Forty-Two
Quell
I’ve slept terribly the last two nights and my toushana isn’t happy about it. It slips over my bones, chilling them to the core. Then it pricks me in the ribs over and over, for a long while, before fading away. An hour or so later it’s at it again.
The promise of sunrise lurks beyond the trees that my hammock’s swung between. The color has drained from the world, but it’s like the biggest, grayest, heaviest cloud sits squarely on my chest. I force in a big breath and feel my lungs swell. Breathing takes effort. Everything takes so much effort. I’m summoning Beaulah’s face to my mind, to urge some motivation to my limbs, when Jordan pops up like a ghost.
“Get up.”
He offers me a piece of bread that looks as hard as a rock. I roll onto my other side to look at something other than his face. The hammock shifts near my feet. I catch a glimpse of Jordan fiddling with the rings and suddenly the support goes out from under me. My stomach drops as the hammock and I plummet. My butt slams onto the ground.
“I said get up.”
He steps back to give me room to stand, but I anticipate his movement and stick my leg behind his feet. He stumbles, and despite his gracefully flailing arms, gravity wins and he falls. And just like that I’m having a stellar morning.
“It’s time to go.” Jordan dusts himself off. Yagrin saunters over, looking like someone else. I bundle up my hammock and stuff it in my bag, keeping my back to him. I’m not dealing with another one of his personas. No way.
“Quell.”
“Leave me alone, Yagrin, or Liam, or whoever you are.”
“We cloak to Aronya today,” Jordan says, taking my hammock and slinging it over his arm with the other two. Yagrin holds on to Jordan, then he reaches to hold on to me. I bristle at his touch, but I stuff down my annoyance and call on the cold to take us where we need to go.
The mining town off the coast of Aronya smells like potpourri with a crude, sour scent underneath. Cargo ships line the modest harbor, where a flood of tourists loiter beneath signs for cave tours; they meander in and out of trinket shops and eateries. I hadn’t pictured the remote island as a bustling center of commerce. Its skies are clear almost year-round, I read, and it has a high-altitude peak, perfect conditions for sun tracking undisturbed. But most importantly, Aronya is also where enhancer stones are mined…And enhancer stones hold magic! At first the throng of tourists are just a blur. Then I notice many of them tout House colors and subtle House symbols in some form or fashion.
“Is everyone on this island Marked?” I say to Jordan’s back as we snake through the crowd and up the harbor.
“No.”
A mountain looms in the distance. Its highest peak draws up to a wide crater and disappears into the clouds. “They used volcanic resources to build the Sphere?”
“Sort of.”
The closer I look, the more the Order’s world reveals itself. People in long dark coats too warm for this weather navigate the throng. A circular imprint or hole in the fabric at their neck gives them away. Draguns. Greedy Traders posing as finely dressed world travelers are scattered throughout the crowd, making eyes at anyone willing to meet theirs.
Jordan reaches for my hand.
I don’t take it, but I walk faster, keeping in step with him. Workers covered in grease stains haul carts loaded down with goods to and from waiting ships. Each cart is branded with some kind of symbol. Three thorny branches woven together. A smudged dollop of paint. Several symbols I recognize, but some I do not.
“Where are those going?” I ask Jordan, pointing at a cart full of shipping crates marked on its side with thorny branches and a dark sun.
“Brotherhood business. That’s not your concern.”
Farther along the harbor, the cave’s entrance is more visible. A line of gondolas drifts across shallow teal water toward a gaping entrance in the solid rock. Long crystalline formations with sharpened points line the rim of the cave’s mouth, leaving an open space only large enough for a small boat to pass. I crane for a better view.
“I didn’t anticipate so many people,” I say.
“Something has to fund our research.”
Snooping here is not going to be easy. Jordan pulls me aside, out of the way of the crowds.
“Where do you want to set up?”
“Up there somewhere,” I say, scanning the wilderness around the mountain beyond the town.
“Tourists aren’t allowed to stay on the island overnight,” Yagrin adds. “After sunset, Aronya’s a whole different place. There’s a nice bed-and-breakfast for Marked patrons in the mountains.”
“You’ve been here before?”
He nods but doesn’t offer any more details. “We could track on the be—”
Jordan cuts Yagrin off. I take their bickering as a chance to slip into the stream of people rushing by us. I want a close look inside that cave. That has to be where the magical stones are mined. Down the harbor is a gaggle of people waving line starts here signs.
“Excuse me,” I ask a fellow in a bright turquoise-and-gray tunic as he fans patrons in his direction. Oralia. “Do you offer private tours?” I fiddle with my fleur-de-lis earring.
“Fratris fortunam,” he says under his breath. “You’ll need to access our evening schedule, madam.” His lips pucker in a smile. “Is this your first time to Aronya?”
“It is.”
“From Second Rite enhancers to commemorative Cotillion gifts, retail shops to the mines, we have it all.”
Jordan shoulders his way through the crowd toward us.
“I’m dying to see all Aronya has to offer, especially the Sphere.”
“You and so many. Tourism has been up with all the nasty rumors about the Sphere cracking.” He glances at a pocket watch.
“Do you expect magic to all be gone imminently?”
“What is magic for, if not to be used until the very last drop,” he says out of the side of his mouth.
I wait for him to guffaw, but he doesn’t.
“Magic serves the user, after all.” He swipes two fingers in the air, left, then right, and it reminds me of House of Oralia’s sigil—two smeared dollops of paint.
Unsure what to say to that, I move things along. “Are you able to lead my tour?”
“Meet me at Betty’s bauble shop at sundown.”
“It’s a plan.”
“What’s the plan?” Jordan is behind me. I wave at the tour guide and lead Jordan away before saying, “I was asking some questions about the Sphere. The rumors of it breaking have increased tourism. People know what’s happening.”
“Which breeds fear. Fear breeds desperation.” Jordan’s jaw clenches. “Did he say anything else?”
“Just that he believes the Council and the Dragunhead have it in hand.”
“This is useful intel. But don’t run off from me like that again.”
“I think I’ve proven I should have a longer leash.”
“I’m keeping it short for your own sake.” He steps closer and heat rushes through me. “Nothing is going to get in the way of you sun tracking that Sphere.”
“My entire focus is on sun tracking.”
He walks away and I swear I hear him mutter, “She’s lying.”
Jordan refuses to let us stay near the harbor. Instead we hike up the mountain and watch as the little city bloats with patrons milling around like worker bees. Once we’re settled, Jordan leaves me alone to stew. I recline against a rock and let it hold me up. From this vantage point the shoreline is a dot in the distance. The horizon is ocean in every direction.
I stand. “I’m going back into town.” It’s a little early, but hiking back down beats sitting up here. Staring at a stupid beach. Jordan tears himself from whatever he’s spent the last few hours doing and joins me.
“I’m going alone.”
He eyes the shore. I walk off, and though I expect to hear his steps behind me, I don’t.
“You have an hour,” he shouts. “Don’t make me come find you.”
I flash him a choice finger in response.
When I reach the village at the bottom of the mountain, shops eclipse the view out to the water. The central artery of the retail district, appropriately named Main Street, is sparsely littered with people. I head toward a quaint pink building with a swinging sign that reads Betty’s. The clock on a tower chimes six times in succession. Then suddenly the colors of Main Street shift and sharpen. Shades draw up in windows, and the letters on shop signs transfigure. A shopkeeper dusts her Shifter magic across the windows of Harbor Reads bookstore; each of its grand windows transfigures into a doorway with stairs heading in hidden directions. Myrtle’s window front shop is now Misa Memorabilia, every inch of its walls covered in stickers, magnets, and tees. Graffitied on the side of a building is a burning fleur-de-lis, my grandmother’s House sigil. I walk faster. The farther I go, the more the air fills with cinnamon and spice: pastry shops appear where there had been boarded-up doors moments before.
Every several paces is a flickering lamppost with huge flames. I give them a wide berth, gawking at every kind of store imaginable. A dagger polisher. A swath of Vestiser boutiques. Flower crafters. Cartographers. Street artists and their muses, crafting portraits with nothing but their bare hands. A conglomerate of stationery needs. Jewelers. A smelly forge. And that’s just what I can see.
The next person I pass boasts a magnificent ruby-red-and-silver diadem. For a moment, I imagine letting go of the tightness at the meeting of my ribs and showing my own diadem. My heart twists. The real Misa, where Knox’s family was from, was a place for everyone. I skim for any sign or hint that this could be the same. But when I stop to read the signs hanging on the lampposts, I have my answer.
KEEP THE TOUSHANA AWAY
I almost trip over an elderly couple, arm in arm at a bistro table. The one thing I’ll miss about Hartsboro is that I didn’t have to hide there. My insides urge to release my toushana, nestled beneath my ribs. That entire part of my body is as cold as death, and it’s reassuring.
“Quell!” The whisper comes from an alleyway between two shops. Out pokes Liam’s head.
“What are you doing?”
He hops in stride with me. “I’ve known him longer than you have. He’s not as clever as he thinks.”
I smirk, then remember I’m annoyed with him and frown instead. “I don’t forgive you for lying to me.”
“You don’t have to forgive me. You just have to help me bleed the Sphere. I know that’s what you’re up to. You see I was right all along, don’t you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Quell, it’s me.”
“Precisely.”
We walk a full block in silence.
“You know, I was thinking, we could tell my brother our real plan. Try to get him over to our side, now that you’re on board, too. He’ll do anything you say.”
I guffaw. “Hardly. And we are not planning anything. I am locating the Sphere. That is all.”
“He’s been different these last several days.” He goes on about a fight they had, but I have my eye on the bauble shop. It’s up ahead and I need to lose this leech before then.
“Jordan’s a coward.” How Yagrin can see anything else in his brother, I’ll never understand. “He’s as rotten as the Order he serves.”
“Then why are we here and not dead?”
My stomach twists at his suggestion. “Jordan is the enemy.”
“There I must disagree with you. The Order is the only true enemy.” To my relief, he meanders in another direction, just in time for me to slide into Betty’s. But the tour guide is not there. I wait for a moment, then another, before hurrying off toward the cave myself.
After leaving town, I traipse around the base of the volcano. There has to be another way into that cave. I follow the strong wall of rock until I find an area where its foliage is loose. I peel back a curtain of overgrown vines and summon my toushana. Cold vibrates in my chest and I press it out through my hands, carving a decaying hole inside the mountain. When the dusty haze settles, I crawl through. Inside, only a shard of moonlight from the cave’s mouth cuts across the teal water. But even in the dimness, everything sparkles. An earthy pungency pricks my nose. Thick, salty air gusts inside. And all I see is earth covered in gems.
“I knew it!” But no sooner than I think I’ve found enhancer stones, I realize nothing here looks as if it’s ever been touched, and certainly not mined. I take a step, careful to set my foot firmly on flat ground. The whole place glitters. Brilliant stones in a rainbow of hues cover each inch of the rocky dome above. Blues deeper than the clearest ocean, greens brighter than any forest I’ve ever seen, yellows so shiny they look like gold, and regal purples. I can’t resist running my hands along the jagged walls as I walk. The majesty of it all drags me along, one foot in front of the other. This place feels like magic. My toushana stirs inside, sidling against my organs with something that feels like comfort. Gardens of gems cover the ground, clustered in pointed, rocky formations.
A narrow river cuts through the rocks before winding around itself and emptying into the cave’s mouth. The gondola route for tourists. But the cave goes deeper, meandering out of sight. I hurry that way, following a path lit by thin tapers on the walls. The path narrows and smooths. When I reach a gate that’s been welded shut, I use my toushana to get through it. Past a narrow cleft in the rock, over a barricaded passageway, the cave opens up again, this time to an underbelly of shiny rocks, barrels overflowing with gems, and drums of kor elixir. My heart rams my ribs. The stones here are arranged methodically in neat rows as if they were planted here. And much appears to be picked over. The precise colors of the stones are consistent from gem to gem, reminiscent of rings maezres wear. There’s enough here to make thousands of rings.
Cultivator rings hold magic, too.
Maezres use them to help bolster students’ magic. Many students. Over several years, which means they can hold much more magic than simple enhancer stones. My heart skips a beat and my dark magic stirs. I’ve found something I can use.
I touch a stretch of bright green stones so vividly colored it looks like grass made of glass. Carefully, I pull on the thread of cold humming through my body and stream toushana toward it. Black touches the stone’s glossed surface and it withers into blackened rot.
“No!” I stumble up and away and into a plot of red stones covered in soot with my thudding heart in my throat. I need this to work. I need something to hold the Sphere’s magic so I can take it myself. Studying the bed of blood-hue stones, I notice the ground around the whole plot is blackened as if it’s been burned. As if it’s been touched by toushana. I closely inspect the rocks caked in ash. My toushana stirs. I smooth my thumb across one stone and its red color gleams beneath. My toushana shudders again. I shiver with a warning chill like I haven’t felt in a long time.
Despite this mess, some of the stones are intact. Audior green. Shifter purple. Anatomer blue. Retentor colorless. I’ve never seen a red-stoned Cultivator ring in any of the Houses before. Which could mean…
Ice ripples inside me, my toushana two steps ahead of my mind. I have to know if I’m right. I rest a single fingertip on a red stone and watch, hardly breathing, as black seeps from my skin to form a thread of smoke. Instead of decaying the rock, it siphons inside, beneath the glassy surface. The cold in my chest teases with a sharp ache and I watch as the magic streams out of me and into the stone. It feels like an insistent tugging at the very marrow of my bones. My heart skips a beat and I close my fist. I should stop.
But my toushana still bleeds.
Rivers of black run between my fingers and into the rock. It tugs again, lassoing my heart. I tighten all over to restrain my magic. But it won’t halt. Deadly cold sludges through me, like a massive weight being pulled along by a shoestring, up through my chest and toward my hand that’s still connected to the gem.
I yank my arm back with all my strength, but the magic outside my body is stronger than a manacle. Panic rocks in my chest. I claw at the ground with my free hand and pull away with all my might. My bones scream. The world sways and I’m hot. So very hot.
My breath shortens.
Black glimmers beneath the gem’s red surface.
My magic. It’s taking my—
The world is heavy.
“Help,” I manage, when Jordan’s narrowed eyes find me.