The Gantean (Tales of Blood & Light Book 1) (10 page)

I wanted that ulio. I had an ung-aneraq that needed cutting, stretching through the hall to bind me, unwanted, to Costas Galatien.

I scrambled around the crevice in the floor and lunged at the sorceress from behind, jarring the blackstone blade from her grip. She whirled, pulling her black shadows around her, obscuring any view of her. I snatched the ulio from the floor and quickly severed the cord that sprang from Ghilene’s bloodlight. Cutting the cord would sabotage whatever strange magic the sorceress had made and hopefully protect me from any retaliation, too, by crumbling the magic entirely.

The sorceress’s black shade recoiled with the cut. As the magic fell to pieces, I was forced from Yaqi in a disorienting thrust that knocked me to my knees. The enchanted water receded, washing into the gaping crack in the floor.

The chaotic ballroom spun with cowering guests and patrolling mages. The sorceress seemed to have vanished, but I found Ghilene on her back, limp as puppet with her strings cut. She shuddered, her skirt quivering around her like a petal in a windstorm.

“Ghilene? Are you all right?” I crawled to her side.

“I’m cold,” she complained, grabbing my hand in uncharacteristic intimacy. “So cold.”

I shivered, too.

“Ghilene, Lili!” Laith Amar rushed to us, concern creasing his face. “I saw what happened,” he said. “I need to see her Aethers. Now. She’ll be suffering from magical drainage.”

He helped me guide Ghilene onto a bench in the nearest alcove. Then he flicked his hand in a complicated gesture, saying, “She was being used for that magic in some foreign manner. She needs to get warm. Go get her a cloak or a blanket.”

I found Ghilene’s Mirkian wool cloak in the coatroom and returned to the alcove. Costas and his family remained sequestered on the dais, surrounded by Galatien mages. The other Brokering guests collected into anxious, murmuring groups. As far as I could tell, only Ghilene and her mother had been injured in the attack.

Laith stood over Ghilene with a blank expression on his face, his hands moving rapidly above her body in slashing, precise gestures. I tucked the cloak around her, but she continued to shiver.

Laith’s eyes flashed back into clarity with such a severe glare that I retracted against the alcove curtains.

“I saw you,” he said to me. “You cut the cord that connected Ghilene to her mother.” He spoke accusingly, as if I had hurt Ghilene.

I frowned. There was nothing hazardous about cutting a bloodcord—Ganteans cut all such connections. “I only cut the cord to undo the magic the sorceress made. She was using it to power her spell.”

“So you know what happened here tonight? You know who she was? Are you working with her?”

“The—the sorceress? All I know is that she attacked Lady Entila using that bloodcord between the Lady and Ghilene.”

Laith watched me with an inscrutable expression. “But you must know—”

“Well, well, look I what I found,” Jaasir Amar pushed into the already-too-crowded alcove from behind me. “A plaything cast aside. An abandoned toy. Did I not warn you? Nothing but a novelty.” Jaasir’s deep blue eyes were as hard and homogenous as lapis. “Laith!” he barked as he drew the curtains behind us. “What are you doing?”

Laith turned to his half-brother. “Lady Ghilene Entila was injured in the attack. I’m healing her.”

“Did you see what happened?” Jaasir asked.

Laith’s gaze flashed to me. “Ghilene’s handmaiden used Gantean magic to fight the attack.”

Jaasir crowded me back against the curtain. “Magic? You used magic?” Disbelief laced his tone.

“I believe the attacker used Gantean magic as well,” Laith remarked. He gestured in a soothing wave over Ghilene’s resting body. She looked calm and peaceful, the only one in our crowded alcove who did.

Jaasir snaked his arm through mine, but faced his brother. I recoiled, but he held me firm. “What? Do you mean to say—was it—was it
the Cedna
?”

I gasped and resumed my struggle to free myself from Jaasir Amar. For such a slender man, he had a great deal of strength.

Laith nodded. “I have no doubt that it was. I’ve never seen anyone else with such black aetherlight. It had to be her.”

“Amatos!” Jaasir yanked me into the center of the alcove and held my shoulders to face me towards Laith. “Ask her!” he cried at his brother. “Ask the fucking Gantean bitch what she’s done to Costas!” He did not wait for Laith to obey, instead snarling at me, “What is she up to, your damned Cedna? What does she want? What did she do to my father?”

My heart rammed against my ribs.
The Cedna? The Cedna had been right in front of me, and I hadn’t even known?
I cursed silently and again tried to shrug away Jaasir’s pinning hands, to no avail.

Laith looked at me almost apologetically. “No one yet has resisted my truth-compulsion. You may as well save us both the trouble and tell me the truth without it. Were you working with the Cedna to make this attack?”

I’d had enough of the Amar brothers. I twisted my arm in a sharp outward jerk and broke free from Jaasir’s grip, shoving through the alcove curtains. Panic drove me towards the ballroom doors. I threw a glance over my shoulder, expecting to see the brothers in hot pursuit, but neither of them followed. Instead they both headed towards the dais and the Galatien family. I dashed into the hallway beyond the ballroom, turned right and then right again, taking the route to the western wing.

The garden
. I had to find my necklace and then find the Cedna. She was here, in Galantia. The thought gave me hope, but I had to get the necklace first.

I took the stairs two at a time. The garden’s heavy wooden door did not budge when I turned the handle.

Boots clacked on the stairs at the far side of the hall. Pressed against the garden door, I had nowhere to hide as a figure crested the top of the stairs.

“Leila, are you all right?” Costas ran down the hall to my side. I stared at him breathlessly. In all the shock I had almost forgotten what the magic attack had interrupted.

Costas ran his hand up and down my arm in a soft caress, and despite everything, I did not want him to stop. “You have to get out of here,” he said. “My father’s sent guards searching for you already.”

“For me? W—why?”

“It’s Jaasir.” He pulled me off the garden door. “He’s concocted some convoluted story—”

“I wasn’t involved in the attack!” I cried. “I only tried to help Ghilene—”

“I didn’t think you were! Come, follow me, you have to hide. Jaasir’s gotten it into his head that you did some kind of magic to entice me, and Laith’s saying you were doing magic just now during the attack. It’s a mess. I’ll get it fixed, but while I do, it’s better that you disappear temporarily.”

Costas led me back down the western wing’s stairs and through a corridor to a heavy wooden door. He checked both shoulders before inserting a key into the door’s lock. Then he tugged me into a narrow passage and closed the door behind us.

His dark silhouette loomed as he took both my hands in his. “This passage leads to the tunnel system beneath the High City,” he explained. “Walk down the stairs and turn left at the bottom. Take the next set of stairs up, and you’ll get dropped into the courtyard behind the Temple of Amatos.”

I couldn’t see his face, but his warm hands offered a small comfort against the plaguing chill that had not left me since the attack.

“Leila, I never meant—I know I’ve given you no reason to trust me, but listen.” He squeezed my hands again. “Go to the Pavilions at Orothea’s Playground. I’ll send my men to meet you there; they’ll take you somewhere safe while I sort this out with my father. Yes?” He squeezed harder.

Shock gripped my throat; I could not answer him.

“Leila,” he murmured.

“I—can’t,” I finally managed.

“You must! It isn’t safe for you here. I haven’t had a chance in all this chaos to get one of my loyal men to be with you, but I’ll send one after you, I promise. I’ll take care of you, but you have to do as I say. The Pavilions—they’re gazebos at Galantia’s finest park. You can find them, yes? I can assure you I will have a man there to meet you no later than the dawn.”

“No,” I said again, this time in a stronger voice. “Costas, I need to find my—”

“You don’t understand! You have no choice! My father loathes unsanctioned magic, he imprisons at the least offense, and if he finds out you’re Gantean—suffice it to say I cannot protect you until I can talk him down. You must do as I say, Leila.” He released me.

I put my face into my hands. “My necklace,” I finished my last thought, not knowing what else to do.

Costas cupped my neck. “It will all come out clean, Leila. I promise. I’ll do whatever must be done to have you. Do you understand? Stesichore, the marriage, I had no choice—”

“But—”

“We don’t get to choose, Leila. Our fate is handed to us, and we make do as best we can.” He leaned in and kissed me before pushing me away. “Dawn at the Pavilions. Now hurry. You need to get out of the Palace. Go to the Pavilions.”

He released me and cracked the door, letting in a sliver of light. He checked both ways before slipping out the door and closing it behind him, leaving me alone in the dark.

I
took
several breaths before moving deeper into the tunnel. Even in normal conditions I didn’t like tight, dark spaces—they reminded me too much of the caverns of Gante, where we’d hidden many times from threats of storm or raiders. They reminded me, too, of the Hinge. The hunted feeling that had followed me from the ballroom only made it worse. I had to keep one hand on the wall to convince myself it wasn’t narrowing around me with every step into the dark.

For the moment I’d have to follow Costas’s advice and hide, though the missed opportunity to find my necklace rankled. I needed to get the anbuaq back, especially with the Cedna somewhere nearby.

The tunnel twisted and sloped. My feet stumbled on a stair as I moved blindly into a descent. The wall beneath my hand dampened, and the hem of my skirt grew heavy with water, snagging like a shackle against my ankles.

Finally the stairs ended, though they brought me only to another tunnel, this one smaller than the last, but I did not consider turning back. If Mydon Galatien believed Jaasir’s stories, Costas said I faced severe consequences. I shivered. Imprisonment was a fear worth heeding. It would take away the last remnants of my freedom and impede me with Nautien’s task.

I wished Costas had thought to give me a lantern—the darkness thickened with every step. I had the odd sense of unseen space opening around me.

“Uppf!” I crashed into something warm and squirming.

“Fuckin’ hells!”

I fell, tangled with my obstruction, to the damp floor. After groping blindly in the dark, I came up with a handful of thin hair.

“Lemme go!” The obstacle sounded and felt like a boy, smaller than me for certain.

I released the child and rued again the absence of light. As if the world heard my wish, a vague glow ignited before me—only a small circle, but it illuminated a tanned face topped by a shock of sun-bleached hair.

“Who’n the bloody hells’r you?”

“I—I’m trying to leave the Palace.” I didn’t know what else to say.

The boy’s eyes narrowed above his candle. “You some fine court-type lady?”

I shook my head. “No. I’m trying to escape. I—”

“ ’Scape what?”

I hesitated. “Slavery, for one thing.” This seemed the most sympathetic of my possible answers.

“Ah,” he said knowingly. “All right then. Which way you headed?”

“I—um. I was told this passage led to the Temple of Amatos?”

The boy snorted. “You missed that turn way back.” He flapped one hand at looming darkness behind me. “This one leads to the Bottom City. It’s a much better place to get out the tunnels secretly, if y’ know what I mean.”

He lifted his light and turned, continuing in the direction he’d indicated, towards the Bottom City.

“You comin’?” he asked over his shoulder when I did not move.

I followed the boy up a winding stair, then down a ladder, and through still more passages. I would never have imagined the complicated network of tunnels that ran beneath the High City. The boy found his way with ease, as though he’d traversed this maze many times before.

We ascended one last ladder, a wrought iron construction with rough rungs that scraped my hands. The boy pushed at the ceiling above us, opening a hatch, and offered his hand to help me clamber onto a quiet street. A strong odor—rotting food and refuse—assaulted me. I was no longer in the soft, rich embrace of Lethemian wealth and elegance. This place stank of poverty and distress, and to my shame I missed the comforts of the Palace for an instant. Here no expensive magelights glowed; nothing but stars illuminated this section of the city. We stood in an alley between ramshackle shanties built from rubble.

“W—where are we?”

The boy was dressed in fine clothing, though it had the look of a costume rather than natural attire. He lifted his head. I judged him to have maybe ten or eleven winters, though I always found it difficult to read the ages of Lethemians, whose diverse lives either aged them quickly, for the poor, or slowly, for the rich.

“The alley behind the den strip,” he answered, jutting his chin as if to direct me.

“I am not familiar with the High City,” I explained.

“Ain’t in the High City. This here’s the Bottom City.” He cupped the glowing object that had lit our way in the tunnels in his palm.

I inched towards him. He represented my only source of information for the moment, and I truly didn’t know what to do. A sense of urgency borne from the events at the Brokering had pushed me through the tunnels, but here in the dark slum, everything that had transpired at the Palace—from the moment of my arrival to Costas’s final kiss—seemed like a dream. I cupped my neck with my palm, missing the warmth of Nautien’s anbuaq.

A vague light emanated from the sphere the boy held. It was smaller than his palm, and it glowed with a white light tinged with gold.

“Whaddaya think it means?” he asked me.

“What?”

“The stone, all lit up like this?” he brandished it at me with a querying look on his face.

“I—I don’t know. What is it?”

The boy shrugged. “Some magitrix’s stone.”

“It’s a magestone?”

He nodded and curled his hand around it. “Rock’s gettin’ hot. I don’t think that’s a good thing.” He jerked his head. “I gotta go. Don’t tell nobody you saw me, and I won’t tell nobody I saw you.”

He ran off down the alley.

I snatched up my skirts and ran after him. “Wait!”

He paused but said, “I gotta get this stone back to the guy who wanted it. I ain’t got time. I got a bad feeling the magitrix already knows it’s gone.”

“I need somewhere to hide.” I hated the helpless quiver in my voice. Were I out in some natural landscape, I could have quelled this creeping fear. I knew how to cope with being alone in the wild. The vast, dirty city overwhelmed me. I had no sense of the directions after the time in the tunnels. Only this boy with his stolen stone anchored me in the world.

He snorted. “Me too, lady, me too, but first I gotta get paid for smithin’ this magestone.”

I closed the gap between us and put my hand on his arm. “Let me come with you. If you’re with me it will look less suspicious, right? We’re better off together, because they’ll never suspect we found each other in the tunnels.”

The boy frowned. He tucked the magestone back into his belt bag and shrugged. “All right. It can’t hurt.” He stuck out a hand. “My name’s Lymbok.”

“I’m Leila.”

“You really a slave?” he asked, surveying my dress.

I nodded. “I was.” I matched my steps to his as we proceeded.

“Listen, I gotta stop off at this den—that’s where I meet the mage who wanted the stone. After that, we’ll find a good place to lay low here in the Bottom City. I got places. They ain't gonna catch me. Mage promised a nice purse for this stone—and he better pay it, ‘cause let me tell you, that was some risky job, what with that big party goin’.”

“You stole the stone at the Brokering?”

Lymbok took a turn down another, broader alley. “Sure. I was hired to do it.”

“What’s a den?” I asked.

“Den, a den. A place where they drop the milk? Don’t you know?”

“Dragon-milk?” I had heard of the drug made from the sap of some eastern tree. Ganteans spoke of it scornfully, as yet another weakness of the sayantaq
southerners.

“’Course. C’mon and be quiet. Don’t say nothin’ to the mage when we get there, neither. He ain’t that friendly. Better you stay in the front lobby. I didn’t say nothin’ about havin’ a partner. Might make ‘im mad.”

I nodded in silent agreement as Lymbok turned down a wider avenue, less dingy than the previous alleys. Some magelights in lanterns illuminated the street. Despite the late hour a carriage rolled past us, and several shadowy figures walked the curb. Lymbok pushed me up the front steps of a townhouse that had seen better days and knocked on the door.

A window opened in the door. “Yes?” A dainty nose poked through the aperture. I could see little more of the face than its outline.

“Hey Amey,” Lymbok said. “Is that Danei here yet? Said he’d be here after midnight.”

The door opened to reveal a young woman, my age or slightly older, with typical southern features and pale hair. She had a vicious bruise coloring one eye and split lip, visible in the lantern light glowing softly from the room behind her. Her shoulders slumped as though carrying years of burdens. She pointed up a staircase behind her. “Upstairs. He took the second room on the left.”

Lymbok scurried up the stairs. The girl and I faced each other. She did not smile, though I could tell her unhappiness had nothing to do with my presence. “You want to sit in the front room while you wait?” she asked. “There’s only Mr. Danei’s spoon boy in there right now.”

She led me into the room with the lights. Several low sofas lined the walls, and a large table filled the rest of the room, covered in implements I did not recognize.

The girl looked me up and down, taking note of my dress with too much interest. “Do you drop the milk?”

“Me? No, I’m just—I’m just here with Lymbok.”

“Lym usually works alone, and you look pretty fancy for our place, but that Mr. Danei is fancy, too. He plays music. Do you know him?”

I shook my head.

She pointed at a sofa. “Have a seat. Might as well be comfortable while you wait.”

Gingerly, I sat. Once again, I felt as though the world had swept me up in a current I couldn’t resist.

“I’m Amethyst,” the girl said as she moved back towards her post at the front of the den. “Ask if you need anything.”

“Thank you.”

After Amethyst left, I took a better look at the den. The low light could not entirely hide the stains on the upholstery. One sofa was occupied by a shadowy figure, smaller even than Lymbok. A glint flashed as I studied the silhouette. I started in my seat—those eyes studied me with the intensity of a Gantean winter storm.

“H—hello,” I murmured, uncertain how to behave.

Another young boy unfolded from the sofa. Though smaller than Lymbok, he moved with a similar agile grace. I could not see his features well from across the room, but his clothes bagged around his body, a few sizes too large. He checked the door of the parlor before stepping across the room towards me.

As he moved into the circle of light from the lamp on the table beside my sofa, I caught my breath. He was Gantean. I could not mistake his coarse dark hair, streaked with almost purple highlights from the southern sun. It had been cut, which led me to believe he was a slave. Really, what else would he be?

The fierceness in his posture and expression as he studied me showed me that no southern softness tainted
him
. His tanned skin sprouted freckles where I could see anything in the low light.

I gathered my wits. The boy stared at me, his nearly black eyes like pits of fire in his hollowed face. I put a hand on my chest. “Leila,
Iksraqtaq, qargi Shringar
,” I whispered, offering the traditional Gantean greeting. The words tasted bittersweet on my tongue; it had been so long since I had spoken in my native language.

The boy exhaled an audible sigh that made him waver like a ghost. He tumbled forward, directly into my lap. By instinct my arms wrapped around him, supporting the small weight of his body.

“
Sa, sa
,” I soothed in Gantean. “Everything will be all right.” The south had made a liar of me; I promised what I could not deliver. A sweet odor wafted from the boy’s body. He nestled into my lap like a child half his age.

“
Anura, anura.”
The Gantean words fell on me like cold rain.
“Salmik-iks. Veda. Veda.”
His arms tightened around my waist. He called me
anura
—an unattached young woman. His other words broke my heart.
Help me, please, please.

“What is your name?” I asked in our tongue.

“They call me Miki,” he said, lifting his head but averting his eyes. I wanted to smile, but restrained myself. Ki at the end of a name meant ‘little one.’ I had heard it often enough as a youngster. He might not like Miki, but it suited him. He weighed almost nothing.

A clatter of footsteps echoed from beyond the parlor. Miki flinched as a voice rang through the den.

“Stop the damned thief!”

A fast-moving blur—Lymbok, I could tell by the royal blue tunic—flew past the entrance to the parlor and out the den’s front door. The girl Amethyst nearly fell from her stool when he blew by. The den’s front door swung ajar as Lymbok disappeared beyond it.

“Amatos!” The man who’d yelled glared out the door and turned to Amethyst. “Which way did he go? Didn’t you see?”

Miki slid from my lap and inched into the parlor’s shadows. Moving with characteristic Gantean silence, he searched the pockets of his ragged clothing, withdrawing a small folding blade, the type carried by thieves and pickpockets. Miki’s eyes glittered as he peered around the door frame.

He hid the knife as Amethyst and the man—presumably the one Lymbok had come here to meet—entered the parlor.

“You.” The man had the features of a rich Lethemian: fine wool suit, fastidious grooming, clear skin, and good teeth. His mouth twisted in a grimace as he loomed above me. Miki nearly disappeared as he pressed his back against the wall, giving me a slight, warning shake of his head. “You were with the thief?” the man asked.

I feared to say anything. I had no desire to take on Lymbok’s troubles. The well-dressed man struck me as formidable.

“Where would he go?” the man pressed, closing the distance between us and peering into my face. He reached into his coat pocket and produced a magestone similar to the one Lymbok had stolen—though this one as black as the sorceress’s bloodlight at the Brokering. “I can decipher the truth, you know.” He lifted the magestone.

The entire night had exhausted me, and finding a fellow Gantean slave in a sorry state had been the final straw. As I rose from the sofa I let the dagger Costas had given me drop into my hand.

I faced the man, the small blade held before me. My hands did not even quiver. Heat circled my wrist—heat as warm as Costas’s bloodlight had been when we bound ourselves together. Perhaps the warmth made me brave.