Green Wild (Thrones of the Firstborn Book 2) (23 page)

Tiana swung around, looking for the source of the voice. While she was trying to decide which of two older women had spoken, Fai said, “We know the true Atalya.”

“And she wants blood?” Tiana didn’t believe it.

“He hunts my sister!”

Tiana winced. She didn’t like Jozua’s ‘hunt’, but that didn’t matter. “It’s not the same. He wants to take her home, not kill her.”

“Duty and desire,” said the Voice, smirking. “Now he is part of something much vaster than even he ever dreamt.”

A quiet voice said, “I’d actually prefer he just left.” Cinai dropped her eyes as Tiana glanced at her.

“Cinai, no!” said Fai. “We gave him that chance! He’s made his choice.”

Cinai shrugged and hunched her narrow shoulders. “Atalya didn’t kill her captors. She didn’t hurt anybody.”

Tiana recovered herself. “Yes. Listen to Cinai! She’s one of your own and her choice should matter.”

Fai cried, “Give him his freedom and he will take hers, eventually!”

Tiana thought of Jozua waiting in his camp. “Would he? Could he? From his campsite?”

Fai scowled at Jozua’s still form. “He has his ways.”

Near Cinai, a little boy holding a rabbit in his arms said, “I don’t want to hunt him either. If he stays in the forest too long, he’ll change, anyhow.” He looked up at Cinai, who ruffled his hair. Then he turned and wandered into the woods.

The circle of observers rustled and a few other people muttered something before walking away. The butterfly on Jozua’s lips lifted away, leaving Jozua blinking. A strange rumbling laughter emerged from him.

“What? What are you laughing at?” Tiana snapped.

The laughter became a cough and then he said, “All this talk of freedom and choice. But from what she said, your Lady Lisette had none.”

The Voice of Atalya lounged against its tree inspecting a wing, as if it didn’t much care that its audience was leaving and its game had fallen apart.

**We’ve been talking. I don’t think it can take away the gift it forced on Lisette. Let’s just kill it.**

Tiana seriously considered the idea, but Fai and Cinai, facing each other, distracted her again.

Cinai said, “He’s right, Fai. If you want to champion somebody’s freedom, go take care of that poor girl the Voice hurt. I can make my own choices here.”

Fai’s eyes slowly widened. He half-shook his head, frowned, and then looked from side to side like a trapped animal. In that other vision, the emerald light shuddered and flickered, like a guttering candle. Tiana reached out a hand. But the trembling remained: not a candle but leaves in the wind.

Cinai raised her voice. “Go! Leave me alone for once. Help somebody who needs it, who our
own patron
has mistreated.” Her voice shook, and Fai stepped backward.

“It was needful,” said the Voice, like a sulky child. “She wouldn’t accept the present and Somebody worked so hard on it, too.”

Tiana, unsettled by the rapidly shifting light only she could sense, stared at the Voice. Only with the skill of long experience did she control the desire to shout. What did
any
of them know about choice?

Fai turned his frown on the Voice and his shoulders straightened. Then he bowed to Tiana, as courtly as any of her suitors. Lisette was right; he was noble-born. Jozua had said something about Cinai being destined to be the mother of Dukes, hadn’t he? “May I accompany you to your camp and examine the mischief worked upon your companion?”

“Do you think it will help?” She was savagely pleased when his control flickered to reveal wild, haunted eyes. The day wasn’t going as she’d planned, either.

Fai closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, he said, “I don’t know, but I will place what stock I have with the Lady Atalya at Lady Lisette’s service. My own sister commands it. How could I do otherwise?”

The will to poke around inside the shell of glass thorns the boy maintained drained out of Tiana, until all that remained was tiredness. “Come along, then.” She looked past him to the Voice, who smiled. “Is this still your game?”

Instead of answering, it swung back into its tree and went to sleep. Tiana was not surprised. “Come on,” she repeated, and turned to go back to her campsite. It wasn’t until she was almost back that she realized Jozua had not returned with them.

N
O LONGER CRYSTAL music
, the steady rain shower promised dampness for days to come. Fai hardly seemed to notice the wet, and he was just as oblivious to Jozua’s absence. She ought to chase the hunter down and drag him back with her; he could only be causing trouble, left alone. She needed him in one piece at until she worked out how to extract the crimson light sleeping within him. After that he could go get himself hanged for all she cared.

But she was tired, and afraid for Lisette, and so very frustrated. It was good the Firstborn had retreated from the world, because if one appeared before her now, she would shake them for making this so difficult. Their promised help had been a shining fairytale come to life and now she was cold and wet and
things
were creeping down her boots and worse
things
emerged every day from a hole in the world. Her sister’s letter, with its vivid description of the gap in the night, crumpled in her pocket.

**I’m sure if your Firstborn could work faster, they would. They fear Ohedreton, you know that. Don’t believe they grant this gift out of love for your world.**

Tiana sighed and recalled the sensation of the blue light washing through her. At that point, Niyhan had seemed wise and all-knowing. Confidence flowed naturally. How could the plan fail, whatever it was? She simply had to obey and collect the lights of the Firstborn. Then, somehow, it would all be made well again. They were the Firstborn and she wanted to obey them, but right now it felt like an impossible challenge.

The sound of the campsite rose over the patter of the rain. Tiana pushed her way into the guards’ clearing where the rain came down in sheets. One man managed thee sputtering, steaming fire; the rest were either inside tents or building some sort of shelter out of cut branches. The fire tender sprang to attention, his gaze going past her to Slater and then to Fai.

“Thank you for your escort, Lieutenant,” said Tiana. “Go do something else. You, Fai, come with me.”

Fai barely raised his head, but at least stayed on her heels. In the linked clearing, Twist and Cathay spoke with Lisette under an open tent, while Kiar huddled on the edge of the trees, Minex perched on a branch near her. “There she is. Can you actually do anything for her, or is this a symbolic gesture?”

Fai’s voice was low. “What happened to her?”

“Your precious Voice forced her to take up a gauntlet that sank into her hand. Now her fingers are turning into light.”

“Atalya’s Voice,” he murmured. “It values strength. Purity. I suppose...” he shook his head and moved to kneel before Lisette. “Lady Lisette, may I inspect your injury?”

Above his head, Lisette met Tiana’s gaze. She was a mess, more rumpled and red-eyed than Tiana had ever seen her, but she looked curious rather than upset at the moment. Tiana forced herself to smile in return, until Lisette’s attention returned to the young man in front of her.

**Will indulging her histrionics improve matters? It is power, even if it has unfortunate side effects.**

Irritated, Tiana thought,
**Sometimes I really don’t like you very much.**

Almost mildly, Jinriki said,
**I don’t like anybody very much, but your Lisette has earned more of my respect than most. Her current state of mind is alien to me. She doesn’t want the power. How can that be?**

**I don’t know! Maybe it hurts. Maybe she doesn’t like how her hand is vanishing. We do like our hands, you know. Maybe she doesn’t want it because it was forced on her. I know forcing people to do things doesn’t bother you much but that doesn’t make it all right, it makes you a
fiend
.**

Doggedly, Jinriki said,
**She was not this upset when I used her to speak to you.**

Tiana put her hands in her hair and turned away from Lisette and Fai.
**You’re the mind-reader, sword.**

**You’re the human, Tiana.**
His voice curled around her like smoke.

Kiar detached herself from the forests’ edge and moved towards her, and Tiana waved, glad of a distraction from Jinriki’s conversation. From his voice, from the way he said her name.

“Look at her. I can’t think of anything better to cheer her up, can you?” Tiana nodded at Lisette, surrounded by three attentive men. She could actually think of all sorts of better things, but none of them were in the forest and Lisette had admitted she missed Cathay’s attention sometimes. That had to be worth something.

Kiar didn’t even bother to look that direction, didn’t even make the pretense of attending as she said, “Yes. Tiana, we need to move the camp. Outside the forest, preferably.”

This conversation wasn’t much better than Jinriki’s. “You keep saying this and I keep saying I’m not ready, Kiar. You’ve got to—”

Kiar pushed pale wet hair away from her face with both hands. The whites of her eyes glinted in the dimming light. “No, listen. Earlier, I was distracted, and I dropped the aegis in the other world shielding our location from the Blighter. I re-established it, but...”

Tiana gnawed on her thumbnail. “Do you know that he saw us? Is a sky fiend near?”

“Other than Jinriki?” Kiar shrugged and pressed her lips together. “We hardly know what Ohedreton is capable of. Given that, we need to assume the worst.”

Tiana wondered what had upset Kiar so much that she lost her iron focus; there were so many possibilities lately. Lisette, Jozua, Twist... ah, yes.

Something was odd about her story. “We’re not moving right now because it’s raining and it’s almost night. But you re-established it? How did you do that?”

Kiar blinked and frowned. “I don’t know.” She cast about. “I just... reached out and did it. Without a sky fiend, without needing to be present. Except I
was
present.” She chewed on her lip. “I have to think about this.”

Tiana stuffed the damp letter from Jerya into Kiar’s hand. “Read this when you do think about it because it may matter. Eidolons behave differently in the gap in the night. If you’ve been maintaining one through the gap, that’s important.”

Kiar took the letter, looked at it, and glanced up again, her brow furrowed. “All right. Later. How can I convince you we need to move the camp?”

“I really think I’m getting close, Kiar. The green light is... trembling. We can’t leave.” Tiana watched Kiar draw breath to argue and added, “Ask me again in the morning. We’ll have all day to come up with a plan, then.”

Kiar blew out her breath in a sigh. “I guess that will be all right. As long as nothing happens tonight.”

Tiana smiled at her. “Exactly.” Kiar lowered her head and moved back to her tree.

**She should have mobilized the camp for departure while we were gone, if she was really concerned.**

Tiana dropped her gaze.
**Hah. It’s Kiar. Everybody would look at her. She can’t do that.**

**Certainly not if she never has to. You are too kind to your companions. They will never grow and improve if you pamper them.**

**Don’t say stupid things. Kiar shuts down when she’s overwhelmed. **

**Oh, don’t I get pampered, too? Well, I shall return the favor.**
Tiana clenched her fist, wondering if they were going to quarrel again. But he simply said,
**She is stronger than she believes herself.**

**Well, we can agree there. Nobody can ever make her see it, though.**

**Because you try kindness. Demand action instead.**

Tiana recalled the fight against the sky fiend in the field, when Kiar had tried to free the creature. She’d failed, blamed herself, and huddled behind a shield while Tiana and Jinriki had dispatched the sky fiend.
**It’s not as easy as you think. If you’d known her as long as I have... you’d see it’s not an easy thing.**

The trees rustled, and Cinai emerged near Tiana, followed by Jozua. Without the glimmering blessing of the crystal rain, Cinai looked older and less innocent: not a forest child but a young woman. But her eyes were clear and she carried a ragged bundle.

She paused next to Tiana and said quietly, “He’s always known how to talk to girls, how to get what he wants and make them feel good about themselves at the same time. If our mother hadn’t died...” She shook her head. “Well, the price he pays for being able to talk to women is that he has to listen to them.” Behind her, Jozua snorted with laughter.

Tiana’s alarm overtook her desire to listen. “That one hasn’t threatened you, has he? Look, what I said before didn’t mean I was on his side. You don’t need to—Why is he with you?”

Cinai hesitated and then shook her head. “We’ve been talking. I’ve decided to go home again. There’s a lot at stake.” She dropped her eyes, as if expecting to be scolded for this decision, which put Tiana enough off balance that she didn’t.

Instead, she asked, “Why did you run away? I heard something about a marriage?”

Her voice low, Cinai said, “Yes. To the son of the Count of Biaxin. It was arranged years ago.”

Tiana gave her a helpless, unhappy look. She and all her family had the power of choice in their marriages, which only made sense in their situation. But she knew many other young people didn’t. It was a popular theatrical trope. “Don’t you like him?” she asked sympathetically.

Cinai shrugged, hugging herself. “He’s all right. I don’t want to marry him, though. I don’t want to let him paw me every night until our fathers have their Duke again.”

Tiana frowned. “I could cancel the arrangement, if you wish. There’s something about Biaxin and the Counties, anyhow. Lisette would know.”

Cinai gave her a strange little smile. “Could you? But no. There are too many benefits. Especially now, with the Blight.” She turned her gaze to her brother again, still engaged in a soft conversation with Lisette. “He encouraged me to run away, and now I have to tell him I’m going back. Come with me? I’m not strong like you are. I’m afraid he’ll talk me into changing my mind.”

Jozua cracked his knuckles. “Oh, we can’t be having with that.”

Cinai addressed him for the first time in Tiana’s hearing, her voice flat. “If you hurt him, I will do everything in my power to destroy you. And he will want to fight you, so maybe you should just go back to your camp.”

Jozua laughed. “No. Go on, say your goodbyes. I’ll watch from here.”

Cinai hunched her shoulders and walked toward her brother, radiating dread. Tiana bit her lip and then caught up with her. She wished the green light would stop flickering so madly, and the sleeping red light wasn’t complicating matters. She even longed for the ignorance she had at the Citadel of the Sky—had the blue light flickered before Jinriki’s rebellion had given it an opportunity to pour itself into her? Was it a good thing or a bad thing?

Fai looked up in time to see Cinai approaching him, and froze, Lisette’s hand in his own. Then he raised Lisette’s hand to show it to Cinai. “It’s amazing, Cinai. You were right.”

Cinai whispered, “I’m going home, Fai.” The words carried, despite the rain, despite the noise of the campsite. Lisette looked down, and pulled her hand away.

All the same, Fai stared at her. “What? What was that?” Cinai didn’t answer, instead lowering her gaze.

Fai said, “You can’t! We’re dedicated to the Firstborn now, that’s what you wanted! You can’t go back.”

Panic flared in Cinai’s eyes. Tiana wanted to help her, but didn’t know how to defend Cinai’s decision. It’s her choice was the easy cry—but she was returning to do something she didn’t want to do, bind herself to other people’s ambitions. It’s her choice was an argument that cut both ways. And the Firstborn they followed was unfamiliar to Tiana, and very different from the gentle flower lady who watched over her from ceiling frescoes.

Cinai swallowed and found her own words. “I’ve been thinking and listening, Fai. And I think I can. I think I should. Going home is the right thing to do. It’s my duty.”

Fai only had eyes for his sister as he crossed the space between them. “It’s a sacrifice. It’s capture. You know that’s not right.”

Cinai put her hand up, as if to hold him away. “I don’t know! I don’t know that anything in this forest is right. You’ve seen what the Voice did to that girl. How can that be right? How does that match with all these ideals of freedom?”

“But you’ve felt her here, the same as I have! You know here She is a huntress, that outside this forest they follow a false Atalya.”

“How can she be false when studying Her stories led us here?” Cinai’s voice trembled, and Tiana touched her arm in encouragement.

When she did, Tiana’s breath hissed through her teeth and her gentle touch became a clenched fist. The green light gathered around Cinai, roiling like a stormy sea. But it was still beyond her reach, on the other side of a veil.

Slowly, she flexed her fingers and muttered, “Atalya is with her, even now.” She raised her gaze to see both siblings staring at her from identical green eyes. “I can feel it.”

Fai cried, “You don’t know anything. How can you feel it? I feel Atalya. She whispers in my ear. She wakes me at night.” He stepped forward, and Tiana moved between them, planting a hand on his chest to stop him.

And stopped herself. Once again, she could sense the green light gathering, this time around Fai, rushing and roaring. “How can that be? It’s in both of you....” She shook her head, dizzied.

**Perhaps you have to cut them open.**

Tiana glanced at Jozua, who watched the argument with an amused unconcern, the crimson light still and quiet. Then emerald vertigo swirled around her and she stumbled to one side. Both siblings stared at her.

“Work it out,” she demanded. “How can she be with the dutiful daughter and the wild son?” The air pressed down on her, as if the rain hadn’t already started. “What is the common thread? What is she?”

Helplessly, Fai said, “I wanted to save her. I wanted her to be free to live her own life, not sold like a horse.”

Cinai whispered, “I was so afraid. I didn’t want to go. But I can make a difference. I can save everybody.”

“Thank you,” said Tiana and stepped between them again. This time she placed a hand on each sibling’s chest. The light was there, beyond a tissue-thin veil. She wondered if Jinriki spoke the truth, and she had to reach inside them to take it. Was that right? It felt wrong.