Lin
“Tessn has been lying to me,” Lin thinks, sinking low into her bathtub so that only her eyes are above the surface. Her servant disappeared during Cygnen’s engagement party, leaving the young woman to fend off every man that fit the description of “tall, dark, and handsome” that her social circle wrangled up on her behalf. Tessn didn’t return by the party’s waning hours and when she did, after a majority of the other guests had vacated the premises, her skin looked pale and her gait was unsteady. She had also changed out of her overshirt, no longer matching with Gwydolin’s attire.
“My apologies, Lady Talivar,” Tessn had said then, bowing low, her foot slipping an imperceptible amount. “It seems I’ve come down with a bit of sickness. But if you are ready to leave, I shall escort you.”
Lin sinks below the surface of her warm, fragrant bath water, sealing her off from the outside world. She stews in the embryonic sensation, the sound of the water lapping against the bathtub’s edge muffled by her watery tomb. Where did Tessn go? What was she doing? She wasn’t sick, as she claimed. She awakened Lin the following day, skin still sallow, but possessing no uncertain steps. Lin didn’t even want the juice Tessn offered to fetch her. Lin’s only desire that night was companionship.
“But that’s what happened,” Lin thinks as she resurfaces. “I was alone.”
Gwydolin is not a stranger to loneliness. Her brother Dorian is twice her age and holds a seat of importance among the High Council. Their father, as High Councilor, often stays in his chambers at Extrema, the zenith of the Upper City. Lin doesn’t think she’s seen him once this year. Lin never met her mother. When she was younger, she tried asking about her mother’s absence. The answer was always the same.
“Gone. She’s gone and has been since you were born.” Did she leave? Did she die? Was she murdered? What was she like? Was she a Bright Caster? Gone, just gone. That’s the melancholic upbringing Lin expects to find in weepy Romantic stories, where perfumed pages bear lush descriptions of garden parties and men deliver lengthy monologues of their travels through locales both esoteric and exotic. The stories where wealthy young women dabble with arts and spend their days drinking tea with their peers and discussing matters both social and pertaining to the Natural Philosophies. Lin imagines that if she were in such a Romance, she would carry around with her a leather-bound journal stuffed with sketches of leaves and whatever creature she can get close to. But she is not a young debutante waiting to be caught up in the moments surrounding magnetic individuals and she does not carry around a book full of nature sketches. And as she takes a towel and dries her fuzzy scalp, she frowns at the reflection in the mirror.
Her hair is dark, the stubble leaving an ugly shadow outlining her hairline. Her eyes glitter and glisten with Inner Light. Wrapping the towel around her chest, Lin takes her fingers and pushes the corners of her mouth up in a mock smile.
She mutters to herself. “Chin up. You look prettier when you smile.”
Returning to the interior of her room, wide and white and meticulously clean, Lin approaches the open window and looks over the city. She stares out across the sprawl and pushes the corners of her mouth up again, eyes drawn toward the wine-dark waters of a distant coast. Lin closes the window and approaches the outfit she’s laid out for herself earlier in the morning.
As she’s straining and adjusting the flared skirt, a couple finger widths shorter than she’s used to—it’s the current fashion as of last night—her eyes fall on the wood carving sculpture Tessn bought for her as a surprise. No, not surprising. Lin has instructed her to do so when necessary. It’s yet another trinket purchased by Tessn on her behalf. It’s a ring, wood forming braided lengths that weave into the main body of the structure. A filigree egg sits on top, as though a diamond in a gold ring, the precarious eggshell walls so paper thin that the light shines through them. Inside the egg is a little bird, palm-sized and preening, the wooden feathers ribbed like real feathers. Gazing upon it banishes the dark thoughts clouding her mind and a natural smile, though small on her lips, curls up toward her eyes.
“You can really feel the artist in this piece,” she says aloud to herself, scratching at her head stubble. Lin traces the inside loop of the ring with a delicate touch. “They, too, seem trapped in a daily loop. I would like to meet you, I think.”
Gwydolin pulls her hand back as Tessn enters the room, hands behind her back, the repeating ripple pattern in her shirt making Lin’s eyes see strange illusions.
“Lady Talivar,” Tessn says and drops to one knee. The young noblesse cocks her head to the side. “May I present to you one of your heart’s deepest desires?” Lin’s eyes widen and she sucks in a deep gasp, covering her gaping mouth with her hands as Tessn brings out what she was hiding behind her back. Sitting in her cupped hand, palm facing upward, is a wig made from gleaming copper red hair. It’s short, a bobbed cut unlikely to reach past her ears, but the delightful loose curls give it volume. Lin bounces on her feet, stifling the urge to squeal.
“Oh, Tes, you simply must put that on my head this instant,” she says after regaining her voice. She sprints to her bureau and sits before it, bouncing up and down with constrained excitement. Tessn approaches from behind, placing the wig on Gwydolin’s shaven scalp and adjusting it to fit just right. Lin is speechless, lips parted but unable to string together a sentence. She twists her head, taking in every angle of her new look.
“I’m never taking it off,” Lin proclaims, running her fingers through her burnished locks. “Is this why you had to leave? Did you physically fight someone for this hair?”
“... yes,” Tessn says after a pause.
“I love it,” Lin says, beaming, her legs kicking back and forth like a child. “I love… everything about it.” It seems the words in her throat are still tangled up.
Rumath, the head-girl of House Talivar’s servants and stewards, cuts their collective fawning over Lin’s new hair short upon her arrival. She’s Atwurkean, her coastal complexion decorated with intricate ritual scarring, making her cheeks seem ribbed like fish gills. If Rumath were in the city-state of Atwurk, she would color those scars with vibrant face paints and makeup. But House Talivar forbids such rituals under their roof.
“Your father requires your immediate presence, Lady Talivar,” Rumath says, bowing.
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Extrema, the seat of the High Councilor, stands at the pinnacle of the Upper City. Extrema, made of glass, takes the form of an orb, similar to an Espreth or a watchful eye over Nuaranth. Reaching Extrema is no simple matter. One first has to descend to the Old Town neighborhood from within the modern heart of the Upper City, by ways of a secret road guarded by elite members of the Garrison. These men, solid and stolid and implacable, stand watch over the entrance, disallowing even members of the High Council passage without written permission. Permission that must come from the High Councilor before he sends for his visitors.
Lin clutches Tessn’s elbow as they walk the tiled streets of Old Town toward the secret road. Her servant looks down and adopts a reassuring smile, patting Lin’s clenched hand, but her face hardens once she turns forward. Gwydion sett Talivar, the High Councilor of Nuaranth, father of both Gwydolin and Gwydorian, never seen outside the High Council and rarely in his own home, is not a patient man. Lin remembers, when she was twelve, making the trek up to Extrema but taking too long and arriving at the High Councilor’s empty chambers. She never found out why her father wished to see her. Dorian never told her. Perhaps she’ll never know.
The two of them come across the Elite Guard, middle-aged men with hard faces and tattered long coats, black material bleached gray from age and sun exposure. The absence of Praetors with them should comfort Lin, but add to her anxiety. Glassy, vacant eyes focus on her face, and one of them pulls out an envelope from their inner coat pocket. Dim eyes scan line by line, taking in a sketched portrait, before rough hands refold the paper and stash it back inside the dark confines of a weather worn coat. The guards part, one of them bowing, ushering Lin and Tessn down a set of cobblestone stairs leading to a disquieting darkness.
Again, Lin descends into the rough cut red rock foundations of Nuaranth with only the Inner Light of her eyes cutting a path through the abyssal stone. It’s damp. Bioluminescent fungus grows in pools of stagnant, milky water, gossamer appendages fluttering closed as both Lin and Tessn disturb the air beside them. Lin glances back long enough to witness said fungus unfurl again, pale blue light pulsing through clear, glasslike fungal flesh. The Bright Caster tightens her grip on Tessn’s arm, wrapping her other arm through the loop between elbow and torso.
The darkness fades, a shaft of sunlight piercing the subterranean veil and illuminating a swatch of an unknowable cavern. Water sprinkles in from an unseen ledge, becoming a deluge that fills much of the cavern floor. The walkway leading to the center becomes submerged, and shallow water laps at the toes of Lin’s shoes, but a steep drop-off on either end of the deep crimson rock plunges into abyssal darkness. It’s like a bloody trail, an oozing wound bright against pallid flesh, the milky water rippling as the water falls in from overhead.
At the center of the chamber is an old lift, cut from dark shale and basalt, bearing a central figure resembling a woman with her arms spread but held low, head craned downward. Lin recollects Tessn’s narrative of Nuaranth’s origin, concluding it symbolizes the city’s female founder. Her hair is short, just touching the bottoms of her earlobes. At her feet is a black iron lever, shallow rust pits marring the surface but otherwise in working shape. Lin sits down on the base of the statue, wet stone cold against her bare thighs, and Tessn pulls the lever.
The lift shudders and shivers, a deep groaning echoing from below, growing louder as the platform rises out of the silt. A massive stone-hewn corkscrew powers the lift, polished surfaces sliding out of some hidden mechanism submerged deep below the clouded water. Tessn stands solid as they rise, but Lin wraps her arms around her servant, trembling like a stone loosed from a cliff-side. The light overhead grows brighter, the shaft narrowing until they are once again in the open air. Buildings like crooked teeth sprout from the ground all around them, the windows descending as the lift continues rising from its tomb. Then the rooftops of the Old Town vanish beneath the rising stone and Lin gazes out over Nuaranth laid bare before her. From the Upper City, the streets and architecture become indistinct and lost in the haze, becoming more of a concept than concrete reality. People, like ants, occupy Nuaranth’s narrow roads, each contributing to the greater narrative. Husbands and fathers, wives and mothers, partners, children, each living their lives without ever glancing up.
The lift kisses the lowest sections of the Upper City, round glass bottoms dripping like honey from the edge of the cliff. Glass like iron bars, as though the walls of a gilded cage, fall in place as Lin continues to rise. Despite her familiarity with the Upper City’s bright streets, she’s never ventured this far below, where roads and plazas obscure the sun. The glass is opaque, darkened for privacy. And then the lift continues higher, breaking through the lower half of the Upper City. Familiar sights grace Lin’s vision, though she still clings to Tessn. She can see the cafe she and her friends visit. She can see the art studio where she first laid eyes upon the wood carving that preceded The Ring. Up and up she goes, higher than any highrise that makes the Nuaranthian skyline. Higher and higher, until only the glass spire of the High Council matches the altitude of the Pinnacle Lift. Even the top of the cliff seems an immense distance now.
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“Tes,” Lin seems to whimper, looking up at the looming sphere connected to—yet utterly detached from—the High Council’s glass spire. Her grips is so tight around Tessn’s arm, the circulation struggles and the skin feels fuzzy. “Can you tell me a story about the Pinnacle Lift? “
It feels like such a tiny platform this high up; air growing cool; the lift swaying in the wind. The High Councilor’s chamber yawns open above them, threatening to swallow them whole, bulbous glass black like Praetor armor and Garrison caps.
Her voice is soothing and breath warm against the top of Lin’s head. “First there was only the Upper City. Known as Nuaranth-by-the-Sea, then, or so my mother had told me. The Pinnacle Lift brought travelers to and from the city. The cliff top was undefendable, but the lift took them down into the city’s underbelly. There, in that chasm of water, that liquid abyss, invaders would have found it impossible to traverse the narrow corridor. The city garrison would funnel them through the stairs and slay them one at a time.” Tessn snaps her fingers in a steady rhythm. “With such efficient defenses, only a few soldiers were necessary for guarding. The city had no other way in. As for launching stones from the cliff and onto Nuaranth—” Tessn gestures over the edge of the steadily rising platform. Extrema is upon them now “—the Elemnists in those days built a sloped bulwark so tumbling rocks would crash into the sea.”
“But time marches onward toward our permanent fate and the city grew up and down the cliff face. It became apparent that one singular rising platform has long since outlived its purpose. It became a podium from which the High Councilor would address the city. Or rather, a place to address the patricians of the Upper City. And then they built Extrema and the Pinnacle Lift contorted so that it alone could reach that sad height.”
The shadows of Extrema’s vestibule shroud them in uncharacteristic darkness, Lin’s eyes like lanterns illuminating the wall as it rushes past. Though, she supposes, a Shadowarch could have become High Councilor back then. They would have found the dark endearing, like still sea waters. She ponders more at Tessn’s words, “sad height.” It’s as though she pities the station. It seems a lonely existence at the zenith of Nuaranth, so far above anyone else. But Gwydolin is used to loneliness. It’s her father she fears.
Those are both lies. She’s not used to loneliness, not if it means Tessn isn’t around to support her. And she doesn’t fear Gwydion, her father. She fears the High Councilor. And those two aren’t the same. Not anymore.
In the dark, Lin’s eyes shine like lanterns as they meet Tessn’s gaze. She peers at her face with skin like baked terracotta, striking features steadfast. Lin feels an overwhelming urge to squeeze her tighter until they fuse, merging skin and knitting bones. Never to part. She sighs.
“Lady Talivar?” Tessn asks, voice edged with concern. “Is something the matter?”
“If you could, would you hold me for a bit? I need to find my courage.”
“For what reason?” She wraps her powerful arms around Lin’s shorter frame. Her chest rises with steady breaths. “You don’t need courage to face your father.”
Gwydolin buries her face in Tessn’s shirt and inhales her fragrance. She smells of tumeric and citrus oils. “That man is not my father.”
“But he is your father.” Tessn tightens her arms. “Like ash and rust, it’s an immutable fact.”
Lin says nothing more, inhaling the aroma of clean linen and spices from Tessn’s chest.
Before long, they untangle, and the lift stops at its destination, in front of large brass doors. Crystal lights flutter into life, nourished by Lin’s Inner Light, casting a dreamy glow across the opaque glass walls and tiled floor. Tessn throws open the doors and first hears the guttural screaming of a tortured man, followed by the gruesome sight of the inflicted torture.
“Lady Talivar, don’t look!” Tessn shouts, whipping around and trying to shield Lin from the horror of cursed knowledge. But she is too late.
The High Councilor’s chambers, encased in the opaque glass of Extrema, are a small room. The walls curve to better overlook Nuaranth below, sacrificing floor space. If she peers out the eastern side, Lin could see the steel and glass stem attaching the structure to the High Council’s chambers, their glass spire divided into slices for each Councilor, with the ground floor acting as their meeting hall. On a throne of black glass and polished iron sits Gwydion sett Talivar, tall and gaunt, eyes boring holes through his daughter. His face is pale and anemic, gray stealing into his dark hair and skin sagging from their boney fixtures. He folds his hands together on his lap, with black nail polish in sharp contrast to his cream-white robes, which are interwoven with fine silver and gold strands braided together. Gwydion doesn’t wear a crown, such things are for monarchs. He instead he wears a red tippet, a silk sash-like garment around his shoulders and down his front. Undecorated and unpatterned, it serves as a badge of office won through magnetic effort and given by the noble Houses of Nuaranth. However, interlinking gold rings festoon his neck, spreading outward and onto the shoulders.
But Lin’s eyes aren’t looking at her father.
Garrison Commander Syn sett Harros stands at the chamber’s center. Disheveled hair obscures his haunted eyes, sunken and burdened with baggy shadows. He scowls, snarls aloud, a steel wire switch in his hands, crimson blood drip, drip, dripping into a puddle between his feet. Before him, on his knees, hands upraised to defend against more savage blows, is a young Garrison sergeant. His face is youthful, though cut to ribbons, with patchy stubble on his upper lip soaked in thin blood. The left half of his face bears the worst damage, down to the bone, eyebrow flayed and gone. His left eye hangs as a pulpy mess outside the socket.
Lin can’t bring herself to look away.
“Commander Harros, stop this at once!” It’s Dorian. He’s also here, though Lin can’t see him. All she can see is stringy flesh and frayed optical nerve, shivering and trembling like gelatinous twine. “Tessn, take Gwydolin back behind the door. I’ll retrieve her shortly.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Gwydion says. Dorian glares at his father. “Lin should witness the tragic failings of the Garrison, both in dereliction of duty and swiftness of correction.”
The young officer, with pleading eyes—eye—looks to the young Bright Caster for salvation. “Please, my lady—” he says, but the tip of Harros’s switch delivers a screaming silence from his throat.
“Do not speak!” the Commander hisses, flaying another strip of skin from his the younger man’s face. “Wretch! Especially not to her!”
He collapses from the pain, sobbing and mewling in agony, blowing bubbles of mucus and blood that ooze from his face and spread across the floor. Commander Harros continues his ministrations, cutting the back of the wretch’s long jacket to shreds, followed by skin with the force of his flagellations.
“You must be asking yourself,” Gwydion says, planting his hands on either armrest of his high-backed throne. “‘Why? Why is Syn brutalizing that man?’” Lin doesn’t speak, eyes staring unblinking at the growing pool of blood. “Someone murdered Merchant Councilor Hayvris in his home while under the defense of this man. Or, rather, they dismantled him, just as Syn is dismantling the man in front of you.”
“Lord Councilor,” Tessn pipes up, bowing low, her back parallel to the floor. “Is this all necessary for Lady Talivar, your daughter, to witness?”
“DO NOT SPEAK.” Gwydion’s voice increases in volume, but he doesn’t shout. “Beg for my forgiveness.” Tessn, without hesitation, face paling and sweat beading on her forehead, prostrates herself before the High Councilor. “How magnanimous am I in forgiving you, Shadowarch. Return to your mistress’s heel and keep your mouth muzzled.” Tessn picks herself up and walks to stand at Lin’s heel. “Dorian, explain my process.” Dorian glares at his father again and bites his tongue, jaw clenching.
“Such a high-profile murder compromises the impenetrable safety of our city. And anyone can be next. Another Councilor, maybe. Or even you.”
“Now more than ever, House Talivar must rely on its allies,” Gwydion says in interruption. “From this moment forward, Lin, you are to act as steward to Lady Fenoiryne sett Kinkara. A fitting exchange, I think.” He leans forward. “The son teaches the daughter, the daughter serves the mother.” He sits back. “As for Dorian and Syn. Handle this issue. Your problems have persisted for too long.” With a flippant wave of his hand, Gwydion dismisses them all.
There remains one exit from Extrema. Lin stands still on the platform as they all pile into the lift, hands clapped together at her waist, eyes looking forward yet unseeing. Dorian clenches his jaw tighter, threatening to snap a tendon, a vein bulging in his temple. Syn stands at ease, arms folded behind his back, eyes closed, and breathing through his nose. Tessn stands beside Lin, arms hidden in her sleeves, head craned down, eyes on the floor. No one says a word. The punished man whimpers and weeps, leaking fluid from his dangling optical nerve, a pathetic groan burbling in his throat. The Pinnacle Lift descends.
Lin keeps a kerchief in the folds of her dress. Lacking pockets, she keeps most of her belongings in Tessn’s sleeves, but a proper lady always keeps a cloth to wipe the dust off of a seat somewhere on her person. There have been and will continue to be fashion cycles that debase clutches and handbags, so the Bright Caster has taken to stuffing one of her kerchiefs in her bra. She doesn’t notice its presence anymore, but pulls it free all the same. Without a word, and without looking at him, she hands it to the tortured Garrison sergeant, pinching the fabric between her long finger and thumb.
“Oh, thank you!” he utters, voice wet, taking the cloth and laying it over his tortured face. “Thank you, Lady Talivar! A treasure of House Talivar, truly!” His fluids soak through the cloth, but at least she doesn’t have to look anymore.
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Syn and Dorian part ways with Lin and Tessn once they reach the surface, Dorian’s precious little sister treading stoic through the streets of Old Town. Once she and her slave are out of earshot, Dorian turns to the Garrison Commander and jabs a finger into his chest.
“This is your doing,” he says, voice grave, eyes burning with Inner Light. There’s not a finger’s span between their height, but at the moment Dorian’s pressure has him towering over the Commander. “If it weren’t for your complacency, she never would have witnessed… that.” He points to Culver, the young sergeant Syn had brutalized as punishment.
“I had told you that the issue at the Garrison could not wait,” Syn retorts, referring to the escaped Praetor. “And I had told you that the Elemnist was no mere Librarian. They are a Crow, they must be, considering how slippery they are.”
“I don’t want your excuses, Syn,” Dorian says. “I want results. Take care of the Elemnist. I want to see their eyes as they hang from the gallows. And if your shortsighted leadership lets them slip through the cracks again, I will see to the removal—” Dorian makes a pinching gesture in front of Syn’s left eye and pulls back “—of that near-sighted eye. Fix it.” Syn clenches his jaws and nods, Dorian turning on his heels and stalks away.
Syn snatches away the kerchief Culver presses to his face. “You don’t deserve such gifts!” He looks at the cloth that once sat so tantalizing against Gwydolin’s breasts, now dyed red with blood and a clear liquid discharge. He tosses it on the ground. “Ugh, you’ve ruined it with your stench.”
Culver scrambles to get it, shaking the loose grit and dirt from the fabric before redressing his facial wound.
“Arrogant creature,” Syn mutters, covering his left eye with the heel of his palm. “Gwydorian sett Talivar, Military Councilor. What a sick joke. House Harros has held the positions of Garrison Commander and General of the Army since the founding of both institutions. And now they are all brought to heel under House Talivar after Dorian ran and begged at his daddy’s feet.”
“Sir?” Culver utters.
Syn ignores the other man. “Also, he keeps that treasure locked up tight on House Talivar grounds. Sweet Gwydolin. Delectable Gwydolin. Unreachable, untouchable, unattainable. Do you know how my status would increase if I could court her?” He scoffs. “‘Allowed,’ I have to be ‘allowed’ to court her, to speak with her, to touch her. I can’t merely pluck the fruit from the bush. I have to be ‘given permission’ like some mongrel.”
“If anyone deserves her, it would be you, sir,” Culver says. Turning, Syn notices he is not by himself for the first time.
“Return to the Garrison,” the Commander orders. “Distribute the order. Apprehend the Elemnist and the rogue, no matter the cost.”
“But, sir, my face—”
“Elemnist!” Syn roars as he points toward the Garrison Headquarters, face contorting in rage, spittle flying from his curled back lips. “Praetor! NOW!” As Culver scampers away, Syn kicks an errant stone and sends it skittering down the street. He crosses his arms and covers his left eye with his hand.