By My Blood

Chapter Three: Cerise, Part One

Jorda loved the nighttime, if only because it loved her back. Her mother had assured her of this, over and over.

"The stars love you, Jorda, look--" As she ran the comb through her hair, over and over, long after the knots had been pulled apart, for the feeling of smooth waves gliding through the tines.

"I thought my hair was moonlight?" Jorda would ask, because she liked to catch her mother mixing up her story, and her mother would make airy gestures and say, "Yes, Jorda, well, the moon loves you too."

Moonlight, starlight, eyes deep and dark as the wells of sky between the stars. She lay back on the cool stone of the rooftop and stared up, letting the memories fade into the faint feeling of fingers through her hair. The moon was thin as a bitter smile above them, her and Neria, arranged like carved statues on the roof of a pure white building that looked out over the descending sprawl of Remore.

"Nearly midnight," Neria said, her voice a whisper with serrated edges. They had expected the Mage hours earlier, had been sitting here waiting for him since the sun had gone bloody and then dark. Her fingers slipped harder through Jorda's hair this time, yanking on a knot. She hissed slightly. Neria didn't notice, unsusceptible to pain that didn't involve immediate danger.

"He will come eventually," Jorda told her. He had to, unless her had fallen into the habit of ignoring his duties, which the Mage of Remore risked only at great peril. Every noble had their eyes on his position. One slip up, one absence at a Crescent's Fill, was cause for a complaint to the emperor, and a request to remove him and install one of them instead.

As if her thoughts had summoned him, the sound of a great door opening crashed through the nighttime stillness, echoing over the walls of the Mage's complex across the swept alabaster street. Quieter voices followed, venomous though hushed. He had been held up. He was unhappy, angry. She felt her own anger uncurl in her stomach, claw its way up her burning throat and settle somewhere within easy distance of her traitorous mouth.

She'd made a mistake once, speaking in his presence, and it had made everything harder. She no longer trusted her anger in her mouth.

"And?" Neria asked, words still whispered and taut.

"Nothing. Now we wait. All I promised to do was watch him a while."

Neria knew what the Jade Man had asked of her, though not what he had offered in return, and her eyes were dark and greedy with that knowledge. With a silent slither she rolled over flat on her stomach next to Jorda, both of them peering over the edge of the roof like children eavesdropping.

The shadows of the street below were cut suddenly with orange light. The lanterns that swung from the Mage's guards as they waited for him to emerge from the gates of the complex walls.

His step was silent but purposeful when he did, strides long, his shadow a mad, flickering thing in the lamplight. They walked, so quickly and unceremoniously they could not have noticed the eyes that followed them from above.

"Take the job," Neria whispered, so light her voice could be mistaken for an exhale. The guards and the Mage below did not look up as they continued down the street, toward the long, wide stairs down to the lower levels.

Jorda's anger was like the Mage's shadow, jumping suddenly in and out of focus. She hadn't expected this, that his presence yards below her could strike a match against the ice she had cultivated for so long. That seeing him alive and well, authoritative and uncaring, could mean anything to her when she had known that he was alive and well and in charge of the city that trapped her.

She wanted him dead.

She wanted to kill him.

She wanted to be able to leave when she did.

But the Jade Man wanted her to feel this way and he wanted her to take his job, and she felt intuitively that he was not to be trusted. Even if he offered her escape... even if he offered it in exchange for what she already wanted to do...

She rolled over onto her back but closed her eyes to the stars. In the darkness she considered what she risked by claiming the Jade Man's offer, and how much she wanted the man who killed her mother to die as she had.

To die in body and in blood, like her mother.

To die in spirit and in the little ways that took away your soul, like Jorda.

She wanted so much her throat burned with it and her anger clawed its way into her mouth to let out a strangled scream, an animal sound that spooked Neria into grabbed her arm.

It didn't matter. The Mage would be too far away now to have heard the white-haired statue on the roof screaming for his death.

She wanted.

So she would take. Three years was long enough. Long enough to be trapped in a city that would never be her home, to be spoiling for revenge on the murderer who ruled her prison. Even if she risked the life she had built and the life that lived in her veins. It was time to take what she wanted and give her mother a sacrifice that would finally let her memory rest.

"Neria. I'll need help."

"Of course." And her friend's voice was the blade she was looking for, sharp enough for blood.