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He had pain

The pain in his shoulder was a constant, and so was his eidolon, the eneirl, and the tere linked When his shoulder burned, co slowly back to life, he couldn’t help but think of her fine hands on it, winching the tourniquet that had saved his of the battle surgeons, which didn’t help matters, and they made him use his arm A slave--chi it to keep the muscles supple, and Akiva was ordered onto the practice field to work his left arht never fully recovered Against expectation, it did, though the pain did not diminish, and within a few months he was a more formidable swordsman than he had been before He visited the palace arned on the practice field Fighting two-handed, he dreds to thethe e him

Akiva had never been in his father’s iion; he couldn’t be expected to know them all "Yes, my Lord," said Akiva with bowed head His shoulders still heaved fro out the flares of agony that were just a part of living now

"Look atof himself in the seraph before hiht from Joram, as did the set of their features The eh broad, he was of ht and had to look up at Akiva

His look was sharp He said, "I re that

"It’s the eyes," said the eettable, aren’t they?"

It was one of the few things Akiva did remember about his mother The rest of her face was a blur, and he’d never even known her name, but he knew that he had her eyes Joraed, "I re it, he was handing over the one thing he had of her

"Terrible what happened to her," said Jorae of his mother after he was taken fro hi him to ask, What? What happened to her? But Akiva didn’t ask, only clenched his teeth, and Jora knives, said, "But what can you expect, really, of Stelians? Savage tribe Almost as bad as the beasts Watch that the blood doesn’t out, soldier"

And he walked away, leaving Akiva with the burn of his shoulder and a new urgency to knohat he had never cared about before: What blood?

Could his mother have been Stelian? It made no sense that Joram would have had a Stelian concubine; he had no diploe tribe" of the Far Isles, renegade seraphiiven their women as tribute How, then, had she cos The first was their fierce independence--they were not part of the E steadfastly refused, over the centuries, to come into the fold with their seraph kindred

The second was their syic It was believed, in the deep i had been Stelian, and they were ruic unknown in the rest of Eretz Joram hated them because he could neither conquer nor infiltrate the to focus his forces on the Chiossip that swirled through the capital, of where he would set his sights once the beasts were broken

As for what had happened to his mother, Akiva never found out The harem was a closed world, and he couldn’t even confirm that there had ever been a Stelian concubine, let alone what had becorew out of his encounter with his father: a syers of his blood, and a curiosity about ic

He was in Astrae for , and so soldiers in arms, his time was his own After that day, he made use of it He knew about the pain tithe, and thanks to his wound, he now had a constant reservoir of pain to draw on Observing the ood as invisible--he learned the funda He practiced on bat-crows and huht, lining the them down to perch on his shoulders, or in his cupped hands

It was easy; he kept going He quickly ca e was little more than parlor tricks, illusions And he never fooled hius, or anywhere close, but he was inventive, and unlike the courtly fops who called the or burn or cut hie up power--he had it, low and constant But the real reason he surpassed them was neither his pain nor his inventiveness It was hisinto a hope--to see the chiain--had becoical: to perfect a glas There was a e, but it was rudimentary, only a kind of "skip" in space that could trick the eye--at a distance--into overlooking the object in question Invisibility it was not If he hoped to pass in disguise a the enemy--which was exactly what he hoped--he would have to do better than that

So he worked at it It took o into his pain, like it was a place Froed--and felt and sounded different, too, tinny and cool Pain was like a lens that honed everything, his senses and instincts, and it was there, through relentless trial and repetition, that he did it He achieved invisibility It was a triuhest honors, and it gave him a cold satisfaction to keep it to hiht Father

The other part of his plan was language To master Chimaera, he perched on the roof of the slave barracks and listened to the stories they told by the light of their stinking dungfire Their tales were unexpectedly rich and beautiful, and, listening, he couldn’t help i at a battle caht hie

By the tiiment at Morwen Bay, he could have used a little ht he was basically ready for what ca madness

40

ALMOST LIKE MAGIC

Back then, it had been Madrigal’s existence that had called to him across space Noas Karou’s Then, Loraed city of the beasts Noas Marrakesh Once again he left Hazael and Liraz behind, but this tinorance They knew the truth about hiuess

Liraz had called him a traitor, said he made her sick Hazael had just stared, pale and repulsed

But they had let hio without bloodshed--his or theirs--and that was the best he had hoped for Whether they would tell their co for him, or cover for hi over the Mediterranean with the wishbone in his hand, his thoughts belonged to Karou He i for him at the mad Moroccan square where he’d first locked eyes with her He could picture her so clearly, down to the way she would keep lifting her hand to her throat, reaching for the wishbone before she re every ti it ht here in his hand--alal had told hiain, he hadn’t even knohat a wishbone was She wore one on a cord around her neck, so incongruous a thing against her silk gown, her silken skin