Chapter 9 Asset
Asset
Hours later, I stand in Livid’s empty cell, surrounded by nothing but broken, clawed-up furniture and silence.
Another problem I’ll have to solve, when I already have too many.
Fix it, the other parts told me.
Because that’s what I do.
But what am I supposed to fix? Our engagement to the man who slaughtered our people?
The consequences of breaking the Treaty if we don’t follow through with it?
The reality that we broke Silver’s heart and have been replaying and agonizing over it every second since he stormed off?
Or the fact that somehow when Reltas stole into my prisons he managed to free not only my father, the man responsible for all the most difficult parts of my childhood, but also the girl who represents the worst, most volatile parts of me?
The pounding of a stallion’s hooves reverberates within me.
I know the answer: all of it. I am supposed to fix all of it. Myself.
And I will. I just need some time to think.
I stalk out of the dungeons and into my father’s old war room, ripping maps off the wall and putting up blank parchments that I quickly fill with frenzied notes.
I notice right away when my sister, Mara, leans against the doorframe, her long hair pushed back from her face as she studies me with her one good eye, but I don’t address her until I’ve finished my thought. Then I bark out a terse “What is it?”
She doesn’t seem put off by my tone. Instead, she holds up a letter in two fingers. “This arrived for you,” she says. “It looked important.”
Finally, I glance up, only to scowl at the torn edge of the envelope in her hand. “You opened it.”
“I said it looked important!” she protests. I roll my eyes. What she means is that it looked like a secret, which Mara likes to know.
I snatch the letter out of her grip, shaking out its contents, even as I mentally grouse that I don’t have time for this.
But my thoughts grind to a halt as an ornate, pearl-crusted piece of stationery falls into my hands.
It’s an invitation.
To my own wedding.
In . . . one week’s time.
I almost laugh. It’s a bold move. Reltas must have sent it before he even came here, just counting on the fact that I wouldn’t be able to find a way out of his trap.
But if he thinks setting the date so soon will prevent me from thwarting his plans, then he is vastly underestimating me. I can still do this. I’ll just have to cut corners. I’ll be smart, efficient, committed.
I tear all the papers off the walls again and start over, scribbling even faster now, ink blots flying.
Mara doesn’t leave. She watches my frantic scrawling with a hooded gaze.
“So, you’re . . . engaged?” Mara asks. “Since when?”
“A couple hours ago. And I’m working on it.”
She nods, but her silence is heavy, as though she wants to say more. She doesn’t, though. She just keeps standing there.
“Can I help you with something else?” I finally snap, impatient to have the room and my thoughts to myself again.
“I was actually . . . going to ask if I could help you,” she admits.
“How?” I ask. Although it comes out as more of a demand.
“I . . .” She seems perplexed by the question. “I don’t . . . know?”
“Then probably not. At least not right now. I’ll let you know if I think of something.”
Mara looks down, pursing her lips. “All right,” she says softly. And then she finally leaves the room.
It’s not until several minutes later that my hand freezes and I finally recognize what Mara was trying to do.
A few months ago, on the roof of this castle, she and I talked about how she wanted to be there for me more.
How she spent our childhood protecting herself, sometimes at the cost of, well, me.
And it’s true. Mara is good at cropping up in the aftermath, but usually absent in the middle of things, when it’s most dire. Like now.
She was trying to be there for me.
And I completely brushed her off.
My horse nickers and I glance back at the empty doorway, wondering if I should go after her. At least to let her know that I appreciate the attempt.
But no. I’m not the part of Mance who should be having that conversation. Maybe Heart can catch up with her later. Right now, I need to focus on the thing that I’m good at: plotting and planning. Getting us out of this mess.
I step back to review my handiwork, taking in the map of the Continent that I’ve just covered in arrows and times as I review it all in my head.
Tomorrow we go to the Forest Realm. Mance—the core Mance, I mean—will have to be stationed there, trying to talk to our father and persuade him to cancel the whole arrangement.
But he’s notoriously stubborn and we haven’t done much recently to gain his goodwill, so we’ll need backup plans, too.
While Mance commits herself to hounding Merod day and night, other parts of us will sneak off to the different realms to make discreet but diplomatic visits.
We need to know if any of them would back us, should we break the Treaty by breaching this accord.
We are not helpless, after all. We have other alliances.
And just because the law states that any realm can declare war in these circumstances, it doesn’t mean they must. Perhaps if we can mitigate the damage before the breach, then if Reltas declares war we will have allies to help end the conflict quickly and without too much bloodshed.
It’s a solid plan to fall back on in case it gets that far.
With travel time, though—journeying to each realm and back—while still keeping our ability to split a secret, meaning that we can’t appear in more than one realm at a time (not counting the Forest Realm, which we’ll just have to try to contain) then the only way we’ll fit it all in is if—
I put down the quill.
If I go to the first realm myself now—and fill the rest of Mance in on the plan when I catch up with her in the Forest Realm tomorrow. She’s holding a meeting right now, trying to set up a system for her absence, and I can’t exactly go interrupt it or everyone will see me.
When we merge again she’ll understand. I’ll just have to trust that she’ll be all right without me until then.
I jot out a note for her at the bottom of my gibberish so she’ll know generally where I went, jabbing a pin into the invitation so it dangles below my message.
Then I head for the tower, picking at the corner of my mind that holds Alect’s memories as I walk.
It can be discomforting, plumbing the recollections of a dead man.
Especially when that man was my own cousin, and his memories were only conferred to me because he died at my hand.
I can feel the presence of his experiences like an open wound in the corner of my mind, one that never scabs over.
One that I need to prod at until it bleeds insights into my thoughts, because, unsettling as it may be, Alect’s life is a valuable resource.
His memories are not as clear and crisp as they would be if I’d lived them myself, but when I focus, I can feel his past emotions, channel his impressions of things, and, most valuably, learn from his discoveries and sometimes even adopt his skills.
There’s a sort of muscle memory I can tap into if I let my mind go blank and allow my—his—instincts to lead.
Right now, what I need is his knowledge of his own magic.
Alect invested a significant amount of time testing it, pushing it to its limits, and one of the things he came up with was a method to travel vast distances very quickly.
It’s how he was able to go back and forth between the Grasslands and the Cliff Realm so often, and it’s also how he was able to do such a tremendous amount of travel in the eight years he was away from our realm.
The ability is . . . fairly unpleasant.
But it’s also extremely practical, which in my mind makes it worth it.
I reach the top of the steps, a chill winter wind whipping my hair about my face.
Surrounding me are the frost-covered cliffs, stretching into the distance, with buildings and streets crisscrossing along their ridges and slopes.
Far below, at the base of the city, I can just make out the foggy forest. But it’s too distant for my purposes, so I pick a rooftop in the town instead.
We can summon a copy of ourselves into any space we can see, so, according to Alect’s discoveries, the key to fast travel is a good vantage point.
Steadying myself on the edge of the parapet, I mentally isolate a sliver of my soul, the smallest piece I can manage, and project it into the distance, ignoring the awful, splitting pain of doing so.
After a beat, I can just barely make out my own pale figure and black hair crouching on the roof I picked.
At least I think that’s me. Maybe it’s a shadow. Or a cat.
Nervousness prickles my skin and my sheep bleats within me as I worry that I aimed too far. But there’s only one way to find out.
Before that piece of me gets any ideas and moves out of my viewpoint, I grit my teeth and thrust myself into it.
For a moment, as always, I reel, trying to fit two simultaneous sets of memories into one mind.
My foot slips in the midst of the muddle and I start to slide down the tiles toward the hard ground below.
But we were only apart for a handful of seconds, so it doesn’t take too long to settle, and I catch myself just as I reach the edge of the rain gutters, my heart hammering in my chest.
I should probably try to project myself onto solid ground next time.
Still, though. That worked. And it’s taken me only seconds to traverse halfway through my city.
I clear my throat and brush myself off. Then I hoist myself up onto the chimney and do it again, this time aiming for a clearing in the forest.
And when that works, I keep going. I do it again and again and again and again.
By the time I have the Jungle Realm in sight, there are miles of distance between me and the rest of Mance, and yet not even an hour has passed.
But I’ve never split myself and merged back together so many times in such quick succession, and for a moment I need to crouch down in the vines, waiting for the last of the vertigo to settle, breathing in the humid jungle air as I fervently hope that all the lurching stops soon.
Unlike the stark cliffs I just came from, the Jungle Realm is lush, even in winter.
Plants in vibrant colors explode all around me, twining into one another to create an enormous tapestry of life, with each part vying for dominance.
Instead of short grasses and hearty shrubs, here there are Sumaumeira trees, their roots splayed aboveground in sweeping arcs to avoid floodwaters during the wet season.
They’re imposing, but some have a lattice of Strangler Figs growing in the cracks of their bark.
I know the species. It slowly leeches nutrients, eventually withering the host completely and making a home in its corpse.
Then it stands tall, still holding the outline of the trunk and branches, but with nothing left inside it, the original tree having wasted away within its throttling mesh.
But even amid such savage vegetation, the city manages to look imposing.
It rises above the canopies, built in the shape of a massive pyramid.
As our realm uses glass to honor the first magic we brought back from the Citadel, so the Jungle Realm honors their first magic as well.
Prime Vega could manipulate clouds, which meant she could both summon and dispel them, but she could also make them do things that were unnatural.
The entire pyramid is one giant rain cloud, somehow solid enough to step on and yet constantly spitting water and flashing with lightning. It is an ever-present storm, raging in the middle of the jungle.
I rise, straightening my clothing to the best of my ability. I’ll need to get this over with if I have any hope of getting back before Mance starts to worry.
Carefully, I compose and review a speech in my head, detailing our longstanding alliance and the reasons that backing me makes sense. It’s not perfect, but it will have to do.
And then I set off, a crack of thunder echoing around me, as the jungle welcomes me in.