Chapter Six Light
CHAPTER SIX
LIGHT
The world was on fire.
Embers danced in air that tasted of sulfur, and a billowing blackness blotted out the sun, casting the land in shadow.
Around her, the dead were piled like cresting waves in a churning, endless ocean—a fallen army with the faces of countless nations and emotionless eyes that all seemed trained on her.
Sages.
Their marks had turned gray in death, as if their magic had gone with them to the stars. Far in the distance, almost obscured by a veil of smoke, a city built along a curve of rugged coastline had been set aflame. Was this what war looked like?
A voice spoke: I see you.
Reya whirled, reaching for the familiar leather hilt of her father’s sword, but it wasn’t there.
The presence the voice emanated from took no shape, but Reya could feel its life, its soul. It circled her, taunted her. A numen of dreams. Her mother had told tales of the dream walker spirits, and how they often brought portents of fate.
They were messengers of the All-Gods.
“Who are you?” Reya’s voice echoed back to her, as though she were standing at the mouth of a cave instead of on a battlefield.
I am the beginning. Its voice was the purr of a lover and the command of a god, older than time and deeper than sin.
One of the corpses let out a groan. Tripping over limbs and spears, Reya ran for the soldier, a female armored in silver and pale gold; her hands went right through the breastplate as the body and armor disintegrated beneath her touch, coating her palms in charcoal ashes that lifted and curled around her on the breeze.
A scream crawled up her throat as more bodies crumbled into dust, and the waves of the dead rose up to drown her.
Wake up, mo réal, said the numen. They are coming.
She couldn’t breathe. Too tight. Too close. Reya tried to wipe the ashes from her hair and skin, but only managed to smear them across her flesh like war paint. They flew into her mouth and nose until she was choking on the taste of death.
Let us see how bright you shine.
Reya jerked upright with a gasp, her lavender sheets pooling around her waist. She was covered in sweat.
Thunder boomed overhead like a death knell, and there was a faint hammering of rain on the metal roof of her flat.
Air. She needed air. Taking the sheet with her, she hurtled for the window.
It opened with a bang, and she inhaled the scent of the rain, metal, and sea, eclipsing the scent of death on that burning breeze.
On the roof of the building across the street, a raven cawed, as though to chastise her for disturbing the peace.
“Oh, bite me,” she mumbled, giving it a vulgar gesture.
Her dreams had never been fun places to explore.
But she’d never been visited by a numen before.
How many times had she begged the All-Gods to speak to her?
To show her the way? That they were coming to her now with veiled warnings when she was less worthy than she had ever been of their council could mean nothing good.
She tried to remember what it had called her.
An Etellinian word, she was certain, though the harder she tried to remember the faster it slipped away.
Fifty-five days. The reminder landed like a physical blow to her already throbbing injuries.
The broken fingers of her left hand were so blue they were almost black.
The two healing teas and quarter bottle of whiskey she’d chugged for the pain the night before had helped, but they’d since worn off completely, and now her head was pounding and her entire arm hurt like an Etellinian winter.
Rolling her neck to try and relieve the throbbing pressure in her skull, Reya crossed to her kitchenette, bedsheet fluttering behind her like a cape. If she was going to pull off the heist of her life, she needed coffee.
After she’d left the inn, she’d retraced the Sage’s steps to every buyer he’d met with. There had been no sign of the Earth Star. And the axe now propped against her bedside table next to her sword, while a breathtaking piece of weaponry, was unlikely to sell for more than two thousand golds.
Reya closed her eyes and saw his face, as she had for hours while she’d waited for the relief of sleep.
Remembered what it had felt like to be pinned beneath him, the intrigued surprise on his chiseled features when she’d admitted that she liked it, and shook her head like it might shake the weight of him from her memory.
Fantasizing about a male who was likely plotting her death at that very moment was not a productive use of her time.
His Earth Star had, by all accounts, been a ruse. Even if it wasn’t, she was not about to go anywhere near the male again. Last night, she’d been outmatched; she just hadn’t known it. And Reya was not in the habit of picking fights she couldn’t win.
Thankfully, she no longer needed to.
Reya filled her copper kettle with water and switched the burner on. Grinding the beans with her mortar and pestle, she eyed the letters on her counter.
The first one was innocuous enough, the white wax eight-pointed-star seal of the Church of the First plain on its face.
It was from the high priest to the king, bolstering the monarch’s farcical, long-held belief that the continued purging of the magic-born from the empire was indeed a holy purpose.
Not surprising or terribly interesting. The second letter was far more engrossing: written by the king and addressed to the warden of Bladestone Prison, demanding results by summer’s end before the weather turned.
Bladestone Prison was once a castle. A fortress home to the great Etellinian kings and queens who ruled the north long ago. After the conquering, the Rhiterrans refurbished it as a prison for the sole purpose of containing magic-born.
The third letter was damning—a report directly from the prison detailing an effort to “isolate the magical element” using some sort of compound, confirming the rumors that had been rippling through the underworld about experiments on magic-born inside the prison.
The report listed various trials and an alarming number of losses, though there was no indication that any attempts had been successful.
Rothmire, it seemed, was after a way to destroy magic for good.
And it was her ticket out of this mess.
The kettle whistled, and she switched the burner off before dumping the grounds inside, then stirring and letting it sit.
She had a feeling the King of Rhiterra would pay handsomely to keep that correspondence from falling into the wrong hands—especially when such evidence might create alliances between other countries wanting to protect the magic-born in their own lands.
The Crimson Dagger planned to reap that profit.
Reya slid the filter into place over the spout before pouring herself a generous cup, adding a splash of milk, a scoop of sugar, and a dusting of cinnamon.
She moaned at the taste, the sheer pleasure of this small morning ritual enough to make her forget, just for a moment, that her future rested on the edge of a knife.
Her plan hinged on finding the right mediary to deliver her message to the king, and on avoiding whatever trap the Silver Guard would try to set for her at the exchange. And if it all went wrong, she needed a backup plan.
South of the Etellinian Mountains, along the eastern coast, stood the last free port city in Ianess, where hundreds of ships docked and traded every day.
Port Talluah was a hive of crime and debauchery that made even the dark corners of the Heap look tame.
But so long as its operations filled the pockets of the powerful, the city would continue to exist on the fringes of the empire’s control.
There she could find international buyers who didn’t know the name Lennox Raulin.
Best of all, it was crawling with pirates loyal to Reardon Voláni.
Adding twenty-eight days of land travel to her timeline was risky, giving her roughly three weeks in port to secure and execute a job, but it was her best chance.
While Reya sipped, she packed, tossing clothes and supplies into an open bag.
Going by ship would be faster, but Reya knew her boss and his games.
The moment she secured passage, Lennox would have either the captain killed or the ship burned to the ground, and she would be out of whatever coin she’d paid—coin she couldn’t waste.
She’d been careful over the years to live beneath her means.
Thanks to her frugality, her savings were substantial.
Not even close to one hundred thousand golds, but enough to buy passage on a ship for her and Ash and keep them both comfortable and fed while they started a new life in Delthia.
Once she sold her flat, she would hopefully have enough to buy land abroad when she finished her apprenticeship.
She would need to hire a foreman to help her build her smithy, of course.
And that would cost more coin than she had. But it was a start.
She wrapped dried fruit, bread, and salted meats in linens and filled her waterskin to the brim.
Then she threw in her waxed linen tent, some spare weapons, and a wool blanket.
When she tested the weight, she groaned, staring wistfully at the stacks of books she’d begun sorting for her move to Delthia. All her favorites.
Maybe she could bring just one.
Blackmailing the King of Rhiterra wasn’t as simple as tacking a note to his front door. He needed to know who he was dealing with and what she was prepared to do if he didn’t cough up the coin. She would need to send a clear message, Reya thought as she polished her dagger.
By the time the rubies were glistening, she’d chosen her target.
Reya knew she was being followed. She’d felt the first prickle on her neck upon crossing the Sovereign Road, the arterial thoroughfare that bisected the city from Southgate to the mountain palace.