Lament (Scars of the Sundering Book 2) (31 page)

“What are you doing here?”
Delilah regarded her brother and then Kali, confusion evident in her furrowed
brow. “You’re not supposed to be here!”

“We had a delivery for Master
Valyrian. I thought I would say ‘hi’ while I was here.”

Delilah’s eyes narrowed. “What
kind of delivery? From whom?”

“It was for Master Valyrian.”
Kali pursed her lips. “We didn’t ask. It wasn’t our business.”

“Deli, look. The next time you’re
in the city—”

“What do you mean, you don’t
know? Do you know how—?”

“Deli! Let me finish!” Kale
grabbed his sister’s arm. “The delivery doesn’t matter. He was expecting it,
and it got us in. I have to tell you something.”

Delilah scowled. “What? What?”

Kale took a deep breath. “You
have to stop acting like you’re the supreme drak when you come down into the
undercity. You have to stop giving out blessings and acting like you’re going
to save everyone. It’s causing us trouble.”

“Serious trouble.” Kali nodded
and crooked her arm into Kale’s. “Like gang trouble, okay?”

Delilah scoffed. “You’re joking.”

“We’re serious, Deli.” Kale
squeezed his sister’s arm. “They tried to shake us down and everything.”

A dark cloud passed over
Delilah’s face. Kale needed to head off her temper before it flared. “It’s all
fine. We talked to them, and everything is fine. As long as you keep a low
profile when you come visit. We’re going to go talk to some of the draks around
town to get them to help us convince everyone you were just putting on a show.”

“What’s all this about?” Delilah
shifted her weight and looked at Kali.

“There’s something going on
between the draks, humans, and minotaurs in this town.” Kali shrugged. “We
don’t know what it is, but we don’t want to be involved. Kale needs to keep
that library safe for you, and he can’t do that if we’re under additional
scrutiny because a bunch of thugs think we’re plotting to start a revolution.”

“All right, all right.” Delilah
let the matter drop, but only temporarily. She would want solid answers, and at
the first opportunity, she would push the issue.

Kale hugged his sister.
“Everything is fine, honest. We’re staying out of trouble.”

“Yes, we just want to make sure
we
stay
out of trouble.” Kali patted Delilah on the shoulder.

Delilah nodded and sighed,
squeezing Kali’s hand. “Okay, fine. You’d better get going before we all end up
in trouble.”

Chapter 17

Delilah was not convinced her
brother and his mate disclosed the truth. A mysterious delivery just to let
them in, news that thugs were harassing them because of her—it all pointed to
the exact opposite. She had more important things to worry about at the moment,
though. Her brother and his mate were adults, and Delilah decided they needed
to deal with whatever trouble there was on their own.

The
Rose Concordat
was a
tough read. She was unable to move it from the pedestal, so she had to stand
upon a chair to read it. The codex was several hundred pages of overly complex
language, although she was surprised how much of the text was written in
Ancient Drak. Reading the archaic language was more time consuming than reading
even the common trade language, because not all the concepts had direct
translations, and some of the translated words lost their meaning in The
Sundering.

Adding to her difficulty was the
fact that she read for only an hour at a time, and not every day. Most of the
masters did not excuse her from classes, no matter how much proficiency she
demonstrated, and she found herself curtailing her socialization time with Katka
and Conner to make time to look at her grimoire. Thus far, it had yet to reveal
anything new to her.
If I could only spend a few days with it.

A few days of free time was not
in her future. The next several weeks were a flurry of activity in all of her
classes. She found her classes on evocation to be basic and far below her skill
level. Alchemy, protective magic, and enchantment classes were worthwhile,
though, Delilah found her skill at enchantments and charms lacking. Katka
excelled in those. Each helped the other develop proficiency in lacking or weak
areas. She recognized she would never be as good at making charms as she was at
summoning fire or whirling clouds of blades, however.

End-of-spring rain storms rolled
in from the mountains, turning the courtyard into a muddy morass. The days were
warmer now, and even in the rain, Delilah felt comfortable. The heat and
humidity slowed some of the more manic students, but the drak sorceress enjoyed
it. For a brief time, Delilah allowed herself to hope the archmage had
forgotten about her.

Her abandonment by the archmage
was short-lived, however. On the eve of Artume’s Feast, an early summer
hunter’s festival, the archmage summoned her to the Court of Wizardry. None of
the high wizards were in attendance.

Archmage Vilkan sat as straight
as a marble column in his chair, drumming his fingers on the armrest as Delilah
approached. Dark circles under his eyes made him appear more sinister than
normal as he gazed at her from beneath lowered brows.

“Novice Drak, I appreciate your
punctuality.”

Delilah held her tongue as she
bowed.

“You will apply for the next
Novice Trials scheduled. I have need of your undivided time, and the court
won’t allow that until you are my apprentice.” He scratched a spot on the armrest
of his chair. He looked past Delilah and then returned his gaze to her.

“I have indulged Master Valyrian
long enough. You are here at my decree, and your penance for a lifetime of
being a renegade is service to the Mage’s Guild at my pleasure.”

Delilah bit her tongue until she
tasted blood. She did not intend to serve at the archmage’s pleasure for the
rest of his or her life. She noticed the archmage looking behind her again and
heard the doors open. A novice holding a scroll trotted past. The archmage
gestured at Delilah, and the novice extended the scroll to her. Delilah took it
without turning her head toward the novice.

Archmage Vilkan waited until the
novice left. “Find out when the next Novice Trials are, put your name on the
lists, and then take this scroll to the archduke. Part of your Novice Trials
will be dealing with him. Be courteous and give measured responses to his
questions. You will be representing the Mage’s Guild and the Arcane University
in this matter.”

“What matter?” Delilah remained
silent no longer.
What is he blabbering about now?

“The archduke will explain what
he needs of you. Go now.” The archmage dismissed Delilah with a wave of his
hand. “Return when you’ve finished the archduke’s task and have completed your
Novice Trials.”

Delilah left the archmage to his
thoughts and searched the courtyard for Master Galina. She, over anyone, would
know details about the Novice Trials schedule. She found her working with a
group of initiates by the practice dummies. Delilah waited by the reviewing
stand until she caught the older woman’s eye.

“You need something, Novice?”
Master Galina paused her lesson and stepped over to the reviewing stand.

“The archmage wanted me to put my
name on the rolls for the very next Novice Trials. When are they?”

Master Galina rubbed her
forehead. “He sent you to put your own name in?” She sighed and paused for a
moment. Delilah noticed her lips moving as she counted in silence to herself.
“It is three days hence. I hope you’re not wasting my time.”

Delilah placed her hand on her
chest and bowed. “I promise you I am not, Master. We all do the archmage’s
bidding, yes?”

“Yes”—Master Galina pursed her
lips and cocked an eyebrow—“so it seems. You may go now, Novice. I have lessons
to teach.”

The drak sorceress bowed again
and left Master Galina to her students. She shifted her pack as she left the
compound and wondered if it might be better to leave her grimoire at her
brother’s. However, the proximity of Grimstone Keep to the Arcane University
made a detour to the undercity impractical. Delilah sighed and girded herself
for a hike through the midday crowds.

* * *

“So? What happened?” Jairo sat on
the edge of his chair, listening with rapt attention to Kale’s story. Over the
past few weeks, Kale had related the story of the foundation of Drak-Anor in
exchange for his help in calming the draks in the undercity.

Kale was at the part of his tale
where Delilah had just been swallowed whole by the warlock-turned-dragon, and
he swooped in to save the day on the back of Terrakaptis.

“SPLURCH!”

Jairo recoiled at Kale’s
exclamation, tumbling backward in his chair. Kali grabbed his hand just before
he fell over and pulled him upright.

“The warlock exploded! Delilah
used her whirling blade spell, I don’t know what it’s called, while in his
stomach, and carved him up from the inside out!”

Kali and Jairo grimaced.

Kale nodded with a grin. “It was
nasty. Blood everywhere. I thought she was dead, she thought I was dead, and we
almost killed ourselves racing through the gore to get to each other.”

“Hey, hey! Maybe you two already
fulfilled your destinies as Children of Destiny!” Jairo waved his quill at
Kale. He reached over to his desk and dipped his quill in the inkwell. Then he
scribbled some notes.

“Maybe. Look, Terrakaptis said
that prophecies are just stories made up by old men trying to make sense out of
the world. Anyway, there isn’t a prophecy that says anything about us.” Kale
wished he could snap his fingers and convince all the draks in the world to stop
believing in prophecies about Children of Destiny.

“I’ve heard the stories, too,
Kale.” Kali stepped behind Kale’s chair and put her arms around his neck.
“They’re not specific. They all just say striped draks are special and will
have great purpose in their lives.”

Kale looked up at her. “Yeah,
those are the same stories that say draks hatched from the same egg have to be
exposed and left to die, right?” If he and Delilah hadn’t been hatched with
stripes, that would have been their fate. Even with their stripes, their clan
exiled them as soon as they were old enough to fend for themselves.

“Well, yes.” Kali squeezed him.

“So, how do you decide which
parts of those stories you’re going to accept as truth and which you’re just
going to ignore?” Kale held his hand up and looked at Jairo. “You want to say
I’m special because of my stripes, but you ignore the same story that says I’m
cursed because I was hatched from the same egg as my twin sister. I choose to
ignore both parts. My sister and I are muddling through life, doing the best we
can. Just like everyone else.”

Jairo jotted down a few more
notes. “Okay. What happened after that?”

“That’s enough for today, Jairo.”
Kali stepped around Kale and snatched the grey drak’s quill from his hand. She
set it on the desk. “I’m hungry. You can hear more stories later.”

Kale stood and stretched. Jairo
scrambled to secure the papers lying on his desk as the air from Kale’s wings
stirred the room.

“All right. Thank you.” He
clasped Kale and Kali’s hands. “I’ve already spread the word, and the next
broadsheet is going out tomorrow. Hopefully, they’ll start making a
difference.”

“I hope so.” Kale was tired of
the stares and whispers as he passed. Not for the first time, he wished he
could send a message to Delilah. Her last message to him stated she was
scheduled for her Novice Trials, but she didn’t expect she would be released
from service to the university any time soon.

He and Kali made their way home.
They stopped to buy a pair of rabbits from a butcher stall. Though he still
heard whispers and felt stares from the other draks, Kale chuckled for a
moment. His life was so mundane now compared to how it was in Drak-Anor. While
part of him longed for another adventure, part of him was content. He smiled at
his mate as they returned home.

“What?”

“A year ago, Deli and I were
running around Drak-Anor, fixing defenses and doing other odd jobs for Sarvesh.
Now”—he extended his arms—“I have my own home in a city leagues away with a
mate. It’s surreal.”

“Well, don’t go wishing for too
much. I think we’re just enduring a calm before the storm, you know?”

Kale understood what she meant.
Even if the draks treated him like one of their own, rather than a fabled
outsider with a special destiny, there was still the undercurrent of conspiracy
to which Boss Steelhand alluded. Kale decided he had two goals: keep Kali safe,
and keep the library and moon gate safe for his sister.
Maris can take all
the rest.

* * *

The passages of Grimstone Keep
were just as cold as Delilah remembered. She considered the possibility that an
enchantment made the keep feel cooler than the outside air. After the third
lady garbed in a high collar with her nose pointed upward and eyes narrowed as
she passed, Delilah decided it was not just the mountain air keeping things
chilly.

Archduke Fyodar did not keep
Delilah waiting. The drak sorceress was ushered into the room where the
archduke sat in a gilded throne. Unlike other royal seats Delilah had
encountered, Fyodar’s was not raised on a dais but was situated behind a large,
polished, cherry wood desk. Guards were stationed throughout the room, and the
archduke was attended by a minotaur wearing deep-blue robes.

Delilah waited in front of the
desk until the archduke acknowledged her. She stood, eyes level with the top of
the desk, wondering if he noticed her presence, until she observed him
regularly glance in her direction.

“The archmage sent you, did he?”
Archduke Fyodar looked up at last and gestured to the minotaur. “This is my
advisor, and Court Wizard, Theros.”

The minotaur bowed his head
toward Delilah. His black fur was flecked with grey at the tip of his muzzle,
and Delilah noticed he wore gloves, unusual for a wizard. He regarded the
archduke. “He sends a novice?”

Delilah tossed the scroll she
carried onto the archduke’s desk. “He bade me deliver this.”

“This is the same drak that was
with me on the battlements during the last incident with the giants.” The
archduke unrolled the scroll. “Get her a stool or something.”

One of the guards left the room
and returned after a few moments with a stool upon which Delilah could stand.
It was only one step higher, but now her entire head appeared above the
desktop.

Archduke Fyodar handed the scroll
to the minotaur. “What’s his game, Theros?”

The minotaur read the scroll and
then dropped it on the desk. “No idea, Your Grace. Perhaps this little drak can
tell us.”

Delilah shifted her grip on her
staff. She wished people would stop referring to her as “little drak.”

The archduke tapped his chin as
he regarded Delilah. “I wonder… do you think this novice is privy to the
working of the archmage’s mind?”

“I can tell you, I am not.”
Delilah saw no reason to play coy with the archduke.

“He refers to her as his
apprentice in the letter.” Theros raised his eyebrows. Delilah gritted her
teeth.

“Guards, leave us.” The archduke
stood and gestured. The guards left their posts and shuffled out of the throne
room, closing the door behind them. The archduke nodded to Theros.

“
Sphraira tees alistheias.
”
Azure strands swirled through the air, forming a sphere that started at the
wizard’s right hand and expanded to encompass the desk, the throne, and all
three of them.