“Oh, yes,” she muttered, “dwelling on theology’s absolutely the smartest thing to do first thing in the morning.”
She hadn’t forgotten Amris. She couldn’t forget Gerant. But her companion had long since stopped responding to most things Darya said when she woke, save to poke more-or-less gentle fun at her, and Amris’s sincere “Theology?” made her jump a bit.
“Oh. Um. That.” Darya indicated the carving.
“Sleeping under her gaze does encourage such thoughts,” Amris said, nodding, but he didn’t pry, just continued putting on his boots.
It encourages many thoughts,Gerant put in.I’ve been considering it, and I think I can expand my powers enough to talk directly with Amris—though that assumes you’re willing to help me.
Happy surprises were all the more surprising. “And skip the translation? Of course, as long as I’ll be in decent shape afterward. He says—” she began, turning to Amris.
He didn’t interrupt her. But the incipient joy on his face let her know that he’d worked out what was happening, and after seeing that, Darya wouldn’t have thought to say no even if she had been inclined.
“He always did his best work in the middle of the night,” Amris said, and she laughed.
“Wizards. I’ve never met one that kept normal hours. Well, what do we need to do?”
First, kneel facing each other.
The floor was tolerably hard on the knees, which actually pleased Darya. It was a distraction from Amris, with his hopeful face and sleep-mussed dark hair, the clean, hard lines of his shoulders and chest, and his ability to somehow kneel in parade stance, goodgods.
The sword goes between you, held upright. Each of you needs one hand on the hilt, and you clasp the other’s.
Clasping hands felt surprisingly easy, even given their contact of the night before. Getting both of their hands on the hilt of the sword was a different matter, and required a fair amount of adjustment. Their fingers ended up intertwined there too, with each of them resting the tip of a thumb on the emerald.
Darya always felt magic before she saw or heard it. On her, it was little rivulets running over her skin, almost like raindrops but keeping to steadier and more distinct patterns, and not quite wet, though she kept expecting them to be. For this spell, they were cool and wispy, starting at the thumb on the emerald and spreading out across her skin in an orderly grid of lines like a fisherman’s net.
The emerald was glowing, alternately brighter and fainter in a rhythm like a heartbeat. Darya didn’t speak—she knew better than to interrupt Gerant during a spell. She watched the light illuminate Amris’s face, felt the heat of his fingers in contrast to the cool threads of magic, and knew that he, like her, had started breathing to the beat of the emerald’s light. He was enough taller than her that each breath stirred her hair faintly, a sensation on the pleasant side of ticklish, and Darya knew he must be able to feel hers on the side of his face.
She hoped it didn’t smell too awful.
As the web of magic flowed over Darya, it took a part of her with it—nothing too large nor too vital, just a bit of what made her herself. She felt it go out, without any more pain than a gentle tug on her hair might cause, and so she knew when the web expanded to cover Amris, settling itself over his body and then farther in. Sitha wove all souls, just as her daughter cut their threads. The spell found threads in Darya and tied them to loose places in Amris: not the tightest binding she’d ever heard of, but a binding nonetheless.
Once before, she’d felt her spirit woven in such a fashion: when she’d knelt before the Adeptas, knock-kneed and cross-eyed from a four-day vigil, and balanced her blade on her outstretched palms while they joined her to Gerant. This was less, and different, and to a man who yet lived, but Darya held to what familiarity she could. It seemed the safest path.
Breathe steadily, they’d told her in training.Don’t try to resist. Hold back nothing of yourself. You trust the soulsword, or you die.
Already Amris had proven worthy of her trust—many times, since he’d slept beside her and not knifed her and taken the sword. Besides, sometimes she just had to jump and hope she landed more or less whole.
She looked into Amris’s eyes, waiting for him to hesitate or pull back, but he was in as fully as she was.Of course, Darya thought, and she didn’t let herself be flattered; of course he trusted his lover, and he had more to gain by going through with the ritual than she did. Still, it was nice that she wasn’t an unthinkable price to pay.
The web spread outward, then inward, until it finally knit itself completely together around Amris and Darya’s linked hands. By then, she was feeling his presence—fainter than Gerant’s, with no coherent sense of his thoughts, but an awareness of his being that went bone deep. If she closed her eyes and went to another room, she’d still know where Amris was. If he was masked and in a crowd, she would have picked him out instantly.
Hello, love,said Gerant.
Amris smiled and gaped at the same time, mouth open and eyes crinkling at the corners. His astonishment resonated within her. So did his joy, as much keener than any Darya had experienced, as Gerant’s pain had been. She thought of how the temple must have looked in the halcyon days of its use: joy, love, one human hand in another, all forming a greater pattern.
Her hand wasn’t the right one. Gently she disengaged it, and then the other, leaving Amris holding her sword. “You two talk while I pack up,” she said, raising the barriers in her mind. She’d done it often enough for her own liaisons. It felt odd to be the one on the outside now, but it would likely do her good, as Adeptus Brannath had said of many things. “You’ve a lot to catch up on.”
* * *
They did, and Amris had no notion of where to start. By Gerant’s silence, neither did he.
Then, rueful,You look well.
“Evidence of your arts, I think,” Amris said. “You could exhibit me in front of a committee, if you wished.”
From a few feet away, where she was sharpening knives, Darya snickered. Then she started humming a song. Amris didn’t recognize the tune, and didn’t know if there was one, or if it was only an obvious effort at tact.
