‘Don’t make a joke.’ The words came through clenched teeth. ‘Don’t you dare make a joke. They’ll find us. It’s only a matter of waiting for dawn, and they’ll find us. They’ll kill you, and I’ll never see my sister again. I’ve lost everybody.’
My fingers brushed against her hair. She twisted against me, her body pressed into my chest, shuddering. Crying. And gods, what was I supposed to do about that?
I’m not interested in forgiving you, I had said. It should have been true. I should have been able to sink into the hurt and anger and extinguish the desire to fix this. I should have been able to strangle my feelings and make myself safe.
‘I’m sorry.’ The words came bubbling out of me and I knew I wasn’t safe, wasn’t going to be safe for a long time. ‘Sorry for not being better at . . . at this. For being stubborn. I should have admitted there was no point a long time ago.’
She didn’t pull away. ‘No point?’
‘I want – all I’ve wanted for the last seven months is to find him. Save him, get forgiveness, all of it. But . . .’ I swallowed. ‘As it turns out, I can’t. Maybe I don’t deserve it, who knows? Let’s face it, Acarius is probably dead. Maybe he was dead even before I left the cabin, or maybe Jaern is going to kill him, but either way, there’s no way for me to stop it or avenge it. I want to help you get your sister free, but I can’t walk, Brix. I can’t think of anything to cast. I don’t even have the obsidian stone. I’m useless.’ I slammed my fist against the thigh of my bad leg, welcoming the extra jolt of pain it sent through me. ‘I’m hiding in the dark. I’ve failed. This is the moment when the idiot in a story would fall on his sword, except I don’t even have a damn sword.’
Silence. If it was possible, I felt a little worse. Granted, it must have been difficult to think of an effective reply to that much spewing self-loathing, but anything would have been better than sitting there and thinking she agreed with me.
‘Forgiveness for what?’ she said.
It didn’t matter now, anyway. My voice seemed like it belonged to someone else, full of gravel and curiously blank. ‘He would never tell me anything. Anything. Even about magic, he would give me the barest foundation and then say, “Off you go, Cricket” and leave me to figure out the rest for myself. I nearly died learning the fire spells.’
‘You fought over magic?’
‘We fought over my mother.’ The words were flooding out now, whether I wanted them to or not. ‘I don’t know anything about her. I don’t know who I am, Brix, and he wouldn’t tell me.’ I shivered. ‘I don’t know what my mother was doing in that miserable little pit of a village, I don’t know who my father was, I don’t know why she died and I lived. And I couldn’t find out, Brix. I spent last year looking, talking to people, and I couldn’t find out. It was like I didn’t really exist, and Acarius wouldn’t help. That last time – I said things. He said things. I told him to go to the hells.’
‘Gray.’ Her hand found mine and held it. ‘Everybody—’
‘And I left,’ I interrupted. ‘Stayed away from the cabin for months, wouldn’t talk to him, nothing. They came for him while I was gone, and he called for me – called for help, magically – and I didn’t answer, until it was too late. When I got back there, the cabin was ransacked and blood smeared everywhere.’
Brix still didn’t move. Maybe she hadn’t understood what I was telling her.
‘Acarius called for help,’ I repeated. ‘I didn’t answer. I couldn’t let that stand, not without at least telling him I was sorry. Now it’s too late for that, too. Jaern will hurt the world because I couldn’t swallow my pride and be good to my grandfather.’
‘You really are an arrogant bastard,’ she said, quietly.
I blinked. ‘What?’
‘You don’t know everything about your parents, so you don’t have an identity. You have one argument, and so the man who raised you will never forgive you. You make one mistake, and that’s going to destroy the world?’ She looked at me sideways. ‘The world, Corcoran?’
‘Are you saying that I’m overreacting?’ Irritation began to penetrate the fog of despair around me. ‘Jaern will get to the fort, and because they won’t realise what he is quickly enough, he’ll slaughter everyone inside and raise them as marulaches. A crew of undead that can cast spells. There’s nothing that will be able to stop them.’
She sucked in her breath, then let it out in a low whistle. ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’
‘I have,’ I said.
‘Well, clearly,’ she said, dryly. ‘If you could get there ahead of him, would it make any difference?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe.’ I tried to picture a situation that wouldn’t begin and end with an arrow in my guts. ‘Say I told them about Jaern and they, for some reason, believed me. With the Guild on my side, someone could perhaps silence him before he pronounces whatever incantation he has in mind when he arrives. And then all of us working together might be able to figure out how to stop him. You have to give the Guild credit, they are good at hurting people.’ I rubbed my eyes. ‘I mean, they’d probably kill me directly after we stopped him, but ethically speaking that shouldn’t matter, if I could prevent an undead plague ravaging the whole world. All of which is useless, unless I can somehow get my crippled leg over the thirty miles between here and there more rapidly than the non-injured necromancer with an unwearying army.’
‘Oh, well, ethically speaking.’ Brix rolled her eyes.
In spite of it all, I smiled. It was strangely comforting, that I could be sitting in the middle of my ruined life and Brix could still find my diction ridiculous.
She tilted her head to one side, thoughtful. ‘The frustrating part is it’s not even that far, as the crow flies. Thirty miles, you said. If we just had some horses, we could probably overtake him. It’ll take Jaern a little longer than you’d think because he’s got to cross a river with all of the undead, and they don’t seem like terrific swimmers. Unless there’s a magical way for him to cross a river without having to get in the water. Is there?’
Something niggled at my brain. I frowned. ‘Say that again.’
‘I was asking about crossing the river—’
‘No.’ I sat up straight, trying to think. Something. What was it? ‘Just before that. What did you say?’
Brix sounded mystified, and a little annoyed. ‘I said it wasn’t that far, as the crow flies.’
Cricket, you idiot.
‘I can get there,’ I said. ‘I can get there before him, crippled leg and all, if you help me. I can stop him.’
*
There wasn’t any alchemical paint left in the camp, of course, but Brix knew which wagon held the ledgers, and I was betting that stored with them would be ink. I must not have been terribly coherent when I explained, because even after we managed to find me a sort of crutch – I think it was actually a piece of a tent pole – she kept interrupting me with questions.
‘Flying.’ She picked up a stone and smashed the lock off a small lap desk that we had unearthed inside the wagon. Inside the desk were three bottles of ink and a number of poorly-made quills. ‘You really can fly? I thought you just said that to make those wizards angry.’
‘Yes.’ I gathered up the ink and quills and studied the canvas cover of the wagon, but it was still intact. If there had been a tear, I could have ripped off a piece of the fabric. As it was, I’d have to find a knife or come up with a different idea.
‘Then why haven’t we been flying this whole time?’ Brix said, with the exaggerated patience that means someone is trying to be reasonable in the face of madness. ‘Why waste time with horses? Why walk anywhere?’
‘Because.’ I hobbled closer to one of the dying braziers, dumped my loot into the dirt and began the very awkward process of sitting down. ‘It’s not something one does lightly. The last time I broke my shoulder and spent two weeks getting over the dry heaves from the toxicity.’
‘I thought there were . . . shielding runes. Something. To pro
tect against the poison.’
‘Theoretically, there are. I just haven’t figured out the ones for this yet.’ I thudded to the ground and started peeling off my shirt. Nothing about this was ideal. And even in ideal conditions, this wouldn’t have been particularly safe. I spread out my legs as far as I could and then laid the shirt flat on the ground between my knees. ‘It’s a . . . unique spell.’ I glanced up and froze, arrested by the look on her face. ‘What?’
‘I thought we had got past the lying thing,’ she said.
I paused, the quill between my fingers. ‘It’s dangerous, Brix,’ I said. ‘It’s not a very stable incantation, and it’s my own invention, which means it hasn’t had generations of polish. It’s dangerous and it hurts, even if nothing goes wrong.’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘I suppose this is where you get noble and refuse to let me come with you to help?’
I started scribing on the shirt, as meticulously as I could in that dreadful light. She was right, of course. I had no intention of letting her get in the air. But I was beginning to know her well enough to know that saying so would do me exactly zero good. So I wrote my spell, and tried to plan how I could take off without her.
‘I’m going, Corcoran,’ she said.
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘It’s big enough for both of us.’ But at least I didn’t elaborate the lie.
I’d be alone again. But the other slaves would come back in the morning, she had said, and dawn was already starting to colour the horizon. She’d be with her own people. She’d be safe.
‘Why the shirt?’ she said. ‘Why not scribe on yourself, like you did with the other spells?’
‘I need to stand on top of the spiral to take off, and I’m not leaving the spell here on the dirt for anyone to ruin while I’m sixty feet in the air. I figure I can prop myself on one foot, with the stick, if you help me.’ I dipped the quill again and took a deep breath, trying to settle myself. Magic in general is a sharp-edged plaything, a lover that is just as liable to slap you as kiss you. But this was a little different. If I got the flight rune wrong or sloppy, there wouldn’t be enough left of me after the crash to even feel foolish.
Eventually I found the quiet room in my head, the place where the runes came one after the other, pouring out of my fingers and falling into their places. They spread across the linen like living jewels, blossoming outwards in a spiral.
I sensed Brix’s uncertainty as she studied the runes. Flight looked nothing like your standard attack spells. She didn’t speak as I finished and hoisted myself on to my good knee, helping me to my feet. She propped me in the middle of the rune spiral, and then stepped backwards, eyes fixed on me. Her toes stayed on the edge of my shirt’s fabric, hands partly extended in front of her. As long as I kept my bad knee locked, I was fairly stable.
‘I won’t fall,’ I said.
She glared at me. ‘I know, because I’ll catch you.’
I cleared my throat and pronounced the runes. Halfway through the spell, as the characters sparked with dangerous red light, I realised that Brix’s lips were moving silently. When the wind started I lost track of her in the dust cloud that developed. I dropped to my good knee as I finished the spell, clenching the shirt in my fingers and bracing myself.
The wind would knock her back and away from me. It would have to.
This seemed stronger than usual, though, as the air picked up speed and circled back on itself. All other sound disappeared, drowned by what was now a proper whirlwind with me at its chaotic heart. The magic around me coalesced first into one dark, red-black wing, and then another.
There is always one moment where I can see the wings move towards me, but they haven’t attached yet, and that precise split-second is the most difficult part of the spell. At that moment I have to choose. I could let go – let the magic drain away, drop my concentration and not hurt.
But pain isn’t always something to fear. I held on.
The wings darted in like wasps. The magic sliced into the flesh of my back and shoulders, hot blood spraying down my sides. My bones changed alignment with a hideous crack. The whirlwind suddenly condensed itself beneath my feet and exploded.
No way out now. Fly, or fall.
The wide-open, terrifying sky roared around me, thick with silvery pain and pulsing, ecstatic speed. I laughed.
Fly.
Twenty-Three
No matter how brave you are, you wind up screaming during the first part of flight. Even if it didn’t hurt so much to have your anatomy rearranged to be more bird-like, being flung upwards is bloody terrifying – every single time.
When I had used all the breath in my lungs and was hurriedly making sure I still had the spell-shirt clutched in one hand, I became vaguely aware of a noise like a whistling tea kettle. If I hadn’t had to concentrate on getting my heels back and wings snapped open before the spell hardened, I would have recognised the noise before the whistling object came shooting past me, into the high clouds above.
As it was, I hung there on the wind for a moment against the newborn sunrise, craning my neck upwards and wondering what part of the camp I had managed to suck up with my ascent. A silvery speck appeared to be arcing back downwards. Maybe the whirlwind had picked up some metal implement? The whistle had changed, too. It was almost . . . words?
‘GRAY!’ shrieked Brix, as she plummeted past me, silver wings flapping around her body like a panicked swan, feet treading air.
Oh, shit. I closed my wings and dove.
‘Heels back!’ I shouted. ‘Put your heels back!’
She was fighting the spell, instead of letting it stiffen around her. Understandable, but deadly. If she didn’t get her feet pointing backwards, like a makeshift tail, she was going to fall. There would be nothing I could do to catch her. How in the hells had my spell encompassed two people, anyway? I gulped air and bellowed: ‘HEELS!’
Her tumble arrested then as her body lengthened, feet together. She looked up at me, and I had a split second to open my wings before she passed me again, soaring upwards. Her toe clipped my shoulder and sent me twisting.
By the time I came out of the somersaults, I had run out of curses and was starting again at the beginning. The whirlwind beneath us had calmed, and the campsite looked like a colony of ants that someone had kicked apart. Brix’s laugh startled me.
She was above me again, grinning like a kid at a fair. ‘Why didn’t you tell me it would be like this?’
And instead of panicking, which would have been an entirely logical reaction, I was proud of her. I grinned back, straightened my neck and shot forwards.
She figured it out a split second later and followed. The remains of the camp fell behind us in minutes as we moved through the pink clouds like dancers, swooping and circling past each other. Magic coursed over me like cold wine, heady, glorious. Most of my body had gone numb from the shaping magic wrapped around it, and my scruffy black raven’s wings felt like a part of me. The agony – and maybe the seizure – would come later, after we landed. For now, I could lose myself in the joy, and in watching her face as she felt it, too.
Her wings were made of white, silvery light. Initially I had thought of them as swan’s wings, but as I studied them from above and below I saw they were more like owl’s or hawk’s wings. Somehow it seemed surprising that they didn’t look exactly like mine. It had been the same spell, hadn’t it? So why the difference? Just the weight of a second caster’s imagination, perhaps.
For Brix must have pronounced the runes and cast the spell at the same time I did. When I could risk a glance at the shirt that I still held with cramped fingers, I saw that the runes glowed with two colours, red and a silvery green, rippling over them like the iridescence on a starling’s feathers. Which meant she and I were sharing control of the spell, pulling the magic together like two horses in harness. Any wizard would have told you such a thing was impossible. Magic is essentially competitive – you don’t share a spell, you take it, or someone takes it from you.
But then again, any wizard would have told you flight was impossible.
The caravan track that I hoped led to Cor Daddan sped away beneath us, a brown ribbon on a dull, grey-green plain. My blood pounded and surged through me and I let myself climb higher into the sky, up into the wide, pale sunlight, as the wind scraped my hair back from my forehead. Brix always kept just a bit higher than me, though, her body rippling with silver light.
She caught my eye, then. ‘How much further? What will it look like?’
A good thought, that. I turned my attention back to the ground, which still appeared to be mostly empty plains scudding past at an alarming rate. I had never achieved speed quite like this before, and I knew I needed to think about the consequences of it, which were almost certain to be unpleasant.
‘It’s a citadel,’ I shouted back. Which wasn’t very helpful, but I had an idea that we wouldn’t find much else that looked like human habitation out here. I didn’t know all that much about what, exactly, the old empire had built Cor Daddan to guard, but surely there couldn’t be an entire town so far from everything. Was it . . . maybe to enforce taxes on wool? Could you herd sheep out here?
Then I saw the knot of orange light crawling across the prairie ahead of us, and my stomach gave a lurch.
Jaern. How had he come so far, so quickly? He must have been going nearly the speed we were.
Hang on to your concentration. If you’re fast enough, maybe he won’t—
A pulse of purple lightning ripped upwards, splitting the air.
—notice you.
For one heartbeat, Brix and I were stuck in that metallic, blistering anticipation. Then the thunderclap roared around us as the superheated air currents boiled and tangled on themselves, tossing us like dice in a box. My head filled with his voice, cursing in languages I didn’t know, erupting with impotent rage.
And then he was gone.
We had passed him, and I couldn’t even risk looking back. The unnatural speed propelling us had somehow increased, to the point that if I forgot to keep my head inside the capsule of the spell, the air passing me would tear my skin off. I glanced over at Brix, who wasn’t smiling anymore, her face contracted in grim determination. The clouds streamed around her . . . but that wasn’t quite right. I squinted, unwilling to believe what I saw. The clouds showed through her.
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