Chapter 1 #2
They both wore decent clothes. No fine linen or silk, but the cotton was smooth and evenly dyed, and the seams were straight.
Their hair was thick and shiny, their frames of healthy weight, their skin unblemished by childhood diseases.
Reasonably prosperous parents, then, enough to afford good clothes and see a healer and eat three square meals a day.
But they were filthy from head to toe, smeared with soot and dried sweat and tears, and the smell of horse about them was strong. That thick, glossy hair was tangled, and the little girl, no more than six, was staring with wide, blank eyes as she chewed and swallowed.
The boy, around twelve or so, was trying to look everywhere, all at once. He twitched when I entered the room, drawing closer to the girl as though to throw himself in front of her.
Both of them were dripping with bits of scrap iron, quite literally.
It was tied to them on a multitude of strings, dangling from their wrists, their necks, the buttons on their shirts.
Their pockets bulged with it. They clicked and clanked as they moved, the boy reaching for more food and pressing it into the girl’s hand.
He had a shortsword strapped to his belt, the tip dragging on the floor, but he was barefoot.
They had the same dark hair, olive skin, and blue-green eyes. Siblings, then, especially with those sharp, identical noses.
Everything about them sent a frisson up my spine, the fine hairs prickling at the nape of my neck.
“What is this?” I asked, in a low voice, and my father looked up with a start, beckoning with relief.
“Come, Jesamin. This is Anto and Letti, from Lonmire. They’ve had…quite a journey.”
I entered, moving cautiously, as though I were trying not to frighten away wild animals. Anto watched me with deep suspicion, unaware of the streak of butter on his nose as he gulped down a bowl of beans.
I knew of Lonmire, a fishing village on the furthest northeastern reaches of fel Arron land, nestled against the banks of the River Nicla. They were heavy suppliers of salt fish, and on the common path for the merchant caravans moving between Port Coran and the rest of the Rivers.
It was a small village, no more than two hundred or so people, but fairly prosperous in both trade and skill. It explained their health and well-made clothes.
“What news of Lonmire, Anto?” I asked gently. The girl was still eating, seemingly unaware of anything happening around her. I hoped Papa had already sent one of his men for a healer.
The boy looked at me with those extraordinarily oceanic eyes. His sister’s gaze was empty, but his…beneath the suspicion and watchfulness, there was a bright seed of stark terror.
“They’re all gone.” He said it so simply, so factually, it took me a few seconds to ponder the implications of it.
“They…left? Did they move on with the caravans?” I shot a quizzical glance at Papa, fearing to ask a blunter question. I remembered all too well asking where Mother was, and my last memory of her was a lacquered pine box, the lid nailed shut.
“They’re gone,” he repeated. “Every house was empty. Only Letti and I were left.”
“Anto, were there any bodies?” Papa asked, in that kindly yet stern tone of voice that only a good father could muster.
He shook his head. “They’re gone.”
His voice rose, taking on the register of a much younger child. I realized then that despite his hyper-awareness of all that moved around him, he was as deep in shock as the little girl.
I leaned toward him. “Anto, do you remember when you last saw your parents?”
He nodded slowly, mouth stuffed full with ham. “When we went to bed.”
“Do you remember what happened after that?”
“The face in the window looked at us. When the sun came up, everyone was gone.”
The prickling at my nape became icy fingers tapping down my spine.
“What did this face look like?”
Anto stopped chewing, that wary look in his eye blossoming into full and glassy fear. “It was…so white. Its eyes were too big. I thought it was a mask…but it wasn’t. Ma and Da and Tasos are gone.”
“Who is Tasos, Anto?”
The little girl’s eyes finally flicked to me. “His crib was empty.”
“Do you remember anything else?” Papa put his hand on Anto’s shoulder, making the scrap iron clank as the boy shuddered.
“We were behind the forge,” he whispered.
“It was warm. I think…it was the iron kept ‘em out. Da’s the only smith. We sleep behind the forge sometimes. They’re all gone.
I ran to the caravan to send a message, and the man gave me a coin for the work, and we went to bed and I kissed Ma and Tasos and the face watched us and it didn’t leave until everyone was gone—”
“Hush.” When Papa was kind yet implacable, it was impossible to disobey. He took Anto’s shaking hands, wrapping them tight. “Hush now. You’re here and you’re safe, and we will go look for your family.”
I licked my lips, my mouth suddenly dry. “I have only two more questions, and then I promise, Anto, I will go look for myself. Did you hear howling, or see any wolves?”
It was a long shot, and it had been many decades since wargs were seen on Veladari soil, but it was worth the ask. I had read the history books, and I knew that they could easily have killed two hundred people in a single night.
But Anto shook his head.
“Last question. Do you remember anything about the man who paid you? Did he give you gold?”
Slavers were uncommon in Veladar. No sane person would risk the fury of our overlords; twenty years ago, slavers from Hélléne had tried to take several young women from the Moor.
The Lord of the Moor had expressed his displeasure by retrieving the women, dowrying them as recompense for the full day spent in slavers’ hands, and had nailed said slavers to crosstrees along the Great Road of the Moor, flayed alive and salted to preserve them.
He’d set a man to walk the Great Road with a bucket in hand, and the manservant would lift a sponge on a long stick to dribble water in their mouths, keeping them alive.
As the tale went, they lasted several agonizing weeks, and their bodies remained as a withered, skeletal warning to this very day.
Since then, the incidence of press-ganged slavery was almost nonexistent.
There was little point in stealing people if their rulers could track their scents across continents, and had both the time and inclination to do so.
But for a man to arrive and pay a smith’s boy, perhaps for his silence on the matter…the River Nicla fed into the northernmost waters of the Eridan Sea. If fishing ships could reach its docks, so could slave ships, and while unlikely, it was far from impossible.
Anto dug in one of his pockets, carefully arraying the bits of iron on the table before him, and finally pulled out a coin which he plopped into my hand.
I almost dropped it.
“Jes?” Papa leaned forward, his face taut with strain. “What is it?”
I flipped the cool black coin, its oily smoothness familiar to me from my lessons in the Argent Collegium. Faint iridescence shone on its matte surface. My lips were numb as I spoke. “It’s chthonium.”
Chthonium, the strange metal of the Fae.
The Master Artificers of the Argent Collegium possessed several artifacts of Fae creation, the purposes of which were nebulous, but in achieving our own Masteries, the students were permitted to examine the devices—to touch, smell, and even taste them.
The devices themselves were made not only of chthonium, but bright platinum and even sheets of pure diamond, but it was the unusual black metal we were to memorize.
Once touched, it could never be forgotten.
And, as the Master Artificers had told us, the likelihood we would ever come across it again was vanishingly rare.
Those artifacts, stored under unbreakable locks and keys in their dusty vaults, were the only ones of their kind permitted in the world above, and that only at the sufferance of the Four Lords, who had determined them innocuous enough for study.
Yet here I sat, with a chunk of pure chthonium in the palm of my hand. It was unlikely to actually be currency, but my human eyes, like Anto’s, refused to acknowledge it as anything else. It was shaped roughly like a gold mark, with little else about it to designate its purpose.
“I must see our lord about this. Anto…may I keep this for now? I will bring it back to you—”
He leaned away from me, already stuffing the iron back into his pockets. “It’s bad luck. I don’t want it back.”
I met my father’s eyes before speaking to Anto again. “Then I’ll match its weight in gold for you. Now, you must rest with your sister, and stay here. But before I go, describe the man who paid you with this coin.”
He slowly blinked. “He was a lai, Da said. He had a fancy coat, and a scary smile, and he was skinny like a scarecrow. Da wouldn’t let me get too close. He said he didn’t like him, but the man gave me the coin when Da wasn’t looking.”
I supposed I couldn’t expect a smith’s son to give too much of a damn about some lai nobleman, but that was so little to go on. “Did you read this message you sent for him?”
Anto shook his head. “That’s rude.”
I smiled despite myself, but sighed inwardly. There was only one thing to be done. The existence of the coin changed everything.
I beckoned Papa’s manservant over. “Take them to be bathed, and feed them as much as they’d like. You two must stay here, yes? You are welcome in this house for as long as you need.”
They were both stuffed full, and Letti didn’t so much as blink as Anto took her by the hand, leading her off with the manservant.
The housekeeper, Tarja, would see them right.
She took care of Papa most days, helping to bathe and dress him, and children were no trial for her. She’d helped raise me, after all.
“Jesamin, if we get the carriage ready…I know the axles were unsound, but…” Papa looked pained, but I got up from my chair, took his cold hands in mine, and rubbed some warmth back into him.
“Hush. We both know there’s not enough time. I’ll ride for Owlhorn at once.” A crooked smile crossed my lips. “We both know it’s perfectly safe for me.”
The Lord of the Rivers was a fiend, a vampire of terrible form and worse appetite, his temper towards noblemen generally one of scorn.
He was also newly widowed, and I’d heard from Papa’s friends that some of the lais, of the old and pure Veladari blood, were already vying to put a particular woman on the throne.
I’d be shocked if Esteri lai Auvray, daughter of the richest man of the Rivers and long considered a desirable catch, wasn’t the Lady by the end of summer.
But my mother had been Forian. Good merchant stock from Port Coran, and back when Papa was young and had the use of his legs, he’d been most impressed with both her beauty and mind for numbers, and had made a damn fool of himself trying to impress her.
It had worked. Though the other Rivers noblemen had scoffed at his choice, Oksana Kulik had become Oksana fel Arron, and they’d lived in a fairy tale until the day of the accident.
And thanks to their fairy tale, I was forever safe.
My dark brown curls, brown eyes, and skin that went from pale in winter to bronze in summer marked me as no pure-blooded Veladari, and I had grown up glad of it.
When the news came that the Lady of the Rivers was dead, I’d exhaled a brief sigh of regret on behalf of the Lord and gone on about my day, utterly unconcerned.
Now that I had to ride through his gates and demand his aid—and worse, his attention—I was gladder of it than ever.
“Jesamin…do be careful.” Papa gazed into my eyes with deep gravity, but he didn’t try to talk me out of it. We both knew it was necessary; by the time the carriage was outfitted to manage his wheelchair, I would already be at Owlhorn by horse. “If he asks—”
“What could he possibly ask of me?” I forced a smile. Even if I were eligible, after Renaud’s betrayal I wouldn’t touch a vampire with a ten-foot pole. “Regardless, he must be fetched immediately. This is not a matter we can resolve ourselves. Something is seriously amiss.”
“You truly underestimate yourself, darling girl. Remember you are not obliged to offer blood for any reason. Take Talos with you to watch your back, and travel swiftly. I’ll send the men to post sentries around Lonmire and guard the scent.”
I nodded, and kissed his forehead. “Of course, Papa. I’ll be home soon.”
I tucked the chthonium coin in my pocket, and swept out to prepare to meet Lord Wroth.