The Cedna (Tales of Blood & Light Book 2) (9 page)

“Onatos!” She filled the name with scorn. “You are like your mother. You have been seduced by a southerner.”

“But he said he would get me out.” I hated how small and young my voice sounded.

“Well, he has not yet, has he?” She slid a hand between the bars, her fingers clenched in a fist. “Take it,” she hissed, casting her gaze sideways to monitor the guards, who only appeared bored.

I captured what she dropped into my palm, keeping my hand wrapped tightly around it.

Inarian stepped back. “I have secured passage back home. I leave tomorrow. I will report what has happened, though I do not see how we can help you. You have done this to us. Remember your duty to your people. It is the least you can do.” She turned, and the two guards closed around her.

Once they were out of sight, I opened my hand. Inarian had given me a single shard of blackstone so I could open my veins and make my bloodlettings even here in the Galatien prison.

Ennis sighed behind me. “I had hoped that visitor was for me. I would almost welcome a sentence of any kind, just to break up this boredom. Your visitor, she was one of your people, yes? A Gantean?”

I nodded and curled my hand around the blackstone. Inarian would not even try to argue me free or help me escape. She was leaving me here to face the punishments of the sayantaq king alone.

I
narian had been correct
; I had to make a blood offering. I could only go so long without doing so—the bloodletting represented the deepest of my duties, and a heat rose in my blood to let me know I was due to appease the Hinge. I had no idea whether my offering would have any success here in the cell, but I had to try.

I jabbed the blackstone shard into my arm. The basic bloodletting ritual of the Cedna was as familiar to me as my own hands. I’d watched my mother perform it countless times, and I’d done it myself regularly since I had become Cedna. A Cedna’s blood coursed with power, the power to open the Layers and to feed the Hinge. Every time I bled, the Hinge consumed my bloodlight as vital sustenance.

“What in the names of the gods are you doing?” Ennis bent to examine the crude wound I had made, but I slid my arm away to shake blood to the stone floor, where I hoped it would soak into the ground to be consumed by the Hinge.

“It’s nothing,” I said.

“What do you mean, it’s nothing? You’re bleeding. What have you done?” She urged me towards the cot.

My small sacrifice had drained me far more than was usual. I could not answer her questions; my head spun too furiously. I stumbled onto the cot and fell into a black stupor.

A
commotion woke me
, but I was too tired and disoriented to rise. I had not bound the wound in my arm, and so I’d bled more than I’d intended. Two guards stood outside the iron gate with Ennis between them.

“Ennis?” I said as I sat up. “What’s happened? Where are you going?”

“I am to be set free,” she said. Her face looked lighter. “They have only lienbound me to House Galatien. The espionage and treason charges have been dropped.”

“I am glad for you,” I said, though in truth, I was sorry to see Ennis and the guards disappear down the hall. I did not like to be alone and friendless, underground, in a dark cell in a foreign country.

I also feared returning to Gante. They would have little compassion for me after my failed mission, and Inarian would report that I had not listened to her guidance. The only reason she had not stuck her blackstone shard into my neck was because I had no successor. Perhaps I was safer here, far from the reach of Ganteans. A Cedna had to name her own successor; I had never heard of it being otherwise, but if they grew desperate enough, would the Kaluq Elders find a way to name one themselves? I did not know.

T
he wound
on my arm festered, and I grew ill. I wanted to believe that the infection was due to the poor conditions of the prison, but I couldn’t discount that Inarian might have laced the blackstone shard with some sort of mild poison, just for spite. Not enough to kill me, surely, but enough to express her disdain for my behavior here in the south.

I woke fevered, tangled in the terror of drowning.
They would come for me. They would kill me.
A soft touch on my arm relieved me. “Atanurat?” I whispered.
He knew. He would help me.

“It is I, my lady.”

The speech sounded wrong, though I couldn’t identify why. “Atanurat?” I said again, weakly.

“You have a fever, Beautiful.”

My mouth was dry. When I rose, my vision disintegrated. Gentle hands steadied my shoulders.

“You are unwell. Allow me to give you some water.”

“Please,” I croaked, and finally my vision steadied.

Onatos. It was Onatos Amar who stood before me with his black hair smoothed back from his narrow face. He wore impeccable black attire, as usual. I drew back in embarrassment. I was filthy, and I smelled of blood and disease.

I pressed into the wall behind the cot and wished he would go away.

“Mydon has sentenced you to a year’s supervision under the care of one of his vassals. He feels it best you not return to Gante at this time. I offered to serve as your jailor. You have also been fined one hundred gold jhass for the drawing of a weapon in His Majesty’s court. I took the liberty of resolving your debt to the throne.”

“I—thank you.” The words did not come easily.

“You are welcome, of course. You are to accompany me to my home in Amar. But first, we will go to my townhouse. Can you walk?” He slung an arm beneath my shoulders and helped me from the cell. The guards followed us all the way to the Palace gates.

Onatos’s townhouse proved a welcome haven. When I stumbled from the carriage, he steadied me. A maid brought me upstairs and deposited me in a tub filled with water that steamed like the hot springs around Nitaaraq.

The copper gown Onatos had so favored was ruined beyond repair, but the black one I had bought at the same time sat across the bed, clean and pressed. The maid dressed the wound in my arm.

“Lord Onatos wishes you to dine with him,” she said. “He awaits you downstairs.”

Onatos sat at a table too large for a party of two. “Are you feeling better?” he called down the table.

I only nodded, daunted by the broad expanse between us. I sampled the beverage in my goblet. It burned the sides of my throat deliciously.

“You like the wine?”

I nodded again.

Onatos waved, and a manservant sprang into the room from some hidden nook to refill my goblet. I drank too quickly, draining the cup before any food was served.

Onatos raised his eyebrows. “Be careful, love. You’ve been ill.”

I couldn’t argue with that. “Why are you helping me now?” I called to Onatos. “I’ve done nothing for your cause; I have set no precedent. I figured you had forgotten about me.” I thought he had abandoned me as Inarian had.

He cocked his head. “I could never forget you, Beautiful.”

“But you have nothing to gain from helping me.”

His gaze held mine, and a look of hurt crossed his face. “Do you truly think me so mercenary? Cedna, if a mage were to look at us right now, if he were to see our Aethers, what do you imagine he would see?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. My bloodlight. Yours.”

His hands tightened into fists on the table. “I see you do not understand the aetherlumo di fieri. But do you not feel it? In the Aethers, a mage would see a thread of aetherlight running between us, heart to heart.”

I sucked a breath. He spoke of an ung-aneraq, the bond that developed between two people who mated. But we had not! How could this be? My hand snuck up over my chest, rubbing where I felt the pull he always exerted on me. I shook my head, my face flushed. “That is impossible,” I said.

“So some might say,” he replied. “But legends of the aetherlumo tell a different story.”

I
was prepared
to depart Galantia early the following morning, but Onatos lingered, sorting through possessions to decide what to bring back with him to Amar. Waiting in the tiled courtyard, I wondered if going to Amar so complacently was a good choice. A better plan might have been to sneak away to catch a ship to Gante. Would the Galatien king have cared enough to hunt me down and enforce his punishment? I doubted it. But he might punish Onatos for losing me, and I could not pay back Onatos’s kindness like that. I also did not wish to face the Elders and the Ikniqs who would give me looks of disappointment and whisper whatever rumors Inarian had spread of my conduct here. My people would retreat to the safety of Gantean traditions—hiding, enduring, suffering—and unless I did the same, I would be the lone beacon of dissent there.

I did not wish for that role anymore.

I stood at a crossroads. I chose to walk forwards because I could not face going back.

S
moke
and broad buildings clogged Orioneport. Onatos’s home city bustled with industry, and though the daylight faded as we slipped into the harbor, the entire coast blazed with magelights set in the regimented square windows of the tall buildings.

“I love returning home in the evening,” Onatos said, slipping beside me at the gunwale. “There is nowhere like Orioneport at night. Galantia may be bigger, but Orioneport has more magelights and glamor.”

“Will we stay in the city tonight?”

Onatos leaned towards me, so close his lips might brush my cheeks. “I wish we could.”

I pulled away, unnerved by his closeness and the intensity of his gaze. He caught my hand and prevented my retreat.

“My Alcazar is outside the city, and I have business there that cannot wait. We shall ride for the Alcazar immediately.”

“Ride?”

“Ride. Horses. Amar breeds the best in Lethemia.”

“I do not know how to ride.” Gante had no horses, only tuttu deer, too wild and untrainable to be corralled into human service.

Onatos laughed. “Then you’ll have to ride with someone who does.”

The scenery flew by me in a blur; my senses narrowed exclusively on the man who held me: the pressure of his torso against my back, the contact of his thighs molding mine. My body was warm and liquid against his. My mind was slippery and addled from the novelty of riding, the freedom, the cool wind stroking my neck and hair.

I caught my breath as we approached the gates to Onatos’s Alcazar. The Galatien Palace had been larger and more extravagant, with its gold gate and its colored crystal pillars seeping magic, but I found the Alcazar more beautiful. Dark trees lined the avenue leading to the gates. Thousands of candles lit the white stone steps that we climbed to reach the arched doors, which were nothing like the towering gold gate in Galantia; these were made from pale wood carved with serpentine emblems, intricate and fine. A row of servants in black and gold lined the inner hall, peering at us with barely disguised curiosity.

“Here I must leave you, Cedna.” Onatos offered me a wistful smile before we passed through the door. “You will be in good care with the handmaiden I have given you.”

“But why?” I hated my tone of dismay. Onatos’s sudden leave-taking startled me, and I could not tame my voice to hide my feelings.

“
You
may do whatever you please here on the grounds of the Alcazar, Cedna. You are my guest. But
I
have returned to my responsibilities. Go on now. Your handmaiden will show you to your rooms.” He gestured to a silent, small woman dressed in odd black robes standing to the left of the intricate doors.

I wanted to ask him when I would see him again, but two purposeful liveried men interrupted us with the loud rap of boots on the stone stairs. I felt out of place, a foreigner in this southern land. As the two men spoke soft words to Onatos, I let the somber handmaiden lead me away.

“Again?” Onatos’s voice raised in anger behind us. I glanced over my shoulder, but the handmaiden pulled me away before I could discern what troubled him. I did not want to let him out of my sight.

T
he handmaiden led
me up so many stairs that I was breathless by the time we arrived at a level hall lined with doors. I froze as the handmaiden gestured me into my chamber; it stunned me that much. The room was fit for a goddess! I could hardly countenance that I should occupy it. The ceiling soared, etched in the same serpentine motifs as the doors far below, but these designs were gilded in what appeared to be real gold foil. Blue magelight burned in wall sconces cast from glass. Four white pillars girded the bed, allowing it to be draped in a tent of blue silk. An open door led to an outdoor courtyard.

A carved wardrobe took up a whole corner of the room, and when I opened it, I found two new silk dresses, rich green and deep blue, as if they had been made for me. Eager to shed my Gantean traveling clothes, I pulled one out and changed under the watchful eye of the handmaiden.

“It was suggested to me that you might enjoy sculpting blackstone, my lady,” the woman said. I could not discern her age or distinguishing features behind her garb.

“Is there some available?”

She nodded. “I will arrange it. You are to let me know anything else you need for your comfort.”

T
he handmaiden arrived
in my room early the following morning. She gestured at the courtyard. “Please let me know if what I have arranged is to your liking.”

I stepped into the bright southern sunlight and gaped at a box full of blackstone spalls set upon a wooden table before the fountain. The spalls had been shaped, all the tedious work of refining the raw material finished. Various tools—leather wrappings, hammerstones, files, copper wires—had been set out in a neat line beside the box.

“This is perfect!” I cried, amazed.

“Do you require anything further?” the handmaiden asked.

“No,” I said, already distracted. “Thank you. You can go.”

Days passed in a flash. The handmaiden brought me meals, and between eating and sleeping I shaped, and shaped, and shaped, using the techniques I had learned from Urasuq. I practiced grudgingly at first, frustrated by my inept hands and glad for the privacy to fail. I closed my mind and refused to seek Skeleton Woman’s assistance as I had in the past. I wanted to prove that I could make an ulio without any help.

I persisted despite the growing heap of shards and faulty blades.

Onatos had not come to visit me once since we had arrived at the Alcazar, though I remembered his promises to show me Orioneport and the grounds of the Alcazar. I grew increasingly impatient and agitated.

“Curse it!” I screamed and threw away the latest of my blackstone failures in a tantrum worthy of a six-winters child. All morning had been the same: each stone shattered beneath my too-heavy grip.

A whimper emerged from where I had thrown the rejected blade. Removing the protective leather wrappings from my arms, I went to investigate. An aqueduct ran in a raised channel around my courtyard, supported by sculpted arches and feeding my fountain. I knelt beneath the aqueduct and peered through an arch. A green lawn lay several spans below, and beyond that, still more terraces. A mop of inky black hair interrupted my view halfway down to the next courtyard.

I grabbed a lock of that hair. It was silky and slippery, not coarse and thick as a Gantean’s would have been.

The head attached to the hair snapped up. A pair of vibrant indigo eyes met mine. He was boy, a youngster of seven winters, at most. A trickle of blood ran down his face.

“You’re cut,” I told him. “Come up here.”

He scrambled under the aqueduct, landing lightly on his feet before me, lean and lithe as a snow cat’s whelp. He wiped blood from his face.

“What were you doing down there?” I asked. “Were you watching me?”

He nodded, and his shoulders hunched as if anticipating a blow.

I did not scold him, instead bending to look at his wound. A blackstone edge is so fine its cuts often did not hurt. I had a basin of clean water at the ready to flush my own hands and arms free of shards, so I upended it over the boy’s head to wash him, and then retreated to my rooms to find fabric to wrap his wound.

The boy pressed the cut with his sleeve—fine silk, I noted.

“Blackstone is sharp and dangerous,” I said. “And you shouldn’t lurk about when I’m working with it.” I made no mention of the fact that I ought not to have thrown the sharp material in anger.

He cocked his head. “But I like to watch.”

“You do?” I finished tucking a scarf around his head.

“What are you making?”

I plucked up the most decent of my many attempts at an ulio. “Something like this.” He leaned over the blade. I pulled it away. “Blackstone edges are sharp. And they have magic. You must not touch them.”

He nodded. “Like a mage’s stone.”

I shrugged. “I wouldn’t know.”

“You can’t touch a mage’s stone without his permission. Everyone knows that.”

“I am not everyone.
I
am from a land far away.”

“How far?” The boy climbed onto the edge of the fountain to have a seat.

“So far to the north that it is always night in the winter and always day in the summer.”

“How can that be?” He frowned at me.

“The sun moves differently at the ends of the world. Run along now. I’m busy. I’m making a blade for Lord Onatos.” I shooed at him with my hands.

His frown deepened. “He’s got blades. He doesn’t need yours.”

I stiffened at the boy’s imperious tone. “My blade will be different.”

The boy’s features warred, his indecision plain: to take issue with me or to try to learn more? His curiosity won. “Can’t I stay and watch?” he pleaded.

I had no interest in having an audience for my defeats. “I am done with my work for the day. Will you join me for lunch?”

The boy stood up and smoothed his wet shirt like a Galatien courtier. “Eat with you here?” He pointed to my courtyard where a table had been laid for my midday meal.

“Of course.”

“But then I have to change,” he said, and with that, he vaulted over the aqueduct and disappeared.

I sat at my table and waited. I had never much cared for children, but my days were lonely at the Alcazar, and the boy intrigued me. When he returned, he wore a black suit that put me in mind of Onatos. In fact, the boy’s eyes and hair were the spitting image of Onatos, although his face had broader planes and bolder structure. The resemblance concerned me.

I patted the seat beside me. “Come have some juice.” I poured a glass of the tangy orange beverage, my favorite of all the exotic foods I had been served at the Alcazar.

He scrambled up beside me, grinning. “What’s your name?”

My voice died in my throat. Never had I wished more for a simple name, but a Cedna has no name. I lifted my chin. “My people call me the Cedna.”

“The Cedna?”

“Yes. I am the leader of my people.”

“Like a queen?”

“A bit.”

“I’m Laith.”

“Do you live here at the Alcazar?”

“Most of the time. Except when Lady Daria throws me out.”

“Does that happen often?” I burned to know who this Lady Daria was.

“Only when my father goes away. He won’t let her throw me out when he’s here.”

“Lady Daria is not your mother then?” I pretended to know of whom he spoke.

“Of course not. If she were, you’d be dining in
my
courtyard, and it would be far finer than this.”

I looked around me in wonder. “Do they make them finer than this?”

He shrugged. “You should see Lady Daria’s.”

An odd surge of jealousy rippled through me. Why were Lady Daria’s quarters so much better than mine?

“Do you go to Lady Daria’s courtyard often?” I asked Laith.

“No! She’d pinch my ears if she caught me spying.”

“I have not met her yet,” I remarked casually, hoping for more information. “Does she leave her courtyard to go places?” I had not even known others occupied the Alcazar, though from my high terrace I could see how the huge building sprawled over half the hill.

“Not since the baby came. She lives down in the Court, not up here in the Towers. My father wouldn’t have wanted you to meet her.”

“Your father? Who is your father?” I asked, but with a sinking heart. I already knew.

“Lord Onatos, of course.”

My stomach plummeted. So Onatos was already mated. All his fine talk about his aetherlumo and the thread that he believed to connect us didn’t matter. I had been foolish to imagine anything could happen between us, of course. No Cedna could take on a sayantaq mate—look at the trouble that had caused my mother.

“When Father’s home, I can go anywhere in the Alcazar. But when he’s away I’m not supposed to go to the Court because of Daria. I sneak there anyway to see Jaasir—he’s my baby brother. Father’s often away, but now that you’re here, it’s more fun in the Towers.”

My mind reeled. “Daria is Onatos’s … wife?”

“Of course. Lady Daria Powdin-Amar. They hate each other.”

“But she is not your mother?” I struggled to understand the sayantaq ways. Ganteans mated for life; we did not even consider taking more than one mate. To do do was the most tainting thing one could do.

“No!” he cried. “Ugh! No! My mother’s much prettier.”

I gathered from Laith’s words that Onatos had made young with two different women. Ronin Entila had done the same—the southerners had different views about mating. I had a thousand questions, but a young boy hardly seemed the person to answer them. I wished Onatos would visit me. Why did he not come?

“What is the Court?” I asked Laith, starting with the most simple and innocent of my questions.

“The Court?” Laith poured the last of the orange juice into his glass. “It’s the main part of the Alcazar. Down below.” He pointed over the aqueduct.

“I have never seen it. I wish to go there.”

“We can go right now, but you have to climb down if you want to go in secret.”

Laith crawled below the aqueduct that bounded my courtyard. I followed, knotting up my dress to help me move. We arrived on a precarious landing and then descended a flight of stairs into a quiet hall lined with tapestries. The boy moved too quickly for me to pause and admire them.

A door loomed at the end of the hall, and Laith paused, fumbling in his pockets to withdraw two thin pieces of metal that resembled knitting needles. He stuck one into the lock and leaned towards the door, almost as if listening. Then he inserted the other needle and pushed. The door swung open, revealing a steep staircase that wound in a tight spiral downwards.

At the bottom, Laith picked another lock, leading me outdoors and onto another parapet—clearly not meant to be traversed. Green courtyards laced with canals and fountains and exotic blooms sprawled below us. We alighted onto a broader causeway, and I exhaled in relief.

Laith put up his hand. “We’re nearly there,” he whispered. “Be quiet.” He crawled into an aperture in the wall. I barely fit—I had to slide along on my belly through the tunnel. We arrived in a cupboard of a room. Laith pulled me to the far wall, a finger on his lips for silence. He pointed at a tiny opening that passed entirely through the thick stone wall. In some unfathomable trick of perspective and lens, I could peer through this glass-filled hole and see nearly an entire chamber. I pulled my eye from the spyhole in surprise and opened my mouth to exclaim, but Laith shook his head vehemently.