Angel of Storms (Millennium's Rule, #2)(6)

As she worked she opened the doors to the past and braced herself.

But the pain she once believed would always be too vivid to bear remained dull. Only sadness and a little guilt remained. Would her love for Izare have faded as fast even if they had remained together? Surely her regret at breaking her lover’s heart and ruining her family’s ambition should last longer than five years? It took centuries for the best-made tapestries to fade; in comparison, the time she’d been in exile was nothing.

Yet the cause of all the heartbreak, her use of magic, had been forgiven by nothing less than an Angel. Surely, then, she should forgive herself too? And she had done far worse than that. She had killed a priest with magic.

At that memory she shuddered. Sa-Gest had been a vile, manipulative man who had blackmailed other women into his bed. But he hadn’t succeeded with her, and all men deserved a chance to defend themselves before judgement. Yet she felt more horror at the thought she had killed someone and at how easy it had been, than that she had killed him.

He was there one moment and gone the next. She’d pushed him off the precipitous road and over the cliff–and stripped magic from a great swathe of the valley to do it.

If she had seen his body, she was sure that the memory of it would haunt her now. Instead it was an image of a man with impossibly pale skin–the hue she was weaving now–that visited her dreams, waking and sleeping.

“You are forgiven, Rielle Lazuli. And I offer you this: if you vow never to use magic again, unless to defend yourself, I will give you a second life. You cannot return to your home. You must not contact those you left. You must travel to a distant land where you will be a foreigner and a stranger.”

His lips had been… what colour had they been? She faltered, her hands still as she considered. If the shade hadn’t been remarkable then it must have blended well with the rest of him. So his lips were probably pinker than his skin, but not so dark as to look painted.

The shape had been fuller than the thin line of the typical Schpetan mouth, closer to that of her own race. Weaving slowly, she worked until the result seemed right. Taking a few steps back, she was startled to find the mouth almost appeared to be smiling. She could not remember if he had smiled, though she felt he must have at some point. Perhaps only because he had been so forgiving and kind, and she had not grown up expecting that from an Angel dealing with the tainted–those who had stolen and used the magic that belonged to the Angels.

That was not the only expectation that had been proven wrong, that day.

“I give you permission to use magic, if your life is in danger and you have no other choice.”

Her stomach clenched as she thought of the magic she and Betzi had used to fend off the soldiers. A lifetime of caution could not be so easily escaped. She had not used magic the time, not long after her apprenticeship began, when she had been cornered and fondled by one of the palace litter bearers, only escaping when a coughing fit loosened his grip. Still at odds with Betzi, she had been surprised when the girl guessed what had happened and offered sympathy that was, for once, lacking in mockery.

“Do you have any knack for weaving the darkness?” the girl had asked. By then Rielle had learned enough of the Schpetan language to know what Betzi was asking, and that the Schpetans were inclined to overlook the occasional, small transgression. “If you do, I can teach you a trick or two to warn off men like him,” she’d offered. “Don’t wait until you’re cornered again, either. Like everything in life, it takes practice.”

Only when the siege had begun had Rielle accepted that offer. While the Angel might have given her permission to use magic, she could never prove it. He may have dealt with the priests at the Mountain Temple who had once used tainted women to breed stronger priests, but there had been years of suffering before his intervention. She did not want to find out what this nation did to punish the tainted, or rely on the Angels to rescue her, unless she had no other choice.

Betzi had taught Rielle to create a tiny flame by vibrating the air until it grew hot, and to harden and move the air in order to push something away. The girl had told her to practise the trick, reasoning that if the Angels wanted magic for themselves but permitted it for self-defence, then surely it was better to use it as efficiently as possible.

Even so, using magic had made Rielle dream of walking down the main streets of Fyre dressed in rags, filth flung at her by the crowd. It made her feel sick with fear whenever the local Schpetan priests were near.

And now the Angel was here, if the rumours that had followed their return to the workshop did truly confirm what she had seen at the wall. Had he come to punish her? She shivered as she imagined disapproval in the Angel’s ageless eyes–eyes that had been so dark she’d had difficulty making out the border between cornea and pupil. How am I to show that? Perhaps a warm and cool black together. The same for his hair, perhaps?

She paused to raise a hand to her hair. It had grown long enough to touch her shoulders by the time she’d arrived at Doum. She’d let the locals believe that Fyrian women always wore their hair short, and that she then grew it longer because she liked the local custom. Glossy and black, it fascinated Betzi, who liked to braid it.

The Angel’s hair was black, but where light touched it had reflected blue. As she finished weaving the forehead she glanced at the tray of bobbins and the shade of blue she had chosen. An improbable colour, but one she had recognised below the city wall that morning–and not just from the robes of the priests.