The Elder Blood Chronicles Bk 1 In Shades of Grey (15 page)

“I’ll give you a choice,” he said, echoing
words he himself had heard so very long ago, though he had been
better off than this child. “I can give your life back, or I can
end it quickly with no suffering. What would you have?” he
asked.

She looked up at him and seemed not to
comprehend him for a moment. She gave a slight shudder and coughed
again, the sound deep in her chest. He waited patiently, hoping she
would choose his first option. He had no taste for killing, but he
would not leave a child to starve to death, cold and alone. If she
hadn’t the will to live, he would send her as painlessly as he
could onto the next life. “Why would anyone want to live here?” she
asked in a wavering voice harsh from disuse.

“Because here is not the only place. Life is
full of choices. In death, there is but one,” he replied.

“I don’t care about choices anymore; I don’t
want any of this.” She turned her head away from him and slumped
back against the wall.

Charm closed his eyes and slowly drew his
dagger with loathing. It had barely cleared its sheath when the
child jolted slightly and slumped farther back against the wall,
sliding over to rest limply against the balcony railing. He looked
up sharply to find Isador perched neatly above him as silent as the
shadows around her. She stepped down off the railing and calmly
drew her throwing knife from the child’s eye. She cleaned it with
detached efficiency and put it back in its sheath at her waist. She
looked down at the child’s body and then to Charm. “If putting
Symphony in charge of this world stops this sort of thing, I’ll
fight tooth and nail to see her crowned.” Her voice was flat and
level with no emotion whatsoever.

Charm gave a slight nod and watched her for
another long moment before standing. Some individuals he had met
had that ability, to shut off everything inside. Isador was
apparently one of them, for he himself had never mastered the
skill. He could no more shut off his emotions than he could stop
breathing. “I’d burn the place if I thought it wouldn’t take this
entire district down. Let’s get out of here, the smell is too
much,” he said trying to sound as calm as she did.

“I always wondered why you joined the
Fionaveir, Charm. I finally have my answer. You may be greedy and
unscrupulous, but you do have heart,” Isador said with an approving
nod. She dropped down from the balcony and quickly disappeared into
the shadows.

Charm smirked and took one last glance at the
child
. Only an orphan could truly relate with another orphan
he mused. His mother hadn’t been a whore, though, and he had never
known her. He hadn’t watched her die as this child had watched her
own mother waste away. His had been a victim of rape and had died
by her own hand soon after his birth. He wasn’t sure which was
worse, watching a parent die or knowing your life caused their
death. He had heart, that was true enough, but it was selective
where it found mercy. That was part of the reason he had so readily
accepted this assignment, though he wouldn’t bother telling anyone.
From the information he had on the girl, she was an orphan as well,
and unlike the waif before him, she had chosen life. So he would do
everything in his power to ensure she kept that life. The
NightBlades and High Lords are damned.
He had no mercy for them,
not a drop of it, and if he did his job correctly she would never
even be aware she had a guardian angel.
He smiled at the
self-given title. It was an ironic thought. The smile still in
place, he dropped down to join Isador. They had much to do before
their new charge arrived.

“So what you are telling me is the teachers
at the Academy are not even real people?” Her tone was incredulous.
They were on the third hour of everything he could possibly think
to tell her about the Academy. The rules had been covered in the
first hour, and then they had moved onto the Academy grounds, which
she was sure could not possibly be as large as he described.

“No, what I said is, most of the teachers are
constructs,” Christian clarified, his voice full of his seemingly
endless patience. “The ones for the more elite classes, such as
Arcane Arts, Chemistry, and Arcanetech are actual people.”

His posture abruptly changed and he sat up
quickly and pulled hard on the steering of the ship, bringing them
into a sweeping descent. The maneuver caught her so off guard that
she nearly fell out of her seat before she managed to sit up fully
and cling to the chair arms.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” she demanded in a
panic stricken voice.

He gave a laugh in response and a huge smile.
With one hand, he indicated the view screen. “Watch and you will
see.”

She stared at in bewilderment and turned to
gaze at the view screen. With a start, she realized they were
barely five feet above the black waters of the ocean. Night had
long ago fallen and she had ceased watching the view screen at all,
but she was sure they had been much higher. How had he managed to
dive the ship so far and so fast?

Her frantic thoughts froze as a massive form
loomed up on the view screen. She thought it was a cliff at first
until it turned its head to regard them. As they rushed closer
details became clearer. The massive form’s serpentine body was
adorned with thickly scaled skin, combined with a huge fanged mouth
big enough to swallow the ship. The creature gave a bellow that
shook the interior of the ship and Jala felt her chest tighten in
terror. Her hands dug into the arms of her chair and she fought
back the urge to scream. “Oh, Fortune, what are you doing? Fly away
from it, not into its mouth! Oh, Fortune! Oh, Fortune!” Her voice
was somewhere between a gasp and a scream and she realized she was
babbling. She abruptly clamped her mouth shut and noticed he was
laughing. He was about to feed them to a gods-only-knew what kind
of creature that was, and he was laughing.

At the last possible moment, he pulled the
ship around, bringing it under the jaws and through a twining loop
of the creature’s body and back into the air. She wasn’t sure if it
had been her imagination or not, but she truly thought she had
heard the creature’s jaws slamming shut. She slowly turned to look
at him, with her jaw dropped open and her eyes huge. “What in
Fortune’s name was that?” she demanded.

“I wasn’t sure if you had ever seen a serpent
before. I doubted you had. They aren’t usually this close to
Sanctuary, so I decided to show off a bit and show you something at
the same time,” he replied through his dying laughter. He raised
his eyebrows at her a couple times and gave another chuckle. “Oh,
Fortune, indeed.”

She glared at him and slowly released the
death grip she had on the chair. He was entirely too amused. “You
could have given me a bit of warning,” she snapped in
annoyance.

“Didn’t want to ruin the surprise, and if he
had dived before I got there I would have looked rather foolish,”
he replied, oblivious to her annoyance. “Not sleepy anymore are you
though?”

“No, not at all,” she admitted. “Traumatized
perhaps, but certainly not tired.”

“Oh come now, it wasn’t that bad. I would
think a follower of Fortune would have more of a sense of
adventure,” he teased.

She gave him a light glare in response. He
gave her another roguish smile, and she felt her glare fading.

“Look,” he said, pointing back to the view
screen.

She turned her attention to where he
indicated and saw a vast glow on the horizon growing by the second.
“That’s Sanctuary?” she asked in awe, her irritation completely
forgotten.

He gave a slight nod. “She always looks
better at night. At night, she is beautiful and you cannot see her
scars.” His voice had gone low and thoughtful. He slowed the ship
once they were close enough to make out the individual lights. “You
can tell the quarters by what color the lights are,” he
explained.

She stared down at the rainbow of lights
below them. The city was shaped like an enormous wagon wheel, and
the center was lit with pristine white lights. The area around it
glowed with a rainbow of different colors depending on where one
looked.

“Some of the sections are different colors,
and others are simply yellow, and I see two that aren’t even lit
up,” she said, looking to him for an explanation.

“The multi colored ones belong to Houses. See
the blue and silver lights?” With his hand, he indicated a large
area to the north, and she nodded. “That’s Morcaillo’s section of
Sanctuary. The yellow colored ones are neutral quarters where the
House that would have normally tended them has fallen. The two
lightless quarters belong to House Dark of Oblivion and House
Blackwolf of Glis. They don’t use lights because they aren’t needed
there. The lightless one closest to my own quarter belongs to House
Dark.” He was turning the ship toward the lights in the center of
the city as he explained, and gradually they began to descend
toward a perfectly straight row of white lights that seemed to
stretch for a very long way.

“The lights are all magical, aren’t they? Why
aren’t they needed in those two districts?” She asked the first of
the hundred questions she had running through her mind.

“Yes, they are magical; most of Sanctuary
runs on magic. The Dark’s don’t need the lamps because their part
of the city is virtually deserted. They retreated back to Oblivion
during their war with Merro. The Blackwolf’s section is dark
because most of them are shifters and don’t need the lights. They
see just fine in the dark.” He landed the ship and gave her a wink.
“I have to get cleaned up quickly, and then we will head to the
Academy and you can ask all the questions you want as we walk.”

She watched him go and leaned back in her
seat. To her vast disappointment the view screen had gone black
when he released the controls. She stared ahead at the darkened
wall and tried to narrow down her questions to a reasonable few
before he returned. There was so much she wanted to know, but she
knew she would have to pace herself or she might find the end of
his patience with her.

She was carefully choosing jewelry when he
returned to the front of the ship. She looked up and watched him
fastening the last buttons on a deep blue vest. She caught herself
staring. He wore dark blue pants and polished black knee high
boots. His silver silk shirt was flawless, seeming more like liquid
metal than fabric, and the vest he was buttoning was covered in
embroidery so fine she shuddered at the time it must have taken to
create. His hair had been styled, as well. And she noticed blond
highlights in the auburn that she hadn’t seen before.

He glanced up, and raised an eyebrow when he
noticed her watching him. “Ready?” he asked.

“I’m so glad you were out of sorts when I met
you, I don’t think I would have had the nerve to speak with you had
you looked as you do now. You definitely look like a High Lord’s
son now,” she said quietly, the jewelry forgotten for the moment.
She had been talking to him for hours now, and all of a sudden she
felt herself becoming shy. It made no sense at all. He was still
Christian. Only the clothing had changed.

He smirked and pulled on a long deep blue
leather coat that fit snuggly at the shoulders and flared toward
the bottom, brushing lightly against the backs of his boots. “In
that case, I’m glad I looked disheveled as well.”

“I’ll be ready as soon as I decide what
jewelry to wear. I don’t even know what some of this is,” she
admitted with a sigh.

He moved and knelt down beside her, resting
easily on the toes of his boots with perfect balance and she tried
to ignore how good he smelled. “Let’s see.” He began moving pieces
aside and glanced at her dress and jacket a couple of times before
selecting a slender amethyst choker and matching earrings. He
dropped them in her hands wordlessly and moved a few more pieces
before choosing a few rings and some silver bracelets. “That should
do nicely. So, what in here are you unsure of the purpose of?”

With a frown, she held up a silver net with
small black gems set at intervals where the wires crossed each
other. “This,” she said. “There are two of them, and I have no idea
what they are.”

He smiled and took it from her hands gently
and turned it over to rest across the back of his hand. “It’s a
hair net, you put this part on my hand across the back of your hair
when it’s pinned up and fasten these clips just so.” He
demonstrated the fastenings, and she nodded.

“I would have never figured that out,” she
admitted ruefully.

He gave a shrug and stood. “I like your hair
down, and if you choose never to use them you will hear no
objections from me.”

She smiled and quickly donned the jewelry he
had selected. She closed the trunks back up and stood slowly,
looking down at them and then back to him. “Should we hire a coach
or are you going to carry them with magic again?” she asked.

He raised an eyebrow and waved his hands at
the trunks, and they both disappeared. She stared down at where
they had been and when she looked back up at him, he dropped two
small dark stones in her hand. She looked down at the stones and
back at him with confusion written clearly on her face.

“When we reach your rooms simply break the
stones. They are called storage stones. It’s a temporary transport
spell that will last for about eight hours,” he explained.

“Handy,” she said and examined the stones
closer. By all appearances, they were simply well polished smooth
black stones. They didn’t look magical at all. She glanced over at
Christian, hoping he wasn’t teasing her and that the trunks were
really inside the stones. If he was, she was going to look very
foolish trying to break the rocks later.

He gave her a questioning glance and motioned
toward the door. She nodded and headed that way. As they stepped
down from the ship, he waved his hand back at it and it disappeared
as well. He held up a shiny stone for her to see. Rather than a
plain black rock it looked to be a small diamond about the size of
a bird’s egg. “This variety lasts longer. The better quality of
stone it appears to be the longer the item will be contained. This
will last for about a month. I won’t leave my ship in there that
long, but if I need to, I can.”