Galvanized, Rafe went over to a dark purple quartz pedestal and ran his hand wonderingly over it. Then he drew out the bag with the Keys and pulled out one of Leo’s Keys, the one with the same color. It fit snugly into the cup-shaped top. Another five pedestals completed a ring around the Tower.
“Look! These look to be some kind of perimeter, possibly defensive, probably activated by the Keys. If we can get it working, we can hold out against hostile…” He turned in time to see Isabella sag against the wall, face twisted in pain, grabbing on to a ledge occupied by the mortal remains of one of the most powerful mages to ever exist for support.
He ran to her side. “What is it?”
“My gut,” she whispered. Her eyes were narrowed and angry. “Something I ate—Rafe!” She shoved him hard just as a report went off behind Rafe.
Pain exploded in his side in metal-tinged red heat. Isabella, still against the wall, took out her dark dagger and threw it. There was a gasp, and a clang. Sulfur hung in the air.
Blood. Bullets. Gun. Rafe struggled to connect the dots. They were being attacked.
But there was just the three of them here. And he trusted…
Isabella grabbed his arm and pulled him back behind a block of quartz, carelessly left like a giant baby’s toy. Rafe held sticky hands to his oozing side. Isabella turned her head to her side and retched, throwing up all the contents of her stomach.
“Bitch.” Rafe had never heard Bryony sound like this, cold and venomous. “You’re supposed to be dead.”
“I didn’t like the oatmeal cake,” Isabella called. “I took a bite and threw away the rest on the trail when no one was looking. I didn’t want to hurt Rafe’s feelings. You don’t deserve him for a brother, you know.”
“Bryony.” Rafe struggled to sit up and was rewarded by a fresh gush of blood. “Bryony, what are you doing?” Isabella untucked her long tunic from her pants and ripped out a strip from the bottom. She applied it to Rafe’s side.
“Doing what I should have done years ago. Finally getting rid of
you.
”
“But, I thought you…” He stopped.
“What? That I liked you?” Her laugh was wild and bitter. “You poor sod. You couldn’t see, could you? I hated you. You were the reason I was sent away. You thought I came home to heal you? No, I came home to make sure you were dead, but you survived anyway. You always survived. I thought you’d die at sea, or in a landslide, or in battle, but
you
never did.
”
The Tower swam in front of his eyes in a haze of light. Rafe’s side hurt abominably, but he welcomed the pain, embraced it. It distracted him from the hollow feeling in his chest, the weight on his voicebox and lungs.
Bryony hated him. Had always hated him.
“So,” said Isabella casually as she tied the ends of her makeshift bandage, “who are you working for, Bryony? You’re too clever to lose control in a sudden passion. You’re too much of a careful planner. Who’s waiting for you outside, so you can hand the Tower over?”
“I’ll say this for you, Isabella, you’re not stupid.” Bryony laughed scornfully, and the sound ripped at Rafe. “You’re right. I’m going to hand the Tower over to the only state in the world that treats everyone equally, that doesn’t discriminate based on birth and stupid custom.”
“You’re giving it to Blackstone, then?”
Bryony said nothing, but her silence said it all.
Rafe closed his eyes. “Blackstone.” His voice came out weak and hoarse. “Blackstone.” He chuckled.
“What’s so funny?” asked Bryony.
Rafe gasped as the movement hurt his side. Isabella laid a restraining hand on his shoulder, and answered for him. “Oh, he finds it funny to hear someone pontificating about the virtues of Blackstone when they’ve never had to live there. So Karzov and his agents sold you a pretty vision, then? Poor Bryony.”
“Enough.” Bryony’s voice took on an ugly sneer.
“You want me to stop talking? Come make me. You and your handgun, against a wounded man and a sick woman with just a dagger. Surely you can take us on?” Isabella mocked.
“I’m not a fool. I don’t have to come after you. You can stay there and bleed to death or die of poison. Blackstone’s already out there by now, and we can flush you out. See how you do against a team of soldiers. Nice try, Isabella, but I’m not buying it.” Her footsteps crunched. “And, Isabella? Don’t rely too much on Rafe’s so-called ka powers. I’ve been feeding him magebane in his tea. He can’t use the magic. Enjoy the light while you can. It won’t last.”
And on this parting shot, she was gone.
The moments stretched out. Rafe took a painful breath, counted to ten, let it out again. He did it again. And again.
Isabella watched him. He felt her watching him, even though his eyes were closed against the pitiless glare of the Tower. She’d gotten up, gone into the tunnel, brought their packs and the dark dagger she’d thrown at Bryony. Now, she sat, waiting. For him.
Finally he said, in a cracked voice. “She did me a favor. Without that magebane, I wouldn’t have made it this far into here.”
“Yes.” There was uncertainty there, and wariness. Did she think he was going to shatter?
He shifted. He was not made of porcelain. Yes, he’d been fooled and he’d been lied to, and no doubt he was just as stupid as Bry—others believed him to be.
But he’d rise from this again. He’d salvage this. The thought of Karzov getting both ka and krin made his skin crawl.
“The Keys.” Sel, it hurt to talk and his thoughts far outstripped his crawling speech. “The pedestals. Perimeter. Get them in. Maybe they’ll activate something.”
“Or bring the ceiling down on our heads and bury us alive,” said Isabella wryly, but she took the blood-soaked bag from him anyway. “It’s preferable to death by Karzov, anyway. Tell me what to do.”
Quartz ran in veins in the floor, covered over by a thin layer of dirt and vegetation. They formed a pattern, with the Keys themselves as the final pieces, the whole thing designed to plug into the ka flowing through the Tors Lumena. Ka crawled through the pattern, sluggish and dirty, and they weren’t color-coded to the quartz like he’d thought at first. Bluish ka, for instance, oozed through smoky-gray quartz, and the quartz for orange and yellow were so close in shades, it was hard to tell which pedestal belonged with which kind of ka. Rafe struggled to match Key to pedestal, using his myopic ka-sight. Isabella muttered and blew dust and pulled out choking weeds and leaned hard to wedge in the Keys, but finally they were all in place.
“Now what?”
Rafe let his head fall back. “I don’t know. There’s ka in the pattern but it doesn’t look like its nearly enough. Some kind of switch? You wouldn’t want it to work without all six in place, I think.” He dragged himself back to the ka patterns he could barely see, peering at them like a rheumy-eyed old man. “I see it. Over to the center, between the rose and gray quartz pedestals.”
Isabella clawed away some weeds. “Found it!”
“Go, then.” Rafe whispered.
She threw the switch—and ka, wild and wonderful ka, untamed like waves, unfettered like a child on Girdlesday, burst into the pattern, scoring and scorching its way through the quartz. It fountained up the pedestals and surged into the Keys.
Rafe had barely time to withdraw his senses into a tight fetal curl when the overloaded Keys burst into shards and grit. Isabella threw herself beside Rafe and they huddled until the last of the Keys shattered into tinkles that slid softly onto the floor.
Finally, Rafe said, softly. “It didn’t work. And… Isabella? I-I’m bleeding again.”
Isabella hissed as she peeled away the soaked bandage and examined his side.
“That bad, huh?” asked Rafe, watching her face.
“I may be a horrible kayan assistant, but this I can do something about,” said Isabella briskly. “I need you to stay alive. You’re kayan. You can think of another way to get that perimeter up.”
Rafe leaned his head back. Finally, he said. “That ka. It’s tainted and it’s too much. We need to control how much gets into the defensive pattern and purify it if we can.”
“And we’ll do this how?” she prompted.
“Back at Uncle Leo’s house and in Ironheart, your light dagger pulled in ka and purified it somehow. It took away the taint and made it usable.” He looked questioningly at her.
Isabella shrugged. “I can’t see that, so I’ll take your word for it. Yes, the light dagger, as you call it, uses ka. That’s how I can do some small magics and attract krin. So, then?”
“I’ll feed the ka into the dagger slowly. I don’t want to risk overloading it. Then, once the ka is clean, I’ll put it into the pattern.” Rafe grit his teeth against the pain in his side. “We’ll have to do it now. Quickly, before this gets worse.”
“Wrong.” Isabella crouched next to him, slanted him a somber look that he could not quite read. “You’ll die before you can do that. I can help. Kayan aren’t the only ones with mysterious powers.” Her mouth quirked.
Rafe gave a slight downward jerk of his head. He was too drained to be curious; it kept all that he had to stay conscious, to keep up the wall against howling desolation and despairing surrender.
Bryony had betrayed him. Blackstone was at the gates.
Isabella pulled his pack over and rummaged in it, coming up with extra clothes, a lighter, and a knife. She eased his bandages off, ripped the fabric of his shirt, laid bare the wounds. He couldn’t look down, so he looked at her frowning, serious face, her fingers fluttering in an uncertain dance around him.
She looked like she’d never done this before, and he had not the heart to ask her if it was true.
“Here.” Isabella squared her shoulders and handed him a small pad made from a strip of his own torn-up clothing. “Bite down on this. I need to get the bullet out.” Tendrils of hair slipped down to touch her face, and she pushed them back absently, gaze lowered to his wound. Her eyelids were pale moons, slightly bruised, and her lashes lay in dark fans. This was, Rafe realized, the best light he’d ever seen her in.
Isabella clicked the lighter and held the knife blade in the flame. “I wish I could get you roaring drunk.”
“Me, too.” Rafe slid the pad into his mouth. It tasted dry and musty.
“Ready.” It wasn’t a question. Before he could think, mentally adjust, or somehow prepare himself, she had pushed the knife-blade into his side. Rafe clamped down hard with his teeth as the pain rolled over him, washing him away.
Let go, be loose, be water
… That was hard to do with the poking and probing that went on for an eternity and a half, before finally Isabella said, “Got it!”
He sagged with the relief, but there was more pain waiting on the horizon, an ominous smudge like a towering wave coming from far away. There was nothing to do but face it…
… then Isabella was there, somehow both beside him and inside him. Her fingers moved upon his skin in light taps, while at the same time she walked up to his mental self and gently, inexorably pushed him away.
Go home, go back.
And there was no sea and no wave. Rafe blinked in the bright light of the cavern. Warmth flowed into his side, a healing warmth that knitted together skin and tissue and arteries. It was a silver warmth, tinged with shadow, edged ever so finely with obsidian black. Snatches of emotion and flashes of images came with it. Sharp sorrow… cold loneliness… knees aching on a hard stone floor… prickles on flesh in bitter cold… a man covered in golden glow… a voice as glad as a trumpet’s… another that was thin and steely, a voice that knew its duty… terror and tunnels…
… a
scritch scritch
in the dark… something oily and terrible coiled in his stomach like a sleeping snake…
He jerked back from this flood of information, breaking contact with Isabella, cracking his head against the quartz hard enough to shock himself back into wakefulness. “Ouch!”
Isabella, head bowed low, hair tumbled down her back, swayed, caught herself before she toppled forward. Rafe reached out to her, then hissed in reflexive pain.
A dull throb answered him.
He looked at his side, incredulous. The wound was closed, with just a pink line to show that it had existed. He moved, experimentally, but felt nothing besides stiffness and some tenderness of muscle.
“How’d you
do
that?”
“I told you I have super powers.” Isabella looked ghastly, eyes haunted and full of loss. “Don’t make me regret doing this. No heavy lifting or vigorous exercise for at least a week, young man.” She straightened, color returning to her face. “The pattern.” She laid her clear crystalline dagger in his lap.
Rafe stared at her a moment longer. There was something different about her… no. It was something different about his
perception
of her. It was as if, having seen drawings and paintings of someone, he was meeting her face-to-face for the first time. He suddenly
knew
her, but that knowledge was so intuitive and hidden that he could not bring it to the surface.
He had the uncomfortable sense that it might have been two-way.
Now was not the time to deal with it. Rafe took Isabella’s dagger, closed his eyes, braced himself, and reached for that roiling, burning ka within the Tower.
The colors slipped away from him, darting quicksilver as fish. They resisted separation and capture, dealing him quick stinging lashes as they flitted away. Rafe set his teeth, lay quiescent beside the poison waters, and waited.
Rust-brown roped past, almost lazily, and Rafe grabbed for it. It struggled, stinging his hands, but Rafe aimed it at the dagger, which drank it in one greedy gulp. A thin thread of the same color, somehow brighter, glowed around the dagger. Rafe pulled it into the matching pedestal, squinting to find the right connections, the right hole to thread it into.
Vibrations shuddered through the earth and into his bones. A low rumble reached his ears. He exchanged a look with Isabella.
Blackstone machines.
Isabella said nothing, but she rose and went to stand by the cavern entrance, the black dagger in her hand.
Eyes aching, Rafe went back to fishing.
This time he caught a dirty yellow almost immediately. Heartened, Rafe pushed the color into the dagger and pulled at the filament that came out. It broke as he hurried it over to its pedestal, leaving him with gold fibers that crumbled into motes and floated away. Rafe hissed and returned to the dagger.