Imbued, page 24
“Oh, do not pretend that was the problem! Don’t pretend what you’ve done was ever right. I told you before. You cannot stand on both sides at the same time.” They were filtering the words out between clenched jaws. “You could have joined us, given us the help we really needed. Instead, you played the Anadem’s dog. You let us slip between the cracks, even those that we thought safe! Just fodder for her obsession in the end. You killed so many of us, I’m surprised you even remember my name.”
It was like the words themselves solidified between us in the air. A group of people walked into the cave, conversing animatedly, then starting an enthusiastic banter with Maluga while receiving their food, but Patri and Gray didn’t react at all, consumed in their silent duel.
It looked like we weren’t as welcome in Shihua as I thought.
“You would have fought for your freedom then?” Gray asked sharply. “Took Shihua to war? I only tried to protect you from that.”
Patri reared back. The grinding of their teeth was almost audible as they forced themself to lower their voice. “We survive. We have to, due to the likes of you. And Vesper.” All at once, they deflated, eyes flitting to the rocky ceiling above us. “Fighting for freedom...I wish it was that easy. Sanctuary after sanctuary are joining her cause, and how I wish I could celebrate that! But I fear they’re running into their end. No.” They sighed. Their gaze dropped onto me. “No, the only reason you’re not in shackles right now is her.”
In the crossfire of both of their glares, I sat back, craving to put more distance between us. There was nothing pleasant in Patri’s expression now. And Gray...just blank. No emotion at all.
“She’s stable?’ Patri asked. My chest constricted. They talked like I wasn’t even there.
“More or less,” Gray said. His gaze flickered to me and back. “It’s a chance.”
Patri nodded like they understood something behind the words, and my heart hammered against my ribcage.
“This is war,” Gray said with emphasis, his voice dark. “We might not be able to avoid it, but we could use it. But Vesper is going to ruin us all if we don’t—”
“No. I need the others for this discussion. I can’t decide alone.” Patri stood, impatience in their every movement. Gray rose as well, and I instinctively followed, along with Marigo.
A muscle twitched above Patri’s eye as they glanced at me, their voice a dull thump against my ears. “I’m sorry. You will not be part of that conversation.”
They glanced above my head towards the entrance of the cave. I spun around. Figures gathered there in the brilliant sunlight—inconspicuously but intent. On me.
I heard the breath escape Marigo’s throat in a small, disgruntled groan, and a wave of disgust surged forth in me. The healing I’d received, the food Patri had offered so generously...it was all empty gestures, a way to assess the danger I meant.
“What did you mean ‘it’s a chance’?” I asked in a shaking voice. “What do you want with me?”
Gray glanced at Patri Sara, hesitant, but there was no trace of empathy in his eyes as he spoke. “You’re our only way to understand Vesper. To undo her damage. We can’t ignore that.”
I took a step back. “You said I was safe here. You said these people would protect me.” It was the only reason I came here. My only choice.
He wavered. “They will.”
Liar. Or was he that naive? If I felt like a discarded tool or broken weapon before, now I was reduced to a problem. Something that stood in the way. Some thing that needed to be dealt with, hidden, or defused. And it looked like I wouldn’t even get to know what was going to happen to me.
All these people, hiding the truth, lying, and manipulating. There was a price or a foul secret behind every word. I was done with them. They would use me if it fit them, just like they’d done before. Vesper, Gray, Patri, Aesh...all of them.
Ignoring Marigo, who called out to me, I turned around and marched out of the cavern. I didn’t expect the guards at the entrance to let me through, but they did, although as I trudged towards the riverbank, I felt them follow me at a distance.
I wasn’t looking at where I was going. I couldn’t get far enough anyway. This sanctuary was nothing but another trap.
18
It was dark when I came to, and I was weightless, floating in the middle of nothing.
I was dreaming, I was pretty sure. I remembered going to sleep. I’d wandered back into the main settlement of Shihua after walking the forest for a good hour following my outburst. Patri Sara’s guards trailed me but did not interfere. The sky had already darkened when I got back and I’d found Marigo waiting in the infirmary space I’d woken up in before. She’d led me to another cavern that was designated to be our sleeping quarters, and I’d lied down without speaking a single word to her. I must have gone to sleep right away.
And now I was here, dreamless in a dream world. I felt at the precipice of consciousness, but something was keeping me here. Like a thread affixed to my chest, pulling me under lightly. I breathed in the darkness around me, denser than air, cold and empty. My body trembled with aftershocks of the bitter revelations of daytime. I had no fight left in me. I let myself being pulled, a force taking ahold of me. I surged forward, faster and faster in a mad dash—then stopped.
I opened my eyes. I was on a rock outcropping, and in front of me, tucked into a valley of lush green, a township was burning.
Light rain drizzled from above, but it did nothing to quench the fires ravaging the homesteads and the terraced fields below. I lifted my face towards the sky, trying to perceive invisible constellations, to shut out the carnage, blinking water out of my eyelashes.
No. Not my eyes, not my face. Not my body. The moment I realized I didn’t belong, the view lurched, and suddenly I was outside, looking at the figure gazing upon the destruction. In their immaculate light gray dress, a smooth, silver cascade of hair fanning out on their shoulders, Aesh was a vision out of this world. They were perched on the back of a nugar, the raindrops falling from the sky not touching them, only the invisible barrier around their form.
Their chin jerked, and they glanced around, an anxious light in their eyes. “Is it you?” They were thinking the words at me, but I heard them as clearly as if I was standing right beside them.
“Where—what’s happening?” I asked, confused.
“I’m not sure,” Aesh said in their head. I glanced around at the rainy forest and the flaming demesne ahead. We were alone. “Are you asleep? How did you find me?”
I tried to move or change position, but I didn’t have a body. I was merely my eyes, looking at Aesh from a fixed point in space, two feet above their head. I could perceive some of my surroundings, but the focus was solely on them.
“I didn’t do anything.” I sent back. “I felt a tug, and I followed. I’m asleep, I think. Aren’t you?”
“No.” Aesh waved an impatient hand at the view. “Clearly.”
I huffed. “It could be a dream for all I know.”
“It’s not. I’m as awake as I never wanted to be. It looks like our connection is strengthening. Very interesting.” Aesh gazed ahead, thoughtful.
“What’s going on?” I was almost afraid to ask, in case this really wasn’t a dream. I didn’t recognize the location, but then again, I hadn’t seen much of Kamphua apart from Kiriong. But I thought we were still somewhere to the north, judging from the landscape filled with terraced mountains.
“Well.” A deep sigh broke out from between Aesh’s lips. They looked distraught as they searched for me again, but then finding nothing, rested their glance on the ruins. “We’re starting a war, aren’t we?”
Anxiety gripped me. “Where is she?” I meant Vesper, but I couldn’t bear to utter the name.
Aesh scoffed. “She’s close. She’s always close.”
I looked towards the town again, trying to make out details. A group of light-robed individuals marched among the buildings; flames followed them as they torched structures in their way. Not everything—it looked like there was some rule to their actions only they knew. Another group was commandeering what looked like a crowd of people, likely the inhabitants of the homesteads, to stand and watch the destruction around them. The wind picked up the muffled noise of screams, sobs, and shouts. And from time to time, sparks of another kind flamed up from the direction of the invaders.
Magic.
“Where are we?” I tried again, although this was not what I needed to ask. “Why are you doing this?” maybe. Or “What am I doing here?”
Aesh gave a faint smile. “You’ll hear about it soon. Sanctuaries are good at disseminating news.”
I didn’t ask how they knew where I was. But now I had an idea for where they were. Patri Sara had talked about the attack on Tamarik. Maybe I was seeing the final accords of that.
I looked into Aesh’s eyes. There was little of that small creature I’d known as Fourth in them at that moment. How could I trust them?
“It was you,” I said anyway. A gamble, but I had to know. “You saved me from her. You helped me escape.”
The regret and sorrow in their eyes back when we’d faced each other in Kiriong Palace. The intensity of their voice commanding me to not die, to stand up and fight the last time we’d met in a vision. The way they were limping, hurt by Vesper, after the woman discovered I was still alive. That voice in my nightmares, urging me to run. The fact that they’d contacted me at all.
Time stopped around us, the chaos of the town below distant, subdued. There was only Aesh and me, and the waiting for something to change on their face to answer my questions.
And something did change. There was a smile. An impossibly sad one. “Did I save you?” they asked. “Or did I doom ourselves?”
More secrets. More deception. They could have been my one ally right now, but sometimes I didn’t even recognize them. “I don’t understand. Why didn’t you run too? Why are you—”
“I told you, I can’t say,” Aesh snapped. “But what about you? Are you really planning to stick around? Did you not hear me when I said it’s the worst decision ever?”
“You’re not telling her about me. Why?”
“Because I fancy staying alive.”
Frustration blurred my vision. Why was everyone so adamant about hiding everything from me? Secrets within secrets within lies in all directions.
“Am I dangerous?” I asked. I had to get something out of them or I would go mad. There was more to all that was happening and the cold feeling at the base of my spine told me I was close to the truth. “Do I have something that Vesper needs? Could I help you to—”
“Don’t. Say. Her name.” Aesh was actually speaking the words now, hissing them through their teeth. “And stop wanting to help me. I don’t need it. I don’t want it.”
They turned the nugar around and urged it to leave the outcropping. I moved with them, although I wasn’t controlling it—our connection seemed to be bound to Aesh’s immediate environment, and I followed them without my intervention.
“You’re lying.” I saw reluctance in their every move. Whatever hold Vesper had on them made them say these things. I had to believe that.
But they laughed, a harsh, cruel sound. “And you’re deluded. What are you even planning? We’re going to find you. We’re going to tear you apart.”
“I don’t know.” I had to speak it out loud. “I don’t know what I can do. I don’t even know what I am. I’m alone. I’m...nothing.”
“Help me,” I wanted to say. “Save me again.”
They looked up as if they wanted to find my invisible presence. And there it was again—that sparkle, that tiny glimmer of an understanding. “You’re hardly nothing, love,” they said quietly. “You’ve seen her already, didn’t you? I felt it the last time we connected.”
“Her?” They were not referring to Vesper this time; it wouldn’t have made sense.
A sigh broke out from between their lips. “It’s not too late to step back, but you have to choose. And soon.”
“I don’t understand.”
Aesh’s eyes suddenly locked onto me, and I was hit by an emotion stronger than anything I’d felt from them before.
Fear. For me.
“I risked everything for you,” they whispered. “I never wanted this to happen. Now it’s on you.”
And I remembered.
Back in that cage. The horror. The worry. The soothing words. That lullaby that Aesh had sung to me before Vesper had dragged them out of the cavern to tuck them away before she had prepared me for her experiments. The solace of their arms around me when I’d woken up from a nightmare—a real one or a vision, I’d rarely known. They were always there for me. It was us against the dread, day by day, year after year after year. Decades? Sometimes it felt like it.
Vesper didn’t have love for us, even though she handled Aesh with more care than me. But Aesh made sure that I at least felt what it was like being loved.
“You need to leave,” Aesh said, stomping out the feeling. Was I reading their thoughts, their emotions just now? I had no time to ask. They glared at me, the intensity of their eyes choking down all my arguments. “She’s coming back. Listen to me. When you figure this out, because sweet tears of Riidu, I know you won’t stop asking questions, promise me this. You’ll run. You’ll go and you’ll leave me behind.”
I wanted to protest, but they already snapped their attention away. The half-physical sphere of perception I was stuck in wavered as a new figure joined Aesh on the small glade.
In a royal blue robe wrapping her in dark obscurity with the hood up to conceal her face I barely recognized her. But there was no deceiving the stream of emotions I was getting from Aesh: anxiety, apprehension, repulsion...expectation. Respect. Joy?
It was Vesper.
The woman drew close on her own nugar, looking over Aesh. Only the hungry glint of her eyes could be seen under her hood. “Dahar reported back.” Her raspy, deep voice was all too familiar. A hostile fog descended onto my mind and my nerves screamed at me to flee. “The bitch-queen is on the move. Have you finished sulking?”
The sense of slight delight radiating from Aesh turned sour. For a second, they were at a loss for words. “I...”
“Good.” Vesper’s voice was a snap of a whip. The scorch of a slap. “Then you’re ready.”
There was only a small delay in Aesh’s answer. “Whenever am I not?” Their voice was shaking but was made to be light, almost mocking. All thoughts escaped me, leaving only dread in their wake. How many years did it take for this deception to come so natural to them?
But I knew the answer. It took fifteen years. Fifteen lonely years while I wasn’t beside them to help.
Vesper seemed satisfied as she nodded and turned her beast around. “Then let us go. Many things to do tonight.” She rode forward, leaving her underling behind.
Aesh took a deep breath and my mind buzzed up with the impression of emotions again: frustration, anger, panic. And there were images too.
A cave-room, open to the sky. A bamboo cage; soiled rags on the floor; morsels of dry bread in the corner. A table packed with vials, books, and parchments—the decapitated bodies of birds and frogs scattered everywhere.
A robust statue beside the entrance in the form of a woman on her knees hiding her face behind her hands. A crown of wild hair billowed to the ground around her.
I had seen that statue in the waking world. Recently.
But then Aesh stirred as if rousing from a daze and with a small shake of their head, they only spared me one more glance. “Like I said. Don’t try to save me.”
“Wait—” I started, but the distance between us grew larger, and I knew they were pushing me out. I cried for them to stop. I needed to know more! I needed to trust them more. But it was useless; they were so much stronger than me.
Before I was yanked back inside my sleeping body, I heard their last words, almost lost in the noise of the rain and the heavy thumping of their nugar breaking into a run through the darkened forest. “It was a nice sentiment, though. Thank you for wasting it on me.”
~*~
I woke to complete darkness, the sinister mood of the burning demesne clinging to my mind. Sitting up, I peered into the dimness. Somewhere on my right, Marigo was asleep—I heard her calm inhales and exhales and as my eyes adjusted, I could even see her bed in the wan moonlight trickling in from outside. The mouth of our cave was covered by a thick drape, but it was drawn to the side to allow for ventilation. The night was warm, but not uncomfortably so. The noise of leaves rustling in the breeze, the creaking of the wooden structures outside, and the distant rumble of water filled the silence with activity.
I breathed. I considered my options.
Shihua protected me from the Kepokans and Vesper, but nothing good was waiting for me here. Judging from Patri Sara’s reaction earlier, no matter what Gray had said, I couldn’t put my fate in either of their hands.
Frustrated tears burned their way down my throat. Gray seemed just as powerless here as I—or he was downright lying to me. I didn’t know which option was worse.
I had no other ways forward. I wanted to live, to untangle from these deadly threads—something inside me still did. And to save myself, I had to face what I was. What Vesper had done to me. The things I feared pulled me at a thousand different directions, but there was one thing I knew now.
Where to start looking.
I climbed out of bed, took my shawl onto my shoulders and crept towards the entrance. Something cold and dark turned in my stomach. The guards would try to stop me. I would have to take care of them. I thought about those dead kootars, then Ronn and Funtan, crossbows flying out of their hands, bones crunching as they’d sunken to the ground. I had many options, but I wasn’t facing simple drunkards or animals now. I had to go against mages—experienced ones. What would it cost this time?
“Another midnight excursion?”
There was a sleepy grumble to Marigo’s voice. I froze, then turned to look back at her, barely seeing her form in the dark.
