The Gantean (Tales of Blood & Light Book 1) (25 page)

Laith made no reply, only raising his eyebrows in disbelief.

Allian moved towards the door. “I’ll get back to my ship,” he said. “Meet me at the punt dock in an hour. We all need to get out of Hemicylix before Ricknagel’s men sequester the city.”

I nodded, taking the offer. Allian had a ship, a means of transportation, which we desperately needed. “We’ll see you shortly.”

Laith still said nothing.

After Kercheve departed I turned to Laith to pick my bone with him. His eyes were open, though still slightly bleary from drink.

“Do you know where they’ve taken Tiriq?” I demanded.

“I’m almost certain she sent him north to Engashta.”

“Engashta? Why there?”

“I don’t know. That’s only what I heard. I don’t even know if it’s true.”

“I have to go north then,” I announced.

Laith tried to stand, but wobbled on his feet. “One step at a time, sister mine. First we have to get safely out of Hemicylix.”

He stumbled as he moved towards the flagon of akavit he’d set on the table.

“I wish you wouldn’t drink so much,” I blurted. “What if you need to do magic?”

“I can do magic drunk. Truth is, half the time I do it better, drunk.”

I threw up my hands. “Fine. Do whatever you want. You always do, anyway.” I remained annoyed at him for not telling me about Tiriq and not agreeing to track him.

“Laith does what Laith wants,” he chanted. “So goes the saying. Except it’s not true at all,” he added darkly. “I’ve been stuck doing exactly what I don’t want for sidereals.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing,” Laith murmured. “But Laith does what Laith wants, my ass. I’m a lien-bound mage. I do what I’m told. My brother is my keeper.”

Laith and I
were
a matched set, just as our purported father intended. Some people, like Miki, had a core of blackstone running through them, a hardness, a sharpness, an unchanging edge of principle that kept their actions strict to their choosing. Laith and I were like water; we filled whatever circumstances held us.

A
llian rowed
us out to the
Lady
Tourmaline.
I almost lost my footing on the ladder as I boarded the large ship.

“Careful!” Laith said sharply behind me. “You’ll knock us all down.”

I gratefully took Allian’s hand at the top of the climb. A few moments later Miki shimmied up a rope and called down a heading as if he were a ship’s boy on
Northern Wind.

“How does he know where we should go?” Allian asked. “
I
don’t even know where we should go.”

“He knows I need to go to Engashta.” I pulled Allian towards the ship’s office. “I need to find my son.”

Allian bowed courteously. “My lady, my duty lies with Costas. The
Tourmaline
will seek him.”

“Costas would want you to find his son—”

“I understand that you are Costas’s wife now,” Allian said. “But even so, I serve him first.”

“We have to find him!” I snapped.

Allian thought I spoke of Costas, not Tiriq. He ushered me into ship’s office with a gesture. “When he sent us seeking you when you went missing, he was distraught. I’ve never seen him like that. I knew then that he loved you. We’ll find him, I promise, my lady. I am sworn to him, blood and breath. You can count on me.”

Memory prodded insistently with his words. His voice! I’d heard it that night with Miki in the grasslands beyond the Savalias. “I saw you!” I murmured. “Or heard you. You were on the river in the grasslands north of Murana, searching for me with a mage. You passed during the night, and you were talking. I hid in the grasses!”

“What?” Allian yelped. “Why didn’t you come out? We would have helped you. We were sent to find you!”

“I didn’t want help. I was running
away
.”

That drew Allian up short. He frowned. “You were trying to get away from Costas?”

I didn’t say anything, suddenly realizing my error. If Allian wasn’t on my side, he wouldn’t help me find Tiriq.

Laith cut the tension, striding into the office. “Where is it you propose to go, Kercheve?”

Allian turned to the table littered with charts held down by glass weights.

“We need to go to Engashta,” I insisted.

Allian shook his head. “Costas first. I want to go to Orioneport to see what I can discover about how Costas was taken.”

Laith glared at Allian. “Orioneport? Why Orioneport?”

“Gods in Amaranth, Laith. You know why. The Amarian coterie is the most likely to have information. Amarian mages have their tentacles everywhere.”

“Don’t waste your time sailing to Orioneport. I can find out what the Amarian coterie knows from here,” Laith said.

Allian lifted his eyebrows. “How?”

Laith grinned. “None of your damned business. Give me an hour or two.”

Allian nodded curtly and left the ship’s office. Laith’s answer had annoyed him.

“What about the Cedna and Jaasir?” I asked Laith after Allian departed. Laith wanted to search for his brother above all else.

“I’ll check for any reports about them, too, when I search the Amarian coterie’s messages.”

“What was that all about with Allian?”

“Let’s just say Allian would love to learn how Amar’s coterie communicates. We always have information first, but no one knows how we do it.”

“And?”

“And what?” Laith pulled his magestone—the glittery one—from his pocket.

“Are you going to tell me how you do it? Since I’m your sister?” Laith was susceptible to this argument.

“It’s meant to be an Amarian secret, but I suppose you’re as Amarian as I am. I created a magestone, a special one that can store information. Our mages know how to access it remotely and store their messages in it. It’s like an aether-sending, but it can be saved until a person is ready to listen.”

“But why do you help Allian? I know you want to go after the Cedna and your brother. You could avoid this whole mess with Costas. If Ricknagel wins, wouldn’t it be better for you and your House if you had? It might be better for you if you were not perceived as close to Costas—”

“Amatos, Leila! What kind of man do you think I am? Your son, Costas’s son, is my nephew. I can hardly abandon him to Ricknagel’s plans. House Amar is about as tangled with House Galatien as it’s possible to get at this point. I’m fully invested in Costas’s ultimate victory. I see what Ghilene Entila was up to now, of course,” he added.

“What do you mean?”

“With your Tiriq. I don’t think she wanted to harm the child at all, she only wanted to control the Galatien heir. Having the boy under her power gave her assurance if Ricknagel did not succeed, a bargaining tool. She’s a crafty little schemer for being so young. Gods, she grates on me almost as much as Jaasir does.”

He lifted his magestone and gestured it through several complex motions. “Quiet now. This is a tricky bit of magic.”

L
aith
moved
his magestone through hand sigils, occasionally murmuring a few words. He was in a full trance, eyes clouded with bloodlight like a shaman’s. I still didn’t understand the precise mechanics of Lethemian magic.

“Damnation!” he exclaimed. I looked up from where I sat on one of the cabin’s benches. Laith’s eyes had cleared, and his scowl made him look like a much older man.

“Did something go wrong?”

He shook his head. “Just a spot of trouble with the untagged messages,” he muttered. “But I should be able to—” he waved his magestone and descended back into trance.

“Fucking Amatos!” he burst out a moment later.

“More trouble?”

“Well, at least I’ve got something,” he said. “But there’s another one in there that I can’t reach. Damn, damn, damn! One message said Xander Ricknagel had taken Costas during the battle at the Savalias—nothing we don’t know already—and Ricknagel’s disappeared as surely as Jaasir.” He paused. “Would you have a look at this?”

“But I don’t know anything about Lethemian magic.”

“Something you said about Gantean magic might prove useful here. Look, my magestone stores the messages from the other mages,” Laith explained. “Aether-sendings normally pass through the channel and dissipate, as in a conversation. You can only remember them if you’ve heard them in real time. The only record is in the receiver’s mind. But my stone preserves the sending so you can draw it up, one time, much later, like a letter that can only be read once. So the sendings need to be stored somewhere; they have to stick. I made a trap for them in the Aethers, a net, you might call it. I can get into the net with some tricky spellwork; there are pouches where the sendings are trapped based on the tags attached by the mages who send them. The tags allow me to retrieve the messages from the net, but I’m having an unforeseen problem.” He looked both concerned and sheepish.

“What’s that?” Now that I knew we were dealing with a net, I wanted to see it.

“Some of the aether-sendings aren’t tagged. There’s no way to get them out, because I have no way to summon them. They’re stuck in there. I didn’t think it through when I made the net.”

“You can’t get to the untagged messages?” I clarified. “How do you get the tagged ones out?”

“Each tag is a word linked to a spell. I just say the word while doing the corresponding hand sigil.” He sighed. “If you asked any mage, they’d say this whole operation was a stroke of genius. No one could have done any of this but me. I can’t believe I forgot to make a sigil for the untagged Sendings.” He flushed. “I’m a fucking idiot. I don’t know how to get the uncoded messages out of the cache. I can’t open it. It’s like the aetherlight netting needs to be cut.”

“You think I
can get in?”

“Ganteans have a way to cut aetherlight, don’t they?”

I stared at him. I had the Cedna’s ulio at my waist. “Yes,” I said. “I have a blackstone blade. They serve that purpose—cutting bloodlight—in Gantean magic.”

Laith grinned. “Magical serendipity,” he crowed. “I swear to Amassis, it works every time!” He gestured me to his side.

Laith opened the way into Yaqi—the Aethers—with his magic, pulling me under in a dizzying, sudden lurch so different from Gantean blood-letting. To make his net, Laith had woven bloodlight into an intricate pattern, nets within nets, so fine I could hardly see the gaps. I recognized which caches contained coded information; glowing sigils coiled in the nets, guarding the messages within. I actually had to take the netting up in my hands; it was as cumbersome as any of the huge trawling nets I’d made in Gante. I turned it, searching for the unmarked cache. When I finally found the blank pocket, I used my ulio to slice it open. Three spheres of jelly-like bloodlight slid free.

I prodded one of the spheres with my ulio. The blackstone edge parted the gleaming lining, and the sphere dissolved.

“Laith!”
An voice cut the air, distorted, but recognizably Jaasir’s.

“Laith, Father’s not with her. She’s alone. She’s taken me captive, but she didn’t take my stone, the one you gave me for aether-sendings. But it’s hard—”
Jaasir’s voice cut off. I waited to see if the message continued. Nothing.

I cut the next sphere. The substance parted as easily as seal fat.

Jaasir again:
“We’re sailing north. I don’t know where, but we’re well past Talat City. I can see land to the east. Perhaps she’s going to Gante? The ship’s called Firebrand. It moves fast, abnormally fast. What should I do? Laith, make me an aether-sending. Tell me what to do.”
At the end, Jaasir’s voice grew plaintive, displaying true fear. In the thick, slow reality of Yaqi, his distress felt distant and untouchable.

I cut the third sphere, an ivory-colored one. The female voice that emanated from it sounded as desperate as Jaasir’s.

“This is Saira Jawahir. I’m in Talata along the direct road between Galantia and Engashta. A full regiment of soldiers marched through the village, flying the colors of Ricknagel and Talata. I heard—”
The magitrix paused.
“It’s difficult! The whole place is crawling with Ricknagel soldiers. They have a captive. They don’t want us to know, but rumor says it’s the king, that it’s Costas Galatien himself! I heard that their destination is Engashta.”
A loud noise disturbed her.
“Amassis!”
she cried.

No message-orbs remained.

Laith spoke as we came out of the trance. “I should have checked this earlier, but I was so distracted with everything going on at the Palace, trying to figure out what Ghilene was up to, trying to figure out what to do about you and Tiriq. Damnation. If the Cedna killed Jaasir I’ll kill her myself.”

Though the Amarian brothers showed little affection on the surface, I had heard the pleading dependence in Jaasir’s voice in those messages. Laith’s agitation told me he wanted to go to his brother immediately.

“You can’t kill her,” I said. “She must be killed in a Gantean ritual, I’ve told you. It’s vital.”

“It was only an expression, Leila. I understand; you’ve told me now several times how vital it is.”

“Do you think Saira Jawahir’s information can be trusted?” I asked to break the tension between us.

“She went to great lengths to send it, and Saira has a calm head. She isn’t prone to exaggeration. We should tell Kercheve that she believed Costas was being taken to Engashta.”

“What about Jaasir?” I asked.

Laith pulled on his eyebrows as he thought. “Kercheve will certainly want to go to Engashta. That’s the same path Jaasir took. Maybe we can find news of both
Firebrand
and Costas there. We may as well head north with Kercheve—it’s free transport in the direction we both wish to go. Though I swear, if he asks me to track Costas Galatien via that heartstring of yours, I’m going to hit the roof.”

“What’s so bad about tracking?” He made it sound deeply distasteful.

“Ugh. The drainage. It makes a mage sicker than you can imagine. It’s the kind of magic that isn’t worth the cost of doing it. Better to search using mundane methods; they work as well without the cost tot he mage. Everyone always thinks magic can accomplish anything, but it has limits. Mages have limits.”

“You tracked me to Murana. You said so.”

Laith lifted his brows. “I had a little assistance. That little trinket, that charm you wear, it has some kind of special connection to you. Made it much easier. I’ve no notion why. I assumed it was some kind of Gantean magic. Useful. I’d love to learn more about it. Later. But I haven’t got one of those for Costas or your son.”

I covered my necklace with my hand, wishing I had the star-charm I’d made for Tiriq. “I have to get Tiriq,” I said, feeling the lack of him more than ever. “I can’t bear this.” I collapsed onto the bench again.

Laith watched me with an almost wistful look on his face.

“What is it?” I asked. “Why do you look that way?”

“He would have loved you so much,” Laith said softly. “Our father. He would have been so proud of you.”

I blinked. I had never even thought of him, the man Laith believed was my blood father. Onatos.
That name stuck in my head. I’d heard it somewhere long ago. Spoken angrily, in a woman’s voice.

“You look so much like him, it’s uncanny,” Laith interrupted my reverie. “When I knew him, he was hardly older than you.”

“You miss him?”

“Like Amatos missed Chintara.” I did not catch the reference.

I
watched
the water flowing in the ship’s wake and gathered my thoughts. Laith would pursue the Cedna north. I trusted him not to act rashly without Gantean guidance. Allian would search for Costas in Engashta, the most likely location to find Tiriq as well.

Both missions pulled on me, forcing a reckoning between my Gantean duty and my heart’s need. Vanquishing the Cedna required a ritual that inspired fear and ambivalence. I tried to think of the Gantean task as destroying the greatest traitor my people had ever known, a traitor who had attempted to kill my own daughter. Even so, I could not deny that I also contemplated sacrificing my own blood-mother. That thought was sayantaq; she had never been a mother of any kind to me. The bloodcord that had bound us was long since severed, yet bearing the responsibility of her death haunted me.

I knew what I had to do, but I did not wish to do it.

The Cedna, Atanurat had told me, had wanted to keep her daughter bloodbound. The Elders had taken the baby away from her, driving her to leave Gante. Though I loathed what she had done—abandoning the Ganteans, leaving us to face the dwindling magic whose care had been her duty—I could understand her action. Ghilene had taken my child and it was nearly driving me mad. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. I could think only of Tiriq and Tianiq. Had the Cedna felt this, too? The heart-stopping loss, the constant terror that her child might die?

But then why had she done the same to me? Why had she cut Tianiq from me, when she’d hated the Ganteans doing that very thing to her?

I wanted to speak with Atanurat. He would know what to do. I tried to imagine what he would suggest.
The Hinge must be protected at any cost
. That Gantean truth superseded all others. The Hinge, the Ganteans’ most vital responsibility, could not be ignored. Not if we wanted to maintain magic in the world as we knew it.

If The Cedna died without her ritual, the Hinge would crumble. My choice was no choice at all if I was truly Iksraqtaq. How heavy that choice was, knowing that when one Cedna was sacrificed, another had to assume her place.

Every Cedna knew her own end. She was
tunixajiq. The Cedna maintained the balance with her blood.

Just when I’d mustered my commitment to go with Laith after the Cedna, Allian surprised me, stepping to my side. “Laith told me what he learned. Engashta, as you said. It’s the last place I want to go—ruled by three Houses, and all of them allied to Ricknagel. It’s unlike Xander Ricknagel to be so far from his own turf. I’ve been racking my mind. Why Engashta? Why not Ricknagel Province, his home, where he is loved beyond all measure by his people?”

I frowned and wondered the same.

Allian continued, “I’m afraid it means that House Talata and House Ricknagel have a deeper alliance than we imagined. Laith says he must find his brother, that he will continue north after Engashta.”

“I know.”

“And I will go in search of Costas.” Allian’s voice took a testing edge. “What do you propose to do?”

The world hinged on my answer.

“Tiriq—”

“You can bet that as soon as I’ve got Costas, the first thing we’ll do is locate his son.” Allian said. “But you can’t go running off to find him on your own. It’s far too dangerous. Costas would never forgive me.”

“Isn’t that what you intend to do? Go after Costas on your own?”

Allian rolled his eyes. “I’m a spy and a soldier. It’s what we do. You’re a woman. A wife. A mother.”

“And mothers protect their children. That’s what
we
do.” My raw Iksraqtaq intentions shattered at the mere thought of Tiriq. He needed me. My boy trumped any duty, Iksraqtaq or otherwise. The only true safety I could find for Tiriq was under the protection of his blood-father, my husband, who required rescue.

“Do you even love him?” Allian blurted. He seemed affronted that I debated, that I was torn between two duties. He had no idea.

Love was a luxury Ganteans did not allow. I had not been brought up to believe that love fell out of the sky like summer rain, unexpectedly. I had not been brought up to consider love at all. Costas was my mate, my husband. We were bound to each other by blood and breath, by the ung-aneraq, more than by any silly emotion. I wanted Costas returned to safety so he could protect our boy and search for our girl. Love paled in comparison to what I needed from him. If Costas and I loved, ours was not the gentle love of summer rain. What lived between us was more akin to fire: as dangerous as it was useful.

The duty of the Cedna’s downfall rested on me like a weighty blanket of snow after a storm, but that ung-aneraq bound Costas to me, drawn so tight and thin it cut like a rapier. Costas would lead me to Tiriq; that I knew with the certainty of a mother’s intuition.

“Can I help find Costas? And then Tiriq?” I asked Allian.

Allian loosened his jaw. “You’ll come with me to Engashta?”

“To Engashta,” I murmured. So I had chosen, for Tiriq, for Costas, for myself.

I
stood at the gunwale
, searching the night sky for the silver glow of Tiriq’s namesake, reaching for the only piece of him that I could touch.

“Stargazing again?” Laith asked as he sidled to my side.

“My daughter, Tianiq, is named for that star, there.” I pointed at a bright amber dot on the horizon.

“Tianiq! Such a beautiful name. I forget sometimes that you had two,” mused Laith.

“I never forget.”

“Do you think you can find her, too?”

“I must.”

“She is safe?”

“She is with her Gantean fathers,” I spoke as though I knew, but I had no sense of Tianiq since the bloodcord between us had been cut. She was lost in the world as though I’d never been her mother. “She will be raised in the Gantean way. She is safer than Tiriq.”