The Sleeping Life

Chapter Twenty-Three

For the first time in her experience of him, Rennyn’s Wicked Uncle looked disconcerted, his gaze fixing on the glass in her hand. But then an eyebrow quirked, and his features relaxed as he decided she could not mean her words in their most literal sense. The mocking expression he produced after that was deliberately assembled, an assumption of unassailable calm entirely familiar to Rennyn. He shared one of her weaknesses: pride.

"You think you can control me?" he said. "Well, I suppose you’ve already demonstrated your taste for very obedient men."

Ignoring this jab, Rennyn stopped in the nearest beam of sunlight and held up the piece of blood-smeared glass so that it glittered. The power-sapping vines were a factor she could not compensate for, only hope that they would not weaken the casting of someone they weren’t actually attached to.

"You’re not going to give me the option to choose death over chains?"

Rennyn did not lower the piece of glass, turning it to find the angle that would capture the most light.

"Those are the only two options," she said. "I can’t leave the problem of you for someone else to deal with. Though if death really is your preference, let me know now before I waste energy casting."

"And then collapse into a self-righteous heap?"

"I’ll have to take that chance. If I manage to stay awake, what will I need to do to get you off that wall?"

This time his smile was cold, and not at all pleased. "After you’ve served me revenge flavoured with hypocrisy and collected another dog at your heel playing protector?"

She had found the brightest point of sunlight, and held the piece of glass motionless as she surveyed her distant uncle. "I’m defanging you, not making you into a pet. What you tried with me—let alone the situation I’m in with the Kellian—are nothing I wish to repeat. Your choice is to be killed, or to never kill. Which is it?"

His face, the only part of him he seemed able to move, went very still: a statue of a starving man, covered in ivy. This was not a small decision: Eferum-Get were killers at their very core, hungry for the lives of others. Being bound against killing would diminish him, force him to adapt to the living world, if a month bound to a wall in this sunlit room had not already done so.

It seemed silence was to be the whole of her Wicked Uncle’s answer. Sunlight shimmered as Rennyn began to draw power. Only a Symbolic casting had any chance of producing a binding he could not break—especially with her limited energy stores. There was little enough at hand that she could choose to represent her intent, but what she wanted was simple enough.

The shard of glass was hot between her fingers as she lifted it and drew it across the scar that she hated, and could not erase. A representation not just of death, but of blood, and all the pain, the multiple injuries her Wicked Uncle had dealt her. Then she stepped forward, and cut his throat.

"Well, at least you didn’t fall over."

Rennyn, leaning temporarily against the nearest wall, didn’t look at him. Her body was already crying for sleep, and it seemed particularly cruel to be in a place where she could not risk sitting down. She was at least fairly certain that the casting had taken, despite the presence of those vines. She had chosen "do no harm" rather than "do not kill", weakening the injunction by broadening it, but given her Wicked Uncle’s apparent enjoyment of inflicting pain, it would not have been enough to bind him only from death.

"How much damage will taking you off that wall do?" she asked, forcing herself to shift a few feet. "Are you going to start dying if I get you down?"

"I shouldn’t think so. I don’t need to breathe."

Rennyn blinked, and glanced at the nearest unconscious mage. "It’s in your lungs?"

"That seems the major focus of the infestation. From this angle. Are you ready to leave now? Am I sufficiently diminished?"

His voice was dry, all hint of his reaction to her casting locked under a surface layer of sarcasm. The diagonal slash she’d made across his throat had already healed, leaving a thin white line. Her own neck stung, not so easily mended, though at least she’d managed only a shallow wound.

"I get you down, you get me outside this shield?"

"That’s the idea. Or do you feel a need for another layer or two of injunctions?"

"I don’t have the energy for that. I shall have to discover the value of your word."

He made a noise she did not mistake for laughter. "This is going to be educational for both of us, then."

She surveyed him flatly. "I presume you have some semblance of a plan."

"A sketch. The guards are the problem. When you get me down, they will come. I won’t be able to move immediately, and you have as much chance of fighting them as of developing a sense of humour. You need to get me off the wall, then hobble to where they put you up, and look suitably bag-like until they’re gone. If they follow the previous pattern they’ll knock me out and string me back up. Get me down again, before the infestation is re-established."

"How intelligent are these guards?"

"Well, they’ve not treated me to any sparkling repartee. Functional."

Few constructs—golems—were as capable of decision-making as the Kellian: one of the reasons constructs were not in more common use. They would not necessarily make a connection between her introduction to the room, and a near-escape of an older captive. But they might check her.

"I am very tired of limited options," Rennyn said, and pulled away from the white strands that were reaching to bind her to the wall.

Blocking out distaste, she first approached the problem of freeing her Wicked Uncle by moving anything not firmly stuck to him. Then she studied the major points of connection, the sections she would have to pull aside when she switched to fast movement. And that could not begin until she had dealt with those two thick spikes into the back.

She could not pull him forward as far as the woman, and barely managed to crane up far enough to catch a glimpse and confirm the spikes were there. Her legs trembled, and she moved away a few feet to break the ever-eager roots that had taken the opportunity to fasten to her ankles.

"One chance," her Wicked Uncle murmured. "And you are not filling me with confidence."

Leaning against the wall, Rennyn took slow deep breaths in preparation and reflected that, if she failed, she at least would not have to listen to him. It was bad enough that she was going to have to touch him. Best to do that without looking at his face.

Gripping her useful piece of glass, she wished she could trade it for intact feet, and started forward.

The narrow gap between his back and the wall would only just fit her hand. Rennyn felt for the first of the spikes, plotted once again every move necessary, and then sawed. Her main fear had been that the spikes would be too tough, tree roots in comparison to the tendrils, but the first parted like butter, surprising her into nearly jerking back. She cut her palm in her effort to keep hold of the glass, then poked the shard wildly to where the second spike was barely within her reach. There…no. She jabbed again, urgently.

Her Wicked Uncle sagged several inches, and she dropped the glass, tearing at the vines that crossed his chest, lifting the largest above his head. Then she pulled his arms inward, as if she were trying to remove a shirt. When most of his upper body was exposed, she grasped him by the shoulders and used her weight to drag him forward.

Numb feet stole her balance and she fell, thumping down onto her back. Her Wicked Uncle had sprawled face down, no longer attached, though bleeding from a cut across his back between the stubs of the two spikes. He was only inches short of the nearest beam of sunlight, but did not so much as twitch—or sizzle.

The thought of getting up again was almost unbearable. Rennyn groaned, and compromised by twisting onto to her hands and knees. She had to move. Move!

The weight of the stone door worked in her favour. A low grating noise gave her bare warning, and she flung herself upright, well short of her original position, but at least in a patch without other occupants, where she could twine her arms through vine. Trying to control her breathing, she dropped her head, closed her eyes, and went limp.

Rustling. Rennyn’s shoulders tensed, and she worked on relaxing them, on being unconscious and uninteresting and nothing that needed attending to. This was not the kind of thing she was good at: she had too much curiosity, and was far from a natural actress. But, though the faint noises scraped along her nerves, she would not risk even a glance to see what she was up against.

More than one. They were not loud, these glass guards, but she was able to track their swift progress across the room to where her Wicked Uncle lay. A faint Efera discharge followed, accompanied by a muted grunt, as if someone had been struck hard enough to hurt. And then…yes, they were lifting him now, the noise increasing, leaves shaking.

Something touched her head. Rennyn did not flinch, not quite, but she could not help clenching her jaw and screwing her eyes more tightly closed. The touch came again, cool against her cheek, and then multiple…fingers lifted her.

The way she stiffened would be obvious to any half-competent observer, but the guards simply raised her higher on the wall, tucking more of the vines around her. And then the contact was gone.

They could not be overly intelligent. Almost, Rennyn risked a slit-lidded glance as the faint sounds suggested movement toward the door, but she held the impulse back, waiting for the grating that signalled the door had been closed.

It did not come.

Had they all gone, and simply left the door open? Or had one remained, suspicious, watching? Rennyn breathed. She would count to ten. Ten breaths.

Twenty breaths.

Thirty.

She pictured a thousand tiny roots sprouting, everywhere the vines touched her. Imagined something pressing into her back, below the shoulder blades. One or the other would paralyse her.

Was this exhaustion the weariness her casting had brought on her, or the sleep of the vines? The pain of her cut palm distracted her and she lost track of the number of breaths she had waited. Still there came no sound, no suggestion that anything had remained behind. It would be stupid to lose herself out of pure over-caution, and surely whatever these guards were they would not notice a stolen glance beneath barely-cracked lids.

Stone grated. Rennyn jerked involuntarily, but she was safe, had waited long enough—and was not inclined to waste a moment more, immediately wriggling free of her nest of vines and stinging threads, conscious of a need not to disturb anything more than necessary. And then she forced herself into a tottering shuffle, wasting no time in pulling her Wicked Uncle down a second time. And then, every inch of her groaning, she had to return to her own place against the wall, just in case the guards had been alerted.

After a stretched pause where the door remained firmly shut, Rennyn quivered and curled down. She had to rest, at least temporarily. The pain suppression on her feet was not fully hiding a dull throbbing, and her left knee had developed an odd tendency to give way. All of her was shaking, though she could not tell if that was the aftermath of urgency, or a sign that she had pushed herself beyond physical limits. Surely she had not done so very much. Tiny castings—and one big lump of Symbolic because she could not have allowed that knot to be anything less than firm.

Frustration welled. She had chosen this, had chosen not to kill him, to not take the best chance she would ever have of regaining her physical strength. But she pushed aside those thoughts. She was awake. Her magical strength was still there, and unless she misjudged entirely she could cast without blacking out as she had when she’d put too much into that light casting, back during the encounter with the Kentatsuki swarm.

A tiny thread attaching itself to one bare toe reminded Rennyn that remaining awake was not the only vital concern. She shifted several inches, then let out an aggrieved sigh and gazed at the enormous distance that lay between her and her Wicked Uncle, face down in the vines. If she had to move him every minute or two…

Would it be possible to clear a safe spot on the floor? She examined the possibilities as she crawled back, keeping her still-bleeding palm clenched in a fist because she did not have the time to attend to it yet. The dirt and leaf litter meant the thicker vines that covered the ground were not nearly so thoroughly attached, though firmly anchored every so often by roots more substantial than the white threads.

Reaching her Wicked Uncle, she rolled him over, and then did her best to shift vines about so that there was a gap for her feet and a gap for her behind: a place for her to sit for more than a few moments.

Her palm wasn’t too bad. The bleeding seemed to be stopping on its own, though the ragged skin didn’t look very pleasant. She daren’t cast anything to try to deal with it, and perhaps that was as well, since the pain helped with her struggle to stay awake. But she had learned too well the limits of her physical condition, these past few months: there was no winning against this dragging weariness. If she were going to risk more magic at this stage, she would not be using it on herself.

Lieutenant Meniar had not provided convenient lessons on waking the unconscious, but it was simple enough for Rennyn to follow her Wicked Uncle’s lead, for he must have gathered what little Efera that had not been drained from him and pushed it into a straightforward command of will.

"Wake up, monster."

His eyes opened. Even ten minutes ago Rennyn would have greeted that development with a mixture of relief and trepidation, unsure whether her Symbolic casting would keep him from tormenting her. But Rennyn had reached a point where she felt no more than a technical interest in the complex changes to his expression, the attempt to look in her direction, and then the slow—achingly slow—attempts to move.

She watched him as if he were at the end of a long tunnel. A monster she had set out to kill. A man? Perhaps. She had no illusions about the likelihood of him becoming someone worthy of trust. The chances of him helping her escape were slim to vanishing, but still marginally better than her hopes of breaking through a shield on her own. Had binding him been the right decision? She wished she’d been able to ask Illidian’s opinion, since there were large potential consequences for the Kellian.

Illidian…

"You’re becoming part of the furniture, little cousin."

She had—inevitably—dozed off, and the root tendrils had crept into the space she’d cleared. They tore, stinging, from her ankles and rump as she was lifted.

Too close. Too close! The de-fanging had not banished everything, did not prevent swooping distress as she found herself in a monster’s arms. She squirmed involuntarily, then tried to hold back further reaction.

"What a wonderful expression," her Wicked Uncle murmured. "As if you were covered in slime. Would you like me to put you down? I have my doubts on avoiding guards if we’re kept to the pace you walk."

He was casting, something intended to cloak their presence. Rennyn clenched her jaw, then forged a path through the situation with a tight focus on the practical.

"Any measure of their level of hearing?" she asked in a similarly low voice, turning her head toward the door and finding that he’d already opened it.

"Not so acute they responded to our discussion, or the noise that door makes," he said, his shrug bringing her momentarily even closer to his face. "But, yes, shut up now. I’m not minded to test the question."

A flat note to that last. She pictured him waking here a month ago. He had run, and fought, and woken again pinned to a wall in a sunlit room. Had the light burned him, those first days? There had been experiments, long ago, testing the reaction of Eferum-Get to sunlight. Some scorched, some crumbled, and some faded like shadows. The strongest and the weakest were the most sensitive, and her Wicked Uncle was very very strong. The vine must have kept him alive even as it held him in place.

How many days had it taken before he did not flinch at the dawn?

However much he had adapted, he still took pains to avoid the now sharply-slanting beams of the light as he crossed the room. Rennyn noted this, along with the thickness of door, storing information for when it might be needed and ignoring as much as she was able the part of her that kept muttering teeth, teeth, teeth.

Beyond the stone door was a courtyard with a dry fountain in the centre and archways leading in four different directions. Their prison was clearly not a small building. A crumbling, ivy-festooned…what? She would think it a temple or a palace, but all the ceilings she could see were stone grids allowing glimpses of the sky. No other more decorative carving, though she spotted more faint traces of paint. Sky blue and vivid green. She had never seen anything like the place. But her knowledge of architecture, like most non-essential matters, was minimal.

Her Wicked Uncle, balancing effortlessly, pushed the stone door of their room shut with one foot and then waited, back pressed against it. Of everything she could see, only the door was entirely clear of vine, but Rennyn could detect nothing that would prevent growth. Perhaps the guards kept them clear.

She was struggling once again with the interminable task of keeping her eyes open, and clenched her injured hand to jolt herself back to alertness, then froze as something moved on the far side of the courtyard.

A person? An ant? A creature of many limbs of vivid turquoise, and all along its back…wings? Or antennae like a moth’s. The head reminded her of a wasp’s. It moved in their direction—not quickly—and the casting Rennyn’s Wicked Uncle was maintaining intensified.

He really wasn’t breathing. Rennyn noticed that because she held her breath, and recognised an absence from him. But his heart was beating faster. She hated that she could tell.

More movement. Glass constructs, some turquoise, others of deep blue, ranging in size from a small cat to a half-grown person. Their joints made no sound as they picked their way across the vine-covered ground, moving purposefully—but not toward the two escapees.

Rennyn relaxed marginally as the strange procession vanished through another of the archways leading out of the courtyard. So the things were resistant to magic, but not immune to casting effects. Or perhaps were simply not very observant.

Whatever the case, her Wicked Uncle wasted no time debating the possibilities. As soon as the last of the constructs had passed from sight, he skirted the edge of the courtyard and slid around the corner of one of the arches.

A short corridor to a second courtyard, and this time her Wicked Uncle chose speed over caution while picking a circuitous course so that he never stepped from shadow. The next corridor, however, ended not in a doorway, but a ramp leading up to a square of sunlight.

Helecho walked as far forward as he was able, so that Rennyn could glimpse paving, the remnant of an archway, and—further away—a glitter of water. And, just before the end of the ramp, shards of glass. Here was the shield that had stopped him last time, now doubly impassable to an Eferum-Get prince.

Biting her lip, Rennyn did not ask why he had not waited for evening. She would not risk drawing the guard with an incautious word, especially since—after a long pause gazing intently back the way they’d come—he allowed the concealment casting he’d been using to lapse.

Beyond the shield, paving stones began to lift. Shedding showers of litter and sand, they tilted until they were vertical, and then settled neatly back down, one by one. A curving wall to solve the problem of sunlight, with dirt and leaves lifting in turn to plug any gaps, and help hold the stones in place.

Rennyn, her attention divided between this practical solution and the way they’d come, stiffened. "Movement," she murmured, in the softest of whispers.

Her Wicked Uncle didn’t look back, but his casting shifted to a complex twist that was not immediately comprehensible to Rennyn. She attempted to decipher it while watching a new procession of guards—or possibly the same one—patrolling busily around the nearby courtyard. They were less than fifty feet away, moving at the same unhurried but businesslike pace, and gave no sign of having noticed the escapees.

If they came in the direction of the exit, she would pull the ceiling and walls down to block the corridor. That was unlikely to hold them for long, and would risk her hold on consciousness, but delay was a better option than combat.

Her Wicked Uncle’s casting took on a familiar pattern, echoing notes she had half-heard more than once. He was not using sheer power to force his way through the shield—perhaps he did not have the strength for that, without a focus—but was matching and subtly altering the casting itself, sliding a gap into the shield.

Then he walked forward, and they were outside.

Immediately, he stepped right, moving from the shadow of his already-crumbling temporary wall into a narrow band cast by the remains of a pillar. From there he could go no further for the moment, trapped in a sliver of shadow. Behind them, the paving stone wall collapsed.

In the wake of that clatter, neither Rennyn nor her Wicked Uncle moved, listening intently. Rustling. The sound of dozens of delicate footsteps, approaching rapidly. And, then, retreating. It seemed the constructs were bound to the building’s interior.

Her Wicked Uncle promptly set Rennyn back on her feet, and contrived to plaster a smug and obnoxious expression over clear exhaustion.

"And now you say thank you, little cousin."

He would never be anything less than hateful to her, but he had been true to his word, and it would be petty not to acknowledge that.

"Thank you," she said. "You surprised me."

His smile widened. "Did I? Reflect that the absolute worst thing that I could do to you—outside returning to mutual self-destruction—was to keep to our bargain, leaving you not one thing to complain of. How will you hate me now, little cousin?"

"I think I’ll manage," she said, and turned to conceal her annoyance, surveying the terrain.

A lake, or very wide river, dotted with small islands and crumbled buildings, linked by bridges in various states of repair. Directly ahead was a single arch of stone, probably formed using magic. One side had been shattered, leaving only a narrow path intact. Excessively tall statues in various states of disrepair lined the far bank and beyond…more tumbled walls and the remains of a road winding through familiar trees. Semarrak oaks, looking rather bare.

"This is an island as well?" she said, looking back over the corridors they had just exited. A cellar, swimming with magic, with very little sign of whatever building had been aboveground.

"The second prison you’ve broken me from, little cousin. I wonder if that balances your other handiwork."

He began drawing power as Rennyn turned to stare at him. Second? What… But of course he meant Solace. For all his power, Helecho Montjuste-Surclere had been, like the Kellian, a tool created by Queen Solace.

His casting this time was shadow. It reached out toward the bridge like a dark finger. He followed it unhesitatingly, tossing parting words over his shoulder.

"If we meet again…let us hope that we do not."

Rennyn did not move, or respond, until he had crossed the narrow point of the bridge. This man she had travelled so far to kill, the key to her recovery, walking away

"Goodbye, monster," she said, with a shake of her head.

With her back to the problem she could not similarly abandon, Rennyn considered the wilderness before her. Famously dangerous Semarrak, and obviously not a part near the Kellian settlement—or any place frequented by people. The wind was rising and, outside the ivy-covered cellar the temperature was less than pleasant.

No food, no shelter, no allies.

No shoes.

It should be overwhelming, but Rennyn did not let herself be caught up in guessing her chances. She would start with a place out of this wind.