“My sincere apologies, Grandmage,” she said. “I don’t quite feel myself. I’m sure you understand.”
“And there she goes again. Always a performer, just like her mother.”
“Grandmage?”
Oriel glared at Syl now, her every feature contorted with disgust.
“Enough with the games. You revolt me. Spoiled little madam with your nursemaid and your darling daddy sheltering you, making you think you’re special. You came here believing that you could tear us apart, but we are so much older than you can ever know, so much wiser. Yet still you persist, like a piece of grit in the shoe of a giant.”
“Tolluntur in altum, ut lapsu graviore ruant,” said Syl, glaring back.
“What?”
“The bigger they are, the harder they fall, basically,” said Syl. “It’s Latin. The poet Claudian, I think.”
Oriel smiled triumphantly. “So you admit it: you wish to see the Sisterhood fall. This is treason!”
“I admit nothing of the sort. I was merely referring to giants, and quoting a poet from Earth. And how can it be treason if you are simply librarians?”
“Enough! Your prattle is exhausting. I know you were in the changing rooms. I know exactly who you were with. Yes, you were found alone but that is only because Tanit—your elder and better, lest you forget it—had the good sense to clean up your mess and remove Sarea to a safe location before she called Sister Thona, and of course Sister Thona summoned me. So now explain to me what happened to Sarea. Tell me what you did to her, you wicked child.”
“I did nothing. I swear I did nothing!”
With surprising speed, Oriel slapped Syl hard across the cheek, hard enough to turn her head on her neck and bring tears to her eyes.
“How then did her finger break so badly that the bone tore through the skin?” Oriel said. “I saw her injury with my own eyes, Earthborn.”
“But it wasn’t me that did it though. I don’t know what happened to Sarea. It just, I don’t know, happened. Honestly.”
With a face of cold stone, Oriel snatched Syl’s injured hand and squeezed, hard. Syl yowled with pain and tried to writhe away, but the old woman was unnervingly strong, and Syl was weak with medication.
“She hurt me, but I didn’t hurt her back. I didn’t!”
Syl’s dislocated joint had been popped back into place by the medics, but now Oriel yanked it backward again, baring her teeth, threatening to wrench the bone from the socket. Syl squealed, and felt sure she would pass out. Blackness started to cloud her vision.
“I didn’t do it!”
Oriel let go, looking quite pleased with the outcome.
“I suspect you truly believe what you’re saying. However, I don’t believe it. Do you care to hear what Sarea says?”
Syl breathed out heavily, which Oriel took as assent.
“Sarea thinks that she somehow injured herself. Poor Sarea is devastated because she fears that she lost control of her formidable and very unique powers and turned them on herself, like the recoil of a weapon injuring a shooter. That truly brilliant Novice is all but broken, thanks to you. She’s terrified to practice her skills again for fear of damaging herself. She is undergoing intensive counseling as we speak. You may have ruined her.”
“But it really wasn’t me that did it,” said Syl again, cradling her injured hand in her healthy one for fear that Oriel would strike again. Yet Sarea doubted herself? Good, thought Syl. She stared back sullenly at Oriel.
“I feel you blocking me,” said the Grandmage. “I feel your wall of hatred. I will find out what’s behind it though—you mark my words. I will find out what powers you hide, for there is something foul within you, of this I am sure.”
“Just like there’s something foul within the Sisterhood?”
Oriel’s eyes glowed red then, or perhaps it was just the light catching and reflecting her robes. When she opened her mouth to speak she pushed her face into Syl’s, and her breath was sickly sweet and spicy.
“I will tear your secret out of you. I will wrench it from within you myself. I will strip you bare and leave you empty, until all that remains is the husk of what was once Syl Hellais. You’ll be a shadow of what went before, just like what remains of your ridiculous father, that smiling idiot, that empty shell.”
Syl’s lip quivered with impotent fury. “What did you do to my father?”
Oriel really did laugh now, sounding for the first time like her pleasure was real.
“Syrene’s dancing puppet, you mean?” came the old witch’s reply. “When it comes to your father, Earthborn, we’ve barely even started. Oh, yes. Syrene will return soon. When she does, perhaps she will fill you in.”
Chuckling with cruel amusement, Oriel arose and swept from the room.
CHAPTER 54
Syl stayed in the infirmary for several more days, her door locked, her medication administered by a silent nursing drone, clicking around on silver wheels. A taciturn doctor dressed in Sisterly red saw to Syl’s hand and prodded her head, and her food came mashed on a tray. She had a small collection of bland books—mainly sycophantic volumes covering the history of the Sisterhood, so she had little trouble guessing who had chosen them for her—and no other distractions. The only visitor she received was Oriel. The Grandmage would sit beside her bed for hours at a time, watching her, probing at her mind, and Syl would concentrate on irrelevant things, summoning gentle memories from her days of innocence. She allowed Oriel into her head far enough to witness her tamest thoughts—the sweet faces of daffodils, a castle cat stalking a teasing robin, a kilt blowing up and revealing neon underwear, she and Ani hanging out of the castle windows watching an enormous red moon rise over Scotland—and still she felt Oriel picking and digging. She could no longer pretend to Oriel that she had no abilities at all, but she could conceal the true extent of them. There was a great difference between the kind of learned mental discipline that Syl was exhibiting—the capacity to block out pain, to create images of walls and barriers in one’s mind to prevent others from divining one’s thoughts—and the reality of her powers and of what she was capable of doing with them: clouding, compelling.
Killing.
She let Oriel see Paul, for the Sisterhood knew of her affection for him, and so she taunted the old witch with rosy, lingering recollections of a shared kiss, of tongues slipping pink over each other, and Paul’s skinny, muscled body, lean and pale as he dived like an eager seal through the freezing waters of the loch. She could feel the revulsion spilling out of Oriel like mud, and it seemed to distract the Nairene, to make her recoil. Encouraged, Syl thought about humans, so many humans, humans stuffing their faces with cake, laughing with their mouths open so it spilled down their chests. She thought of them burping and farting and copulating. She thought about their eyes, about the lids that creased oddly to cover them, and their stocky, compact bodies, until Oriel’s repulsion became like a hard tumor in Syl’s head. The Grandmage probed no further.
Yet still, her stark surroundings ground Syl down. The relentless brightness of her small ward—a sterile cell with no windows, and a small toilet cubicle—was divided into time periods only by the arrival of her meals. In between she slept heavily, exhausted by her mental jousting with Oriel. Often she considered the task that she’d set herself, and she despaired. Sometimes it felt that just surrendering to the allure of the Sisterhood was the only real option, the only way that she’d ever know peace again . . .
Until Syl awoke from a nap to find three different red-clad females waiting silently beside her bed. The two at the back bowed their heads in respect as the third stepped forward regally, her eyes never leaving Syl’s. She was younger than Oriel, and strangely beautiful, her face laced with filigree tattoos, her scarlet lips plump to the point of bursting, like overripe fruit.
“Syrene,” said Syl.
Syrene studied Syl, her feat
ures bland, and Syl stared back, part horrified but also mesmerized. The tension grew too great and the young Illyri looked away.
“Is it just Syrene? The Grandmage Oriel warned me that, even when hurt, you remain insolent,” said Syrene. “How are your injuries, Syl Hellais? I brought you flowers.”
She lifted a bouquet of tangled blooms above Syl’s bed, and thick, wet pollen drooled from their outsized stamens onto her sheets. The smell filled the room: avatis blossoms, the very flowers Syl had first seen in Syrene’s rooms on Earth before she’d been sent away. Syrene was toying with her.
Smiling, Syrene reached out to touch Syl’s head and Syl flinched, shifting away, for the Archmage’s fingers had burned her before, searing pathways into her mind, yet this time those inquisitive fingers stopped short, and the hand was gracefully withdrawn. Syrene observed Syl haughtily, and the twin eyes tattooed on her cheeks seemed to glare too, so that momentarily Syrene resembled a bug, a spider with multiple eyes. Then, with a dismissive flick, the Archmage dropped the blossoms onto Syl’s exposed neck. As they made contact the heads of each flower closed and a cloud of foul-smelling gas huffed into Syl’s face: the flower’s defense mechanism. She coughed while Syrene looked on disdainfully.
“What a strange way to thank me for my exquisite gift. And still you do not even have the courtesy to greet me properly,” she said.
“I greet you, Your Eminence. I thank you.”
“That’s better. And do you not also welcome me back to my home? I have been gone a long time, and you are my guest at the Marque, are you not?”
“I welcome you home, Archmage,” Syl sighed.
“I trust you have been treated well by my Sisters. I stressed that they were to look after you as if you were my own daughter.”
Behind Syrene the two younger Sisters looked up, sniggering audibly. They seemed familiar, and Syrene followed the direction of Syl’s eyes as she took them in, frowning.
“You remember my handmaiden, Cocile, I presume? And my scribe, Layne. You met on Earth, of course, although then they were dressed in the yellow robes of Novices.”
Syrene was enjoying Syl’s confusion. How could Novices have progressed to the full rank of the Sisterhood so quickly?
“Obviously they are anything but Novices,” said Syrene. “The seemingly lowly status denoted by the robes of the Novitiate works in our favor. Donning yellow gowns when appropriate means that my best and brightest Sisters are frequently underestimated. Is that not so, Cocile?”
“Indeed, Your Eminence,” said Cocile.
Now Syl remembered these two, but it was little comfort that last time she’d seen them had been back in Edinburgh, when Meia had knocked them both unconscious to gain access to Syrene’s quarters in order to rescue Syl. There was no Meia here to protect her now, and Syl watched Syrene unhappily. The pollen on her chest was itching dreadfully and the smell in her nostrils was of putrefying flesh, but she was loath to push the flowers aside and let Syrene know of her discomfort.
“Now we are returned to the Marque, however briefly,” continued Syrene, “and they can once again be who they truly are. Although we did become very familiar with your home on Earth, Syl Hellais. Very familiar indeed. Your father sends his greetings.”
“My father? How is he?”
“He is well. So accommodating. I believe he would do anything for me. Anything at all.”
Syl grabbed the flowers and sat up, placing them on the sheets on her lap. Noticing the red hives that had already swollen across Syl’s neck, Syrene smiled properly for the first time, but she said nothing. This was all just a game to her.
“What have you done to my father?” said Syl.
“What could you possibly mean? He is better than I’ve ever seen him. So . . . happy. Yes, wouldn’t you say he’s happy, Cocile?”
“Ecstatic, Your Eminence.”
“Ecstatic—an excellent choice of words. I think perhaps being relieved of the burden of a disruptive, disobedient teenage daughter may have given him a new zest for life. He is a changed figure. And so very warm and loving. So . . . sensuous.”
Syl pretended to study the flowers on her lap while rage swelled like a toxic balloon in her chest.
“I don’t understand what you mean, Your Eminence,” she finally managed, lifting her eyes and trying to read the Archmage’s face. For a second she considered probing her mind too, or at least attempting to, but that would be foolhardy: the Red Witch was a skilled psychic, a veteran of the craft, and it had been all Syl could do to hide her own growing talents from the Nairene Sisterhood. She must bide her time, keeping her gifts a secret for when they could be best used.
“Perhaps I have said too much. Suffice to say, Andrus—Lord Andrus—has become a valued companion,” said Syrene. “Anyway, it is my belief that you will soon see your father once more. Does that please you?”
“When will I see him, Your Eminence?”
“Oh, I’m sure we can come up with something. Just make sure you understand that we’re on the same side, Syl Hellais—that is, if you are on the same side as your esteemed father?”
“My father? The same father who sired me? Of course I am. I’ll always be on his side.”
If Syrene noticed the subtlety of her message, she didn’t show it.
“Good. You need to get well soon, for there is much to be done. The sooner you leave the infirmary, the better.”
Syl looked at her own bandaged hand.
“I think I am probably well enough to leave now, Your Eminence.”
Syrene clapped her hands as if nothing pleased her more.
“Wonderful,” she said, “for we have a ball to prepare for: the Genesis Ball. And you are to attend, Syl Hellais. Nothing will please me more than knowing the daughter of Lord Andrus will dance at the Genesis Ball.”
“I am invited to the Genesis Ball, Archmage?” Syl was sure it must be a joke.
“Indeed—the invitation is mine to give. As the only daughter of my respected comrade and beloved friend Lord Andrus, I shall expect you to attend in honor of your father, and as a symbol of the growing closeness between our families. I insist on it.”
It was exactly what Syl had wanted, but coming from the Archmage, weighted as it was with innuendo and hints of impropriety, the notion now galled her.
“Is that where I shall see my father?” she said tightly.
“Oh no, indeed you shall not. The great Military leader Lord Andrus would not return to Illyr for something as inconsequential as a debutantes’ ball. What does he care for the making of suitable matches among the Sisterhood? Oriel is quite capable of overseeing that matter alone. I shall be returning to Earth, for there is work to be done. When you see our dear Lord Andrus again, it will be for something of far greater import than that, something much more wonderful entirely. You can be sure of that much, at least.”
“Really? What?”
Syrene gave Syl a pointed look, and Syl felt a cracking pain under her skull, as if she’d been struck sharply with a hammer. She put her fingers to her head, and Syrene nodded slightly. It had been a warning.
“May I ask the nature of the occasion that will allow me to see my father, Your Eminence?” said Syl instead.
Syrene let out a high, tinkling laugh, and her voice splintered around the room like breaking glass.
“That, my child, is still a secret, for his proposal is not yet public knowledge. Oops, I have let it slip, have I not? How silly. But, as his only progeny, I imagine it is safe to entrust our wonderful news to you. In due course, Lord Andrus and I shall be wed.”
“What?” Syl felt like she’d been punched.
“You are happy for us?”
Even while Syrene smiled, there was a chill in her voice and a blatant threat in her eyes. Syl swallowed down her rage, and her tears, and nodded, not trusting herself to speak. Her father, her beloved fath
er, was to marry this creature?
“Excellent,” said Syrene. “And naturally, it will be an occasion of great joy, and you will be expected to celebrate with us. But for now we must prepare for the Genesis Ball, for other alliances need to be assured too. So come, for it is time for you to stop lounging around in bed like a spoiled princess. Rise, my . . . stepdaughter.”
She swept out of the room without another word.
Seconds later the doctor hurried in, a medic at her heels. With no formalities, she instructed Syl to clear out, and clicked her fingers at the medic, who immediately yanked the young Illyri from the bed. Syl stood semiclad and pale, holding her bandaged limb gingerly, for the sudden movement had left it throbbing.
“Is my hand mended?”
“Your hand is fine,” said the doctor, and she narrowed her eyes spitefully.
“It doesn’t feel fine.”
“Take the bandage off,” the doctor instructed. Nervously, the medic stepped forward and unwrapped Syl’s hand. The skin was puckered from being covered up, but otherwise it was smooth and undamaged, the fingers straight and strong.
“But it still hurts.”
“Wiggle your fingers,” said the medic. Syl did as she was told, carefully, and felt her eyes water as the unused joints cracked and ground.
“It was dislocated,” continued the doctor. “We fixed the injury. We left the pain.”
“Why would you do that?”
The medic was looking at her feet, but the doctor grinned.
“To teach you a lesson, Syl Hellais, Earthborn, daughter of the Lady Orianne. Now go, before I teach you another one.”
CHAPTER 55
Thula offered to help Alis with the conversion of the mine. He was strong, and had hands that didn’t shake, although Alis was a Mech, and weakness and trembling weren’t concerns for her. Still, the mine was large and heavy, and fitting a timer to it required the removal of panels and the deactivation of its proximity sensors, which involved holding back wires and replacing circuits. Alis was grateful for Thula’s assistance, and the work was completed in about two hours.