Eight Will Fall, page 2
As in every shop she’d been in before, small luminite trinkets were strung along the edges of the ceiling. The shopkeeper must have paid a small fortune for them. She thought of the Empath boy who regularly peddled fake luminite trinkets in the market, wondering if these were fake too.
Beneath the trinkets, a woman and a young girl in an embroidered dress browsed shelves stuffed with sugar-glazed pastries and imported candies. The woman’s eyes kept darting over her shoulder.
She’s used to guards, Larkin thought. How wonderful it must be to find comfort in those polished suits of armor.
Larkin was only able to glimpse at the shelves before the shop owner, dressed in a crisp linen tunic and leather apron, strode over to her. She felt the sensation of mud dribbling down her skin. Disgust. Her unkemptness disgusted him. Larkin stared back, forcing herself not to swipe at the dust on her cheeks.
“Can I help you?”
“I have twenty-four marks.” She proceeded to rattle off everything she wanted, allowing him to do the math for the cuts of meat and pounds of flour. The man busied himself, scurrying about to fulfill her request.
Larkin stood by the counter and waited, the child behind her chattering with glee as she and her mother made decisions on sweet rolls and toffee. Every so often, the shop owner glanced at Larkin, but his indulgent smile was laced with the kind of suspicion that made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end.
She met his smile, widening her eyes innocently.
The shop owner returned with her requested items. “Twenty-two marks.”
Larkin emptied her purse into her palm, counting out coins as he wrapped her cut of salted meat. As she held the marks out, he stalled, studying her hand.
Black clay crusted over the fresh scab on her knuckle, black clay beneath her fingernails. Black clay lined her palms like roads on a map. Only Empath miners burrowed deep enough to hit black clay.
His suspicion intensified, and hate sparked on Larkin’s tongue and scorched her throat like molten ore. But the shopkeeper’s calm face didn’t betray his hatred, which told Larkin one thing: He was used to turning down Empaths like her.
“Take your coin to the shop down the road,” he said flatly. “They’ll serve you.”
Larkin wouldn’t beg. She refused to beg. “My marks are as real as any.”
Silently, the shopkeeper plucked the items off the counter and placed them all on a shelf behind him. He turned back to her and crossed his arms, waiting for her to do or say something—anything—to cry and scream or shuffle out of the shop.
Larkin wouldn’t give him the pleasure.
Slowly, Larkin reopened her purse and funneled the coins back in. One fell and hit the ground, ringing. She bent down to pick it up, then paused.
Larkin should have been out the door already, the shopkeeper all the wealthier. Yet here she was, crouched beneath an assortment of fake trinkets. She could still sense the man’s revulsion.
It was almost too easy.
She closed her eyes and siphoned his scalding emotion, ushering it, her hand curling into a fist. She focused on the shelf near the woman and the young girl, fanning her fingers as her body exhaled his rage.
With a crack, the shelf snapped in half, glass jars smashing against the floor. The girl screamed as the shards shot across the tile. The shopkeeper swore and raced to assess the damage.
In the chaos, Larkin quickly evaluated what was in reach—rounds of aged cheeses, three rabbits, and two unplucked pheasants hanging by their feet. No cake. Sorry, Garran. She stuffed it all into her knapsack.
Above her, the delicate trinkets swayed with the commotion, useless.
Larkin punched open the shop door and scrambled down the steps. She ran through the circle of outdoor carts, dodging vendors and patrons, and across the footbridge toward the shelter of the canyon.
She imagined the shopkeeper’s face when he realized what she’d stolen and grinned.
He could have had her money but chose her wrath instead.
THREE
The strap of Larkin’s bag cut into her shoulder as she rushed toward the canyon. The sun had just dipped beneath the city’s mountain, stall vendors filling wagons with leftover wares to cart home.
She scanned for the patrol and found none. The streets were vacant of guards, just like the mines and the shops. Any concern was quickly overwhelmed by her relief. The absence of guards had granted her a satchel full of food and a purse heavy with marks.
She’d gotten away with magic.
Destruction magic.
Loathing like that of the shopkeeper wasn’t unfamiliar. The merchants and gentry were saturated with it. But their hatred was always mixed with fear. They knew that were it not for the luminite, she could glean their silent loathing and use it against them.
Her own exhilaration at using magic surprised her, and she quickly sobered. To be caught using magic meant a lifetime in a cell, or worse. Her family couldn’t afford to lose her wages.
She couldn’t risk it, not again.
Larkin hurried through the canyon, the granite cliffs trapping the stench of garbage. Broken lampposts lined the path, and a luminite cable crisscrossed the high walls like an iridescent web. As Larkin neared the canyon’s bottom, she passed a woman sweeping the steps to her home. A dejected man on the next stoop drank from an opaque bottle.
She sensed the same emotion every evening as she walked up to the door of her home. The same emotion, but not a constant one. Because love wasn’t a fine-tuned note that rang without changing pitch. Love was harmonized by worry and trust, bright with joy, and sometimes heartbreaking. There were few emotions like that, ones that took Larkin’s breath away every time she felt them. Even as angry and exhausted as she was now.
The door groaned as she pushed against it. Larkin’s father sat at the kitchen hearth, preparing dinner as her mother chatted with Garran and Vania at the worn table.
Garran stood and met Larkin at the door, planting a kiss on Larkin’s forehead. She sensed his relief that she’d made it home safe. “How was the shop?”
She set her bag down. “No cake, but we’ll eat more than broth tonight.” She smiled and forced herself to relax so Garran wouldn’t sense anything strange.
“Angry?” He raised an eyebrow.
She was angry. Still angry. But if she tried explaining this to Garran, he’d be disappointed in her.
“The shopkeeper tried to overcharge me.”
He grimaced. “Some shopkeepers think the luminite’s gone to our heads.”
Thank Ilona, Larkin thought, out of habit.
Vania ran toward them, jumping into Larkin’s arms. Larkin groaned, steadying herself to keep from toppling over. “You’re almost too big for this.”
Vania flashed a grin full of missing teeth, batting away dark, unruly curls. “Maybe.”
Larkin released Vania and approached her father, who was slicing bread near the hearth. She glanced inside the pot, the broth no thicker than brackish water. With a flourish, Larkin pulled the pheasants and the rabbits from her bag, and her father paused mid-slice.
“Did you pinch this?” he asked, much too seriously. Ilona’s breath, everyone was suspicious of her today.
Larkin erupted in laughter. She’d learned from experience that laughter was a good distraction, the easiest way to hide her emotions.
She didn’t exactly have the cleanest slate when it came to theft. As a child, she used to steal bits of fruit and dried meat from the stall vendors after her shift. When her mother found the hidden stash beneath Larkin’s bed, she made Larkin scrub their entire home with a pig-bristle brush the size of her thumb, hoping that would stanch the bad behavior.
It didn’t work.
“She found a luminite vein in the mines,” said Garran.
“See?” Larkin knocked her shoulder against her father’s. “You have no faith in me.”
“It’s Ethera Mine he has no faith in,” her mother chimed in.
“Perhaps it’s less dry than you think.” Larkin knelt and hung the rabbit on a skinning hook near the fire. “You should come back. Mine with me and Garran again.”
Her father frowned. He’d been working in the Vault, a newly dug shaft. Prone to cave-ins and noxious gas, the mine churned out more casualties than any of the others. But the work paid well.
“We don’t need all of this,” he said, examining the pheasant. “Did you spend everything?”
“Oh, Jallus.” Her mother hobbled over. “A nice meal for once won’t kill us. It’s Larkin’s birthday.”
Her father sighed. “Fair enough.” Larkin hid a smirk. He knew better than to try to argue with her mother.
“Garran, help Vania wash up,” said her mother, easing onto a kitchen stool.
Garran swept the young girl off her feet and rushed her to the kitchen basin, Vania giggling as Garran splashed her. Their joy was warm, and Larkin’s muscles relaxed.
“I can heat a blanket for you,” Larkin offered as her mother stretched out her bad leg. She had broken it in the mine years ago. When she didn’t heal properly, Larkin took her place, Garran following suit soon after.
“Oh no.” Her mother lifted Larkin’s hand and examined it. “What did you do?”
“It’s just a scratch,” said Larkin. She felt a flash of disorientation and heaviness, as if she were poisoned. Guilt. “Mum…”
“I only wish I could give you a day,” her mother murmured. “Take your place so you could have one day from that awful hole in the ground.”
“The mines keep me out of trouble.” Larkin hugged her. It wasn’t fair that her mother felt any guilt. None of this was her fault, and Larkin could remind her of that over and over again, but it didn’t matter.
I love you, thought Larkin.
Her mother’s arms tightened around her, returning a love warmer and more familiar than any other emotion Larkin knew.
* * *
After supper, full and drowsy from pheasant-and-rabbit stew, Larkin took Vania by the hand and led her up the narrow stone staircase to the bedroom they shared with Garran.
Larkin lit a candle and helped Vania into bed. She sat behind her, unwinding a matted ribbon from the girl’s dark curls and grabbing a brush from the nightstand.
Vania yawned. “Mum is going to start teaching me how to read tomorrow. Then I can be just like you and Garran.”
Larkin smiled. “You’ll be reading faster than us in no time.” Empaths were banned from formal education, so their mother had taught Larkin and Garran how to read from her small set of heirloom folklore tomes.
Even their mother didn’t know how old the tomes were, or whom they belonged to first. There were no names inscribed, no owners or ancestors listed. Empaths weren’t allowed to have a surname either, and Larkin had little knowledge of her lineage beyond the mysterious books. Books that hinted at a time when Empaths weren’t hated and practiced magic freely. The dynasty erased their names and their stories, stories that had kept her up late, wondering if Empaths once had a goddess of their own. But Larkin knew as little as her mother did, and perhaps as little as her mother’s mother. Their history was gone.
And once Vania learned how to read, she would have the same questions. Knowledge of the magic within these books had given Larkin an itch she was always desperate to scratch, like poison beneath her fingernails. And there was no antidote.
Part of Larkin wished that Vania could stay ignorant of such knowledge forever.
“And then, maybe soon, I can start working too,” said Vania. “Just like you.”
Larkin combed her fingers through Vania’s now-silky strands. “You don’t need to work, sweet girl.”
“But I want to help.” Vania craned her neck to blink at Larkin.
Larkin kissed the top of her sister’s head. “You can help me by staying home with Mum and keeping her company. You can join me and Garran once you’ve grown bigger and stronger. How does that sound?”
Vania sighed reluctantly.
After tucking Vania in, Larkin picked up the threadbare ribbon from the nightstand and brought it to the table in the corner, sitting down. Mending it herself would be simple, and in the privacy of her home, where there was no chance of getting caught, the risk was worth it.
Around the same time Larkin had learned how to read, she’d taught herself how to conjure and destroy. When everyone else was asleep, she worked with odds and ends—nothing that would be sorely missed—crushing clay mugs and iron buckles to create tiny figurines she’d kept beneath the floorboard. She made one for each member of her family, imagining them living on a farm surrounded by miles of forest, in a land without a queen.
The figurines were gone now. She’d destroyed them only a year ago, after the riot, severing herself from such a childish hope. She’d needed to grow up.
Now she tried to be practical and cautious with her magic. But it was her birthday.
Larkin concentrated, sensing her father’s worry bubbling up through the floorboards. She siphoned and projected onto the fringed ribbon, shredding it into a pile of wispy threads. Destruction was the easy part, but she usually had trouble pulling together enough positive emotion to conjure. Tonight, it would be simple.
Garran laughed from downstairs, and Larkin siphoned his buoyant amusement. Thread rushed back into her palm, a tendril of crimson ribbon spiraling around her fingers.
Tomorrow, Vania would wonder for only a moment why her hair ribbon looked new, and their mother would be too busy to notice.
Larkin looked up as Garran entered the room, the trill of anxiety below growing.
“They’re arguing again.” Garran joined Larkin at the small table. “Father told me to go to bed.”
Their parents’ conversation had grown serious upon Garran leaving the kitchen. Larkin could barely hear them.
“The disappearances in the hills are getting worse,” said her father. “Heard rumors in the mine this morning. Not only that, but more destruction—homes, crops, wagons—all crumbling to dust.”
Larkin met Garran’s eyes as they listened intently.
“This has gone on for far too long,” said her mother. “What if one of us is reassigned to the farms? What then?”
“Melay has sent her army to investigate. Even the city guards have gone. Something about a scarcity of soldiers.”
“A scarcity? Do you know how large the Demuran army is, Jallus? Are they dead?”
“Faie…”
“Missing, like the farmers?”
“You know I don’t know, Faie. No one does.”
“Dead?” whispered Garran.
Larkin knew that Garran was thinking about Adina and Edric. These weren’t just rumors; Edric was missing.
Her eyes darted to Vania, but her sister was asleep. Melay’s soldiers couldn’t be dead. The dynasty had always kept a large army even though Demura rarely faced a real threat. Still, she couldn’t help but entertain the thought. Would it be so terrible if the guards never returned?
“Jallus?” her mother asked. “What if it’s destruction magic?”
“It’s just a rumor, Faie. Who could be powerful enough? Unless the magic is coming from below. From the—”
“Don’t.” Her mother’s voice was sharp. “Myth does not belong entangled in truth.” She paused. “And keep your voice down. The children are listening.”
Her parents’ voices became indecipherable, but the prickle of their anxiety lingered.
“What was Dad going to say before Mum cut him off?” asked Larkin.
“I think he was going to say the Reach.”
Larkin barked a quiet laugh. “You can’t be serious.”
Garran shrugged, his concern a cold, dull chisel grating against her rib cage.
“You heard Mum. It’s a fable.” Larkin kept her voice light and soothing. The last thing she wanted was Garran’s emotion waking up—
“What’s a fable?” Vania said quietly from her bed.
Larkin groaned. “Now you’ve done it.”
Garran lifted his hands in mock surrender.
“What’s a fable?” Vania repeated, sitting up.
“You’ll learn soon enough when you start reading from Mum’s books,” Larkin said, and waved her hand. “Now to bed.”
“I want to know now. What’s a reach?”
Larkin simpered at Garran. “The honor’s all yours.” She knew Vania wouldn’t rest until she got her answer. Better they tell her now than risk her asking Mum about it in the morning.
Garran scratched his head. “The Reach is a big cave.”
“How big?” asked Vania.
“The biggest on the whole isle. And a long time ago, the queen threw very mean people inside of it as punishment. But it’s just a fable, Vania. People tell it to keep naughty children like you from doing anything bad.”
“Then it’s a mean story.” Vania crossed her arms.
“Indeed it is.” Larkin grinned. “A very mean, very short story.”
Garran matched her smile. “I do my best.”
The tale was meant for Empath children: a warning should they ever attempt magic. The bad Empaths in the story were led by the villain Otheil Kyran, who wanted to steal the throne from Queen Leliana Ilona. When Ilona defeated Kyran and his six disciples a thousand years ago, she cast them into the Reach, and magic was forever banned.
The tale’s most thrilling moment was when a captured and bound Kyran told Ilona that, though he had fallen, darkness would rise once more.
And Ilona ever famously responded: Darkness cannot exist where there is Light.
Ilona had since been revered as Demura’s Goddess of Light, Kyran the God of Darkness. Good pitted against evil.
But to Larkin, the story had a much more practical meaning. Ilona and Kyran were two mortals with too much power. Ilona loathed magic, and Kyran abused it. Nothing more.
Of course, Melay continued to uphold the legend as truth, graciously allowing Empaths to exist on the isle. Their inherent darkness was ever doused by the dynasty’s light, after all.
Fortunately, Larkin didn’t have to explain any of this to a satisfied Vania, who had fallen back to sleep. But Garran’s concern remained.
