City of Light (The Traveler's Gate Trilogy) (19 page)

She sighed. “But it wasn’t long at all before the fog in my mind lifted, and I realized what I had done. What I had become.”

You’re a monster,
the Violet Light whispered.

Rhalia’s eyes shone like gold coins. “I became a monster.”

Don’t walk the path she did,
the Silver Light said.

“I don’t want you to walk down the same path I did, Alin.”

Think about what you’ve done to these people
, the Rose Light begged. Alin glanced around, at the fear in the citizens of Enosh. They didn’t love him. They cringed away from him.

“Think about what you could do to these people,” Rhalia said. “Think about what you will do, when you lose control.”

The Gold Light shone, comforting and powerful, in the back of his mind, like a new sun hanging out of sight.
Don’t be afraid,
it said.
A truly brave man would face the truth.

“You don’t belong here,” she said.

You don’t belong here,
the Light agreed.

Alin stared past Rhalia, through the Gate, at the shining silver-and-gold walls of Elysia. Behind those walls, the tops of the city rose: red brick towers, gold monuments, silver spires, gleaming amethysts the size of warehouses. A column of light rose from the peak of the city to pierce the sunset sky.

His heart ached for the City. It was where he belonged, he could feel it.

But if he took that one step inside, he would never leave.

Alin took in one deep, shuddering breath, and the spell was broken. He took a step back and turned his back on Rhalia, walking away. Silver Light spun at his command, flashing into every window, through every cracked door. It raced and flew through the entire city, spreading out, giving him a vague sense of everything in Enosh, tying him with tiny webs to every person in the city.

“Not yet,” Alin said, his voice cold. “I still have work to do here.” The very idea of Grandmaster Naraka blackened his thoughts, and the Incarnations were still loose. Leah was likely doing her best to keep them contained, but could she really handle it? Not as well as he could, he was sure.

No, he wouldn’t make Rhalia’s mistakes.

He would do
better.

“There are nine virtues in Elysia,” Rhalia said. “They’re all important, but there is one which provides them all with context. Only one virtue that gives the others meaning. And you don’t even understand it.”

Alin marched toward the Blue District, his boots ringing on the stones. “I don’t need to hear about the White Light, Rhalia. I think I’m done with stories for today.”

“Then why is the Gate still open?” Rhalia asked softly. “Why do you carry me around with you every day, if you don’t—”

He slashed a hand across empty air, and the Gate vanished.

Time to get back to work,
the Red Light said.

He almost hoped he
did
find some intruders in the Blue District. In this mood, he would enjoy doing something clear-cut, something that was undoubtedly the right thing to do. Like protecting his city from invaders.

***

Before he made it to Enosh, Simon had wondered if they would find anything. What were they even looking for, aside from ‘something wrong’? Unless they saw Alin actively dismembering a citizen, how were they supposed to know if he’d done anything?

It didn’t take him long, running through the streets of Enosh, to figure it out.

The city looked completely different than when he’d last seen it, both because of Alin’s presence and because of his reconstruction efforts. They were in the all-blue section of the city, which he had heard someone call the Blue District.

He clung to the side of a wall, fingers braced with Benson’s steel, and watched a mother and her daughter cling to one another and shake as a shapeless blue mass, dangling six-foot tentacles, drifted down the street as though it were underwater.

He stood in the shadow of a doorway, his hood drawn and Nye essence running through him, watching one man beat another bloody with a shovel. A boneless blue lizard the size of a dog flowed up to him, hissing, but he dropped his shovel and held his hands up.

“Mercy,” he said, in a lazy drawl.

The reptile sniffed him, flicked out a tongue, and then flowed away, leaving the bleeding victim on the street.

As soon as the blue creature of Elysia was out of sight, the man had picked up his shovel once more and continued his beating. None of the bystanders said a word; they went about their business.

Once Simon had shoved the attacker’s unconscious body into a nearby shed, along with the scraps that had once been a bloody shovel, he moved on.

Under normal circumstances, he could hold his Nye essence for about two minutes. It seemed like longer, under the effects of the essence, and he could stretch that out if he used it less, or burn through it quicker. But he figured two minutes was a good deadline.

He saw his third crime before sixty seconds was up.
 

He was standing on top of a roof, eavesdropping—with Rebekkah’s help—on the family speaking underneath him.

“I don’t understand it,” one woman whispered. “He was never…before…”

She says, ‘he was never like this before he killed the king,’
Rebekkah relayed.
She’s talking about Alin, obviously. What more do you need?

Keep listening,
Simon instructed.

“Eliadel is a good man at heart,” a man’s voice said loudly. Then, more quietly, “Look, we’ve been through worse times. Alin is hardly the worst thing to ever happen to us. We’ll get by.”

Nearby, where they couldn’t see it, a silver mirror on the wall began to flash. It was flashing brightly, but aimed up at the sky, so the only reason Simon could see it was because of his vantage point.

Less than a minute later, a winged figure landed. It had the head of a brown dog, bright blue eyes, and wore gold-and-white armor. Its wings were enormous, and looked to be made out of gleaming gold feathers.

It glanced around for a moment, sniffing the air, before its gaze settled on Simon. “You,” it growled. “Why didn’t I notice you?”

Simon shrugged.

The winged dog-man snarled, baring its teeth. “I should teach you fear, black robes.”

Simon summoned Azura, which gleamed silver in the bright afternoon sunlight. He didn’t attack, he didn’t speak, and he didn’t back down. He was sure the dog got the message.

It was amazing how much more used to lethal threats he had become since moving to Valinhall.

The dog-man looked at him for a moment, and then laughed, deep in its chest. It sounded like it was grinding rocks to gravel with nothing but its lungs.

“I like you, black robes. Come see us in the Gold District. You will do well there.”

Folding his wings, the dog-man bowed, and then hopped off the flat roof. It landed on the street below and pushed the door open.

You should have attacked him,
Rebekkah sent.
You’re overdue for a fight.

I’m not here to fight,
Simon said.

How do you know?

A man’s screams and a woman’s echoed from downstairs.

“The Silver District has reported disrespect,” the dog’s growling voice said. “We will take this man with us to the Gold, where he will be taught better. If he does not resist, he will not be excessively harmed.”

The man wept, but neither of them offered any words of resistance. Before Simon had figured out what to do, the dog-man had spread its wings and flown off, a small man tucked beneath one arm.

Rebekkah made a sound like she was clearing her throat.
Your Nye essence is running out. You should head back now, if you want to be able to fight any time in the next half an hour.

I told you, I’m not fighting
.

Uh-huh. Sure.

Simon started running back, but he couldn’t help seeing the images of the victims in his head. The terrified woman in an alley, trying to protect her daughter with her arms. The bleeding man on the street, whom no one would lift a finger to save. The man, speaking not-quite-respectfully enough in his own home.

He had been angry at Alin in the past, but this made him a little sick. Was Alin really the one who’d turned the city into
this?

Valin’s questions were never far from Simon’s thoughts, but they rang especially loudly now.
What do you want to do?

He wanted to put a stop to this. He wasn’t sure what the consequences would be, he knew that he should do it in the right way, and he still wanted to avoid fighting Alin, if at all possible.

But someone had to stop it. Simon knew that he could.

And, given half a chance, he would. The situation in the city was too bad to leave as it was.

Rebekkah mimicked Lilia’s dreamy tones.
I sense a fight on your horizon…
she murmured.

Simon ignored her, running to the Naraka waystation.
 

The blue streets blurred, but nothing else noticed him, and he reached the building in a handful of seconds. He didn’t see anything waiting for him outside, and Rebekkah didn’t alert him, so he assumed he was safe as far as hidden watchers went. There wasn’t even anyone out on the streets in this part of town, except…

Simon drew himself to a halt, and almost slipped and fell on the edge of his cloak. Thanks to the grace and agility of the Nye, he managed to turn it into a skipping step instead of a crushing tumble down two stories onto the cobblestones.

When he managed to pull himself to a complete stop, he crept back a few feet, trying to get a glimpse down the last alley. For a second, he thought he’d seen someone.

Over there,
Rebekkah said, sounding eager.
Oooh, she’s watching your building. You should punch her in the face.

The doll was right. The girl down there might have been five years older than Simon, somewhat tall, with light brown hair and the clothes of a moderately wealthy villager: a long brown skirt, a tan shirt, a leather vest, and a pale linen cloak to shield against the cold. She would have fit in anywhere in Enosh, but for some reason Simon was reminded of Myria when he saw her.

I’ve still got a little bit of essence left. I might as well go check it out.

Make sure to save some for the fight,
Rebekkah advised.

Glancing up and down the street for those floating, tentacled jellies—he saw none—Simon leaped down onto the stones and dashed across the street. He moved so quickly that he must have seemed to appear right next to the girl, because she gasped and backed up a step, pulling a dagger and pointing it at him with both hands.

Then her eyebrows climbed, and she lowered the knife.

“Simon?” she said wonderingly. “What are you doing in that cloak?”

He hadn’t thought of her in, from his perspective, almost a year. The sheer surprise of seeing her here prevented him from even recognizing her for a second, but then his brain snapped to work.

“Ilana,” he said. “Why are you here?”

He had wondered why anyone would be sneaking around in alleys, keeping an eye on the waystation building, but it was doubly strange if that person was Alin’s sister.

I guess that means you’re not going to hit her,
Rebekkah said with a sigh.
Pity.

***

“I’ve been keeping an eye on him for months,” Ilana said, back in the waystation. Overlord Feiora had summoned a thick, comfortable chair and a blanket from her Territory. She them out for Ilana, who sunk down gratefully into the cushions and began telling her story. She even had a footstool.
 

Why had it never occurred to Simon to call something as mundane as furniture? He had been freezing in the snow less than three days ago, and he could have dragged his comfortable bed and thick blankets out of Valinhall at any time! He couldn’t summon them directly, but he could still walk through a Gate and pull them out.

The cold in the streets of Enosh hadn’t been so bad, compared to the Helgard-summoned snow a few days past, but the wind was still piercing. He should have thought of that months ago.

Azura doesn’t pick the smartest,
Rebekkah said.
But she’s a big fan of people who aren’t afraid to start fights. She has good taste.

“I wasn’t here when Alin first came back,” Ilana went on, sipping on a mug of hot tea that Feiora had
also
summoned. “I hear he wasn’t so bad back then. But the longer he stayed in Enosh, the worse he got, and the more rules there were. There are some districts where there are rules for how many hours you’re allowed to stay up per day. If you stay up longer, you get detained. Try to go to bed early? Detained.”

She shook her head and took another sip of her tea. “I wouldn’t have believed it was him if I hadn’t seen him kill Grandmaster Tartarus myself. I tried to go up and talk to him, but…”

Ilana stared deep into her mug. “It was like looking at the Valinhall Incarnation. Scarier, even. You know, I’ve never worn a disguise in all the time I’ve been here. I’ve looked straight at him dozens of times without even trying to hide, and he’s never noticed me. It’s like he doesn’t…look at people anymore.”

She clutched her tea as though it held the answers. Simon didn’t have any idea what to say.

Leah, standing over by the still-open Naraka Gate, wasn’t so shy. “Where have you been staying, Ilana?”

Alin’s sister glanced at the circlet on Leah’s head, but she answered readily enough. “Here and there. There are plenty of people who are willing to give me a room for a night or two. I know a handful of Travelers who managed to avoid getting tangled up with the Grandmasters, so I’ve been helping them smuggle people out. A little at a time, you know.”

Leah nodded thoughtfully.

Has anyone told Ilana that Leah’s the Queen of Damasca?
Simon wondered.

Who cares?
Rebekkah responded.
Leah would have taken charge and started questioning Ilana anyway.

That was a good point. Still, he reminded himself to clarify the situation for Ilana as soon as he got a chance.

“What were you doing waiting outside?” Leah asked. “How did you know we’d be here?”

Ilana shook her head. “I didn’t. I check all the permanent waystations I can, every day, to see if anyone new shows up or if they post new guards. It’s the only way to stay ahead.”