Broken Veil (Harbinger #5)(82)

Cettie smiled. “I will do everything in my power to ensure you survive this, Sera Fitzempress.” She had pulled herself so close that her arms were nearly touching Sera’s lap. “I’m going to cut your bonds. My mother has a pouch. It will be damp to the touch. Hidden in a secret pocket. There is moss inside it . . . a powerful magic. It can heal us. Get it. I lack the strength.”

Sera slowly turned, trying to shift so that her back was to Cettie. But she kept her gaze fixed on Jevin, who still stood by the Leering, head bowed as if in some sort of trance as he played the hautboie.

Cettie started to work on the bonds. The pressure of tugging on them made her wrists hurt all the more, but Sera bit her lip and endured it.

“It’s growing louder,” Cettie said.

“What?” Sera asked, straining to hear over the sound of Jevin’s song.

“The music.”

That confused her. “I don’t understand.”

“Not the song Jevin is playing. Remember our days in Vicar’s Close? I hear the magic as music, Sera. Chords . . . strains . . . measures . . . it’s beautiful. It’s growing louder. It’s stronger than the magic Jevin is weaving. There’s singing this time too.”

“I hear nothing,” Sera said. Were the students at the abbey singing?

“It’s not from this world,” Cettie said, grunting. “I’m so tired. Almost finished.”

“What does it say?” Sera asked.

“It’s not in our tongue. The words, I mean. I can’t explain it. It’s been so soft, but now it’s louder. They’re coming, Sera. They’re coming.”

The bonds fells away from Sera’s wrists, and she gasped with the relief from the constricting pain. Blood flowed back into her fingertips, causing pinpricks of agony, but she knew the pain would lessen. Sera started to crawl toward Christina’s body, making her movements deliberately slow.

Sera felt hope flare to life inside her. Jevin had the Tay al-Ard in his pocket. She’d seen him stuff it there. The other kishion were gone. With Cettie healed, they’d stand a chance to overpower him together.

She licked her dry lips again, arriving at the corpse. She quickly began her search, rifling through Christina’s skirts.

At first she thought the dampness seeping through the gown was blood, but she had discovered the wet pouch. She carefully withdrew it from the pocket.

Then a voice startled her.

“You forget that Leerings have eyes,” Jevin said coldly, turning around, his own eyes glowing silver as he put his instrument down on the floor.

Sera quickly tried to untie the knot on the pouch, but an invisible force yanked her off her feet and dragged her across the floor by her ankles. Jevin closed the remaining distance between them with a few quick strides. He yanked the pouch out of her hand, his face mocking her.

“Still you resist,” he said, looming over her, squeezing the pouch in his hand. A look of fury blazed in his silver eyes. He threw the bag aside and dropped down, grabbing her throat with his hands and squeezing. She couldn’t breathe.

Sera tried to bat his arms away, but he was impossibly strong, more so than such a slight man should be. His fingers dug into her skin. She arched her back, trying to claw at him with her fingers. As spots of blackness began to dance in her eyes, he finally let go, and she twisted away, gasping for breath. He walked over to Christina’s body and fetched a small vial from her poisoner’s bag. Cettie was crawling toward her, on her knees, but she slumped to the ground, exhausted.

“You don’t know true pain until you’ve swallowed Kyanos,” he said, strolling back as if he hadn’t a care in the world. “It tastes a little like almonds. Have a bit!”

He knelt by her, twisting off the cap of the vial, and grabbed her by the back of the neck. Sera grabbed his wrists and tried to make him drop the vial, but he overpowered her and forced it to her lips. She jerked her head to the side, smelling the odor he’d described.

“Drink it!” he snarled. “I won’t let it kill you. You’ll only wish you were dead!”

As he tried to force the contents of the vial down her throat, she bit his hand so hard he flinched and jerked away, dropping it. The pasty ichor drained out. “You can’t make me!” Sera shouted at him. “I won’t give in, no matter what you do.”

He nursed his hand, massaging the bite marks with his thumb, staring at her balefully.

“You . . . cannot . . . force me to do as you’d like,” she said, trying to scoot back toward Cettie. “I’m not a puppet dancing on strings as you are. Those things inside you, squirming about, filling you with hate. They control you, Jevin. This is not who you really are.”

He rose, still massaging his hand. “But you are a puppet, Empress. Only you do not see the hand controlling your strings. The invisible hand.” He said it mockingly. “The intelligence behind the Mysteries . . . that is what controls you.” He glared at her, his eyes full of wrath. “You trust it blindly, Sera Fitzempress. You cannot question it. You cannot make demands of it. How sorry I am for you, to follow something so blindly. In such ignorance.”

Sera glared back at him.

“You put your trust in vapor. A shadow. It never reveals itself, yet it murders innocents just as we do. How many have been put to death for not following it blindly? You believe the Knowing cares about you, about the world, but we are nothing more than particles of eternity. Playthings that live and then die. Existence is meaningless. This shell I wear,” he said, gesturing to his body, “it goes to the worms. The Knowing cannot stop us from murdering the people we’ve gathered in the abbey. It’s not because it chooses not to interfere. It’s because it cannot! It is victim to its own laws. It cannot intervene against free will. I will prove my words with fire, and you will see that I speak the truth. The Knowing will not stop me from destroying Cruix Abbey. It didn’t stop her then,” he said slyly, looking back at the Leering, “and it cannot stop me now.”