Green Wild (Thrones of the Firstborn Book 2) Read online

  “There’s two?” she said, dismayed. “I thought there was only one.”

  “The other one is the princess who saved the city from the mudslide, Sora,” said Cutter, grunting as he pushed one of the bodyguards back again. Then he spoke rapidly in Vassay to them, and Jerya caught several bad words.

  “Would you like to see my daughter?” asked Julina gravely. “I think the injury is in her mind, not her body, but perhaps you can tell us for certain.”

  Jerya turned away from Julina and Sora, leaving them to their conversation. Instead she advanced on Sora’s bodyguards. “What is going on here?”

  “Sora is frightened of your magic’s corruption,” said one of them, with bushy eyebrows and jowls more suitable for a man twice his age.

  “We hear your monsters attack people. That they attacked this lady of yours.” The second man, who had the face of a fairy tale prince and the voice of a pre-adolescent youth, gave her an ugly sneer.

  Ah. This was more like what Jerya had been expecting since Vassay arrived.

  “And just what are you going to do if such a monster attacks in my Court?” Jerya demanded.

  “Protect her. Shield her with our bodies if we must.”

  Jerya heard Sora give a tiny sigh behind her and changed what she was about to say accordingly. “Did she ask you to protect her?”

  “No, she didn’t,” answered Cutter, amused. “They attached themselves to her back on the road. Poor Sora.”

  Jerya took a deep breath. “You are guests in my city and I’m sure you have some... useful function to serve as part of your expedition. Go serve it, or I will introduce you to monsters who will physically escort you from the building, give your pretty cloaks a brush down, then throw you into the mud.” They both stared at her, goggle-eyed. “Should I use smaller words? Go, now!”

  “Landry!” called Sora, and the other woman pushed past the two bodyguards and turned to face them.

  “Sora volunteered to be here, oafs,” she said, and pushed one of them in the chest. “Go away.”

  “She doesn’t take care of herself like she should,” muttered one of them. They both took a few steps backward, running directly into Jerya’s guards.

  She smiled at Raffey. “Lieutenant Monster, escort these men back to their wagons. Don’t let them return.”

  Landry and Cutter both looked at her, eyes wide, as the bodyguards were manhandled out of sight. Cutter seemed amused, and Landry surprised. Jerya gave them the same smile she’d given the guard. “They’re all rather big and strong, my guardsmen, and there are so many of them. They make much better monsters than my eidolons.”

  “Landry!” called Sora again, impatiently.

  Landry jumped. “Coming.” She hesitated, clearly unwilling to shove past Jerya, which Jerya approved of. Graciously, but pointedly, she let Landry through as she turned to watch the healing.

  Sora sat beside Shanasee’s bed, her fingers lightly resting on Shanasee’s chest. Landry pulled a chair over, sat down, and put one hand on Sora’s hair. Both of them began to mutter to the Logos. Even quietly done, the sound of it scratched against Jerya’s ears. It buzzed and twisted and she heard sounds surely no human throat could make.

  Cara stood beside Julina, her hands clasped and her heart in her eyes. She hadn’t been sleeping much, and she’d taken Shanasee’s withdrawal much harder than anybody else. Jerya knew Cara blamed her, but what else could she have done? So many would have died without Shanasee’s sacrifice.

  Jerya glanced around at the sensation of Twist’s arrival and found him in the corner near the door. When she caught his eye he joined Cutter and Jerya. Cutter brightened, recognizing him, and said, “Shall I tell you what they’re doing, sir?”

  Shrugging and waving a hand, Twist said, “I’m sure the Crown Princess would be interested.” He leaned against the wall, watching the work with a narrow gaze that didn’t fit his usual temper.

  “Of course, sir,” said Cutter, glancing at Jerya. “Ah... are you interested? Do you understand the basics of the Logos?”

  “Yes, of course,” said Jerya pleasantly. “Are they working together? How exactly is that done?”

  Cutter grinned. “Landry is what we call a foundation specialist. She narrates a set of terms built on top of the Logos that Sora uses to do very precise tasks. It fades when Landry stops working, but it’s really useful.”

  Twist’s eyebrows climbed to his hairline. “Do your secondary workers rely on the foundations your Landrys create? Or can they work independently?”

  “Uh... Landry is her name, sir. And we can all work independently, of course. Sora practices a lot because in a crisis there isn’t always a foundation specialist around. I’m guessing she’s studying the Princess’s brain now, that’s pretty delicate work.” Cutter swelled with pride. “At the University hospital, sometimes they build pyramids four levels deep to perform certain operations. We can’t do that here because everybody above the foundation layer needs to be pretty good at medicine, and there needs to be a couple of coordinators keeping everything synchronized.”

  “Ah,” said Twist, as if he suddenly understood something. “An interesting master trick. And on the strength on one trick, your people have climbed so far.” He sounded almost sad, and Cutter gave him a bewildered look.

  “Is the Vassay weather-working also one of these pyramids? I always thought it was a trick, like Twist’s skipping,” asked Jerya.

  “Oh yes. It—” Cutter stopped as the babbling from the two women came to a stop. Sora sagged and wiped her mouth. Cutter hurried forward, pulling several clothes and a vial from a pocket in his billowy pants. He gave each of the women a cloth that they held to their mouths. Then he opened the vial and dispensed small tablets.

  Only after Sora had swallowed hers and patted her mouth did she turn to the observers. She addressed Julina. “She is mostly healthy. There was some pressure in her brain, which I lessened. And—” she hesitated.

  “Yes?” asked Julina quietly. “Please tell me.”

  Slowly, Sora shook her head. “Something old and healed badly. Something I might have been able to repair but I’m not sure it matters anymore.”

  Cara crossed her arms and stared at the floor.

  “What are you talking about?” asked Jerya, intrigued. She’d never noticed any significant scars on Shanasee before, and her cousin never mentioned any old injuries. The trauma from her final battle with Benjen had been entirely psychological, supposedly. But if she had physical scars from that, perhaps they could help Shan deal with her darkness.

  Sora gave Jerya an unhappy look. “It isn’t proper to discuss things like this with anybody but her closest family.”

  Indignantly, Jerya said, “We are Blood! And cousins!” She caught herself and added, “I’m responsible for her. If we don’t know, we can’t help. And when she wakes up again, I need her to be healthy.”

  “This won’t matter—” Sora stopped herself and shook her head. “At some point—years ago, judging from the markers on the tissue—this woman had a massively traumatic miscarriage. It didn’t heal properly, which means she’ll never bear children without exceptional magical assistance. Just getting pregnant could be very dangerous for her.”

  Jerya blinked, then looked at Julina and Cara. “When was Shanasee pregnant?”

  Lady Julina glanced down at her daughter and sighed. “Years ago. It’s an old story, and she never confided the details to me, only came to me for comfort when the pain became too much to bear.” She didn’t look at Cara, and Cara, who should have known everything about her charge, didn’t say a thing, or lift her gaze from the ground.

  After thinking about Sora’s story and about Cara’s silence for a moment, after wondering what had happened that made Cara stay so quiet when surely she knew something, Jerya shook her head. Whatever it was wouldn’t be worked out here and now, especially with foreigners present. She said, “Yes, you’re right, Sora. That doesn’t matter now. Thank you for telling me, and thank you for
what you’ve done for Shan. Can you examine Iriss now?”

  Tension went out of Sora’s shoulders and she moved around the bed lightly. “It was so interesting having a chance to examine one of your kind closely, although there’s always more to see. The corruption—I know that isn’t a good word, I am so sorry, is there a better word? The corruption is present on so many levels. It creates a bubble I can’t see into. Of course, I wouldn’t be able to, it’s not the Logos—but the thought of what that bubble contains is just dizzying. What the Princess did was phenomenal and it must have come from those tiny bubbles.”

  Jerya swayed backward, buffeted by the sudden force of Sora’s chatter. Then she said firmly, “What she did came from here,” and touched her heart. “She was very frightened and she overcame that for the good of our people.”

  Sora stopped, dismayed. “Yes, of course. I hope she finds her way out of the darkness again.” She lowered her eyes, fidgeted with the hem of her blouse, then turned to Iriss and began to mumble. After a moment, she sank into the chair beside the bed and held out her hand toward Landry.

  Landry maneuvered past Jerya with a faint, concerned smile. “I’m sure your cousin will improve, Princess. She has a strong heart, as you mentioned. All your family seems so brave and fierce.” Her eyes flickered past Jerya to the door, where Jerya knew Seandri observed.

  She managed a curt nod, and got out of the way, joining Seandri as the women started work and Cutter hovered nearby. The room was so crowded. She wrapped her fingers around Seandri’s arm and he whispered, “I’m glad you’re letting them try to heal her. Harthen misses her. We all do.”

  Jerya leaned her head on his shoulder. “I feel so unbalanced without her,” she responded in a low voice. “I feel so... violent. I want to murder people sometimes. I ran away from the Vassay before.”

  Seandri put an arm around her shoulders. “You have a strong heart,” he said. She glanced up at him sharply, but he showed no sign of noticing he’d repeated Landry’s phrase.

  “I don’t know how Yithiere bears it,” she muttered. “Since Zavien died. Jant has Julina but Yithiere is all alone.”

  “We should talk about that at some point. He’s relying on Alanah right now, which seems... dangerous,” Seandri said meditatively.

  Jerya glanced up at him. “Alanah is an old friend. I trust her; the Chancellor trusts her. If spending time with her keeps him stable, where is the danger?.”

  “Alanah has three small children despite being unmarried,” Seandri pointed out. It was true. Alanah liked children, but had never wanted a spouse and her Royal appointment allowed her to make eccentric choices. “And Yithiere gets obsessive and short-sighted when he thinks he’s protecting those he cares about. Especially children.”

  “Oh.” In the war with Benjen, the bastard had stolen and murdered Jerya’s infant cousin. Jerya’s generation had all been tiny then, and while Math and Shonathan had returned to war to bring Benjen down, it had been Yithiere who’d stayed behind to protect the remaining children.

  Jerya chewed on her lip, her gaze on the two women working magic while she thought about Yithiere. Sora was grimacing. She’d never grimaced while inspecting Shanasee. “What else can we do, though? Alanah just came out of confinement and Zavien died months ago. How has he been managing?”

  “Well, the other Regents helped. Lisette...” he began, then trailed off and shook his head. “He doesn’t trust Harthen the same way. I think the phantasmagory helped him. He was connected to all of us; he could hide his fears in there and redirect his fire. It was an outlet, and safe.”

  Jerya ground her teeth. “That doesn’t help.” She wrapped both arms around his chest and pressed her face against him. “Lord of Winter, Seandri. We’ve lost so much. The Regents, the phantasmagory. We’ve lost so much and we’re still losing. I don’t know what will be left of us if I—”

  “I can’t!” said Sora sharply. Her chair clattered as she stood so fast she knocked it back. “I can’t do this. There’s something in her. I repair the damaged tissue and the corruption grows out of what I’ve done, like it’s taken root. I think I’m making it worse.” She looked around wildly, then found Jerya. “I’m so, so sorry. But I don’t know enough. I can’t understand what’s going on and it frightens me.”

  In a distant, clinical way, Jerya was very glad she’d sent Sora’s bodyguards away. Her distress would have frightened them and that would have complicated things. “I see—” she began, cool and controlled, then took a deep breath. Seandri’s grip on her hand helped hold back her shattered hope.

  Landry swore in Vassay, low and amazed, before leaning over Iriss. “You did do it, Sora! She’s waking up.”

  Instantly, Jerya was at Iriss’s side, half-knocking Sora onto Shanasee’s bed and stepping on Landry’s foot in her haste. Iriss had moved her hands from her chest to her face and shoulder. She shook her head fitfully, as if emerging from a bad dream.

  Jerya took Iriss’s thin, pale hand in her own, and their fingers laced together. That hadn’t happened since the attack. “Iriss, I’m here,” she breathed. “Come back to me.”

  Iriss opened her eyes. They shimmered with a pearly sheen, just as the Blood’s did when they were in the phantasmagory. “Jerya?” she whispered, and turned her head blindly. “Jer, I’m so cold. What happened?”

  Chapter 13

  The Price

  THE NEXT DAY, Jerya took her place at the Tabernacle of Broken Hearts. She wanted to stay with Iriss, but she’d made the Tabernacle of Broken Hearts her duty and she wasn’t going to shirk just because she felt like it. Still, when she saw that the Plaza was almost empty, she indulged the hope that maybe she could return to the inn early.

  Only a moment after she’d seated herself, a small boy came tearing into the plaza. He skidded to a stop near her chair and looked around wildly. “Where’s the Princess? I need the Princess!”

  Raffey moved forward and caught the child. “She’s right there, lad. What’s going on?”

  The grubby boy gave Jerya a blank look. “Princess Gisen, I mean. Where is she? I need her to come to the new levee now, now, or—” The expression of fright on the boy’s face compelled Jerya to rise.

  “I’m not sure where she’s at, but I’ll come.” She glanced at Seandri.

  He shook his head. “The Plaza’s empty. Let’s go.”

  The boy’s expression didn’t allow time for an argument. Raffey released him and he took off like a slingshot. Jerya ran after him, sending eidolon birds from her hands to help her track him and find out what waited ahead.

  They didn’t have far to run before they encountered a crowd. The little boy beat on the legs of the people in front of him, trying to force a path for Jerya.

  Jerya glanced at the crowd, and then looked beyond with her bird’s eye view and saw the source of the child’s panic. The engineers from Vassay were adjusting the old levees. The river was slowly rising as it adapted to the damage done to the whole river system by the mudslide, and it was clear the old levees, designed for spring thaws, weren’t going to survive.

  The Vassay were using their magic to reinforce the existing levees and raise new ones. Far down the river, Jerya’s hawk saw another team working near the edge of the city to broaden the river’s bed in a controlled fashion. Possibly that project was going well. But this one had descended into chaos. One of the levees was leaking and two people were in the turbulent river, hanging onto ropes, their heads barely above water.

  The Ambassador stood at the base of the raised levees, shouting orders. More than one of the Vassay engineers had blood streaming from their mouth and many of the rest were chanting fiercely. When the levee sprang another leak, the crowd of observers started backing up.

  Seandri scooped up the small boy as somebody almost stepped on him. He couldn’t see what Jerya could, even with his advantage of height, but he could still help her.

  “Lend me your strength, Seandri,” she said, and held out her hand. He put the boy down, placed hi
s hand in hers, and opened the power in his blood to her. With a tingle as their magic merged. Jerya closed her eyes and remembered what it was like to fly and dive and strike. In response, a giant eidolon eagle spread its wings and separated from Jerya’s form.

  They’d practiced this many times before as part of training; it was part of the magic of eidolons. They’d always had the phantasmagory before; it was even taught that one had to be in a phantasmagorical combat trance to call a gestalt eidolon. Yet even without the phantasmagory, Jerya felt Seandri’s mind close to hers: his affection, his worry, his omnipresent appreciation of a beauty she could never see. It twisted her heart and she didn’t know why.

  But the people in the river were drowning.

  She and Seandri occupied the giant eagle together as it soared into the sky and dove. One foot closed over one individual, one foot over the other. Then she dropped them again, because they were tied to their ropes and she couldn’t begin to estimate the damage she would do by pulling them into the sky. She circled above, gathering her focus to send a cutting emanation from the eidolon. But before she was ready, both people started bobbing down the river. Somebody else had cut the ropes first.

  She swooped down again and caught them, one, two, and into the air, ignoring their screaming, and down again, depositing them in the dry street beyond the crowd.

  Jerya exhaled and let the giant eagle dissipate. Looking up at the embankment the ropes had been tied to, she saw the man Yithiere had identified as an assassin—Thorn—standing there, a small knife still held in one hand. He gazed at the two people she’d rescued, and after a minute, she did too.

  They’d collapsed in the street, exhausted and overcome by emotion. One was sobbing, the other whimpering. She watched impassively as the crowd engulfed them. Some of her own citizens saw her, and there were a few tentative cheers—and then the magic of the Logos-workers took hold and the water on the street began to flow backwards, into the river again.