Page 5 of In the Ravenous Dark
And soon, so soon I can almost taste it, my mother won’t have to worry about me at all, because I’ll weave enough for her to retire on and leave all of this behind.
What Icantaste now isn’t so pleasant. I roll my dry, vomit-flavored tongue around in my mouth and glance down at the still-shouting vendor. “I think we’ve been discovered.”
Bethea giggles. “Oh no. At least I didn’t fall off the roof and split like a melon. That would have been a real scene from some horribly dull tragedy. How did we get up here?”
“I was wondering the same thing. I’m also wondering how we get down.”
Bethea peers over the edge and shudders. “I better not have to be drunk to make the return journey, because we’re out of wine.” She flops back. “At least the view is lovely.”
I lean back on my elbows as well. Temples and official buildings, creamy and orderly, rise among verdant gardens and cobbled streets lined in blooming trellises until they reach the royal palace at the polis’s center. The palace is built of white marble in the smooth, swirling shape of a seashell, its perfectly round, columned tiers climbing to a point that nearly touches the shimmering magical barrier that surrounds the polis like an overturned bowl. I’ve never seen the sky without the veil, though my father told me it merely lends what is plain blue more of a green iridescence. The city itself rests atop a plateau that faces inland with jagged cliffs and slopes gently to a seaport on the other side, with just enough space for its populace and the farmlands that feed us. Beyond that, past the veil that protects us, is the blight. The blight is even less visible than the veil, but its effects on the land are obvious. The blight iseverywhere, killing the land either through drought or a deep freeze.Depending on the direction you look from the polis, you might see the vast ocean to the east, billowing white snow around inhospitable mountain peaks to the northwest, or the dusty gray brown of the southwest desert. Any way you look, the blighted wasteland surrounding us is nearly devoid of life. Theblight has consumed the entire continent aside from Thanopolis, half burying the skeletons of old towns and cities under either sand or ice.
And yet, somewhere beyond that great, desolate expanse is the island kingdom of Skyllea, which the blight hasn’t yet swallowed. My father’s homeland. Another memory: one of his strong, red-lined hands overlaying mine, directing my finger on a tattered map to find Skyllea. The warm rumble of his voice against my back, his stubble scratching at my cheek. His excitement, his pride. My urge, nearly overpowering, to go wherever he wanted, tobewhatever he wanted. I thought I might explode with it.
There’s a hole in my chest, long walled off—except for the siren call of Skyllea, echoing in the empty dark.
It’s only as solid as a dream to me, but one I will reach out and touch someday—someday soon. As a child, my father warned me away from getting too close to the veil and the blight’s edge, but if merchants can cross it, I can, too. I’ve woven and saved, saved and woven. I’ve spoken to a Skyllean trader who says he’ll be taking his family’s caravan across the wasteland and I can buy passage. The journey is treacherous, and you need blood magic to protect you from the blight’s slow poison, which is why no one can leave without the king’s approval. All bloodmages—wards, with their guardians—serve him, and none would use their magic for such a thing without permission.
Maybe there, in Skyllea, I can escape that final memory of my father, the one that wine can never permanently wash away. His blood on the cobbles. A dead man’s eyes. My own guilt for ever secretly wishing he would join those who ended up killing him.
Under other circumstances, I might appreciate the opportunity to get a view of the wastes I’ll soon be traversing. But as curiousas I am, right now my goal isn’t climbinghigheratop the fountain’s precarious and potentially fragile glass dome.
“Anyone have a rope?” I call, after scooting myself to the marble edge. There are some good-natured chuckles. At first, all they seem to do is laugh at me, until a rope comes flying up from a rather handsome sandal vendor with muscular arms and a wide grin.
“Your wish is my command,” he says with a flourish of his hand.
The loop makes it only as far as the chicken in the maiden’s arms. Luckily the goddess is raising it in a sacrificial manner. But Bethea and I will still have to climb down roughly the height of an outstretched body to reach it.
“Let me go first,” I say.
My knees tingle as I grip the vine-carved marble lip and slide my feet over the edge. I’m barefoot and have no clue where my sandals have gone. I try not to think of all the nothing between me and the market square far below as my toes catch what feels like a flower crowning the maiden’s head. Gaining a foothold is a little tricky, making my breath come short as I cling to the edge, but after that it’s easy going until I reach the chicken. I pause for a quick apology to the goddess when I use the maiden’s nose for purchase. Dangling from the rope makes my stomach plummet. As if to catch up with it, I slide down too quickly, burning my palms badly. But I don’t mind once I’m back on level ground, the mosaic tiles warm and reassuring under my bare feet.
A crowd of onlookers clap and cheer. I give a bow, and then immediately regret inverting my head. The fruit vendor doesn’t need a reminder of what I’ve done; he’s rinsing oranges in a wooden bucket and glaring at me.
“Would have served you right to break your neck,” he growls.
I smile as sweetly as possible, given breath as sour as mine. After a flirtatious wink for the helpful shoe vendor—which changes to a wince at the fierce stinging in my palms—I turn to call encouragement up to Bethea.
Just in time to see my friend slip.
And fall.
It all happens too fast. My thoughts freeze, but my hand doesn’t. I don’t think. I don’t consider the consequences. I onlymove.
Move, move, move—the one sigil that I’ve used over and over again almost every day, manipulating my mother’s wooden loom and natural fibers in fantastic patterns far faster than anyone without magic could have.
I throw out a hand toward Bethea, sketching as I do that simple symbol I know better than any other. Except it isn’t thread I feel running every which way through her body, but a tangled network of veins. I don’t try to movethose, only to lift all the blood in her body at once, preferably without tearing it out of her. Already knowing that won’t be enough, I reach my other hand toward the fountain of King Athanatos with the same sigil, but in a complex layering like I would create for a weave—ashapein my mind, then in the air. Every drop of water roars toward Bethea like a river’s current, forming a massive sphere for her to land in. It explodes shortly after impact. I can’t hold it, or Bethea, for much longer. The displaced water floods one entire quadrant of the square.
And it leaves my friend soaked, alive, and entirely intact upon the ground. For a second, I’m too giddy with relief to realize the cost of what I’ve done.
Bethea turns to me on hands and knees, sputtering, wet strands of hair clinging to her face, her flower wreath long gone. “What just happened? Where did this water… How am I not…?”
I’m not even sure. I had no idea I was powerful enough to dosuch a thing. I stare wide-eyed at my own palms. There’s blood beaded on them from where I skinned them on the rope—the blood that powers all living magic. It must have made my sigils vastly more potent.
I remember the moment my father took my small shoulders, stared intently down at me with his golden eyes, and said, “You can never show them, Rovan. I love you, and if you love me, and you love your mother,no onecan know what you can do. Promise me.”
I promised him with all the fervency of a child who would do anything for her father.
Now, I quickly fold my arms and glance around. If I’d hoped to slip away, it’s impossible. The handsome shoe vendor retreats from me with his hands raised like I’m a wild dog about to attack. The fruit vendor’s mouth no longer spits curses or grumbles, but gapes, his oranges scattered all around.
