Citadel of the Sky (Thrones of the Firstborn Book 1) (10 page)

“I tried,” Tiana said bleakly. She watched as the two guards went to check on the bodies. She distantly wondered if Jerya was still upset. This wouldn’t help.

Slater said, “Is that your blood? Forgive my language, Your Highness, but to hell with them.” He glanced at his men. “Clean up. Find out who these creatures were and where their friends might be. I’m taking Her Highness home.” Then he looked at Tiana again. “If you don’t mind?”

The laundress said, “Her wound...? I can wrap it.”

Tiana said, “There’s no point in staining anything else.” She walked past them, out of the alley, down the street.

At the Palace, she went directly to her rooms. She dropped the bloodstained white dress on the floor and changed into a lightweight sleeping chemise that provided easy access to her shoulder. Then she huddled in her window seat, waiting for the consequences.

People arrived soon enough, a stream of faces and voices. She had trouble connecting them to comings and goings, and sometimes statements people made didn’t register until much later.

The doctor cleaned and bandaged her wound. “Straightforward enough for a knife wound. It’ll leave a scar, though.” He patted her other shoulder. “The Blood heals faster than most people. You might not even notice it after a few days. I’ll give Lady Lisette instructions on changing the dressing.”

“That’s true?” She’d heard about the Blood’s accelerated healing, but she’d never had an opportunity to see it in action.
Hurrah.
But the doctor was gone. The Chancellor was there instead.

He stroked his neat beard. “That man, Treyl. You didn’t know him? The great-nephew of the mayor of Lor Seleni.” He patted her hand. “We’ll smooth this over. They shouldn’t have touched you.” Thoughtfully, he said, “We’ve only found one of his friends, though. The rest have run away.”

“Not soon enough. I killed him,” she said. “I wanted them to run away before.”

Jerya was there, holding her hand. “Yes,” she said. Tiana could tell she was angry. She carried silence a certain way when she was angry.

“I don’t know why I didn’t run away myself. I couldn’t.”

“I’m glad you didn’t,” said Jerya. Then she was gone.

Lisette was there, and Kiar. Lisette stroked Tiana’s hair and said to Kiar, “The Mayor tried to suggest the city courts review the attack. What was he thinking?”

Tiana said, “Never any consequences.” A dry sob escaped. “But
he
attacked
me.”

Kiar said, “He was using a drug. Something new, they called it ‘clarity.’ I wonder where it comes from. The merchant who sold it is foreign.”

Lisette said, “Jerya thinks whoever was manipulating Tomas was put off-balance by his death. These weren’t just some bad men. It was an assassination attempt. If they’d killed you… or if you’d killed all of them….”

Tiana started crying in earnest. “Treyl looked like Tomas when I was done.”

Lisette hugged her, rocked her back and forth. She slept.

She woke and Yithiere was there. His black eyes bored into her even when she looked away. “You forgot your lessons. And now you have killed.”

She wanted to cover her ears. She was the first of the younger generation to take a human life, but Yithiere and her father had been to war, fought against Blighters, both kin and foreign.

“It’s a hard thing,” Yithiere said. “Most of the others won’t understand. You carry a piece of them inside you now.”

“I don’t want it.”

He lowered his head, reminding Tiana of his wolf eidolon. “This is what it means to defend Ceria. Shanasee is primus since Viani died, but she would have died there.” Primus, the old term for the most powerful living user of family magic. Her great-aunt Viani, Seandri’s mother, had held it until her suicide. Now, technically, it belonged to her cousin Shanasee, though she never used her magic anymore.

“Shanasee wouldn’t have been in that situation, or all alone,” Tiana said.

“Yes,” Yithiere said. She closed her eyes.

Her father sat beside her, holding her hand as Cathay stalked around the room. Cathay was angry, but pleased. “The fools got what they deserved.”

Sadly, King Shonathan said, “Fools usually do.”

“I wish they’d set upon me instead, though.” Cathay crouched by Tiana’s side. “You did very well, stormy, but look at you now. So sad and withdrawn.” He brushed hair away from her face. “Where’s my lightning and thunder?”

She looked into Cathay’s dark eyes and knew Yithiere was right. He wouldn’t understand until he’d been there.

She slept again, through the night. Then Kiar was there. “I have to go. Jerya’s right; I’d rather face mysteries and peasants than Twist and the reception tomorrow night.” She hesitated and then kissed Tiana’s forehead.

“Find answers,” Tiana said. Kiar smiled as she left.

Lisette said, “Baxer sent a message and a gift. Do you want to read it?”

Tiana said, “Read it for me.” She wondered what would have happened if the door hadn’t been locked, if she hadn’t been in that alley. Perhaps they would have found Cathay somewhere else in town, instead. He trained with weapons. She didn’t know if that would have been better or worse.

Lisette scanned the letter. “He’s horrified you were assaulted right outside his theater.” She paused, eyes on the letter. “He doesn’t come out and say it, but he’s worried you’ll never come back to the Small-light District again. And he’s sent a new dress.” She lifted the lid on the box and the scent of yellow roses emerged. A bouquet was pressed against a lightweight black and white dress.

Tiana looked at it for a moment, unsure how to respond. Lisette sat down beside her. “The Chancellor is resigned to losing Kiar tomorrow, but he’s hoping you’ll still come to the reception. There’re some young men he’d like you to meet.”

“Of course,” said Tiana absently.

“That’s what I told him,” Lisette squeezed Tiana’s hand. “These things happen, these complications or attacks or whatever, but life has to go on.”

Still looking at the dress, Tiana asked, “What’s going to happen with the Mayor?”

“The Regency is handling it.” Lisette’s voice was cool; she disapproved of whatever the Regency was doing. She hesitated, then added, “Everybody’s going end up pretending it didn’t happen, Tiana. The Chancellor is worried about how the city will react otherwise. The Mayor is powerful.” She squeezed Tiana’s hand again. “But dealing with this is our job. All you need to do is recover. And come to the reception.”

Tiana dragged her eyes away from the dress Baxer had sent and stopped holding onto her fear. It was so easy to let it drift away, to let herself think instead on the party ahead. The Regency receptions were organized in an attempt to find mates for the Blood of marriageable age. Tiana was the only member of the family actually enthusiastic about them. It was true, she was picky: whoever she chose had to be just right. But she and Lisette and Iriss had a good time, even if the Chancellor’s selections were all lacking so far.

“It’s going to be a quiet, little affair without Iriss,” Tiana said. Lisette broke into a radiant smile and Tiana blinked at her, surprised.

“I thought the same thing. We’ll tell her stories when she’s feeling better.” And then she hugged Tiana. “I’m so glad you’re you again.”

Tiana tilted her head. “I just… I’m fine. For now. There’s the scent of blood in the phantasmagory, though.”

Lisette nodded. “I know. Nothing is ever left entirely behind. You have to move on, but things move with you.”

Tiana chewed on her lip. “Tell Baxer ‘thank you’ for the dress, and reassure him that I’ll be back at the theater eventually. Right now, I’ve got to decide on outfits for tomorrow.”

L
isette and Tiana
never had any trouble talking to strangers, but for Kiar, it was always difficult. So she said no more to the guards and villagers than was utterly necessary to get the party on the road, and pointed in the right direction. Somebody had sent Berrin along, for which she was grateful; he was no longer a stranger after their walk through the depths of the Palace. He was happy to take charge of maintaining the pace.

Jerya was right, though. Better this than a lesson with Twist. Better this than the reception tomorrow night. Better to be useful, she told herself, but she couldn’t help worrying that her traveling party expected to talk to her, expected to her to make polite, social conversation like the Princesses. She thought she could feel them staring at her. She wished it would rain so she could put her hood up. She wondered if Twist would notice when she didn’t show up for the lesson. Would he shake his head and sigh?

It was better once they were out of the city, on the Royal Highway. In Lor Seleni, anyone who cared to could recognize her, but on the road, her lineage was unclear. Her peasant’s blood bleached the dark Royal hair a dirty blond, and while her skin was dark, some farmers turned quite dark in the sun.

Of course, no peasant rode a horse like Spooky. He was a liver-colored Altas stallion, a racehorse, taller even than the soldiers’ mounts and looming over the Varyan riding horses that were popular with most nobles. He stood out everywhere. But Yithiere had found her at the horse fair three years ago and pointed him out to her, as the horse worked on a lead with his trainer for an admiring audience.

“The Ganying have been refining the Altas for a thousand years. They control the bloodline strictly. You will only see geldings of the pure line in Ceria.” And then, just as abruptly as he appeared, he’d vanished. She hadn’t noticed at first, she’d been so absorbed by watching the horse. But Yithiere’s Regent, Zavien, stayed behind.

“Do you like him? The horse?”

“He’s beautiful. I suppose they’re the Blood of horses, and he’s a prince.” She couldn’t keep the wistfulness from her voice.

“Very astute,” Zavien said. He sounded irritated, and when she looked at him, he was looking at her, not the horse. He opened his mouth, as if to say more, and then shook his head. “Yithiere is an idiot sometimes,” he said, by way of explanation, and walked away.

The next day, the Royal stable master found her. “The bloody Ganying have, haha, decided to give you a present. That stallion. They even found a justification for it, too, bless his soul.” The stable master seemed at once both horrified and delighted. “They say it’s on account of you being Blood and having survived five years after taking the magic powder. But I suppose if there hadn’t been that, they might have suddenly fallen in love with that mop of hair.”

There’d been a ceremony and everything. And nothing seemed hastily improvised, and Yithiere hadn’t even been present. It all seemed to be exactly as they claimed. Except it was totally without precedent. So, they said, was she. But that was ridiculous.

She still hadn’t worked out what exactly Yithiere had
done
. But the attention Spooky got made her feel the same way she used to feel in the kitchens when she was three years old: safe and warm and totally unnoticed. It helped that he was perfectly mannered, far easier to handle than the rest of the stallions in the stables. And he could, of course, outrun anything. Nothing but the Hanna messenger horses could even wind him.

It was like he could read her thoughts; he frisked and bounced, and as she calmed him, she relaxed herself. No racing today. But she let herself drift off into the rhythm of the ride.

At midday, they left the Highway for a smaller road. It curved around bedraggled fields of winter wheat, and pastures for goats and cattle. She passed a pear orchard, and the wind brought her the scent of the fruit harvest. The homes in this area were stout, with thick, white walls and pale yellow shingles, and they were often in the midst of large beds of flowers. That wasn’t something she’d seen before. When she summoned up the courage to ask about it, the farmer she was escorting explained that the flowers responded favorably to recent weather conditions, so everyone had planted more of them. It was a small brightness in an otherwise awful season.

It took about two hours for the travelers to arrive at Rushing Fork. As Kiar waited outside the inn for the village elder to arrive and greet her, she concentrated on activating the Logos-vision. It was easier today, and the vision more stable; no one was staring at her expectantly this time. The mind-ravaged victim she’d traveled with was crouched down in the mud next to the pump, drawing endless circles with his finger. She could see the shadow of the magical taint lying over him, like the mud still clinging to his finger even after he’d wiped it on the ground.

There was a crossroads in the center of the village, where a farmer’s track intersected with the county road. A stream just south of the crossroads was lined with unhealthy apple trees. Across the track from the inn was a blacksmith’s shed, and three children were playing a game with metal studs. The fourth, watching, had the magical taint of a plague victim. Kiar dismounted and passed the reins to Berrin. “I’m going to talk to the children.”

The children didn’t notice her at first, which was fine with Kiar. Children made her nervous. The magic-tainted one watched instead of played, but her eyes weren’t empty like the previous survivors Kiar had observed. When the children did notice her, they began picking up their game. The survivor transferred an intense stare to Kiar, chewing on her lip.

“Hi,” Kiar managed. She was bigger than they were, after all. The little girl looked to be nine or so, and she didn’t respond at all. One of her companions pushed her gently.

“C’mon, Mere, get out of the lady’s way.”

Mere pulled herself away from her companion. “She’s not a lady. She started staring at me first.”

The other child, a boy of about the same age, looked embarrassed. He met Kiar’s gaze briefly and mumbled, “Sorry, Lady.” Then he took Mere’s hand and tugged at her.

Kiar lowered her gaze. “She’s right, I was staring. Was she ill recently?”

The boy said, “Yes, ma’am, she had the plague. She doesn’t anymore, though, see? All better. Mere, stop staring.”

Kiar said awkwardly, “I’m glad you’re feeling better, Mere. Can I talk to you later about when you got sick?”

Mere finally dropped her gaze and shrugged. “I don’t care. I don’t remember anything from then, though. Just bad dreams. I can’t think about those.”

“Why is that?”

That penetrating, unblinking stare rose again. “I might get sick again.”

Berrin called to her from the inn, and Kiar said, “I see. Well, goodbye.” She didn’t see. She hoped she could learn to see.

Berrin stood on the inn porch with who was presumably the village elder, a thin, stooped, older man who would have been quite tall and powerful in his prime. His nose was crooked and his hair was iron-grey. Berrin said, “Ah, Your Ladyship. This is Elder Whitestaff. Elder Whitestaff, this is Kiar Suan, Lady of the Blood. The Crown Princess has sent her to investigate the sickness here.”

Kiar endured his scrutiny as stoically as she could. She wanted to run away, of course, but that was normal. She distracted herself by wondering what impact the last bastard Lord of the Blood had on the village. That worry always put everything else into perspective.

Then the Elder nodded. “Your ladyship. Are you a physician?”

She shook her head. “I’m a student of the Logos. I’ve come to see if there is something wrong with the Logos around the victims of the illness.” She wasn’t going to tell anybody but Twist about the taint of the family magic until she had a better idea of what was causing it.

Whitestaff’s sleepy gaze sharpened. “That’s wizardry, not the Royal magic?”

Kiar nodded. “I’m not very good at the Royal magic.” That always reassured people. “Have you had any wizards pass through recently? Or anybody strange?”

The Elder’s bushy eyebrows lowered. “Traders pass through every month, Your Ladyship. Some are stranger than others. Wizardry isn’t something I know how to recognize, unless things are changing in front of me or there’s chanting going on. No obvious Blighters, though.”

“That would be too convenient, I suppose. How many people are sick in your village now?”

“Twelve, Lady. There’re nine that’ve died and two that have recovered recently.”

“Are the recovered still functional?” She looked down the porch stairs at the man still playing in the mud like a child.

The bushy brows twitched like a snowy caterpillar. “Some are handier than others, Your Ladyship. The children that do not succumb entirely survive the best, but that’s the way of children. They all change, though.” He shook his head. “Before this illness came, I’d only seen that kind of change once before. Fellow’s skull got crushed by a bull. A killing blow, but he survived another twenty years. His whole manner was different, though.”

Kiar tried to steer him back on topic. “And it has struck men, women, children, all equally?”

“Aye, Your Ladyship. I’ve been more concerned with keeping my village alive, so I can’t say for other places afflicted, though I know they exist. The traders bring word, and sometimes they’ve left their own victims with us. I’ve seen it in the young and old, male and female: the fever, the vomiting, the hallucinations, head pain and seizures. It doesn’t spread like other illnesses. Usually, if one person gets something bad—and it ain’t the flux—the whole family gets it. That just isn’t true for this. A mercy, I suppose. Given how it kills.”

Kiar asked, “How long does it take? Is there someone I can observe directly?”

The old man hobbled down the stairs of the porch and Kiar followed him, Berrin trailing behind her. “Once we know they have the screams—that’s what we call it around here, Lady—they last anywhere from three days to two weeks. Usually at least a week, though. The fever rises and falls and rises again, and there’s the seizures and the delusions. They get worse throughout the week and then, well, the victim either lives or dies.

“If they survive the peak of the illness, like young Mere, there’s another week of a cool fever, and weakness, and lots of sleeping. Then, well, they’re either like Mere, or like Paul, who you came in with.” He fell silent.

Sickness was rare in the Palace, where everything was kept scrupulously clean, and everybody was well-fed. The Blood themselves hardly ever contracted physical illnesses. But Kiar knew the poorer districts of Lor Seleni had outbreaks of worrying illness, the generic ‘plague.’ And she knew that city officials responded to such outbreaks by strictly controlling traffic in and out of those districts, as well as taking other steps, depending on the illness. Three years ago, they’d fought an outbreak with imported beer, and Twist had showed her the contaminants in the water.

Elder Whitestaff had a long, if uneven, stride once he found his rhythm, and Kiar had to quicken her usual pace to keep up as he led them out of the village proper. “Mae Parker’s husband died to the screams late last year, at the beginning of the outbreak. She didn’t catch it until just recently. She and her family culture our silk.” He nodded as they passed a large stand of mulberry trees on the west side of the road. Just south of the stand of trees was a fenced yard full of chickens and attached to a house.

Kiar’s pace slowed. She could see the taint of the family magic on the house, a moving, morphing darkness much like the mark left on the wall outside Iriss’s quarters the other night. She stared at the mark, watching as it faded and shimmered and grew again. Then she jumped as the Elder rapped on the door and called, “Good day, Parkers.” He opened the door, and Kiar hastened to catch up with him.

The main room of the cottage was dominated by a large and ancient loom, where a very young woman had half-turned to greet the Elder. A door led off to the left, while a staircase led up to a loft, but Kiar hardly registered those details, her gaze glued to the bed made up against the right wall. That was the wall she’d seen from the outside, marked by magic. Something moved there, something dark and alien to the Logos-vision. It whimpered and turned towards the sound of voices.

“Good morning, Ilsa. This Lady’s come from the capital to study the screaming plague. She wanted to meet your mother.” The Elder’s voice was soothing, and Kiar tore her gaze away from the mother to look at the daughter. She was touched only by her nearness to the thing on the bed, but her alarmed look and deep breathing bespoke a deeper disturbance. “Ilsa had the screams when her father did, last year, aye Ilsa? Your family’s a strong one; your mum will pull through just like you did.”

Ilsa nodded slowly, ducked her head shyly at Kiar, and turned to fuss at her loom. The Elder sighed and explained quietly, “Before the screams, Ilsa was as outgoing and sociable a girl as you could imagine. Afterwards… shy as a fox. Even the ones who survive… they don’t survive the same.” He shook his head. “But I’m going on. Here, why don’t you take a look at Mae and see if there’s any wizardry about.”

He led her across the room, to the magic-tainted shape on the bed. Kiar took a deep breath, made sure she wouldn’t start babbling gibberish, and forced herself to stare down into the taint. This time, it wasn’t as if the woman beneath the taint were being attacked by eidolons, not like Iriss. Instead, it was as if she was
becoming
an eidolon, like the magic was crawling inside her, being absorbed under her skin.

With a rush of horror, Kiar wondered if that was what she’d looked like when she had absorbed the eidolon attacking Iriss. She looked down at her hands, saw the taint that was always there, and repressed a whimper. Panic made the phantasmagory surge up, and she struggled to untangle herself from it before she lost control.

The woman on the bed started screaming, broken cries from a tortured throat. The eidolon within her
reacted
to Kiar, its essence swirling and moving towards her, and then away. She saw the endless smooth wall of her rising shield overlaid behind it and she pushed it away, frightened of being enclosed with the plague eidolon.