Chapter 9 #2
I’m not sure we should be calling that a success, Hymn tried to interject, but she ignored him, choosing instead to wallow in her humiliating failure, coupled with the fact that all the section leaders had rejected her.
The walk back was nothing but a blur of pain and the sluggish tapping of her cane. Stone paths. Stone steps. Gates. The echoing chill of the barracks forecourt, where they had burned their clothes. The feeling of other bodies somewhere nearby, moving about and talking in low voices.
Ky tried to reach for her when she stumbled into the room with the cots. She heard his boots scrape, his quick intake of breath.
“I’m fine,” she lied quietly, too tired to care if someone whacked her for it, but nobody did, because apparently, they were done with that now.
“Wash,” Cairn barked from the doorway instead. “Then report to the mess. You will eat. You will drink. You will not pass out.”
It took her longer than it should have to get to the washroom, despite Rion leading her there.
She was so exhausted she couldn’t even talk—could barely think—and simply focused on the scent of clean soap and the sound of dripping pipes.
There were stalls, thank the sun. Stone dividers with hooks for towels and uniforms, which Rion guided her hand to.
“I’ll be just outside,” Rion promised, though her own voice was husky and broken.
She had learned, after Cairn left, that the other recruits had already taken up proper rooms within the section of the barracks occupied by their new banner.
Her friends had been waiting for her in the dungeon room, after hearing some of the other soldiers gossiping about the last recruit nobody wanted.
She stepped into the nearest stall and shut the door behind her, leaning her head against the cool wood for a moment. Just breathing. Just wondering why her face was so wet.
You’re still crying, Hymn told her gently, curling around her jawline to nuzzle at her cheek.
She fumbled for the pipe, found the valve, and twisted, hoping to wash away the tears as fast as possible.
Water slammed into her like a physical thing.
It was blessedly, bitingly hot, and it stole her breath.
Salt, sweat, and tears ran in small rivers down her body, pooling around her boots.
She tore those off clumsily, then the socks, then the uniform, her fingers stiff and shaking.
“I’ll put a new uniform over the door for you,” Rion whispered, likely hovering right there and listening to the wet sounds of her discarding her sodden clothes.
“Thanks,” Eiko croaked.
Hymn was restless. She could feel the small weight of him rustling through her hair, unsure how to comfort her.
I’m sorry, he whispered. I’m sorry I couldn’t do it right. I’m sorry you hurt. I’m sorry he hates you.
“Stop,” she croaked aloud, because the roar of the water would cover it. “Just … stop apologising.”
He stopped immediately. Obediently.
Far more obedient than the tears that continued to fall without her permission. They burned worse than the water. Worse than the salt. Worse than two days and nights of standing on that cliff.
She pressed her palms to her face, fingers digging into her skin, shoulders shaking as the silence she had been forced into finally cracked. The sounds she made were ugly, but the water ate them all up. Nobody could hear her here. Not over the groaning pipes and the rush of the water.
You’re not weak, Hymn said, frantic now. They broke you on purpose. That’s what the exercise is designed to do.
“It’s not that,” she rasped. “I just … I stood there for two days and couldn’t even fail properly.”
You didn’t fail, he insisted. I’m here. I’m just … stuck.
She let her hands fall, blinking water out of her eyes, breathing hard.
“Stuck where?” she muttered, dragging her palms down her face.
On the next pass, her nose brushed the inside of her wrist, where he had skipped down to circle in his favourite spot.
The skin there was cold.
She frowned, turning her arm under the spray, water streaming across her forearm.
The water was burning hot, but her wrist remained cold.
Her other arm was pleasantly warm, by comparison.
She raised her right wrist higher, frowning harder.
She could feel a tightness beneath the skin.
A faint, sinuous movement, a slight shifting of something under the surface.
“Hymn,” she whispered, her heart thudding. “What are you doing?”
I … don’t know, he admitted slowly.
She pressed her thumb to the inside of her wrist.
Something moved.
Something under her skin. A slender line of coolness twisted just beneath the surface, following the line of her bone. It coiled once, twice, then stretched, as if testing the limits of its cage.
Eiko swallowed hard.
“Do that again,” she whispered, pressing more firmly.
The thing under her skin answered. A little ribbon of cold slid along her vein, looping neatly into the shape of a tiny head and the impression of wings before flattening again, as if embarrassed.
I manifested, Hymn said faintly. See? I told you we could do it.
Before she could respond, he pushed an explosion of colour into her head, her comforting blanket of blindness yanked away.
She flinched at his excitable action, unprepared for the sudden change.
Steam curled through the air, and condensation dribbled through the gaps between stone, the walls all around her glistening.
The door was washed in helpless strokes of lace-blue worry with streaks of darker, cobalt distress.
Rion was still there, on the other side, tainting the wood with her colours.
Sodden, forest-green fabric bunched on the floor. Neatly folded, forest-green fabric over the door. Soap in a dish, on a bench. Little flecks of purple flowers in the waxy block.
Boots, kicked aside.
And then her feet. Bruised and blistered, tainting the water pink. Slender legs, skin the colour of the dust spirals that used to dance through the Fingers back home when she was little, each sparkling particle catching the sun.
Bruises everywhere, haloed in pumice-coloured pain. The colours painting her body were washed out with exhaustion.
And then her arm.
She stared at the subtle, shifting darkness beneath her own skin, feeling the edges of awe and exasperation collide in her chest. Hymn was a shadow beneath her skin, a narrow ribbon of darkness, ink spilled over bronze parchment.
When she sensed his presence moving—as she had been for days—the shadow moved with him, sliding beneath the surface of her skin in a slow, sinuous glide.
He was a small, winged thing, swimming just beneath the surface.
When she pressed her thumb to him, the darkness bunched and flexed, ink gathering and spilling, dragged across the parchment of her skin.
When she lifted her finger, a tiny head seemed to form, and sleek little wings flared out in a blur of deeper black, before smoothing back into a simple band of shadow.
“Oh my sun,” she breathed, her fingers trembling over the moving shape. “You didn’t come out at all.”
Hymn’s little hum of pride vibrated along her bones. But I’m here! Look!
Can you hide again? she asked, thinking of how Chasin had touched her wrist like he was searching for the little monster.
The twisting shadow around her wrist disappeared, and she traced the spot, marvelling over how it was still cold.
She could still feel him and the way he swivelled and twisted around her bone.
It was unnerving, but she imagined it would have been significantly worse if her monster had been as large or violent as any of the others.
No wonder they had been washed in the colours of pain and agony.
Let’s keep this a secret, she decided. At least until I can figure out how to manifest you properly.
Okay. He wrapped her wrist loosely and nestled into the palm of her hand. I’m going to sleep now.
Lazy little thing.
Eiko leaned forward until the spray of water cascaded over her head. She closed her eyes and willed the colours to die away. When she was clean and dry and dressed in a brand-new uniform, Rion resumed her silent accompaniment, leading her to the mess.
“Cairn is watching,” Rion whispered, as they shuffled towards the scents of bread, butter, roasted vegetables, and some sort of rich, meat gravy. “Is it true …” She trailed off, but Eiko knew the question she wanted to ask.
“None of the captains asked me to take the oath,” Eiko mumbled back. “And Hymn didn’t manifest.”
“So why is Cairn hovering around and ordering you about like he’s a section leader, and you’re the only soldier he has?” Rion asked lowly.
Her curiosity piqued, Eiko tried to activate her second sight, willing the mess into focus, but the mess was no shower cubicle, and the sheer wall of colour and activity that smacked into her had her stumbling back.
Rion lost her grip on Eiko’s arm, both of them far too weak from the “unmaking” they had been put through.
Eiko hit the ground in a clumsy tangle, her cane clattering to the side.