Episode 156: Self Destruction (Indigo)

She patted the vest Corban gave her, packed tight with spells and secreted tools. She drew her sword from its scabbard.

She counted back from five. Gramm, she thought. She hadn’t seen him in twenty years, but she could still imagine the set of his shoulders, the ridge of his jaw.

And she was there, five feet from him just as she’d counted.

“Yes?” he asked.

He couldn’t possibly recognize her. His hand found the hilt of his own sword. For spending twenty years in Babylon, he’d readjusted quickly.

“Why are you here?” she demanded.

She used to be taller against him. Now he had more than a head on her. It would make her superior in a fight – how often, if ever, had he trained against someone so short? He couldn’t have trained recently, either. Only certain types in Babylon were into swordplay, and he wasn’t of that ilk.

“Who are you?” he countered.

“An emissary.”

They locked eyes.

His were so familiar, even after all this time. The way his eyebrows almost seemed to go down instead of up. The way his eyes looked more gold than green in some light. She would have known him anywhere. How was it possible that he was here, solid, alive?

“You can put your sword away. I’m here because I’m traveling to see family.”

No way was she sheathing her sword. “Which family?”

“Put your sword down and we can talk,” he suggested. He lifted his hands from his sword belt.

Fine. No one was close enough to disarm her before she could transport. She slid her sword into its leather housing but kept her hand in place. Verbal negotiations were not her skill set. Meldrick was delusional for sending her, but she knew she was the best option for ensuring Gramm was ally and not enemy.

The best at reading him, too.

“My brother,” he said once her sword was away. “Why are you interested? Have I done something?”

He gave her his intense look.

Gah, that look still frustrated her. She hated how well she knew him.

It had been an unhappy marriage, and that had been her fault. She’d been so defiant, so certain that when she told Gramm she was being forced to wed him, he would refuse the marriage and she would be free.

He’d insisted, for whatever reason. Their only child together, Camilla, had been the result of copious amounts of both alcohol and resignation.

And then he’d died, and she’d been free, and only a little guilty that his death was such a relief to her. She’d asked him not to marry her and he’d insisted. She’d failed the trial, which she regarded as partly his fault for forcing the wedding to begin with.

And he hadn’t failed the trial. She despised that he’d passed, where she had failed.

“You’re an ascended king,” she accused him now. “Every seat in the realm is threatened by you, and you have to ask why I’m interested? If I were you, I’d leave the realm.”

Then he’d be gone and not her problem anymore.

His eyes studied her. They took in her body, her stance with one foot just in front of the other, ready to run. They took in her eyes and whatever expression she wore, which was probably not a happy one.

“I’m simply visiting my brother,” he said.

Behind him, a blonde woman – Indigo’s old body – stepped out onto the deck.

She was backwards, which made her look wrong to Indigo, because she was used to looking at herself in a mirror. The reverse image wasn’t what she saw now; this woman was the real body. Everything Indigo had lost in the trial.

Aged, but still her.

She fought off any reaction she could have had and turned her eyes back to Gramm. “Which brother, where?”

He lunged toward her, his hands outstretched with intent to pin her. In one motion, she had jumped back from him and drawn her sword. “Nice try,” she said. She held it ready, lower near her waist. In movies they always held the sword out threateningly toward their enemies, but that left them vulnerable. She held it near her waist, arm out slightly, ready to block.

He drew his sword at the same time and they stood, a few feet apart, swords only inches from combat. She watched his eyes, but she watched his body too. Even a twitch could signal that he was about to strike.

“I have no idea why you are here,” he defended, “but I do not have to answer to you. As you said, I am an ascended. I am also in the jurisdiction of the Sea Kingdom.”

Was that deliberate? She’d assumed the boat was about ease of transport, but what if it was strategic? “Do you consider them an ally?”

“I have no allies,” he said with force. “I have no kingdom. I am a man seeking refuge with family. Who are you? Who sent you?”

Not Indigo, that was for sure. “Selena,” she lied, choosing the name of Naomi’s mother. “I sent myself, on behalf of a friend.”

His sword gestured in her direction. “Which friend.”

She laughed. “Which brother?” she demanded, pointedly. He could share or not, but she wasn’t sharing first after his refusal to be forthcoming.

“Arlen,” he said.

Liar. This would have been so much easier if he even had a brother named Arlen.

“My friend is the queen of Distant Landia,” she made up, also pointedly. Two could lie and two could glower and two could be ready for attack.

“I see,” he said. She could hear his old frustration – days and weeks and months of her rejecting him. Camilla only existed because he’d come to her room one night with a bottle of hard liquor and stated we need an heir.

Even then, it was weeks of alcohol-laced encounters before there was even a chance she was pregnant.

The brother thing was a test, of sorts, and very cleverly done. That she knew he didn’t have a brother named Arlen narrowed down the list of people she could be. If he’d heard any rumors that she’d switched bodies, coupled with her reaction to seeing her old body here, on this boat, he probably suspected who she was.

Or not. She would have liked to think he wouldn’t have attacked her if he knew she was Indigo.

He attacked her, either way. One lunge forward, which she blocked, and then they were engaged in battle. Ultimately, she would be better off because she could transport home if he wounded her. If she wounded him, he was stuck on this boat without modern medicine, without Zero.

She pushed back, from underneath. He had gravity on his side, but she had the fact that all she did was block and shift. She never pressed, that wouldn’t be diplomatic. If he really went at her, she’d fight back more, but for now she wasn’t sure what problems injuring him would cause.

“What does your queen want?” he asked as he swung at her from above his left shoulder. She dodged it neatly, sword ready for an attack she couldn’t dodge.

“To know you aren’t a threat to any kingdoms in the realm.” There, that should be vague enough.

“I am a threat to any of my family’s enemies.”

His family. He probably didn’t know that his younger brother had married an Alandrial or that his daughter was raised Alandrial.

“Who do you regard as enemy?” she asked.

“The Dells,” he said.

That was it? One kingdom, and it had to be that one? What about Kehsmar or the Chatkas or the Sea Kingdom or something?

He took advantage of her shock to press with his sword, until she was backed only about two feet from the rail.

She needed to not lose this fight. She jumped up onto the railing. “You shouldn’t,” she said, and she jumped off, backward, sword in hand.

And transported onto the deck behind him, to where her old body stood watching their fight. She drew the sword up to the woman’s clavicle, arm around her.

“Can we talk?” she asked Gramm, once she had the woman hostage. The woman didn’t fight. Indigo would have. It annoyed her that whoever this woman was – Gramm’s trial wife, from the sound of things – he’d essentially made a watered-down version of Indigo.

He whirled around and looked at her. The muscles of his jaw clenched angrily when he saw her sword at the woman’s neck. “We tried talking,” he spat.

“Negotiate, then?” she suggested.

He sheathed his blade. “Only if we put down our swords. I will not negotiate while you have my wife hostage.”

His wife should have found a way to not be hostage anymore. Indigo barely had a grip on her.

“What’s her name?” she asked him.

“Jade.”

How original. At least indigo was a more attractive color, with more depth, than jade. Jade always made her think of waving cats from Noc Thui.

She sheathed her sword and released Jade, who scurried over to her husband just like he would have wanted.

“Why are the Dells your enemy?” Indigo asked him. “They deposed the current lines and restored health to a wounded kingdom.”

“They did,” he acknowledged. “Are you from there?”

Oh, no, she had no reason to share with him. Not yet, anyway. “I’m wiccan. But they’re my friends.”

When she said it, she realized she was. She belonged with Zero. She’d spent twenty years eschewing her body’s wiccan heritage, but now, standing next to Gramm and her old body, she wondered what she was clinging to about her old life.

She was new, better.

She was wiccan, but fairies were her friends.

“Why do you like them?” he asked.

She stood a little taller. “They help everyone. They freed the slaves, closed the brothels, stopped the inbreeding, started schools.”

“And how do I know you are who you claim to be?” he asked.

“You don’t,” she said. Then she tried to figure out if that was an admission that she lied about her name, or an acknowledgement that he would have to trust her on blind faith.

She loved verbal negotiations for fun, but when important matters stood on the line, she preferred written negotiations. They bought her time to think.

“How do you know me?” he asked. He put his hand on Jade’s back, which made Indigo want to scream at him to stop touching her body.

It wasn’t her body, she reminded herself; it was Jade’s.

“Your daughter is looking for you,” she said, without making even a scream-like noise.

That, she could answer truthfully, without endangering anyone. Partly truthfully, anyway.

He shifted, a step forward that angled him toward Jade, and a tightness in his posture that was absent before. “What’s her name?” he demanded.

“Mim,” she provided. Jade relaxed a little and leaned against Gramm, just like Indigo would have done. She tried not to scowl at Jade, opting for goading instead. “And her boyfriend.”

They seemed so new and uncertain to each other, Mim and Liam, that she doubted Gramm or Jade knew they were together.

Neither of them reacted to the boyfriend thing. She tapped her fingers against themselves, annoyed. Maybe they hadn’t heard her.

“Is she safe?” Gramm asked.

“Yes. And Onyx has his mate. She lives with us.”

She wondered what Gramm would think if he ever found out that hers was the body that had made his talking cats.

Gramm straightened and stepped away from Jade a little. He seemed to have come to some kind of decision about her. “I am headed west, to Fjor Halsein. My brother, Jericho. What are we negotiating?”

Progress!

“Your assurance that you won’t try to reclaim your throne in the Upper Dell. Not assurance. Promise.”

Preferably signed, and scripted in ancient Elesarian ink mixed with his blood and either Meldrick’s or Aadya’s. Binding beyond any law but old magic.

He stepped closer to her. Too close. His sword was still sheathed, so she held a travel pack in one hand, just in case, and let him approach.

He whispered next to her ear, “I can’t promise something that contradicts what my actions will appear to be, but I can promise my intent aligns with your conditions.”

That, or he said this to buy himself the time and freedom to act in his own interests.

“What are you up to?” she asked him.

He shook his head subtly. “Prove I can trust you.”

He hadn’t exactly proved that about himself. She closed her eyes. “I think you know my name.”

He stepped back, closer to Jade. “Eutropia is an enemy of the Dells.”

Anyone could have guessed that. It was why they kept her in a position where she would have constant oversight, casual teachers who were really spies. “More than we thought?” she asked.

“Notably more,” he confirmed.

That would be news for Meldrick and Aadya.

“You know her allies?” Indigo asked. That, more than anything, could encourage her to trust him.

“Ionia is already headed for Fjor Halsein. My intent is to rally my brothers, my allies.”

Jericho would rally. Zeus…she’d heard he was a player, self-centered and uninterested in anything besides the perks of being a prince.

“She has Camilla,” she warned him.

He did that clenching thing with his jaw again. “Eutropia has my son. My aim is to join her campaign, and create a front within her forces.”

Forces? As in, someone planned to do battle against the Dells?

“We have a school at the palace,” she offered. If Gramm could get Camilla out, it would do good things for their future relations as friends. She wanted to offer the same for him. “Do you want us to relocate your son, in a friendly way?”

It would be easy: Send Delphine to her weekly meeting, make sure she noticed the boy, offer him a place at the palace school.

Eutropia would be unable to argue without showing her hand.

“If possible,” Gramm agreed. “She has a wife in mind for him, I believe.”

“We’ll bring him to the palace,” she promised. “He can stay with Mim and Liam.”

Still no reaction to Mim having a boyfriend, but Indigo wasn’t goading him anymore.

“And Mim,” Gramm said. “Jade should at least see her.”

“You both can. It’s safe, you have my word of that. If you don’t want to go there, I can bring them here.” And leave them, if they’d rather stay with Gramm. They weren’t hostages. Strategically, it might not have been the brightest move, but neither Meldrick nor Aadya nor Konrad had said the couple needed to be kept close to the palace.

He refused, by way of the explanation, “I have other children. They will need school.” He glanced over his shoulder at Jade. “She’ll go with you, negotiate and plan.”

“Okay,” she agreed. “I’ll have her back soon.”

“Where am I going?” Jade asked, in Indigo’s old voice.

Her hand shook, so she rested it on her sword belt.

“To see Mim,” Gramm said, clipped. “The Dells.”

Jade nodded her head, and Gramm closed the space between them and placed a kiss just lightly on her lips. “Keep your head down,” he urged her.

Jade looked out at the water for a minute and then turned back to Gramm with an expression Indigo had never once in her life seen on that face. It felt out of place to her, the level of trust she had for Gramm.

“Or…” Jade hesitated. “I had a thought.”

He stepped closer, his hand on her back. “What is it?”

She looked at Indigo, with more of the distant expression Indigo associated with her old face. “First I need to confirm that you’re…the original me.”

She was slow if she hadn’t picked that up yet. Indigo opened her mouth to say so, but Gramm cut her off: “Well, you fight like her. You negotiate like her.”

“I am,” she cleaved.

Jade turned her eyes back to Gramm. “I don’t want to just leave our kids with strangers.”

“What’s your idea?” he asked.

She turned back to Indigo. “How many people know you’re you?”

“A few in the palace. Virtually no one else.” Even her students didn’t know. Her kids, she wasn’t ever sure which of them knew. Rhyss, for sure, and Spence. Camilla. She wasn’t even sure if Mara knew, or if she thought their families were just close friends.

“Would you like the opportunity to take on Ionia and your mother?” Gramm asked, with a bit of a sly smile. “Aid in the war from the inside?”

It was…simultaneously unappealing and alluring. To be able to face her mother, as herself. Probably even to lie and say she’d passed the trial…that would feel good. And Ionia was a bit of Drey’s unfinished business. She’d do that, for Nell.

It would feel good.

But returning to her old body…she had no idea what impact that would have on her. It might feel as foreign as moving to this one had. What if it felt like going home? What if she didn’t want to leave?

“You want to switch?” she asked Jade. “For how long?”

“Until things are better,” Jade said. That was nice and vague. “I can take better care of my kids and learn skills that people here take for granted. You already have those skills, you’re better equipped to rescue your daughter.”

It was a powerful inducement. Better than Gramm rescuing Camilla alone; she wouldn’t know him, and it wouldn’t feel like a rescue to her. Just a change of hands.

“I would need to talk to Zero,” she decided. That would buy her time to think. Explore, as distasteful as it was, her feelings. Maybe even paint.

“It’s an opportunity, not an arrangement,” Gramm teased, and Indigo actually laughed.

She had evidence of miracles, right at this moment.

“Thank Maelchor for that,” she joked back. Maybe, if they weren’t forced into marriage together, she and Gramm could actually manage something of a friendship. “You need me to bring Zero here?”

“I think if Gramm left, people would notice,” Jade explained.

There was just one tiny thing… “Before I bother with that, you should know I’m scheduled to die briefly in the next few days.”

Gramm’s arm twitched towards her, but he restrained himself. A wise move. “Why?”

None of his business, was why. “I’m adept at making enemies,” Indigo invented.

“Okay…but…” Gramm looked at Jade, his eyebrows concave with worry.

Antiquated, stubborn, misinformed scissorbill. “Would you like to wait until after that is dealt with?” she offered. Camilla could just suffer another day or three, no big deal there. Not that there was any notable rush, with him on a boat; it would take days to get there. But those were days she needed to be training that body, which didn’t look like it had ever held a sword, nevermind employed one artfully.

Jade and Gramm shared a look. Again, something she’d never managed with Gramm before. She’d always avoided his annoyingly aware eyes.

“If it’s temporary, I can handle pain,” Jade told him.

Indigo wondered, with belated amusement, if Jade thought she was giving them time to rekindle their marriage if they wanted to. She almost laughed, but the timing would have been off so she kept it to herself.

“If it’s temporary,” Gramm said pointedly to Indigo.

He wasn’t going to believe her, because he didn’t trust her.

“You should talk to Zero, not me,” she said. Gramm was someone who would respect Zero, because Zero was patient and calm and intelligent. Gramm liked those things, for the simple reason that he saw them in himself.

The comparison irked her more than she wanted to admit.

<- Episode 155 | Episode 157 ->