by Dana Swift
I can’t believe he didn’t recognize me or at least suspect who I was. While I’m shocked, pride also slithers in. I’m winning this one. I have the upper hand after all. But how could he not have figured it out? I gave him such clues, practically waited for him to ask.
At the end, a part of me wanted to tell him, let him off the hook so our next meeting wouldn’t be even more awkward. But I couldn’t do it. I’ll let the awkwardness fade, the memory settle so that it can wear away a bit at the edges. I only now seem to process that I met Jatin, sat across from him. It’s almost laughable, but my anger at the Vencrin balances the scales or absolves the embarrassment. Five silvers! Five.
It takes me ten minutes of hard walking to get back to Basu’s. I had hoped the hike would calm me and get my head straight so I can properly threaten Basu and get to the bottom of this. Nope, the issue dwells for half a mile.
Children run up to me, materializing from the alleyways and into the bright streaking sun. I’m dirty, with a tear in my skirt, but the gleam of my silks must still smell of opportunity.
“Ten coppers, ten coppers,” they say, all smiles and big eyes. Hands reach upward, some with a Touch wrapped around their wrists, others naked. I search for my small sack of coins. But it’s gone. That boy, whose arms wound around me, tears rolling down his checks. That sneaky little—
“I have nothing,” I say, happy I don’t have to lie. I try to not give away any silver and gold like this, for it will find its way to funding Bloodlurst. Some of the older children, near my age, already wear the splotchy red sign of overuse in the crooks of their elbows.
Vencrin drugs have infected the East Village. Yes, they feel good. Yes, Bloodlurst in particular can make you more powerful for a limited time. And that can mean a day’s work down at the docks, making skyglider deliveries, or even illegal cage casting. But the drugs are slowly draining my people of their magic, of their lives. And now the East Village isn’t getting firelight either. Which means Basu, a bizarre old man who has been a family friend for years, has betrayed us. A man who let one-fourth of my city suffer due to vastly unfair prices and slide further under the control of criminals and druggers. Firelight is the first step in bringing light to the darkness, protecting people from the Vencrin who roam the streets and dispense quick boosts of power to teenagers. Without it…
My chest hurts. I feel like I’m going to explode.
I round the corner to Basu’s street and the kids slink and shuffle away. When Riya sees me, her shoulders unravel, but when a closer look confirms my safety, she breathes in anger.
“ ‘It’ll take five minutes,’ she says. ‘I’ll be right back,’ she says. What the blood, Adraa? You are covered in dust and…and…” Her speech slows. Gods, she knows. “You burned out?” Her voice trills up in a question, but she only needs a jerk of my head in verification. The shame of losing my magic creeps back in like heat. I’m sticky with the disgrace of it.
“I’ll apologize in full later. Right now, we have a problem.” I step closer to her. At the word problem, Riya shuts down her irritation, open for what is coming instead of yelling about what has happened.
“Tell me.”
“The Vencrin are stealing my firelight and up-charging it. Three coppers is five silvers for those near the docks.”
“What? Those—”
“Also, I ran into Raja Jatin.” I brush a hand through my hair, suddenly aware of its tangled state. And I had considered telling him who I was!
Her jaw unhinges. “Wait, what?”
Under normal conditions I’d probably laugh at her gawking. I drop my hand and even the leftover embarrassment evaporates. Five silvers. “We can talk later. Right now, I need to speak with Basu.”
I step into Basu’s shop, and though I’m not trying to be quiet, it’s unusually soundless. Nice new purple door. Hardwood floors. He doesn’t have bells hanging over the threshold or even fabric cloaking the doorway. Both are normal precautions against thieves shrouded by black camouflaging spells. I watch him as he frantically grabs orbs out of my bags. He inspects, places, inspects, places each ball of light into boxes. Greed gleams in his eyes. How had I never seen it before?
“What’s going on, Basu?”
“Oh, Lady Adraa! So glad you have returned. Did you catch that thief?” He extends one hand, waiting.
“Sorry, too fast,” I say, my tone biting.
“Huh, well, you do look worn, my dear.”
“Don’t call me ‘dear.’ ”
“Oh, my apologies, Lady.” He continues his task. Inspect. Place. Inspect. Place.
This isn’t working; in fact, this process is boiling the anger, cooking it. If he didn’t hear the edge in my voice the first time, I need to make it sharper. “What’s going on, Basu?”
“What, my d—” He restarts after a long look at my face. “Have I done something to offend you?”
“If not you, then someone you work with.” I might not be able to cast ice spells, but my voice drips frost.
Basu stops his inspection. “I don’t quite follow.”
“I know, Basu. Five silvers for the firelight. My firelight.”
“I sell them for three coppers, like you ask.” He lifts his hands in one of those open shrugs. “Nothing funny.”
“Basu.”
“I have been a friend of the Belwars for two generations. I wouldn’t dare tarnish—”
I grab his kurta and push him against the wall. Empty orb canisters clatter. My left arm flames red and his collar singes. So does my sleeve, but it won’t hurt me like it will him.
“Adraa! Calm down,” Riya warns. But she doesn’t know how often I do this, how I’ve perfected it.
“He’s responsible, Riya. Let me deal with this.” Sometimes I wish I could control my anger better. I’m suffocating, the lump in my throat making it difficult to say the next words, but I can’t stop. The girl I pretend to be at night emerges. Five bloody silvers, Vencrin, betrayal—each detail pumps through me. “I know it’s you.” There is literally no one else in the East Village I distribute to, which kind of narrows down the suspects. “So talk,” I command.
“It’s supply and demand, Adraa. Even if you worked all night and all day you couldn’t supply the entire country or, blood, the entire continent. It’s a cute experiment for Belwar. But this is commerce and profit.”
I shake him against the wall when he doesn’t continue. “You disrupted an entire market; you cannot control something like that. The rest of the world wants to see in the dark too.”
I give him a cold, hard stare, and the flames on my arm jolt.
“Okay, okay, there is this one distributor. Said he would pay triple for half of my firelight supply. I have a family same as everyone.”
“Name the distributor.”
“I don’t know the man in charge, just the guy, practically a boy, who picks them up.”
“Name. Now.”
“Goes by Nightcaster, obviously a cage-casting name, but I didn’t ask. The money…it was more than I had ever been offered for anything. Please.”
“Nightcaster?” I drop Basu and he tumbles against the counter. He really is working with the Vencrin, then.
Riya gives me a look of wide-eyed confusion. “Who is Nightcaster?” she asks.
I deflate into stumbling surprise. I know the name all too well. Once a sport, cage casting has turned into an illegal fighting ring where wizards and witches battle and the audience gambles and soaks up the violence. The biggest ring in the country, the one run by the Vencrin, is only a few blocks from here. It’s called the Underground, not the most creative name given its whereabouts, but Nightcaster is one of its prime contenders.
I know because I am too.
“You bloody bitch.” Basu pats down the sparks on his kurta. The skin around his neckline is no more than sunburned. I’ll s
how him how bitchy I can—
Riya grabs my arm. “Rani, don’t.” She’s using the Rani talk on me? I glance between her and Basu. In both their eyes I must look enraged, a fire needing to be extinguished. I relax, and behind me, Riya sighs.
“You won’t sell to them ever again,” I command.
“I can’t do that. They expect—”
“You seem to think I care about what the Vencrin expect.”
“V-V-Vencrin?” Basu stammers.
“You don’t even realize who you are selling to?” Pathetic, just pathetic.
“Please, Rani.” Basu steps around the last saddlebag of firelight, protective and fatherly. Fatherly protection only looks nice when it’s a living being; any inanimate object and one just looks absurd. That’s Basu, greedy and ridiculous to try to plead for something that is not his. I’m firelight’s mother.
He continues, oblivious. “Give me this batch and then I can work something out with them. I need time. I need this shipment.”
“I’m stopping this now.”
“Expensive firelight is better than no firelight. You would be destroying the East Village if you take it. They count on my supplies, my deliveries.”
“They count on me. You are the one who has failed them.”
My left arm extends and before I can think about the spell, I cast. “Yatana Agni Tviserif,” I chant over and over until the first word spills into the last. I don’t know exactly what I expect to happen, but when the orbs start to quiver, I chant a little louder, a little angrier. Maybe I could make them defective or something. But in my head I imagine it: the firelight leaving their containers and Basu’s control and coming back to me.
“What are you doing? Stop!” Basu shouts.
Then it isn’t just the orbs vibrating but also the magic inside them. An orb-filled box crashes to the ground. The clattering drowns out Basu’s cries. Even Riya tries to yell into the rattle of noise. The orbs, my magic, they are obeying me, trying desperately to reconnect. It’s only a few at first, but with another chant, hundreds burst from the orbs or ghost through the sphere’s seams and fly toward my left hand. The fire turns into red smoke as it amasses and slithers up my arm. So much power! I’ve never tasted such strength. This came from…me?
I breathe for a moment as Basu and Riya stare in silence. Then I reach toward the last saddlebag and Basu panics. I see the spell on his lips a moment before it’s cast.
“Noooo!” Basu and Riya both roar. Riya thrusts herself in front of me as I begin the counterspell. She pushes me to the ground and hurls a purple shield spell. It’s too late. Basu had three seconds on her, easy. His yellow light breaks through Riya’s half-crafted shield and swerves around her, blazing toward me. It would be easier to concentrate if I weren’t falling through the air, but whatever. Riya had good intentions and I can see everything, feel every drop of my magic hovering on my Touch and ready to explode. I hit the ground as Basu’s yellow spell hits my counterspell in midair. I can taste his magic like it was uttered from my own mouth. A knockout spell. Oh, Basu. You really thought you were going to get away with this.
It takes only a second for my rebound spell to swallow Basu’s magic and redirect itself. In this moment my Touch seems to have a personality of its own, and it can feel easy victory. No contest. The red smoke smacks Basu’s chest and blows him against the counter. A moment passes in which he staggers to gain his footing. I sent a minimal counterspell. It shouldn’t even knock him…Basu’s eyes go wide. He slumps, and slides down the counter, and with a thump his butt hits the ground. Never mind, I guess it was enough to render him unconscious. Riya was right. Maybe I don’t realize how powerful a red forte I truly am. Maybe I could have really hurt him.
“Adraa!” Riya shouts.
“I’m fine, I’m fine.” I wave her off. “Though this is the second time today I have rolled in the dirt.”
“I was only trying—”
“I know.”
She helps me stand and I brush dirt from my sore hip. I’m going to need a little pink magic today to ease the bruises.
“What in Wickery did you do? Before he cast.”
“I took it back.” I clench my left hand. It’s the opposite of a burnout; it’s a renewal. Instead of feeling like jelly, my arm is solid steel.
“That was dumb. You don’t know what reabsorbing all that power could have done to you.”
“Yeah, I know,” I admit. I hadn’t exactly meant for it to happen.
“How did you do it? I don’t remember ever learning that kind of spell. I don’t even know anyone who has done that.”
“I…made it up.”
“Made it up? Gods, you and your experiments.”
“I created firelight, it responds to me. I just kind of did it.” Though I don’t think I should ever try it again.
“Well, you freaked him out.” Riya stares down at Basu. “That worm! Doesn’t he know he could be arrested for casting against a Belwar?” The anger seems to have migrated. Somehow, the fight calmed me, but Riya’s failure to protect me ignites her, must bite into her self-worth.
“You did great, Riya.”
“I failed. If that was anyone with a higher Touch or if you hadn’t seen it coming…”
“You won’t let it happen again.”
We share a long look.
“So what now? Should I arrest him?” She kicks at Basu’s boot.
“Guess so. Bring him to my father’s attention, ask him for help in the matter. He was my parents’ friend, after all.”
“This is such a mess.”
I squat next to Basu, feel for the rhythmic beat of his pulse. “It’ll be my job one day, right? To clean up messes?”
Riya smiles and rubs my cheek with her sleeve. She shows me the dirt. “You look the part for sure.”
I rub at my face too and the sleeve comes back dusty. “Gods, and I met my fiancé like this.”
It is not always pleasant to work with the Dome Guard. Formality drips from the interaction, or maybe saturates is a better word. Riya and I explain the entire situation, and the leader, an older, gray-haired guard, shrugs, having to trust me when an unconscious wizard sits at our feet.
I would like to request that Basu be delivered to the holding orbs below the palace, but they were abandoned after Mother’s arrival on the mainland years ago. She couldn’t stand sleeping above criminals. I can’t blame her. On Pire Island, prison cells dangle off the cliffs, just in case, you know, someone should break free. In Belwar, the only prison, the Dome, lies in the northwest, far from the coast and the ships, and close to Mount Gandhak. It’s a stone sphere of a building standing in the shadow of a volcano, hence its name. It’s daunting enough to be frightening. When Basu awakens he’s sure going to have a bad surprise.
Two guards restrain Basu with Dome cuffs, which prohibit him from casting any type of magic. The cuffs glow bright yellow as he’s loaded into a windowless carriage. One guard, with a sharp, strong beak of a nose, stares at me throughout, even as he casts orange coils to help him with the weight of Basu’s limp body. It’s a little unsettling, his staring, like we are playing an uncalled-for game. If he asks me to smile I’m going to lose it.
“Your father might have to hold trial if the truth cannot be cast out clearly,” says the leader, who’s taking down my story.
I turn my attention back to him and hope Nose Guard finishes his job quickly. “I understand the casting accords with truth spells. I do not care about his spell against me. I care about the corruption.”
“Will you inform your father?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you.” The guard ruffles his graying hair, which makes him look young, almost childish. “Saves me a lot of paperwork.”
“Well, thank the gods. The paperwork.” He doesn’t grasp in the slightest what Basu has done, does he? Doesn’
t realize what five silvers would mean for a poor family. How much harder life is without fire; how vulnerable my people are to those that lurk in the shadows.
The guard clears his throat and places two fingers near his Adam’s apple. “Lady.”
I’m this close to not paying my respects, not placing my fingers against my throat, but in the end I do. They are moving a body for me, after all. That sounds grim. A part of me kind of likes it.
* * *
Riya and I are not nine meters into the air and away from Basu’s hut before she salts me with so many questions I could be preserved for a century. They string between my father, Nightcaster, and Basu, which only serves to remind me of how the latter has changed sides.
“Riya, give me a minute to think. A whole lot has happened in the span of three hours. We are going to tell my father immediately; I have no clue who this Nightcaster is; and yes, maybe I’ll question Basu further. You good?” Guilt about lying snakes up my belly. I don’t think I need to question Basu. He gave me what I needed when he dropped Nightcaster’s name. But to explain would blow my cover. I cannot let Riya know that I sneak out at night, let alone what I accomplish.
“All right,” she agrees.
Exactly sixty seconds pass before Riya slowly slides into “So, what was he like?” Her voice is curiosity mixed with disbelief, a tone children use when they see my dad fire off his magic at the Festival of Color.
“Who?”
“Who else? Raja Jatin.”
“Oh.” I resettle on Hubris and look toward Mount Gandhak. He must surely be there by now or very close. “What you would expect: cold, arrogant, and quite tall…”
“Annnd?” Riya drawls.
“And what?”
“And what? Are you kidding me? And, did you like him? Did he seem to be a good person, a good match, a good anything? Give me something of substance here.”
“I shouldn’t fret over boys, an older, wiser friend recently—”
“Oh, come on.”
I sigh and let the wind talk for me for a minute. Finally, I twist to face her. “The truth is I don’t know, Riya. Both he and his guard had no idea it was me they were talking to, but considering they thought I was some East Villager, they didn’t treat me badly. The guard was easier to read and seemed friendlier. He…well, he carried me after I burned out.”