House of Sand and Secrets (34 page)

“Lord Eline will see you now.” The servant is back. He indicates for us to follow him, and we are taken to a small lounge, smoky with tobacco and ‘ink. Three men are there with Garret. I recognise Yew Avin. The other two must be Rutherook and Karin.

Eline is standing, smoking a long thin pipe of silver. At his thigh a little green-glass table holds a carafe of pearly liquid and several small liqueur glasses. “Lady Pelim,” he says. “How fortuitous your arrival is. My friends and I were just discussing your little note, and what exactly we would do about it.”

Jannik’s note; the one he wrote before Carien died, telling him of our little abortion. The one we planned to use to draw him out. Back when I thought I knew what I was doing.

The room is full of the smell of scriv. I eye the three men. Eline is a Saint, but the others – I confess I know nothing of them, except for Yew, leaning casually in the shadows, as if he were some student from the University in a public house. He grins lazily at me.

“And to what conclusion did you finally come?” I ask.

Eline laughs. “Please.” He waves at one of the leather couches. “Do take a seat, my dear.” Jannik might as well not exist.

“I prefer to stand,” I say back at him, my voice soft and mild. I keep close to Jannik, and it’s not just his presence that calms me, but the pulse of his magic.

“Suit yourself,” Eline says. “Allow me to introduce Rutherook.” He gestures to the long-limbed man sprawled on a leather coach; he has an ascetic’s face, and pointed jutting eyebrows that give him a look of sly surprise

“Karin.” A compact balding man with grey hair hanging over his little ears dips his chin like a little bird pecking at seeds. Something about the way his gaze slides this way and that makes me think he is most likely a Reader. He’ll be watching me for anything that will give me away. I bring myself into a state of calm, safe in the crumbling stone walls of my mental room.

It’s getting harder to not be scared. The last gambit is a weak one, and I know it. I have to stop myself from simply blurting out that Carien is dead, and accepting the bribes I will be expected to pay to stop Eline from involving the Mata. Carien was a piece of his property, and Eline will want recompense. He’ll want the Lark back at the very least. And if my last play fails, then I’m going to be left in a bad position.

If it comes to the worst, Eline will ask for the assurance of my support in some later deal, he’ll want a percentage of the Pelim holdings, he’ll want to cripple our business dealings in MallenIve. Gris alone knows what else. I’m prepared to give it to him, if Jannik and I can walk away from this, and if Isidro and Harun will be safe.

Finally, Eline inclines his head toward the youngest of the group, leaning against the wall, his arms crossed. Yew grins wider. “And this–” Eline says.

“We’ve met,” I snap.

“Then you must know how interested he is in what you own,” Eline continues smoothly, my interruption no more meaningful than a moth’s path across the night sky.

I smother the rising anger in me before it even has a chance to solidify. “Indeed.” I incline my head as if I am accepting some kind of compliment.

“Snow-pear?” Eline indicates the cut-glass carafe on the table near him. “Or would you decline that too?”

“I’m not here to drink your alcohol.”

“Of course not.” He pours himself a small glass, and sips at it, before taking clamping his mouth about the stem of his long silver pipe, and blowing a fog of scented smoke between us. “You’re here to do what exactly? I believe your little missive was designed to drag me out to the Guyin’s hovel.” His eyes glitter in the light of the fire-place. “So why then are you here?”

“To talk.”

“I think, before we discuss anything, it would only be fair if you were to return my property. A show of good faith, if you will.”

I close my eyes briefly. “There’s – there’s been an accident, I’m afraid Carien passed away earlier this evening.” There. Passed away, such a lukewarm description. Magic scrapes at me as Jannik’s own anger turned inward. His control must have slipped.

Eline scowls. “An idiot,” he says. “Taking the chance on an abortion. It’s better this way.”

My breath catches in my throat. “Better-” And I can’t help but turn to catch a glimpse of Jannik. His face is set and impassive, but I know, this has made his mind up as much as it has my own.

“A miscarriage, a death,” Eline takes a sip of his drink and creases his brow, contemplating this new development. “It’s an acceptable ending, one that won’t raise any suspicions of foul play.”

“Leaves you open,” says Rutherook, from the couch. “I’ve three sisters.”

“Every minor House in MallenIve has a handful of unwed sisters, Drury,” Eline says, before inclining his head to me. “I never wanted her back, you imbecilic woman. I’m talking about the thing you stole from me. The Lark.”

Carien deserved a better ending than this. He couldn’t even be bothered to ask for her body back or to even pretend that she mattered. A game piece. That’s all she was, and Eline never saw her as anything else. I narrow my eyes. “All right, then. I’ll bring him back, but perhaps we could come to some kind of understanding first.”

Eline looks beyond me, to Rutherook. “An understanding? Talk, then.” The air ripples with the awkward feel of a lower-caste War-Singer testing his control. Rutherook is potentially lethal.

That leaves only Yew unaccounted for. He touches his fingers to the curls of brown hair that falls over his eyes. Mocking me.

“I will return your property, and say nothing more of the matter.” I damn Merril for the chance at saving other lives. “You bought him. He is yours to do with as you wish. In return, I ask that you refrain from any contact with the bats belonging to either the Lord Guyin or myself.”

“Of course, it is only a courtesy.”

“And that you do not buy, steal, or accept as a gift any other bats.”

“Really?” Eline’s smile is acid, wreathed in smoke. “Would you also assume to tell me how to run my House?”

“In exchange, we will not go to the sharif with our knowledge of your involvement in the murders of the bats found in the Lam-heaps and in the Casabi.”

We stare at each other.

“How gracious of you.” Eline turns from me to stopper his silver pipe and set it cross-wise on the glass table. It chinks softly, like a warning bell. “Although I must admit that your offer is one that amuses more than anything else. Do you honestly believe that the sharif care about a few bat corpses?”

I shake my head. “I do not, but I thought it only fair to offer you a reasonable compromise first.” Jannik’s magic is building up in the air, waiting for me to access it. It amazes me that I am the only one in this room who can feel it, scraping and sliding and angry. A caged beast, watching its executors and waiting for the chance to leap. “I confess I had hoped that you would acquiesce.” And I also hoped that he wouldn’t. If I am truthful with myself.

The room goes silent.

“I think,” drawls Eline, “that we should bring this farce to an end.”

Rutherook coughs loudly, and I start, shifting my attention to him just as Yew straightens from his slouch against the wall. It is my only warning before the pain hits me from an unexpected direction. I am pummelled, driven back against the wall by a force like a fist made of storm winds. The sound of shattering glass drowns my scream, and fire lances down my back. Yew must have driven me into one of the glass sculptures and slammed us together into the wall.

There is no smell of burning flesh, but I remember this pain from scalding my wrist once with boiling water when I was still living in the squat in Pelimburg. It is the same – magnified a thousand times, with bright hot points all over my back from which the burn spreads.

Then the pain is gone; replaced by an icy numbness. My head is too heavy to keep up and it is only a War-Singer’s art keeping me upright, pinned to the wall like a broken butterfly in a display.

“Was this truly necessary, Garret?” Yew drawls. “I thought you wanted them both alive. If she dies, you will have the sharif all over your House like white-ants. She’s not some bat you can discard.”

“She was dangerous. And unliked.”

I can’t see Eline, my head is held straight. The short Reader, Karin, and Yew, are the only ones in my line of sight. I have no idea what has happened to Jannik. The War-Singer moved before I had time to react.

It was Rutherook, I understand now, not Yew. He was feinting earlier, making me think he was no more than a bumbling apprentice.

“Don’t damage the bat, I want it,” Eline says. He’s walking across the room, but still not in view. Warm liquid is dampening my back against the wall, and I can smell blood, hot and coppery. My hands and feet are growing colder, my head heavier, but still I cannot move. There’s no feel of Jannik’s magic. Snuffed out. I don’t want to think what that means and I can’t even open my mouth to speak, to say some last word to Jannik, to tell him that I’m sorry, that it shouldn’t have happened like this. I try think it, hoping that it will wing its way from my house of the imagination to his, but there is no sound of sand, no whispering of birds.

The pressure is building against my face, keeping even my eyes open. They’re drying, an itching burn that is somehow worse than the numbness at my back.

“There’s a lot of blood,” Eline says. “Keep them from bleeding out.”

“I’m doing my best,” Rutherook grunts. “Yew could help, were he so inclined.”

“Could I,” drawls Yew, bantering as if we were all exchanging barbed pleasantries at a party.

Eline walks into view. He touches my face, carefully slapping one cheek to see if I will move. The pain is sharp, but distant. “Still there.” He glances across to where Rutherook must still be sprawled, like a spider watching an insect in his web. “You can keep her alive?”

“Of course.” Rutherook’s voice is deep. “The bat will be harder. I didn’t expect it to hit that damn Narlet. Bloody man always had a thing for sticking spikes on everything he made. Tore a hole right through him.”

Tore a hole right through him.

No.

I step out of this reality, and into the crumbling house inside my mind. I do not want to hear them discuss how long my Jannik has to live. The pain drops away as if it never existed. I sit down on my childhood bed, and twist one arm behind my back to feel along my spine. There are no wounds. Why should there be? I stare at the stone walls, and watch the mortar sliding from the cracks. Outside there, back in Eline’s glass-covered room, I am dying.

Jannik may be dead already. I run my fingers along the coverlet. My face is wet. I’m powerless. I never could save the ones I loved. I wonder how long it will take me to die. Bonded, I should be able to feel his ending. But here in my room, I am safe from that, at least. Will I just stop breathing outside, and here in this too-small memory of my childhood, will everything go black? A quiet nothing of an end.

No.

If this is how we will go, at least it will be us together. I bring down the walls of my room, let them fall. Let them go. There is pain. Voices buzz. I can’t feel my legs.

“There, she’s conscious again.”

I manage an agonizing sip of air and hang on to my calm. Not all this pain is mine. I pick between them. He has been pierced, I feel it now – a second-hand cramping in my stomach, like a reminder of what I did to Carien. He’s there, still alive, still magic. And if he is, I should be able to reach that and use it. So why then can I not?

It takes me a moment before I realize it’s because I’m bound in a way that is worse than iron or ropes. Jannik is doing this to me. Or rather, Jannik’s approaching death. The magic that should be at my command is cut away from me, and strive as I might, I can just barely feel it, like the edge of a feather against my face. Mentally, I grasp at that touch, try to pull it into me. Give me the slightest bit of power and I will tear these four into so many scraps of flesh that the sharif will not be able to piece the bodies together again.

There. Again. The feather touch. I cling. I will hold to this if it takes the very last of my breath from me. Before Jannik dies, before I do, Eline will know what a Pelim’s revenge feels like.

The feather slips away, fading.

No. I refuse. With all my will concentrated so that the sound of Eline’s and his cohorts fades, I follow that feather.

“Can she breathe?” Eline says.

“Barely,” Rutherook answers. “But if I give her any more leeway Gris knows what she’s–”

Light burns out my mind, blinding me, leaving me aching and hollow. I blink and try to shake the white glare out of my head. I can move. I’m on my hands and knees, glass crunching like grit into my palms. They’ve let me fall.

Why then can I hear nothing but the faint whisper rustle of sand grains tumbling over each other? I manage to open my eyes. There is a wide blue sky overhead. Empty of everything, no sun or clouds, but somehow light fills the space. Golden sand is all around me, stretching blankly for miles around. There is no house of sand, no rivers or singing birds. I stand, the grains falling from my dress in a soft shower. The dunes roll out endlessly on every side, their sides rippled like the ribs of half-buried mammoth creatures.

“Jannik?” The word is weak, dying. My voice cannot pierce this desolation. I turn around. Nothing. It doesn’t matter which way I walk, they all present the same nothingness.

A hot breeze sends more sand falling over the lips of the dunes, making the grains look like the spray of sea-waves. Something small and black drops before my bare feet. I crouch down to catch the tiny piece of fluff between my forefinger and thumb. It is soft, downy. A breast feather of some dark bird, a raven perhaps. Holding the feather tightly, I walk into the wind and let it sear the dried tear tracks from my face.

I walk for miles. My feet are burned raw by the sand, my skin peeling and red. Why is it that in Jannik’s world I am always relegated to this flimsiest of shifts, with no protection? Damn him. I shade my eyes and scan the rolling horizon. Still no sign of my husband. I grow tired, thirsty, and my shift is stuck damply to my body. I wonder how much time I have left.