Idol of Glass (22 page)

Twenty-nine: Emanation

Edging back into the shadows he'd painted while MeerShiva and Mnemosyne traded barbs, Pearl had heard his name whispered. Ra was safe—or as safe as she could be—and his instincts told him to retreat.

Someone he'd never seen before beckoned to him, her presentation that of a gentleman in morning trousers, shirtsleeves and a striped waistcoat, but her essence a woman's. He approached her, wary, but too curious to resist finding out who she was and how she'd come to be there. She looked nothing like the Permanence, though he thought he must have seen her somewhere before.

“I'm Cree. A friend of Ume's. She's been searching for you.” Cree held out her hand. “I've come to take you to her.”

Ume hadn't abandoned him. It was all Pearl needed to hear.

“I'm not quite sure how to get back,” Cree admitted as he came closer. She nodded toward the mirror where he'd drawn Hraethe under the hill. “But I came through here.”

Pearl took her hand, and with the crayon he still held, he filled in the edges of the bathing chamber that had begun to run in the steam, bringing it into focus once more. He tugged at Cree's hand, jerking his head toward the glass.

“Just…step into it?” Cree looked dubious, but when Pearl nodded, she took a resolute breath and moved forward. In an instant, they were in the bathing chamber at
Ludtaht
Ra, but Cree had overstepped the mirror, and they tumbled into the bathwater, floundering in surprise.

Running footsteps sounded in the passageway, someone drawn by the noise they'd made.

“Cree! What on earth—?” Ume appeared in the arch, struck speechless at the sight of Pearl. After a moment of frozen inaction, she rushed forward to help him from the water and threw her arms around him, kneeling by the bath as Cree climbed out. “You dear, sweet boy. We've been trying to find a way back to you for ages. How did you get to him, Cree?”

“It was Merit.” Cree peeled out of her sodden waistcoat. “I mean, MeerHraethe. He opened a portal somehow, and I saw him go in, so I followed.”

Ume glanced up at her. “You followed Hraethe into the bath?”

Cree blushed furiously. “No! Into the mirror. I had a terrible feeling he'd try to get under the way…the way Pearl and I got under, and I came to stop him, and saw him disappear.” At their feet, the mirror lay shattered in pieces. Cree looked back at the water. The pastel crayon had dissolved into an oily glob, floating among the candles. The reflection of the other realm was gone. “I think we may have him trapped there. I should have called to him.”

Pearl shook his head. “Shiva.” It was the most he could manage.

“Was that who she was?” Cree gave a little shudder as though a mouse had run up her spine. “I suppose she has everything in hand.”

Pearl had begun to shiver, and Cree grabbed the plush towels from the bench and wrapped him in one before putting the other over her shoulders. Ume rubbed the towel over his arms, smiling as if she'd never been so happy to see anyone, her eyes a bit damp, though it was probably the steam. Having believed until now that she'd left him with the Permanence willingly, Pearl had to blink his own eyes against the humidity in the face of her obvious affection.

At the ribbons on his wrists, she hesitated, her brow furrowing. “Pearl, you hurt yourself before.”

Cree paused in running the towel over her dark curls. “It was my fault. My
vetma
.”

Pearl looked up at her. He remembered now where he'd seen her before—from his throne in Szofl, granting petitions. Hers had been the last one he'd answered:
“Please take this burden from me.”

She regarded him with chestnut eyes heavy with remorse. “I'm so sorry.”

Pearl shook his head. He knew it hadn't been her wish, that someone had sent her there to do something she wanted with all her heart not to do. Her sadness had been unbearable, and granting her
vetma
had been a way to solve his own predicament, to put a stop to the terrible visions he couldn't escape.

Ume pressed his hand. “Pearl. I want to tell you about Cree—”

“Don't.” Cree shook her head at Ume with a silent, adamant communication.

But the words in Ume's head were already set loose on the tide of Meeric vision. Tears he couldn't blink away blurred Pearl's eyes.
She's your mother
, the words promised. He had a mother. Pearl threw himself into Cree's arms.

The walk back to town with Ra in her arms was like another time Ahr had carried her. Though now it was her Meeric strength that allowed her to carry Ra, before it had been Ahr's male physique—and Ra had weighed little then, having spent weeks refusing food.

She'd tried to drown herself after destroying Prelate Vithius at
Ludtaht
Ra, stepping into the Anamnesis with a promise to Ahr that Ra's second death would be atonement for the theft of Mila. Ahr hadn't wanted Ra's death on his head twice. That was what he'd told himself when he'd fished her from the river and breathed life back into her lungs. Now here they were again, Ra on the brink of death, and Ahr carrying her. And again, Ahr was the cause of it.

As Ahr had carried Ra up the steps to the temple, she carried her now up the steps of the tavern. Patrons at the bar gave her a wide berth. No one tried to help.

Jak sprang forward from a booth at the rear, asking no questions as they took Ra up to the rented room and laid her on the bed, but the anxiousness and worry on Jak's face said everything. Ahr couldn't look into the steel eyes.

She stepped back to let Jak tend to Ra after bringing water and a flannel from the basin. “She's lost a great deal of blood. But the bleeding has stopped. She must be healing. Perhaps even if she isn't consciously aware of her power, her body is. She'll be all right.”

“No thanks to you.” So Jak had something to say after all.

“Jak—”

“No, I'm sorry. I told myself I wasn't going to do that.”

Ahr twisted the damp flannel in her hands. “If I could undo—”

“Do you know how many times she's said that to me?” Jak took the flannel and cleaned the blood from Ra's face. Despite the cuts and bruises, Ra looked peaceful in her restorative sleep. “Your words—and your actions—can't be taken back. You're Meer.”

“I'm sorry.”

“For soothsake, Ahr. Don't be sorry you're Meer. It's like me being sorry about my lack of gender. And there's no point in it. Shiva's words and actions can't be taken back either.” Jak glanced up before Ahr could look away. “And I wouldn't have them taken back. She returned you to me.”

Ahr brushed away a bit of blood at the corner of her eye. “You should hate me.”

“Well, I'm pretty fucking angry with you, Ahr, I won't deny it.” Jak wrung out the cloth with a sharp twist into the bowl Ahr held, turning the water pink. “But I don't hate you. We'll get through this. You kept Pike from killing her. You brought her back. That's a start.”

Ahr lifted her shoulders in a self-deprecating shrug. “I didn't stop Pike. Shiva and I shattered Pike's box, but Ra had managed, even without magic. Pike was bleeding on the floor from her knife when we arrived.”

“Where
is
Shiva?” Jak moved on to the dried blood on Ra's arms, apparently afraid to see what was under the blood-soaked sweater. “Isn't she coming?”

“She said she had ‘business' to attend to. She went through the mirror.”

Jak paused. “
Through
the mirror?”

“There were people there.” Ahr shrugged again. “She said she was going under the hill.”

The steel eyes widened. “Under the hill? You mean like…Hidden Folk?”

“I suppose so. I was more concerned with Ra.”

Jak gave a nod and a headshake in the same motion, looking overwhelmed. “As we should be now. I guess we'd better get her out of these.” Jak studied the tight fabric of the brown sweater and form-hugging trousers as though trying to figure out how to remove them. “I think we're going to need—”

“Scissors.” Ahr handed them to Jak as they materialized, tucking the basin within the curve of one arm.

Jak gave her a wry smile. “Handy, that Meeric blood, isn't it?”

Cutting the soaked fabric of the sweater up the middle with difficulty, Jak revealed what lay beneath the shredded wool with a gasp of surprise. There were multiple knife wounds, to be sure, and a great deal of blood, but the lacerations were all closed up and dry, and well on their way to healing. Ra had reclaimed her power after all.

Thirty: Rapprochement

Ra woke between the sheets of a tavern inn bed, her body protesting the event with a host of twinges and aches, but feeling on the whole a great deal better than she had the night before. Though the bedsheets were grayed and scratchy and patched, and the bed was hard and full of lumps, it was the most glorious bed in which Ra had ever woken. Ahr lay beside her, deep clove-colored hair in tiny waves against her head catching the subdued winter sunlight, the bare olive skin of one arm stretched across the covers.

Ra rolled over and breathed in the scent of her.
Bergamot and black tea
. She swore she could smell it, as if Ahr were still the girl at the teahouse who had come out to see the god go by in his golden litter.

She dared to place a kiss on Ahr's sleep-warm brow, with a whispered “Good morning.”

Ahr opened one indigo eye, a cloth patch covering the other, and bolted upright, scrambling from the bed. “I fell asleep—Jak's just gone for breakfast—I wanted to make sure you didn't—that you were…breathing.”

“You don't need to fear me.”

Ahr hugged her arms against her chest. “I don't fear you, Ra. I fear myself.”

Before Ra could respond, the door opened and Jak appeared. “You're awake.” Jak's grin was irrepressible. “I went to get us some breakfast, but…well, there's someone here to see you—both of you—that you just won't believe.”

Ra sat up, curious, as Jak drew the door wide. In the corridor, head covered by the hood of a heavy cloak, stood Merit. Relieved to see he'd woken from his long sleep, Ra wrapped the sheet around herself and jumped up to greet him, and then stopped short as he drew back the hood. It was impossible that this was Merit.

This man that could not be Merit, young and strong as Merit had been when he'd carried Ra among the throngs of Rhyman, crossed his right arm over his chest with his fist against his heart and bowed to her. “My liege.”

Ra touched the smooth perfection of his cheek when he straightened. “Merit?”

He covered her hand with his and shook his head. “MeerHraethe.” The floor seemed to tilt beneath her feet, and Merit—MeerHraethe—caught and steadied her.

Ra shook her head. “How?”

“Apparently, I've been…” Hraethe smiled and shrugged. “Asleep.” Looking past her, he let go of Ra's hand. “
Meershivá
. Jak told me, but I couldn't quite let myself believe.”

Ra moved aside, still bemused, as Ahr came forward and took Hraethe's hands in hers.

“My dearest friend,” said Ahr, and kissed him in a way that was more than friendly. “I'm so pleased to see you looking so well.”

Hraethe let out a somewhat self-conscious laugh. “And I, you, dear girl.” He squeezed her hands, red tears brimming in his eyes that said he was what he claimed to be. “And I, you.”

Shiva joined them at breakfast in the tavern, oddly subdued, with the news that Pike's body had gone missing from the mill. Despite what the Meerhunter had done to her, Ra didn't bear him any personal animosity. He was a man doing a job, and he'd been sincere in his promise to rebury RaNa's bones—though his audacity in taking them hadn't won him any points with her. Nonetheless, she'd hoped she'd seen the last of him.

Ahr, seated strategically between Hraethe and Jak, paused over her flapjacks. “Missing? What do you mean?”

“I mean, my dear, that he was evidently not as dead as he appeared.” Seated across from her next to Ra, Shiva fixed Ahr with a sardonic gaze. “Unless someone chose to steal his body in the night and bury it in secret.”

Hraethe choked on his eggs and had to take a drink of water.

Ra poked at her plate. If Pike was alive, it was troubling news. Thanks to the obscenity of RaNa's stolen bone dust, he had definitive evidence now of her renaissance. The solicitors who'd hired him would have what they needed to legitimize their planned coup. And Rhyman sat unprotected.

But what Hraethe told them next—though it was happy news—complicated the situation. Pearl, who'd been kept under the hill against his will, had been reunited with his mother and was home at
Ludtaht
Ra.

Both Ahr and Jak seemed puzzled for a moment about who Pearl was, which baffled Ra. Her memories had been suppressed for a time after the madness, not theirs. And Ahr had seemed to recall everything else from the time before.

“The drawing,” said Hraethe. “Pearl cast a spell on the drawings he gave us to make us forget. You remember, Ahr—the pastel of the courtyard you liked so much?”

Ahr sipped her tea, brow furrowed, and then smiled. “The one with the dragonflies and falling petals that seemed like you could step right into it.”

Jak nodded. “I saw that in your room. It's lovely. But it had some odd inscription on it.”

“Forget Pearl when you look on this,” Ahr recited, and then both exclaimed together: “Oh!”

Shiva looked bored. “Yes. He's a very clever boy.”

“And Cree's his mother?” Ahr shook her head in amazement.

Hraethe nodded, and jabbed at his eggs. “Prelate Nesre used her to spite Ume.” Ra shared his anger. Nesre's death was one about which she had no regrets.

Jak glanced at Ahr. “Ume and Cree. Not the fortune teller and the bartender—from right here in this tavern?”

“Fate.” Ahr met Jak's eyes. “It does seem impossible to ignore its existence after all.”

They set out after breakfast, warmly attired through various Meeric means. Ra had found the lilac scarf by the bed—pristine, as though it just been conjured—when she returned to the room to wash up. Outside the door, Hraethe had stood guard, as though he were still her loyal servant and not a Meer in his own right. He would travel with her, he said, to be sure she was safe. It was endearing, though Shiva seemed clearly perturbed at the announcement. Something had happened between Shiva and Hraethe that had prompted his renaissance, but neither volunteered an explanation, so Ra reluctantly left it alone.

By the time they reached Haethfalt, the winds had carried heavy clouds with them, and it had begun to snow once more in a blinding swirl of white, reminding Ra of the storm on the last Heart of Winter, when the memories of her life as MeerRa of Rhyman, buried in her renaissance, had reemerged with a vengeance.

The members of Mound RemPeta were understandably dumbstruck by Hraethe's arrival, though Geffn nudged his betrothed, wide-eyed, and whispered something in her ear that made her giggle nervously.

Still in need of restoration, Ra retreated to her room, leaving the explanations to the others, and slept for the remainder of the day.

The members of Jak's moundhold regarded him as if hoping not to seem too plump, lest they be the first to be eaten. After the awkward introductions, Hraethe retired with Shiva to her borrowed room since it was clear neither was truly welcome in this little warren.

Shiva sat on the quaint little bed, crossing her black-sheathed legs, leaving him standing awkwardly. “Do you have nothing to say about my gift?”

“Your gift?” Hraethe stared at her, trying to fathom her out. They'd fucked like animals, heedless of the glass and snow they rolled in, until the sun had risen over them. He'd believed she'd surrendered to him at last, but she'd been cold and indifferent ever since, as though they were strangers. “Do you expect me to thank you for allowing me to fuck you?”

“Now that you mention it, you might. You don't seem to understand the privilege you've been granted. But I was referring to Ahr.”

He was taken aback. “You don't meant to say you brought her back for
me
?”

Shiva inclined her head. “For those who loved her. Ra made a mistake. I remedied it.”

“And made her Meer.”

“I suppose my blood must have seeped into the pool with her essence. I ought to have been more careful. She's a wretched little creature who'd crush her own skull out of spite if she could manage it.”

Hraethe's temper flared. “And you're an exceedingly cold creature. I'm amazed you have something so hot between your legs.”

She uncrossed them, her hand sliding down between her thighs, her poison-green eyes on him as she stroked her fingers against the center. He was instantly aroused, and immensely aggravated by the fact. Shiva seemed to revel in the knowledge that these two states for him were intertwined. She unbuttoned the poppy-red blouse with her other hand, eyes on the evidence of his arousal, and bared herself, letting the blouse fall from her arms. The red peaks of her breasts against the alabaster skin were hard as diamonds. She was absurdly beautiful, despite the severity of her rubine hair, drawn back at the crown and wound with silver wire. He longed to see it down. But he was tired of being toyed with.

“If you think I'm just going to service you whenever you please, you're not only made of ice, you're completely insane.”

Shiva laughed. “You come,” she said wickedly, her mouth caressing the word, “when I call. That is the creature
you
are.”

Hraethe moved with Meeric swiftness and leapt onto the bed, pinning her arms above her head, and Shiva's laughter increased. A rippling, bubbling sound like a fountain, it was both mockery and enticement. He pressed against her, letting her feel the heat of his desire as his cock ground between her legs, nearly incensed by the brush of her breasts against him through his shirt. Shiva moved sensuously beneath him, breath rising and falling to bring her closer, and maddeningly separating her from him by fractions of an inch, in waves.

“I come when you call?” He bit at her lip, and she arched against him. “So I'm nothing but a dog to you.”

Something dangerous flashed in her eyes. She breathed out, moving that fraction of an inch away and holding it. Her wrists went slack in his hands. He didn't heed the warning.

“I guess you'd know,” he growled. “Since you're such a b—”

Before the word fully left his mouth, she'd broken his grasp, and in one swift movement, clutched him by the hair at the sides of his head and butted hers so hard against it, he was sure both their skulls would crack.

Hraethe reeled, the room winking out for an instant, but Shiva had no such impairment, as though she'd turned her own skull to marble, and she tossed him into the wall, leaping on him as he hit the ground. She hovered over him like a goddess of annihilation, her nails like talons above his eyes as she held his head tilted back with a vicious grip of his forelock. He couldn't help noticing even as he braced for agony how magnificent her breasts were. Perhaps he was the one who was mad, after all. He'd nearly climaxed from the unexpected rush of the blow, and his arousal hadn't dampened in the least.

“
Meershivá
, but you're beautiful,” he moaned.

That gave her pause. Shiva retracted her nails, curling her fingers slowly into a fist. “I've allowed you liberties no one has ever had. If you dislike my manners, find yourself another body. I'm sure Ahr is willing. But don't you ever say that word to me again, or you will find this life even shorter than your last.” She dropped his head unceremoniously against the stone floor, and Hraethe grabbed her by the wrist before she could rise, though he knew he was risking further wrath.

“If I can die fucking you,” he managed, “I'll take it.” He saw he'd irrationally pleased her, and his cock grew harder. Shiva noticed.

Balanced on her boot heels, she lowered herself over his lap, ripping open the buttons of his pants with one hand while tearing a hole in hers with the other. “You just might, MeerHraethe.” He was rewarded at last with the heat of her cunt around his unrepentant erection. Hraethe forgot everything while fucking her, forgot his own name. Nothing mattered but her body, the pain in his head obliterated by the inhuman pleasure of her touch.

“You
come
,” she whispered, leaning close to him as she rode him, “when I call.”

“
Meershivá
, yes,” he groaned, and obeyed.

They relaxed together on the floor when he'd finally satisfied her, Shiva lying draped across his chest, still wearing the tight leg-hugging fabric, though the crotch had been obliterated. Hraethe tried not to dwell on that with any conscious attention. Both the appetites and the stamina of the Meer seemed to be inexhaustible.

“You sent me away,” he said, broaching the subject at last, though the transgression was four centuries old.

Shiva traced her finger over his chest, bared now since she'd shredded the shirt during their copulation. “You had fulfilled your duty.”

The answer stung both his ego and his heart. “Is that all I was to you?”

“We both had our duties, MeerHraethe. Yours was to give me your seed. Mine was to give
Soth
AhlZel a new Meer.”

“And now?” He ran his hand over the smooth slope of her ass, his fingers unable to resist the part in the fabric—and in her legs.

“And now, you talk too much. I should never have loosed your tongue.” She pressed herself back against his fingers, taking them in, and Hraethe groaned at the renewed vigor of his erection. She was going to kill him after all.

“Why did you bind it in the first place?” He pumped his fingers into the moist heat inside her, enjoying the way she wriggled down farther to take them deep, watching the bead of perspiration on her lip that said he affected her as much as she affected him.

“I didn't.” She arched against him. “I merely let you drink of my blood through my own. To bind
you
.”

“To bind me? To you?” He hadn't thought his cock could get any harder. He put his hand to the small of her back to press her pelvis more firmly against it, fucking the space between them even as he fucked her with his fingers.

“Of course, MeerHraethe.” Shiva's body went taut, her nipples hard in the air above him, and she climaxed with three sharp thrusts against his fingers as he bathed her with the efforts of his own climax. “You are mine.”