“Bone witches do not sell their hearts!”
The boy’s eyes narrowed. “Because you have no hearts to give, the lot of you. So you take others for your own and bleed them dry. You grow the dead by the armies, and if we don’t keep you in check, you will let them overrun us.”
“That’s not true.” I grew angrier with every word. I had done nothing for the boy to single me out. “You hate us for nothing more than prejudice.”
The boy pulled his cloak even tighter around himself. “I know your tricks. My father told me all about your kind. If you can’t see my heartsglass, then you can’t curse me.”
“I don’t want to curse you.” That was only half the truth, because I was angry and did wish I knew how to shut him up.
From inside his hood, the boy’s face hardened. “Your kind killed my mother,” he snapped. He turned and fled back into the confines of the crowd but not before his heavy cloak shifted and I saw his heartsglass. It blazed back at me for an instant, a bright-tipped shimmering silver, and then it was gone, lost in the maze of people—and the boy along with it.
She had changed her hua in the interim. This time, it was of a deep blue, to mimic the depths of the sea. A pattern of waves made up half of the dress before tapering off as it drifted downward, speckled in areas with orange-colored carp and silver-backed trout. The dragon was again a prominent design here, but parts of its body remained hidden behind her waist wrap, which was tinted in turquoise and overlaid with peach and gray seashells, so only its head and front legs stuck out. Its eyes were made of black agate, and they peered out at me with its disproportioned snout raised, tusks on display. Its hind legs jutted out at the bottom of the thick wrap, tail ending in a long, sharp spike.
To complement her hua, she wore an assortment of jeweled pins on her hair commonly seen in royal courts. The gems dangled from long sticks pushed into her hair, braided and secured by silk bands and fashioned from aquamarine and fire-opal beads.
“I have made twenty-eight visits to the Akyon oracle.”
This announcement piqued my curiosity. I was aware of the Ankyo oracle’s importance to the asha of the Willows, but the women are only required to visit her for the most important matters—when she begins a relationship with a patron, for example, or when she pledges service to a king or noble.
“The average asha makes only two visits to the temple during her time as an apprentice,” she said, sensing my next question. “The first to present herself when she comes to take up residence at the Willows, and the second when she is about to debut as a full-fledged asha. Until she finds a benefactor, she is no longer required to announce herself to the oracle.
“Unfortunately, the oracle had something very different in mind with me.”
6
Where Kneave was a closed city of shuttered trade, Ankyo, the capital of Kion, was a flourishing cornucopia of open spaces and color. It was a kingdom made up of other kingdoms, invaded by one or the other at different times in history before finally breaking away and achieving independence on its own terms. But such influences remained—from the severe-looking headscarves worn by some that were reminiscent of Drycht to the cylindrical top hats favored by men from the Yadosha city-states to the multiple inclined roofs of the houses here, distinctive in Arhen-Koshon and Daanorian architecture. The roads were wider, which I preferred, and most of the houses were simpler in design, no more than small square structures with white walls and angled roofs.
The Odalian capital was a colorful place, where people showed off their silks and jewelry, and many Kions made up for their simple homes with elaborate wardrobes. I didn’t know how I wasn’t constantly tripping over cloths and hems, for the people favored heavier garments as much for fashion statements as for the colder seasons. Long trains of satin trailed behind the women, coupled with yards of sleeves of intricate designs that hung from their elbows or spilled down from their waists, imitating the asha’s traditional hua. Headscarves were not as common in Ankyo as in Kneave, but every now and then, I spotted a covered head among the crowds. Many here chose to wear their hair loose or had elaborately coiffed hairstyles that sported as many as three or four gemstone ornaments. The men wore less than the women, but the designs stitched into their long tunics and overcoats covered every inch of space, elaborate to the point of fastidiousness. There was no surface on their clothes that did not have embroidery or patterns or motifs of paisley and crests in some way. Two or three layers of clothing appeared to be the standard, and Lady Mykaela’s beautiful hua suited the Kion fashion perfectly.
And if the magic the Odalians wore had been enough to make my head spin, the spells here nearly forced me to my knees. Waves of it emanated from nearly every person we passed, and the world spun. I swayed in my saddle, and only Fox’s quick thinking kept me from falling off my horse.
“Take these.” Lady Mykaela was beside me in a moment, offering me two jeweled pins like the ones she wore in her hair. One was a curved accessory set with beautiful star sapphires, and the other was plainer, shaped like a strangely gnarled crescent moon, and wrapped in silver wire and amethyst. “Pin these to your hair.”
The dizziness abated when I put both on. I could still feel the magic roaring around me, but it felt strangely muted and no longer hurt my eyes or my mind. “A countermeasure,” the asha explained. “Do not let the simplicity of our city fool you. Kions take their love of magic to an even greater extreme than Odalians do.”
“Is it always like this?” It seemed offensive to me somehow, how people wasted their magic this way, when the villagers in Murkwick struggle to make every runeberry patch count.
“There is a reason they call Ankyo the City of Plenty, Tea. Most Kions are rich, which also means they can’t help themselves.”
Kion castles were different in structure from Odalian castles. They were smaller in size but boasted multiple floors, each layer marked by a bowed rooftop—thinner than the ones in the kingdom of Daanoris but less ornate than those of Arhen-Kosho. The result was not unlike several tiers of sugared cake piled atop one another with pointed spires on every corner curling up into the sky. But this time, Lady Mykaela ignored the palace and turned to a small district nearby and into another world entirely.
The houses here were not as small and as square as most of the city but longer and more rectangular in form, the size of two or three average Ankyon houses. The walls facing the street were made of thick adobe and white brick, plain and devoid of any other design. “We call this the Willows,” Lady Mykaela said, “home to the greatest asha in all the kingdoms.”
“There aren’t any willows,” Fox said, who sometimes took things literally.