The Edge of the World Is a Cold Blue Ring
“Tauhrelil, how are we getting there?”
“You already said it.”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow you.”
“I’m a Tauhrelil,” she told him. “We’ll go in through the Ring.” Finally, finally, she turned her head and looked at him. “Can’t believe you want to test me in the Shattered Lands, by the way. I mean, that’s just insanity. Are you trying to get me killed, Seket?”
As far as Asaau was concerned, there was no truly plausible excuse to enter the Shattered Lands, but he supposed Virenina’s came closer than most. And after that disaster in the trial chamber… The other six candidates had all passed through it. Asaau couldn’t present Virenina alongside them untried – as her sponsor, it would destroy his reputation. But if you came back from the Shattered Lands alive, he thought, then no one could say she hasn’t walked through the pyre. Au Melai’s smoking mirror, only a Tauhrelil would think of this.
And the Ring belonged to the Tauhrelil family. If any of the seven houses bloodroyal were mad enough to accept the idea of using the Shattered Lands as a trial ground, it was them.
“Why, I thought this would excite you, Tauhrelil,” Asaau said. “But if you don’t believe you can handle it…”
“Come on, Seket, even I can tell that that was bait. Now you’re just insulting my intelligence.” She was grinning again. “Hey, can I insult you back? Make it even?”
“You must be nervous, if you’re actually asking my permission before insulting me.”
“Can I insult you twice?”
“You could, but it would be more useful to decide where on the Ring we’re going.” After all, the Ring was not once place so much as a constellation of them, all held together by a single name – a great circle-chain of research stations at the edge of the human world, Tei Ura’s shield against the Shattered Lands and the strangenesses they bred. The seven greatest links on that chain were known to most as the Satellites; they held the Ring together, and were held together in turn by the substations, those many smaller links that bridged the gap from one satellite to the next.
“The Third Satellite is closest,” Virenina said. “We’ll get on the vacrail, take a private car, then once we’re there – ”
“The vacuum rail?”
Virenina looked over at him. “Oh, sorry, that too common for you? Seats haunted by the ghosts of too many unroyal asses? Look, I’m sure there’ll be plenty of places at the Ring where you can sterilize yourself after, get rid of that nasty people-born-without-a-pedigree smell.”
“That’s not the issue.” Actually it was, more or less, but she’d made him feel too ridiculous to admit it. “I simply – teleporting would be faster, that’s all.”
“Yeah, I know,” Virenina said, and came to a stop. “Come on, Seket, you think the vacrail would be my first choice? Think I love the idea of spending a couple hours in a little metal capsule shooting through an airless tube?”
“Well, I imagine you’ll at least enjoy the part where we travel at thousands of miles an hour.”
“I won’t even be able to feel it!”
“Very well, you’ll experience a safe, stable transit at several times the speed of sound with minimal risk of injury or death. I’m sure this will cause you no shortage of agony.”
“It really will. So glad you understand. And teleporting would cause me worse. If it’s a choice between that or the agony of safe transit, I know which one I’m picking.” She gave a brief toss of her head, as if throwing the whole argument behind her. “You can’t visit the Ring unannounced without a Tauhrelil to get you in. I can hardly show up for a training mission without my instructor. You can’t fly, I can’t port over. And that means our fastest way of getting there is…?”
“The vacuum rail,” Asaau sighed.
“Hey,” Virenina said cheerfully, “at least we’ll both hate it.” She turned once more to the door, stepped towards it –
“Tauhrelil, wait.” Asaau felt almost guilty seeing Virenina’s frustrated, full-body twitch as she stopped in place yet again, but even so: “Your spear regalia,” he went on. “You won’t be unveiling it to the public until the finalists’ tournament. If we’re going anywhere, you should change first.” Asaau looked down at the long, layered skirts of his own distaff regalia. “We both should.” He turned to go –
“Seket, wait.”
Now it was Asaau’s turn to startle and stop. He could feel annoyance showing itself on his face as he turned to look at Virenina, and so he expected her to be grinning. Instead, she looked serious.
“Bring dark lenses,” she told him. “Or a veil. Something to shield your eyes.”
Asaau’s distaff regalia – what he wore for his public appearances, for his clients, for bloodless work – was yards of layered, trailing silk skirts in his family’s colors, cool violet and night-deep blue under a black overskirt embroidered in gold. He typically wore it with his knife, gold jewelry, and little else; in the Opaline City, with its rainforests and its bath-warm air, bare chests and skirts were the fashion for women and men alike. Now, though, he traded it for something more practical. Not his spear regalia, which belonged to the arena; instead Asaau chose a plain, dark durata silk shirt and pants, armored gloves, and grip-soled boots. Over the shirt went a vest lined with impact gel. Durata silk could easily stop a blade and would be armor enough for most of his body, but it would do little against crushing force. Should he fall, or worse…
Asaau put the thought from his mind and went to meet Virenina, who, for her part, had changed into a plainer approximation of her spear regalia. She’d swapped out the dress for a sleeveless top, and the molded, blue-black armor marked with her family’s sigil for standard-issue chitin plate in a dull, dark grey. In place of her regalia’s full-leg boots, she wore a pair of normal combat boots, along with more standard plate over her calves and thighs. Ai Naa’s anchor hovered at her back, as always, its shining blade just visible behind Virenina’s head.
Stepping off the vacuum rail and into the station, Asaau was glad he’d insisted they both change before going. Though night on the Ring was nearly as warm as in the Opaline City, Asaau felt a chill…but as he and Virenina left the rail station and entered the Third Satellite proper, Asaau realized that the chill had little and less to do with cold.
From venule to vessel to bloodroyal, it was every noble house’s duty to cultivate beauty, to return their wealth to the world. The Third Satellite was overseen by House Tehariel, one of the seven vessel houses sworn to the Tauhrelil family…and yet, no matter how long he looked, Asaau’s eyes could find nothing in their surroundings to love. The lines of the buildings belonging to the Third Satellite were cleanly drawn, but relentless in their uniform straightness. Every surface was cut and ground to flat perfection. The lush, rain-jeweled colors of the Opaline City were gone, replaced by moon-white stone, bright naked metal, broad planes of flawless glass…and, underlying everything, the endless cold blue hum of the Ring’s luminous edge. Had the Ring been simply ugly, perhaps Asaau wouldn’t have found it so unsettling, but ugly was the wrong word; empty came closer. The Ring was bereft of adornment, lunar in its sterility, a place of pure purpose. It glowed against the night like a dead reef in a dark sea.
The Ring was inhuman.
Yes, and the Shattered Lands will be worse, Asaau told himself. Whatever awaited them beyond the Ring, lingering here wouldn’t make facing it any easier. He drew in a slow, silent breath, then turned to face Virenina.
“Well?”
“Atrium,” she said, and tilted her head: over there. Asaau’s gaze followed hers across the pale, empty courtyard, to a building that stood like an envoy before the rest. The two of them had barely started forward before its doors slid open, releasing a lone figure in black skirts and a white lab coat who approached them as quickly as dignity would allow. Asaau would have waited for them to close the distance, but Virenina had already begun walking again, clearly intending to meet them halfway. Asaau followed, if only to preserve the fiction that he and Virenina had planned this excursion together.
With seven feet still between them, the other noble sank to one knee and raised her opposite hand in a single, smooth motion, eyes lowered. She had to have been from a vessel house; a venule would have gone to both knees, while bloodroyals knelt only to gods and fellow royalty.
“Blood of my venarch,” the woman said to Virenina. “You honor us with your presence, yet we have failed to honor you in turn. We beg your forgiveness for this poorest of welcomes.”
Asaau stood beside and just behind Virenina, waiting. Though the Third Satellite was overseen by House Tehariel, it belonged to House Tauhrelil…and Asaau was a Seket. For him to speak before Virenina here, in her own family’s domain, would have been a grave insult.
“We should be asking your forgiveness,” Virenina said. “We didn’t exactly warn you we were coming.” Asaau bit back the urge to correct her; a bloodroyal had the right to survey her own territory whenever she pleased. Virenina took the woman’s upraised hand in one of her own and lifted it gently. “Rise, Lady Ilare. A greeting from the head of House Tehariel and Warden of the Third Satellite is more than enough honor on its own.”
Part of Asaau wished he could have seen the mad scramble their arrival must have set off. Everyone! The bloodroyals are coming! Quick, send out the highest-ranking official we have!
“You are too kind to this humble vessel,” said Ilare, even as she rose and finally met Virenina’s gaze with her own. Up close, she revealed herself to be a tall, spare woman with sun-starved olive skin, pale blue starspots, and a lean face animated by quick, dark eyes. Her hair, tied into a businesslike knot behind her head, looked as if it would gleam slate-blue under brighter light, the same way Virenina’s did teal, or Asaau’s violet. “I pray you will tell me if I might in any way assist you during your visit,” she went on. “Your word is my command.”
“Words are exactly what I want,” said Virenina. “Where can we speak privately?” She took half a step back on the we, aligning herself with Asaau, and Ilare’s eyes slid over to him for the first time. The look in her eyes never wavered, but Asaau recognized a certain tension in the skin around them, and for a moment he almost pitied her. An unannounced visit from two bloodroyals, one of them her own venarch’s niece, would have taken years off anyone’s life.
“Of course.” Ilare’s voice remained admirably steady. “My quarters are but a short distance from here. Please, this way.”
Asaau didn’t know whether the walk to Ilare’s quarters felt so long because it was spent in silence, or because there was so little to see along the way. Despite their different shapes, every building still managed to look the same to him. The spaces between them should have overflowed with fountains and gardens; they should have glowed with lanterns and captive light. Instead, those emptinesses stood untouched. Something cold and heavy settled in Asaau’s stomach as he realized that, since they’d arrived at the Third Satellite, he hadn’t seen a single bird or bat or dragonet. Not even so much as an insect. He might have wondered why, but their surroundings were all the answer he needed: there was no place for them to live.
Beside him, Virenina seemed unbothered. Asaau would have paid dearly to know what she was thinking. Was he letting himself fall victim to his own nerves, or did this place feel as wrong to her as it did to him? Maybe others could have guessed – people paired with greater spirits, able to cultivate the right powers – but, like most bonded spirits, Asaau’s hadn’t even been strong enough to survive pairing and earn a name, let alone fuel any abilities beyond human. Useless –
Something nudged his side. Virenina’s elbow. She was offering him her arm; Asaau must not have been hiding his discomfort as well as he’d thought. It shamed him that she’d sensed his weakness, shamed him worse to acknowledge that weakness by taking her arm, but he found himself unable to refuse…and somehow, with his hands on her arm, it was easier to breathe. The night was sweltering, yet in that moment, Virenina felt like the last warm thing in the world.
At last, Ilare brought them to a building that, even to Asaau, stood out from the rest – a three-sided, glass-striped column tall enough that anyone at the top would see all the Third Satellite spread out below, and a fair expanse of the Tauhrelil pillar lands besides. The tower faced them on a point; the broadest of its sides faced the Shattered Lands themselves.
Only after Ilare had led them inside could Asaau finally let go of Virenina. The Satellite’s buildings turned out to be just as coldly designed on the inside as they were out, every bit as empty of life and color, but it was easier to bear indoors – perhaps because it didn’t threaten to send his mind spinning the way it had under the open sky. By the time they’d reached the uppermost floor of the tower, Asaau felt as if he’d regained control of himself. Below them he could see the whole of the Third Satellite, in all its pale desolation, but so too could he see the dark forests stretching far beyond it.
Ilare’s quarters were at the back of the tower, along the side that faced out upon the Shattered Lands. The wall there was one great window, and as Ilare closed the door behind them, Virenina cut straight across the room to stand before it. Asaau joined her, and for a moment could do nothing but stare.
No two stories could agree on how the Shattered Lands had come to be – only that they had existed since the time of living gods, when rivers ran red and stars fell as petals from the heavens. Some said the lands were a wound carved on the face of Tei Ura during the last battle between gods. To others, it had been only one god, the same one who had cracked Tei Ura’s moon in two. Still others said it had been no god at all – that it had been a meteor, a disease, a long-forgotten weapon. Asaau’s own family held that the Shattered Lands were the work of Ane’ai Ket, the cauldron from which he’d raised hosts of monsters and plagues, that he might seize the throne of the Many-Colored Palace from his sister Au Melai…but as Asaau looked down at the Shattered Lands, every story he’d heard of their origin fled his mind. None could ever have prepared him to look down and see.
It was as if some divine fist had caved a pit into the world’s surface and set a fire inside, stoked it until the broken pieces within had twisted and melted together, and then finally sown fresh life atop the ruins. Great black tables and blocks of stone leaned this way and that; where their edges touched, they ran together like wax, tying the lands together in a dripping fretwork of stone arches. Greenery covered the stonetops like mountain snow, frothed and flowered down the sides, and spilled curtains of vines into empty air, down to the waters welling up between the worldshards like blood beneath a half-healed scab. Above the water, mountains split abruptly into crooked cliffs, which leaned drunkenly together into deep caverns, which reopened to the skies as canyons, which crumbled into islets, which amassed and arose from the waters as mountains…
There were too many shapes; it was as if his brain were about to be sick. Land simply didn’t work that way. Asaau stopped trying to make sense of it before he could be sick in truth, looked over at Virenina instead, and was fully unsurprised to see her lone eye gleaming with excitement.
That said, it seemed Asaau’s tolerance for looking at an expanse of land that defied all physical sense had run out at about the same time as Virenina’s tolerance for standing still and not talking. Already she was turning away from the window to face Ilare, whose smile told Asaau that their reactions were far from new to her.
“Of course, I should have offered you both refreshment first,” she said, “but most visitors gravitate towards the view. I find it much ruder to interrupt a novel experience than to wait a few moments before offering tea, don’t you?”
Asaau wasn’t certain he agreed – the choice between tea or sensory terror was, to him, an easy one – but Virenina looked as if she agreed enough for both of them.
“We have no servants on the Ring,” Ilare went on, “so I’m afraid bottled drinks are all I can offer, but there is tea, at least – I have sunpeel, bluelace blend, dragonsblood – or water, if you would prefer. No alcohol, sadly…”
More’s the pity, Asaau thought. “The bluelace, if you please,” he said. To his side, he heard Virenina ask for water. Ilare showed them to a broad glass table, then seated them beside one another and set their chosen drinks before them. Only after she’d made enough of a show of hospitality did Ilare finally sit down herself, facing them across the table with the Shattered Lands at her back.
“My lady Virenina,” she said, and gave a brief, gentle bow of her head. “First Spear.” Asaau received a shallower nod. “What is it that brings you on such a sudden visit to the edge of the world? Forgive me for asking so gracelessly, but my curiosity is a torment.” She gave a small, drily helpless smile. “You wished to exchange words with me. I confess, it has become a shared desire.”
“Seket.” Virenina turned to Asaau. “Indulge her, won’t you? Seeing as this was your idea.”
It was your idea to pretend this was my idea. And Asaau had agreed to it – more fool him. Of course he understood why they’d agreed to do it this way – as the actual Spear and Virenina’s instructor, he had to be the one to actually propose this madness to Ilare – but really, Virenina was enjoying pretending to be the sane one far too much.
“Do forgive me,” Asaau said, without returning Virenina’s look, “if I have some difficulty deciding where to start.” He folded his hands just so on his lap. “My lady. You are a busy woman, I know. Warden of the Third Satellite is a heavy title to bear. Though the role I play has little in common with yours, I know what it is to have lives hanging in the balance of one’s work. Pulling you away from yours is not something I do lightly.”
Ilare looked on wordlessly as he spoke, her dark eyes shining with interest. Had their situation allowed it, Asaau might have smiled. Your curiosity torments you, does it? How kind of you to tell me so.
“But a question for you first, if you would,” he went on. “How closely do you follow the selection cycle?”
“The making of a new Spear affects all of Tei Ura,” Ilare replied. “I’d be a fool not to follow it as closely as time allows. Especially this cycle – ”
At that, Ilare cut herself off and dropped her gaze. Asaau could guess exactly where she was trying not to look.
“Go ahead. Say it.” Virenina leaned in towards Ilare. “No? That’s okay. I can say it for you.” Her grin was utterly mirthless. Light gleamed against the blades of her teeth. “Vene V Tauhrelil should have died on the Heavenfacing Court. Instead he murdered the Spear tasked with serving him mortal justice. That he managed to vanish afterwards is just salt in the fucking wound.” The curse fairly ripped its way out of her mouth. Asaau saw Ilare flinch. “My father’s actions will taint the name of House Tauhrelil for generations unless someone steps forward to purge the rot. Everyone knows what he did, Lady Ilare. I’m trying to set it right.”
Asaau was almost horrified, until he saw what Virenina was really doing. Of course – a vessel who feared angering the blood of her venarch was a vessel who didn’t ask too many questions. Did you have any concerns about my candidate’s sincerity, Tehariel? About the nature of our mission? You’d best voice them carefully.
“Forgive us, my lady. I’m sure you didn’t intend to stick your fingers into an open wound.” It was Asaau’s turn again, and he poured the words on like a balm, soothing and smoothing Ilare’s frayed nerves. “But it is that same wound that brings us here. Tauhrelil hopes to fill it by replacing the Spear her father took from us. Never has she given me cause to question the strength of her conviction, nor her aptitude for the red art…but I cannot yet declare her truly ready, even though the selection cycle’s final act is close at hand. If Tauhrelil wishes to restore her family’s honor, I must be certain she is not too much like…” Vene, he thought, and kept his face still and pleasant in spite of it. “Like her father,” he finished.
“To do that,” Asaau went on, after the briefest of pauses, “I must see her in – well, in peril. I must see how she functions in the worst of circumstances, with no allies and no aid. Only then will I be able to see what she is truly made of.”
“Of course,” Ilare said. Asaau watched her swallow faintly. “Of course. I believe I understand. You – you wish to test her in the Shattered Lands.” Her eyes met Asaau’s for half a heartbeat, even darted over to Virenina, as if hoping one of them would tell her she’d guessed wrong.
“We ask a great deal, I know,” Asaau said. “Please believe me when I say that I have exhausted every other option. Regular training was never designed to push candidates to such extremes. The risk, you understand – to ensure their survival, we have always saved the worst of it for simulated training. However – ” He pressed his hands together. “Tauhrelil breaks the simulations.”
“Breaks them,” Ilare repeated numbly.
“That is, she’s broken the trial chamber,” Asaau said. “Not intentionally, and not even through any fault of her own, truly – but simulated training is meant to force a candidate to draw out their full potential, both in physical combat and, if one is capable, in channeling. Tauhrelil has tremendous raw ability as a channeler. Though it makes her a strong candidate in the selection cycle, it also means that she’s capable of channeling enough vaara to overload the chamber’s feedback circuit and cause a meltdown…and if Tauhrelil must restrain herself to avoid causing one, it defeats the entire purpose of simulated training. There is no place for restraint in a simulation, my lady. How can we truly test a candidate who still holds part of themselves back?”
“Is there no place else you might go?” Ilare asked. “I mean no disrespect, please, but – the Valley of Teeth, the Pale Labyrinth, the ruins of Dimerinan – Tei Ura has no shortage of dangerous places, surely you could…”
“I considered them all, and more,” Asaau replied, “but Tauhrelil suffers from teleportation sickness, and only the Shattered Lands may be reached by vacuum rail. The time it would take us to reach the others…the eye of the public is as ardent as it is fickle. Frivolous as such a concern may seem, the fact remains that disappearing now, as the selection cycle nears its peak, would be career suicide. Tauhrelil has given too much of herself in this for me to risk throwing away her hopes over such a careless mistake.”
“There is no way you might – test her yourself, somehow? Or – or hire someone…?”
I’ve just told you she can channel enough vaara to destroy a mechanism built expressly to contain it, Asaau thought, would you care to imagine what she can do to a human brain – but Virenina saved him the trouble of having to hold his tongue.
“Your anchor is connected to you. With you all the time,” she said. “It might not be part of your body, but it’s part of you, right?” She drew the prayer spear from where it rested behind her, against the chairback. Asaau readied himself, fully expecting her to slam it to the ground, but Virenina brought it down quietly. I suppose she feels she’s already scared Ilare enough.
“This is mine,” Virenina told Ilare, and tipped the blade gently sideways, set the rings beneath it chiming. “How can I fight with any other weapon, when I have one that’s a part of me? You might as well cut off my hand and stitch on someone else’s.” She relaxed her grip on the anchor, but kept it before her – leaned it back against her own shoulder, rested her cheek along its haft. “You heard the First Spear. No holding back, he said. No restraint. Hire someone? Fine, but we might have to pay their descendants reparations instead of them a wage – it’d be a miracle if I didn’t kill somebody.”
That vicious challenge of a grin was long gone; now she was grave-somber.
“I’m aiming to become Seventh Spear, Lady Ilare, not a murderer. I will not stain this blade with undeserving blood.”
“Of course,” Ilare said, looking at her hands, and said nothing else for several long moments. At last, she looked up at them.
“If you die,” she said quietly, “the venarch will kill me.”
“Only if it comes as a nasty shock,” Virenina said. “Come to think of it – my lady aunt is the one backing my campaign, isn’t she?” She tapped a finger to her chin in mock-thoughtfulness. “I think my patron really should know if I’m doing something like this. Has the right, more like, after everything she’s done for me. Be awfully ungrateful of me if I died out there without even giving her the courtesy of an advance warning. Why don’t we call her right now? She’ll probably answer if she thinks it’s the head of House Tehariel.” Virenina was grinning again. “She’ll definitely answer once she knows it’s about me.”
If you’re so certain Lady Virieh would approve, why didn’t we contact her first? One of these days, he and Virenina would need to have a serious talk about planning before acting. Another one. Perhaps it might actually sink in this time.
Yes, he thought, and perhaps afterwards Au Melai will descend from the moon and bring you to the Many-Colored Palace herself.
Ilare was looking at Virenina with something like horror – probably at the prospect of having to deal with three bloodroyals in one day – and Virenina was still talking. “Lady Ilare. If it’s royal retribution you’re afraid of, just let me talk to her.” She leaned past the shaft of her spear and pressed her gaze to Ilare’s. “Listen – even if I died in the Shattered Lands, it wouldn’t be your fault. I chose to go on this mission, and that’s nobody’s fault but mine. You know that. The First Spear knows it. I know it. Let me make sure our reigning venarch knows it, too. Otherwise, if anything happens, all she’ll know is that the last place anyone saw me alive was the Third Satellite.”
Ilare blanched.
“Exactly,” said Virenina.
After one last moment of hesitation, Ilare raised her hand and waved it like a limp flag of surrender, drawing Asaau’s eyes for the first time to the ceiling-mounted luxtruder glinting overhead. He hadn’t noticed it till now simply because its presence was scarcely more noteworthy than the ceiling itself. Captive light was the Ilisaf family’s gift to the world, used near everywhere on Tei Ura, and devices to control and shape it were plentiful as threads in a tapestry.
“Open communications,” Ilare said weakly to the machine above. The luxtruder pressed out a bright, blank panel of light and floated it down to them. “Ilare the sixth, head of House Tehariel, first among Key-Bearers and Warden of the Third Satellite, requests an audience with the Her Wisdom Virieh, sixth of her name, Venarch of House Tauhrelil and all bloodlines suppliant, Sage of the Red Chambers, Lady Regnant of the Nightglass Tower and Keeper of the Deepest Vault.”