Spellbound (42 page)

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Authors: Blake Charlton

BOOK: Spellbound
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“Cyrus loves you.”
She threw her hands in the air.
“Just had to prove me wrong, didn't you?”
“He does, and I can see why.”
“You don't know who I really am.”
He smiled easily.
“You don't know either.”
She rolled her eyes at him but couldn't help smiling.
“Do you love Cyrus?”
Her smile wilted.
“Once I did.”
“And now?”
She looked away.
“He is kind to me. I like his affection. I have told him it wasn't working.”
She looked at him, but then added,
“He'd be jealous if he knew I came to talk to you.”
“Don't go.”
“I wasn't planning to.”
“He can't be too jealous. He gets to share a tent with you. He may touch your hand or face. All I want is for you to stay.”
“I said I'll stay.”
He grinned like a boy.
“Maybe I just wanted you to admit that again.”
Also grinning like an idiot, she shook her head.
“You're childish and irksome.”
But as she cast this she realized that a twinge of guilt was moving through her. Cyrus would be hurt if he knew about this.
Nicodemus was leaning closer, leaning on his right arm. The flexion caused the smooth curves of his triceps to pronounce its lateral head and long head as they ran up to his shoulder.
He studied her studying him and he smiled—in the half-light his teeth seemed whiter, his skin darker.
“I thought you despised me.”
“I kind of do.”
He laughed.
“I'm glad you stayed.”
“So am I.”
“Will you do something for me?”
“Depends on what it is.”
“It may seem a bit odd.”
“Oh, don't ruin this now, Nico. I may be acting oddly, but a little flirtation has been the only pleasant thing to happen in what's otherwise been the worst night of my life.”
“It's not that odd.”
“What is it?”
“I think of you far too often. I've thought about you ever since I watched you save Vein.”
“God-of-gods, just tell me what you want me to do.”
He picked up something from the tent's corner and tossed it to her.
She caught it and was surprised by the sharp points she felt within her hand. But when she tilted it to catch the light, a smile spread across her face. The tortoiseshell comb.
Nicodemus lay back to rest on his elbows, accentuating his deltoid muscles. Francesca pulled her braid over her shoulder and untied the ribbon at the end. Gently, with short strokes, she untangled her wild hair. As it passed through the comb's fine teeth, her dark brown curls grew into their natural loose spirals and caught the luster of her incandescent prose.
After a hundred strokes, all her hair was free and flowing down to obscure her shoulders.
Nicodemus watched her with patient unwavering eyes until the last flamefly paragraph winked out and left them both in darkness.
Then Francesca lay down on her side of the tent and felt her curls all around her face and neck.
She dreamt that her body had become the wide earth and her hair the vibrant grass sea—green with the rains, golden under the sun, and rolling forever away into the horizon.
Francesca woke in a tent lightening with dawn. It took her a moment to realize the man sleeping beside her was Nicodemus. Guilt washed over her, and she hurried out of the tent.
Outside the chill air visualized her breath into pale wisps. A thousand feet above her, half the
Queen's Lance
flew from its tether. Up that high, the sunlight was already shining and so illuminated the silk, brilliant white against the still-brightening sky. Normally Francesca would have been captivated by the sight; now she didn't spare it a second glance.
She crawled into the tent she had shared with Cyrus, only to find it empty. Her stomach tightened. He must have noticed her absence when he woke. She turned to leave but found him crouching in front of the tent, turban wrapped, veil up.
She froze.
His light brown eyes searched hers for a moment; then he climbed into the silk tent and sat beside her.
“Cyrus,” she said softly, hoping her voice was intelligible. “I sorry I—”
He held up his right hand to stop her and then produced a small black vial with his left. She had a moment to frown before he poured the vial's contents onto the silk between them. The liquid stained the cloth so darkly that it could only be one substance. “Ink?” she asked.
Nodding, Cyrus pressed his index finger onto the stain. Instantly the blackness came alive, sliding through the silk to form flowing letters. He was using hierophantic spells to move the pigment through the cloth. The fluid ink formed a sentence:
“I've thought all night about how my words could reach you.”
She looked at him and said aloud, “I'm sorry I left.”
He gestured to the ink, which had flowed into another sentence: “
You can write.
”
Tentatively, she put her finger to the stain. A small patch of ink magically pooled around her touch. She wrote out the letter “
I
.” The strokes her fingers made were thick, messy; however, at the last stroke, the ink
reformed into a beautiful, thin-limbed “
I
.” Cyrus had written a surprising, delightful spell. She wrote on:
“I went to correspond with Nicodemus in Numinous.”
He looked at her and wrote: “
Could he help you?
”
Francesca bit her lip.
“He understands what's happened to me in a way that is hard to describe.”
Cyrus's hands moved more hesitantly.
“Could I understand as well?”
She looked at him and then wrote, “
I can try to explain, but maybe not now. I feel …
” She picked her finger up to try to discern how exactly she did feel and then wrote,
“exhausted inside.”
“I am sorry, Fran. How can I help?”
“Your understanding helps. I am sorry I left last night to talk to Nico.”
Cyrus hesitated.
“You trust him?”
Pause.
“He's clearly enamored of you.”
“Don't be jealous, Cyrus. I could never touch him. No one can ever touch him. The poor man. Honest, he was only making eyes at me, and I probably shouldn't encourage him as much as I have been. I just …”
Pause.
“ … needed to talk to someone about disability.”
Longer pause.
“Now I feel guilty.”
“You shouldn't. It's understandable.”
Cyrus moved closer.
“How do you feel now?”
“Better. Tired. Still … a bit shaken by my deafness.”
“You're not deaf.”
She looked at him to see if he was joking.
But he looked back at her with an even gaze. He lowered his veil to show her his fine, black beard, and his mouth set in an earnest line. The ink under his fingers shifted again.
“We will find a way to restore your hearing.”
She looked from the sentence back to Cyrus's face. He hadn't looked away from her.
“You think so?”
He nodded.
“If Nicodemus can recover his ability to spell, you can recover your hearing.”
“But what if I can't?”
He reached out and took her hand. After the night spent avoiding Nicodemus's touch, the warmth of his calloused hand was a shock. Cyrus placed his other hand on the ink. The stain flowed.
“We will find a way. It's going to be all right.”
Francesca felt as if something were collapsing inside of her. Gone was the fear and strange giddiness that had charged her encounter with Nicodemus. When she thought about how flirtatious she had been, it was like remembering a night spent drinking. And yet Nicodemus had fully acknowledged her new disability, which had both liberated her from her denial and shocked her with pain and loss.
Cyrus's insistence that she was not deaf—or would be deaf only briefly—was pushing her back into denial, pushing her back into hope.
Francesca lowered her head, felt her shoulders sag. She didn't feel like crying as much as lying down to sleep forever.
But then Cyrus leaned in and touched her cheek. She sat passivly in his embrace. He kissed her forehead. Slowly, she leaned into his arms. She did not know whose conception of disability—Nicodemus's or Cyrus's—was more accurate. But when Cyrus pulled her closer and kissed her again, she found the strength in his touch.
The part of her that was collapsing completed its decline. She was not crying. She would not cry. But a weight now rested upon her soul with such force that she put her arms around Cyrus's neck and hung on as if her life depended on it. And, judging by the pain of her despair, it might.
 
NICODEMUS WOULD NOT have guessed it possible to fall asleep while flying through the sky on a giant magical sheet. But when something nudged his shoulder, he found himself blinking while suspended above a mile of limpid wind. Below lay a city he had never before seen.
Like Avel, this was a city built of sandstone and red tile roofs. But unlike Avel, this city was not surrounded by thick walls. There were defensive barriers and gatehouses, but beyond each of these grew small outlying towns, the buildings of which extended almost up to the barriers. Even without the extramural population, the city was twice the size of Avel. Its sanctuary stretched wider and boasted a gleaming white dome. This was the house of Canonist Zayd—whose godspells cut the canals that channeled snowmelt from mountains west of Roundtower all the way down to his city's crops. Above Zayd's sanctuary soared a flock of colorful lofting kites. To the west a natural harbor was spangled with sailing vessels. In all other directions stretched patchwork fields of wheat and chickpeas. This was Dar, the heart of Western Spires for hundreds of years.
Someone nudged Nicodemus's shoulder again. He turned to see Cyrus's upside-down face. The hierophant's robes suspended him belly-up from the ship. “Dar,” the wind mage yelled. “I didn't want you to miss it.”
Nicodemus nodded. He and the hierophant had spoken a fair bit early in the flight. The conversation had clearly been an excuse to demonstrate civility toward each other after the previous day's icy exchange. Speaking to Cyrus had made Nicodemus feel less guilty about the time he had spent with Francesca.
Mostly he and Cyrus had talked of different types of airships. Nicodemus, genuinely intrigued by the aerial constructs, had asked about the
many different types, their tactics, the historical battles, and such. Though Cyrus was clearly passionate about the subject, it was apparent that he would rather not have been speaking to the other man. Nicodemus had been relieved when Cyrus had turned his attention to piloting.
Presently Cyrus pointed north. “We'll soon land at a garden tower north of the city. You might be able to see Mount Spires.” Nicodemus squinted at the horizon and could indeed make out a spike of blue darker than the rest of the horizon. Then Cyrus turned and pulled himself away from Nicodemus and to Francesca.
Izem had placed the cleric far enough away from Nicodemus that they could not hand off text, and any spell they cast would be caught by the wind. Izem had said he needed them so positioned to keep the airship balanced in its current sleek shape.
A cold knot formed in Nicodemus's gut as Cyrus took Francesca's hand. The wind mage pointed to the ground. Francesca nodded and made a few gestures in response. He kissed her hand. She didn't seem to object, and she didn't look back until Cyrus had returned to piloting.
Nicodemus kept his eyes on the city.
Perhaps the Walker was right and he would need to use his cacography to resist the Disjunction. But if he could recover the emerald, only for an hour, he could at least touch another human in kindness. And, should that day ever come, the person he chose to touch should not be Magistra DeVega.
Despite the intimacy he had shared with her last night—thoughts of which had filled his head until they were aloft—she had behaved no differently toward Cyrus, not seeking his affection but not avoiding it either.
The ship flew northward along the coast for another hour, gliding low over hills covered with grass that grew only to hip height. Here a pack of lycanthropes could be spotted and attacked by lofting kites or hunted down by Spirish lancers. There were no redwood forests this far north; rather, broad oaks dotted the inland hills while slender palm trees bowed in the coastal wind.
Flying at various points within the hills were small flocks of windcatchers. Though still massive constructs of white cloth, Dar's windcatchers were smaller than those of Avel. They were also spread farther apart. The wind here wasn't as strong or as consistent.
When a tall fin-shaped tower came into view, the
Queen's Lance
tore itself apart even while sewing itself into a new vessel with a hexagonal hull made from evenly spaced strips of cloth and flanked by an array of sails that made reflexive adjustments.
After alighting in a wide landing bay, Izem wound a green robe around Nicodemus and then ushered him through narrow hallways to a small
room with two beds and a cloth-covered window that glowed with midmorning sunlight. After instructing him not to leave the room, Izem hurried off.
Nicodemus lay on a bed and tried to clear his mind. The pilots would fly him back to Avel, and he would consult Shannon. Then they could decide if they should make another try for the emerald or retreat to continue the fight some other year, in whatever city Typhon reappeared. Suddenly Nicodemus thought of James Berr and flinched. When flying over the Greenwater Valley, he had spotted several half-eaten lycanthrope bodies but no sign of Berr.
No doubt the creature had escaped back into the savanna.
From outside came the sound of rushing ocean wind and scolding gulls. Somewhere, likely in the quarters next door, a door opened and then closed. A bed creaked. The wind grew stronger.
A sharp knock sounded from the door. He sat up, and Cyrus came in with one bowl of fried fish and another of lentils. Until that moment, Nicodemus hadn't realized how little he had eaten. Nicodemus thanked Cyrus and dug in. The fish tasted of olive oil and salt, the lentils of cumin.
Cyrus sat on the opposite bed and unwound his turban. When Nicodemus finished, Cyrus lowered his veil and said, “I sold you out.”
Nicodemus blinked.
“I sold you out to Avel's wind marshal so that we could use the
Queen's Lance
to chase the Walker. I did it in case you could get Francesca's memories or hearing back.” He paused. “Do you understand why I did it?”
“I do.”
“I'm not proud of it, but I would do it again.”
Nicodemus didn't reply.
“I've spoken to Izem. We've grounded the fifth crew member so that Izem and I can fly the ship alone to Lurrikara and then to Avel. I will drop you at Coldlock Harbor; from there you may return to your camp. When I report to the marshal, I will claim you misspelled part of the
Queen's Lance
outside Dar and escaped. If you are foolish enough to return to hierophantic custody, stick to that lie or I will be dropped without cloth from two thousand feet for treason.”
Again, Nicodemus nodded.
Cyrus pressed his lips together and then said, “Francesca wants to go with you.”
Nicodemus kept his face neutral.
“Help me convince her that we will be able to restore her hearing.”
“I'm sorry?”
“She's crushed by her new deafness. You have to help me give her hope back.”
Anger twisted through Nicodemus's gut. “How do you know that we will be able to restore her hearing?”
“She must have hope. We can't take away her hope.”
Nicodemus felt his fists tighten as he remembered a childhood filled with assurances that he would outgrow or overcome his disability. “You don't know if it's possible. It's no kindness to give false hope.”

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