Maybe if Sur-Rak had looked at her that way the very first time they met it would have cowed Tif, but she had four seals now and was the only person in the chamber who might be able to save the Archon.
She leapt up, grabbing at the noble keshe. Tif’s hands didn’t come into contact with Sur-Rak’s skin or clothes, instead meeting the resistance of the Gold shroud projected around her. But Tif had been expecting that and pushed heat from her palms into the defensive barrier itself. She wasn’t entirely sure if she could attach to ris like she could other things, but that was the only way she could think to get past Sur-Rak. Praying to the Aspects it had worked, Tif heaved with both arms to the side.
Sur-Rak was busy weaving her hands back and forth in that intricate way she had before firing off her ris, but as Tif had hoped, shifting the shroud moved the keshe with it, causing Sur-Rak to stumble before her shot was finished.
Tif released her Blood hold and splashed through the shallow pond toward Jer’s ma, disturbing fish and floating flowers as she went. She could hear multiple people yelling and moving around the room, but it seemed like they were still chasing Udaru, which might give her enough time to attempt to replace the Archon’s ris. She felt bad not thinking of the same for Rof, but the young keshe had also tried to murder the Archon, so she wasn’t really sure what to think of him anymore. And as for what the Archon had wanted…well, after Tif had reminded her about Jer, then she could do what she pleased.
Barely halfway there, a Gold ris strike from the side bent Tif’s right knee the wrong direction; Tif heard the bones snap and felt the pain shoot down to her foot and streak up her body like lightning all the way to her chin. Unlike before, she managed to run on, hobbling for a few steps before her Blood ris set her leg aright. Not a moment later she took a blow to the head, which knocked her sideways but slowed her no more than the leg. The repeated hits did worry Tif though because, while she remained okay, if she didn’t have enough Blood ris left when she reached the Archon, she’d be as useless to the dying keshe as everyone else was.
With her bare toes, Tif formed a brief hold on the balls of her feet to the rock underneath the water and then released it, using the moment of a firmer grip to first push herself forward, and then with her next attachment, sharply to the side. She felt cool air shoot past her, the marker of a Gold ris shot, just missing, and heard someone shout in frustration.
She was almost there.
A great force crushed into Tif on both sides, like a cyclops as big as the palace had clapped her between its massive hands. She heard and felt multiple bones break as her shoulders squeezed closer together than they ever should have been, but the most painful was the snapping of Tif’s collarbone, which thrummed through her neck and chest. She toppled forward, pushing water and fish aside as she collapsed into the pond, her face and body half submerged. Heedless of the lancing pain, Tif arched her neck to see Jer’s ma, laying only a handful of feet away. She was so close, but now that Tif wasn’t able to dodge their attacks, a host of smaller strikes descended on her, jostling her body this way and that, building in intensity and frequency until she could barely separate them from each other, blurring her vision and heari--
The next thing Tif knew she was on her back, blinking her eyes against a bright light. Clothes still wet rubbed against her skin, so she couldn’t have been out long, which was a small comfort she supposed. Tif pushed herself up, finding a thin layer of straw beneath her hands instead of the fish pond. The light was coming from a line of torches set on a wall--a wall past a row of tall metal bars that went floor to ceiling. Twisting where she sat, Tif saw that the rest of the space was made of faded, brown brick that curved like a cubby and didn’t have so much as a single window.
“This must be what ma and fa feel like,” she whispered to Pep. Tif didn’t bother adding that the way she had just been crushed had probably been similar to what Rof had felt, too--Pep already knew.
The sound of a chair scraping against stone turned Tif around to see a guard she hadn’t even noticed march past her cage, heading onward to somewhere she couldn’t see. Tif did hear a door open from that direction though, not too far away, and then close.
The door had barely shut when she heard it open again, this time followed by multiple footsteps. Curious yet worried, Tif stayed where she was in the middle of the cell, using the few seconds before the oncomers’ arrival to straighten her spine and push her half wet hair back.
As it turned out, the footsteps belonged to not just knights but multiple division leaders, which Tif perked up even more to see. They weren’t all present, just the Archon’s brother, her ancient father, and the female keshe with Gold tattoos across her eyes. There was also a human woman who wore the tabard of the inner division knights and whose jawline reminded Tif a great deal of Tad-Soo.
They lined up in front of her cell in that order, the guard no longer present. Before any of them spoke, Tif asked them, “Did the Archon survive?”
Their hooded stares answered her question, and she began to cry. It wasn’t fair in so many ways. She hadn’t gotten to tell the Archon how much she wanted to be a knight and eventually the Archon, to ask her for advice or guidance. And even worse, the Archon hadn’t gotten to hear how much she had meant--not to someone from Blood tribe--but a citizen of Lercel. How much hope she gave her people, and most importantly, how her son obviously missed her.
“Why do you weep, murderer?” the Archon’s brother growled.
“What?” Tif said, the accusation shocking her out of her grief. “I was trying to save her.”
“How, precisely, did you expect to accomplish that?” the human knight asked. Her words were cool and clipped, and her eyes watched Tif as closely as a master das player watched their opponent’s tiles.
Though Tif desperately wanted to prove that her actions had been in the right, she didn’t immediately answer. There had to be another way out of this cell than revealing the crest. She was innocent after all.
“I just wanted to help. To do something. Seeing all that blood…” Tif didn’t need to fake the shiver that ran across her flesh, and she moved her arms to hold herself.
“Yes, that,” the female keshe with the Gold band asked. Tif had thought this leader seemed so bubbly during the challenges and though she was somber now, there was still a kindness to her. “How did it happen?”
Tif looked to the Archon’s brother. “Didn’t you see when you came in?”
“Answer the question, murderer.”
Tif jumped up from the cell floor, facing him down. She loved Lercel and the Archon, and he had no right to call her that even if he was an arcknight.
The Archon’s brother flicked his hand contemptuously, and Tif felt a slap crack across her cheek. She expected the pain to dissipate, but when it didn’t she pushed her senses out, realizing with shock that she felt only the slightest bit of heat remaining on her skin. It was just her face that hurt now, which meant her Blood ris had mended her recently broken body, but it seemed that it had expended nearly all of itself to do so.
Of course, bits of her body were still numb with Death ris, but that seal didn’t offer her any sort of protection. She’d have to be careful, no two ways about it, so Tif gingerly sat back down.
“Take your time to answer if you need,” the female keshe said. Her voice remained kind, but there was a strength behind it that made it clear how she had risen to the rank she held. “But you must answer.”
The obvious answer was the truth, that Jer’s ma had…asked for this. But would the Archon’s father and brother believe that? If they already knew the Archon’s desires, why be so angry or ask Tif in such a way? And if she told them that Udaru had been the killer, if the knights didn’t already have him, wouldn’t they try all the harder to find him and execute him? Maybe even attack Sah’Sah in vengeance?
Tif didn’t like all the lying she’d had to do recently, truly she didn’t, but if one more could save a whole city, or even just Udaru, then she thought she might as well try.
“It was Rof,” she said to them all. He may not have succeeded, but that had been his goal, so why not let him take the blame? And he was already dead, so the knights couldn’t hurt him anymore. Pep even thought he might want the credit.
“That squire killed my daughter,” Tif heard Jer’s grandfather wheeze, “when countless assassins and two wars did not. I don’t think so. It was the lizard.”
It took Tif only a moment to understand why Udaru would get the blame despite her effort--they knew he had been an assassin before the Archon had made him a division leader. She needed to stop that type of thinking before it took hold.
“Udaru was faithful to the Archon,” Tif said as forcefully as she dared.
“If he was so faithful, then why did he flee us?” the Archon’s brother asked, sounding as if there was no answer that could possibly justify such an action.
Tif remembered all too clearly how Udaru had been reaching for her before being struck by Gold ris. “Probably because the knights who came in attacked him.”
“It was the lizard,” Jer’s grandfather said again as if Tif hadn’t spoken. “He never should have been allowed into the divisions. I was against it from--”
“No. It was Rof,” she said determinedly.
The old keshe’s wrinkled face soured even further at being interrupted, and for a moment Tif thought he might actually look at her instead of gazing off into the distance. Whether he did or not, she wasn’t going to let him talk about Udaru that way. The aquaros had always tried to do the right thing and been more than kind to her, from offering to set her free to being willing to say all those nice things to the Archon about her. And what he had done today…had only been because the Archon had wanted him to. She had even thanked him.
If the arcknights kept blaming Udaru, Tif might as well tell them exactly that.
“How could it have been the squire?” the kind division leader said to her. “His body was smashed between the Archon’s shrouds.”
Tif had completely forgotten about that. “He was,” she agreed, thinking quickly, “but Rof didn’t die right away and managed to attack her after.”
“How?” Tad-Soo’s maybe-relative leaned on the word. “Be specific.”
“The same way I saw him kill a Death tribe warrior,” Tif answered, glad for the chance. “By porting his Gold ris inside their head.”
The division leaders looked at each other. “Impossible,” the Archon’s brother said.
“For a person, yes,” Tif said, recalling what she had been told about Tears, “but not for ris.” Udaru had given all the details to the Archon, but Tif really should have pieced it together earlier. It explained why, after fighting the Death troops, Rof had expended so much of his Tears ris even though he had been standing by Tif the entire time. “He had two scrolls, one from Gold and one from Tears. That was how he learned.”
The division leaders weren’t focused on her anymore, talking amongst themselves.
“There was an item stolen from the restricted section of the University,” the human inner division knight said. “The timing could match.”
The University? Tif remembered a boy at the lotto being from there. He had said that he and some friends had been expelled for losing something important and were gambling to try and buy their way back in. Could that be it?
Tif missed the next thing that was said, hearing only, “...the precision would take years…” but then the kind keshe whispered slightly too loud, “I heard the Archon’s ris wasn’t depleted in the slightest before she expired.”
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“It wasn’t,” the Archon’s brother confirmed.
They all looked troubled after that, and Tif could understand why. If their shrouds provided no protection against such an attack, they were just as vulnerable as everyone else.
“Who else in Lercel has such a combination?” he went on to say.
As if looking through stacks of info in her mind, the human knight replied, “Besides the two remaining members of Udaru’s division, dispensations for Tears were given only rarely.”
“Whoever they are, collect them,” the Archon’s brother said, “regardless of station. And have their Tears ris overwritten with Gold, immediately.”
The woman left, Tif assumed to issue the order or carry it out herself.
“One seal of Gold and two of Tears to accomplish such a feat, eh?” Jer’s grandfather said as he moved around the room with his stuttering steps. “Something that the lizard has, leaving us back where we started. And yet the biggest question hasn’t been answered.”
Tif frowned along with the other two division leaders. What could be more important than finding the assassin?
Jer’s grandfather jerked around, stabbing a finger in the air, but to Tif’s surprise it wasn’t pointed at her. It was directed at the Archon’s brother.
“Why were inner division knights not beside her when this happened? Why weren’t you?”
“She was in one of her moods,” the Archon’s brother glared right back at his father, “and used her fifth seal to keep everyone out of her chamber. Why she allowed Udaru, this one, and that dead squire in, I have no idea. I was seeing to other business. I do have a whole city to mind, after all.”
The old keshe fumed. “You would put the care of Lercel before your Archon, your sister?”
“Of course not,” the Archon’s brother bit the words off with his sharp teeth. “The last report I received said that she was in the bath, and I thought she’d stay there the rest of the day. Besides, it was that fool rumor that put her in such a mood, I guarantee it.” The Archon’s brother turned to look down on Tif. “That came from you, didn’t it?”
Tif didn’t like how he had asked that question one bit. She had been wanting to convince people for days now to take the threat to the Archon seriously. But this...it sounded like they were trying to pin even more on her.
“In a way--” she started.
This time it was the Archon’s brother who surprised her by marching from the room. “Watch her,” he ordered before departing.
The human knight was back at that point, and she and the kind keshe used the chance to confer while the Archon’s father gazed up at nothing in that eerie way he had--though, Tif couldn’t help feeling like he was staring directly at her.
When the Archon’s brother returned, he wasn’t alone.
Sur-Rak glided into the room. The anger Tif had last seen on her face was gone. Instead, she was cool, collected, grace itself, which only served to remind Tif that she was half soaked in a cell sitting on straw.
When put to the question, the noble keshe responded promptly. “Yes, she is the one who told me about the assassination. She is also connected in some way to a hidden Blood Aspect in the city, likely tied to the underground.”
“The underground?” the kind keshe said.
“Why didn’t you tell us this sooner?” barked the Archon’s brother, and the Archon’s father huffed in agreement.
Sur-Rak took the accusatory words of her superiors without batting an eye. “I reported my suspicions through the proper channels, just as I did the information about a potential assassination attempt. However, she was taken outside of Lercel the very next day and, to my knowledge, returned only tonight, so there was no chance to learn the whereabouts of the rogue Aspect. In fact, if I hadn’t been confined by such cumbersome rules, I could have investigated her the moment I was pronounced a squire.”
The Archon’s brother lifted a hand for silence. “This is no time for you to try to seek out more power for yourself. Your aunt and ruler lies dead.”
Sur-Rak nodded her head to the side in slight deference and said no more. She did, however, look at Tif, and Tif could imagine the noble saying to her that she’d never be the Archon now. To prove how wrong she was, Tif stared back just as calmly as she could. These were the knights of Lercel, and there was no proof against her. It was only a matter of time until she was free.
“So this girl does not hail from the Blood Plains?” the human knight said, eying Tif closely again.
“Shouldn’t our first priority be determining who wished the Archon dead?” the kind keshe said. “Who cares where this girl or her ris came from if she is not part of the plot?”
Tif saw a few people ready to respond to that, including Sur-Rak, when the sound of the door hitting the wall turned the division leaders’ heads and Tif’s, though she couldn’t see who it was yet.
Jer stormed into view, wearing similar travel clothes as he had in the challenges but with a dark blue cape that fluttered behind him and his braided hair tied back. He would tell them, Tif knew. About how she had been trying to figure out the identity of the killer, not be one.
The human knight was the first to speak. “Jer-Rix, what are--”
“It’s her,” Jer interrupted, pointing at Tif. “She came to me in the middle of the night, speaking of an assassin, and fool that I was, I told her stories about mother. I don’t know how, but she must have used that information to...to…” He clenched his jaw, looking to the ceiling and then to his uncle and grandfather. “It’s my fault.”
Tif stood again. He was in pain and terribly confused. “Your ma was my hero, Jer. I’d never do anything to hurt the Archon, or you.” He turned toward her voice, his eyes hard and unforgiving. “I’m sorry though,” she continued. “So sorry this happened and that I couldn’t stop it. I wanted to, I just…I didn’t know how…” Tif scrubbed another tear from her face. It wasn’t fair for her to be crying when he wasn’t yet. If only she had spoken up sooner to the Archon about her son, maybe they’d all be together now. By the Aspects, she wished she had.
Jer stood staring at her the entire time, not moving, not blinking, still as the golden statues who had watched his ma die. And when he finally did speak his words were chipped from ice. “If it wasn’t my uncle’s right to execute you, I would do it. As it is, I will be there watching,” he leaned closer, and Tif thought she could feel the hate radiating off of him, “until your ris fails you, until your blood stops pumping and your breath flutters to an end, every minute, every second, in payment for her.”
With that, he spun on his heel, stalking out of the room. Sur-Rak watched him go but did not follow, and neither did any of the division leaders.
“Jer!” Tif called after him, struggling to find her voice after his tirade. “It wasn’t me! Jer!”
“Quiet,” the Archon’s brother said, and when she didn’t stop calling after him, louder, “Quiet!”
He followed the second ‘quiet’ with another ris powered slap, and reflexively, Tif pushed heat into the blow when it connected with her cheek. A line of red ris snapped into being between the two of them.
Tif’s eyes opened wide. She hadn’t even known she could do that.
The Archon’s brother must have noticed the latch in some way because he bellowed. “How dare you steal from me after what you’ve already taken.”
This time he punched her instead of just a slap, and Tif slammed into the back of the cell.
The first blow was quickly followed by a second and then a third, and with barely any Blood ris left to heal her, the pain from each piled on top of the next. She heard the Archon’s brother screaming as he continued to beat her, shouting about what she had done and demanding the names of anyone else involved.
A blow to her chest made Tif reflexively cough and blood came up with it. Her body was raw, the only thing keeping her upright was the brick wall behind her and the Gold ris shots pushing her up against it. Was she going to die here? Tif hoped very much she wouldn’t--there was still so much she wanted to do--but it was getting harder to focus, her head swam and she wasn’t even sure if she was standing anymore.
“...stop…stop, you’re killing her...you have to stop!” she heard someone say. Tif could barely keep her eyes open, they were so swollen shut, and breathing out seemed to expel more liquid than air.
“We’ll have to wait to interrogate her more after she’s healed,” another said.
Tif heard a growl and then departing footsteps, followed by others, though someone ended up staying longer than the rest before leaving, too.
When they were gone, Tif tried to feel past the pain of her body--which pulsed like she was still being hit--to determine where she was. There was hard brick against her back but also her left arm, which didn’t seem right. She cracked one bleary eye and found that she was lying on the ground on her side. Tif went to push herself up into a sitting position to meditate but found that she didn’t have a drop of strength for that. Instead, she closed her eye and focused on breathing steadily. Her nose was broken though--a bent, firebrand on her face--and trying to breathe out of it just made her cough. So, she switched to sucking air in and out of her mouth, trying to ignore the pain of her ribs with each inhale and how loose her teeth felt.
Over the next few hours, Tif drifted in and out of consciousness. She didn’t mean to, but the constant pain sapped her energy, and though a multitude of questions and half-formed thoughts raced through her mind, she tried to quiet them to meditate better and hopefully recover faster. In a way she succeeded, falling into a fitful sleep. As the night wore on, each time she jerked away, she felt a little less battered and bruised, breathing was gradually less painful, and she could even open both eyes, though they were still puffy.
One question Tif couldn’t stop wondering was when the division leaders would seek her out again to demand more answers. But when the torches burned down to embers and still no one had come, she let go of the question and slipped into unfettered unconsciousness.
The sound of rattling keys woke her from a sleep of people screaming at her, their shouts of hate and anger hurting her like a physical thing, to find the room very dark and a short figure standing in front of the bars.
Whoever this was, they seemed to be working on the lock, and Tif spotted a dull glint of metal on the upper right of the person’s ear.
“Awt?” she said. Tif had been wondering when she might see him again, but she certainly hadn’t expected it to be here.
“Ah, not hurt so bad as I feared,” she heard him say. Despite everything they had been through, the familiarity of his voice eased muscles she hadn’t even realized had been clenched. “The way you were bent at angles while you were sleeping didn’t look comfortable.”
There was a click and the door swung back on hinges that squeaked no louder than a rat might whine. Tif didn’t hesitate, getting up and managing to walk free of the cage on legs that hurt only somewhat with each step.
Once out, she looked side-to-side. To the left, Tif didn’t see any other movement down what she guessed was the rest of the cell line--most everything that direction was hidden in deep shadows. And to the right, there was no one between them and the wooden door that she’d bet was the exit.
“How did you get in here?” Tif whispered. “The guards--”
“Like flats,” he said.
They were in Archon’s palace. These were the most well paid guards in all of Lercel. Surely Awt, on the bad side of the underground after losing the crest, couldn’t possibly have had enough money to not only bribe his way into the palace but then payoff anyone charged with watching the person suspected of the Archon’s murder. Tif didn’t have to say all that, of course. With how many years they had been together, the way she asked, “What?” was enough.
Awt didn’t bother closing the cell door and pocketed whatever key he was using before answering. “Have you forgotten how much the lotto pays?”
Tif’s mouth dropped open. “You kept my ticket and didn’t tell me!” she yelled in a hiss, slapping him in the arm.
He took the hit with only a small grunt. “I knew you’d just waste it and likely get yourself in trouble.” His tone clearly implied that this would have all happened regardless.
“I knew how to use Gold ris. Everything would have been fine.”
Awt was silent, like he might argue with her, but then he just shrugged. “Maybe. But you know as well as I that ‘would haves’ and ‘what ifs’ don’t fill your belly or line your pockets, so we might as well move on to dealing with where we find ourselves to be.”
Her money that she had earned. That’s what he had taken from her, used, and was now dismissing as easily. While he might think himself her savior, the truth was that she had just rescued herself. And she’d only needed to do it because of him interfering in the first place!
Awt motioned for her to follow, moving toward the exit door. “Come on.”
Expecting her to listen right after admitting that he had stolen her dream and lied to her about it. This is exactly why they were no longer together.
“Where are we going?” she said.
“Somewhere safe,” Awt answered, stepping back to grab her by the arm, which, fortunately for him, was covered by a long sleeve.
Tif latched her bare feet onto the stone ground so that Awt couldn’t budge her. When his attempt to pull her along failed twice, he turned back around.
“What are you doing?” he hissed, and Tif heard a bit of worry flash through his voice. Apparently a fortune of flats could only buy you so much time.
“Waiting for you to listen,” she said. “Ready yet?”
“Tif--”
She laid her hand on top of the one he was using to hold her arm, skin on skin. The effect was immediate: a spark of energy shot through her palm, up her arm, blossoming into the rest of her body, making her feel twice as alert, while at the same time causing Awt to sag until she stopped touching him.
“Ready?” she asked again.
This time he tried to get away from her, but Tif had already planned for that: after draining him the first time, she had attached her hand to his sleeve, so he barely made it two full steps back before having to stop.
“What about now?”
Awt let out a tight sigh, looking none too pleased with the position she was putting him in. “What do you need to say that can’t wait?”
“First,” Tif started, “that I appreciate you coming to get me. Even though I’m mostly here because you didn’t believe in me, it was still a brave thing for you to do.”
“And?” he said, not even trying to defend himself. He really was in a hurry.
“I need you to take me to wherever Vak-Lav is. Right now, no side trips or stops.” She had already failed to save someone else’s parent and she wasn’t going to repeat the mistake.
Awt’s eyebrows twitched slightly, giving the impression of a frown. “But Tif--”
She put her free hand next to his again and waited. He watched her closely and must have decided that she was quite serious in her request because he grumbled, “Fine.”
“Wonderful,” Tif said, feeling reenergized in more ways than one. She unstuck her feet from the ground and marched past him, using her connection on his shirt to pull him after. “Let’s go.”