CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: Luscia
Luscia’s fingers scrambled desperately for the vial.
Only minutes into Luscia’s trek to her apartment, the episode seized her entire nervous system. Searing, exploratory needles stemmed from each temple in search of the other. Despite the paralyzing intervals of pain, she remembered tying a single tonic under her tunic, just above her mother’s dagger.
The privacy of darkness held Luscia captive within the winding, abandoned corridor. She tried to shush the shrill, whimpering lycran while she fumbled with the stopper of the vial and swallowed her aunt’s acrid remedy. Condensation enveloped her now-dampened skin, adding a chill to her feverous delirium. Luscia pressed her forehead against the wall as her hands cleaved the masonry. Each fissure in the stone marked a different loved one she pleaded to, begging them to take away her agony. Panting, Luscia pressed her cheek into the rock and waited for the pressure to subside.
This is the price of my unfaithfulness, she whimpered to herself.
Luscia wasn’t worthy of the High One’s mercy and wouldn’t dare beg Him for it. She’d broken her covenant to Boreal, to Aniell, by agreeing to teach Darakai’s al’haidren how to wield their sacred blades. Luscia submitted to the piercing penance willingly; the shame was hers alone to bear.
An unknown number of minutes passed before Luscia’s vision sharpened and her chest expanded to its true fullness again. Beneath her touch, Aksel’s ears twitched irregularly. The disorienting, buzzing fog slowly evaporated, revealing the distant voices that had caught his attention.
Silently, Luscia eased away from the wall. She and the lycran were not alone.
“No, you lied to me! I put a lot at stake for this agreement, Naborū!”
Luscia shook out the remaining cloudiness in her ears.
“I offered you an opportunity. It’s no lie you needed my assistance. Would you prefer your lordly debts come to light, Felix? You’ve always been a gambler. Will the province of Galina celebrate the habits of their Lord Ambrose, or condemn them?”
Preoccupied by their brisk exchange, the two men had not yet detected her presence. Unfortunately, they were about to. That turnoff ahead was the only passage in the direction of the Boreali suites.
“This was not part of our bargain, Naborū! Fix it. Now!”
“I cannot reverse what you’ve elected to become, Felix. But I warn you not to forget with whom you’re speaking. You were nothing to Galina before I extended my resources to satisfy your…appetites.”
Luscia didn’t wait for the conclusion of their dispute—she had no desire to hear what despicable arrangement it entailed. She released the knot caging her mane at the top of her head, raked her fingers through the tangled ends, and smoothed the wrinkles out of her sparring tunic. None could learn of Luscia’s disgraceful pact with Kasim, least of all Tetsu Naborū, the notoriously shrewd haidren to Pilar.
With a groan, Luscia rushed down the corridor at her original pace, clucking at the lycran. “Come along, Aksel, I don’t have all day,” Luscia called, raising her voice as she rounded the upcoming turn.
Though the passage was dimly lit, Luscia witnessed an abrupt shift in the men’s countenance. Ambrose, she deduced, was younger than anticipated. His untrained yancy build, similar to that of Ira Hastings, posed her no threat. Regardless, he promptly stood as lordly as he presumed himself to be and jerked on a pair of fine gloves, as if he was ready to leave. Squinting at her approach, the hue of Ambrose’s eyes was indistinguishable, though it aligned with the rich coloring of his noble Unitarian skin and even richer curls.
An odor cradled her nostrils, akin to the sickening tinge of sweet onions just as they’ve begun to rot. Luscia’s bravado receded when she faced Ambrose’s companion.
The same man who’d watched her climb the steps to Dmitri’s table during her reception lingered inside the snug, stone-arched corridor: Sayuri’s uncle, Tetsu Naborū. Sporting the same slick loop of oiled hair, the sallow skin over his cheeks was pulled taut where it was fastened at the base of his neck, just above the short collar of his generous white robes. From her readings, Luscia recalled the significance of their unspoiled hue, signifying his coveted position as chancellor of the Shoto Collective. She’d heard that while many shoto prime, the intellectual leaders of the collective within the Western House, sought after that pinnacle of Pilarese influence, only few ever managed to secure it. Somehow, Sayuri’s uncle had attained both internal chancellorship and external haidrenship to his House. Yet, unlike the scholarly picture of success one would expect, the notorious Tetsu Naborū here stood like a common underling beneath a ceiling of dark cobwebs.
Luscia would not have believed Pilar’s wealthiest haidren and shoto prime to date, could possibly fall victim to something so ordinary as addiction, especially that of common pipe marrow. But its cloying scent oozed from his every pore, explaining the unsightly yellowing of his eyes, the whites of which were nearly identical to his waxen complexion.
“Little Lady al’Haidren,” he crooned. Tetsu Naborū flipped his head studiously on its side, resembling a featherless owl. “I wonder what could have possibly brought Boreal’s fledging here, to our clutches, this morning? Tell me…” She tried not to gag when he leaned closer. “…do you and the crossbreed often play in ancient shadows?”
Luscia didn’t respond, and the haidren did not compel her to. Instead, he raised two spindly fingers and twirled the tapered hairs of his sharp beard around the claw of his pewter nailpiece.
“I wished to walk the lycran about the palace to better familiarize him with our new home,” she said carefully, unnerved by his probing interest. “We were not welcome on this floor and made to leave. I quickly became lost, but I believe this direction leads to an exit. We should be on our way.”
Inclining her head to both men, she took a step around the pool of Tetsu Naborū’s billowing robes. With a nauseating gulp of stale pipe marrow, Luscia looked up to find his calculating, jaundiced eyes dangerously near her own. Aksel snarled at the Western haidren, and bile climbed the walls of her throat.
“Even the great, venerated Alora Tiergan came to learn her place.” Reedy, chapped lips hissed her aunt’s name as if it were a curse. “And so I ask you, little al’Haidren—will her niece?”
Luscia’s diaphragm constricted. Logic promised the willowy, opiated man couldn’t inflict any real harm. But as the ache in her skull returned, his nearness threatened logic to reassess its claim.
“She should hope so,” Naborū warned, easing back barely enough to permit their passing.
With a single snap of her fingers, Luscia mutely led Aksel away from the haidren to Pilar. Keeping an unassuming pace, she refused to look back. When the hulking double doors to her apartments finally came into view, Luscia sailed into her makeshift haven. Inside, she pitted her back against the wood and pressed her eyes shut.
“Lady Luscia, thank the High One!” a woman cried, disrupting Luscia’s solace. “They’ve been out searching all morning for you, your men have!”
“Tallulah.” Luscia sighed; another complication of her contract with the younger Kasim. “Meh fyreon. I began the day walking unaccompanied. It becomes oppressive, constantly being around the others.” She despised the sour tang of the half-lie. “But more pressing is my aunt—do you know where I might find her?”
“Ana’Mere has left the city,” Tallulah answered, tears collecting along her sparse lashes. “They found an orphaned cross-caste dead in the bay, and…the Peerage denied her request to send the body to the nearest Boreali kin in Port Tadeas. The haidren to Bastiion, him being m-minister…he overruled the Peerage, b-but only under the condition that Ana’Mere escort the body herself.” The maid sniffled into a handkerchief. “They ordered her to r-remove the remains and depart before noon.”
If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.
Tallulah reached into the swollen pocket of her apron and retrieved a folded scrap of parchment. Offering it to her mistress, the maid’s oversized teeth bit back a freckled lip as Luscia read the hurried script.
Luscia,
I trust Tallulah relayed the urgency of my departure, as you were nowhere to be found. I do hope your absence was purposeful. While I am away, do not respond brashly to these events.
Submit emotion to reason. We must trust His Majesty to seek justice for Boreal.
Ethnicam eyes watch for any misstep.
rul’Aniell,
Alora
Luscia delicately refolded the parchment, her lips pursed. It was irrational to take offense from her aunt’s instruction, but she felt rebuked all the same. Discrediting the sting, Luscia gently thanked the maid and sought the canopied terrace outside her bedroom for air.
Not a moment later, a crash of oak and stone had Luscia whirling around as the captaen of her guard stampeded into the apartment. By the tremors across his forehead, he wasn’t pleased.
“Luscia!” Marek barked as he marched into her bedroom, trapping her on the balcony. “Not one, Luscia. Not one najjan knew your whereabouts. You left your entire guard behind! Here, in this yancy shrine, of all places!”
“Am I a prisoner in my own apartments, Captaen?” Two alabaster fingers shushed his lecturing. She was not his inferior, and it was a gross overstep to speak to her as such. Her spine straightened as she leveled her gaze, “There are elements of my station which require attention outside of this room.”
“Your father holds me accountable for your safety! In the name of Aksel’s Keep, why did you conceal yourself from us?” Marek demanded.
“Perhaps I needed space from my warden. He’s insufferable.”
“An al’haidren is to be protected at all times, Luscia.” Marek scratched the rust-colored stubble on his jaw in visible frustration. “You don’t get to have these juvenile disappearances anymore! And certainly not here.”
Luscia’s face felt aflame.
“I do not answer to you, Marek Bailefore,” she said, flattening her voice and staring into his strained, oceanic eyes. “Do not allow your speech to turn so informal with me. You may be my father’s choice, but you were not mine. If I must submit to rank, so must you.”
Marek’s gaze plummeted to his wrist. Trailing his line of sight, she saw her father’s beaded cuff tied snugly around it. Flooded with shame, her chest caved in.
She’d rejected his kurtfierï, a token of courtship, when he’d offered it on the eve of her Ascension. Luscia stared at the beads in the lacing, rebuking herself. It was extremely unusual for a suitor to wear the kurtfierï, for if accepted, it was worn by the suited. The cuff’s prominent display implied that Marek still waited to be acknowledged; for Luscia to change her mind. She’d not handled their conversation graciously that night, and she was cruel to so callously remind him of it now.
“Marek, I—” Luscia moved toward the cuff, but her hand fell, unwilling to take it from him.
“Tadöm, Ana’Sere, for reminding me where we stand,” he whispered vacantly. “Meh fyreon, for forgetting. It won’t happen again.”
His nose twitched as the captaen quietly bowed his head, and left.
Luscia swallowed, watching him depart. Though he wouldn’t admit it, she’d been justified in rejecting him that night, for there simply wasn’t reason enough to accept his courtship. She had no need for a union, not until conditions require her to continue the line of Tiergan. Having just embarked into her new life, Luscia wasn’t ready to lay down her blades, or her independence. And were he to be honest, neither was Marek.
A midday breeze swept her reddening cheeks, guiding her to look out over the colorful floating stalls below. Luscia slumped against a limestone column, guilt and resentment coiling her thoughts. Children were being butchered, tossed like trash into those very waters, while she was forced to become an idle figure, watching by. Were Luscia to gather her weapons and seek answers herself, her own najjan would remain an obstacle. The men were obligated to uphold Alora’s mandate for passivity, including the passivity of her niece.
Shaking her head, Luscia glared across the vast openness to the adjacent terrace, where the nearest byrnnzite cupola glimmered in the sun.
Even the servants of Sayuri Naborū-Zuo come and go more freely than I, she brooded.
Gradually, a sly grin replaced her frown.
“Mila!” Luscia abruptly yelled through her bedroom, into the common room. “Mila, my Aksel is parched. Let him drink his fill.”
----------------------------------------
Balmy air lapped the side of her face, beckoning disobedient hairs to stick to the thin blanket of sweat coating her moonlit skin. One would’ve imagined nightfall might lessen Bastiion’s smothering humidity, but the crown city had proved more disappointing by the day in that respect.
Gripping the decorative cutouts on the palace walls, Luscia became one with the stone as she slid her body along the exterior. Despite confidence in her own nimbleness, Luscia was keenly aware of the steep drop awaiting a fall, should her footing falter. Mentally reciting Boreali poetry to keep her wits about her, she slithered to the edge of a narrow overhang. As she’d done the night prior, Luscia felt for a beam on the underside of the cupola, secured her grip, and on an exhale, hoisted her entire frame to the opposite flank.
Inching toward where the beaming met a column, Luscia pushed her upturned boots against the pillar and ran toward the ceiling of the dome, landing on the balcony in a backward crouch. It would have been perfect, a soundless dismount, if not for the jangle of luxiron blades secured about her person. Luckily silence was not the present priority, considering Sayuri Naborū-Zuo no longer occupied the apartment.
Since her earsplitting shrieks early that morning, the al’haidren to Pilar had refused to enter her former quarters. Luscia had overheard the entire ordeal as she drank her breakfast cup of ennus and Viridi tea. The al’haidren had screamed to her staff about some fetid odor and demanded her belongings be relocated immediately. Palace staff had yet to find the source of the stench, or a remedy for it.
Luscia grinned. They wouldn’t.
She’d ventured into Sayuri’s apartment the previous evening with Aksel’s contribution in hand, sprinkling lycran waste over every piece of upholstery. Luscia had even coated the wood moldings while Sayuri dreamt, none the wiser. Luscia didn’t harbor any remorse for repurposing the al’haidren’s unique quarters—by Mila’s testimony, Sayuri had abused the hidden stair to better regulate her inferiors. Under new stewardship, it could be used to save them.
Locating the main chamber, Luscia squatted low and plucked a few hairs from her scalp. Suspending them aloft, Luscia studied the pastel strands for movement. The entire suite had been boarded upon the al’haidren’s transfer, so any breach in the interior wall would emit a subtle draft, though probably imperceptible. Her superior eyes caught a slight sway of the ends and tracked the course of airflow to a massive, ornate armoire, situated in front of a floor-length tapestry.
Moving toward the piece of furniture, Luscia angled her body to shove the hunk of timber away from the wall, only to realize it was fixed in place. Circling it, she knelt to feel under the bottom lip. A cool draft caressed the back of her knuckles.
“How clever you are, Sayuri Naborū-Zuo,” Luscia credited.
She had been foolish to assume the entry point would be so blatant. Because Dmitri’s grandfather, King Aquila, had the passage sealed, Luscia doubted Sayuri’s reopening of it was exactly sanctioned. Ingeniously, Pilar’s al’haidren had concealed her unauthorized stair in plain sight, as just another article of her overzealous decor.
Luscia opened the face of the armoire. There, a few steps inside the piece of bulky furniture, stood a humble wooden door within the stonework. Pausing, Luscia reached into the black cloak concealing her personal armory and produced a round, glossy stone.
Entering the stairwell, she brought the lumilore to her lips, the pebble’s warmth a familiar kiss of home and history. Luscia inhaled the dank flavor of mildew and let her breath pass over the surface of the lumilore, awaking it to life.
A subtle, kaleidoscopic light flooded the emptiness, set off by tendrils of lumin pulsing inside the small stone. Even Tiergan eyes needed aid to see in complete darkness, and the moon could not follow her into the stairwell. Luscia stretched the lumilore before her feet, grateful she’d thought to bring it with her to Bastiion. When they were young, Boreali children spent days during Ana’Innöx, the Great Harvest, searching for the strange pebbles among the rocky banks of the Dönumn. Phalen swore she always found the brightest stones, as his never seemed to shine quite the same.
Luscia smiled tightly, trying not to miss him.
The stair descended in a steep spiral, the quiet stuffier with each step. After what she estimated as seven stories lower, another modest door came into view. Luscia pressed her ear against the rough grain. Muffled, racing chatter and clanking pots indicated the kitchens lay on the other side; a less than preferable route.
Curious, she crept off the landing and slunk deeper, where the temperature dropped to a refreshing chill. At the final door, the whoosh of rushing water beyond met her ears. Luscia cast the lumilore about, spotting a soiled pot near her boot.
Gripping the corroded handle of the door, left unlocked, she pushed it open. Luscia dry-heaved at the smell, so much stronger to her nostrils than those of a Unitarian maid. A brackish brew of excrement and sludge flowed past the archway.
After all, who would lock a servant’s access to a sewer? Luscia chuckled to herself.
“Pretentious yancies.”
She renewed the lumilore’s glow and studied the architecture. An adjacent ledge bordered each side of the outtake conduit. Luscia entered the slimy tunnel and skirted along to the west. Something flickered in the distance. Following the direction of the flowing muck, the offshoot bent and narrowed until the conduit ended. Brown water spilled over like a murky tongue into an external aqueduct, carrying it away from the palace main. Gulping the newly fresh air, she’d never been so grateful for the seedy odor of the west docks.
Luscia huffed victoriously. Over the edge of the sewer aqueduct sprawled the freedom of the backstreet, stories below.
She pulled her hood over her fair braids and secured a veil to hide most of her Northern face. Standing atop the rim of the waterway, Luscia gazed over the trembling embers of decadence and depravity illuminating the night sky.
Unbeknownst to the monsters within, tonight the city of Bastiion would host a hungry al’haidren to Boreal. Taking a step into nothingness, Luscia leapt, eager to greet them.
[https://i.imgur.com/doAaFte.png]