Chapter Twenty Vina #2
“You think you can? I know all your traps and tricks, witch. I taught you most of them.”
“And yet I tricked you once, and I’ve done it again. Curious.”
“You’ve grown too used to the magic of flesh.” His arms flexed, muscles cording. “You don’t know how to finesse your mirrors like you used to.”
“Simran!” Hari yelled.
An arrow whistled through the air and lodged in Galath’s arm. The next in his chest. The third in his throat. They came in swift succession, too fast to avoid.
But Simran wasn’t the one who’d shot him, this time. Neither was Vina.
Two familiar knights were standing at the entrance of the hall.
Matthias was lowering his bow. And behind them stood a group of archivists, solemn in their sweeping dark robes.
One stepped forward. A monocle was over their eye—that strange, prismatic device, golden around the glittering prism at its center.
“You are an aberration, assassin,” said Meera, removing a stoppered vial of ink from the chatelaine.
She was wearing white gloves, and even touching the ink made their fingertips bleed black with it.
“You have the look of a tale—but you’re not a tale codified in the archives, and you’re not welcome on the Isle.
This is a glorious and storied land, and it has no place for you.
Once you’re destroyed, the Isle will be safe. ”
Galath laughed, low and deep.
“Is that what you archivists claim? That I’m destroying the Isle?
I would, and gladly. I wish I could claim the glory of the Isle’s death.
” His grin was a rictus. Blood poured from his wounds.
“You know the truth, ink-binder,” he said.
“You know what you do, and what your Queen does. All those lost places, those people erased, their blood lies upon your hands, not mine—”
The ink shot from her hands like a weapon, arcing toward Galath without care for the people it would hit on its path toward him.
Hari stared frozen, eyes wide as it raced toward him.
Ink would surely not harm him as it harmed incarnates, but the whip was knife-edged, gleaming with its own sharpness—it would still hurt.
Simran screamed. But it was Galath who was leaping—Galath who stopped suddenly, body curving.
There were burns hissing lividly on his arm.
She realized he’d shielded Hari with his body, and paid the price for it.
Simran’s eyes were wide as coins, furious.
“Leave the man alone, lads,” Vina called out, aiming for casual. Hard, when you were yelling over the eldritch hiss of limni ink, wielded in a way she’d never bloody seen before. “I’m more important, surely? Don’t tell me I’m not, I’ll be hurt.”
Another whip of ink headed to Galath, Hari still under him. Vina ran toward them, but Simran was closer.
Simran’s hand rose. The mirrors shone bright.
And the ink—froze.
Simran grasped it, teeth bared—held the ink fast in her own bare hand and flung the whip of it back at Meera, who was staring at her gray-faced and horrified. The whip shattered, a thousand diamonds of ink spilling across the floor like glass.
“Simran!” Vina cried out. It had to have hurt her, to touch so much ink with nothing but her bare hand. Simran was an incarnate, after all—the ink was inimical to her. But there was no pain in Simran’s face.
Vina’s thoughts raced. The woods in Gore. When the ink had fallen it had hurt Vina, of course. But Simran hadn’t cried out in pain.
Simran hadn’t been hurt.
“You fool,” said the archivist, voice trembling. “Incarnates should not touch that. Cannot. You, you—”
“Get out of here, Hari,” said Simran. “Please, please. Go.”
Galath grabbed Hari and slung him over his shoulder, and with athleticism Vina hadn’t seen before, he leapt across the room, winding between the mirrors, and raced away.
Edmund moved to follow them, and Vina—without even pausing to think—drew her sword. It was the memory of the child in her head that made her do it, Elayne’s boy.
“Vinny, what the hell are you doing?” Edmund asked.
“If he isn’t the true cause of the Isle’s death, you don’t need him,” she said. Her gaze fixed on Meera—on the archivist with her tight jaw, her ink-stained, gloved fists. “I’m much more useful to you. Take me from here instead. Set the story of The Knight and the Witch back on its path. Go on.”
“You believe him?” Meera asked, incredulous. “A murderer, the killer of your kind? The killer of your own friend?”
Soren. She thought of him again, an awful lump in her throat. Soren, terrified of his fate. Soren, who did not want to die for love, for a fae maiden he didn’t know.
She could well imagine him choosing the mercy of a clean death.
“I believe you have a choice, ma’am,” said Vina.
“You can fight me, kill me, to claim the assassin—I’d be a worthwhile sacrifice, tale and all, if he’s the cause of all our suffering.
But if he’s not the Isle’s blight, then keeping me alive and in your power serves the Isle far better than chasing him down. ”
“No one is taking you,” Simran said, voice deadly. The mirrors began to rattle. The ink shards on the ground turned liquid, trembling.
“Sir Matthias,” Meera said. “Do it. As I told you.”
Matthias sucked in a shaky breath. He wasn’t looking at Vina. He lifted his helm and placed it over his skull, concealing his face.
“Witch,” he said, voice emerging hollow. “We see your craven magics. If you do not bow to the Queen’s authority, her finest knights will be sent to challenge you. You will perish, witch. Will you not repent?”
What was this? This was no part of the tale of The Knight and the Witch that Vina had ever heard.
But she could feel the tale roaring through the room, and roaring through her.
Vina knew, instinctually, that she wasn’t part of this moment.
The knight was not needed here. If Vina hadn’t been determined to remain with Simran, she would have been able to run.
But Simran was caught in the tale’s snare.
All nonincarnates knew how to live inside tales; to speak and dress for them, to move through them. That was what life on the Isle required. Matthias was deliberately playing a part.
The mirrors dimmed. Simran threw her head back, drawn by the compulsion of their shared tale, eyes wide with fury and panic, even as her mouth moved, playing her role.
“Send your most honorable knight,” she proclaimed, with a toss of her hair. “I assure you, they will fall to my eldritch magics, as all your kind do.”
A hand clamped on Vina’s arm. Her sword was taken from her lax hands.
“Come on,” Edmund said gruffly. He wouldn’t meet her eyes. “We’re going. Don’t fight, Vinny.”
“You’re not taking me?” Simran demanded, voice thin and strained as she struggled against her tale.
“Why would we?” Meera asked. “You’re exactly where you’re meant to be. The tale will hold you here better than any fetters of iron ever could.”
Vina stumbled as she was dragged.
“Galath!” Vina called out. His name rang through the cavernous mountain, ringing songlike against the walls. “Keep her safe!”
There was no sign of the pale assassin, and no sign of Hari. Just Simran standing alone, face all harsh angles and shadows and burning eyes, lantern-bright with helpless fury.
“Vina,” Simran said. “Vina.”
Edmund wrenched Vina out of the door. It clanged shut.