Aveline (16 page)

Reading between the lines, Aveline pocketed
the two necklaces. “Thanks.” She looked at Jose, wanting to tell
him she would return, if he earnestly wished it.

The older man was gazing at her
expectantly.

“I will make sure she receives these,”
Aveline said finally. She turned away, disappointed she had not
thought to tell Jose she wanted to visit again when she had the
chance.

“Will you tell me how she likes it?”
Mohammed asked anxiously.

“Yes. I can come back.” Aveline gazed at
Jose as she said the words.

“Today?” Mohammed asked.

“When her mistress allows it,” Jose said
gently.

The older man rolled his eyes and then
turned away, stalking back towards the metal trees.

“Soon,” Aveline said.

“I …
we
would like that,” Jose
answered.

She turned away before he witnessed the heat
in her cheeks and left, navigating the hallways until she reached
the elevator. Mohammed’s insight into the death of Tiana’s sister
was disturbing, but the exchange with Jose left Aveline energized
in a positive way for once, if not hopeful about making a few
friends while she was here. Spring was far away; she needed someone
else to talk to from time to time and had enjoyed his company.

Her upbeat mood lasted until she reached
Tiana’s room and recalled what had driven her away. Aveline did not
sense the elevated charge she had when she left. She had not
determined what to say to convince Tiana to leave the closet and
not be as concerned about what Aveline thought of her unique
abilities.

Aveline debated going to the kitchens for
strawberries before changing her mind. She was not one to avoid
confrontation, though it was hard for her to temper her normally
quick tongue and sarcasm when dealing with Tiana.

She unlocked the door and stepped inside.
Her instincts warned her something was off before her senses had a
chance to register what.

The closet door was open, and the bathroom
door was halfway shut. The window filled the room with cold light.
Tiana was nowhere to be seen.

“Tiana?” Aveline strode to the closet first.
Its interior was dark. The girl was not present. She turned – and
her gaze went to the half-finished cup of tea on Tiana’s vanity.
“Burn me!”

Aveline went to the bathroom and pushed the
door. Something heavy blocked it, and she pushed her head through
the opening. Tiana was unconscious on the floor, her forearm
bloodied and a knife in her hand.

“Tiana!” Aveline shimmied through the narrow
opening and bent beside the blonde girl. She assessed there was not
enough blood loss to threaten Tiana’s life and leaned in closer
until she could smell Tiana’s lips.

The faint scent of poison was present.

Muttering curses, Aveline half-dragged,
half-carried Tiana out of the bathroom and stretched her out on the
floor. She yanked the assassin’s kit Karl had given her from the
bottom drawer of the armoire and dumped it out beside Tiana.
Aveline searched it quickly. Good assassins carried multiple kinds
of poisons. Great assassins knew to bring the antidotes, too, in
case someone was targeting him or her.

Aveline found the oil she needed and
snatched a cup, filled it with water and dropped in several drops
of the antidote. She propped up Tiana’s shoulders and poured the
mixture into her mouth.

Tiana swallowed without waking.

Aveline shook her head. “You foolish, stupid
girl.” She lectured herself next for not thinking to tell Tiana the
danger of accepting anything from Matilda ever again.

Replacing the contents and then tossing her
bag into the armoire, Aveline lifted Tiana onto her bed. She hurled
the teacup and saucer out the window before bandaging up Tiana’s
bloody forearm and then sitting down at the foot of Tiana’s bed. It
would take a few hours for the effects of the antidote to
appear.

Aveline pulled the two watch pendants from
her pocket as she waited. She played with them until they bored her
then fingered the flowers Tiana had embroidered onto her sash. One
pink, one yellow, one purple. They were small, pretty pops of
color.

Checking Tiana again, Aveline stood in the
center of the room, restless. Pink had returned to Tiana’s cheeks,
and she was breathing deeply in slumber. She would have to sleep
off the effects of both poison and antidote.

Aveline cleared her bedding from the center
of the room and eyed the space. Training there would be a
challenge. She would have to be more in control of her limbs in
order not to knock over anything or run into the wall or furniture.
Sick of doing nothing, she tied her long hair back at the base of
her neck and moved to the center of the room to perform one of the
defensive martial art forms her father had taught her.

The next day, Tiana had recovered, though
her coloring was paler than Aveline would have liked. She had tried
to make up for leaving Tiana exposed with not one but two bowls of
strawberries. Tiana was too kind to blame her, but Aveline hated
knowing she had failed her ward in more than one way.

“You don’t have to hide your eyes from me,”
Aveline said for the tenth time.

Tiana hesitated and clenched the sash she
was embroidering. She was facing Aveline for once, which was
progress, but she still refused to look at her impatient
guardian.

“Don’t worry about it,” Aveline said,
sensing Tiana was not ready for this step. “What are you
sewing?”

Tiana picked up the silk to show her. “For
Matilda.”

“She poisons you and you embroider her a
scarf?”

“Veil,” Tiana whispered.

Aveline bit back the lecture at the tip of
her tongue. “No. Just … no,” she said and stood from her spot on
the floor. She snatched the veil from Tiana and went to the window.
She threw it out, but a gust of wind blew the thin square of silk
back in. Aveline balled it up and tossed it out again, only for the
wind to push it back.

“Are you doing that?” Aveline demanded.

Tiana giggled. “I do not control the
wind.”

Aveline muttered curses and snatched the
nails she had pulled from the window. She placed them into the
center of the veil before balling it up once more and tossing it.
This time, the veil plummeted towards the street.

“No more making pretty veils for someone who
wants to murder you,” Aveline said firmly and faced the room again,
hands on hips. “If you can move things with your mind, why don’t
you throw her out the window next time she comes in?”

Tiana gasped. She touched her bandaged arm.
Aveline had not asked why she cut herself. She had a friend who did
the same and claimed it was a release of sorts and helped her feel
better. Tiana had only cut herself once since Aveline had been in
her life.

“I am deformed,” Tiana said. “I shame my
family by existing, and I am grateful they let me live.”

Aveline stared at her. The words were soft
and quiet – and factual, just as Tiana’s unfeeling statement about
her mother’s death had been. The Hanover girl truly believed what
she said. It was beyond Aveline’s ability to understand either the
conviction of such beliefs or that someone like Tiana held
them.

“I want you to have this.” Tiana twisted
around and retrieved the pendant watch Mohammed had sent. She wore
one and held out the second to Aveline.

“Me?” Aveline gazed at the outstretched hand
holding the pendant. This time, she did not calculate how much she
could sell the chain for. An emotion far less pleasant than
anticipating where she would spend the money was in her belly. She
had warned Tiana once about considering her as a friend and was
beginning to question her own indifference to the girl. “Why?”

“Who else would I give it to?” Tiana
reasoned. “You would object if I gave it to Matilda, would you
not?”

“Vehemently.”

“Then I wish you to take it.”

Still Aveline hesitated. The two pendants
were created for sisters, people with a bond stronger than that
between a guardian and her ward or potential target. They lit up
when close to one another and the light within them faded when the
two pendants were apart. The symbolism was not lost on her, even if
she were a lowly street dog with no formal education.

It’s just a necklace,
she told herself.
It means
nothing.

Aveline accepted it, unable to name the
uneasy emotion in her blood. She pulled it over her head, and it
settled on her chest next to the plain locket George had given her
upon her arrival.

Tiana smiled.

“I heard someone else discuss the Free
Lands,” Aveline said and returned to her position sitting on the
floor. She pulled out her new weapons to polish, again, needing the
distraction and to remain active.

“What did they say?” Tiana asked
eagerly.

“They seemed to think they exist.”

Tiana sprang off the bed and went into the
closet. Aveline watched her, confused. When the girl neither
slammed the door closed nor returned, she stood and followed. The
light in the closet was on, and Tiana was kneeling on one side,
gazing at a tapestry embroidered with flowers covering half of it,
as if it were a work in progress.

“You did all this?” Aveline asked when Tiana
did not speak. The tapestry lining one wall of the closet was ten
feet long and eight feet tall. “It must have taken you years.”

“I started when I was young.” Tiana pointed
to one corner. “You can tell how poorly I embroidered.”

Tiana’s early attempts were more skilled
than anything Aveline had seen in the inner city markets. She knelt
next to her ward, gazing at the array of flowers, geometric designs
and meandering whirls, vines and twirls in too many colors for her
to name.

“This is us.” Tiana rested her fingertip at
the bottom, center, of the tapestry, directly in front of where
they knelt. “And these are the Free Lands.” She stood and touched
an area six feet from the ground.

“Ummm … what?” Aveline asked, brow
furrowing.

“You must not tell anyone.”

“I don’t even know what I’m looking at.”

“A map.”

“But these are flowers and plants and … I
don’t know what some of these are.”

“Think of the blue as water, the brown as
roads. These are trees,” Tiana pointed to a ring of green, upside
down triangles. “These are prairies.” She tapped yellow lines. “I
have spent almost eight years collecting information about the Free
Lands, where they are, and how one might reach them.”

Aveline studied the ornate map. “What are
these?” She touched a flower.

“Villages, towns and cities. Purple for the
friendly natives, pink for non friendly natives, and orange for the
non-natives.”

Aveline traced a finger from the largest of
the flowers, the one Tiana claimed to be their city, and followed a
slender brown vine upward, across yellow prairies, through green
forests, past multiple flowers. She dropped her hand and looked up
to where Tiana had placed her hand on another large flower. The
Free Lands appeared close, until Aveline began to think about how
far it was from Lost Vegas to the mountains a few days ride away.
The mountains were designated as gray triangles in Tiana’s artistic
map and were at a point of about a third of the distance between
Lost Vegas and the Free Lands.

“How do you possibly know the location of a
place no one can confirm exists?” Aveline asked, baffled.

Tiana whirled and hurried out of the closet,
returning seconds later with a book. She dropped to her knees
beside Aveline. “Because of this.” She opened the book and showed
Aveline the writing scrawled across the pages.

“I can’t read,” Aveline said impatiently.
“Does it tell you where the Free Lands are?”

“This book was written
twenty years after the Old World ended,” Tiana said. “It does not
say where the Free Lands are, but it says where they are
not.
It describes the
journey the survivors of the Old World took when they sought
refuge, before coming to this city. I used the information in books
and what I have learned over almost a decade to create this
map.”

As Aveline listened, she turned from
skeptical to considering. The amount of time and level of
obsessiveness it took to create such a map bordered on madness. But
it was Tiana’s glowing features, and her direct gaze – the first
time she had chosen to look straight at Aveline with her deformed
eyes – that alerted her to how serious Tiana was about leaving the
city.

“Is it accurate?” Aveline asked, growing
concerned.

“If they exist, yes. This is how to journey
there.”

“So you know the path to
take but not if
there
exists
.”

Tiana nodded.

“You wouldn’t go to these lengths if you
don’t already have a plan to leave the city.”

Tiana looked away. She closed the book and
hugged it to her chest.

Growing concerned, Aveline observed the
distance Tiana would have to travel to reach the mythical place. It
would take weeks, without the Ghouls, natives, mixed terrain and
seasonal obstacles guaranteed to test even the most intrepid
explorer.

“Tiana, you can’t be serious about this.”
Aveline waved her hand towards the Free Lands. “Your own stepmother
nearly killed you in your room. How do you think you’ll survive
outside of the city?”

“I will not survive if I remain here.”

“You can’t know that.” Even as she spoke the
words, Aveline knew how right Tiana was.

“I will die on my eighteenth birthday, if I
do not leave the city first.” The Hanover girl’s voice was
hushed.

“How do you know?” Aveline asked coolly,
mentally reviewing everything she had said and done since arriving
to ensure she had not tipped off Tiana somehow.