Chapter 10: Calliope

Delosian City of Vroifburg

Calliope had more to think about than she ever thought a visit to Vroifburg could possibly give her. The words that the Sahira, Lillibet, had spoken to her the night before were reverberating throughout her mind, even now, throughout her dreams. Take them off...

"Calli?" someone asked, interrupting her thoughts and she glanced up to find Sebastian watching her, a concerned look on her face. Gabriel was looking up from his meal as well and Calliope knew in an instant that this was not the first time her friend had tried to get her attention. "The sugar? Could you pass it?"

"Oh, yeah," she muttered, reaching for the sugar bowl and handing it to Sebastian, watching him shovel spoonfuls of the sweet substance into his cold porridge. She felt her father's eyes boring into her but she ignored him. If he had something to say, he could say it. She wasn't going to broach the subject herself. Not after the tremendous scolding she got last night and the silent treatment she'd been given all morning.

Sebastian set the sugar bowl aside. The loud clink of the porcelain against the wooden table was the only noise in the dining room at all. They had come late to breakfast, exhausted from a night spent on festivities and fighting. Everyone else in the inn had already eaten and gone. Only the three of them remained making the painful silence that much louder.

"Did she read your future?" Gabriel asked suddenly and Calliope's eyes snapped to him before she could help it. Of all the things she had expected him to say to her when he finally spoke, this was not one of them.

"What?" she asked, playing dumb. Gabriel leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms across his broad chest, and narrowed his gaze.

"You know what she is," he said simply. "Answer the question."

"I know she was your lover."

Sebastian choked on his porridge. Gabriel's eyes narrowed to slits.

"A lifetime ago, perhaps," he admitted through gritted teeth. Sebastian gazed between them, wide eyed.

"Is she my mother?" Calliope asked. Gabriel raised a brow and Calliope's shoulders slumped. She knew Lillibet wasn't her mother. Calliope had darker skin than her father which meant her mother must have been dark skinned as well. Lillibet's skin was as white as a morning snow. "She told me to take them off."

Calliope's eyes were downcast, firmly on the fabric covering every inch of skin on her hands save her fingertips.

"That makes no sense," Gabriel remarked in that gruff way of his and Calli sighed. "They are skin welded on."

"Why?"

Calliope's question hung suspended in the air for a beat. She had never asked this question before. Any mention of her gloves or her mother always seemed to make Gabriel uneasy, as it did now. He uncrossed his arms, crossed them again, shifted in his seat, and frowned. With every minute that ticked by without an answer, her courage waned. She had always tried to be the good little soldier, training every day, trying twice as hard as anyone else. She had only ever wanted to live up to her father's expectations of her, to become the Ysuelt hunter that he dreamed of her being. She had never wanted to make him uncomfortable or anger him so she had avoided these questions, avoided prying. But this was her life, not his. These were her gloves, attached forever to her hands. She had a right to know why at least.

"Your mother had it done," he spoke finally and she noticed the disgust in his tone, as though he still couldn't believe what had happened after all these years.

"And you didn't agree, I presume?" Calliope pressed.

"I wasn't consulted."

"But why–"

"She had her reasons. I can't be asked to account for them," he snapped.

Calliope was pushing her luck. Gabriel was on the verge of shutting down completely, reverting to the silent treatment. If she upset him now, it could be days and the entire journey back to the Ysuelt keep before he spoke to her again.

"Can it be... undone?" she asked, trying to keep the hopefulness out of her voice. If he hadn't wanted it done in the first place, he must be in favor of seeking a solution to it now. Right?

"No," he answered. "Skin welds are permanent."

Her heart shattered and silence descended upon them once more. Calliope was almost firmly mired in her own misery when Sebastian spoke."

"I heard–," he started and then cleared his throat, turning red at the sudden glare from Calliope's father cast in his direction. Still, he put on a brave face and turned to Calliope. "I heard that a skin-welder may undo their own work if they are very skilled."

Gabriel's lips curled and the look he shot Sebastian was lethal.

"Is it true?" Calliope asked, hope returning as she gazed at her father.

"Those are rumors," he spat. "Unfounded rumors."

"But it's possible," she said. "There's a chance."

"Let it go, Calliope."

"Who did it?"

"Calli–"

"Who welded these gloves to me, father?"

Gabriel slammed his fork onto the table and the barmaid passing nearby jumped before scurrying away back to the kitchens. Even Sebastian flinched. But Calliope did not. She held her ground even as her father's glare darkened and turned cruel.

"She lives in the capital now," he said finally and Calliope blinked at him, half surprised he even told her and half thrilled to actually have some form of an answer.

"We've never been closer to the capital," she remarked, breathlessly.

The sound of chair legs scraping against wooden slatted floors echoed throughout the empty chamber as Gabriel stood.

"Enough," he grunted.

"At least tell me what they do," Calliope cried, jumping to her feet as well. She leaned over the table, pleading with her father to answer. He turned to look at her and, for the first time, that icy glare softened just a little. He watched her for a moment and then sighed, turning away.

"They block your power," he muttered, so quietly she almost didn't hear him. Her lips parted in surprise at his words.

"My power?"

Calliope lifted her hands and looked down at them. She knew she had magic. Some people outside of the Sahir did. But only small things. Amplified hearing, the ability to grow hair and nails at a faster rate than average. One girl in the village could change her hair color on a whim. Calliope herself had only ever been able to produce tiny, useless sparks which danced around at the tips of her fingers. And she had never been able to control them. Was this the power of which her father spoke?

"Why would my mother want to block my power?" she asked, looking up from her fingers.

"You have seen the life of those with magic in their veins, Calli," her father said softly and, when he turned to look at her again, he looked more tired than she had ever seen him. She felt a pang in her heart, guilt at having forced him to recount that which was so difficult for him. But she needed to know. And he was the only one who could tell her. "A life of forced servitude, to be the pawns of kings, hated and feared in equal measure. Your mother didn't want that life for you. I don't blame her, given what she had to go through because of her own magic."

"My mother was magic?" Calliope asked, one more piece of the puzzle which was her mother falling into place. Gabriel frowned as if he hadn't meant to give that one away. Then he turned away from her and headed for the door to the inn.

"I'll take you to Annalise. The woman who bound your gloves. You can ask her all your questions."

With that, he left the inn. Calliope stared after him a moment before turning to face her wide-eyed friend who had witnessed the whole thing.

Gabriel intended to keep his promise, it seemed, but not that very day. Too much was to be done in Vroifburg, much business of the Ysuelt. All day, they met with various men who brought reports of monsters here or there, offerings of gratitude for the men who kept their villages and their people safe from such creatures, people who still owed the Ysuelt some sum from long ago. It was tedious work, keeping the accounts while Gabriel did the talking, but Calliope and Sebastian did not complain. They had each other and Calliope had the excitement of learning more about her origins than she ever had before to occupy her mind.

She waited to bring it up until dinnertime and Gabriel reaffirmed his promise, though not without a frown and a sigh, and sent them off to bed. Calliope went to her room, yawning, and said goodbye to Sebastian as he headed off for his own. She was asleep moments after her head hit the pillow.

Still, the nightmares came. A broken crown, rivers of blood, and always the same three words repeated again and again.

Take them off.

She awoke in a cold sweat, sitting upright and panting as she refamiliarized herself with her surroundings. It was only then that she heard the voices.

"Did you follow us?" Gabriel was demanding in a failed attempt at a whisper.

"Of course I did," a woman's voice replied. It took Calliope a moment to recognize it as belonging to Lillibet, the Sahira who read her future. "You thought you would come all this way and manage to avoid me?"

"What did you tell her?"

There was a moment of silence and then, when Lillibet answered, her voice was lower than before.

"I kept my oath, Gabriel," she whispered. "But I wanted to see for myself."

"You shouldn't have done that. She's asking questions now. She wants to take the gloves off."

Another pause.

"She should," Lillibet finally replied. Gabriel sighed.

"I can't go back to the capital," he said a moment later, his voice deepening as he lowered it again so that Calliope had to strain to hear him. "You know what they would do to me there."

"Let me take the girl with me. I can take her straight to Annalise. No one has to know who she is or that she's even in the city."

There was another pause. This one, Calliope knew well. Gabriel was considering it.

"What did you see?" he asked finally.

"I– I don't know," Lillibet confessed. "It was her but then something shifted. I saw a man. And then it shifted back to her. I don't know who he is. But they're connected somehow."

"Lilibet–"

"I know you care for her, Gabriel. But you cannot keep her from her fate. None of us can."

Their voices faded with their footsteps as they walked away down the hall. Calliope laid still, breath coming in the rise and fall of her chest. She stared at the patch of clay someone had used to fix a hole in the wall. She wasn't sure why but a single tear rolled down her cheek as she lay awake.

The next day, Lillibet came to collect her and Calliope stepped forward to meet her fate with a renewed determination to discover herself no matter the cost. She waved goodbye to Gabriel and watched as he dragged a complaining Sebastian away from the capital and towards home.