silver's Blizzard Thread
6 posts in this topic.
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bundle up, folks, it's about to get cold
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Week 40 - Blizzard Week 1
2578/2500Spoiler
“How long should we wait for the next two to go up?” Kasumi asked.
“As briefly as you think you can without causing significant trouble for them,” Mireya said. “If any of you fall, we’re technically obligated to do something about it, but please try to avoid that.”
“Though you should also try to avoid being stuck at the bottom when the Banes make it back,” Cyrin said, weaving another spell that Leilan thought was more Acid.
“True,” Mireya agreed. “There isn’t really a best way to do this.”
Leilan cracked a weary smile. “Except for the five of us to not be down here at all.”
Cyrin returned the smile. “Well, on the bright side, at least we won’t be escaping the Banes only to get caught by some sleepy security guard on night shift.”
“Don’t jinx us,” Mireya warned. “You should stop right there before your dumb ass dooms us all.”
Cyrin tossed her their spell and started another. “It would only be the third or fourth time something’s gone wrong tonight.”
“Shut up or something’s going to be wrong with your face.”
Leilan couldn’t help but admire how comfortable the two mercenaries were around each other, exchanging light-hearted banter in one of the most dangerous places in Aphirah. He wondered how many heists they’d shared like this, a rare team of a Minor and a Major Mage, laughing in the face of danger.
“Should the next pair of us head up?” Kasumi asked, head tilted up to watch Dawn and Shane’s progress.
“You probably could,” Mireya said. “If you’re next, you should probably take Dawn’s rope, since you’re lighter.”
As Kasumi nodded and pulled herself up on the rope, beginning her climb, Leilan glanced at Kaja. “I’ll go last.”
Kaja hesitated, looking almost angry, and he was sure she’d challenge him. Instead, she looked up at the long climb above, and he thought he saw her swallow. She nodded silently and clenched her jaw as she took Shane’s rope, the muscles in her arms heaving as she clambered up.
“So,” Mireya said. Leilan startled when he saw that she was staring intently at him. “Are you the ringleader?”
Leilan looked up. Dawn wasn’t on her rope anymore, and Shane was climbing the final distance. “They listen to me, mostly,” he said. “I don’t know why they do.”
Mireya raised her eyebrows, and he could only hope that she wasn’t thinking the other Heirs were his employees and that he was really the one to be cautious of. At least she wasn’t saying anything in front of Cyrin.
“They’re back,” Cyrin cut in, finishing another spell with a quick flick of his fingers. Leilan spun around to see a pair of Banes rounding the curve, clawed hands outstretched. “Keep an eye on the walls.”
Mireya pushed him towards the ropes. “Start climbing.”
Leilan knew he shouldn’t wait, but he faltered. “Are you going to—”
“We’ll fend them off as you climb,” Cyrin promised, weaving up another small spell, every moment of his hands too fast to track. “You need to get going. We’ll be right behind you.”
Leilan decided he was right. Tugging on his gloves, he took the rope Kaja and Shane had taken and pulled himself up.
He hadn’t realized that his arms were aching and sore from the climb down until they were holding his full weight, and he nearly dropped back to the ground. Leilan gritted his teeth. No matter how tired his arms were, they were going to have to get him out of here. He blew out a long breath, heaving himself up higher, one pull at a time.
He heard hissing sounds soon enough, and although he knew looking down would be unnerving, Leilan glanced at the conflict below as he climbed. Mireya had both her hands raised, sometimes squeezing a fist around the air and flicking it, and a Bane would go flying like a doll seized and flung by a child. He could have sworn she was grinning. Cyrin was nearly a whirlwind, moving over the ice in bends and twists like a skater as they dodged clawed swings and flung spells. He saw them dance out of the way of a Bane’s slash before dashing it to smoke with a strike of their fist. In that movement, the neckline of their jacket shifted, and he caught a glimpse of dark ink between their shoulder blades, where only a vertical point of a concealed tattoo was visible between the sweep of their black hair and the fabric.
“Keep going, Leilan!” It was Shane, calling from above.
Leilan looked up again, picking up his speed. He guessed he was just short of halfway up. Kaja was the only other one still climbing, but she was near the top. She wasn’t going especially fast, even though she was the most physically suited of the five Heirs to a vertical climb, and if they had been at the same height he could have easily outraced her. He nearly shouted encouragement up to her, but something made him reconsider. He wasn’t sure whether it was because he thought she wouldn’t appreciate it or that he was starting to feel breathless.
A growl came from somewhere close that he couldn’t see, and he suddenly froze, feeling the thud of his heartbeat in the surface of the rope under his hands.
“Leilan, hold still,” Cyrin shouted from below, and although Leilan was in the perfect position to stay paralyzed, he couldn’t help but react when he saw the shadow swooping on his right. He moved down, ducking his head as low as he could.
The Acid spell splattered against the Bane, but it was still in motion, with too much momentum to stop right away. The Projection collided with the rope above him, clumsily snagging it with its claws before its shape dissipated. As the rope shook, Leilan heard a shriek, but he couldn’t tell if it came from above or below. He was reasonably sure it wasn’t his own.
“Saints,” he whispered, then he laughed nervously, squeezing the rope tighter in his hands. “Thank you, Cyrin, for—”
Leilan heard the rope make a strange sound almost like a creak— like a bending branch with too much weight on it— as it shuddered in his grip, and he went very still again.
“Something’s wrong with his rope.” Cyrin’s voice sounded very quiet to his ears, or maybe just very far away.
It felt impossible to raise his head again, but when Leilan looked up, he saw the problem instantly. Where the Bane’s claws had snagged the rope, there was a slash in the cords that didn’t go all the way through, but it was damaged. He could see the fibers slowly, slowly splitting and snapping from his weight, and he thought his heart might stop.
“The rope’s breaking,” he hollered, not speaking directly to the people above or below him.
“I can scale the other rope,” Cyrin said, sounding like he was speaking to Mireya. “I could help get him over to that one—”
“They’re too far apart,” Mireya said. “He’d have to jump, and I don’t think he wants to do it.”
Another of the rope’s cables shredded, and Leilan swore he felt himself fall an inch.
“You’ve got the Banes?” Mireya’s question was almost impossible to hear in her lowered voice.
A short pause from Cyrin. “Leave them to me.”
“Leilan,” Mireya called. “I’m going to get you out of there. Do you trust me?”
“You don’t even trust me,” Leilan yelled back. “What in the name of the Saints do you mean by that?”
“Whatever issue I have with you, I can think of a million better places to resolve it at.”
Her voice was patient, almost too patient, like she had all day even though she only had a few seconds. The rope creaked again. He heard another ghostly shriek from a Bane that Cyrin had presumably dashed to fumes, the sound muted and distant. He didn’t want to think about falling that distance.
“Yes,” Leilan said, then louder, “Yes, I trust you.”
“You’ll going to fall,” Mireya said, very plainly. “I’m going to catch you with the Force rings, and then I’m going to throw you at the other rope. You should probably grab it.”
“Is that going to work?” Leilan asked in disbelief.
“If it doesn’t, Cyrin can always… catch you himself or something.”
“No, Mireya, you’re making this work,” Cyrin huffed.
“Fine. Yeah, I’ll make this work. Are you ready?”
Leilan knew he wasn’t, but he wouldn’t be getting any readier. “Ready.”
“Just let go,” Mireya said. “I’ll do the rest. Get ready to catch.”
It took everything he had in him to loosen his grip on the rope as it shuddered again instead of grasping it tighter, but he uncurled the fingers of his upper hand from the rope one by one, before shaking a deep breath and releasing his other hand’s hold.
Leilan barely had time to register that he was falling before invisible hands caught him on his back. He heard a grunt of effort, and then the hands pushed him, hurling him in the direction of the other rope. Leilan flailed in front of him, his arms sweeping through the air in search of something to grab, and he felt all the air rush from his lungs when he caught ahold of the second rope. He took it with both hands, and he hung there for a few seconds, breathless.
“That was harder than I thought,” Mireya wheezed. “Imagine if that had been Kaja.”
“Keep going,” Cyrin called. “I’m nearly out of magic, so I’ll follow you up in a few seconds. Mireya will join us soon.”
Mireya had gone back to using the rings on the Banes, tossing them to the side almost effortlessly. Leilan guessed she would be alright.
“Okay,” he said, taking a deep breath before he went back to his climb.
He barely noticed anything through his haze of moving upwards. Even the ache in his arms felt muted, and he was dreading the moment where his adrenaline would wear off. Scaling the final distance to the edge of the cliff and getting a hand from Shane so he could stand on the surface was the greatest relief he’d ever felt.
“That looked terrifying,” Kasumi whispered as the Heirs huddled around him. Shane put an arm under Leilan’s shoulders to help him stay standing. Kaja was farther away from the group, her gaze turned away from the drop in the ice with her jaw set, and he remembered the shriek he’d heard when his rope had been struck. He wasn’t completely sure it was her. He’d never heard Kaja shriek before.
Leilan cracked a thin smile. “Imagine how it felt doing it.”
“You managed quite well,” a teasing voice said behind him, and he turned to see Cyrin standing on the cobblestone. Leilan had expected that they were a fast climber, but the speed at which they’d managed it surprised him nonetheless. He’d had a great head-start on them. “Not a lot can prepare you for that.”
“Nothing I’ve seen before this has,” Leilan agreed.
Cyrin smirked as they went to stand to the side. “You might even remember it as fun someday.”
He might, but it would be a long time.
Equally swift, Mireya clambered up a few moments later, dusting herself off by the side of the Fall. “Not too shabby for your first heist,” she said to the Heirs. Leilan guessed that she was happy enough to be done that she was briefly forgetting her resentment.
“Do we get a discount for participating, or are you adding a five-person gratuity fee for us getting in the way?” Dawn asked.
Mireya snorted. “They seem to cancel out, so the deal stays the deal.”
“You’re completely sure you got the First Spell, right?” Shane asked.
“Oh, it fell out of my pocket just before we left through the shield. My bad,” Mireya said casually, and after a moment of complete silence, she grinned as she lifted the scroll from her coat. “I’m sorry, I have it. I just wanted to see the looks on your faces.”
“Not funny,” Kaja grumbled.
“Sorry, sorry. I have a few other exciting things on me that you didn’t see if you weren’t in the vault, including that earring you said I’d never get back, Cyrin—” Mireya paused, the mushroom dangling from its hook in her fingers. “Cyrin?”
Cyrin was turned away from the group. Their lowered head and the waves of their hair kept Leilan from reading their face, but the way they were standing so utterly still raised alarm in him even before he saw that their wrist was raised, and they were looking at their communicator. Dimly, he realized they should have service up here now.
“Has anyone got something they feel like sharing?” they asked quietly, turning, and Leilan couldn’t decipher whatever was in their voice.
No one answered them. Cyrin’s gaze went to Mireya.
“We both know you work for the government,” Mireya said. “We don’t know in what way you do, though. You might not even be important. It might help you to tell us.”
“What proof do you have of that?” Kasumi retorted.
Mireya pointed at Dawn, Leilan and Kaja. “These three felt guilty enough to confirm it for me after I guessed. Is that enough proof?”
Kasumi closed her mouth and lowered her chin.
Cyrin looked at Leilan. “You said your families were close,” they said. Realization was dawning on their face. “You told me that you meet when you like to, but you don’t like each other, so there’s another reason for it.”
Leilan swallowed. “Cyrin, I know what I said, but—”
“No, I think I get it,” Cyrin said with a laugh. The laugh was bitter in some way, but he couldn’t tell if it was bitterly angry or bitterly upset. “Five families, all in the government. I even heard what regions you’re from, and they match the distribution of the Houses. You know each other, but you’re not all friends, because your relationship is for work. And of course, you’re looking for power. Stop me when this sounds too familiar.”
At least the others were too busy staring at the ground to glare Leilan’s way.
“There’s five of you, but you’re not Leaders,” Mireya said. “At least, I would really hope not.”
Shane cleared his throat, and all six gazes swiveled to him. “We’re Heirs,” he said, his voice so hushed that his words nearly faded into the cold air.
Whatever was on Cyrin’s face didn’t change— he must have put it together once he had started talking— but Mireya recoiled, her expression twisting into something like disgust. He could have been imagining it, but he thought he saw some hurt too, a sign that she’d still thought they were better than this. If he was imagining it, he was hoping for it, and he didn’t know why he would be hoping for that.
“I never thought I’d say this, but I really would take the stuck-up rich kids any day over this,” Mireya muttered.
“What’s it to you?” Kasumi asked. “What kind of assumptions are you making about us from this that you didn’t already assume when you thought we weren’t Heirs? The only difference I see is that we’re really meant to have power.” -
Week 41 - Blizzard Week 1
6051/6000Spoiler
“And if you abuse it, the whole world is going to feel it,” Cyrin argued. “Don’t you know what the First Spell places in your hands? What’s different is your motives and how you could speak anything into law— you could enforce it with this, do anything with magic that you wanted to. Saints, you could get rid of it forever, since you’ve been taking issue with how it’s used. And no one’s going to cast the last spell, not on my watch.”
“No one’s going to get rid of magic,” Leilan said. “We wouldn’t.”
“Are you going to listen to someone who asks you to, though?” Mireya demanded. “Or maybe you’ll be merciful, make magic a privilege that only your allies can enjoy while denying it to the rest.”
“Anyone with it could do that, or worse,” Kaja remarked. “You just sound like you have a vendetta.”
Mireya straightened, her eyes flashing. “Only because I know what you do and wipe your hands clean of for magic.”
“Stop!” Dawn exclaimed, in possibly the loudest voice Leilan had ever heard her use. She flinched under the angry looks that came her way, but stood tall, her lips pressed into a fierce line.
“You have our attention,” Kasumi said dryly after a few moments.
Dawn shook her head at all of them. “This isn’t the time or place for this,” she pointed out. “It’s late at night, we just escaped the most secure location in Aphirah, we’re exhausted, and we’re still trespassing on the museum with stolen items. No one’s going to have a constructive conversation right now, just an argument, and I have the feeling that if one of us gets their way right here, whoever’s unhappy isn’t going to accept that outcome.” She raised her chin. “So, we’re going to have to come to an agreement once we’re all clear-headed.”
Without waiting for an answer, she turned and started walking towards the exit, back to the regular museum exhibits.
“Where are you going?” Mireya asked, some of her anger melting into confusion.
“We’re all going to the hotel,” Dawn said, not breaking her stride or calling over her shoulder. “I have an idea for how we’ll wait until we resolve this. There was plenty of time to think of it while you were all arguing.”Spoiler
“This is your plan, Dawn?” Kasumi asked. “A hotel safe for valuables?”
“It’s not meant to hold it forever,” Dawn said. “Just long enough for us to figure what to do with it.”
Mireya folded her arms over her chest, inhaling deeply. After they’d made their way back to their hotel, Dawn had asked the night receptionist for access to the safe room and then had her leave. Now, the seven of them— two thieves, five Heirs— were huddled around an open safe, where the First Spell lay inside after Mireya had reluctantly parted with it. The scroll seemed so insignificant and unassuming for an artifact of such power.
“Now what?” Shane asked.
Dawn closed the door over. “Leilan, you’re going to input a number between zero and nine. Don’t say it out loud. Don’t let anyone else see what it is. Just remember it.”
Leilan slowly nodded as he moved forward and knelt on the floor in front of the safe, hesitating before he covered the keypad with his hand and pressed a button. A dash appeared on the display for the first digit.
“Cyrin, you’re going to do the same,” Dawn instructed.
Cyrin frowned, but they seemed to have figured out what she was doing. They blocked the keypad and chose their digit, and a second dash lit up.
Dawn scanned the group. “Kasumi, you’re going next, then Mireya.”
Kasumi shuffled forward, hiding the number she chose from view. When she stepped back, Mireya bit her lip as she stared at the keypad. She didn’t want to seal away the First Spell, not when she felt like running off into the night with it. With extreme reluctance, she moved in front of the keypad and pressed the button for the number one.
The safe whirred and beeped pleasantly, displaying the cLoSed message.
“The two of you have two digits of the code,” Dawn said. “Two of us have the other two, so no one knows the full code. That means no one can go rogue and open it before we discuss, and that we can only unlock it together.”
“Are we really going to come to a decision?” Kaja asked skeptically.
“We don’t have much of a choice but to anymore,” Dawn said. “Not if anyone wants to leave with it. Now, let’s get back to our suite and get some sleep. We’re already tired enough of each other on top of just being tired.”
Mireya wanted to throw another bitter remark at them, but instead, she clenched her jaw shut and followed the group into the lobby. The elevator ride up was silent and charged with resentment.
A soft buzzing on her nightstand woke Mireya up the next morning. She rubbed her eyes and reached over for her communicator, brushing the hair from her face so the scanner could identify her. After it unlocked, she had to blink a few times before she could read Cyrin’s message.
>cyring-wolf:
meet me in the lobby, sleepyhead
>bluelightningrod:
gotta do my hair first, i’ll be there
>cyring-wolf:
see you in five years then
She snorted and slipped the device around her wrist before getting up.
Mireya flicked the light on so she could get ready. Her experience at this hotel was soured by knowing it was the Heirs’ suite, but it really was a good room. The wall color was metallic bronze, which was a little strange, but the rest of the furniture and décor was in rich copper or brilliant rose gold, making everything around her shine. She walked over the soft patterned rug— which had to be the work of an artisan commissioned from the South with the level of detail the design had— and into the attached bathroom, picking up a change of clothes from her suitcase as she went. She got ready in a few minutes, most of which was spent arranging her hair into buns.
As soon as she pushed the door to her room open and saw the long hallway with the Heirs’ rooms ahead of her, everything about the night before came back to her. The realization, the shock, the strange sense of betrayal that she hadn’t been able to shake. Mireya grimaced and hurried down the hall.
On her way to the elevator, she passed by Dawn and Kasumi, who were having a hushed conversation on the living room couch. They paused their discussion to watch as she pressed the button. “Are you heading out?” Dawn asked.
Mireya avoided their gazes. “I’m going on a walk.”
“With Cyrin?” Kasumi asked.
She nodded, turning away from them.
“Well, I hope you have a good time,” Dawn said. “We’ll see you later.”
“Thanks.” Mireya was saved from having to say anything more by the elevator doors opening for her. Maybe Dawn was right. Maybe she did need time to cool off.
When she got down to the lobby, she spotted Cyrin leaning against a newspaper stand by the doors, flipping a coin deftly from hand to hand. He always tried to linger near the exits when he could, she knew, in true escape artist fashion, and he looked for the unexpected ones too. Mireya had learned a lot about him in their time together as a team, but she hadn’t yet figured out why he prided himself so much on being able to get out of any situation, no matter how unlikely. It was starting to look less like a skill to be honed and more like a compulsion to her.
“No sunglasses?” she asked as she walked up to him. “You wore them when we were here a few days ago.”
“I thought about it,” Cyrin said, tucking the coin away. “But it’s cloudy out, and I would rather be seen for who I am than as an idiot.”
“Like those two things don’t match.”
Cyrin shook his head at himself. “I walked right into that one.”
“I could grab them, if you don’t want to head up there again,” Mireya offered, more seriously. “You could change your mind once we’re out.”
That made Cyrin scowl. “This is my home city. I shouldn’t have to hide my face here.”
She’d said something wrong, and they were right. It wasn’t a huge deal anyway. “No, you shouldn’t,” she said, grimacing internally at herself. “Let’s head out. Grab a newspaper.”
Cyrin took one off the top of the pile as they stepped out the doors. The hotel was located on the Taeveni Courtyard, Mireya’s favorite landmark in Storm City. In the center of the cobblestone square, a statue of the Taeveni— or as Aphirans knew it, a thunderbird— towered above its fountain, wings unfurled as it clutched a storm cloud in its talons. Its curved beak was open, like the creature had turned to stone mid-screech.
Mireya felt a flood of love for her city rushing over her every time she returned. The alpine air was the same as Crystal City’s, but she preferred Storm City’s weathered, unyielding curves of stone to the cutting edges of glass slicing at the sky. The city screamed of its history instead of its progress. She liked being somewhere that remembered itself, no matter how much of its past had been stolen.
That morning, the courtyard had an open market, with rows of stands lining the edges. Mireya smelled spices and honey, and she spotted the stand it was coming from, pointing it out to Cyrin. “We should get mulled wine,” she suggested. “I think it’s the week for that.”
“You say that every time we’re here,” Cyrin said, but they were already walking that way.
“It’s always time for mulled wine.”
They each got their own drink, paying a deposit to return the reusable glasses, and went to on the rim of the fountain. Cyrin laid out the newspaper over the stone. They raised an eyebrow as they pointed out the headline to her: Alleged Discovery of the First Spell Prompts Archeological Digs in the West and South.
Mireya shook her head. “Of course they’re assuming it’s an Aphiran artifact and not a Ren one. They’ll look everywhere before they look here.”
Cyrin raised their glass in a mock toast. “It works out for us, doesn’t it? If you think about it, it’s just karma. Revenge is a dish served cold, and it’s had about five centuries to chill.”
Mireya grinned, and she saw them smirk too, but their expression looked weary. Cyrin usually held themself like they were sitting for a portrait at all times, poised and elegant, but they seemed to be giving up on that today. Their hand holding the glass was limp, and their shoulders were drooping. Everything pointed to them being exhausted.
“How’d you sleep?” she asked. “Was it fancy enough for you?”
Cyrin rolled his eyes amusedly. “I don’t have a fanciness quota to meet before I can fall asleep somewhere, but it was fine, except that I woke up too early.” A gust of wind blew past, and he ran a hand back through his hair to keep it out of his face, pausing for a few moments. Mireya thought he might explain the reason he’d woken up, but instead he let out a long breath and added, “My room is teal.”
“Teal?” Mireya repeated. “Like it was in their hotel in Crystal City?”
Cyrin nodded. “Exactly.” His finger ran over the newspaper at his side distractedly, highlighting random passages. “Teal was the House of Justice’s color. That room used to host the Heirs from that House.”
“Oh,” Mireya said with surprise, then she quickly added, “My room’s in bronze. It must have been for the House of Wisdom.”
“I bet they’ve hardly seen any visitors since those Houses fell, only housekeeping to keep the dust off.” Cyrin took a sip from his glass.
Mireya glanced at the newspaper, which was fluttering in the wind. “I wonder what they thought when they realized they’d have to let us stay there.”
Cyrin was staring at the cobblestone under their feet, and she wasn’t sure they’d say anything, but they looked up at her again. Their gaze was stormy.
“I didn’t think the five of them were bad people,” they said. “Maybe they aren’t, outside of being Heirs. But we can’t support the Houses.” Their voice was quiet, but it surprised Mireya to hear faint anger under their words.
“I know,” Mireya said. “We can’t.”
Cyrin took a deep breath. “I know they’re not the same people as who we oppose them for, but the Houses— the Heirs still carry that legacy with them. They choose to live with it. They aren’t the battlemage or the people who created the Fading, but that’s where they get their power from. They profit from the price that so many had to pay for them.”
“Not the battlemage,” Mireya corrected them. “The Butterfly.” Her heart still had another name for him. Dante.
Cyrin blinked, a shadow falling over their face. “Why are you commenting on that, of all the things that I just said?”
They didn’t understand. For a moment, Mireya wished she could get them to, just so Dante might be remembered with the mercy he deserved. But Cyrin didn’t know Dante, didn’t even know she’d known him, and right now she knew she looked too sympathetic towards someone who had started a long line of hurt that had they had been tangled up in. She couldn’t defend her old friend’s name without alienating her closest one today.
“Sorry,” she said, washing down the bitter taste in her mouth with a sip of her wine. “Historical semantics. It’s an old habit.”
Cyrin took a few seconds to nod. “It’s fine.”
“What should we do with them?” Mireya asked, keeping her voice soft so it would be less obvious she was trying to change the subject. “Seems like neither of us are very happy with how things are now.”
“I vote we say yes to whatever we need to, pretend to negotiate with them,” Cyrin said. “But in the end, we’re getting that artifact back, with honest methods or not. I’m not comfortable with letting them have it.”
“I’m sure either of us could crack that little safe open with no problem,” Mireya laughed. “I doubt we’d be welcome any longer if we did, though.”
“So in our group talk, we end it with us agreeing to let them keep it, we take our payment and part ways, and then we come back to steal it from them,” Cyrin suggested. “Like we first planned.”
“Perfect.”
The two of them clicked their glasses.
“You know, I’ll probably feel bad about the double-crossing,” Cyrin admitted. “At the very least, I felt like I would, before we found out who they really were. It’s not exactly fair thievery, and maybe not fair to them either.”
“Don’t get soft,” Mireya warned, but she knew exactly what he was talking about. She’d found herself genuinely enjoying the time spent with the Heirs at points, and it had caused her to almost regret the way their adventure together would have to end. Especially with Dawn. The reveal of their identities should have wiped out that regret, but she wasn’t sure that it had.
“I know better,” Cyrin said with a smirk, but it was late getting to his face. He cleared his throat. “Anyway, I was thinking I should stop by the Hall of Saints, pay Feyven a visit. We missed it last time we were here.”
“That’s a good idea,” Mireya agreed. “I think you promised them a prayer.”
“I did, and I’m not in the business of disappointing Saints. Do you want to come along?”
She shook her head, smiling. “I’ll make the walk with you, but I’ll wait outside.”
Cyrin nodded, and they stood up together, finishing the last of their mulled wine. Mireya hurried to the stand to return their glasses and get their deposits back. When she came back, she placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. “There could be time if you wanted to see your family, too,” she said softly. “It’s a short train ride from this part of the city to the Prism.”
She wanted to leave him the option, but she knew what he’d say, even before the look in his eyes got distant. “I haven’t put in a six-month notice,” he joked, but she could tell his heart wasn’t in it. “I don’t think we have any weddings or funerals coming up either.”
Mireya hoped her smile didn’t look too forced. “Too bad for them,” she said, emphasizing the last word.
It was only the slightest amount, but she saw Cyrin’s expression lighten. “Come on,” they said, nudging her gently. “I’ve missed the place.”
After they had walked over and Cyrin had slipped inside, Mireya loitered outside the Hall. The wind had picked up, and scarves were fluttering in the wind, waving like flags in the sea of people moving by. Mireya could barely make out the writing on a rippling poster taped to a lamppost, warning about the risks of magic poisoning and how to prevent it. The poster was a common sight in Crystal City or the Arcade, but she’d never seen one of those in Storm City before, or anywhere in the North, for that matter. Magic poisoning was caused by low-quality Salve magic getting trapped in the body of the person it was meant to heal, and it was both untreatable and fatal, but it was so rare in Renvara where magic was of good quality. She supposed it was a sign of changing times, or maybe local magic scarcity— another thing that wouldn’t have been a concern for the area before.
Before. She was thinking of things far in the past as if they’d happened over the last weekend.
She surveyed the outside of the Hall, starting to wander from the entrance a bit. The inside was filled with art— painting, murals, and sculptures of Saints—but the entire building was a masterpiece in its own right. Silver pinnacles stretched from the sloped roof, studded with elaborate window openings carved from the stone. The massive double doors were open wide to welcome the visitors. Most of them were tourists, Mireya knew. Few people made the active choice to follow a Saint anymore— largely because it was an active choice, a commitment to self-improvement with a role model to act as a guide down a path of an aspired value, where the follower chose their Saint based on what they were the patron of.
At first, it had surprised her that Cyrin could reconcile that commitment with a lawless career, but it had made more sense to her once she figured out that being a mercenary was probably his largest reason for it. He clung to guilt too hard, and this was his way of making it a lifesaver instead of an anchor. Mireya knew he was good enough already that he didn’t need to worry about staying afloat in a sea of personal failures, but he worried too much about rising waters. She didn’t blame him. Some actions felt like floods.
She was snapped out of her thoughts by a bony hand squeezing her shoulder from behind, nails digging into her skin. It took everything in her not to react by reaching out to the nearest power source and shocking the person touching her.
Instead, she spun around, trying to remove the hand, but it only clenched around her tighter. For such a frail hand, it had a remarkably strong grip.
The woman holding her was elderly, in her seventies or maybe even her eighties, was about Mireya’s height, and was also Ren. There was a fervor in her wide, dark eyes, and Mireya flinched at seeing it focused on her. The woman shook her shoulder, her nails now painfully pinning her in place.
“You are the Saint?” she rasped, and it was difficult to tell whether she really meant it as a question or not.
“No— no,” Mireya stuttered, stepping back and hoping to get free. It didn’t work. “I’m not a Saint at all, ma’am.”
“You are,” the woman insisted, her cracked voice turning the words into something like a growl. Mireya flinched again. “You look just like her. We’ve all seen the art.”
“I hear that a lot,” Mireya pleaded, prying the woman’s fingers away one by one. “I get the misunderstanding, I really do, but you’ve got the wrong person. She’s dead, in fact.”
“She doesn’t die,” the woman hissed, and Mireya recognized what the fervor in her eyes meant. It was desperation. This woman needed a savior. “Not Mireya Kaltrina, the Spark, patron saint of harbingers. The world needs her, at all times. Where have you been?” Her voice grew angrier. “Where have you been?”
Mireya stumbled back, breaking free from her vise-like grip and immediately bumped into a member of the crowd. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled, not because of the collision. “I’m sorry.”
She turned and pushed her way through the crowd, running as soon as she had the space to.
She knew the woman wouldn’t be able to catch up, and there wasn’t anyone following her, but she couldn’t slow down. It wasn’t a person without hope chasing after her. No, it was all she’d left behind, and that was far harder to outrun. All this talk of Cyrin needing sunglasses and she’d forgotten that maybe she needed them more.
Mireya looped the Hall, coming back to the main entrance. Cyrin was standing outside the doors, scanning the crowd and frowning until he saw her. “Are you—” he started to ask.
“Just follow me.” She dashed past him.
Cyrin slipped behind her. “Why are you in a hurry? What’s going on?”
“I’m not in a hurry, you’re just moving with the metronome of a drowsy snail.”
“Okay, rude,” he muttered, but he caught up to her side and stayed with her.
They went all the way back to the Taeveni Courtyard before Mireya allowed herself to slow, stopping at the fountain once more. Cyrin watched her silently as she composed herself, his eyebrows raised expectantly, but his expression was without judgment. In fact, she could read concern in his gaze as he waited to make sure she was fine.
“Sorry,” she said at last, her words slightly breathless. “I had to get away from someone.”
Cyrin immediately switched to speaking in Ren— which was a little less secretive than it usually was because of their location, but it was still safer. “Police?”
“Worse.”
His forehead creased. “Sparrow?”
It sounded so strange and wrong, to hear the name of their enemy spoken as the word for the bird in her native language. She almost wanted to tell him to keep it out of his mouth when speaking in it.
Mireya shook her head. “No. Someone who hasn’t lost faith yet.”
As Cyrin hesitated, she wondered if he was having trouble translating her words. It was possible, because he wasn’t a native speaker, but she was near certain he knew every word she’d used. As realization spread over his face, however, it dawned on her that he’d been translating her meaning instead.
“Come here,” he said finally, speaking in Aphiran again as he guided her to the fountain and helped her to sit next to him. “We can take as long as you need.”
Mireya let out a shuddering breath, and she let her head fall on their shoulder. They put an arm around her in a side hug, and she felt some of the tension leaving her body and easing into comfort. It wouldn’t be right to be here without them by her side, she realized. She couldn’t imagine doing this job with anyone else.
“I love you,” she said in Ren quietly, easing closer to them.
She saw Cyrin smile slightly, and they rubbed her back comfortingly. “I love you, too,” they said, responding in Aphiran. She’d never heard them say it in Ren— one day, she might ask why. “What can I be doing for you?”
Mireya shook her head. “I’m okay, I promise. Just—” She shrugged, a little helplessly. “I forget sometimes, who I’m supposed to be. Who I’m not.”
Cyrin nodded, his gaze falling to the cobblestones briefly. “Yeah,” he said, his voice distant. “But that kind of thinking gets treacherous, doesn’t it? If I were who I was supposed to be, I’d have stayed in university, gotten a business degree—”
“And then entered your family’s pharmaceutical business, profiting off people like Autumn,” Mireya finished. “People you want to save.”
“Exactly,” Cyrin said. “I’m not sure where I’m at instead is the best place, exactly, but I’m glad that I didn’t turn out like that. I couldn’t be your eternal annoyer if I had.”
Mireya snorted. “You are kind of insufferable. Especially when you’re right.”
Cyrin grinned. “Am I right about this?”
Mireya tried to punch him in the shoulder, but he dodged like he’d known it was coming, dropping his hand in the fountain behind them to fling water at her. She shrieked with indignation and joy, splashing him in return until he had to face away, both of them laughing.
“Anyway—” Cyrin broke off laughing again as she flung the last of the water on her hands at him, and he shook his head in amusement and wiped his face. “I can’t call Autumn, because it’s night hours at her hospital with the time difference, but Clarity’s always up at this time, and I told her I would call her while we were here. Do you want to join in on that?”
Mireya almost wasn’t sure if she did want to. Almost. That last night with Clarity still stung a bit, and she knew Cyrin made a lot of allowances for her, but she was in a good enough mood at the moment, and she knew she wouldn’t feel better by giving her friend the silent treatment. “That’s a good idea. Video call?”
“So we can show off the scenery? Definitely.” Cyrin tapped their communicator, letting a Projection appear above their wrist as they started a call.
Clarity took a few moments to answer, as usual, before she appeared at her coffee table. The faint glow of her fireplace lit the wall behind her. “Here!” Her voice was still somewhat distracted, like she’d been busy at the moment Cyrin called.
Cyrin smiled. “You’re still working on that surprise thing, aren’t you?”
Clarity’s gaze flitted to the side, and she moved her hand off-screen. There was the sharp click of a MagicBox being snapped shut. “Nope,” she said unconvincingly.
“Of course,” Cyrin said, his tone knowing.
“What is this surprise, and why don’t I know about it?” Mireya demanded with mock offense.
“To be fair, I don’t actually know about it either,” Cyrin commented.
“You both don’t understand surprises, don’t you?” Clarity snorted. “It’ll be here when you get back. How’s it going over there?”
Cyrin and Mireya exchanged glances, and she knew they were both thinking that they couldn’t share very much out in public like this.
“Well, we got what we were here for,” Mireya said. “The rest of it isn’t so fun.”
“Have you—” Clarity pantomimed snatching an item and scurrying off with it. “—yet?”
“Not yet,” Mireya said. “It’s in a safe, because apparently we have to talk about what to do with it before anyone can leave with it.”
Clarity clicked her tongue. “There’s fighting?”
“You could say that,” Cyrin said. “We’ll be leaving with it one way or another, though.”
“Good. I really cannot wait to see it.”
“There’s something else you might want to see, Clarity,” Mireya said, reaching into a pocket of her coat. “I mean, you might not, but I’d like you to take a look at it.” She held up the device Kaja had found.
Cyrin blinked. “What is that? Where did you find it?”
“I think it’s a battery cell,” Mireya said. “We found it— where we went looking for the other thing.”
“Interesting,” Clarity said, leaning forward. “A battery? I could see it.”
“One of our clients suggested it was a power source for a new spaceship,” Mireya said. “Optimally small, lots of power to keep something running, probably either has a way of recharging or there’s lots of them. What do you think of that?”
Clarity snorted. “New spaceship? I’m not a rocket scientist, but we’ve had batteries that small for a long time.”
“A long time?” Cyrin asked. “How long?”
“Like, literally hundreds of years. If it were new, it would be a prototype that’s smaller, but just as powerful,” Clarity said. “We’ve gotten a lot better with that technology.”
Mireya felt dizzy with how fast her head was spinning. The astronaut in the Arcade. This device had reminded her of that one, but whatever he’d picked up had been smaller, slimmer. She’d been sure of it.
“It could be from the spacewreck,” Clarity mused. “That mission started five hundred-ish years ago, didn’t it? But wherever it crashed two years ago, its location became top secret.” She shook her head fiercely. “Sorry, I’m thinking out loud. Can I have a look at it when you get back?”
“Of course,” Mireya managed to say, tucking the battery in her pocket. Cyrin was giving her a very strange look, and she had to pretend not to see it. “You’ll see this and the other thing too.”
“And we could support you for a bit,” Cyrin added. A strange hope filled their voice. “I mean, I’m not going to know what to do with my cut, it’s that much. But you might be in need of a change. Don’t you want to get away from him?”
For a moment, Mireya swore she saw something like fear sweep over Clarity’s face, something like terror echo in the blue depths of her eyes. But it was gone so fast, and they were talking through a screen. She wasn’t sure she’d seen it properly.
“I’m okay,” Clarity said, smiling a moment later. “That’s generous of you, but I’m fine where I’m at. You work on getting that money, and I’ll stick to my work.”
“Okay,” Cyrin said. They were looking to the side now, so that neither Mireya nor Clarity could see their face fully. “We’ll see you soon.”
“Bye, Clarity,” Mireya said.
“Bye, both of you. Kick ass for me.” Clarity ended the call.
Cyrin slowly lowered their wrist, but didn’t turn around until Mireya cleared her throat gently. “Do you feel like talking about that?”
“I don’t know,” Cyrin said. “Do you feel like talking about the battery?”
“I don’t know.”
Cyrin nodded, standing up. “We’ll figure both of them out,” they said, looking back at the hotel. “I’ve cooled off enough to head back up. What about you?”
“I’ll stay out here a little longer,” Mireya said. “Try to mellow them up a little bit. Imagine that you have to make them friends with you.”
That smirk of his flitted over their lips again. “I’ll do my best,” they said, slowly walking backwards to the hotel again so that she could catch the spark in their eyes. “Here’s hoping they won’t like me less by the time I’m done trying.”Spoiler
Shane was in denial about actually having to get up. He gladly would have stayed in his room for much longer that morning, but the heat abruptly stopped working, and all of a sudden staying warm under the covers was no longer an option. He put on his warmest clothes and left his room, shivering in the cold hallway.
He found the other four Heirs huddled on the couch in front of the fireplace, all looking a little disgruntled and cramped. Kaja had an blanket, but did not seem to be sharing.
“Did anyone call to find out what’s happening?” he asked.
“I did,” Kasumi said. “The front desk said they were working on it.”
“Got it. I’ll find a blanket or something.”
“There could be space on the couch still—” Leilan suggested.
“No,” Dawn, Kaja and Kasumi all blurted together.
Leilan winced. “Or maybe not.”
Shane rolled his eyes as he shivered. “If any of you want a blanket, I reserve the right to say no, because I’m taking them all.” He wasn’t going to, but he felt like saying it.
He moved back to the hallway, where there was a closet in the wall just before the first of the Heir’s rooms— Dawn’s room, he was fairly sure— that held spare blankets and pillows. There were other things in there, too, like an ironing board, but he was certain none of them knew how to use it. The elevator door dinged as he reached up to grab a blanket from the top of a stack, and he figured one of the others had slipped down to the lobby to complain.
A shadow-like blur slipped past him on his left, and he let out a quiet but shrill sound of surprise, dropping the blanket and nearly losing his balance with his reach. He bumped into something behind him, and a pair of hands caught him by the shoulders. “Easy,” a voice said. “It’s just me.”
Shane turned to face Cyrin, who had backed up and raised his hands non-threateningly. His clothes were dark, like the shadow he’d imagined. He could feel his face heating up with embarrassment.
“Oh,” Shane said, laughing nervously. “Sorry for reacting like that. Do they call you the Specter because you’re sneaky?”
He’d meant it as a joke, but a faint frown spread over Cyrin’s face, and he looked slightly uncomfortable. “No.”
Shane winced. “Sorry. Pretend I didn’t ask.”
Cyrin bent down and picked up the blanket for him. “Did the heat go out while I was gone?” they asked, passing it over.
Shane nodded. “It did. It got very cold right away, and the others claimed the fireplace, so.” He shivered again. “I’ll resort to bundling up.”
Cyrin seemed to examine him for a few seconds in silence, their gaze flitting over his face. It made Shane anxious that he didn’t know what they were seeing in him, but after a moment, they stepped back.
“I might have something for that,” they said, turning around and waving him along. “Follow me.”
Mystified, Shane let them lead him down the hallway, into the teal room for the House of Justice. He hadn’t seen too much of the other Heir rooms besides his own, especially for the hotels outside of Crystal City, and he’d almost never entered this one. The teal walls were almost too vibrant in his vision, and not for the first time, he couldn’t help but wonder if anyone had ever considered the design for the Houses didn’t need to be this flashy.
Cyrin flicked the latches on his suitcase open, metal clicking against leather. He reached in and held up a pair of bronze wristbands, placing them in Shane’s hands. “You can put them on,” he said.
Shane slowly slipped them on his wrists, holding up his arms in front of them. Once the bands were in place, he felt the metal growing warm against his skin. The warmth spread like a current up his arms until the circuit closed between his shoulder blades. It felt like he was soaking in summer sunlight.
“Oh,” he breathed, the chill of the air immediately too insignificant to notice.
Cyrin nodded. “They’re made with Flare. It provides more body heat.”
Shane looked at the bands in awe. “It feels like a hug,” he said after a few moments.
A sad smile crept across Cyrin’s face, almost reluctant to show itself. “That’s actually their purpose,” he said. “They were sort of a moving out gift from my sister. They can also keep you warm, though I don’t really use them for that.”
“That’s…” Shane lowered his arms slowly. “That’s really nice of her. What’s your sister’s name?”
Cyrin paused, pressing his lips together in a thoughtful frown. -
*edit: the above post for Week 41 is Blizzard Week 2!
-
Week 42 - Blizzard Week 3
13118/13000Spoiler
“I remember what you said about your policy with questions,” Shane said. “So you don’t have to answer.”
“I would, but come to think of it, I’m not sure I can tell you without giving myself away.” Cyrin chuckled softly.
“Like… your identity?” Shane asked. “I’m sure I wouldn’t know just from that.”
“You might be surprised, actually.”
Shane raised an eyebrow. “Well, you don’t have to share, but I couldn’t tell anyone who you are besides the other four. If I exposed you for participating in theft for us, there’d be a lot more problems for us than you, especially if you responded by exposing me. It’s about the safest position to share that you could be in.”
Cyrin appeared to give it some thought. “I might ask you a question or two about yourself afterwards, to make it fair.”
“Deal.”
Cyrin stood a little straighter, like they were ready to be scrutinized. “My sister’s name is Allison.”
Allison. It didn’t make sense to Shane until it suddenly did, in the space of only a few moments. He knew a famous Allison, an opera and movie star who had earned her fame even outside of her famously wealthy family being in the public spotlight as celebrities. She and her siblings all had raven-black hair and sat in their front cover portraits like royals, but there was one of them that had stopped making the tabloids. A forgotten sibling with a name that started with a C.
“Allison,” Shane said slowly. “Allison Bridger.”
Cyrin nodded, a little tensely.
“You’re Cyrin Bridger.” Shane shook his head in amazement. “I’ve forgotten about you, but I was also talking about you. Right in front of you.”
Cyrin made a slight face. “I wasn’t quite worried you were on to me, but it was a bit awkward. Don’t worry about it.”
“How?” Shane asked in wonder. “How did you end up selling yourself out as a thief in Crystal City? You were from one of the richest families in Aphirah, attending the best university in the nation. Why did you leave that behind?”
A dry smile spread over Cyrin’s face. “Well, it helped that I didn’t really have the choice.”
They were watching him, waiting for him to speak instead of saying more, and he realized that he knew the answer.
“You didn’t leave,” Shane said. Cyrin had stopped showing up in magazines and newsbait articles, but he’d also disappeared from the interviews and statements of the other Bridgers. He’d faded into the background entirely. “You didn’t retire from the public eye. You were kicked out.”
Cyrin nodded.
“There were… rumors going around that you were acting out,” Shane said slowly. “Not public rumors, but my father heard them, because he used to be in touch with your stepmom, I think. I didn’t know what to make of them, but didn’t pay much attention to them either.”
“Really?” Cyrin asked, sounding surprised. “I always wondered what the news circulating around looked like.”
“Was it something else?”
Cyrin’s gaze flicked away from his for the briefest moment. “I might answer that some other time, but it’s not for now.”
“That’s fine,” Shane said. His heart was already racing from all that he’d just learned. “I guess you get to ask me a thing or two now.”
Cyrin paused. “What Houses are you all from?”
“Kaja is from the House of Strength,” Shane said. “Leilan is from Compassion, Dawn is from Loyalty, and Kasumi is from Honor.”
“So you’re from the House of Courage?”
“That’s right,” Shane said. “The Hawking family.”
A strange, heavy look passed over Cyrin’s face. “Your House had the assassination a few years ago,” they said, cautiously, as if they were worried he would snap at them for speaking it. “Gwen and Ray Hawking.”
“Yeah,” Shane said, swallowing. He hardly knew what else to say. “They were my parents.”
He’d seen so much sympathy, of course. The news had wailed their grief for weeks afterwards, and then at every anniversary of the event. He’d hardly done any work for his first half-year as a Heir because everyone felt too bad to ask anything of him. Flint had been distant, closed-off, but at least Shane had known that whatever he was feeling, his uncle was feeling too and probably understood it better. His pain was public, and he’d rarely had to see someone completely unprepared for it.
“Of course,” Cyrin said quietly. A look almost like horror had gradually crept across his face. “You’re Shane. I’d heard about you, but I never knew that you became an Heir.” He took a deep breath. “I really am so sorry.”
“You don’t need to apologize.” Shane shook his head. “I hear it a fair amount. It’s a strange way to respond to grief that I don’t blame anyone for using, but it doesn’t make any sense to me.”
“Right,” Cyrin said in a hushed voice, barely nodding. He was standing very still, and Shane wasn’t sure if he’d blinked. “I get it. It doesn’t sound like much.”
Shane offered him a weak smile. “It’s okay. It’s been a while, and…” He waved a hand loosely in the air between them. “You know. Life’s supposed to go on and all that.”
Cyrin nodded, his gaze sweeping over him for a moment before he stepped back, with something in his eyes that he couldn’t read. “You can keep those as long as you need them until we separate,” he said finally, gesturing to the wristbands. “I think you could use them right now.”
Shane rubbed the metal with his thumb, feeling the warmth of the bronze. “Thank you,” he said, meaning it. “Aren’t you… angry towards us, though? Or distrustful, at the very least?”
The thief gave it some thought, folding their hands behind their back. “I’m angry and distrustful towards the Houses,” they said. “I’m still making my mind up about the five of you. I’d like to separate you from them in my mind, but I’m not sure that I fully can. There’s…” They paused. “There’s a lot of overlap, even for those of you who I think are trying to break loose from them. It might still be too much for me.”
“And Mireya?” Shane asked.
Cyrin tilted their head to the side. “Well, I’m sure you guessed she’s an anarchist. She’s… a little more committed to the hard feelings than I am.”
“Yeah, I did guess,” Shane murmured, then spoke up again. “And you? Where did your opposal to the Houses come from? Your privilege was protected by them, and that’s not an easy thing to give up or leave behind.”
Cyrin’s expression shifted again, and they suddenly looked so much more familiar. It was the regal, mysterious look for the front covers, displaying the person and their power without giving a viewer a glimpse of their thoughts. Shane couldn’t help but think he would have recognized them so much sooner if he’d seen them like this. A moment later, their face returned to what he knew them by— the smooth, carefree, capable thief. Not the aristocrat who had just been standing in front of him.
“You saw them, didn’t you?” Cyrin asked.
Shane knew what they meant and nodded.
“It’s an uncomfortable mask to wear,” Cyrin said. “And the role isn’t something where one size fits all. I’ve been sheltered from a lot of injustices that Ren people have faced because of my wealth protecting me, but there are also some I’ve had that an Aphiran with my status would never have to deal with. So, there were times where I couldn’t act the part, and I could see past it. I don’t pretend to have shed that privilege entirely, but I learned to recognize where I was unfairly given advantages because of my class and disadvantages because of my culture. Both made me angry. Both made me want to do something about it.”
Shane slowly nodded. “I see what you mean. Leilan and I tell ourselves that if we ever get in power, we’d start pushing for that kind of change, though the others aren’t entirely in agreement.”
“Why not now?” Cyrin asked.
Shane smiled thinly. “Believe it or not, we don’t actually have as much power as it seems like we do.”
“You might have more than you think,” Cyrin said, raising an eyebrow. Before Shane could decide how to respond, they stepped away, offering him a small nod. “I’m off to get some more magic, since I trust it when it’s from here. Mind picking up the expenses?”
“I’m sure we can,” Shane said. “Where’s Mireya?”
“She’s still out,” Cyrin said, leaving the room. “We’ll talk as a group when she’s back, but it might be a while. She tends to lose track of time passing.”
It was indeed a long time until Mireya returned from her walk— or maybe it had been a sulk. Shane wasn’t sure. The heat got fixed sometime that afternoon, but it was several hours into the night before the elevator dinged and Mireya stepped through the opening doors, looking strangely composed. He wondered what that would mean for their argument— no, their agreement.
No one summoned the group of seven to the living room, but they all drifted there within a few minutes of each other with some silent understanding that it was time to discuss what they’d been thinking about for the last twenty-four hours. Shane felt safest next to Leilan, who had thoughtfully left him a space on the once-full couch. As expected, Mireya and Cyrin sat side by side, separate from the rest of the Heirs. The fireplace crackled in the first moments of silence.
“So,” Dawn said softly, at last. “I think everyone needs to be open with their vision for the First Spell. We just might have a few ambitions in common, but we also need to see where we’re divided over them. That’s the first step.”
“Are we going to go around in a circle and share our feelings?” Kaja asked. “That’s childish.”
Shane could already feel a headache starting as Leilan gave her a tired look. “What’s childish is not considering other people’s feelings to be selfish. We’re going to act like adults here.”
“I would hope so,” Kaja said. “But Kasumi has literally brought a juice box to this conversation.”
Kasumi narrowed her eyes as she slurped from her straw, pulling the juice box closer to herself defensively. “You leave my orange juice out of this.”
Mireya heaved a sigh. “I’ll share.” She leaned back, her expression blank except for the challenge in her eyes. “I know the Houses see magic as a threat. They know its uses are varied, but it looks like more and more of a weapon in the hands of their opponents, and it scares them. Even if they—” She paused. “Even if you could find a way to manipulate the magic supply by creating and destroying it to only give it to the law-abiding, and I don’t think you can, is that still fair?”
“Can you give an example of why it wouldn’t be?” Dawn asked, sounding curious rather than confrontational.
Mireya nodded. “Let’s take Cyrin. He’s a Minor Mage involved in the activities of the Arcade, which is not only a center of crime but of anarchy too. He’s exactly who you’d hope to target with an enforced blanket ban of criminal magic use, in short. Yesterday night, he used magic to rob a museum, which was illegal. No judgment, of course.”
Cyrin snorted. “I think everyone in this room is pretty happy that I did. I don’t feel all that judged.”
Mireya rolled her eyes, almost playfully. “Two days before that, he used magic to contain a spell that would have unleashed a fiery earthquake in downtown Crystal City, which prevented untold damage and casualties. What if his hands were tied? What if he didn’t have the magic he would need to act with?”
There were a few moments of thoughtful silence. Shane found himself barely nodding.
“But if the person who made that spell didn’t have access to magic either, the threat wouldn’t have existed in the first place,” Kasumi said slowly, like she knew it was a good argument and was reluctant to refute it. “For all the good uses it has, magic is the largest enabler of crime that Aphirah has.”
“You rely a lot on the good ones,” Cyrin said. “Hospitals save lives with Salve. Flare provides power to some of our cities. The planes we flew here on used Force to help their engines. When the First Spell was created to stabilize magic, it did so by concentrating its supply in the world’s mountains and hills and controlling its power and purity, making it more reliable for humans to use. Even if you could avoid getting rid of magic entirely for a blanket ban and found a way to only leave magic accessible to these uses, why would you use the First Spell for the very opposite thing it was meant to do?”
“The First Spell is a tool,” Kaja said flatly. “It can do a lot of things, even things it wasn’t meant for.”
“Well, so can magic.”
Shane didn’t even realize he’d spoken the thought aloud until six pairs of eyes were on him. He resisted the urge to squirm under the attention— he’d been hoping to get away without saying very much.
“Go on,” Leilan encouraged him.
“Okay. Well.” Shane cleared his throat awkwardly, his pulse fluttering as he swallowed. “Magic is a natural resource. A material, almost. It becomes whatever humans make of it, using their creativity. Of course it’s going to have good and bad uses, because people will have thought of both. But we don’t fault metal for being made into bullets. If we did, we wouldn’t put it in our wedding rings.”
He hoped there was one of those hospitals with Salve nearby. Being watched this closely made him feel five seconds away from a heart attack.
“That’s what this debate sounds like, really. If we grabbed the wrong magic scroll and it could do anything with the world’s supply of metal, I don’t think we’d be talking about eradicating it.” Shane shifted in his seat. “There’s so much else we can do. The possibilities really might be limitless. What could we do instead?”
The silence went on for long enough that he wondered if he was going to have to say it all again, and that might have been too much, but then Leilan cleared his throat.
“There’s something I talked about with Dawn, when we were first wondering if we should try to hire you both,” he said. “A conversation about what we’d even use it for. My ideas won’t match the ones of the Houses, but— we were thinking it could be used to seal up the Tremor rift in Amber City.”
Cyrin hesitated before speaking. “That’s in line with what we’d probably too. We’d get rid of the Fading and magic poisoning too.”
“But like you said, the Houses aren’t going to do that,” Mireya cut in. “Or if they do, it’ll only be through getting rid of most magic.”
“The Houses don’t want any of those things to exist,” Dawn said. “Maybe it’s not their priority, but…”
“I’m a little hesitant to believe it,” Cyrin said. “Given that the Houses created and weaponized the Fading against the Ren to force them to surrender their lands and magic, and we’re still the only ones who can get it.”
Mireya bit her lip and nodded.
“They can be our priority,” Leilan said. “They should be, in fact.”
“I have a suggestion that I’m not sure anyone’s going to like,” Shane said.
“Well, you’ll say it anyway,” Kaja muttered.
Shane did a good job of ignoring her this time. “What if the five of us didn’t share it with the Houses?”
Silence after his contributions was becoming the theme.
“How so?” Mireya asked.
“We’re not the same as the Houses,” Shane said, glancing at Cyrin as he spoke. “We do exist separate from them. Our loyalties are supposed to lie close to them, but our values can’t match up exactly. If we don’t think we can fully trust them with the First Spell, then why hand it over to them? Why don’t the seven of us figure it out?”
Kasumi sighed. “I don’t dislike it, actually. What’s a little more treason, anyway?”
“Kind of insignificant at this point, honestly,” Dawn said. “I’m in.”
Shane looked between Cyrin and Mireya. “I know you aren’t perfectly trusting of us, but I think you prefer us to the Houses. If we’re better at all, this is a lot safer than the alternative.”
The mercenaries exchanged glances.
“We do prefer you,” Cyrin said.
Mireya’s stare was hard as it passed over each of them. “Would you really leave them out of this? All of you?”
The Heirs all nodded with different timings— Kaja’s was the latest, but it was a full nod.
“If we’re all comfortable with this, we can take it out of the safe and reunite up here to use it, settle the deal, and end our oaths,” Leilan said cautiously. He stood up. “I’m ready to go downstairs.”
Kasumi got to her feet a moment later. Mireya and Cyrin stood as one.
Shane climbed out of his seat to call the elevator for them. “I feel like this is historic,” he said. “Reaching this kind of compromise.”
“Yes, we know you’ve always wanted to see something like that,” Kasumi told him. “Hopefully the next few minutes are grander. Changing the world doesn’t happen every day.”Spoiler
Cyrin spent the elevator ride staring blankly ahead at the buttons for the hotel until they blurred into nonexistent numbers in his vision. There it was again, that urge to escape, to bolt for the nearest exit, but he felt trapped. It wasn’t even the sealed doors. He felt frozen to the ground, like if he just stood still enough, the threat would simply pass him by.
He really should have been thinking about Shane Hawking. If he had, maybe he wouldn’t feel panic pinning him down like this.
He heard a soft ding an unknown amount of time later, but he didn’t register it was for the elevator until he was seeing Mireya, Kasumi and Leilan standing outside the open in the lobby, facing him concernedly. He hadn’t even seen the doors move. One moment they’d been traveling downward and the next they were already there, with him holding up the group.
“Is he angry?” Kasumi asked uncertainly. Her voice sounded muffled to his ears, and she wasn’t speaking to him. Dimly, he wondered if they’d tried getting his attention already. “He’s clenching his fists.”
“No, he’s not angry,” Mireya said. “That means— it’s just— you can step out, Cyrin. It’s okay.”
Willing himself to move forward, Cyrin stepped out of the elevator, letting out a deep breath. He slowly unclenched his fists, raising his hands closer to his face. There were small crescent marks on his palms from the impression of his nails. “Sorry,” he murmured.
“You’re fine,” Leilan assured him. “When you’re ready, we’ll head to the reception.”
Cyrin nodded, blinking several times until their vision returned into focus. The lobby was entirely empty at this hour of the night, while the world clocks on the wall showed brighter times in Crystal City and Spark City. It was unsettling to hear only the rush of cars on the road and the ticking of time. They wouldn’t have guessed this hotel got that quiet.
“I’m alright,” they said, forcing conviction into their voice. “Let’s go.”
The four of them rounded a wall, expecting to see a lonely concierge at the front desk, bored on their night shift, but there was no one at the reception. All of them slowed to a stop when they saw it. Something was crawling at Cyrin’s senses.
“This isn’t right,” Leilan said. “I’ve been down here at many times of night. The lobby gets empty, but the hotel always has someone staffed here.”
“Maybe they’re on break?” Kasumi suggested. “We could wait until they get back, since we don’t have a key to the safe room.” She pointed to the door behind the desk.
“Wait,” Cyrin said, stretching out an arm to feel for whatever was invisibly tugging at their senses. It felt like magic, but weak magic, and they closed their eyes to concentrate.
“What is it?” Mireya asked.
Cyrin flicked their wrist to the side and back. “I’m sensing Concealment and Force,” they said quietly. “But it’s… a faded feeling. Old. Like it’s already been cast and used.”
Leilan’s gaze darted to him. “You’re detecting spells that aren’t active anymore?”
“I don’t know,” Cyrin said. “I think that’s what it means when the magic feels that way, like a remnant. Or an echo.” If they were concerned for him at the moment, he was not helping his case.
Mireya frowned, stepping towards the door. “If it seems like it’s gone, we should be—”
A new spell made Cyrin’s senses tingle again, and he caught her by the wrist, causing his fingertips to spark. “There’s someone casting Force,” he hissed. “This is definitely happening right now, and there’s probably a Concealed receptionist somewhere around here.”
Everyone looked to the door to the safe room. It was closed, but he thought he saw a crack of light pouring out from underneath.
“We need to get in there, right now,” Kasumi said.
“Cyrin and I first,” Mireya said.
Cyrin rushed to the door, kicking it in. He could have just opened it normally, as it swung wide, unlocked. Inside the room, Pia and another person were standing in front of the safe they’d chosen for the First Spell. Pia had her hands spread, flinging the Force spell at the very battered-looking safe, and it shook violently as the door cracked open. He didn’t recognize the other person, but there was a tracking device in his hand, a bright dot flashing in the center. Their gazes snapped to him and Mireya as they stood in the doorway.
“What are you doing?” Mireya snapped, clapping her hands to summon power to them. The light in the room went out, and Cyrin felt the hairs on the back of their neck rise.
Pia grinned, her face barely visible in the darkness. “Sparrow’s collecting his dues.”
Cyrin reached for their knife as Mireya raised her hands, both about to strike, but they missed the other thief’s movement of tossing an item through the air until it had landed at their feet. A high-pitched hiss like a kettle pierced their ears as a purple-tinted gas filled the air, blocking the projectile from view. Cyrin waved it away from their face, swinging the blade in front of them with their other hand, but the haze didn’t clear and they only struck empty air. They heard Mireya cough, and in their next breath they were too, choking. The air had gotten too thick.
Pia shouted something to the other thief about grabbing the scroll and covering his face, but her words were much harder to understand by the end of her sentence than when she’d started. Cyrin gasped for air, stumbling towards what he hoped was the safe, but he only slumped to his knees. His vision was blurry, his head was hurting with dizziness. He felt drowsier than he would have thought possible. This wasn’t just a smoke bomb.
Sparrow emerged from the gas, standing in front of him with a smirk that was somehow crystal clear in his sight even though the rest of him was hazy.
“No!” Cyrin shouted, but his cry came out strangled, and he doubled over coughing again.
Sparrow crouched down to be at his eye level. “Dying yet, my ghost?”
Cyrin swung at him as he lunged with the last of his energy, but there was nothing to hit. Only illusions and violet mist. He went tumbling forward into darkness as his tunnel vision swallowed him up.
Clarity’s room was cold, but her body was warm. They were laying across her bed, Cyrin’s arms around her waist, and he could feel the slight rise and fall of her breathing as he held her. He pressed his lips to her neck, just above her pulse through her skin so he could feel closer to her heart, and she snuggled against his chest with a soft sigh. He was familiar with the two of them like this, half-naked and tangled together and so still and so quiet, a heavy and yet air-light haziness seeming to hang over them. He couldn’t remember what night this time was, not when they all blended together in his mind, but it didn’t matter. His mind wasn’t racing, for once. He couldn’t think of much at all.
This is how it was, he thought as he trailed his fingers over her arm. They hadn’t spent time like this, not since he’d started questioning the two of them. Cyrin hadn’t related to the idea of romance, and he’d more or less settled with the label of aromantic by the time he was in college, but Clarity had confused him, given him an extra period of doubt. He didn’t love her in the romantic way, he knew that now, might have even known it at the time. But there was still that feeling, wiping the thoughts from his mind and replacing them with passion. So what was it?
Clarity shifted, burying her face against their shoulder, and Cyrin ran a hand through her long hair to keep it out of her face. Their gaze fell on the back of her neck as they cleared it, and— no. They weren’t remembering this part correctly.
“Clarity,” they whispered, leaning back to get a better look.
“Hmm?” She didn’t open her eyes, just tried to press closer to them. She looked perfectly calm, almost asleep.
“There’s something on the back of your neck.” It was a mark on her skin, possibly a tattoo, but it didn’t have the sheen of ink. The more they tried to focus on its shape, the more it blurred in their vision. Cyrin frowned, blinking rapidly as it settled for a moment. A… shield? Had they forgotten this somehow?
Clarity didn’t move, but she was silent for a long time. “It’s nothing,” she said finally. “There’s no need to worry.”
“I’ve never seen it before. How did you get—”
“Shhhh,” she said softly, almost as if she was bored of the question, gently pulling him back to her. She found his hand with hers, her fingers warm against the skin of his wrist. “Just relax. It’s all going to be fine.”
Cyrin was sure he had something more to say, but then she pressed her lips to his, and he didn’t mind forgetting it.
Casper’s drunken laughter was louder than the party music as he closed the door behind the last of his guests. Cyrin watched him stumble back to the home bar and slam more shot glasses on the counter, turning the music down. “Now that it’s just the three of us, we should have another drink,” he said with a grin, already rummaging for another bottle of rum. “Well, the first for you two.”
“It’s bad enough that you’re drinking with all of your friends right in front of Magnus,” Cyrin said firmly. “Stop trying to offer him some.”
Behind him, but just enough to his side that he would be able to see Casper, Magnus squeezed his hand. Cyrin squeezed his back, giving him a look to make sure he was alright. His brother had been silent nearly all night, occasionally squeaking out single-word answers to drunk party guests who were too enthusiastic over meeting the youngest Bridger. Cyrin had spent the event guarding him like a hawk, driving off anyone who made him uncomfortable. He wished he’d had an excuse to leave and take Magnus with him, or even just a way to, but he had neither. Camilla had had an allergic reaction to an hors d’oeuvre and Allison had taken his car to get her to the emergency room.
Casper rolled his eyes as he poured himself a shot. “I know you think you’re great for trying to get sober, but you’re killing the mood on my birthday.” He threw the glass back. “What’s the problem, anyway? He’s like, twelve, right?”
“Seven,” Magnus mumbled, hiding behind Cyrin a little further.
“Whatever. It’s not his birthday.” Casper frowned as he reached for the bottle again. “It’s not, right?”
“Casper,” Cyrin warned, letting go of Magnus so they could snatch the bottle away. “You should have stopped with the drinks a long time ago. There are other ways to be social than getting wasted with a hundred something guests.”
“What, by standing in the corner and using a death glare on anyone who stumbles up to you?” Casper laughed. “Sounds fun.”
Cyrin set the bottle on the floor— there was a coffee table just to their right, but it had gotten flipped at some point of the night. “Magnus,” they said quietly, pulling their brother closer, “is young enough that this is neither age-appropriate for him nor safe. Allison and Camilla, like the two of us, were only here to keep up appearances because it’d be strange if they didn’t show up, and they were very relieved to leave. Do you really want to be the kind of person who drives their family away?”
Casper snorted, searching below the counter for something. Taking one bottle away from him when he was standing in a bar wouldn’t do much good. “I mean, I was pretty thrilled when you left for college.”
“Well, I missed you,” Magnus protested.
“I know, little guy. I missed you too.” Cyrin ruffled the dark hair on his head.
“Ever thought about going somewhere far away and staying there?” Casper had found a bottle of gin and was spilling it on the counter in his attempts to pour it. “That’s the best present you could give me.”
“I don’t know where I’ll be living once I graduate,” Cyrin said, slowly and evenly.
“Yeah? Well, I know where you should be right now.” Casper swallowed his drink, closing his eyes and bracing himself on the counter. “With Mom.”
“Mom’s just back home,” Magnus whispered in confusion.
“She is, she’s okay. He means the mom he and I share, Lycila.” Cyrin kept his voice calm as he rubbed Magnus’ shoulder comfortingly, but he was giving Casper a hard glare.
“It’s not fair, you know?” Casper said, slurring his words together. “That you get to live and have no worth while she was stolen away from us.”
“Why is he talking like that?” Magnus sounded terrified.
“It’s fine,” Cyrin assured him, swallowing. “He’s just… saying the things he usually keeps to himself. It’ll pass.” He looked back at his older brother. “Casper, I don’t care what you do with your opinions, but I need you to sober up. You’re scaring Magnus.”
Casper sneered. “No, I’m very eager to share my thoughts now.” He slammed a fist on the counter, and Cyrin watched the shot glasses wobble. “Don’t you remember that funeral, when no one could understand why you weren’t in a casket with her? How you were a ghost among the living?” Each of his words was more growled than the one before it. “Well, why aren’t you dead?”
“I don’t have the answers to that,” Cyrin said, but their voice was starting to shake.
“What if you are dead?” Casper went on, slowly rounding the counter. “You already are to me.”
It was then that Cyrin saw the knife in his hand, sharpened and gleaming bright. His pulse spiked with alarm.
“Casper, you’re very drunk right now. You aren’t thinking straight.”
“I’m not?” Casper snapped, gesturing with the knife, and they took a step back. “Then why have I been thinking this since forever?”
“Magnus,” Cyrin said, very slowly, not taking their eyes off Casper. “I need you to run upstairs. Find somewhere nice and safe to spend the next few hours.”
“Casper, stop,” Magnus whimpered.
“Magnus, now, please.”
“Only one way to find out if you’re really dead or not.” Casper was staring at them with pure, unfiltered hatred, and they were starting to feel sick.
Cyrin backed up, glancing behind him at his younger brother. “Magnus, you need to—”
Casper lunged, far faster than he’d imagined he would with drunken reflexes.
Cyrin stumbled back, gasping, as the knife caught him in the ribs. He heard Magnus shriek with pure terror as he dropped to one knee, pressing one hand to the injury as sharp pain flared up in his chest. He felt thick, red blood seeping through his fingers, and he couldn’t help but scream as Casper ripped the knife out.
“Get out of here, Magnus,” Casper ordered, throwing the knife aside. “I’ll let you know how he dies.”
Cyrin heard a muffled sob and rushed, light footsteps as Magnus ran away, the sounds fading into silence as he got too far to hear. He let out a strangled cry of pain as he tumbled to his hands and knees and then the ground, unable to keep upright.
“Don’t mind me,” Casper said, stepping closer to them. “Just making sure you get there.”
“Casper,” Cyrin choked out. “Please.”
“Now you’re feeling close.” Casper walked around them in a slow circle. “Don’t worry. I’ll leave you an open window to fly out of. I know tradition.”
Keeping a hand pressed to the wound, Cyrin reached for the only item that might be of some help to him, but stopped before they closed their fist around it. They needed Casper to be gone first.
They needed to seem dead.
Cyrin made their gasping breaths slower and lighter and closed their eyes, slumping fully against the ground in the spreading pool of their blood. They couldn’t stop breathing entirely, but they had to hope Casper couldn’t tell a nearly dead body from a dead one. It seemed like like an eternity of ignoring the burning in his lungs before he finally heard a sigh from Casper— a sigh not exactly like relief, but one for when a task was done and behind.
“May the skies receive you.” They heard their brother say one of the only phrases he knew in Ren. There was a longer pause before Casper snorted and said, “If they’ll even have you.”
A new pain hit Cyrin in his chest, higher and to the side of where the stab wound was.
He heard Casper walk away, and there was the sound of the promised window opening. A silence stretched on for a few moments, and he was sure his heart racing against the floor would give him away. But then Casper’s footsteps moved in the direction of the door to his house, and he heard it close noisily behind him as keys rattled in the lock, then nothing.
With a moan of pain, Cyrin rolled over on his back, gasping for air. His hands were shaking too much to undo the clasp on the chain around his neck, so he pulled on it until it snapped, and the pendant fell on his chest. He picked it up, flicking the tiny compartment open. Inside was a small cluster of magic, just enough for one emergency spell.
He barely knew how to cast Salve, which was enough to make the risk of magic poisoning real even though he had Renvara magic. But if he didn’t cast it, he’d die anyway. He had to take his chances.
With trembling hands, Cyrin went what they thought were the right motions of weaving the spell, twisting, tying, and pulling until they had something that looked more or less right in their hands. They didn’t have time to refine it, so they pressed it to the bleeding wound in their chest and weakly snapped their fingers.
Cyrin winced as his body pulled itself back together, closing up so there was no break in their skin except for the line of a scar that was lighter than the rest of the skin around it. He lay there for a few moments, gasping, as his head spun and his vision went in and out of focus. He was alive, yes, he was alive, but he was still in a pool of his own blood. He was covered in it. Saints knew how much he’d lost having to wait for Casper, and it could still even be fatal.
He lifted his wrist with a heaving breath and called Allison on his communicator, letting his arm fall close to his face so he’d be able to hear it.
“Cyrin? Hey!” His older sister was quick to answer, but also too quick to let him get a word in. “Camilla’s going to be okay, though I don’t think she’ll be going back to the party. She stayed away from the seafood, but there might have been some cross-contamination with another plate. I’ll need to speak with the caterers Casper had.” Allison clicked her tongue. “Is the party still going? It’s super late, but the last one he threw went even later, so—”
Cyrin let out a long, shuddering breath, closing his eyes so the tears were contained.
“Cyrin?” Allison had heard him, and now there was concern in her voice. “Cyrin, are you okay over there?”
“I need you to pick me up.” It had only been a few minutes since they’d last spoken aloud, but their voice rasped like they hadn’t used it in years.
“I don’t know if I can.” They thought they heard heels clacking as Allison paced. “I could leave Camilla at the hospital for a little bit, but it’d be too long to get to my house. I guess I could get you to the hospital—”
“The hospital is exactly where I need to go.” It was a fierce struggle to get the words out through their heavy breathing.
“What in the Saints happened?” The anxiety in Allison’s voice had spiked, and they blinked their eyes open. “Is Casper there? Can he tell me what happened? I can call him instead.”
“No, no, don’t,” Cyrin begged. “Don’t call him. Please don’t tell him anything about me at all. Just—” The ceiling darkened in his vision, and he thought he might pass out. “Please, I need you to come get me. I’ll tell you everything later.”
“I’m on my way. Hang in there, okay?” She ended the call before he could think of an answer.
Cyrin lay panting, struggling to keep the ceiling lights bright in his vision. He needed to be conscious when Allison got here, because he needed to tell her to find Magnus. Hopefully he would come out for her.
The lights were getting… brighter now. They were different colors, too, suddenly gaining crystal clear focus like pixels in an image. Cyrin squinted until he realized he couldn’t see anything but them, and that the pixels weren’t clear. They were shifting, out of place, like static on a screen. He heard the crackling sound in his ears.
“No, no,” he muttered, not sure why he was trying to cling to this memory of him dying, but it didn’t matter. He fell into the next one.
The next time Cyrin blinked, he was standing, and the room had shifted into the Bridger family residence. The west wing, with its large, picturesque windows and its cozy, warm lighting, to be specific. He glanced at his shirt, feeling it for blood. No sign of it. Inhaling deeply, he looked up, scanning around him.
The west wing could have been a complete residence if it were cut off from the rest of the mansion— it had a kitchen, bathrooms and bedrooms as well as many sitting rooms. He was in the library, which connected the wing to the rest of the house and led to the other rooms of the wing. Cyrin looked through the doorway to the next room over, where he could just glimpse the back of an armchair facing a luminous window. A hand hung limply over the armrest.
He found himself taking a step back as a shiver traveled down his spine, then hurrying away to the door that led to the rest of the house, turning the handle forcefully.
It didn’t open.
Cyrin stared at it, rattling it with more force, even pushing against it with their weight. Nothing happened.
“Okay,” they muttered, taking a deep breath and trying to push back the dread rising in their chest. They’d broken out of holding cells, of tall building windows, of impossible to escape rooms. This was just another locked door. They could do this.
Cyrin kicked at it several times, each kick more powerful than the last, but the door didn’t budge. They frantically tugged at the handle, hoping that they’d knocked something loose, but there was no sign that anything they were doing was working. A faint cry of despair escaped their throat as as they gave up on it and rammed their shoulder against the door, then one of pain as it twisted.
No. No, they’d done everything to make sure they’d never end up trapped here again. They’d learned all there was to learn about unlikely escapes, gotten out of countless impossible situations, never gotten stuck somewhere since then. This couldn’t be happening.
The sound of static from the screen that he knew was in the next room only got louder, filling up his ears. Cyrin let out a sob, closing his eyes and pressing his forehead against the door. Even though he couldn’t see it, he knew the armchair would be in full view if he turned around. He couldn’t turn. He just needed to get out of whatever trip down memory lane this was.
Saints, please.
As if sent by them, a hand grabbed him by the shoulder and ripped him out of his illusion. -
CONTINUED - Week 42 - Blizzard Week 3
Spoiler
Leilan flinched awake as the last of the walls went tumbling down.
His cheek was cold against the lobby floor— the lobby, he was still in the lobby. Not in Amber City. Not in the middle of the worst earthquake his hometown had seen in centuries. He had no idea what that purple gas had been, but it had made him see things he’d hoped to keep out of his mind. Wincing, he opened his eyes.
Kasumi was sprawled out next to him, her eyes closed. He was concerned at how still she was until he saw the slight rise and fall of her breathing. Leilan was about to reach out to her, but he heard a foot falling against the ground, and he froze. He half-closed his eyes, barely able to see the room through the gap between his eyelashes.
He was sure his brain was playing tricks on him again when the astronaut from the Arcade stepped into view, leaning over him.
The astronaut didn’t do anything. At least, they didn’t seem to be. It was impossible to see through their glass visor when all it showed was a refracted view of him lying on the floor. He held completely still for several more seconds until the astronaut moved away, and it was all he could do to not gasp in relief.
He saw them move over to Mireya, who was slumped against the door to the safe room. As far as Leilan could tell, she was fully out of it. He thought the astronaut spent a long time observing her, because they seemed to be trying to get a good look at her face. After a while, the astronaut backed up a step, hurriedly moving inside the room. Leilan wasn’t sure anymore how much of this was hallucination and how much was reality.
The astronaut knelt next to Cyrin, and Leilan thought the mercenary’s face had a strange, reflective sheen to it, from what he could tell. Hesitantly, like they didn’t know what they were doing, the astronaut touched Cyrin’s shoulder.
Cyrin sat up immediately, gasping for air, and the astronaut jolted back. The two stared at each other for a moment before Cyrin scrambled away, eyes wide with fright. The astronaut made a break for it, nearly tripping over Leilan as they ran further into the lobby and out of sight. Cyrin wiped at his face, shaking his head, and Leilan realized there were thin streaks of tears on his cheeks.
“You okay?” he asked, pushing himself up on his arms with a grunt of effort. His muscles felt weak, and he thought he had some bruises from his fall when he’d passed out.
Cyrin nodded, looking away from him once he’d given him a glance to see that he was fine. He dragged himself over to the safe, where the door was hanging open. “It’s gone,” he confirmed quietly.
Leilan shook his head. He wasn’t ready to process that disappointment yet.
“You try to wake up Kasumi,” Cyrin instructed, moving over to Mireya. “We woke up, they shouldn’t be far behind.”
Leilan hoped so. Mireya and Kasumi were smaller than him and Cyrin, and he could only hope that whatever dose of the gas they’d breathed in wasn’t worse on them.
He crawled over to Kasumi, lifting her back and neck and shaking her gently. “Kasumi,” he whispered. “You need to wake up. Whatever you’re seeing, it’s not real.”
“Dad?” Kasumi murmured drowsily, her expression remaining blank.
Leilan swallowed. “You’re remembering him, Kasumi. You need to break out of it.”
Kasumi didn’t answer.
Fingers shaky with anxiety, Leilan pulled up one of the two Heir group chats on his communicator— the informal one with personal usernames— and typed out a message.
>leilan-akamai:
We need all three of you downstairs. There’s been a problem.
Kasumi’s wrist buzzed, so he knew it had gone through.
Cyrin was holding Mireya up against his side, shaking her arm. When she didn’t rouse, he looked frantically at Leilan. “We need help.”
“I sent a message to the other three,” Leilan said. “You got more magic, right? Can you do anything with it?”
Cyrin shook their head after thinking. “I don’t know how it could help.”
Leilan looked back at the sleeping Kasumi, a burning question on his mind. He finally asked it. “Cyrin, what kind of mage are you, exactly?”
“I’m just a Minor Mage.”
“Really?”
“Not even an Alchemist or Artificer. Nothing special.”
Leilan gave them a look, trying to figure out whether they actually believed it or not. He didn’t know how good of a liar Cyrin was, or if they would even lie about this. “Are you sure about that?”
Cyrin looked baffled, so his money was on them meaning it. “What do you mean?”
“How did you sense a spell that was already cast and used up? There shouldn’t have been anything for you to detect.”
Cyrin shrugged. “I think I’ve done it before. It’s not too hard if it hasn’t been very long since it was cast. It’s just a lot fainter.”
“Minor Mages aren’t able to do that,” Leilan said. “They can only sense magic that is active in the moment, not… whispers of old magic. I don’t even know if that’s a real thing.”
Mireya slumped a little, and Cyrin caught her before she slipped. “I’m not sure what to tell you, Leilan, but I can.”
Leilan frowned. “Well, what’s your Hollow?”
“It’s Tremor,” Cyrin said. “I had a hard time using it in the vault.”
“I saw that,” Leilan said, nodding. “But it wasn’t affecting you in the usual way. Normally, when they’re around their Hollow, Minor Mages feel really ill. They get really dizzy, think they’re going to be sick, have trouble standing up. You just got… strained and shaky.”
“Sounds like an adverse reaction to me,” Cyrin said, but there was confusion on their face and vague alarm in their voice.
“No, no, I know,” Leilan said quickly. “It just wasn’t typical of a Minor Mage. There’s a few things about you that aren’t. Do you know if you’re actually… if…?”
Cyrin gave him one of those long, difficult to read looks. “Well,” he said finally. “I don’t see what the alternative is.”
“There they are!” Shane yelled, rushing to the front desk. Kaja and Dawn were just behind, equally hurried.
“What happened?” Dawn asked, getting on the ground beside Mireya. “Why are they unconscious?”
“We all were,” Leilan said. “There were… There were two people in here, breaking the safe open with magic. They threw some kind of grenade with gas in it.”
“They were Sparrow’s followers.” Cyrin shook his head. “They took the First Spell. It’s gone.”
“Gone?” Shane repeated.
“He’ll have it soon.” Disgust and bitterness mixed in Cyrin’s voice.
“What’s going on?” Mireya muttered as she opened her eyes, shifting and putting a hand to her forehead as if she had a headache.
Dawn took one of her arms while Cyrin took the other, and they helped her up. “We’ll talk upstairs,” she said quietly. Mireya nodded, her expression weary.
Kaja knelt to pick up Kasumi, scooping her up in her arms with barely any effort. “Come on,” she said, looking back at the safe room, where the lights Mireya had put out were just starting to sputter to life again. There was a rare uneasiness in her voice. “We’ll have to have an entirely different conversation now.”
Kasumi roused when the elevator stopped at their floor, blinking up at Kaja as the seven of them stepped out. “Why are you holding me like I’m a small child?” she mumbled, wriggling a bit.
“Because you are pretty small,” Kaja said, not unkindly. “And you also passed out.”
“Those two people work for Sparrow,” Leilan told her. “They stole the First Spell while we were all seeing things in that gas.”
“That bastard,” Mireya growled, more alert now. “Of course he had something up his fucking sleeve.”
They all took the same spots they had sat in for their last talk, with the exception of Kasumi, who Kaja laid out on a couch to herself. Leilan could see that even the Heirs upstairs were tired, and he knew that ideally, they wouldn’t be having another, possibly more difficult conversation at this hour. They were all spent.
“So,” Cyrin said quietly, rubbing at his face. His eyes seemed mostly dry now. “We can’t do what we planned to do, and Sparrow will also have the First Spell soon. This is a very low moment.”
“How bad is it that it’ll be in his hands?” Dawn asked.
“Bad,” Cyrin said. “Very bad.”
“It’s bad for you because you were hoping to keep dangerous magic out of the hands of criminals, because he could now potentially control all of it,” Mireya said. “And it’s bad for us because he has visions for magic that we don’t like at all.”
“So, when he was setting us up with you so that you could get it out of the Fall…” Shane leaned back in his seat, aghast.
“He was planning to leave the hard work to us and then steal it before we could do anything,” Leilan said. “I didn’t trust that he was facilitating things out of the goodness of his heart, but I didn’t know this was his ulterior motive.”
“Mireya, Cyrin,” Kaja said slowly. “You had a client who went missing after you went to the Permafrost’s Fall for him, right?”
Mireya nodded. “We did.”
“Sparrow also said he’d sent nearly every client you’ve gotten your way on his personal recommendation,” Kaja said. “I’m guessing that included the one before us.”
Cyrin sat up suddenly. “You’re thinking he orchestrated us going to the Fall the first time, too. So that we’d stumble across the First Spell and have footage of it, and then the news of us discovering it would get out.”
Kaja nodded. “I think he must have known where it was even before you went there.”
“He mentioned a professor who received that footage and revealed it before getting killed, but Cyrin doesn’t think such a person exists,” Shane said. “Sparrow must have made him up and done the revealing himself.”
“But how did he find out where it was before anyone else did?” Leilan asked. “Why the two of you specifically? And how did he find us now?” He coughed. “That’s a lot of questions, I’m sorry.”
Mireya raised a finger as she addressed each one. “Who knows, he has it out for us, and…” She paused. “I don’t know. He might have forced a friend we talked to earlier to share with him.”
“Clarity wouldn’t do that,” Cyrin argued. “She doesn’t have all the information anyway.”
“Who’s Clarity?” Dawn asked.
“She’s an Alchemist,” Mireya said. “She’s our friend, and somewhat a third teammate, but she still works for Sparrow. She didn’t leave his employment when we did.”
Leilan looked to Cyrin. “What would she know, and why wouldn’t she share it with him?”
Cyrin bit their lip. “She heard that the First Spell was in a safe, and she has our location shared with her. That’s all. She could have gotten our hotel from that, theoretically, but Sparrow could have found out without her help just fine. He would already know we’re in Storm City if he was aware of the First Spell’s location, so he could have sent his people over right away. They could have followed us, tracked us, whatever.”
“And you’re sure she didn’t share anything you told her?” Kasumi asked. She seemed more alert now, sitting up on her couch. “Because she’d be a useful ally if we tried to get it back from Sparrow.”
“Of course not,” Cyrin said, their gaze darting to Mireya. “She may be— not yet ready to leave Sparrow behind, but she’s our friend, not his. She wouldn’t do that to us.”
Mireya nodded after a moment. “I do believe we mean a lot more to her than Sparrow does.”
Shane cleared his throat, raising his hand. “Hold on. Are we getting it back from Sparrow? The alternative would be kind of scary, but… That sounds like another heist to me.”
“Do we have much of a choice?” Dawn asked.
Leilan cleared his throat. “Well, the five of us might. We’ve technically reached the end of our deal we swore to, because we did get the First Spell, and it wouldn’t be hard to meet up again to finish what we started if Cyrin and Mireya went on and managed to steal it back. But,” he added, looking around at all of them, “it’s also possible for us to go on. We’d have a few days before we’d have to show up to the celebration in Starlight City for the Houses’ anniversary, and maybe it would sit better with some of us to go through with it.” He glanced at Cyrin and Mireya. “Because while we’re opposed in a few ways, I think all of us find a greater enemy in Sparrow than each other.”
“You’d be right about that,” Mireya said. “I wouldn’t mind a larger team against Sparrow.”
“We could extend those Chant vows,” Kaja suggested. “Just add that it now goes until we get it back from Sparrow.”
“Is everyone okay with this?” Leilan asked.
He was surprised to see that not only did everyone nod fairly quickly, but there also seemed to be little reluctance to it.
Cyrin stood, removing a small cluster of magic from their MagicBox. “Leilan, care to do the honors again?”
Leilan nodded as he stood, holding out his arm as he had done for that first meeting at the table in the Arcade. There was no way he could have known he would be doing it willingly only a few days later.
Giving him a slight smile of encouragement, Cyrin twisted the spell into a swirl of Chant, and they each placed a hand in one of the curves. The thief snapped his fingers.
“I, Cyrin Troy, re-enter into oath.”
“I, Leilan Akamai, re-enter into oath.” Now that he had the ability to use his real name, his oath already felt more compelling.
“I vow on behalf of myself and Mireya to honor my most recent oath to Leilan until we have retrieved the First Spell from Sparrow,” Cyrin said. He seemed very familiar with the language of magic oaths. “We will continue as the defenders of the Heirs until this new deal has ended.”
“I vow on behalf of myself, Kaja, Dawn, Shane, and Kasumi to continue to pledge our help to Mireya and Cyrin until the First Spell is in our hands again,” Leilan said. “I reaffirm that we will follow them where needed until they no longer need us.”
Cyrin nodded. “This I swear.”
“This I swear,” Leilan echoed.
The Chant spell winked out.
“Before we make a plan,” Leilan said, lowering his hand, “we need to talk about something else. There’s been an astronaut following us around.”
Mireya looked startled. “Yes! I’ve seen him too.”
“Oh, thank the Saints,” Cyrin sighed. “I was starting to think I’d hallucinated them.”
“There’s a what following us around?” Shane asked.
“When I woke up from the gas, there was an astronaut watching us,” Leilan explained. “He— you said he, Mireya?— didn’t seem to do much, just sort of examined us. Cyrin saw him too.”
Kaja shook her head. “Well, I think you hallucinated him.”
“No, because I’ve seen him before,” Leilan said. “In the Arcade, when we were looking for Favia. I was with Dawn and Kasumi, and he was just in the crowd. I think he noticed me, but he slipped away before I could point him out.”
“I also saw him in the Arcade,” Mireya added. “He was in the store buying something when we were picking up artifacts the next day. I chased after him.”
Dawn shook her head, smiling faintly with amusement. “So that’s why you dashed off and left me to pick up those Force rings.”
“If I had said hey, there’s an astronaut over here who’s giving me weird vibes, I’m going to run after him, you’d just think I was really bad at finding excuses to bail,” Mireya said, and Dawn laughed.
“What happened with him?” Kasumi asked, leaning forward.
“He bought this device from the shop,” Mireya said. “It was small, with an amount of stored power that seemed outrageous for that size. I tried to talk to him, because I could feel it and I was curious, but he ran off. I followed him up to the roof of the Fortune, and all of a sudden, he just… disappeared. He was still there, but invisible. He never even cast a spell.”
“A power device,” Kaja mused. “Like—”
“Yes, almost exactly like this one,” Mireya said, taking out the device from the vault. To Kasumi and Shane’s shocked expressions, she added, “We found it on the stand for the First Spell. It made no sense.”
Shane shook his head. “Why is no one sharing these things when they notice them?”
“Sorry,” Mireya said sheepishly. “Anyway, it was almost the same. Dawn suggested it was for ‘the new spaceship’, which is what gave you all away, by the way. I showed this to Clarity, and she agreed, except for one detail. She said that we’d have optimized the design to be better than this one, so this was too large for a new ship. But it could belong to a much older one.”
“And was the one from the astronaut smaller?” Kasumi guessed.
Mireya nodded. “Exactly.”
“Is he… trying to get back to space?” Cyrin asked. “And was he in the Permafrost’s Fall somehow?”
“I have no idea why he would have left an old space battery there, and no idea why he’d want a new one,” Mireya said. “But I have a theory that he got the old one from the spacewreck.”
“That’s plausible,” Shane said. “Well, about as plausible as it could get.”
Leilan cleared his throat. “Mireya, have you ever seen anything like the battery the astronaut picked up?”
“Nope,” Mireya said. “I thought this one here was cutting-edge technology, but it looks clunky compared to the other one.”
“Then I might have some information to add to this puzzle.”
Shane groaned, leaning forward and burying his face in his hands. “Saints.”
“I agree with Shane, actually,” Kaja said, pointing at him. “We need to learn something about communication.”
Shane pinched the bridge of his nose as if he had a headache. “Never thought I’d hear you say you agreed with me.”
“You can savor it, but don’t start expecting it to hear it again.”
“Point taken,” Leilan said. “There’s this family that is in close relationship with the Houses, supporting government projects.” He looked to Cyrin and Mireya. “Do you know the Cardozo family?”
“The family line that last had control of the House of Wisdom?” Cyrin asked.
“That very one. One of its members, Marius, is our friend,” Leilan continued. “He called me in Amber City because our families were making it his problem that the five of us were missing. One thing he mentioned was that his family had just gotten one of the prototypes for a new device stolen from them before they could get a patent or more of them produced.”
“Did he say what type of device it was?” Dawn asked.
Leilan shook his head. “He did not, but maybe I could ask him, if it matters to this. If it was valuable, and it was stolen, it seems plausible enough that it would have ended up on the black market in a place like the Arcade fairly quickly.”
Shane’s headache looked like it had passed over to Cyrin, because they closed their eyes and sighed. “This mess is a fucking spiderweb."
“Maybe it is,” Kaja said. “We could be drawing it all up. Whatever’s happening here, though, I’m thinking one thing. We don’t know that we can trust this astronaut.”
“Exactly,” Kasumi agreed. “We can’t tell what side he’s on yet.”
“He helped me, though,” Mireya said. “When I was on the roof. I had the dumb idea to charge at him when he was invisible to see if he was still there, and I nearly fell off when I tripped on his foot. He caught me and pulled me back on the roof.”
Leilan nodded slowly. “That’s interesting. Maybe he’s not out for us, because of that and of how he could have done anything to the four of us who were passed out, but didn’t. We don’t know that means he’s an ally, though, or an enemy of Sparrow. We don’t know if he’s dangerous. I think we should proceed with caution if we see him again. Has everyone got that?”
There was a series of nods.
“I think we’re ready for a plan then,” Cyrin said. “Dawn, can you take care of those plane tickets again?”
Dawn grabbed her tablet from the coffee table. “On it.”
“Alright.” Cyrin rubbed at their eyes. “So— no, wait. I think we need someone on coffee duty too if we’re to get through this.”
“I second that,” Shane said, getting to his feet and rushing to the kitchen. “Seven cups of coffee to make up for what will probably be seven hours of missed sleep, coming right up.”Spoiler
If Mireya wasn’t sure whether the Heirs were starting to get familiar with her or not, she got her answer when Shane knocked on her door the next morning.
“Wake up, Mireya!” he called. “You outslept me, and you know what that means.”
Mireya rubbed at her eyes. “That I might have actually had a nice morning?”
“Maybe.” Shane paused. “But also that you need to get up. The plane’s here in three hours. Dawn tried with the airlines, but she couldn’t find anything with this short notice, so we got a charter from the Houses.”
“Got it.” She yawned, sitting up and climbing out of bed.
She figured Shane had left, but he spoke again after a few moments. “I have a question that I’ve been meaning to ask, actually.”
“I might have an answer.”
“What does the Fortune stand for? The casino? Is it named that for the money there?”
Mireya snorted at the unexpected question. “What? No. It’s the Fortune, as in fate. You’ll get laughed at if you don’t know what it stands for.”
“Okay,” Shane said, slowly drawing out the word with skepticism. “Well. See you out here soon!” His footsteps receded down the hallway.
“Not even a thank you,” Mireya said to herself, fixing her hair in the mirror. “I just saved him from so much bullying.”
She left her room once she’d gotten all ready, finding most of the group to be in a bit of a frenzy. Kasumi was making breakfast, and it seemed she’d thought to do it for all of them and not just her fellow, because there was a plate of pancakes for Mireya sitting on the counter. Leilan was busy on a call, packing a suitcase in the living room as he talked to someone about arrival times, but he found a moment to give her a quick smile. Cyrin was sitting in front of the fireplace and swiftly weaving magic, with the spell stones from the vault in front of them. She gave them a salute, and they switched to casting one-handed so they could return it.
The only one around who didn’t seem to be in a hurry was Dawn. Mireya spotted her on the balcony outside the living room window, sitting in a chair and turned away to face the city. A tablet rested in her lap. Feeling curious, Mireya pushed the glass door to the balcony open, waving to her. Dawn smiled, and gestured for her to take the other seat.
“What are you up to out here?” Mireya asked, sitting down. “It’s a bit windy out here.”
“Just some art. I finished packing, and I needed a moment to relax.” Dawn set her tablet and stylus on the small table between them so she could see. “The cold keeps me alert, anyway.”
Mireya peered at the screen. Dawn had been drawing clouds, delicately shading them with gray and blue and smudges of white. There was enough detail to the art that she could make out individual water droplets. “Wow, that’s really good.”
“Thanks. Storm City has some great clouds.” Dawn laughed, before she pointed to the lower, empty half of the screen. “I haven’t decided what buildings I should draw, though.”
“You could do a full drawing of clouds and no buildings, but Storm City wouldn’t look right without its sky.” Mireya shrugged.
“Yeah, that makes sense.” Dawn tapped the end of her stylus on the table. “Do you like storms?”
Mireya blinked. “How come?”
“I don’t know, you’re from this city, so I figured you’d seen a few. Plus, I heard you had some sort of Arcade codename— the Stormguide?”
“Oh, I see.” Mireya laughed. “They’re fun, I guess. I prefer watching them to being in them.”
Dawn nodded. “And your codename?”
“I got struck by lightning once and nobody’s let me forget about it.” It wasn’t a lie, technically.
Dawn’s eyes widened. “Seriously? That’s astonishing. Were you fine because of your electricity powers?”
Mireya glanced down at the Taeveni Courtyard below, at the replication of the thunderbird that had once been so hard to fight. It looked so harmless carved in stone. “Long story short, yeah,” she said. “There’s a bit more to it, but I was fine.”
She looked over and saw Dawn tracing a crooked streak of pale yellow, slashing at the blank canvas from a billowing cloud. “That’s very interesting,” the artist said. “You live a strange life.”
Mireya chuckled. “Don’t you?”
Dawn pondered that, looking up at her. “I guess,” she said. “Most people don’t become Heirs, or have the chance to be one. I didn’t assume I would be.”
“Really?” Mireya asked. “No lifelong ambition to be in charge?”
Dawn shook her head, smiling faintly. “Not at all. I actually took the position from someone who had more ambition than me.”
Mireya raised her eyebrows. “Is there a story there?”
“I suppose there is.” Dawn set down her stylus. “I had an older brother. His name’s Jasper, and he was the Heir before me. I don’t think you would know too much about him, but he was… a problem. He was only in it for the power. He sabotaged plans, ruined Heir discussions and decisions, always wanted his way. He really just couldn’t wait for my House’s leader to die.” She chewed on her lip. “I really didn’t like seeing it.”
Mireya nodded slowly. “And you took it from him?”
“I used the Champion’s Appeal.” Dawn broke her gaze away for a moment. “It’s this weird, old rule in House code that no one’s bothered to get rid of, even though I was the last person to use it in a long time. If there’s concern that an Heir or Leader is acting out of line in a dangerous way that could bring down the House, someone from the House can challenge them to the position. It’s risky for both people, though. It involves a special Chant spell for each person that acts a bit like a lie detector, except it weighs the two people’s morals and character against each other. The person it deems better wins the appeal and the role.”
“It does sound archaic,” Mireya mused. “But you won, yeah? You were the better person. You got someone corrupt out of power. That’s pretty good.”
“I’m not sure I am.” Dawn smiled, thinly and without any joy. “I might not have been power-thirsty, and I’m not now, but I don’t have any direction because I didn’t actually want the position. I just knew we needed him out of it. He…” She paused, and her next words trembled. “I had to do some horrible thing to keep him from doing horrible things. No one else was going to, so I did.”
“Dawn,” Mireya said slowly, with a growing realization. “You had a brother?”
“It wasn’t just any binding Chant spell. Not the regular ones like Cyrin and Leilan swore.” Dawn wiped her eyes. “It was more like the Oathbound ones. The ones that kill you if you fail at them.”
The air rushed out of Mireya’s lungs for a moment. “Oh.”
“If I killed my brother to get power, it doesn’t sound much better than whatever he did with power, right? Maybe even makes me worse.” Dawn let out a shuddering breath. “Sorry, I thought I might be able to talk about this without crying, but it’s only been a few seasons. I—”
“Dawn, you aren’t him,” Mireya said firmly. “I’ve only known you for a few days and even I can tell that.”
“Not very long ago, you thought we were all like him.” Dawn blinked back more tears. “I might be.”
“I thought— never mind what I thought.” Mireya shook her head. “I knew you weren’t corrupt like that. This really doesn’t change my opinion of you.”
It did, though. It couldn’t have been easy for Dawn to do, and it must have taken a huge amount of bravery for her to stand up to her brother, knowing what the only two possible outcomes would be. Her death or his— or as Dawn saw it, his blood on her hands.
Dawn sniffed. “Have you ever had to do this?”
It took Mireya a moment to figure out what she meant. “Take someone’s life, you mean?”
Dawn nodded, wiping her eyes with the sleeve of her sweater.
“Yes,” Mireya said hesitantly, and quickly added, “It’s a very hard thing to mentally justify to yourself. You could have had all the reasons in the world to do it, or just no choice at all, and it will still seem like you did the wrong thing and there was something better to do.”
“If I ever managed to justify it to myself, I should know I’ve gone off the deep end.” Dawn smiled that thin, regretful smile again. “I need to know it’s wrong. If it starts to feel right, something terrible has happened to my heart.”
Mireya nodded after a moment. “Yeah… Yeah. The people it rests easy with are mostly the people who should be feeling guilty about it.”
Dawn turned her head to look back at the cityscape. “Was it hard?” she asked, her voice a little more even. “For you?”
“I’m not sure I’ll ever fully be able to put into words how much it’s affected me,” Mireya said. “But yes. I saw the memory again just last night as if it were yesterday, so I know it’s stayed with me all the time since. I’m not inclined to let myself forget, either.”
A woman closed the door behind Mireya and Dante as they stepped out of the back of the car. “This is as far as we can drive,” she said. “We’ll walk the final ten minutes.”
Mireya nodded, balancing her feet on the uneven gravel path as she scanned the path ahead. The mountain road had narrowed substantially, with pine and spruce branches stretching out in their way and the occasional fallen boulder that made driving impossible. Beside her, Dante shivered slightly, pulling the coat that didn’t quite fit him tighter around himself. He was too used to the loose clothes of pirates and the warmth of the tropics to have owned a coat suitable for these mountains, and the coat actually belonged to one of the House members who had sent them off before the drive.
“We’re ready,” Mireya said, looking to Dante for confirmation. He nodded, but tightened his jaw.
The woman— a member of the House of Wisdom and the Cardozo family— then started to lead the way up the trail. She must not have been important enough to have her own bodyguards, but had to be important enough to chosen for this, so Mireya couldn’t guess at her rank. The stones rattled and crunched under their feet as they hiked, and sometimes she’d wobble over a loose one and bump into Dante, but he kept her upright.
Finally, the trees on their left thinned, and they found themselves on a cliff overlooking a forested valley. The sky was streaked with opaque white clouds that reduced visibility further out, but they weren’t high enough for it to matter much to them. The wind was fierce, and Mireya brushed dark brown hair— not yet aqua— from her face whenever it picked up.
“Interesting place to broker peace from,” Dante mused, tucking his hands in the coat’s pockets.
The Cardozo woman looked him over, nodding slowly. She looked ten, maybe fifteen years older than them, with brown skin and natural chin-length hair. There had been a strangely hollow look in her eyes ever since she’d picked them up in the car. “I understand it must be,” she said, taking out a spyglass. “It’s certainly no assembly room or diplomacy visit. But it’s where it must happen.” She raised the spyglass to her eye, scanning the forest below, before she passed it to Dante. “Look to the clearing towards the west.”
Dante took it, and he spent a while examining the clearing. “Who’s the guy in bright turquoise, and how much money did it take to dye his coat that way? A full tax season?”
“It’s teal,” Cardozo corrected, before clearing her throat and ignoring the second part of his question. “He’s a representative from the House of Justice.”
“The Morrow family, huh?” Dante passed Mireya the spyglass, and she was sure he was wondering if there were a way to steal the coat from this distance. He was pretty good, and enough of a kleptomaniac to try, but he was probably out of luck this time.
She squinted until she found the clearing and could focus on the three people standing in it. They were in a triangle formation, with the man in the arguably more turquoise than teal coat standing between the other two. The leftmost person had a spell in her hands, which she held away from her body, as if she didn’t trust it. The other person was a young man from Renvara, his arms folded over his chest and his head lowered. She wondered if he felt like a traitor at this moment. She and Dante might be traitors, too. It would all depend on how everything here played out.
“I hear you know the whistling language,” Cardozo said as Mireya lowered the spyglass. Dante took it again.
Mireya nodded. “Want me to call to them to let them know we’re here?”
Cardozo lowered her gaze to the clearing. “Say whatever you can.”
Mireya placed her forefingers between her lips, inhaling deeply before whistling a series of tone of different pitches and lengths to compose her message. The high, shrill sound carried over the mountain and into the valley. Wolves above and below.
“They heard it,” Dante said, peering through the spyglass. “They all reacted to it, at least. I’m going to assume the mage doing a scared little dance in place meant that.”
Cardozo turned to him. “Is the spell close enough for you to use?”
Dante hesitated. Mireya knew this mission was strange for both of them, because she wasn’t sure when the last time he’d paused before saying anything had been. “I think so.”
Cardozo nodded, something like relief creeping over her face. “Good. You’re preventing war, you know.”
Mireya pressed her lips together. “It’s just a Rationale spell, right? One that will make everyone in Renvara want peace, nothing more?”
“Nothing more,” Cardozo promised. “The part about it only affecting the Ren so it doesn’t confuse anyone Aphiran is up to your friend here, but he has said he could control it that way.” She looked to Dante. “You can’t sense the spells that you spread?”
“I can tell when there’s magic, but can only determine their type when I’m searching for a specific kind for me to use,” Dante explained. “I can’t sense it like Minor Mages.”
“That’s interesting. What you can do makes up for that, though. Both of you are incredibly powerful.” Cardozo cleared her throat. “The Houses are very grateful for the two of you, as I’m sure you know. It may be sneaky, but this is how we avoid war between our two nations.”
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