Karys slept through most of the day. Her rest was plagued by visions of the dead woman’s face, the echoes of screaming, the smell of brine and the sound of water. Confused dreams, in which she repeatedly drove the knife into her own stomach. Instead of blood, the wound ran with dense shadow, and the dead woman said, over and over: I didn’t know it would look like that. Oh, I didn’t know it would look like that.
She woke up stiff and groggy, and discovered the floor of the train listing downwards. Through the window, the hazy impression of great dark trees closed around the vehicle. Karys rubbed her eyes. Winola was seated on the floor of the alcove, writing in her battered notebook. The scholar finished a sentence, blew gently on the ink, and snapped the book shut.
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
Karys twisted her head to the side, cracking her neck.
“Hungover.” After a second of thought, she added: “And hungry.”
Winola tucked the book into the front pouch of her bag. “Well, I believe we’ll be disembarking now. We should be able to find something to eat in the city.”
Startled, Karys looked out the window again.
“We’ve reached Eludia?” she asked.
The trees crowded out the sunlight, sweeping up to the sky. The train slowed, the floor levelled, and they came to a clean, smooth stop.
“Yes,” said Winola simply.
A few more passengers had boarded along the route, and they gathered at the door now—men and women carrying heavy cases, murmuring to one another. Haeki and Lindlee stood behind them, and the teenager shot Karys a concerned look when she emerged from the alcove with Winola. The train door rolled open, and the small crowd filed out onto the platform.
Dusk. The air was cold and bright. On every side, unfamiliar trees spread their branches, their leaves a deep, vibrant green, and birdsong rang between the boughs. Although it was not yet dark, orange etherbulbs illuminated the station, each drawing a powdery cloud of moths.
This is … Eludia? Karys had expected a city like Psikamit, not a forest grove. The earthy scent of the trees felt gentle and clean, the wind held the early bite of winter. She breathed deeply.
“So he actually came,” said Ferain.
A handful of people milled around the benches along the platform, rising to meet the trickle of passengers. A man caught Karys’ eye—pale-skinned, slender, his thick dark hair liberally streaked with grey, his jaw dusted with stubble. He might have been sixty, dressed in muted greys and browns, with a stiff-shouldered formal jacket. Something about his appearance struck her as obscurely familiar.
“I’m surprised that he was worried. He doesn’t normally pay that much attention.” Ferain sounded wary and puzzled. “Maybe the Foreign Ministry sent word about the retinue. They must have.”
“Oh, wonderful, I think that’s Uncle Rhevin over there.” Lindlee dragged her large suitcase off the train. “He said he would be waiting to meet us.”
She waved. The man noticed, acknowledged her with a brief wave of his own, and strolled across the platform to meet them. He extended his hand to Lindlee. She shook it, then realised he was trying to help with her suitcase, and flushed.
“Pleased to meet you,” said Rhevin, amused. “Lindlee, wasn’t it?”
Huh, thought Karys. Sounds like Ferain. Not quite the same; Rhevin’s voice was deeper, his accent more pronounced, his intonations flatter—but she would have guessed they were related just from hearing him speak.
“That’s right.” Lindlee ducked her head. “Thank you for inviting us to stay.”
“My home is yours.” His eyes were an unusual reddish brown and deep-set. They passed over Winola and Karys, settling briefly on Haeki. “These are the people you mentioned? Welcome to Eludia. I am Rhevin Taliade.”
Lindlee quickly made the rest of the introductions. Karys studied Rhevin. She could not remember much of Ferain’s appearance from the Sanctum. She thought he might have been taller than his father, his complexion darker. The rest was murky.
“A pleasure,” said Rhevin briskly. “I hope your journey was uneventful. This way, please.”
They followed him through the quiet station, out to a flagstone road cut between the trees. Fireflies glinted in the air between the trunks, swift yellow glimmers. As they walked, Lindlee answered her uncle’s polite enquiries about her parents, the care of the lodge, the Auric. The path climbed, and the forest ahead opened up to the lilac sky. The peak of a mountain rose into view, tall and alone, midnight blue in the twilight. A little further and they crested the hillside.
Eludia dwarfed Psikamit. The city grew in every direction—lights winding all the way to the mountain, architecture rearing up to the sky—and the land beneath it lay stark and sweeping. Nothing existed on a level plain; promontories gave way to deep ravines, valleys curved up into sheer bluffs. Clusters of houses gathered between corridors of forest and stone; they stood along the precarious ridges of windswept cliffs, and crowded the shaded banks of low hills. Slender bridges connected the buildings, arching over the roofs and the high trees and the clefts in the land, their weathered support pillars whorled with veins of indigo stone.
“Home again,” murmured Ferain.
A bird of prey hovered overhead, riding a warmer current of air. The view was impossible to absorb at once: all of it so foreign, so unlike any place Karys had ever known. She had lived by the sea, she had lived in the arid heat of Miresse, but neither had felt like this. Eludia’s atmosphere held a vast calm quiet, a peace deeper than sound.
“I don’t imagine you’ve been here before,” said Rhevin.
Karys turned from the vista. Ferain’s father was watching her, his expression difficult to read.
“I believe there’s a lot we need to discuss,” he said.
She nodded. “There is.”
“Is my son alive?”
“Yes.”
Rhevin did not appear surprised or relieved. His face did not change at all.
“Good,” he said.
They took an awrig down a zigzagging path to reach the floor of the valley. Haeki, beside the window, sat entranced and silent, her warm breath misting the glass as her eyes drank in the city. The sky’s colour had deepened, and the lamps at the roadside glowed steady and bright. Karys rubbed her thumb back and forth along her aching jaw. Eludia, at last. The old capital. Ferain’s home.
War—it means a war of vengeance with Varesli.
She grimaced, and dropped her hand to her lap. New Favour might have known where she was headed—but in a city this huge, they would struggle to find her now. Desperation could only carry the saints so far; without Constructs to guide them, without knowledge of Ferain’s identity, they would be left scrambling in the dark. That thought should have comforted her, but instead Karys’ mind spiralled around scores of unanswered questions.
Why had New Favour attacked the retinue? Why were they so desperate to see Ferain dead? How could he possibly start a war with Mercia?
And what was Nuliere up to?
There was no real evidence that New Favour held any interest in Ferain’s ties to Ambavar. As far as Karys could tell, the saints did not even know which survivor they were hunting. So why would Nuliere claim otherwise? It was possible that the herald was deluded, so alone in the world that she sought kinship where none existed. She certainly had been kind to Ferain, and taken enormous personal risks on his behalf. Yet her generosity was precisely what Karys mistrusted—her childhood had been shadowed by a cold lurking presence; from her earliest years, she had been instructed in the demands of the sea: penitence and punishment and secrecy. Nuliere’s moods might be fickle, but the herald had never been sentimental. Not until now.
Still, they could not afford to openly question her motives. For the moment, they needed Nuliere, and Ferain clearly intended to maintain the charade.
The awrig passed below the arch of one of the towering bridges, and slipped onto a narrower road. Green beds ran along the verges of the street, flush with hundreds of white flowers. The buildings here were large, ornate, and old; most plastered the same shade of light ochre brown, and decorated with coloured tiles around their windows, doors, and eaves. Trellises of climbing roses and wisteria draped the walls. People wandered the neighbourhood, enjoying the cool evening; couples strolled arm in arm, groups of children ran and called out to one another.
The vehicle slowed at the end of the street, and stopped at the steps of a double-storey house covered in ivy. Trees surrounded the building, screening all but the façade from view. Rhevin opened the awrig door, and picked up Lindlee’s suitcase.
“There are two bedrooms you may share, both on the second floor,” he said. “You’re also welcome to any food in the kitchen—you’ll find dinner on the stove. I want you to be comfortable here. Cas Eska, once you’ve put down your bag, could I speak with you privately?”
“Of course,” said Karys.
“My study is down the hallway from the bedrooms.” He touched his hand to the front door, unlocking it, and gave a shallow bow. “Please come inside. Make yourselves at home.”
The interior was airy, spacious—the floorboards solid walnut, the walls a warm cornsilk colour, the long windows hung with white gauze curtains and pale velvet drapes. Dustless and sparse, the furniture seemed too small for the size of the rooms; wooden tables and straight-backed chairs marooned on woven carpets, adrift and untouched. As Karys climbed the stairs to the second floor, she received the curious impression of the place being impermanent, arranged like the children’s dollhouses she had sometimes seen while working for wealthy clients in Psikamit. No art on the walls, no clutter, no sign of personal attachment at all.
“Is this where you grew up?” she murmured to Ferain.
Her shadow had been meticulous in matching her ever since they had arrived at the station. He trailed her up the stairs now. “For a few years. Before my mother’s first attempt, I lived with her in a house outside the city, just below the mountain. My father owned a few different properties back then, and we moved between them until he settled on this one. It was closest to the university.” After a second, he added, with a hint of acidity: “And furthest from my mother.”
The rooms that Rhevin had offered them each contained two narrow cots and an empty wardrobe. One faced the street, the other had a balcony overlooking the garden. Karys took the former with Winola, and left Haeki to share the larger room with Lindlee.
Through the window, the evening sky had darkened, the trees turned to black silhouettes. Lights shone in the houses across the road. Karys set down her bag at the foot of the bed nearest the door.
“I was expecting more questions, to be honest.” Winola walked over to the window, and peered out. “He’s very hospitable.”
“Worried?”
“No, no. Pleasantly surprised, that’s all. Once you’ve explained things, I’ll need to discuss my observations with him, but the situation seems promising.” She flashed a quick smile. “One step closer to freedom for you and Ferain.”
Again, the discomforting sense of vertigo. “If Rhevin can get into the Lapse.”
“True, but if he’s able to counter even one of the relic’s authorisations, I think we’ll be able to reach the binding and dissolve it. Go on, talk to him.”
The door stood ajar at the end of the corridor. Karys tried to relax the tension in her neck as she approached the study, rolling out her shoulders. They had come so far—they had crossed half the continent in the hopes that Rhevin might be able to help. It suddenly felt like an insane gamble.
“Winola wasn’t the only one expecting questions,” mumbled Ferain. “This is so unlike him.”
“He must have been very worried about you,” Karys replied under her breath.
Her shadow gave an uncomfortable shrug. “You’re a complete stranger who he has no reason to trust. Even if he was worried, it’s just … it’s not like him.”
Similar thoughts had crossed her mind—why doesn’t he suspect a ruse?—but, under the circumstances, Karys was not about to question Rhevin’s generosity. She knocked on the door, then stepped inside.
In marked contrast to the rest of the house, the large study appeared cluttered and cramped. The room held a desk below the window, a workbench against the wall, an armchair, and a number of glass cabinets housing small, broken ornaments. Bhatuma relics, Karys guessed. Ferain had said that his father was a historian at the university. The usual working accoutrements were also stacked under the bench: phials of blood, bone, and metal shavings, chalk, knives, and clamps. Unremarkable for an average practitioner, nothing to rival Vuhas’ stores.
Rhevin was leaning against the edge of his desk, reading a file. He put it down when Karys walked in.
“I believe you’ve made a long journey.” He gestured for her to shut the door. “I assume from Psikamit? The Foreign Ministry contacted me in private, told me there had been a political incident and the situation was still under investigation. Take a seat.”
Karys moved over to the armchair. “So they explained what happened?”
“Not in any real detail; they want the affair kept quiet. But they did indicate there was a slim chance my son might have survived the massacre.” He folded his arms. “Then my niece contacted me out of the blue, claiming a Mercian woman had arrived in Tuschait, and was insisting on talking to me about Ferain. At any other time, I would have called the girl foolish. But…” He made an offhand gesture. “Hope makes a hypocrite of us all. So, Karys Eska: you have come a long way to deliver a message—which can only mean you expect to be paid for the trouble. What is your offer?”
She met Rhevin’s gaze levelly. “More than a message.”
“You know where he is?”
She nodded. “I found Ferain up the coast from Psikamit, near the wreckage of a Vareslian ship. He was badly hurt, preserving himself within a stasis dimension generated by the Split Lapse relic.”
Rhevin’s face gave nothing away. “You spoke to him.”
“He told me he couldn’t leave the Lapse. The situation was dangerous, and I didn’t think I could bring help to him.” Karys took a breath. “So instead I brought him to help. To you.”
A pause.
“And yet, I don’t see my son,” said Rhevin.
Ferain sighed. He stretched across the floor to lie in his father’s shadow.
“Were you really that worried about me?” he asked.
Even having explained the situation, Karys had expected Rhevin to be shocked or appalled, or perhaps to accuse her of fraud and then throw her out the house. Instead, his eyes only widened fractionally. Nothing else—he did not move from his desk, cry out, flinch. Just a small flicker of his eyelids, as if none of this really came as a surprise to him.
“That idea pleased you, didn’t it?” he said. “Me, grief-stricken at the loss of you.”
Ferain made an annoyed sound. “Why do you have to be like that?”
“Anything that puts you in the centre of attention.” Rhevin uncrossed his arms. “Well, it seems the Foreign Ministry’s intelligence was credible after all, although I’d still appreciate a full explanation. What happened?”
Karys kept quiet while her shadow talked. Ferain was to the point; he sketched out what had happened to the retinue, how he had been injured, the effectiveness of the Lapse, the Constructs’ connection to New Favour. Rhevin listened and nodded occasionally, but none of what his son described seemed to upset or alarm him. It was only when Ferain came to describe Karys binding the Split Lapse to her body that his expression soured.
“That relic was irreplaceable,” he said.
“Funny, so am I,” said Ferain.
Rhevin did not deign to reply to that. He turned his attention to Karys. “The binding would have left an impression, correct? May I see it?”
Karys hesitated. After New Favour’s attack on the train, the scar now rested on the inner slope of her armpit. She would have to undress to show it to him, and that seemed— Oh, don’t be stupid. She lifted her arms to take off her shirt.
“It can wait,” said Ferain hastily. “There’s the matter of payment to settle first. Karys risked her life to save me, and I vouched that she would be compensated for her efforts.”
Rhevin raised an eyebrow. “I’m sure we can arrange a commensurate fee—”
“Fifteen thousand cret. And expenses.”
His father frowned. “Commensurate and reasonable, to be paid once you have been restored to your body.”
“I gave Karys my word, and I won’t go back on it. If anything, fifteen thousand is too low. The money was my inheritance, and it’s within my power—”
“You would struggle to sign for it presently,” said Rhevin.
“Well, when you put it that way, we should probably also discuss the matter of compound interest—”
“Fifteen thousand,” said Karys. “Once he’s healed.”
Her shadow retreated to her side, out of Rhevin’s hearing.
“Karys, stop ceding ground,” he snapped. “I’m not going to let my father cheat you. He can pay now.”
She brushed him off, keeping her gaze on Rhevin. “Those were the original terms of our agreement. His life in exchange for fifteen thousand cret. I spoke to a mender, and she claimed that the binding I worked is locked inside the Lapse, and that opening it requires countering the relic’s authorisations. Ferain said you were an expert on the Split Lapse. If we can find a way to heal his injury, would you be able to open it?”
Rhevin appraised her, his rust-coloured eyes thoughtful.
“Probably,” he said. “I would need to do some research.”
The knot of tension inside Karys loosened. Not a dead end. So long as Rhevin believed he might be able to help, there was hope. Until that moment, she had not realised how heavily the prospect of failing Ferain had weighed on her.
“Please do,” she said.
Her shadow continued fuming even after they left the study, mumbling darkly and veering out of her silhouette. Unusual for him to get so heated. Winola wasn’t in the bedroom when Karys returned to it. The scholar’s spare clothing hung neatly in the wardrobe, and her notes and workings materials were arranged at the foot of her bed.
“I should have known that he would be like this,” muttered Ferain. “I don’t know why I expected anything else.”
“He thinks he can help you.”
“How generous of him. Surprising that he would bother.”
“Ferain.”
“Although I suppose I should be happy that he believes I’m more valuable alive than dead. Reasonably more valuable. Not quite commensurate at the price.”
“He was clearly worried about you.”
“‘Clearly’? I didn’t think so.” Her shadow rippled irritably, and then settled. He sighed. “Your neck is bothering you.”
“What?”
“Yes, very convincing. You keep touching it.” He slipped up her side and brushed her jaw, feather-light and cool. “There.”
Karys’ breath caught in her throat. A chill broke out across her skin, the drawing pulled inside her chest, and she clamped her hand down on her neck. Her voice came out higher than she meant it to. “Haven’t you drained me enough for one day?”
“Either something happened on the train, or it’s Rasko’s wasp,” he said. “Based on the location, I’m guessing it’s the latter. Didn’t he say you had a week?”
“He’s a third-rate Mercian fixer. Precision probably isn’t his strong suit.”
“How bad is it?”
She scowled. “A headache. I was going to take care of it tomorrow.”
“Are you sure? We could go now.”
“Your teacher isn’t going to welcome a courier in the middle of the night. Leave me be, Ferain. It’s nothing.” Karys tramped back into the corridor. “And I’m hungry.”
She found Winola and Haeki downstairs in the kitchen. A pot and pan rested on the stove, steaming gently, and the fragrance of onion and ginger hung in the air. Haeki washed dishes in the sink under the window, while Winola sat at the table with New Favour’s knives laid out in front of her. The scholar was carefully applying a thin line of salt to the edge of each blade.
“Embrace, do you have to do that here?” asked Karys.
Winola’s eyes remained fixed on her task. “How did your conversation go?”
“He said he needs to do some research, but thinks he’ll be able to open the Lapse.”
“So fairly well, then.”
“I think so. Where’s Lindlee?”
“Out visiting friends. She wanted to surprise them.” Winola finished with the salt, and leaned over to pick up her blood flask. “She said that she hopes you feel better soon.”
Karys crossed over to the stove. The pot contained a broth, the pan held fried pork and vegetables. “Is it safe for her to be wandering around on her own like that?”
“Haeki asked the same thing. Apparently the neighbourhood where her friend lives isn’t dangerous.”
Karys ladled a large portion of vegetables and meat into her bowl, and poured broth on top. Kernels of sweetcorn floated to the surface. Over at the table, Winola used a teaspoon to drop a small measure of blood onto one of the knives. The instant the liquid touched the metal, it hissed and evaporated. She repeated the test with a greater quantity of blood, and louder hissing ensued.
“You know that if one of those cuts you…” Karys began.
“Yes, yes. Rapid personal disintegration, violent excruciating death.”
“You haven’t seen what it looks like.”
Winola glanced up.
“Sorry,” she said. “Insensitive of me. I’m trying to establish how New Favour applied the Construct’s effect to these weapons. What the working responds to, and the scale of that response. I’m hoping that might give me a sense of how to counteract it. I’ll be careful, I promise.”
Karys shook her head. “No, of course. Is there anything I can do to help?”
“Not at this stage.” Winola returned her attention to the knife. She tapped the back of the spoon to the blade, and it gave an ordinary metal ting. “I mostly just need to think.”
Haeki hung her dishtowel over the drying rack. “Which means: ‘leave me alone.’”
The scholar’s lips quirked. “I wouldn’t say that.”
“But you might think it.”
“Maybe.”
Karys raised a hand in surrender and backed out of the kitchen, taking her bowl to the dining room across the hallway.
The broth was salty, slightly sour, and hot, and eating it eased the pain in her jaw. The house was quiet and warm. It felt safe. Karys finished her food, then sat at the long, bare table for a while, thoughtlessly twirling her spoon around the empty bowl.
“Ferain?” she said.
“Mm?”
“Do you know if your father keeps any scrap paper? Reports or general forms from the university, that sort of thing.”
“He used to store uncollected student essays in the basement for administrative purposes. Why?”
“Do you think he would mind if I used those?”
“No, not at all.” Her shadow sounded curious. “He burns them every few years anyway; storing them is just an administrative formality. What do you need paper for?”
Karys smiled. She turned in her chair, and raised her voice.
“Haeki,” she called. “Can you come here?”