Soulwoven: Exile

Chapter 22

~22~

Fifty days before the destruction of Nutharion City

Dil felt like she was melting in the summer heat.

She sat in an overstuffed chair at the top of a thin tower. The tresses of her hair were getting heavy and her neck was sore. The glass beads on her dress’s bust chafed against her collar bone. And to top it all off, her undergarments had gotten bunched up in places they had no business being, and she wouldn’t get a chance to remove them for hours.

She would be very glad when her days of getting puffed up like a popinjay every morning were over.

But in the meantime she was a guest in Nutharion, and her grandfather had taught her that when you were a guest you did what was expected of you.

Even if that meant feeling like you were becoming a creature more of lies than of truths.

Next to her, Cole glistened with sweat, and the goop that Willem had been slathering on his head all morning was losing its grip. His hair stuck out at crazy angles she knew and loved and missed. They were hundreds of feet above the highest level of Nutharion City, in a small round room open to the air. White pillars spaced every few feet held up the roof, which was painted black and dotted with constellations of diamonds that mimicked the stars. Shelves, pillows, and blankets were scattered around the floor. The furniture was rich, like everything in the Cityhall, but well used at the same time—not rich for the sake of displaying wealth, but rich because it had been made that way.

At a black, lacquered writing table in the center of it all sat a girl.

She was tall, broad-shouldered, and she held herself like a man of forty-five. Rigid and heavy, as if her body weighed two hundred pounds. Her hair, a blond that bordered on dishwater, was cropped at neck length but hung over her eyes. Her hands were tented under her chin, and her forehead drew over her eyebrows in wrinkles as thick as her skin could bear. She looked immensely focused, sharp as a razor and pointed as a rapier.

Not a girl, Dil thought. Not just.

She was Pyell Mehedrichsani, and she wore the rainbow robe of the Magister of Nutharion.

The wind blew in from the north and brought Dil the girl’s scent. Pyell was sweating, and she gave off the clean crispness of a girl mixed with the deep musk of a man and maybe, Dil thought, a hint of the tang of womanhood.

Cole cleared his throat and shifted. They’d hiked up spiraling stairs within Pyell’s tower for fifteen minutes to reach her. On the way up, Cole had gone over his meeting with Lady Allenbee.

The thought of prison made Dil’s stomach swim.

Animal! Get it! Catch her!

She pushed the thoughts aside. It’ll be fine, she told herself. She won’t send us to prison. She won’t.

Pyell’s eyes came up.

“You are Wilderleng,” she said. Her voice was as deep as a full-grown woman’s, and it resonated, as though the world ran around and through her when she spoke.

The words startled Dil. Her heart beat faster. A bead of sweat trickled down the crevice behind her ear.

Pyell turned to Cole.

The rumors were wrong about her, Dil thought. She’s much more than just a girl. She made deeper echoes in the Second River than Leramis, or Ryse, or even Tsu’min.

“And you,” Pyell said to Cole, “are much more important than you realize.”

Cole paled.

The Magister frowned at both of them, then took a deep breath and stood. The wrinkles on her forehead smoothed. Her heaviness dissipated. She looked relaxed, a little tired, and like a very confident teenager rather than an adult. She stepped around the writing table and gestured toward the edge of her sanctum.