23. Caspyn
Chapter 23
Itraveled up the coast for days, watching as ferry after ferry pulled away from rickety and broken piers. I knew I needed to go to the queen, I had every intention of leaving and never coming back. But one step away from the familiar pier and I knew I needed to try, I needed to find a way back to the Qits, to explain to Jayse.
So, I followed the water as I made my way back to Turin, racing toward my fate even as I tried to find a way back to her. Back to the woman that I had lost, right when I had realized what she was to me.
Each pullers I passed heaved and grunted, the Qits already floating out to sea. I stood at each one, at the Qits, and the broken and empty piers that looked as though they had been abandoned for centuries and not simply hours.
The Qits had always been one large family, and word traveled quickly thanks to the colored lights that they used as communication in the dark hours of the night. Although, most of the transferred information probably came from the Wave Walkers. The Wave Walkers were the best source of communication between Qits, and with the boats they worked and traveled on, word could spread from Qit to Qit as fast as the waves they were named for.
Salt clung to my skin from days of walking beside the spray, my cloak sagged and stained from blood and silt as I stood on the sandy beach, watching yet another ferry drift into the waves. The ferryman stared as though he knew exactly who I was, and what I had done.
I locked my gaze with his, the groan that rumbled from my belly sounding so much like a growl that I could have sworn he heard with how he flinched.
In all my walking I had found little to eat besides the small fishes I caught in the wake, the slippery things trapped between my deft fingers before I cooked them with the flame of my magic. I had survived on less, yet somehow the gnawing pain in my stomach was loud and painful enough it was hard to think through the hunger.
Although, that was probably caused by how much I had been using my magic. The new magic, vio, was that of the soil and rock. It lived in the rocks and the dirt that was below my feet, all of those bits of Okivo rattling as though my magic was calling to it. The fissure I had made before had been the first manifestation of that power, that wild untamed eruption fueled by hate and fear. I wasn’t sure I could do that again, not that I tried. I stuck with moving pebbles over the ground and compacting sand into a path. Even the small things that I had done could make this magic even more powerful than that boiling flame that lived below my skin.
Fire burned, but soil and rock had a different way of destroying.
The power of fíra and now of vio. But what of time? That was not the magic of a Sypher as I had assumed, that was the Vynari magic as that King had called it. I had hunted for answers of that power for years, and now I knew someone who knew. Not just of time, but of this Syphers power. If I survived my destination to end the Queen, I would hunt him down: Vaelar. I would end him, but not before I got answers.
For now, I let the power of vio that Theadore had given me throb through my veins as I stood on the strip of beach. The water lapped against the toes of my stained and scuffed boots, the salty surf drenching the edge of my cloak as it shuddered and flowed in the cold wind that roared off the ocean at this time of night. The wind that was so much a part of my home. Or what was my home.
Rage and hatred continued to boil through me as it had for days, the tendrils of that heavy power wrapping around my skin as my fingers fluttered at my side. The sand below my feet danced and twisted alongside the movement as this new magic pulled at it, directed it into a spiral that moved faster as I spun my fingers.
Faster, faster.
Tiny specks of sand circled into a cyclone that grew smaller and smaller until it was nothing more than a pillar of a needle, a sharp mass that followed my fingers as I raised it, pointing that spinning tip at the now distant ferry, the ferryman nothing but a speck.
With a flick of my fingers, I sent the cyclone of sand toward him as though it was a knife with a point sharp enough to pierce him straight through.
Perhaps it would have if it hadn’t been swept away by the wind halfway through its journey, all those fine spinning particles of sand scattering into the breeze as though they were nothing but dust.
Still, it had made it farther than last time. I just needed more power, more control.
Something to work on.
“Hey oh!” The voice called behind me in that familiar lilt, the sound of stomping feet following right behind. All of my magic was still rushing over my skin as I turned, fingers flicking as more sand rose into the air.
The man who was trudging his way through the beach grass to meet me barely noticed, he simply looked up, his sun-weathered features crinkling together.
“Ya lookin’ fer a fare, you jus’ mist it. They pullin’ em all in. We came from up nearin’ Fyrnd o’ the water. All pult in, they are.” He was still smiling, his hands gesturing wildly as he spoke.
“I came down from ma Qit, Waide o’ the water,” I responded, pulling my voice into the Wave Walker slang. “They be pullin’ in there too.”
He nodded, rubbing his beard as he stared. I was well aware I wasn’t dressed as I usually was, or how they would usually see a walker dress. He wore soft cotton breeches and a shirt that was coated with salt and bleached from the sun. I was clad in heavy leathers and boots to my thigh, my knives and pouches strapped over waist and chest and disclosed behind my heavy cloak. I was dressed for travel and battle, not for working the waters.
It was clear that though I may speak like him, I was not like him. At least I had cleaned most of the blood and dirt off last night after yet another ferry had pulled in before I could reach them.
“Do ya be knowin’ why?” he asked, still looking me up and down. I resisted the urge to look, I hadn’t exactly been prepared for this man to make an appearance and for all I knew my knives, or worse, were on full display.
I shook my head, taking the opportunity to glance at what he was staring at. Sure enough, a blade glinted there. I pulled my cloak around the sharp curve of the dagger as I spoke, well aware the sea water hadn’t cleaned the blade as well as I would have hoped.
“I don’,” I shook my head more fervently.
“Hmmm,” he stopped looking at where my blade had been, his lips pulled taught beneath the beard as he tried to decide if I was trustworthy.
“Well, we be havin’ a fire up near ta road. We has some chick’n and a bit of tates some’un snatched near’in a farm back a’ways. You wel’com to it.” It looked as though I passed the test, although he gave me yet another look, his eyes dragging over every inch of me before he turned, stomping his way back through the beach grass.
“I be thank’in ya,” I answered, following behind even as I hid and resecured blades and anything else I had on me. It was then that I saw what he really had been staring at. It wasn’t the blades, it was the blood stains near the hem of my cloak, the fabric was sopping wet from standing in the waves, which had also released some of the bright red and deep indigo tendrils that dripped down and stained the sand.
Well, if he decided I was trustworthy after seeing that, it could either mean that he had seen worse, or that he assumed he and whoever else he was traveling with could take me.
I could only hope it was the former. There was enough time to pull in the Qits, which meant there was enough time to put a price on my head. I kept my magic pulled tight against my skin as I stomped my way through the last of the beach grass before we reached the small camp he and a few others had made; two other Wave Walkers were approaching from the other side.
“Foun’ him near’in the higher pier!” My companion yelled to the other, gesturing to me as they all turned.
“This one was near’in da ferry from da road.” The other one said as he and his companion approached, everyone turning and nodding to the two of us.
There were five of them in total, six with the other newcomer. Seven with me. Luckily, they all seemed tired and worn from days of travel, their clothes were wet in places as if they too had stood in the surf and watched their connection to their homes fade into the distance.
Names were exchanged as the fire was stoked; potatoes thrown in the dirt near the flames as someone put a pot of sea water nearby to boil. A bloody bag set on the side of the pit was only big enough for a small chicken, not enough for this many men, but I was sure we had all lived off less.
The way it sat there, the blood oozing through the fabric, it brought back way too many memories of the heads I had plucked from the Fae. Of all the blood that has seeped from them.
Of the blood that had seeped from Theadore.
I had been working to find my way back to Jayse, to explain, but sitting there, watching that blood ooze over sand was bringing it all back.
Except he wasn’t a Fae. He didn’t bleed with that pungent purple blood of the Fae. If he was Fae, then that would mean I was part Fae, which was impossible. I was a Catalyst, I held the power of a Sypher, but certainly not a Fae.
Because my great grandfather was not a Fae. He had said as much.
I had felt that buzzing pull with him, but the pull of his magic that I had felt from him was wrong, as was the magic that now throbbed through my veins. He had no point in his ears, his hair was brown and shorn short… but yet…
“I am... but not.”
It still didn’t make sense. Yet, I sat there, his magic buzzing through me. Magic that he has used without a Catalyst, which could only mean that he was Fae.
Fae magic.
I sat up straighter as someone laughed from where they were sitting on the other side of the fire, their conversation nothing but noise as my own thoughts ran through realities that shouldn't be.
If there was Fae blood in my line that meant that there was Fae blood in me. In Lily. But I hadn’t felt that, not in Amari, not in Lily. We were Catalyst and Requisite, the descendants of Lynar. We were not Fae. Requisites and Catalysts didn’t connect to the Fae beyond them stealing and splitting the power centuries before.
“What say ye, Jack?” Someone called, pulling my focus from my dirt covered palms as they used the name I had given them. It was the name I had always given the Wave Walkers, this time, however, it hit deeper than it ever had before.
The look on my face must have made it clear I hadn’t been paying attention, because they all laughed.
“Da ferry’s being pulled in,” the man who had found me by the beach, Lant, said as he used a long stick to poke both fire and potatoes, sending a shower of embers into the quickly darkening sky. “You said you came from Waide way?”
I nodded, “Ya, I saw ta old man cut ta line too, wen they be pullin’ it in.”
They all exchanged a look, the exchange sending the heavy thrum of the vio magic boiling underneath my skin.
“Isn’ that where you say it hap’n, Tif?” Lant asked, turning to the other man who had been brought up by the road. He sat in the sand near the fire, his hands pressed to warm them as the night crept in and the air grew frigid. As the sun continued to set the lines on his face deepened in the shadows of the flickering light of the fire. They all did, which only made what he said next that much more ominous.
I really should have been paying attention.
“Ay,” Tif, nodded once, still staring at the flames. “Word came in tha’ dere was a man down dere, he kilt a lad, took his skin straight off and bathe in tha’ blood.”
They all gasped and grumbled at the announcement, and for once I was with them, my sound of disgust real even as something dark bubbled right alongside that heavy thrum of power. Not only had that never happened, but I had never in all my years of killing done anything so cruel. Even if I had purposefully killed children, which I hadn’t. Besides Jack I had never killed a child, I never would… There was already too much blood on my hands with Lilly. With Jack.
“Is worst than that, I heard,” Tif continued, leaning closer to the flames so that it only made the shadows worse. “He be’in the someone we be’in heard abou’, that Wanderer. He kills fer sport and pay and now he is huntin’ on da Qits.”
“You mean da one with them eyes, da blue uns?” One of the other men looked absolutely terrified as he looked between each of us, clearly checking our eyes. I tried to look away, but only looked right into the eyes of the Walker next to me, who was also frantically checking eyes, his hand on a satchel that I was sure carried fishing tools that could easily double as weapons.
He, however, looked right into my eyes and then away, as if he didn’t see my dual shaded blues at all.
Except, perhaps he hadn’t. I had kept that new magic, that heavy vio magic, pulled up since I had been approached on the beach. The dangerous thick waves of the magic rumbled against my skin in preparation for something to turn. Just as the heat of my fire and the ice of my time magic changed my eyes color, so clearly had this. But to what?
I stared from man to man as the others were doing, tensed to see my eyes reflected back to me in the glossy horror of those around me. There was nothing but fear and a good mix of disgust from them all.
“Well, at lees nun of us seems ta be da merderin’ type.” I broke the silence with an ominous laugh that only a few joined in on. At least it was enough to take any future blame off me. Not that their story was anywhere near correct, but how could it be? I was sure that was what everything had looked like to Jayse.
Jayse.
Something in my chest cracked and severed at the thought of her name, of what had happened. I pushed the emotions back into that black pit.
“Well, I hope dey caught da man,” Lant said, more embers flying into the air as he stoked the fire. “Qit justice be quick.”
“May da waves give punishment.” They all said together, the call of justice on the Qits was hard and firm. There was rarely any council or court, only death and drowning.
In a way Tayln had saved me from that.
Not that I would have let them. I would have burned the Qit before it came to that.
“Wut we be doin’ without da work den?” Someone else asked, their voice quiet over the crackle of flames.
“I be waitin’. Ferries be back soon, I wager.” Most everyone nodded in agreement on the older man’s proclamation. I didn’t joined them, I already knew where I was headed.
“I might be goin’ to dat weddin’,” I kept my voice low, laying the accent on thickly. “Tis time for a pilgrimage an den I cud see that princess.”
A few of them had looked as though I had lost it, a few others nodding as though they were in agreement, even if the looks that they gave me also said that my mind might be addled. Wave Walkers rarely left the Qits and the beaches, even the temple of the goddess was too far inland for them. What I was suggesting was close to blasphemy to their kind.
“Might be good, see tha princess befo’ she be gone,” one of the Wave Walkers said and something inside of me tightened.
I still didn’t know what I was missing in regards to the princess, but I was starting to think that didn’t matter. I knew she wouldn’t finish the Queen anyway, so if it had to be me alone then I would get it done.
The talking had shifted to the princess, all of the rage still boiling through me as I turned to join in, more sparks flying into the air as someone stoked the fire.
“I bet that be why the movin’ up da wedding, so tha’ li’l girl can be dere,” someone said, and I nodded in agreement with the rest of them.
“I seen a caravan up Seetin way,” Tif said, his voice low, Lant shoving the chicken in the now boiling water. “Haps you could meet up wit dem.”
“Haps,” I nodded, still looking at him. I had no reason to tell him I would rather travel alone. Wave Walkers did nothing alone and even wanting to go to the wedding was too much of an oddity. Besides, I didn’t like the way that man near the edge was looking at me, like he knew what I was already.
“Do ya know if’n they be the Lighters?” I asked, trying to pull the conversation, and that man’s focus.
I leaned in close, expecting the response to the question, sure enough a few of them men chuckled. Wave Walkers didn’t tend to be the religious types. Not that any were religious enough to travel with the Lighters.
The Lighters were the most devoted of the followers of the sister. In fact, only the priestesses that live at the Temple of the Sister were more devout. But seeing as most of the Lighters, or the Children of Light as they called themselves, were the children and descendants of the priestesses and many of the virgins in their ranks would spend their years giving service and worship at the Temple, it made sense.
The Children of Light were nomads, traveling from city to town to share the word of the Goddess and the sister. It was a religion that most in Okivo followed, but the Lighters demanded precision in their adherence. Every rule was followed, all the way down to the laying of brides and blessing of babes. Most avoided them, if only because they had developed a reputation for entrapping men that come across them. New seed is always valuable in a nomadic community.
“Why you be wanton’ to go to weddin’ anyhow?” That man near the edge of the fire asked, his voice twisting oddly. I stiffened, fighting the urge to reach for my knives and them all.
“To see the Queen.” I answered, all of their eyes going wide. Damn. I had let the accent slip, but the more looks of horror stared back at me I realized that wasn’t it at all.
My magic had shifted from heaviness to heat.
“Da be a gud- Hey… Your eyes…” Tif stuttered from across the fire, his gaze as horrified and angry as the rest of them. All of that horror of before returned as they stared at the eyes that I was sure had returned to the dual shade of blue.
Well, if this wasn’t terrible timing.
“What about my eyes?” I asked, not even bothering with their way of talking now. “What color are they?”
“Blue,” Lant said. I didn’t miss the stutter, a trill sparking at the horror and panic that was seeping from him so strong I could taste it. Fear. I loved the fear. It pricked at my skin and pulled that dark and dangerous part of me right to the surface. My twisted grin spread as I brought up that heavy power until it was it alone that rumbled underneath my skin.
“How about now?”
“Br-brown,” Lant stuttered, he and a few others shifting away from me.
“Well, that answers that question,” I mused, my cloak uncoiling behind me as I stood, the men on either side shifting away. The one on my left, however, shrieked and moved back, but not away to escape me. He moved away to take aim.
I should have grabbed my blades.
The thought was only half formed when I heard the click of the harpoon gun and saw the long barbed weapon hurl through the short distance between us.
I attempted to step back, but he was too close. I wasn’t fast enough. I had no time saved and even the magic that was rumbling through me wasn’t enough to stop the sharp pain of flesh and bone being ripped apart as the harpoon went through me. I didn’t scream, not that I could with the blood that was flooding my mouth. The taste of it swelled, the agony exploding as the line of the harpoon was pulled back, that barbed cone ripping through me the other way.
Still, I didn’t scream. My vision blurred as my magic roared to life.
“I knew it be you,” that same man roared, grabbing his own weapon as he shot up from his perch. “We be makin’ you pay fer what you done to doze kids.”
He reached for his bag as though he would attack me, but I pulled out one of my blades, even though every inch of my body was screaming. The warmth of my own blood was a hot fountain down my legs, my already stained and worn trousers soaking it up. I didn’t dare touch the wound, I didn’t dare look at it, it would only give them more reason to claim victory. I stood, staring at each of them as they waited for me to fall to my knees, waiting for their victory to come. I would give them no such thing. My knees were buckling with the pain, my chest gasping at breath. But I stood, letting my magic course through me. If it had to be what held me up, so be it.
“I don’t see that happening.” Each word was a trial to say, my breath catching as I tried to speak through the blood that was gurgling up my throat in an attempt to drown me.
They all stared in horror as I held out my blade, the metal gleaming, the smudges of scarlet against the edge blending with the red that I was sure was covering me and making everything more horrifying.
I couldn’t help it; I smiled, sure that my teeth were red, the color looking more haunting against the fire that was casting everything in that flickering glow that I was so familiar with in the moments before I killed. I suppose this was no different.
“None of you will leave this place.” They didn’t believe me.
The darkness was screaming inside of me, the feeling mixing with the agony that was spreading through every inch of me. The smell of blood was everywhere, my blood still dripping from me as I took one agonizing step backward.
I shouldn't be standing, I shouldn't be able to walk, but I forced each movement, blades still held high as I pulled at all of that turmoil that I had spent my entire life shoving away. It wasn’t only the pain of the hole that had been ripped through me that rose to the surface. It was the rumbling agony from Jayse, and Jack, and most of all Lily. It was from losing everything again and again. Pain, agony, and loss all swirled together, coiling end over end like a blood soaked ribbon. A rope of despair, made of the fragments of a life meant only for death. The magic twisted alongside it like tendrils of thick mud, all of it blending and screaming before it ripped from me.
Each tendril scuttled across the ground, slithering through dirt and over rocks before I slammed it into the ground right underneath their fire, slicing through dirt.
The ground shook as I finally released that scream, the sound of my pain and anger rattling the world as rocks cracked and popped, the ground cleaving open beneath the men. It wasn’t that same gaping hole that I created before, this hole was precise, perfect. The ground split as though someone had slid a knife through to cut it, the fire and then the dirt falling away as the world swallowed whatever was in its path. The men screamed and tried to escape, but everything was sliding into the fissure, the men’s screams falling to nothing as the black pit that had opened up beneath them consumed them whole.
Something inside me was screaming to stop, to let them live. I had never done something quite so callous, but I didn’t care.
Not anymore.
Not when everything was so covered in blood.
I pushed that voice away, shoved it in that dark hole with all of that pain as I watched the last of them slide into the open maw of the ground.
Their screams were still echoing behind me as I sealed the ground together; the planes of dirt and mud closing as though it was nothing more than a mouth snapping shut. I released my hold on my magic, the growl of the world slowing to a low rumble and then to silence as I walked away into the night, the last scream of the last living man falling to nothing.
My body was roaring in agony, each step becoming more and more excruciating as the squelch of my own blood slid against my boots. I shouldn't be standing up, let alone walking, but I forced myself forward, knowing there were reeds that grew by the road that I could use to stitch myself back together and allow my body to heal. I had always healed faster than others, this would be like every other time.
This couldn’t be the end. I wouldn’t let this be the end.
My fingers slid against the warm blood that was trickling from the hole in my gut, the long slender harpoon having moved straight through. The long lines of the barbs that were usually used to hook the fish were clearly visible against the leather of my tunic, the hole in the middle wide enough I was sure I could press my thumb into the wound.
That I could press a few fingers straight through.
So much bigger that I had thought.
I usually carried powder to stop the flow of blood, but even if I had anything on me it would not have been enough to stop this. I needed to reach those reeds. I needed to find a needle and thread. I needed to find Jayse; tell her I was sorry. Tell her that everything was wrong.
The sun was down, leaving only me and the stars as I trudged down the road, my blood soaked footsteps following me like a long cape. It would have been beautiful, these stars that reminded me so much of that night when I promised Jayse I would stop killing, that I would settle down with her. But that was as long ago as the night I watched Lily fade into another smothering abyss. All the darkness, sucking everything in my life away. It was all there was, a hollow void that took everything. It would make sense it would take me too.
But not yet, I still had a Queen to kill.
Cresting the hill, I caught sight of a lantern of a wagon swaying amongst the stars near the horizon. The spot of light bounced over the road, the yellow flame dragging through the ebony night and leaving streaks of yellow and gold behind. Just like the stars that were spinning overhead, all of that inky black turned into beautiful streaks of light. So much light, swirling everywhere, swirling around me. It swallowed the pitch until everything was flashing in pops of gold and silver.
“Beautiful.” I lifted my hand, reaching for all of that light, ready to ask it for help.
I didn’t even get a word out before all those spinning lights went sideways and the taste of dirt mixed with my own blood filled my mouth.
Then everything went black.