58. RIEKA
58
RIEKA
T he dream had left me unsettled. I’d awoken that morning, packed a bag of rations and sought out Eleen. She wasn’t pleased when she saw me. Nor was she particularly fond of my request.
Her response was clipped. “You are not going to Gerhold.” It was an unequivocal no.
But when Rhydian and Wade didn’t return that day either, the blood shard still indicating they were at Gerhold Hall and having exhausted all the trains resources, I used the collar codes as an excuse. Oric, the Kindling I now knew to be Eleen’s partner, had actually sided with me.
“Even Rhydian hasn’t read all those books. Rieka might be able to see what he couldn’t.” I could have kissed him. I didn’t, because I suspected Eleen might have challenged me to a fight over it.
“And I’m bringing Tira with me,” I quickly added before she could change her mind.
The sweet Terrestrial was the other more pressing reason I’d wanted to leave. Over the last week, Tira had been missing from meals on several occasions. Yet when we’d confronted her about it, her answers were either, ‘I must have lost track of the time,’ and ‘I was with Hentirion in MedCom .’ But when asked, Sal informed Emil that she hadn’t heard about Tira being there for days.
Then there was the fact she’d come back smelling like citrus.
Someone thought she might be spending time in The Gardens since, as S’vara said, “She stinks like that fruit Saska picks from the fruit grove.”
Then on top of the fact she had no energy in training or reading lessons, her disappearances became more frequent. Farox had gone searching for her one afternoon and found her standing in the middle of The Gardens before Eydis’s Liminal form, staring up into the skylight, unable to recognize even her own name. And she did this three days in a row.
Yesterday we’d watched her. For not a single moment was she left alone, and today she was fine.
Whatever was happening to her, what had happened to Ghena and the other children was happening when no one was around. I wasn’t about to let it happen again. If I had to take her away from the train every two days with a looper on her collar until we figured out what was making her sick then I would.
I woke her at midnight and I’d told her I was taking her to see Frey. It took some convincing since she thought I was playing a cruel joke on her, but eventually, she packed.
We’d been standing alone in The Abattoir for fifteen minutes waiting for the train to slow, Tira bouncing delightfully on her hooves when the scent returned. I had assumed Saska had come to bid us farewell, expecting to see him cutting into the red citrus fruit since it had become his preferred morning meal. Instead, I heard a pair of soft-soled shoes converging on us, the sound accompanied by the clacking of a wooden cane.
“Rieka,” Kosha greeted me as he entered the carriage, a pack slung over his shoulder. “Thought I might join you.”
“You’re coming to Gerhold Hall?”
Since the code’s failure, the council had been divided. Those that were against it, wanted Rhydian to take his position immediately, to stop any false hope from infesting the train and causing more damage than Rhydian’s cause already had. The other half of the council were insistent on keeping Gerhold a secret. Even the parents who had given Rhydian their sick children didn’t know where they were going, just that it was safe. Since Rhydian and the Runners had actually found half the code, a feat which hadn’t been accomplished in five centuries, they were adamant at letting the Runners continue their work. Kosha stood with them.
“I was under the impression your collar didn’t allow that?”
He looked at me curiously. “Rhydian told you of our burden?”
“He did.”
“It is true we cannot leave like everyone else. But a day trip has never hurt any of my ancestors.” He then indicated to the looping device on the inside of his collar before he greeted Tira with a smile. “Besides, I’d like to see the plans for the school house.”
“You know about the school?”
“Of course.” He frowned at the question as though his answer should have been obvious. “It was my idea.”
With school now the chosen topic of the trip’s conversation, we departed for Gerhold Hall. Lex, desiring nothing more than to get off the train had volunteered to be our guide, he didn’t even seem to mind Tira’s constant chatter.
When we arrived at the village at dawn, I knew instantly something was wrong because the first person who greeted me was Wade. If he was here so was Rhydian. Kris exited the gates a moment later to meet me at the bottom of the hill. She smelled of milk, of Jonah and of blood. Rhydian’s blood.
“Where is he?” were the first words out of my mouth.
I could see the fear in her face at my question. I repeated it. Her reply was saturated in sorrow. “He’s in the castle, in his room. Rieka, he’s in bad shape.”
What had happened in two days that he’d come here instead of to Sal on the train? Was he injured, was he dying, sick? A thousand scenarios raced through my mind as I ran up the hundreds of stairs through the castle until I found his scent in that familiar corridor where he’d first shared himself with me.
I pushed open the door and found Kodee, the young male medic from the compound standing over Rhydian’s body. There were bloody bandages in his hands and even more strewn across the bed covers.
“Who are you, you can’t be in here!”
Death carried a scent with it. A rot. It clung to the back of the throat like syrup, and tickled the nose. Rhydian smelled like death.
Kodee continued shouting his objections as I rushed over to Rhydian. The medic attempted to stop me, his hands reaching out to grab me.
A growl ripped from my throat and he fell back into the dresser in surprise. He swallowed hard. “You’re his wife. Lady Kanyk.”
My steps slowed, my mind, my body unable to comprehend what I was seeing. “Who did this to him?”
They were everywhere. Dozens of them, long angular slices through his skin, some as far down as the muscle. They were scattered from his hips all the way up his chest, across his Sul marks and curved to his neck where a deep one the size of my own blade stretched the length of his jaw, parting his beard in a raw divide. The cream sheets were scarlet wherever his body touched them.
A fever, so hot I could feel it in the air came off his body in waves.
“What happened?” I did not even recognise the fear in my own voice.
“I do not know. Every attempt to heal him has failed. I heal one wound and another appears. I don’t heal them and they get worse. Some reach to the bone Lady Kanyk.”
I wipe the hair from his damp brow and ask how long Rhydian had been there. “Two days.”
Two days. Rhydian had come straight to Gerhold and never left. “And you’ve no idea what it is?”
Before the young medic could respond, another voice entered the room. “It is The Cut.”
I look up from the bed to find Kosha standing in the doorway, his face solemn. He entered, his cane clacking against the hardwood floor as he approached the bed. His eyes seemed to study Rhydian, taking in every cut he examined upon his grandson’s body.
Kosha leaned over Rhydian, brushing his hand over his grandson’s hair. “You stupid boy.” His voice was soft and melancholic, the scent of pain and sorrow an undertow to the sweet lime scent.
A moan slipped through Rhydian’s lips.
“If you have taom thistle, go get it,” Kosha said, directing his words to Kodee, adding, “And helum root too if you’ve got some.”
Kodee quickly objected to the second suggestion. “I can’t give him helum root, it’ll kill him.”
“No it won’t. Quickly boy, before the fever reaches his heart.” Kosha leaned down and pressed his lips to Rhydian’s forehead. When the young Organic had left the room, taking the basket of bloody bandages with him I asked if the herbs would cure Rhydian.
His answer was blunt. “No. But they will ease his pain until he succumbs to the Cut.”
Kosha sat down on the edge of the bed and carefully lifted Rhydian’s hand into his lap, the same hand that possessed his marriage band. It was such delicate affection, the way Kosha held his hand that it remined me of my father. He remained that way—silent—for what felt like an hour.
“What is the Cut?” I asked when I couldn’t take his silence any longer.
Our eyes met across the bed and Kosha sighed. “The consequences of a Hemopath breaking an oath.”
When Kosha realised this information was entirely new to me, shocking even, he continued. “ Hemopaths are bound by their blood. When we swear a blood oath, we are bound by those words until death. It is the same affliction that claimed my daughter.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “Eydis is a Liminal. She is still alive.”
He continued to stare at Rhydian as he answered. “Eydis became a Liminal because she chose to break her oath to me to take on the collar of another. The Cut was her punishment for breaking it. Now it is his.”
Rhydian whimpered, drawing my eyes from Kosha. His brow creased as though he were having a nightmare. His grandfather reached for the bowl of water on the bedside table.
“What she did was honourable, why would she be punished for that?” I asked, watching as Kosha wrung out the cloth.
He placed it on Rhydian’s head, his whimpers seeming to quiet at the soothing cold. “Eydis made an oath to take on Filora’s burden. She swore in blood to claim the collar as her own. Collarless passengers before taking the Runner’s oath are permitted to fight one another for battle-earned collars you see. A loophole very few but Eydis would have known about.”
“That still doesn’t answer my question, Kosha.”
He looked up at me, his deep blue eyes sharp. “One oath sworn in blood does not circumvent another’s fulfilment. Unless the second hinders the pursuit of the first. That is the only way a Hemopath can suffer The Cut. Rhydian would not be in this state without having made an oath that breaks with another.”
A knot began to form in my stomach. “Can he be healed?”
“Only if the first oath is fulfilled.” Kosha removed the cloth and leaned over to press his lips to Rhydian’s head once more. “And the only oath I know of is the one he made to me as boy. The same oath his mother made.”
To kill a family member to protect the passengers.
“But you’re his wife. Perhaps you know of another.” Kosha then stood and walked across the room, his cane clacking like the ticking of a clock.
“Will he die?”
Kosha halted, frozen on the threshold by my question. He left without responding. His answer was in his silence.
Rhydian whimpered again, the sound twisting a knot in my heart. My body was being crushed under a mountain. Someone had ripped open my chest with a dull blade and was squeezing my heart in their bare hands.
I reached out a shaking hand and found Rhydian cold to the touch, not even my lips could draw warmth from him. Sweat drenched his brow. It saturated the fabric of his pillow.
Kosha’s words darkened the room, taunting me as I beheld the man loved.
Of course, I knew of another oath. Rhydian had made it to me in this very room. To love me. To protect me. To never let me go. But how could that oath break with the oath he had with his grandfather?
But the answer wasn’t in the question. It was in the why. Why had Rhydian made the oath to me?
The bet. Because until he had declared himself to me, I still believed he intended to sell me as a Thrall.
Rhydian had said “The deal was to deliver you by Marian.” A deal was just as binding as an oath. And Rhydian had made a promise to hand me over to the Naven buyer. And in swearing his oath to me, that deal was as good as broken.
Anger roiled beneath my skin.
How dare he make that decision alone? Did he not think about the consequences of what making an oath to me would do?
I stared down at his beautiful face, the way the pain had etched itself into his features like sculptor-carved stone.
“You should have never made that decision without telling me first. If you die on me Rhydian Kanyk, I will never forgive you,” I angrily brushed at the tears hitting my cheek.
“I would destroy the pillars of the world and let the God Sphere crash to the earth before I let Veliah take you from me. Do you understand me? You Die, I die. That is my oath.”
Anguish wracked at my lungs, clawed at my throat with every rattling breath Rhydian took.
“Veliah cannot take you from me. I will not let her.”
The voice in my head I’d been suppressing, the T'eiryash who innately knew the Gods’ Tongue that had cursed my entire species to the fringes of Devo society, I begged her to send me the gaakriikta that would save Rhydian.
And the spells did come. Low and guttural, the sounds so melodic to my ears that they felt as natural as breathing. But no Gods’ Tongue I spoke did a thing.
I could not banish or compel The Cut away. Nor could I summon it into my own body. I could not even shield him from the effects of his oaths. No matter what I tried, Rhydian would not mend. The cuts would not heal.
Another spell, half scream half curse erupted from my throat shredding the last piece of my composure. It shattered every piece of glass in the room.
My head snapped up at the scent of freshly strewn blood.
Kodee stood in the doorway, a glass vial shattered in his now bleeding hand.
My body quaked in anger.
Of course you hurt someone else.
I excused myself from the room, unable to watch as the Organic not only tended to Rhydian but to the injury I had inflicted upon him too, the scent of the medicinal herbs bitterly aromatising the air in the hallway.
My poisoned words soon had Kris and Taren rushing down the corridor, where they found me inconsolable on the floor.
They tried to comfort me as friends do, to give me words that they thought might ease the pain I felt. But they were Kanahari. They spoke of Eldertides and spirits, of fate and purpose as if those things meant anything to me when the man I loved was dying and I couldn’t do a godsdamned thing to save him.
When they realised they were doing more damage than good they left, promising to return soon with food should I feel so inclined to eat.
Only when Kodee had departed did I find the strength to enter the room again. Rhydian’s fever had begun to dissipate after receiving the helum root. The yellow plant was highly toxic to humans, but as Kosha had said, it did not kill Rhydian, it merely took down his fever. After topically applying the toam thistle to his wounds, the leaves a rather good coagulant, Rhydian was finally starting to stir.
He was only conscious long enough to sip some water. Never quite so awake that we could have a conversation about how furious I was with him. Even when Tira made a quick visit to check up on me, he was barely conscious. Frey escorted her back out of the room when the sight of Rhydian’s body had caused her to burst out crying.
When he finally fell back asleep, his fever gone, at least for now, I distracted myself with the other reason I’d come to Gerhold Hall.
I thought I was going to have to search his library one book at a time, but when I approached his desk I found hundreds of notes and books strewn open across his desk. Everything from Gods’ Tongue to the history of the Imaris line. In all likelihood, Rhydian had been searching these himself before he’d fallen ill.
One hour passed, and I’d gone through all the documents Rhydian had drawn up for the village. Another hour passed and I still had not found anything of value.
I could tell someone who the progenitors of the three Imaris Hemopath Bloodlines were by name and date of birth, the exact ingredients used to stave off at least four types of Toxicant Viper poison, and two plant varieties used to mask their scents.
I knew that settlement of Gerhold had started a few years ago based on all the village plans, but that it had halted eight months ago during New Bloom when they had learned they couldn’t get the code from the factory. Then settlement had started up again a few months ago, right around the time Rhydian learned of my T'eiryash status. But there was not a single piece of information on bio-organics and a link to Gods’ Tongue.
To make matters worse, I finally learned of the origin of the train. Rhydian's ancestors kept journals, most entries were too depressing to read, and he seemed to have already designated them as useless to our search, judging by the notes scrawled in his hand on the front pages.
no code. no bio-organic mentions
But in the first journal written by Agiron Imaris himself, one entry had been circled countless times. Not because Rhydian found it useful, but because of a painful truth it revealed.
The Kensillan Territory Rail was once known as the Royal Residential Train. A touring palace used by the Imaris royal family to travel the country, ensuring they were never far from their people. A home to hundreds of blessed and humans, that the gods turned into a prison.
I searched the rest of Agiron's journal for mentions of the collars or the code that may have been missed but only found myself growing sick as the entries repeatedly mentioned his daughter's twenty-fifth birthday. Until finally the entries stopped.
It was early afternoon when I could finally bring myself to search Rhydian’s desk, having exhausted all other options. The first drawer contained papers, designs for the Lycoan runes on his Sul. In the second were nothing but a few empty vials. However, upon opening the third drawer my body reacted violently, rushing away and colliding with the wall as a strangled cry pressed between my lips.
With a shaking hand, I reached inside and pulled out the sketch. Black charcoal on parchment. Rhydian had managed to capture the likeness so perfectly, right down to the expression in his eyes. I half expected the man to open his mouth to speak to me.
I hadn’t realised Rhydian had seen my spectral in the fight pit long enough to draw him from memory.
Rushed footsteps entered the room, my name cried out in fear. Kris had heard me scream. “Over here,” I said, waving my hand in the air to indicate my position on the floor behind the desk. She rushed over to help me to my feet.
“That’s a good likeness,” she said, noticing the sketch in my hand.
I placed it down on the table in hesitation as she helped me to my feet. “You know this man?”
She nodded. “That’s the man Rhydian almost sold me to. Your buyer. The one that wanted a white-haired Brute who could only be found in Keltjar. He wasn’t pleased when he saw me.” She added that last part almost as an afterthought.
Kris didn’t notice the way in which my body reacted to this news, too focused on the tray of food she had brought me. She didn’t notice the way my body began to sweat, or the sudden changes in scent I had to keep concealing.
And when she left the room, she missed the way my legs lost all strength and I collapsed onto the floor unable to contain my devastation. Sobs so violent wracked at my throat that I had to cover my mouth for fear of being heard.
Rhydian knew. Ever since Lantern Town and the fight pit. Be they Human, Tainted or God. God. Rhydian had known who wanted to procure me and he still made the oath.