Lightfall, p.7
Lightfall, page 7
“We’ll discuss how to proceed,” Benedikt said at last. “But we make no vows.”
His tone closed the subject and shut Thorne out of it. He’d already made Kanslar’s support of Talheim clear, so he had no part in that discussion—and no place in this room anymore.
Anger pounding in his temples, he stalked from the Sanctum and shut the door. The outer hall was deserted, not a single Vassoran guard in sight; so it was perfectly safe to spin on his heel and punch the wall.
Aden stood guard at Cistine’s door when Thorne arrived, eyes falling at once to the bloody whorls across his knuckles when he strode down the hall. “What happened, Mavbrat?”
“Politics.” Thorne wiped his hands on his pants. “How is she?”
“Resting. The others went to dispose of that dress and find food. She asked me to keep watch.”
“I’m not surprised. She sees Kristoff when she looks at you. Even in Kalt Hasa, he made her feel safe. You make her feel safe now.” Unlike him, whose likeness to his father only signified danger.
Aden’s eyes narrowed slightly. “What happened in the meeting?”
“I don’t know. It could have been the stress, the way we were seated at the table, something one of them said…”
“She mentioned the dress.”
Lavender. The color of lightning. Guilt kicked Thorne’s chest so brutally his heart skipped. “Julian.”
Aden measured him with the same piercing stare that always compelled him to reveal his mischief-making and feats of daring, no matter how well-kept. “Don’t envy the dead, Thorne. She carries his ring, but you hold her heart. You’re still her choice…and I think you always will be.”
He wished that felt true—or like it was the right thing for her. “Do you think I should go in?”
“She asked me to ensure you would.” Aden clapped him on the shoulder. “I’ll see how the others are doing.”
Cistine was curled up tightly on the bed when he entered, facing away from him, stirring slightly when the door clicked shut. After a long moment, she whispered, “I ruined the negotiations, didn’t I?”
He sat at her dining table, peeling off his boots and rubbing his throbbing calves. “I did what I could. They’re deliberating now.”
She rolled over to face him, eyes pink from weeping. “Thank you for trying. I’m sorry I ran away.”
Thorne walked to the bed, gripping one of the corner posts and leaning around it to search her exhausted face. “Do you want to sleep, or find a distraction?”
She dropped her gaze, fingers floating to the chain around her neck. “I was thinking of training, actually. Would you like to join me?”
He blinked, giving outlet to the punch of surprise in his gut. “I thought—wouldn’t you prefer Quill?”
“Not today. He doesn’t know…everything. What it was like, what we survived in that place.” Her throat heaved in a harsh swallow. “You do. You were always with me.”
Throat tight, he offered his hand, stomach lurching when she let him draw her upright. “I’d be honored.”
They walked to the training hall in silence, and with every stride Cistine’s steps grew firmer, her shoulders straighter. In the dimness of the familiar brown stone walls and amber ghostlight below the courthouse, her gaze crystallized. When they took up their practice swords, her hands no longer shook.
When she attacked, Thorne was lost in her.
They dueled barefoot through the lonely vaults, every clang of steel the echo of the cabal’s essence: dreamers and victims forged into warriors and survivors, pouring out their pain through striking fists and slamming blades until the world made sense again. Cistine dominated the steps of this wild dance, relearning old strokes and adopting new ones, a flicker of a smile tugging her lips and coaxing one from Thorne in turn.
At least this helped—this familiarity, this release. He hoped they’d always have it, like rain-slick rocks and mountain heights.
All at once she lunged through his guard, locked their sabers, jabbed her knee between his, and hurled him against one of the pillars. He froze when she pressed in, knuckles digging into his sternum and full weight balanced behind the blade. Her abdomen jerked against his in rapid pants, and her smile burned like the sun. “Pinned you.”
He loosened his grip on the sword. “I’m at your mercy, Logandir.”
Her gaze dropped and her head tilted, the press of her body shifting as she leaned into him. Her eyes fell to half-mast, her breath wafting against his lips, and his heart thundered, wondering if she would dare—
“Your warriors spoke the truth. You do fight all your enemies with the blade, whether they stand before you or within you.”
Thorne and Cistine yanked apart as Chancelloress Adeima swept into the room, tall, aristocratic, and fierce as a lioness, her brown skin warm in the tawny ghostlight. Her compassionate gaze settled on Cistine. “Tatiana and Ariadne gave me entrance to find you. Are you well?”
Her jaw shifted. “I don’t know how to answer that today.”
Adeima nodded. “Yager understands your pain better than most, which is why I told Maltadova I would deliver the Courts’ decision about the treaties myself.” Her gaze swept between them. “They will meet with you again…on condition.”
Tension splintered through Thorne’s calves. Cistine’s eyes widened. “What condition?”
“That you would find a way to face your specters so today’s outburst does not repeat.” Adeima raised a hand when Cistine opened her mouth. “This is not punishment or proof of anything, it is what the Courts deem necessary for these treaties to proceed. There is not a woman in Yager who begrudges your pain. That you choose to stand before us so soon after what you suffered shows courage beyond measure. I hope you will accept this condition, not for your kingdom’s sake, not for ours, but for yours. You deserve to be well.”
Cistine sucked in a breath through her nostrils. “I’ll try to do something about it.”
“Take time to deliberate if this is a requirement you can meet. The Courts await your word.” With a dip of her head, Adeima strode for the steps, and Thorne gritted his teeth.
There was another conversation that needed having—one he’d put off too long for fear of his own shortcomings. But after she offered this compassion, this understanding not only to his selvenar, but to him, he couldn’t let her go.
“Chancelloress.” Thorne jogged after her, falling into step when she slowed. “I owe you an apology. I’m sorry I haven’t come sooner to make it.”
“It’s been a difficult few months. What do you wish to apologize for?”
“For not upholding my part of the bargain we made in Veran. I hope my failure to deliver the witness from the Black Coasts doesn’t change Yager’s choice to stand with Talheim against their southern foes.”
Adeima glanced back at Cistine. “We do not judge women on the actions of men. But we do not give our support lightly to anyone, Thorne. We will watch carefully how she faces these trying times.”
“That’s between you as rulers.” Thorne dipped his head. “Just tell me how I can restore Yager’s faith in my Court.”
“There is one thing.” Mischief twinkled in Adeima’s eyes. “Until now, our solitude in the belief that women ought to sit on the Judgement Seat has kept us from proposing the law that would legalize it. But now that Kanslar has a sensible Chancellor again, we need to sway only one other vote to pass such an amendment.”
“You want me to talk to Bravis.” Thorne tipped his head. “Why not bring this proposal yourselves?”
“It would seem disingenuous if it came from us, seeing as we will be the first to place women in power.”
“Cunning as ever. All right, I’ll speak to him when I can.”
“We will see.” With a fleeting smile, she departed, freeing a snarl in Thorne’s chest; that was one wrong mended, at least. And hundreds more to follow.
He wandered back into the hall to find Cistine cross-legged on the floor, practice sword jabbed into the sand and brow pressed to the grip. The weary bend of her shoulders shoved a blade through his heart.
“You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to,” he murmured, leaning his own blade against a pillar. “We can find different terms they’ll meet on.”
“I need help, Thorne.” She stared through the empty doorway where Adeima vanished, lashes lined with tears. “I’m barely sleeping. I’m never hungry. I hate dresses. Dresses! And I just have this awful feeling, all the time, like something terrible is coming.” She slid her fingers back through her unkempt hair. “I wanted everything I have now so badly, the treaties, this chance…” Her gaze flicked to him, a silent conclusion that sent his stomach into somersaults: you. “But I can’t enjoy any of it with all this chaos tangled inside me.”
He knelt slowly at her side. “Cistine…”
She shivered, then groaned, dropping her saber with a dull thunk and dragging her hands back through her hair. “Even your voice makes me think of him! And if it’s not you, it’s Kalt Hasa, and if it’s not that, it’s…” She broke off so abruptly, it raised the hair on the back of his neck. After a long, tenuous pause, she slowly shook her head. “I can’t do this anymore, but I don’t know where to start changing things.”
Quiet memory nudged deep in Thorne’s mind. “May I see your hand?”
Hesitantly, she offered it to him. He brushed her knuckles with his thumb, turned her palm over, then tapped it four times.
“When I was a boy, my family all lived in one apartment.” He gritted his teeth against the memory of silver and scarlet doors, forcing himself to focus only on the old calluses on Cistine’s knuckles from beating on Quill. “Baba Kallah and I shared rooms next to each other. When Salvotor truly wanted to punish us, he’d separate us…sometimes for days at a time. But we found a way to speak to each other, a pattern of taps on the wall between our rooms. Salvotor never deciphered it, even though it was simple enough for a boy of five to understand.”
Her soft laughter brightened the vaults to their uppermost reaches. “Show me?”
He tapped the center of her palm four times. “We asked this question often: are you all right?” One tap. “Yes.” Two more. “No.” Five taps. “You are not alone here.” Six taps. “I am proud of your strength.” Seven taps. “All will be well, I promise.”
“What does three taps mean?”
Heat crept up Thorne’s neck. “I love you.”
A blush spread across the bridge of her cheeks. “Oh.”
“Some nights I would lie awake after he belted me, listening to a pattern of three knocks from her room, over and over, until I fell asleep.”
Cistine turned her hand over, fingers hovering at the blue headwaters of veins gathered in his wrist. Then she tapped six times—firm and deliberate. “When I can’t talk to you, we’ll do what Baba Kallah taught you…taught us. We’ll find peace together, somehow.”
Though he was desperate to press a kiss to her brow and wrap his arms around her, he only tapped her arm once. Then he drew her to her feet. “I think I know where to start…someone who can help. Ariadne, Saychelle, and Aden are counseling with her already for the trial.”
Cistine blinked. “No one told me they were doing that.”
“It’s their choice how much to say.” He shrugged. “They tell me this sort of work is harder than training, harder than anything else they’ve done. But it can help if you step into it with all your heart.”
“I will. I have to, for Talheim’s sake. And for mine.” She drew her bottom lip between her teeth, brow scrunching. “Do I know this person who’s helping them?”
Thorne fought not to smirk. “As a matter of fact, you met her here when I brought her to assess Ariadne and Aden.”
Cistine stared at him, then broke into laughter. “Of course. I should’ve guessed it was Mira.”
CHAPTER TEN
NERVES BUZZING, TATIANA hurried through a dark and unseasonably-warm winter rain that washed away Pippet’s beloved snow. Part of her felt like a traitor, leaving the courthouse after Cistine’s nervous fit, the others trading shifts guarding her door and Ariadne’s; but she hadn’t visited her father since they commandeered his augwain to slam through the courthouse gates, and the letter he sent asking her to visit tonight held a flavor of urgency she couldn’t ignore. Not after everything she’d put him through.
Anxious energy sang in her fingertips when she entered the lower-level room of her childhood home, rife with her tinker father’s half-finished inventions. His inking device was set out from the rest and looked freshly-used. Breathing in the smell of oil, grease, and metal-workings, she fumbled with her buttons. “Papa, it’s me! I got your letter!”
“Don’t take off that coat!” Morten tripped on his way down the stairs, a cloth-wrapped bundle tucked under one arm, sweat beading on his brown skin. “We’re late as it is!”
“Shocking.” Tatiana yelped when he hooked his hand under her armpit and spun her back out the door. “Slow down, will you? Where are we going? I thought we were having dinner!”
“We’ll be eating there.” He hugged her around the shoulders, dulling the edge of his hurry. “I know it’s short notice, but I wanted you to meet some friends I’ve made.”
“Friends? Since when do you have time for friends? The shop is your whole life!”
“Well, things have been slow since the summer.” Summer—when the cabal’s bandit raids along the Vingete Vey came to light, tied back to all of them. Rage and shame bristled up Tatiana’s spine, nearly muffling her father’s next words. “But with all this free time, I’ve met other tinkers. We meet and discuss the trade every other week or so. I want you to see everyone!”
She peered up at his eager face, grinning despite the rain. He didn’t even sound this thrilled when she and Quill told him they were valenar. “Papa, what in Nimmus have you gotten yourself into?”
“You’ll see!”
He guided her to halt before a patchwork of buildings where prosperity elbowed out poverty. Tan, russet, and blackwood wattle-and-daub homes vaulted from the cobblestones, this one in particular offset by bright burgundy ghostlamps blazing in the windows. Music wafted from within; shaking the rain from his head, Morten opened the door.
The home was broad and deep, two open levels burning under ghostlight and the glow of a broad hearth along the far wall. On every surface, stuffed into corners and balanced preciously on shelves, were creations like nothing Tatiana had seen before: strange timepieces and odd harnesses, skeletal frames outstretched with leather strung from their boning like bird’s wings, cog-and-wheel machinations that tooled around the room under the inhabitants’ feet. The music resonated from an artfully-crafted cabinet in the upper gallery, plunking on a wide disc slowly turning in the center. The people were as peculiar and magnificent as the inventions, variegated in complexion, gender, and status, the only thing alike about them the sleepless bruises beneath their eyes, their worn hands and singed-off brows, and the excitement in their chatter.
Morten squeezed her against him. “Welcome to Heimli Nyfadengar.”
The Tribe of New Birth. The Old Valgardan name made Tatiana’s spirit soar, stretching her grin wide. “These are all inventors?”
“Every one!” Morten guided her forward, raising his chin in greeting to a few who shouted his name. “I found them, or rather they found me, after I finally managed a sale to an elite. An elite, Tati! I replicated the design of a flagon but with acrid powders instead of augments, and this woman gobbled them up. She’s Vassoran, you see, and—”
“Formerly Vassoran.” A short, well-muscled woman stepped into their conversation without invitation, smile knife-sharp. “Some of us are made to give orders, not take them.”
Grinning, Morten turned them to face her. “Kadlin, this is Tatiana. Tati, this brilliant woman is the head of Stornhaz’s first inventor’s guild.”
“And hopefully not the last!” Kadlin’s handshake was welcoming, though her eyes retained that steely glint. “So, you’re the daughter I’ve heard so much about. Morten tells me you’re inclined to inventing and repairing.”
“Among other things.” Tatiana returned that wolfish grin. “And those things have taken precedence over the past decade.”
“Pity! From what I’ve seen, the arts run deep in your family.” Kadlin winked at Morten, and he straightened his spine and smoothed his clothes. “I’ll fetch us some drinks while you make yourselves comfortable. Tatiana, any preference?”
“No alcohol for me.”
Morten squeezed her shoulder, the smallest touch bursting with pride.
In Kadlin’s absence, Tatiana nudged him. “So, this is what you’ve gotten into? Shameless flirting and showing off?”
He swatted her on the rump. “Is it so wrong for a man to seek recognition for his talents?”
“Oh, it was absolutely your talents she was recognizing.” Tatiana fluttered her lashes, then danced away when Morten swiped at her again. Something knocked into her ankle, and she glanced down at a cog-and-wheel machine thunking into her boot. Grinning, she picked it up and popped its belly hatch, studying the tightly-wound gears inside.
“Excuse me!” a high-pitched voice shouted. “That’s mine!”
Tatiana arched a brow at the boy no older than six or seven years skidding to a halt beside her. He put out both hands, and she surrendered the device. “And what do you call…this?”
“Its name is Vohrun. It makes deliveries. And it’s mine.”
Tatiana crouched on his level. “And who are you?”
His cheekbones pinked. “Athlis.”
“Well, Athlis, I think Vohrun makes a good deliverer. And an excellent ankle-biter.” Tatiana ruffled his hair and straightened again.
“Athlis is our youngest member,” Morten explained as the boy scampered away. “His mother died this past year of bloodcough. He’s given up schooling to make deliveries for some of the shops. Little Vohrun was the only friend he had before he found us. Now Kadlin pays his board.”
