ChaoticArmcandy

  Aralia saw Chancellor Basilica’s eyes flick between all three of them–calcuting.

  There was only one way to py this–one smokescreen that had never failed.

  “Professor Renfew,” Basilica began gravely, and then paused as the man in question twitched aside his robes with a profoundly bored sigh.

  Renfew withdrew something–a circlet, or rather it was a colr, Aralia saw, made of a strange silver-streaked and clouded metal. She had heard of compulsion colrs, but never before seen one.

  “Chancellor,” he forestalled, with the vague tone of contempt that only someone like Apollo Renfew could get away with right now. “I profoundly do not want to have gone rummaging around in the vaults tonight to find and dust off this tiresome piece of jewelry for no good reason, only to have its intended bearer be disposed of, in the heat of rashness, on the whim of a zealous, jumped up female Factor–we are quite up to our necks in those as it is.”

  “You manshaped worm–” Aralia snapped. Even as her riposte left her mouth, she was disturbed that Penelope was simply staring at Renfew coldly, not reacting, not taking the bait.

  “Oh please,” Renfew spat back at her. “We’re up te enough as it is, skip the small talk would you?”

  “I never knew you for someone who bothered for research,” said Aralia cuttingly. “Or any sort of useful work.”

  “Isn’t that much more the speciality for those of your breeding, Factor?”

  “Don’t patronize me, Professor.”

  “Stop this, now, both of you!” Basilica looked profoundly put upon. “Very well, Renfew, then attach the damn thing so you two can get out of the same room and we can all be done with this.” He shook his head and muttered something under his breath that sounded a lot like unbelievable.

  Penelope was still holding a poisonous silence as Aralia crossed to the door and stuck her head out to call for orderlies.

  There was a fresh fre of sorcery in the room as Renfew locked the compulsion colr around Ellie’s neck. Aralia thanked all the blind gods of dread that the girl was still slumped limp and unresponsive in her bonds. Was she cool-headed enough to merely be pretending? Probably not. At least her breathing looked even.

  Two of the Chancellor’s burly orderlies came to the door, and Aralia saw their faces go sour when they saw who had called them.

  Aralia very much didn’t give a shit right now. “Get that,” she said coldly, pointing at Ellie’s unconscious body, “down to my personal research b, at once. No permanent physical damage is to come to her, or the Ministry’s wrath on your heads, understood?” When they didn’t move, she gave Basilica a significant look. “With your permission, Chancellor.”

  “Yes, yes,” he gave an impatient wave. “Do as she says. Renfew, if you would?”

  The sorcerer reshaped Ellie’s bonds so they weren’t holding her to the chair and watched with a disgusted expression as the orderlies busied themselves with hefting the girl and dragging her out.

  Aralia kept her face carefully bnk as she turned to follow them, aware that Penelope was watching with a discomfiting focus. She paused at the door, and said something stiff and underhanded by way of farewell to the Chancellor, not daring to direct anything at Renfew except a gre.

  In response, there was only an echoing, contemptuous silence from all three of them. She had found that Dragonians had a particur sneer they always wore when they were waiting for an inferior to leave before they talked.

  An uneasy chill stole down her spine at how thin her own cover was feeling. Fortunately, the hooks of bckmail she’d snagged in Renfew’s flesh were destructive enough that he could not betray her without utterly destroying himself.

  Penelope was another matter entirely. If she had just caught the scent of a traitor, she would not stop hunting until her quarry was torn apart or butchered.

  The hallway outside was empty, and Aralia forced herself not to hurry. Better not to leave those men alone with Ellie. How much of the fracas the orderlies had overheard she didn’t know, but they had been tasked with delivering an unconscious, bound and colred maid to an alchemical research boratory. They could hardly fail to notice that she wasn’t to be considered a person.

  She gave in and quickened her pace, thinking grimly that this pce was becoming more and more overdue for burning every day.

  ~ ~ ~

  I repsed to consciousness gradually, without quite realizing what was happening.

  My body ached like I’d been dragged down a flight of stairs. My senses were syrupy, my tongue thick, my mouth sour. My cheek was pressed against a hard surface that was feeling harder by the second.

  I groaned weakly, blinking to clear my fuzzy vision.

  Some insubstantial part of me, though, felt refreshed and oddly expansive, like a creek that had run, run, run, all the way into the ocean and become unending, unceasing, wildly powerful and very, very salty.

  “Ellie?”

  Memory filtered in like the tide lifting.

  “How are you feeling?” Aralia asked cautiously, stepping closer.

  She had been pacing, of course.

  My limbs had been bound but they were free now. I was lying on a ft steel table in a small steel room–a containment chamber. I struggled upright and narrowly avoided clouting my head on the fume hood hanging over me. I gred at her.

  “Why,” I said, enunciating, forming each word carefully, “in the Nine hells would you care?”

  Her golden eyes blinked in genuine surprise. “What?”

  “How dare you pretend that you actually care about me?” My voice shed out like a frayed steel cable finally snapping. “After putting me in that situation? Letting her have a go at me?” A long shudder rolled through me that I could not stop.

  I expected cold fury, but Aralia was only watching me, brow furrowed. “You have every right to be mad as a cat in a sack right now, Ellie.”

  It was my turn to blink. I took a slow, deep breath, sagging a little as memory seeped in like water rising through sand. There was a heavy silence between us. I felt a little nauseous. I was unbelievably tired.

  “I thought she killed me.” I whispered finally. “I remember…dying.”

  Aralia winced. “Yes.”

  I stared at her. “How–why am I alive, then?”

  “You were gone, but your body’s…engine…was still warm. It just needed a jump–an alchemical one, in this case.” She looked at me specutively. “The spirit has an affinity for the body, but it doesn’t always return there, you know. There are other pces to go, sometimes better homes waiting for us. And of course, the waters exert their own pull, and there are many predators for the unprotected. You seem to have…made a choice, coming back.”

  That was a lot to process. “And she didn’t mind?”

  Aralia frowned. “Penelope was overruled.”

  “That’s not what seemed to be happening when she killed me,” I said ftly.

  She looked away. “It…took me longer than it should have to account for her presence there and control the situation. I’m sorry, Ellie. I was caught between trying to keep you alive and saving my own cover and the lives of my people. In the end, I imperiled both.”

  Aralia apologizing to me was a little like waking up to a world where things fell up, towards the sky.

  I swallowed. “Why?”

  Those golden eyes searched my face, and I could not tell what they saw, but they looked more tired and softer than I had ever seen them.

  “What were you thinking,” Aralia asked, her voice burring roughsoft in her throat. “When you made a fool of Penelope, though you were bound and helpless and she wielded all the power?”

  I frowned, unsure if she were reprimanding me or asking a genuine question. “I just wanted to attack her,” I said honestly. “And–”

  A fsh of memory, afloat in a sea of whispering luminescence, a river of stars.

  “I felt like I wasn’t alone. When I was attacking, I mean. Taking the risk felt like stepping off a cliff, but–” I hesitated, biting my lip.

  “What did you see?” Aralia asked, almost gently. “In the Tides?”

  My gaze drifted and I sighed, remembering. “I–On the other side there were so many who died the same way I did,” I said, all in a rush. “Defiant. Almost…mid-leap. Or those who fought and won and lived, then died ter, but who still reverberated with the same…” I gestured inarticutely.

  Aralia nodded like this made perfect sense, and I rambled on, encouraged.

  “And they were welcoming me…It was like being linked to them all, sharing a single…well, risk. Like being a strand in a great net. Or a wave in the ocean. It was so much better than feeling alone in the way that fear corners you into. I was so tired of being alone, and…it was like I finally…belonged.” I swallowed painfully, drew a deep breath, and refocused on Aralia. “I did that,” I said, an ache of resolve relighting in my chest. “And I don’t regret paying the price. Why did you bring me back?”

  She raised her eyebrows at me. “You can’t think of a single reason I might want you around?”

  I did not blush. “Come on, Aralia,” I said doggedly. “You’ve already admitted I’m just a pawn. This obviously isn’t about sex.”

  “You thought I was alluding to sexpy?” She snorted. “You really don’t know your own worth, do you? Even after that bzing dispy of forbidden courage.” She shook her head, marveling. “You have no idea how rare that is?”

  At that, my cheeks did tinge pink. I couldn’t help it. “This isn’t about–that,” I said, a little too quickly. “It’s about me understanding where I stand with you, now. What I am to you.”

  She looked me over, a small smile pying with her lips. For some reason, that made me mad.

  “I’m not legally a person anymore, Aralia,” I snapped. Why was I blushing? “You are in control of my life entirely now, and nothing adds up. Why did you ask me to sacrifice myself, and then risk what my sacrifice protected?” I shook my head uncomprehendingly. “In order to–save my life?? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “You recalled someone to me that I am still trying to find,” she said simply. “Call it being linked by a risk–or a resonance.”

  I stared at her, feeling an odd loosening of some of the nooses that my recent brushes with disposal had wrapped around my heart. Was she actually sincere? Or was she pying some deeper game? I couldn’t very well argue with the fact that I was still breathing. That had to count for something.

  …Didn’t it?

  “Not that you two are much alike, mind,” Aralia continued dryly. “Besides both being stubborn tea girls that run straight at trouble, that is. I didn’t know whether to be proud of you or choke you out myself. I won’t pretend it hasn’t been a struggle on my end to decide which.”

  I rolled my eyes, trying to conceal the flutter of excitement in my ribcage. Aralia was looking for a tea girl from her past? Did this mean she was going to bring me into her confidence? And what of the deal I’d made for Mi’s safe passage home?

  Mi. That memory hit like a horse kick to the gut. All my levity whipped away like ashes falling into swift water. I’d met Penelope face to face and literally not survived the encounter. If she was hunting Mi then I needed to make sure Aralia carried out her promise as soon as possible. I shivered. The room was chilly.

  “So, I’m not dead.” I narrowed my eyes at her. “And I remind you of someone. You still haven’t answered my question, not really. What happens to me now?”

  “You’re cold.” Aralia offered me her hand. “Let’s go sit in my office and I’ll make you a cup of tea. There’s a lot to catch you up on.”

  ChaoticArmcandy