The Mirrored City (27 page)

Victoria pulled her hair and cried. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. On the Moon,
we don’t have
monsters!” Her scream echoed throughout the atrium, turning heads.

“Get away from her!” One of the healers noticed and walked over briskly. She was a heavyset woman, wearing a full veil of an initiate healer. Lyta knew that walk anywhere. You didn’t share a home with six sisters without learning to recognize them beneath a veil.

Bejia stopped dead in her tracks when she saw Lyta. Her eyes narrowed with recognition. She tore off her veil and snarled, “Lyta. Why are you here, upsetting Victoria? And who is this?”

Lyta unveiled her face and pointed her chin defiantly. “My sister is here, Bejia. Where are you keeping her?”

“She isn’t here.” Bejia crossed her ample arms. “I’m going to have you arrested, you… murderer.”

“I only killed Patreans. Safina can send me the invoice.” Lyta balled her fists.

“I would advise you to think about your next move very carefully.” Heath ripped off his disguise and stood next to Lyta.

Bejia’s face went pale with fear. She took a step back and placed her hand against her throat. “Stormlord.”

“We know she was taken here,” Heath said confidently. “Blood magic pinpointed her location.”

It wasn’t exactly true. Heath had taken
her
word for it that Shannon would be in the mirror of the Palace of Keys, where they had put those horrible things inside her. Her certainty crumbled. Shannon could be anywhere.

“She isn’t here,” Bejia reiterated stubbornly. “I won’t risk violence in this asylum by calling the guards, if I don’t have to. But I cannot allow you to upset our patients. I demand you leave us in peace. Now.”

Victoria stood, eyes sparkling with tears. “Don’t make him leave. He’s taking me back to the Moon!”

Bejia’s mouth curled in disgust. “You are not just a liar, you are an evil man, Stormlord. Do you even care what happens to Victoria when you fail to deliver on your promise?”

“Shannon’s life is in danger,” Lyta said. “She was your sister. If that means anything to you at all—”

“Oh. You’re looking for Shannon?” Victoria said brightly. “I know her. She talked to me yesterday. But she looks nothing like the rendering.”

“Where?” Lyta grabbed for the woman’s arms, but Victoria shrank away.

“Don’t touch me. Never touch me,” she hissed.

“No one’s touching you,” Heath assured her. “Where did you see her?”

“By the fountain,” Victoria said. “She was a fat man they had to lock away because he started screaming. On the Moon, we don’t have screaming. No one ever has to raise their voice to be heard.”

Heath looked to Bejia. “I need to see him. Please. You don’t gain the Light if you don’t have compassion. I’m asking you as a healer to help us save a life.”

“Yet
you
have no compassion,” Bejia stated.

Lyta wasn’t sure how true that was. He had spared Daphne when he could have killed her. He had spared her own life when Safina sent him to murder her. He was trying to save Shannon any way he could.

Heath smiled weakly. “I didn’t start out that way. So let me give you a piece of wisdom. The quickest way to end up exactly like me is to put your own anger ahead of the needs of others.”

Bejia scowled, gathered her robes, and motioned for them to follow.

They made their way to the third floor and saw more guards on each level. Each room they passed was barred shut, each one a window into madness and misery. As they passed, a toothless woman snatched something from her waste bucket and shoved it into her mouth, chewing openly, with her face pressed against the bars.

Bejia explained, “It’s not uncommon for people to take on other identities in here. We have two Achelons and a man who claims to be possessed by Harrowers. Shannon Ibazz is a well-known name to the people of Baash. Her recent departure caused a scandal. The man Victoria spoke of, Rancis, could have heard any number of people talking about it.”

“Did you question him at all?” Heath inquired.

“Why would I? Shannon and this creature here ruined my life. I never wanted to hear that name again.”

Lyta sighed. “I’m sorry for what I did to you, Bejia. If I’d known, I never would have done it. It was pointless and stupid, and now Shannon’s going to pay for my mistake.”

Bejia shook her head. “Those houses, the games we played… Honestly, I’m glad I will never become a First Wife like Mother Safina. I like healing and using my Light to help people. I don’t forgive you, but I have made peace with the consequences.”

They reached Rancis’s cell. He was obese, at least three hundred pounds, naked, and manacled to the floor, shivering. He turned to look at them. His eyes were pale white, but they widened in recognition. His voice was high. “Lyta?”

The way he said it made Lyta’s skin crawl. “Shannon?”

“Lyta,” the man’s face twisted in anguish, “help me.”

Lyta grabbed the bars of the cell and ripped them open, breaking the lock bolt out of the stone. She rushed to wrap her arms around the man’s heavy shoulders. “I’m here, Shannon. I’m here.”

“It hurts so much, Lyta. Please help me.”

Lyta rubbed his bald head. “Tell me how. Where are you?”

A chorus of voices around her answered in unison, “I don’t know. It’s dark and it’s cold.”

Lyta looked to the door, to see Bejia and Heath staring off with blank white eyes.

They spoke again with small frightened voices. “Please help me.”

Lyta stood, her hands trembling. “Shannon, how are you doing this?”

Shannon’s plaintive plea became like a chant, repeating over and over as everyone in the atrium joined in with Rancis, Bejia, and Heath. “I’m so scared. It hurts so much.”

Lyta walked out onto the balcony. The guards stood frozen at their posts, sobbing. “Lyta. I need you, Lyta.”

She glanced over the railing. In the courtyard, patients, healers, and guards stood, a sea of alabaster gazes fixed on her. “You’re the only one who can help me.”

Only one figure moved. A slight girl with long brown hair twirled and danced joyfully. Victoria smiled and spread her arms wide and then hugged herself. She yelled, “I found Shannon. She’s all around us. Now I can go home. I’m going back to the Moon!”

T
WENTY-
F
IVE

The Maw

J
ESSA

The Storm Raiders came under the cover of darkness with their Thunderstones and crept into the Wavelord village. They kept the women and children hostage and herded the men into the longhouse. The men were plied with honeyed aphrodisiacs and threatened with the death of their loved ones into making love to the pirates’ women. And when those children were born, the Wavelords were slaughtered.

And since that time, nothing has been good.

The firstborn of the Wavelord and Storm Raider union was called Noah, and he named his people the Stormlords. He grew from a cruel boy to a brutal man, killing his parents to achieve power. The Stormlords sailed the oceans invincible, slaughtering villages and taking slaves for their new home in Thelassus.

And since that time, all that was good has been forgotten.

They built an empire in the ocean, where not even the sky ships could reach, strangling trade routes and murdering the lesser nations. The banners of Kultea spread across half of Creation and the great Mother Kraken laughed.

And since that time, even after the Old Empires fell, nothing has changed.

—Legend of the Kondole,
Oral History

JESSA FLOATED IN
darkness.

Arrogant.

The voices welled up from all around her. They were low and placid but dripping with utter contempt. The words vibrated through her body, making her shattered bones throb in agony.

Foolish.

She opened her eyes. The rose illumination of the giant anemone let her see in the lightless depths. Mariel’s lifeless body floated nearby, green hair spilling out amid a clout of dirt and broken glass from the shattered terrarium. The lion from the coelacanth menagerie floated upside down a few feet away.

We are ancient.

The dark silhouette of a massive six-finned fish rushed past, devouring the lion with a single snap of its three-foot mouth. Its scales were black and thick, like heavy plates of dull obsidian steel. Jessa sensed other dark massive shapes prowling the water behind her.

You are nothing to us.

She glanced around, looking for Pisclatet, but the fishman was nowhere to be seen amid the crushed detritus. The abraevium fabric of her dress was probably the only thing that had saved her from being cut to pieces. It had hardened in response to the massive pressure of the sea.

You thought to come to our demesne and make demands of us?

Jessa willed her body to move and righted herself, silver gown spilling out around her legs. Her ribs hurt. Her left arm couldn’t move. Her right thigh and left shin were broken. She stretched her good arm to her side and called her lightning. The water cleared around her as she willed the debris away.

Face our Mother’s judgment.

She started to sink in the water down the long luminous maw at the center of the calcified anemone. She tried to will herself up through the waters, but she was being drawn in inexorably. Her body ached, but she struggled as she was pulled deeper and deeper into a dark pit of water at the nadir of the ocean.

Jessa awoke in an air-filled cavern of rainbow coral. Fantastic and colorful shapes grew out of rock, lined with glassy blue veins of thunderstone. She was on a slab of shale rock, and her injuries were gone. She glanced around anxiously.

In the center of the chamber was a throne of gilded coral, bigger and grander than the one in the Sunken Palace. A pale woman rested languidly in it, her hand supporting her head.

Noticing Jessa, the woman’s head perked up a little bit. “Well, don’t just sit there. Let me get a look at you.” Her voice was impatient and husky, like the sound of an exasperated mother mustering all her patience for a young child.

Her skin was ivory with blue veins visible underneath, and she glistened with translucent slime. Her limp white blonde hair had been plastered to her skull, making her appear bald. She had silver eyes, with four pupils like an octopus. Along the backs of her arms were suckers, and her fingers writhed like tentacles.

“Kultea?” Jessa gasped.

“Don’t make me get up,” the woman beckoned with a curling tentacle. “I’m old.”

Jessa’s heart pounded as she took a tentative step toward Kultea. Inwardly, she prayed to Kondole for guidance and protection. He had destroyed Kultea’s avatar in Rivern. She had to remind herself that she was doing this for her son. “Great Mother,” Jessa began, “I come to humbly beg your audience.”

She curtsied, lifting the hem of her abraevium gown in deference.

“Closer,” the Mother of Krakens said, with a hint of false sweetness.

Jessa took a breath and marched toward the throne until she was a foot away. Kultea’s hand snatched Jessa’s face and pinched her cheeks. She fought hard against the urge to flinch or run away. The goddess appreciated strength. The strange silvery eyes blinked as Kultea leaned in to inspect Jessa.