Chapter 14 Mullayne
Mullayne
Langzu – inner Bian, the Reisun workshop
The Hangtao clan was once the most powerful royal clan in all of Langzu, their estates and holdings representing the largest fraction of the realm’s riches.
And in one bloody night, the Sovereign and his enforcers eliminated them entirely.
It was a calculated attack, undertaken when the majority of clan members were in residence at their Bian estate.
While most of the clan was eliminated in Bian, simultaneous attacks occurred in Ruzhi, Xiazen, and the Hangtao’s country estate.
They were given no quarter and no chance to retaliate.
This wasn’t exactly how Mull had planned on reuniting with his cousin.
He’d imagined having far less dirt on him, for instance, and he’d imagined Imeah by his side, fully restored to health.
He certainly hadn’t imagined being trailed by two members of the much-reduced ranks of the Unanointed – one the rudest woman he’d ever met, and the other the biggest altered he’d ever seen.
For one of the few times in his life, he was at a complete loss for words.
He could only stare into Sheuan’s face, a face that seemed oddly unchanged since he’d seen her last. The same luminous black eyes, the same slight line between her brows when she frowned.
He felt so much older; shouldn’t she, then, look older?
He wasn’t sure where to begin, how to explain.
Sheuan put a hand on his shoulder, and he felt suddenly as though everything would be all right. She was family and she knew who he was and he was home, in a manner of speaking. But then her gaze focused on Hakara once more. Right. He’d brought trouble with him.
To his surprise, she addressed Hakara first. “What are you doing here?” Her voice cut through the darkening alley. “Did you find your sister?”
And now his mind was reeling again, the headache he’d borne for the last twelve days needling at the backs of his eyeballs. “You know one another?”
Sheuan took a breath, held it, let it out in one quick whoosh. “Never mind that. You’ll get picked up by enforcers in another moment, the state you’re in. Get inside. All of you.”
And then she was closing the window.
For a moment the three of them just stood there in the alley.
The brightness of sunset was fading into the cool blues of a new night, the heat emanating from the walls beginning to fade.
What was Sheuan doing in the workshop after hours?
The scraping sound of the front door seemed to unstick them all.
Thassir and Hakara flanked him, as though they thought he might still try to run, Hakara taking him by the upper arm.
What was her plan here? Ransom him? He’d welcome that.
Not that Sheuan or her family could pay.
She shut the door quietly behind them and turned the lock.
The workshop felt like a place asleep, projects draped in cloth, awaiting the return of workers the next day, only one lamp lit behind a screen, leaving everything else to fade into grays and browns.
The smell of greased metal and sawdust filled the air.
By all the gods, old and new, he’d missed this place.
Only, he was used to Pont lounging in a corner, or Imeah striding in with some new book to show him, or even Jeeoon sorting through whatever scraps he had for things she could use. It no longer felt like a place asleep to him; it felt like a place that had died.
Mull slipped free of Hakara’s grip, and she let him. Where could he run to now, after all?
Sheuan turned, and he was falling into her arms, gripping her so tightly he wasn’t sure she could breathe.
So many times, under the weight of the earth, he’d thought he’d be trapped there.
He’d thought he’d never return to the surface.
Even after Hakara had fished him out of the sinkhole, nothing had felt quite real, his head still swimming on the road to Bian.
Yet here, now, it cleared, everything crystallizing into the ginger scent of his cousin’s perfume, the firm feel of her back beneath his fingertips. This was real.
She was saying something, he wasn’t sure what; something soft and soothing, the litany of a mother to a frightened child. He made something out – “I thought you were dead.”
It wasn’t until he pulled away that he noticed the tears on his cheeks. He dashed them away. What was the use of tears? They did nothing for him, or for anyone.
In spite of the shine to her eyes, Sheuan was watching him in that peculiar way of hers, as though every blink was saving some judgment of him in the recesses of her mind. Her hand was still on his shoulder, the dust he’d brought with him now clinging to the front of her dress.
Her dress.
He’d been so focused before on her face that he hadn’t seen what she was wearing.
Mull didn’t know a terrible lot about fashion, but he could spot a finely made piece of clothing.
And it wasn’t just the dress. The comb in her hair was dripping with pearls, her wrists heavy with jade. This… this was different.
Pieces started to arrange themselves in his mind.
She was here in his workshop after hours, she was wearing clothes that were richer than the Sim family status indicated, and the one lit lamp was located in the corner where he’d once done his work.
A place that was now separated from the rest of the workshop by a screen.
His voice felt strangely steady, given the absolute maelstrom in his mind and his heart. “Sheuan, what did you do?”
As soon as she opened her mouth, he knew she was going to lie to him. So he didn’t listen – what was the point? Instead, he brushed past her, past her flailing explanations.
“Mullayne…” Hakara’s voice. He didn’t stop to hear her either. No one he cared about ever called him by his full name. Not unless he counted his mother and her disappointed moments.
He drew the screen to the side.
The place was a mess. Books scattered across surfaces, a notebook with her handwriting on it, bits and pieces of discarded cloth littered over the floor. And a neat row of newly manufactured filters, lying next to the window he always looked out of to daydream.
He’d specifically put the prototype in a box, had labeled it, twice, as not to be opened. Of course she’d gone and opened it anyway. He should have known she would. He was wrong to think that nothing here had changed. Everything had changed.
“I was going to tell you,” she said from behind him.
“You were going to have to.” He ran a hand through his hair and then looked at his palm, disgusted. He needed a bath. “Are you selling them?”
“No,” she said quickly. Too quickly.
“Then what are you doing?”
She hesitated, her gaze finding a spot somewhere past his shoulder. Someone else might not have noticed, but Mull knew her.
“The truth, Sheuan. Please.”
She sighed. “The Sim clan has been dissolved. I’ve married.”
Hakara let out a low whistle. “And married well, it seems, judging by that comb.”
Her jaw firmed. “It wasn’t what I wanted.”
No. It was exactly what she’d wanted. Sheuan didn’t let a chance pass her by; she never faltered or fumbled opportunities.
She never could afford to. He’d seen the deft way she moved through social circles.
A woman in her position within a dying clan, everyone waiting to see when they could pounce upon the corpse?
She couldn’t have done it without a great deal of skill.
She didn’t let a thing happen without a plan.
“Who?” Gods help him, he knew the answer before she said it.
Her tongue flicked out to wet her lips, her gaze casting involuntarily toward the corners of the space, as if there were an escape there he couldn’t see. “The Sovereign.”
There it was, still a shock after all. When he spoke, he couldn’t feel his lips moving. “You leveraged the filters, didn’t you? My filters?”
Her stance widened, her eyes locked onto his. “Yes.”
“For mining? Exploration?”
She shook her head. “Mull, you never really thought through what they might be able to do. If they can keep the aether out, then maybe they can protect a person against restoration.”
He reached out, fumbled for the chair at the desk, sitting in it before noticing there was still a book laid out on it, the pages spread.
He didn’t care. “Restoration?” Theoretically, it could work.
If the aether existed as particles in the air, and restoration was enacted through aether, and alteration was initiated through breathing in that aether, then filtering those particles out would mean avoiding restoration.
You might be able to come through unscathed – without becoming altered or having your matter transformed.
But someone’s matter still had to be transformed in order for restoration to work.
Sheuan was nodding. He’d been speaking aloud. So he finished the thought. “Just not the people the Sovereign chooses. Including the Sovereign himself.”
Hakara pushed past him. “He’s pitting this invention, his entire realm, against Kluehnn himself. If that’s what he wants, we should be working together – the Unanointed and the clans.”
Sheuan picked up one of the finished filters.
Mull couldn’t help but notice the craftsmanship of it, the crisp, clean lines.
“Even if we distributed the secret of how these are made to everyone in the realm, there simply aren’t enough resources.
We can’t protect everyone. I don’t think the Sovereign wants to protect everyone. ”
He removed the book from beneath him, letting it fall to the floor, scattering bits of cloth in its wake.
His head throbbed and he rubbed at his temples in an effort to assuage it.
“Sheuan. I left you in charge of my workshop while I was gone. You were supposed to watch over the workers and sell my wares. You were not supposed to start a revolution.”
She gave him a little half-shrug, and he knew that was all the apology he’d get from her. Her attention went back to Hakara. “Did you find your sister?” she asked again. She made the question sound casual, though Mull knew from the strain in her voice that it was anything but.
Hakara nodded. “I did. She’s well.”
It was a less than satisfactory answer – Mull could see it from the way Sheuan turned and busied herself with stacking the opened books on the desk.
She couldn’t pretend it didn’t matter to her, so she was doing the next best thing and hiding her expression.
He remembered a time, back when they were young children, when she cast her true feelings out for the world to see.
Now, she was a closed box he only sometimes could crack the lid on.
And then everything fell into place. Her staying late at the workshop, the filters, the enforcers outside the city. “It was you. You told everyone I was dead.”
She stopped, her hands lingering on a book. “I had to, Mull, it was the only way.”
“And now what? Now that I’m back?”
He’d never seen such a sharp, calculating look in her eye. “I don’t know. It would be better for me if you stayed dead.”
She said it matter-of-factly, yet it pierced him in places still tender from the deaths of his friends. If he stayed dead.
He shoved aside his feelings, examining the thought rationally, and that was when he knew.
It might have hurt, but she’d unknowingly done him a favor.
That was how he could get into the den and access the tomb.
“What if I did stay dead?” he said slowly.
“Have me arrested,” he added. “Say that I murdered Mull. I have my papers; I don’t look like myself.
The enforcers outside the city didn’t recognize me.
Do it quietly. I’ll plead clemency from Kluehnn. They’ll take me to the closest den.”
Hakara was glancing at the shutters, the light fading to full darkness. Her foot tapped. “It’s a terrible idea. You’d never survive.”
“Well that would work out fine for Sheuan, wouldn’t it?” He couldn’t help the bitterness in his voice.
His cousin reached for him and then let her hand fall back to her side. “Why do you want to get into the den?”
So he explained, feeling much more level-headed than the last time he’d done so. And the more he spoke, the surer he felt. What he’d seen written on stone was real.
Sheuan was nodding, her expression thoughtful. “I saw a book in Kashan – it said things I knew weren’t true. If there’s a third aerocline that isn’t mentioned in any of your books, then we don’t know how much of our information has been corrupted.”
“The Unanointed need his help,” Hakara broke in. “I’m not sending him to his death, even if that would be convenient for you.”
Thassir grunted. “There are more filters here, if we need them. If what he says is true, knowing more about why Tolemne returned to the surface and the nature of the bargain he made with Kluehnn could only help us.”
“It’s a terrible plan,” Hakara said. “We have no scheme to get him out.”
“Are all our plans not terrible?” Thassir said, his voice light. “If he’s clever, let him find a way out.”
Mull raised an eyebrow. “And do you really want to be dragging me along with you?” He could taste victory, just a moment away. Yes, victory meant being tossed in with criminals and then into a den for hard labor, but if he could find that tomb… he knew, he just knew he’d find the answers he sought.
“Fine.” Hakara’s lip curled in a grim smile. “But I need those filters and something else in return, since this works out so well for both of you.”
Sheuan’s eyes narrowed. “And what is that?”
“Get me into the castle.”