Shard, page 19
part #2 of Cruelly Made Series
He eventually brings over two teacups and a small pot. He pours the first cup for me, hesitates, says, “Can you hold this?”
My thumbs and forearms are leathery sticks under my skin, but I manage the teacup with both hands. “I know you don’t want to have a baby with me.”
“I don’t have a choice.” He pours himself a cup and sits down.
“Of course you have a choice. It’s your dick.”
He cocks his head to the side. “Is it? If it’s mine, why didn’t you just leave the Academy?”
“I begged to be dismissed. If you’re going to ask rhetorical questions, you should know the answer.”
“So why didn’t you run away if you knew how dangerous you were?”
“Where was I supposed to run? It’s not the same as being trapped down here with you.”
“So why didn’t you kill yourself instead of risk losing your Aether to the Blight?”
Now he’s getting personal. “I decided to keep it safe as long as I could.”
Although that’s kind of a lie, because if ScatheFire hadn’t saved me the instant I’d arrived here, my Aether might not be safe. And it’s not safe now. I’m putting my obligation to save the Fells before my obligation to safeguard my Aether, when I know damn well what will happen if anything down here eats it. Or fucks it.
“So duty.”
“Don’t you dare say you have a duty to the Warden.”
“He and I have very similar interests. The Warden seeks to understand the Blight so he can thwart it.”
Thwart it? The Warden seems more interested in bending it to his will. “And how do you know that? I think he’s crazy enough to think he can control it so he can overthrow the Emperor.”
Atrament shakes his head. “He isn’t interested in a coup.”
“How do you know that?”
“If he’d wanted that, the Blight would have consumed him long ago. Whatever he actually does want has made him immune to the Blight.”
“Immunity is impossible.”
Atrament gestures with one hand. “Fine. Resistant. Like Priests are. Whatever the Warden wants is something the Blight hasn’t been able to warp.”
I sit back in my chair. “So what is it?”
Atrament refreshes my tea. “He trusts no one with that knowledge. If anyone knew what it was, they might be able to use it against him. To your point, the Blight devours ambition and avarice as easy meals. He is not planning a coup.”
I sip my tea. Pride, avarice, ambition are a hunger, and hunger makes you do stupid things. Long ago, we realized that you couldn’t count on Mages—not even the purest of Aethers—to be above temptation. So a bunch of laws were written that make it so that Mages can’t do anything about their temptations. If you can’t destroy the hunger for a cookie, you can put the cookies out of reach.
I nibble my teeth along the delicate edge of my teacup before setting it down and looking out over the twilight garden.
Atrament inquires, “I understand your resistance. But if one of your commanders ordered you to carry the child of a Fell as an experiment, would you do it?”
“Children are not experiments,” I snap.
He isn’t amused. “The first Aethers and Fells were. The gods gave us some knowledge, but left us to figure out the best way to breed, rear, and keep them. Perhaps you were an experiment.”
I shudder. “What do you mean?”
“Your conjured Crystal spears,” he says. “You aren’t a normal Crystal. Perhaps you were part of an experiment to produce a new type of Crystal. A better Crystal.”
“Shut up, Atrament!” I snap, freezing cold and shaking.
He gestures. “Or perhaps not.”
History says the gods made the first Aethers. The God-Forged ones immortalized in paintings with their bodies covered from head to toe in Aether. They showed us how to make the Aether thread, but all our history and religious texts agree that we discovered how to make worldly Aethers over the years. The gods just gave the power and knowledge to the God-Forged Aethers, but everything else They left for us to slowly learn.
I’ve never understood that. It wasn’t like the Blight just went away after the First Wars. Why not just tell us?
But They hadn’t. And They hadn’t taught us about Fells.
“If you were ordered by a military commander to breed with me, would you submit?” he asks again, unrelenting and silky at the same time.
I’m trapped by the shadows and everything seems to loom. I take a deep breath. I’d be horrified and shocked and dismayed, but if I was ordered to procreate with a powerful Fell to experiment, and that was how the Academy and military wanted to make use of my otherwise useless Crystal Mage self?
I swallow a sob.
“The Warden is no different. Perhaps the Warden is the most qualified man to make this request in the world. He is the one who holds something in his heart the Blight cannot touch.”
“I am not going to see the Warden as anything less than… than…” I want to say monster, but the Warden’s not a monster. I’ve seen monsters, but I can’t say that a man who has something so pure in his heart that the Blight can’t corrupt him is a monster.
How could he be that pure and so cruel at the same time?
I hate Atrament’s logic. “Why does he want the baby, though? He can’t be planning on raising it here. And magery can’t be passed on. If it was that simple, we’d just breed a ton of Aethers. Everyone would be an Aether or a Fell by now. Aethers are invoked. And we’d have identified the best, most stable Fells generations ago and bred them too.”
“The potential for magery is inherited,” Atrament corrects.
“Nobody cares about that.” Everyone knows that the potential to be a mage (and how powerful a mage could be produced) is something that can be inherited, like intelligence or eye color. It’s dry tinder. But the actual spark has to be invoked by something. Fells are easily sparked, like an ember on dry tinder, while Aethers are more like trying to get a fire started with wet tinder on a damp day.
But potential doesn’t matter, because potential means nothing if the resulting baby doesn’t have the gifts, isn’t smart enough, strong enough, hale enough, trustworthy. Potential is like a really beautiful horse with four crumbling hooves that won’t hold shoes: more useful as a meal.
Atrament’s expression doesn’t change. “You also know that very few female Aethers ever have children, and no Aether has ever had a child with a Fell. That is uncharted territory.”
“Maybe it should stay that way.” I never planned on having kids. I don’t know many Aethers that do. We serve at least ten years before we can retire. If we survive that long, we’re in our thirties. Male Aethers can sire kids until the day their cock stops delivering the goods, but female Aethers are old mares.
Female Aethers also have the problem of suitable marriage prospects. They have noble status commensurate with what they would have had had they not been Aethers, just with no title, dowery, lands, wealth. Just a very nice pension and the title of Lady-Mage. They don’t have any allies or friends or connections at court, much less the expansive network of those things a noble wife of that age is expected to have, along with (preferably) favors she is owed, and no debts to her name, financial or political. A female Aether has spent her entire adult life as a mid-level officer in the military. She probably doesn’t care about fashion, jewels, gossip. They’re battle-hardened, probably physically damaged, and can likely out-ride and out-fight their husbands.
Female or not, most retired Aethers don’t marry. Retired Aethers are a guest of honor at every parade, festival, party, and event there is. You’re invited to every dinner and social event. You can hunt and fish and ride on all Imperial lands. Your choice of lovers, investments, friends, and hobbies is your concern alone, with no risk of scandal because you haven’t spent the past thirty years carefully building a delicate web of alliances and friendships that might be compromised.
So few of us survive to collect on the debt we were owed that the Empire spoils those of us that do.
Atrament sighs at me. “If it’s exactly as you say, then all we’ll do is pass on our potential, and there’s nothing to fear from having a child.”
“Except our child would be conceived in the Pit in the presence of the Old One, at the very font of Blight. We could produce a monster!”
“Yes, we could, and the entire point is to answer the question. And you still haven’t answered mine. If you had been ordered by your commander, would we already have coupled?”
I’m not some mindless dog that grovels adoringly at the feet of her cruel master. “The military doesn’t want this. If they did, they’d already have done it. You’ve clearly never served.”
“I haven’t, but why do you accuse me of that?” he inquires, eyeing me a bit more sharply.
“Because the military isn’t in the business of making more Blight or ruining Mages,” I say coldly. “They’d offer female Aethers nearing retirement a trade. Take a few years off their contract for procreating with an Imperial Fell. Then offer an Imperial Fell some sort of boon to volunteer for stud duty.”
Atrament leans back in his chair, expression like I’ve shaken his entire world.
Has he never been outside this prison? Doesn’t he know how things work beyond its wall? There’s no reason for this insane experiment to happen between a non-consenting Crystal with a bodycount and an Atrament Fell that’s been in the Pit for the gods know how long and for what reasons.
Why isn’t he in the army, on the front?
Exactly.
Because he’s sitting here, with me, having tea in an underground twilight moss garden while we have an insane conversation about breeding an evil demigod.
“They would get volunteers, you believe.” He sounds quite mild now.
“Of course they’d get volunteers,” I say. “I can tell you that at least one of my Fells—possibly two—would happily volunteer for stud duty. And there are a dozen female Aethers under the age of thirty at the Academy being warehoused as training partners because they don’t have a team, or at least that many nearing retirement out in the field.”
“Which of your Fells would volunteer, you think?”
I hesitate to answer. Why does he care? But the question seems genuine enough. “Blood, absolutely. And probably Smoke.”
Smoke would probably do it because it’d be transactional in the purest sense of it. Rot would not want to participate.
Atrament goes quiet and pensive.
“Atrament, tell the military what’s going to happen. They will come.”
He shakes his head. “I’m not allowed to come and go as I please.”
“Are you a prisoner too?”
His face hardens over. “We’ve been ordered to do this. The Warden will expect progress.”
“So what, I’m just supposed to stay here with you in this place until I’m pregnant? Are we raising a baby here? Is he taking it away? Is he feeding it to a Blightling? Is he going to drag a Verdance down here to purge it and he just wants to see if I can get pregnant down here?”
“I don’t know what his plans are beyond conception.”
My Aether snags and pulls inside my skin, and my magic shifts dangerously, and the Blight of this place practically perks its ears. A thousand pairs of eyes have turned towards me. I squeeze my hands into fists.
He still seems puzzled by the concept of volunteers, and as long as he’s busy chewing on that, he won’t be chewing on me.
He says he’s not free to come and go, so is he a prisoner? If he’s a prisoner, how did he get banished to the Pit? His age is hard to determine. Maybe Blood’s age give or take a few years? He’s clearly a formally trained Fell, and he has a noble accent, but nobody has ever heard of him.
Atraments are rarer than Crystals. One even existing should have at least been a rumor.
Getting thrown into the Pit was supposed to be simple. The end to my story.
Nothing makes sense here.
28
Crystal
Atrament’s moss garden is beautiful and strange. There are peculiar little bugs that flutter around that glow faintly from their behinds and are glossy green, and I can’t tell if they’re Blighted or not. They don’t seem to want to eat me or my Aether.
Atrament drifts behind me, silent and observing. His long hair is bound tightly in a knot. He doesn’t seem to have a familiar. He’s wearing the same dark attire as everyone else in the prison, except he’s barefoot.
Every little clue I can gather is a potential weapon against him.
I wander around the cavern to explore every inch of it and get a sense of it, but there’s no way in or out: water comes in through crevices in the rock, and it’s the same cold, clear water I’m used to from the upper levels.
I can’t pester Atrament with too many questions. He’ll get wise to it and think I’m going to escape. Which I am, of course. I need to figure out how I can escape, and to do that, I’m going to be a real pain in the ass about ScatheFire’s fate.
“Come to bed,” Atrament says.
I choke and spin around. “What?”
“To sleep,” he amends impatiently.
“I’m not sleeping in the same bed as you.” I’m exhausted from the day and my body hurts, but I am not going to be tempted by his featherbed.
“There is one bed, and it is large enough for two people.”
“That’s not why I object.”
A curious cock of his head. “Then where will you sleep?”
“I’ve lived in the Pit’s accommodations for some time now. I’m no delicate Aether flower.” This moss looks nice. Stones look nice. A bed of nails and fire and smelly socks sounds just fine.
He ponders this. “Do you think I will force myself upon you?”
“The thought occurred to me.”
“I won’t.”
“Why should I believe you?” I come around a large cluster of ferns and glowing mushrooms.
“Why would I lie? I have no reason to waste time on a lie,” he says matter-of-factly.
“To lure me into your bed so I’m asleep and vulnerable.”
He frowns again. His brow folds together in a cluster of wrinkles. “That makes no sense.”
“What’s got you confused?”
“If your fear is that I will creep up on you while you sleep—”
“Yes.”
“Then what is to prevent me from doing that if you sleep right there?” He points to where I’m standing. “Or over there? Or there? Or there?”
“I guess that’s true.” My mind and stomach churn with a strange unease that’s hard to place.
Atrament nods, reaches up behind his head, and unbinds his hair. The long, strange tendrils twist and cascade around him. His hair is perfectly black. There is no shine at all. It does not reflect any of the light.
He sets his hair clasp on a shelf by several others, sorts the teacups and such, and generally busies himself like anyone else preparing for bed.
He looks at me, then at the clean featherbed and asks, “Are you planning on sleeping in those clothes?”
I look down at my filthy prisoner uniform. Then at the clean featherbed.
It doesn’t seem to be a rhetorical question, although he seems bewildered by having to ask it at all, like I’m going to be crazy enough to say yes, yes, I am an urchin who loves to wallow in her own filth.
Reluctantly, I shed my baggy pants and shirt, crossing my hands in front of my breasts and trying to shift my thighs to hide my privates, and suddenly aware I had a posture like some coy painting.
Atrament watches me with intense interest.
Great. Now I’ve tantalized him and I am going to wake up having to defend myself with magic I can’t control.
“It’s beautiful,” he says.
“What?”
“Your Aether.” He circles around me several times, then stands in front of me. “I’ve never seen so much in a single body. It’s so beautiful. It is like… I don’t know the words. It shines.”
Thing learned: Atrament has seen naked (or partially undressed) Aether Mages. More than a few.
I tremble with the knowledge. Atrament doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy to hang out with the Aether guards that come through this place.
“You are also filthy.” He goes to a shelf and fetches a bowl exactly like the one I’d had in my cell, a bar of the rough soap, and a thin bathing towel. He points to the cavern where the water comes out of the wall and fills a small, deep pool that feeds a winding, tiny creek that disappears into various tiny crevices in the rockface.
I almost tell him don’t watch, but that’s stupid. I’ve never been shy or bashful. But he does follow me to observe from behind a couple of large ferns while I scoop up the freezing cold water, douse myself, and then soap myself, getting up layers of grime and filth.
“Your skin does shine,” he comments.
“Could you not do that?”
“Do what?”
“Watch me from behind those ferns like a creeper.” Does this guy have no manners? He’s got the noble accent but all the social sense the gods gave a chicken.
“Shall I come to the other side of the ferns, or turn around?”
Clearly not used to talking to people. “Just come out from behind the ferns.”
He complies.
The Fells and their malicious compliance, and now Atrament who had abandoned any good manners he’s ever had.
I soap and rinse out my hair, trying to detangle it with my fingers before giving up. Doesn’t matter. I wrap my towel around myself, and try to ignore him staring at me, so I walk past him like he’s not even there and return the soap and bowl to their shelf.
He follows, silent as a cat, and fetches another small item off another shelf. It’s a fine-toothed comb.
“I was thinking of just shaving it off,” I say.
“No,” he says. “A Crystal Mage cannot cut her hair.”
“I wasn’t aware that was a rule.” I take the comb and sigh. “I’ll do it later. My thumbs are hurting too much from the shackles to hold it.”
The little muscles in my thumb and forearm are hot ropes of agony, like the little muscles on the top of my foot and the inside and front of my shin.
