CHAPTER 15
Lizanne
“I didn’t like the way that woman looked at me.”
Lizanne glanced up at Tekela from the contract that cemented her employment in the Varestian Defence Conglomerate. She had read it several times during the return journey, finding to her annoyance that Ethilda Okanas had crafted something it would be very hard to extricate herself from later, at least legally. “You shouldn’t,” she muttered in agreement before glancing out the window. They had left Iskamir behind a day ago and were nearing the southern extremity of the Sabiras Archipelago, beyond which lay the hopefully secure anchorage of Viemen’s Island.
“I won’t have to see her again, will I?” Tekela asked. “Or that son of hers. He was almost as horrid.”
Lizanne began to snap at her, irritation at the cleverness of the Okanas clan leading her to scold this girl for her weakness. An entire world of horrid people awaits you, she had been about to say. Harden your sensibilities and keep a loaded revolver handy. Instead she took a breath and recalled all the many trials Tekela had endured, concluding she was already as hardened as Lizanne wished her to be. So she said, “I’m sorry. I’ll do my best to ensure you don’t find yourself in their company again.”
They had resisted lighting the blood-burner for the return trip, Lizanne deciding the burst of speed would be best saved for emergencies. The flight was therefore long and somewhat tedious, passed in resentful scrutiny of the contract she had been obliged to sign interspersed with fitful dozing. Her sleep had been interrupted several times by the buffeting the aerostat received from the winds at this more southerly latitude. Hours of fighting to keep the machine on course left Tekela increasingly fatigued as the journey wore on. Lizanne wanted to take over for a time but lacked the required familiarity with the controls. Besides which, manoeuvring herself into the pilot’s seat in the cramped confines of the gondola seemed next to impossible.
“When we’re back on the ship,” she told Tekela as the first of the outlying Sabiras Isles drifted by below, “your first task will be teaching me how to fly this thing.”
The fleet came into view some two hours later, the many ships clustered in a tight arc around the speck of rock Lizanne’s map confirmed as Vieman’s Island. Daylight was fading fast and Lizanne feared night would fall before they could settle onto the fore-deck of the Viable Opportunity. Fortunately, Captain Trumane evidently saw the danger and ordered all lights lit, including the frigate’s powerful search-light, which was lowered to illuminate the front of the ship. Tekela was obliged to navigate a stiff cross-wind to complete the approach, her hands dancing from lever to lever as she gave voice to some choice curses in Varsal Lizanne would never have suspected her of knowing.
Finally, the landing gear bumped onto the deck and Tekela closed the throttle, stilling the thrum of the engine, before slumping forward with a soft sigh. She sat with her head resting on the dials in what Lizanne suspected was a theatrical pose until she heard a very faint snore emerge from the girl’s nose.
“At any other time signing this would be an unconscionable act.” Trumane sighed before tossing the contract onto his desk. “One the Syndicate would most likely punish with a prison sentence. Now, however.” He shrugged and sank into his seat. Lizanne had expected more resistance from him but divined that his pragmatism outweighed any ingrained corporatist abhorrence for such a patently poor deal.
“There is something else to consider,” she said. “The contract makes no mention of you.”
Trumane frowned at her. “So?”
“It stipulates just about every aspect of our arrangement, including my role and the role of our coterie of inventors, and the employment of the refugees, but says nothing about you, the man they refer to as Captain Noose. I believe this to be a deliberate omission. Captain, I must advise you not to accompany us into Varestian waters. Take the Viable Opportunity and head north, along with Mrs. Griffan. If you can make it to a Mandinorian port you can enlighten what’s left of the Syndicate hierarchy on the true nature of this crisis. Such understanding appears to be sadly lacking at this juncture.”
“No.” Trumane gave a stiff shake of his head. “I have not led this fleet so far to abandon it . . .”
“They’ll hang you,” Lizanne broke in. “The Okanas family, and many of the other clans, feel they owe you a blood debt, something Varestians do not forgive.”
“I have never run from pirates, Miss Lethridge,” he replied in a quiet but steady voice that told her this discussion was over. “I do not intend to start now.” He lowered his gaze to the charts unfurled on his desk, reaching for a pen and compass. “Now, I have a course to plot if you’ll excuse me.”
“The whole composition has eight distinct movements,” Makario said, handing her a partially crumpled sheaf of musical notation. “It was realising this that proved the key. The Artisan certainly had a passion for the number eight.”
Glancing over the papers, Lizanne found them covered in a mostly illegible scrawl of notes interspersed with comments in the musician’s often-tiny script. Lifting her gaze to him, she was struck by the redness of his eyes and the jittery tremble to his hand as he ran it through a mop of unkempt hair.
“How long since you slept?” she asked.
His brow bunched in genuine bafflement. “Why would I sleep with a puzzle like this to solve? I once thought Illemont would be my sole consuming passion, but this.” He turned his gaze to the solargraph and Lizanne found herself wondering about the ability of this device to capture the hearts of those cursed to study it. “The Artisan was as much a musician as he was an inventor. To have met him would have been to know greatness.”
“You’re sure this is all of it?” she asked, setting the pages down on the work-bench.
“I’ve tested it several times, out of earshot of our fellow convict, of course.”
“Very well.” Lizanne turned to regard Tinkerer, who stood at another bench near the starboard bulkhead. He was engaged in completing a prototype redesign of the rocket projectile that had been so useful during the march from Scorazin. This one was larger with a greatly increased range and, thanks to an internal clock-work apparatus of dizzying complexity, would possess a remarkable level of accuracy.
“We’ll wait until he’s finished his new toy,” she said. “In the meantime, please get some rest.”
Three days later she watched Tinkerer’s face closely as the solargraph played the tune, deciding Makario had been right about the Artisan’s musical gifts matching his inventiveness. After he tapped out the first three movements on the chimes the device began to play on its own. Cogs whirred and dials turned as it gave voice to something of such sombre precision that it couldn’t help but tug at her heart. Tinkerer sat through it all with an expression of interest but no particular concern and when he was done his only reaction was to blink at her.
“Have you . . .” Lizanne ventured, “anything to tell me?”
“Yes,” he said with an earnest nod that caused her to lean closer. “I need more brass for the rocket-guidance mechanism.”
“About this,” she grated, stabbing a finger at the solargraph. “About all of this.”
“Oh,” said Tinkerer. “Then no.”
“It’s the right tune,” Makario insisted as Lizanne turned her gaze upon him.
She thought back over her interactions with Tinkerer, all mentions of the Artisan and his shared memories in the trance. The trance. “Here,” she said, taking a vial of Blue from her wallet. “Play it again,” she instructed Makario after she and Tinkerer had both imbibed equal portions of the product.
This time the reaction was immediate. As soon as the tune began Tinkerer’s gaze took on the unfocused cast that told of an imminent trance. However, it wasn’t until the fourth movement that the full effect took hold. Tinkerer’s eyes closed and he slumped to the floor, limbs twitching. Lizanne began to rise from her seat to check on him . . . and found herself standing waist deep in the middle of a fast-flowing river.
She had never experienced such a seamless transition into the trance state before and found it jarring. The sudden switch in surroundings, complete with a change in temperature, sights, smells and sounds made her stagger in the water. She would have lost her footing on the loose shingle of the river-bed if a pair of hands hadn’t reached out to steady her.
“Careful now,” said a voice in soft, cultured Eutherian. “You really can drown in here, you know.”
The woman who had hold of her arms was trimly built of average height with shrewd dark eyes peering at Lizanne from behind a pair of spectacles. She wore sturdy clothes of strong fabric, the kind worn by someone who spends a good deal of time outdoors. A heavy pack was slung over her shoulders and a short-brimmed felt hat sat on her head, tilted back to reveal a shock of close-cropped black hair. She was also, Lizanne noticed, possessed of a high-cheek-boned beauty normally reserved for the imaginary heroines found adorning the covers of cheap romance novels.
“This . . .” Lizanne closed her eyes and shook her befuddled head before taking a more fulsome look at her surroundings. A swift river, thick jungle on both banks. “This is the Arradsian Interior.”
“It is indeed.” The woman gave an apologetic smile and released Lizanne’s arms from her gentle but firm grasp. “Though I have always preferred the Eutherian name for the continent. Kilnahria, it derives from a serpent god of the pre-Imperial era. Quite apt, wouldn’t you agree, miss . . . ?”
“Lethridge,” she said, straightening and extending her hand. “Lizanne Lethridge. And yes, very apposite.”
“Alestine Akiv Azkarian,” the woman said, shaking her hand and giving a formal bow. “I was about to stop for lunch,” she went on, sloshing her way towards the far bank. “If you would care to join me.”
“You are the Artisan?” Lizanne asked, voicing a rueful laugh as she laboured through the water in her wake. The trance had seen fit to attire her in a somewhat impractical skirt and jacket of archaic dimensions, making for laggardly progress. “The Artisan was a woman.”
“How observant you are,” Alestine remarked, clambering onto the river-bank and extending a hand as Lizanne struggled to extricate herself from the water.
“I thought you would already know my name,” Lizanne said, hauling herself free of the river and keeping hold of Alestine’s hand. “The Artisan having foreseen this meeting.”
“The Mad Artisan,” Alestine said, her smile now tinged with a mix of sadness and humour. “Isn’t that what they will come to call me?”
“The appellation of madness has faded recently,” Lizanne replied. “Which is strange, given that the world around us grows madder by the day.”
Alestine released her hand and turned, leading her deeper into the jungle. “I did not, in fact, know your name,” she told Lizanne, as they tracked along a narrow trail. “But I have foreseen this meeting, or at least a portion of it. Oddly, I remember you having darker hair, and being markedly less polite. It happens sometimes, the vision’s truth proves illusory. Due, I have theorised, to the relative passage of time. The longer I have to wait for it to come true, the less true it turns out to be.”
“What did we discuss in the vision?” Lizanne asked, aware that her voice betrayed a note of desperation she would normally try to conceal. The shock of actually finding herself conversing with this person after expending so much time and effort to do so made her a little giddy, even nervous.
“You said your world was burning,” Alestine said, coming to a halt as the trail opened out into a broad clearing. She unslung her pack and set it down before casting around with a searching gaze. “We need fire-wood. If you wouldn’t mind lending a hand.”
Lizanne began to comply but found her eyes drawn to a dark shape above the tree-tops ahead, the sides jagged black teeth against the pale blue of the sky. The temple, she realised, recalling one of Clay’s shared memories. “Are we close to Krystaline Lake?” she enquired.
“Oh, Emperor’s Soul no,” Alestine laughed, crouching to gather up a fallen branch. “The lake lies over three hundred miles north-east of here.” She followed Lizanne’s gaze to the bulky silhouette above the trees. “Seen one like it before, I see. Krystaline Lake, eh? I must confess I had no idea there were ruins there.”
“A whole city in fact.”
“One I’ll never get to see, except through your eyes if you’re willing to share.”
Lizanne turned to her, finding the same half-sad, half-amused smile on her lips. It wasn’t unkind, but Lizanne found there was too much knowledge behind that smile for her to like it. “So in your vision I told you my world was burning,” she said. “In reality it has only just begun to smoulder, though I think the flames are about to rise very high indeed. I believe you know how to prevent that, and I would have you tell me.”
Alestine’s smile switched to a grimace, her face clouding in reflective sorrow. “Then I fear you may be disappointed, miss. But”—she dumped the branch she had gathered on the ground and set about searching for more—“let’s discuss it over dinner, shall we? I have an excellent cut of Cerath haunch to share. It’s good meat, but does require proper seasoning.”
She proved deaf to further questions so Lizanne helped her build the fire and a frame with which to spit the haunch of meat. Alestine scored the layer of fat coating the flesh with a knife then rubbed it with salt before sprinkling on some wild thyme. She constructed the frame in only a few moments, crafting two sturdy bipods and a cross-beam from scavenged wood. The swift, unconscious precision with which she went about the task was enough to banish any doubts Lizanne might have as to her identity. She looks like Tinkerer, she realised. Or Father when he’s particularly engrossed.
“The secret is to keep it turning,” Alestine said, adjusting the haunch’s position over the fire before turning to her pack. “Would you care for an aperitif?” She extracted a metal flask and two tin cups, handing one to Lizanne before pouring a pinkish liquid into it. “A local vintage,” Alestine said, raising her own cup to her nose to sample the aroma. “I’m afraid the name is quite unpronounceable. I call it ‘Kilnahria’s Milk.’”
Lizanne sniffed the substance, finding it pleasantly fruity, before taking a sip. “Very nice,” she said. “If a little strong for my tastes.”
“I’m glad you like it. You didn’t in the vision.” She drained her own cup and poured some more. “So, how did you like the music? I assume you unlocked the solargraph; otherwise, you wouldn’t be here.”
“A highly accomplished tune, to be sure. The musician I employed to decipher it was suitably impressed, and he is something of an expert in the music of your era.”
“And you, Miss Lethridge? Did you like it?”
There was a weight to Alestine’s gaze that caused Lizanne to conclude her answer was important. A test of some kind? she wondered. Did my vision self hate the music or love it? “It was beautiful,” she said, deciding honesty would be the best course. “But sad. Your musical skills appear to match your flair for things mechanical.”
“I can assure you they do not. I didn’t write the music, you see. I merely captured it for posterity, although it’s nice to know my flair for the mechanical had some uses.”
“A great many uses. So many in fact, people have killed to possess the fruits of your labour, myself included.”
“Such was never my intention.” Alestine took another sip from her cup and turned to the meat, asking Lizanne to help as she adjusted the spit to revolve the haunch above the flames. “Approach every task with care and diligence and you won’t go far wrong,” she said. “Something my mother never tired of telling me.”
“If you didn’t write the music,” Lizanne said, stepping back to waft the thickening smoke away, “who did?”
She saw the sadness return to Alestine’s face, though this time it was not accompanied by any humour. “A lady of my prior acquaintance,” she said. “You remind me a little of her. So much passion and humanity bound up in a tight, controlled package. I think you two would have gotten on quite well. Although, in time she would probably have come to see you as a threat and had you executed. She was prone to such things in later life, so I’m told.”
“Had me executed?” Lizanne asked. “A woman of some influence, then?”
“You could say that. They made her empress eventually, well, Emperor to be strictly accurate. Apparently the title cannot accommodate a change in gender.”
A singular memory sprang to the fore of Lizanne’s mind: one of the many statues adorning the miniature temples that lay outside the Corvantine Imperial Sanctum, a hawk-nosed woman rendered in marble. “The Empress Azireh,” she said. “You knew her? She wrote the music?”
“She wrote a great many things, but music was her passion. And yes, I knew her, but she wasn’t an empress then.”
There was a rustle of disturbed vegetation as Alestine turned towards the far end of the clearing, Lizanne following her gaze to see the foliage twisting and merging to form a new tableau. A young woman sat at a pianola, playing the same tune the Artisan had captured in the solargraph. Although the surrounding jungle remained unchanged, the floor beneath the pianola was smooth chequered marble reflecting a grand, palatial interior. Despite her youth Lizanne saw clearly the resemblance to the stern, commanding woman who would later adorn the temple built in her honour.
“She was just a lonely girl then,” Alestine went on as the young future empress played her beautifully sad music. “Lost in a court of privileged, scheming idiots who would quite happily have seen her dead. I’ve often thought divine blood was more a curse than a blessing. So much promise, so much more music to give to the world, all swallowed up by the fate her blood made for her. But, the young are ever prone to the hope, perhaps the delusion, that their fate can be changed.”
Lizanne watched as a young woman emerged from the jungle and bowed to the woman at the pianola, who immediately straightened into a much more attentive posture. The younger Alestine was also easy to recognise, but in this memory she wore the white blouse, black waistcoat and skirt of a Corvantine court attendant, and a low-ranking one at that. “It’s the upper c minor again, I’m afraid,” Azireh said, tapping one of the pianola’s keys. “A little tinny, don’t you think?”
“My musical knowledge was only functional,” the older Alestine told Lizanne as her younger self opened the lid of the pianola. “I knew enough to repair instruments but not play them with any skill. My primary duty in the Sanctum was fixing the various toys and automata with which the noble children amused themselves. The ‘Fiddly Girl,’ they called me, amongst other things.” She gave a fond chuckle. “Awful brats the lot of them, apart from one.”
At the young Alestine’s bidding Azireh repeatedly tapped the key as she worked away at something in the pianola’s innards. Lizanne was no expert but couldn’t detect more than a fractional change in the pitch. “I found out later she used to loosen the strings herself,” the older Alestine said. “Just so she would have a reason to talk to me.”
“That seems perfect, my lady,” her younger self said, closing the pianola lid and dropping into a low curtsy. “If you’ll excuse me.”
“Wait a moment,” Azireh said. “I’ve been working on a little something and would so like your opinion. My lady attendants wouldn’t know a decent tune if I strangled them with it.”
She began to play without waiting for a response, the same composition as before but now executed with expert clarity and precision. Lizanne found it much more affecting than that recreated by the solargraph’s chimes, music that seemed to reach inside her, forcing her mind to explore the most vibrant memories, good and bad. It was both an unnerving and intoxicating experience, and, judging by the changing expression on the young Alestine’s face, one she shared in full measure. Up until now her face had maintained the same incurious, carefully neutral mode common to servants of long standing. Now she stared at the young woman before her with rapt fascination, a single tear tracing down her cheek.
“Love is always a surprise,” the older Alestine said. “Don’t you find? Whether it creeps up on you over the course of years or reaches out to snare you in an instant. The moment is always a revelation and it can happen in the space of a heart-beat, or the time it takes to play the most wondrous music a foolish young woman had ever heard.”
She looked away and the memory swiftly merged back into the jungle. “I do believe it’s time for another turn of the spit,” she said, moving back to the fire.
“You were lovers,” Lizanne said, finding the notion scarcely conceivable. A servant and a princess trysting in the Imperial Sanctum. “If you had been discovered . . .”
“Oh we were, make no mistake about that.” Alestine gestured for Lizanne to take the other end of the spit and together they turned the meat, the fire hissing and popping as grease flowed from the cuts. “We weren’t even particularly discreet. It wasn’t uncommon for nobles to indulge themselves with the servants. There was an unspoken tolerance for such things, life in the Sanctum being so monumentally dull. But not for us. For what we had was not mere indulgence, and that made it dangerous. For a time we were left in peace. Azireh had me assigned as her personal attendant and we lived in happy seclusion in our own little palace. She composed her music and I designed and constructed my toys, then came the Regency Wars.”
The sound of rustling plants came again and Lizanne looked round to see the entire clearing morphing into a grand ball-room. Huge chandeliers of glittering crystal hung from the ceiling above a dance floor streaked in blood from the many corpses that covered it. There were men and women, infants and elderly, all dressed in the finery befitting the various ranks of Corvantine nobility. From the pattern of the blood spatter Lizanne deduced this massacre had been carried out with the blade rather than the gun.
“The Coronation Day Purge,” Alestine said, sprinkling a little salt on the roasting meat. “At least half of the upper tier of Imperial aristocracy wiped out in a single day. I won’t go into the tedium of what led up to it. Suffice to say a bunch of malcontent inbreds wanted to seize power from the ruling bunch of inbreds. The result was the Regency Wars, which began with all this. Azireh survived, thanks to me. I dressed her up in servant’s clothes and we managed to escape the Sanctum. We took refuge in my grandparents’ house, which could have been a costly mistake, it being an obvious place to look. Luckily, her uncle found her before anyone else did. He heaved her up onto a horse and off they went. We barely had time to say good-bye and I didn’t see her again for five years. When I did, this is what they had made of her.”
The ball-room shimmered and shifted into an even grander room of cathedralesque proportions. Tall windows rose on each side and huge pillars supported vaulted ceilings of such height they were wreathed in mist gathered from the thousand or more people below. They were all kneeling in abject supplication, heads pressed to the floor and arms outstretched as they paid obeisance to a figure seated on a dais. Lizanne was barely able to recognise Azireh under the mask of alabaster paint that covered her face, her features bunched by the weight of the bejewelled crown atop her head. More than that was the new hardness to her eyes. These were the eyes of her statue, the eyes of a woman who had seen and done terrible things, too many to remain that same young woman who had once sabotaged her pianola just for the chance to talk to someone she thought she might love.
“Emperor Azireh I,” Alestine said. “Quite impressive isn’t she?”
Lizanne saw that there was one figure amongst the multitude who was not kneeling. Alestine stood at the rear of the huge vaulted chamber, clad in a plain muslin dress as she stared at the newly crowned empress that official history would record as an emperor. “This was the last time you saw her,” Lizanne realised.
“Yes.” Alestine didn’t turn from her cookery, crouching to add some more wood to the fire. “I was surprised to receive a formal invitation to the coronation, somewhat frightened in fact. But I went, nevertheless. How could I not? And I didn’t kneel, which was noticed but by then she was already so feared none would dare voice an objection. After the ceremony a chamberlain gave me an envelope. Inside was a large amount of money and notification that I had been commanded by the Emperor to undertake a research expedition to the continent of Kilnahria. There was also a note in her own hand, just one line: ‘Find me treasure.’”
The coronation faded into the green wall of the jungle as Alestine took a knife and cut a portion of meat from the haunch. “I do believe this is close to done,” she said, biting off a morsel before offering it to Lizanne. “Don’t you think?”
Lizanne took the meat, putting the whole piece in her mouth and discovering Cerath meat to be both flavoursome and tender. “She exiled you,” she said, chewing and swallowing.
“She had little choice. And I believe she thought she was being kind. I had often spoken of this place, you see. Idle talk about its many mysteries as we lay together in the small hours. It was a surprise to find she was actually listening. Ah!” She turned as fresh rustling sounded from the jungle. “It seems our guests have arrived.”
“Guests?”
“I invited a few old friends. I hope you don’t mind.”
Lizanne’s polite response died as a figure stepped out of the jungle, a tall figure carrying a spear and a war-club. His face, adorned in a black-and-white mottling of war-paint, was the distorted, scaled and hostile visage of a tribal Spoiled. Lizanne lunged for Alestine, catching her by the wrist and tearing the knife from her grip. Lizanne whirled to face the Spoiled as he dropped into a fighting crouch and charged, teeth bared in a snarl.
She side-stepped the Spoiled, lashing out with her knife in an attempt to sever the veins in its neck. It was too swift, however, dancing out of reach and countering with a fast sweep of its spear, aiming for her legs. Lizanne leapt over the weapon, rolled and cast her knife at the Spoiled’s face, an expert throw that would have skewered it through the eye. Instead the knife shuddered to a halt in mid air, where it continued to hang.
“That’s hardly the way to greet an honoured guest,” Alestine reproached her, moving to pluck the knife from the air before turning to the Spoiled. “Tree Speaker,” she said. “Good of you to come.”
The Spoiled continued to glare in challenge at Lizanne for several seconds then abruptly straightened into a calmer posture, the hostility fading from its face. “Maker of Things,” it greeted Alestine, speaking with such calm affability that Lizanne realised it was conforming to a pre-set sequence of events. This trance had been crafted with such care it was easy to forget the entire thing was essentially a narrative dream.
“You made yourself a pet Spoiled,” Lizanne said, watching Alestine lead the tribal to the fire where she cut him a portion of meat.
“I didn’t make anything,” she said with a laugh. “I merely discovered some new friends.”
She inclined her head at the jungle where more Spoiled had begun to appear. There were about fifty of them, male and female, all of fighting age and carrying weapons. They were clad in a similar garb of soft dark leather, albeit with a few individual embellishments. Some wore face-paint of various hues whilst others didn’t. Some wore necklaces of bone or beads, whilst others were unadorned. She had had little opportunity to study the tribal Spoiled that attacked Carvenport but she did recall a rigid uniformity of appearance amongst the different tribal groups. Her experience during the final moments aboard the Profitable Venture had provided a partial explanation. They share minds. It’s how the White controls them.
“There was a Gathering,” Tree Speaker told Alestine with grave formality. “Your words were heard. Agreement was reached.” He pointed his spear at the temple above the trees. “We will go with you to end what must be ended.”
“And very decent of you it is too,” Alestine replied, handing him some meat. “Best eat up. From what I recall you’re going to need your strength.”
Lizanne spent some time in confused contemplation, gaze roaming the assembled Spoiled as they came forward to share in the feast. “Language,” she said finally, one particular realisation rising through the babble of thoughts. “Are they speaking yours or you theirs?”
“Does it matter?” Alestine asked and Lizanne realised that it didn’t, at least not here. In the trance, language was thought.
“But if this is a memory you must have found a way to communicate,” she persisted. “Did you . . . change them somehow?”
Alestine gave a full, hearty laugh that lasted long enough for Lizanne to find quite aggravating. “No,” Alestine said when she finally sobered, shaking her head and wiping a tear from the corner of her eye. “If anything, it was the opposite. They found me not far from here, a few years before all this. I’d had the misfortune to encounter some of their less friendly cousins and was in rather dire need of medical attention. Tree Speaker’s daughter found me, bleeding away and close to death.” She smiled fondly at the Spoiled, who was now busily gorging himself on Cerath flesh. “He’s a healer as well as a warrior. They have a remarkable knowledge of the healing properties of Green, and all manner of medicinal herbs to be found in this jungle. They usually kill our kind when they find us, the Sickened they call us. But for me they made an exception.” Her face took on a more serious aspect and she turned to regard the temple. “I think because somehow they knew we would share an important task one day.”
“What’s in there?” Lizanne said, moving to her side. “Your empress’s treasure?”
“I suppose you could call it that. The greatest treasure and the greatest danger.” She raised her gaze to the sky as a rumble of thunder sounded. “It appears you’re running out of Blue, Miss Lethridge. Do be sure to call again soon. Tell your musician friend to take a look at the Follies of Cevokas.”
“Wait.” Lizanne winced as a pulse of confusion went through her, the sense of dislocation that indicated the end of a trance. “You locked your memories in Tinkerer’s head for a reason. You knew we would meet. I need to know why.”
“You already have what you need,” Alestine said, the jungle turning to mist around her as the trance neared its terminus. She gestured at the Spoiled as they transformed into vague, wisp-like ghosts. “For now, at least. I look forward to your next visit . . .”