The Past's Skybound Bane (The War Eternal's Ashes Book 2), page 20
“You’re either an idiot or a very brave fiend-worshipper, to go digging where you aren’t wanted with this damn creature in tow,” the grey-clad man spat, glancing at Raine. “In that basement, my people performed the greatest magic that’s been done in two hundred cycles.”
“Magic?” Sanen gasped. “Firebrand’s tears, is that what killed all these people? Why would anyone do this?”
The agent sneered. “Not that you’ll ever get to tell anyone, but our goal is nothing less than to raise a new sun into the skies! The cost will be high, but nobody important will be paying it.”
“How ruthless.” Sanen’s impressed tone was tinged with a clear edge of fear, but Raine still failed to smell anything but an almost Gigant-like fury underneath his façade. The Antiquarian was perpetrating some unknown duplicity against their foe. “What do you mean by ‘nobody important’?”
The agent grinned, encouraged by Sanen’s worried tone. “Just some worthless rebels and the filth that spawned them.”
Sanen’s features no longer showed fear, but cold judgement. “The Zathon-followers. And the refugees in the south, at the Void’s edge.”
“So you know something after all.” The grey-clad man’s expression soured. “What are you, some Risker with too much courage and not enough sense?”
“Just a man finally doing his job.” All pretense of fear was gone from Sanen. His quiet voice held equal parts self-deprecation and resolve. “No chance you’d tell me where your people are hiding near that campground?”
“It’s too late anyway. A messenger is on the way to our nearest headquarters with your descriptions. There’s nowhere you can hide from us in the Phoenix Empire… and those wastes of breath to the south of Laventon will be dead even sooner, long before you can reach them to do anything about it.” The agent sneered. “Now call off your pet, and I might have my allies spare you.”
“Pet?” Raine bristled.
“Yeah, you, you overgrown ox,” he spat. “I’ll enjoy seeing you beg for your life, after what you did to my hand!”
“That was unwise,” Sanen drawled. “You risk a great deal by annoying a Gigant, especially one you’ve fired a weapon at.”
“I know you goody-two-shoes types. You wouldn’t really let her—“
Raine curled a finger against her thumb and flicked the man across the side of the head. His eyes rolled back.
Sanen raised an eyebrow. “If he dies, we lose our only witness.”
“I care naught for witnesses… but if this man is of value to thee, then I shall restrain my hand in future.” Raine frowned. “Clearly thou hast thy uses, Antiquarian. How didst thou know he would boast?”
“Because he’s right.” Sanen’s shoulders sagged, and he subsided against the bottom half of the wall Raine had demolished. “The refugee camp he referred to is a week’s travel and more to the southwest. There’s no way we’ll get there in time to use the information. It’s all up to Alina now.”
“We shall see about that.” Raine bared her teeth and ripped the bolt from the wall and through the unconscious Syndicate agent’s hand, then slung the insensate man onto her shoulder. She rose, and before Sanen could further embarrass himself with his misgivings, she picked him up by the waist with one hand. He began to shout something, but became silent when Raine leapt the buildings of Tiller’s Green and landed back on the trail to Risingtown.
Raine glanced down at the Antiquarian, and saw that he had fainted. More swift accelerations and stops would do harm to his delicate constitution. With a growl, she fought off an unfamiliar discomfort. On her next leaping bound she restrained herself to half the distance and height, though she was still travelling many times the pace of a running human as she sped away southwest. She wasn’t sure why Sanen’s discomfort mattered to her: to find Alina, she only needed him alive, not happy.
Gag’ga dagros. When all this was done, how glad she would be to be free of these humans and their frailties!
Chapter Thirteen
Morning sunlight was just beginning to stream in through the window of Alina’s and Emerald’s room when a knock at the door woke the Dead wanderer from a fitful slumber full of faceless women with grasping hands.
With the remnants of the half-remembered nightmare clearing from her mind, Alina rose from the four-poster bed. Crossing to the armoire beside it, she pulled on a familiar red-and-brown robe to cover her nakedness. The garment was a little large— her vessel the last time she’d slept in this bed had been taller, with broader shoulders— but with a sash cinched around its waist the robe served her purpose.
From beneath the covers, Emerald watched with interest. “Who do you suppose it is, Maerisrei? More admirers?”
Alina opened the door.
Jayde stood in the doorway with her arms crossed. “Good morning.”
Alina assessed the chill in Jayde’s expression. “It seems that wishing me well is the last thing on your mind.”
“I’ve questions.”
“Come in. I’ll answer as best I can.”
Jayde walked into the bedchamber, taking in the hardwood wardrobes, the heavy red-and-brown rug in the centre of the room, the stool which rested in front of an expansive dresser with a large mirror built into it, and the luxurious bed in which Emerald still lounged under the down comforter. “I haven’t been in this room before. It’s normally kept locked.”
“Unnecessary. It could have been converted: I am not often sentimental.”
“Speak for yourself, Maerisrei.“ Emerald’s teasing smile brightened the room, the sunlight reflecting unnaturally brightly from her perfect teeth. “After a hundred cycles sealed away, and another century of wandering, I would have been rather put out if my dresser had been repurposed before I could get any proper use out of it.”
“What was all that about yesterday?” Jayde demanded. “That painting was dear to many of us, and you practically blew my eardrums out with… whatever you did to it. I think I’m owed an explanation.”
“Swear to me that you will repeat none of what I say.”
Jayde’s eyebrows snapped together. “You should know better than to ask that of a scholar.”
“Then you’ll receive no explanation.”
After a valiant attempt to stare Alina down, Jayde’s expression shifted into one of confusion. “You’re not kidding.”
“Some knowledge is, and always has been, dangerous.”
“I swear, then.”
“You swear what?”
Jayde glared. “I’m not a Fae.”
“Even so.”
“Fine. I swear I’ll repeat none of what you tell me.”
The air in the room trembled, and Jayde gave a start.
Emerald smiled, twirling something about her fingers: a colourless ribbon of some unknown material which vanished as soon as Jayde caught sight of it. “It is sworn.” The Fae’s tone carried a heavy, sultry sweetness, like honey melting on smooth taut skin.
Alina closed the room’s door with a firm click. “The other three beings in that portrait are the only unbound Fae in all the Liberated World, aside from Emerald. The rest of their kind are sealed away in the basements beneath us.”
Comprehension dawned on Jayde’s face. “No way. You mean they’re the ones whose names have been scratched out of the Book?”
“I see you’ve read some of my writing.” Alina turned her back to Jayde and stared unseeing into the wardrobe beside the bed.
“As has every consenting adult of my family.” Jayde shook her head. “Of course I’ve read your Book. Melianne wouldn’t— I mean, Emerald wouldn’t exist without the sustenance of cycles of our lives, given freely.”
“Then you understand the implications of the painting which hung in your entry hall until today.”
“Oh, hells.” Jayde’s expression grew haunted. “The Fae are living stories. And every time you mention or even think about one, you lose something. We’ve been speculating on the identities of the Faceless Women for five cycles.”
Emerald emerged from the blankets, wrapping herself in a sheet and crossing to stare wistfully into the mirror. “As much as I fear the repercussions, I can’t say I blame Jenna for keeping the painting. Those three, bound as they were to Jenna’s service, were instrumental in engineering your family’s rise to prominence. I daresay she considered them friends, even as she knew in her heart the threat they would pose when she passed away.”
Jayde’s glance at Emerald was incisive. “Are we in danger?”
“Not immediately.” Alina reached out and touched the door of her wardrobe absently, as though lost in thought. “In the long run, however, everything might be. Keeping the portrait was a reckless choice.”
“Easy for you to say,” Jayde murmured.
Alina turned to regard the Jennite, muted curiosity in her expression. “I am intrigued as to what you mean by that.”
“You’re a centuries-old being who can separate your actions from your feelings.” Jayde’s tone was tense, bordering on adversarial. “Some would envy you that power… but I think you’re pitiable.”
“Explain.”
“You’ve no right to judge Jenna for acting with her heart instead of her head. You did more to hurt her than anyone, all because you can’t handle your emotions except by hiding from them.”
Emerald turned her head, a gleam in her eyes as she watched Jayde’s and Alina’s reflections in her mirror.
Alina grew still, unnaturally so, and her breaths ceased.
“There, you’re doing it again!” Jayde was no longer making any effort to hide her anger. Her voice rose. “Yesterday you claimed to value criticism, but you won’t take my words to heart, will you? They’ll just roll off you like any other piece of unwanted information. Well, you can’t test a hypothesis with incomplete data, Alendras! What are you waiting for? Tell me what you really think!”
With visible effort, Alina met Jayde’s eyes. “I think… that you are eight and a half centuries too young to lecture me.”
“Am I? Because I’ve lived, loved, and lost more in thirty cycles than you have in the last two hundred, Tamelios!”
“I am no longer Tamelios—“
“Bullshit.“ Jayde stepped close to Alina, staring a challenge into the Dead wanderer’s eyes. “Unless your Book was as full of shite as you are today, you’ve the power to hear people’s hearts, read them like a journal’s pages. Listen to me like that, really listen!”
“You don’t know the intimacy of what you ask—“
“I don’t give a damn. Don’t think: just do it, you coward!”
Alina opened her ears to the song of the world around her, and in an instant of listening, encompassed completely the thrum of pain in Jayde’s heartstrings.
The psyche of Jenna’s great-granddaughter was utterly vulnerable, in a way Alina had never experienced before. There was no art Alina knew of which would have allowed Jayde to so completely lower the barriers around her mind. She was revealing, willingly and in their entirety, the deepest parts of her consciousness which Dead Lords had trained for centuries to seize in paltry fragments from mortals’ guarded thoughts. The trust and caring needed for Jayde to so place her truest self at another’s mercy… these spoke more deeply to Alina than any harsh words Jayde might have used to get her here.
A manipulation worthy of the Dead, Alina thought, allowing herself a moment of self-indulgent irony.
Cautiously, as though too harsh an ear might injure Jayde’s bared spirit, Alina listened deeper, to the words of the Jennite’s core. Jayde’s heart spoke of her bond with her great-grandmother Jenna: in no time at all, Alina witnessed months upon months of childhood spent learning at the old adventurer’s knee, and felt keenly Jayde’s fervent desire to grow up to be like Jenna.
A thousand gleaming facets of Jayde’s self could be heard dancing to the song of who she was: there was the Jayde who loved the science of chemistry, or alchemy as she called it; the Jayde who supported the projects of her uncles and aunts with a smile; the Jayde who once sent a burglar packing in the dead of night with a hefty bruise and a good telling-off; even the Jayde who, with a mixture of exasperation and affection, tolerated her young cousin Eita following her around like a lost duckling.
Among these and more, Alina’s attention was inexorably drawn to a flawed, shattered aspect of Jayde which sang an imperfect and beautiful song. The song was about the peaceful, gentle man Jayde had loved, the illness he’d been born with and died of, and the stillbirth of the child he’d given Jayde before he’d passed away. Her spirit sang of these things with bittersweet joy and ever-present pain.
Every last part of Jayde’s Res thrummed with the impossible strength to love despite the ache of her losses. Even Jayde’s deepest self didn’t know if she would ever again join with another in romance or passion… but her caring nature lived on as a deep yearning to lift others up from the depths of despair.
And in that instant, Alina felt Jayde’s kind and careful ear listening to Alina’s own spirit. She witnessed through the eyes of Jayde’s mind as she moved cautiously through the labyrinth of Alina’s self, making barely a thrum of Res in the silent corridors of the Dead wanderer’s heart. Despite the quiet of the music which drifted in the wake of Jayde’s passage, those dark halls responded, singing their own dismal songs. Nine centuries of struggle, suffering, and despair rose from a murmur to a pained and cataclysmic shriek which threatened to rend Alina’s mind asunder. An unbearable scream tore its way out of Alina as she realized she could no longer control herself, could not break free of her emotions: she was powerless to stop them from shaking her to pieces.
Yet she did not come undone. The pain grew no less, but as Jayde continued to move through the howling storm, and as each dark, mazelike region of Alina’s heart poured out its misery and fury, the presence of another ear to listen made the awful din somehow easier to bear.
Jayde’s compassionate presence took in the Dead wanderer’s worst qualities with an impossible warmth. She heard and held the cool self-judging voice of Alendras who carried Alina’s grief for Jenna and the bones-deep weariness of Pyke. She felt and embraced the nihilistic despair of Tamelios who had fashioned a doomsday device to either rid the world of its tyrants or to destroy it, and who had nearly achieved both. She witnessed the vitriolic self-hatred of the tyrant once named B’kosk, enduring the warlord’s self-flagellatory litany of his own crimes with the blithe acceptance of a child petting a growling bear.
And when the storm of pain and sadness and rage had passed, leaving Alina trembling in its wake, Jayde was there at the core of her, a steadying presence. Like the sun dawning on windswept islands, better things came to the surface of Alina’s spirit: her own curiosity about the world and about the hearts of humankind; her dedication to the pursuit of a correct use for her power; and most of all her love. It came to her mind’s eye in the form of a radiant Queen raising her up atop a dais in front of ten thousand howling Fae… and in the form of the soft, wonder-filled smile on Jenna’s upturned face, a face more familiar to Alina than any she herself had worn.
So beautiful were those beloved features that Alina could scarce bear to look upon them… but with the warm presence of Jayde shining on the storm-torn bedrock of Alina’s oft-ignored heart, she endured the grief, stayed vulnerable. The pain and joy of seeing Jenna again, even in a daydream, cracked the stone surface of the island in Alina’s spirit. For the first time in decades, fertile earth was revealed in which something new could grow.
Alina stood barefoot in the soft soil for a bittersweet eternity, embracing the memory of Jenna. Around them, wildflowers grew to the size of trees, towering protectively over Alina as she remembered, slowly, what it was to allow herself to feel.
“Maerisrei… maerisrei!“ Alina followed Emerald’s pleas back into reality. She found herself slumped on the floor, and Emerald kneeling across from her. “Maerisrei, come back to us.”
Alina’s face was wet with tears she didn’t remember shedding. She cupped her wife’s cheek tenderly. “I could never leave you for long, my Queen.”
With a wordless smile, Emerald helped Alina to her feet.
“Jayde, you…” Alina’s voice trembled and faltered. “You have a healer’s spirit.”
“And you’ve been fleeing from solace for far too long.” Jayde leaned on her staff as though exhausted. “I’m glad it worked: I’ve never tried that with anybody who isn’t human. You’re… not as different as I thought you’d be. There’s more to unpack— it’s like you’ve an ocean of tears drowning all but the mountaintops of your memories— but under all that, your mind is the same shape as anyone else’s.”
“Where did you learn that ability?”
Jayde smiled, a tender expression. “From great-grandma Jenna. And… from you, in a way. See, Jenna was always curious, but she never liked just learning someone else’s techniques. From your writings and those of others, she developed a new branch of magic. One a human can perform, without a Relic or Oddment and at barely any cost in Res.”
“Jenna, she…” Alina’s voice was choked with an emotion she couldn’t identify. “It has been… a long time since I last failed to compartmentalize. Why is it always Jenna’s doing, even now…?”
“She had that effect on people.” Jayde placed a comforting hand on Alina’s shoulder. “Her heart was so open, it was impossible not to reciprocate. I’ve aimed to be like her… but between my temper and my inexperience, still I fall short every day.”
“You… might be surprised to learn Jenna had a temper to match yours, once.” The waver in Alina’s voice betrayed how deeply she had needed a kind touch in that moment. “How did she craft this art?”
“Here at the House, Jenna read your books on magic and the world of the mind. Then she travelled a great deal, people-watching and studying magic. She saw the harm done by those who were hurting or afraid. From the lessons of her travels and from your accounts of the time of the Ancients, she grew convinced the root of most suffering was unmanaged fear.
