Chapter 11 #2
Without a word, the young woman reached into her deep cloak pocket, produced a small tin of green salve, and passed it to Ezer.
The very same kind she’d seen smeared on the war eagles’ injuries earlier.
‘It smells something dreadful, but it takes the pain away entirely. Ehvermage-crafted. Helps the servants, when we spend too long scrubbing floors. I’m only nineteen, and I swear I’ve worse knees and knuckles than my nan. She died at forty-three. It’s quite old for a Sacred, these days.’
Ezer realized, suddenly, that if she was a servant … it meant this woman wasn’t a Knight or a Scribe.
She was a Null.
Sacred-born, with no magic at all. Born to do nothing but serve.
Without a word, Ezer unscrewed the lid on the salve – and nearly choked on the smell of it. It was like rotten milk left too long beneath the sun. But she dipped a finger into the greenish substance anyway and spread it across the bridge of her nose.
It felt warm at first, like she’d traced a line of hot water down her face.
But then it cooled – so rapidly, it felt like ice.
The relief was instantaneous. She hadn’t realized how bad it hurt until the pain was gone.
‘Thank you,’ Ezer said, handing her back the tin.
‘Keep it,’ the servant said. ‘I’ve a feeling you’ll need it more than me in the coming days.’
Something about that made her stomach twinge.
Still, it was the first time anyone had done something truly kind for her in a long time.
Longer than she liked to admit.
‘I can get more,’ the young woman said, and smiled. ‘No shortage of mages here. No shortage of penance marks, either.’
She wasn’t certain what penance marks were, but if it required the salve, it couldn’t be good.
‘Izill Brezevayne.’ The young woman held out her small hand for Ezer to take. ‘And … your name?’
‘Ezer,’ she said. ‘Just Ezer.’
Izill smiled. She had a natural sort of beauty, disarming with her mouse-brown hair and freckles scattered across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose.
‘Lovely name, Just Ezer. Now I need to thank you. You’ve earned me sixteen silver coins. They’ll get me plenty of fun on Absolution.’
Ezer blinked. ‘And why would that be?’
‘Because,’ Izill said, as she pulled her knees to her chest and began to chew on her thumbnail, ‘the other servants wagered it would only last for two. But I had the winning bet. You’ve been asleep for three days.’
‘Three days?’ Ezer yelped.
Izill shushed her, glancing nervously over her shoulder. ‘Runic stasis,’ she said, and pointed to Ezer’s wrist, where a mark she hadn’t noticed before now sat like a fresh scar on her skin. It was white, like a rune whose power had already faded. ‘It was ordered by the King himself.’
Ezer felt sick at the sight of it, at the mention of the King.
Someone had marked her … to knock her unconscious?
‘But why—’
Izill shushed her again. ‘You’re loud enough to wake the gods.
I’m not supposed to be here long, but sometimes …
well, it’s nice to take a moment. Now, keep it down,’ she whispered, ‘unless you’ve the skill to fight a cranky war bear, and that’s the best way I can describe Zey when she wakes even one minute too soon.
But of course, it looks as if you’ve fought something greater and survived. Beyond the raphon, I mean.’
So, she knew.
Did the others?
Izill nodded at Ezer’s trio of raised black scars. ‘Do tell.’
‘Shadow wolves,’ Ezer explained. ‘They attacked my village when I was a child. I was the only survivor.’
Izill whistled and spat a chewed fingernail into the fire. ‘Not many of you out there,’ she said. ‘Survivors, I mean. You’re godsblessed.’
Ezer doubted that, so she changed the subject to more important matters.
‘How did you know about the raphon?’
Izill grinned. ‘Everyone knows about the raphon. Zey saw it. And so everyone knows because Zey knows.’
‘Zey,’ Ezer repeated, glancing over the back of the couch to the rows of beds and the blonde Eagleminder still sound asleep.
Perhaps she’d get lucky, and the woman would never wake up at all.
‘Eagleminders,’ Izill said with a sigh. ‘You know how they are.’
Ezer just stared at her.
Izill’s eyes widened. ‘Ehver above. So, it’s true, then. You really are an Unconsecrated.’
‘A what?’
The word sounded foul on Izill’s lips, like a curse.
She’d never heard it before.
But she’d also never heard of a raphon being inside the Citadel. Clearly the countless articles she’d studied about the Citadel and its Sacred hadn’t come from very reliable sources.
When Ezer didn’t answer, Izill added, ‘An Unconsecrated. A Sacred, born and raised outside the Citadel. Likely because one, or even both of your parents decided to lay down their oaths and leave.’ A pause as she tapped a fingertip on her lips, considering.
‘What’s your magic, then? Realmist? No. The dark hair, the scars, the mysterious glint in your eyes …
you look a bit like an Ehvermage to me. No offense. ’
Ezer pursed her lips. ‘Not a mage,’ she said.
‘A Scribe, then?’
‘I’ve no magic at all,’ Ezer said, because she didn’t know this woman, didn’t dare breathe a word about her connection to the birds. Her ability to see so well in darkness. The voice on the wind.
And certainly not her strange dreams of the prince.
She held out her empty hands. ‘I’m just … me.’
Izill stared at her for a moment, and Ezer wondered, not for the first time, just how convincing she could be at telling a lie.
Kinlear wasn’t fooled.
Arawn wasn’t either.
But Izill shrugged, as if she were instantly convinced.
‘Welcome to the club, then. Unfortunate, in this space, for there aren’t too many of us.
They do try hard to weed out the weak when they match Sacred.
’ She lifted her chin. ‘I’m nothing to be ashamed of, though.
At least, not in my mind. I’ve always said a Sacred is a Sacred, even if they’ve just one drop of our blood in their family tree.
Even if they break their oath and leave the Citadel behind. ’
She was kind. An easy companion, Ezer could tell.
‘So, who was it?’ Izill asked. ‘Your mother or your father that broke their oath?’
‘Neither,’ Ezer said. ‘At least … not to my knowledge. They died in the attack. I don’t even remember their faces.’
‘A surname, then?’ Izill said. ‘You’d be surprised how many names you come across when you’re delivering laundry to every door in the Citadel.’
Ezer shook her head. ‘I’ve never known.’
‘Gods, they weren’t lying.’ Izill smiled sadly at her. ‘You’re quite a mystery, indeed.’
She wasn’t used to being spoken about, used to being looked at or considered by anyone at all.
Something about it made her skin crawl to know she’d been the topic of conversation inside the Citadel.
While she’d been utterly gone to this world …
for three damned days, unable to tell her side of the story.
‘Whatever the case, you’ve Sacred blood,’ Izill said. ‘No one, and I mean no one, can enter the Citadel without it. You don’t see any nomages walking the halls, now, do you?’
‘No?’ Ezer said.
She hadn’t had the chance to consider that.
But now that she thought about it …
It was only the Sacred. The Scribes, the Knights, the Eagleminders. Even the Null servants, for though they were the only ones not to have magic …
They still had Sacred blood.
Another little mystery unfolded before her, and it was one she’d never discovered in the pages of her books.
Ezer supposed she should have been shocked.
But she wasn’t. She knew the stories of those who’d defected, not to join the Acolyte, but to leave the ways of the Sacred entirely. It was either for love or fear or a need to live out one’s life without the pressing weight of the Sacred laws.
She couldn’t imagine the sheer weight of living so perfectly all the time, beyond the one damned day of Absolution to blow off a month’s worth of steam. Perhaps it was why she’d seen such fear in Arawn’s eyes, when faced with the reality of failing.
That wasn’t living. It was marching, always to the beat of someone else’s orders.
‘Can you tell me where I am?’ Ezer asked, changing the subject, because it was too heavy to bear in the moment. Too much to process, in such little time.
‘Tower of Dhysis,’ Izill said matter-of-factly.
‘Shared dormitories line every floor of this tower. If you want your own quarters, you’d have to be of advanced Sacred status.
Most of them are in their thirties by now.
The Masters grant them more privacy than us.
Makes the rapid decline … less intrusive, I suppose. ’
A terrible thing, the toll magic took on a Sacred after time.
‘And how, exactly, did I get here?’
‘You’re a guest of the princes,’ said a voice from just behind them.
They both whirled to find Zey, the Eagleminder.
‘And you,’ she said pointedly to Izill, ‘are not supposed to be here, Izill.’
‘My orders are to clean your dorm. It says nothing specifically about how long it takes me, nor what I’m permitted to do in the in-between. But if you must know, I’ve been reassigned.’
‘To what?’ Zey growled.
Izill shrugged. ‘To her.’
‘What?’ Ezer spun to face her again when she realized Izill was speaking about her.
A servant. For a Ravenminder?
‘The prince wants you to have an attendant,’ Izill explained with a smile. ‘Someone to help escort you throughout the Citadel, and help you learn the ways.’
Zey barked out a laugh. ‘That’s preposterous. She doesn’t belong here.’
‘She belongs as well as you,’ Izill said, as Zey practically snarled like a hungry lion.
Ezer had no clue how long the Eagleminder had been standing there, but she had her arms crossed over her full chest, a pale brow raised in disapproval.
Lovely, buttery yellow waves tumbled over her shoulders now that her braid had been let loose, and despite the chill, she wore a sleeveless tunic to reveal the fine muscles on her toned arms.
Ezer swallowed.
Because the woman wore a look of pure, seething hatred on her face.
‘Zey,’ Izill introduced them. ‘This is—’
‘The one who interrupted my Demonstration earlier this week. I never got the chance to thank you properly for it.’
It was said with a snarl. A shiver tiptoed up and down Ezer’s spine.
It nearly made her sick, how someone could be so beautiful on the outside when they were clearly curdled within. Because she knew in an instant, Zey was rotten to her core.
‘Ezer,’ she said, introducing herself. Refusing to bend to the piercing glare Zey leveled at her. ‘We’ve met.’
Zey bared her teeth like a lioness. ‘Well, Ezer. Next time you find yourself in a space not permitted for your kind,’ she looked pointedly at Izill, as if to rope them into the same category, ‘I’d suggest you swiftly find yourself back out.
There’s only so many times a Sacred can resist the urge to defend what is theirs.
A delicate balance we must hold.’ She looked at her fingernails, feigning boredom.
‘I’d hate to see that balance shift on Absolution.
We wouldn’t want to get another mark on your face.
Though I’m not sure there’s room for more. ’
Ezer had dealt with plenty of lashing tongues in her life. The comments hurt when she was younger. Sometimes, she refused to leave the house until Ervos bribed her with books and sweets. But these days they rolled off her like morning dew on the feathers of a bird.
Nothing could hurt her the way the past had.
Not anymore.
‘I apologize for what happened with your demonstration,’ Ezer said. ‘An accident, if there ever was one, and believe me, I’d take it back if I could. Though, I’m not entirely certain it was my fault.’
‘No?’ Zey asked.
Ezer shrugged. ‘No. In my expertise, a bird’s behavior is a direct reflection of its master.
Your eagle is unhinged. A danger to itself and others, practically feral.
And given that a spilled bucket set it off in such a way …
well.’ She clicked her tongue. ‘I’d hate to see what a wave of shadows would do in the middle of an all-out war. ’
Zey looked like she might leap across the couch and strangle her. But she only flipped her lustrous hair over a shoulder and tipped up her nose. ‘And what sort of expertise would an Unconsecrated have?’
‘Enough to know a feral beast when I see one,’ Ezer said. ‘But that depends, of course, on whether you trust the opinion of a scarred little vermin like me.’
Others began to wake behind them, the movement enough for Zey to pause, glance over her shoulder, and settle her breathing.
‘I suggest you leave,’ Zey said softly. ‘Go back to whatever shit-stained tower you came from and— Your Highness.’
Her face paled as she suddenly glanced past Ezer’s shoulder, where another woman had quietly opened the door to a knock.
And standing in the doorway, an amused expression on his face, was Arawn.