White Heart of Justice (14 page)

I stood shell-shocked for a moment, considering the implications. I think it was only my training with Glashia that prevented me from clenching my fists or shouting my frustration. Instead, I said calmly:

“I assume, since you brought Joy down and she just handed me the box full of letters from Bialas that I won't be assigned another race target.”

“That's correct.”

I wasn't sure if that was good news or not. It would have been difficult to prepare to retrieve another target the night before the start of the race. But then again . . . my target was still
Album Cor Iustitiae
. Which had been famously missing for so long, finding it would be like finding Lucifer's tomb. (Of course, I
had
found Lucifer's tomb, first semester. With Peter's help.) But now I wouldn't just be racing the clock and other bounty hunter teams generally, I'd be racing against another team specifically for the same target.

Rafe must have been having similar thoughts because we both blurted out the question at the same time:

“Who's the other bounty hunter?”

“Brunus Olivine.”

I made a face and Rafe's hand twitched. Probably some sort of hand-cast spell reflex. Luckily Rafe had never had the magical control issues I'd had.

“And, let me guess, Holden Pierce,” I said, my voice leaden. Holden Pierce was the number one ranked Angel at the Joshua School. He was an amazing spellcaster. As in
amazingly ruthless
. His noteworthy spells (Painfall, Damage Cascade, and Hemorrhage) were ones I'd used and they were brutal. I'd predicted Brunus and Holden Pierce's pairing months ago. But Karanos' next words surprised me.

“Peter Aster will serve as Brunus' Guardian during his hunt for the White Heart,” my father said. His stare was unblinking. Against the frozen, inhospitable landscape, Karanos' boxy frame looked like a battle tower waiting out a siege. He continued, his gaze resting briefly on Rafe before switching back to me.

“Friedrich heard grave news about your chances of recovery. Clearly, he underestimated both your Guardian's and the Demeter Mederies' skills, including your brother's. Brunus and Peter were given leaves of absence from St. Luck's and the Joshua School to accept their . . .
extracurricular assignment
.” It was clear from the way Karanos said it that he didn't approve, but had no authority to disallow the assignment. “Brunus, obviously, isn't a contender for the Laurel Crown, but he will be able to prevent
you
from winning it.”

Karanos shifted his weight. It wasn't exactly shuffling his feet, but the movement made my father seem uncharacteristically restless.

“How important is it to you that you work for the Jayneses next year, Noon? Wouldn't it be better to go where you are most needed and trust the Council to place you in a position where you will do the most good for Halja? You don't have to race. Or hunt for the White Heart.”

“What's important to me is that I have a choice in where I work. And that I be allowed to work with Angels of my own choosing.”

“You could
choose
to go where you are most needed,” Karanos said. “And trust that the Council would make other arrangements for your protection.”

We stared at each other. It was the closest I'd ever come to openly defying my father. I wasn't, of course. The Laurel Crown Race was a Maegester tradition and had been for centuries. Laureates were well respected, even if every now and then they chose unconventional residencies. But it was the first time Karanos had ever articulated his wishes about my future so vocally. And, I had to admit, if only to myself, that if it weren't for the fact that lack of choice about the way we led our lives was one of my biggest problems with Halja's ruling magical elite, Karanos' words might have had more of an effect on me.

I glanced at Rafe and Joy, wondering what they thought of this polite, but public Onyx family wrestling match. I found their body positions telling. Rafe was standing as close to me as he could possibly get without touching me, while Joy stood apart from all of us, almost as if she were an observer.

I chose to quit squabbling with my father over my future choices and focus on something more immediate. Like following up with him about the arrow shot that had led to Brunus and Peter being tasked to find the White Heart.

“Father, do you know if any of the other racers have been shot with cursed arrows?”

He didn't answer immediately. Probably mulling over whatever sparse information Kalisto and others had managed to gather in the wake of my life-threatening injury. But finally he answered with one word that put what had happened into sharper perspective.

“No.”

We both frowned, an amazing show of synchronized Onyx emotion. No doubt it occurred to Karanos at the same time as me: the arrow may not have been meant to kill me, but I'd been its sole target. The only remaining questions were who did it, why, and when I'd be able to remove the cursed tip from my chest. Almost involuntarily I reached up and rubbed the spot where my demon mark used to be.

After that, our moonlit meeting wrapped pretty quickly. Karanos inquired about Rafe's knowledge of a few spells that may be useful for our trip (all of which Rafe already knew; I was no longer surprised by Rafe's untouted yet vast cache of spellcasting skills). I thanked Joy for giving me the box full of Bialas' letters and Karanos bid us good night, telling Rafe and me he'd meet us at the barghest pen tomorrow to see us off.

We were all heading back inside when Joy pulled on my sleeve to indicate she wanted to talk to me alone. I stayed behind and the two of us faced each other in the chilled, semi-darkness.

Since no one else tonight had wasted time on irrelevant things, I immediately asked her:

“Why didn't you tell me?” Luckily, she didn't feign ignorance.

“It wasn't my place to tell you. It was Ari's. I thought he was making a mistake by not telling you in the beginning, but he can be very determined.”

I narrowed my eyes. “A demon trait, no doubt.”

“He dated plenty of women before you,” she said, ignoring my barbed words. “Mederies mostly.” Joy glanced inside the springhouse. “Pretty ones, smart ones, kind ones. But not one of them affected him the way you did. I think he was worried about losing you before you even started dating.”

I crossed my arms across my chest and turned away, instinctively looking toward the shadows instead of the snowy brightness. My breath came out in increasingly dense clouds. I waited until my magic settled and then said, “He told me it was your idea for him to train at St. Luck's. Why did you encourage him? If my father finds out that Ari's still alive—and that he's a drakon—he could declare him a
rogare
.”

With Joy's coloring, it would be impossible to tell if she paled at my words. But they did seem to have a chilling effect on her. She finally swallowed and said tightly, “Ari is as far from a
rogare
demon as any full-blooded demon can get.”

“Full-blooded?” I laughed. “Is there any other kind?”

She snorted. “All waning magic users have some demon blood, Nouiomo. You of all people should know that.”

I glared at her but she didn't seem the least bit afraid that I might lose control of my magic. But then, why should she be?
Her
blood made her immune to it.

“What did you want to talk to me about?” I asked her. She was the one who'd wanted to speak to me in private. I had a feeling she had more to share than just her side of Ari's past deception.

“For most of Metatron's life,” she said, jumping back into our earlier discussion, “he was obsessed with finding Justica. The Bialas family histories are a bit unclear, but the story I was told is that Justica died during Metatron's lifetime and he wanted to bring her back. All of his magical experiments were conducted in memory of her, or in the hopes that it would give him a greater understanding of the magic that might bring her back.

“In the years leading up to his death, however, Metatron began to regret some of his more extreme magical experiments—like the Sanguine Scales. What do you know of them, Noon?”

“Only that their judgment was often unfair and their punishment unusually cruel. A curse of some kind,” I added, remembering the discussion I'd had with Aurelia earlier today.

Joy nodded.

“Those judged guilty by the Sanguine Scales were cursed to live forever as walking corpses. They're called the
mortem animae
. They have no memory of their past life except a great longing for it.”

“You're speaking in the present tense. Are you saying they're still down there? The
mortem animae
?”

“Yes. That's another reason I wanted to meet with you. To make sure you understand just how dangerous this trip will be for you. Noon . . . I know you're not very experienced. You may have come a long way in learning how to use your magic, but do you have any idea what you're considering going up against? The
mortem animae
won't kill you. They simply touch you and make you one of them. We'd never see you again. You'd spend the rest of your life, and all of eternity, in Tartarus not remembering any of us. Instead of an arrow through the heart, the
mortem animae
curse removes it. That's what they're all searching for. Their hearts, their lives, their loved ones. Their souls, Noon, if they ever had them.”

I frowned. Not many Haljans spoke of souls.

“Metatron worked tirelessly toward finding a cure for the
mortem animae
curse. It was his
magnum opus
or ‘great work.' And we Bialases believe
Album Cor Iustitiae
was the result.”

“Then why not use the sword to save them?” I cried, suddenly irritated that Joy had painted such a bleak picture when the solution for fixing it was right in front of her. “Instead of continuing to hide it, why not use the White Heart to free the
mortem animae
from their curse?”

“Because Metatron used all of the perennial magic tricks he'd learned while trying to find a way to bring Justica back to make the White Heart. So that sword may be capable of far more than removing a curse. It may be able to make someone who is absent, present again. Think about what that means, Noon. If you had the power to bring someone back, would you?”

My fingers pressed against the left side of my chest, following the line of my recently made scar through the coarse linen of my dress tunic.
I guess it would depend on who was missing,
I thought. But Joy was continuing with a tone as serious as I had ever heard her use.

“
Should
someone be brought back? What would our world be like after? It's taken two thousand years for Armageddon's warring sides to learn to get along. Tip the balance and how long do you think it will take to relearn it? And how many people will die before then?”

Suddenly, I realized what she was talking about. It wasn't ex-lovers like Justica or Ari. It was absent lords, like Luck or Micah. Instantly the hairs on the back of my neck rose. The air felt like it did before an electric storm. All was quiet. Intense. Like the whole world was watching this conversation, although we were completely alone.

If I had the power to bring Luck back, would I? Should I? What would it mean for Halja? We'd learned to live with the Angels. We worked with them and sometimes we even married them. What if they were suddenly persecuted again? Or the opposite. What if
we
were? Those of us with Host blood? What if bringing someone back meant returning to the days of war?

Could the White Heart start Armageddon II?

But then I scoffed at the direction of my own thoughts. They were so melodramatic. I needed to focus on the task at hand. Not blow everything out of proportion. Things were actually very simple.

Find the sword. Win the race. Work for the Jayneses. Try and be happy as a sentry on board the
Alliance
. And thank Luck I didn't have to make a decision about whether or not to bring him back from the dead.

But I couldn't resist one last question.

“Who are you, Joy? For real?”

“A neutral party who sees farther into the future than you can possibly imagine.”

I scoffed. “Well, that doesn't mean you've interpreted the past correctly. And I've never been one for signs, symbols, or visions. I have yet to experience one that wasn't capable of being twisted into at least two different ‘truths.' Speaking of that, did you know I've also heard that the White Heart is just a yeti tusk that Metatron fashioned a handle for and then ensorcelled with a healing charm?”

But Joy appeared unconvinced by the alternate history I suggested.

“Just promise me, if you use Bialas' letters to retrieve the sword, you'll honor my request.”

“Which is?”

“Don't give the White Heart to the Divinity. Return it to me.”

“I swore an oath to return the sword to them.”

“Your father told me the Bounty Hunter's Oath only requires that you return your target to its rightful owner. I think Bialas' letters will convince you of my claim.”

“Do you realize what you're asking? If I find the White Heart and give it to you instead of Friedrich, I'll never be able to work with an Angel again.”

“It will take more than Friedrich Vanderlin to prevent Rafe Sinclair from watching over you. No Angel is more devoted to the people he cares about than that man.”

I frowned. I guess she'd
seen
something about Rafe too. I hoped it wasn't him defying the Divinity for me. But much as I thought Joy might be right about Rafe's character, I refused to believe that she could see the future. Nobody could. The most anyone could see was
possible
futures. And there were way too many of them for anyone to predict the one that would stick out of the millions that might.