2.20. So Afraid
Annalise’s brows bolted so high they disappeared beneath her razor bangs.
“We’re a soul over our quota,” Tiago continued, somewhat breathlessly. “And if we allow Riccana il Teremi to heal naturally, she’ll die on the road or develop some lifelong injury. She deserves better than that.”
“Sunshine—” Annalise tried, but Tiago wasn’t done.
“And we’re already above our requirement. And if we heal her, we can ride as rough as we care to without worrying whether she’ll make the trip, which will put us even further ahead of schedule. I suggest that a fit servant for the Sorcerer General, with the level of courage that she displayed would be a more valuable import than a hexis dynamo above our quota.”
“Fit she surely is,” Ofelia said. “If she’s knocking you off the pole you have up your hindquarters.”
“Will you stop,” Tiago snarled, with uncommon aggravation. “Seriously, Ofelia.”
“Saints. Okay. Seriously.” Ofelia held her hands up. “And I agree. It’s what Simon would want us to do with his hexis.”
“That makes it unanimous,” Annalise said. “Bleeding hell, Sunshine. I was already convinced, y’know.”
“I know.” Tiago glanced at the girl fighting for her life in the wagon. “But I wasn’t.”
He returned his eyes to Seth’s. They were all looking at Seth. He shifted from foot to foot. “The hell am I gonna say?”
“Does that mean you’re a no?” Tiago demanded.
“Fuck no, I’m not a no. I’m just surprised I get a vote. I’m not even Legion yet, I don’t think.”
“Ah, Charlie’ll give you a fine rank once we meet him.” Annalise rustled Seth’s hair. “I reckon he’ll like you, Seth. He likes these two gobdaws. Just get you a haircut first. Make you all spick and span.”
“He likes you, mother,” Ofelia said, as her brother dug through the carriage’s half-tidied confines. “We’re just by extension. I bet you he won’t even remember our names.”
“That’s not a fair bet, considering how much our Charlie forgets,” Annalise said. “You can like someone without knowing their name. For all I know, my Seth ain’t even named Seth. Maybe it’s an alias.”
“Ofelia did a truth tasting on me,” Seth said.
Annalise tapped the side of her long, lovely nose. “That was after you told me your name.”
“I’d have picked a far cooler name than Seth.”
Tiago yanked the circle-sewn fabric from the carriage and flattened it across the roadside. “Help me get her into the circle.”
Ofelia, guilty over the shit she’d shoveled at Tiago, took Riccana’s legs. They shuttled the whimpering girl into the span of the circle. Seth took a fretful look around the carriage’s grassy surroundings, wary of watchers. The al Ydrises had a certain casualness about the use of blood magic he was still not quite used to.
No Legion inquisitor or stormy Exark presented themselves. The village was on its second day of celebration; the sound of a trio armed with field-pipe, cajon and squeeze box, playing with inexpert cheer, floated from the square.
Tiago undid the gauze on his arm, revealing the neat incision where he’d cut his skin to draw the blood that turned Riccana. The leafy band at his forearm mirrored that on Annalise and Ofelia’s; he set it into the gap within the healing circle.
Would they tattoo that on Seth this winter? The thought quickened his pulse into alignment with the distant jaunty music.
Annalise settled next to her son, her sword flat across her lap. “You really like this girl, Sunshine.”
“She’s brave,”Tiago said. “That’s all. She took on more than she needed to, younger than she should have. I don’t even know her, not really.”
“Let’s give you the chance.” Annalise rested her palm on her son’s shoulder. With her other hand she tugged the dynamo bead that glowed with Simon’s hexis from one end of the sword’s abacus to the other.
Riccana’s breathing shifted, from the crackly shallow sound of a woman in pain to an even, restful rhythm. The twitching stopped. The grimace that cut lines into the corners of her mouth shrank and faded. Tiago’s shoulders drooped with relief.
Annalise’s heavy tattooed mitt stayed on his back. “She’ll sleep a while, I reckon. Would you like to take the carriage with her? The rest of us can go on horseback.”
“I’d rather not,” Ofelia said. “Besides, it’s more romantic if the two of them take the wagon. She’ll awake with eyes full of sky and her handsome rescuer.”
“Whist,” Annalise said.
“We’ll be fine.” Tiago slid his arms beneath Riccana’s slight frame and lifted her. “If it was a smooth enough ride while she was dying, it’ll be fine now. Your nameless pony up to pull this, il Gutierre?”
“She’s too pretty and prancy. Like her master.” Annalise jogged to her warhorse and rubbed his nose. “We’ll use Meaty.”
Seth helped Tiago hoist the girl into the straw-thatched wagon. “Can I say how sincerely relieved I am that your sister’s cheap romance-novel eyebeams have finally swept away from me?”
“I really don’t give a damn about what she thinks,” Tiago said, with all the damns he was giving leaking out at the edges of his mouth.
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“It’s quite the romantic set-up, being an attractive yokel’s tour guide to the Necropolis.” Ofelia’s cloak swished around her as she hopped into the carriage. “I’m sure Mother’s excited to do it for hers.”
“Oh, aye.” Annalise climbed into the driver’s box. “Watch my little country fox gawp at all the skyscrapers. Swat the flies before they get into his open mouth.”
“That’s very kind of you to offer.” Seth grinned as he slid himself comfortably into the al Ydris family’s patter, into the spot they’d left open for him. “But that’s how we bumpkins get our protein, you know.”
Ofelia popped her head out the carriage’s frosted window. “And Tiago will have his new girlfriend.”
Tiago sat atop Demetrius, his gaze fixed on the sky, perhaps seeking a returning bird he could flee into and escape his sister. “Shut up, Feeli,” he said, but the panicky anger from before was gone.
“It could be fun,” Ofelia said. “Double-dating with your mother. Fun.”
“I should have let Enna-Belum eat you.”
“I was on him first, if you’ll recall.”
“Wonder what your alias would’ve been,” Annalise said, as her children bickered. “Boris, you reckon?”
Seth took her proffered hand and let her haul him up beside her. “I’m too skinny for it.”
“That’s on the list to address.” She kissed the tip of his ear. “I’ve got myself a sword that needs emptying and a sweetheart what needs fattening up with some fine Necropolitan food. Tuck your head in, Feeli.” Annalise gathered her reins. “We’re off.”
A flick of the braided leather sent Draco and Draka trundling forth. Bound for the Necropolis.
The sun reached its apex and began its downward path. The carriage and its attendant wagon was passing a ring of sacraliths. Someone had taken a chisel to their caps, and defaced the rough-hewn, blobby faces of the Plainland protogods who had abandoned the world to the seraphs. Seth had never seen any of these intact, but in places along the roads they remained: the holy-world equivalent of a mummified thief hung in a gibbet to warn the rest.
It was here, beside the mangled gods of the old world, that Riccana il Teremi awoke for the first time since her soul was ripped from her.
By the time Annalise had gotten Draco and Draka to a halt, Riccana was sitting up and screaming. They hurried from the carriage to the wagon, where Tiago had dismounted, presumably to help the girl off the wagon. For his troubles he was being kicked repeatedly in the chest.
“Let me off,” Riccana barked. “Don’t touch me.”
“Okay.” Tiago backed away, hands up. “Okay, not touching. But you’re still only partway healed. If you exert yourself too hard—”
Riccana tipped out of the wagon and fell on her face.
“You should have been touching,” Ofelia noted. Tiago wiped the straw-strewn footprint off his black tunic.
Demetrius’s startlingly blue eyes stared with skepticism at the carework girl who clung to the edge of his wagon as she dragged herself upright again. “Where are we? Where’d you take me? Where’s Shaheill?”
“Poor girl.” Annalise gave a matronly tut of her tongue. “You really ought to be sitting. There’s a carriage, if you like. Very expensive cushions in there.”
“No. No, I—” Riccana teetered and came close to falling again. She found her footing before Tiago could help her and scowled at him. “No. I have to go back—they—the blackfeather. I can’t leave them.”
“The blackfeather is gone,” Annalise said. “You and your people killed it.”
If they were being fair, Seth killed it. But he kept his mouth shut.
”Gone?“ Riccana swiped the chaos of her curls away from her face. Straw drifted out of it. ”We… we won?”
”That’s right.” Annalise smiled encouragingly. ”A big bleeding blackfeather broke through the deathspell and the first village it came to killed it dead. No massacres, no burning burgs. Might well be the only time that’s ever happened. And that’s cause of Shaheill. And its sacrifices.”
“Its—” Riccana’s hands went to her midsection. She looked down at them, and their pale-as-chalk skin.
She did fall then, onto her rear, wide black gaze fixed to her hands like they were covered in blood. Like the bleached skin on them belonged to someone else.
“You won’t go scarecrow,” Tiago said. “You would have already if it was a danger. Shaheill lent you their last animaxis. There was never a question of who’d get it.”
Shaheill, he’d said, because she wasn’t ready to hear Simon.
“My soul,” Riccana mumbled, barely audible.
“It’s here.” Ofelia emerged from the carriage and held the animaxis out. ”Safe.”
Riccana took the mirrored animaxis and gazed into its surface. A facet caught the light and glinted unearthly emerald.
She held it at an angle where the obsidian surface caught the light and resolved into just enough reflection that she could make herself out. The bright white pupils burned in her murky image like twinned candle flames.
She stood and went walking into the woods, as stiff and derelict as if her soul had never been snared. She left the animaxis in the dirt.
“We can’t take you back,” Annalise called. “I’m sorry.”
She made no indication of having heard. Tiago moved a hesitant halfspan, then stood rooted, fists clenching and unclenching. Ofelia touched his arm, all traces of mirth at her brother’s expense gone. “She’ll come around.”
Tiago attempted to recapture his nonchalance with an ineffective shrug.
“Seth,” Annalise murmured. “Would you follow her, love? Unobtrusive-like? She deserves her time, but we can’t lose track of her.”
He nodded, kissed her shoulder, and took off after Riccana, secreting himself behind oak and between shadows. The newly minted unlit girl’s march gradually lost its purpose, and ended at a mossy stone. She sat upon it and wept.
Seth stood on the other side of a thick tree trunk to wait out the storm. When it began to subside he stepped into the path and onto a twig, for politeness’s sake.
Riccana turned, face shining in the dappled light.
“Hey,” Seth said.
Riccana’s sorrow had burnt itself into flat gray ash. “You’re the boyfriend.”
Seth quarter-bowed. “Seth il Gutierre. Craven cutpurse and amateur stormship pilot. And pretty new at this unlit thing, too. Fresh turned a few weeks ago. So if you’re—”
“How many did we lose, Seth il Gutierre?”
“Maybe let’s focus on you for a moment, yeah?”
“How many,” Riccana repeated.
Seth sighed and gave up the bedside manner. “About a dozen.”
”How many Teremis?”
“Two whose name I didn’t catch,” Seth said. “And Simon.”
Silence but for Riccana’s heavy breathing. A woodpecker drilled its way into the canopy.
“He was so afraid, when he was the one in command,” she said, eventually. “I told him not to be. That the Legion would come. That they’d take care of us. And when that didn’t come true, when it was just…” She looked him up and down. “When it was just you, and we had to do it ourselves. I said I’d take care of him instead. And that was wrong, too.”
She returned to her hands, her new favorite staring target.
“He was so afraid,” she whispered.
“He wasn’t afraid at the end,” Seth said.
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not.” Seth thought of Simon’s request, and gave the man a silent apology; his niece deserved the truth. “He asked us to tell you it was on the field with a pointy stick. But the truth is it was after, and he was turning. And it was between the two of you. And he picked you. So.”
She stayed motionless.
“So however you reckon he’d prefer you use this chance, do that,” he said. “I wish I knew him well enough to say what that means. Suppose I’ll defer to you.” He held his hand out. “Let me help you back.”
She recoiled from him, as if following the ingrained instinct not to touch the unlit. But that was her now, too, and haltingly she let him help her off the rock and back toward the carriage. “I need to know who else went. The other Teremis. I don’t care that I’ll never see any of them again.”
“We’ll find out for you,” he said. “I promise.”
She nodded at this. Entirely by accident, Seth was developing a trustworthy reputation. He quietly returned the three braces he’d removed from her back into her hip pocket.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“The Necropolis. I hear it’s lovely this time of year.”
“I hear it’s smoggy shit.”
“Whatever else it is,” he said. “For us, I suppose it’s home.”