To say she was baffled would have been understating the matter. Had he just admitted to trying to have her killed? What was that? Why?
Perhaps it was as close to an apology as he was capable of. He got up and walked to the door. She simply stared after him, speechless.
“Oh,” he said, turning, “in case it wasn’t clear enough: Zymun is one of my knives. Sharp and imbalanced, but very predictable once you understand what he is. In normal times, I should not… but these are not normal times, are they? Let me offer you this: Guilt is a poor counselor. Guilt oft conspires to make two victims where there was only one. If it comes to trusting your gut or trusting your son, make a wise choice, High Lady.”
Chapter 41
Liv walked through the abandoned orange groves silently, clouds of superviolet billowing from her with every step. Drafting was as easy as breathing now, and the many-fingered clouds spread a hundred paces and more from her in every direction. She patted the fallen statue of the Broken Man, remnant of the long-dead old Tyrean Empire.
She didn’t go to the burnt-out buildings and rubble of Rekton. She didn’t go to her old home. She was here for something important.
She crossed the river, appearing to walk on water, small geysers of superviolet rising to support her feet at each step. She arrived at the old battlefield, long overgrown with low plants, mostly brown this late in the summer. Craters were still visible from artillery and magic both, eighteen years on, but now rain lilies and haemanthus huddled in those shady, watered places, beauty flourishing over ugliness, new life sprouting from rot.
Uncertain what her full powers might do here among the dead, she withdrew most of them into herself. Sundered Rock beckoned her, and she climbed it.
“Beliol,” she summoned, and a moment later her ring sparkled. Her nameless servant hadn’t remained nameless for long after she had broken the halo. He’d seemed surprised that she had known what his name meant. Beliol meant ‘yokeless,’ so different from Belial—‘worthless.’
‘Yokeless?’ she’d asked. ‘And yet you serve me.’
‘One needs no yoke to be compelled to serve when one believes in the one whom one is serving.’ She’d been flattered, but of course, he’d meant it to be flattering.
“The chained one comes, Mistress,” Beliol said. “Five hundred paces, moving slowly so as not to give alarm, I believe.”
The approaching Mot was attended by only two guards, both blue wights, and thus fully under her control. Her full retinue was half a league away. They reached the base of the opposite side of the cracked dome that was Sundered Rock, and she began to climb it alone.
Samila Sayeh had been a hero of the Prisms’ War and later the lover of Usef Tep, her former enemy. They had come to Tyrea together to submit to the Freeing.
Finding war threatening once more, Samila had intended to die fighting against the Color Prince at Garriston. Usef Tep had done so, but she’d lived, and now she served the man responsible for her lover’s death. Funny how war makes villains of heroes and slaves of the free.
Liv had narrowly missed meeting the legend in Tyrea, but had later met her in Ru, when the mousy genius had figured out in moments a calibration problem with the Great Mirror of Ru that had stumped Liv and others for hours.
If anyone was going to figure out what Liv was really doing, it was she. But did Samila even remember what she’d done at the Great Mirror? Did she remember those coordinates she’d translated in an instant?
In a few minutes, the middle-aged woman had climbed the opposite side of Sundered Rock, allowing the gulf to sit between them. The duolith itself, shaped like a cracked egg, lay partially submerged. It was hundreds of feet tall, and lay gray in the sun, with scorch marks faded by nearly two decades’ passage but not gone. A few withered tufts of grass clung to its overhanging halves, and there was an opening below, as if the egg, broken in halves, had spilled its innards.
Except it was no egg, and not nearly an empty shell. Probably the rock debris between the two halves had simply been cleared by looters certain that here at the epicenter of the holocaustic finale of the Prisms’ War, there must be treasure hidden.
Maybe there had been, once. The Color Prince had gotten his black luxin from somewhere.
Oddly, Samila Sayeh had affected few of the usual traits of a wight, much less a god. Her skin wasn’t crystalline, except her left hand, as if she were still running the experiment to see how blue luxin might function as skin in an application that required so much dexterity, sensitivity, and motion. The rest of her looked severe and beautiful. The olive skin of an Atashian, but barely wrinkled even at forty-four years and seventeen days old, because she’d been a noble, and careful to protect her skin. She was slender and striking, her naturally blue eyes now solid cerulean, irises and sclera both.
But her dress was murex purple. A simple preference? A sign of her obscene wealth now? Of trying to find some common ground with Liv and her superviolet? Was it a sign of not caring to wear blue every day—‘Yes, I’m the blue goddess, I needn’t wear blue constantly, thank you’? Or… was the color in honor of her Usef Tep, the Purple Bear?
How much of the old Samila Sayeh was left in the new Mot?
Regardless, in Liv’s new sight, the older woman crackled with power. A throbbing heartbeat of blue will scattered its near cousin superviolet with every breath, and spectral bleed made her glow in superviolet like a sword plucked from the forge and held in the air for a few long moments: the color dulled quickly from white hot to angry red to a sullen gray, but you’d still be a fool to touch it with your hand.
They were mirrors to each other: outsiders, logical women, cool and rational, both captured, both entwined, but Liv young and Samila older, Liv unproven and Samila renowned, Liv with all her tales before her, Samila with her legends behind, and, most importantly, Liv free while Samila wore the Color Prince’s black jewel at her throat. If she disobeyed him, or attempted to remove it, it would behead her.
“Hail, Lady of Sorrows,” Samila said across the great gap between them.
Liv had never heard the term before. She was probably supposed to ask about it. But she had no idea what games the Color Prince would be playing here nor any interest in playing them. “Hello, Samila. Lady Mot, is it now?”
“You’ve taken the seed crystal,” Samila said. “Without taking a slave collar. Impressively done.” She turned to the side and said, “No, Meena, I think it’s important to give credit where it’s due.”
There was no one there, though. Not even in superviolet. Not even as an afterimage of power.
Now that was interesting. Was Meena Samila’s version of Beliol?
Liv coughed, clearing her throat. “Can she see you?” Liv asked as she covered her mouth.
“No,” Beliol said. “Though she knows I’m here. You might find it in your best interest to hold back as much information as possible.”
That they both had… invisible helpers attending them, but that those were invisible even to other gods, meant something, but Liv wasn’t certain what. And had that been Samila slipping in letting her know about her own attendant, or had it been on purpose?
“Beautiful ring,” Samila said. “Is that where you keep the seed crystal?”
“Thank you, but no. A ring on the finger seems an awfully vulnerable place to keep such power, doesn’t it? On the other hand—sorry, no pun intended—I did want a small physical reminder of my power to flash about when such things might prove helpful.”
Samila Sayeh seemed to like the idea. It was a lie, though. The same lie Liv wanted Beliol to believe. She’d sent him to get her a suitable ring, and while he was gone, she’d turned her powers to making a gem that would sparkle and glow only when he was near.