Green Wild (Thrones of the Firstborn Book 2) (25 page)

Blinking rapidly, she pulled her hand away. “Is that—?”

Kiar turned her hand over and a perfect sphere, rippling with faint colors like a soap bubble, rose from her palm. “Try to catch that.”

Lisette poked a finger on her left hand at the orb, touching the warm, smooth surface and making the colors swirl. Then she swiped at it with the hand leaking light. Once again, her hand passed through it—but she could see both at the same time, at the same moment. The sphere seemed as unreal as a shadow.

Yes. That was exactly what it was like, like looking at somebody standing within a shadow.

“Ouch,” said Kiar, and the sphere vanished. She tapped her fingers together and then shook them. “I’ll have to think about that.”

“Did you sense something? Were you hurt?”

“Not exactly. There was a pressure.” She shook her head. “I’ll have to think about it,” she repeated.

Lisette drew in a deep breath. “All right. Can we try something with the Logos now?”

Kiar said, “I still don’t think that’s a good idea. Jinriki used the lux to create a monster with Tiana. We don’t need to do that.”

Lisette pulled her horse up, and looked back along the column. At the very end, Jozua rode beside the mule that pulled the Fai’s travois. “What about healing him? If Fai was healthy, Cinai would give Tiana the green light.”

Kiar’s breath hissed through her teeth. “Oh no. No, no. Don’t you dare mention that idea to Tiana unless we’re sure it will work.”

Patiently, Lisette said, “I just want you to try it. See what you can do.” She reached out and closed her fingers, like she had before when she summoned the motes of light. Sparkles appeared around her fingertips.

Kiar stared at her, narrowing her eyes. Then she began to mutter to the Logos. After a moment, she extended a single fingertip and touched just one spark, exactly as Twist had done.

There was a crackle, but Kiar stayed on her horse. Instead the spark exploded into a shower of light, and Lisette felt as if somebody pulled on her hand. Kiar stumbled in her speech, her words slowing down until Lisette thought she would stop entirely. That would be bad, she knew.

Something snapped from the vicinity of their hands and the shower of light. The motes compressed into a shape and absorbed color. Lisette felt, distantly, a tiny, rapid thumping. As Kiar stopped speaking, even that faded.

A hummingbird woke up and fluffed its wings in the palm of Kiar’s hand. Lisette stared at it, and then turned her eyes on her own hand. The light now stretched halfway to her elbow.

“I think,” said Lisette, “I’m getting better at it.” She said it to reassure Kiar, she said the words, but she was lying.

I
RISS TWIRLED
IN her new dress, showing it to Jerya. The long skirt flared out, the layers fluttering in the breeze. Her legs flashed through some of the gaps in the layers. The gaps, and the carefully torn holes.

“It’s so pretty,” said Iriss. “Thank you. I feel more like myself again.”

Jerya smiled. “Pretty
and
useful. You’ll tell me if you think it needs more holes, yes?”

Iriss gave her a little smile in return. “Of course. I’m still your Regent even if I have trouble with my eyes now. I’d still be your Regent even if my leg was cut off. Or I lost my hearing.” She considered, tapping her finger on her chin with her head tilted to the side. “But not if I lost my head. I think you’d be on your own then.”

She glanced up and apparently saw enough to recognize Jerya’s sour expression. Instantly she took Jerya’s hands. “It’s all right. It’s my head, I can make that joke.”

Jerya squeezed her hands. Iriss had always been cheerfully morbid. This wasn’t
new
. It was just... uncomfortable.

“You’re right.” Pulling away, Jerya returned to pacing around the room. Alanah attended a meeting with the marshals in command of the Royal Guard in Mousame. Jerya had also sent a special dispatch of the Guard with the Regency Scouts, to locations pinpointed though the craft of dressmaking. She apprehensively awaited word of Yithiere and the Vassay caravan he escorted. She expected messages on all of these missions imminently. The suspense kept her tense and moving.

“Did you hear from Tiana yet?” asked Iriss, sitting down decorously. She picked up some yarn to untangle.

“Twist came by this morning while you slept. She didn’t bother to write me a letter, but she’s alive. Near the army marching on Biaxin.” Jerya brought her fingers to her mouth, then stopped herself from biting them. She’d broken herself of the childish habit almost a decade ago, dammit.

Somebody asked her today, in the Tabernacle of Broken Hearts, if Yithiere led troops from Vassay to protect them from the darkling army. He’d been a young man, with a child in tow, and eager for reassurance. Stories of the two armies outside the Blight were circulating. Overnight Jerya had gone from feeling on top of the situation to nearly helpless.

It was all the fault of the duchies, for being so stubborn, for clinging to old fears and cultivating new ambitions. She’d thought the Justiciar’s Council’s animosity was personal, but it turned out they represented their lands admirably.

She wanted to break something. The Justiciar’s Council would be preferable. Alanah had gone to meet with the marshals
because
of the Council; they sent to the marshals every day asking if they needed anything; advice, supplies, weapons. Leadership. Jerya, the thinking went, was just an inexperienced girl.

But she knew she was inexperienced, which was why she didn’t send to the marshals everyday, why she waited on their word as to when she’d be needed to defend Lor Seleni. They were soldiers with experience fighting Benjen. She was inexperienced, so she delegated.

A horse galloped up and a moment later a messenger hurried in. It was one of the Regency Scouts, not one she’d seen before. “Your Highness,” he—she, it turned out when she spoke—began, then paused to wait for permission to speak.

Jerya acknowledged her with an impatient gesture and she went on. “I was with the force you sent to the location Lady Iriss pinpointed. We found a disorganized gathering of the darkling troops, ma’am. They were arriving through...” She swallowed, her scarred face twisting. “Through a fiend of some sort. It was birthing them.”

Jerya clapped her hands together. “Of course. I remember Twist and Kiar both mentioning such a thing before.”

The scout gave her a dark look, and said, “We dealt with it, and scattered the darklings, but for a high cost in soldiers, ma’am. Two thirds casualties. Fiends are even harder to kill than the darklings.”

Tapping her mouth with her finger, Jerya regarded Iriss and her dress. “Well done. There are others, though. Other fiends. This is important.” She opened the door and told a guard, “I need Twist.” Then she directed the scout to the writing desk, to write a report while Jerya waited.

It didn’t take long, but Jerya was already lost in planning the possibilities when the sound of Twist’s arrival jerked her to alertness. He was just in time, and she wondered if he’d skipped in by the clock.

“Your Highness,” he said. He looked tired and worried. Everybody did these days, but she was so used to seeing laughter in his eyes that it hurt a little more.

“Twist. Walk with me while I go to the Ambassador’s meeting?” He nodded and fell into step beside her as she left the inn. “Are there any Logos-workers in the city who can banish fiends like you can? Of our own people, I mean.”

Twist hesitated, thinking. “I doubt it. They’re craftsmen, specialists. They might manage it if their life depended on it. Kiar did, but...” He shrugged, his mouth twisting sardonically.

“But Kiar is gifted, yes.”

“Most of the fiend hunters work out of the Citadel,” Twist offered. “But the Citadel is distracted right now. They have their own fiends to manage.”

Jerya raised her eyebrows. “Can’t they just put them down?”

Twist tsked. “They’re not going to abandon a holy duty and simply execute their prisoners, Princess. And a hint? Don’t even suggest it to them. Once one holy duty has been abandoned, there’s much less incentive to cleave to the rest.”

Jerya glanced at him as she stepped around a cart. He met her gaze guilelessly. “Yes, I know. But we need wizards, wizards who can banish fiends. Ohedreton is using them to move his forces around.”

Twist hesitated, then said, “Vassay.”

“I didn’t want you to say that.” Jerya nodded at a familiar face in the crowd. “If I was crowned, could I command the Citadel to help us?”

“Don’t ask,” Twist repeated, and his voice was harder. “Don’t make them choose between two holy dictates.”

As they approached the door to the Song Garden, the theater where the new meetings happened, Jerya sighed. “Ask them for me? Now? It’s important.”

Twist rolled his eyes in exasperation and vanished.

The table had changed; it was now big and round. “We built it,” said the Ambassador, beaming. “I thought it might help people communicate better.”

“I think we communicate just fine,” said Lord Aubin. “But I’m pleased to see you’ve decided to reduce the number of voices. Your kindness is appreciated. Perhaps now we can get something done.” All the Justiciars attended, of course. So did the Mayor and the nobles, but most of those lower in station had vanished. Given how Vassay operated, Jerya wasn’t nearly as sure as Lord Aubin that this was a good thing. She wouldn’t put it past them to hold another meeting for the commoners.

Seandri and Landry already sat at the table. She tried not to think about how they’d been spending their time. And—oh yes, Thorn sat high in the balcony. Jerya wondered sourly if he’d shoot her if she did something he didn’t like. They’d placed her chair so that her back was to him. Of course. She sat down next to Seandri.

The meeting started with the business of the reconstruction. This time, it did go better. She offered her opinion whether or not anybody requested it, and the Ambassador made sure they listened to her, using a rough good humor to smooth over awkwardness. Sometimes the others wanted her thoughts; she heard tidbits from the petitioners at the Tabernacle that the Justiciars and the nobles didn’t, They definitely preferred hearing the news from her over hearing accusations from some upstart citizen mistakenly invited to sit at their table. It wasn’t right to be pleased by so little consideration but part of her, weak and small, enjoyed it anyhow.

Partway through a discussion of the bridgework and the southwest expansion, Jerya heard the whisper of Twist’s arrival on the far side of the stage. He glanced at her briefly, then lifted his gaze to look at the balcony where Thorn lurked. He frowned for a long moment, his eyes narrow with dislike, before he finally dropped his gaze to Jerya again.

Once Jerya held his gaze, he shook his head clearly and decisively. Then, with another whisper, he vanished.

Jerya gnawed on her lip, thinking about the Vassay. Seeing the Ambassador beside the Justiciars, it was clear who she preferred to work with. It wasn’t all bad, having Vassay’s help in the reconstruction. They had ulterior motives as a nation but the engineers were just people, and the Ambassador was genuinely interested in helping. Ceria had suffered catastrophe after catastrophe; without Vassay’s help, things would be much worse. She didn’t like seeing children playing with Vassay dolls, but that was a problem to be resolved later.

But there had to be a later first.

“Well,” said Lord Aubin. “That’s enough about Lor Seleni for now. We must turn our attention to the bigger picture. Your Highness, have you heard from your father recently?”

Jerya raised her eyebrows. “Nothing meaningful,” she hedged. Every time somebody asked she prepared herself for their discovery of her father’s death, or the absence of the phantasmagory.

“Ah, well. Tell him we do miss his presence,” said Lord Aubin with a kindness that was never real. “And have you word from your uncle Yithiere?”

Twist hadn’t been able to find him the last two times he’d checked, which meant that Yithiere had changed the caravan’s route. Still, that didn’t have to be bad.

But the Ambassador shifted his weight and looked down at the table, his eyebrows drawn together, and Jerya knew it
was
bad.

“No,” she said flatly. “He hasn’t been available. Have
you
heard from the caravan, Ambassador?”

The Ambassador coughed. “Ah, yes. We have. Prince Yithiere seems to have.... guided it off track.”

Lord Warrane snorted and said, “Stolen it, you mean.”

“My uncle is a formidable man, Justiciar,” said Jerya dryly, “But I think carrying off an entire caravan is beyond even his skills. Come now, what has he really done?”

“Led them east instead of west,” said the Ambassador heavily.

“East. Ah. Toward Morning.” Jerya looked over the Vassay. “Did he abandon the supplies?”

The Ambassador blinked at her in astonishment. “Many of them, yes. I don’t wish to offend but he’s been, ah, intimidating my students into following his orders. He’s apparently treating them like soldiers, which I assure you they’re not. One of them managed to communicate with us very early this morning to let us know what’s been going on. He was extremely upset. And dirty.”

Jerya looked around, then craned her neck to see up into Thorn’s murder balcony. Twist was having a quiet little conversation with the assassin. “If your poor student provided a clear location, I can send Twist to go and find out my uncle’s motivation. I’m sure he has a good reason.”

“I thought,” said Lord Aubin, his voice chilly, “It was your task to monitor your far-flung relatives as they engaged to deal with events. Tell me, do you have any news of your sister? Meaningful news? Or is your phantasmagory completely bereft of information these days?”

Lord Warrane said, “Oh, I’m sure all her informants have gone elsewhere.”

Jerya’s teeth clicked together.
They knew.
“Yes. And as it has nothing to do with anything in your purview, my Lord, I will spare you the details.”

“If I could just drag the conversation back to my students,” the Ambassador said apologetically. “I’m afraid we need more than Twist’s assistance. Or rather, we need a different kind of assistance from Twist.”

Jerya felt Seandri shift position beside her. She glanced at him and gazed back at her earnestly, his hand on the arm of her chair.

“We need to convince Twist to teach the Vassay his skipping, Jerya,” he told her. “If more wizards could move as he does, that would make so many things easier. It would be easier on him, too. He’s burning himself out trying to keep up with our errands.”

Jerya sat back, startled by the request, and shocked by who’d made it. They’d planned this conversation in advance, Vassay and Seandri. Her Seandri. “I can’t make him teach anybody. We can’t even pin him down.” She looked over her shoulder again, but the balcony was empty.

“But you can ask him,” Seandri said. “You can talk him into it. He’s loyal to you. We’ve been talking about it and it would be such a help to everybody. It could turn the tide of the war.”

Jerya hesitated, looking at Seandri. Sweet, gentle Seandri. Her Seandri. Her favorite cousin. She wanted to protect him, so she’d kept him here. He’d made himself useful by supervising the Vassay, and now he argued their case for them. Somewhere she’d made a terrible mistake, but she wasn’t sure if it was a week ago or years ago.

It would hurt Twist if she told him to give up his secrets. It would be giving more power to those who were, despite all their kindness, her enemies. But the Regency Scout’s report weighed on her mind. If they didn’t take advantage of Iriss’s insight, if they didn’t deal with the fiends before they could transfer armies from the dark world, then everything would be lost.

“I’ll talk to him,” she said to the Vassay Ambassador. “If I convince him, those he teaches belong to Ceria, not Vassay. We have need of them, and I will direct them.”

The Ambassador stared at her broodingly. Scriber Stone gave a tiny nod, which the Ambassador didn’t seem to notice.

“I don’t like that very much,” he told Jerya. “Because of your uncle stealing my students and abandoning the supplies, we hardly have a choice.”

“Really? I could have said the same thing about you demanding my uncle escort your supplies. Perhaps,” she tapped her chin, “Perhaps your students kidnapped him.” She gave him a little smile she didn’t feel. “If neither of us believe we’re winning, that’s probably for the best, don’t you think?”