Yerin’s jaw was set, and she was very deliberately breathing in and out, but she was on her hands and knees just like he was. Even Eithan’s knees were bent, his hands held out for balance, his smile gone. The strain showed on his face.
Lindon couldn’t take a breath. His mouth gaped, but it was as though the air had turned to stone.
“I have done you honor by speaking to you in person,” Jai Daishou said calmly. “Don’t spit in my face, Eleven.”
Eithan raised his hands and pulled against the air, as though he were trying to pry open an invisible door. He strained for a long moment before, finally, something gave.
The pressure vanished. Lindon gulped down a deep breath. Eithan staggered to lean against the statue of the First Patriarch, red-faced and panting.
Jai Daishou’s lip twitched into the first stage of a smile. “You have had a long journey. When you recover, come see me, and I will grant you an audience.”
He departed, striding off through the courtyard at his own speed, paying no heed to the servants who scurried out of his way.
When Lindon had recovered himself, he looked to Eithan. In joining the Arelius family, he’d picked up their enemies and rivals as well, and Eithan might not be capable of protecting an Iron from significant threats. Maybe Lindon would be safer if he stayed further away from the Underlord.
But as soon as Jai Daishou rounded a corner far away, Eithan stopped breathing heavily. He straightened his back, smile returning to its place.
When he saw Lindon’s concern, he winked. “People here are all so concerned with high rankings. I’ve always felt that you get more done when you’re not in the spotlight, don’t you think?”
Yerin rolled her shoulder in its socket. “It’s too late to save face. You were hauling like a plow-horse.”
Eithan laughed. “I was, wasn’t I? Well, maybe I have provoked too strong of an opponent this time.” He didn’t sound too concerned about the possibility. Reaching into his pocket, he flipped Yerin something that looked like a wooden coin. “Yerin, have one of the servants direct you to the refinery. Show them that token, and ask them for a Purple Feather Elixir.”
She brightened immediately. “This will smooth my path to Highgold?”
“Your path to Highgold is very smooth, if only you would listen to me, but this will help you advance your madra base without tapping into your Remnant. Cycle as much as you can over the next three or four days, until the pill wears off.”
Yerin gripped the token in her fist and ran off without another word.
“What about me?” Lindon asked hopefully. He had received a dozen Four Corners Rotation Pills over the course of the journey, though their effects had begun to fade during the last week or two. But if Eithan had something more powerful in reserve, Lindon wanted a taste of it.
Eithan rubbed his hands together in apparent anticipation. “You and I, Lindon, are headed for my personal favorite room in the entire city: the Arelius family library.”
Jai Long hopped down from the back of his bat, sliding down its bristly gray-white fur to the ground. His boots crunched on sand.
All around him, the Sandvipers landed their own mounts. Gokren rode a bat just like his, which had been generously donated by the Jai clan, but the others traveled on Thousand-Mile Clouds of various colors, or flying constructs, or various treasures. Most of their equipment had followed them in a levitating cauldron big enough to stew five men, but it was lagging a day behind.
He ignored the rest of the group, heading straight to a white Thousand-Mile Cloud with a tent erected on it.
Inside, Jai Chen was struggling to sit upright. “Are we…stopping…already?” she asked, her voice soft but threaded with effort.
Jai Long grabbed her by the shoulder, helping her sit up. He wanted to unravel the red bandages around his head and speak to his sister face-to-face, but he needed Sandviper loyalty enough that he didn’t want to scare them off.
“We’re here,” he said, and she lit up. He scooped her out of the tent, pretending not to hear her protests that her hair wasn’t straight.
She had suffered the indignities of travel without protest, and now he carried her to look out over the desert. Into the sun, which rose behind a black mountain. At the city of dragon’s bone.
This was her first glance of Serpent’s Grave in almost ten years, and she covered her mouth and teared up at the sight. Their parents lived in the city somewhere, as did their brothers and sisters.
She smiled at him, wide and open and tinged with grief. Jai Long knew she was glad to be home, despite everything, even if the sight of her birthplace pierced her like a sword.
Behind his mask of bandages, he smiled too.
For very different reasons.
Chapter 9
Lindon had spent much of the past five years working in the Wei clan archives. He was confident he knew what a library was supposed to look like.
But this room, located behind and beneath the bone tower that housed Cassias' family, was just a twenty-foot by twenty-foot square box. It had only one door, and all the walls were pale, yellowed bone. On the ceiling, a few scripted circles glowed with runelight, illuminating every corner.
A small altar of bone rose from the center of the room like an arm, with a claw cupping a ball the size of Lindon's fist. The ball was made of copper plates, and he thought he saw whirring flashes of color between the plates.
All in all, it was nothing like a library.
Eithan waited with hands on hips, clearly anticipating Lindon's reaction.
“Are the books...in the walls?” Lindon finally asked.
The Underlord clicked his tongue. “What are books but a mechanism to store knowledge? If we have something much more efficient available,” –Eithan picked up the copper ball— “then why would we need books?”
Lindon peered at the ball. It was a construct of some kind, obviously, but beyond that he couldn't guess. Maybe it would project words onto the wall—some of his mother's White Fox constructs could do as much, crafting images from illusions.
“This is the single most valuable object the entire Arelius family owns,” he said, spinning it on the tip of one finger. “Most of us aren’t aware of that, but it's true. We primarily use the powers of our bloodline to find areas that need cleaning or maintenance, but as an...unintentional side effect...we also tend to collect other information.”
He tossed the ball from hand to hand. “All of that information pertinent to the sacred arts—including secrets about the Paths of our rivals—is stored in here. Some of it also gets copied into dream tablets, scrolls, books, and so forth, but everything goes here.”
That was intriguing. If they could study the sacred arts of their enemies, they could walk into any battle with the upper hand. If Jai Long's sacred arts were in there...
“How do we get it out?” Lindon asked.
“Well, first, you have to be a blood member of the Arelius family.” Eithan continued tossing the ball in his left hand and touched the right against his chest. “Fortunately for you, I am. The original Patriarch left this treasure for his descendants, and they have learned from it and added to it one generation at a time.”
“That's incredible. Truly, it's a treasure that I'm honored even to lay my eyes on. But how do we get it—”
Eithan didn't do anything Lindon could see, but the copper plates slowly pushed out from the center of the ball. A light flashed red.
And suddenly a featureless, crimson man stood in the center of the room.
It looked like a Remnant left behind by one of the wooden training dummies: a head without a face, body slender and unremarkable, limbs lifeless and smooth. It was solid red, without details or distinguishing marks.