“I had Tevun’s help then, Em. He sang the Hymn in aid. Alone, I don’t think I can bring him back.” She looked toward Lojen, who stood there in confusion. The bikrome took a breath. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Her smile was sympathetic but also warned that she wasn’t certain she could do it.
Lojen nodded and then hustled down the tunnel, catching Ruane just before she reached the exit, grabbing her by the arm.
“Leave me be!”
“Ru, calm down,” he begged, surprisingly calm even though they’d gone through the void and back this day.
She tried yanking from his grip, but he held her in a vice hold. “Let me go, Lojen.”
“Not until you calm down and tell me what’s wrong.”
“What’s wrong? Are you bloody daft? Father’s dead and we’re in a rebel den with blown apart bodies everywhere.” That feeling he noted in her since being banished from Merj bubbled within her, that doubt creeping about. The fire for revenge still raged brightly.
Lojen released her arm. “This isn’t what I wanted for you, Ru. For either of us. This is not the life you were meant to live.”
“You call this a life? You’re more of a fool than I thought.” She took to the steps.
“Where are you going?”
“To kill anyone associated with Lu Har. Starting with Solanine.”
“That’s foolish. You’ll be dead before you can set foot into Marketside. You don’t think this place is being scoped out, even now? Think, Ru. Don’t you see, Father wanted us to be here. He wanted us to be here to help Emre.”
She was halfway up the crumbled stairway when she turned. Her exoscales bristled. “You would trust that man? That humir? He’s the reason Father is dead! You heard it. They planned it. I won’t trust him.”
“Then trust me.” He needed her more than she would ever know. And as much as she didn’t want to admit it, she needed him too. They were all they had left, they needed each other. “Ru?”
She bellowed as she drew her longknife and proceeded to plunge it over and over into the wall, leaving gaping holes in the crumbling stone of the sewer tunnel. Panting with rage, she left her longknife buried to the hilt in the mortar. “I want Lu Har dead, Lojen. I want them all dead.”
Her anger was a detriment, an obstacle she needed to learn to control. Control it just as Lojen had done. He wanted revenge for the death of their father, they talked at length over the years about what they’d do to Solanine and the Fallen.
But now, here amongst the dead, including their father, Lojen, somehow, was cool as the dark side of a room. “I know.”
He grabbed her and pulled her into a hug. Her anger wilted and she fell into his arms, the fire quelled and washed away.
“I miss him, Lojen.”
“Me too, Ru,” he said, holding her tight. An older brother protecting his younger sister.
Ruane pushed back. “You lead. I’ll follow.”
He gave her a skeptical look. “If you say so.”
“Don’t be such a Scurred Hatch, brother. I have sense now and then.”
He laughed and they headed back toward the rebels.
“Emre, we wan—” Lojen stopped midsentence as they walked back into the room only to find the bikrome standing above the body of their father.
The bikrome’s lips were pressed to his lipless snout as if kissing as man does for emotional gesture. The many bracelets around Val’s wrists glowed fierce gold and silver. Ruane let out an aggressive hiss.
“Ease,” Emre said, noting Ruane’s astriction. “She’s trying to summon Tevun’s soul from the Meadows. To learn what he can impart before his soul is lost to us forever.”
“By kissing him?”
“She isn’t kissing him,” Emre explained. “Vision Form relies upon the aether bound to one’s soul. Living or dead, aether exists within each of us. Not as the mist and its poisons. But from the very life within. Bikromi seers must be able to breach the veil between their soul and another’s. To breathe it in if you will.”
“Gross.”
Emre’s shoulders moved up and down as he chuckled. Men were such odd creatures. “For those not used to it, I suppose it could be odd.”
“Odd is not the word I would have chosen.”
“Zip it, Ru. We have to know what Father was trying to say. This is the only way.”
Val’s goggles hung around her neck, nestled into the falling silver of her hair. Her eyes were closed as her back was bent near perpendicular to her feet, entire upper body stilled, breathing deeply. The bracelets glowed, alternating between silver and gold, pulsing like a heartbeat.
And that’s when Lojen noticed the connection. It was subtle, but the bottommost bracelet let out a tiny vibration that left a ripple in the air. The ripple bounced off the billow created by the one just above it, creating a complex crest of wisps only visible by the shifting of the bracelets’ glow. Aether, he realized. The shimmering aether moved in rhythmic pattern from each bracelet up toward Val’s hands, which throbbed arctic blue down her arms, up her shoulders and into the white of her cheeks, down to her lips.
At the precipice of the bikrome’s mouth pooled the aether, like a dam holding back a river. The many bracelets on her wrists twanged as she released the magical shimmer into Tevun, almost as if she was breathing the aether directly into his lungs.
“Any of you hungry?” Finn asked suddenly, breaking the tension that had built. Everyone but the bikrome looked at him with varying array of surprise. “What?”
“You wanna eat at a time like this, needle dick?” Wick glared at the big man with those beady buttons for eyes.
“What? I’m hungry, I can’t help it. Em?”