nodded slowly, leaned back, and started to whistle. It felt as if Lily had heard that whistle before.
“And Esmerelda, you’re going to do what you promised.”
Esmerelda said nothing as she followed Lily. Only once they got a little farther down the hallway did she speak. “This is quite an interesting structure that you have here.” There was a bit of amusement in her words.
“It was an office building of some sort,” Lily said. “We converted it into a little more. It took some time, but we have some skilled people working with us.”
Esmerelda swept her gaze around. “Where do we go first?”
Lily stopped at the nearest door. “The woman inside here served one of their leaders. Maybe they see her as leading now. I guess I don’t know. She doesn’t talk much, but I’m hopeful that maybe she will to you. They say nothing when I question them. Honaaz calls it clamming up, something from the sea, but I prefer to think of it as keeping secrets from us.”
“You might be giving me too much credit here.”
Lily pushed the door open, and she waited. She felt a faint surge, but nothing more than that. It came briefly, and then it faded. That surge was her way of knowing that her protections still held. She had placed them around the walls to maintain a seal on the inside of the room and prevent anybody from using magic here.
“This was skillfully done,” Esmerelda said.
“You didn’t think me capable of it?”
“I didn’t say that. I merely complimented you. You should learn to accept a compliment.”
“I’m sorry,” Lily said quickly. “You’re right. I… I spent much time putting these in place and tend to be protective of work I’ve done.”
Esmerelda patted her on the shoulder, and then she smiled. “Let me begin.”
She pulled what looked like a flower out of her pouch, but it was a flower that was woven out of grasses, twisted into a brown rose. As she headed forward, there was a jerk of metal chain dragging across the stone, and then light bloomed around the rose Esmerelda held.
The woman sat in the middle of the room. She had a chain bound to one ankle, but otherwise she was free to move around the entire room. She had access to water, a commode, and even a thin mat for her to sleep on. Lily had made sure that they treated their prisoners as well as possible, even though she knew they probably wouldn’t have done the same thing had the situations been reversed.
Esmerelda stopped just out of the woman’s reach. She knelt down on the ground and held the flower before her. It glowed with a soft white light, filling the room with an energy that Lily was aware of. It took her a moment to realize why she could feel it. Whatever Esmerelda was doing reminded Lily of her mother.
“My name is Esmerelda Jagger,” she said, tipping her head forward. “I am a visitor to your city.”
The woman sneered. “You are an outsider.”
The woman was young, and at first, it had surprised Lily that she led them—at least until Lily had uncovered that the woman had access to some potential that was probably hegen in origin, or maybe it was just witchcraft.
“You’re right. I am an outsider,” Esmerelda said, her voice soft and soothing. The power glowing from the woven rose seemed to augment it, amplifying it so that she seemed even more soothing. It was a vastly different tactic than what Lily and Isabel had been using, though she suspected that Esmerelda would’ve already known that, and that was the reason she had chosen to take this approach. “There are many outsiders here, but in a place like this, outsiders are common.”
“Not common. We protect our own.”
Esmerelda shifted, and her dress moved around her, though Lily didn’t see her touching it. It spread outward, as if there was something…
Lily smiled to herself. Esmerelda had something woven into the dress as well. She had been wearing a jacket when she’d first come to the city. Though Lily had not seen what Esmerelda had done with it, she could feel a certain power within the jacket. Something had been woven within it as well, perhaps as a measure of protection.
“These lands were not yours before,” Esmerelda said. “I’ve seen the island. I’ve seen the temple. Well, the remains of it. There is even an island nearby with similar temples.” The light continued to glow from the flower she held. “It makes me wonder, and I suspect it would make any curious person do the same.”
“We protect our own,” the woman said again.
“I would say the same thing. My people tend to move around. We don’t have a home. At least, not all my people do. We live outside cities, on the road, and we live here,” she said, patting the left side of her chest with her free hand. “But we are all connected.”
She smiled and leaned forward. The flower burst with a flicker of power, the light glowing even more brightly. Lily couldn’t tell what she was doing, but she recognized that there was magic within that flower, and she wondered just what Esmerelda drew upon as she called that power out.
“It can be tempting to try to learn different techniques to protect our people. My people taught the art.” Esmerelda twisted the rose in her fingers, and the light began to intensify even more. “We have used this kind of thing for many years to protect our people and bond them. It was the one way we would maintain our cohesiveness even after we were chased from a land that once was ours.”
Lily frowned in surprise. She had never known that the hegen had a homeland. They were scattered, but they had never called one place home. What was Esmerelda doing?
“My people once had towns and cities, though it was a long time ago. Stories are passed down through generations, and they begin to change and shift. If you know anything about my people, you would believe that we love the road, but that was not always the case, and is not the case even now. Our homeland, however, was lost. It can be hard to think that one place is your own, hard to believe that you possess a thing, only to have it taken from you. Many would go to great lengths to ensure that doesn’t happen.”
The woman glared at Esmerelda. “What do you know about it?”
“I know it can be painful, especially when you start to think you know better than others. Is that how you felt?”
The woman looked down.
“I imagine there were others within the city who didn’t feel the same way you did, but then you found those who agreed with you. You took steps to understand. You took steps to try to make sure that your people—people you had grown up around, that you had cared for, that you felt a part of—were protected, whether or not they knew they needed it.”
“It was necessary,” the woman said.
“And you did what you needed to, until you realized that something wasn’t quite right.”
The woman glanced up at Esmerelda but said nothing.
“There comes a time when everybody begins to question. It’s a feeling. You recognize it—at least you do if you pay attention to it. And you can feel it in your heart, I suspect. It’s there, and when it is, you begin to realize that there’s something to it that tells you whether you’re doing what you should be, or whether you’re doing something you should not. It’s when you listen that you begin to feel.” Esmerelda leaned forward, and the flower glowed more brightly. “Did you feel that way?”
The woman still didn’t answer.
That didn’t seem to bother Esmerelda.
“I found that sometimes we get carried away. Sometimes we take the path we need to take, but sometimes not. Either way, there’s a lesson, and a truth, that we must find.” Esmerelda frowned. “I have learned the extent I would go to in order to protect those I care about. It was a harsher lesson than I had anticipated, yet it was one I needed, but did not realize I needed.”
With a quick movement, she pressed the woven flower into the stone. It stood upright as if it had been sharpened. Its light radiated around the room. There was a faint rustling sound that Lily didn’t fully grasp until tendrils began to stretch from the base of the flower, sweeping out and wrapping the woman. They worked their way around her chained ankle first, then grabbed her arms and pinned her to the ground.
Esmerelda looked down at the woman. “You will tell me everything you learned, or you will see the lengths I will go to so I can protect those I consider my own.”
Lily couldn’t tear her gaze away. She had thought that Esmerelda was going to try to use the hegen art to convince the woman to help, or perhaps coerce her, but this was something else entirely. Lily had never seen power like that. It was nothing like what her mother had used, but it was powerful nonetheless.
And here she had thought there might not be any reason for her to learn Esmerelda’s techniques, but what she was seeing of the magic that existed here was even more than what Lily could do with her bone talismans.
Which is why Esmerelda agreed to come.
The woman cried out.
Esmerelda shook one finger at her. “You should be quiet. I find that silence helps us think.”
With a gasp, the woman became silent.
The steady rustling sounds continued as the strange grasses twisted and moved across the ground, then crawled up the walls.
“The others nearby will face a similar fate,” Esmerelda told the woman. “If you don’t talk, there will be one who does. Eventually I will find someone who understands that it’s best to share. Best for you. Best for your suffering. Best for us all.” She glanced back at Lily. “You may leave us. I will get the information you need.”
Lily stepped out and stood in front of the closed door, wondering at Esmerelda. She had never thought Esmerelda would be capable of anything like that, but perhaps she should have known better. The woman was married to the Hunter, after all.
By the time she reached Isabel, her mind still hadn’t worked through what she had seen.
“You left her in there?” Isabel said. “She’s too soft. Those women are going to tear her apart.” She started to get to her feet, but Lily raised a hand to stop her. “I’ve seen her around Verendal, Lily. I know the kinds of things she does. She has a good heart. She never even charged for her art.”
“I don’t think it matters,” Lily said.
“What if they—”
“They won’t be able to do anything to her.” And for that matter, Lily didn’t even know if she would’ve been able to do anything to Esmerelda. She had not seen that level of control before. It startled her.
But it also reassured her.
“I’m going to keep making talismans,” Lily said. “When she comes out, tell her that I will be by the shore.”
“If you insist. It might be better if you stay nearby.”
“I don’t think she needs me.”
Isabel looked down the hallway. “She’s going to get hurt.”
“I don’t think so. But if you’re concerned, you may certainly go and see if you need to protect her. I doubt you do, however.”
Isabel frowned. “What’s she doing?”
“To be honest, I have no idea. She was using power beyond anything I’ve ever seen before. And I’m glad she’s on our side.”
Chapter Fifteen
LILY
The waves crashed against the shore. Lily had been sitting for a while, testing different grasses, different types of flowers, and even different oils that Esmerelda had lent her, all trying to work them into her talisman. She still struggled with the technique.
“You have to let yourself feel it,” Esmerelda said, striding toward her.
Her pale skin seemed to glow in the growing moonlight, and she moved with confidence that Lily hadn’t seen from her in the time she’d been in this city. It was almost as if attacking that woman—which was what it had felt like to Lily—had changed something for her.
“I’ve been trying to feel this aspect of art my entire life, and have never gotten anywhere closer to an answer. The only time I can is when I carve bone.”
Esmerelda smiled, then looked out, turning her attention to the water. “I imagine you have questions.”
Lily snorted. “Shouldn’t I?”
“You heard what I said in there.”
“I heard. You’re willing to do whatever you have to do in order to protect those you claim as your own.”
“I am,” Esmerelda said.
“I’ve not seen the art used like that before.”
“It has not always worked quite like that. To a certain extent, it’s this land. But there’s also something to be said about where I harvested the grasses used in that art. I spent some time with the Alainsith, and they have their own influence over the land.”
It had to be more than that, Lily knew. Even spending time with the Alainsith, and using something that had been tied to them, shouldn’t be enough to do what she had seen. That was power. Real and raw power. And it was so different than anything Lily had ever witnessed before.
“Did she tell you anything?”
“She told me enough,” Esmerelda said. “I doubt I discovered anything new for you. They have been learning from them. Not only about witchcraft, which we knew the Alainsith were responsible for.” Her tone sounded troubled.
Lily understood, as she felt much the same way. She had been taught to revere the Alainsith.
And then she had come to know Jal. He was not what she had believed of the Alainsith.
“Go on,” Lily said.
“I’m not sure what else to tell you. The Alainsith want to reclaim these lands. They believe them to be theirs and think we are simply in the way. The real issue is not with us, or with Reyand, or Sanaron, or even the hegen. The real issue they have is with the rest of the Alainsith. Jal and his people. Wular and hers. Even the southern family.” She shook her head. “And to be honest, I don’t know what we can do.”
“But you think we should do something.”
Esmerelda watched her. “You do not?”
“I’m not saying that. I’m just saying that there are likely going to be people who feel we should leave the Alainsith to their own war. Let them have it out, as it were.”
“You know what would happen if that were to be the case.”
“We would be caught in the middle,” Lily said. And it would be no different than what had happened during the witchcraft war.
So many had been caught in the middle. Like her family.
“Is there something else?” Esmerelda said.
Lily shrugged, as she wasn’t exactly sure how to answer for several long moments. “I’d like to know how you managed to make that flower turn into… well, something more than just a flower.”
“Was it more than a flower?”
“It was.”
Lily knew what she had seen. It was a far greater use of the hegen art than anything she had experienced before. In some ways, it had looked more like Alainsith power. How could that be possible, though? Maybe it was because Esmerelda had used some aspect of the Alainsith in her art? If so, it wouldn’t be all that dissimilar to what Lily did with the Alainsith bones.
“What you saw was me encouraging the rose to find its form. And that is what mattered. When it does, eventually the flower will blossom, much like a real flower.” Esmerelda shrugged.
“So I could do something like that?”
