The Ruby
What felt like seconds later, I woke up with a start.
I had seen more than I could process for one evening.
The final stone had shown me everything from the night of the dinner forward.
Edrin's face. The taste of the poison. Colsar running.
Teorin lifting me. The gate cracking as he carried me through.
I saw all of it.
When it was done I sat up slowly and looked at Axar.
"Ask me what you need to ask," he said.
So I did.
I asked about the poison first because that was the most urgent thing and he confirmed what I had already begun to suspect.
It was definitively Yorali work, or so he believed.
He had encountered most things, but never this.
Whatever had been used on me existed nowhere in his records, and that concerned him more than the poison itself.
Unknown things could not be treated with known remedies.
"As you get stronger," he said, "so will it. It will not kill you quickly. But it will not leave you either. We need the antidote and I cannot find it from inside Morrath."
"Then what do I do?"
"You get stronger. You let Vaelor help you.
There may be something in his healers' stores that can slow it even if it cannot cure it.
" He paused. "And there are creature networks below the surface.
Black market infant feeder blood exists if you know where to look.
Enough of it could get you out of here permanently.
" He looked at me. "I can do more for you beyond Morrath than I can from within it. "
I stared at him. "You're leaving?”
"Yes."
"I thought you were trapped here."
"Yes." He said it without apology. "The lie served its purpose. But now you are here, and the first part of my promise to your mother is fulfilled.” He moved to the table.
"I am leaving Harxin in charge of the castle.
He is a creature of considerable loyalty and answers to me and to no one else. You will be safe."
"And Teorin?"
"He is with a healer now. He has not fed properly for most of his life and the marrow donation made it considerably worse. He will regain his physical strength quickly with treatment. His mind will take longer." A pause. "Until then he cannot be trusted. You understand what I am telling you."
I understood exactly what he was telling me.
"And if Sevrin returns?"
Axar shrugged. "Then he takes the castle back. That is his right and I have no quarrel with it."
"And if Teorin decides he wants control of the castle?"
"Teorin is not equipped to do so. Harxin answers to me."
"Where are you going?"
“Alarna first. Then Veynar.” He paused. "I saw much in the Witchward. Not everything. I still do not know why Edrin was sent to kill you. But I suspect Alarna had something to do with it."
"That makes no sense."
"That is where you are wrong." He held my eyes. "And that is exactly why I am going."
He handed me a satchel. “These are the rest of the memory stones, and some things your mother wanted you to have.” He paused. “The stones have been warmed by the witches of the Witchward, but once used you cannot visit them again.”
I nodded.
Someone knocked at the door.
A woman with wings. A creature some sort.
“Majesty,” she bowed. “It is time for us to leave.”
“Thank you, Ivernet,” Axar said without looking at her. He looked up at me. “Trust no one,” he said.
He moved to the door.
He left the way I suspected he did everything. Without explanation and without looking back.
I sat alone in the memory chamber after the door closed. Then I got up and walked back to my chambers.
Now that I had my memories back, I felt strange.
I knew something was wrong before I reached the door.
The rubies were gone. It had not mattered before. But now that I remembered that night, I remembered placing them on my face before dinner. Where had they gone since then? After using the memory stones it suddenly felt more important than it ever had before.
I was moving before I had decided to move. I rang the servant’s bell in my chambers. I had never used it before.
Fiersa walked in, the expression on her face one of surprise. “Where are the clothes I arrived in?"
Fiersa frowned. "My lady—"
"The clothes. Where are they?" My voice was raised.
The door opened.
Teorin stood in the frame with color in his face for the first time since I had woken up in this place, his eyes clearer, his posture carrying something restored. Whatever the healer had done was already working.
"What is all the fuss?" he said.
"Where are the clothes I arrived in?"
He looked at me calmly. "I have them."
"You have them?"
"By the time we arrived at the Darkway most of your jewelry had fallen off. I collected what I could." He said it as though this were obvious, as though keeping a dying woman's clothes and jewelry was simply what one did.
"Bring them."
He brought them.
I went through everything piece by piece while he stood there watching. Most of it was gone. I went through the seams and the folds and at the very end, pressed into the lining of the collar, I found one ruby.
I closed my fist around it. "Leave."
He left.
I sat on the edge of the bed and let it all come at once.
The children I could not reach. Colsar on the other side of something I could not cross.
My mother who I had just met for the first time in a room made of memory and would never meet any other way.
The face chains gone. The rubies gone. Everything she had left me gone except for this one small thing pressing into my palm.
I cried in a way I had not let myself cry since I woke up here. When it was over I looked at the ruby in my palm.
The back of it was pointed. I pressed it against my cheek and pushed it through. Blood ran down my face and I did not flinch because my mother had not flinched and I was her daughter.
I wiped the blood away and thought about Petunis the day she gave me the facial jewelry.
"These do not fall," she had said.
I stood up. I opened the parcel Axar had given me.
It was time to go to the shoreline.