CHAPTER 19 EZZO #2
“He could be spreading the blood around . . . transfusing multiple typics from one Shade?” I counter Akari’s objection. Which would make the girl we saw the last in a long line of tests, a casualty of trial and error.
“That would explain all those bottles he had in the cellar.” Raya takes my suggestion and runs with it. “If he was bleeding them slowly, he could have used them as a source for days. Weeks, even.”
“Okay, but for what reason?” Another stark chill shudders Akari. “Why would he want to phase typics into the Gray? They can’t exist there. They’d be destabilizing the shadows, at best.”
At worst, they’d collapse them entirely.
“So maybe he wants the Gray gone.” I shrug, because who the hell knows what drives the whims of a zealot. Once they’ve stooped low enough to start killing, what difference does it really make?
“But . . . see, I don’t think he does.” It’s now come Raya’s turn to pace. “The way he talked about the shadows—the way he controlled them—it was almost as if he felt . . . entitled to the Gray. Like it was made for him, specifically. Not for Shades.”
“Except he is a Shade.” Akari offers up yet another wrong conclusion I’m forced to correct.
“Actually, we’re not quite sure what he is. My gift, it—I’ve never seen anything like him.”
“And he called himself something different, too,” Raya’s quick to jump in and say. “A void is the word he used. The last remaining void.”
“Which isn’t a thing.” Akari groans as she drops down to the bed. “All that tells us is that a delusional man is delusional and that he is bad at working his gift.”
“Come on, Kiri, that’s not fair.” Raya’s beginning to sound as exasperated as I feel. “Did you notice anything strange about him? When he grabbed you, I mean?” She approaches the subject gingerly—delicately—and given the way Akari’s cheeks pink with the question, I get a good sense for why that is.
Since the moment Raya got here, Akari has been steering this conversation away from herself—away from the series of events that led her to the Meridian’s table—and if I had to guess, I’d chalk it down to shame.
She is an Orange Shade, after all. Strength magic.
Second in its formidability only to Red.
Yet we found her in a cage.
Then, to add insult to injury, she was rescued by a half breed.
As far as embarrassments go, this one has to sting.
“No, I didn’t.” She lies back to stare at the ceiling.
“He looked like every other typic in that tavern. No fancy robes, no sacred sun sigil, and he must have been wearing a glamour since I didn’t recognize his face.
He asked me about my magic, then my prices, then the next thing I knew, I was following him to that cellar.
I didn’t want to, but I did, even though I never saw him cast a spell. ”
“He must have slipped you a compulsion charm,” I say, seeing how the method’s a perfect fit. “His Hue did the same thing to the typic.”
“Do I look like an idiot?” Akari’s shame fast turns mean. “I would have noticed if he tried to slip me something.”
No, I very much doubt she would have; people rarely ever notice the dance of thieves.
“Show me how you were standing,” I tell her, reaching for one of Alara’s crystals.
“Excuse me?”
“Just . . . pitch me your magic, exactly like you did him.” I make to help her back to her feet.
“No, half breed, I don’t think I will.” She bats me away, and that split second of movement is all I need.
“Fine, you don’t have to pitch me—it’s already done. Check your pocket.” I take immense satisfaction in watching her face flare a deeper shade of beet.
“How in the—?”
“If he’s a practiced hand, that’s how easy it would have been.” Hells, I’m not even that good at it—picking pockets has always been more Cemmy’s thing. In comparison, my technique is downright sloppy.
“Gods, of course you’d be a thief.”
“Your kind never left me much of a choice.” I meet her derision with a scowl.
In fact, they have a whole guild dedicated to making sure no Hue is ever safe enough to hold an honest job.
There was a brief time, a few years ago, where Eve and I did try to go straight, work instead of steal.
We became messengers for Isitar’s elite, used the Gray as a means of outpacing their regular couriers.
And it was fun, while it lasted—a way to make some coin and get one over on the typics.
But as with everything in our lives, the fun only lasted until it didn’t.
The moment our superior delivery skills started drawing attention, we stopped playing with fire and went back to thieving.
“That’s because your kind is a threat.” Akari hurls the charge at me. “You take power from the Gray.”
“No, we don’t.” Nor do I have it in me to rehash this argument for the second time today.
“But the Meridian thinks we do,” Raya mutters, less to us than to herself.
“What?” both Akari and I say.
“The Divine Meridian—he said something else before I could get away. He said: what will you do when the well you draw from fills with poison? How will you survive when the power you’ve been leeching disappears from the Gray?”
“So . . . what do you think it means?” I ask, trying to make sense of the words. Stealing from the Gray has long since been a charge levied at Hues but never at Shades. The story is always that we take while they balance, that they live in harmony with the shadows while we drain.
“I don’t know, but it has to be related to what he’s doing, right?
” Raya worries at her bottom lip. “If he’s bleeding Shades and phasing typics, then he must think that it will somehow .
. . stop the leeching? Or protect the shadows, maybe?
What do you think?” She aims the question my way.
“Is this the same thing you encountered last year?”
“No, that man wanted to expand the Gray into the physical realm, kill every typic.”
“Okay, so then maybe this one wants to do the opposite, kill every Shade.”
“Well, I, for one, am just about done with these hypotheticals.” Akari’s patience finally gives. “I say we do what we should have done an hour ago—hand the half breed over to the Council and focus on what’s important: fixing your magic.”
My entire body tenses, even though I should have seen that declaration coming from a whole continent away. They’re both Shades, after all—and not rogues, either, but Academy bred. The Council’s lies are far too entrenched.
“We can’t hand him in, Kiri.”
Which is why I find myself surprised that Raya objects.
“The future, it . . . it seems to want him here, for some reason. We might still need his gift.”
Less surprised that it’s for an entirely self-serving end, and not because I’ve earned my freedom by saving her ungrateful Orange friend.
She is never going to believe you deserve freedom.
For the first time since Eve shattered, I feel my sense of self-preservation kick in.
No matter what I do or what I say, Raya is never going to see me as anything other than an illegal half Shade.
That’s just who she is, and who I am, and it’s not a reality either of us can change, regardless of what the future wants or how deeply the mystery of the Meridian has worked its way into my veins.
How it kept me here far longer than it should have.
“Forget about his gift, Raya.” Akari continues to talk about me like I’m not standing three feet away. “He’s already dead, don’t you see that?”
I mean, I certainly will be if I don’t hurry up and make my escape—especially with the way she’s casually advocating for my murder.
So, while the two of them are lost to their bickering, I do what I should have done in the first place: I fish out a couple of Alara’s charms—an Orange to distract them while I flee the room and a Red that’ll compel them not to give chase—and toss them into their midst.
This ill-advised alliance is officially over.