Chapter 22 Cero #2
After Karinna woke up that afternoon, she’d spent a bizarre amount of time simply staring at the creature, her expression strange and fluid.
Occasionally she tilted her head or lifted a hand.
It was as if she was communicating with the cat.
Which she very well might be. Her family was rumored to be magical.
Perhaps talking to cats was one of her skills.
“Is your…friend planning to come with us?”
“Do you have a problem with her?” Karinna’s voice was low and dangerous, and Cero struggled not to roll his eyes.
“Just being polite, rebel, bleeding hells. Not everything is an attack.”
A flash of brown stripes blurred beneath him, and a moment later, he felt a soft touch against his ankles as the cat settled in.
Karinna, he noticed, was frowning down at the pouch beneath his seat. “Why don’t I have one of those?” she said. “That way she can sit with me.”
“You do have one,” he said. “She obviously chose not to sit with you. Maybe she was worried she’d catch your bad mood. The ways of cats are mysterious.”
Karinna opened her mouth to retort, but by then, Cero had turned away. He lifted the Sail into the air in a series of tight spirals, calling a stiff updraft, grimly satisfied when he looked over his shoulder to find Karinna looking green. She should have bleeding listened to him. Not so tough now.
But, strangely, as soon as Karinna began retching, his smugness faded and he just felt like a petty fool.
He leveled out the Sail to keep the ride as smooth as possible and handed back a lilangia stick for her nausea.
He was feeling marginally less guilty when finally, an hour into their flight, she fell asleep.
Just before dawn, Cero spotted the flickering lamps of Jibaut glittering on the western horizon, a serenely beautiful disguise for a dangerous place. Cero circled the city twice before he found a clearing far enough away that it would be safe to land in.
Cero had gotten to know Jibaut when he was stationed here months ago. He knew which parts of the surrounding pine forest were mostly abandoned. He also knew the one person who might have a map of unknown lands to the west.
When he finally brought down the Sail, it was a relief. He was tired. In his dreams, he’d stumbled through the tunnels beneath the cloister, looking for the specter who had spoken to him the first time he’d gotten lost down there.
But all he’d found was the silver-eyed child repeating the words the specter had spoken to Cero long ago:
The oldest betrayal is that which is between blood. Cast him into the dark, so that he might see.
This uncanny wisdom from the boy terrified Cero. His knowledge made him seem older than his years. Who are you, Cero bet-Dafra? He asked the question, over and over. But Cero never had the answer. He would wake up grimacing, unwilling to sleep again.
Karinna, asleep behind him, awoke when they landed, and Cero was relieved to see that she alighted from the Sail with care this time.
He observed her surreptitiously. If she slowed him down, he’d have to leave her behind. “How’s your ank—”
“I’m fine, pilot.” Karinna spat the last word out like she’d swallowed a bug. “Let’s move.”
Cero glanced at the small lump under his seat. A moment later, a furry, green-eyed face poked out and sniffed at the air.
“Will she be all right?”
Karinna’s face softened as she knelt to offer her hands to the cat to sniff before scratching her under the chin.
“Abzi can take care of herself.” She looked at the creature in that strange way she had before nodding. “She—I think she’ll guard the Sail.”
“You can talk to her?”
“Obviously.” Karinna sniffed and walked into the woods before calling back, “Don’t just stand there like a dolt!”
As they made for Jibaut, Cero trod carefully, mindful of Karinna’s injury.
When he slowed over harder terrain, she noticed and cast him a blistering glare.
True to her word, she kept up, moving lightly, almost blithely.
They entered Jibaut’s outskirts, and he considered how to warn her about the danger of this city without getting his head bitten off.
“Have you visited Jibaut before?” he finally asked her.
“Yes, so you don’t need to warn me about how scary it is and how all the big bad pirates will get me,” she said. “I’ll defend us both. Don’t worry your pretty head.”
“You think I’m pretty?” The words were out before Cero could help it, and Karinna stared at him, first in horror and then in rage.
“That wasn’t a compliment,” she growled, and stalked ahead. Which was lucky, really. Though Cero had grown up in Dafra, where survival meant never letting your guard down, if he’d led the way, he wouldn’t have seen the footpads awaiting them until they were upon him.
Karinna shouted a short warning, even as she spun her scims into action.
Cero raised his wind to shield them both and spear the footpads, but he couldn’t use it when she was moving so fast that he might hurt her. And—he dropped the wind—she didn’t require his aid. At all.
For Karinna Veturia was a marvel with her blades. By the time he was looking at where she should logically be, she was already far ahead. He’d not seen her fight Ghaz off—he’d been nearly insensate by the time she saved his neck.
Now he understood Musa’s disdain when Cero had told him he didn’t want a tiny Martial with no self-control as a bodyguard.
There will be times when you might not be able to use your magic, or it might not be safe to.
It won’t go well for your people if you die, Cero.
You need a protector, and that’s Karinna.
No one will get past her. I’ve only met one human she’s never beaten, and that’s the man who taught her to fight.
“Oi!” Karinna bellowed at him, and he realized he’d been standing stock-still, staring at her.
“Jibaut has flying cockroaches,” she announced. “Unless you want a few for dinner, close your mouth.”
Their attackers were groaning and crawling away—he was surprised she hadn’t killed any of them, and he said as much.
“They’ll tell everyone else,” Karinna said. “In Jibaut, rumor travels faster than an antelope with its arse on fire. No one else will trouble us.”
As the sun rose, Jibaut grew quieter. It was a city in love with the shadows, and the days were spent sleeping off the night’s excesses. They passed more than one pirate retching in an alleyway.
“The man we’re going to see,” Cero said. “He’s—”
“Alas, sky-dog, I don’t really care,” Karinna said. “Are we sneaking in or going in by the front door?”
Spires, but she was infuriating. Cero had met all sorts of people in his life. Dafra was filled with the suffering, the starving, the lonely. People who had lost family, homes, limbs. No matter what they’d suffered, generally they were at least civil.
But a fight with this girl over manners in the middle of Jibaut invited trouble he didn’t need. He gritted his teeth and moved on. He could see the trader Kade’s home from here. It was one of Jibaut’s larger structures and ringed by guards.
When Cero was last in Jibaut six months ago, he’d questioned Kade after Quil and his friends had escaped on Kade’s horses. Cero determined that while Kade knew a great deal about what went on in Jibaut, he didn’t know where Quil had gone.
Can I interest you in anything? Kade had gestured to his rooms of books and maps.
At the time, he’d wanted nothing more than to please the Kegari—to keep his precious collection from being destroyed.
A book of Kegari work, perhaps? I have one of the only surviving copies of Queen Div’s collected essays.
Cero didn’t give a fig about essays then or now. But he did need a map.
“We go in through the front door,” he answered Karinna’s question as they approached. “Let me do the talking. I don’t wish to antagonize him.”
Karinna looked briefly mutinous, and Cero marveled at how a face so objectively lovely could seethe with malice. Then he grimaced at the tenor of his own thoughts. Objectively lovely? Spires, he needed a tumble.
The guards barred their way, of course. Even if everyone else was sleeping, they had a job to do.
But upon seeing a Kegari in full flight leathers, they immediately fetched their master.
He appeared in a blue dressing robe, rumple-headed and red-eyed, blond hair sticking up every which way.
He had a blade in one hand and kept it raised as he looked between them.
“Cero bet-Dafra and”—he peered at Karinna—“one of the Veturia children, is it? Karinna, judging by the glower. Not a pairing I’d expect.”
“I’m his bodyguard,” Karinna said. “We’re not a pair.”
“A pair just means two,” Kade said, as if explaining something to a small child. “Come in.”
They followed Kade to a library-like room Cero had seen before, a large space that smelled of dust, paper, and leather.
“Would you like something to eat—”
“Just give us what we came for—” Karinna began, but Cero shot her such a look that for once, she fell silent. He was astounded that she would reject food, which in Kegar was the deepest form of insult. But then, she’d always had enough to eat.
“Thank you,” Cero said. “We’d love something to eat. And if you could keep our presence here quiet, I’d appreciate it.”
Kade nodded and gave instructions to the young man who had followed them in.
When the man left, Kade turned back to Cero and sheathed his blade.
“I won’t ask why you’re here with someone who should ostensibly be trying to kill you,” he said.
“I assume you’re not back for that book of Kegari essays. ”
“I need a map,” Cero said. “One that shows the lands west of here.”
“West.” Kade walked to one of his shelves and pulled out a scroll, unrolling it on a large wooden table and using small leather sandbags to hold down the corners. “So easy I won’t even charge you for it.”
Cero perused the map, which indeed showed the lands to the west. But the map ended at the sea beyond the Jaduna Cloud Forest.