Citadel of the Sky (Thrones of the Firstborn Book 1) Read online

  The King looked ashamed. “It hasn’t. But it cracked many years ago. We didn’t… we didn’t ever tell anyone. Because it was our fault. An artifact from the time of Shin, a symbol of the Blood, and we allowed it to be cracked! I only ever wore it out at the big ceremonies, and, well, everybody was looking at Tomas then, not me. I always meant to tell… someone, but… these things slip away, you see. And then suddenly it’s a confession, and there’s hardly ever a good time for a confession. I thought perhaps I’d tell you, at least, Jerya, someday. If only because how it cracked was interesting. To the monarchs, you understand. That’s what Hook said.”

  Jerya shook her head. “It’s just jewelry, it’s not even magically inscribed. But tell us the story, Daddy.”

  One of the eidolons snapped, “Let him gather his thoughts, you wretched girl,” while the others grumbled.

  The King waved his hand soothingly at his companions. “It’s an ancient family heirloom, they have every right to know the story. To call me to task like an errant child.” His mouth thinned. Then he murmured, “But I do need to gather my thoughts, as it were.”

  Iriss ran her fingers lightly over her viola’s strings and said, “Your Majesty, I know a jeweler who might be able to repair the fracture, so please don’t worry about that. He says opals have some unique properties.” She added, “You shouldn’t have to bear such a burden alone. We’re here to help.”

  The King drew in a deep breath. “A month after Tiana’s first birthday, Hook—that was the previous Royal Wizard, Tiana—came to me and asked to borrow the Royal Pendant. He thought that it had some kind of connection to, well… the fate of our family, especially the monarchs.” He paused. “Hook was always so polite. He meant our madness. I suppose at another time, I might have needed more convincing, but… I thought that if I could understand our problems, I could please the Queen. So I gave it to him. He had it for five months. I didn’t actually reclaim it from his workshop until after he died. When I found it, it was cracked.”

  Jerya said, “Oh, Daddy!” and reached over to squeeze his hand.

  “Did he discover anything?” Tiana asked.

  Kiar said, “Hook died insane, according to Twist. Very insane.” She tried to remember more.

  The King wove the chain between his fingers. “He behaved erratically near the end, it’s true. No, Tiana, if he found anything, he never informed me.”

  Tiana said, “Weren’t you afraid to wear it after that?”

  A fourth eidolon spawned from the King and drifted to stand in a corner by itself, face to the wall. The King said, “Well, he hadn’t been wearing it. We discussed that part very carefully before I gave it to him. And I wasn’t quite sure what else to do with it. Wearing it seemed to… be the least trouble. Tomas said it was probably just a coincidence and if it wasn’t, well, most monarchs fared much better than poor Hook.”

  Tiana said, “What about the one I found? It looks identical, even down to the crack! That’s very mysterious.”

  Jerya smiled, “Or just geology. We’re none of us experts. Perhaps they were cut from the same rock.”

  Tiana asked, “You don’t think it’s strange? I found it through the phantasmagory.”

  Jerya raised her eyebrows. “Not just exploring, then?”

  Tiana flushed. “I was looking for the fiend that killed Tomas. I wanted to find it so you’d stop talking about one of us having done it. None of us are Benjen. Ooh, maybe the fiend cracked it?” She frowned. “But I still don’t know how they connect.”

  Kiar ground her teeth. Benjen. He had plagued two generations of the Blood, stolen and killed King Math’s son. When most people referred to the Bastard, they still meant him. If people ever talked about her, they thought of him.

  She focused on the pendants again. It was a better use of her time. “They don’t look completely identical, although the cracks and the flaw that surrounds them are very similar. The stones are brothers, not twins.”

  Tiana said, “Perhaps there are hidden clues. Can you look for traces of the fiend through the Logos?”

  Kiar sighed. “And find whatever made Hook die insane?”

  “You’re of the Blood, Kiar! Just looking can’t hurt!”

  Kiar looked away. “It can. I have to be careful, Tiana. I can’t… I’m not you.” I can’t just push away bad thoughts, she couldn’t say.

  There was silence, until finally Tiana said, “You really think I should find somebody else?”

  She’d find Twist. He was probably reckless enough to experiment, despite the way Hook had died. Kiar rubbed her hands across her face. Then she said, “I hate working under pressure. It’s harder to focus. It takes me forever to get my concentration together when I’m not alone. But I’ll try.”

  * * *

  Kiar sat on a chair and stared at her hands, letting her eyes lose focus as she tried to bring about the frame of mind that made the Logos comprehensible. The others made it hard—the sound of their breathing, their eyes on her. Her mind kept freezing. She couldn’t do it.

  She breathed. She tried to block out sound, block out their presence. Her eidolons naturally manifested as shields. She could keep people out, so she could do this.

  Slowly, she pulled the special Logos-vision over her eyes, being careful not to go too far. It was usually easy to get halfway there, to start perceiving the basic component nature of the universe. The problem was resisting going further than halfway. If she didn’t hold it back, it would dominate her vision, turning everything she looked at into an incomprehensible jumble of passive linguistic noise.

  She looked at the Logos of her hands and tried to sort the jumble into meaning, into something she could interact with and describe in a way the uninitiated would understand. But she wasn’t ready and comprehension came too easily, moving beyond interpreting into active vocalization. Looking could hurt. She clapped her hands over her mouth, her face burning.

  They shouldn’t have expected better, she was terrible with the Logos, she was terrible at showing off. Nervousness once again froze her mind, and she felt her mouth stop moving under her hands.

  She tried again. This time she progressed slowly, bringing comprehension just into focus. She missed the fine, complex details at this level, but she knew she would not do better in front of her cousins. Her control was inconsistent these days, even when she was alone.

  She turned her hands over, staring at the way her dark skin absorbed warmth from the window, and how moving her fingers pushed air aside. She could see the shadow of the phantasmagory just under the flesh and the nacreous glimmer of her life-force that marked her as a member of the Blood and possessor of the Blood’s family magic.

  It wasn’t as strong as Tiana’s or the King’s, but through the Logos, there was no denying it was there. Tiana blazed like a fire and the King like coals, while Jerya was the stars’ glow, just like her. Once, she’d looked at Shanasee and turned away, dazzled by the gift her older cousin kept hidden.

  Tiana moved beside her and put her hand on Kiar’s shoulder. “It’s all right, we can ask Twist….”

  Kiar flinched. “No, I’m there.” She looked up at her cousin. To mundane vision, Tiana was a perfect specimen of traditional Royal Blood, with cinnamon skin and long, black hair. Through the Logos, though, Kiar could see Tiana’s recent use of magic as a smear of darkness obscuring the components that defined her. Jerya, on the other hand, had touched magic much less recently. The King was hardly anything but darkness and glow, with his near-constant use of magic.

  Lisette and Iriss had healthy human patterns, without the nacreous glow, although they were marked by their proximity to others’ use of magic. They were comforting to look at. The Blood always made Kiar feel sick if she gazed too long. It was the way they blotted out parts of the fundamental structure of the world.

  Tiana said eagerly, “Wonderful. I knew you could do it. What do you see?”

  Kiar dragged her gaze away from watching Iriss strum her viola and peered at the smears acr
oss Tiana and the King. Her eyes stung, and she said, “Can you put the necklaces down? It’s hard to see them under your own markings….” She heard the gentle clinks as the necklaces were placed on a table. But all she saw were the smears, a darkness across the Logos where she thought they must be.

  “Lord of Winter,” she breathed. Fear rushed through her, and she wondered if Hook had seen this. She turned towards the window and brought herself into focus with the King’s eidolons. Their outlines were distinct, their features invisible, and as they moved, they left a fading visual echo behind them that didn’t quite match their movements. Then she looked at the opal necklaces again. In comparison to the eidolons, the darkness of the pendants was as vast and deep as the Logos itself.

  “How can that be? What am I missing?” she muttered and picked up one of the necklaces, trying to recalibrate her sight.

  “How can what be?” asked Tiana. “What did you see? What’s going on?” Jerya shushed her, and Kiar was grateful.

  She squeezed her eyes closed, opened them, and promptly over-focused. A horrible buzzing attempt to describe the smear emerged from her throat. Panic overwhelmed her and she flung the necklace away from her. Stuffing her fist in her mouth, she stumbled to the window.

  The eidolons scattered away from her as she fumbled open the latch and pushed the window open. Then she spat out a mouthful of blood and vomit, and leaned out, gasping for breath. Her natural vision blinded by tears, she still registered the Logos of the outdoors, and it was a balm on her sight.

  In the courtyard far below, a line of supplicants waited for admittance to the Court of the Justiciars, to beg for judgement or rewards. The detailing of their life-forces was sharp and beautiful, for the most part. Too sharp; it would cut her if she couldn’t ease back out of focus again.

  “Kiar?” Tiana said behind her. Her voice was high. “Are—are you all right? I didn’t think….”

  Kiar dragged in a deep breath. “I’ve been better.”

  Tiana said, “What was that… sound?”

  “That’s what happens when you have a half-trained idiot look too hard at eidolons.” She stared at the line outside. There was something odd about it, but she couldn’t identify what it was.

  “What… can you explain?” Tiana’s voice was timid, and Kiar felt even worse for worrying her.

  “Everything around us is just information, Tiana. It’s just words. The difference between an ordinary person and somebody who’s taken plepanin is that plepanin tears away the gift of interpreting the world as a coherent whole. Surviving the plepanin means relearning how to do that. But our Blood magic isn’t part of the Logos and it obscures it. If you’re properly trained, like Twist, you learn how to work around the marring. If you’re me, you try to put words to what can’t be described.”

  She turned around and looked at the necklaces again. The one she had flung away was still on the ground, and the other one was on the table. No matter how carefully she looked at them, she couldn’t see anything underneath the eidolon shadow.

  “Well, they’re the same in at least one way. They’re eidolons or so deeply touched by them that the taint obscures anything I could see. I’m sorry.”

  Jerya frowned. “Both of them?”

  Kiar nodded. “Yes. I know they look… real. But they smear the Logos exactly the same way eidolons and emanations do. I don’t know what Hook saw that made him think they might be connected to… to the Blood’s madness. Honestly, I have no idea how he hoped to interact with them, now that I see them with the Logos.” She paused and added bitterly, “I’m sure Twist would know.”

  Tiana sounded puzzled. “No matter how I approach it, either someone with the family magic has to be involved, or there’s some new kind of fiend.”

  Kiar frowned. “What makes you say that?”

  Tiana looked up from her fingers. “I know they’re connected, Tomas and the pendant. I just can’t see how.”

  Kiar frowned and turned to lean back out the window to look at the line again. Normally, she’d believe Tiana’s certainty was self-delusion. But because the phantasmagory was involved, because Tiana had led them unerringly to the second pendant, that certainty could be significant. Or it might just be her fantasy. There was simply no way to tell.

  She finally identified what had she had noticed staring out the window before. “There’s someone in the plaintiff line marked by family magic. Why is that?”

  Iriss stopped her melodic strumming and Jerya rose to her feet. “Who?”

  Kiar pointed out two peasant men standing together, near where the line vanished into the court, at the second guard checkpoint.

  Jerya stared at them for a long moment and then turned and marched to the sitting room door. She opened it and said, “You, come here.”

  Berrin followed her back to the window, where she pointed out the same men. “Bring those men up here. Tell them they’ve been granted the honor of a personal audience with the King.”

  Berrin looked taken aback, almost as if he was going to argue. But then he gave a quick smile and bowed. “As you say, Your Highness.” Then he left.

  Jerya said, unsmiling, “Let’s find out. Maybe there’s a simple explanation.”

  Tiana moved her hands in agitation. “More bastard theories.”

  Iriss spoke up, “Parts of the Regency Court have been talking about Benjen again.”

  Lisette said, “The courts like to see Benjen in every shadow, despite the more recent Blights.”

  The King said flatly, “Benjen is dead.” Everyone looked at him. Kiar thought he would know, since he’d been there.

  But Jerya said, “We shall see.” She returned to the window and watched.

  Kiar closed her eyes until Berrin returned and announced the visitors. “Presenting Wallis Jacoby and his brother Clary, from the village of Rushing Fork.”

  He herded in two men. One was clearly frightened, holding his hat in his hands with his eyes on the floor: a typical peasant pulled aside to meet people high above his station. The other’s form rippled with unformed eidolons, cascading and dancing within him. His behavior was extraordinary as well; his head was high, wild eyes staring around the room, his mouth moving constantly. His brother maintained a tight grip on him, even as he bowed deeply.

  “Thank you, Berrin,” Jerya said, turning from the window. She smiled at the visitors.

  Iriss murmured, “Gentlemen, you are in the presence of His Majesty King Shonathan, Her Royal Highness the Crown Princess Jerya, and Her Serene Highness Princess Tiana.” She gestured fluidly at each princess as she identified them. Kiar had long ago convinced the Regents to leave her out of any introductions.

  Tiana touched the King’s hand, and he jerked. “Ah, yes. Always good to meet new people. Why are we meeting these fine men, Iriss dear?”

  Wallis Jacoby looked up from his bow, saw the King’s eidolons, and fell to his knees. “Honored… we’re honored, Your Majesty.”

  He didn’t sound honored. He sounded terrified. His brother, free of Wallis’s restraining hand, took two steps forward before tripping over his feet and sprawling across the carpet.

  Jerya seated herself, still smiling. “Why did you come to court today, Wallis?” Clary pulled himself to his knees and sat there, his mouth moving in silent speech.

  The man stared silently at the ground for so long that Kiar had to look elsewhere. Looking at the liquid movement of the substance of Clary’s form was making her stomach turn again. Tiana had her eyes closed, and Kiar was more than willing to believe the younger princess had slipped into the phantasmagory. But Jerya just sat there, her smile fading into a patient, reserved expression. Iriss was equally still, her pale shadow, although her gaze was focused on the afflicted man.

  Finally, the man Wallis risked a glance up. “The taxes, Your Highness. Half our village has been afflicted by the plague, and we’re having difficulty with the crops.” Clary’s eyes darted around the room, and he pushed himself to his feet. Wallis pulled him down again.r />
  Jerya said, “The plague… tell me about the plague, if you please.” Her brow furrowed.

  The man said, “Oh, Your Highness, it’s a terrible thing. My brother Clary survived it, and as you see, he’s only fit for the simplest tasks now, even with supervision. You see? You see how his mouth moves? Once he spoke and he described the nightmares the fever brought him, but his voice died and all his stupid jokes with it.”

  He swallowed and continued. “Half the village has been touched by the screams, and it kills at least half those it touches. My daughter and wife are gone as well.” Sorrow and rage threaded through his voice.

  “I see. My sympathies for your loss,” said Jerya. She paused and he lowered his gaze again. “But you say you came about your taxes? Surely, even if you reside within this county, you wouldn’t need to come all the way to the Justiciar’s Court to renegotiate your tax obligation. Has the count’s magistrate failed you in some way?”

  “The magistrate died, Your Highness, and the replacement selected by the count has chosen not to inspect the territories, in light of the troubles we’ve been having.”

  Jerya said, “Ah, the troubles.” She paused, then said, “Tell me about the troubles?” There was an expression Kiar didn’t recognize on the elder princess’s face: a strange sort of intensity.

  The man looked up again, doubt and confusion on his face. “Which ones, Your Highness?”

  It was Jerya’s turn to be silent, gazing at the man. He ducked his head and pulled his brother closer. Finally, she said, “Let’s start with the one that caused the death of your magistrate.”

  “A fiend,” he said promptly. “There are a terrible number of fiends about these days, spoiling crops and stealing children and preying on the lonely.”

  “And?”

  “My granddaddy always said that fiends bring out the bandits. But everyone’s pretty sure a fiend took this one, on account of the tax money being left behind, and all the blood.”