The Midnight Sea (The Fourth Element #1) (18 page)

“All right. But aren’t you the least bit curious? He must be very old, Darius. He knows the truth of what you are—”

“I already know.”

“I don’t think you do.”

His eyes narrowed. “Don’t press me on this, Nazafareen.”

“Those necromancers on the plain. They never actually said—”

Suddenly, Darius’s pupils dilated. We had paused in a stand of evergreens, a short distance from the road. In an instant, he’d gone animal on me. If Darius had hackles, they would have risen.

“Get on my back!” he whispered. “Hurry!”

I wrapped my right arm around his neck as he leapt up and caught a low branch. In moments, we were halfway up a spruce tree, nestled in the crook of its branches. Darius rested against the trunk, his arm curled around my waist. I leaned into him, heart pounding.

“Still your mind,” he said in my ear. “Find the bond and hold it. Only the bond, nothing else. Can you do that?”

“I think so.” I repeated what I had done in the Hall of a Hundred Columns, except that instead of trying to reach for the power, I just watched it, pulsing in the corner of my eye. Colors flowed through it, streaks of blue and purple and green. It was beautiful, mesmerizing. My heart slowed, matching his. I was no longer separate from him, or the woods, or the air. Everything was one.

Even the pounding of hooves on the road. The smell of many horses and the cold, sharp tang of iron. I was one with those too. They washed over me, through me. Not the enemy. Not anything to worry about. Just threads in the tapestry. When they slowed, shouted in consternation, and a small part of my mind began screaming in panic, Darius’s calm flowed into me, gentle but firm, and my thoughts stilled again.

The power seemed to glow brighter as the riders milled about on the road. It dimmed as they moved on.

Long minutes passed. I didn’t want to leave that place. The nexus. It soothed my pain.

Then Darius’s voice dragged me back. “We must go now, Nazafareen,” he whispered. “The
Amestris
awaits.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

W
e pushed on past dark. I would walk until I couldn’t any longer, and then Darius would carry me. The woods grew thicker. Branches tore at my hair and face. I felt boiling hot one moment, freezing cold the next. I understood that this was a bad sign.

Several times, he had sensed soldiers in the forest. Not as close as before, but still we would have to stop and hide ourselves in the bond. This made the going even slower. When it started to snow, Darius insisted that we halt for the night.

“How much farther to the coast?” I asked him.

“A day, at least.” He broke off several pine boughs and made a pile of them on the ground. I sank down, more tired than I’d ever been in my life. A chill wracked my body, causing every muscle to tense. Darius pulled me into his arms. It was the first time I had ever been so close to him without feeling any desire whatsoever. I truly was at death’s door.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. The ground spun in a lazy circle.

“For what?”

“For thinking you were Druj. For treating you…badly.”

He barked a short laugh. “You never treated me badly, Nazafareen.”

“Yes, I did. I helped them chain you.”

“That wasn’t you.”

“Ilyas…the way he used the bond…that wasn’t the first time, was it?”

He stiffened behind me.

“I’m so sorry,” I mumbled.

“Shhhh.” He brushed snow from my hair. “Sleep now.”

And I did, but I woke many times, my own screams ringing in my ears. Monsters stalked my dreams, monsters with human faces. They scared me worse than any Druj. By morning, my fever was an inferno. I ached with thirst. Darius fed me snow, but his face looked strange. Everything looked strange, distorted, like objects glimpsed at the bottom of a river bed.

He picked me up and ran. The world moved past in flashes as I slid in and out of consciousness. I heard a harsh rasping sound, like someone sawing logs, and realized it was his breath. Off in the distance, a hound bayed, deep and excited.

Darius stumbled, caught himself. Ran on. Frost coated his hair and eyelashes. My own chills had stopped. I was beyond cold. Beyond feeling anything at all except a vague sort of regret. Somewhere, a ship waited. But we would never reach it.

He crashed through a frozen stream and fell to his knees. I looked at him blearily. His eyes had gone flat, empty.

“They’re closing in,” he gasped. “I can’t…”

“I know,” I croaked.

“If I draw too much of the power while you touch the bond, we will both die,” he said, so close I could feel the warmth of his breath on my lips.

“Do it then.”

Darius met my steady gaze and some of the frightening deadness lifted from his eyes. He tangled his icy fingers in my hair. The hounds bayed again, more insistently. I felt the cuff start to heat. Wind ruffled his tunic, and power surged through the bond. First air, then earth. My teeth ached from it, my bones seemed to vibrate, as a ripple swept across the snow, coming from deep in the ground.

So much still unsaid, yet words had become irrelevant. Neither of us was very good with them anyway. I raised my hand to his cheek and let my eyes drift shut. From far away, I heard the cracking of branches, the heavy groan of rock and dirt stirring in its bed. Darius drew deeper and the ache sharpened to pain.

“More,” I urged softly.

He shuddered and pulled me closer. I filled my lungs for the last time with the smell of him, which is hard to describe but always reminded me of the clean salt wind of the sea.

“Wait for me behind the veil, Nazafareen,” he murmured. “Promise you’ll wait for me.”

I tried to answer, to swear I would find him, but the vise of power held me fast. And then I heard the crunch of footsteps on snow behind us.

Do it
, I thought, sudden terror nearly exploding my heart.
Please, oh please, don’t let them take us
again.

A sandaled foot kicked Darius off me. My first thought, absurdly, was:
Sandals, in the snow?
The power winked out. And I was being lifted again, by someone even bigger and stronger than my daēva.

“Put her down,” Darius raged, jumping to his feet.

A voice, deep and rough. “Follow or die here. The choice is yours, Water Dog.”

I knew that voice. It belonged to Victor.

Chapter Twenty-Three

I
recall little of our flight through the woods. Only that without the burden of carrying me, Darius managed to keep up with Victor’s relentless pace. My thoughts weren’t very lucid. Who were we running from again? Necromancers? Ilyas? Immortals with the black eyes of wights? Sometimes I thought I was back in the dome. That Victor was Darius. But he didn’t smell right. And he was too big.

The hot tangle of my daēva’s emotions swirled through my brain. Anger, relief, frustration, fear. Finally, I closed my eyes and let the darkness take me.

Seagulls.

Their rusty-hinge cries were the first thing I heard.

I cracked my eyelids open, then shut them again immediately. Mistake. I felt worse than the time Tijah and I had drunk two jugs of wine on my eighteenth birthday. We’d laughed late into the night, arguing over which of the Water Dogs had the largest…sword. Her money was on the giant Behrouz who always seemed to get extra rations from the serving girls.

Not the dungeons. Not with the feel of soft linen against my skin. I burrowed deeper under the covers, the last two days coming back in small revelations. Victor. We’d been saved by Victor. Darius wouldn’t like that one bit.

Gulls…The
Amestris
…Had we made it to the ship? I was too fuzzy to tell if the whole bed was moving, or just me.

I peeked out, suddenly burning with thirst, and saw a window overlooking a harbor. Fishing boats bobbed on a white-capped sea.

“She’s awake.”

Then Darius’s bright blue eyes were peering into mine. His face cracked into a smile.

“Water,” I whispered.

He helped me lift my head to drink. I guzzled a whole cup, then fell back on the pillows.

“Where are we?”

“You’re in the home of a friend,” the first voice said. A moment later, Victor was looming over me too. I studied his strong, masculine features. Wavy hair like Darius but a shade darker, also cropped short. Beard stubble roughened his jaw. He looked no more than thirty years old, but I knew he’d fought in the war. Two centuries ago.

Darius ignored him. “We’re safe,” he said. “For now.”

“How long?”

“Have you been out? Two days.”

“My arm…” I realized that the terrible throbbing had ceased. I still felt weak, terribly weak, but that poisonous burning sensation was gone.

“Victor healed it.” He paused. “Your hand, it’s still…He can’t regenerate—”

“I know.” I looked at Victor again. “Thank you.”

The daēva nodded. His expression was guarded. I wondered what the two of them had been talking about for the last two days. The atmosphere in the room was as charged as the air before a thunderstorm. Perhaps they had been sitting there in brittle silence the entire time.

I took a deep breath and threw the covers aside. I wore only a thin shift that came down to my thighs. Darius immediately found something fascinating to stare at on the ceiling. I suppressed a grin. If he’d been raised in the Four-Legs Clan, instead of by dried up old magi, he wouldn’t have minded at all.

“Where are my clothes?”

“You need to stay in bed,” Darius informed a spider web in the corner.

“And we need to go to that ship. I won’t hold you up any longer.” I placed a foot on the floor, steadying myself with my right hand. My muscles felt like water.

“It’s not here yet,” Victor said, gently pushing me down with one huge hand.

I heaved a sigh and let him manhandle me back under the blankets. As much as I was desperate to get across the borders of the empire, the news came as a relief. I already felt like going to sleep again.

“When?”

“Four or five days,” Victor said. “The
Amestris
was delayed by a storm. But I’ve been assured she’ll arrive in less than a week.”

“
Five
days
?”

“Rest easy, Nazafareen,” Darius said. “The Immortals have already come and gone. They searched the town, questioned everyone. The man who owns this house is a merchant. He is also the owner of the
Amestris
. He keeps a hidden room in the attic for…people like us.”

“Why? Why is he helping?”

“You can ask him that yourself,” Victor said. “Once you’re better.” He stood. “I’ll see some soup is sent up from the kitchens.”

I stayed awake long enough to eat a few mouthfuls. My stomach clenched with each swallow, as though it didn’t recognize this strange substance I was inflicting on it. How long since I’d eaten? Days, even if you counted the slop they’d given me in the dungeons as food.

“Tell me a story,” I said drowsily, pushing the spoon aside.

“If that is what you wish,” Darius replied. He settled into a chair with one leg hooked over the side and started to relate the story of Pantea, wife of King Xeros’s greatest general, who was so beautiful that she had to keep her face veiled at all times, or men would fall hopelessly in love with her. When her husband was killed in a battle with the Druj, King Xeros came to give her the news personally. Of course, he immediately desired Pantea for his own. He wished her to marry him, but her heart was broken.

“This doesn’t end well, does it?” I said, annoyed with him for choosing a tragedy. “She probably killed herself rather than wed the King. Now she and her true love are buried next to each other on a hill covered with wildflowers. Blah, blah, blah.”

“No, he gave her command of the Immortals,” Darius said, lips curving in that subtle smile of his. “She took over her dead husband’s bond and led them to victory.”

“Oh.” I closed my eyes as the sun came out from behind a cloud, flooding the room with warm light as the gulls squabbled over scraps on the street below. “Carry on, then.”

When I woke the next day, I felt stronger. Strong enough to eat a whole bowl of soup and ask about a hot bath. The maid, a pretty girl with thick eyebrows and an enviable figure, offered to help me, but I didn’t want her seeing my body. I could count my ribs. The bruises and cuts had vanished thanks to Victor, but my arm…I hated it. Hated the way it looked. How useless it was to me. I stared at the snarling lion on the cuff, despising what it stood for, although it was my link to Darius.

Had he really meant what he said, just before we leapt into the aqueduct?

Even if I could be free, I would choose
you…

Why would he? Victor’s missing fingers had been returned to him when the bond was broken. Darius too could be whole again, if we ever found the fire. Take the power whenever he wanted it, not only when I allowed him to. Maybe there were other things free daēvas could do.

They were easy words to utter, but how would he feel if the choice were not abstract?

And what if it were me? Would I trade him for my hand?

I sank into the hot water. It turned grey immediately. Disgusting. I was disgusting. I felt a surge of rage at Ilyas. I never should have left him alive. At that moment, if I could have tortured him the way he’d tortured Darius, had him writhing on the floor slick with sweat, screaming, I would have done it.

I fumbled with the soap, repeatedly dropping it. It took two hands to get a proper lather. I reminded myself that at least I still had my sword arm. I planned to use it if I ever saw Ilyas again.

But it was the hundreds of mundane tasks, things I hadn’t dealt with lying in the dungeons and then running with Darius, that now reminded me every moment of my loss. Washing my hair. Drying off. Getting dressed. I had to relearn everything, like a clumsy child. Braiding was obviously out of the question so I let my hair hang free down my back. It nearly brushed my bottom, and I finally relented and asked the maid to help me comb out the tangles.

In the afternoon, Darius came. I pretended to be asleep. He stood over the bed for a long while, just looking down at me. I knew
he knew
I was faking. I could feel his hurt, but I didn’t want to face him right now. Jokes about arm wrestling aside, I had no idea what we were to each other anymore. Not Water Dogs. It was the first time in nearly five years that I wasn’t wearing the scarlet tunic.

The maid had asked me what I wanted to do with my old one. I told her to burn it.

I ate more soup, plus bread, and fell asleep for a time. When I woke, it was dark out. A single candle burned in the corner. I stretched my arms over my head, letting my fingers trail across the stump. I had avoided touching it as much as possible, but now I felt curious. It was covered with smooth skin. Like nothing had ever been attached to it at all.

“You saw Delilah.”

I startled. Victor was sitting in the chair Darius had occupied, although he had pushed it back into the shadows, well out of the candlelight. He wore a white tunic that left his calves bare and the sandals I remembered from the woods.

“Yes.”

“How…Did she say anything to you?”

There was a desperate edge to his voice, although I could tell he was trying to control it.

“She asked after you. She wanted me to tell you she’s well.”

He shifted his weight. The chair creaked alarmingly. It hadn’t been so long since I was terrified of this man. Of what he could do. I had been the hunter and he the prey, although if we had caught him before the necromancers did, those roles would have reversed in a heartbeat. I knew neither of us had forgotten that fact.

“She helped you escape the palace.”

“Yes.”

“So I think it’s safe to assume she is no longer
well
,” Victor snarled.

“I…she said the King wouldn’t kill her.”

He took a deep breath through his nose. Exhaled slowly.

“Did you tell Darius?” I asked. “That she’s his mother?”

Victor frowned. “He doesn’t know?”

“I sort of hoped you’d taken care of that.”

A bitter laugh. “The boy is lost to me. A Water Dog through and through. We have nothing to say to each other.”

“Why did you save us then?” I demanded.

“I happened to be passing by.”

I couldn’t help it. I rolled my eyes. Victor shrugged carelessly.

“I thought you’d go after the necromancer,” I said. “The one who took the fire.”

His face darkened. “I did. Just when I was about to take him, he met eight others. They rode north, into Bactria. It was pointless to follow.”

“We saw the necromancers on the plain, just before we reached the Barbican. They told us Queen Neblis owed you a great debt. They wanted an alliance. To capture
you
.”

Victor studied me. I held my breath, hoping I hadn’t gone too far. Perhaps I shouldn’t have reminded him of our former status.

“Are you asking why she sent her Antimagi a thousand leagues south? After one crippled daēva?”

I looked at his powerful shoulders, his brawler’s hands and bullish neck. Even when he was cuffed, this man was never a cripple. Not like me.

“Well, they did seem awfully eager for your head,” I said lightly.

“It’s not my head she wants.” Victor gave me a wolfish smile. “Though she might settle for it.”

A bloodthirsty animal…one of the first to be leashed…breaker of Gorgon-e
Gaz…

Whatever Victor was, I needed answers, and he had them. He was the only person I knew who had lived through all of it. Who knew the truth.

“Just tell me one thing. Did the daēvas fight for her in the war? Before they were turned?”

“Is that what they taught you?”

I nodded.

“Gods, no, though we held ourselves apart at first. Stayed on the sidelines. I argued against it. But there were few enough of us.” His lip curled. “Far fewer than there are now, with the King’s
breeding
program
.”

“But how do they…” I trailed off. “Against your will.”

“Pleasure can be induced through the bond, as well as pain,” Victor said shortly.

I felt my cheeks warming. “Oh. I didn’t know.”

He paced to the window, looking out over the darkened harbor. A full moon cast its silvery light on his profile. Darius had the same aquiline nose.

“We’re solitary beings by nature,” Victor said. “Staying out of each other’s affairs, and the affairs of humans. We hated the Druj, killed them on sight, but they’d never troubled us before. Not in any numbers.”

“So you lived within the borders of the empire?”

“Yes. Not the cities though. The wild places.”

I knew nothing about the daēvas, what they were
before
. I found I was intensely curious.

“What happened?”

“I finally called a gathering of all the daēvas I could find. About a hundred. Xeros wanted us to fight for him. He wasn’t King yet. Just one warlord out of many. My people refused. They were blind to the danger.” He paused. “So I went to see Zarathustra.”

“You knew the
Prophet
?”

“Yes. We were old friends. He was High Magus of Karnopolis then.”

I tried to picture Victor chatting with the Prophet over cups of Ramian wine, but the image was too surreal.

“He told me he’d found a way to join humans and daēvas, so we could fight Neblis and her demons together. Some fey alchemy that let both wield the power. By this time, her Druj hordes had overrun most of the lands north of the desert. I thought the daēvas might see reason. If we didn’t join the fray, we’d all die.”

I pulled the covers to my chin, feeling almost like I did as a little girl when my father told us ghost stories. Wide-eyed and hanging on every word, yet safe in his presence. Victor was silent for so long that I thought he’d decided against telling me the rest. Then he sighed and returned to the chair.

“Zarathustra asked if he could test it on me. I agreed.”

“Wait…you said fight
together
? Sharing the power?”

“Had it been master and slave, do you think I would have volunteered?” Victor growled.

“I…no.”

“Needless to say, there was a flaw. The power only flowed one way.”

“So he betrayed you?”

“Not him. Zarathustra was horrified at what he’d created.” Victor held up his hand, the one that used to have missing fingers. “When he saw what the cuffs did, he wanted to give them back to the fire. Xeros stopped him. I tried to remove it myself and felt pain as I had never known before.” His voice roughened. “Xeros wanted to use me to catch the others. When Zarathustra objected, they dragged him away.” He looked at me defiantly. “I never would have done it. I would have taken whatever torment they dealt to me. But then they found Delilah. Used her as a hostage.”