Ruby Ruins

the Fiftieth. You’re off by a week, but that’s not surprising since you’ve been unconscious the entire time.”
“I took a blow to my head?” she asked. “Is that why I can’t remember the fight?”
“You had this buried in your head,” Dualayn said. He marched to his jewelchine bench. She managed to sit up.
The effort left her dizzy.
When her vision cleared, he held up the severed end of a blade. He put his finger near the middle. “It had lodged that deep into the left lobe of your brain. Can you move your right hand?”
She raised it while processing what he said. It made no sense. She stared at the length of deadly metal, trying to fathom that burying into her brain and her still surviving.
“Good, good, and the palsy is gone from the right half of your face,” he noted.
“That was in my head?” Avena croaked. “I should be dead.”
“But you’re not!” Dualayn had this look of giddy joy. “I regenerated your damaged brain, child. Using resonating topazes placed directly on it.”
Avena’s hands swept across her head. She prodded at her temple before her fingers slid into the fine silk of her brown hair. She stroked across her skull, feeling for any imperfections, finding no scar. Her hair felt different. Less weight.
“You cut my hair?” she asked.
“My apologies. You did have a lovely braid. Long hair is a woman’s glory, so I do feel a tad bad for having to sever yours. But it was in the way.”
“No, no. I’d rather be bald than dead.” She smiled. “You truly removed the top of my skull to heal me? That theory on using topazes and a tuning fork?”
“The topazes’ default mode is to spread healing energy,” said Dualayn. “They repaired the swelling in your brain. So far, I can find no deficiencies in your memory or your abilities, but I must perform an exam.”
She nodded. Despite the hollow pit in her stomach, a gnawing need for food, she was eager to learn more. The Recorder had revealed so much knowledge. What he’d uncovered alone was worth keeping protecting him. She had to recover to do that. To study with him and fight at Ōbhin’s side.
He carried me all the way from the Greenlet. He’d crossed the breadth of the city. Not its longest measurement, for it stretchered wider west and east along the Ustern than it did north and south, but a feat that sent a giddiness through her. That must have polished more of the murk off his soul.
A yearning to see him almost overwhelmed her need to be examined for any problems.
Dualayn returned with a small diamond jewelchine housed in a tube of polished steel. It was another of Dualayn’s inventions, though it hadn’t caught. Diamond torches were just more expensive than a candle or an oil lantern. The rich might use diamonds to light their houses, and many cities were lighting their streets with them, but the commonfolk didn’t have the extra coin on portable light, so had to go with cheaper alternatives.
“Okay, let’s check your pupil dilation,” Dualayn said.
She sat there as he shone the light in her eye, had her follow his finger, tickled her sides to get her to giggle, poked and prodded half her body to check her senses, and used a leather-wrapped hammer to tap her knees in the right spot to get them to spasm.
“What is the multiplication of twenty-eight and four?” he asked as he worked, the first of many questions.
She did the sum in her head. “One hundred and twelve.”
“In what year did the Tri-Color War occur?”
“It started in 645, when King Kashen Briflon died, and ended in 652 when the last surviving brother, Gerey Briflon, perished killing his nephew Vash Briflon in the Battle of the Mud. They were the last two survivors of the Briflon dynasty.”
“What is the property of heliodor?”
“It represents Elohm’s Patience,” she said. “His bright Yellow. It is the color that is associated with air and wind, with alarms and warnings. A heliodor can be left to be triggered, waiting for the right conditions before activating it.”
“Good, good,” he said as he went about his exam. “And who is the Archon-Supreme of the devas?”
“Reylis,” she said, and thoughts stirred. The White Lady claimed not to be a deva, but she never denied being Reylis. “You once said that many of the pagan gods in the eastern lands have the same name.”
“Similar names, even amid languages that have no familiar connection. Demochian, Qothian, and Tethyrian can all trace their origins back to a distant proto-language, but Ki’manese, Relasese, and the tongue of the Shattered Islanders is a separate family of tongues. Our Lothonian, Roidanese, Onderian, and those who live on the distant island of Busil are a third such family. Yet the names of gods, tones, spirits, and other such entities connected to the gems all are similar. The Tone of Fire is Otsar while the Passion of Fire is O’csari.”
“Passions are what the Ki’manese people worship?”
Dualayn cocked his head as he prodded her armor. “Revere, perhaps. But you see the similarity.”
“Raleth is the Tone of White and Reylis is the Archon-Supreme.” A nervous writhe twisted through her. “Those seem . . . similar.”
“There are names of other devas if you read older texts, but the church long thought revering them was too close to paganism centuries ago. Different villages might still remember them in their prayers, but only Reylis survived with official sanction. There is a Deva of Vengeance, I believe, named Oysar, and the Broken Mirror heretics in Ondere are said to worship them as the shattered pieces of Elohm. One god split into seven or eight parts or some nonsense like that.”
Is the White Lady a deva? It sounded foolish. She couldn’t be a divine being, and yet speaking