Chapter Ten #2
Bit by bit, Kai pushed himself up until he was sitting cross-legged.
He rubbed circles in his temples, his eyes falling shut.
“We should bring her to Saros,” he said gradually, still in the gods’ tongue.
“But then…” Cursing, he looked to River.
“How much d’you think Ineen’ll hate me if I get this one killed? ”
Lina felt the blood drain from her face, imagining public drownings, ice blades skewering her, hundreds of eyes watching, jeering. She fought the urge to jump up, to say, frantic, She’ll despise you, of course! Menon above, you can’t give me to the Archpriest!
“A lot, probably?” Kai prompted.
Immeasurably!
Crossing his arms, River leaned against the wall, looking sour. “Oh, yes,” he deadpanned. “We can’t have her hating you.”
Lina felt herself nodding and stopped. Yes! You don’t want that, do you?
Finally Kai let his hands fall and looked imploringly to Lina. “Give me a reason,” he said in the common tongue, “You want to live? Convince me.”
Lina’s heart thumped, caught in her throat. “I – I didn’t – I didn’t want your brother to kill you, so I – ”
He waved a hand. “I don’t give a shit about what you’ve already done. What can you offer me now?”
Lina stared, the weight of his words sinking in. “Information.”
Kai nodded, but River released a harried breath. “We can’t expect her information to be any good,” he hissed. “She’ll say anything to get herself out of this.”
Kai smiled, unfazed. “And she’s alone here, surrounded by countless spellcasters who would gladly strike her down if she gave herself away.” He held up a hand, which shockingly stopped River from interrupting. “And one warden who knows a couple of tricks to keep her docile.”
Lina held his gaze, wringing her hands together so he couldn’t see how they shook. “I’ll live, then,” she whispered. “Cast a ward, silence my magic, anything – but I’ll live in peace.”
“And with your secret kept.” His smile turned mean, flinty. “So long as you have something interesting for me.”
Dread skittered across her skin. There was one thing she could give, one thing she’d never have the chance to unless she was exposed. She hoped it was enough.
She hoped she wouldn’t regret it later.
“Then let me tell you,” she said, summoning Ione’s holy countenance, her ice-cold flame. “about Castor and Rigel.”
Lina whisked through the altarhouse, her reclaimed freedom giving her the sensation of flight.
It took two days for the warden to recover enough to make good on his threat; two excruciating days of being watched by an increasingly frazzled River, who wouldn’t let Lina out of his sight but who also was suddenly concerned for Kai’s wellbeing.
“You can’t sleep after a concussion or you’ll die,” he insisted, shaking Kai awake every time he nodded off. “And if you die on my watch, I’ll be screwed.”
“That,” Kai practically whined, “is a myth.”
“Mikau said rest,” Lina added from the armchair, bored. The books at her disposal in this cramped room (infamously, The Kraken’s Consort, which River begged her to stop reading aloud) only kept her busy for so long.
Only after River woke Kai up the fourth or fifth time, prompting Kai to threaten to kill him and his entire family, did River finally leave Kai alone to his fitful bouts of sleep. And focus his attention on Lina, who apparently might torch the entire island.
She tried to admire River’s dedication, knowing he was playing jailor because he wanted Ione kept safe from this monstrous spawn of Sowelan.
She tried to understand his feelings of powerlessness, of being a mundane man surrounded by spellcasters.
She tried a lot of things, but by the end of two days of being treated like she might spontaneously combust, she was fit to slap him.
She was still a little awestruck that they released her, that they allowed her to return, unmonitored, to the life she had grown so accustomed to.
She nodded at a guard she recognised as she passed into the altarhouse’s outer halls, breathing deep the late summer breeze streaming in through the opened walkways on the way to Ione’s flat.
A delight after a coffin room reeking of old smoke.
Her heart fluttered with each step, an uncomfortable hum of excitement and anxiety. Lina hesitated before a full moon mirror, checking, fluffing out her hair and her skirts and feeling stupid for it. She smiled, forcing herself to meet her own gaze.
Alive. She was alive, could greet another dawn, feel the sun on her face, see her friends again.
See Ione.
Pathetic, she could hear Castor saying back to her. It was true. Our family serves no one but Sowelan.
She shivered. While she hadn’t revealed her relation to Castor, talking about him, reliving it all, was like resurrecting an evil spirit. Lina spun on her heels and hurried down the hall. Away from her eyes – his eyes – on her in the mirror.
“A deal’s a deal,” Kai had said after everything. He sat on his bed, elbows on his knees and one eye still shaded with bruising; behind him, River stood guard. “You can live.”
“How magnanimous.” After two days of listening to Kai and River snipe at one another, her fear of them had tipped towards apathy.
Without ceremony, he unsheathed his knife and pricked his forefinger. “Drink.” He thrust his finger, the bead of blood glistening like a tiny ruby, inches from her mouth. When Lina only grimaced at him, he sighed, grabbed her hand, and wiped the blood on the back of it.
“It’s a simplified binding ward,” he explained. “What I wove around Nalu to shut him up. And if you wanna go back to kissing Ione’s ass, you’ll drink that blood before it gets cold.”
He waited until, nauseated, Lina licked the blood from the back of her hand. She knew enough about wards to guess what he had in mind, and if it would free her from this room, she would have done anything.
Kai lifted his forefinger, still shiny with blood, and drew an intricate pattern in the air between them. “This’ll only allow for one command,” he went on, his jaw set with concentration. “But unlike a full binding ward, it’ll last until I dispel it.”
“Why not cast the full ward?” Lina challenged. “Then you could have complete control of me.”
“And no more worrying,” River mused.
“Meh,” Kai actually said. Finished, he drew a line of blood across her throat, making her skin prickle with the sea-salt burn of magic.
“I haven’t the time nor the patience to be plying you with blood every other day.
The complete ward’s only fun while it lasts; I once got Nalu good with it, made him sing and dance in front of his crew.
” He whistled. “He made me regret that.”
He knelt, his eyes darkening as they bored into her.
“I think it would serve me in the long run to keep you around. Your command is this: from this moment you are not to harm or bring about harm to anyone on this island.” He paused, one hand playing with his ear, the recent dent in it. “Unless in self-defence,” he finished.
“That’s an unnecessary loophole,” River snapped. It was so good to know he was on Lina’s side.
Kai stood, disregarding that. “Easy enough, right?” he asked, and in response, Lina’s throat tightened.
Not her throat – something around her throat.
“And if you disobey,” Kai said amiably, pointing, “those wardstrings around your neck will strangle you.”
That was hours ago, and yet Lina had not grown used to the sensation around her neck. She tested it, delved her finger beneath one of the strings. It was as thin as fishing line, cool to the touch – until she pulled.
A bitter chill shot up her arm. A warning. Scowling, Lina let the wardstring go.
Around a corner ahead, a door creaked, shattering the strange quiet of the altarhouse.
A glimmer of silver streaked through the crossway – Ione, dressed for an outing, her gauzy pearl-blue dress sweeping behind her.
Her plaited hair swung with each stride, her expression lofty and cool, lips pursed, the face she wore when she was on a mission.
Cynthia followed close behind, a stoic shadow in the face of Ione’s bright star.
Lina hung back, watched her a moment. Dug her fingers into the bruise of her own futile feelings. You are an attendant. You are furniture. You are living on borrowed time.
A dog excited to see its master, Castor’s voice mocked her. Archpriest Rigel materialised next, the memory of his hand squeezing her shoulder: You forget who you belong to.
Lina brushed her arms, repulsion rippling through her.
Cynthia hesitated at the edge of the crossway, giving the hall a perfunctory scan. Her eyes widened a fraction when she glimpsed Lina; she reached and all but yanked Ione to a halt.
“What was that for?” Ione complained, hands on her hips. “You know I’m in a hurry. You’re terribly rough sometimes.”
Cynthia murmured something and Ione jolted, pivoting so abruptly her plait almost hit Cynthia in the face. She squinted, her serious expression cracking into a wide, brilliant smile.
“There you are,” Ione called, gathering up her dress and bounding down the hall.
Lina’s heart lurched. She couldn’t help it. There was such a sweet, strange pleasure in it, an unwarranted feeling of homecoming. That just being here could make someone smile so prettily.
“So you are alive!” Ione cried, nearly barrelling into her. She held Lina at arm’s length and made a show of inspecting her. “Mikau told us you’ve been ill. Given that you were feeling poorly the other day, I believed them at first.”
Cynthia slinked after her, her expression penetrating. “But,” she added, coaxing, “then we heard that River and the warden came down with the same illness, and very conveniently after you and River were seen dragging the warden half-conscious into his room.”
Lina suppressed a sigh. She’d told Kai the illness story was stupid; he’d said he’d rather people thought he was felled by a stomach bug over nearly losing a fight with Nalu.