Whispers of the Skyborne (Devices of War Book 3) (20 page)

“Follow,” she said slowly, “me.”

How could she be all right with this? It didn’t make sense to me. Torture was torture, and that was wrong.

But what if what I heard was something else?

Like what? For the love of sky. A man had yelled. A woman had screamed. There was no way that was innocent.

Neira entered a room three doors down from the room with the screaming woman. She closed the door behind me. “Your priestess will be joining us soon.”

A single, stone table dominated the room. Stone. Something that heavy in a
letharan
city? It didn’t make sense. “Why? Neira, explain yourself.”

She leaned on her wide-spread palms, her head hanging. After a long moment, she pushed off and knelt, disappearing behind the table.

I leaned forward, standing on my tiptoe to see her, but failed.

She rose, shaking something out of her face, two glass jars in hand. She held them, watching me.

I shook my head and raised a shoulder. “What?”

“What do you see?”

Two glass jars? A silver, metallic liquid filled the bottom of both of them. I stooped to peer closer.

Neira set them in one of the natural dips of the rock table. “Go ahead. Look.”

Releasing a frustrated breath, I picked up one of the jars and peered inside. The metallic fluid was…alive. It moved. It had a water-like appearance, but it was made up of several smaller, glittering bits, like grains of sand that constantly shifted. “What is this?”

“We’re not sure.”

I looked at her over the lid of the jar in my hand.

“Wait for Aiyanna. She has information.”

I set the jar down and raked my fingertips along my scalp. “When did you have time to ask her to join us?”

Neira’s eyebrows rose and a wide smile rode her lips as she chuckled silently. “Synn, you are the one I hadn’t intended to invite to this gathering. I’d requested she and I meet weeks ago.”

Taking in the room, that’s when I noticed the rectangular planks on each of the eight walls of the room. I’d heard of areas like this. Now that I was thinking, it was highly likely Ino City had an area similar to this one. An interrogation center. The El’Asim never had any reason for such spaces. On the other side of each of those planks, would be a room. In that room, was probably a person, one of the Ino refugees. And they were being tortured.

Neira folded her arms over her chest, watching me.

“These people are under my protection.”

“And had you dealt with them, they would not be in these rooms now.”

I opened my mouth to speak.

“But you would also not be allowed to dock in my city.”

“Aiyanna and Carilyn vet everyone we take in.”

“You really are the least observant person I’ve ever met.” Neira tipped her head to the side, biting her lip. “How do you survive? How do you lead?”

I didn’t even know how to answer that.

“Aiyanna has been working on this project with the Vash for years. Carilyn was introduced to it about a few months ago. She helped us discover personality tells, ways to determine if a person has been infected before we test them.”

“Test them?”

Neira looked away. “I won’t lie, Synn. The test is harsh and sometimes, the people don’t survive.”

The door opened.

Nix stumbled into the room first, her hands bound in front of her, her eyes hiding behind a blindfold. She spun. “Is this really necessary?”

A man entered the room and guided her out of the way.

Aiyanna stepped lightly into the room, her hands spread to guide her blindfolded steps.

Her guard held one hand. He released her and undid her blindfold. “We have arrived.”

Aiyanna blinked several times. Her gaze landed on Neira. A soft smile lit her face as she bowed, her hands palms together in front of her face.

Neira returned the gesture.

“Are we there yet?” Nix slapped her bound hands against her thighs. “Can I please be allowed to see?”

“
Cola
,” Neira chided, “you did not need to leave her blind.”

The dark man snorted, but removed the blindfold.

Nix took in the group and tsked. “And here I had high hopes of an entertaining evening for once.”

Neira shook her head slightly. “She can be untied.”

I didn’t know the men, but I had seen them before in the past several months. They didn’t hesitate in following Neira’s instructions.

“Synn,” Aiyanna said, her voice full of surprise.

I took a few steps away from her, maneuvering the table between us. “You’ve been a part of this for years?”

She closed her eyes, her mouth open. When she reopened them, she licked her lips. “I was sworn to secrecy.”

“What other things don’t I know about you?”

“Quite a few, actually.” Aiyanna snorted, her chin jutted forward. “Do you even realize that in all this time, you only started asking me about my life today?”

“I know about you.”

“No.” She looked away in disgust. “You know what you think you know. That I am a priestess. That I don’t have a life. That I sit around praying and reading cards all day and all night.”

Both of my eyebrows rose. “And what do you do instead?”

She pierced with her gaze, normally so soft. “I help people, Synn. The people of this world, not simply the people of my clan.”

Nix chortled in the corner.

I gnashed my teeth. Everyone knew so much more than I did. Why?

Because they cared. Because they were smarter. Because they were more observant.

I could be angry or I could try to do as they had done and open my eyes. I really just wanted to lash out, but my anger wasn’t at them. It was at myself. How could I claim to be a leader when I didn’t see the world around me, hear the people who surrounded me? What kind of lover could I be if I never asked questions? If never sought to know the person more than what they presented themselves to be?

Aiyanna slid her hand in mine. “I am glad you’re here. I wanted to tell you months ago.”

“He wasn’t ready then.” Neira set another jar on the table with a clank. “He had the temerity to ask a question. I thought it deserved an answer.”

Nix stepped forward, running a rough-nailed finger along the uneven edges of the stone table. “Why are we here,
akicita
.”

That was a new term. “What did you just call her?”

“Relax.” Neira chuckled softly. “She called me a peacekeeper.”

“Oh.” I wasn’t even going to ask how Nix knew Neira’s language better than I did. I’d learned enough to survive, to be able to follow most conversations. And in Enhnapi, we followed a lose set of language rules. We spoke them all. So, if we didn’t know a word in the language we were using at the time, we’d replace it with one we did know.

It didn’t escape my notice, however, that Neira chuckled. She seemed at ease, something I’d never seen in her before. She’d always been uptight, rigid. She knew Aiyanna enough to relax. Nix as well.

How well did she know Nix? How was Aiyanna connected to all of this? I had thought the Vash had been cut off from the world, but I was beginning to realize they’d simply been removed from the politics of
my
world.

Aiyanna cleared her throat. “All right, Synn. Let’s begin. The Seven Great Families devoted a great deal of energy to maintain the purity of blood.”

Nix pushed away. “Tell me you did not bring me out here for a history lesson.”

“Please.” Aiyanna placed her free hand palm down on the table and squared her shoulders. “Tarot has always guided us to those the Families discarded. We could never discern why they were so focused on bloodline.”

“Until one day,” Neira said, holding up a jar, “when a boy was left to die in our wilds and this came oozing from his ears, nose, and mouth.”

I frowned at the living silver contained in the glass jar. “I don’t understand.”

Nix took a step back, her focus turned inward.

Neira shrugged. “If we discovered an outcast soon after they’d been abandoned, we also discovered the remnants of this fluid. We have to move quickly, however, because it moves quickly and does not survive long outside the host.”

“It looks like it’s living in there.”

“Agreed. However, it’s sealed.” She picked up one the jars. “If we remove the lid.” She did just that.

The liquid rose to the mouth of the jar, but shriveled away, as if the air was poison.

Neira leaned over and blew into it.

The liquid solidified almost instantly.

I couldn’t quite figure out what I was seeing. “I’m trying to keep up. I really am.”

“The voices.” Neira flattened her lips against her teeth, setting the jar down with a clunk. “They each claimed to hear voices inside their heads, and someone trying to control them. It wasn’t until this liquid had left them that the voices disappeared.”

“Voices. Living metal. What are you talking about?”

“I remember…” Nix’s voice was small. “When I was a girl, when my Mark should have presented itself, I was brought before the Shankara elders. They made me drink from a metal cup. It was bitter and I thought something moved inside it.” She shook her head, heart-shaped mouth agape. “It was after that I was allowed to be betrothed. But there were moments when I heard voices inside my head.”

Aiyanna nodded. “This liquid was only found in those fleeing the Great Families. Those who were collected from other tribes never spoke of voices, never talked of…” She gestured to the jars. “…that.”

My frown was so deep it was starting to give me a headache. “What do these voices tell them?”

Nix raised her gaze. “Kill. They tell us to kill.”

“N
O,”
I
SAID WITH A
laughing snort, pressing my fingertips to my head. I couldn’t wrap my head around what they were trying to tell me. I’d heard the voice myself. But a liquid metal taking control of people? “You don’t get to use this as an excuse. You don’t get to say you killed people because…this told you to?”

Aiyanna lowered her gaze, her lips pinched pensively. “Just listen, Synn. When you hear everything we’ve gathered to date, you’ll see.”

Nix’s surprise slipped and was replaced by a carefully constructed mask.

I held up a finger, noting her surprise only after it had disappeared. It had seemed so genuine. “Are you trying to tell me you never knew about this?”

“I’d heard rumors, talk, but I never paid attention.” She pursed her open lips, her forehead folded in a frown. “Have you ever wondered why the Seven Great Families were so worried about keeping the blood pure?”

“No. I never wondered about that.” My face screwed up in consternation. “I’ve barely heard whispers of this. I’ve certainly never seen it. And, before anyone forgets, I’m El’Asim, one of the Seven Great Families.”

“You’ve seen it, Synn.” Nix rubbed her fingertips along the rock top, her gaze distant. “You simply did not realize it. Did you ever wonder why Ino Nami treated you as she did?”

I shrugged, shaking my head. “It was because of my Mark. I didn’t get mine until late.”

“Or how your tribe never allowed others to enter. The only people allowed in the El’Asim tribe were other El’Asim.”

“Not necessarily. We allowed the Umira.”

“They were of the same bloodline, Synn.”

The pieces were clicking together, but it only made me more irritated. “Our bloodline is mixed. The Umira. The El’Asim. We’re mixed. It shows in our Mark.”

“True.” Nix blinked, her gaze unfocused.

“Then, how do you explain the El’Asim and Umira being allowed into the Great Families if you need pure blood?” I slashed my hand. “I don’t know where you’re going with this, but you’re traveling down the wrong path.”

Nix met my gaze, though I doubted she actually saw me. “Do you know what we called you? The rest of the Great Families. The Shankara, the Ino, the LeBlancs, the Bahrains and Fursts?”

I rolled my eyes. “Do I care?”

“Blood bastards.” Nix’s mouth fell open as her gaze drifted to the ceiling. “We called you blood bastards and looked down on both of your tribes. When the rest of us gathered, you were never invited.”

Gathered? “What? The Great Families only gathered for the ice thaw and even then, it was only to break the
letharan
out of the ice.”