This Dark Descent, page 7
ARIELLE
ARI FELT LIKE she’d been unmoored and set adrift in the ocean—weightless and without direction. She didn’t remember waiting for Damien to roll down his sleeves and strap on his guns once more. She didn’t remember walking back up the stairs, the faded sunlight too bright for eyes that had grown accustomed to the dark.
She’d watched Damien beat those men within an inch of their lives, and she had not looked away.
Not when the blood splattered his arms. Not when bone cracked. Not when her Saba’s voice asked her how she had gotten here, with him.
Monsters rarely look like monsters.
Was she a monster for not stopping him? Would he have stopped if she’d asked?
She hadn’t asked, and he hadn’t stopped, and Ari couldn’t bring herself to regret it. Not fully. Even as her stomach tilted and the sound of metal against bone reverberated in her head, she couldn’t ignore that flare of relief inside her. The knowledge that those men had gotten what they deserved and they would not harm her again.
She couldn’t ignore that she felt safe for the first time in a long time.
And so it was when the corridor flooded with Anthir, a stern, fair-skinned young man at their lead, she shook her head at Mikira’s wide-eyed stare.
Say nothing, she willed her.
Damien put his back to the door they’d just exited, his jacket slung over one shoulder. Whatever surprise he felt at seeing the constables was buried beneath a practiced mask.
“Sergeant,” he greeted. “Is there a problem?”
The sergeant bowed—barely. “My apologies, Lord Adair,” he said, not sounding sorry at all. “We received a report claiming that you were seen abducting these men who work for the Kelbras.”
He held out pictures of the two men who’d attacked her. One short and square-faced, the other lean with a jagged nose. “Do you know why someone might have said such a thing?”
Ari had to force herself not to look at the door behind Damien. To his credit, he didn’t so much as blink.
“Not in the slightest,” he replied smoothly. “As I’m sure you know, my family is old friends with Inspector Elrihan and a dedicated supporter of the Anthir.”
The sergeant’s lips curled in distaste. “Yes of course. I wouldn’t dare to insinuate. But neither can I simply dismiss such claims, you understand.”
“Of course.” Damien’s voice was light, but the Adair guard holding the Sherakin shotgun fell into line at his back. The constables responded by reaching for their enchanted batons.
Mikira shifted, her nervousness nearly as tangible. Ari willed her to stay still. All it took was a noise from the men downstairs, or the wrong turn of a head, and the Anthir might realize just how close they were to the truth.
The blood.
As though the thought drew him to it, the sergeant’s gaze fell on Damien’s red-stained sleeve. “Are you wounded, Lord Adair?” he asked with hollow concern.
Ari acted before she could think. She drove her palm into the point of her Saba’s necklace hard enough to draw blood and tugged it free with her other hand, tearing the skin open with a sharp burst of pain.
“That’s from me.” She held out her wounded hand. “Damien was inspecting it before you showed up, and if you don’t mind, I’d like to get it tended to sometime today.”
Visible annoyance flicked across the sergeant’s face. “I see. My apologies, my lady.” He inclined his head to Damien, adding begrudgingly, “I’m sure this was all just a misunderstanding. Please accept my apologies, Lord Adair.”
“Of course,” Damien replied. “Though I didn’t quite catch your name, Sergeant.”
The sergeant paused mid-turn. “Jac Eedren, my lord.”
Mikira stiffened in recognition at the name, and it brought something of a smile to Damien’s lips. “My family recently made a sizeable donation to a hospital with a Mr. Eedren in residence. A relation of yours?”
“My father.” Jac’s face had gone pale, the threat received. The Anthir’s job was to enforce the law, but they never would have dared question a member of another noble house this way without solid proof, which meant someone had sent them. Someone whose reach with the Anthir went farther than House Adair’s.
Ari could practically see Damien recording the slight, a notation in his mental ledger. Jac’s only saving grace was that they hadn’t brought any enchanted animals with them. A bird charmed to detect lies or a hound to track scents would have been far more than a slight.
It’d be an attack, and Damien’s response would not have been a simple threat.
Damien adjusted the cuff of his sleeve. “You may go, Sergeant Eedren.”
The sergeant performed a hasty bow, then scrambled from the corridor, his compatriots a step behind.
“How did you know that?” Mikira blurted out once they’d gone. “That guard at the ball—they have the same family name.”
“If you’re going to make an enemy of someone, you best know everything about them,” Damien replied, and Ari didn’t miss the warning underneath.
Something clicked into place in Mikira’s expression. “Rezek sent them.”
“I don’t imagine he likes the idea of us working together.” Damien turned back for his room. “This won’t be his last move.”
* * *
ARI SAT STILL as a bird on the chaise as Reid meticulously bandaged her hand with a skill that bespoke training. She still wondered at herself over what she’d done. Involving herself like that—it went against everything her parents had taught her to do in such precarious situations. But Damien had been threatened because of something he’d done to protect her. The least she could do was return the favor, even if she didn’t understand why he’d done it in the first place.
With the Anthir gone, they’d gathered around the book-strewn table before a crackling peat fire. Thick gray clouds had filled the sky, and several enchanted lamps burned along the perimeter of the room.
Mikira kept glancing outside. She looked anxious, like an animal backed into a corner.
“Do you have something you want to say, Miss Rusel?” Damien asked from his position by the fire.
“Mikira,” she corrected him with a shudder. “Did you take those men?”
Damien regarded her with an unreadable look. “I didn’t, no.”
But your people did. Ari could practically see him stepping around the question. It was like watching a chess game unfold; he always thought several moves ahead.
“Would it bother you if I had?” he asked. “They’re Kelbra men.”
Mikira’s jaw set, the nervous shaking of her leg ceasing. “That doesn’t make it right. People can’t just take people off the street.”
“Apparently they can.” Reid tied off the last of Ari’s bandage and released her hand. “Good riddance to them.”
Mikira cast him a narrow-eyed glance but didn’t respond. Instead, she started for the door. “I have work to do at the ranch. I’ll be back in the morning.”
Ari debated if she should follow, but in truth, she didn’t want to be alone right now. The events of the day had left her feeling swept away. Instead, she watched as Damien took apart and cleaned his revolvers, and Reid hunched over the microscope at the desk, making notations in his journal. She half expected them to ask her to leave, but they absorbed her presence without so much as a batted eye, and she wondered if this too was a move on Damien’s part, a carefully calculated decision to make her feel more comfortable.
“What will you do with those men?” she asked, thinking of the Anthir sergeant.
Damien looked up from carefully wiping down the outside of a revolver. “I’ll let them go in the morning.”
The thought of them being on the street again where they could hurt her made Ari’s chest tighten, but what had she expected? For him to keep them imprisoned forever?
Damien’s sharp eyes missed none of her reaction, and he set the gun down on the cloth laid out before him. “They won’t come near you again. You’re under my protection now. You’re safe.”
Safe. She almost laughed at the thought. She hadn’t been safe since the day she fled her home with nothing but the clothes on her back and a book she couldn’t be rid of no matter how hard she tried.
“From them, perhaps,” she said. “But you won’t be the last to figure out I’m unlicensed. The Anthir will come for me eventually.”
“If you’re referring to the enchant dealer I spoke of, he won’t be a problem.” Damien picked up his whiskey. “We’ll make sure he understands his discretion is appreciated.”
She shivered but didn’t protest. Her gaze shifted to the dismantled guns. She wanted to be able to protect herself, to not have to depend on the Adair name to shield her. She was tired of relying on other people, of bending herself to their whims. Perhaps Damien wasn’t like the haughty nobles who’d sneered down at her, but he still wielded immense power, and she did not.
She was going to change that.
A servant knocked and entered. “Lord Adair, the materials you requested have arrived.”
“You can put them in the study,” Damien replied.
Reid’s head snapped up as workers began carrying in barrels of dirt and water to the open door to his left. “You’re putting her in my workshop?”
“Mikira will see if she’s out here, and I’m not shutting her in some faraway room. Besides, you only ever use my desk.”
“The light in here is better!”
“Then what are you complaining about?”
Reid muttered something unintelligible in response and rose to follow the workers, his annoyed instructions floating out from the other room. Damien had told her that Reid knew the truth of her powers, but it still made her uneasy to hear them discussed so openly.
By the time the last of the materials had been delivered, Reid was pale-faced and overwhelmed. He sunk onto the chaise with the world’s largest teacup and his cat in his lap. “There’s dirt on my floor,” he grumbled at them. “Dirt.”
“We’ll leave you to grieve in peace.” Damien invited her toward the room with a nod. She followed him inside, where the workers had organized the materials into sections: dirt and water for the golem, verillion for the magic, and powdered gemstones to bind the spells. The room itself was spacious, with a built-in desk along an entire wall hung with anatomical diagrams and landscape sketches. The bookcases on the opposite wall were a neatly organized assortment of glass tea containers, scientific equipment, and tomes thicker than her fist.
Another door led to what looked like Reid’s bedroom, now nearly blocked by the barrels of dirt.
“Do you have everything you need?” Damien asked.
“I think so.” She dragged forth a stack of buckets. “I’ll need to make the clay first.”
Damien had changed into fresh clothes after the Anthir left—a silver waistcoat over a white shirt—and he removed the waistcoat now and rolled up his sleeves. “If you tell me what to do, I can help you.”
She instructed him on the ratio of water to dirt and the means of mixing, after which the buckets would be left to sit to allow the clay to separate from the sediments in the dirt. They worked alongside each other in silence for some time, Ari being careful of her injured hand as they prepared bucket after bucket.
“Will you build the horse and then bind the enchantments or bind them to the clay before crafting it?” he asked as they neared the last of the buckets. He had mud splattered on his white shirt and caked along his forearms that stood in stark incongruence with his neatly styled hair and fine clothes.
“I’ll fold the verillion and gemstones into the clay, then build the horse and bind the enchantments before bringing it to life,” she replied, each word stranger on her tongue than the last. She’d never talked about creating golems with anyone before. It was a task she did alone in her workshop, with the knowledge that should anyone discover her, it would mean her life.
Damien held a small jug underwater in a barrel until it filled and then carried it to his bucket of dirt. “It’s a crime how little of this art remains.” He poured the water into the bucket, then used the mixing stick to stir it, the muscles in his forearms flexing. “I wish I could have seen it at its peak.”
Ari stilled in stirring her own bucket. To build a golem was not so different from enchanting a living animal, merely a different application of the same magic, and yet it was condemned and driven into obscurity because a kingdom with power sought to possess one without.
“I’ve never understood why the Enderlish hated it so,” she said. “Why they hated us.”
“They saw it as a threat,” Damien replied. “Golems kept the Enderlish army at bay for years before they finally broke through. The day the Enderlish flag rose above the Kinnish royal palace, the first thing they did was crack down on Kinnish magic. Before long the Sendian Church was calling it an abomination, a perversion of Sendia’s gift to humanity.”
“The Harbingers brought magic to humanity, not Sendia.” She might not know much about her own religion, but she knew that. Even the Enderlish agreed on that point, though they believed the Goddess Sendia sent them. In the Kinnish religion, there was no goddess, only the Harbingers. “Their religion stemmed from ours, didn’t it? How can they turn around and call us a perversion?”
Damien scraped the mixing stick along the edge of the bucket, then set the mixture aside among the rows of others. “You can do a lot of things when you’re backed by an army of that size. This continent had never seen anything like it before or since. If the Cataclysm hadn’t wiped out so many Enderlish troops, the Eternal War would have been over years ago, but Enderlain still hasn’t quite recovered.”
Most of that army was now in Celair, half made of conscripted farmers and shopkeepers. She’d heard whispers that the Council of Lords kept the real soldiers in the castle barracks and garrison towns throughout Enderlain, sending those they saw as expendable to die on the front lines. It wasn’t the level of the invasion of Kinahara, but it was enough to disrupt an entire kingdom.
Ari moved her bucket over to join the others. “How do you know all of this?” It was the sort of information she’d craved for years, but never had access to.
“My mother was a historian, and I take a particular interest in history,” Damien replied as he secured another bucket and filled it with dirt. “I also collect old books on the subject. You’re welcome to them any time, though for Reid’s sake, I have to ask that you be careful not to get clay on them. He can only take so much.”
A smile pulled at her lips. “Do you believe, then? In the Harbingers?”
“I put my faith in things I can see and feel.” Her disappointment must have showed on her face, because he added, “But I have books on Kinnism too, including an Arkala, and people who would be happy to discuss them with you, should you want that.”
She wasn’t sure yet what she wanted. There was far more to her culture and religion than belief and prayer, though those were two of the central tenets. Damien clearly excelled in another: the practice of study. Kinnism placed a high value on learning and using that knowledge to better the world, as the Harbingers had for humanity.
Ari was aware of those things, but that was as deep as her knowledge went. Everything she did know was only a reminder of something else she that didn’t—she could craft golems, but lacked the understanding of their past and purpose, knew the importance of community to her people, but had never experienced what it meant. Her culture was like a piecemeal tapestry cloistered away in a dark room, sewn together with stolen books and whispers overheard when her parents thought her asleep.
Her family had even lived outside their town’s edah, the community square central to all Kinnish towns. Because of all that, she’d never felt properly Kinnish. So much of her history, her culture, her people’s religion, had been kept from her by her parents. She had only the smallest pieces, a thin thread connecting her to another life that she wanted, more than anything, to know more about.
“I think I’d just like to start with the books,” she said at last, and he nodded.
Ari dragged over the last bucket and surveyed the lot of them. “Do you think we’ll ever go back?” she asked. “To Kinahara.”
When the Heretics’ magic erupted across the island, it did more than destroy buildings and take lives. It settled in the animals and trees, the water and the earth, a blanket of magic so thick it could suffocate. People near the epicenter of the explosion died from exposure mere hours later, rotted away from the inside as if from a verillion addiction. The stories she’d heard said that to this day, even minutes on the island were enough to sign your death warrant.
Damien came to stand beside her, and she found his nearness to be a comfort, though his words were cold. “No,” he said softly. “I think it’s gone forever.”
CHAPTER 9
MIKIRA
MIKIRA WAS FLYING.
She forgot the worries weighing her down like saddlebags, forgot their dangerous plan and the even more dangerous man she was in league with. The world fell away as Eilora barreled down the track, the wind pulling at her hair, the heavy thud of the horse’s hooves a steady rhythm that matched the racing beat of her heart.
Then they turned the last corner, and Mikira gave the mare her head, putting on a final burst of speed as they crossed the finish line. Eilora slowed and the dream fell away, nothing but a beautiful illusion. Each of her worries latched back into place like leeches thirsting for her blood, refusing to be shaken loose—her father’s predicament, the worried looks Nelda and Ailene couldn’t hide when she left each morning, the looming competition.
She led Eilora in loping circles, letting both of them catch their breath. It was the third run they’d done that morning, Eilora’s second enchantment for endurance lending her extra energy. Not many charms paired well with endurance during breeding, but docility was one of the rare few that wasn’t overridden by it.
“Not bad,” Reid called from where he leaned over the fence. Widget, his cat, sat on his shoulder like a small crow.
Mikira nudged Eilora toward him. “Are you feeling okay? That almost sounded like a compliment.”
ARI FELT LIKE she’d been unmoored and set adrift in the ocean—weightless and without direction. She didn’t remember waiting for Damien to roll down his sleeves and strap on his guns once more. She didn’t remember walking back up the stairs, the faded sunlight too bright for eyes that had grown accustomed to the dark.
She’d watched Damien beat those men within an inch of their lives, and she had not looked away.
Not when the blood splattered his arms. Not when bone cracked. Not when her Saba’s voice asked her how she had gotten here, with him.
Monsters rarely look like monsters.
Was she a monster for not stopping him? Would he have stopped if she’d asked?
She hadn’t asked, and he hadn’t stopped, and Ari couldn’t bring herself to regret it. Not fully. Even as her stomach tilted and the sound of metal against bone reverberated in her head, she couldn’t ignore that flare of relief inside her. The knowledge that those men had gotten what they deserved and they would not harm her again.
She couldn’t ignore that she felt safe for the first time in a long time.
And so it was when the corridor flooded with Anthir, a stern, fair-skinned young man at their lead, she shook her head at Mikira’s wide-eyed stare.
Say nothing, she willed her.
Damien put his back to the door they’d just exited, his jacket slung over one shoulder. Whatever surprise he felt at seeing the constables was buried beneath a practiced mask.
“Sergeant,” he greeted. “Is there a problem?”
The sergeant bowed—barely. “My apologies, Lord Adair,” he said, not sounding sorry at all. “We received a report claiming that you were seen abducting these men who work for the Kelbras.”
He held out pictures of the two men who’d attacked her. One short and square-faced, the other lean with a jagged nose. “Do you know why someone might have said such a thing?”
Ari had to force herself not to look at the door behind Damien. To his credit, he didn’t so much as blink.
“Not in the slightest,” he replied smoothly. “As I’m sure you know, my family is old friends with Inspector Elrihan and a dedicated supporter of the Anthir.”
The sergeant’s lips curled in distaste. “Yes of course. I wouldn’t dare to insinuate. But neither can I simply dismiss such claims, you understand.”
“Of course.” Damien’s voice was light, but the Adair guard holding the Sherakin shotgun fell into line at his back. The constables responded by reaching for their enchanted batons.
Mikira shifted, her nervousness nearly as tangible. Ari willed her to stay still. All it took was a noise from the men downstairs, or the wrong turn of a head, and the Anthir might realize just how close they were to the truth.
The blood.
As though the thought drew him to it, the sergeant’s gaze fell on Damien’s red-stained sleeve. “Are you wounded, Lord Adair?” he asked with hollow concern.
Ari acted before she could think. She drove her palm into the point of her Saba’s necklace hard enough to draw blood and tugged it free with her other hand, tearing the skin open with a sharp burst of pain.
“That’s from me.” She held out her wounded hand. “Damien was inspecting it before you showed up, and if you don’t mind, I’d like to get it tended to sometime today.”
Visible annoyance flicked across the sergeant’s face. “I see. My apologies, my lady.” He inclined his head to Damien, adding begrudgingly, “I’m sure this was all just a misunderstanding. Please accept my apologies, Lord Adair.”
“Of course,” Damien replied. “Though I didn’t quite catch your name, Sergeant.”
The sergeant paused mid-turn. “Jac Eedren, my lord.”
Mikira stiffened in recognition at the name, and it brought something of a smile to Damien’s lips. “My family recently made a sizeable donation to a hospital with a Mr. Eedren in residence. A relation of yours?”
“My father.” Jac’s face had gone pale, the threat received. The Anthir’s job was to enforce the law, but they never would have dared question a member of another noble house this way without solid proof, which meant someone had sent them. Someone whose reach with the Anthir went farther than House Adair’s.
Ari could practically see Damien recording the slight, a notation in his mental ledger. Jac’s only saving grace was that they hadn’t brought any enchanted animals with them. A bird charmed to detect lies or a hound to track scents would have been far more than a slight.
It’d be an attack, and Damien’s response would not have been a simple threat.
Damien adjusted the cuff of his sleeve. “You may go, Sergeant Eedren.”
The sergeant performed a hasty bow, then scrambled from the corridor, his compatriots a step behind.
“How did you know that?” Mikira blurted out once they’d gone. “That guard at the ball—they have the same family name.”
“If you’re going to make an enemy of someone, you best know everything about them,” Damien replied, and Ari didn’t miss the warning underneath.
Something clicked into place in Mikira’s expression. “Rezek sent them.”
“I don’t imagine he likes the idea of us working together.” Damien turned back for his room. “This won’t be his last move.”
* * *
ARI SAT STILL as a bird on the chaise as Reid meticulously bandaged her hand with a skill that bespoke training. She still wondered at herself over what she’d done. Involving herself like that—it went against everything her parents had taught her to do in such precarious situations. But Damien had been threatened because of something he’d done to protect her. The least she could do was return the favor, even if she didn’t understand why he’d done it in the first place.
With the Anthir gone, they’d gathered around the book-strewn table before a crackling peat fire. Thick gray clouds had filled the sky, and several enchanted lamps burned along the perimeter of the room.
Mikira kept glancing outside. She looked anxious, like an animal backed into a corner.
“Do you have something you want to say, Miss Rusel?” Damien asked from his position by the fire.
“Mikira,” she corrected him with a shudder. “Did you take those men?”
Damien regarded her with an unreadable look. “I didn’t, no.”
But your people did. Ari could practically see him stepping around the question. It was like watching a chess game unfold; he always thought several moves ahead.
“Would it bother you if I had?” he asked. “They’re Kelbra men.”
Mikira’s jaw set, the nervous shaking of her leg ceasing. “That doesn’t make it right. People can’t just take people off the street.”
“Apparently they can.” Reid tied off the last of Ari’s bandage and released her hand. “Good riddance to them.”
Mikira cast him a narrow-eyed glance but didn’t respond. Instead, she started for the door. “I have work to do at the ranch. I’ll be back in the morning.”
Ari debated if she should follow, but in truth, she didn’t want to be alone right now. The events of the day had left her feeling swept away. Instead, she watched as Damien took apart and cleaned his revolvers, and Reid hunched over the microscope at the desk, making notations in his journal. She half expected them to ask her to leave, but they absorbed her presence without so much as a batted eye, and she wondered if this too was a move on Damien’s part, a carefully calculated decision to make her feel more comfortable.
“What will you do with those men?” she asked, thinking of the Anthir sergeant.
Damien looked up from carefully wiping down the outside of a revolver. “I’ll let them go in the morning.”
The thought of them being on the street again where they could hurt her made Ari’s chest tighten, but what had she expected? For him to keep them imprisoned forever?
Damien’s sharp eyes missed none of her reaction, and he set the gun down on the cloth laid out before him. “They won’t come near you again. You’re under my protection now. You’re safe.”
Safe. She almost laughed at the thought. She hadn’t been safe since the day she fled her home with nothing but the clothes on her back and a book she couldn’t be rid of no matter how hard she tried.
“From them, perhaps,” she said. “But you won’t be the last to figure out I’m unlicensed. The Anthir will come for me eventually.”
“If you’re referring to the enchant dealer I spoke of, he won’t be a problem.” Damien picked up his whiskey. “We’ll make sure he understands his discretion is appreciated.”
She shivered but didn’t protest. Her gaze shifted to the dismantled guns. She wanted to be able to protect herself, to not have to depend on the Adair name to shield her. She was tired of relying on other people, of bending herself to their whims. Perhaps Damien wasn’t like the haughty nobles who’d sneered down at her, but he still wielded immense power, and she did not.
She was going to change that.
A servant knocked and entered. “Lord Adair, the materials you requested have arrived.”
“You can put them in the study,” Damien replied.
Reid’s head snapped up as workers began carrying in barrels of dirt and water to the open door to his left. “You’re putting her in my workshop?”
“Mikira will see if she’s out here, and I’m not shutting her in some faraway room. Besides, you only ever use my desk.”
“The light in here is better!”
“Then what are you complaining about?”
Reid muttered something unintelligible in response and rose to follow the workers, his annoyed instructions floating out from the other room. Damien had told her that Reid knew the truth of her powers, but it still made her uneasy to hear them discussed so openly.
By the time the last of the materials had been delivered, Reid was pale-faced and overwhelmed. He sunk onto the chaise with the world’s largest teacup and his cat in his lap. “There’s dirt on my floor,” he grumbled at them. “Dirt.”
“We’ll leave you to grieve in peace.” Damien invited her toward the room with a nod. She followed him inside, where the workers had organized the materials into sections: dirt and water for the golem, verillion for the magic, and powdered gemstones to bind the spells. The room itself was spacious, with a built-in desk along an entire wall hung with anatomical diagrams and landscape sketches. The bookcases on the opposite wall were a neatly organized assortment of glass tea containers, scientific equipment, and tomes thicker than her fist.
Another door led to what looked like Reid’s bedroom, now nearly blocked by the barrels of dirt.
“Do you have everything you need?” Damien asked.
“I think so.” She dragged forth a stack of buckets. “I’ll need to make the clay first.”
Damien had changed into fresh clothes after the Anthir left—a silver waistcoat over a white shirt—and he removed the waistcoat now and rolled up his sleeves. “If you tell me what to do, I can help you.”
She instructed him on the ratio of water to dirt and the means of mixing, after which the buckets would be left to sit to allow the clay to separate from the sediments in the dirt. They worked alongside each other in silence for some time, Ari being careful of her injured hand as they prepared bucket after bucket.
“Will you build the horse and then bind the enchantments or bind them to the clay before crafting it?” he asked as they neared the last of the buckets. He had mud splattered on his white shirt and caked along his forearms that stood in stark incongruence with his neatly styled hair and fine clothes.
“I’ll fold the verillion and gemstones into the clay, then build the horse and bind the enchantments before bringing it to life,” she replied, each word stranger on her tongue than the last. She’d never talked about creating golems with anyone before. It was a task she did alone in her workshop, with the knowledge that should anyone discover her, it would mean her life.
Damien held a small jug underwater in a barrel until it filled and then carried it to his bucket of dirt. “It’s a crime how little of this art remains.” He poured the water into the bucket, then used the mixing stick to stir it, the muscles in his forearms flexing. “I wish I could have seen it at its peak.”
Ari stilled in stirring her own bucket. To build a golem was not so different from enchanting a living animal, merely a different application of the same magic, and yet it was condemned and driven into obscurity because a kingdom with power sought to possess one without.
“I’ve never understood why the Enderlish hated it so,” she said. “Why they hated us.”
“They saw it as a threat,” Damien replied. “Golems kept the Enderlish army at bay for years before they finally broke through. The day the Enderlish flag rose above the Kinnish royal palace, the first thing they did was crack down on Kinnish magic. Before long the Sendian Church was calling it an abomination, a perversion of Sendia’s gift to humanity.”
“The Harbingers brought magic to humanity, not Sendia.” She might not know much about her own religion, but she knew that. Even the Enderlish agreed on that point, though they believed the Goddess Sendia sent them. In the Kinnish religion, there was no goddess, only the Harbingers. “Their religion stemmed from ours, didn’t it? How can they turn around and call us a perversion?”
Damien scraped the mixing stick along the edge of the bucket, then set the mixture aside among the rows of others. “You can do a lot of things when you’re backed by an army of that size. This continent had never seen anything like it before or since. If the Cataclysm hadn’t wiped out so many Enderlish troops, the Eternal War would have been over years ago, but Enderlain still hasn’t quite recovered.”
Most of that army was now in Celair, half made of conscripted farmers and shopkeepers. She’d heard whispers that the Council of Lords kept the real soldiers in the castle barracks and garrison towns throughout Enderlain, sending those they saw as expendable to die on the front lines. It wasn’t the level of the invasion of Kinahara, but it was enough to disrupt an entire kingdom.
Ari moved her bucket over to join the others. “How do you know all of this?” It was the sort of information she’d craved for years, but never had access to.
“My mother was a historian, and I take a particular interest in history,” Damien replied as he secured another bucket and filled it with dirt. “I also collect old books on the subject. You’re welcome to them any time, though for Reid’s sake, I have to ask that you be careful not to get clay on them. He can only take so much.”
A smile pulled at her lips. “Do you believe, then? In the Harbingers?”
“I put my faith in things I can see and feel.” Her disappointment must have showed on her face, because he added, “But I have books on Kinnism too, including an Arkala, and people who would be happy to discuss them with you, should you want that.”
She wasn’t sure yet what she wanted. There was far more to her culture and religion than belief and prayer, though those were two of the central tenets. Damien clearly excelled in another: the practice of study. Kinnism placed a high value on learning and using that knowledge to better the world, as the Harbingers had for humanity.
Ari was aware of those things, but that was as deep as her knowledge went. Everything she did know was only a reminder of something else she that didn’t—she could craft golems, but lacked the understanding of their past and purpose, knew the importance of community to her people, but had never experienced what it meant. Her culture was like a piecemeal tapestry cloistered away in a dark room, sewn together with stolen books and whispers overheard when her parents thought her asleep.
Her family had even lived outside their town’s edah, the community square central to all Kinnish towns. Because of all that, she’d never felt properly Kinnish. So much of her history, her culture, her people’s religion, had been kept from her by her parents. She had only the smallest pieces, a thin thread connecting her to another life that she wanted, more than anything, to know more about.
“I think I’d just like to start with the books,” she said at last, and he nodded.
Ari dragged over the last bucket and surveyed the lot of them. “Do you think we’ll ever go back?” she asked. “To Kinahara.”
When the Heretics’ magic erupted across the island, it did more than destroy buildings and take lives. It settled in the animals and trees, the water and the earth, a blanket of magic so thick it could suffocate. People near the epicenter of the explosion died from exposure mere hours later, rotted away from the inside as if from a verillion addiction. The stories she’d heard said that to this day, even minutes on the island were enough to sign your death warrant.
Damien came to stand beside her, and she found his nearness to be a comfort, though his words were cold. “No,” he said softly. “I think it’s gone forever.”
CHAPTER 9
MIKIRA
MIKIRA WAS FLYING.
She forgot the worries weighing her down like saddlebags, forgot their dangerous plan and the even more dangerous man she was in league with. The world fell away as Eilora barreled down the track, the wind pulling at her hair, the heavy thud of the horse’s hooves a steady rhythm that matched the racing beat of her heart.
Then they turned the last corner, and Mikira gave the mare her head, putting on a final burst of speed as they crossed the finish line. Eilora slowed and the dream fell away, nothing but a beautiful illusion. Each of her worries latched back into place like leeches thirsting for her blood, refusing to be shaken loose—her father’s predicament, the worried looks Nelda and Ailene couldn’t hide when she left each morning, the looming competition.
She led Eilora in loping circles, letting both of them catch their breath. It was the third run they’d done that morning, Eilora’s second enchantment for endurance lending her extra energy. Not many charms paired well with endurance during breeding, but docility was one of the rare few that wasn’t overridden by it.
“Not bad,” Reid called from where he leaned over the fence. Widget, his cat, sat on his shoulder like a small crow.
Mikira nudged Eilora toward him. “Are you feeling okay? That almost sounded like a compliment.”
