Chapter Seventeen

[cityofthehand]

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Chapter Seventeen



The minute they were alone, Naran’s face turned hard and cold. Maira shifted closer to him. “What now?”

“You need to rest. And I…” He blew out a breath. “Have to see my friend returned to the gods in a few hours.”

Maira gave him a puzzled look. “They haven’t done that yet?”
“It’s only been three days,” he reminded her softly. Then he chuffed. “No, two and a half. He died after sunset.”

“Seems like it’s been…”

“Weeks,” he supplied for her with a slight grin.

“I could go with you.”

He looked like he wanted to accept, but shook his head. “No. It might be dangerous.”

“At his funeral?”

“You said it yourself, whoever killed him knew him. And they won’t want to draw suspicion to themselves. If you’re there with me, they’ll definitely come after you. We can’t risk that.”

“Do you think he was killed for the device?”

“Seems as likely as anything.” Naran crossed his arms and leaned back into the corner of the couch as his eyes went glazed and distant. “Am I a coward if I don’t want to go?”

“To the funeral?”

“If they put him on the pyre and I watch him burn then it’s real and he’s gone forever. But if I don’t think about it, sometimes I forget. I can pretend I’ll wake up and he’ll be there to tell me this whole bad dream is my fault because I ate fruit before bed. He always thought eating fruit before going to sleep gave you nightmares. Eat fruit in the morning, meat at night. That was his rule.”

Maira tried smile as she longed for the wisdom to say something comforting. She couldn’t decide if she should get closer or stay distant. Grief’s strange nature made both things uncertain. Sometimes a person wanted to be held, sometimes they wanted to be far from any other living thing because even the voice of another person became a bitter poison.

“You’re not a coward,” she ventured.

“Yes, I am. This happened because I ran. I brought this all on you. All of it.” His voice shuddered hard. She turned to see him wiping tears away with the heel of his hand. “How can I ask you to forgive me for that?”

“It’s all right.”

“Nothing is all right. You barely survived and he’s dead. How is that all right?”

She answered twice as softly, “Because it’s done. We can’t change it now. We have to get through what’s ahead of us, and blaming each other and ourselves isn’t going to help. We can feel guilty later. If we live.”

Unresponsive, he sat sniffling and gave up on wiping away his tears. Maira ached with sympathy and leaned gently against him, weight against weight and warmth against warmth. “Naran, listen to me. There wasn’t anything you could’ve done. Even you’re not all powerful, you know.” She tried to joke, but could barely smile and the laugh didn’t come at all. Cautiously, she touched his arm. “If you don’t want to go, then don’t. Rest here with me. You must be as tired as I am.”

“I can’t be a coward again,” he whispered, “But I don’t want to see him like that.”

“Oh, Naran.”

He broke into a full sob and fell forward into her lap. His tears soaked into the fabric. He cried so hard it worried her. She smoothed down his dark hair with her fingertips and listened silently as he told her how much he missed his friend, how he hated himself, how lost he felt. Then she listened to him cry until he finally calmed.

“Now I’m a coward and selfish,” he said, very calmly and matter-of-factly. He rose from her lap to stare at his own feet like he didn’t understand what they were. “I should have left you to rest, not -” he stopped as though he couldn’t describe what had just happened. “Cried all over you like an infant.”

“You’re a little bigger than an infant,” she said. It got a punchy giggle out of him.

He stood up quickly, looking dizzy for a moment. She reached her hand out in case he needed it. “I should go now.”

“You don’t have to. It doesn’t make you a coward or a bad friend if you don’t.”

“Maybe, but it’ll make me a suspect almost certainly.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“You’ve done more than you should have had to.”

She shrugged. “It wasn’t that bad.”

“You’ll stay here for the rest of the day?”

“Where else am I going to go?”

“I’ll be away the rest of the day, but tomorrow morning I’ll come get you. I’ll need you to describe the device to me when I have my books,” he said. He wiped his eyes a final time as he straightened himself and reordered his clothes.

“Just tell me where it is, I can meet you there.”

“No. I’ll come get you. Safer that way. And if anything happens, run to Lord Shadow. He can protect you better than anyone else. I don’t think he knows about the device, but if things get bad, tell him.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Andaric trusted Lord Shadow up to a point, and that may mean we can as well.”

“Be careful yourself. If the killer is at the funeral, they might still go after you,” Maira warned him.

“I know,” he replied, quietly. They paused a moment, each unsure what parting courtesy to give now. Were they intimate friends, still just acquaintences? Naran broke the silence and simply said, “Be safe and thank you.”

“You, too.”

“And Naran?”

He turned around. “Yes?”

“When you see him, it won’t be as bad as you think. You’ll deal with it. Trust yourself.”

He merely nodded as if he didn’t believe her but didn’t care to argue and left.

The emptiness of the house closed in around Maira the moment the door closed.
Unsettled by it, she went into the bedroom, stripped of her clothes and crawled under the blankets not to wake until late afternoon.

When she did wake, she fought to get moving. Her body registered soreness in every inch as she shuffled to the washroom. A heated bath helped, as did the small meal she made herself from the pantry’s stores afterward. She had only just sat down when Yena and Kei-zi returned as promised, with more questions.

Well rested, answering carefully came far easier. She asked, during a pause in the conversation, what Lord Shadow said to them.

Yena cryptically replied, “He was as helpful as he could be.”

Kei-zi made some deceptively idle conversation and asked a few questions that were not nearly as innocuous as they sounded when Maira thought on them. After a brief back and forth, they departed and left Maira wondering if she’d said the right things or not.

With nothing but time on her hands, she finished her meal brought her paper binder to the table. When she opened it, she found four brand new charcoal sticks tied with a red ribbon. She smiled. Yena must have done her this kindness.

Encouraged by the new charcoals, she sketched out all the things she remembered of her midnight flight over the Asna’isi Tract. Her hands remained somewhat stiff and hurt if she squeezed too tightly, so the drawing was not as exact as she wanted, but the details were satisfactory enough.

As she made broad, dark strokes to color in the night sky, she remembered the wind on her cheeks and Graymere’s warm body pressed close, the tug of the harness, the speckles of light beneath her, the flap of wings all around. Maira closed her eyes a moment and put her finger tips to her chest, imaginging herself back there again. She would not have traded that flight, no matter what it cost, for all the world.

Thinking of Graymere’s wings, she turned to a new piece of paper to sketch them. The sketch turned into an idea as she wondered if a human could build their own wings. Her mind flashed with numbers and symbols that she jotted down on the sides of the two twin wings she drew. She turned to the back of that page and sketched other things. A harness, a frame, ratios, where the human body would fit in it. She thought of a harness, of a light frame to substitute for wing bones and measurements flowed out of like water. Numbers appeared easily, the math totalling mentally as if she were doing nothing more complicated than counting on her fingers. Almost as if she remembered rather than invented.

She flipped to another page, immediately taken with thought of manuevers, tactics that would be possible. The only problem was lift off from a dead start. Off a high cliff or building, a glide would be easy. Perhaps magic would be required for lift. How did Asna’isi manage it on their own? Graymere would know how to answer, if she asked him next time she -

The thought stopped her cold. The next time. The next time she might face death. Maira looked at her hands and bandages. Charcoal residue blackened both as she held nub of what remained of her first stick. She glanced to the window. Dusk had passed long ago. If not for the fireplace and candles set around she would have been in the dark. She hadn’t realized she’d been at it so long or that in her frenzy of drawing and calculating, she had not only sketched Graymere and his wings, but Lord Shadow with measurements forming a halo of small text around his head. How had she known his wingspan and weight? Why had she thought of going to Graymere so quickly, so easily?

Disturbed at losing touch with her own mind, she shut the paper binder and went to wash her hands. The water turned gray as she scrubbed until she got down to nothing but dark brown skin and dirtied bandages. She washed them and laid them in strips over the edge of the washtub to dry. She did not let herself touch her papers or think of the Asna’isi or flying for the rest of the night.

Naran came in the morning as promised while she sat eating fruit and sketching at the table. Maira could not give up thinking of flying no matter how hard she tried. Her night had passed slowly. She tossed and turned and dreamed of it every time she touched sleep. Morning came and found her desperate for a distraction, so she gave herself one.

When he came through the door, she raised her head. “How are you?”

He gave a shrug and a sigh. “I haven’t cried in hours. That’s good, I think.” There was a strained silence before he pointed at her picture and asked, “What’s that?”

“The device he gave me,” she replied very gently. “I thought it would help.”

“Can I see?”

She turned the paper to him and noticed her hands had gotten dirty again, as had her bandages. She would need new ones. Without looking away from the page, Naran said, “You should take them off now, let the wounds air.”

“How did you -”

“I noticed yesterday. You’re healing quickly enough. Open air is better, trust me. I’ve gotten burned enough to know,” he said replied, absently. Then: “This is a good drawing. Who taught you to sketch?”

“I learned on my own, when I learned how to read and do numbers.”

“You taught yourself to read?”

Shamed into averting her eyes to the bandages she unraveled, she mumbled, “Yeah.” She flexed a hand. The wounds and blistered had all closed. Some scabs had groan. The skin remained sensitive, but not so delicate she couldn’t touch or pick things up.

“What else is in here?”

Maira rushed to the table and snapped the binder shut in front of him. “Nothing. Just things I do when I’m bored and I have a little charcoal laying around. It’s nothing.”

“Somehow, I doubt that.” he said, but he didn’t ask again. “I can keep this?”

“Sure.”

Naran folded the drawing and held it between two fingers with a mischievous grin on his face. With a flick of his wrist, the paper disappeared. “It’s also really impressive at parties and gatherings. That’s how I made money through the academy. Penny magic is what they call it. Did a good business on the street when the prefects didn’t run me off.”

“I can make paper disappear, too. It’s called fire. I’ll be more amazed when I get it back,” she said, smirking as she rolled here eyes. “So, where are we going? I need to get out of here. I’m getting restless.”

“You’ve only been here half a day.”

“I’m used to moving around a lot.”

“Then by all means, let’s move. Oh, and bring your binder.”

“What for?”

“You’ll see.”

Might as well, she thought and gathered it up. They left the house and politely greeted the new guards at the door. Both were half-Tsaqa Rok. Maira told them she would return before sunset and wondered why they didn’t ask about her business.

When they were half a block from the house, Naran shoved his hands into his outside hip pockets and announced, “You’re going to see something few outsiders ever get to. I’m sorry it has to be under these circumstances.” He looked over his shoulder and Maira looked with him. A curvy, full chested person with striking pale blue eyes and blue-white streaks in their hair followed them, and suddenly looked far too interested in a vendor selling chewing weed.

“They’re still after us,” she said to Naran. “Guess he really isn’t going to give up. So much for leaving me alone until this is over.”

“Eh, they’re keeping their distance. It might not hurt to have a little extra protection right now.”

“You think they’ll follow us where we’re going?”

“That’s what I was trying to say. They can follow us there, but even they won’t get in. We’re going to the Archives of the Midnight Eye.”

Her memory flashed. “The big ridiculous building with the weathervane in the shape of an eye with a lot of stars around it and all the statues? On the Outer Round?” she asked. She knew the place because it was by a temple that contracted with Tayeland candlemakers who sent their messages through Haringe. She’d always wondered what it was, since no signs outside announced what it was, only the name of the place.

“Yes, that one.”

Realizing how insulting she’d sounded, she backpedalled, “Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

“Don’t worry. It is a bit ostentatious. The Midnight Eye is the order that Andaric and I both belong - belonged - to.” He paused a moment after that correction and she waited. He cleared his throat with a cough and moved on, “It’s a very old, powerful order descending from the earliest sentinel sorcerers who guarded the old city-states with their terrible magics. Which sounds very dramatic and spooky, but it’s actually a lot of gray-haired sorceres getting together and griping that the price of potions always goes up and young sorcerers not appreciating how easy they have it.”

“Sounds like people in the Tayeland, just without the potions,” she commented with a smile.

“Yes, well, when they’re not doing that, they’re quite progressive and well connected. One of the Councillors is a Midnight Eye. Which means they have a lot of resources, including one of the most impressive archives in the entire Domain. There are only two other collections that have more materials in more languages than ours. The first is the Council’s. The second is the Asna Collective Library which belongs to Lord Shadow. His actually has more materials than any library ever known, even the ones from the Old Empire.”

“Impressive.”

“Yes, it really is,” he said and Maira didn’t miss the pride in his voice. “Technically, only members of the order are allowed in. The books we have are precious, some are the only ones of their kind left. And can be dangerous if misused.”

“So how am I going to get in?”

“Because today’s your lucky day. Today you’ve just been accepted to a very prestigious apprenticeship under one of the finest, most respected sorcerers in the city.” Naran gave her a flourished mock bow as they walked, never missing a beat as he spun around. Such easy grace and wit made her smile brightly.

“Ah. That’s why you told me to bring this.” She pointed at the binder. “Makes me look like a real apprentice.”

“Precisely.”

She was suddenly very grateful for the new clothes Shadow gave her. In them, she looked as if she actually belonged at the side of a sorcerer like Naran. Even her bruises worked for them. From what she’d seen of Naran’s life, apprentices spent a lot of time getting bruised and scraped up as they learned to fight and control their bodies.

They walked on, comfortably quiet. Pacing beside him, one hand in her own pocket, the older holding the binder, felt as natural as strolling along in the Tayeland. The grin on her face felt normal, too.

“What do you think we’ll find there?” she asked as they entered the edges of the Capitol Complex, where the city went from a ramshackle mixture to planned streets and granite buildings.

“Either a clue as to what the device does or a way to trace the spell that killed him. I’m still not sure what kind of spell it was, to be honest,” he said with a lilt of sadness under his voice. To distract him, she gave a questioning look and opened her mouth to ask why he didn’t know. He answered before she spoke, “I mean, I don’t know what specific spell it was. Spells are like…They’re like fruit. You know that there are many types of bananas, yes? There are the long ones, small ones that are always green, red ones, and so on and so forth.”

“All right. Do you need to get a knife and peel the spell?” she teased. If she didn’t know he came from money, she did now. Bananas were expensive, the Taye reserved them for special holiday meals. They didn’t grow on the Dhatan farms that fed the city, and had to come from the western parts of the domain. Maira had only ever seen the little green ones, but didn’t want to admit that.

He gave her a look of mock indignation that turned instantly to a grin. “All of those are bananas, but they’re different types. Spells are the same. You can know that a spell is a Soul Stealing spell without knowing what kind of Soul Stealing spell it is. Just like -”

“I get the idea,” she said, holding a hand up.

Suddenly, he snapped his fingers at her and pointed. She leaned back, unsure what he was getting at. He smiled at her confusion. “What languages do you read and write?”

“I can read and write Domainish and New Pahali pretty well. I can speak a bit of Djaa and Trade Tongue. I know some phrases in Asna and Dhatan, but they’re all dirty ones. That’s about it.”

“That’s good. Most of the books are written in High Domainish. Old High Domanish, I should say.”

Maira already felt the headache she would get and grimaced. “Wonderful.”

“Don’t worry. My Pahali is rusty. You can have those texts. Even if you can’t read things, you can look for useful pictures or diagrams. I’ll show you what to do. Oh, I should warn you. The rules here are very strict. The librarians are legally allowed to hunt down and punish anyone who damages a book or takes one they shouldn’t or forgets to return one. And, trust me, they will. I once forgot to return a lexicon on time. I never did that again.”

“What did they do to you?” she asked. She had some of his memories, but they were random. She hadn’t seen anything about being punished by librarians.

He made a face. “I’ll just say that I was naked, there was a lot of dust, and you wouldn’t think a woman who spends all her time organizing books would have that kind of aim, but you’d be wrong. So do as I do and stay very quiet.”

As the Archives of the Midnight Eye came into sight, Maira decided she probably didn’t want to know the story behind that. Well, maybe. A little.