Chapter Nineteen #3
She could’ve laughed. Saros would sooner pay to never see her again.
Their entourage left them to their dank, oppressive little cell.
Ione pressed herself into a corner, the stone wall shimmering with condensation.
One guard remained posted on the other side of the door, his head blocking what little light the barred window allowed in.
River paced like a wounded animal, his mood teetering between rage and hopelessness, half-baked plans forming and dissipating between.
“Can’t you – ” He motioned up at the door, like that meant anything. He huffed and lowered his voice. “Break the lock? With ice?”
Even thinking of it exhausted her. Another failure. Ione buried her face in her hands, her mind spiralling through every little thing she should’ve done differently.
River cursed and knelt before her. “Wake up, Ione. Do you really want to wait here until they figure out Saros isn’t going to pay for us?” He raked his wet curls back. “Just – just summon me an ice blade.”
Not having the strength to argue, Ione held up a hand; she frowned, an unpleasant heat droning through her limbs, her bones. She breathed, concentrating hard – was this fatigue, was she sick? – until a sharp pain cracked through her skull. Ione cursed, her hand flying to her forehead.
River reached for her, and she tried again, indignant, only for the pain to strike once more. What little water she’d summoned dripped uselessly to the ground.
When she’d blinked the stars from her eyes, River had run up to the guard, was trying, failing, to convince him that Soliz’s extremely lucrative hostage was in need of help.
It was pointless. The heaviness in this cell, the lethargy, it wasn’t just fatigue and grief blanketing her: it was a ward, silencing her magic. And the longer they were in here, the less she’d be able to do.
Just one blade. Just one.
River stalked up to her, the vibration of each of his footsteps setting Ione’s blood aflame. Then his hands were on her shoulders, his voice, far-away, in her ear, “Stop, Ione – ”
Ward work is dangerous, Kai had taught her. The most intricate can kill.
Just one blade. She imagined driving it into Rigel’s neck.
A hand wrapped around her wrist and pulled. Ice sparked and air flooded into Ione’s lungs; her back hit the wall and she shook so violently she thought she might vomit. A flash of pink caught her eye and she gazed, bewildered, at her own blistered, frostnipped hands.
River circled an arm around her shoulders, drawing her to him, safe, warm. “It’s all right,” he whispered. “Kai will be here soon.” A pause, darkening. “Any fucking time now.” Sighing, he guided her head to rest on his shoulder, his arm like a blanket around her. “Get some sleep.”
Kai would destroy this place, she thought, letting her eyelids close. A hint of vindictive delight warmed her.
For what they’d done to Lina, it was what Soliz deserved.
Singing.
Some deep, lilting melody reverberating through the stone. Shivering and sore, Ione sat up from River’s lap and flexed her swollen fingers.
The singing rose and fell, their lyrics just out of reach. Ione craned her neck towards the ceiling, the source. Beside her, River stirred, blinking at the room like he’d forgotten where they were; his face fell when the memory seemed to return to him.
He groaned and brought his forehead to his knees. “I was hoping Kai would’ve gallantly levelled the building by now,” he muttered.
“Unlucky,” Ione replied, still staring skyward. The song was in the gods’ tongue, she gathered, newly resentful that aside from a handful of phrases, she knew nothing of it.
River heard it now, too; he closed his eyes, his face set in concentration. “Glorify the dawn,” he murmured, thoughtful. “Hail the newborn sun.” He waved a hand and stood, stretching. “Some good-morning song. If Oseidos made us wake up at dawn to sing each day in, I’d quit.”
Ione mustered a hollow smile at that as River trudged up the stairs to the door, where the guard’s head still cast a black shadow through the barred window. The guard was chattier now, although just as accommodating as before, laughing when River asked if they could have some water to drink.
“Can’t you make your own?” he asked derisively.
Above them, the singing swelled until Ione could pick out some words. Welcome, she heard; Come, conquer the night.
“Who’re we welcoming?” River asked the guard; why, Ione didn’t know. Annoying their captor was a distinctly Kai move. “Or is this just a daily prayer?”
“Shut it.” The guard sighed, harassed. “It’s bad enough missing the ceremony to mind you two. At least let me listen to it, or the message we send to House Artem will come with a couple of your fingers.”
“What ceremony is it?”
It occurred to Ione that River was trying to goad him into opening the door. She groaned, vexed. They were exhausted and powerless. It made more sense to her just to wait for Kai, considering everything she’d done so far had only gotten them into worse trouble.
The guard grumbled. “Don’t you know? I assumed the Snake priests had to do something similar.” He called out to Ione: “How’d you move Menon, then? Rigel’s still pissed you outsmarted his golden boy.”
As though she would’ve given Menon up on purpose. “Pliers,” she said flatly. The guard laughed.
“Sky and bone,” River recited. “Fire and flesh. A bit more macabre than our prayers.”
“I’ve heard yours.” He yawned. “Beautiful moons and sparkling seas and blessed little fish. Yours are prayers for weaklings and poets; ours are for warriors.”
“Shame what happened to your best one,” Ione called, growing bored listening to them both.
“Castor was a volatile bastard,” the guard granted her. “I never did think it was a good idea for the priests to place so much hope on him, especially with Ms Runaway their only other…”
He trailed off, but not without a small, flustered scoff that let Ione know that he had misspoken.
Reborn the Light, the chorus sang. Rise the Sun.
Occupied, Rigel had said of Lina. Not dead. Not gone.
The hairs on the back of Ione’s neck stood on end. Rigel didn’t have Lina killed.
He was going to use her.
There were wards that required blood, and most hydromantic wards had a fire counterpart.
Ione stuffed down the elation that Lina was still alive and wracked her mind for the wards Kai had told her about.
A magma ward of some sort, a glacial ward’s equivalent: something huge and dangerous, something designed to obliterate her people, retribution for what Menon did to Castor, to Rigel’s plans.
Lina was alive. But if Sowelan’s priests were using her to weave a magma ward, then she may not be for much longer.
Ione couldn’t wait for Kai.
Her ears still on the guard, who was beginning to lose his patience with River, Ione slipped out of one of her boots.
The things she wore at Caelos were all second-hand, donated by the Tannos or other shrines.
In another life, she would’ve reviled her new clothes, rough-hewn and ill-fitting, but the thick woollen stockings she’d chosen might yet prove useful.
“Excuse me,” she called, creeping up the steps.
River watched, curious, as she advanced until she was beside him. The guard grunted an acknowledgement but didn’t even turn.
Ione stood on tiptoes before the barred window, her stocking in one hand. The guard’s head was inches away, just on the other side. “Do you have the key to this door?”
He chuckled. “D’you think I’m going to let you out because you asked nicely?”
“Oh, no one’s ever done anything because I asked nicely.
” She lunged, shooting her arms through the bars on either side of the guard’s head.
Her free hand caught the other end of the stocking and she pulled back through the ache of her frostnipped hands, the fabric tightening around his throat and forcing his head against the bars.
He emitted a furious gargle, his arms flailing – Ione ducked, and River ducked with her, in time to avoid a blast of flame through the bars. The acrid reek of singed wool tainted the air, but in no time the fire abated.
“Give me the key,” Ione shouted, all but hanging onto the stocking. Bright, needling pain shot through her fingers, the blisters bursting. “You don’t have long.”
There was a wheezing noise, a strangled curse. His hands batted at the bars, reaching futilely for them.
“With what Ione’s worth, they’ll let us out regardless after Caelos pays up,” River chimed in, grabbing hold of the stocking before it slid out of Ione’s grip. “Either way, we’re gone.”
“But if you throw us the key – ” Ione gritted her teeth, her gorge rising at the sounds he was making. “ – you get to live.”
Give in, she demanded silently. Please.
A thud, a metallic tinkling noise – and then River gasped and let go, letting Ione crash to her knees as he bolted down the stairs. Metal skated over the stone floor, and the guard slumped to the ground on the other side of the door.
“Bitch,” he wheezed between desperate breaths. “Get out, then, he’ll kill you – ”
River leapt back up the steps, unlocking and thrusting open the door. The guard fell backwards, still gasping for air, and tumbled three steps before River kicked him the rest of the way down. Ione watched, stunned, before River grabbed her wrist and hauled her with him through the doorway.
The door slammed. The lock clicked. River braced his hands against the door and breathed, shoulders hunched. “Fuck, Ione,” he rasped.
Fire sparked through the bars, fizzling harmlessly as the silencing ward took hold. The guard pounded his fist against the wall, cursing them, but by then Ione had recovered enough to locate her satchel and River’s cloak and rapier on the floor beside the dungeon.
“Let’s go,” she said, tossing his things to him and hurrying past him down the hall. She healed her bleeding hands and summoned an experimental slash of ice, already energised with the silencing ward no longer hanging over her – and infuriated, with Lina in danger just a floor above them.
River flew after her up a cramped spiral staircase. “We’re not leaving, are we?” he asked miserably.
“You can. They’re casting something, a ward, and they’re using Lina to do it.
” She kept close to the wall as she hurried on, her pulse thrumming in her ears with every step.
“An interrupted ward can be devastating.” She grinned up at him, equal parts exhilarated and terrified. “I’m going to devastate them.”
The chorus grew louder and louder. Not one guard or priest lingered in the labyrinthine halls, the confined passages, the pretty altar rooms painted in vibrant summer hues – they were among what sounded like hundreds of people, Ione surmised with a cold dread, who sang in greeting to their summon.
The prayer led them to the opulent foyer, dripping with gold accents and lanterns sparkling in the light of dawn trickling in through the windows; at one end laid the exit, doubtless tempting River beyond belief.
At the other end stood the enormous door carved with sunrays, reverberating with the song.
Ione leaned against it, cringing when it creaked; behind her, River sighed and joined. The door yielded, swinging open with a long, mournful groan. And Ione and River balked, paralysed by what awaited them beyond.
A circular altar room, wider and grander than any on Oseidos. A sea of priests and priestesses in robes of sunset colours clustered on all sides, their prayers beautiful and deafening, their attention focused on a winged statue at the head of the room painted in brilliant gold.
Not on the statue, Ione registered, nauseous: on the altar lying before it, bathed in sunlight shining in from a high window. A man stood behind it, arms raised to the heavens – Ione squinted, only able to make out black hair and gold robes.
Rigel.
And before him –
“Ione.” River’s voice caught. He touched her arm. “Ione, on the altar, she…”
Ione shook her head, her jaw clenched, her nails digging into her palms. She tore her hand back and shouldered through the sun priests, ignoring the questioning whispers rippling through the congregation.
None of them stopped her, and as she neared the head of the room, Rigel lowered his arms. On the altar, Lina laid on her back, her hands folded on her stomach, her body swathed in gauzy, pearlescent gold. Like this was a funeral, a vigil.
Ione would kill him. The chorus rose and swirled into a thundering crescendo and Ione broke into a sprint, an icy torrent rising on either side of her, needing to reach him before he finished his summon.
“Rigel,” Ione roared, and at that moment, a blast of heat knocked her to the tiled floor.
The song ended, and a cacophony of cheers and applause rang out through the vast room.
“Welcome back, quondam goddess,” came Rigel’s voice, deep and syrupy and unsettlingly gentle, as Ione pushed herself to stand. “I had intended to send you back to Caelos alive, but if you’re still so intent to see our new successor one last time, then you may be the first to test her.”
Movement in her periphery stopped Ione in her tracks. Her gaze fell to the body on the altar.
“Bear witness,” Rigel announced, smiling, “to the birth of a god.”
The world went quiet, save for River’s footsteps resounding on the echoing floor.
“Rise, Sowelan.”
River’s hands wrapped around her arms, wrenching her up, back.
And on the altar, Lina opened her eyes.