by Kim Wedlock
"Well I've not mastered the ability to turn invisible just yet." He withdrew his hands and rubbed them together, attempting to spread the candles' feeble warmth before eagerly taking the cup of steaming tea the chestnut-haired woman had poured for him. After a sigh of relief, he sat down and looked across them all dubiously. They mirrored his tone immediately. "The Crown is becoming more and more private. There are more meetings taking place without liaisons. It feels like something is going on, and they're cutting the other authorities out of it."
"Such as?"
"I don't know. But I don't like it. The king won't see me."
"You think he's scheming something?" The chestnut woman asked.
"Or he's afraid. The Order's attacks are becoming more frequent. He may be getting paranoid - and not unreasonably so if Salus has people in the palace. And Salus won't see me, either, so I can't gauge for myself his present state nor what he might be up to. He's becoming reclusive."
"And reckless," Taliel added grimly. "This snow is his doing." She looked across their startled faces with some surprise of her own. "You didn't really think it was the Order, did you?"
Malson shook his head, his cup held between both hands while its steam licked his face. "He needs to be stopped. We need to escalate our efforts. We've been pulling strings for too long, we need to take action once and for all." He looked back towards Taliel. "You say Rathen was going to the Order?"
"Word is they've been and gone, my lord, and with the suddenly purposeful movements of mages, it seems he has said or done something to spur them into action."
"Or has he further incited the rebellion?"
Her eyes hardened. "You wanted us to involve ourselves with him," she said with only the faintest trace of insult. "You must trust him. More likely, he has successfully encouraged them to increase defences and prevent more disasters by either Salus's hand or the magic itself."
His youthful eyes watched her closely. "There's more."
Her austerity slipped. "Yes. He spoke of provoking Salus in order to get a read on him. I don't know what he has in mind, but his companions didn't seem averse to the idea. When or how, though, I don't know. Knowing him, however, he would want as much control over the matter as possible. It's likely that he would set a trap so it would take place on his terms."
"Mm. If he sets a trap then he'll have to plant bait, and if he wants a read on Salus, he may just be the bait himself. Which Salus will take - but not directly or easily. Which means that he would have time to plan. Probably not much time, but some - which in turn means that there's an opportunity to learn of it and pass it on. And there's no doubt that Rathen will want your advice on the matter before it happens."
"We should do what we can to put everything in their favour, then," David declared. "If Salus knows he'll be going up against Rathen Koraaz, he will take precautions. He won't go alone, but there are a few key individuals he's likely to choose. Those he trusts. We can distract them, ensure they're unavailable when he discovers the bait so he can't call them back as easily."
"And perhaps ensure that one of us goes with him instead. He'll take mages - what about Vari? Or Kaz?"
The chestnut woman shook her head. "Vari is out on a prolonged assignment and I'm not strong enough. He might be open to taking Oliver, though. He's a cell guard, after all. He's always close by and is more accustomed to combat than Vari and I put together."
"You may be right, there," Malson mused. "But sending one of us along with him is a wise move. Internal sabotage and a reduced chance of fatalities. Otherwise, we find out what Salus will plan to do - perhaps try to steer those plans ourselves - and give Rathen Koraaz as much information as we can." His eyes fell upon Taliel. She stared back levelly without protest. He nodded and returned to the others. "But as brave as Rathen and his group are, it won't be enough. We, however, can go further. He has agents in the palace, I will find a way to hamper them, but we need to reduce his numbers elsewhere, too."
"We can knock his confidence if we strike the right people," Taliel suggested. "He's paranoid and still questioning the capabilities of his subordinates. His attempts to reinforce our results with promotion and further conditioning don't seem to have had the results he was hoping for. He rushed into it, and not all the conditioning has taken. But if we break his confidence in just a handful of his preferred agents, we can knock him further off balance."
"Portians, you mean?" Kaz asked, but Taliel shook her head.
"They would have the greatest impact, but they would also be more difficult. Phidipans will give us faster results and dig deeper into the doubts he already has."
"And you know who these trusted phidipans are?"
She looked back at Malson and smiled strangely. "I do."
"Good. Then make it happen. If we whittle away at his confidence, he'll hesitate."
"Or he'll strike harder and faster," one of the others remarked dubiously, but Malson shook his head with a calculating look, and slowly his eyes drifted back onto Taliel.
"No. He'll hesitate. Because we can make him doubt himself as well as his subordinates. We can discourage and delay action, we can encourage responses. We're already burrowing into him." He watched Taliel's expression. It was hard and unreadable, but while there was no enthusiasm, there remained no protest either. She didn't break his stare. "We can break him from the inside, and then we, and Rathen, will have a fighting chance."
Her chin rose decisively, and he nodded his approval.
"How exactly are we supposed to knock his confidence in his favourite operatives?" Kaz was asking, but when the curtain was pulled back and Renan, the grim drunk outside, slipped into their meeting, their hearts jumped into their throats.
"What is it?" Malson hissed, rising from his seat in a frenzy at the sight of alarm in the man's eyes.
"There's a mage here - I'm sure it's a mage - and he doesn't look right." He didn't wait for response or reaction. He slipped immediately back out through the curtain and returned to his spot outside, perfectly positioned to survey the entire tavern and the comings and goings of anyone that should pass through.
"Kaz," Malson began, but she was already moving towards the curtain. No one missed the foreboding look the candles caught in her eyes. She sensed something, and it unsettled her greatly.
They stared after her under tense silence. A moment later the incessant noise outside rose into shouts, but the panic that incited them into motion passed as raucous laughter quickly followed. But their guard didn't drop, and when Kaz returned, her eyes were wide and harrowed, clouded by terror, as though a personal fear was being realised and demonstrated right in front of her. They stared at her warily, reading the situation in a flat second. Taliel and Bheid hurried past her to see for themselves.
A scream shattered the air like broken glass. Startled shouts followed, chairs screeched across the floor as people leapt from their seats, and feet pounded frantically over wood in all directions.
"An attack?" Malson asked in utter disbelief as Taliel and Bheid burst back in, but Kaz's quiet voice cut through the chaos like a knife.
"It's not an attack. Get out. Now."
No one waited for clarification. They fled the room in an instant, splitting off in different directions and finding their own way out, avoiding the conspicuous crowds that barrelled towards the doors and clambered out through windows, a handful of mage hunters among them. Flashes of light flickered through the previously jovial tavern, bright, blinding lights that shunned the lanterns and sconces, while cracks, pops, cackles and sobs created a dreadful symphony of ruin the walls wouldn't soon forget.
Making for the privy door that lead into an alley, Taliel threw one final glance behind her. She saw the figure of flaming chestnut hair approaching the mad-eyed mage with a scar on his chin. She didn't try to stop her.
The tavern was in flames before she reached the end of the alley.
Chapter 54
Convinced that she'd missed something, Petra strained to listen through t
he darkness. The snow had muffled the air into a deathly silence; no nightlarks sang, no owls hooted. There was nothing but the occasional dampened thump of snow sliding from overloaded branches. Her measured footsteps stopped periodically in case the rhythmic crunch of snow was masking something, but there was nothing at all to be found.
She breathed uneasily and forced her hands away from her sword. Despite it all, she knew in her gut that there was nothing in these wooded slopes, and that the ominous feeling hounding her all evening was nothing more than general tension. It had been hanging over the whole group since they'd broached the idea of provoking the Arana four days ago - and that no one faced up to it seemed to make it even thicker.
She rolled her neck and dropped her shoulders, fighting the knots between them, and looked up to the sky through the frozen leaves for distance. There were no clouds overhead that night; the sky was as black as jet, studded with billions of silver pin-points. The snow's own brilliance shied back beneath it, but its chill remained rigid, made colder by the depth of the darkness, and the stillness felt unbreakable, as though even time hadn't been spared the frost's bite.
No one had seen even a trace of wildlife since the previous afternoon, and nothing - not even an Aranan agent - could trek across the ground or climb through the trees without announcing themselves. But, even though they couldn't be taken by surprise, and she was certain that these woods were empty, patrol remained a habit best left unbroken.
Petra drew herself back in and focused, setting aside the nagging feeling for vigilance.
Until another half hour passed and marked the fifth time she crossed Garon's route and found him absently rolling his shoulder. Finally, she stopped, and extended her blade from a practised grip. "Draw your sword."
He blinked at her in confusion. "I beg your pardon?"
She pointed it towards the shoulder he was still absently rolling even then, and fixed him with intention while he straightened somewhat defensively. "Exercise it."
"We'll wear ourselves out."
He sighed as she stepped out in front of him, blocking his path of escape. "We've been through this before. I'm not letting you get out of it this time. Draw. Your. Sword." She stared at him rigidly, then smiled with satisfaction as he complied at last, though with no small degree of objection.
He was barely ready when she struck him from the right, but he managed to deflect it all the same. He glared at her, but she merely grinned, withdrew, and struck quickly once more from the left, which again he blocked. When she withdrew a second time, however, he moved into a swift lunge led by two quick stabs, the first caught in a hurry by the flat of her blade, the second knocked aside. She darted immediately to the right and used his own momentum to get around behind him, but he slammed to an abrupt stop and spun about, lashing with his blade to catch her again. She was still grinning. He was not, but she saw his enthusiasm in his strikes. She knew he would walk away if he wasn't enjoying himself, and for that, she beamed all the more.
Their game came to a sudden halt at the sound of frantic footsteps, and they both spun with their blades at the ready, humour lost for gravity. Rathen slowed and looked from one to the other, his dark eyes wide with alarm. The pair sighed with relief. "It's fine," Petra assured him.
"I heard swords..." his brow dropped in bewilderment.
"We were just sharpening our skills," Garon explained, drawing himself back into his official demeanour. "Everything is fine. If there's a problem, rest assured we will call for you."
"Okay..." He looked again from one to the other, then slowly turned away, heading back towards the camp. Moments later, the clanging rose again.
The camp was nestled in a hollow beneath three towering boulders. The small fire burned brightly at its centre, though its light was hidden from the few passers by who might be out in this weather, and its heat bounced back from the stones that rose and met above to encase them. It was cramped, but it was warm, and that counted for the most.
Aria lay asleep in a tent beside the crackling flames, bundled in one of the Order's thick blankets, a little smile on her round and rosy face. Eyila and Anthis sat at the doorway of another, book and paper laid out beside them.
Eyila didn't look up as Rathen passed to stand beyond the boulders and stare out into the night. Her eyes were tied to the papers, looking between the two with great determination, considering the black, inky shapes on the page. Most she'd come to recognise - names, places, conjunctions, the marks that denoted questions and exclamations - and though there were a few words that had multiple spellings for the same sounds, she'd decided she would work out their distinction over time. Instead, her biggest challenge came from the subject matter. She was often sure she'd made a mistake when in fact she hadn't all, because the choices the characters made were so outrageous. Lost children who followed trails of cakes rather than searched for their own tracks to find their way back home, an old woman who loved children but lived alone in the woods, and who ultimately wished to eat said children rather than the cakes she slaved over or the game that roamed outside. And why weren't the parents looking for them? Had they so easily decided them lost beyond a hope? Could a parent truly be that incompetent? The idea had set an ache in her heart for the past two days. No, it made absolutely no sense. But these were the final pages. Confusion aside, if she could finish these two pages, she would have read a book.
Despite her concentration, she gradually became aware of Anthis's eyes upon her. There was nothing strange in that, nor in the flush of her own cheeks at the discovery, but while his eyes would flick away seamlessly the moment she looked up, she made no effort to try to hide her embarrassment. Their pale complexions had the strangest tendency to lay bare their feelings, but hers merely glowed. It made him stare a little harder, but she rather enjoyed it. No one had ever paid her much interest before. From the age of eleven she'd been a novitiate to the priestesses, then at sixteen an apprentice to the village healer. Her time had been scheduled, her future determined, and if she were deemed worthy of marriage, her partner would be chosen accordingly.
...And yet here she sat in unnatural snow, beneath the interested eyes of a near-stranger, a foreign book in her hands, far from a home forever lost to her. And a family forever lost to her.
The black shapes began to blur, and a lump formed in her throat.
"Are you all right?"
She looked up quickly and smiled at the furrow of concern that ruffled Anthis's handsome brow. "Fine." Her voice managed to escape the constriction. "Thank you."
"Are you sure? We can stop if you--"
"No." She smiled again to placate his confusion, and forced softness into her suddenly hardened voice. "I'd like to finish this tonight."
He nodded slowly as she returned to the book without waiting for argument, his concern flickering deeper, and listened as she read aloud and transcribed the words of each sentence as she went. She stumbled a few times, caught again by the characters' absurd decisions, but she made her way stubbornly towards the end.
His eyes tracked the words beside her voice, and upon the completion of the last, Anthis was already beaming with pride. It took him a moment too long to notice that her own smile was hollow. "Eyila..."
"Yes? I'm fine." But again she failed to convince him. Regret eased some soft honesty into her eyes. "I'm sorry, I'm just tired, that's all."
"Oh...well, it is late...and it's not an easy thing to do. Well done - truly."
She softened for a moment at the warmth of his smile and the affection he suddenly tried to hide from his eyes, but it didn't last. She doubted if she could even pull her lips into a smile with her hands.
But she didn't want to smile.
She rose abruptly to her feet, and he scrambled to follow, his face set in what now seemed to be perpetual confusion limned with a hovering injury. She didn't notice it, however; she'd turned her face away towards the gap in the hollow and the frozen world beyond it. "Thank you, Anthis. I'm going to meditate before I sleep. My mi
nd is busy. I'd like to quieten it."
Her voice had an edge of stone. Anthis said nothing as she walked away.
Rathen didn't notice her walk by. He didn't notice the countless minutes pass, nor the end of the distant, ringing swordplay, nor even the snow as it began to fall and melt upon his face. He was lost in yet another labyrinth of torment, caught in an endless, desperate struggle, racking his brain for a solution to the problem he'd been unable to shed and had tumbled far beyond his control. But he couldn't get past that first towering obstacle. Initially he'd ignored it and thought on ahead, but it seemed to grow while he wasn't watching it, until it loomed like a thick, black cloud that smothered all hope of the sun ever returning.
How, how was he ever going to do this?
His cold, stinging hands clenched into fists. Even as his thoughts cascaded, he was acutely aware of the magic humming in his veins. It surged like a mountain river, powerful, unstoppable yet contained within its frozen banks - but should he try to touch it, it would snatch him from the edge, toss him around and squeeze the life out of him in moments.
He hadn't dared to try for almost two weeks. There was no point. Nothing had changed. He couldn't use it. And yet, somehow, Kienza expected him to do just that even after rescuing him from the hands of his own magic again, and had offered her usual lack of helpfulness in the form of 'use it carefully' and 'face your situation', neither of which could reasonably fall into the category of 'advice'.
The Order had sensed nothing amiss in him; they couldn't see past his blood - which had undoubtedly been a mistake to divulge - and in knowing that, they would have considered him beyond their help before sparing even a moment to try. And so he hadn't asked. There would have been no point.
Which ultimately meant that the matter - every matter - rested squarely and entirely upon his own slumping shoulders.
They rounded further beneath the amassing weight. What he wouldn't give to be back beside his fire in his rock-shell home, listening to Oat bleat indignantly outside while Aria tried to plait her wool. When life had been quiet, simple and free of responsibility. And safe.