Riven, page 30
This was what he wished could last forever. For a moment, all the ugly truths he’d grappled with were gone. Henrik, Orri, Una’s control over him, the Primer, everything they promised, or threatened. None of it mattered.
But like all moments, it passed. Far, far too soon.
The sound of a throat clearing broke them apart. They both looked toward the doorway, where Askalon stood watching them with a hooded gaze, his arms folded stiffly over his chest.
“What is it, Askalon?” Fura said, her voice breathless. Crimson climbed her neck into her cheeks.
“Katrìn is asking for you.”
“Oh, of course. Thanks for telling me.” Fura stepped away from Mars, heading for the door.
“Not you, Fura. Him.” Askalon pointed at Mars.
“Me?” He couldn’t imagine what Katrìn could possibly want from him.
But as he left the temple and made his way back to the laboratory, he found out quickly enough. It was something he’d been asked to give only once before in his life, by Una.
A vial of his blood.
Twenty-Seven
Despite living in an abandoned old castle with little in the way of distractions, the next week passed quickly for Mars. After his conversation with Fura that day they discovered the Echo, he’d become invested in Katrìn’s success, which brought with it a tangled mess of hope and worries. He soon found himself taking up her coping mechanism of choice—staying busy.
He spent his mornings working in the laboratory with Katrìn, which mostly involved providing her with samples of his blood once or twice a day for her experiments so she could compare the kull in his blood with her own to isolate the variables. As she explained, there must be some difference in her blood compared to that of any other adept because of Henrik’s experiments, and if she could figure out that difference, it might be what they needed to solve this puzzle.
The rest of the time, he either spent leafing through the old Consortium books, picking out useful tips and tricks about magic, or trying to master the craft of making artifacts. Katrìn had willingly taken the time to show him how to determine his kull level, since she needed the information for her own experiments.
“Huh,” she said when she had finished the calculations. “Well, it’s not the kull level that marks the results of Henrick’s experiments. Ours is practically the same.”
“Does that matter?”
She shrugged. “If anything, it makes my job easier. Since we’re equal in power I won’t have to adjust for any differences.”
“Equal in power? I thought your kull was special.”
Katrìn made a face. “Don’t get too excited. Power is only one small piece of a person’s kull. Many adepts share the same level. There’s even an average.”
“Surely we’re above average, right?” He winked.
She smiled. “Yes, but only slightly. So don’t let it go to your head.”
“Me?” He placed a hand on his chest. “I wouldn’t dream of it. I’m the humblest person I know.”
“Right,” Katrìn snorted.
“But what makes your kull so special, then?” He stared at the paper on which she’d written the sum.
Katrìn shook her head. “No idea. That’s what we’re here to find out.”
With his kull level defined, he’d been able to craft a couple of basic artifacts, the kind he had read that all first-year Consortium adepts attempted. He’d made a keyless lockbox that would only open at his touch, a palm-size fabric ball that generated more and more heat the longer it was held, and a whistle that was supposed to be heard only by adepts. Mars didn’t quite succeed with the last one—it was so loud in his own mind when he first blew it that it had rendered him unconscious. Katrìn and Askalon had found him lying on his back with a trickle of blood coming out his nose.
“Don’t take it too hard,” Katrìn said as Askalon helped Mars to his feet. “You’re not the first adept to fail at that one. It’s more complicated magic than it looks on paper. It was exceedingly loud, though.”
“You heard it?”
She nodded. “I almost fell myself.”
“Did he?” Mars thumbed a finger at Askalon, who looked thoroughly amused by the situation.
Katrìn shook her head. “It’s silent to non-adepts, at any rate.”
Mars vowed to be careful when testing his artifacts from there on out.
The afternoons, Mars spent with Fura, the two of them practicing swordplay in the Rivna temple. It had started off as a way to pass time while Katrìn fretted over her most recent failure to find a solution to the Primer problem. But it had grown into something more, almost like lessons where they were both teacher and student. Fura taught him a little of the Rivna fighting styles, and he in turn showed her more of the combat techniques he’d honed in the shadows.
A week into their stay at Skarfell, Mars joined Katrìn in the laboratory one morning with an offer to help. At the moment, there weren’t any other artifacts in the textbooks he felt like tackling.
“If you really want to help me,” she said, making no effort to hide her annoyance at being interrupted, “you should go back in time and bring Henrik here to help me figure this stuff out.”
Mars gritted his teeth in frustration. Partly because he knew he could be of more use to her if she just gave him some direction, and partly because of his complete lack of understanding about what she was doing. Feeling ignorant and useless was not something he was used to.
“I’ll just sit here and say nothing, then.” He pulled out a chair, scraping the legs against the floor. “Think I can manage that.”
Katrìn arched an eyebrow. “Are you sure? Because I’m having my doubts.”
Mars rolled his eyes at her, then winked—and was pleased to see a smile curl across her face. In his experience, she was liable to accomplish more if she relaxed a bit. He eyed Henrik’s journal lying on the desk, curiosity getting the best of him. He’d avoided the journal, having no interest in touching anything of Henrik’s, but now he felt up to the task.
Sitting down at the desk, Mars opened the journal to the first page. As expected, it primarily concerned Katrìn’s conception, the experiments she’d endured while still in the womb, as well as her eventual birth. Having little else to do, Mars sat back and began to read. To his surprise, he soon found himself engrossed in the story.
Katrìn’s mother had been an adept belonging to the Lux kith. The Luxes had managed to secure Lena Helgadòttra at the age of nine, and by all accounts she’d been a willing adept, thereby avoiding the maiming and hobbling most coerced adepts endured. By the time she turned nineteen, Lena had apparently earned her masters’ trust, and was seemingly adored for her sweet nature.
Mars found it difficult to hide his disgust at the way Lena had been regarded by the people who had kept her in thrall. He had to wonder how much of this “likability” the Luxes saw in her was an act she put on for her own survival and protection. Rebellion came in many forms, after all.
When Lena was twenty, the Lux vane had hosted a party of wealthy foreigners from Osway for several weeks at the kith’s estate. Among these Oswayans was a young man by the name of Tanix Reinhold. Who he was exactly, whether wellborn or servant, the journal didn’t record. All that was said about him was that he and Lena shared a love affair that ended with her pregnant and him sailing back to Osway. Mars suspected that learning their adept was pregnant hadn’t gone over well with the Luxes. The consequences for Lena had been dire enough that she had used her magic to flee to Jakulvik, finding haven with Henrik and his people.
Mars wondered how much convincing it had taken for Henrik to get Lena to volunteer for his vessel experiments. Had Lena seen the potential in what he was trying to accomplish? Or did she see Henrik as nothing more than another rich person looking to take advantage of her magic? Mars suspected there was no way to know. He looked up at Katrìn, buried in some experiment. She had surely read these pages; he couldn’t guess how she must be feeling, no matter how committed she was to the cause Henrik had worked for.
From across the room, Katrìn growled again in frustration. Deciding he’d read enough, Mars stood from the desk and approached the table where she was working, then stood hovering over her. Eventually, she decided she had no choice but to look up at him. A scowl marred her pretty face. Eyeing her burn scars, Mars wondered what she thought about them, now that she knew the full story of where they’d come from—her mother saving her from that fire. Just as Katrìn saved me, he reminded himself, recalling the night of the Quiescence ball.
“This is impossible. It makes no sense.” She slapped the table, causing a pair of glass test tubes to rattle in their wooden holder.
“So you keep saying. But what exactly doesn’t make sense?” Mars motioned to the table, crowded with her notes and various empty vials that had previously held his blood and hers.
Katrìn rolled her eyes. “It’s complicated. You wouldn’t understand. Not without a solid background in chemistry.”
“Try me.”
She made a face.
Mars put his hands on his hips. “Even if I don’t understand the science of it, I might make a connection you haven’t. Or the act of telling me might trigger an idea for you.”
“Oh, all right.” She huffed once and waved at the mess across the table. “I guess I don’t need to go into detail. The problem is actually very simple. I’m trying to isolate the variable in my kull that makes me a vessel by comparing it to yours. The reactions should be different, but no matter what I do, I keep getting the same results.”
Narrowing his gaze, Mars tried his best to look as if he understood perfectly. “Is that why these two look the same?” He indicated the test tubes, both containing a liquid that wasn’t quite red and wasn’t quite purple, but some nameless shade in between.
“Precisely.” Katrìn thumped the table again. “This one held your blood and this one mine.” She indicated each test tube in turn. “If I’d gotten the formula right, the two should’ve reacted differently when I added a few drops of the Primer to it.” She indicated a vial full of a golden mixture so bright, it looked like liquid sunshine. She’d made several vials of the Primer that first day and had nearly spent them all in her experiments. Only this one and another, stowed in the secret compartment, remained.
“I see.” Mars rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
“No, you don’t. You’re just saying that. But our blood reacting the same means my theory is off, and I need to start again from the beginning.” She suddenly sank back into her chair, crushed by defeat. “I can’t make any progress until I can figure out exactly what changes Henrik’s experiments produced in me.”
Mars stared down at her, uncertain what to do or say, how to comfort her. He cleared his throat and placed a hand on her shoulder. “You’re being too hard on yourself. Maybe you should take a break, give your mind time to rest.”
Katrìn grunted. “Henrik wouldn’t have taken a break.”
“Henrik spent his whole life coming up with this stuff. You’ve been at it a week. Give yourself some grace.” Mars reached into his pocket and withdrew a palm-size ball he’d found in his room, left there by an adept long ago. “Here. It’ll take your mind off things. Maybe shake something loose.” He took a few steps back and tossed it to her.
She rolled her eyes. “What’s this made of?” She squeezed the ball, marveling at its soft texture as Mars had done when he discovered it.
“No idea. Come on, throw it here.” He held out his hands. Reluctantly, Katrìn stood and tossed it to him. He caught it easily, then volleyed it back to her.
In moments, they were enveloped in the game. There was something satisfying about it, not just the simple skill it took to catch it, but something about the ball itself, the gentle way it struck the palm, as if it longed to be held and let go again.
“Fura and I used to play like this all the time when we were little,” Katrìn said as she made a tricky catch—Mars having lobbed the ball a little too high for her.
Mars grinned back at her, although he couldn’t help the tug of envy that went through him. Even when he and Orri had played together, it had never been so simple, and never just for fun—they made games out of practicing their knife skills, a useful supplement to their training. There was an innocence to this game, though, one that made Mars feel like a kid again. Or more like the kid he might’ve been if he’d been born under different circumstances.
He was just starting to sense that Katrìn was beginning to relax when the door swung open and Fura rushed in.
She raked her gaze over the two of them, the whites of her eyes flashing. “Someone’s coming.”
“What?” Mars snatched the ball from the air. “Across the Mistgrave? How?”
“Come on.” Fura raced from the room, heading for the stairs.
In a frenzy of pounding footsteps, the three of them hurried to the top of the White Keep, stepping out onto the southern tower. A warm breeze whipped across Mars’s face as his eyes fell on Askalon, standing on the edge of the tower wall with a spyglass raised before him.
Mars joined him, glancing down at the Mistgrave. As always, the mist was impenetrable, a wall of gray so solid, the sunlight seemed to bounce off it.
But Askalon wasn’t peering down with the spyglass, but across, at the horizon, tracking something in the distance.
“Are they still there?” Fura said, coming to stand between Askalon and Mars.
Nodding, Askalon handed her the spyglass. She raised it to her eye and a moment later made a strangled noise.
“What are you seeing?” Mars squinted against the light, detecting a faint blur in the distance, some isolated storm cloud.
“Look for yourself.” Fura shoved the spyglass into his hand.
Raising it to his eye, Mars aimed at the dark spot, only to take a step back in alarm.
A small ship was sailing right for them. No, not sailing—flying. Hovering low above the Mistgrave. The skiff had no sails and no oars, no visible means of movement, save for a distinctive glow around the gunwale where the deck met the hull.
Ice. The thing was fueled by Ice.
As far as he knew no one had ever attempted something like this. If the magic failed, or if they couldn’t land before the Ice ran out, it would mean death. He tried to make out the figures sitting in the skiff, but it was too far out. For now.
“Who would be crazy enough to use Ice to make a ship fly?” Mars lowered the spyglass in shock.
“My mother,” Fura said. “Who else?”
Katrìn bumped up next to him. “What do we do?”
“There’s no telling how many people they have on that boat. . . .” Mars said.
“Do you think we can fight them off?” Fura laid her hand on his arm. “Or perhaps ambush them somehow?”
“Killing them would be a whole lot easier.” Mars could think of a dozen ways of knocking that skiff down well before it reached them. If the fall alone didn’t do the trick, the draugrs and riftworms waiting in the Mistgrave below would.
Fura grabbed his arm. “It’s my mother, Mars.”
“We might be able to capture them,” said Katrìn. “A magic trap of some kind. But where to set it?” She looked behind and around them, casting about for an idea.
“They’ll have to land down there.” Fura motioned over the edge. “We could try and fortify the door. This is a fortress, one that was protected by magic. Surely there are mechanisms to prevent invasion.”
Mars frowned. “That might work. They can’t get through the door unless—”
“They brought an adept with them.” Katrìn shook her head. “Which they surely did. A few, I’d wager, to keep that ship flying.”
Mars started to respond but broke off as something caught his eye. He raised the spyglass again and swore. “There’s a second one.”
“Another skiff?” Fura shielded her eyes.
Mars nodded. He shifted to the right, trying to get a better view with the spyglass. He scanned as far and wide as he could, but didn’t see any others. Even so, two ships’ worth of Elìn’s people would surely be more than they could handle. “How did she know we were here? Could she have known more about Henrik’s work than she let on?”
“No way to know.” Katrìn widened her stance, as if bracing for a fight. “I think our best bet is to lure them into the dorms, then barricade the doors. I can craft a seal to keep them from breaking out.”
“Oh, they’ll definitely walk right into the dorms looking for us,” Mars said sarcastically. He ran a hand over his hair, his rough skin catching on Una’s bond, tied to his braid next to Fura’s. “Maybe we can leave a trail of cookies from the door to the dorms to lure them in.”
Fura glared at him. “Okay, then, you’re the mercenary. What do we do?”
Mars sighed, dread churning in his stomach. Once again, he couldn’t see a way out of this. The best he could do was damage control. Fura would be fine; Elìn was her mother, after all, and Fura could handle herself. As for him, he couldn’t let his magic be discovered. If he could help Katrìn avoid the same fate, he would, but if his secret was exposed . . . Elìn would surely be furious to find them here, but that fate was nothing compared to what would happen if he was discovered as an adept.
Fura was right. It was time to rely on his abilities as an assassin.
He turned away from the tower’s edge, a deep calm settling over him, as if the Shadow Fox were a costume he kept tucked inside himself, to slip on whenever the need called for it. It was time to do what he did best.
The first order of business was Askalon. “What’s your story?” Mars gestured to the man. “Are you with us on this?”
Askalon stared back at him, his expression stony. “I’ll do whatever is necessary to keep Fura safe. I gave her my bond.”
Mars didn’t like the practiced nature of his answer, but Fura didn’t give him time to probe further.
