by C. E. Murphy
Rasim heard Desimi mumble, "Ras is the ringleader," into the floor, and almost laughed. Trust Desimi to make certain the blame lay squarely on Rasim's shoulders. He deserved it, but still, it felt so normal that for a moment even being squashed by a king's magic wasn't too worrying.
That carelessness faded instantly, though. Rasim wriggled his fingers to his sides, pressing his palms against the floor. He wanted to stand, to face Roscord on his feet. That seemed important somehow. Maybe because he'd fallen, last time he'd faced Roscord. Because he'd been hit, and knocked to the ground. That would not happen again.
Anger surged through Rasim, taking some of the weight away. He pushed upward with the emotion, just like it was magic itself, and felt more of the stone witchery break apart. Teeth gritted, he pushed upward just a few inches.
Taishm's attention broke from Roscord, coming back to Rasim in astonishment. Rasim didn't care. Didn't care that a king was gaping at him, didn't care that his limited magic would do him no good, didn't care if guards came to strike him down with swords and spears, just so long as he got to his feet.
With a roar, he shoved himself all the way to his feet, feeling Taishm's magic shatter around him. They both staggered, Rasim with utter exhaustion and Taishm with equal amazement. Lorens and Roscord came to support Taishm, who threw them off vehemently. Kisia, although chained, came to support Rasim, and to his surprise, so did Desimi. Rasim sagged against them gratefully.
"Roscord's right," he whispered. "We're Seamasters' Guild journeymen, your majesty. I'm Rasim al Ilialio. This is Desimi and I guess you've met Kisia."
"Yes." Taishm sounded dry. "How did you do that? Throw off my magic?"
Rasim shuddered. Thinking about it made him even more tired than he already was. First the fire prison, then the weight of stone. There was nothing left inside him to fight with.
Nothing except stubborn determination. He stuck his jaw out and fastened his gaze on Roscord, refusing to show weakness to the island warlord. "I wanted to be on my feet to face him again, your majesty. He struck me down last time."
"Last time," Taishm said neutrally, studying Rasim as though he was something unexpected and interesting.
Rasim didn't want to be interesting. He wanted to prove Roscord a danger, and he wanted to sleep. It wasn't very heroic, but he thought he'd had enough of heroics for a while.
The longer Taishm looked at him, though, the more determined he felt, and that lent him strength. He straightened up, no longer leaning on Kisia and Desimi, and squared his shoulders. He was a journeyman in the Seamasters' Guild, he had slain a sea serpent and discovered a threat at the heart of the Northlands. He could, by Siliaria's seas, stand up straight and face his enemy. Holding on to that thought, he met Taishm's eyes, and thought he saw the faintest smile cross the king's mouth.
"Tell me about last time," Taishm said.
"I met him in the islands, your majesty. I was trying to help a girl he'd kidnapped escape, and he almost killed me."
Roscord spat a derisive sound. "I've never seen this boy before in my life."
Taishm looked at Roscord. They were nearly of a height, Rasim realized, though Taishm seemed taller because he was so slender. The king made the most of that perceived height just then, looking ever so slightly down his nose at Roscord. "Is that so," he asked. "Then why did you think he was dead?"
Relief slammed through Rasim as hard as horror seemed to take Roscord: the warlord turned white, while Rasim's feet felt like they'd left the floor. Taishm had heard Roscord's unwise comment, and had only waited until the right moment to reveal it. Rage flew across Roscord's face, then sheeted toward panic as he failed to have an instant, acceptable answer for the king. "They should all be dead," he finally spluttered. "All of them, dangerous mad witches that they are! Your own city rises against you, Taishm!"
Taishm's eyebrows lifted in a show of polite disbelief. Roscord went from white to red, realizing his second mistake: he should never have used the king's first name. His beautiful voice turning hoarse, he croaked, "Your majesty," but it was too late. He had, for a moment at least, lost the king's faith.
Taishm, without so much as looking at Rasim, said, "Speak."
"I caught him murdering his own soldiers, your majesty, so their deaths could be blamed on the kidnapped girl's mother, so she could be put to death. He tried to kill me then."
"Someday," Taishm said, "someday I think I'd like to hear how a Seamaster journeyman ended up in a position to discover an islander's murderous tendencies, but today I'll forgo that. William, is this true?"
Rage worked across Roscord's face, answer enough. Taishm closed his eyes a moment, shoulders loosening in defeat. "We've been friends since childhood, William. Since those wretched letters my mother used to make me write. Practice at diplomacy, she told me. You can never know when you might need allies from afar. I had thought, when you came here, that she had finally been proven right. That my people had tired of a weak king, and only my distant friend cared enough to come so far and warn me of what he'd learned. But that isn't it, is it. You saw a weak king, just like everyone else, and now I think you've come to try to take my throne away from me."
Every word hit Rasim in the chest like a hammer. He hadn't realized Taishm and Roscord had known each other. Neither, from the murmurs of astonishment racing through the throne hall, had most others. No wonder. No wonder Taishm had listened to Roscord's warnings about the Seamasters' Guild. Sympathy crashed through Rasim. Taishm had almost nothing, only a crown he'd never wanted, and now not even the long-time friendship he'd believed in.
Roscord inhaled deeply, obviously reaching for control over his lovely voice. He achieved it, speaking softly. Convincingly, Rasim thought: even he was almost convinced as Roscord murmured, "I'm not your enemy, your majesty. The Seamasters have allied themselves with the Northmen—"
Taishm gave Rasim a sharp, questioning look. Rasim swallowed, but nodded. "Not to displace you, your majesty. We came across an idea that was too awful to be true, and thought we'd better get some proof before we tried to tell you. We thought the Northmen could help us, maybe, and—" He faltered, because the last part was painfully accurate: "And because we thought they'd be a distraction while we did our investigating."
Taishm barked a laugh. "They are that, at least."
Rasim blurted, "Yes, but the ones you've got here are working for Roscord, not the Seamasters. They're distracting you by making you distrust your own people, not distracting the people while you find out the truth."
"And what is the truth, young man?"
Rasim didn't want to answer. Not in front of hundreds of witnesses, any of whom might know something about the Great Fire and the Northern queen's death. But there was no choice. Even a hesitation would make him look like a liar, and he couldn't afford that. Afraid but determined, he opened his mouth to speak.
Roscord snatched his sword from its sheath and leaped at Rasim.
Chapter 32
More magic than Rasim had ever felt a single person use surged through Desimi, and a wall of water slammed upward through the marble floor.
Chunks of stone broke and slid on it like a wet avalanche. Smaller shards flew high and rained back down, making the water deadly. The throne room audience screamed and scattered, running for the doors. Roscord flew backward, slammed across the width of the room by a forceful bolt that Desimi channeled with immense confidence. A second, narrower bolt of water crashed into Taishm's chest and shoved him halfway back to his throne, putting him well out of danger.
Desimi collapsed. Rasim caught some of his weight, and Kisia slid around them to help get Desimi to the floor gently. She put her fingers at his throat, then snapped her gaze to Rasim. "He's alive. Go!"
For a bewildering instant Rasim still didn't know what had happened, much less where he should go. Then he followed the trail of wet destruction to the room's far side. Roscord was gone already, not defeated, just running through a door nearby. Lorens, the Northern prince, was already
after him, his own sword drawn and long legs eating the distance. Taishm, abandoned by both his counselors, stood where he was, purely astonished.
Rasim was running before he was fully upright, fingertips scrabbling for purchase on the wet floor. The marble was cold, wet, slippery under his bare feet: dangerous. Rasim reached for magic, shoving water away to make a clear path and drying his feet with witchery as well. He slipped once, but then had his feet under him. He was half a room's length behind Lorens when the Northern prince reached the door. Rasim raced into the next room, then, following wet footsteps, into the room beyond, and came to a shocked stop.
Roscord lay in a pool of his own blood with Lorens kneeling over him.
Lorens looked up, icy calculation in his blue eyes. That slid away in an instant, leaving regret and horror so profound Rasim doubted what he'd seen in the first place. "I had to," Lorens said grimly. "We'll get no answers from him now, but he was a master swordsman. I had no choice."
Rasim nodded frantically, a tiny scared action that had no thought behind it. He wanted to believe Lorens. He had loathed and feared Roscord, and he liked the yellow-haired Northern prince very much. But cold trickled through his chest, then lodged in his belly, growing larger by the moment.
Roscord had no weapon in hand. His sword wasn't even within sight, and Rasim had the faintest recollection of seeing it against the throne room wall, probably dropped when Desimi smashed him. And one of Roscord's hands was sliced open like he'd thrust out his hands to stop a knife and had failed. His expression, too, was one of wide-eyed shock, as if he'd never anticipated the blow that took his life.
Lorens took in Rasim's expression, and, without speaking, crawled beneath a nearby table. He emerged with a long knife in his free hand. It was unbloodied, but clearly deadly. "I kicked it away," he said quietly. "You don't trust me anymore, do you?"
Sick exhaustion rose in Rasim's stomach. "I'm sorry. It's been a bad day. Are you all right? What are you doing here? Why are the Northern ships barricading the harbor if you're here? What have you told the king?"
"I stowed away on Derek's ship," Lorens said cheerfully, though his humor faded quickly. "When I realized he was working with Roscord I thought I should go along with the story. I hoped if I seemed to be one of them, some of the other conspirators might betray themselves to me."
"You almost let Guildmaster Isidri die for that!"
The Northman's blue eyes became icy. "This may be war, Rasim. There are casualties in war. One guildmaster is nothing to the safety of a city."
Rasim's stomach lurched with sickness again. He could see Lorens's point, though he didn't like it at all. Lorens waited a moment, then got to his feet and offered a cautious hand of friendship. "I'm glad to see you, Rasim. I thought you were dead, in that moment."
Still uncertain, Rasim took Lorens's hand. "I thought so too. Desimi saved me. I can't believe he saved me. The whole idea was to get Roscord to do something stupid, but..."
But Rasim hadn't really thought about what it would be like for the island warlord to actually attack him in cold blood. He hadn't thought about how to survive that, and he knew that without Desimi's help, he wouldn't have. "I have to go see if he's all right. He used way too much magic."
"He'll recover." Taishm spoke from the doorway, startling Rasim. He came in, dry and tidy despite Desimi's deluge. Water witchery, Rasim thought: any water witch could at least dry himself, and the king seemed to have more power than he was generally believed to. He went to Roscord's body, crouching beside him in silence before finally asking, "What did you suspect him of, Rasim? Why did he strike rather than let you speak?"
There was no one else in the room. Only a king, a prince, and a journeyman, and the prince already knew Rasim's suspicions. Rasim slumped against the same table Roscord's knife had been under, and spoke mostly to his own feet. "I didn't have any kind of proof it was Roscord, your majesty. It's just that the fire last month didn't look like an accident. We were afraid if it wasn't, then neither was the Great Fire. And if it wasn't, then maybe Queen Annaken had had been murdered, not died accidentally, and...Guildmaster Isidri thought we needed support from outside if we were going to find out. The Northmen seemed like good allies. She was their princess too, after all."
Taishm's eyebrows quirked upward a little. "And you now think Roscord may have been the mastermind?"
Rasim shook his head. "I don't know, your majesty, except why else would he have tried to kill me? He fought hard to gain power in the islands. Maybe he was even more ambitious than that. The Northmen have been under attack, too. Their water supplies are being poisoned by witchery. If Roscord has been behind all of this, he's..."
"Thorough," Lorens supplied dryly. Both Rasim and Taishm made sounds in their throats. Not quite laughter, but a sort of raw humor regardless. Lorens half smiled, then stepped forward. "Your majesty, I haven't been entirely forthcoming with you. It became clear to me on my journey here that my captain was in league with Roscord. I allowed them to continue their charade, even to the point of encouraging you to dismantle the Seamasters' Guild, in hopes of exposing more of their brethren. We have offered an alliance to the Seamasters, but it's not represented by those ships out there. They're a faction we're eager to rid ourselves of."
Taishm's expression grew increasingly grim as Lorens spoke. "You ought to have included me in your plotting, Prince Lorens. Arson and murder aren't new thoughts to any of us. Your guildmaster should have come to me."
"Your majesty," Rasim said in a small, painful voice, "I'm sorry, your majesty, but you stood to gain from arson and murder."
Taishm went very still. His voice was strange when he spoke. "Is that what my people think of me? That I would murder my cousin's wife and child, and hope grief poisoned him to his grave, so that I could have the throne?"
"No!" Embarrassment brought scalding tears to Rasim's eyes. "No, your majesty, it's just that once I started thinking about who could gain from murder, there were so many possibilities, and you were one of them. That's why we thought we needed to go to the north. We thought they would have spies here who might be able to tell us something. Only it all went...wrong." He gestured at Roscord's body, then rubbed his hand over his eyes. "And the Northern ships out there in the harbor have magic, and—oh, goddess, the ships! Isidri! We have to—!"
He was running before he'd finished the thought, much less the sentence. Running back the way he'd come, only this time with a king and a prince in his wake. They tore back through the throne room, stragglers from the crowd gaping and clearing the way.
Kisia, unchained now, still knelt beside Desimi, who was half-conscious. She watched Rasim race by, and over the pounding of his own footsteps he heard her say, "Get up, Desimi. We don't want to miss this."
It was astonishing how much easier it was to run out of the palace with a king in tow than it had been to run into it. A dozen steps outside the doors, Rasim knew already that his half-considered fears were right: the air was freezing, as cold as it had been in the north, and the harbor's blue was all wrong, icy and cold.
A vast weight of magic rolled in from the Northern ships. Rasim remembered Masira's belief that they controlled cold and heat the same way Ilyaran witches might control air or water, and was convinced. The Northerners were freezing the harbor, icing the air, killing crops and fish with their magic. There would be nothing to feed the city, and it would be weakened for years to come. Roscord's ambitions had known no end.
Rasim stumbled, looking back over his shoulder as he ran. There, and there, within the palace windows: light glinting brilliantly, but away from the setting sun. More than one person in Roscord's pay was signaling to the Northern ships, ordering them to act. Rasim had known it in his gut from the moment he had seen the Northern ships: they had only waited on a signal to tear the city apart. The Ilyaran fleet had backed down, not providing the excuse, but the chaos within the palace had been more than enough.
The king, Rasim thought with cold certainty, had been mean
t to end up dead. Desimi had saved not only Rasim, but also Taishm. That should be heroics enough for a lifetime.
A flare of magic dragged Rasim's attention back to the harbor. He staggered to a stop, astonished at the view. He could see the entire slope of the city from the palace grounds, all of it lit red and gold as evening came on. The whole curve of the docks and harbor lay below them, easily visible.
A single woman stood on the docks, a point of warmth against the cold. Guildmaster Isidri, her hands uplifted and magic stronger than even Desimi had used pouring out of her.
In front of her, the sea melted. Crystal blue came back into the water, its white sheen fading. It crept forward inches at a time, one woman fighting against the strength of five ships.
Someone else joined her, someone broad-shouldered but female. Masira, Rasim guessed, and with Masira came others. All the disgraced guild members, from apprentices to shipwrights and seamasters, all of them who had been left in the city and who had hidden near the guildhalls to protect their home. They all came to join Isidri, and the weight of their magic grew greater yet. Now the ice melted feet and yards at a time, crackling and snapping as it ran back toward the Northern ships.
"Come on," someone whispered, and Rasim discovered Kisia and Desimi at his side. "Come on," Kisia whispered again. "The harbor life will die if they don't win, and fast. Ilyara will be destroyed. Come on!" she cried aloud, tears running down her face. "Come on, Isidri!"
Taishm stepped up to Rasim's other side, glancing beyond Rasim at Kisia. He nodded once, seeming to accept or understand something, and then his voice cracked and rumbled, louder than thunder. Rasim staggered with its weight, at the domination of sky magic allowing a single man's words to be heard across the breadth of Ilyara: "Seamasters, fight!"
Chapter 33
For the rest of his life, Rasim would remember the explosion of ice and water that erupted at Taishm's command. He had felt the fleet fight together before, struggling to save themselves against the sea serpent. That was nothing compared to the fury of witchery unleashed against an enemy of Ilyara.