Silence (45 page)

That’s what she told herself at
least.

“
Emili..?” he asked her,
his voice low and controlled, edged with a hint of desperation.
 

Emili?

Was that her name?

Emili...

It felt right.

She tried to nod, but the movement
dragged her skin against the harsh, stone ground and turned her
assent into a wince at the sudden, searing pain. Her eyes welled
with tears and she bit her lip, instinctively trying to hide the
horrible pain from the boy. Still, a whimper escaped her. She saw
the blurry outline of the boy take a hurried half step back, as
though disgusted at the sight of her weakness. She didn’t blame
him.

The other one, the older man that
Emili hadn’t paid any attention to, held out a hand over her
midriff. His eyes flickered blue and all of blinding pain across
her skin washed away as though by a soothing shower. She looked at
the man curiously.

He was middle-aged, she could tell by
the streaks of grey in his long hair, tied back in a ponytail.
Stubble shadowed his chin like overgrown weeds. His weather worn
face was something of a backdrop to his pair of glowing, blue eyes.
As her eyes cleared of tears, Emili watched his unnaturally blue
eyes flicker to a more natural shade of the color surrounded with
white. A word rose to her lips.

“
Celestial..?” Emili
wondered.

“
Indeed I am,” the
Celestial answered majestically. Emili felt a blush rise to her
cheeks. She hadn’t intended to voice the thought. “You may call me
Camillio Tyche.”

Emili glanced over at the other boy,
floating warily by a stone archway, and then back at Camillio. She
felt the boy’s name on the tip of her tongue, but it was just
infuriatingly out of reach. She thought back to when he’d said
‘Emili’ and suddenly found herself longing for the low sound of his
voice.

“…
What happened to me?”
Emili asked Camillio in a crackly voice. “Why did it hurt so
much?”

From the corner of her eye, she saw
the boy wince. Then Camillio’s voice sounded.

“
You were possessed by a
nasty Sycrarian named Khryzt,”  the Celestial explained. “I
bound him beneath a multitude of blood runes though; I doubt that
he’ll ever threaten you. But he might be able to
communicate-

“
Is this really the best
time to be getting into all of this?” interrupted Sheikoh coldly.
He glanced over Emili, and his sharp eyes softened. “She’s gone
through enough already.”

“
It
matters
because there’s a chance, however slim, that the
Sycrarian might break my seals” Camillio retorted with a glare.
“She needs to be fully appraised so she can come to me if
anything-

“
What, so you’re saying
that that foolproof plan you told me about isn’t all that foolproof
at all?” the adolescent spat. His words were harsh against Emili’s
ears. “You know what, mate? I think you just like watching people
get cut up.”

“
You are being ridiculous,
Sheikoh,” Camillio hissed, every line of his face cold and hard.
“None of this is certain; this is a never-before-attempted
experiment.”

Sheikoh! That was it! That was the
name that she’d been trying to think of!

“
Experiment?” Sheikoh
demanded harshly. “I seem to recall your last experiment involved
cutting that mark of imperial restraint out of yourself. Another
cut up. Maybe you take after your Zul.”

Camillio Tyche’s expression froze
dangerously. There was a long pause. Emili could see that something
Sheikoh had said had crossed some line within the Celestial.
Beneath his flat expression,
Camillio seemed to radiate a murderous chill.

“
All you are is an
experiment,” the Celestial said coldly. “That’s the reason why
Dorothi cries when she sees the real you. That’s the reason why you
wrap yourself in fake skin, because you’re a failure. A half-breed.
You have spent your life hiding from the world. And you presume to
tell me what I can and cannot do? You’re a coward.”

Sheikoh’s face was suddenly all sharp
lines and brooding intensity. The shadows of his corner bagged his
eyes. Emili saw his right hand flicker with a sudden pistol. And
then she saw his right hand. She saw the skeletal arm, the insect
hand that held the gun. The pulsating wires that ran through the
blacksteel like worms. The lumps of sludgy, pale sacks that hung
from what looked like burned bone. She let out a horrified
gasp.

Sheikoh turned and then followed her
gaze to his exposed arm. His expression was rent with pain. He
swung to face the Celestial, his eyes filling with dark
fury.

“
Say that again,” Sheikoh
hissed dangerously.

The teenager pointed the pistol
between the Celestial’s eyes. One of the floating balls of blue
light through his zombiesque limb into sharp relief. The
Celestial’s eyes flickered with blue light. Twin sapphire nexuses
sprung around his clawed hands.

“
Coward,” Camillio
murmured, his voice low and dangerous.

Something seemed to explode inside of
Emili’s chest.

“
STOP!”
she ordered them
desperately.

Glares of bleached white light
streamed from something behind Emili, its glimmering streaks
coloring both Sheikoh and Camillio pale. The two of them paused
mid-punch, watching her with wide, fearful eyes. Then the
Celestial’s, Camillio’s, face broke into a strange smile. Emili
followed their eyes downwards and gasped in shock.

Her body was floating above the
ground.

    “
Well,”
mused Camillio, his eyes back to normal. Sheikoh looked over at
him. “Everything seems to have worked out perfectly.”

   
Then
the Celestial smiled at her. Beside him, Sheikoh’s face twisted
with horror. Emili let herself fall to the floor. Her chest burned
with a flare of resentment. The brooding boy’s look of enmity
seemed to have engraved itself into her mind. She turned and
stalked out of the room, trying to shake Sheikoh’s disgust out of
her head. Who was he to judge her? What gave him the right to hide
things from her? Things about herself!

   
What was so
wrong
with flying?

Emili bolted down the winding stairs outside of the circle
door. The night’s darkness was only broken by the magical green
glow of the fronds in the tank beside her. The plants drifted in
slow motion with the water’s currents. They looked like families,
all of them fluttering in relation to one another.

Emili stopped descending and stared
back at them. Her earlier fury drained out of her as though it’d
never been. She suddenly felt so alone. Why couldn’t she remember
anything? What was wrong with her? She raised a hand to the cool
glass and stared deep within the water. She jumped back; a strange
creature stared back at her.

Dark, magical symbols twisted all
throughout the pale skin of its face, dancing softly with gentle
waves. Its clothing was made up with ripped and burned bandages. A
ratty nest of hair tangled around its face. Its burning expression
flashed with shock at the sight of her. Her reflection, she
suddenly.

Emili’s shock crumpled into despair.
She looked closely at herself, at her chipped tooth, her unnatural
silver eyes, the horrible winding scars of blood runes. She was a
freak. A monster. Her hand rose to push back the tangled clumps of
hair and she eyed the pentacle runes scarred into her forehead with
repugnance before she let the hair fall back over her face. Then
she leaned against the glass and let frustrated tears fall down her
face. Why was all of this happening to her? Where did she come
from?

A moment later she felt a tentative
hand glance over her shoulder.

“
Emili… are you okay?” came
the boy’s voice. Sheikoh’s. It was soft and worried, not dangerous
like before.

She fought the urge to slap his hand
away.

“
Who is Emili supposed to
be?” she asked listlessly, not turning around to look at him. Her
voice was steady even as tears streamed down her cheeks. She felt
him pull his hand back.

“
You’re Emili,” he
whispered. “You’re the girl who saved my life. Who taught me how to
read.”

She could hear a smile in his
voice.

“
Who could always repair my
old Trinity in about twelve seconds.”

She didn’t know what a Trinity
was.

“
Dorothi’s older sister.
Surely you remember Dorothi?” Sheikoh pressed.

Dorothi..?

Emili closed her eyes and concentrated
as hard as she could. Nothing. The seconds stretched along the
night.

“
Emili..?” Sheikoh wondered
desperately.

“
I think you have the wrong
person,” Emili whispered underneath a sob.

The boy gently raised his hand to
cradle her tear-streaked cheek. There was minute recoil as his
fingers glanced against the water, but he pulled her around all the
same. Sheikoh held her eyes with his own dark ones that glittered
with resolute promise. The dancing, green light played with the
shadows of his high cheekbones. She held onto Sheikoh’s intense
eyes like a child clutching at a lifeline. Sheikoh brushed her
tangled hair over an ear. His normally sly features were
desperately sincere and open.

“
You are Emili Wray. It
doesn’t matter what you remember,” Sheikoh whispered with
conviction. “All that matters is that we have you back.”

And then Sheikoh wrapped her in his
arms, one human and one mechanical. Emili leaned against his warm
body and closed her eyes. She basked in the comfort of his embrace,
wishing that she could lay there forever. His acceptance seemed to
banish her nagging worries. All except for one. She pulled away so
she could see his dark eyes.

“
Why am I like this?” Emili
asked hesitantly. “Why is there a demon inside of me? Where did I
come from?”

Sheikoh looked to the side, his
expression uncertain. He bit a lip.

“
All that matters is that
you’re here now,” he told her softly.

Emili felt her earlier frustration
flare up.

“
That’s all that matters,”
Emili demanded. Sheikoh retreated half a step at her tone. “You
come to me, expecting some other Emili, full of memories and
thoughts that I don’t have, but when I ask you anything, all you
want to do is keep things from me? Maybe I should go ask
Camillio.”

Sheikoh held up his hands
reassuringly.

“
Can we at least talk about
this sometime when it isn’t the middle of the night?” he asked her
in a small voice.

In answer, Emili stepped up the stairs
to talk to Camillio. Sheikoh sighed and put a hand on her
shoulder.

“
Okay,” he murmured in
defeat. “You… died… four and a half years ago. You could say that I
brought you back to life.”

All of the breath whooshed out of
Emili’s chest. Her mouth hung open, stunned.

That couldn’t be true. There was no
way. People don’t come back from death.

She didn’t realize that she’d said
that out loud.

    “
I
guess that isn’t completely true. See, the Sycrarian inside of you,
Khryzt, he… helped,” Sheikoh ventured, rubbing the back of his
head.

    “
So you
made some kind of deal with a demon?” asked Emili
incredulously.

    “
No!”
Sheikoh exclaimed. “I mean, I did, but it wasn’t like that at all!
In the Transcendent Plane-

    “
The
Transcendent Plane?” Emili asked him scathingly.

    “
That
was where the d- the Sycrarian was trapped,” Sheikoh murmured,
looking off into the distance.

   
“
So you offered
the Sycrarian
my body in exchange
for bringing me back to life?” Emili guessed. “What was the point
of that trade?”

    “
No!
Would you please just listen for a second?” Sheikoh balled his
hands and tapped at his temples in frustration. “Okay. Everything
happened when Camillio hired me to go steal a codex from another
Celestial. He gave me this amulet so I could survive the
job.”   

   
Sheikoh
flicked a dull, silver medallion hanging just below his throat.
Emili noticed that he did so with his normal hand and angled his
body to hide his mechanical arm.

    “
This
amulet makes magic useless,” Sheikoh explained. “But that’s not all
it does. When I put it into the Transcendental Codex, I went to the
Transcendent Plane. You came out of my memories.”
   

“
I came out of your
memories,” Emili repeated, nodding slowly. Sheikoh was
crazy.

“
Then the Sycrarian came.
He possessed you and told me that he’d be willing to help us get
back to the real world if I forgave him of an ancient crime. We got
back. He came inside of you,” Sheikoh explained with a shiver. “Me,
Indigo, and Ghost managed to get the amulet around your… his… your
neck. That knocked the two of you out. Then Camillio figured out
how to lock the demon inside of you and here we are.”