Green Wild (Thrones of the Firstborn Book 2) Page 4

  “Come out, come out,” she called. Nothing moved. The stillness and silence intimidated her. She could feel the presences around her, like a hum against her skin.

  “What’s going on?” asked Kiar, and Tiana jumped. Her cousin peeked around the partially open door. “Are you all right? We expected more noise.”

  “I broke a mirror,” Tiana said. “You didn’t see some kind of darkness come out of the room, did you?”

  Before Kiar could answer, several other mirrors shattered loudly. Something dark materialized on the floor and then leapt toward Kiar. She cried out and caught it in her arms. Tiana thrust out her hand, her fingers curved into claws, sending an emanation out to wrap around the shadowy thing. It was small, even smaller than she was, with six limbs and—

  “Tiana, watch out!” called Kiar. “I’ve got this, look to yourself.”

  **Idiots. Unwilling to listen,** growled Jinriki, and he moved in Tiana’s hand to block as something rushed from her side. Tiana looked around wildly and saw three very different monsters rushing toward her. She had only an impression eyes, feathers, fur, fangs. On one, there was the oddness of a human woman’s mouth, lips curved in a sensual smile.

  She spun, waving her free hand in a wide arc, and flung the monsters away from her. “Can I destroy these, Jinriki?” she demanded. “Or would you rather I just let them eat me?”

  **They hardly deserve to be sustained after this, but—hold them in place, and stab me into them. I will disintegrate that which binds them together. Without a mortal host, they will flee back to the prison to reform.**

  “Fine.” But this was easier said than done. With Jinriki’s help, keeping them away from her wasn’t a problem. Getting close enough to stab them was a different challenge, though. They spoke to the Logos as she pinned them up beside their shattered mirrors, and the ground twisted and melted under her feet, or tossed her into the air. After regaining her footing for the second time, she asked peevishly, “Can’t you do something?”

  **I am.**

  Tiana muttered and launched herself at the closest sky fiend, carrying herself along with another emanation. If they were going to change the ground under her feet, she would avoid using it. She had never been able to manage so many different emanations at the same time before bonding with Jinriki. He was a very good weapon, even for somebody who had never learned to use a sword.

  **Focus!**

  She snapped her attention back to her target. It squirmed against the wall, an unfinished nightmare with four eyes from four different animals and a feathered mane. Then she drove Jinriki into its torso, and it exploded into a mist so icy than it seemed to cut at her skin.

  With the first out of the way, the other two were easier to manage, but no less shocking. When the third one had exploded into frozen whiteness, she dropped to her feet and fell to her knees, shuddering with cold and pain. Her skin was paler than she’d ever seen it, like she’d been drained of all color. She stared at her hands for a minute, realizing she could barely feel the ground under her. Was that important? She looked for Kiar.

  Her cousin hadn’t moved from the door, the first little sky fiend frozen in her arms. Tiana blinked, staring at her, and shoved herself to her feet again. “Are you all right?”

  Kiar’s form flickered rapidly, like a guttering candle flame. Horrified, Tiana realized that the fiend had one hand sunk into Kiar’s chest—and that Kiar had her hand sunk into the fiend’s head.

  “Don’t do anything yet,” said Kiar. Her voice was eerie, flickering just as her body did. “I’m looking in. Into our enemy’s world. It’s where I went before, Tiana. And they’ve been very busy.”

  Chapter 4

  Fiends and Friends

  “BUSY?” DEMANDED TIANA. “What does ‘busy’ mean? Busier than invading our world?”

  “Yes,” Kiar assured her. “They’re preparing other invasions into other parts of Ceria. And I think... I think the fortress they built at Mousame is in both worlds at the same time. This is incredible.”

  “Wonderful,” said Tiana sourly. She watched the little fiend squirm around Kiar’s hand and tried to decide if their merged bodies was creepier than the way Kiar flickered. “Are you planning on staying like that long?”

  “I shouldn’t,” Kiar said, with a note of regret that Tiana decided won the ‘creepy’ contest. “Somebody will notice soon and that could make things complicated.”

  “Instead of incredible.” Tiana shifted her weight, ready to intervene if the fiend tried anything awful when Kiar pulled away.

  “Look, if you really need me to, I’ll explain how incredible it is to see into what your enemy is planning. But later. Um. Could you and Jinriki give me a hand? It’s going to run as soon as I let go.”

  “I was waiting for you to ask.” Tiana wrapped her power around the fiend and yanked. As soon as Kiar pulled her hand out of its chest, and her head away from its hand, Tiana spun the field around and drove Jinriki into the same spot Kiar had been attached to. Maybe Jinriki could do what Kiar had done and puncture Ohedreton in the process.

  The thought amused her. But the amusement faded as the fiend wriggled against her power. It didn’t dissolve like the others had. And Jinriki didn’t respond to her thought. She reached out uncertainly. **Jinriki?** He was probably just distracted, he—

  **Yes.** The final sky fiend exploded into icy mist that she no longer felt. **Your body is too cold. Time to go.**

  Tiana looked doubtfully around the room. Blackness surged in the frames of four of the shattered mirrors. “What about them?”

  “They need to be sealed up again. I don’t quite know how it’s done,” Kiar said, sagging against the doorframe. “I can try, or we can wait until the Magister sends somebody along to do it. We still need to deal with the monks out there.”

  **If you don’t leave this chamber right now, I’m going to warm you up myself right here.** Jinriki’s tone was flat and ominous.

  Tiana didn’t see how this was the threat his tone implied until she thought about what would happen if magical heat filled the room. She didn’t know much about how the Logos worked but she at least understood the basics of ice and heat.

  “Fine,” she grumbled. “I’m freezing,” she told Kiar. “Let’s talk about it in the antechamber.”

  Kiar blinked, looked closely at Tiana, and then stepped forward and put her arm around Tiana. “Lisette’s going to kill me,” she muttered. “Come on.” She pressed her hand against Tiana’s cheek and after a moment it burned. As she wrenched her head away, Kiar said, “You’re going to miss the phantasmagory in a few minutes. How did you get so cold?”

  “The fiends make it cold,” Tiana explained. Her mouth felt strange, now that she paid attention to speaking. Her feet were clunky and wooden and she would have tripped except for Kiar’s arm. It was, she thought, a little like being in the phantasmagory, or that time Jinriki had stolen her body. Except it was just the cold, putting out her fire.

  “Well, it’s warmer out here. We’ll get you thawed,” said Kiar briskly. They emerged into the antechamber. The monks huddled in the corner of the room furthest from both Cathay and herself, if ‘huddled’ was the right word to describe the precise way they’d arranged themselves.

  When Cathay strode forward, the distance between each monk decreased. It fascinated Tiana and she wondered if Kiar had noticed.

  Before she could say something, Cathay seized her hands. “You’re freezing. How cold was it in there?” Without waiting for an answer, he tugged her away from Kiar and into his arms.

  That completely banished the monks from her mind. Cathay didn’t just hug her, he practically wrapped himself around her. She still held Jinriki in one hand, but he ignored the blade, pressing his head against hers and breathing on her cheek. “Put your hands on my chest.”

  “Yes, do that,” said Kiar, relieved. “As soon as this is sorted out and she stops tripping over her feet, we should move her upstairs again. Tiana, defrosting is going to hurt.”


  Cathay’s breath on her cheek was cool, not warm. Jinriki clattered to the floor and Tiana looked down. She’d dropped him. Or Jinriki had made her drop him. And she hadn’t even felt her hand move.

  **Put your hands on his chest,** Jinriki told her acidly. **He’s finally good for something. I’ll take the edge off the pain when I can.**

  Tiana blinked down at the blade, then put her hands under Cathay’s coat, against the cloth of Cathay’s shirt. She could feel the pressure of his chest against her hands, but that was it.

  “Yeah, that’s cold,” he said. His voice was gentle and calm, as if he hadn’t been trying to seduce her for months.

  “Skin contact would be better,” said Kiar worriedly.

  “Probably not the place,” Cathay said, but placed one of his hands over both of Tiana’s.

  “Pay attention to the monks,” said Tiana, distractedly. She could suddenly smell Cathay, as if she’d never smelled him before: sweat and leather and something spicy that was almost cardamom but not quite. She wished she was brave enough to actually slide her hands up under his shirt, against his bare skin. They’d warm up quickly, then, and—

  She caught a surge of something from Jinriki, something savage and powerful. Then pain swept over her skin, as if a thousand needles stabbed her all at once. She cried out at the shock, and tears sprang to her eyes to spill down burning cheeks. Cathay kissed her forehead and that hurt, too. She tried to yank herself away, to rub her stinging legs and stomp her feet, to run out of the room and leave the pain behind.

  Then, just as quickly as the pain had come, it faded. **My apologies,** Jinriki told her. **I was dealing with your monks. They are free now, or soon will be.**

  Tiana dragged in a breath, shaken by the abrupt arrival and departure of the pain. Then she turned to look at the monks. One had fallen to the floor. Another sagged, their perfect formation destroyed. A third one fell. By the time the fifth one collapsed like a puppet without strings, the first one had climbed to his feet again.

  “What have you done?” he croaked. “Where are the fiends?”

  **They are free, too. I found a way to extract them while preserving the men, but it means they will reform elsewhere. I had no other choice if you wanted the men to live.** Jinriki’s tone was as cold as Tiana’s hands had been.

  Tiana chewed at her lip and tried to push herself away from Cathay. He didn’t let go, but he at least let her turn to face the monks fully. He kept hold of her hands, too, until she said, “Cathay, please, I need at least one.”

  He frowned and let go of one. She flexed her fingers; they were still clumsy, but she could feel her own hand when she made a fist and that was useful. She sent out an emanation and brought Jinriki to her.

  “Where are the fiends?” repeated a second monk, stepping in front of the one who’d spoken first. That one fell back, bowing his head.

  “Guess it’s back to the old precedence order?” Tiana said, and shook her head. “In order to free you, they had to be freed as well. They’ve escaped into the wild.”

  “Tiana!” said Kiar, shocked. “We should have waited for the Magister before making that decision.”

  “Who says she made it?” countered Cathay, cupping Tiana’s other hand between his own. “One will get you ten the sword did it on his own. Freeing five of his friends? The only surprise is that he didn’t free any of the ones inside.”

  Tiana glared at him and yanked her hand away. “I didn’t want these men to die.”

  “Convenient for him,” said Cathay, scowling.

  “Forgive me, your Highness, but we were fated to die as soon as we were taken. You should not have meddled.” The monk’s voice started out kind but became harsh by the end.

  Aghast, Tiana said, “You can’t want to be dead.”

  “If our deaths would have stopped monsters from returning to the world? That is why we are here, Your Highness. Every monk assigned here is prepared to give his life to protect the world from these fiends.”

  The other monks all nodded and bowed. The speaker saw Tiana’s shocked expressed and his softened into sadness.

  “You are young, and you carry a most unique fiend. Your judgment is impaired. But please, Princess, you must try to consider the cost of your choices.”

  “What’s your name?” asked Tiana sharply. “If I’m going to carry your life as a burden for all my days, I might as well know your name. All your names.”

  The monk hesitated, and then bowed and offered, “Danyeen, Your Highness.”

  The others followed Danyeen’s lead, and soon Tiana was trying to commit five new names to memory. It helped to make a little song: Danyeen, Jaele, Perris, Frans, Kai, a set of men who should have died. As she composed it, the monks conferred together, before going into the mirror room.

  When Tiana realized what was happening, she said, “Hey, wait, is it safe?” She looked at Kiar questioningly. When Kiar shrugged, she focused her attention on Jinriki. “Won’t the fiends just possess them again?”

  **If so, it will only be what they deserve,** sent Jinriki, with a restrained fury.

  Hesitantly, Tiana asked silently, **Were you trying to free the fiends, not the monks?**

  His anger was so palpable that it seemed wrong that his physical body was just an inert blade in her hand. She could feel his tension as he answered, **I would like to have freed my cousins, oh yes. It would have started with leaving them in their hosts, and next required paving a path out of this prison in human blood.**

  Cathay reached for Tiana’s hands again, and she stepped away absently. He was distracting even when she wasn’t angry with him. **I don’t understand. They don’t need human hosts; I saw that the other day, and in the mirror room.**

  **Think about what you saw, Princess.**

  Tiana thought about it. Several more monks appeared with Lisette, including one Kiar recognized as an aide to the Magister, and she let Kiar talk to them as she thought about it. When the situation seemed to be sorted out, Lisette scolded her up the stairs to warmer rooms, all the way up to her bedroom. Then, as Tiana sat beside the fire, she ventured silently, ** Our enemy uses sky fiends as some kind of portal between his domain and our world.**

  **He made the sky fiends by destroying my master, and now he makes them his slaves and his spies, sending his power through them until they are torn to pieces by it, destroyed as surely as if you or your kin had acted. I have ‘freed’ them to that fate. At least in the mirrors they were preserved from future harm.**

  Tiana frowned down at the sword on her lap, running her fingers over the blade and all but tasting his bitterness.

  “Why?” she asked aloud, forgetting to keep quiet.

  “Do let us know what you find out,” said Cathay, sprawled in a nearby chair with his eyes closed.

  **I don’t know. To see if I could. You didn’t want the men to die. Perhaps I wanted to repay you for accepting me on Antecession. Or perhaps I wanted to show them I am capable of valuing a human life.** He stopped for a moment, then surged on. **I didn’t think. If I had, I would have realized the consequences of attempting to be kind to Niyhan’s monks. To any humans. It’s not a mistake I’ll make again.**

  Tears sprang again to Tiana’s eyes, but not from the fading frostnip this time. “It was the right thing to do,” she whispered. “Enough people have died today and maybe the fiends won’t be enslaved, maybe they’ll escape.”

  **That seems unlikely.** Jinriki’s voice was dry.

  “Maybe,” Tiana repeated. “There’s no maybe in dead.” She thought about explaining to Kiar and the others what Jinriki had actually been about, but hesitated. Cathay would never think anything good about Jinriki, and Tiana couldn’t even blame him. As for Kiar and Lisette...

  **If you do, all they will hear is that I released five fiends to become five more portals between worlds. They’ll come to that conclusion on their own soon enough. They will question whether I’ve been secretly corrupted by our enemy, perhaps even below my own awareness.**
She felt his hard little laugh. **A very reasonable conclusion based on the available evidence.**

  Tiana scowled. **If you’ve been corrupted by anything, it’s me. And that’s a reasonable conclusion, too. You influenced me, I influence you. And if they bring it up, I’ll tell them that.**

  **How embarrassing,** Jinriki sent lightly. Then, in a sharper voice, **Incoming.**

  Only a heartbeat after the sword’s warning, Twist popped into existence right next to Kiar and the bookshelf. He looked terrible, with mud on his clothes and face and twisted into his hair. His eyes were bloodshot and even their bright blue seemed dimmed. But when he spoke, he sounded as cheerful and lighthearted as always. “Ah, here you are. I’m glad I found you so easily. I have news!” He paused, and blinked slowly, looking around.

  Tiana rose to her feet. “Is everybody all right? What happened below?’

  He quirked an eyebrow. “Oh. Yes. Your entire family escaped the mudslide.”

  “And the city?” Lisette asked quietly.

  Twist frowned and closed his eyes. After a moment of silence, Kiar said, “Twist?”

  He swayed, and then gently folded toward the floor.

  Chapter 5

  Geniuses

  WITHOUT THINKING, KIAR stepped forward and caught Twist’s arm, but that only changed the direction of his fall as he slumped against her. She struggled with his awkward weight, lowering him to the floor.

  Her face alarmed, Tiana started forward. “Is he...?”

  Biting her lip, Kiar waved a hand to stop Tiana, and Lisette did so by taking her hand. Kiar examined Twist’s pale skin, then felt his forehead.

  “I think...” She turned Twist’s head back and forth, lifted his hand and dropped it, put her ear close to his mouth. His breath tickled her cheek. Then she sat back on her heels. “He’s sleeping. He’s exhausted himself.” She scowled and resisted the desire to prod him awake. Smelling salts might do it but simple assault probably wouldn’t, and from the looks of him, he needed the sleep. It was only luck that he’d managed to make it to safety before collapsing. She imagined what might have happened if he’d lost consciousness while skipping and shuddered.