Green Wild (Thrones of the Firstborn Book 2) Page 18

  She walked to the river instead, to the Green Bridge, across from the catacombs exit. Looking across the water at the ruined city beyond, she shivered. If Vassay could restore much of what was lost, that would be something. But what would it cost Ceria? She’d seen already that they didn’t give gifts without expectations of compensation, not to her. Many of them were consistently kind to the children, they were cheerful, enthusiastic and friendly. But they were all young, Jerya’s age. Their leaders were older, and they viewed the Blood as an obstacle standing between them and unfettered access to the Citadel of the Sky. And maybe they didn’t like that they were monarchs; maybe that was why they’d invited all the other people to the meeting. Vassay had monarchs once, before their revolution.

  A shadow moved near her, and she turned her head absently. She expected to see her guard, but there was only a tree, moving in the breeze. She looked around for the guard and didn’t see him. Puzzled, she moved away from the river’s edge, searching for him. It was dark, but it was a clear night, with the Winter Crown still rising in the northeastern sky and both the bright spill of starlight and distant lamplight illuminated enough that Jerya was sure her guard was gone.

  Her skin prickling again, Jerya reached in and stilled her rising fear, sent it into an emanation circling in her hand. It was not a response suitable for visiting diplomats because the link between thought and action was too tight, but oh, it was right for anybody who’d removed her guard. She remembered the monster, the Blighter, engulfing Iriss—

  “Let’s talk,” said a voice right behind her. She whirled around and saw the man leaning against the bridge piling. He wore the Vassay work clothes she’d seen so much of lately, and he didn’t seem to be armed. In the dim light she could just identify his finely featured face. It was the man called Thorn. Only a man, not one of the Blighter’s monsters.

  She exhaled. “Oh. It’s you.” The emanation evaporated from her hand as curiosity overtook her nerves. “My uncle says you’re an assassin.”

  “I know,” said Thorn dryly. “He’s a perceptive man. Sometimes.” He straightened up and moved toward her.

  “Where’s my guard?” Jerya asked, looking around and not backing away. She was wary, but she certainly wasn’t going to show it.

  “Your guard is having a bad night. It’s the sort of night where he wakes up tomorrow morning, realizes how wretched he is at his job, and runs off to join the infantry under an assumed name. But right now he’s resting someplace out of the way.” His speech was smooth and calm, almost hypnotic. He stopped a little more than an arm’s length away, which was probably too close. Yithiere would disapprove. “To be fair, he wasn’t very good at noticing things behind him in the dark and he might be amazing at stabbing monsters right in front of him. So this is probably better for everybody.” He tilted his head to one side. “Although I suppose it might leave you a little afraid for yourself?”

  Jerya gave him a surprised look. “No, of course not. Any assassin who gives me time to be afraid is either wretched at his job or has something else on his mind.” She gave him a crooked smile. “Besides, the last time my baby sister got away from her guard, she killed somebody.” She did her best to imitate his slow, measured drawl. “It’s possible that you’ve misunderstood the purpose of our guards. That’s all right, you’re a foreigner, it’s an easy mistake.”

  A smile flickered across his expressionless face so fast she might have imagined it in the darkness. “I want to show you something.”

  Jerya wondered how long he’d wanted to show her something; if he’d made the decision to not try to kill her before or after he’d disabled her guard. A prickling at the back of her neck told her it was after, that she’d been a hairs-breadth from a bad night of her own. “Here?”

  He shrugged. “Here, there. It doesn’t matter where.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “All right. Normally my Court hours begin after breakfast, but since you’ve been so... creative in your approach, let’s see it. Unless it’s a weapon of some sort,” she added conscientiously. “Then you ought to apply to my sister. I think she’s started collecting them.”

  “We have to wait,” he said, and stood there, arms loose at his side, waiting. “It won’t be long now.”

  Jerya raised a hand and let the emanation she’d had curled there unfold. It shed only a faint, misty glow just brighter than starlight, but just brighter than starlight was enough to see him more clearly. She regarded him for a moment, as he looked back at her. “You’re not actually from Vassay, are you? Although Scriber Stone knows what you are.”

  He remained perfectly still, as if she hadn’t unfolded magic near him or even spoken. “You shouldn’t mistake this as my employer’s task. You are exactly the kind of danger they fear on the throne in Ceria. But I’m curious about something.” That flickering smile appeared and disappeared again. “I’m not used to being curious.”

  Jerya ran the other nearby countries under rapid review. “Tylisse? They have an amiable relationship with Vassay but they’ve managed to stay independent.”

  He blinked at her and she felt smug. “No so amiable.”

  “Why do they care so much about who rules Ceria? Do they really think that somebody else on the throne would allow them more plepanin? The monks can only produce so much.”

  Thorn sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “If the rulers of nations confided in me, they would be very odd.” He glanced up at the stars and said, “Soon now.”

  Recklessly, Jerya said, “I don’t think you’re actually an assassin. I think you just like skulking around in the dark. Maybe you hold a special place in Scriber Stone’s heart and that’s why he looks at you so much.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Believe what you want. If I happen to be an assassin, that will prove useful later. You can keep taking long starlit walks, with vanishing guards, until somebody notices.” He shifted his weight, as if coiling himself. “No matter what you think, you are risking yourself right now.”

  Jerya ignored that last. “And Scriber Stone can keep making eyes at you across a crowded room, and bringing you along as his porter. It’s sweet, really.”

  A frown touched his face. “He believes he is subtle. He has a few skills, but some of them are not where he believes. But it doesn’t matter what he betrays. You’re so very careless, despite your uncle’s warnings.”

  Jerya was unsettled and nervous and irritated. She thought, I should run away, back to my guards and lamplight and Seandri. I should make this into a bad dream. Then she thought, There is a challenge here. “Why am I still alive? If you’re so confident and I’m so careless—and yet somehow such a threat!”

  “Oh, hush,” was all he said, and it shocked her enough that she did. She wasn’t sure anybody had ever told her to hush, not in so distracted a way. The Justiciar’s Court had tried hard to shut her up but all their thundering disdain hadn’t achieved what this man did with a single word.

  “It’s beginning,” he said. “You won’t feel it yet.” He held out his hand to her. “It will be useful if you take my hand.”

  Jerya stared at his big, square hand. It didn’t match his fine features at all. “Why?”

  He didn’t answer, leaving his hand outstretched.

  “No,” Jerya said, and took a step backward. It was one thing to stand her ground against an unexpected assault, and something else entirely to go around holding hands with an alleged assassin. It was... intimate.

  “I must remember to tell my employers,” he said dryly, “that an outstretched hand is all it takes to dismay you. Although that is consistent. You’ve disliked Vassay’s outstretched hand as well.”

  “It’s not actually stretched out to me,” she muttered. “They’re just trying to get inside our defenses.”

  His eyebrows went up again. “I don’t need to hold hands with you to get inside your defenses, I promise. But you do as you please and so shall I.”

  Jerya scowled and grabbed his hand, trying to crush his fing
ers in her fist. It didn’t work; his hands were too big. She felt like a baby clinging to a grown-up’s fingers. Solemnly, he moved his hand so that they had a more traditional palm-to-palm clasp. His hand was dry and warm, with hard callouses along the edges of the palm and the bottom of his fingers.

  He said nothing for several moments, which Jerya spent resisting the urge to pull her hand out of his and run into the night. Then he said, “Look around.”

  When she did, her grip on his hand tightened involuntarily. The night had grown darker. She looked up at the sky, and the stars were dimming. She could actually see the Winter Crown fading. The lamps in the houses along the street all seemed to lower their flames at once. Even the water lost its glint.

  “What is this?” she asked, the emanation around her free hand swirling up to lift her hair. An eidolon fluttered from her breast, its own ghostlight untouched by the fading.

  Thorn looked curiously at the falcon as he said, “It happens every night.”

  Jerya remembered a Council session when three scholars had presented their findings on a change in their timekeeping: according to their measurements, the nights were getting longer and the days shorter. It was, Jerya had assumed, like the seasonal shifts, but on some epochal scale.

  “Oh,” she said. “I didn’t realize it was like this.”

  “Wait,” he said. “Wait, and remember that you are not falling asleep.”

  But as it got darker and darker, Jerya wondered that exact thing. It was so much like dozing off. What other rational explanation could there be for the dark fog stealing all the light? At one point Thorn squeezed her hand gently, then squeezed it again harder. When that didn’t get the reaction he apparently wanted, he ran his thumb around her wrist, stroking the sensitive skin on the underside of her arm.

  The touch sent a shock running up her arm and straight down her spine. She lifted her head, eyes wide and stared in his direction. She could barely see the shadows of his face against the deeper darkness. “Stay awake,” he said softly. “Once it’s entirely dark, be ready.”

  “I’m awake, believe me,” she muttered, and started to ask what kind of readiness he expected when she realized that the ghostlight from her magical manifestations was fading, too. The eidolon itself seemed fine, according to the invisible thread that connected then. But as the emanation light faded, so did its power, until it was barely more than a breath of channeled wind.

  She didn’t mention that to Thorn.

  She could see nothing; it was like she was in the deepest of catacombs without a single glimmer of light. Thorn squeezed her hand again, maintaining an almost painful pressure this time. “Here it comes,” he said.

  A heavy blackness engulfed the world. It pulled the ground away from her feet like the earth was nothing but a dream. It swept away the tiny bird on her shoulder, spinning it back into magic. Yet Thorn held her hand and so she knew she stood still in a world where almost every sensation had been clogged by this assault of darkness. A hot breeze blew, bringing her the scents of salt and rotting vegetation. And in her ear, Thorn whispered, “What of your magic now?”

  Fear clutched at her chest. She brought eidolons into existence easily. She felt them fly out of her chest and into the warm wind. But she saw nothing. They vanished into the darkness, spun of her magic but beyond her reach or control. Then she sent out emanations, waves that should have shattered the air with their sound, but there was only silence.

  “Your magic,” he whispered. “Can it touch this darkness?”

  “I’m—” she began, then stopped. “Yes,” she said carefully. The truth was complicated, and not for sharing with him.

  He made a sound that might have been a chuckle, too close to her ear, and she reminded herself to start carrying a knife. If she was unarmed for a portion of every day, she needed to acquire a different skill set. Every muscle in her body twanged as she tried to read his intentions. He still held her hand and she could feel the warmth of his body near hers, a stillness in the breeze.

  There was something odd about her magic, and the way it worked and didn’t at the same time. But she couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t study it. She was too achingly aware of the assassin beside her, holding her hand like they were courting. An idea occurred to her. She oriented herself toward him and fumbled until she found his other hand. It was empty, and she laced her fingers into his.

  There. Now she was restrained, but so was he. He wasn’t going to hold her with one hand and stab her with his other. At least if he made any sudden moves, she’d know, and she could kick him. Alanah would be proud.

  His fingers tightened on her as he laughed. It was an odd, rusty sound. “I see. I was ready for you to pull away and flee into the darkness, but that doesn’t fit you, does it? Don’t worry, little falcon. The eye will end soon. Only a minute or two before it passes and the light begins to return.”

  “I’m not worried now,” she told him. “The eye? It’s looking at us?” Her skin prickled more, which she didn’t think was possible.

  “The eye, the heart, the center. Though this breeze does feel like something exhaling, don’t you think?”

  And then once again, all of Jerya’s magic vanished, as if cut by a knife. The warm breeze faded and the previous mild coolness reasserted itself. The lights began to sparkle again, first at the corner of her eyes and flickering out when she looked directly at them.

  “Was that... how long was that?” She shook her head. Her sense of the passage of tie had been utterly warped by adrenalin and outright fear.

  “Only a few minutes. The fading of the light has been going on for.... Years, I understand. The eye, the heart of the darkness has only been there for a matter of months.”

  An uncontrollable shudder ran up her spine and down her arms. Her magic burst around her again, an emanation flaring around her shoulders like a mantle. It felt odd, like she had an eidolon out, but without the sense of a part of her being distant.

  Slowly Thorn became visible, first as a deeper darkness against the returning glow of the city. She’d never realized how bright the city was at night.

  “It is very much like falling asleep and having a strange dream,” she admitted. “I think I even saw it in the past—the fading, anyhow—and thought it was sleep. Thank you for showing me the truth.” She glanced down at their linked hands, then tugged at hers.

  He didn’t let go. “Distrust me a few moments more, Princess.”

  She stopped tugging, curious, but he didn’t go on, the silhouette of his head tilted toward hers as the stars brightened overhead.

  “Thank you,” she repeated, “But I’m a little at a loss as to why you showed me that.”

  “As I said, it was a self-indulgence. I was curious about something. And how well my curiosity has been rewarded. Perhaps I’ll indulge myself again sometime.”

  “Are you some kind of assassin?” she asked. “Or just a mysterious half-breed with a sense for the dramatic?”

  Once again, he didn’t bother to give her a direct answer. “It’s true that you’re still a threat. Whatever that darkness is doesn’t change that you are a very particular kind of problem for my employers.”

  “I think you must be bad at your job,” she added in irritation, and tugged at her hands again.

  This time he let her pull her hands through his fingers, slowly letting her go. “I’m not,” he said, almost regretfully. “But I’m allowed some discretion as to whether you match the criteria I’ve been given. I’ve been evaluating you.”

  “And I’m a threat, yes, I certainly hope so, thus why are we standing here talking?”

  He raised one of his hands, splay-fingered, toward her neck, and she stepped quickly out of range.

  “The darkness is concerning,” he admitted. “But there are more immediate troubles. The armies of your Blighter are moving.”

  “How do you know?” she demanded sharply.

  “You’ll get the news soon,” he said, shrugging and stepping backwards himself.
/>
  She scowled. “And you think my magic will be useful against him. Well—”

  He cut her off. “No. I don’t. I think your magic is far too weak to do anything about this Blight. No. The threat you present is different.” His rusty laugh came again. “But if you don’t know what it is, I really shouldn’t tell you. Goodbye, Princess. I’ll be seeing you.” Then he turned and walked away, vanishing into the night, leaving Jerya to wonder what kind of threat Vassay found more terrifying than a Blight.

  Chapter 16

  The Forest Dance

  **EVEN IF YOU’RE not on the road, you’re still waiting on their pleasure,** pointed out Jinriki, scathingly. It was the afternoon after Fai’s visit and nothing, absolutely nothing had happened.

  Tiana sat beside the tiny campfire, feeding it sticks in a desultory fashion. **I’m not. I’m waiting on Her pleasure.** She went to bed the night before certain that the morning would bring somebody in charge to help her sort things out. Now, after a day of idleness, she was no longer sure.

  **Perhaps in the spirit of your Running holiday, she wants you to chase the light down and take it.**

  Tiana scowled. **Maidrunning is about taking what’s offered freely.**

  **After you run it down so that it has no other choice.** Jinriki’s satisfaction was palpable.

  **No! That’s not right.** Tiana thought of the holiday, which had always been a playful spring event for her. A race, a scavenger hunt, dancing: all outside in the warm sun after the chill of winter. If lots of people got up to other, less official activities after the dancing and racing, well, that was part of spring, too. **It’s a game. A kind of tag.**

  **Then we should go tag the light.**

  **No. The light is all around us. We’ve tagged Her. She’s It.**

  Jinriki stopped arguing, which should have made Tiana feel victorious and didn’t. Instead she felt cross and bored. The stable girls had most of the soldiers inspecting and cleaning tack and organizing the supplies the mules had carried. They didn’t ask her to do any of the chores, though the loud stable girl had give Tiana a speculative look before being dragged off by her companion.