Winter Be My Shield

by Spurrier, Jo

  ‘And I’ve given it to you when I can, but this is important. It’s about the legion that was wiped out in the south.’

  Delphine sighed and fluffed her dark curls. ‘Oh, very well then, but try not to keep him out all night. The general says we’ll be at the temple within a week and I have a lot to do before then.’ To Isidro, she said, ‘Get your coat.’

  ‘Yes, madame.’

  Torren waited impatiently while Isidro pulled on his fur, his mittens and his boots, then snapped the manacle of a slave-chain around his wrist, blindfolded him and led him out into the cold.

  The metal was warm and it hummed faintly against his skin. That was an invention of Alameda’s, who was skilled with enchantments despite her youth. She’d invented it after one of these trips had frozen the metal to his skin, and Torren, too impatient to let it warm and come loose on its own, had simply pulled it free and taken a layer of skin with it. Now at least he didn’t risk frostbite every time the Battle-Mages wished to question him.

  He was allowed some limited freedoms in the Collegium quarter but he was never taken out of the academics’ little enclave without being masked. The Akharians were still very much aware of the fact that Rasten could invade his mind at any time and use him to spy on them. In this way, information such as the layout of the Akharian camp and the number of their troops was hidden from him.

  The interrogations had slackened after the first week or so of his enslavement, but had begun all over again following the rout in the south. They always began the same way, with the mage collecting him from Harwin’s tent, then leading him on a disorienting and chilling march through the camp. In the early days that alone had left him exhausted and in pain, but the good food and rest Delphine had promised had let him regain some strength and the enchantments Alameda had made finally let the shattered bones begin to heal, even if the harsher interrogations periodically set him back. He still moved cautiously, but one bad step was no longer enough to bring him to a faint. Physically he was the strongest he’d been since the duke had captured him in the village.

  He recognised the atmosphere of the interrogation tent the moment they led him through the door. It was warmer within and heady with the smell of spruce and smoke. When rough hands shoved him to the floor he was ready for it, and fought to keep himself from tensing as they stripped his coat from him and bound his hands behind his back again, wrapping the ropes over the splints and stones that supported his broken arm. It was always the same, and familiarity had given him the means to deal with the powerlessness and the fear. When they hauled him up onto his knees Isidro already felt as though he was watching all this from some remote point, a detached and dispassionate observer.

  Torren gazed down at him, pulling on a pair of fine leather gloves. There was a brazier in the tent that gave just enough heat to keep hypothermia at bay, while still leaving the air chilled enough to be uncomfortable.

  Torren wasn’t a true sadist — this was only a job to him. He would carry it out to the best of his abilities but he didn’t savour the task as others might, or spend the hours in between thinking of new and varied tactics to increase his pleasure in these moments. Isidro supposed it was something to be grateful for, but it disturbed him that he had become such a connoisseur of sadism.

  ‘I have received new information from the survivors of the Seventh Legion,’ Torren said. ‘Let me ask you this again, boy. How many Blood-Mages are there in Ricalan?’

  ‘Two that I know of, sir,’ Isidro said. ‘Kell and his apprentice, Rasten.’

  ‘And you’re sure of this?’

  ‘I can only speak of my own experience, sir, but in that respect yes, I’m sure.’

  ‘How then do you explain the fact that survivors of the massacre of the Seventh Legion have reported seeing another mage, a female, before the inferno struck?’

  He had been waiting for this. ‘Sir, in a village under attack anyone capable of taking up arms would have been fighting, women among them. Perhaps they were confused as to what they saw.’

  ‘Are you saying these men lied?’

  ‘No, sir. They must have been mistaken. Kell does not permit other mages to exist in Ricalan outside of his control.’

  ‘You have heard nothing of a female mage in Ricalan?’

  ‘No, sir,’ Isidro said.

  ‘No rumours, no whispered tales?’

  ‘No, sir.’ It was a gamble to deny it entirely. For all he knew one of the slaves had already sold the information, or their whisperings had been overheard by one of their guards. But if he so much as admitted the possibility, his captors would press him for more information. Outright denial was safer than making up some story.

  ‘Then what explanation do you have for what our men saw?’

  ‘As I said, sir, they must have been mistaken,’ Isidro said.

  Torren struck him across the face with the back of his hand. ‘Don’t you dare insult your masters! You halfwit natives wouldn’t know a mage if she had you by the balls, but Akharian men know one when they see one. No mage capable of something like that would be able to pass herself off as a normal person. You have heard something about her, I know it, and we will get it out of you. Who was behind that massacre?’

  ‘It had to be Lord Rasten, sir. It’s the only explanation.’

  ‘Horseshit.’ Torren gestured to a pair of aides who waited silently beside the brazier. ‘String him to the ridge-pole,’ he said and turned to a table set along one of the walls. He pulled back a cloth to reveal a two-foot rod with a leather-wrapped handle at one end and two metal prongs at the other. The Stinger.

  Isidro closed his eyes and murmured a silent prayer to the Black Sun. Perhaps it would have been better to come up with some story, but it was too late now. He had made his denial and he had to stick with it. Admitting to anything else would be the crack they needed to break him.

  His shirt was damp and clammy by the time the aides stepped back, leaving him with his wrists bound to the pole overhead and stretched so that only the tips of his toes touched the floor. He flinched as the icy metal of the prongs brushed against his prickling skin.

  ‘Well, boy?’

  ‘There’s nothing more I can tell you, sir.’

  ‘Well, we’ll soon see about that, won’t we?’

  It was hours later when Torren delivered him back to Harwin’s tent, numb with cold and stumbling with exhaustion.

  Delphine’s students had long gone back to their tent, presumably, but Delphine was perched on the edge of the bed while Harwin lounged in the leather-slung chair. Both of them were drinking bowls of hot tea.

  Torren shoved Isidro to the floor before unfastening his manacles and then stood over him, slapping the chain against the hem of his coat in irritation.

  ‘Well, Torren, I hope you got something useful out of him,’ Delphine said. ‘He’ll be no good at all to me for the next few days.’

  ‘Watch your tongue, Delphi! I’ve half a mind to take him back to the storage tents and see if a few days of cold and hunger will loosen his tongue.’

  ‘This is about that business with the Seventh, isn’t it, Mage-Captain Castalior?’ Harwin said. ‘What makes you so sure he knows anything about it? Surely it could have been a natural mage. Statistically, there must be some folk among the natives with enough power to be able to use it even without formal training.’

  ‘There were four Battle-Mages with the Seventh,’ Torren said. ‘I knew them all. I even trained with one of them. No unschooled mage could kill four Akharian Battle-Mages. No, that bitch has to be a Blood-Mage. And this wretch —’ he gave Isidro a kick to the ribs ‘— still insists this man Kell and his apprentice are the only Blood-Mages in Ricalan.’

  ‘Well, maybe that’s all he knows,’ Harwin said. ‘I can’t see the slave taking any risks to protect the ones who crippled him.’

  ‘You know, Torren, there is another possibility,’ Delphine said. ‘This other mage could be a Sympath.’

  ‘Don’t even joke about that, De
lphi!’ Torren snapped. ‘And as for you,’ he said to Isidro. ‘I know you’re holding out on me. When I get proof, I’ll make you wish you were back with the Blood-Mages. You hear me?’ With another kick and a curse he slung the slave-chain over his shoulder and strode out into the night.

  With a sigh Delphine drained her bowl and handed it to Lucia. ‘Take this, girl, and help him get cleaned up and bedded down for the night.’ She frowned down at Isidro, who was still on his knees, too weak and shaky to stand just yet. ‘He’s going to keep this up until you find something to tell him, you know.’

  ‘Yes, madame?’ he said.

  She recognised it for the useless platitude it was and scowled at him.

  ‘Are you sure you haven’t heard anything? No gossip or rumours? It will go easier on you if you find something to tell him.’

  Behind her, Lucia looked stricken.

  ‘Perhaps, madame, but then he would want to know who I heard it from. How could I subject someone else to that? The survivors from the Seventh must be mistaken. Kell would never tolerate a rival mage in Ricalan. There must be some other explanation.’

  Delphine just sighed and reached for her coat. ‘You are too cursed high-minded for your own good, Aleksar. Harwin, I’m turning in. See you in the morning.’

  When she left, Harwin waited for Lucia to lace the doors closed again before he ordered Isidro to open his shirt and show him the damage. He winced at the welts the Stinger had left and rummaged in a trunk for a pot of salve. ‘Here, this will soothe them. I’ll mix you a sleeping draught, too. I know you always sleep poorly on nights like this …’

  That was putting it mildly. Even though the interrogations left him exhausted, Isidro knew from experience he wouldn’t be able to sleep without waking hourly from nightmares of being back in Kell’s domain. Harwin knew all about it — he was woken by them, too, and often roused Isidro himself, seeming so concerned Isidro wondered what noises he made before he broke free of the visions. ‘If you don’t mind, sir, I’d rather sit up and try to get some work done. Perhaps I’ll sleep better on the sled tomorrow.’

  ‘If you wish,’ Harwin said with a shrug.

  Before he retired, Harwin locked a manacle around Isidro’s good wrist. It tethered him to a few feet of chain that was padlocked to a trunk full of books. On some nights he was given a little more freedom but after these sessions with Torren, Harwin always made sure he was in no position to do himself harm.

  While Lucia settled down in her post by the stove, Isidro reached for the book he had been working on, the page marked with a leather thong bearing the fat round bead of a lantern-stone. He hung the cord around his neck, took the stone in his fist and activated the enchantment with a moment of concentration. Between Rasten and the other mages who continued their strange experiments on an irregular basis, he had been prey to odd fluctuations of power until Delphine had taught him the basics of controlling them. As a side-effect he’d gained enough skill to activate the small enchantments the mages used on a daily basis. The lantern-bead was no bigger than the first joint of his thumb but it gave enough light to let him read and write. With his back to Harwin to hide the light, Isidro opened the book on his lap but simply sat there for a while, gazing at the page without reading a line.

  When I get proof, Torren had said.

  The interrogations were a strain both physically and mentally, but he could handle them for now. He knew what to expect and he knew he could withstand it. But if Torren found hard evidence that Isidro was lying to him then the game would be stepped up. They had wrung enough information out of him to tell them how to break him down if they had reason to do so. He was useful to Delphine and the academic mages but not valuable enough to be spared harsher methods. Even if they wanted to, Delphine and Harwin could not protect him.

  ‘Can you explain something for me, madame?’ Isidro said. ‘What is a Sympath?’

  Delphine gazed down at him from the saddle, her lips pursed thoughtfully. ‘Where did you hear that term? Oh, of course, the other night …’

  ‘I’ve come across it in books, too, madame, but I’ve found no explanation for the word.’

  It had taken him a day or so to recover from the latest interrogation. The Stinger left no marks other than the welts that still stung on his chest, but it left him feeling as though he’d been beaten with sticks. At first he had been left incapacitated for days afterwards, but since Delphine had offered him her patronage, his health and his strength had been steadily improving. He could now spend all day on his feet and keep up with the pace of the march, although Delphine made sure there was a sled available for him if he needed to rest. Most wondrous of all, his arm was finally healing.

  Once a week, Alameda examined it with that peculiar device that could see through flesh and bandages to the bones beneath, and sketched the changes under Delphine’s guidance. It confirmed he would never have use of the arm or the hand, as the bones were healing ragged and crooked, but at last the pain was diminishing.

  Sometimes Isidro slept on the march, wrapped in furs and riding on a sled if he had worked through the night before, but the return of his strength was such a welcome sensation that he savoured the activity and the weariness it brought. Delphine often had him walk beside her, leading her pony or carrying her lantern while they travelled in the dark. As the Akharians reckoned these things, entrusting him with the responsibility was a mark of her favour.

  ‘Well,’ Delphine said, ‘there are several classes of mages. The first are ones like yourself, Sensitives, born with a modicum of talent. If they are identified young enough and trained with rigour they can become competent low-level mages. This level of talent is tolerable in slaves, as without training their power tends to atrophy and they are essentially harmless. Once trained to competence they are generally employed in the more menial divisions of mage-craft, mostly charging mage-lights for the emperor’s household and the administration and for anyone else wealthy enough to keep a mage on retainer. Generally, when one speaks of mages it is not this class we are referring to, but the ones above them.

  ‘The next class are those we call “born into power”, although that is something of a misnomer. The talent usually manifests sometime between the child’s fifth year and the time they reach puberty, although it can happen earlier — this indicates a very powerful mage. Like Sensitives, these mages are born with an internal store of power, but they also have an instinctive knowledge of how to cultivate this power, how to keep it from leaking away and how to replenish it once used. Some scholars have posited that the only difference between Sensitives and those born into power is the possession of this instinctive knowledge. This level of ability cannot be tolerated in slaves, as they will inevitably pose a danger to their masters and to society as a whole.

  ‘There are grades of ability within this classification but it is demonstrably possible for a born mage of the lowest capacity to progress through the ranks to the highest level, given enough discipline and work. A Sensitive, however, can never progress higher than the lowest few ranks. It is only the born mages who are powerful enough to become Battle-Mages, but technically they are a different class again. There are not that many mages who can shut out the chaos and confusion of a battle well enough to retain the calm and focus necessary to control their power and be useful on a battlefield. Mages who do not enter the military have the choice of either entering the Collegium as scholars, or entering private or public industry. Either way, all mages trained by the Collegium are required to spend a certain amount of time each year in the service of the empire, to repay the debt incurred by their extensive training.’

  ‘I’ve heard of this, madame,’ Isidro said. ‘I must be confused. It seems as though mages are treated as slaves of the empire.’

  Delphine sighed. ‘There are some who hold such views, but it is a ridiculous notion. Mages cannot be bought and sold. We have the right to marry, to hold property and enter into contracts, even to vote, should the occasion arise. If anything the a
rrangement is more akin to a tax than to slavery. And here,’ she glared at him from under her hood, then looked away, ‘you have drawn me off topic.’

  ‘My apologies, madame.’

  ‘Oh, hush,’ she said and gave him a sidelong glance. In trying to adopt what the Akharians thought the proper demeanour for a slave, Isidro had drawn upon his father’s teachings of courtly manner and appropriate conduct around one’s superiors. So far it had stood him in good stead, but Delphine seemed to be always suspicious he was mocking her. ‘Now, where was I? Ah, yes. Sympaths. While born mages have an instinctive knowledge of how to generate and raise their power, Sympaths have an innate ability so strong they can’t help but gather power. In some ways it’s something of a deformity. Any characteristic, even a desirable one, can be taken to such extremes that it becomes a liability. Sympaths are capable of deriving power from the world around them in such vast quantities they are physically incapable of holding it in. They often cause general havoc until they are identified and brought under control.’

  ‘Control, madame?’ Isidro said.

  ‘Oh, it’s not as ominous as it sounds. Sympaths are immensely valuable to the empire. Large works — bridges, dams, aqueducts and the like — can be built in a matter of weeks with a Sympath providing the raw power for their construction. If built by hand, they can take years or even decades. An ordinary mage can assist but they are still limited by the rate at which they can generate power. A Sympath, however, removes that constraint from the equation. There seems to be no real limit on the amount of power a Sympath can generate. The constraining factor appears to be simply the level of energy of the participants.’

  ‘Participants?’ Isidro said. ‘I’m afraid I don’t understand.’

  Delphine laughed in a puff of mist. ‘In Akhara this is considered a most indelicate subject. Certainly not fit for discussion between a mistress and her slave. But I doubt you native folk would see it the same way, given your marriage traditions. Sympaths feed off sensation. They generate power from sexual energy and activity. In Akhara they have a residence attached to the Collegium. To us it is the House of the Sympaths, but everyone just calls it The Palace. It’s a den of licentiousness and fornication — quite endearingly so, actually — given over to the pleasures of the flesh. There are generally several hundred inhabitants whose only duties are to eat good food, to give and receive innumerable forms of pampering and to participate in … other various activities. It’s all perfectly scandalous, you realise. Everyone in polite society pretends to be quite horrified by it all, while they secretly wish they could join in, if just for a little while.’