Chapter 26
Hope
This part of Avallia, the major city of the South Petal, couldn’t be any more different from the neat South House and its crystalline pools.
The narrow, winding alleys were shadowed and labyrinthine, with unexpected hidden squares appearing when one least expected it.
Most of the buildings were made of grim, weathered stone that no one had bothered to take care of in decades, if not centuries.
It was a feast for the senses, though. The powerful scent of fresh bread and last ashes on a fire pit, the lively sounds of musicians and hums of conversations, the constant touch of floating white petals against their skin, never falling on the ground, denser than before.
Ciaran turned to the right, following the detailed instructions Arabella had provided. Another cobbled walkway welcomed them, filled with merchants and stalls selling fresh produce.
Hope knew that Arabella’s information hadn’t been an act of kindness. It had been purely self-interest for them to leave soon, and for them to put a remedy to Lenna’s risk of losing control of her magic.
“What happens when a panom loses control over their magic?” she whispered next to Ciaran before stepping out of the way of a child chasing another at the speed of light.
Ciaran replied distractedly. “Every citizen, panom or human, is meant to report them to the military Roix and the Organ Mandor so they can get rid of the culprit.”
“They don’t want them alive, I get that. But why?”
“They are unpredictable. Mental instability can lead to magic combustion. Depending on how strong a panom is, they can scorch themselves only, or the entire island with them.”
Hope lifted her eyebrows. “Cardinals above.” She kneeled down in a corner pretending to tie her shoe and sent written ink to Lenna.
The golden words came with an angry reply.
As Hope repeated the inked conversation to Ciaran, another message tickled her forearm.
Hope stared at Lenna’s words until they vanished, with a growing knot of worry and fear in her chest. They turned to the left, entering a squeezed alley where only one person could walk through at a time.
With a curved bridge uniting the buildings on each side, it was incredibly dark, but Hope didn’t dare let any red sparks loose in case someone spotted them.
Instead, her palm didn’t let go of the space between Ciaran’s shoulder blades.
“Ciaran,” she whispered, deciding to voice a concern she had had for days and hadn’t dared say out loud in case it materialized into what her hypothesis was.
“Something is not right with the Roix. The roixers used to be everywhere, controlling and patrolling, their Cardinal-red uniforms always present as a reminder to the citizens to behave or be punished.” She swallowed.
“We haven’t seen a roixer or the Roix Reigner since our return from the Fifth Crusade.
It’s as if they have vanished, except they surely haven’t. ”
“I noticed. The Roix is usually based in the Organ House, from where the Roix Reigner takes orders from the Mandor. They might be there.”
Where Hope wasn’t, but the Cardinal Queen was. Those were precisely her thoughts, and they weren’t very reassuring. That, and the diversity of options of what the Queen could do with a military organization like the Roix—commanded by Indianna’s mother as the Roix Reigner.
Some light appeared at the end of the alley that significantly resembled a trap with the shape of a tunnel. It was a one-way alley, leading to a minuscule square with a rusted signboard on a dirty door that read “Jewels, Pearls, and Precious Gems.”
Hope stood next to Ciaran and chuckled, rereading the shop’s name with a smile on her face.
In a Petal where valuable things were magically Taken, this was the one business that would never have any clients.
The easy accessibility of the shop was very much in line with the eagerness to have many clients visiting, clearly.
The sound of Hope’s five quick knocks on the door echoed around them.
The door opened wide, and there wasn’t anything inside that remotely resembled a jewel or a pearl.
There were boxes piled on top of boxes next to the walls and an amount of rudimentary chairs and tables that seemed excessive and completely unnecessary, especially as the shop—if this had ever been used as a real shop—was completely empty except for a wrinkled old man standing behind a counter.
“I don’t know who you are, and I won’t waste my time asking for your lies. You two are important enough for someone powerful to direct you to myself; therefore, your blood is worth more than your weight in gold.”
His side grin revealed three golden teeth, matching the shiny golden patches splotching his brown irises.
Perhaps the South House respected jewelry when it was part of the citizen’s body, in which case, modifying physical appearance was the only way to prove economical and social status.
His wrists had golden bracelets with various patterns inked, and Hope didn’t doubt the ink used had been a liquid form of the metal.
He didn’t want to waste time or words with nonsense presentations or conversation, and neither did she.
“Do you know where the House Takes everything?”
“My, my, my. That is not a question many people dare to ask out loud.” He examined her thoroughly with his eyes narrowed.
“One of your daggers for five minutes of my time. One of your daggers, and this little vial filled with your blood for five useful minutes of my time.” The glass of an empty bottle the size of his thumb shone under the dim light.
“That will be all, then,” Ciaran said, turning around to the door.
Hope grabbed his arm, stopping him mid-step. His stare was piercing, and the tickle in Hope’s forearm revealed his shadow ink:
The danger of her blood as the Organ Mandor lying around when the Cardinal Queen was looking for her and had her as a target was obvious.
Any panom who was keen on dark uses of their magic was a risk too.
She was willing to get answers, but not willing to die for them.
She sent her Cardinal-red ink to his biological forearm, and Ciaran had already made sure his forearm was not visible from the merchant’s point of view, as the color of her ink would give her away.
When Hope turned to the merchant, his arms were crossed and his head tilted, one bushy eyebrow arched toward the ceiling.
“Apologies,” she said, faking a nervous laugh.
“He is a bit blunt sometimes, but he means well. I have a genetic disorder that doesn’t allow my body to be magically Healed, so last time it took me weeks to heal from a cut, and it was he who had to re-do the bandages every day and every night.
Apprehensive isn’t the word, but I wouldn’t say he enjoyed it that much. ”
The merchant chuckled, his arms still crossed but his shoulders relaxing slightly. “I understand that very much, sir, and you’re not alone. I want your blood but not your pain, miss...”
“Rose, you can call me Rose.”
“Would every part of your body take as long to heal?”
Hope smiled, and this time her smile was genuine, because this man was falling into her trap, and not only wasn’t he even noticing, but he was doing it willingly.
“Thanks for the consideration, Speaker of the Scales. A cut on my thumb would be perfect, actually. It is very irrigated, so it will bleed freely and immediately. It will probably still take a long time to heal, but I could change the dressing myself and it would be less messy and dramatically full of blood all over the place.”
The merchant curled his top lip as he swallowed deeply. “I want your weapon and your blood but also want to stay on the Ruler’s good side, so of course I don’t mind where the blood comes from. I’m not a mean man.” He handed Hope the vial and remained staring at her, smiling.
She could feel Ciaran’s body next to her, more tense than the string on most crossbows, but she didn’t let herself move her focus from the performance at hand. If they wanted accurate answers from this man, her actions had to appear real.
Hope placed the vial on the counter, her right thumb an inch over the opening.
With her left hand, she took the longest, thinnest blade from the sheath around her thigh, and very slowly brought it to her thumb, trying to make her hand shake a bit for dramatic effect, but her hand had never trembled and didn’t now either.
When the end of the blade touched her skin, she flinched and gasped loudly, and both Ciaran—in his quickly acquired apprehensive role—and the merchant looked the other way.
That’s all Hope needed for her right hand to open further, not because of the pain of the dagger that had never touched her, but to Give the individual red drops now falling into the vial.
When she grew up in Verdania, ripe elderberries had always marked her skin when she crushed them by accident, the juice dark and sticky while it ran between her fingers.
She had never used bloodroot sap before, but had read about its uses in dye—it was toxic and dangerous if ingested, so if anyone dared drink her “blood”, they wouldn’t be a worry anymore.
To mimic blood’s thickness, she added a final touch of sticky pine resin mixed with red earth like the one from Cralia.
In the right amount and dilution, the result was as convincing as anyone’s blood.
She made the combination of the three ingredients flow more abundantly at the beginning, as she continued flinching, and slowly, the flow decreased until it stopped, leaving an inch high of dark red, thick liquid at the bottom of the vial.
While the merchant grinned and put a cork top to seal it, she took another of her daggers out, placing it in front of the Speaker of the Scales.
“That’s my part of the deal,” she said.
“So it is, and your five minutes start now, Miss Rose.”
“All I want to know is where the South House keeps everything it has Taken and everything it Takes.”
“That won’t take five minutes, Miss Rose.
We could have made a different deal if I had known all you wanted to know was just that.
Too late now, sadly, isn’t it?” He tilted his head, sighing, and Hope waited for the answer instead of entertaining any more of his absurdity.
“The South House loves treasures and burying them, and there are lots of sand and dunes in the South Petal. One can put two and two together.”
“I’m afraid I need specifics. The South Petal is big, and as you said, there are lots of dunes.”
He swallowed, looked at the dagger and then flicked the blood vial. “The dune where the South House drops everything it Takes is called the Seizing Wind.”
“How do you know?”
His gold-injected gaze drifted past the small window as his fingers toyed absently with the full vial. “The House once Took me there, and warned me that if I continued injecting gold into my body organs, it would keep me there as I would finally be valuable.”
“Why did it let you go?”
“Because it said the South Cardinal, more than anyone else, understood how greediness can make beings blind and stupid. I never fully understood why, but I think it pitied me.”