by Callie Bates
I climb, compressing space again, and again. The next time, my fingernails scrape stone. I’ve reached the ramparts. I drag myself up—
Into the snout of a musket.
It doesn’t erupt in my face, even though I’m staring, frozen. Then the gun is flung aside, and hands grasp my forearms, hoisting me up. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” the woman shouts. It’s Elanna, her face smeared with black powder.
I grin like an idiot, tumbling at last to safety. “It seemed like the best way to get back in.”
The stones shake under another blast. El drags me to my feet, then seizes the musket. “They just attacked. No explanation. Just the mortar fire. None of the others can break their guns!”
I glance around, seeing Irene and Sabina loading their own muskets, and Tullea weaving an illusion on the other side of the temple. But it’s shredded to nothing when it drifts close enough to the militia, and the endlessly ringing bells.
“It’s the witch hunters,” I begin, but then I stop. Elanna’s staring down the hill, her face stiffening with horror.
I look, and my pulse pounds into my ears. A tall wooden structure is being winched upright below us. Another one follows it. Siege towers, three stories tall. They aren’t as high as the hill, but once they’re in place, the soldiers will be able to fire up at us from the shelter of the roof.
And hundreds of men crowd the streets—maybe thousands. Far more than there are of us. The emperor will see their lives as disposable, until ours are removed.
Cannons are being winched up into the towers. Maybe, at this near distance, I can break them. I don’t see witch hunters. Cannons are harder to break than muskets, but by concentrating, I can pull out the lanyards and force the vents to collapse. I reach for the nearest one; the impact of its collapse rocks through me. The second one explodes in a gasp of black smoke and sparks. Shouts ring up from the siege towers.
Elanna’s gripping the wall with one hand, the other clutching the collar around her neck. “This damned thing! I could make the whole hill walk and terrify them—I could make the mountain move—”
Behind us, another siege tower has risen up. A shot bursts out, skittering off the wall beside El’s fingers. We both dive for safety. Another burst follows it.
I halt it in midair, and it crashes against the stones below us, sending up a plume of smoke. Sweat already soaks my shirt. If I have to stop every shot individually, this siege will last forever.
El’s digging at her choker, and rage burns up in my throat. Rage that neither Alakaseus Saranon nor his ministers believe we constitute a threat, much less a voice that must be heard. I grab El’s hands and pull her up. Maybe I couldn’t break the collar before—but maybe I wasn’t trying hard enough.
“I have an idea.” We run back into the temple, and I stop right beside the font. Power rolls off it, intoxicating. Madiya told me I was brilliant to find it; she called it the Ida well. A well, not a font. Does that mean there are more? But I don’t know where Madiya is, and I don’t have time to ask these questions, even if I trusted her enough to believe her response.
I push my hand into the space between the lid and the font. Elanna crouches beside me, saying, “Jahan—”
But then her voice disappears into the roar of the font. Brilliant sparks pour into my hands, into my body. I’m alight. Electric. Vibrating. Light replacing the dull network of muscle and sinew. Is this safe? Am I going to burst apart like Mantius? But it feels good—warm, shocking, invigorating.
Someone grasps my elbow. Drags my arm backward. I gasp. Sparks dance across my vision. Through tearing eyes, I can just make out Elanna, clutching my arm tight.
“I thought you were going to erupt,” she begins.
The buzzing lingers in my hands. I lift them up and touch her choker. She gasps.
Break, I think. This time I hardly even have to insist.
The collar shatters under my palms. Clean shards that spray down Elanna’s shirt and kick back into my face. She splutters. I wipe off my chin.
“It worked.” The words feel awkward, too large, in my mouth. I’m grinning maniacally, I realize.
El’s staring at me. Our eyes lock. For some reason, we both start to laugh.
“Who would have thought,” I manage, “that all I needed to do was stick my hand in a magic spring—”
But Elanna cuts me off with a kiss, intent and ferocious. I lean into her, even though I hear the rattle of guns outside the temple. We need to go. But the power is humming in me, and I feel dazed to be back in the world.
Too soon, she breaks away, breathless. “You wonderful fool. Did you know that’s what would happen?”
“Lucky guess.” I’m still grinning, drunk on the buzzing in my skin.
A crack sounds outside. Both of us jump to our feet, running for the door.
“Where’s Lathiel?” I ask.
She gestures back inside. “I put him with the prisoners, the ones who couldn’t fight. They’re in the back, keeping him safe. Madiya’s here, somewhere, but I told them not to let her near him.”
“Thank you.”
Outside, our rebels have scattered back toward the safety of the temple walls. So we see him the moment we run out: my brother, standing on the parapet, his arms raised. He looks ready to dive over the edge like a bird. Like Mantius.
“Rayka!” I bellow, charging toward him.
He looks around. He’s covered in black powder, and half his hair stands on end. The moment I see his face, the sweat on my spine freezes. What has he done?
“They had powder kegs,” he says. There’s a luminosity about him; several grubby reformers are looking up at him with awe. “They were going to undermine the wall. Even without seeing, I could feel the fuses. Test the probable range of impact.” He grins a little. “The same principles of warfare Vasilides taught us at the academy.”
“Vasilides,” I echo.
“I just had to spark the fuses so they exploded too soon. Well,” he grins, “at just the right moment.”
I step up to the parapet and stare down the hill. The siege towers have collapsed—not only collapsed, but exploded. A tangled mess of wood, metal, and the meaty red of bodies lies below us.
The top of my head seems to combust. “I told you to defend us! You were supposed to keep us safe, not massacre them!”
Rayka’s jaw sets. He jumps down from the parapet. “It’s war.”
“Those are our own people.”
“I won!”
“All the gods, Rayka, you didn’t damned win! This isn’t about winning, this is about everyone, in all of Ida, all of Paladis…” I see how he stares at me; I throw my hands up. “You know what? Never mind.”
I swing back to the people watching us, who have largely busied themselves. Elanna’s at the wall; she casts me a sick look. I don’t know what to say. We need to strategize—decide whether we can attempt a truce—but right now, I’m so angry I can’t even think. My brother is a sorcerer, just like me, only he’s had more recent lessons. He has a finesse and control I don’t. So there is no reasonable excuse for killing everyone in the siege towers and wounding who knows how many more below them.
There are other ways he could have done it—ways that aren’t murder. And he knows it.
Nestor comes running up with a cup of water, clearly warring between triumph and fear. I take the cup and throw it over my head. The coldness shocks some of the rage from me. I can breathe again. Think again.
Rayka’s right. This is war. The emperor is treating us as an incendiary faction that must be put down by an armed force. He won’t use delaying tactics; he won’t hesitate. He’ll use every tactic of brutal efficiency to destroy us.
Except those are our own people, down there on the ground. The emperor might not have any compunction about firing on his subjects, but I don’t have to operate by the same tact
ics.
The power of Mantius’s font still hums in me. I know what I’m going to do.
Shaking the water from my eyes, I turn back to the wall. Elanna stands with her arms folded. We look at each other, and I can see she’s had the same thought as me.
“Can you do this?” she says. “I know you can heal yourself, but…”
“I’ve done it for another before,” I say. “I don’t know if I can do it for so many. But I have to try. If nothing else—If nothing else, we can help.”
She holds out her hand. Slowly, bursting through the earth, tree roots cobble together, making a kind of staircase we can climb downhill.
She scowls. “It’s too damned sluggish.”
“You can’t always be instantaneously extraordinary.” I smile at her, though my mouth feels heavy. Together, we climb down the hill.
Below, it’s carnage, a mangled route of canvas, blood, and splintered wood. The wreckage of bodies is scattered back into the smashed stones and trees, torsos separated from legs, necks missing heads. On the other side of the lower temple, beyond the worst of the dead, soldiers and medics are pulling the wounded survivors toward safety. As we approach the ruined temple, a man limps toward us, holding up a piece of canvas stained with blood. The nearest thing to a white cloth he could find.
“Truce!” he calls, his voice hoarse. “We demand truce to care for our wounded, under the law of war.”
I stop, holding up my hands. “You have it. We’ve come to help care for the wounded. One of our people was…was overcome with battle frenzy. It wasn’t meant to go like this.”
The man stares from me to Elanna and back again. “But aren’t you the Korakos?”
“I’m Jahan Korakides. And this is Elanna Valtai.” I pause. “And I’m Paladisan, just like you. I don’t want to see our people die any more than you do, no matter what side they’re on.”
He blinks. There are tears in his eyes. He gestures us forward. “Then come help.”
Beneath the siege towers, it’s ugly. One man is missing a leg. Another his arm. One has taken lead shot in the gut; his forehead is slick with sweat, his hands clammy. The medics say he won’t make it: “Best to give him opium and let nature work its course.” But I kneel beside him, gripping his hand. He’s panting, hoarse shallow breaths. His eyes are glazed; he doesn’t really see me. They’ve already given him something strong from a flask.
The power of the font still pours down the hill. The witch hunters must have retreated following the destruction—or been injured in it. The bells have ceased. Gathering the power, I begin murmuring to the lead ball. It’s fixed stubbornly in there amid the delicacy of his intestines. Closing my eyes, I whisper with my mind for it to work itself free. The man cries out, holding on to my hand hard.
And the ball slides from his body, onto the stretcher. He’s shouting again, somewhere between triumph and terror and pain.
“You’re doing well.” I give him more liquid from the flask. The lead ball was the easy part. Now to mend his organs. To fuse his skin.
I put my hand over the opening in his gut. As you were, I tell the seeping intestines. Knit together, as you were.
It’s slow work, but at last they begin to mend, the ripped organs reaching together, sealing up. Slowly, so slowly, a layer of muscle begins to climb over them, and the tenderness of new skin.
There’s an exclamation over my head. I look up: One of the medics is staring down at the wounded man, who has, somehow, fallen asleep.
He kneels next to us. “How did you do this?” he demands. “How?”
“With my mind,” I say. “With sorcery.”
The medic gives me a long look. He glances at the patient, with the skin growing visibly, if slowly, over his wound. He looks back at me and jerks his chin. “A man over there is about to lose his leg. Unless you know a way to save it?”
I stand up. “I’ll try.”
* * *
—
I DON’T KNOW how many hours pass; I lose count of how many men I kneel over, of how many bodies I coax back into something near wholeness. The hum of power is gradually waning, leaving a headache and deadness in my limbs. The wounds are slower to heal now. I may heal all these men and leave myself dead with exhaustion. I’m helping to set a broken arm when there’s a cough over me. I squint up through aching eyes. Lamps have been lit against the encroaching night; smoke smudges the tent. A man in a general’s uniform, his coat riddled with medals, is looking down at me. His face is haggard.
Captain-General Horatius. I’m not sure whether I say his name aloud or not.
Two lackeys flank him. They’re looking at me like hawks readying for the kill.
He’s come to arrest me at last. I suppose it’s inevitable. I’ll have to run, faster than they can move. I’ll have to find Elanna, whom I last saw tending to men with wounds less severe; her magic is still slow to come, but she can at least help others in ordinary ways. We’ll have to get out.
But the captain-general doesn’t arrest me. He holds out his hand, instead, to help me to my feet, careless of the dried gore that lingers on my fingers and palms. My body protests at standing upright. I’ve been kneeling so long.
“Korakos,” he says. “I’ve come with word from His Imperial Highness, the emperor-apparent.”
Emperor-apparent?
“Emperor Alakaseus suffered a pain in the chest this afternoon. He’s…” The captain-general pauses. “He’s no longer among the living. The emperor-apparent has declared that hostilities here in Ida will cease and that sorcery is not to be considered a criminal activity. I’m to escort you up to Aexione at once.”
My mind is still stuttering around his first statement. “The emperor collapsed—”
“It was sudden. Pray for his soul. That’s all anyone can do.” He nods at me. “Thank you for your work here. Now come.”
He already turns, as if expecting me to follow, an obedient dog.
I don’t. Firmina was going to Aexione—she was going to talk to Alakaseus…But Augustus and Phaedra were threatening Leontius earlier. “Who has demanded my presence in Aexione?”
Horatius stops and looks back at me, his exasperation plain in the sigh he exhales. The medics glance up from their work, not pretending they don’t hear. “His Imperial Highness Leontius, the emperor-apparent, has sent me explicit instruction to bring you directly to Aexione. I am not even allowed the presence of a witch hunter.”
I hesitate, but it’s the irritation with which he says this last that convinces me. Only Leontius might have forbade the captain-general to bring a witch hunter.
“Very well,” I say. “Give me a moment.”
I don’t wait for him to acquiesce. Striding away through the tent, I swing past stretchers and intent medics until I find Elanna, crouched in a corner wringing out bandages. Blood—not her own—streaks her cheekbone. She stands as I approach; I resist the urge to wipe the blood away with my thumb. Her eyes are dull with weariness.
“Come quickly.” I grab her elbow and pull her from the tent, out into the night. One of Horatius’s lackeys comes rushing after us: “Lord Jahan!”
I ignore him. “El, you need to get back up Solivetos Hill.” I explain quickly that the emperor’s heart gave out and that Leontius requires my presence. If I go, perhaps it means the end of all this. If Leontius has claimed the throne, if he’s finally willing to reconcile, then we have all the hope in the world. Yet it’s hard to believe it.
Elanna rubs her palms over her forehead. “What are we supposed to do?”
“I don’t know. Horatius claims all hostilities have ceased, but…” I can’t believe things have really ended, so quickly. “Let Tullea and the others know what’s happened. I’ll send word as soon as I can.”
“Jahan.” She grasps my arm. “How do you know they’re not going to arrest you? I should come—”
“Horatius promised me safe conduct. You stay here. Keep our people safe.”
Horatius’s lackey has found us, his footsteps crunching in the gravel. Again, he calls, “Lord Jahan! Come at once or I’ll be forced to take action!”
“They’d have arrested me by now if they wanted to.” I reach for El’s forehead, where the blood was smeared, and try to wipe it off. It’s too dark to tell whether I got it.
She grabs my face and plants a kiss on my lips. “Stay safe.”
“And you. Now go, before they decide to round you up, too.”
Without another word, she turns and clambers over the ruined stones, making for the hill.
I swing back to Horatius’s lackey, who is picking his way toward me with evident irritation. “There you are,” I say pleasantly. “Ready to go yet?”
* * *
—
HORATIUS AND HIS officers bundle me into a plain coach-and-four. Inside, we all sit too close, four men occupying a too-cramped space. The officer beside me keeps reaching for his hip; he must have a pistol there. I can feel his distrusting glance leveled at my cheek, and the stare from the other officer sitting across from me, his knees almost bumping mine. They’re wary, but they’re also frightened. I suppose they’ve never been this close to a sorcerer before. And known it, anyway.
Maybe I shouldn’t have conceded so quickly to the summons. But they haven’t produced a witch hunter and, so far, that is enough to put me marginally at ease.
Of course, there are ways to harm a sorcerer without bells and stones. Fists and pistols might be just as effective, or more. Leontius might have sent for me—the gods alone know why, after what he said to me—but where is Alcibiades Doukas? Not to mention Augustus and Phaedra?
And where is Firmina?
No one speaks. It must be past midnight. The coach jolts over the cobblestones.
Somewhere nearby, a shout rises. The glow of torches gleams on the windowpanes.
“All the gods,” Horatius mutters. “Not these lunatics again.” He strikes the roof of the coach twice with his fist. The coach surges forward, the sudden burst of speed thrusting me back in the seat. But the torchlight still pursues us. The shouts echo over the squeak and thunder of the coach.