Shadow's Kiss: Blood, Lust and Magic Page 2

  “Don't be silly, of course she did, she was just a troubled woman that's all.”

  “I hate her, my life is ruined.” he snapped.

  “You don't mean that.”

  “Okay maybe not the first bit, but everything is definitely ruined.”

  Rohn was rocking on the spot now, his voice on the edge of breaking the quiet tone they'd taken as to not wake their sister.

  “You'll go to the Ninzi Mountains Rohn, you'll be the greatest Chen Ninzi champion there ever was. And Erisha and I will watch all of your fights. You'll be famous and rich, and buy us a lovely house and marry a beautiful girl and no day of your or our lives will be sad or dull again.” Nina bounced softly in place as she spoke, but if he'd only have looked up at her face he'd have seen the tears sparkling around her eyes.

  “How can I do that? We need money and we need it now, if they find out we're poor we'll be thrown in prison, when we can't pay the rent they'll come for us. The Army will get us, take us away, even Eri, they'll take her too. Being poor is a crime, remember.”

  “Because I've already got a job. All I need is for you to take care of Eri whilst I'm not here, if you can do that, you can keep training and when you make it, I can leave my job and everything will be.. just amazing. Okay?”

  “You've got a job?”

  “Yes, I was going to tell you about it today, it pays good too – more than Aunt Maire's did.”

  “But what about the academy, your education?”

  “I didn't get the scholarship after-all.”

  “What the hell? But why not? You were so set to get it? Does everyone just have to take a crap on our family?”

  “The other girl was more promising than me.”

  “Those idiots, they can't see real talent when it's right in front of them.”

  “Their loss, anyway, can you do that for me? Look after Eri? You can set up training in the back garden, bring some of the other boys around to practise, Maire ain't here to complain about you kicking holes through wood anymore.”

  “Yeah, sure. I won't let you down. Not like everyone else has. I'll practise day and night and I'll get you that mansion in Prille that you deserve.” The warm spring day emphasis that took over his tone brought her heart into bloom.

  “Thanks.” Nina rubbed her hand on his shoulder. There was a flutter in her belly, she knew that words like that didn't come often from her tough-shelled brother. But he was no longer the skinny brat that six years ago had moved here to Nanta, and done nothing but cry and scream. Now he was a promising martial arts student, who in his mind was destined to be the greatest Chen Ninzi warrior that ever lived. Which was to be a great achievement. Chen Ninzi is a peaceful spectator sport, one that decent people took part in and enjoyed watching. Unlike the brutal sport of King Dederick's, Dedite's Isle and it's terrible killings for the sake of enjoyment in the name of a Goddess, that Nina believed would not even condone such behaviour herself.

  ~

  Nina closed the door to her bedroom quietly. It was better to let Erisha sleep as long as possible, when her eyes were closed and her mind asleep, there was no suffering. She pulled open the drawer on her bedside cabinet and studied the carefully folded letter within. Nina squeezed her eyes shut and tore apart the letter. It's hundreds of torn pieces fell slowly into the waste basket, sitting at the top of the pile were the words in her own very neat handwriting: “I am so happy to learn that I was the recipient of a scholarship at Lason's Academy Of Design.” Nina fished it back out and tore it into even tinier, unreadable pieces. Rohn might have read that if he ever came to empty it before she could. Her dream of learning everything there was no know about jewel crafting and trinket making would have to wait.

  She pulled out her Big Book of Ailments from her overflowing bookshelf and sat it down on her bed, she was going to have to start looking up Eri's symptoms now that she was sure it wasn't just the simple flu. Her belly knotted when she got to the section titled: Cimnestra Disease. All Eri's symptoms were there. Most of her symptoms were on every page, but this one had the one different clue; a strange fading of colour from the sufferer. Nina had never heard of Cimnestra before, but the paling of Erisha's hair and eyes made sense now. Flicking through the book back and forth for hours only kept bringing her to that same page. It had to be it. But it didn't look good for Eri. She threw the book to the side and lay on her back, watching the flickering candle-light dance on her ceiling, it tormented and teased her with elegant pirouettes. Little Erisha wanted nothing more in her life than to grow up and be a ballerina. Nina wanted to sob her heart out, but instead she whispered the words of the song her mother sang her to sleep with every night when she was still here. She whispered it over and over and over. Because if she didn't stop to think; everything was fine.

  “I'd give anything for your heart,

  Bring in the gemstones cart by cart,

  And if you ever should tumble and fall,

  A broken and shattered precious glass doll,

  Know that my love is an invisible twine,

  That'll hold you together till the end of time.”

  ~

  The following morning, Nina made her way to Rohn's room with bags under her eyes, still dressed in her clothes from the night before.

  “I need Orunip,” she declared, after bursting open the door.

  “Don't you even knock?” He snapped, pulling the bedsheets up close to his chin.

  “I need Orunip or Eri will die.”

  “What? What time is it? What you on about?” He rubbed his eyes.

  “It's a herb, it's only found in Eumor though. And Eumor is out of bounds.”

  “Slow down Nina.”

  One eye was falling asleep but she managed to get the next sentence out slowly.

  “Eri has this disease, I'm about 99% sure. And the only cure is Orunip, otherwise she's not going to make it. it's going to kill her off slowly.”

  “Right. And it only grows on the other side of the world in Eumor?”

  “Right.”

  “But we can get it from a doctor?”

  “Its very expensive, Eumor has been out of bounds for years and years now, it's in limited supply. We don't have enough money for it right now.”

  “But we can buy some when you get your wages right?”

  “My wages... right... yes... of course.”

  Rohn sat up in the bed and yawned.

  “Alright, but it's a cure, so that's good, isn't it?”

  “Well, she has to have a small dose of it every day, and overtime it'll kill the disease off, but there's a chance that it will become immune to the medicine and win. Then she would...”

  “So it's a chance on a cure?”

  “Yes.” Her lip quivered.

  “Is it contagious?” He asked.

  “Apparently not no. But we have to get it soon, it has already been three weeks and my book says that six weeks is the longest a person can go without medicine before they lose the chance of the cure working. I'm so stupid, I should have looked sooner, I should have known it wasn't the flu. Why did I listen to Maire?”

  Rohn offered only a watery gaze. He was useless in these kinds of situations.

  “Don't worry, I'll get the Orunip. If it is the last thing I do,” she said.

  She could already hear Erisha coughing up phlegm in the next room. Nina wished she hadn't waited so long to read through the book. But there wasn't time for self-hatred right now, she had to get into the town and find a job. Rohn was expecting wages, she couldn't return home until she really was employed.

  CHAPTER TWO

  JANINA

  October, Year of the Pearl Acacia

  She felt every lump and bump of the cobblestone paving through the worn soles of her pumps. The smooth shirt and tailored jacket that she had taken from Maire's wardrobe made her feel much older than her sixteen years. She coughed from the traffic pollution in the thick air of the town. Masses of people blocked her way through the streets as she made her way to the emp
loyment office, a place that she never thought she would find herself. Before yesterday her life had been planned out, but it had all rested on their Aunt and she was gone now. The crowds were watching a scene unravel but Nina was too short to see over their heads. The loud voices of The Army bellowed over the noise of tooting horns and chattering townsfolk. The soldiers voices were unmistakable, they spoke, or rather yelled, in an unrelenting tone that reminded her only of pain and anguish.

  “Stop. Stop or I will be forced to eliminate you right here.”

  Nina finally got to the front of the crowds. She stepped up onto the pavement and a strong icy gust of wind hit her face. She reeled back into the safety net of the gathered people and understood why they were all waiting to move.

  There stood an Elven man with pure white eyes and narrow pointed ears either side his thinning grey hair. His legs stood wide and slightly bent, and his hands were cupped together in front of his chest. Hovering above his hands, a misty ball of ice that shifted back and forth between being frozen and fluidic. Three soldiers of The Army approached him with their rifles pointed at his head. The Elven man was either going to attack the soldiers and die anyway, or he was going to give him self up and be taken away. Nina thought about leaving, but the crowds had pulled tighter around her and the only way was forwards towards the unravelling scene.

  “What's happening Ma?” Asked a small boy next to Nina. He gripped his mother's hand tightly and stood on his tiptoes to try and see closer.

  “It is a sinner my darling. The soldiers are dealing with him,” his mother replied.

  “Is he going to die Ma?”

  “Probably honey. Why do you think that is?”

  “He used his wizardry Ma. He's a bad man.”

  The rifles were a clear indicator that these particular soldiers had no magic, but even so, Nina knew that no matter how great the man was at wielding ice he wasn't winning this fight. King Dederick's Fortitude Aura, made them somewhat invincible.

  Dederick named his army The Peace Bringers, but they were known to most as just The Army. Only his small band of true followers believed such a name worthy, the rest merely pretended.

  The Elven man drove his hands forward and the ball of ice grew bigger as it torpedoed towards the soldiers. With a flick of his wrist in thin air the ball exploded into shards like frozen daggers, impaling the soldiers viridian leather uniforms to their legs and arms. The soldiers stood solid and Nina was sure one of them raised their mouth into a smirk, but her vision was half obscured by her arms which had reflexively flown to her face amidst the shocked screams and gasps of the townsfolk.

  There were three ear ringing gunshots followed by ringing and muffled voices. The ice ricochetted off their hard golden breastplates and helmets. Water dripped, from the strip of metal that covered their noses, onto their straight lined lips. The gold and green plumes atop their helmet where covered in slush, and the Diviner's iced blades melted within seconds of coming into contact with the soldiers. The aura of Fortitude bestowed on them by the powerful king had awoken and highlighted them against the bricks of the shopping mall, in a pale yellow glow. Their wounds healed before they could start to bleed. Nina put her arms back down to her side, the hairs on the back of her neck where standing up straight and her breath was stolen for moment with the shocking chill in the air. The crowds started to emerge from their cowering positions, lost in the action she was only just noticing the Elven man collapsed in a heap on the grey paving stones.

  His silver taffeta robes, traditional dress of the Elves of Eumor, began to soak with red blood. It was rare to see such a beautiful garment, it's vibrant orange fig-leaf embroidery was prominent against the utilitarian fashion of the locals. When Dederick came into rule he'd given the Elves only a few weeks to return to their homeland across the sea to the West. Those who had missed the opportunity or failed to understand what staying would come to mean, had been stuck here on Ainin. He died a stranger in a foreign land. Nina wondered what his last words would have been if he'd not died instantly from the bullets.

  Screw the king, came to mind. She'd decided long ago that they were going to be her last words too. The crowds were leaving, stepping around the man's bleeding corpse. The Army were barking orders to move along. Nina had only glanced at him for a second, she didn't need another lifeless face in her already growing collection of grim memories.

  “Fifth rebel suicide by soldier, just this week,” one of the townsfolk said from somewhere in the crowds.

  “Aye, what a waste.”

  “Ma,” said the little boy, “that was cool. I'm going to be a Peace Bringer when I'm big too.”

  Nina walked away before she had to hear anymore. To think that the young people of Ainin had come to see things like this as normality disgusted her. When she was a little girl, Diviners were everywhere, using their magic for stunning tricks and helping others. There were plenty magical Healers that could cure the sick, but now those Healers are gone, thrown in prison, slaughtered or forced to join The Army and heal only those the king permitted them too. Where once there were a hundred Healers in a town, there were now none, none that would ever considering revealing themselves anyway.

  ~

  Nina got butterflies in her stomach when she saw the employment office in the distance. She'd been so set on one day opening her very own boutique jewellery shop that she had never really thought about job interviews before. All along the buildings around her, were long thin digital screens, black with wording in light blue that went over the strict peace laws again and again. They were placed on fences around trees and even ran around the rims of rubbish bins. If the obvious imagery wasn't shoved down your throat enough, the words were drilled into your brain over the loud-speakers too.

  “Welcome to Nanta Town Center. Peace breakers will not be tolerated. Sinners will be removed from society. Please refrain from littering. Littering is a sin. Please refrain from violence. Violence is a sin. Please refrain from stealing. Stealing is a sin. Please dress respectfully. Disrespectful clothing is a sin. Children must be seen not heard. Having a noisy child is a sin. Magic is prohibited. Magic is a sin.” It went on like that for ages, repeating a list of rules. Sure some of them were good rules, like stealing and violence, but she knew just how literally the rules were taken. You'd be arrested for stealing a sticker if it accidentally stuck to your shoe on the way out of a shop – even if the shop owner couldn't care-a-less – The Army did. They were cruel, cruel bastards. She'd witnessed with her own eyes a woman being taken off to prison for tripping over and landing in a flower bed. The crushed flowers were classed as violence and vandalism, whatever became of that unfortunate woman she could only imagine wasn't good. No doubt she never saw freedom again. Then there were even dumber rules, like not wearing skirts too far above the knee or having your ring-tone on maximum volume. It was as though the king had written the rules for a joke but his chief military man had taken them literally and handed them out anyway. At least that's what some people liked to think, older people who were too faithful to the royal family to accept that one had been born so corrupt, but Nina knew what an evil piece of work the king was, she knew it well and had done since the day he ordered her parents deaths. Nina mouthed the words perfectly as the robotic female voice blared out over the sounds of bustling shoppers and workers.

  She pushed open the glass door on the tall red brick building and tried her best to look wide awake as the receptionist eyed her over her thick framed glasses.

  “I'll do anything,” Nina said.

  The woman prodded at her tight bun, glanced at her watch and then gestured for Nina to sit at her desk.

  “Fill this in,” she said, slamming down a form and a pen in front of her.

  The woman's belly gave a rumble, breaking the eerie silence of the room. Nina scribbled down her information the best she could and handed it back, to a raised eyebrow.

  “You're only sixteen,” the woman scoffed.

  “Yes, but I finished school last m
onth, I did my exams early, I was ahead of my class.”

  “Yes, but. You have no experience and you'll be starting higher education soon I would presume.”

  “No. I won't be. I just want a job please, I'll take even the worst one you have.”

  “I've nothing for you. No experience, no training in anything. You're far too young.” The woman crumpled up the form and threw it over her shoulder, it landed perfectly in the waste basket atop a dozen other discarded forms.

  “Please.”

  “Go on get out.”

  She started to leave before turning and dropping to her knees, her fingers intertwined and her arms reached forward.

  “My sister is sick, I-”

  “Too young, no experience. Waste of my time, be gone with you.”

  Heartbeat racing, Nina thought about blurting out about her Aunt's suicide. But that would be her own suicide.

  “Isn't there a job that just involves cleaning or something?”

  “Yes.”

  “I can clean.”

  “Look here, nobody wants to hire a kid, you'll be off joining academies come the fall, my staff turn-over is too high, people will stop coming to me to fill their placements. Now go on, get lost before I have you arrested for ruining my peace.” The woman slammed her fist against the desk.

  Nina was about to slam the door just as hard on her way out, but noticed the green and gold armour of a soldier across the way outside. Of course he would be there, every corner had a soldier. Some with rifles, some with swords, others only had shields and their own magic to whip would-be-sinners into shape. And if a street was free of soldiers she could count on it that a Zimir's Oculus was lurking in the shadows there, watching and waiting to strike out with it's paralysing ray.

  ~

  She turned out all of her pockets, emptied the contents of her fringed suede bag onto a wooden bench. Damn not even enough small coins to take the bus. She'd have to walk the forty minutes to the second employment office, on the edge of Nanta.

  CHAPTER THREE

  KING DEDERICK