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She was already drained of energy, and the effort made her so lightheaded she caught herself against the bed, crumpling when her wounded arm buckled under her. The medallion slipped back into her shirt as she rubbed the sweat from her forehead and steadied her breathing.
She had to get it out of the city. Clea had not specialized in the art of sealing. It had taken most of her energy to place a seal around it, and already it had broken down. She didn’t have enough energy to repair it and her health was in shambles.Feverish with the paranoia of her circumstances over the last few weeks, sleep and appetite had evaded her. Sleeping felt like balancing on a fine and breakable string. Food had been flavorless and painful in her stomach.
A girl’s voice sounded from the door as it opened. “Feeling any better?”
Clea pushed herself up to face her young caretaker. A new figure stood in the background, a shadow against the clay wall. Clea remembered that someone had carried her last night; she’d woken up just long enough from her exhaustion to recognize that she’d been saved. Had this man saved her?
Inspection of his appearance revealed little about him beyond the fact that he wanted little revealed. A black hood shadowed his face, and a strip of cloth covered his eyes. Ash-dusted bandages concealed his hands. He appeared to be of a strong and nimble figure, judging by his shoulders, but she could scarcely tell beneath the ragged cloak he wore. His clothes looked decayed, as if he’d taken them off a corpse.
Clea straightened, trying to look less like a wounded animal where she remained curled on the bed. “Thank you for saving me,” she replied, examining the dark-haired child who looked to be about the age of nine.
The girl was dainty and beautiful and perhaps in all traditional ways should have been delightful, but there was a strangeness about her Clea couldn’t place.
She gave Clea a polite smile and a curtsy as she picked up the edges of her sackcloth dress. “My name is Alina. I am pleased to make your acquaintance. What is your name?”
“Clea.” She thought too late in the haze of her brain about the risks of giving her real name. Veilin had a tendency to gain some celebrity in their respective cities. In Loda, she’d been the youngest of six and hadn’t worried as much about such things. She’d mostly kept to herself while in Virday as well, but that never stopped chatter.
“I don’t know what would have happened to me without your help,” Clea added, stealing another glance at the cloaked figure near the door.
“It is a Kalex’s honor to assist the Veilin warriors,” Alina said. “The survival of civilization does rest on your shoulders, they say. It’s a heavy burden.”
The acknowledgement of Clea’s duties as a Veilin felt strange and ill-fitting, especially since Alina also admitted to being a Kalex. “Kalex” was generally a bucket term for anything that was close to human, and Veilin and Kalex had a history wrought with friction. Kalex were illegal in Clea’s home city of Loda.
“I hope you don’t mind staying here for a short while,” Alina chirped, hands folded politely in front of her. “I know it’s filthy, but I will pass along news that you’re here. You deserve a better resting place.”
“No,” Clea said more forcefully than she’d intended. She regretted her tone of voice once she saw the shock register on Alina’s face. “I’ll do it myself.”
Alina smiled. “Oh, please, it’s no trouble. Ryson can have the king’s soldiers here in minutes.” She turned to the man near the door. “Ryson!”
“No, please!” Clea pleaded.
Alina spun toward her, startled. “The royal families are all Veilin, aren’t they? I’m sure you’ve been acquainted. It isn’t good for you to associate with those of bad birth. We’re forbidden to ask about your business, but based on your journey last night, you must be in need of help.”
Bad birth.Clea paused at the term. It was typically used as a derogatory term for Kalex, based on the superstition that they were tainted by evils done around the time and place of their birth. Kalex could be human born, but such births only happened around a death or tragedy. Higher rates of poverty, theft, and murder in Virday meant that one in every six children born to a human couple had the chance of having a Kaletik mutation. The rates would be at risk of increasing even further if The Decline continued.
That said, Kalex never referred to themselves as “badly born.” Veilin had created that term decades ago, an unfortunate abuse of their religion that believed Veilin blood a blessing, and blood in general the element that connected all life.
“It’s…” Clea hesitated, getting the sense that this girl was toying with her, but unsure why. “It’s complicated.” The nagging feelings of Alina’s strangeness evolved, and every second changed Alina more from a little girl to something like a puppet or marionette, with lifeless movement. She found herself convinced that she was watching the performance of an object, and continued to sift through the feelings, searching for a threat.
“I see.” Alina’s voice jerked Clea back from the thought. “Your accent is Lodain. You were running away from Virday.Do you need to go back to Loda?”
Clea nodded, trying to pull herself back to normalcy. The more she tried to tap into her Veilin senses, the more her head throbbed. Not only was Clea drained of ansra, but the medallion seemed to be interfering with her ability to recover. She lifted a hand to her temple.
Alina continued on as if she hadn’t noticed the change in Clea’s demeanor, smoothing out a ripple in her cheek as she brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. A ripple in her cheek? It was as if something beneath her skin were moving.
No. No. That wasn’t right. She must be seeing things.
Clea pressed her eyes closed in a long, concentrated blink.
“Then we can help you,” Alina said, swaying back and forth with her hands in her lap. “We will return you to Loda.”
Clea’s thoughts lapsed entirely at the girl’s proposal. It took her a moment to recognize that she wasn’t being mocked. Her eyes flickered from Alina to Ryson, and she released any struggles to interpret her senses and centered her thoughts on the offer.
Watching this little girl now, moving and breathing with a timid expectancy in her eyes, Clea questioned her own sanity. How could she compare a young Kalex to something lifeless and malicious? A pang of guilt shot through her, and she wondered if her old Lodain biases were rearing their head again.
She’d been raised to fear Kalex. The Veilin religion was often called the religion of blood, even the word Veilin tracing itsorigins to ancient iterations of the word vein. Veilin were carriers of the life blood, and should resist infection that could spread to others. Kalex, she’d been told, had inborn character deficits. They were carriers of cien, of the infection.
Her experiences in Virday had shown her prejudices to be entirely false.
