“Have you had any urge to harm or kill your fellow man?”
“Having a few of those urges right now.”
“What color is this card?” He held up a paper with a splash of yellow paint on it.
Her Goldsigns twitched, the silver blades hanging over each shoulder eager to cut her free. She calmed them—they wouldn’t be able to cut through the halfsilver, made of madra as they were, so she would have to dig through the script-reinforced stone behind her. And the second she started trying that, they would cook her like a side of bacon.
Still, she was stone certain they were doing nothing but burning up her time. “What does that tell you? Is a Blood Shadow blind to color?”
The Skysworn examiner looked like he was struggling not to spit at her feet. “Answer the question.”
“Yellow. You want me to tell you the shapes next?”
This time, he held up a green card. “And this one?”
“...if you can’t tell what color that is, you need a new line of work.” Every Skysworn in the tower wore green robes when they were out of their green armor.
He paused for a second as though deciding whether he could backhand her or not, but accepted the answer. He pulled out a card with a triangle painted on it.
“Do you know what shape this is?”
She stared at him. “Are you pulling my chain right now?”
“Answer the question.”
She shook her wrists, rattling the chains. “You’re welcome to kill me now if it’ll bring this to an end.”
He stepped closer, wind madra swirling green around him. He wore a thin beard and he looked at her like she’d killed his children and made him watch. “Don’t tempt me, Redmoon.”
She grinned at him. “Not Redmoon. Arelius.” Eithan Arelius was the only reason she was tied up at all, instead of facing the business end of an axe.
If he touched her without the stamp of his Emperor, or at least another Underlord, Eithan would wear his skin like a scarf.
He reddened and turned away as the door opened. When Bai Rou entered, the examiner and note-taker buzzed over to him like vultures to a corpse. They muttered to him for a while—telling tales about her, she was sure.
The big man’s burning yellow eyes flicked to her, and she turned her smile on him like a blade. He gave no sign whether she’d drawn blood or not, but raised his voice so she could hear. “She’s clear?”
“It’s in a stable condition,” the note-taker said, “but there’s no telling how long that will last. It’s largely up to her.”
“She’ll turn against us before the sun sets,” the examiner said, glaring at her.
Bai Rou folded his arms and leaned against the wall, and he was watching her too. “She comes with me.”
Yerin rattled her chains again. “We’re wasting breath. You got a key, or am I going to go gray in here?”
They freed her in spite of the examiner’s protests, but left the halfsilver shackles on her wrists.
Bai Rou pulled her into the hallway and began marching her down without a word. She caught more than one hostile glare, rough search of her spirit, or flare of a half-formed technique.
What a spine that took, to shake swords at a girl in chains. They had better hope she didn’t remember their faces. Not only did she have the power of Redmoon Hall inside her, she had the will to use it against them. They’d dropped her off a cliff and left her to die.
Well, one Skysworn had.
Smartest thing to do would be to kill her flat-out. If they let her hit Truegold, they’d regret it.
“You looking for somewhere to drop me?” she asked.
He said nothing.
“You can’t kill me, so you want to put me to work. Lindon isn’t cutting it on his own?”
She tried to conceal the real worry she felt, after she’d been forced to leave Lindon in the care of the two Truegolds. She’d only had a fingernail’s weight of trust in the Skysworn to begin with, and now even that much had dried up and blown away. They wouldn’t draw swords on him, not with Eithan’s name hanging over him, but they wouldn’t step quick to help him either. He needed her help.
“The Blackflame completed his mission,” Bai Rou said. “We will speak to you both, and that’s all you need to know.”
“That so? Last I checked, there were three of us. What about the new girl?”
She thought she saw a shadow of worry pass over his yellow eyes, and that cheered her.
“She’s coming too,” he said, scowling.
Renfei stood in front of the room where she’d left Akura Mercy to recover. It swung open soundlessly, revealing a mass of darkness so thick it was almost palpable. If she stuck her hand past the doorframe, it looked as though it would be swallowed by endless night.
Only one thing was visible in the inky murk: a bright purple book, hovering in the center of the room. It glowed, but somehow cast no light. Only the book itself was visible, a single distinct figure in an ocean of black.
The book was spread open, its pages thick, and it pressed on her spirit with an impression of overpowering might and incomprehensible age.
Then it vanished, and Mercy hopped out of the dark.
If not for her wide purple eyes, Mercy would look more like a friendly innkeeper’s daughter than a child of the mighty Akura clan. She beamed at Renfei, clasping her hands behind her back and leaning forward with a twinkling smile. “Sorry, sorry! I know it’s gloomy. I heard you knock, but you know how it is when you’re deep into cycling. You just lose your head!”
A staff fell out from the darkness. Made of what looked like polished black roots, the staff was taller than Mercy, with its top carved to resemble a snarling dragon with purple pinpricks for eyes.
...or perhaps not carved. Though its eyes didn’t move, Renfei was sure they’d fixed on her, and she thought she heard a hiss.
It was enough to get her madra cycling and send a hand to her hammer.
Mercy grabbed for the falling staff, fumbled it, tried to catch it with her other hand, almost lost her balance, and ended up seizing it in both hands. She raised it triumphantly. “Got it!”
Renfei’s eyes moved from her to the shadow behind her. “What were you doing in there?” she asked. She didn’t intend to, but she was using her Skysworn voice: the tone of a career authority figure.
“Cycling,” Mercy said, waving one hand as though she meant to blow away the darkness like smoke. “It’s not my favorite aura to cycle. Hard not to fall asleep.”
It was deep shadow aura in there, laced with some other, darker aspects that dissipated even as Renfei tried to sense them. It was a tapestry of black.
Some of the rumors about Akura Paths flashed through her mind, and she could feel her expression harden. This was a fine nest of vipers she had to babysit.
Mercy was watching her, and slowly she stood up. Renfei felt an instant of what she could only call a premonition: she was about to see beyond the mask of the cheery, innocent girl.
The Akura Lowgold reached up with one hand—gloved in slick black, as though she’d dipped it in tar—and placed her fingers on Renfei’s arm.
“You must be exhausted,” she said.
Renfei searched her face for anything mocking, but found only sympathy. A trainee shouldn’t speak to their Skysworn with such familiarity, and a Lowgold should express more respect to a Truegold.
But she was an Akura, so that much was to be expected. She would have grown up around people who could evaporate Renfei with a thought. Sometimes, Renfei wondered why any Akura stayed only Lowgold, even one as young as Mercy.