52. RIEKA
52
RIEKA
T he Gardens were the closest thing to a forest on the train. Overgrown and wild, Sal had managed to keep the grove in a state of controlled chaos, so the trees never grew any faster than could be maintained, and never any higher to cause damage. It was a place Rhydian and I had frequented quite often when he first started to claim what was between my legs.
So, when Rhydian took me there after morning training the day after our return from Gerhold Hall, I had expected him to take me into the grove once more.
But his choice of location was much more public. He led me to the fountain at the centre of the grove, to the bench with the gold statue in clear view of anyone who walked by. Rhydian took the seat beside it.
Taking his lead I climbed onto his lap, his hands wrapping around my waist as I explored his mouth with my tongue, relishing in the sweetness of him.
“If you wanted us to have sex in public,” my inner voice said breathlessly. “We could have just stayed in the Fight Hall.”
Rhydian coughed into the kiss, forcing me to pull away. He had the most amused expression. “Rieka. I brought you here to introduce you to my mother.”
I sat back in his lap, studying his face. He was serious. But Rhydian’s mother was dead, wasn’t she? Then I realised where we were sitting.
The gold glistened under the morning sun, a ray of light cast down and across the pages of the book in the statue’s hand.
I jumped from Rhydian’s lap and wiped my lips with the back of my hand as he adjusted himself in his pants.
My gaze flittered between him and the woman. The woman who upon closer inspection looked remarkably like the sketches in Lily’s room.
“Rieka. This is Eydis Kanyk. My mother.”
I was going to tell him off for playing such a cruel joke. But the sincerity on his face gave me pause. “Your mother. The statue?” I’ll admit, in that moment, I thought he’d gone mad.
Rhydian leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees, his voice melancholic. “She’s not a statue.”
I opened my mouth to speak and then I heard it. The beat of a heart. Inside the statue.
“She’s a Liminal!” I said in disbelief, my curiosity drawing me closer as Rhydian fixed his gaze on me.
My mother used to tell me stories about Liminals. How the gods would punish those that had offended them and turn them to stone. The mythical Illen Fields of Prea were said to be filled with the souls of those who’d angered the gods, the location lost since the Gods Fall. I’d even heard rumours on the roads to The Hetra, amongst the campfires of Imperial Guard regiments on border patrols that it was the favoured punishment of the Gods Hold. But I’d never seen one before.
Eydis sat as if she were relaxing on the bench. Her left arm was draped along the back of the bench to support her as she read an unknown book, the pages cast in the same gold as she.
Rhydian was right when he said she wasn’t a statue. It was as though someone had taken her and painted her with gold leaf. The details of her were so fine I could differentiate every pore, every eyelash, every strand of hair that was braided over her shoulder. Even the fabric of her clothes was unlike any gold statue I’d ever seen. Only her eyes appeared statuesque. They were solid gold.
My "husband" didn’t stop me when I moved to touch her. Her right hand rested on her leg as if she had been holding someone’s hand right before.
She was cold to the touch.
I withdrew my hand and found Rhydian still staring at me. With hurried steps, I sat beside him and grasped his hands in mine. “Who did it, why did they do it? Lily told me she died because of a flu that spread through the train.”
He released a breath slowly, as if he’d been holding it for some time. “The flu didn’t take her, another illness did. She’d suffered from it for a while. Ever since she killed the assassin for Filora. She survived Lily’s birth but she knew she didn’t have long left to live. But stubbornness is an Imaris character trait, and she didn’t want to leave.”
I could feel the ache in Rhydian’s chest as if it were my own. His taint could hide and shield a lot, but it couldn’t hide his pain. “She chose this,” I said at the realisation.
His thumb rubbed circles on my hand, tracing the lines of my palm. “She said she wanted to watch over us, Lily and I, and she wasn’t ready to die. So she asked Jordry to transfigure her.”
Rhydian and Jordry were the same age, which meant Jordry was ten when he turned Eydis into a Liminal.
“But this.” I gently ran my other hand through hers where it rested on the bench. “How is this better?” Eydis must have chosen this position for them, to enable her children to hold their mother’s hand should they want to.
Rhydian’s hand stopped its motions, his voice barely above a whisper. “She’s still alive.”
There was next to nothing on Liminals in the Celestial Library. One was more likely to find them as a mention in an appendix than find a book on them. The only information was common knowledge, and it was limited.
Liminals only occur when an Alchemist transmutes a living organism into their element.
They were alive. Their regular heartbeats were thousands of years of proof in that regard.
And lastly, the reason Rhydian’s face was wracked with sorrow. The process was irreversible. Not even the Alchemist who cast them could undo the change.
It was because of that fact no one even knew if Liminals were conscious.
Then realisation stuck. “You want me to see if she is still in there.”
Rhydian hadn’t shielded himself from me since Gerhold Hall, so though I knew it would be easier for him, he didn’t hide the spike in his pulse. But he doesn’t answer either. And I got the distinct scent of shame from him, as though the idea of asking me for help, using my blessing for himself was selfish.
I brought his hand to my lips in a quick reassuring kiss and then I stood and tried to speak with the literal uncrowned Queen of Kensilla.
I’d always been able to project my thoughts into another’s mind, and I’d gotten better at it over the years because of Tiny. Being afraid to speak Gods’ Tongue had allowed me to hone this skill instead which was how I learned to do what I’d done in the fight pit. I never knew how or why I had this trait. I didn’t know the man who had aided my parents in having me during Lesan, and since my mother’s blessing was not twisted the way mine was, I’d always assumed I’d taken after him. Most days I hated my blessing. But the way Rhydian was looking at me, as though I held the sun in my hands. Right now it had never felt more like a blessing.
Locating that place in the mind where thoughts dwelled was instinctual for me, I’d wandered the path so often that were I blindfolded I would still know it. But when I reached the place where her voice should be, I found only silence.
It was as if I were walking through the train. There were items strewn on bunks and clothes draped over chairs, and The Kitchen smelled like freshly baked bread, but every passage I walked through, every carriage I entered, I entered alone. It was a ghost train. If Eydis was in there, she stood behind a door I could not find.
“It was worth a try,” Rhydian said when I apologised for not being able to help him. I kissed away the tear that fell upon his cheek. “What do you think she would say to you right now if she could hear you?”
He remained silent for a moment, his fingers absentmindedly roving in circles over my hands. And then I see it, the words forming in his eyes, as though Eydis herself had spoken them to him on the scent of the wildflowers. The corners of his mouth perked up.
“Wife, shall we go for a walk?”
“Explain it to me one more time,” I said to Rhydian as I stared at the wall of flashing lights before me. There was a box that looked similar to the one in the vehicle that took us to Gerhold in the right panel, a green map displayed on it that had a red dot moving across it. Rhydian called that one the ‘tracking map’. The panel on the left had row after row of flashing lights that bore no pattern that if one looked at it for too long it was likely to give you a headache. In the centre was what looked like one of those electronic tablets I’d seen the Slavers holding. Only this one was built into the box.
“This is The Control Room, it keeps the train running,” Rhydian said, waving his arms about like one of those big tent showmen who would come into the city once a year with their exotic menageries.
“And we control the train, not Kensilla?” I questioned.
“Yes. Kensilla runs the stations and the Lobby, but we make sure the train keeps running.”
He didn’t repeat the part where he explained the Imaris bloodline was banished abord the rail by the Kensillan Republic’s Venerable Council, and how they had to commit various forms of familicide to keep the rail moving. Or that fifty other pairs of survivors from the Kensillan nobility were sent here with them forming the first group of prisoners of the Kensillan Territory Rail.
“We run the train from here?” I pointed to a series of switches and buttons beneath the ‘tracking map’ adding, “But we never stop it.”
Rhydian nodded slowly. “Because?”
I took a deep breath and then repeated the worst part of this whole thing. The collars were rigged. Not only were they all bonded to the train like the Imaris collar, but they also locked onto the stations, binding the passengers’ collars to the station platforms, and their boundaries.
I wandered over, running my hands over the cold metal of the wall. “But now you think you have a way to change that?”
“Thanks to you.”
I spun around at his words. “What did I do?”
“Aside from the fact you’re immune to Void traps.” Rhydian approached the tech, pressed a few buttons and made what he called a hologram appear in the air. The image it displayed was the series of symbols that the pitmaster had shown me when he’d tried to remove my collar.
“You can read Gods’ Tongue as well as speak it,” Rhydian finally answered.
It wasn’t something I was proud of. I understood the language without wanting to, could speak the language without ever having been taught, and was feared for it by no fault of my own except that I was cursed to be born a T'eiryash. Gods’ Tongue was taboo for the simple fact it belonged to the gods. Whether one worshipped a pantheon or not, the continental consensus was the language was not meant for human tongues, hence why many T'eiryashta often found themselves without one.
I stepped closer to the holographic just as Rhydian asked if the symbols were numerical in nature. “No. They're words.”
“Like the carving in the temple?”
“No. That inscription was complete. These words are…unfinished.” There were dozens of syllables missing from the text, making the entire piece illegible. So many in fact, that I could only discern one word. I pointed to it.
“This word is muun. It means truly. The rest are nonsense.”
Rhydian nodded his head as if he expected or even suspected this to be the case. “We believe it’s part of the code for the rail’s collars. About a year ago we located the factory where our collars were made, where they are still being made. According to our intelligence, that code is used during the manufacturing of the collars, and it is housed on site. But we can’t get to it on account of the Void traps.”
“Which is where I come in.” I paused, another thought occurring. “But if you haven’t been inside, how do you know the code is there?”
Rhydian moved back over to the tech box and shut it down, the holographic image vanishing in a snap. When he turned back around, his entire demeanour had changed. He was almost apologetic as he answered. “The buyer.”
My buyer, he meant.
Rhydian ran a hand through his hair nervously. “They wanted a female Brute, white hair, twenty-one years of age. And I’d find the one they wanted in Keltjar.” He left out the part about mistaking Kris for me.
“And in exchange,” he continued, “they would provide me with the codes we could not get.”
I wanted to make a joke about why the only reason I was still around was because he had fallen in love with the package, or that he only wanted me for my brain, but it felt in bad taste considering how earnest he was being with me. So I kept my mouth shut and let him continue.
“If we can get the codes, and put them in that consul.” He pointed to the glass tech box in the middle of the wall. “The collars would all just drop off.”
“You hope.”
He closed the gap between us, his arms wrapping around my waist to pull me close. “Fools hope is better than no hope.”
Breathing in his scent, I closed my eyes and spoke in warning. “Fools hope gets people killed, Rhydian.”
I felt his lips kiss my hair. “Then we don’t die.”
“That simple huh?” I breathed into his chest.
“That simple.”
But nothing is ever simple.