33. RIEKA
33
RIEKA
T here had indeed been a Hunt called in our absence.
S’vara, who had been awaiting my return in The Fight Hall along with Saska and Farox informed me that thirty-five people had been drawn. They’d all departed the train at one of the other stations less than an hour before we had left yesterday and it would be some time before we knew who had survived.
It had been a relief to hear that the rest of my bunkmates weren’t among the chosen. Whilst Emil was currently working an early morning shift in The Pipe Room , Tira was safely sleeping under the watchful eye of Hentirion. Over the next hour, whilst we aided the Runners in separating out the supplies, I listened to the three of them happily recount how Tira had spent the entire day in The Market Commons teaching the scholar the bartering techniques of her commune.
I had been hoping to find Lily in The Fight Hall , desperate to ask her if I could use The Kitchen to bake tonight. I knew there were baking supplies in what we had brought aboard, and I was in desperate need of a distraction—from so many things. However, when I inquired after her to the other passengers on kitchen duty they said that she had swapped shifts for the day on account of Jae being drawn for the hunt. The news made my stomach drop.
When I asked if anyone had seen her since then they had said no.
S’vara offered to join me when I said I was going to look for her, but when we reached her room in the private sleeper carriage, the same room I’d bathed in after my first Hunt, I hesitated at the door. S’vara sniffed at the air noticing what I had. There was pain in the air.
“Lily?” I knocked but there was no response. The tartness in the air stung the back of my throat.
Something was terribly wrong. I pushed open the door and was immediately struck by the scent of fear, and not the type of fear that had the wolf in me crooning.
This fear was a mother’s.
Lily’s stood hunched over the edge of her tub, her hands braced on the side as she moaned in pain. Her gaze shot to me at the door, and I saw the tear-stained state of her face, fresh tears falling down her cheeks with every heave of her chest. I rushed forward, shouting for S’vara to fetch Sal. I heard her feet beat down fast on the hardwood of the corridor just as I reached Lily.
My name came out in a strangled breath. “Rieka.”
“Hey Lily.” I tried to keep my voice calm. “Tell me what’s happening, is the baby coming?” I rested my hand on her lower back, rubbing circles the way I had seen the midwife in Keltjar do.
Lily grunted out a response through gritted teeth. “Jae’s on a hunt. I—” Her knuckles turned white on the tub as a pained cry slipped from her lips. I reached for her hand and when she took it, she squeezed so tightly I could feel my pulse throbbing in my fingers.
“I can’t do this without him. He needs to be here.”
I squeezed her hand back and directed her to the bed. “He’ll be back. You just take deep breaths ok. Sal will be here any minute now.”
She sat on the edge of the bed, my hand still gripped in hers. “If they take him, I don’t know what I’ll do Rieka.” She looked at me through pained eyes that were eerily similar to her brother’s. I made her take a deep breath with me before I gave her my response. “You do what you have to do to survive another day. Even if the pain makes you want to die. You chose to live to spite them. For your baby.” I wiped away the tears from her cheeks. Lily had such a strong countenance normally, it was easy to forget she was one year my junior.
Footsteps sounded in the corridor a few minutes later, Sal’s scent accompanying it. The moment she entered the room, she headed directly to Lily. I moved over slightly to let Sal reach the pregnant woman but was surprised when she asked me to help get Lily on the bed.
I circled the bed and adjusted the pillows for Lily, and was helping her climb atop the bed, her hands in mine when Rhydian’s scent entered the room.
Fear tainted his arrival. When I looked over at him standing in the doorway, his gaze was not on Lily. It was on me, or rather, on my hands touching his sister.
“Rhydian!” Lily cried out. He snapped his gaze to his sister and rushed to her side, taking her hand in his as he knelt beside the bed.
“Is she in labour?” he asked Sal, signs of panic in his voice.
I stepped aside as Sal began her work, sweeping her hands over Lily’s stomach, her face a mask of concentration. “Men. Impatient creatures.” The Organic sighed and lowered her hands over a spot just below Lily’s ribs.
We remained silent, Lily’s heavy pained breathing the only sound in the room.
“It’s false labour brought on by stress,” Sal informed us after removing her hands.
Rhydian’s focus returned to his sister. “Why, what has happened?”
Lily couldn’t seem to get the words out, so I spoke for her. “Jae. He was drawn in the Hunt while we were away.”
Rhydian’s jaw clenched at my words. And I didn’t fail to notice that he avoided looking at me as I spoke. The distinct scent of doubt sliding off him.
Did he think I was lying?
“He’ll be fine,” Rhydian tried to assure her. “Jae’s one of the best fighters in this place. I’m sure he’s boarding right now.”
Lily nodded her head rapidly. Her breathing still a little fast, her heart rate still quicker that it should be.
Sal called out to me. “Rieka can you hand me my bag?” I did as she instructed, gathering the large leather bag and placing it by her hand. She lifted it onto the bed and after unclasping the top, began foraging inside for something, but the mumbling that soon followed made me think she was struggling to find it.
“Can I help?” I asked, stepping forward.
Sal sighed in resignation. “I rushed here and just tossed all the tonics inside. I need the vial that has three vertical bumps down the glass.”
It probably took me longer than it should have, but when I found what I thought was the right vial, the contents a putrid pink colour, I handed it to Sal. She ran her fingers down the side over the bumps and smiled.
She handed it to Lily who quickly downed the tonic. “It will take about twenty minutes to take effect, but the labour craps will subside.”
The three of us remained in the room, Sal monitoring Lily from a nearby sofa, Rhydian holding his sister’s hand, and myself massaging Lily’s hand in the place Sal said would alleviate her pain.
When her heart rate had just about returned to normal, her body succumbing to sleep Rhydian finally spoke to me.
“Why were you here?”
I looked over and found Rhydian staring at me, the look so full of contempt, that some invisible string I didn’t know was there tightened around my chest.
I kept my eyes on him, trying not to let the cold expression on his face unsettle me. “I came to ask if I could bake and found her.”
“You could have asked one of the others. Why seek her out?”
Gently, I placed his sister’s hand down on the bed. “Because Lily is the one who asked the council to use the ingredients on my behalf—are you interrogating me?”
His face seemed to grow hard. “Should I be?”
I stood from the bed and walked over to the centre of the room and waited for him. Lily remained asleep as Rhydian released her hand and approached me. He stopped no more than two feet away, his body tense, expression still cold.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“I just don’t understand why you had to seek out Lily right after we returned?”
I could feel myself scowling when I responded. “You might not know this since we haven’t been married very long, but I bake to prevent myself from making shitty choices. And last I checked fucking someone whose not my husband because I was just assaulted by some prick with a superiority complex was not a good choice.”
Rhydian scoffed. “We could have an open marriage.”
“Right, because our being married was such an easy sell in the first place. Whatever issues you’re having right now, you need to get over them. I needed a friend after all the shit that just happened and since Lily is a Runner I know who wasn’t on the run, I wanted to talk.”
Rhydian’s fear scent spiked. And I suspected that if he wasn’t in complete control over his heart rate, it too would have spiked. The two always went hand in hand.
“You wanted to talk to her or punish me by hurting her?” he said, his words bitter.
“Why the fuck would I hurt Lily?”
“For using my taint on you.”
My palm collided with his cheek before I could stop myself.
Rhydian stood there wide-eyed. Shocked. Though not as shocked as I was.
I’d just slapped him, for insinuating the very thing I once contemplated doing.
“What just happened?” Sal had risen from the sofa, her attention now on us.
I couldn’t bring myself to speak.
Whatever ideas Rhydian had conjured in his head that had turned his features hard had vanished. Now all I saw was anguish. He thought he’d wronged me.
I am a fucking monster. I strode from the room immediately needing to be as far from Rhydian as possible. But the moment I passed through the doorway, I was greeted with a crowd of curious passengers all waiting to hear news about Lily. They saw me, saw my state and instantly started to worry.
The scents were a chorus of fear and anxiety. Their voices soon joined and tried to pry answers out of me that I couldn’t provide.
Rhydian’s scent drew closer.
How could I explain what I’d done when even I didn’t understand it?
I pushed further into the crowd when my name was called. But not by Rhydian.
Big brown eyes stared at me in a panic. Jae. He’d survived. Black hair, scuffed cheeks and a blood-splattered shirt told me he must have come straight here and not even bothered to go to MedCom. He took one look at me and blanched, his voice cracking as he spoke. “Lily, is she...”
I rushed to him, squeezing his trembling and bruised hands. “She is fine Jae. It was false labour. She’s asleep now. She’ll be so happy to see you.” He gave me a small smile as he squeezed my hands before dashing into the room.
I caught sight of Rhydian just inside the doorway and found a tightness in my chest that hadn’t been there before. A pain that had me fleeing for The Fight Hall.
For hours I fought, sparring with anyone who would let me fight them. When Farox found me there still sparring with a pair of very exhausted passengers, I hadn’t realised I’d missed two meal times. He offered to take their places, but after three hours, he finally quit on me, claiming I was avoiding sleep because Rhydian and I had fought and that it might help if we fucked and made up.
Until that moment I had not realised I was avoiding sleep. But the idea of going to sleep after what had happened between us in Lily’s room was not a pleasant one. It was not that I wanted Rhydian in my bed, one warm body was no different to the next. I’d done it on and off for three weeks. It was the fact that I had somehow convinced myself that since Rhydian was back, and would be sharing my bed, I would not have to dream.
“Say you love me,” he whispered in my ear, his voice low.
“I love you,” I said breathlessly. He hastened the collapse of my resolve, his fingers unrelenting in their fervour. I sucked in a breath at the sudden surge building within me.
“Say you’re mine.”
“I’m yours.”
He kissed me, the words absorbed by his lips, consuming them into himself.
The well inside me cried out for freedom, his hand having finally reached my soul and pulled until all I could feel were his lips on mine and the tether between us pulled taut, threatening to snap taking my sanity with it.
He growled. “Say my name.”
“No,” I teased back, seeing the fire in his eyes aflame at my being so near to the climax he so hungrily wanted to see on my face.
“Say my name,” he pleaded again.
“No.” I smiled, relishing in retaining what little power I had left, forcing him to take me higher, to move his hand slower once again. I was not ready. It wasn’t enough. I wanted more. I wouldn’t say his name.
I heard a snap. A branch breaking. Anger. The smell of anger.
I sat up, alert.
A black wolf stood ten feet away in the long grass. Her golden eyes locked on mine, the picnic basket rocking between their feet.
He called my name.
I twisted to face him.
His starlit eyes were wide. His lips moved, my name on his tongue.
Great crimson ravines appeared across this chest as though invisible claws had angrily raked through his flesh, the blood splattering my face.
He collapsed into my arms; my name coughed up through blood-stained lips.
“Please,” he wheezed, luminous tears trailing from his terrified eyes. “Say my name.”
“I can’t,” I sobbed.
The air filled with the sound of ripping flesh and those invisible claws raked through his body once again, his life blood pouring from the open wound in his neck as a scream ripped from my lungs.
I’d left the partition to the bunk open, in case Rhydian decided to share our bunk tonight, but instead of him, I awoke to the startled faces of my bunkmates. And not just them. More than half the passengers in the sleeper carriage shifted in their bunks, awoken by my scream.
In the bunk opposite, Tira sat wide-eyed and stared at me from over S’vara’s shoulder. “Are you ok Rieka?” she asked in that soft spoken way of hers.
I gave her a small smile, an attempt to reassure her everything was fine, even if it was the fifth time in three weeks it had occurred. I motioned for her to go back to sleep but Hentirion spoke up in the quiet of the sleeper.
“You really are a T'eiryash, aren’t you?” The scholar’s voice was so awestruck he almost didn’t sound like himself.
“Hentirion,” Farox said in a pleading tone. So very unlike him.
“What’s an Teary—” Tira fumbled over the word.
Saska, likely realising he wasn’t going to get any more sleep, jumped from his bunk. “They’re nearer to the gods than the rest of us,” he said in a matter-of-fact way. “More divine than human.”
S’vara sent him a scolding stare. “Don’t fill her head with nonsense.”
Saska ignored her as he leaned back against the alcove window and pulled a fruit from his pocket. “Pazgari history says they were blessed with taints so powerful the gods made them divine warriors, allowed them to live on the Isles. It is why they speak Gods’ Tongue.”
Tira frowned as she looked at the Pazgari. “But the God Isles fell, what happened to them?”
Saska rotated the red-skinned fruit in his hands. “They were hunted to extinction, some say.” A blade appeared out of nowhere and he cut into the fruit, the air instantly engulfed in that familiar citrus scent.
Where did he get Deogn Sweet Limes?
His blade paused and Saska caught my eye. He offered me a piece. A piece I very quickly declined.
Shifting to sit on the edge of the bunk, I rubbed my hands over my face and took a deep breath. “And what makes you think I am one, Hentirion?”
“Thirty years ago I was a soldier in the Fire Infantry in Halinon,” the old scholar said. “There was a man, no older than yourself that was brought in to aid the war effort. His taint was so powerful that sand turned to glass beneath his feet.”
I suspected I knew where his story was going.
“Killing Devos because of their taints was outlawed centuries ago in Halinon. Even if they were suspected of being a T'eiryash.” Hentirion continued. “And rather than cleave his tongue from his body, the generals believed he would better serve them as a weapon.” Then both his gaze and scent changed. A flood of pity pressed down on me from his bunk. “His taint consumed him, turning him into the very thing he controlled, and he vanished from the world.”
I’d known for years humans feared my kind because of the danger our words caused, but it wasn’t until I lived in the Citadel that I actually had a name to put to it. The book I’d stolen from the library in the Celestial Offices had made it clear that my kind was not looked upon favourably by anyone. Our Blessings were fraught with complications. We were feared by humans for our words and by Blessed because we did not fit the mould so many of them have lived their lives trying to break out of. Worse still, our lives were short. Almost all T'eiryashta recorded to have existed all seemed to either vanish or die within a thirty-year life span. What frightened me about Hentirion’s story was how closely it resembled the tales in that book. The power, the lack of control, the age.
What frightened me was how close the story was to my own life.
Emil, who had been quiet until now, finally climbed from the bunk he shared with Saska and joined him on the floor. “And how exactly does that confirm Rieka is a T'eiryash, Hentirion?” He gladly accepted a piece of the fruit from his lover’s hand.
“When he dreamed, the soldiers all heard his voice in their heads. Just like tonight,” he answered solemnly. “Rieka, you scream in your sleep.”
I didn’t know what he wanted from me. If I could change what I was I would have.
“Is this your way of saying you are afraid of me?”
They wouldn’t be the first people to be, they wouldn’t even be the first person today that acknowledged they feared me. I hadn’t been able to get the look on Rhydian’s face out of my head all evening. The coldness in which he had regarded me still made my chest feel tight.
Hentirion frowned, his eyes softening. A moment later he was climbing from his bunk and crouching down in front of me. He offered me his hands and I took them. “I’m afraid for you my dear. No one should be alone in this world. Even creatures like yourself. I just wanted you to know that I know.”
“Aren’t you afraid of me, that I’ll...” I hesitated, unable to bring myself to speak of the more prevalent fear. So I asked about the more obvious fear. “That I’ll bespell you?” Why did I not feel any fear or animosity coming from them? This wasn’t normal. At least not for me.
S’vara shifted, moving from her bunk to sit beside me. “Do you bespell people often? Have you ever bespelled any of us?”
“Absolutely not,” the words hurriedly escaped. “I’ve only ever—” I paused abruptly.
“Only when what?” Hentirion asked bluntly. “When have you felt inclined to speak the words?”
I hesitated, scared this genuine concern would vanish the moment I spoke. But I did answer. I explained how I’d used the spell to save Tiny in Keltjar, how I’d used another to hide from the Hunters, and how, when the mask-less Hunter had touched me…How I used Gods’ Tongue on him before my blessing manifested and I ripped him apart.
Hentirion remained silent, his expression becoming one of contemplation.
It was S’vara that spoke instead, forcing the old man out of his thoughts. “You should have more faith in your tain—your blessing, even if it is different to what is expected of our kind. All you’ve said is that it has protected you when you needed it to.”
Her words were kind, but they didn’t change the fact nothing good had ever come out of my use of that language. They just made me feel more like a monster. The world would be safer, they would be safer if I never spoke Gods’ Tongue again.
I leaned into S’vara, allowing her to brush her head against mine, her affection welcome after the horrible two days I’d just had.
Farox turned in his bunk and rested on his elbow. “Now you should ask Hentirion why he really wanted to confirm it.”
The old man looked as though he would have liked to smack the Drake up the back side of the head. I pressed him when he didn’t indulge Farox.
“I’m a scholar’s assistant. It is illegal for me to be a historian in Prea. But...” He hesitated.
“Why are men so slow,” S’vara chastised him before turning to me. “Hen wants to write a paper on you.”
So obviously they have talked about this at length before.
“Why about me?”
“Not you. About T'eiryash,” Hentirion clarified. “I’ve always believed that there was, as Saska said, a closer link between them and the gods, and would provide the realms with a greater understanding of why our paths deviated from divine worship to scientific.”
“Devos aren’t allowed to study at the Schools of Engineering,” Emil noted, his Prean far improved since he’d arrived. “How would you even publish?”
A gentle smile touched Hentirion’s lips. “You’d be surprised to know how many people are on our side in Athus. They are the founders of Prean Progressivism after all.”
I wanted to say no. I’d had many sleepless nights because of the terrifying contents of that book on T'eiryash. But the idea of someone like Hentirion creating something that would be of help to someone like me was—it would be priceless.
“You cannot use my name. That is my own and I will not share it with the world. That is my only condition. Accept it and I won’t object to your paper.”
The man’s honeyed eyes lit up like gold, filling with pure joy.
Sometimes I forgot how fast a situation could change with a simple conversation.