ChaoticArmcandy

  The oiled click and slide of tumblers, as Aralia turned the key to her office door. I swayed a little beside her and she gave me a frank look.

  “What?” I mumbled. “I’m fine.”

  She snorted and pushed open the door with one hand. I flinched as her other arm circled around my shoulders.

  “You’re unsteady as a newborn foal.”

  “Well, technically, I haven’t been alive for very long,” I muttered, but let her pull me gently but insistently over the threshold.

  The enormous window of pte gss opposite showed the molten yolk of the sun just spilling over the horizon of ste rooftops. The edges of everything were soft in the new light. I couldn’t help myself. I stood watching, entranced.

  Aralia bustled, pulling a kettle and mugs out of a cabinet.

  “Sit down before you fall down,” she called over her shoulder.

  I ignored her out of sheer stubbornness, still staring out the window. The sky was a glowing scrawl of incandescent pink hues that seemed too beautiful for the byrinth of nightmarish control, the terrifying maze of the st few hours, days, weeks I’d been trapped in. I felt my soul dare to draw breath again.

  Then a prickling buzz began to seep into my neck and down my spine, spreading fast. I stiffened and reached back, my fingers grasping a smooth, metal circlet before they, too, lost all sensation in a tide of crackling numbness.

  The colr–

  “Aralia!” I gasped. Cramping spasms nced down my back, doubling me over–my arms had gone limp, and then I stumbled as my legs faltered–

  “I withdraw my st command,” said Aralia quickly, and the crackling buzz vanished instantly.

  I straightened slowly, shuddering at the ghostly pins and needles that were still rolling through my nerve endings.

  Aralia cursed under her breath. “That was careless of me. I apologize.”

  I gnced at her in poorly concealed irritation. “What is this thing?”

  She winced. “A compulsion colr. There are very few left, but there were once a great many. Most were deliberately destroyed a very long time ago, after the fall of Old Gel.”

  “And what does it do?” I asked tersely, running my fingers along it, looking for a seam. I could find none. Had it been sealed around my neck?

  “It punishes transgression,” she said grimly, and said no more.

  I felt a wave of despair and exhaustion. “So any little order you give me that I don’t obey, even accidentally–”

  “It will discipline you, yes. And that holds true for any authority, not just me.”

  I closed my eyes, swaying a little. This is my life now?

  “I’m sorry, Ellie,” Aralia said. “I’m afraid there was never a chance of you being spared this particur humiliation, if our gambit was to work. It may be scant comfort to you now, but if push comes to shove, and everything else goes up in fmes, rest assured I do have a pn to get it off you.”

  I stared at her. As novel as it was to have her apologizing to me, I was beginning to hope the trend would start reversing. “Do I get to hear it?” I snapped. “Come to think of it, do I get to hear any of your pns?” I folded my arms below my breasts, narrowed my eyes at her and resisted the urge to stamp my foot. “Who are you, really? And what is actually going on here?”

  Aralia hesitated.

  “Remember how I died?” I said acerbically. “With my mouth shut?”

  “You did not,” Aralia reminded me, raising her eyebrow, “die with your mouth shut.”

  I stamped. “I meant without spilling any secrets, obviously! Admit that I died!”

  “You…did die.” She looked torn, which was a victory in itself.

  “So? You have to tell me!”

  “That’s not really how–”

  “Aralia,” I interrupted. “I let you throw me to the sharks. You owe me. I deserve to know what I’m a part of.”

  For a long moment Aralia just looked back, her golden eyes tired and inscrutable. Then she cleared her throat, and said, quite carefully–

  “Didn’t Mi tell you?”

  I went rigid, mind racing. It must be a trick. She was goading me. She wanted me to reveal something. Why else would she–

  I tried to force my voice ft but it came out hoarse. “Just answer my questions, Aralia.”

  Aralia quirked an eyebrow. “You don’t know, then?”

  The hairs on my neck were rising. “Know what?” I said desperately. Why was I taking her bait?

  “Mi is also one of my assets.”

  My mind reeled. No. I stared at her.

  “She could have told you about my smuggling operation whenever she wanted,” continued Aralia mercilessly. “She’s seen its extent with her own eyes.”

  Smuggling operation? No! This is some deeper game, that’s all. But then–

  I shook my head stubbornly. “I don’t believe you.” I couldn’t afford to let her persuade me into revealing anything more about Mi. It was a trick.

  Mi’s face going stony, hardening as she fished Aralia’s coin from my blouse.

  Those golden eyes looked at my wryly. “I’m telling the truth, Ellie.”

  I pressed my lips together, staring back in stubborn silence.

  But then–how had Mi recognized the coin as Aralia’s?

  She sighed. “If you refuse to believe anything I say then why ask me for answers in the first pce?”

  I gred at her and did not speak.

  “Fine. It’s time we got to the bottom of this the old fashioned way, inelegant way.” Aralia crossed to her desk and began rifling through a drawer. “If you’re just going to shut down about it, and you clearly don’t trust that I’m not working an angle here, you leave me little choice.” She came up with a familiar-looking gold disc and brandished it at me. “I’ll bring her here then.”

  I bnched. If this wasn’t a bluff, then–

  “Nervous, are we?” Her tawny gaze noted my reaction. “I take it your parting was rough?”

  I frowned at her. That stung.

  “Let no one say you gave me a choice in this, Ellie.” Aralia said dryly. “And stop pouting at me.”

  The buzzing tingles began to build very quickly. “Aralia,” I gasped.

  “Oh, shit,” Aralia said quickly. “Right. You can pout if you want to, Ellie.”

  I grimaced at her instead. The buzzing faded.

  She pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and began balling it up in her fist, beckoning me forward with her other hand.

  I eyed her suspiciously. At least she wasn’t using the colr to draw information out of me by torturous punishment. That would be the easiest and most obvious strategy if she were acting in total bad faith. So perhaps she did really care about me, at least to some extent?

  What was with the handkerchief though?

  “I can’t have you interrupting our….conversation, Ellie. Sorry.” She was wearing an expression of ill-concealed anticipation that I recognized.

  My eyes widened.

  “Don’t worry, it’s clean.”

  “Aralia,” I sputtered. “You don’t need a gag to keep me silent! Why are you—”

  “Because you’re cute, you slut. Now, come here.”

  The buzzing crawled down my spine. Gring, I took a step towards her, then another, and it stopped.

  She smirked. “On your knees.”

  I obeyed, trying not to think about what usually happened when she said those words.

  “Eyes on me. Good girl.”

  An involuntary shudder. I could feel my face starting to heat. Her eyes roamed.

  “Open your mouth.”

  I obeyed and she began to push the wad of fabric into my mouth. I continued gring at her, even as heat fluttered in my pelvis.

  “Are you enjoying this?” she mocked.

  I groaned, flushing darkly.

  Aralia smirked down at me, grabbed a handful of my hair, and used her grip to tilt my head back, her thumb shoving the st bit of handkerchief home. I was unable to fully suppress a moan.

  I felt her hand come to rest on the top of my head. She was doing something over on the desk with her other hand. Then she stroked my hair and I squirmed. “Remember, no talking until I give you permission,” she murmured needlessly.

  ~ ~ ~

  Aralia waited, sitting with the patient poise of an apex predator in her element.

  I knelt beside her desk, her handkerchief balled up in my mouth, my shoulders bowed and tensed, eyes fixed on the door, and fidgeted. There was nervous sweat cooling on the back of my neck. My pulse raced unsteadily. Mi was coming here? If Aralia could produce Mi, and this wasn’t some bluff, then that meant Mi really was her asset, which meant–

  I…didn’t know what that meant.

  I winced as memory flooded me, full of caustic shame and pain.

  Mi staring at me, lip curling, as if she didn’t know me at all–

  “Did she tell you to spy on me?”

  Her shock of disbelief, followed by bzing anger–

  “She’s one of Cordivar’s creatures!”

  I cringed internally, my heartbeat lunging wildly.

  Her despair–“Being around her is making me sick to my stomach.”

  I swallowed, bewildering arm sinking through my breastbone like a hot knife through butter. If Mi also had been Aralia’s asset this whole time, why had she gotten so bitterly angry at me? Weren’t we both implicated by our secrets? Couldn’t she understand how little choice I’d had? I squirmed as another fragment of memory tore through me.

  “Does Aralia Cordivar know about me, Ellie?” said Mi quietly. “Does she know I’m a tea girl?”

  And like the perfect fool, I hadn’t known the answer to that question, hadn’t been able to give her the most basic reassurance or confirmation.

  I shot a sidelong look at Aralia. When she’d persuaded me to turn myself in, to draw the administration’s attention away from the trails and tracks of others who’d been subverting Apomasaics, I’d assumed at first that Aralia had been referring to Mi.

  Perhaps that conclusion had been a wild leap, but Emilia could hardly have failed to notice that my decision to go through with the gambit had come on the heels of visiting Mi and Roxa’s room and Aralia very well could have inferred that my sacrifice was a conscious strategy to protect them because they had left such traces in the alchemical stockrooms and ledgers.

  I felt another wave of nausea. Mi thought I’d outed her to Aralia. She thought I’d been spying on her the whole time. And the worst thing was, she wasn’t actually wrong–I’d unintentionally led Emilia straight to her door. Of course Mi would feel betrayed. There was an awful, creeping chance that I had given her away, if not by word then by deed.

  Mi’s gaze, raking me with a raw sharpness like broken gss. “If she’s lying about not being a snitch then it makes no difference, the damage is done. If she’s telling the truth then let her prove it!”

  I shivered. I may have ruined everything, but I would try to limit the resulting damage as best I could. I had to keep Aralia from discovering anything else about Mi.

  I flinched as a sharp rap sounded on the heavy oakwood door and looked up at Aralia with a panicked expression.

  “Come in,” called Aralia, meeting my gaze with a wry expression.

  The door swung open, and I swallowed, almost trembling with nerves.

  ChaoticArmcandy