In the House of Five Dragons
16. Shatter
“Emperor Tychon’s decision to send most of the Verita et Illumina Lansinos into Fiore has been a subject of much debate, but not one the emperor himself has ever addressed. At that time, the nations who joined his new empire had done so by diplomacy, but it was agreed that war would eventually prove necessary. Was Fiore a bold show of force by a young emperor or his desperate gamble?”
— From Accounts of Njorn Pass, by Alexander Ferro
Rikard dreamed.
He stood on a field of glass. Long tales before, Yearn Valley had been a lush paradise. Colorful streaks of favorites and daydreams once cut across the southern reach like smears of paint. Bright, soft and spring.
But now the Yearn Valley was a battlefield that only barely held its form. Gilded green grass became skeletal and as colorless as ash. The ground was stretched out thin as a drumhead, frail and utterly transparent. Glass. Great cracks and fissures snapped and slithered through the Yearn Valley, as wide as the greatest Terran roads and bleak as old age. But through the ever-moving tears, Rikard felt… nothing. No cold, no trace. Nothing. The Shatter were nearly done with their work here.
Shards of old wounds — Yearn Valley’s brittle, broken bones — cut painfully at his soul. The tenuousness tugged at him, threatening to unravel his very being. Rikard tensed his own form reflexively, bracing it with name and rank. Beside him, Flickerdim and Jingleblack coiled and uncoiled restlessly.
Are you certain about this place? Jingleblack asked with jittering, nervous thoughts that bounced about like fleas.
Rikard bled reassurance for the young Alterran soldier. Hae, this is it.
But there’s not enough dream left here to hide anything, much less a plan, said Flickerdim, then gave Rikard a sly sidelong insight. But that’s your very idea, isn’t it? If we stretch it out thin enough, we can hide it here and they will never even think to look.
Exactly. It’s a desperate measure, but we’re running out of ideas.
What if you can’t find it later, when it’s time? Jingleblack worried. What if you don’t remember what to do?
I will forget, Rikard thought. Remember what it was like when I first came here? The journey nearly Shattered me, too. It will be even worse when I return home to Terra. Hiding the plan here is only buying ourselves time. And maybe not enough.
Flickerdim rustled, raven-black fingers sprouting along his back. They flared, reaching for something necessary. Stumble hopped down the branch to nuzzle his friend. The shade-shadow fingers furled and closed like flowers by night, then sank back into his general deepness.
What is it? asked Stumble.
He remembers me in his dreams.
Really? Does he remember me? Stumble was eager, fluffing his stony feathers excitedly until they began to float off, light and soft as clouds. The wound of thinking that Rikard might have forgotten him already actually bled tiny pearls of gold and blue along his feathers. Does he? Does he remember me, all the things I showed him?
Flickerdim star-sparkled a short laugh. Not yet, no. He will, Stumble. But don’t worry, he will remember you before the end.
Stumble wanted to thank Flickerdim for that, but the Alterran general was a proud old memory. The gratitude would have cut him open surely as the fear of being forgotten had bled Stumble.
Something soft moved beneath his fingers. Rikard woke with a start, jerking upright in the bed and instinctively clenching the sensation in his memory. But the softness was not a thought. It was an actual thing. Something in his fingers.
Rikard looked down at his hand. It was the corner of a sheet, nothing like the one Rikard had clutched around himself back in the Moon Court archouse. This was fine and slippery, not the rougher weave of a soldier’s gear. Rikard ran his fingers over the cloth, marveling at the feel of it against his skin.
“It’s much better than anything we had before, isn’t it?”
Laurael stood in the doorway of the bedroom, holding aside a curtain of layered brocade. Her skin was different. No, her clothes, Rikard recalled. Her new tabba was as lovely as the sheets.
She smiled at Rikard — small and prettily, just like she did everything. That slightest upturning of her dark red lips made his heart leap. Rikard had never seen anything so beautiful in his life. He lurched out of the bed and swept Laurael into his arms, tangling the fingers of one hand in the elaborately pinned curls of her hair. Rikard sought Laurael’s lips and kissed her, diving into the feel of her. His wife tasted like the clove oil she liked to dab on her teeth in the morning, to clean away the sticky taste of sleep. Wonderful, delicious… Rikard never wanted to taste anything else ever again.
He forgot to breathe and didn’t care. Laurael wedged her hands between them, against Rikard’s chest and pushed him away.
“I missed you, Laura,” he whispered.
“As I missed you, my lord,” Laurael told him. “Are you hungry? Breakfast awaits you.”
Suddenly, his wife’s sweet clove-oil kiss wasn’t the only thing that sounded delicious. Rikard sniffed the air and smelled something salty, buttery and rich. The scent itself seemed almost enough to fill his stomach. He bolted past Laurael, following the smell, and burst out onto a porch that looked out over the rolling, landscaped green hill of the Everstones. There were other houses, too, all white marble and red tiled roofs, further down the slope.
Rikard’s abrupt appearance startled the pair of servants setting out breakfast. A young boy shrieked and jumped back, dropping a pitcher of chilled tea. It shattered on the ground and tea splashed into an expanding liquid sunburst. A wedge of orange slid to rest against Rikard’s bare toes. It was cold and rubbery.
The boy hurried to sweep up the broken shards of his pitcher, mumbling his apologies through a thick Po’Marran accent. Rikard stared down at the fruit at his feet. It was so bright and smelled so good, sharp and sweet. When the boy reached for it, Rikard snarled at him.
“Leave it!”
The boy whimpered as he scurried off. Another servant — the balding old Carceman that Rikard had seen the day before — stared with his mouth hanging open. When he realized that his master was watching, the servant covered his expression with a deep bow. But he could do nothing to stifle the sinking, stinging fear that rippled out from him with every thought. Rikard turned away.
“Please sit, my husband,” Laurael said from the door.
She stepped through onto the sunlit porch and seated herself. Rikard picked up the orange wedge and sat beside her in a wicker chair just like the one in the atrium. The servant kept his eyes nervously, uncomfortably downcast and Rikard was relieved when Laurael dismissed him with a wave of her hand. The man bowed and retreated.
“This is better than what we once had, too,” said Laurael.
The table standing between their chairs was piled high with food. Cubed fruit and flat cakes of golden-brown wheat, slabs of honeyed ham and — the source of the mouth-watering smell — a bowl of scrambled eggs. Rikard heaped food onto his plate until it threatened to spill over.
“Slowly, my lord,” Laurael warned when he began shoveling it into his mouth.
“It smells good. I’m… hungry,” he said through a mouthful of egg and half-chewed apple. “Very.”
Laurael shrugged. “As you wish. Do you like it?”
It was hard to keep his mouth doing two things at once.
“You talked about before… before now,” Rikard said haltingly. “About things before that, before the wars. That things you have now are better. Lacier. Nicer.”
Laurael held up a glass of cream sprinkled with cinnamon. “We never could have eaten like this before.”
A young woman stepped through another door and out onto the porch. “Lady Mazrem?”
Laurael sipped her spiced cream and set it aside before giving the girl her attention. “Hae?”
“Someone to see you, my lady,” she reported, then corrected herself. “Both of you, Lord and Lady Mazrem.”
“Who is it?”
“A foster from the temple of Surma. She says she’s supposed to look after Lord Mazrem.”
Laurael nodded. “General Hern sent her. Bring her here, then.”
The maid curtsied and withdrew. Rikard’s stomach was beginning to feel stiff and bloated from his sudden gorging. He had trouble following with the conversation. There had been images in the maid’s mind, but listening with both ears and mind at the same time was painstaking work. Rikard remembered Nikas saying something about sending a foster, but that seemed like elegies ago.
Why did everyone treat Rikard so carefully, as though he were some… some fragile little hope that might dash away to glass in a moment? He was back home, and if everything the other Terrans said was true, then he was exactly the same as before, when he vanished from Njorn Pass.
It was everyone else who was different, who had gotten older and stranger! So why did Nikas Hern think Rikard needed a nursemaid? And why did Laurael agree?
The puddle of iced tea was evaporating quickly in the warm morning. Rikard caught sight of his reflection in the shiny amber pool and stared, distracted and fascinated. Mirrors were supposed to hang on walls, not dribble on the floor and turn into air when they got hot.
Pondering this strangeness, Rikard forgot about the other ones that had seemed so important a moment ago. The man reflected in the shifting puddle had dark, ragged hair on his cheeks. An image came to mind of a blade and soap being dragged over his face, but Rikard could not remember the word.
Sharp steel that does not cut flesh, except by accident. I had to explain it to the Alterra when they came to ask. They thought it all very strange. Why can’t Terrans just shape their body by wish? I told them something, an answer. What was it? I can’t remember.
Soft footfalls snapped his attention up once more. The maid had returned, leading a smaller girl dressed in blue. She was thin and pale, with hair of a bright, sunset red. It was plaited and still damp at the tips. The newcomer bowed deeply, falteringly. When she stood again, Rikard started.
It’s her, the girl from the closed, stinking place. No lights but stars through shrouds of smoke.
The Fiori.
The half-Fiori.
Rikard jumped up from his chair and she recoiled, fear in her eyes and mind. Her terror thrust sharply back at Rikard, as brittle and dangerous as a broken sword. Laurael stood, too, frowning but not trying to restrain her husband.
“What is it?” she asked sharply. “My lord?”
“I know her!” Rikard snarled. His fingers twitched, itching to twine themselves around her throat once more and finish the job begun at their last meeting, but her costume gave him pause. “You… you’re a priestess?”
There was a face in the girl’s thoughts, one that looked much like her own, but even thinner, more drawn and wan. Through her thorny fear, Rikard could reach no further. Hissing in pain, Rikard pulled his thoughts away as though recoiling from a hot stove.
“Answer my husband, child,” Laurael commanded.
“Hae, my lady,” the girl said in a quavering voice. “Hae, Captain Mazrem. I work in the temple fostral. Mana Narissa sent me to look after your wounds.”
Wounds? The holes in his skin, the bleeding places. Rikard remembered now and it made enough sense. He sat down again and picked up his plate. Laurael gave him a slightly frustrated look and reclaimed her seat, too.
“What’s your name, my dear?” she asked the girl.
“Thainna, my lady. Thainna Vahn.”
“Welcome to our home, Thainna. How long has your mana instructed you to stay and watch over my husband?”
“Until Lord Mazrem is well, my lady. As long as I’m needed.”
“A foster’s time is valuable. General Hern and Mana Narissa are very kind.”
“Hae, Lady Mazrem.”
Laurael stared at the skinny girl for a moment, then smiled and resumed her breakfast.
