Summernight Read online

  He was going to enter that tower.

  He was sure of that now – as sure as he was of his own name – and when he did, he was going to make sure that they never brought another innocent girl there again. Beneath his feet, he almost thought he felt a rumble of agreement in the earth itself.

  3: Scenter

  Marielle

  “YOU’RE TOO OBSESSIVE. That’s her first complaint. You take things too seriously, don’t like critique, don’t understand nuance. The world is black and white to you,” Captain Ironarm said, as she read the report in her hand.

  Someone had actually written those things about Marielle. Paper was scarce and ink valuable and someone had sat with their face screwed up, quill in hand, and carefully penned those words.

  About her.

  Marielle felt herself sinking lower with every word. She thought she was doing a good job. She thought she was putting her training to use and helping people. She was the best Scenter trainee. She could follow any track. She practiced constantly. She didn’t eat strong foods or wear perfumes. She was even careful about her soap. Nothing was allowed to hinder her sense. Her kit was meticulously maintained. She took every citizen complaint seriously.

  And none of that had been enough.

  She could feel her eyes growing wider with every new item on the list. She chewed her lip until it hurt and silently cursed the anxious sweat that sprouted up under her clothing. The Captain would smell it. And she would know that Marielle was nervous. That wouldn’t help her case.

  “What do you have to say for yourself?” Captain Ironarm’s voice was calm and even.

  She smoothed the sides of her salt and paper hair back into the tight bun she wore. It was the only tight thing about her. The rest of her face sagged under the weight of years. She’d been the Scenter Captain here for thirty years. Spent twenty-two as a Scenter before that. Joined up at eighteen when her training was complete – just like Marielle. Just like every woman in the Scenter branch of the City Watch.

  “None of us sees color,” Marielle said, carefully. She didn’t understand the insult. She was proud of who she was. Who cared that Scenters couldn’t see colors in a world roaring with the turquoise scent of the sea weaving in with the golden brown of baked bread and the gold of attraction. Green still lingered in this office from Jandela who had been in here before Marielle. She’d let off that burst of envy when she passed Marielle in the doorway. Who would want to trade that to simply see colors?

  “That’s not what the report means,” Captain Ironarm said with a raised eyebrow.

  Of course, it wasn’t. Marielle felt her cheeks heating.

  “I understand nuance,” she said, her voice huskier than she would have liked. She shifted her stance and the leathers of her watch uniform squeaked. They hadn’t lost that squeak yet – they were still so new.

  “If you understood nuance you would know that you don’t drag a Landhold before the magistrate for public drunkenness – especially not twelve hours after he was drunk!”

  “I could smell it on him,” Marielle said in a small voice.

  “But by then he had slept it off. Magistrate Mendyk marched in here yesterday and demanded – yes, he demanded! – that I remove you from the Watch. Don’t look at me like that! It will be a hot day in Thespar before a magistrate – any magistrate, mind! – tells me what to do in my own Watch House.”

  Her hard gaze was fixed on Marielle, nailing her in place. They should have called her ‘ironeyes’ not ‘Ironarm’.

  “Yes, sir.” Marielle’s voice squeaked more than she would have liked, but she kept her back ramrod straight. The Scenters were everything to her. If staying meant being more careful with Landholds well ... well, she could consider that.

  “Justice, Marielle, is more important than regulation. Do you know what that means?”

  Marielle felt new sweat breaking out across her scalp. If only she could wipe it away with her Scenter’s Veil! But she stayed perfectly still, her mind racing. What did you say to something like that? The regulations brought justice. And justice was the most important thing in the world. She settled on her catechism answer.

  “Justice is the gift of the Dragonblooded to the after-generations. It makes it safe for men to strive and achieve but curtails corruption,” she quoted from memory. She knew her catechism. Every citizen of Jingen did. There were rumors that the other cities had different catechisms, but they were only rumors. Marielle knew better than to think so ill of people just because they lived far off.

  Her gaze wandered to the map above Captain Ironarm’s desk – a map of the five cities of the Dragonblood Plains with a closeup of Jingen and her districts in the lower left-hand corner. The cities were drawn extra large for effect, looking as if you could spit and reach the next city but Marielle knew it was only to see them more easily. They were actually many days of travel from one another.

  Captain Ironarm pursed her wrinkled lips.

  “I won’t be Captain here forever, Marielle,” she said sending a stab of fear down Marielle’s spine. The Captain was the anchor of the Scenter Watch. “And so, it’s important for me to impart a little wisdom where I can. Some things are right and wrong, Marielle. You know this.”

  Marielle was nodding.

  The Captain turned in her chair to look out her second-story window over the city below. The glass of the window was rippled in the small panes, but you could still see almost as far as the river running through the center of the city where the festivities for Summernight had already begun. Marielle almost thought she saw the Lady Sacrifice’s procession moving through the canals.

  “There are rights and wrongs according to the catechism. There are rights and wrongs according to the laws of Jingen,” the captain said heavily. “You are a good student. You know these things by heart. The moral law. The city laws. I heard you recite the complete Jingen Code the day you graduated from your training. And these laws are good. But there is a greater law in place, Marielle. It’s a law that branches out over those other laws the way a great tree branches out over a garden. It supersedes them. It encompasses them. Occasionally ... it diverges from them.”

  Marielle gasped. The captain hadn’t just said ... had she? She didn’t say ... Marielle could not even let the thought form in her own mind.

  “I don’t know the name of this law. You sense it sometimes in the catechism. Sometimes you get a whiff of it when you are reading Jingen Law. But it’s something greater. It’s alive. It answers to something beyond us.”

  “The religions, Captain?”

  “I doubt it,” Captain Ironarm said wryly. “Or at least, I haven’t seen proof of that.”

  “It’s not ...” Marielle began.

  “Speak up, officer.”

  “It’s not the dragons, is it? After all, they founded the five cities. We built them on the rocks of their bodies. Perhaps these laws came from them.”

  The Captain shrugged. “I don’t know about that. What I do know, is that over time a Watch Officer gets a feel for this law – what I like to think of as the Real Law. And when it lines up with Jingen law, that’s a good thing. It makes you certain and certainty in this world is rare. It’s a precious thing in the fleeting moments you find it. But there are other times when things are not so certain. There are times when you can sense the real law, but there’s no written code to hold it up. There’s just you, an officer of the Watch, trying to find a way to twist the written law so you can enforce the real law.”

  Marielle shivered. She’d heard of City Watch like that. Men who put a bloody knife in the coat pocket of a man they knew did something wrong just before he was stopped by other Watch officers.

  “Oh, I don’t mean vigilantes,” the Captain said, catching the look in her eye. “That’s not justice either. No, when you get to know the real law, you can see things that other people can’t. Patterns. Ways it’s hinting at the truth to you. It’s alive. And it wants justice more than anything. I think that maybe the world was meant
to be just. But, of course, it’s not. And that Law – the Real Law – is always working to bring that back.”

  A thought occurred to Marielle. She cleared her throat and the captain looked at her expectantly.

  “What about if the Real Law says someone is innocent but the City Law says someone is guilty?”

  The Captain gave her an odd half-smile. “It’s those times that we see what sort of cloth you’re sewn from, officer.”

  Marielle swallowed.

  “That’s what Anaala means when she says you’re too black and white. You don’t know the Real Law yet. You need time to learn it and until you do, you need to calm down a little and let more experienced Watch officers lead the way.”

  Marielle felt her cheeks heating.

  “Which is why,” the captain said. “I’m pairing you with Carnelian for the rest of Summernight. Listen to what she says and see if you can learn some wisdom. She’s been on the streets for long enough to wear out a pair of boots or two.”

  “And if I can’t?” Marielle asked. She couldn’t help biting her lip as she waited for the answer.

  “Then the City Watch is not for you. There are other things a Scenter can do. We’ll find one for you. But until then, go report to Carnelian. She’s expecting you.”

  4: The Queen Mer Library

  Tamerlan

  TAMERLAN HAD ALWAYS loved the Queen Mer library. When it was built, no expense had been spared. The denizens of Queen Mer - carved in white stone – decorated every pillar of the library. Squids with a dozen arms wrapped around the base of the pillars, their arms crawling up the ivory uprights. Seaweed and shells, lobsters and crabs, swordfish and manta rays were carved in the spaces between the shelves and along decorative friezes. Waves crashed in the design of the low barriers and walls.

  But today, Tamerlan was not enjoying the library. The long shelves of scrolls, carefully tucked away from the light, didn’t make his skin crawl with anticipation like they had in the past. The collection of shelf upon shelf of bound books – a marvel of modern dedication to knowledge! – didn’t make him wish for the thousandth time that his father had sold him to the Librarians instead of to the Alchemists.

  Today, he just felt empty.

  He leaned against the desk at the entrance. No apprentice was considered trustworthy enough to go beyond that point. Certainly not the apprentice of the destructive Alchemists.

  A book was laid out on the desk with a careful bookmark nestled between the pages. The Librarian at the door had left it there when she went to find Nabella. Tamerlan’s fingers tapped impatiently on the desk. He needed to get out of here so he could start gathering supplies to break into the tower. He’d need a weapon. A dark cloak. What else?

  His eyes strayed over the open book, soaking in the words while his mind raced.

  The Legends will return someday, or so it was foretold by Jandein. He left instruction for their return. “Greet them with open arms if you wish to taste their power,” he said, “but do not trust them, for they shall take your most precious gift as payment for their power, your own will and mind in payment for their great acts.”

  Someone must have been curious about the Legends with Summernight approaching. Or perhaps they were merely planning their costume for the event.

  Tamerlan reached across the desk and picked the book up, letting his fingers skim gently through the pages, careful to touch only the edges so the oils of his skin would not hurt the delicate ink on paper. There were chapters on each Hero of Legend with detailed sketches of their clothing and weaponry. There was Byron Bronzebow with his dashing good looks and prominent bow gleaming in the light. There was Queen Mer, of course, with her queenly poise, her bodice made of overlapping shells and her necklace made of the bones of shipwrecked sailors. He flipped the book open at random and the pages fell open to the Lady Sacrifice.

  Nausea washed over him and for a moment his vision wavered. He slammed the book shut on the sketch of her lifeless corpse resting over the snout of a dragon, and a page flew out from the force of it, drifting to the floor.

  “Apprentice?” the Librarian called.

  With a gasp, Tamerlan snatched up the paper and stuffed it into his apron. If he was caught having damaged a book, he would never be allowed in the Library again. Worse, a report would go to the Alchemist’s Guild and he would be placed under curfew at the very least. And if that happened, he would lose his chance to break into the tower.

  “I’m here,” he called in a voice that sounded more nervous than he would have liked.

  “Remember to practice great care in transporting our books,” the Librarian said rounding the corner and standing behind the desk again. If she noticed her book was out of place, she didn’t mention it, simply handing the books to Tamerlan wrapped in a sealskin. The skin alone – rare and amazing – was probably worth more than he was. “The Alchemist’s Guild will be held responsible for any damaged or lost books according to the usual tradition. Show me your hand.”

  Tamerlan held out his hand. He hated this part.

  The Librarian pulled out her ledger, carefully wrote his name and guild into the columns and then snatched his hand in her iron grip. Her penknife whipped out of a pocket and with practiced movements she slit the tip of his finger and pressed the print of it – in blood – on the page.

  “Sealed with your blood. Any loss or damage will be recompensed with more of the same. Return the books in ten days.”

  Tamerlan shivered, but the Librarian fixed him with her slit-eyed gaze. There was no mercy in those eyes. She cared far more for those books than she did for the life of an apprentice. He swallowed, glad he hadn’t admitted to the page that fell out of the other book.

  “Of course,” he said, clutching the books tightly to his chest and fleeing the marble halls of the Library into the district below.

  A man dressed as King Abelmeyer the One-eyed nearly bumped into him as he flew down the stairs.

  “Watch yourself, boy! It’s not Summernight just yet!” The man’s eyepatch slipped, and he hurried to correct it, pulling his long crimson cloak around him more tightly and straightening the collar so it stood high around his broken crown.

  Tamerlan dodged around him, running into the main street of the University District. Servants and apprentices clustered around the great-doors of the biggest schools, hanging garlands of sweet-smelling flowers and brightly colored ribbons. Laughter broke out from the groups that felt sour against the sick feeling in Tamerlan’s stomach.

  “Want to help us, Alchemist? We could use the advice of one of the Dragonblooded!” a particularly pretty girl called from where she was hanging her garlands. Tamerlan ran a hand through his pale blond hair – a telltale sign of his ancestry – and shook his head as he hurried past. He heard laughter behind him. Another young man joined the girls as they prepared for the shortest night of the year together.

  The girl didn’t know it, but he knew no more than they did about what flowers to hang. His Dragonblooded ancestry was nothing but a noose around his neck. Maybe if he’d been sold to the libraries it would have helped. Maybe then, he would have the key he needed to rescue his sister.

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out the paper he’d picked up, smoothing out the creases as he carried it balanced on top of his valuable parcel.

  It didn’t look like a book page – or if it was one, it was old and so covered in annotations that it was hard to make out everything. There were corner designs in a gold leaf – intersecting mazes in strange shapes and a faint coloring along the edge of the page suggested that this book had painted pages. So, it was from a valuable book. He’d heard about these. They were called “illuminated texts” – books so precious that every page was a masterpiece.

  Strange. The book he had slammed hadn’t been an illuminated text.

  This page looked like a recipe.

  But if it was a recipe, it was a strange one. There was no distillation or compounding. No details for liquefaction. There were warnin
gs above and below. Whoever had written down the recipe had not wanted it used. And someone had scrawled notes on it about their attempts at making the recipe. They were careful alchemist’s notes of how he had boiled the ingredients and then distilled them to a thick salve. He’d also made a granular powder and an alcohol dilution. As far as Tamerlan could tell, they had all failed. And the monster had written about them on a precious illuminated text!

  ‘Use for dire situations,’ the recipe read.

  Tamerlan was in a dire situation.

  ‘For the summoning of the ancient powers and the bringing of skills not won.’

  He was so intent on the recipe that he almost bumped into a procession of Smudgers. He must already be in the Temple District. He hadn’t remembered crossing the bridge over the canal here, but a quick glance at the busy streets confirmed his theory. Tall temples and churches rose up on high platforms, as if racing to reach the gods, the cathedral tops of the white churches of the Timekeepers rose delicately over the low-slung tiled roofs of the jade temples belonging to the Smudgers.

  The Smudgers who had cut him off wove in a tight line, slowly shuffling their lap around the district and wedging him in place against the canal rail. He’d timed his visit here poorly.

  The crowds were frozen on every side. No one would push through a line of Smudgers. With the smell of sage smoke hanging heavily in the air, one of the Smudgers – an old woman without any teeth – winked at him as they shuffled past. The Smudgers were a popular religion, and the crowd was quiet out of respect for their smoking braziers and waving hands. They spun and almost danced as they wove through the trails of smoke, trying to tint their spirits with its essence.

  Sage stood for patience and acceptance. Tamerlan didn’t want either of those. He couldn’t afford them when the stakes were so high. He would have backed away quickly, except that he’d never believed the Smudgers claims that the smoke could change or cleanse their spirits. All they ever did was steal the best deals on herbs coming in by sea and spout their heartfelt tales to get the fresher ingredients while he was left with second best.