Green Wild (Thrones of the Firstborn Book 2) (29 page)

The lux and the Logos allowed no time to hesitate. She reached out with that same strange psychic appendage that she used to manipulate the eidolon world. The eidolon infection yearned towards her like Fai’s body yearned toward the lux, and so she let herself be a conduit for the shadows, swallowing them into her own eidolon source.

Now with Fai’s body clean, there was nothing to impede healing. She made sure he was stable and released Lisette, pushing her away.

“He’s not fully healed, but he will heal, if he doesn’t do anything stupid,” she said, her voice husky.

She watched in tired fascination as the green light withdrew hundreds of tendrils from Fai’s body, barely aware of Cinai’s astonished gratitude, and the murmurs around her. Did Tiana see what she saw.

The green orb detached itself from Fai with a final pulse, and the young man drew in a deep breath. Cinai fell silent as the orb drifted above Fai’s body, within reach of her outstretched fingertips. Trembling, she kissed her fingers and reached out. A single green spark flew from her fingertips and merged with the orb. Then, without a sound, the orb sped over to Tiana and vanished.

A broad tree sketched of green light formed around Tiana. Branches spread around her like the antlers of a stag, and the face of a woman formed on the trunk. The tree grew and grew until it collapsed on itself, upon Tiana at its heart, until there was no tree, only Tiana, rimmed with green light. Her boots fell to pieces and her toes rooted themselves in the soil.

Then, the light vanished, and Tiana collapsed.

“
I
S
IT TRUE the King has fallen?” asked a well-dressed, middle-aged woman in the Tabernacle of Broken Hearts. It was the morning after her meeting with the Justiciars, the morning after Jerya ordered Twist to betray himself to the Vassay. “Is that why you sit here, day after day?”

Jerya tilted her head. “I don’t know. I hope he hasn’t.” The lie came easily. Some days it was more work to remember the truth. But she hated being asked.

The woman pinched her lips together, dissatisfied with the answer. “What of your magic? Doesn’t your family speak to each other magically?”

Jerya kept her face mild as she regarded the woman. Well-dressed and well-educated; most of her visitors didn’t know very much about the family magic. It existed. That was usually enough. “We do. He does not communicate that way.”

The woman’s mouth twisted sourly. “And yet you think he lives. Thank you, Your Highness.” Her voice was patronizing, dismissive, and she turned and walked away without first showing proper respect. The few remaining audience-seekers stirred and murmured.

Jerya watched her go, all the way to the edge of the plaza where a Justiciar’s Guard waited for her. One handed her something, and they parted ways.

Sweeping her gaze across the few people still hoping to speak with her, Jerya stood. The woman was the third person that morning to ask about both her father and the phantasmagory. The Justiciar’s Council exerted itself and rumors grew: about her father, their magic, and the enemy armies. Somehow everybody knew about the armies outside the Blight but nobody knew about Jerya’s discovery of their origin and what she was doing about it.

“We live in frightening days,” she announced to the lingering observers. “We must remember that the architect of our fear comes at us from without, but the dwelling of those fears is our own hearts and minds. We will protect you, but in the meantime, trust in each other.” Then she withdrew, hoping the pretty words could accomplish what facts and reason didn’t.

Trust in each other.
She thought of Cara, who trusted Jerya and betrayed her on the same day. Cara, who had informed the Justiciars that the phantasmagory was gone. Cara, who had such a twisted sense of her own duty that she didn’t believe she’d done anything wrong in telling Jerya’s secrets, because Jerya wasn’t Shanasee. In the inn parlour after the meeting, Cara said, “You’re a child,” and “It’s better to let wiser heads know the truth so they can make good decisions. Decisions that keep
everybody
safe.” Yet Cara had trusted Jerya enough, even after betraying her, to turn her back and rejoin Shanasee.

The day had gotten worse, too. She and Twist had a long, quiet talk and at the end, he’d agreed to teach his magic to the Vassay. Then he’d gone off to see her sister like a man under a death sentence. She’d talked to him of duty, too, without any idea of what he considered his true duty to be.

Thorn stepped out of the crowd and fell into step beside her. “Your guards really aren’t very good,” he said mildly. “All the way back there.”

“How many times do I have to tell you: they’re not here to protect
me
?”

He glanced at her. “They’d be pretty bad at stopping you, too.”

“They could do what was necessary,” Jerya said stiffly, unclear on why they were even having this conversation. She turned a corner, to a quieter street.

“Mm. No. They couldn’t. I don’t think anybody here could, not even Miss Iriss. And that’s supposed to be her job, isn’t it? You’ve got them all depending on you.”

“Not all of them,” said Jerya, nettled and still thinking of Cara. “Why are you mentioning this? Do you think I’m about to lose control and go on a rampage?”

He watched her for a long moment, then shrugged. “There’s dissension in the ranks. A debate about the different definitions of victory.” He stopped strolling and stretched, and she turned back to him. “How do you define victory, Your Highness?”

“Keeping everything that’s mine,” she said quietly, and thought of Seandri, laughing with Landry after the Council meeting. She’d tried to keep him, only to realize how little she’d had.

“Interesting,” Thorn said politely. “I’ve been thinking about my own job. About where my responsibilities really lie. Do you ever think about your job that way?”

Jerya stared at him, then said flatly, “I am not talking to you about this,” and walked away. He didn’t follow her.

She all but ran the rest of the way to the inn, hurrying up to Jant’s room. When she didn’t find him, she stalked along the halls until she discovered him in one of the tiny writing rooms set aside for visiting scholars.

He sat in the desk chair, with the desk itself pushed into a corner. Gisen sat on the floor at his feet, and the air glimmered with the emanations they directed. Neither of them glanced at Jerya as she stood in the door.

“How is the project going?” she asked.

“Slowly,” said Jant, in a go-away voice.

Jerya didn’t go away. “We need it to go quickly. We
need
a phantasmagory before everything falls apart. I’m trying to hold onto everything, but they keep treating me like I’m a little girl dressed up as a Queen. As long as I have to keep pretending I have access to information they don’t, that’s all I really am.”

Gisen gave her a wide-eyed look, then shook her head silently. Jant said, “Smart child. Why doesn’t she just be a Queen, that’s what I wonder. There’s more to being Queen than bickering with the Justiciars.”

Jerya’s face tightened and she started to argue, but Jant wasn’t done. “But I suppose we ought to help her out, or else she’ll get herself killed and we’ll have to take over. Queen Gisen?” He balanced a sphere on his fingers and Jerya couldn’t tell if it was eidolon or emanation.

Gisen shook her head more vigorously. “Let’s show her.”

Jant nodded and held out the sphere to Gisen.

Squinting, Jerya said, “It’s a gestalt eidolon, then? It’s so small. And you weren’t touching each other.”

“It started as an eidolon. Now it’s both,” said Jant. “The emanation makes the eidolon and the eidolon uses the emanation. But that’s an old trick, only useful for small things. That’s not what we’re showing you. Guess who it belongs to?”

“You?” said Jerya uncertainly. “You made it; I saw you do it.”

“But Gisen holds it. The emanations are no longer mine.”

Jerya looked a moment longer. “So you can pass workings back and forth? That’s interesting, and maybe useful, but it’s not a phantasmagory.”

Gisen danced her fingers through the sphere, then held it out to Jerya, one hand coiling something invisible.

Jerya took a step, reaching out for the orb. As she did, Jant said, “Gisen, what did you do—”

Everything changed. Unseen windows opened and light streamed through. Jerya’s vision flooded with green and when it faded, she was frozen, watching something else, somewhere else.

Windows along one side of a great gallery glowed in the light of dawn. Tiana stood in front of a painting, half-covered by an emerald cloth. She walked forward, her steps echoing on the polished wooden floor, and tugged on the fabric.

It pooled on the floor, revealing a woman, or possibly two women bound together at the back. No. It was a woman with two faces. One face lifted to the sky, features cold and expressionless. The other face looked down, smiling tenderly at the garden at her feet.

While the woman was only paint and canvas, the hilly landscape behind her moved. Plants twined over each other, flowered, dropped seeds, died, endlessly.

“He gave you death, my blossoms. He insisted you must die, insisted it was unavoidable.” The painting spoke, in a dual voice both enraged and grieving. “The others have given you gifts as compensation. I will give you a—” and one voice said ‘curse’, while the other said ‘blessing’. “Fear death, my flowers. Know it is coming and flee from it.”

The double voice faded. The morning sun glowed through the eastern windows. Tiana shifted uncomfortably, and Jerya remembered how often her own family sought out danger, courted death, and even embraced it.

“Is that it?” Tiana touched the painting lightly, rubbed the dry pigment under her fingers. “Any advice for dealing with the Blighter?”

The painting flashed green, blinding, pure. Then the green ran with blood as a black spear pushed through the painting. The vision became a chaotic sequence of images and sensory input. Jerya sank into the jumble and
knew
the sensation. She was in a phantasmagory again, a tiny one, and so was every other living soul who carried enough Royal Blood to make an emanation.

It felt as if everybody in her family had piled into a small closet together. The noise and the sense of pressure overwhelmed her ability to process what was going on. She saw fragments of her family’s surroundings, bumped against flashes of personalities she didn’t recognize. Yithiere and the students he’d stolen hid in a forest, watching a vast darkling army move past, led by the lie she’d told so often. She recognized it, rejected it. Yithiere looked over at her and growled, “What is happening to my daughter?”

And Jerya saw: saw darklings and men battling, saw Cathay’s eidolon leaping on an eidolon-man with a shimmering blade. Kiar huddled in an aegis with Lisette and two strangers. And Tiana—where was Tiana?

Where was Tiana?

The tiny phantasmagory shattered, just like the original had. Gisen stood in the center of the study room shaking eidolon-stuff from her hands. “
He
was there,” breathed the small girl.

“Our enemy? Yes, I felt him.” agreed Jant. “Others of the Blood, too, others we don’t know. We’ll have to find them.”

Jerya grabbed Gisen’s hands. “Why did you break it? Make another one! I didn’t see Tiana. Did you see her?”

Gisen stared at her wide-eyed, then stuttered, “Didn’t—didn’t break it. Broke itself. It popped like a soap bubble.” She swallowed. “Saw Tiana in the gallery with the Firstborn?”

“Yes, and a spear came through the painting! Did you see her after that, Uncle?”

Jant shook his head slowly. “Just the vision of the gallery. I’ll have to run some more experiments but I think whatever Tiana did triggered that... experience. Still, it might be useful—”

“What are you talking about?” Jerya demanded incredulously. “My little sister is being attacked, right now.”

“She has that sword,” said Jant, far too calmly. “And there’s nothing we can do about it. She’s fought battles before; we hear about them later. She’s right in the midst of the western invaders. I’d be more surprised if she wasn’t in a fight.”

Jerya wanted to shake his old frame. Somebody touched her elbow from behind and she whirled around. Siana stood there, with Iriss right behind her. “Come have tea, dear,” she said.

“We just saw—they’re fighting!”

“I heard, yes. Jerya. Come sit with me and Iriss and have some tea.”

Jerya stared at her. She and Jant were so calm, as if none of this surprised them. Tiana might be
dead
. Then Iriss reached past Siana and laced her fingers through Jerya’s. “Help me back to the couch, please. It’s embarrassing to cling to Auntie Siana’s shawl.”

Jerya took a deep breath. She had Iriss and Iriss needed her help. She could focus on that. She went past both women, still holding Iriss’s hand, and led her Regent back to the sitting room. Siana followed after a few words with Jant.

Jerya helped Iriss to the couch and sat on one of the high-backed chairs. “There’s not any tea,” she said, and she knew she sounded like a sullen little girl. Like Tiana, in fact.
Where was she?

Just like Tiana, because the tea tray showed up a moment later, carried in by a wide-eyed inn servant. The tea things were haphazardly placed on a tray clearly prepared in a hurry. The servant put it on the table, gave Jerya a frightened look, and left the room.

“You were screaming,” said Iriss lightly, reaching for a tea-cake and knocking it to the floor. Jerya picked it up, set it aside, and handed her another one. “And there were unformed eidolons climbing the walls. I don’t know who did that but I think it frightened the staff.

“We were all in the phantasmagory again,” Jerya tried to explain. “All of us. Except for Tiana.”

Siana poured the tea delicately and handed the cups around. Jerya sipped hers dutifully. Instead of their their usual afternoon tea, they drank a calming herbal mixture the Chancellor blended himself. He insisted the Blood drink it whenever possible after they trained with their magic or had a meltdown. Repetition created habit, and Jerya felt some of her adrenalin draining away.

“Now,” said Siana. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you. I wonder now if I should have asked you long ago.”

Jerya sat up straight, feeling like she had that morning at the Tabernacle, as if any minute the world would collapse under her. “Go ahead.”

Siana hesitated, which didn’t make Jerya feel any better. Finally Siana said, “Why have you been treating the Justiciar’s Council as enemies?”

Being slapped couldn’t have shocked Jerya more. She swayed back, and then leaned forward, into an argument.

And sat back again. Because it was Siana. Siana, who had hugged her after her mother left, who had lost her husband but stayed with the family anyhow, and so Jerya bit her tongue on her immediate response. She went over her experiences with the Council: the insults, the snubs, the way they treated her as a child. She looked at her own behavior, trying to decide if she’d been acting irrationally or worse, telling herself stories to justify her desires. It was easy to do; she simply asked herself what Tiana would have done.

Finally, cautiously, she said, “I’ve been a little irrational, but they’ve been awful to me. To us. They want us to be leashed dogs, Siana.” Then she hesitated and said, “They have been awful, yes?” What was
really
awful was that she couldn’t trust herself, even now. Not with her father, not with Yithiere for an uncle.

“They’ve been extremely rude and antagonistic,” agreed Siana. “But you’re good at turning antagonists into allies when you try. Every day you go to the Tabernacle and convince people who hate you that you’re on their side. But when you don’t do that with the Council. Why is that?”