This Dark Descent, page 19
“Miss Rusel?”
Mikira steeled herself, already on edge and uninterested in adding anything more to it. But it was only a small group of teenage girls, their blouses neatly stitched with gold thread and tucked into ankle-length brocade skirts. Each one worth more than anything Mikira owned, and yet they were staring at her as if she were the treasure.
The oldest, a girl with tawny skin and intricately braided hair, gave her a tentative smile and asked, “Can we, um, meet Atara?” Her gaze flicked to the horse.
It took Mikira a moment to understand what was happening. To connect the gleam in their wide eyes with the way people had looked at her in the tunnels, like she was something more than herself.
“Yes,” she said automatically, and stepped back as the girls flooded Atara with a series of giggles and soft coos. The horse ate up their attention, letting them pat her and feed her slices of green apples. It was all Mikira could do just to watch, a shift in understanding slowly sinking in.
Then one of the girls gasped, and all three scurried away. She whirled to find Damien approaching, a bundle of white cloth pressed to his bleeding forearm and a roll of bandages in hand.
“Hells! What did you do?” Mikira took the bandage from Damien, which he was all but fumbling. He frowned at her but didn’t stop her as she snatched up a clean towel and wiped the blood away.
“I got between a fool and the prince,” he replied as she wrapped the bandage neatly about his arm. Mikira nearly said that sounded like three fools to her, but she bit back the words and finished tying off the bandage. She’d heard someone say that a house lord had stopped the attack—somehow, she wasn’t surprised to find it was Damien.
Damien inspected the bandage. “Reid might actually be impressed.”
She barked a laugh and picked up another brush. “Before or after it rains gold?”
His measured gaze cut to her. “That might not be so impossible, actually. I’ve been discussing Rusel enchants with the prince after our encounter. He was under the impression your lines were all but decimated, but I told him you still have one left descended from your father’s stallion, Nightflyer.”
Damien couldn’t be implying what she thought he was. “Starling,” she whispered. “A mare.”
“Good.” He slid his sleeve down over his injured arm. “I’ll coordinate the remainder of the details, but you can expect Prince Darius’s stable master the day after the next ball.”
The brush dropped from her hand, and for a wild moment, she considered flinging her arms around Damien. He must have seen it in her face, because he recoiled, staring at her like she might burn him. She laughed.
Royalty wanted one of her horses.
All this time, fear of the Kelbras had kept buyers at bay. Nightflyer was one of the most recognized names in racing, and Starling and Iri were both descended from him. But while she’d refused to sell Iri, she’d been unable to sell Starling. Now Damien had found one of the few people in this kingdom who had more power than Rezek, someone he wouldn’t dare challenge. If the prince bought a Rusel enchant, others would follow suit. This could change everything.
She grinned. “Thank you.”
Something like a smile turned Damien’s lips. “Let’s take Atara home.”
* * *
THE MUSIC OF the Illinir festival echoed from streets away, the sky bright with enchanted lights and resounding with laughter.
Mikira walked alone toward the glow, her hands shoved into the pockets of her coat. She ought to be home with her sisters, not chasing some woman she didn’t understand into a festival she despised. The laughter, the lights, even the smells—they all reminded her of Lochlyn and Talyana, of the nights they’d spent here together as children during the last Illinir.
She turned the card over in her pocket, running her finger along the embossed address of the Petal Shop on the surface. There was something about Quinn she couldn’t get out of her head. She barely knew the girl, and yet she felt an ease and comfort around her she couldn’t explain. More than that, Quinn had opened a door with her questions about Rezek and the royals, a door Mikira couldn’t bring herself to shut.
Do you want him dead?
Quinn had said it like she could make it happen. Had talked about the noble houses and royal family as if they were simply obstacles to be removed. And in that moment, more than her personal desire to see them defeated had taken root. All this time, she’d been thinking only of herself, of her family. But they weren’t the only ones who’d lost people to the war, to the noble houses’ cruelty and the royals’ greed.
She wanted to hear what Quinn had to say.
Ducking through a narrow alley lined with recruitment posters, she emerged onto Tea Street, the entirety of which had been swallowed by the festival. Some of it was commissioned and paid for by the Kelbras, but much of it was donated by enchanters looking to get their name out, and they held nothing back.
Tree branches hung heavy with enchanted lights, some small and star bright, others large and round as pumpkins with charmed images sliding across their faces: glowing fish in a rippling pond, rain falling over an empty bench bathed in moonlight, Aslir roaring soundlessly against a backdrop of night. She skirted around a vendor selling color-changing masks emulating the Harbingers. Two children each wearing Lyzairin’s sapphire tail burst past her, sparklers held aloft, leaving a trail of fleeting light.
The scent of roasting chestnuts curled around her from a nearby cart. Her father had bought some for her and Lochlyn last time, and she’d loved them so much, Lochlyn had given her his entire bag. They were enchanted to change flavor, turning from cinnamon to nutmeg to brown sugar in a bite. She slowed, watching the vendor scoop nuts into thin paper bags for two men holding hands, and wished, more than anything, that her brother was there with her now.
Lochlyn had always had such an unyielding sense of what was right. He was the peacemaker in their family, sorting out arguments between his little sisters with promises of trail rides and sweets. Sometimes she wondered if it was that softness that had cost him his life in the war. He’d never been able to make the difficult decisions.
Those had always fallen to her.
Except maybe now she didn’t have to do it alone. She thought of Ari sitting next to her in the stables after the first race, of her belief that they could do this together, and a little of the tightness in her chest unwound.
“Excuse me?” A young girl stood before her, a paper and pen clasped in her sugar-dusted hand. She wore a silver fang like Ari’s. “Are you—are you Mikira Rusel? Can I have your autograph?”
Mikira blinked at her in stunned silence. The girl shifted nervously, letting her pale hair fall over her face to hide her rising blush, and Mikira realized she was embarrassing her.
“Oh, um, yes?” She took the proffered pen and paper. Did she just sign her name, like she would any document? That seemed too ordinary. Her father’s signature had been a flash of a K and an R, more art than name. She tried for the same, looping the M into the K with a flourish and handing it back.
The girl’s eyes lit up. “Thank you!” She darted back to where her parents were waiting at the corner.
“I thought I recognized you!” The vendor was grinning at her now. “Congrats on the race, Miss Rusel. How about a bag, on the house?”
“Oh, I couldn’t possibly—” But he was already filling it up, and she accepted it with a nod of thanks, scurrying onward before anyone else could take notice of her. It hadn’t occurred to her that people might recognize her now. After two Illinir races and with her father’s name behind her, suddenly she was someone to know, a change she suspected was also due to Damien’s introductions of her at the ball.
Thanks to him, the Rusel name meant something again.
And she’d betrayed him.
Guilt turned her stomach, and she ended up giving the nuts to a woman wrapped in blankets on the street. She wasn’t the only refugee bundled up for warmth and with nowhere to go, and it wouldn’t be long before the Anthir forced them out of the festival. The Council of Lords didn’t like reminders of the cost of their war.
Mikira gave her directions to the nearest shelter along with the few copper marks in her pocket before heading toward the corner housing the Petal Shop.
Quinn waited outside.
Her dark hair was half up, half down, the top coiled into an intricate series of braids. She wore knee-high boots over dark pants and a loose pine-green shirt that turned her hazel eyes the dark, vivid color of the forest. She held one hand behind her back, the stem of a flower poking out.
“You came,” she said.
Mikira eyed the stem. “What’s that?”
Quinn held a flower out to her. It was a red carnation.
It was such a small thing, a flower, yet it brought Mikira crashing to a sudden stop. That feeling of familiarity that had haunted her for weeks enclosed her, immobilizing her with the threat of understanding.
A vase of red carnations. The sound of a gunshot and shattering glass.
Quinn gently tucked the stem of the flower behind Mikira’s ear, the scent of sugar and cloves clinging to her skin. Mikira seized her hand, her thumb tracing the scar tissue on the girl’s wrist, etched there by shattered glass.
Quinn didn’t pull away. She simply watched, her eyes dark and resolute, as Mikira slid off her mask.
“Talyana,” she breathed.
Her childhood best friend gave her a small, sad smile. “Hey, Kira.”
Then they were wrapped up in each other’s arms, and Mikira was squeezing her tighter than she’d ever held anyone in her life, and Talyana’s shoulder was pressing the satin petals of the flower against her cheek, and she was hating, hating herself for having taken this long to figure it out.
“I don’t understand,” she rasped into Talyana’s shirt.
Talyana leaned back, brushing the tears from Mikira’s cheeks. “It’s a long story.”
“Why didn’t you just tell me? Why pretend?”
Talyana gave her a sheepish smile. “I thought if you knew it was me, you wouldn’t let me help you. Not after I…”
“After you left.” Mikira didn’t say it coldly, just plainly. One moment Talyana had been her strength; the next she had been gone, the last break against the storm that had consumed her. She’d always blamed Talyana’s parents. After Rezek shot the vase, scarring Talyana’s arm, they’d never let her return to the ranch. When Mikira had gone looking for her at their house days later, they’d moved.
Mikira dragged the back of her sleeve across her eyes. “But that night in the tunnels. You knew it was me. How?”
She laughed. “Really, Kira? Nightflyer? Your dad’s racehorse was your favorite as a kid. You never stopped talking about him.”
“You remember that?”
Talyana’s expression grew solemn. “I remember everything.”
And Mikira had forgotten. Had she really buried Talyana so deep that she hadn’t recognized her best friend, mask or not? It’d been nearly eight years, and she was a far cry from the short-haired, round-cheeked girl Mikira had known, but her eyes—they’d been the thing that unsettled her from the start.
Mikira just hadn’t wanted to see it.
Talyana slipped her arm through Mikira’s. “Why don’t we walk for a while. We have a lot to catch up on.”
Talyana told her everything as they walked. The day after Rezek, her father had packed her bags and sent her to a military academy at the edges of the kingdom. She’d trained to become an officer, a position she owed to her father’s history as a royal guard.
It pained Mikira to think of Talyana trapped into the rigidity of military life. It was everything she’d never wanted. The schedule, the structure, the repetition. Talyana wanted untraversed seas and forests that had never seen a human hand. She wanted to see desert lizards and scarlings and northern Vynan rivers that froze so deeply in the winter you could go sliding across them on skates.
Yet it also healed something in her to know that Talyana had not left her willingly, and she had never forgotten her.
Talyana told her how she’d spent several months fighting, before being honorably discharged when a blast left her mostly deaf in one ear. How she’d entered the Illinir for a last burst of freedom before she intended to join the Anthir, and how she’d agonized over finding Mikira after she returned, and upon seeing her in the tunnels, had been unable to resist talking to her.
“But when you didn’t recognize me, I was too much of a coward to say anything,” she finished. They sat on the edge of an enchanted fountain in Canburrow Square. The water was filled with sparkling gold dust that caught the light as it leapt into new patterns, forming ribbons that spun and danced.
She squeezed Mikira’s arm. “I’m sorry I didn’t say something sooner.”
“It’s okay.” Mikira squeezed back. “I’m just glad you’re here.”
A silence fell between them, at once as uncertain as it was familiar. Then slowly, in bits and pieces, they started telling each other the little stories they’d missed. They talked about the ranch and everything Mikira had learned about breeding enchants, about the friends that’d rejected her, about Talyana’s first time firing a gun, and when she’d accidentally gotten drunk on cheap whiskey.
Eventually they left the fountain for a vendor selling festival cakes on the edge of the square, and Talyana bought her more than she could carry, and they laughed as she tried to balance them in her arms and eat at the same time. The cakes were warm and spiced and molasses sweet, and slowly the memories she’d built with Lochlyn years ago faded just a little bit more in the light of the new ones.
When they were full of sugar and sick from it, Talyana laced her sticky fingers in Mikira’s and dragged her over to a crowd that had gathered before a stage, where actors dressed as the four Harbingers danced to a quick string rhythm.
“You never answered my question,” Talyana said above the speeding music.
Mikira knew what she meant, but she still didn’t know how to answer. She watched as Lyzairin, the Great Serpent, spun about Rach like a rope. “Rezek has done a lot of terrible things to my family, but he’s only one man. What I need isn’t to get rid of Rezek; it’s to have the means to protect my family from more like him.”
“And yet you’re working with Damien Adair.” Talyana didn’t take her eyes off the stage. Rach had broken free, and now stalked Lyzairin across the stage while Skylis, the Burning Light, swirled around them in trails of enchanted fire.
“I don’t have a choice.” The wind picked up, carrying her words away on a chill breeze, and she pulled her jacket tighter against its bite. “Besides, he’s not like Rezek.”
Talyana laughed as Rach tackled Lyzairin, Skylis’s flame encircling them both. “He’s just like Rezek. I’ve heard rumors about an Anthir sergeant investigating him, looking into everything from his finances to business deals. He’s as corrupt as any house lord.”
Mikira thought of the flood of Anthir in the hall, of breaking bone.
Talyana stepped in front of her, forcing their gazes to meet. “Kira, Damien Adair is a murderer.”
At that moment, a roar overtook the stage, and Aslir erupted onto the stage. Dressed in glittering white from the mane of feathers about his neck to the lion’s tail at his back, he reflected the enchanted lights like the bright star whose name he held, his sheer presence bowing the other three into submission.
Mikira studied Talyana, uncertain. “What do you know?”
“Exactly what I said.”
“Do you have proof?”
Talyana bit her lip, the action at once so familiar and so foreign, it twisted something in Mikira’s heart. “There was a time you wouldn’t have asked me that.”
Mikira turned back to the stage, where the performers were bowing to the clapping crowd. “Things have changed.”
CHAPTER 22
ARIELLE
ARI TURNED MIKIRA’S knives over in her hands. The girl had left them with her for the morning while she and Reid trained, something Ari recognized as a sign of trust on her end. After a week of studying the signatures of other enchantments, she’d spent the last hour comparing the magic in the knives and coming up empty.
Whatever enchantment they held, she’d never seen it before.
Frustrated with her lack of knowledge, she set them aside and picked up her Arkala. Damien had spent the morning taking meetings with House Adair’s bookies, a distiller from their whiskey business, and several district tenants seeking his help, but for the last hour, he’d been deeply engrossed in the spellbook, reinforcing her relief that she’d shared it with him. Not only was he very good at research, but unlike Ari, he could read the old Kinnish, which only just resembled the modern tongue.
She was halfway through a section on the Sages’ theories around Skylis’s desire to walk among humanity as one of them when Damien’s chair scraped against the marble floor and he strode over, a thin leather journal in hand.
“The spellbook is remarkable.” He paused at the edge of the rug. “I haven’t gotten very far—it’s incredibly dense, and my old Kinnish is rusty—but it’s equal parts magic, philosophy, and history, leading me to believe it is a Racari. It’s also very focused on the golems.”
She swung her feet to the ground. “Do you think it’s where the Kinnish learned how to create them?”
Damien’s gaze grew distant as he considered the idea. It was a particular look he got when faced with an interesting question. She liked it— it softened the lines of his face, made her want to trace a finger along his jaw.
“I’m honestly not sure,” he said at last. “We’re bordering on religion now. Both Kinnism and Sendism teach that the Harbingers brought magic to humanity, but where Sendism is centered on the four kinds of enchantments and their stones, Kinnism has always held a much broader definition of magic. With how much knowledge was lost with the Burning, it’s possible magic is capable of far more than we know. New enchantments, additional ways of applying them, perhaps even other gemstones capable of conducting enchantments.”
