Page 64 of In the Ravenous Dark
“I didn’t say she did.” So as not to be entirely ungrateful, I nod at his strange sword. “Thank you for that. Kineas can get carried away, with his games.”
“I’m pleased to help. I’ve been wishing to speak with you. Pardon my forwardness, but you’re difficult to get alone.” If I didn’t know any better, the comment would sound flirtatious. In a flicker of bronze embroidery and rose-gold steel, Alldan sheathes his sword and gestures down at my own blades in the dirt. “That was a remarkable fight. I didn’t know the royal women of Thanopolis trained as warriors, aside from the Princess Penelope and her daughter.”
“Well, I’m not royal,” I say, not bothering to put my weapons away as I trudge toward a marble bench between the shady columns of the courtyard. “And I’m only partly of Thanopolis.”
Alldan follows me, hands folded crisply behind his back. “Yes, your father was Skyllean.” A pause. “At one time.”
Is he rubbing in the fact they disavowed him? Or is the Skyllean trying to unearth my father’s loyalties and my own?
Before I do anything else, I need to sit down. I sink gratefully onto the cool marble. “My father was always a Skyllean,” I say as Alldan takes a seat next to me on the bench, looking the very picture of a poised prince. “He made no secret of it here.”
“Ah.” His tone is perfectly poised, as well. “Then it’s a shame we never had the chance to meet.”
“Disavowing him was a funny way to show that.”
A grimace flickers across Alldan’s face. “That was political theater, you understand. Our alliance with Thanopolis was at a critical juncture. It’s strange—years ago, your father reported something very disturbing happening to him and the other Skyllean bloodmage who journeyed here with him, Cylla. We were quite literally preparing to go to war with Thanopolis over it, but first Cylla and then later your father recanted those reports in documents officially sealed by the royal family here. Apparently, Cylla eloped out of love, and Silvean defected to Thanopolis, preferring life here. We would have liked to have spoken more to them about why they made the choices they did, but we never had the chance. It’s a shame: Cylla’s desire to pass on her bloodline so early and your father’s unfortunate attack on the king so recently. We’ve since been told he was sick. Unstable. So perhaps he wouldn’t have been able to tell us what we wanted to know, anyway.”
I know the truth, of course. But I don’t need to risk trying to tell Alldan. I can see, as plain as the violet of his eyes, that he knows what really happened.
“We’ve realized how little we understand of life over here,” he continues. “Perhaps there’s wisdom to be found. So we’re here to create more formal ties, along with a more open channel between our two peoples.”
They’re here to keep their enemies close, as I’ve suspected. As I’vehoped.
“My father always wanted to go back home,” I say, willing Alldan to get the message. I swallow a sudden lump in my throat. “And it’s been my greatest dream to go to Skyllea someday.”
“Perhaps you can.” He says it politely, maybe not understanding what the dream means to me. Or maybe he’s trying to tell me something else…
Lately, I’ve preferred danger to despair. I want to trust him, but I have no reason to believe he can help me even if he wants to. My laugh is a broken thing, echoing among the columns. “Oh, I doubt it.”
“Why is that?”
I don’t feel like saying more aloud than would be wise. Besides, he must know already, if he knows the truth about Cylla and my father. So I snort. “If you can’t see what’s in front of your face, I can’t help you.”
He points atmyface so abruptly I flinch and lean back, nearly falling off the bench. “That’s an interesting sigil,” he says.
The upright bowl with the three dripping lines, directly under my left eye.
“You know sigils?”
“My people created them.”
I fight my blush with a scowl, shifting back into place. “I know, but since you don’t have a bloodline…”
Alldan shrugs. “We still study them, especially those of us who have the time to do so.”
The nobility, he probably means. Some things don’t change, city to city.
“So… do you know what it is?” I ask, gesturing toward my cheek. I don’tquitewant to admit I don’t know myself.
“I think so,” he says, resting his hands on his knees. “Though I’ve never seen this particular one before. Your father must have created it, and yet it looks similar to another sigil that is relatively new in our lexicon. I believe that one was used, among others, to create the veil that protects Skyllea from the blight.” He glances out through the columns to the iridescent ripple of the veil in the sky over Thanopolis. “Something like it was probably used to create the veil here, as well, though they’ve jealously guarded that knowledge. It’s a sigil for blocking.”
He holds my eyes for a pregnant pause.
Blocking. That sounds like the special set of sigils my father hid in his office, a map for me to trace along my hand, which I’ve identified as having to do with shielding. But the sigils haven’t resulted in anything when I’ve tried to use them. They’ve beenmissingsomething. This sigil on my cheek is in a more prominent place than any other, so maybe it’s somehow connected to the others. My father’s words suddenly come back to me:
Follow your eye.
Goddess.My breath comes faster. He didn’t just want me to follow the visible clues he left behind. He also meant for those clues, those sigils running along my hand and up my finger, to literally point to myeye.
