Given Page 23

  “Through source tangled come undone.”

  The rope moved slow and snakelike until it freed itself of the large knot in its center.

  “Nice one!” said Diedre.

  “You know,” said Yenni, “my friend Zoo-ee told me something similar about Yoben’s Rainfall. She advised me to imagine the smell of the rain.”

  Diedre nodded. “Is a well-documented phenomenon. Focusin’ on a smell or sound or even the feelin’ of something can really help with spellcraft. Zui is one of your dragon friends, yes? The beautiful one from Minato? She helped us in the alley.”

  “Yes.”

  “Ah. She’s as smart as she is stunnin’, it would seem.”

  The mention of the alley brought back the memory of Dragon, steaming and vengeful like her own guardian beast.

  “Oh, what is this?” asked Diedre. “You should see your face, Yenni. Who is it who makes you smile that secret smile, hmm?” Diedre squinted at Yenni, flashing a knowing smile of her own. “Is the other dragon, your Given.”

  The smile left Yenni’s face. “He is not my Given simply because he says he is.”

  “But, Yenni, why you don’t like he? Is a dragon, mams. A pretty one too.”

  “He is Creshen, my parents would never approve.”

  Diedre gave her a skeptical look. “Even though you two are Given?”

  “We are not—” Yenni paused, taking a deep breath to swallow her frustration. “Yes, even so, Deedee. There is no concept of Given on the Moonrise Isles.”

  “Oh. Well, that seems sad.”

  Very sad, if the sinking feeling in Yenni’s gut was any indication. “What about you, Deedee,” said Yenni, attempting to turn the conversation around. “Is there anyone special to you?”

  “Ah.” Diedre glanced away, uncharacteristically nervous. “There is someone, yes.”

  “Oh?” Yenni leaned forward.

  “Yes, but is the same situation. My family would never accept it.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “Um, well . . . tradition. Is not the type of person they would want me to marry.”

  Yenni hummed knowingly. “But if your family did approve, do you think you could marry him?”

  Diedre sighed. “In a perfect world, I think so.”

  “Oh, Deedee. Still, you’ll have to point him out to me sometime.”

  “Erm, yes. An’ you? In a perfect world, do you think you could marry your dragon?”

  Yenni paused. “This is not a perfect world,” she said at last. “So there’s no use thinking about it. Now come, I need to practice Meyor’s Repulsion.”

  24

  He was cursed. He had to be. It was the only way to explain how his Given could look him in the eye and tell him he was nobody, nobody to her.

  A bird trilled overhead in one of the pine trees. Weysh had hoped to find some peace here on the mountain, but the quiet only made his thoughts louder. A little over a moonturn had passed since he’d last spoken to Yenni. True to his word, he hadn’t sought her out, or wanted to seek her out. Half-year exams were approaching, and when he should have been concerned with helping her pass, the thought of her only filled him with empty hollowness.

  “We’re not speaking,” he’d told Harth and Zui when they’d innocently asked after her. He didn’t go into detail, even when they pressed him. It was simply too embarrassing. “Just make sure she passes her exams,” he’d begged them. “Take care of her for me.”

  He hoped this horrible numbness was not how the women he’d left in the past felt. How Carmenna felt.

  Weysh shook his head and focused on moving forward on the mountain trail. Before him twin dragons stretched high enough to rival the pine trees surrounding them, their stony wings forever spread back and their onyx eyes shining. Long necks curved toward one another, creating an archway before an incline of stairs so steep they could lead straight to heaven itself. Weysh considered flying up to the top, but he was here to pray for guidance from Byen, and somehow taking the stairs seemed like it should be part of that effort. He’d already flown up the mountain to reach this chapelle, after all.

  So he took to the cracked, white steps, and when the burn of exertion spread through his legs he relished it, considering it penance. He shouldn’t have unleashed his anger on Yenni as he did, but he doubted she would take kindly to his attempts to make amends. She likely didn’t want to see him any more than he wanted to face her. He breathed deeply of the pine-scented air and kept going.

  When he reached the top, the scenery at last stirred something in his murky soul. If Mount Eglise was a king, then the chapelle was his gleaming white crown. It consisted of columns carved with curving dragons arranged in an arc, with delicate, trellis-like woodwork stretching across them to make a roof that still let in patches of cerulean sky. The altar to Byen stood beneath.

  Weysh’s footsteps echoed on the stone, and the shadows from the roof fell over him like black lace. He knelt before the altar and prayed. First he renewed his vow to Byen to serve as his divine warrior. Then he entreated Byen to lift the curse upon him.

  Kindly Watcher and ruler of the worldly domain, I seek forgiveness for my sins and the sins of my father now visited upon me. Help me understand the woman you have seen fit to bless me with as Given.

  Weysh frowned. Why did his words feel so empty? Perhaps because Yenni did not feel like a blessing. She was pain, and frustration, and endless humiliation. Suddenly his townhouse on Lor Street seemed impossibly small. How was he supposed to convince her to leave a palace to live there? He wasn’t even sure what compelled him to keep going, praying to the almighty for her acceptance. Was it simply the Given bond? Well then, perhaps he should be praying to be released from it instead.

  Weysh sighed and continued. If I am not yet the man who can be Yenni’s perfect match, then help me to become him. Byen watch over me.

  He ended his prayer and stayed at the chapelle for a while in solitude. It was usually only dragonkind who visited here. Few were willing to make the hike up the mountain, especially when there was a larger chapelle at the base. This place was perhaps the closest thing he’d seen to heaven. From the summit the world seemed suspended between twin voids of azure sky and navy sea, and it was easy to pretend, even for just a while, that there was nothing else.

  He had been enjoying the quiet for near an hour when he heard wingbeats and a familiar rusty scent hit his nose. He forced himself to stand slowly, turn calmly, and nod his greeting. “Noriago.”

  Noriago stood at the top of the steps, his hands jammed into his pockets. He gave off the scent of triumph—sunny, sweet, and rich, like the juice of an orange. It clashed unpleasantly with his natural metallic sharpness. “You look like you’ve been living on the streets, Nolan.”

  Weysh scowled. He hadn’t been paying as much attention to his appearance of late, it was true, but he’d had more pressing matters on his mind.

  “What do you want?” he snapped.

  “I’ve been hoping to catch you alone like this for a while. I want to talk, dragon to dragon.”

  “What about?”

  Noriago started toward him. “What you said about how we’ve been through similar hardships.”

  “So you’ve come to accept the truce?”

  Noriago kept coming closer. “When my father was disgraced we lost everything, my brother and me. We lost our mother.”

  And here his scent changed—vinegar and algae. “We lost our standing, and we lost our father, the man we looked up to more than anyone. My brother is young, he decided to stay in Espanna. He thinks with time we can bounce back.”

  He stopped in front of Weysh.

  “But I know better. Even after I graduate from Prevan I’ll never have the life I could have. The Church of the Sacred Vigil has shunned us entirely. Even if I meet my Given, her name will simply be dragged through the mud with mine.�
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  Weysh shook his head. “That’s not true, Noriago. You owe it to yourself to fight. If you give up, they win.” It was a mantra Weysh had repeated to himself hundreds, thousands of times.

  Noriago laughed, and it was not a pleasant sound. “I was supposed to be head of the whole Espannian chapter of the Church of the Sacred Vigil one day, practically as powerful as the king of Espanna himself. What’s left for me now—delivering packages, like you?”

  “There’s no shame in making an honest living,” Weysh said stiffly.

  “Either way, it doesn’t matter anymore. You showed me the truth of it, the future in store for me. What I wanted to tell you is this: Source-drawn wind blow forth with force!”

  Wind whipped at Weysh, and a cloud of something red burst in front of him. Instantly his face was on fire.

  “We are not the same!” Noriago shouted, even as Weysh coughed and sneezed, and tears streamed from his closed eyes. It seemed like grains of sand were stuck under his eyelids, and his nose and lips burned, inflamed.

  “I have always walked the righteous path, while you have strayed, debauched, put pleasure before service,” Noriago prattled. Weysh lashed out, trying to hit him, and met empty air. “And yet I am rewarded with ruin, while you are given a woman you could never hope to deserve! The only thing that brings me even the slightest solace now is watching sinners like you suffer.”

  Weysh crouched, still sneezing, blinded not only by his tears. He also couldn’t smell. “Poison, you coward?” he yelled between burning sneezes.

  “Not quite.” Noriago’s voice came from the left, and Weysh jerked to face it. “But this is the next best thing. Good luck smelling anything ever again, including your ill-gotten Given.”

  “Thrice-damned lunatic!” Weysh shouted, lashing out again, longing to dig his fingers into Noriago’s scrawny neck. “They’ll lock you away for this!”

  “They didn’t the first time. And anyway, I have nothing left to lose.”

  “I’LL KILL YOU!” Weysh roared.

  Noriago laughed, and a moment later Weysh heard wingbeats on the air. No way in hell was he about to let that festering ass boil escape! Weysh changed to dragon, and instantly regretted it. His sensitive dragon nose amplified the pain unbearably. He screeched and changed back to a man.

  It felt as if his face was melting. He needed water, but couldn’t even open his eyes to find it, much less smell through his inflamed sinuses to sniff it out. So he lay on the chapelle floor, sneezing and moaning until slowly, terribly slowly, the agony subsided to painful yet bearable tingling. He opened his swollen eyes.

  Thank Byen, he could see. And yet something seemed to be missing. He stared down the steps at the trees below. The color was off or . . . no. He sniffed. Sniffed again. Inhaled a deep searching breath. He couldn’t smell the trees, or anything else. Noriago was right: his sense of smell was gone.

  Yenni sat rigid as a rod in bed, staring in numb disbelief at the runes on her palms. Was she awake? Or was this a dream?

  Her father’s rune was almost as strong as the day he had drawn it there.

  Yenni traced a finger over the rune, registering the sensation. As her shock wore off bright joy built within her until she sprang up with a whoop, jumping and dancing on her mattress. Oh praises upon praises to those most holy! The week prior she had at last received a letter updating her on life at home. And though her mother found the concept of the wither-rot highly strange, she assured Yenni she would find a delicate way to pass the information on to the Healers’ Guild.. Since then, nothing.

  Until this.

  Yenni didn’t question the suddenness of her father’s healing. She only cared that he was well, that she would see him again. Surely all would be explained in her next correspondence from home.

  It was with a bounce in her step that she dressed and prepared for her first class of the day, runelore. That morning she decided to leave the front half of her hair in its relatively neat row of braids, which she had done curving on a slight angle. She let out the back, tying it into a high puff, which she moisturized with the coconut and shi-shi root oil from Diedre. Yenni turned this way and that, frowning at her reflection. She couldn’t seem to get the shape of her puff right through finger-combing alone. She opened the drawer of her vanity to get her long pick comb, another present from Diedre. It was very useful for working out the tangles in her hair. But as she opened the drawer she froze. In the corner, sparkling in the light of sunrise, was the necklace from Weysh.

  Yenni picked it up and sighed, her mood dampened. It was a hurtful thing she’d said to him, she knew, and untrue besides. The sensory memory of his lips whispered across hers. He was not nobody. Not to her.

  Which was all the more reason why she had to drive him away. So she should be glad that he’d made no attempt to see or contact her in over a moonturn. It was what she had told him to do. She should be glad.

  So why wasn’t she glad?

  Why did she keep picturing Dragon, beautiful and terrible as he dwarfed the mouth of the alley? Dragon, curled up and letting out low moans of mourning as she departed for the Islands? The images never failed to send darts of guilt and longing right into her heart.

  Yenni shook herself and placed the necklace back in the drawer. She missed Dragon desperately, that she could not deny. But Weysh was arrogant and presumptuous, crass and overconfident. And fearless. And honest. And friendly, generous, kind.

  Yenni slammed the drawer shut. There was no use in dwelling on it. The most important thing was that her father’s condition had improved, praise all the Mothers and Fathers.

  She kept lifting her uniform glove to peek at her rune as she hurried down the red-carpeted steps of Riverbank Chambers. Diedre lived on the second floor, and they would often walk to class together. Yenni made her way down the corridor until she reached the familiar Suite 2-5 etched in gold on the dark, whorled wood of Diedre’s door.

  Yenni knocked sharply. “Good morning!” she sang.

  A few moments later the door opened and Diedre loomed over her. The gold clasps adorning her braids glinted in the light of the wall sconces.

  “Is far too early for you to be this cheery, mams,” she muttered. Yenni simply laughed.

  It was a decent walk to Professor Devon’s class from where they lived. His classroom was relegated to a previously abandoned outbuilding on the southeast outskirts of campus. As Devon’s teaching assistant, Yenni arrived early to help him set up—and to answer his exhaustive and never-ending questions about runelore. Diedre, blessed soul that she was, had taken to arriving early with her. She acted as a nice buffer, as with other students present Devon tended to rein in his zeal for the sake of propriety.

  Yenni could easily run to class in a few minutes using her speed runes, but Diedre wasn’t as skilled in them yet and couldn’t keep up. Besides, Yenni enjoyed these morning walks with her friend. Diedre was funny, and her impressions of their professors, especially Devon and Mainard, had helped to keep Yenni’s gloom at bay.

  They stuck to the white, interlocking path down to the main quad of the campus, chatting amicably about nothing of consequence. The elegant white willow trees shading the walkway were now alive with little yellow blossoms, and their sweet scent drifted down to them on a happy breeze. Yenni breathed deeply, her heart at ease.

  Until the sound of quick wingbeats reached her ears, followed by a sharp, screeching cry.

  Yenni snapped her eyes upward, her heart fluttering in nervous anticipation as she squinted desperately through the willowy tendrils above.

  Something thumped to the grass beside her. The shadows of the willows made such gorgeous patterns on him, sliding like water across his gleaming green scales as he stalked toward her. Those eyes, like brightest jade, slid first from her to Diedre, lingering and unreadable. Mysterious. So at odds with who she knew him to be as a man.

  “Ahh,” Died
re began.

  “Hello, Har-tha,” said Yenni. He had seemed to take mild offense to her calling him by his full name, finding it too formal, so she had taken to drawing out his first name.

  He changed, and his green face looked troubled. “Good morning, Yenni Ajani,” he said, and turned to Diedre. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure of an official introduction.”

  “This is my friend, Diedre,” said Yenni, and the two of them clasped hands.

  “Yenni Ajani, a word?” Harth said to her. Yenni took in the clouds across his normally sunny countenance and her chest tightened.

  “Diedre, apologize to Professor Devon for me and let him know I’ll be late,” she said, still frowning at Harth.

  “But how is this? I’m your messenger now?”

  Yenni blinked and turned to her. “I’m sorry, Deedee. I didn’t mean—”

  Diedre laughed. “Relax! All is well and good, mams. Is joke, I joke. I’ll tell him.”

  Yenni let out a relieved breath. “Thank you.”

  “See you in class!” said Diedre, and she shot Yenni a look that she knew meant she would have explaining to do later on. With a wave, Diedre took off, still chuckling.

  “I like her,” Harth said with a gravity that was almost comical, then turned back to Yenni. “Look, something’s happened to Weysh. He told me not to tell you but, Byen above, I can’t stand to see him like this. Two days ago he was up at the chapelle on Mount Eglise, and he was attacked.”

  Yenni gasped despite herself and listened, first unbearably anxious and finally furious when Harth concluded how Weysh had been maimed.

  “What’s more, you could be in danger, too, as Weysh’s Given. Movay, he must really be out of it not to have even realized that. It’s true Noriago would have to be brainless to show up at the academy with the peacekeepers all searching for him, but clearly he’s unstable.”

  Yenni gnawed on her bottom lip, more concerned for Weysh than herself. “So now Weh-sheh cannot smell?”