A House Divided (Astoran Asunder, book 1) (7 page)

She never would see her mother's face again, no matter how hard her eyes strained. Annalith had been swept away while at sea, during a violent storm that had left her vessel severely damaged and Cianne's life destroyed.

When the casket was carried to the sea to be borne away on the waves, Cianne collapsed. Her world had fallen in on her, and she was powerless against the pain.

Her mother's casket was long gone by the time she woke. Cianne regretted that she hadn't been able to watch it disappear, to imagine Annalith being carried out to Cearus's embrace. Perhaps the peaceful image would have cured Cianne of her nightmares. Every time she closed her eyes, she watched the greedy waters swallowing Annalith's lovely, kind face, her silken ebony curls.

The walls of the manor pressed in around Cianne, threatening to crush her, making her skin crawl with the need to get away. Outside the enclave walls she could be alone with her thoughts, could probe the pure, jagged edges of her grief without fear of witness.

She waited until her father locked himself in his room and the servants had gone to bed before she crept down the stairs. She and her mother had made a game of sneaking up on one another, and so Cianne had long since learned which steps to avoid so that she wouldn't make a sound. Slipping through the door of the manor was child's play, and avoiding the night guards wasn't much more difficult. She loved climbing and snuck away to do it whenever she could, so although scaling the enclave wall was a challenge, it was not an insurmountable one.

Skulking through the city streets alone at night was dangerous, she knew that, particularly in the sections of town she preferred to haunt. She didn't much care. A sense of recklessness seized her, and she had to choke back hysterical laughter as she spirited her way along the docks, pausing every so often to peer into the unsavory taverns lining the street. She watched a group leave one house hung with lurid red lanterns, catching a glimpse inside of both men and women wearing shockingly few clothes.

She walked for hours without anyone noticing her, though this was probably more a testament to the extreme levels of their inebriation than it was to Cianne's evasive skills. Still, she was small and able to slip into tight nooks and crannies, which was a decided advantage.

At last, she found herself ghosting along a row of modest rough stone houses. An uneven wall of jumbled stone closed the dwellings off from the street, and when Cianne tested it she found it had excellent hand- and footholds for someone whose fingers and feet were as small as hers were. She began climbing. The wall was higher than she had thought, and when she reached the top and stood staring down at the street below, her heart raced, the first non-grief burst of emotion she'd felt since her mother had died. Vertigo kicked in as her eyes measured the ten feet down to the ground, and she swayed a bit.

"Whoa there," a soft voice called from below.

Whirling toward it, Cianne teetered again, this time coming much closer to falling. Her arms shot out perpendicular to her sides and she didn't draw another breath until she'd managed to steady herself.

"What are you doing up there?" the voice asked. She could tell it belonged to a man, though she couldn't see his face. He was standing too close to the wall, and the shadows obscured his features.

"Climbing," she said, her voice cracking. She tried to remember the last time she had spoken to another person and couldn't. Even with Lach her responses had become mostly non-verbal.

"Obviously," he said in a droll tone. "However, you seem rather unsteady on your feet, so perhaps climbing isn't the best thing for you to be doing at the moment."

Crouching, Cianne lowered her bottom onto the uneven surface of the wall. Stones poked into her rear, but she ignored the discomfort. Dangling her legs over the edge, she braced her hands on the stone, scraping her palms for her trouble, and leaned out over the wall, trying to see the man below her.

"Why don't you come down?" he suggested.

Like any cautious parent, Cianne's mother had warned her about strangers. It didn't matter that this man sounded nice, he was someone she didn't know, and the prudent thing to do would be to go back to the enclave and return to her bed, where she belonged. With any luck, she might even manage to do so without anyone noticing she'd left in the first place.

But something about talking to someone she didn't know felt good. This man didn't know her mother had died. He didn't know that she angered her tutors by skipping her lessons. He didn't know that her father had averted his face at the announcement that his daughter had failed every aspect of her Adept test, trying to conceal the mingled disappointment and disgust that had curdled his mouth, though not quickly enough. He didn't know that ever since then, and especially now that her mother was gone, her father could barely stand to look at her.

She was as much a stranger to this man as he was to her, which meant he knew nothing at all about her. After spending the last week around people who thought they knew everything there was to know about her, this realization was oddly comforting.

"I shouldn't," she said, not wanting to give the appearance that she had caved so readily. "My mother told me never to talk to strangers."

"That's wise of you, and you're right to listen to your mother. I am a stranger, that's true, but I'm also an Enforcement officer."

An Enforcement officer. Cianne chewed her lip, her stomach twisting. It was good, because it meant that he was a safe stranger, but it was also bad, because it meant that if he found out who she was, he would have to report her to her father. The last thing she wanted was for her father to find out what she had been up to, not so much because she feared the punishment that would ensue, but because she knew discovery would make it impossible for her to ever sneak away again. Her father would see to it that every guard in the enclave was on the lookout for her, and her one means of escape would be cut off forever. She wouldn't be able to endure that.

"Prove it," Cianne ordered, hedging, trying to buy herself some time.

"All right, I will. Don't go anywhere," the man said. She could hear the reluctance in his voice, and he moved slowly away from the wall, heading toward a cracked door that was spilling a thin sliver of yellow light out into what she now saw was a garden.

It was a small garden, and the light illuminated his face when he opened the door wide enough to pass through it. He glanced back at her over his shoulder, watching to see if she would run away, so only his profile was visible, but what she could see of it looked kind. His thick, shoulder-length dark hair was pulled back into a tail. His eyes appeared to be dark too, though in the low light of the garden it was impossible to tell. Judging his height from her vantage was difficult, but when he went through the door she could see his head passed beneath its frame with just a few inches to spare, which told her he was rather tall. Something about his appearance made him distinct, and his voice—his accent, to be precise—gave away the fact that he wasn't from Cearova.

He disappeared into the house for a moment and Cianne began worrying at one of her nails with her teeth, another habit of hers that drove her father to distraction. What to do? Should she try to slip away while the man was getting his badge, disappear down a dark alley never to be seen by him again?

But it had taken her several moments to scale his wall, and she had a feeling that if she tried to flee he'd simply go out through his front door and catch her in the act. She didn't want to risk that.

At any rate, would running away make her seem timid or would it make her seem criminal? What if he thought she was a thief who'd climbed the wall to better case the residences? As an Enforcement officer wouldn't he feel obligated to chase her down and take her to the Enforcement station for questioning? She couldn't suppress a shiver as she imagined her father arriving to pick her up from the station. That scenario wouldn't do at all.

She was still debating when the man returned. He left his door wide open, and a wedge of light illuminated a portion of his garden as well as his figure, though it cast shadows that made it difficult to see his face again. He held one hand out, palm up, so that she could see it was empty, and in the other hand he held aloft something that caught some of the light.

"This is my badge," he said, lifting his hand higher. His movements were slow and deliberate, which made her feel more skittish. He was treating her like he would an edgy criminal, she was certain of it.

Afraid to focus on any one part of him for fear that he would be moving before she could react, she darted several quick glances at the object in his hand. It did appear to be a badge, but she had no intention of getting any closer to him to find out for certain.

"I should go," she said, not moving, waiting to see how he would react.

"It is late," he said, lowering his badge but keeping his other hand up.

"You're not going to follow me, are you?" she blurted, angry with herself for showing him her hand.

He didn't say anything for a moment, deliberating, and she could hear the conflict in his voice when he said, "It's dangerous for you to be out on the streets alone at this time of night. I could escort you home, see you safe."

"No," she said, the word coming out sharper than she had intended. Taking a breath, she tried to calm herself. "Thank you, but I'll be fine. I know the streets very well." It wasn't entirely untrue. After several days of exploring, she knew them much better than she ever had before.

He was quiet for another moment. "Even so, I think it best if—"

"No," she said again, more forcefully this time. "Don't follow me." Tears sprang to her eyes and she spoke through gritted teeth.

Heedless of caution, she yanked her legs up in a flurry of movement and scooted to the other side of the wall. Scrabbling down more rapidly than she had ascended wasn't wise, thanks to her shaky legs, and she ended up falling the last couple of feet. Letting out a muffled cry of pain, she picked herself up and pelted down the street just as the man emerged around the corner of his wall.

"Wait!" he called out, but she ignored him. He ran after her, but she ducked and dodged, paying no attention to direction, taking whichever alleyways she could find, the darker the better, and he either lost her or gave up after a short chase.

Escaping had been her only thought, and when her legs began to give out and she was forced to stop, she was surprised by the pounding of her heart, her heaving breaths, her tear-soaked face. Sinking to the ground in the safety of a dark corner of a shop's alcove, she buried her face in her knees and allowed herself to sob.

She made it home, slipping into her room just before the sun rose. No one bothered her the entire day, and she wasn't certain whether she should be relieved or hurt.

I am invisible.

But the man last night had made her feel as if she weren't so invisible after all.

***

"Cianne?" Lach asked, his face creasing. "Are you well?"

"I-I'm fine," she said, flashing him a quick smile.

"Are you certain?" he asked. Worry knitted his brow and his eyes were alight with concern as he stared at her, and she realized it was the first time in years that he'd witnessed her truly losing her composure. She shared more with him than she did with anyone else, but even with Lach she had her mask to wear, and she usually wore it very well.

"Yes, I am." Gathering together the frayed edges of her composure, she unleashed the full force of her smile, feeling a stab of guilt at knowing that she was manipulating him. He never could resist her when she turned on the charm, and at the sight of that smile his shoulders relaxed. "I realized I'd forgotten to do something for my father."

"Ah," Lach said, the understanding on his face making her feel even guiltier. "Do you need to—"

"No, it's all right, I promise," she interrupted. "I'll explain it to him, and he'll understand. Please don't worry about it. I think you deserve to celebrate tonight."

He still didn't look convinced, but she continued to smile up at him and he relented. "Very well, but you must promise to tell me if you need to leave, or if there's anything I can do to help you."

"I promise," she said. She would have loved to leave, but the last thing she could afford at that moment was to call any attention to herself. No one could know that she had been so unsettled, least of all Kila.

Chapter 8

Arriving home was a relief. Kila had learned a great deal that evening, and he wanted some time alone to sort through all the pieces, to make notes and try to put together a picture. He had noted a lot of details and was able to make some educated guesses based on them, but that was all he could hope to do for the time being. Were his partner an Intentionist, they could have worked together to create a much more accurate picture. Kila would have been able to make sense of the physical clues, and his Intentionist partner would have been able to read the gestures and expressions of their subjects to gain insight as to the subjects' states of mind.

But even the weakest of Intentionist Adepts were snapped up by the wealthy and powerful. They were perhaps the rarest of all Adepts, and Kila was under the cynical impression that no one wished to create a crime-fighting team with as much accuracy as would result from the pairing of an Intentionist and an Enforcer. Not to mention that the wealthy had no real interest in controlling crime any more than was necessary to keep the lower classes appeased. It was much more to their benefit to use the Intentionists to spy on their enemies and protect their own interests, and even the most idealistic of Intentionists would be hard-pressed to deny a wealthy patron. Those in the employ of the powerful were less than forgiving of anyone who tried to upset the system.