Airlean Tales S2E19: Atlantis (2)

Karis’s hand shot to her sword immediately, and she bemoaned the fact that she was guarding the worst-kept secret in the entire country. At this point, who didn’t know that Hal was the heir of Leventis?

The strange boy only smiled pleasantly at her hostility. “Why, good lady of flower and frost,” he said, “surely you would not behead an innocent boy?”

That golden eye pierced Karis, dug in her like a spear. She flinched, and immediately hated herself for doing so.

“How do you know me?” she said tightly.

“He’s the Keeper of the Library of Ancients,” Halcyon said. “He knows everything.” He did not move to draw his weapon, but he angled himself protectively in front of Karis—as if that could keep her from that horrible golden eye, which seemed to cut through stone and flesh alike. “Would you deign to share your name with us, Lord Keeper? Last I saw, your mother held the title.”

“My mother is dead, as seems to be the nature of most parents hereabouts,” said the Keeper with a sickening cheerfulness. “But if you are so curious, my name is Soterios Ninotas.”

He looked barely out of school, and yet he felt ancient to her, powerful. Karis would not be one to underestimate him for his young face.

“Name your price,” she said flatly.

Soterios regarded her with a lifted brow. “My price for what?”

“No need to be coy,” she returned. “You come here threatening to reveal the identity of the Lord Leventis. What price must we pay to keep your mouth shut?”

He laughed. “My lady, I haven’t the faintest idea of what you speak.”

Karis did not like these games that Atlanteans seemed ever so fond to play. “Then I suppose you walk through this desolate graveyard, as you put it, on a lark?”

“Quite right. I enjoy places of melancholy and lost heritage.” His gaze landed on Halcyon, and his smile was no longer so friendly. “Witnessing the transience of life is always a pleasure.”

Karis stared into that golden eye, which burned and writhed like churning snakes. There was an ancient, volatile power there, one that made her shiver. He was not right, this boy.

“Then what, do we trust you remain silent?” she said tersely.

He tilted his head like a broken doll. “If not, then do you kill me, Lady Frostplum?”

What was it with annoying boys granting her unbearable monikers? She glared at him, but it felt fruitless; he feared nothing, and she was clearly no exception to the rule.

“It’s fine,” said Halcyon. “He’s bluffing. Keepers are entrusted with information far more deadly than my identity. They have learned to hold their tongue.”

Soterios looked back to Halcyon. “Oh, but things have changed since your departure, Lord Leventis,” he said. “Go to the Apokalion and behold the forsaken seats. See how this country is crumbling, day by day, stone by stone, to a watery grave. Doom is near, and you yourself have set the final days into motion.”

Halcyon fell silent, looking uncharacteristically unnerved, and Karis felt obliged to speak.

“You must be fun at parties,” she said.

Soterios laughed, almost boyish. “That is none of my concern.”

“And neither is your doomsaying,” Karis said flatly. “I’ve heard plenty of the like from the Observatorium. ‘Doom is nigh; alas, despair, the night has won!’ So on and so forth. People are so enamored with giving up that they hardly realize there is a different course of action.”

Soterios regarded her in silence that stretched on uncomfortably long. The smile had disappeared from his face, yet Karis felt no victory in it.

“I see,” he finally said. “You disbelieve me. Think me a simple card-reader on the Marketway.”

That was not quite true; it was difficult not to believe him with his inhuman knowledge and grotesque eye. But Karis said nothing.

“Then allow me to tell you something you will believe,” Soterios said. His voice softened to a distant bell toll, like raven’s wings. “Lady of the sugar-plums, you will lose somebody you dearly love.”

Her heartbeat faded in her ears. She heard nothing but stony silence, saw nothing but that cursed golden eye. She was drowning.

“What, what are you saying,” she gasped out.

“You already know it,” Soterios said. “The thought haunts you every day, a shadow in your waking moments.”

Karis was keenly, terribly aware of Halcyon’s presence next to her. Solid and strong and alive. No, she would let no one take him from her.

“Well,” said Soterios, his tone lightening considerably, as if he’d been discussing the weather, “that’s what I see, anyway. Your life looks to be full of tragedy and pain! What’s one more?”

And the young Lord Keeper clasped his hands behind his back and strode off, whistling a jaunty tune, as if he hadn’t just dropped a stone on her head.

Karis let him leave. For a moment, she understood what it was like to feel cold. The hollowness under her skin where blood should have been running. The feeling that she would shrivel up into nothing. A slow march towards death.

She nearly jumped at the feeling of a steady hand on her shoulder. “Karis,” said Halcyon’s voice. “It’ll be alright. Your mother is in the safest sector of Mythaven, and the Storm is in a calm season. We’ll get back and keep a close eye on her.”

Her mother. He thought she was thinking of her mother. Karis almost laughed as she drew back from his hand, the burning trail of it echoing on her shoulder.

“Yuden,” she said faintly, “I don’t think it’s my mother.”

His brows knitted down. “Then who—”

The sudden warble of a tidebreaker split the air, drawing their attention. A manta shape darted overhead, then swung into a low arc until it levitated before them. The tidebreaker’s belly opened, and Captain Mathias Galeus leapt out.

“Where?” Halcyon asked sharply.

Karis recognized that tone—a dangerous one. It was the tone he used to assess, to prepare.

Right before he hurled himself into the thick of danger.

“The Harvester Dominion,” Mathias replied. “The borders have closed. Senator Rathos Antheos Vathalos is displaying the starting symptoms of furor.”

Furor. The word was said with hesitation, the smallest sign of primal fear. A condition? A disease? Whatever it was, it could not mean anything good.

“No precautionary measures were taken?” Halcyon responded.

“The scarecrows refuse to grant us admission.”

“Then force it.”

“They maintain, correctly, that under the Law of the Ancients, only a Leventis Arbiter poses the authority to invoke venarei morben and bypass dominion boundaries.”

Halcyon chuckled with a brittleness that Karis had never heard before. “So they prefer annihilation?”

Mathias grimaced. “For better or for worse, they want no involvement from the Warmongers. Will you come?”

Halcyon opened his mouth, and fear drove like a knife into Karis’s chest. She seized his arm quickly, yanking him around to her.

“Don’t,” she said. “You are not of Atlantis anymore. They have no right to order you around.”

His gaze flitted over her face, searching. “People could die. A lot of people.”

“Then let Captain Galeus bring this to the prince, and let the prince decide. That is his right as your liege.”

Her heart was hammering wildly, a drumbeat that would not ease. She could not let this happen right before her eyes. She could not let Halcyon run to his death right after it was pronounced.

“Lord Leventis,” Mathias began.

“He is not a Leventis anymore,” she snapped. “He is Lord Yuden, and deserves to be addressed as such.”

“Then tell me, good lady,” Mathias said, still staring at Halcyon, “why he came here.”

To bid farewell. To close the chapter. To put it all behind him. Karis wished she could have said one of those things. But one look at Halcyon and the expression on his face, and she knew they were all untrue.

Halcyon had come to the Leventis dominion to look for answers, and Mathias had presented them on a gilded platter.

“Yuden,” Karis said, “you bear that mask to conceal your heritage. Doing this would announce it to the world.”

“There is no longer a need to conceal his heritage,” Mathias countered, “if the senators fear Senator Vathalos more than the return of a Leventis. In fact, they will be grateful for his presence.”

“He is still considered a fugitive, captain!”

“No one will indict him if he proves an asset, and the strength of Senator Xiph lies behind him.”

“That is no guarantee!”

“I’ll go,” Halcyon finally said, crushing her in two words. “Galeus, I’ll see you at the Harvester’s. I have windsoles. Karis—get to Sethis and inform him of the situation.”

Karis bit her tongue until she tasted blood, but there was no use in raising her voice. It was his decision. And he had made it.

You will lose somebody you dearly love.

“Yuden,” she whispered, voice shaking, “please.”

She didn’t even know what to ask. He had decided to go. He would certainly be in danger. There was nothing she could do about it. Nothing she could ask of him.

Halcyon didn’t smile at her, didn’t touch her, didn’t even look at her. His focus was already honed on the Harvester’s Dominion.

“Join me quickly,” he said distractedly, his windsoles humming in preparation. “This might be a big fight.”

Just like that, he vaulted off. Disappeared like a candle winking out at midnight. Fine, fine. It wasn’t his problem that her heart was terrifyingly compromised, that she cared for Halcyon far deeper than was appropriate. Ideally, he would at least have had the courtesy to realize something was upsetting her, but fine. That was part of who he was, focused and unshakable, and was no small part of what she admired about him.

Mathias reached up to grip one of the handles of the tidebreaker steering pod when Karis spoke. “Captain.”

He looked up and waited.

“Do what you can to keep that idiot out of trouble,” she said. “Please.”

His mouth twitched and he bowed shortly. “My lady.”

Oh so contrite now that he had gotten his way, was he?

The steering pod closed and the tidebreaker shot off. Heart sore but still sprinting, Karis fired her windsoles and darted back to the embassy plaza. Sethis would hear from her. And he would probably not like what she had to say.

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