5. Tivre
Chapter five
Tivre
S mog and smoke thickened the air of the Rhydonian capital city, a choking mixture of industry and ambition.
Still, Tivre loved how different it was from the crisp, frigid breezes of the isles.
Just like he loved the chaos of the crowded streets, full of vehicles and people and even horse-drawn carriages vying for the right of way.
The city was marvelous, delightful, a wonder.
It offset the stress of the journey here, which had involved cliff climbing, horseback riding, and sneaking aboard a cargo train.
Not to mention the effort of maintaining the glamour protecting both of them from curious mortal eyes, especially as they drew further south and their magic weakened.
The glamour masked their most obvious fae traits; the pointed ears, sharp canines, and eyes that glowed too brightly to pass as human, as well as the overall nature of what they were.
Human artists and bards, back in the days when they’d lived among the fae, had always struggled for a way to describe a fae’s innate differences, the pulsing magic that flowed through them and around them, the so-called uncanniness of their features, the faint discord of their words when spoken with power behind them.
On the other hand, fae artisans had simply decided humans weren’t worth depicting in any form of art, which was perhaps a better call.
If it weren’t for the existence of wildlings, which were the result of usually ill-fated romantic entanglements between fae and human, one might believe the two were impossibly different. Yet wildlings did exist, like the very one Tivre had been sent to find.
Humans with fae blood were rare now, after over a century of war. Rarer yet was an Oathborn wildling. Aside from this girl, who he had seen in his visions, Tivre knew of only three other Oathborn wildlings to have ever been mentioned in fae records.
Each of those three had shaped history, in their own tragic, flawed ways.
This girl, whoever she might be, was fated to do the same.
Yet, Tivre swore he would not allow such a thing to occur. He would find the other woman who had haunted his visions for so long, the one whose name he knew and yet feared to speak aloud until their first meeting. Find her, make his offer, and hopefully, return with her instead to the isles.
“Cal Tivre?” Quila asked, including his formal title more out of annoyance than respect. She had folded her arms over her stolen Rhydonian dress, and was glaring at him in that way so many people, human and fae, often did. “You stopped walking two minutes ago.”
“Ah. So I did.” Tivre adjusted his hat, which had also been stolen, checking to make sure the glamour held.
For it could not conceal everything. His hair, for one, always slipped back to its true moonlight-white shade by the end of the day.
As for the rest—Quila’s striking height, angular features, and glass-like nails—Tivre couldn’t justify spending more magic to hide it all.
Thanks to her unpleasant expressions, Tivre figured no human would come close to them at all.
Which was good, and bad. Bad, because he could perhaps, maybe, use a friendly person’s directions.
He was aiming to find a cathedral, one he’d visited fifty years ago.
One that he’d seen in most of his visions concerning this whole business with the long-lost Oathborn wildling girl.
The only issue was he had yet to locate the building.
His last visit had been when the skyline was little more than a scattering of half-built constructions, the streets, a patchwork of cobblestones and mud.
Now, every corner he turned, something new caught his eye.
A crane lifting an iron beam onto a half-built structure, a vendor selling popped corn from a mechanical cart, a child riding a wheeled toy that careened down the road.
Humans had no magic. Instead, they had inventions, and those, Tivre decided, rivaled the wonders of any sigil-based spell.
“Why do I have the sense you are lost?” Quila said.
Tivre winked at her. “Perhaps it is you who is lost, forever unmoored by too long spent studying my handsome face.”
Quila turned her expression skyward, as if pleading with the goddesses for patience. If she was, she’d be sorely disappointed. They weren’t exactly the most benevolent of deities. “Why,” Quila said, “why did Her Majesty task you with this quest, and not Cal Syonia?”
Ah. Tivre’s grin tightened on his face as he kept his true emotions masked.
He had a hundred answers to that question, most of which involved how much he disliked and distrusted the rather vicious younger Godspeaker.
Knowing where Quila’s allegiance lay, he decided on a far more flippant answer.
“Presumably because dear Syonia has no interest in wearing the dreadfully boring Rhydonian outfits everyone sports here. Tweed isn’t really her color scheme. ”
Quila rolled her eyes. “To think the divine speaks to you, and yet, you remain so ignorant. Syonia has already arrived here in the capital, weeks before us. I sought her out this morning, but she was no longer at the safehouse the Queen assigned her.”
“And here I was thinking you left my room at the inn because I snored,” Tivre muttered.
His teasing tone disguised his fears. Syonia had been in the mortal lands for weeks?
What could she have possibly done? The terrifying answer to that question, though, he already knew.
She was not Oathborn, and therefore, not bound by the Accords.
If Syonia felt like murdering a human for sneezing or looking at her the wrong way, she could, and the Accords would not stop her.
Worse, as she was a Godspeaker too, his visions never gave him any indication of her motives. Like an eclipse blotting out the sun, the actions of one Godspeaker were always hidden from the other .
A pedestrian bumped into Tivre, pulling him from his musings, but the human barely registered the contact, moving on without so much as a glance.
And why would he, when there were countless others around them?
Unlike the mostly empty isles, the human capital was full of life. Teeming with it. Bursting at the seams.
“Let’s go, then,” he told Quila.
Tivre walked past workers, their soot-streaked faces grim, their hands covered in grime from hours spent cranking levers or pouring molten metal into molds.
A street vendor called out, offering a concoction of fried dough dusted with sugar.
Tivre eyed the man, then the food, but Quila glared at him.
“We do not have time for frivolities.”
Tivre sighed. She was probably right, even if he knew it would take them at least another week to find the Oathborn girl. He’d seen the vision enough times to know the moon would need to be full overhead, and it was still a crescent in the sky above.
“Fine. This way.” He led her down a side street, and then another. Though she followed him, he was aware of her searching gaze, her intense focus on every passer-by, scanning them for threats.
As they came to a dead end of an alley, Quila cut in front of him. “You,” she said dryly, “have no idea where we’re going.”
“We are seeking an old cathedral, which will provide—”
“Where is it, Godspeaker?”
Using his title instead of his name was never a good sign. “It’s somewhere in this city.”
Her dark eyebrows arched higher. “And how long will it take us to reach it?”
“Less than a day, I’m sure.” He tried for a friendly smile, though he and Quila were certainly not friends. Tivre made a point of avoiding friendship.
Her left hand curled around the hilt of her sword, the reflex of an Oathborn who had been training with a blade since childhood. “You are trying my patience.”
“Perhaps I’m just helping you improve it,” he replied .
She stalked forward, her eyes blazing with frustration. Tivre had seen a thousand Oathborn in combat before, had watched their drills from his window since he was a child, and still, the raw power in their movements when battle-fury sparked within them always took his breath away.
A shout came from the entrance to the alley. “Hey! What’s going on here?” A Rhydonian soldier in a deep blue uniform stood there, glaring at them. “What’s that sword at your hip?”
That sword was supposed to have been glamoured. The magic must have faded without warning. Spells this far south were unstable things.
“We’ve been looking for someone with a fae blade,” the soldier said, stepping closer, completely unaware of how deeply in danger he was. “So you’re coming with me.”
“Like hell I am!” Quila drew her sword and charged forward.
Tivre shouted a warning. He didn’t need to.
Just as she was about to swing the blade, she froze mid-step, her sword hovering just inches from the man’s chest. Growling, she struggled against it, her body tense, every muscle in her posture screaming to fight, yet unable to do so.
Ducking, the soldier fumbled for his pistol.
A single bullet would kill Quila, even if it would not break the Accords.
Tivre snapped into action, flinging a round of sigils toward him.
The glittering magic shapes crashed into the soldier, dissolving on impact, and thankfully, knocked him out before he fired.
He collapsed onto the ground. Only then did Quila move, finishing her strike, her blade swishing in empty air.
“What was that?” she spun to face Tivre. “I have never missed, have never faltered, and now, you make a fool of me.”
“That,” Tivre said, “was the power of the Accords. You nearly broke them, and your own Oath beside.”
She sheathed her blade. “All Rhydonians deserve to die.”
Her hatred came to her so easily. Tivre wondered if any fae, apart from the Queen, even remembered the cause of it, centuries later. He sighed. “And how lucky they are to be protected by the Accords.”
“There is no reason for the damn Accords. ”
“No, no reason at all, except for peace.” Tivre murmured, as he adjusted the violin case on his shoulder.
He’d told Quila that a human-made instrument would help him blend in, which was a lie.
He’d just wanted an excuse to get his hands on one of the tools responsible for the beautiful music he’d heard from his phonograph.
He also didn’t tell Quila, because he could not risk those words returning to the Queen’s ears, how much the Accords mattered to the fae.
The humans outnumbered the fae, by at least a hundred to one.
As the fae’s number dwindled, their chances of victory diminished.
The humans would have won the war eventually, not through hand-to-hand combat with Oathborn, but rather, through explosives and attrition.
If the Accords hadn’t been signed, Tivre had no doubt the humans would have invented an even more terrible weapon, one that no magic could hope to match.
If the Queen got her wish and the Accords were broken…
the slaughter would begin once more. This time, it would be without the Traitor and his wi elding of the Crescent Blade, without most of the Oathborn forces, and without Blood Ember, who had thankfully been neither seen nor heard from since before the end of the war.
As much as Tivre despised that monster, he knew without Blood Ember, the war would have ended far earlier, and with even more fae dead, than it had.
After all, humans were not the only ones capable of creating a perfect weapon.