The Heartstone Blade (The Dark Ability Book 2) (17 page)

She shrugged and then nodded. “You have as much admitted that you did.”

“I told you that I went to his shop, not that I took lorcith. Besides, why should I have the need when he gave me all the access I could ever want?” He had told his father the same thing when confronted.

Her eyes widened. “That is forbidden!”

Forbidden. “Just like sending his son to work the mines? Sentenced as if I were some criminal needing to be punished?”

Alyse stared at him but said nothing.

“Why are you here?” Rsiran asked.

“Where else am I to go?”

“Not here. Home?”

She laughed bitterly. “Still so foolish, aren’t you Rsiran? After Father lost his shop, we had no place left to go. When he left us… This is home now.”

“What do you mean he left you?”

“I thought you said you went to his shop?”

Rsiran nodded, unable to suppress the strange sense of emptiness he’d felt when he found his father’s shop abandoned. “I did. It was empty. Nothing remained except a few scraps of paper.”

“And why would Father clear out the shop?”

Rsiran sighed. He did not want to argue with Alyse. But seeing her brought back all the old memories he had. “Where did he go?”

Alyse only shook her head. “One day he was here. Coming home, drunk as usual. The next day, he never came home. Mother did not do well. So I had to do what I could to keep us fed. Had you… had you…”

Her face twisted as she trailed off. Whether embarrassed or angry, he couldn’t tell.

Alyse grabbed the basket from him and turned, running away from him down the street.

Rsiran didn’t bother to Slide after her.

A
fter Alyse left him
, Rsiran wandered through Lower Town. Seeing her like that, knowing that she had taken to working at the market, was strange. Alyse had always expected to marry into wealth, especially after her abilities manifested. Both Sight and Reading. Gifts to make any in Elaeavn proud. Now she lived no better than he did. Worse probably. At least he didn’t work carting fish up from the markets. He had the forge, and Sliding didn’t restrict him.

The sun tilted toward the horizon as he walked. He debated returning to the smithy and working on Shael’s project, but without a way to follow the plans, there seemed little he could do.

Thoughts of the alloy lingered. If Josun Elvraeth lived, having access to the alloy would be a way to keep him and his friends safe, but he had no idea how to mix the metal with lorcith. From his experience, there wasn’t a way to mix anything into lorcith. It had to be worked in its pure form. All the master smiths thought that the case, including his father.

But did the alchemists? If anyone in the city—outside the Elvraeth—were to know, it would be the alchemists. Their location in the city was a carefully guarded secret. Supposedly none but the guild masters knew how to find the guild house, but Rsiran had an edge that others did not. Wherever the alchemists resided, they would have lorcith. He could use his sense of lorcith to guide him.

The problem was sensing the lorcith. Here in the city, he felt too close. There was another place he could go, one that he did not visit as often as he once had. The last time had been when he’d needed a way to clear his head after visiting Firell’s ship. This time, he needed the distance and view of the city he couldn’t get anyplace else.

Rsiran made his way into a narrow alley. He checked to see if anyone else wandered nearby, but needn’t have bothered. Even the street had been empty. Nothing but refuse and the stench of filth lined the alley.

He Slid and emerged atop Krali Rock.

No wind rustled his clothing tonight. As before, he looked down at the city. Candles flickered in some of the windows. He made a point of not looking toward the palace, ignoring the blue lantern light shining through the windows there. Nothing good would come of turning his attention to the palace, of getting mixed up in the Elvraeth politics. Already he had learned that lesson well.

He sat on the rock and closed his eyes. Then he listened.

Lorcith called softly. Some he recognized quickly. His smithy had a mixture of raw ore and that which he’d already forged. It drew on him, calling with a distinct voice. Were he to want to, he thought he could pull the sword to him even from here. Strange that he should have such a connection to it. He remembered its making, the way the metal had drawn him along, pulling its shape out more quickly than any other forging he’d made before. And none had gone quite the same since.

He pushed away the sense of the sword. It drifted to the back of his mind, willing to let him ignore it for now. Other forgings of his scattered about the city. These pulled on him, as well, almost as if simply to announce their presence. Rsiran acknowledged them and pushed them away too.

Then he felt the strange sense of the alloy at the palace. With the other sense of lorcith ignored, this threatened to overwhelm him, as if it urgently demanded his attention. Rsiran took several slow breaths before he managed to push this sense away, burying it deep in his mind.

All he had left were scattered senses of unshaped lorcith. A few seemed focused between Lower Town and Upper Town. It took a moment to realize that they likely came from the smiths there. Not nearly as much lorcith as he expected to sense. The smiths together had less than he had stored in the crate Shael had brought him.

Rsiran shifted his awareness away from the smiths. A few other small collections existed in the city—barely more than nuggets—but otherwise, he didn’t feel anything. As he considered giving up, he felt something else. Something unexpected.

The alloy.

The lorcith of the alloy pulled on him differently than in the pure form. As the alloy, he had no sense of awareness, none of the pleading desire that he felt when working with lorcith. This felt muted. Had he not pushed away all the other lorcith, he might never have felt it.

The alloy in the palace called to him, but it wasn’t the only source. There was another, small and near the palace, though separate. Firmly in Upper Town.

Few of the guilds were in Upper Town, but if any would be found there, Rsiran suspected the alchemists would find a way to be near the Elvraeth. Or perhaps it was the other way around. Would the Elvraeth allow the alchemists to be too far from them? Wouldn’t they want their secrets protected?

Rsiran Slid off Krali and toward the palace. When he emerged from the Slide, he kept the other lorcith pushed into the distance and listened for the alloy. This close to the palace, he struggled ignoring the alloy found here, but he hadn’t wanted to emerge too far away. Rsiran knew parts of Upper Town better than Lower Town, but there was no telling who might be out on the streets. There weren’t the interconnected alleys all about Upper Town like were found in Lower Town, and streetlights lit the roadways with wide swaths of orange light.

Hidden near a stilted corbal tree, he listened. And then he heard it again, the soft faded sense of the alloy, just enough to trail. He hesitated, searching for evidence of lorcith as well, and noticed it near the alloy. Lorcith would be easier for him to detect, so he followed this, hoping it led to the same place.

Rsiran moved away from the tree and walked. Dressed in a navy shirt of decent cut and brown trousers only slightly stained from the day, his clothing wouldn’t make him stand out. Likely he’d stand out less here in Upper Town than he did at night in Lower Town.

As he followed the sense of lorcith, the road took him past a line of taverns, some with soft music drifting through closed doors. Most had signs hanging from eaves, decorated with names like Trusted Lute or Sleepy Watcher painted with bright colors. A few smelled like bakers, their ovens now cool, but the scent of breads and sweets still drifting into the street, smells so different from what he knew in Lower Town. He passed dressmakers and candle makers and potters and weavers. All had shops better appointed than even his father’s had been, places suited for the wealth found in Upper Town. These were places Rsiran had never visited in his youth. Even then, he’d felt separated from the people of Upper Town.

He turned, making his way onto a smaller street. Bright streetlamps still glowed here, no space along the street left in shadows. The orange light helped his eyes but from what Jessa said, wouldn’t help those Sighted, not like the blue lantern light found in the palace.

Homes lined this street. Most were massive, rising two stories and separated from the next by stretches of green or groomed corbal trees. Some had candles glowing in their windows. A few had soft blue light. All demonstrated wealth unlike anything he could ever imagine, from the exquisite stonework of the buildings, to the way the trees were shaped, groomed into patterns.

The muted sense of lorcith came from the end of the street. Rsiran stopped before a wide house. Nothing about it seemed different from the others along the street, other than the fact that no candles lit the windows.

Rsiran hesitated, considering Sliding into the house, when he became aware of lorcith near him. One of his forgings.

Rsiran turned, readying to Slide away. Haern stood in between a pair of streetlamps, watching him.

Rsiran Slid to him. “Haern?” he asked carefully.

Haern glanced at him before looking over at the house Rsiran had been studying. He held a slender knife—made of lorcith that Rsiran had felt—and twisted it idly in his hand. A light cloak hung about his shoulders, covering a black shirt and pants that practically disappeared into the thin shadows. If Rsiran had ever had doubts about Haern’s previous occupation, seeing him dressed like this erased them.

“What is it you seek here, Rsiran?” Haern’s voice came out as little more than a harsh whisper.

“How did you know I’d be here?” Haern wouldn’t have been able to follow him—not with how Rsiran had Slid to Krali Rock before Sliding toward the palace. And he couldn’t See Rsiran the same way he could others. Sliding masked him.

“Something changed.”

Rsiran frowned. “What changed? You can suddenly See me?”

Haern looked over at Rsiran. Shadows caught along his eyes making his face appear darker. “Yes.”

That troubled Rsiran. Had pushing away the sense of lorcith shifted something? “Is that why you came?”

Haern flipped the knife so that the point faced down. “You should not have been this clear to me, Rsiran.”

“What did you See?” He slipped back so that he stood with his back facing the row of houses behind him. The streetlamps on either side cascaded thin light onto him. Dressed as he was, he didn’t blend into the darkness nearly as well as Haern.

“Normally, only swirls of color. Even that is muted. Most of the time, I cannot tell what that means.” He shrugged, as if that should make sense to Rsiran. “But I had a sudden sense of the colors about you coalescing. There was darkness and danger around you when before I saw nothing.”

“What does that mean?”

“Why were you planning to enter that house?” The knife stopped moving in his hand.

Rsiran tensed. The last time Haern had come to him like this, he had tried to injure him with Rsiran’s knife. He claimed he’d only done it to help save Jessa, but Rsiran wondered how much truth there was in that.

Haern watched him, and a tight smile pulled at his mouth. Then he stuffed the knife into the waist of his pants, pulling his shirt up and over it. “It isn’t me you need to fear.”

“You think I need to fear entering that house?”

Haern looked across the street, and his eyes narrowed. “I Saw… changes for you—and others—if you do. Beyond that, I can’t tell. The fact that I can See anything worries me. What’s in there? Why have you come here?”

How much should he share with Haern? As a Seer, if Haern saw something that might make what he needed to do easier, then shouldn’t he take advantage of it?

“I think it’s the alchemist guild house.”

Haern turned slowly away from the house and looked at Rsiran. “The alchemists? How could you know? I don’t think even Brusus could learn the location of their house.”

What did it mean that Brusus was so connected throughout Elaeavn that he should be able to learn secrets from the Elvraeth, to bribe constables, and yet still not know the location of the alchemist guild house?

“You know I sense lorcith?”

“I think I have heard that,” Haern said. His hand moved away from the knife he carried.

“There is an alloy of lorcith which blocks my other ability.”

“I thought you told us that lorcith could not mix with other metals.”

Rsiran nodded. “Until I—” He glanced up toward the palace and lowered his voice. From here, the palace did not float as it did lower in the city, but the towers still stretched high overhead, as if reaching for the Great Watcher. “Until I tried Sliding into the palace. Windows are barred with this alloy. It kept us from easily Sliding inside.”

“But did not prevent you completely.”

“No.” Rsiran chose not to explain.

Haern turned and gazed back at the house. “Strange that lorcith should prevent you from Sliding.”

“Strange? How so?”

Haern just shook his head. “Contrasting abilities do not pair, at least not strongly. No Sighted can Listen. Readers are never Seers.”

“But the Elvraeth—”

“Even within the Elvraeth, there exists this balance.” Haern shrugged. “I don’t know what it means—I can’t See anything to explain it—only that it intrigues me. Perhaps Della would know more.”

“I don’t think my ability with lorcith is the same as being Sighted or a Reader.”

Haern looked at him, eyes arched. “No? From what I’ve seen, it’s just as useful. And likely gifted just the same as the others.”

If that were true, then Rsiran could no longer feel as if he’d been shorted somehow by the Great Watcher. If he truly had two abilities, how was that any different from what Alyse possessed?

“You still haven’t explained how you have come to believe the alchemists are here. Or why you would seek to find them.”

“I wanted to understand the alloy. Something like that might help keep us safe from…” He hesitated. Did Haern know about Josun?

“From another Slider?” Haern finished.

Rsiran nodded. “The alchemists would know more about the alloy. That’s why I’m here.”

“Seems to be a dangerous thing you’ve pursued. When Brusus told me about Josun, I didn’t know whether to believe him at first, but after Lianna…” He breathed out softly. “I wish I could See him more clearly. Then we could know what he was after and what it has to do with us in Lower Town.” Haern tilted his head as he considered Rsiran. “And you think to protect yourself from him. That this alloy would keep you safe?”

The alloy could keep him safe, if Rsiran could only find a way to use it to block Josun. “I think I need to understand it.”

“And the alchemists know how to create this alloy?”

Rsiran sighed. “I don’t know. Before visiting the palace, I’d never heard of the alloy. Without the ability to sense lorcith, I don’t think I’d even know it was a lorcith mix. And my father didn’t know of it.”

At least, he didn’t think that he did. What reason would his father have had to potentially waste lorcith trying to create an alloy without any guarantee of success? Lorcith was far too valuable to the smiths to experiment with it like that. Testing alloys could be time consuming, and sometimes, each batch required a different amount. That was the value of the alchemists.

“A shame we cannot simply ask a master smith,” Haern said.

Rsiran just nodded. He didn’t say anything about the fact that his father’s smithy had been abandoned. And he had no interest in searching for other smiths. Doubtless they would recognize him, but what reason could he give for asking about an alloy of lorcith? Better to seek answers from the alchemists.