Green Wild (Thrones of the Firstborn Book 2) (21 page)

Jerya blinked, then did some arithmetic. It was easier than dwelling on the pain in her great-uncle’s voice. “You said those who supported Benjen wanted justice for your mother, but Benjen’s Blight didn’t start until
Math’s
reign. That was over twenty years after Shiani died.”

“Oh yes. A lifetime when you’re an ambitious twenty year old girl,” said Jant sarcastically. “And a long time to wait for anybody else, waiting on Anther’s vague promises of reparations and distracted dreams of consensus. Math was ambitious, too.”

“Wanting to be more than a weapon isn’t wrong, Uncle,” Jerya said firmly. “You said everybody respected your great-aunt, the one who started up the schools again.”

“My mother ruined all that,” Jant muttered.

“No.” Jerya stood. “I’m not going to let the legacy of a woman who died fifty years ago destroy Ceria. And I’m not going to let nightmares in the dark prevent the armies we need from moving.”

“Hah,” Jant said to himself, then said, “You do what you have to, girl. Try not to die, though. I’ve seen enough of my kin die.”

“Jerya?” said Iriss, peeking through the ajar door. “Can I come in?”

“I’m just leaving, Iriss.”

“Oh.” Iriss pushed the door open and curtsied to Jant. “Good morning, Your Highness, my Lady. Jerya, I was thinking about that scout’s report. About the armies?” She paused, as if it might be a struggle for Jerya to remember the two armies marching on the eastern and western half of the kingdom.

Jerya glanced at Jant, but he made a point of ignoring her. “Let’s go talk about it at the table,” she told Iriss, and led the way there.

Iriss sat down again awkwardly, almost missing the chair. “I can still hear his voice,” she began. “Giving instructions. When I close my eyes, I can see the shapes in the darkness better. After I finished breakfast, I thought about my dress. I realized that he was giving more than one set of instructions. There’s places on the dress where the hooks and eyes open. More than one.” She looked earnestly at Jerya, as if what she’d said made sense.

Jerya’s father had spoken like that sometimes, and Yithiere. The memories squeezed her heart. “We really ought to get to work on that dress, shouldn’t we?” she said, as cheerfully as she could.

“Yes, we should,” said Iriss. “Once we do, I think I can show you where the hooks are opening.”

Hooks.
Jerya suddenly remembered how her father had died. He’d called hooks to himself, hooks intended to tear the land further apart.

Jerya reached over to the pad of paper in front of Iriss’s place and looked at the dress sketched there. It was a floaty sundress constructed of many filmy layers, each one sketched out on another piece of paper. She studied the skirt, at the way the layers curved around each other. It didn’t look like clothing. It looked, when she opened her mind—

Jerya’s breath caught in her throat. “You mean show me on a map?”

“Yes,” Iriss nodded. “I think if we make my dress, I can show you where the armies are coming from.”

K
IAR CLEANED LISETTE’S
head injury and fed her several cups of willow bark tea to dull the ache, then sat down beside her again and studied at her once again with the Logos-vision.

“What does it look like to you?” Lisette asked. She was sitting up, holding her modified hand close to her chest. “What
is
it?”

“Does it hurt?” Tiana demanded, kneeling at the entrance to the tent.

“Not anymore.” Lisette swallowed, her eyes wide and frightened. “But I don’t know if I have fingertips left. I don’t feel things properly.” She drew the glowing fingertips across her other hand briefly, then shuddered and brought her hand back to her chest.

“The Logos there is so intense, so deeply layered that I can’t make out individual details.” She remembered a similar experience, when she’d looked at the phantasmagory pendant and the Royal Pendant Tiana now wore close around her neck. But she was looking at eidolon magic then. This was almost the exact opposite. “Maybe somebody more experienced would understand it.”

Tiana glanced down at Jinriki, unsheathed beside her. “Jinriki says he knows what it is. But I’m not going to translate between the two of you. He wants you to touch him so he can talk directly to you.” She put the blade down beside them.

Kiar winced. She’d avoided that, actively, purposefully avoided that for so long. Somebody had to be resistant to the powers of the sky fiend. Touching him seemed to increase his influence, sometimes in really awful ways. She glanced toward Cathy, hovering beyond Tiana. The sword delved into minds so easily. And too many were vulnerable to the silent allure of the blade, which all but screamed ‘touch me, take me up’.

But there was a time for trust, and she, more than anybody, should be able to shield herself from his influence, if he turned malignant.

She used no more than a finger to touch the gem on the sword’s hilt. Immediately, the pressure of
pick me up, hold me, hear me
abated.

“Hey, what about the dreams?” Lisette asked, her frightened eyes narrowing in sudden, belated suspicion.

**Is anybody sleeping right now? I think not.**
The sword’s voice was very different than Kiar had expected. She’d heard him speak once aloud, when banishing another sky fiend, and then his voice had been guttural, screeching, alien. But the voice in her head was cool, lazy and intensely masculine. She instantly regretted letting him in.

And that was before she processed what Lisette had actually said to him. Anger and shame rose up and she tamped them down firmly, only asking, “Did you really need me to touch you?”

**It certainly makes things easier. Some minds are stronger than others.**
The pleasure in the silent voice disturbed her. She wanted to put up a shield right now. But she didn’t. She’d let him in for a reason and she was going to get what she paid for.

“So what is it?”

**The Starcatcher Hand? It’s a channel to the lux, the raw energy outside the world. A tool, and a weapon. The two of you could do great things if you learned to work together. A challenge to be mastered.**
An image formed in her mind of Lisette somehow passing energy to Kiar, and Kiar’s grasp of the Logos shaping that energy into something real.

Kiar believed him; he had done something like that once before: made an unnatural monster natural, using Tiana as the channel. She pushed the intrusive image away. “I don’t have the control for anything big like that. I know how dangerous it is to the worker.” She glanced at Tiana covertly, then said, “How does she turn it off?”

Jinriki laughed.
**It’s not activated. She must learn how to do that first.**

Lisette said quickly, “I don’t want to learn how to turn it on. I want to learn how to take it off.”

**She will need to attune herself to the new sensations and take hold of the energy. Communicating would be easier if she understood the Logos, of course. But there’s stubbornness buried in there. She’ll learn.**

“Hey!” protested Lisette. “I’m right here!”

Outside the tent, a guard called, “Rider incoming!”

**It’s the wizard,**
said Jinriki.
**Perhaps I’ll simply explain to him.**

Kiar almost stepped on Tiana in her hurry to get out of the tent, but Tiana was hardly less eager than she was. They both tumbled out and Kiar rose to her feet and brushed herself off as she looked around.

After a moment, a wild-eyed farm horse crunched through the tree line, with Twist hanging onto the horse and trying to stop a sloppy pack from falling off. Kiar and Tiana raced to meet the horse, which shied and then deposited Twist on the ground before backing up.

“Yes, well, good afternoon to you as well.” He let Tiana pull him to his feet.

“You found us! How are things in the city? Did the Vassay arrive? Why are you on a horse? What’s in the pack?” Tiana demanded. Kiar stood twisting her hands together, feeling awkward.

“Honk, honk, honk, I come bearing Fallendre gifts,” said Twist, and put the overloaded pack into Tiana’s arms. “I borrowed Bluebell here because skipping through a forest with that pack gave me a giant headache. All those trees to account for, all those packages.” He shook his head and clicked his tongue. “Alas, Bluebell wasn’t much better. Do you have a horsey person who can take her and convince her humanity isn’t a mistake?” One of the stable girls materialized beside Bluebell and gave Twist a nasty look. He bowed deeply to her. “A horsey
queen
, if I’m not wrong. Exactly what the wizard ordered. Take this poor beast away.”

Lisette peeked out of the tent, then emerged slowly to sit by the fire, holding her hand under the cloak she’d put over her shoulders. Tiana lugged the pack over to her and started going through it. “Fresh cheese. Good crackers. Bacon. Some books for you, Kiar. Some flasks. Cookies! You’re late, Twist, we needed this last night.”

“I spent last night in somebody’s stable,” said Twist, with a mournful face. “I needed it more last night. There’s a letter from your sister in one of Kiar’s books.”

Kiar wondered if he’d picked the books out for her himself, wondered what they were. She couldn’t stop looking at him to go check. The shadows of exhaustion still lingered on his face, but the expressive liveliness she found so annoying danced in his eyes.

Then Minex’s sweet, sleepy voice cut across the clearing. “You are no longer mortal, Lady Lisette.” She was still curled by the fire, head on her arm, blinking her big eyes curiously.

“You’re dreaming. Go back to sleep, creature,” said Tiana.

Twist brushed himself off and moved over to Kiar. “Things have been quite busy here,” he murmured. “An earth fiend, and what’s happened to Lisette?”

Suddenly, Kiar realized just how happy she was to see him. “Lisette’s discovered a new talent. Well, I say ‘discovered’ but it actually seems to be a gift from a Secondborn. Jinriki thinks she can gather up raw energy .”

Twist raised one eyebrow. “Are you talking to that creature now?”

“Well, it’s not like you were here to talk to instead.”

He frowned at her, but a smile crept through. “It’s nice to be missed for my conversation instead of my magic.”

Giddiness made the words easy. “Is there anything else to talk about?”
Twist is here, Twist is here.
“Come, see.” He followed her over to Lisette.

“I hear you’ve joined the ranks of Tiana’s magical army.” He crouched down and started unwrapping a candy from Tiana’s pile of loot.

Lisette met his eyes and pulled aside her cloak to show him her hand. “I don’t like it.”

He popped the candy in his mouth, then inspected her hand as if she was a child showing him a scratched knee. “How does it feel?”

“Numb. Sometimes tingly. And look.” She pressed her glowing fingertips against the side of her mug. “It’s like they’re not even there. I can touch where sensation begins and it feels... odd. Raw, sensitive.” Lisette stared at her hand with a sick expression on her face. “The Secondborn made me take the gauntlet. Forced me.”

Twist’s expression turned peculiar. “I see.” He stared at her for a long meditative moment. “That’s not an easy thing to accept. Do you think it’s meant to help?”

“Maybe.
They
think so. The Voice said Atalya thinks so. But why me? It goes against everything I’m supposed to be, and I have no preparation for it. No skills. No education. Jinriki says I use it by attuning myself and reaching out. I don’t even
understand
that.”

“Do you
want
to understand it?”

“No. I don’t.” Lisette’s lips thinned uncharacteristically and she looked away, “But I’ll try to anyhow. It’ll just take some time.”

“Brave girl.” Twist laid two fingers on her wrist, comfortingly. “I’ll do my best to help you. I do have a bit of experience teaching, unlike these people.”

But not enough for me!
Kiar’s giddy happiness dropped away like a boulder. Twist smiled at Lisette, Lisette smiled back and Kiar’s stomach burned.

“I’m just going to go check on... something. You two keep talking.” She hurried away. As she did, she passed Cathay, loitering at the edge of the clearing, his face turned toward Tiana like a flower toward the sun. She recognized something horrible in his face and worse, saw his own recognition of something in hers. It was too much; she stumbled into a jog to the next campsite.

There, near the stable girls who were feeding the mounts and fussing over Bluebell, she stood facing the forest. What was wrong with her? What kind of reaction was that?

**A jealous one,**
came Jinriki’s purr.

**You shut the hell up,**
she screamed silently.
**What the hell do you know, you stinking heap of cursed metal?**

**Oh, come now—**
but a red haze rose over Kiar’s vision. She couldn’t take it anymore.

**Get the hell out of my head!**
She made a shield around her mind, around her heart, around everything she was, and because she desperately didn’t want anybody to notice and wonder why, the shield around her skin was as close as her clothes. She’d learned since she was a child, oh yes. She could see through this shield, walk, even talk. It was fitted armor through which nobody could reach her.

In a tight, tiny silence, with nothing but herself to see, and no one but herself to know, she could admit Jinriki was right. The searing bolt that had ripped through her when Twist turned the full intensity of his attention to Lisette was jealousy. Stupid, irrational, baseless jealously. She felt like throwing up. Cold panic made her hands clammy at the thought of what underlay the jealousy. She didn’t know what to do with the feelings. Especially here, so far away from books and places to hide. Her armor couldn’t keep out what came from inside her.

A brief heaviness went through her chest: an eidolon coming home. The shield she’d just created had severed the maintenance on another shield. Dread overwhelmed her confusion even before she remembered what eidolon she’d been maintaining. It had been the one in the eidolon world, shielding Tiana’s window silhouette from prying eyes.

Wiping her hands on her tunic, trying to wipe Twist from her mind the same way, she stumbled through the steps necessary to re-enable the protection. She sent the eidolon back by the same path it had used to return. Then she wrapped her arms around herself and leaned against a tree, taking deep breaths and trying to analyze what else needed to be done.

She had to tell Tiana. She had to tell her
something
, anyhow. It was Tiana she’d failed. Lord of Winter, it was so stupid to be jealous, so dangerous, so wrong. She had to remember where such feelings had led her.

Hurrying back through the camp, she barely restrained herself from urging the soldiers to pack up camp, right now. Once again, Cathay caught her eye, and this time he tilted his head in a silent invitation to join him in his vigil.

No time for that. Instead, she found Tiana, and then stared at her in silent consternation. What could she say? She couldn’t explain why her eidolon had failed, even if she wanted to. It was too hard for her to find the right words. Twist sat right beside Tiana, with his gentlest smile turned on Lisette.

“Tiana, can I talk to you?”

Tiana looked up, then stood. “Of course.” She obligingly moved away from Twist and Lisette.

Dropping her voice, Kiar struck out at random. “We shouldn’t stay in one place for too long. The enemy, he’s a master of eidolons. He might see through the shield I erected, or even subvert it.”

Tiana tilted her head. “But you’d know, wouldn’t you? If he stole it somehow?”

For a moment Kiar wanted to say,
Yes, that’s it, he took control, we’re in terrible danger.
But lying would be just as stupid as trying to explain. So she shook her head. “Maybe. I hope so.”

“You never have enough faith in yourself. Well, I have enough faith for both of us. I’m sure your shield will keep us hidden. Don’t worry so much.”

Kiar ground her teeth. Tiana’s faith, she felt, would be a lot more reassuring if her trust didn’t so often seem born of denial rather than real evidence.

The forest was normal. Birds chirped. The horses nibbled on forage. The guards were still alert after Jozua’s appearance. She had no evidence her slip mattered. Surely Ohedreton had many things occupying his time. Invading another world was a big undertaking. But that was hope speaking, not facts, so she tried one more time.

“Faith is one thing but being careful is something else entirely. We could move deeper into the forest. Maybe you’d sense more about the light.”

Tiana hesitated. “No, I don’t think so. The situation seems stable here.” She looked away, to the edge of the clearing. “Yes. They can find us here and that’s good. We need to stay here for now. We’ll defend ourselves if we have to.”

Kiar blew out her breath in a huff and stalked away, to the trees beyond the camp.

A guard moved to follow her. They had no intention of letting any more of their charges bump their heads in the woods and come back with glowing body parts. Kiar swallowed her annoyed protest.

Then Twist said, “I’ll escort her, gentlemen,” to the guard and she wanted to break into a run. She would have welcomed any company over Twist’s: Cathay, the loud stable girl, even the little earth fiend. She couldn’t trust herself alone with Twist. She never reacted sensibly.