This Dark Descent, page 3
“Thank you for your help,” Mikira replied hastily. “But I have business to attend to. Enjoy your night.”
She ducked away through the courtyard, praying they wouldn’t follow, and stilled at the entrance to the ballroom. It was like stepping into another world, one untouched by the rising grain prices and war recruiters hounding desperate refugees. The floor-to-ceiling windows gave way to gold-veined marble floors, servants weaving throughout the party with plates of meat on slices of rich dark bread people like her could no longer afford. A set of charmed pianos stood before a crowd gathered beside the evening’s crown jewel, a Ruby One motorcar imported from Vyna. She’d never seen one in person before.
Every inch of this event had been designed to reflect the Zalaires’ wealth, and the wastefulness of it gnawed at her. These were the people she would have to convince to sponsor her. If she was lucky, she’d find someone from outside one of the noble houses. Someone who had nothing to do with the Kelbras and was willing to take a risk on an unknown racer. Perhaps her father’s name still meant something to these people, who would be all too happy to add his prestige to theirs, another drop of power in their well.
But luck had never been on Mikira’s side.
* * *
AN HOUR LATER, Mikira had driven off six potential sponsors. Granted, two of them had been women asking after her “handsome, reclusive father,” and she was pretty sure at least one had just been fishing for Keirian’s autograph, but they’d all fled at her mention of sponsorship. They were all too happy to take what they wanted from her family—so long as they didn’t have to give anything in return.
She rushed through her explanation with the most recent prospect, Lady Kiora, an Iziri woman with brown skin and ochre eyes who worked for House Ruthar. Unlike Houses Kelbra, Dramara, and Vanadahl, it was the only greater house that didn’t support the war effort, and they were known to clash with the Kelbras, which made Mikira hopeful.
“And so then we had to sell the colt from that line—no, sorry, the filly.” How had she even started talking about this? “And after that—”
Lady Kiora lifted her chin, and Mikira immediately stopped talking.
“Let me be sure I understand you correctly,” she said in a low, accented voice. “You want me to sponsor you to run the kingdom’s most difficult competition on an unenchanted horse, which I will provide, despite the fact that you’ve never before raced?”
Mikira winced. When she put it like that, it sounded pretty bad. Mikira was one of the best underground racers in the city, but this woman couldn’t know that.
“I know horses,” she pressed. “Better than anyone. I can win that race.”
Lady Kiora’s rose-painted lips pressed firm. “Knowing horses doesn’t mean you know racing, even if you are Keirian’s daughter. I can’t help you. Good evening.”
She vanished into the crowd, leaving Mikira staring mournfully at a sea of delicately embroidered dresses and colorful waistcoats. These people were leagues away from her. How many of them had paid the exemption fee to escape the draft? How many knew what it was like to have your life swept out from under you?
Mikira stepped into the path of a gray-haired gentleman she recognized as a long-ago patron of her father’s. “Mr. Fellington. My name is Mikira Rusel, and I’m looking for a sponsor—”
“Pardon me, young lady, but I’m already sponsoring a rider for this year’s race. Perhaps next time.” He stepped away, but Mikira grabbed his arm.
“They’ve announced all the current pledges,” she said. “They didn’t say your name.”
The color paled from Mr. Fellington’s ruddy face. “Unhand me. This is entirely inappropriate!” His voice cracked, and at the shine of fear in his eyes, her restraint broke.
“It’s not my racing history or my horse at all.” Her grip tightened. “This is because of the Kelbras, isn’t it?”
Mr. Fellington ripped his arm free. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, and your hostility—”
Mikira snarled, and he flinched. Then as if suddenly remembering his station, he straightened and lifted a warning finger. “I won’t be spoken to like this by a little girl.” He turned abruptly on his heel, scurrying away.
Mikira watched him go, her fury molten steel in her veins. Then he emerged on the side of the crowd, heading straight for the Zalaire security guards along the perimeter.
“Shit!” She darted into a nearby alcove, falling back against one of the thick columns and pressing her face into her hands.
She wanted to scream.
Oh yeah, that’ll really make someone want to sponsor you. They already think you’re trash, why not be screaming trash?
But what else could she do? Rezek had turned the entire gathering against her, and now she was moments away from being thrown out.
“Perhaps, Miss Rusel, I can help.” Damien Adair emerged into the alcove, Reid a step behind.
Mikira started. “What? Why?”
“Still ungrateful,” Reid remarked, and Mikira scowled in return. His gaze lingered, before he forced it away from her as if jerking free of a sudden snag.
“My family has been looking to sponsor a rider,” Damien replied evenly. “If you’re not interested…” He began to turn away.
“Wait!” Mikira lurched forward without thinking, and Damien stopped. “I can’t ride an enchanted horse. I made a bargain with Rezek.”
“So I’ve heard.” At her look of puzzlement, he added, “I make it my business to know Kelbra business, and I have a solution.”
Mikira only stared at him. Even the best enchanters couldn’t hide the gold flecks that appeared in a charmed animal’s eyes. If his solution involved any form of enchantment, Rezek would know she’d cheated with one glance.
“How?” she asked.
Damien straightened his already impeccable cuffs. “That’s not something you need to know. What matters is you’ll be able to race, and you’ll be able to win.”
Something dangerously close to hope swelled to life in Mikira’s chest. Tonight had been a fool’s errand from the start—and deep down she’d known that even if she secured a sponsor, there was no chance in all four hells she’d win the race. Now Damien was offering her not just entrance into the Illinir, but an opportunity to actually win.
“What about the prize money and the royal boon?” she asked. Jockeys and sponsors sometimes split them, but sponsors often took one or the other. The last winner of the Illinir had gotten their cousin freed from jail with the boon and used their portion of the prize money to start a new life outside Enderlain.
“You can keep the entirety of the prize money for yourself,” he said as the crowd parted for the approaching security guards. “But if you win, the royal boon is mine.”
It was a fair trade. Mikira needed to win to protect her family, but she also needed the prize money. The royal boon was a worthwhile sacrifice in exchange for what Damien was offering. Still, her father wouldn’t forgive her if he knew Mikira was considering allying with a noble house, even a lesser one. The four greater houses alongside the king might make up the Council of Lords responsible for instating every decree from the draft to the rising land taxes that crushed people like her, but the lesser houses were the ones who executed them.
Damien gave her an artful smile. “If it helps, what I intend to do with it won’t be pleasant for Rezek. I thought that prospect might appeal to you.”
She’d heard whispers of the rivalry between House Adair and House Kelbra but knew little beyond that. It didn’t matter. Just like it didn’t matter that she was fairly certain Damien was using her somehow; he was her only option.
“I accept,” she said, and prayed she wouldn’t regret it.
Reid smirked, making Mikira bristle. In contrast, Damien only inclined his head, departing with Reid as the two security guards arrived. She let them walk her out.
As she stepped into the rapidly cooling evening air, she expected to feel relieved, but the tension inside her only coiled tighter. There was no turning back now. She would enter the Illinir, and if by some miracle she didn’t get killed, she still had to win.
CHAPTER 3
ARIELLE
MONSTERS RARELY LOOK like monsters.
At least, that was what Arielle’s grandfather used to tell her. Her Saba had said that monsters came in every shape and size, and the trick was not to dismiss them for how they appeared, for they could look like anyone.
So, as a child, Ari had searched for monsters in every face, in every stunted smile and hasty whisper her family received.
She never imagined that one day, she would be the one creating them.
Wrapped in the glow of enchanted lamplight and the scent of rye from last night’s dinner, Ari worked a piece of soft clay against her worn workbench, kneading it like dough to mix in the powdered ruby and verillion stalk necessary for the behavior enchantment. It would form the final ear of the golem dog Lady Belda had commissioned. For now, the earthen beast stood motionless beside her, its back as high as her hips, nothing but a husk waiting for life.
Sometimes Ari didn’t feel much different from a husk herself. With each hour she spent twisting and molding and shaping—and with each pang of hunger in her hollow belly—life felt farther and farther away, like a dream retreating before the morning light.
She scored the underside of the ear and a spot on the golem’s head, before melding the clay into place and stepping back to evaluate her work. The ear was slightly crooked, but Lady Belda would be there shortly.
“Good enough,” she grumbled. As long as she was paid, she didn’t care if the dog’s ears were on its ass. All that mattered was that she could send her earnings back home to her family in Aversheen and keep enough to get by herself, something that was becoming increasingly difficult with the rising grain and verillion prices as more resources were diverted toward the war effort.
Ari muttered a binding spell, threading the magic of the verillion through the powdered ruby and bonding it to the clay, her intent shaping the behavior charm into one of aggression. Then she snatched up a truthstone from her workbench, the holy rock cool in her hand. It’d been taken from Sage-blessed ground—a rarity in Enderlain—and engraved with the Kinnish word for “truth.” It was also her last one.
That’s tomorrow’s problem. Today she had only to finish this dog.
Ari pressed the rock into the golem’s forehead before smoothing the clay. Taking a deep breath, she picked up the heavy black book from her workbench. Touching it always sent a shiver through her, like cold fingers trailing down her neck. The worn leather was soft and supple in her hands, the spine ribbed in pearlescent bone, and at the center lay a small, jade-green stone flecked with red.
It was a forbidden book. A book Ari wished she’d never touched. It had plagued her life with pain and misery from the moment she had.
Liar, whispered a familiar voice in the back of her mind. It brought you power.
The sort of power that made the shadows whisper and breathe. The sort that kindled life inside cold clay and could draw it screaming from warm flesh. The kind that—no! Ari nearly slammed the book shut, but she needed it. So she locked away the memories it threatened to pull free and flipped to a marked page.
Walking clockwise around the golem as best she could in the confined space, she recited the spell, speaking each old Kinnish letter carefully while holding her intent in her mind. It was a mental exercise that pushed the limits of her concentration, requiring her to channel her intent into the enchantment without fumbling a single syllable.
The power filled her in a rising tide, utterly intoxicating. Magic flowed from her lips like a breath of cold fire, streaming to the stone in the golem’s head. Her voice rose as she neared the end of the incantation, the force pouring out faster and faster until—a light erupted from the dog’s forehead, bright and pure as fresh snow. It rippled along the beast’s body, turning clay to muscle and bone and fur.
In a final breath, Ari completed the spell, the last wisps of magic escaping her in a rush, leaving her body warm and tingling pleasantly from the sensation. The light faded, revealing a heavily breathing hound with sleek black fur and oversized canines. It watched her with dark eyes, muscles bunched and ears twitching, as if unsure what to make of this sudden thrust into life.
“You and me both,” Ari muttered to the dog, placing the book on her workbench. She hesitated, her fingers curling into the soft leather. A low humming rose in the recesses of her mind.
Every time she put the book down, it felt like parting with a piece of herself. If she’d had her way, she’d have left the thing behind in her Saba’s workshop. She’d tried to. Yet it’d appeared in her satchel before she’d even left town. So she’d flung it into the Greystel River when she reached Veradell, only to find it dry and unharmed in her bag once more. It was an enchantment unlike anything she’d ever seen, magic from a lost time.
Someone pounded on the door. Ari started, knocking her head on a hanging basket of dead verillion stalks. The dog was between her and the entrance in an instant, a growl like grinding stones in its throat.
“Arielle?” Lady Belda’s high voice called. “Arielle, open the door.”
Ari scowled. This was why her windows were heavily curtained. If Lady Belda had arrived earlier and seen her crafting an animal out of clay, it would have meant her life. She may not have recognized the golem for what it was, but she would have known the magic wasn’t Enderlish, and while many in Veradell might look past her unlicensed status in exchange for cheap enchantments, they would not ignore the use of Kinnish magic. It had been illegal long before the Enderlish government established the enchanter registry.
No matter that they both relied on the same powers; Enderlish enchanters used their magic to charm objects and living animals—they didn’t breathe life into clay, and that simple distinction meant the difference between steady work and a funeral pyre.
“Calm,” Ari said in Kinnish. The dog relaxed at once, lowering onto its haunches and panting softly.
Lady Belda pounded on the door again. Ari crossed the room to open it, revealing the first rays of sunlight filtering through a blanket of fog and smoke from the iron smelter down the road. She wrinkled her nose at the stench of burning coal and seawater—courtesy of the nearby Greystel River that cut through the city like a jagged scar before emptying into the Eban Sea—and held up a hand to block the light.
An incredibly pale woman constructed entirely of cosmetics and furs stood on Ari’s doorstep, her lips pinched, and eyebrows drawn. She wore a fox fur coat over a black silk blouse tucked into a pair of elaborately stitched pants. The house signet ring on her right index finger caught the morning light—a silver band with pink diamonds in a sun shape.
The two guards at her back weren’t much better. Dressed in three-piece suits with their hands on their holstered revolvers, they surveyed the area like they expected Ari’s neighbors to rob them on the spot.
Lady Belda surveyed her with a downward twist of her lips, and Ari felt a familiar, burning shame creep up her neck. She knew what Lady Belda saw. Olive skin caked in clay and sweat, her long curls frizzed and wild beneath her headscarf, and beyond her, a cramped room with peeling wallpaper, the edges stuffed with bundles of dried herbs and scavenged machine parts she hoped to sell. A small counter hosted the remnants of Ari’s last loaf of challah and the empty soup cans she’d yet to turn in for extra coin.
It was all she owned.
The noble lady lifted her chin. “My animal?”
Resisting the urge to order the golem to piss on the lady’s fine shoes, Ari stepped aside, allowing the woman her first glimpse of the beast.
“Charmed for aggression and obedience,” Ari said, though that last part wasn’t entirely true. All golems were obedient by nature, but Lady Belda thought she was getting an enchanted dog, not a clay sculpture come to life.
She dug out a paper from her apron pocket, proffering it to the woman. “Here is the list of commands.”
Lady Belda took the paper with extreme care not to touch her clay-covered fingers. She scrutinized the list, her eyebrows somehow managing to pinch even closer. “What sort of gibberish is this?”
“Kinnish.”
The eyebrows drew tighter. “Are you slow, girl? I don’t speak Kinnish. Give me the instructions in Enderlish.”
“It obeys only Kinnish.” Ari had explained this to the woman before accepting her order. Twice. Of all the millions of people in Enderlain, why was it her clients were always the most frustrating?
“How do you expect me to command something in a language I can’t speak?” Lady Belda’s nostrils flared.
Ari took a slow, deliberate breath. “You learn.”
Lady Belda’s eyebrows made it clear what she thought of that. “First you couldn’t do the ethereal enchantment I wanted, now you expect me to speak this ridiculous tongue? I should have known you’d tried to cheat me with cheap work.”
Ari flinched. She rarely accepted requests for ethereal enchantments, as they required higher amounts of verillion, and the powdered diamond necessary was out of her price range. That, and she struggled with the complexity of their inexact nature. To enchant something to never get lost or to detect lies, concepts that bordered on obscure, required training she didn’t have.
The majority of her spellbook was in old Kinnish, and most speakers of the ancient language were lost when Kinahara was overrun by the Heretics’ magic in the Cataclysm over a century ago. She could only access the first few pages her Saba had translated, and they were barely enough to figure out basic enchantments.
Lady Belda gestured one guard forward, who set a small sack of coins in her palm. She removed several silver marks, each side engraved with the royal crest consisting of the four greater house symbols: a lion’s head for the Kelbras, a curving set of horns for House Ruthar, the Vanadahls’ dual wings, and a serpent eating its own tail for House Dramara. A large silver Z for the Zuerlin royal family cut through the middle.
