Gravity's Revenge (13 page)

“Elder Enchantress, I will only ask this of you once.” Sheamab lifted one of Hiresha’s skirts and wiped her ink-stained hand on it. “Unlock the door protecting the Lord of the Feast. Once he is dead by impaling, the Order of the Innocent will overlook whatever pact you had with him.”

Hiresha found herself considering the treachery. She evaluated it as she might any uncut diamond, for flaws, for efficient carving designs. Part of her wanted to protect the Academy, to save Janny from grief, and Alyla and Minna, too, though Hiresha could no longer recall why.

She asked, “And you and your Bright Palms will leave thereafter?”

“Once the vizier agrees to these terms, we will go.” Sheamab rolled the scroll into an oilskin case and closed it with care. “The Bright Palms must be allowed within town walls. Given building rights for our sanctums. Men and women encouraged to join the order through tax mercies for their families.”

“A month will pass before that message even reaches the vizier. You mean to hold the Academy hostage all winter?”

Hiresha rebelled against the peace that eroded her mind’s desires with each beat of her heart. Her arms twisted in the grips of the Bright Palms. Willing away the soothing light caused her to ache, tremble, be filled with a filth of worry and hurt. Her thoughts returned to Spellsword Fos, lying atop the Blade, bleeding and perhaps with his ribs and legs shattered.

“I will not deal with any woman who lobs my friends off cliffs,” Hiresha said. “You may as well tumble down the Skyway with that letter yourself, for all the help I’ll give you.”

“You are wrong on one point. An enchantress will carry the message down the Skyway. One of your choosing.” Sheamab seized Hiresha’s hands and folded her fingers over the scroll case. “The leather is strong. The message can outlive the messenger.”

14

Academy Plateau

A line of bleary-eyed women and girls shivered under the Opal Mind’s archway. Hiresha stood before them, the oilskin scroll case a weight in her arms. She gripped it so tightly that her fingertips turned purple.

“Choose,” Sheamab said. She tapped Hiresha between her shoulders with the staff. “Each week, an enchantress will take the Skyway and deliver a message. Four enchantresses a month, chosen by Elder Hiresha, until the Order of the Innocent is restored to its place in the empire.”

“I’ll not choose. It’d be murder.” Hiresha held her voice low, so only the Bright Palm standing beside her could hear. “You only want me to pick a victim so in some small measure I’ll share the blame.”

“You could always choose yourself.” Sheamab’s voice echoed off the buildings and distant peaks.

The enchantresses began to mutter. “I’ve walked the Skyway scores of times. Why does Provost Hiresha look so frightened?”

“Wouldn’t you be? Next to that Bright Palm? I heard she put out Spellsword Fos’s eye with that staff.”

“Quiet.” The Minister of Orbiting Bodies wrapped her constellation-patterned shawl tighter around herself. “The provost is concerned traveling the Skyway today might be dangerous.”

The stooped warden asked, “Why would it be dangerous? And why are all these Bright Palms here? The chancellor will be beside herself with the breach in protocol.”

“I regret that the chancellor is indeed beside herself,” the minister said. “Outside herself and with her gods, to be most accurate.”

Sheamab propped her shoulder against her staff to lean closer, her face beside Hiresha’s so the wind whipped locks of dark hair together with strands of Hiresha’s green headdress. “Through sacrifice, victory. Second tenet.”

“If self-destruction is your motto,” Hiresha said, “then I choose a Bright Palm to fall down with this message.”

“You shall sacrifice yourself not, when another way can be found to the same goal. Tenth tenet.”

“How perfectly convenient.”

Hiresha found that her arms were trembling, and the fennec mewed, his dark eyes staring up into hers. Deciding which enchantress had to die—
To be executed, no less—
horrified Hiresha. She had vowed to protect these women, considered them the closest thing she had to family.

And I will protect them.
I’ll find a way to knock each and every Bright Palm off this cliff.

She saw no such opportunity then. Sheamab had her staff, and Hiresha had not so much as one jewel she could throw as a weapon. Nine other Bright Palms stood guard around the novices, servants, and enchantresses. From flails to swords, the Bright Palms’ weaponry convinced Hiresha they could slaughter all the enchantresses if the spellswords tried the climb to the plateau.

What appeared to be an eleventh figure stood in the doorway of the
Recurve
Tower
. The overcast sky made for a morning of uncertain light.

Everything depends on me. Even the enchantresses who craft magical weapons have never been trained to use them.
Hiresha knew the Rector of Enchanted Armament would faint at a drop of blood.
They have fewer defenses than a flock of flamingos. I need the time to reach my jewel stashes, or enchant new ones. I cannot sacrifice myself here.
Feelings of betrayal and helplessness tormented her.

Enchantresses winced away from Hiresha’s gaze. A woman in a velvet dress with lapis lazuli stones shook her head from side to side, pleading. Hiresha knew her to trade kisses with novices in a less than professional manner in exchange for additional tutoring.
But can I condemn her to death for that?

The next enchantress Hiresha looked at slumped in terror, her eyelids fluttering in a near faint. Another hid her face behind a veil of pearls, weeping. The bloodless expression of a third woman reflected the green hue from her diamonds.

That is Cosima,
Hiresha realized. She knew the enchantress had earned her jeweled gowns for arbitrating legal disputes across the Lands of Loam, crafting her evenhanded decisions in the tranquility of lucid dreams.

“Enchantress Cosima, you picked an unfortunate month to visit the Academy.”

She dabbed sweat from her brow with a handkerchief of green lace. “And you, an unfortunate month to remain.”

I could never give Cosima the message to bear. And so many here are just as intelligent and thoughtful.

Hiresha’s decision was made no easier by the distraction of Bright Palms tossing valuables over the cliff edge. Chests were opened in cascades of gold. Discarded dresses flitted away in the wind like fleeing ghosts.

The lanky Minister of Orbiting Bodies dragged her gowns forward to grip a Bright Palm’s shoulder. “You mustn’t throw anything over the town. A gold coin dropped from this height will crush a skull.”

Sheamab made cutting motions to either side with her staff. The Bright Palms carried the trunks and rolled-up tapestries farther away, to the sides of the plateau.

Hiresha twisted the scroll case in her hands, turning her regard to the Dean of Somnium Exploration. Her frizzy grey hair stuck out from beneath her silk nightcap. The long-toed boots protruding from beneath her skirts were mismatched, green and yellow.

The dean will be next in line for the chancellery, and she only practices soft enchantment.
Hiresha had wanted the Academy to pursue more practical uses of magic, and she believed the overly philosophical Dean Wysteras would make decisions based on the flow of natural currents or some such nonsense rather than sound logic.
In a way, she would be worse than Chancellor Ringwold. If I have to choose someone, I may as well benefit the future of the Academy.

Hiresha hesitated, worried she was turning a grudge into a deadly vendetta.
The faculty all know of our disagreements. They will expect me to pick the dean. They’ll know I used this tragedy to advance my own discipline of applied enchantment.

Enchantresses edged away from the dean. The elder enchantress met Hiresha’s gaze, and it was Hiresha who winced away.

I’ll not pick her.
Part of Hiresha wanted to see the last of the dean, but she thought participating in Sheamab’s scheme in any way would make her the worst sort of opportunist.
I’ll not pick anyone.

The dean spoke out with infuriating calm. “You opened the door to the Bright Palms, Provost Hiresha. I hope someday you will be able to forgive yourself for being the Lands of Loam’s greatest of betrayers.”

Hiresha gripped the scroll case as if to strangle it. More than ever she felt she should give the dean the case.
How dare she think I’d knowingly betray the Academy? The others must see I want no part of this.

Shuffling around in her skirts, Hiresha flung the scroll case over the edge. “This message can fall down the cliff well enough by itself.”

Sheamab’s staff caught the scroll case mid-flight and batted it back to the plateau. The Bright Palm picked up the message and forced it into Hiresha’s hand. “To ensure it is found and relayed to the capital, you will carry it.”

Hiresha pushed back. Sheamab shifted the position of one foot. She forced Hiresha’s hand closed over the case.

“Bright Palm Grongara, bring the straps,” Sheamab said.

“What’s she doing?” the Warden of Faceted Knowledge asked. “And what sort of dream did all these Bright Palms come from?”

The Minister of Orbiting Bodies bowed her head. “The Bright Palms are holding us ransom, and Provost Hiresha is to carry their demands down the Skyway at considerable personal peril.”

The air chafed Hiresha’s aching throat as she spoke to Bright Palm Sheamab. “
May the gods rend you for doing this to us.”

The warden tapped the enchantress beside her with her cane. “Hiresha shouldn’t be going into peril. She’s only thirty.”

“Thirty five,” the minister said.

“Practically a child. It should be me who goes.” The warden shuffled forward.

Hiresha saw her own grimace reflected and warped in the golden hump ornamenting the warden’s stooped back. Even with the elder’s memory fading, Hiresha still thought her wise. She hated to imagine the kindly woman carrying Sheamab’s message off the cliff. At the same time, Hiresha felt overwhelmed with relief, and she could not find her own voice.

“Give that here.” The warden tugged the scroll case from between Hiresha and Sheamab, and the Bright Palm stepped aside. Wrinkles curved upward in the eye holes in the warden’s mask to hint at a smile. “As Elder Enchantress Planterra said on her last day, ‘The way is clear. The final step is the greatest leap.’”

Hiresha worked through the lump in her throat to speak. “May—may the goddess embrace you.”

The warden hobbled forward and downward, rotating to the horizontal as she followed the Skyway. Her train of velvet and taffeta flowed over the edge, then was gone.

The other enchantresses and women crowded the cliff to watch to warden’s descent. Hiresha thought to comfort Alyla, but the young woman did not approach. Hiresha could not long look away from the warden. Thinking of what might happen any moment burned Hiresha’s insides with an acid of shame and resentment. The shifting tresses of her headdress lashed her cheeks.

The warden plodded down the side of the cliff. Hiresha held her breath until she had to take a stinging gulp. When the thing they all dreaded happened, a collective gasp rang out. An enchantress to Hiresha’s left clapped a hand over her mouth. Alyla hid her eyes behind her fists.

Snow swirled overhead, and flecks of white drifted downward over the cliff’s empty path.

One woman said, “She didn’t even get as far as the Blade.”

“We’re trapped,” another said, “aren’t we?”

“Provost, how could you?”

Hiresha felt too wounded to answer, could say nothing until the star-strewn minister stepped closer. Then Hiresha’s voice was desolate.

“Hers was a great mind.”

“Warden Maova should have had a wind burial, yes,” the Minister of Orbiting Bodies said. “A pity she cared little for celestial movements. Many would’ve appreciated knowing the Gateway Constellation was directly overhead at their passing.”

“Is it?” Hiresha asked.

A cloud had swamped the plateau with tendrils of grey. Of the sun there was no sign. When Hiresha looked up into the gloom, snow dove into her eyes, and she blinked hot tears.

“It’s a Feaster’s day.” Bright Palm Sheamab motioned away from the cliff with her staff. “Everyone, back into the tower.”

Hiresha stole another glance over the side, at the crystal spellsword college. Fos was no longer sprawled over the top of the Blade.
But did he pick himself up, or was he carried off?

The coils of the
Recurve
Tower
loomed out of the falling snow like a stone python speckled with windows. The Bright Palms were more visible in the darkness, a ring of shimmering figures around the women.

Minna was staring straight down, her body rigid, stumbling as Maid Janny led her. Hiresha did not doubt the Feaster was terrified to the point of unconsciousness among so many Bright Palms.

Maid Janny rushed from her daughter to Hiresha, pawing at the enchantress’s hand. “Oh, why have the Bright Palms come? Hope they’re blown off the cliff, the lot of them. A blizzard is coming, so they just might be.”

Sheamab rested her staff on Janny’s shoulder. “Do step aside,” the Bright Palm said, “but first retrieve whatever you palmed to the enchantress.”

Hiresha’s numb hands had scarcely felt the jewels that Janny had tried to slip her. Janny’s shoulders sagged forward in defeat, and Hiresha felt grateful for her, for this, and for her long assistance to an enchantress too sleepy for her own good. She tried to give Janny and her daughter some manner of reassuring expression, but her chilled lips stuck to her teeth.

The mother and daughter entered the tower. A black staff held Hiresha back with the Bright Palm. Snow misted about the pair. Hiresha shivered in her six layers of gowns. Sheamab, in her short-sleeves and sandals, did not.

The Bright Palm gazed up at the tower. “Once, I thought I wished to study here. People said visiting the
Mindvault
Academy
was the closest thing to the wonders of the afterlife. Now I see nothing of value.”