By My Blood

Chapter Four: Cerise, Part Two

Jorda's mother had been talented in a way that made people angry. She was too confident for other people to forget her, too lofty for them to forgive her.

That was what people wanted, she'd told Jorda. People wanted to know that you had wronged them and they had forgiven you, seen your shame and lifted it from your shoulders. Small crimes and big apologies, these were ways to form relationships, but ones in which you were the lesser half. Laurelia, lofty, confident conwoman, had never condescended to be the lesser of any pair, and Jorda had learned well from her.

But Laurelia's rules had not been cast from the mold of the lower levels of Remore. Laurelia Salina was, or pretended to be, a noblewoman, and these were the rules and tricks and cons of gold-dusted ballrooms.

When the mother and daughter pair had first come to Remore it had been a city like any other to them. Sure, all cities had their quirks-- mirrored streets, clockwork birds, spindly tenements that corkscrewed into the clouds-- but there was a routine. Renting a luxurious apartment or house in an equally luxurious neighborhood, adjusting their standard backstory to fit whatever target Laurelia was fixed on, and setting out into the whirl of balls and dinners and lies.

In Remore, the target was the Mage.

In Remore, the routine failed.

In Remore, Jorda became an orphan.

Became, becoming-- this was a familiar state for Jorda. Her mother had constantly been becoming someone else, and Jorda was constantly becoming a new identity to match hers. And then Laurelia became a causality and Jorda became a prisoner. A prisoner and a fool. Because when the Mage became a hunter, Jorda ran to the river that rushed like a vein of silver lifeblood through the lowest level of Remore, and there she made a promise, sworn on her own blood: If I leave, I leave on my own terms.

Both she and the city she had tied herself to understood what that meant. She would not allow herself to be hunted out of the city by the Mage. The promise was twofold: Remore hid and protected her from the Mage for three days. Three days in which Jorda miraculously found crannies to hide in moments before every guard turned the corner, safe places to sleep out of sight for three nights, and a sort of near invisibility until the moment the Mage called off the search on the third midnight after Laurelia had been killed.

But the second part of the promise was one not explicitly voiced by her, yet clearly understood by Remore: in return for its protection, she had surrendered herself.

She could not leave its walls.

A prisoner, and a fool.

These were the lines that intersected and twisted to form Jorda's world: the straight, unforgiving lines of Remore's buildings and stairs; the soft, curving lines in her mother's hands that would never again brush her hair from her face; the long, twisting line of the river's bank; the short, slashed line on her palm where she had drawn her blood and promised her life.

But the stranger in the jade mask... he offered her a new thing to become, a way to redraw the lines that caged her in.

One job. Kill the Mage. Get the vile of dragon's blood. Feed it to the river. Leave Remore. Be free for the first time in three years-- and be avenged.

It was almost neat enough to make her forget the reasons she had not attempted before to make the Mage pay for what he had done. But it was not easy enough to make her forget how hard it would be.

So Jorda paced back and forth at the river's edge, rifling through her thoughts and mad half-formed plans. Dawn's light was just beginning to lighten the scraps of sky that could be glimpsed between buildings, although the rose-gold colors of sunrise were reserved for those who could watch from the alabaster houses of the upper levels. There, gold would gild the edges of the flat roofs like crowns and the walls would reflect the soft pinks and oranges of the sky. She remembered the sight well from her first days in Remore.

Down here, there was only a sky that no longer matched the shades of black around her, and a river that could now make out reflections of the street and its one occupant, rippling back and forth on its surface.

Sometimes, when Jorda saw her reflection from the corner of her eye as she went to pace the other way, it seemed that it was wearing a gown of many layers, with black skirts that swirled as she turned. But it was only a trick of her mind, or else a trick of Remore.

Perhaps the latter was more likely. Remore loved its tricks and games.

Jorda hated playing them.

She turned away from her reflection in disgust and found the man in the jade mask watching her from the mouth of a street.

"Lady Secret," he said.

"Lord Shade." She did not worry he had been watching her for long. She had felt the scrutiny of Remore on her for too long to be intimidated by a stare. "We agreed we would meet in the Dragon's Throat."

"Yes, last night. It is now morning. I came looking for you."

Jorda frowned. It was true, she was late. She'd been distracted by her thoughts.

"I said I would pay you for your time, regardless of if you accept my offer. I make good on my promises."

Jorda had had just about enough of promises, but she accepted the payment. She was going to need to make good on some of her own promises if she was going to pull off this job, and for that she needed his money.

Before she could thank him, he continued. "But now I expect an answer. Have you changed your mind? Will you accept?"

He already knew the answer, she thought. This was a dangerous person. Used to getting what he wanted.

"Yes," she said, reluctant as she was to agree when it felt like giving in. "I'll do it."

His eyes glinted. "I am happy to hear that." He did not sound happy, but he did sound satisfied. "Is our deal clear? Do you have any questions?"

"How did you know I was the person you needed?" The only person, she assumed, in all of Remore, who needed the dragon's blood he possessed in order to leave, and had a grudge against the Mage worth killing for.

Satisfaction gave way to amusement. "I suppose you could say Remore told me."

She did not say Remore was too stubborn and cruel a city to hand out answers like bad luck. She said goodbye instead. If she felt his eyes watching her from the slits in his mask as she walked away, he would not be able to tell from her straight back.

As the sky began to flush blue above her, Jorda made her way across the lowest tier, the jangling of her pouch of coins muffled inside her pocket. There was a debt to pay off, and a small, dirty shop tucked away on a street a long way from the river whose owner would surely be waking soon.