The Gantean (Tales of Blood & Light Book 1) (23 page)

Having Miki on Tiriq’s trail gave me confidence, but that good feeling waned as hours passed and he did not return. It was after dark before he came back.

“Well?” I asked. I’d been desperately pacing the room.

“Tiriq’s still in the Palace,” Miki said. “But he’s being sent to Entila. They’ve got the room he’s in rigged with magic. I can’t get in.”

“Did you see him?” I croaked. I’d never shown Miki my tears, but alone, I’d been crying for hours.

“Couldn’t get in, like I said. It was all magicked up in green sticky bloodlight.”

“Did you—did you hear anything else? About the war? About the Cedna?”

“I managed to sneak into an alcove near where some mages were talking. They haven’t had word about how the battle in the Savalias progresses. That mage Laith said that the Cedna completely destroyed Amar’s fleet, so now none of the Galatien allies except Entila have any sea power, and they won’t send more ships until the Cedna is dead.”

I frowned. “What’s wrong with her, do you think, Miki? Has she gone mad? What possible gain does she see in working for Xander Ricknagel?”

Miki shrugged and headed towards the hall. “She’s gone sayantaq. Who can know why her mind turns the way it does. She’s cooked.” He tapped his temple in the Gantean gesture to indicate madness. I hugged myself, wishing I had Tiriq to hold.

I made a bed on the floor with some of my extravagant bedding for Miki, but I could barely rest that night. Nightmares plagued my sleep. Visions of my children haunted me: Tiriq had grown as tall as his father. He held a green magestone as if doing Lethemian magic. Tianiq, eyes filled with a wild amber flame, soared through the air by some unknown means of flight.

Do you remember me, the mother of your blood?
I asked them in the dream. They stared at me, no recognition on their faces.

Early the following morning steps from the hall woke me. The door to my salon sprang open as if no magic had ever sealed it. Laith strode in, closing the door with a swish of his staff. Miki gave the mage a dirty look, but obeyed his request for privacy, no doubt keeping fierce guard on my door from the hall.

I stared at Laith dumbly after Miki left.

“How are you?” he said as if we were on congenial terms. He sat beside me and pulled at a pocket in his cloak. “This belongs to you.”

He held out a silk bag. I took it from him, unwinding the knot that held it closed. I pulled out my necklace, complete with tormaquine and anbuaq, shocked. How had Laith gotten a hold of it? I tried to wind it around my neck but I couldn’t tie it; my hands shook too much.

Laith offered to knot the twine for me. “I am sorry I didn’t it bring it to you straight away,” he added. “I didn’t realize it might be important to you.”

I stared at him. “How did you get it in the first place? I lost it at Costas’s Brokering.”

“Costas gave it to me. He asked me to try to find you after you disappeared—he asked every mage he trusted to try to track you by that heartstring, you know. I asked for one of your possessions to help me—tracking is tricky work, and sometimes a personal object helps. He gave me that. It had a fair amount of magical energy, too.” He nodded at the necklace. “Jaasir found out I was tracking you for Costas and nearly had an apoplexy, so I had to do it in secret after that. I couldn’t track you overtly, but I had my own reasons for wishing to locate you.”

“Your own reasons?” As usual, speaking with Laith was like speaking with a riddler. I wrapped the necklace, secure around my neck, with one hand. Though the thought was utterly irrational, having my tormaquine again gave me the tiniest spark of hope that I might yet be reunited with both of my children. It made me feel myself again, after moons of being lost. It was a great relief to have the anbuaq.

“I have news,” Laith said, switching his topic with whiplashing speed. “Obviously, with Amar’s naval defeat, Costas did not recapture Anastaia, but he’s gained ground for the mage’s barrier on land; he’s steadily pushing Ricknagel back towards his own province.”

“Did you contact Costas? To ask about Tiriq? To get him returned to me? He told me before he left to take care of him! It makes no sense! Why would Costas order such a thing? Did you speak with him directly?”

Laith frowned and glanced out the window. His eyes tracked raindrops down to a puddle on the lawn. “The battlemages won’t permit aether-sendings to come through that aren’t related to the battle itself. It’s a real pain in the ass. If they had one of my network stones, it wouldn’t be such a problem—”

“So you weren’t able to reach Costas? But I know he would tell you—”

Laith lifted his hand to cut me off. “I reached him. He won’t relent. He confessed that he believed you’d flee with your son, so he wants you separated. He’s using the child to keep you here. Typical.” He paused, tapping his lip with his index finger. He finally dragged his eyes from the raindrops on the glass pane. “I have this theory about you,” he murmured. “Once I found out your name it all came together. You’re my sister.”

My gaze snapped up to meet his. “
What?”
Once again, Laith Amar’s wild imaginings had gotten the better of his fanciful mind. I sighed, wishing he weren’t so distractible.

“It seems wrong to me,” Laith went on. “A brother who colludes in imprisoning his own sister is as wrong as a brother who purchases his own blood for service.”

“Why should blood make any difference? Isn’t it wrong to purchase
anyone
?” I began to see why our Elders discouraged a focus on blood and forbade us from making ung-aneraqs with those we loved. It fogged our understanding and biased our perceptions of justice. As they always said, blood was viscous and sticky.

“If blood makes no difference, why are you so unhappy to be parted from your son?” Laith challenged.

“A baby needs a mother! I am his. I would feel the same if he had been handed to me as a babe from some other woman and I had nursed and cared for him through his infancy,” I lied. I had become attached to Tiriq in a sayantaq way, a way that never would have been permitted in Gante. If the bloodcord between us had been cut according to Gantean tradition, I would not be pining for Tiriq so unbearably. That truth was painfully clear. Tianiq had been cut from me, and though I worried for her, her absence did not stab me with nearly the same intensity.

“I always knew I had a sister. I used to dream about you.”

I snorted. “You are not my brother.”

Laith persisted, “My father promised me a sister when I was a boy. He said she would be called Leila. Laith and Leila. He said we’d be a matched set. I recall the day I saw that the Cedna carried you.”

My hands grew clammy. I stuffed them into the crooks of my elbows.
“What?
You think—you think
the Cedna
is my blood-mother?”

“Even as a child I had an uncommonly good eye for the aetherlight. I remember the baby’s light. Indigo and opal. Just like yours.”

“Ganteans do not permit connections of blood. We cut them,” I snapped, even as a chilling sweat trickled down my spine.

Laith crossed his arms in a mirror image of me and frowned. “So you do not know who your true parents are?”

I shook my head. “And it doesn’t matter. What would it change? I am still here; my children are still apart from me.”

“If you were a daughter of Onatos Amar and the Cedna of Gante, you’d receive better support from the Ten Houses when your marriage to Costas is announced. He only hasn’t made the marriage public yet because he knows they’ll resist him. If we can prove you are the daughter of Onatos Amar—”

“I don’t care about that!” I sprang up from the seat and spun to face him. “All I want is my son. If you cannot bring him to me, leave.” I waved at the door.

He ignored me. “Laith and Leila. They have a nice ring to them, don’t they? Matched names for his matched bastard children. He planned everything; Onatos was that kind of man.”

He smiled at me from the window seat as I paced. “I remember the Cedna well from those days at the Alcazar. What a woman! Tall, slender as a blade, sun-kissed skin, that auburn hair braided into a thousand snakes on her head.”

I paused and listened. Ganteans had been willing to speak of the woman. I remembered the few times I had seen her in the flesh—in Entila with Sterling Ricknagel, and a few brief moments at the Brokering before the attack. She had indeed been striking, sharp and vivid as a blackstone edge.

“Her eyes were green like new grass. She seemed beautiful to me, beautiful and terrifying and as imperious as a goddess. She moved—she moved as though she owned the world. She cut the world as a knife cuts flesh. My father—Onatos—brought her back from the High Court,” Laith continued. “She had gotten into trouble and Mydon Galatien placed her under house arrest. My father volunteered to be her jailer.

“She used to let me watch while she chiseled blackstone in a courtyard of the Alcazar. She was obsessed with blackstone, spent hours knapping at it like a common craftsman. Her arms were covered in scars.” He gestured at his forearms.

“They loved each other?” I asked, momentarily distracted by his story.

“I say my father loved the Cedna. Everyone who saw her must have loved her a little. I don’t think she ever loved anything. She was as slippery and dark as the blackstone she cut. Her passions, I think, were fiercer than love.”

“What happened, then?” I asked. “Doesn’t Jaasir say she kidnapped him?”

“She left, suddenly and mysteriously. I told my father I had seen you inside her body, that she carried a baby. He was
devastated
. He set out to find you. He said he’d bring you back for me. Those were the last words he spoke to me: ‘I’ll bring her back for you, Laith.’ He meant you, of course.”

I thought of the haunting dream I’d had of my children. A bloodcord could cut like a wire.

Laith stood up, looking sheepish at how much he’d told me. “Do you still wish for me to leave?”

He waited, but when I said nothing more, he heeded my earlier request. I checked the door after he left, but he hadn’t removed the magical seal.

I hoped for Costas’s quick return. Only his arrival could reunite me with Tiriq—if I could only speak with my new husband, I knew I could reassure him that the best place for our son was with me. In the meantime, Miki, who crept through the Palace halls like some kind of specter, served as my connection to the world outside my room.

“Is there any news of Jaasir Amar?” I asked Miki one evening as we sat together on the seat by the picture window of my room. He had proved adept at listening at important doors. The Palace staff had accepted him as my servant; no one who recognized him remained here, as Allian and most of Costas’s Dragonnaires were on the war front. “Last I heard the Cedna had captured him in the battle in the Parting Sea, yes?”

“Lord Jaasir’s vessel disappeared as he pursued the Cedna; everyone says she’s captured him using magic,” Miki explained. “But I don’t think anyone really knows what happened to him.”

That situation worried me. A captive can get close enough to his captor to kill her, and Jaasir wanted the Cedna dead, badly. He was a dangerous creature, and unlikely to heed my warnings about the importance of killing her in the Gantean way.

“Most people think she’s killed him,” Miki added. “That mage Laith has some secret means of communicating with him, but he has had no messages in days.”

I did not voice my concerns, but I grew increasingly desperate. If Jaasir killed the Cedna without ritual, what would happen to the world’s magic? The Elders had always said the whole system depended upon on her. She was the fulcrum upon which the Hinge moved. Killing the Cedna was no task for sayantaq hands. I pushed aside the burden of the Cedna and raked Miki for more information. “What about Tiriq? What have you heard?”

Miki shook his head and wriggled to his feet “I’m afraid—I think they’ve sent him north, Leila. I don’t know for sure, but I haven’t heard him crying behind his door since yesterday.

Panic surged through my blood. I sprang up from the window seat and caught Miki by the shoulders. I’d had enough.

“Miki, we have to find a way to get me free of this room. I must go after him. I have to find Tiriq.”

A
wailing siren
rent the night.

“Miki! What’s that noise?” I almost believed it had to do with my recent declaration to escape. Could the magic sense my very thoughts?

He frowned. “Alarms are supposed to blare if the barrier around the High City is breeched.”

“Tiriq,” I whispered. No one but Ghilene Entila knew where he was. Was he safe? My heart hammered my ribs.

Miki shook his head. “We have to figure out a way to get you out of here.” He studied the door and surrounding wall as though he might somehow deconstruct Ghilene Entila’s confining spell.

Miki rummaged through his pockets and pulled out the Cedna’s ulio. Its blade glimmered in the candle’s flame. “I have this.”

I gasped. “Where did you get that?” We could cut through Ghilene’s magic with the blackstone blade.

“You had it on the ship, remember? I used it to kill that mage.”

“You’ve had it all this time?”

Miki shrugged, handing over the blade. “Of course.”

My hands trembled as I took the blade. It was just what I needed. I used the fine edge to cut a narrow line up my wrist. I held the cut, where little drops of bright blood welled, up against Nautien’s anbuaq, letting the red jewels drip onto the crystal lodged in the bone.

My physical surroundings slid away; bloodlight spun around me. The room appeared hazy and small in Yaqi
,
distorted so that shimmering green walls pressed against my two-tone blue bloodlight. No matter how I moved, the walls melded with me. Ghilene’s magic held me locked in nets of bloodlight with trip cords waiting to be pulled. When I cut into the strings of her spell, she would be alerted.

I risked it. Tiriq needed me
.
The enchantment’s green light snapped and sparked as I sliced through it. Tendrils of light tumbled around me like serpents falling from the sky.

Movement in the distance—always difficult to assess in Yaqi—paused me. A bright figure cast from a blue bloodlight so pale it almost looked white approached. Not a single twisting ligature connected his light to any other; the man was as unfettered as a Gantean, and yet I knew immediately he was a Lethemian.

I was ripped up from the airless silence of Yaqi. “What in the name of Amassis are you doing?” hissed Laith.

“Let me go!”

“Are you crazy?” Laith lifted his magestone—the glittery one that shifted its color with every movement—and swiped the air, still holding my wrist with his other hand. “What did you do? Ghilene will be here in moments. You utterly demolished her magic—Damnation! Why didn’t you wait for me?”

“Wait for you?”

Laith rolled his eyes. “You’re my sister, remember? I wouldn’t leave you to Ricknagel’s mercy.” He thrust a bundle at me. “Take this. You’ll need it later.”

The siren continued to scream into the night. Laith jerked his head. “Follow me.”

“Tiriq—”

“He’s been sent north,” Laith bit out. “We’ll head north, too, if you haven’t sprung Ghilene Entila on us.” Miki and I followed the long-legged mage through the Palace. He brought us up a staircase and down a forgotten hall. “Hurry. We need to get out of the Palace immediately. Ricknagel’s battlemage Taz Ballestos has infiltrated the city with a cohort of his men. Only the gods know how he got through the magical wards.”

We tore down three more flights of stairs until we arrived in some kind of basement area with poor lighting. Laith spoke a soft word, and his magestone began to glow.

He peered at the door before us. “Locked, of course,” he muttered, thrusting his magestone into Miki’s hands. “Hold this.”

Miki took the stone as if it might burn him. Laith fumbled in his cloak to withdraw two flat strips of metal. He eyed the lock and beckoned Miki to hold the glowing magestone closer.

Laith slid the metal into the lock. “Amatos be damned!” he whispered as he jiggled the pick.

As he eased the second pick into the lock, he closed his eyes and froze except for the tiniest of shifts with his hands. I held my breath. Laith’s eyes flew open. With a single deft twist, he turned the bottom pick. The lock gave a satisfying click. He handed me his picks. I raised my eyebrows and made a mental note to ask him where he learned such a skill at a more opportune time.

Laith retrieved his magestone from Miki, holding it ready as he pushed the door. The croak of hinges sounded terribly loud now that the siren had finally ceased.

We slid into the shadows beyond the door, sucked into the passage on a damp inhalation. The tunnel wound through rock, leading us away from the Palace.

“This will take us out of the city?” I asked, remembering that Lymbok had led us through this network before.

“The tunnels connect to only two places beyond the city,” Laith explained in a hushed voice. “One takes you beyond the eastern walls, the other beyond the western walls. We’re going west.”

“West? Why?” Miki demanded.

“Because Ricknagel’s troops are camped in the east. And because the eastern hatch always sticks.”

“How do you know the way down here?” I asked as Laith led us through several quick, dizzying tunnel turns. Though only his magestone, shining a small circle around us, lit our way, he moved expertly, with confident knowledge of the environs.

“I grew up in Galantia, mostly. I spent hours down here, learning the intricacies of the tunnels. It’s a great pastime of thieves and street children.”

“But you weren’t a street child—”

“I may as well have been. Now, hush, we’re going above ground.” Laith pushed at an overhead hatch I would never have seen had I been walking the tunnels alone. Moonlight cut through the opening as he crawled out. He reached a long arm down to help first Miki and then me through the hatch. The Bottom City’s wall stood just a few spans behind us. Unlike the eastern exit of the tunnels, this western one dropped us only just beyond the city. I shivered. The sound of rushing water assaulted my ears.

“Keep the river on your right,” Laith said, pointing at a wide, dark expanse that glittered and roiled in the moonlight: the Rift River that ran north of the High City.

We hadn’t gone but ten paces when the High City’s siren wailed again. I froze.

Laith jolted me. “What are you doing?” he hissed. “You can bet that’s on our account. Ghilene must have discovered you’ve escaped. Don’t stop, move!”

I had never felt so small and exposed as I did picking along the roaring river beneath the stern facade of Galantia’s walls. We could light no torch, but I caught the iridescent sheen of Miki’s sealskin cloak in front of me, reflecting the moon’s silver.

“Ghilene won’t know which direction we fled,” Laith said. “Hemicylix won’t be her first guess.”

Miki and I made no reply. We were not so naive as to speak under the shadow of the city’s walls. I searched the horizon, hoping for trees, but the landscape showed only the bulk of gently rolling hills. We were in farmlands, soft country.

We passed and ignored a small hamlet as we walked through the night. Rather than the open road, we followed the river’s edge where the brush receded. Miki and I didn’t care if we never saw a city again, but Laith had other ideas.

“We’ll stop for rest and food in the next town,” he announced when dawn spread wings of light over us.

“Stop?” argued Miki. “We’ve hardly left the city yet.” He turned to frown at us as he continued to walk, backwards. His trousers were too short. He had gained at least another finger’s breadth in height since we’d met.

There would be little protection for three wanted people in the farms and townships surrounding the High City.

“It’s time for disguises,” Laith said. “We’re as noticeable as falcons amongst fowl.”

“Disguises?” I asked. “We haven’t got any!”

“Of course we do.” Laith beckoned Miki and me to follow him into a clearing within the shrubs. He removed his pack and withdrew his magestone, offering up a magelight that shone as softly as stars. He unloaded several bundles from his pack, revealing a pair of heavy steel shears.

“Come on then,” he jerked his head.

“What are those for?” I asked nervously.

“What do you think? To cut your hair!”

“No!” Miki and I cried together.

Laith cocked his head. I grabbed Miki’s wrist and pulled him back, thinking Laith would insist.

“Did I say something wrong?” Laith queried.

“Your hair expresses the strength of your spirit,” I explained. “Iksraqtaq do not cut our hair.” I forgot that Laith wouldn’t know the Gantean word.

But he seemed to understand. “Oh. Shouldn’t your hair be much longer then?” He eyed my braids, which barely hung past my shoulders, and Miki’s, only grazing his chin.

“Slavers cut our hair when we were taken,” I said. “A haircut will not disguise me, anyway. We cannot go amongst people, Laith.”

He scooped up another parcel. “I actually got the idea from Jaasir,” he said, shaking out a long black square of fabric. “You shall be a Sulphidite, though they usually have shorn hair. Miki can be my manservant-in-training.”

“And who are you to be then?”

“Shhhh!” Laith gave me his most winning smile. “I will play an Amarian merchant. In our plot, I’m rich, because I have just purchased you at the market in Galantia.”

“I didn’t know Galantia had a slave market.”

“Oh, it’s a discreet, specialized sort of market. The Galatien Family wouldn’t like word of it to get out, publically. They don’t like to be seen as purveyors of human chattel. Even so, buying a Sulphidite in Galantia is a likely story.”

“What are Sulphidites?”

“Lysandrene priestesses. They sell themselves into servitude in order to raise money for the sect. They are quite popular here as household servants. My stepmother Daria—that’s Jaasir’s mother—had only Sulphidites as her servants. She must have owned at least twenty of them.” Laith held out the black garment to me. “The main advantage of posing as a Sulphidite is that they wear these.”

I took the smock. It resembled a small tent. “I don’t understand,” I admitted.

Laith took the shapeless thing and untied several ribbons. With a casual sweep, he launched the sheet over my head.

“I can’t see!”

“Just wait,” he said, twisting it around. “There.”

A tiny window opened before my eyes. Laith tightened the laces around the eyeholes, then around billowing sleeves, and finally, around the skirt. I frowned as I tried a few movements. The lacings prevented me from taking more than mincing steps. “I feel like a hobbled horse.”

“That’s the general idea of the thing,” Laith said wryly. “But at least you are covered with good cause. Miki!” He beckoned the boy close.

“In Herefork, the next village along the road, there’s a large inn. Run ahead and book us rooms. We won’t be far behind.” Laith surveyed Miki’s attire and gave a quick jerk of his head. “You’ll do. Ghilene Entila won’t be sending a search party out for you, anyway. Likely she doesn’t even know you exist.” Laith pulled a sack of jhass from his pocket. “It’s enough to pay for rooms, rent us horses, and get you a bite to eat, too.”

Miki swiped the sack and disappeared into the darkness, showing a shocking amount of trust in the mage.

Laith attired himself in a red tunic and a belt made of thick gold links that sat low over his hips. I’d only ever seen him in the stark white of a mage or the unrelenting black robes of House Amar. “Is that your disguise?”

“My name will be Omer el-Esan.” Laith arranged his belt. “We’ll stay off the road until we have to enter Herefork. You should know that most Sulphidites are quite silent. Best if you speak as little as possible.” He pulled out a magestone—a different one than his usual. This one was made from solid, opaque turquoise.

“Omer el-Esan is a mage?” I guessed.

“Omer is definitely a mage. A free mage, an imagus, not lien-bound to any House.”

L
aith
and I approached Herefork the following afternoon.

“I’ll go down first,” Laith said. We stood secluded in a stand of trees that stretched from the road to the river on an uphill incline.

“It’s clear, at least for now,” he called as he descended. I picked through the trees to his side. “Ready?”

The road was soft from past rains. It seemed odd and ominous that we had not encountered any refugees from Galantia yet. I wondered what had actually occurred in Galantia to set off the alarm, and if the High City had indeed been attacked.

Herefork, a small community, had no gate. Before we entered the village proper, Laith stepped off the road and performed a magical gesture. His face transformed. Before, he had been Laith, a tall, handsome black-haired man with sharp, clear features. A different figure entirely appeared before me. This man had more winters, and he wore his lighter hair flowing over his shoulders. His nose hooked under, and his waist had thickened.

“Will that transformation last?” I asked. Again, Lethemian magic awed me. How did his work in the Aethers effect what I saw so completely?

“I can remove it when we’re in private, and that will help conserve my aetherlight until Hemicylix,” Laith answered. “But it will not last forever. Disguising myself is more draining than most magic. Don’t worry. I expect I can hold it until we get to Hemicylix.”

I followed Laith into the village. He strode up the main road without hesitation to the single busy inn in the village square.

“Welcome!” the innkeeper called. “Did you arrange for rooms ahead of your visit?” He bent to pick up a crate from the floor. “There’s nothing available otherwise. Due to the war, you see.”

“My boy should have checked-in already. Eleven, twelve years old?” Laith indicated Miki’s height with a wave.

“Oh sure. Good boy, that one. I’ve got you set up nicely. Top floor. Your own bath. How long will you be staying?”

“Only tonight. We’ll depart at dawn.”

Laith stayed out late in Herefork that night. Miki fell asleep almost immediately, but I proved too anxious to rest. The hinge of the door creaked, and I sat up in alarm, tossing the covers off and snatching the ulio from the rucksack.

“Leila?” Laith’s voice sounded thick.

“Laith, I almost stabbed you! You scared me!”