IRON GOD | 2: Empyrean

[21] Ido: Questions No One Asked

Ido sat against the wall of the room he and Dakko had just barely begun to call home, a sketch pad in his lap and a charcoal blackening the heel of his hand. He spent a great deal of time drawing these days. Master Qila had given him all sorts of art supplies and even a few lessons. He imagined her gentle voice beside him, her hand occasionally touching his wrist to guide him through a motion, and he felt...what would one even call it?

Love was a poisonous word. No, this was something else. Something primal, as necessary as air and water.

He ran his thumb along one of the lines and softened its edge. Ido's hands looked like he'd rubbed them around inside a chimney, but he didn't really care. It would come off easily enough. Most visible filth was easy to wash away.

It was the stains no one saw that were hard to get out, he thought.

The idea broke his focus. "Stains no one sees." That felt like something he could draw, but how? The boy squinted at what he had so far. So far it was only a vague background that could probably turn into anything. But what exactly? It was almost worse than staring at a blank page. If only he–

A small shuffling sound from across the room startled him from his project. His head shot up and he saw Magpie crouched by his brother's unmade mess of blankets, rooting through a travel pack.

Ido cleared his throat. "Could you not just sneak in and go through other people's stuff?"

"Ami said Dakko needs more of his medicine." Magpie twisted and gave him an intense, skin-crawling stare. "That's how it is. Don't say no to Ami, right?" Her voice changed to a perfect mimicry of Ami's. "Don't you ever say yes to Magpie or else."

"What the..." Ido stammered. "Ami actually said that?"

Magpie's voice changed to Kolo's. "Valielit records and reiterates what she hears." Then she reproduced Ami's voice again. "Anyone who denies me deserves whatever hell I give 'em."

Unbidden, Ido flinched with the phantom ache of every bruise and fracture from three terrible years — that and grief like a festering splinter at the loss of...who exactly?

The boy's jaw clenched. He dropped his pad and charcoal and stood up, trembling with rage. "Get out."

Magpie raised her hands. "Don't stone the pigeon." Her beady eyes were wide and she looked ready to cry. "I don't like the voices either."

"Sorry. I didn't mean to scare you or anything." Ido wrung the building static from his hands. "But please don't talk about Haode like that. I'm still not over it."

"I understand. I think." Magpie pressed her finger into her teeth for a second, then left Dakko's nest of bedding. Right as she was about to leave, she turned back to Ido. "Did he hurt you?"

Ido leaned back against the wall and slid down to a sitting position. "Yes." Then he stared up at the cracked ceiling. "Evidently, I'm still not over that either."

"It's all right. You don't have to be." Magpie met his eyes, and suddenly she looked so sweet, like someone he could hug and it would all be fine, all he had to do was wait for tomorrow – right?

Ido stared up at the most prominent fissure in the ceiling. It looked, by some small stretch, like a bolt of lightning pointing toward the window. He sighed. "Is this what you meant by flying out that window?"

Magpie cocked her head. "What?"

"Oh, sorry. Guess you wouldn't know." Ido shrugged. "Dakko and I used to have a big sister, back when we were really little. Before Haode saved us from our papa who was going to kill us. She used to promise us one day we'd fly out the window together."