The Heart Forger (The Bone Witch #2)(59)
“They’re the most popular artisans in their trades, and their opinions aren’t easily dismissed. You’re an asha whatever the association decides, Likh. Don’t you forget that.”
“And if they decide against me,” the boy said dreamily, rubbing his cheek against the exceptionally soft satin, “then at least I’ll have all this to remember it by.”
The Heartforger paid little attention to the approaching army outside, more concerned with the strange lightning-shaped beads he was forging. His calm unnerved me.
“There will be no more lives lost among the Daanorians, Yansheo,” the asha promised the princess. “Not while I breathe.”
“But how? At least two kingdoms stand against us.”
“Trust me. Khalad?”
“A day or two more is all I need.”
“What is he doing?” I asked. “What are these urvan? Who do these souls belong to, and what do you intend to do with them?”
The Heartforger and the bone witch glanced at each other. “I told you how the old Heartforger had an antidote to the sleeping sickness,” the girl said slowly. “This is part of the remedy.”
“But no one is afflicted with the sleeping sickness here.”
The bone witch smiled. “Khalad and I have since found other uses for the antidote. I have learned that when heartforgers are involved, nothing is impossible.”
Lord Khalad shrugged. “No more so than Dark asha. Silver heartsglass cannot be raised from the dead, Tea—yet my cousin stands here with us. I have worked easier miracles.”
“For what use?” I insisted.
“To you, deprived of heartsglass, seeking Blade that Soars’s path,” she quoted. “Take that which came from Five Great Heroes long past and distill it into a heart of silver to shine anew. Khalad remembers every heartsglass he touches and can create copies of their urvan if needed. I wear Hollow Knife’s darksglass, but I shall need lightsglass. I intend to have both before long, to create shadowglass.”
“You intend to become immortal?” I was crushed, betrayed. What good was her hatred for the Faceless when she walked the same path?
The bone witch looked back out the window.
“I intend to die,” she said.
16
Our group was to be few in number: Fox, Kalen, Councilor Ludvig, and me. I had told Fox about Baron Cyran’s recovery and the forger’s visit, and he agreed it would be prudent not to say more to anyone else. But after thought and my last encounter with Kalen still on my mind, I had told the Deathseeker as well and asked if he would accompany us.
Then Likh came, unusually insistent and blushing. At the last minute, Inessa announced she and Althy would also be joining us.
“I want Khalad to take another look at Kance’s heartsglass,” she explained. “He might have something in his workshop that can provide more clues.”
The Willows was different from the rest of the city. Magic was a mandatory experience among the asha-ka, and one expected to find beautiful women there in expensive garments, with runes as easy to discern as the wind. Most people in downtown Ankyo, from the richest nobles to the lowest trader, steeped their bodies in magic. I could smell it in their hair, in their clothes, in the jewelries they wore.
Shops sold clothes with runic spells stitched into the fabric at a quality below authorized atelier shops, but the garments were affordable to most. There were different strains of inferior runeberry drinks, zivars promising all sorts of dubious abilities, and quack love potions. Numerous stalls lined the streets, specializing in spells of varying successes. What they lacked in authenticity, they more than made up for in demand.
“Kion,” I heard Kalen mutter behind me, the wryness in his tone unmistakable. “The city of plenty.”
We traveled through the widest, busiest streets first, where people wore heartsglass cases in elaborate metalwork. But the spells grew fewer and the garments simpler as the streets narrowed until we reached the poorest districts, where mud-smeared children played in front of decrepit gray houses. Men and women in drab clothing and hard faces hung linens from clotheslines or loitered in groups and stared as we passed. The air smelled of rotten eggs and discarded trash, unflavored by spells.
“For a city that looks as rich as Kion, I never imagined it would have such poor in these numbers,” Inessa murmured, looking stricken. She gripped her cloak, and I saw numerous cuts and bruises covering her hands and arms. Fox was as hard a taskmaster as Kalen.
“Cities are the same the world over,” Councilor Ludvig said. “The greater the stench of the city’s poor, the more extravagant the lives of the city’s rich.”
“We try our best,” Inessa said. “We created food programs. We try to find them decent places to live. But sometimes people slip through the cracks.”
“These are mighty big cracks,” Fox said. Princess Inessa looked away.
Our journey ended in a narrow lane too small to be called a street at a shack between two crumbling houses abandoned by even the most desperate. The path was filled with people, wretched and sickly.
The princess took a step back. Kalen forged on ahead, but a chorus of angry cries greeted him when he stepped past the line. I grabbed his arm, tugging him back.
“We were here first!” an old woman shouted shrilly.