Chapter 4
A Dream of You
Shioven led Jesstin down a long hall, up two short flights of stairs, and into a narrow corridor. There were no sconces to light their path, and the farther they went, the fewer people they encountered in the dark passage.
He couldn’t tear his eyes away from her hair, a rosy cascade of warmth.
She couldn’t have been much older than Elloven when she’d died.
Their heights were a rough match. From behind, he wouldn’t know them apart at all.
Elloven may not remember her, but they had the same direct style of speaking: a sharp wariness edged with pure fire.
A middle-aged man wearing an obscenely wide-brimmed hat stood with a bored young woman outside a circular carve-out of wall that looked like the interior of a turret.
He was propped against the wall, reading something on thick paper, but the woman perked like she’d been waiting for them.
Shioven nodded at her and said, “Tidings, Alice. Loggia Four available?”
“Usually is. Everyone knows you’re keen on it.” Alice dug out a small leather purse and opened it. “You’re in luck. We’re slow tonight. German’s group made the migration this morning, and the freshlings don’t know about us yet. Four pieces for the hour, twelve if you stay until dawn.”
“Until dawn.” Shioven deposited the coins. “He’ll need his rest.”
Alice grinned and cinched the purse, her intrigued gaze lingering on Jesstin.
Jesstin, amused, realized immediately what was happening—or what Alice assumed was happening.
“Young, for your liking.” Alice smirked.
The man beside her contributed a dutiful chuckle, his nose still planted firmly behind the creased paper.
“But fairer on the eyes than the others. Expanding your options?”
“Might say that,” Shioven answered, a smidge frostier than before. Arms folded, she waited until Alice, shaking her head to herself, unlocked the door to the circular outcrop and stepped aside. Shioven brushed by and started up a narrow, spiral staircase.
“Do this a lot?” Jesstin asked her, his hands pressed to the narrow, damp walls for guidance. He could’ve corrected Alice, but Shioven hadn’t, and he’d have to trust she had her reasons.
“The gold pays for privacy. Speculation is all they have.” She climbed past a narrow arch with a door.
Her cloak dusted the steps behind her, disappearing around corner after corner as he tried to keep up.
They came to another door, where moans sounded from behind the meager wooden slats.
“I like Loggia Four because it’s the last one. It faces the lake.”
“What lake?” Jesstin’s hands slid on the slimy walls. He couldn’t wait to wipe them on something.
“The vigils take their ships along the lake at all hours, and they’re not quiet about it.
Unless someone stands right outside our loggia, they’d hear nothing except a mutter of horns, bells, and garbled voices.
” Shioven rushed past the third door and finally stopped at the fourth.
She pushed on the flimsy entrance, waited for him to come in, and bolted it behind them. “Get as comfortable as you’re willing.”
Comfortable? The place was smaller than some closets.
Tattered, moth-eaten blankets covered a bed with uneven stuffing, and a sour stench that could not have come from just one problem permeated the air.
There was a table, two chairs, and a decanter of uncapped wine he wouldn’t touch with a sword to his throat.
The view from the lone window was a morass of lake stretching so far, he saw nothing but.
The distant beats on the ground floor were like a pulse in the stone.
“Can’t imagine being desperate enough to fuck someone here,” he muttered.
“We didn’t come here for that.”
“No kidding.” Jesstin pulled out a chair, tested the legs. There was a wobble, but it should hold. “I’d interrogate you, but I’m not blind.”
Shioven sat on the bed instead of the chair across from him. “I appreciate your trust.”
“Efficiency. We’re a long way from trust.”
“If only we had the time,” she answered slowly, “but I didn’t bring you here to waste yours or mine, Jesstin.
I want to give your time weight and meaning.
And direction. Without it, you could search for her for years.
Years here could be a lifetime out there.
Time is unpredictable here. It does as it pleases and explains itself to no one. ”
“I was lured here on the promise of answers, and then the coward who begged for my help up and vanished.”
“Edmond? I presume he meant for me to deliver.” She unfastened her cloak and let it fall onto the filthy cover. “I don’t know where Aelloven is. He lied if he said I do.”
Jesstin deflated. If she didn’t know how to find Elloven, she was wasting his time. “So I’ve been left to fend for myself, swindled, and with no idea where to go next.”
Her head tilted to the left, then right. “He lured you here with promises and expects me to keep them. How very Edmond. I will, but not for him. Aelloven needs to know how and why she ended up here, and no one else will spare the time or care to tell her, not even her father.”
“I know who killed Elloven, and I’ll deal with it. But I need to find her first, and if you can’t tell me how, then I need to find who can.”
“It’s more complicated than that. Magic keeps me from her, which means I can’t know where she is. Even if she were a room away, I’d never know. I never will.”
“How the hell am I supposed to find her then?”
“We’ll get there.”
“If we’re not there already, this conversation is over.” Though he hoped it wasn’t. Being near this shadow of Elloven was the first time he’d felt even remotely balanced since he’d watched her die. He was already dreading the moment he’d leave her.
Shioven twisted her hands in her lap. “There are markets throughout the Infinitum. Forums Obscura. Dealers of assistance. They may be able to find her, for a fee.”
Jesstin pointed at himself. “Does it look like I came here with any coin?”
“It isn’t coin they trade in.”
His mouth hitched. “How ominous.”
Shioven’s smile formed as she turned it on him.
“I’ve waited a long time for someone like you.
I’ve said none of what I’m about to tell you to anyone.
All these years, I’ve stayed right here waiting, knowing the day would come, just not when.
I lied, stole, dodged anyone who posed a threat to my continued existence, such as it is.
I cultivated a reputation, one you gleaned well enough from Alice, but I’d rather they think I’m their most amorous midnight woman than know that all the men and women who have sat here, with me, in this very room, were the disparate parts of my effort to gather the truth for my daughter and find the means to deliver it.
Then she went to Rivenholde, and I thought all of it had been for nothing—until I learned who she’d gone with.
A White Kingdom necromancer, of all things.
Do you know how rare that is? Can it be anything but intended? ”
Jesstin didn’t have an answer to give her.
“Her death...” Shioven’s voice rattled. “Was the first time in either of my lives I’ve felt incurable despair.
Not even when she was taken from me did I lose my hope so thoroughly.
But Mon told me of the necromancer caught in my daughter’s snare.
He thinks I don’t know how he and the others will remind you that your only priority is to free the masses, not save one woman, but the thing about the Infinitum, Jesstin, isn’t what it is but what it gives and what it takes.
It offers fear and has the gall to charge you for it.
The price is only your own humanity, slowly flaking away, like dead skin.
The more you indulge the hope of beating it, the higher the price.
Mon spent his years deviling the labyrinth with his band of separatists, never realizing every time he stretched himself between worlds, he left parts of himself behind, that the very freedom he chased would mean nothing when he exited this world a man who no longer knew his own reflection, outward or in.
Mon scorches the path behind him for the one he believes awaits him.
But every spark, every curl of smoke rising in the distance, changes the destination.
He cannot see the dawn because he plants himself in the shadows. ”
“I have no loyalty to Mon, and he has none to me.” Jesstin had met his share of extremists.
The Reliquary had plenty, and there were the men and women who never missed an evening in Mythgarde, spending more time with their cohorts than their families.
“If I can free all of you, I will. But there will be no sunlight for anyone, not even me, if I don’t find Elloven.
He’s lost the humanity he fights for if he can’t see that. ”
“Mon and the others, they’ll ‘indulge’ your need to find her as long as it does not waylay their plans. You don’t owe them or me anything. Never lose sight of what matters.” She paused. “Before I... Before I tell you what you need to know, will you allow me a question?”
Jesstin shrugged. “Sure.”
“I read a lot of conflict in you. And forgive me if this is forward, but I see how you look at me. It brings me back to a time when I was loved.” She nodded, her eyes cast to the side in memory. “Others have told me she’s my spitting image. How confusing that must be for you.”
Jesstin shifted in discomfort.