Cadrianna met the other’s baleful stare, holding her chin up, betraying nothing of her thoughts. She hadn’t moved to cover her nudity. One of the scourge tenets hammered into her upbringing ran through her mind. Strong as stone. Give nothing. She wouldn’t rise to the insult by responding like a petulant child.
Fucking bitch.
“CAREFUL OF THIS ONE, CAD. THEIR BITE IS THAT OF A DRACONEM. BLOODDRAKE.”
I know, you fool, she responded with a thought.
Solanine was a blooddrake, Nocturne’s lesser order of draconem. Under the flesh of this female humir was a creature with exoscales, fierce and intelligent, cunning and clever.
And a massive pain in the privies, Solanine.
A memory flashed, one from that fateful day.
As her babe was taken from her, Emre’s body not yet cold in death, a nine-foot blooddrake slithered from the shadows. Snout elongated like a firedrake’s, but without the curved beak, finger-length pointed teeth. Red-black interlocking exoscales etched with aetheric runes, larger on the breast and belly, smaller like a snake’s along the forelimbs. Rounded protrusions covered the crest from nostrils to above the irises, morphing into a pair of two-foot long, keratin horns sloping backward and upward to a point.
“Master Lu Har,” the blooddrake had said, “what of this one?” The lesser draconem’s eyes turned on Cadrianna, a chill running through her.
“She’s to be trained, Solanine,” the beautiful elfir had responded. “Bathe her in Void Form. I want her for the Strix. Break her.”
“Can I have her scales instead? They are so pretty.” The Fallen said nothing. Head back, sighing as a taloned claw combed over the keratin horns as a lady might run her hand through her hair. Deviousness in those all-onyx irises. “As you wish. I’ll see her bathed in blood.”
The Strix let out a noxious whine at the memory. The beginning of the end for Cadrianna, then. A hatred growing. Burning, now.
Drakken in the Mistlands openly wore their exoscales with pride, not afraid to boast the Arbiter’s favor. Those blessed with the massive, magical horns of a wardkeeper, were prominent and respected by all in their devotion to the Pentax’s peace.
But blooddrakes, like Solanine, used their aetheurgy to control blood and flesh. To hide and connive. Only a handful of blooddrakes had survived the Fall of Eminence, maybe less than twenty in total, for their corrupted aetheric essence had left them sterile. One or two, it was said, had turned to Canlon Carr’s side during the war, what happened to them, none knew. Cadrianna knew of a few who were under Lu Har’s thrall, and they were out in the world, using the flesh of others to further the Fallen’s plans.
None but Lu Har and a few others, such as Cadrianna, knew the truth about Solanine. Nearly every person in the Mistlands saw a smallish woman who was a skilled aetheurgist, but little did they know of the voidspawned beast within. The scales—what the blooddrakes called the hides of man—Solanine wore was but one of many faces stolen over the centuries. With their aetheurgy borne of the void, blooddrakes were able to meld their essence and their bodies to those of man, thus taking over said person’s life. A joining of souls, bonded by the runes carved into flesh and upon exoscale.
Magic was the blooddrake’s aether.
“And you presume much, Solanine, to come to my chamber without invitation,” Lu Har said coolly. The elfir’s aura crackled like glitching aethecite engines.
“The Divine sends us as He wills, Lu Har.”
“The bent knee is oft where to find the weak.”
Although barely up to his chest, Solanine stood toe-to-toe with Lu Har, both staring each other down. Both were alive when Eminence fell, there at its breaking, but they bore little else in common. In manner and in presence. The Fallen radiated strength, whereas Solanine constantly sought it, which was why the drake served him.
If Solanine thought anything of the rebuke, the blooddrake didn’t show it. Instead, Solanine marched across the room toward a small table with bottles of wine, lifting an ewer of red wine to the scales’ nose. Satisfied by the vintage, Solanine took the entire ewer and sat down upon a plush sofa near the fireplace, tossing the greenish hem of the stola to one side with a flourish, and drank a hearty pull.
Smug, that’s what Cadrianna would describe Solanine as. A smug wretch. A jealous wretch, at that.
“A COILED SNAKE IS ALWAYS A THREAT TO BITE. SAME GOES WITH A BLOODDRAKE.”
Any more pearls of wisdom, dear Strix?
Lu Har was visibly annoyed even though his outward façade was blank. Cadrianna knew him too well to know he wasn’t pleased with Solanine’s uninvited presence. “Well?”
“It appears your little rebellion problem has finally moved their pieces across the board,” Solanine said, chugging more of the dry red, gaze straying toward Cadrianna’s bare legs, engorging in drink and view. “The Gutter King has set the stage as you’ve wanted. And per my scourge, the Godsblood has crossed the first threshold. The die has been cast.”
“And the Eye?” Solanine confirmed with a nod. “Then the Gutter King will make the next move. I’ve buried the Oculus in Qarthage, it awaits what happens here with the Godsblood. Drenth teeters on the tip of a knife blade, we at the center. Seventeen years isn’t long enough to erase the minds of the city. Fifty out of the Pit wasn’t enough but it’ll have to do. The people of Drenth know Gargantua’s might firsthand, they wouldn’t have forgotten. This Gutter King may think he knows, but he’s not his parents.”
Parents?
“BE WARY, CAD. SECRETS ARE KEPT, SECRETS ARE STOLEN.”
What do you know about this, Strix?
If the Strix could shrug, that’s what her mind relayed. “I DON’T…”
“They’ll hit the Temple, Lu Har, at the mines. The Seal isn’t safe. The Gutter King is not his parents, but smarter. You know this.” Solanine’s all-onyx eyes found Cadrianna’s, anger and hatred within, but simmering below was something else. Knowledge kept. “Even your scourge probably knows this, else why’s she here?”
Cadrianna’s lips quirked, her grip tightening on the knife in her lap. Her mind raced. Who is this Gutter King, the real man behind the hidden throne? And why now? Strix?
“CAD…”
“I’m not pleased,” Solanine continued, the wine sloshed as the blooddrake pointed with the ewer, “with how you’ve handled Drenth these last few years. Allowing this rebellion to sow while you’ve planned your war on the Dunleiths and Kalderim.” There it was again, the glimmer of something else underneath. A desire once lost, Cadrianna calculated its meaning. She knew, of course, what it was. Or what it had been. “You’re growing weak, old man. Spending too much time with whores.”
“Watch yourself, Solanine. The Divine cares not for liars. Neither do I suffer them. Cross at your peril. I had you rebirthed first, recall. I could have left you in the Pit.”
“Threats are beneath you, Lu Har,” Solanine laughed. “Remember, you came to me to bring down Canlon Carr. Not the other way around. Same with Drenth and the Ben—” Lu Har cut the blooddrake-in-woman scales off with a sharp hand signal, apparently to keep the other from saying something in front of Cadrianna. “Ah, you’ve not included your whore. You tread a fine line, Lu Har. You know she’s a Nightingale; her blood will always be that of the First Wife no matter how many times you stick your prick in her. Her child won’t keep her tied to you forever. You know this.” Yes, jealous, that was what it was. And palpable, too.
Brynn…
“We must move forward,” Lu Har said as he poked the dying fire with a spell of Ignis. The flames leapt from his hand along a blackened mist and the ashes in the fireplace grew. “I want you to go to Oldport Basin, Solanine. After this deal with the Gutter King is over. Go to Oldport and find the Seal of Brio’s Ignis. Terris is right where it needs to be. Right where Mother Marrow placed it.”
“Rinkhal and Ialtris are in Port Sin,” Solanine said around a mouthful of wine.
