Green Wild (Thrones of the Firstborn Book 2) (30 page)

Jerya tilted her head back, closing her eyes. “Because they’re trying to take what’s mine. They’re not my allies, not even potentially. They want nothing from me except my nonexistence. They’re my enemies. Just like Vassay.”

Porcelain clinked as Siana sipped her tea, but that was the only sound. Jerya thought about Seandri, about his sweet smile turned toward Landry.

The spear went straight through the painting toward Tiana.

Iriss said cheerfully, “You’ve always been so possessive, Jer. Hasn’t she, Auntie Siana?”

Without opening her eyes, Jerya said, “I share.”

“Yes, you certainly do, as long as everybody knows something’s yours,” said Iriss, and her cheer was threaded with tartness. “

“I wonder,” said Siana gently. “What else is yours, besides Lor Seleni and what it contains? You have spent so much of your energy here.”

“Ceria,” said Jerya, then lowered her head and put her hands over her face. “Tiana. I need to go to the duchies myself and convince them to give us the armies, don’t I?” Her voice turned sour. “Make allies of them. So Tiana, if she’s even still alive, has a chance to do what the
damned
Firstborn want her to do. So I don’t lose
everything
.” Jerya glanced up at Siana, who had her hands folded in her lap. “That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it?”

“If you don’t, I think the price will be very high.”

Jerya put her face in her hands again, breathing hard as what had to be done unrolled before her. “And I have to leave Iriss here. I just got her back again.”

“What?” cried Iriss. “No, of course you don’t. Only, I’ll need a carriage. Or a wagon.”

Jerya shook her head. “You’re a resource to more than me now. You have insights, intelligence we wouldn’t have. You need to stay with Alanah and the Guards.”

“Insights I have for
you
, Jerya!” Iriss stood, agitated. “It’s you I see best. Without you I’ll be blind. It’s for
you
I don’t listen to
him
. Don’t leave me behind. I don’t know what will happen if you do.”

Jerya hunched in her chair and tried to find the right words to convince her. But she never could, not with Iriss, not with Tiana. Pretty words only went so far. “You
have
to. If I took you along, that would be for me and for you, not for Ceria—”

“I
am
for you!” flared Iriss, her face red. Eidolon substance flickered on her skirt. “I’ve always been for you, since we were seven years old.”

Jerya shook her head again, more slowly. “No. You’ve been for Ceria. Regents stand between the Blood and the people. You know that, I know that. And we both know you couldn’t do what you had to, if you had to. I love you, Iriss. And you
must
stay here.”

Iriss burst into tears and stumbled out of the room, one hand held ahead of her so she didn’t bump into a wall. Jerya wanted to go after her, and couldn’t. She turned to the remaining woman instead. “Aunt Siana, I do need some companion. A companion who knows my weaknesses. You’ve watched me all this time. You said something today. Would you come with me instead?”

“Of course, sweetling.” Siana’s gaze stayed on her, level and calm, as Jerya stood.

“Thank you.” She cast around for something else to say. “I have to talk to some other people. And I suppose arrange the journey...”

“I can do that, at least.” Siana found a small book in her knitting basket and opened it up to start making a list.

Jerya nodded, distracted by her own mental list of people she had to speak with. Work was better than thinking of Iriss’s face, and the eidolon energy crawling over her dress. Instead she thought of several of her city folk who awaited advice from her. Alanah, who would need to write her regularly about the Blight. The Chancellor, who needed to be warned about Cara. Seandri, who deserved an apology for things she’d never felt sorry for.

Then she remembered Thorn, remembered his murmuring about jobs and the threat she offered but didn’t see. It made sense now. He thought she might be able to unite Ceria so that they didn’t need foreign support. If she went on this trip without neutralizing him, she’d always be looking over her shoulder.

She looked over her shoulder now, the hair on her neck prickling. Was he was getting information from within the inn? There was nothing out of place, nothing that stood out, but she didn’t have much time to deal with him.

“I’m going to go get started on farewells.” She backed out of the sitting room door before her aunt could notice her sudden tension, then turned around and ran out of the inn, sending an emanation circling lightly around her body. It wasn’t one of Kiar’s aegises but it was better than nothing when it came to arrows.

Only a few steps down the street, she saw him out of the corner of her eye, moving in the same direction from near the inn. He kept pace with her like he was just another person on the street, close enough to talk to if she wanted. She didn’t. She kept walking until she came to a warehouse she knew to be abandoned. Then she turned around and held out her hand to the guards always behind her. “Stay outside, please.”

She didn’t wait to see if they’d obey before going into the warehouse. Thorn had vanished from the street already, although she didn’t think he’d used the front door.

The dark warehouse smelled awful: the last trace of whatever had once been stored there. Maybe if her head stopped whirling so much she could remember what it had been but all she could think about was her list of things to do.

Not getting assassinated was at the top.

“What are you doing here?” came Thorn’s voice, from somewhere in the gloom.

“Giving you an opportunity.” She coiled an emanation in both her hands.

“Do you really think I’ve been waiting for one?” His voice moved around the warehouse.

She unleashed one of her emanations and diffused it so that it was nothing more than a current of air, then let it carry the distant movements of Thorn to her skin. “Why does your employer
want
Ceria to remain disorganized in the face of this Blight? Do they think they can reason with it?”

Thorn stilled. “This one? I think they might. After all, he shares your powers.
You
are the true Blight.”

The flat statement stole Jerya’s breath. “That’s a dangerous thought,” she muttered.

Thorn remained still. He didn’t fidget like a normal man, as if no background thoughts distracted him from his focus on her.

“It doesn’t matter,” Jerya told him. “It doesn’t matter if we are. Ceria is mine and I’m not going to let it be torn apart by Vassay and Ohedreton for their own satisfaction. I’m leaving Lor Seleni soon, to organize the duchies.”

Thorn moved forward, shockingly fast. Jerya felt his lunge against her skin and she dodged and sent out the other emanation at his feet. She missed, or he jumped over it. She rolled to one side and sent the little emanation whipping back at him, then ran behind one of the remaining crates. It smelled of rotten onions.

“That’s why you didn’t try to kill me before,” she told him breathlessly. “Because I stayed in Lor Seleni, focused on the city.”

“Yes,” he said. She ran behind another crate as he closed on her. “Princess. This is stupid. Coming in here was stupid. Are you going to be shot by my partner on the catwalk with the crossbow?”

“Are you going to be shot by my guards when they burst in here with lanterns?” she countered. He chuckled and jumped on a crate, but it wasn’t the crate she crouched behind.

“They can shoot each other,” he said, with the laughter still warming his voice.

“Do you always talk to your victims like this?” she asked. One of the crates gaped open on the side. It too stank like rotting onions. Silently she created a small owl and sent it inside the crate. Then, as she moved away, it started ruffling its feathers and moving its wings, making just a whisper of a sound.

“Never,” said Thorn.

“Look at what you’ve been missing out on, then.”

“Fun and games in the dark,” he drawled. “Yes, I see.” He reached the crate with her owl and looked inside. Instantly the owl fluttered in his face. Jerya shoved at him with her emanations but they were too weak to move a large man, so she darted forward and used her shoulder to knock him off balance and into the open crate. As he fell, he twisted, grabbing her wrist and pulling her down with him, into the rotten vegetable remains.

The owl landed on his head, and she kicked at him, bringing an emanation to bear. They were weak, but she could make them quite sharp. He caught her other wrist as they flailed around, but it didn’t matter; unlike Tiana she didn’t need to map her emanations to her body. All she had to do to cut him was narrow her eyes.

Instead, she lay on top of him, both his hands holding both her wrists and said, “I win.”

He shook his head. The owl on his forehead shifted her weight, clacking her beak inches from his eyes. “Yes, it does appear you have an edge. But don’t declare victory quite yet.” His muscles moved under her as he prepared to do something.

“Hush!” she said sharply. “Listen.” He froze beneath her, listening. “I
could
kill you. I could have had my guards arrange for your death. A bar fight, a scandal, I’d pay for your death with plepanin or a window of access to the Palace. It would have been easy.”

“I’ve stood over you while you slept through the eye of the night,” he said. It was a counter, a note, offered simply as a point of comparison.

“Have you? I believe it. Look at us, both disappointing Vassay by staying alive. Do you think Scriber Stone is so unsubtle by accident? Whichever of us dies, he wins.”

His eyes widened, then narrowed. He released her wrists and she fell on his chest. When he pushed himself up into a sitting position, she was left sitting half on his lap. The little owl fluttered over to Jerya’s shoulder.

She scooted off his knees and out of the crate, then stood. He shifted position but stayed down. With the owl on her shoulder she could just see him sitting with his knees up and arms loose between them. He simply looked at her, waiting in silence.

Jerya waited too. She wanted him to say something, to respond to what she last said. But he didn’t. Finally, she repeated, “I’m leaving Lor Seleni soon, to organize the duchies. I’d like you to come with me. If you’re not going to kill me, you might as well stop other people from killing me, too.”

With that laughter in his voice again, he said, “Do you think I’d make a better bodyguard than I do an assassin?”

She hesitated. “I think you’d tell me when I was being stupid. I could use that sometimes. And... your other skills might also be useful.” She held out her hand to him.

He looked at her long enough that her hand started getting tired. Then his big hand closed around her fingers as he said, “You’re being stupid to trust me.”

“Thank you for your opinion,” she said gravely, and braced herself to pull him to his feet.

L
ife filled the world
, and Tiana could feel it all. It knocked down walls, it crashed through stone. When the spear came through the painting, Tiana stepped back, and that was life. When Atalya’s gallery faded away around her and she came back to earth, she emerged into a sea of life. It wasn’t a green light, as Niyhan had given her a blue light. It was a green force, palpable, driving and furious. It pounded in her veins, a defiant shout against an endless silence.

Life twined around her, flashing small and glowing large. It was beautiful, until the larger glows began blinking out mid-flower. Horror seized her in its gaping maw. But what could she do but encourage them to blaze brighter?

One of the glows moved close to her, until it obscured everything. It slapped her, hard.

Tiana staggered backwards, the green force fading just enough that she could see the everyday world once more. The loud stable girl stood in front of her, brown eyes blazing. Blood smeared down the stable girl’s face and both her hands were crimson.

“Wake up!” the stable girl shouted, and brought her hand back to hit Tiana again. “We need you and your bloody sword, or everybody’s going to die!”

Tiana stepped backward again and almost tripped over the dead horse behind her. She still held Jinriki in his belt over her shoulder and the sword’s point swung down and stopped her.

**You couldn’t hear me,**
sent Jinriki, his frustration palpable.
**Not at all.**

She looked down at him and she understood why. Jinriki had none of the green force running through him. He existed outside the power of Atalya.

Minex said, “Very good, loud stable girl. She is awake now, very good. I will do more.” Minex, on the other hand, vibrated with something that, if not green, was a close cousin. The earth fiend put her small hand on Tiana’s arm, and a jolt ran through her. The green receded more, replaced by a roaring in her ears.

She stood in the middle of a battlefield. The darkling army had found them.

“Look up, yes?” said Minex again. “At the ridge. Witness what he does to your people.”

Tiana dragged her gaze away from the men fighting andani and looked at the ridge Minex pointed to. Several men observed the battle, wreathed in eidolon magic. One of them pointed down at them. Even at that distance, even through the dust in the air, Tiana could tell he had the coloring of the Blood. She thought
Oh, so the stories of Benjen are true
, before she thought
How?
The man turned to one of the andani, a bat winged one, and passed it his sword. Then another wave of andani came over the hill and obscured her view.

A horse screamed and the stable girl cursed and ran away, pulling a jagged knife out of her belt as she did. Cathay swore behind Tiana, and Kiar’s shield shimmered in front of her. Near her, Slater fought a pair of andani determined to get past him.

“No,” said Tiana, and swung Jinriki still sheathed. The emanation split around Slater to carry his two attackers back, tumbling back, into the claws of their allies. Then she pulled the scabbard off the blade and turned in a circle, taking in the battle going on around her. Men fell and she could see who was dead and who was only injured. The deaths hurt her in a strange new way, as if it wasn’t only her fault they died, but also that they lived.

**I have never liked Atalya,**
said Jinriki irritably.
**Let’s end this so you’re not troubled by more deaths.**

Tiana nodded and raised her hands over her head. Every andani within sight lifted into the air, held by invisible fists. Then she flung them all away, just as she’d flung away Slater’s attackers. It wasn’t lethal, but the maneuver gave everybody fighting a moment of breathing room.

“Maybe they’ll be smart. Maybe they’ll flee,” said Kiar, appearing beside Tiana, pulling Lisette behind her.

“They’re eidolons. How can they flee?” asked Tiana, distracted. She glanced first to Lisette, and next to Cathay, to determine if they were injured. Lisette only had that awful glow—yet she stood close to Kiar and where would be safer in a battle? But three gashes sliced down Cathay’s cheek and forehead, making his face a bloody mess.

He wiped blood out of his eye and gave her a small smile. “I’ve never been so grateful you’ve got that sword as I am right now.”

She frowned at his injuries, reached out a finger and traced one of them. A green spark danced down the wound, sealing it closed. Cathay gasped and caught her hand, his eyes wide.

“Tiana, should you be doing that?” asked Kiar in alarm. “Don’t we need that power for
them
?”

“Probably I shouldn’t,” agreed Tiana. “But I don’t care. Doing what I was supposed to didn’t do anything for them.” She nodded at one of the fallen who wouldn’t be getting up again. “If this is going to be a game, I want to be a player, not a piece. Especially given what they do to my friends.”

**Good,**
growled Jinriki, and
**Finally.**
Then he added,
**Here comes a heavy one.**

Tiana looked, and saw a big, bat-winged andani picking its way toward them, leading the reformed troop that had been assaulting them. Amidst the groans of men and the noise of hurt and frightened horses, Berrin called, “Princess?” He stood near the corner of the rough formation Slater commanded, with Jozua watching his back.

“Yes,” said Tiana, pulling her hand away from Cathay and turning around. She swung Jinriki. This time the andani stayed on the ground; Tiana lifted, but they didn’t rise. “What’s going on, Jinriki?”

**I said, they’re heavy. Ohedreton is pouring a lot of power into them so you can’t blow them away like scattered ashes. Don’t worry. If we destroy the big one the old-fashioned way, all will be well.**

“All right. The old-fashioned way, then. This is your dance.” She walked forward to meet them, relaxing her mind so she would respond better to Jinriki’s instructions.

The andani looked like the one she’d faced at the Citadel of the Sky. She wondered if it too would speak with Ohedreton’s voice, and if once again, she’d distract it while Kiar destroyed it. That might, she felt, be harder with a company of similar soldiers at its back.

This one had a sword: real metal, but strangely wrought. It had fangs along each side, and it more resembled Jinriki than anything she’d seen before. But it glinted all over like something that had never been used.

The andani hissed at her, showing its mouth full of jagged fangs. Probably not Ohedreton, then. It moved its sword into a careful guard position and waited.

Tiana let Jinriki move her body; he knew what to do better than she could ever imagine knowing. He swung, and even with their magics conjoined, her muscles ached.

The andani endured the blast of power that came off the sword, although the blast frayed away the edges of its substance. Its own weapon clashed against Jinriki. The edges slid together, and then—

And then—

Jinriki caught in the fangs of the andani’s weapon with an awful jolt. And another jolt, as both weapons twisted together. The andani’s weapon shimmered and darkened. Power raced down it, whining like a spinning disc. The andani shuddered, And then—

there was a crack that swelled and became a peal of thunder.

Jinriki bent—

No.

Jinriki snapped.

The top half of the blade flew off to Tiana’s side and—
something
leaked out of the twisted, sheared edge. Lines of distortion waved in the air, flapping like loose threads. The shock in her arm still reverberating, Tiana said uncertainly, “Jinriki?”

**Tiana...**
he said, and his voice faded away. His presence in her mind fragmented, like ice cracking and melting.

The andani with the swordbreaker moved his weapon to end her, and Kiar stood between them, her shield glimmering bright. She jumped on the andani, tore him apart with her bare hands, but Tiana barely noticed.

“Jinriki,” she wailed, realization hitting like the ground after a cliff. “No, don’t go. I wanted to see your true shape someday.”

Nobody answered in her mind, not with a whisper, or a laugh or or a burst of a temper. Tiana pulled the remains of the blade close and looked around wildly.

Minex held the other half of Jinriki’s blade. Tiana lunged for her and Minex held it out of her reach, one hand moving over the broken end. “No,” said the earth fiend distractedly. “No. Don’t touch me yet.”

Tiana wanted to fall on her and sob. But somebody screamed behind her and his green light flickered and faded. The red light moved nearby and the green light within Tiana rose up
raging
at the red she did not yet have.

She didn’t understand.

Minex tugged on the broken blade Tiana still held tightly. “Give me the Prince,” she demanded. “Give him to me. I must save him.”

Tiana goggled at her, not letting go. Minex was a dreamer, a storyteller, a fool. Tiana had seen Jinriki leaking out of the blade, felt him leaking from her mind. She couldn’t give up all she had left of him to the earth fiend’s fantasy.

An andani appeared behind Minex, already injured, with empty eyes and one of their own darkling weapons. It swung.

Tiana released what was left of Jinriki to Minex’s tugging and shoved her hands out, flinging the andani away. The little earth fiend didn’t even realize the danger she’d been in, so obsessed was she with holding both halves of the shattered sky fiend.

Where was Lisette?
The thought was shamefully delayed, but it overran the spitting green light and the shock of Jinriki’s silence. Tiana looked and found her just to hand, always to hand, her presence obscured by the red light, by Jozua standing at her back. Lisette’s arm glowed brightly, shedding a real radiance that should have overcome the spiritual glows of the Firstborn lights, but there was too much, too much to see and understand, all at once.

“Lisette, I’m going to kill them all,” Tiana told her, in case her Regent had a different plan.

Lisette’s face had streaks through the mud and blood. “Please do, Tiana. I will be here.” The words had a formal cadence that didn’t hide Lisette’s rage.

Tiana turned back to the battle and did her best. She stopped throwing the enemies away and started twisting—but it was hard, harder than it had been for months. Jinriki had made her natural power so much stronger that what once took a whisper now took a shout. At least, she thought distantly, they didn’t bleed.

Her own people did, though, and the blood sprayed around her until it seemed like rain. They were losing. Despite all Tiana and Cathay’s strength, despite Kiar’s special gifts, there were simply too many of them. An endless flood streamed from the ridge where the darkling man of the Blood watched, and the humans died and died.

Lisette and Kiar moved the wounded when they could, back to the center of a smaller and smaller square, and Tiana and Cathay protected them. At one point, Tiana saw, spinning, that Minex crouched in the center of the square, ignoring the bodies around her as she fixated on the remains of Jinriki. She glowed. But everybody was glowing now, except the dead and there were far too many of those.

Then they weren’t just fighting andani. Some of the warriors that came up against them and threw themselves at the fort of bodies were darkling men. They had the same empty eyes as the andani, but they contributed lasting corpses when they died.

Cathay hesitated when he came face to face to one, and Tiana reached past him with an emanation and crushed the man’s throat. He turned to look at her, pale, and she remembered in a flash his enthusiasm once upon a time, after she’d first killed in a dirty alley.

“You need to get out of here,” he said. “You need to escape. It’s you he wants.”

“No,” Tiana said. “It’s everybody I love.” She turned back to the battle.

It was a slaughter, and they were going to lose. But at least she wouldn’t have to live to watch everybody else in Ceria die. It was a small comfort.

The ground shook with the thunder of running horses. Men on horseback swept past her, a river to match the darkling flood. There was barely a moment’s drift between crushing a darkling soldier and having several tons of horseflesh between her and the enemies.

She threw herself forward but a mailed hand shoved her back, and then Lisette took the hand she brought forward to move the impediment from her path. “Let them, Tiana,” she said. “Let’s walk this way. Let’s go see Cathay.”

Lisette had the quiet, calm voice she used when Tiana was lost in the phantasmagory, but there was no phantasmagory now. The voice still worked. Her exhaustion helped. She never felt exhaustion in the phantasmagory either.

She took a deep breath, and another, and then another one, the breaths very much like sobs. Lisette pulled her away from the moving front of the battle.

Cathay was already in the square of injured, where several armored men with the heraldry of Sunasin waited. They’d only been a few hours away from Sunasin, hadn’t they? Just a few hours away from safety, and survival for so many now lost.

The new soldiers stared, not at Cathay or Tiana, but at Minex. Still glowing, she floated in the air in the center of the square, her hands clasped to her breast like she protected something very small. Kiar stood between her and the strange armed men, anxious but clearly ready to stop them from attacking the earth fiend.

Minex’s eyes opened and she looked at Tiana, her expression radiant. “I have him,” she said. “I caught his heart.” But when Tiana looked in Minex’s hands, she saw nothing at all.