Rhydderch

“I did just what we’s been told to do in case of an attack,” the boy said. “I took her as far away from anyone as I could and then hightailed it outta there.”

Rhydderch continued to frown at the boy, still not believing the most unbelievable part of his story. “You say that this woman—a commoner—broke her way through the smart-enchantments on the door?”

“Well, she said she did,” the boy said, “and I saw her walk through the door with my own eyes.”

Rhydderch’s brow furrowed further. “And you’re sure she wasn’t an Auldin?”

“She was a commoner,” the boy insisted. “Spoke in a brogue just like my grandfather on my mother’s side. He lives in a fishing village up the river.”

Agathe’s smart, Rhydderch said. She could’ve fooled the boy.

But then, why would Agathe have needed help finding him? Why would Agathe have even bothered letting anyone see her until every Vethyle in the Spyre was dead? Still…

“Was she fat?” Rhydderch asked, hoping against hope.

“Fat?” the boy snorted. “No. All hungry-like. And she had a big cut across her face, stitched up like boot leather. Was oozing real bad, prolly infected.”

“But she broke the spells? Ganlin spells?”

The boy nodded eagerly at Rhydderch’s obvious interest. The boy was intelligent enough to know that if he pleased an Auld, he would get paid for his trouble. However, Rhydderch didn’t want anyone else to catch wind of the same news.

“Have you told anyone else about this?” Rhydderch demanded.

“I told the cook,” the boy said. “She beat me anyway and called me a liar.”

Rhydderch pressed his lips together in thought. His head was still swimming from drink, and he paused a moment to clear it, washing his mind clean with veoh. Immediately, all the pain he had been hiding from came crashing back into him, and he took a ragged breath.

His sister was dead.

His jaw locked immediately, grinding his teeth painfully together in a spasm.

The boy saw this and his eyes widened. “I’m sorry, Auld Rhydderch. I didn’t know you didn’t want me to tell anyone. She didn’t believe me anyway. She—”

Rhydderch put a hand on the boy’s shoulder and gave a head shake, staring at the table. He took several deep breaths through his nose, forcing the thought of Agathe from his mind. He focused on this new visitor, this mysterious woman who could walk through Ganlin spells like a knife through bread.

Eventually, his jaw loosened. He looked back at the boy. “Take me to where you left her.”

The boy grinned and did.

They found the spilled onions, but the woman was gone.

Rhydderch paid the boy three sparks anyway, then stood in the hallway long after the boy had gone, staring at the onions. It was probably a Ganlin survivor, one of the young auldlings from the Slopes. Agathe must have told her to seek him out as the last Ganlin friend amongst their enemies. The girl might even have word on the rest of the family. Perhaps there were more survivors.

He kicked an onion, frustrated.

He had to find her before the Vethyles.

Saebrya

Treasure.

It was the only way to describe the vast wealth she saw around her. So much of it that just gazing upon it threatened her sanity.

Saebrya knew, as she stood there, that an Auld would heal Ryan a thousand times over for the wealth that lay in heaps and piles and bins before her.

Instead of moving forward, into the room, Saebrya backed up until her shoulder-blades were touching the door, her heart pounding. Gems glittered back at her, and sparks oozed forgotten turquoise light onto the floor, casting the place in an odd green glow.

She was not supposed to be here. She knew that instinctively, just as she knew that she would be executed for it if she was caught.

And yet…

Here were the sparks to buy her passage back home. Here was everything that she needed to return to the village and forget about the Aulds and their Spyre. An insane part of her urged for her to take something, to put handfuls of the stuff into her pockets, to indulge in the bounty.

She was reaching toward a bin of sparks forward before she even knew what she was doing. She stopped herself.

Sparks wouldn’t help Ryan. Rhydderch would.

Freedom glinted back at her in the dull glow of the ether. Maybe not Ryan’s freedom—she doubted she could carry away as many as she would need to hire an Auld to heal him—but her own. The nightmare would be over. She could go home, could sleep peacefully at night instead of wander the streets, begging for scraps, beaten by thugs and travelers alike.

Ryan was dying anyway. All she had to do was reach out and take it.

Saebrya’s hands groped for the door behind her. She found the latch, unlocked it, and yanked it open. Eyes still fixed on the priceless piles of jewels and baubles, she backed out into the hall and jerked it shut.

Around her feet, sippers she had disturbed with her motions moved back to the cracks of the door to feed upon the multicolored mixture of ethers leaking out.

Saebrya let out a pent-up breath. Tears were hot on her cheeks. She felt dirty.

She had almost given up on Ryan—had almost left him in that dirty alleyway with the sipper while she bought her way home—and she knew it.

I almost left Ryan to die.

Disgusted with herself, she turned back toward the stairs. Instinctively, she knew she had to stop running. She had to start going up, towards the Aulds, towards the people who were hunting her. It was the only way she would ever find Rhydderch.

Weak with hunger and self-loathing, Saebrya climbed the stairs and retraced her steps.

At the place where the bruised onions were spread across the floor, she stopped, her heart pounding like a hammer against her ribs.

Silver ether splashed the floor and walls, concentrated near the onions. Sippers had congregated upon the bounty, feeding in a glowing line that led down the hall and around the corner. Swallowing, Saebrya began to follow it.

At one point, the trail of ether split, heading in two different directions at the T in the hall. Saebrya took the path with the less sippers congregated on it.

As she followed the path, she realized that the passageway was growing more used than most. Dribbles of violet and golden ether began to spatter the floors, mingling with the silver trickle. She began to pass people in the hall, some of whom wore fancy robes and dribbled shimmering molten color on the floor. She even passed a group of the man-beasts, who were escorting a gold-dripper in chains. Saebrya held her head down and kept going.

Her path remained relatively unobscured until she reached the sixth set of stairs going upwards. Then the ether started to attack her again. Saebrya slowed, having to watch for the telltale signs on the floor, ceiling, and walls as she progressed, knowing that if she allowed one of them to catch her off-guard, it could kill her.

The silver ether-trail suddenly passed under an open archway that led to one of the flimsy bridges between towers that she had seen from the ground. Beyond, she saw a courtyard in the sky where four bridges met, and then beyond that, a much bigger archway, from which she could hear the gentle sounds of music and could see the warm glow of candle-light.

Taking a deep breath, Saebrya kicked away the snare that pulsed from the floor and hurried out onto the bridge.

She reached the courtyard and, to her dismay, saw that the silver trail of ether disappeared into the gaping doorway on the other side of the bridge. Inside, she could see Aulds and Auldins in fancy robes and gowns, moving amongst each other, chattering.

Saebrya sat down on the bubbling, ether-drenched fountain in the courtyard’s center and bit her lip, trying to decide what to do.

The clothes she had stolen from a goodwife’s drying-line clearly marked her for the commoner she was. Until this point, she had not been stopped, but she knew that the moment she set foot in the fancy hall, she would be. Inside, even those not drenched in ether were wearing elaborate garments of silk and brightly-colored velvet.

When Auld Rhydderch did not emerge after ten minutes, however, Saebrya decided she couldn’t wait any longer without risking the trail going cold. She stood and determinedly made her way across the bridge and through the door of the ballroom.

Here, too, a silver line of ether curled from the ceiling, reaching for her throat, but Saebrya cut it away and kept going.

Inside, to her dismay, the floor was so filled with ether that she couldn’t make out a trail. It had been splashed and mixed to such a degree that it had become a six-inch-deep fluid that flowed toward the door of the ballroom and trickled down the wall outside. Most of it was gold and violet, all but overwhelming the silver.

As she moved forward, trying to muck her way through the ether and the sippers that fed on it, a big hand suddenly fell on her shoulder.

“You looking for me, lass?”

Saebrya spun and looked up into the strange double-face that she had remembered from so long ago. When their eyes met, his face registered confusion. “You’re not a Ganlin.”

“I need your help,” she whispered.

He scanned her face, looking like he was going to respond, when suddenly a voice called from the hall nearby. A woman in a beautiful, opaque silk gown was striding toward them, flinging ether with every motion. She looked irritated. And familiar.

“This is a formal ball, uncle. If you need to speak with your hirelings, do it outside.” The woman’s delicate nose wrinkled as she looked at Saeby. “She stinks. Probably crawling with lice. Take her back to the kennels and do your business there. She is disturbing my guests.”

“Cyriaca, your guests are of the sort that they were disturbed long before they ever entered this room,” Rhydderch said calmly. He patted Saebrya on the shoulder. “Come, girl. Let’s discuss my hounds outside.”

Hounds? Saebrya thought, but followed him.

Behind her, the elegant Vethyle woman huffed and turned away.

“Leaving so soon, Rhydderch?” a man’s voice said as they reach the exit.

Rhydderch sighed and turned. “What do you want, beggar?”

“For you to stop calling me beggar, for one.”

Saebrya turned. And, upon seeing the monster sharing the ballroom with them, screamed.

She stumbled backwards, slamming into Rhydderch in her attempt to get away from the creature in front of her. Everywhere, a sea of faces had turned at her cry and Aulds and Auldins were watching her. Rhydderch touched her shoulders and said softly, “Easy.” Then, shoving her aside, he strode up to the thing and hit it in the face, hard, with the back of his fist.

The thing dropped its wine glass and stumbled backwards, its thousands of ethereal antennae quivering even as the manlike hand reached up and touched his jaw.

Grabbing the thing by the embroidered shirt and tugging it forward until their faces almost touched, Rhydderch snapped, “I know what you did to my hounds, beggar. You test my patience much more and I will feed you to them.”

The man-thing stared back at him in obvious shock, his glowing sipper-green eyes gleaming just behind a wide blue human gaze. The tiny orange tendrils sprouting from the wormlike creature encased within his body wiggled in the air, poking from his skin, spreading outward, reaching…

Rhydderch released him and whirled, grabbing Saebrya by the arm and tugging her from the hall with him.

He took them down several flights of stairs, over another bridge, down more stairs, and into a hall that wound up a corridor and stopped at a big wooden door. Behind it, she heard dogs barking. Distracted by the sound, Saeby wasn’t paying attention when a loop of ether reached out from the floor and snagged her leg and held her there.

When her sudden lack of motion jerked the Auld to a halt, he turned back and his eyes widened slightly. “You’re not an Auldin?”

“No,” she said, trembling. “I’m…” What are you? You don’t even know.

“Then how did you…” Frowning, Rhydderch reached down toward her leg, but Saebrya chopped through the pulsing tendril that held her before he could reach it. At the ether that spattered his hand, he jerked back. His eyes met hers, looking startled.

Saebrya shrank away and lowered her eyes under the stare. “I’m sorry. I don’t like the way it itches.”

He stared at her for some time. Then, “Rees made that enchantment for me,” he said softly. “After the beggar attacked my hounds.”

Saebrya knew this meant something important to the Auld, but she didn’t know what. She took a nervous step back, remembering the gold-dripping Auld in chains.

Rhydderch reached out and grabbed her wrist, halting her progress. “That was a smart enchantment of the eighth rank,” Rhydderch said, eyes darkening. “And you just destroyed it like it was a child’s game.”

“You were gonna do it,” Saebrya said, growing pale under the Auld’s gaze. She tried to break away, but the Auld held her in an iron grip.

“I was going to release you,” Rhydderch said, seeming stunned and angry. “There’s a difference. A very big difference.”

“Sorry,” Saebrya said. Her skin itched with fear. She had never been this close to revealing her secret before, and it terrified her. “Please, sir. I need you to help my friend. You met him once before, in our village. You let him stay when I asked you not to take him away—”

Suddenly, the Auld’s big form went slack. “Oh gods.”

She looked up.

He was staring at her, his jaw utterly slack. He suddenly glanced around them, his dual-colored eyes scanning the dark corners. “I’ve changed my mind. We go to my chambers.”

At his words, Saebrya quailed. “No, Auld Rhydderch, please. My friend. He—”

“Shhh,” he snarled, his eyes hard. “Come with me.” Still holding onto her wrist, he began to walk, giving her no choice but to follow.