Ruby Ruins

hands clenched. He struggled to breathe, his armor weighing at him.
His guilt.
Dualayn picked up five of the small topazes. He placed them on the wrinkled tissues of her brain, forming a circle around the injury. Staving off his despair, Ōbhin stared with questions. Something was missing.
“They’re not . . .” Ōbhin cleared his emotion-choked throat. “They’re not connected by wires. They’re just jewels.”
“I had always dismissed rumors I’d heard of Bofozujimnizemvev”—Dualayn said the mouthful of syllables with ease—“the Forbidden Kingdom. You must have heard of it.”
“South of the Shattered Islands. They don’t like outsiders much.”
“No.” He went to a drawer and opened it. He pulled out a tuning fork. “They were said to use ‘proper harmonics’ to activate gems. I thought it nonsense, of course.” He struck the tuning fork against the edge of the metal table.
Its pure note, a high buzzing, resonated through the room. The five topazes on her head lit up with an orange glow. Ōbhin gasped and stepped back at the miraculous sight. Dualayn set the tuning fork up right beside her, the twin tines blurring from their rapid motion.
“Aliiva’s motherly compassion,” Ōbhin whispered.
“The Recorder spoke of using a specific frequency of sound waves to produce an effect in gems,” said Dualayn. “I hope this is what they meant when they talked about brain regeneration.”
Ōbhin took a step closer, reaching out a hesitant hand to Avena, then pulled back. He turned and grabbed his gloves he’d tossed onto the workbench. He pulled on the leather, covering his hands in black. Blood still stained the left, dried and crusting.
He trembled, his eyes looking everywhere but her. He took in the laboratory, fully seeing it for the first time since entering. The room used to be a dining hall. At the far end was the vault door that held Dualayn’s collection of jewels. Besides the washbasin, cabinets lined the other walls full of all manner of items. Some were open, showing racks of jars and pots, others closed and locked. Among the visible containers, about half were sealed with wax while others were stoppered with cork. Diagrams decorated one wall, schematics for wire bending beside images of human anatomy, the outer layers of skin and muscles appearing to be flayed away to reveal the organism beneath. Another wooden worktable lay beneath the diagrams, covered in the small pliers, delicate chisels, and tiny hammers necessary to shape jewel machines.
The Recorder sat there, the strange and massive jewelchine that Dualayn had found in the Red Heart of the Forest, the center of the Upfing Forest. Every tree there, along with all the grass, had been stained red. It appeared centered around ruins that predated the Shattering, when Niszeh had destroyed the Harmony of the Tone, creating the Seven Good and the one Black.
To the Lothonians, they believed it was when Elohm’s perfect people were ruined by the Black.
Either way, it had devastated lands far to the east, creating the Shattered Islands, and ended the legendary civilization that used to dominate the world. The Recorder, an amethyst and emerald gem somehow grown together in a spiraling helix around the wiring, held ancient knowledge.
Dualayn was studying it with a primer he’d received from the Brotherhood and their mysterious benefactor, the White Lady.
“You can go now,” Dualayn said. “I have her, Ōbhin.”
“What?” Ōbhin whirled around to stare at the older man. “No, no, what if you need more of my help?”
“I am fine on my own,” he said. He was pulling down jars from a cabinet. “Now it’s just a matter of keeping her alive to heal. I can do that on my own. This might take days. Even a week or longer. I’ll take care of her. I don’t need to be distracted by your worrying and pacing and muttering.”
“You sure?”
“No one loves her more than I do,” Dualayn said. “If Bravine and I had a daughter, I’d imagined she’d be like Avena. After my son died . . .” The old man drew a deep breath. “She almost was my daughter. If I hadn’t failed with Chames, she would be. I won’t fail her, Ōbhin. I promise you.”
 

Chapter Five
Ōbhin scrubbed Avena’s blood off his glove with a fistful of grass, staining the green red. He spat on the leather and buffed more away. His eyes were distant, seeing past them to that moment in time. One little decision had irrevocably changed Avena’s life.
For the last Lothonian month, two of his own people’s lunar months, he’d spent most days in her company. When she wasn’t working with Dualayn in the lab or tinkering with her own jewelchines, she was practicing and drilling with his guards. She was his confidant, the only one he could confide in when his loathing for the thing masquerading as Smiles grew too much. They were united in protecting Dualayn from his deal with the Brotherhood. When Dualayn uncovered the secret Grey and the White Lady needed from the Recorder, Ōbhin was certain it would end badly.
They had to protect him. His skills were remarkable. If he could heal her brain injury . . . No one recovered from injuries like that.
The creak of wheels drew his eyes to Joayne pushing Dualayn’s invalid wife across the grounds. She did that whenever it was sunny, giving the woman fresh air. Bravine never seemed to notice. She just drooled, her mind destroyed by an inept physician after a fall broke her neck.
One simple decision. Choose the wrong doctor. Dodge the wrong piece of metal.
The front door creaked open. Ōbhin glanced behind, for a moment hoping it was Dualayn with good news before foolishness rippled through him. It was too soon. It’ll be days. Maybe even a week before she’s up and about.
She will recover. She’s a fighter.
It was Fingers. The older guard, nicknamed for his swollen