by Mary Taranta
“Sir,” Tobek says, but North shakes his head against any apology, dropping his bag.
“You never wrap an infection like this,” he says, tugging the bandages loose, undoing my clumsy work. “It’ll breed faster beneath pressure. Tobek, you should know this.”
Tobek gapes at him. “It wasn’t my idea!”
“You should have stopped her! And you should not be handling an infected arm,” North says, directing his venom at me, scowling at the discolored bruises up my forearm where the blood has broken and pooled beneath the skin—where any infected magic could slide into my blood more easily. “If you’re going to read my books, Miss Locke, learn something useful from them!” To the man: “When did you first notice the poison?”
“Ten days ago,” he says. “She was scratched two weeks before, but it didn’t go sour till then.”
“A fortnight for incubation.” North draws back, shrugging out of his coat, tossing it across a chair. I swallow hard and step back, feeling stupid, in the way. North begins rolling his sleeves, casting a dismissive look over his shoulder at the rest of us. “Wait outside.”
I move for the door but North calls me back. “No, Miss Locke. If you insist on educating yourself, you need to start somewhere. Give me water and stones. Clean ones. Second drawer.”
Fresh from the river, I think. Flat to hold magic more evenly.
Tobek hangs in the doorway, wounded that I’m needed and not him. “Sir—” he starts.
North straightens, eyes flashing. “Get out!”
Tobek scurries outside, Bryn on his heels without a single complaint. I don’t blame her—North infuriated is terrifying.
“Lie down,” North says to Sava. “You”—he looks to the man—“step back.”
Sava protests as her father pulls away. North’s mouth flattens and I jump forward, clutching Sava’s hand in my own. “My sister’s name is Cadence,” I say, “and whenever she gets scared or has nightmares, we sit on the roof and count the stars.”
North scowls. “I can’t help her if she doesn’t hold still!”
“Her name is Sava,” I cut back pointedly. “And she’s ten years old.”
He draws back, nostrils flaring.
“But we’re inside,” Sava whispers.
“Look,” I say, tilting my head to point to the ceiling and the painted stars nestled between the wooden beams. “Lie down and see how many you can count.”
Sava complies, stretching out along the length of the table, a finger tagging the stars as her lips silently mouth the numbers. North pulls back the sleeve of her dress before his eyes drop to the rocks I’ve arranged in a neat line along the edge of the table. Rolling one between his fingers, he presses it to her arm, at the bottom of her scratch.
“Will it hurt?” Sava asks.
“If it does, just squeeze my hand tight as you can and I’ll swallow up all that pain for you.”
“You can’t do that,” North says.
I frown, ready to protest his lack of imagination, but he interrupts me. “Skin is the perfect conductor, Miss Locke. Through it you can transfer heat, cold, pleasure, pain. And magic.” Black eyes briefly meet mine. “If I start to extract the poison, I won’t be able to tell where her infection ends and where your skin begins. If I try to take more than what’s there, if I try to draw something from you through her body, it could collapse her veins.”
I release Sava’s hand, burning with the embarrassment of my inexperience. “Then why are you using stones? They’re conductors too.”
“It’s a buffer,” he says, “to keep the infection from going through me.” North exhales softly and dips his chin. “The gloves,” he says. “In my coat. Leather doesn’t conduct magic. You could wear those and still hold her hand.”
I hurry to pull them on as North presses the stone back into position. Closing his eyes, he begins to coax the poison loose. Sweat beads his temple and shadows dance across the planes of his face, like clouds chased across the sun. He bares his teeth, white against the olive of his skin.
Sava whimpers. The poisoned lines across her face begin to unravel, brightening from the color of smoke to the color of freshly turned ash as it works down her throat, into her arm, collecting at the base of the stone. Fat tears roll down her cheeks and pool in her hair.
After a moment, North pulls away with a wrench of breath and I catch a glimpse of the rock, now black as night, and his fingertips, dark as charcoal. He quickly exchanges the stone for a second, knocking the others off the edge of the table with a clumsy sweep of his wrist. He flinches, eyes meeting mine with a flash of humiliation before he presses the new stone to Sava’s arm, balancing it with his palm as his fingers have become too swollen to bend. It too turns black within seconds and North recoils, dropping the stone to the table. It misses the edge and hits the floor, not with a rattle as expected, but with a dead weight that sounds leaden.
Pale, North tries to run a hand through his hair but falters, tucking the hand under his arm instead. He’s shaking. “She needs rest,” he says, not looking at anyone in particular. “Don’t take her home by horse, not tonight.” He reaches for the cup of water I poured but pain tightens across his face; the cup tips precariously under his fingers.
“We’ll just rinse it out and you’re all set,” I say, jumping in, taking over. After a moment, North nods me once in the right direction, keeping close watch as I quickly rinse the scratch and wipe it dry.
“If the symptoms return,” he says, “she’ll need to be excised again.”
“Will they return?” her father asks.
“It’s already in her blood,” says North. “Some people can fight a smaller infection. Others can’t. If it reaches her heart—”
Sava’s father makes a short bark of terror at the back of his throat.
“Siphoning the infection as needed will help,” North adds, his voice a bland, hollow monotone, “although you face the risk of the body building an immunity to the process. Each time will be harder than the last. If the infection takes root again, she’ll need a full blood transfusion.”
“Nobody’s ever survived a full transfusion,” her father says.
North stares at the floor, still cradling his hand under his arm. Muscles tense beneath his shirt sleeve, tightening along the side of his neck. “Don’t eat anything with mold or black spotting,” he says in that same hollow voice. “Boil any drinking water within a mile of the Burn.”
“Our home is within a mile of the Burn,” the man interrupts with a flash of anger. “Our entire village—”
“Leave.” North lifts his head. “Take your daughter and go somewhere safe.”
The air thickens, like the charge before a thunderstorm. “Where?” the man asks at last. “Merlock didn’t leave us anywhere else to go. When is Corbin going to start fighting for his people instead of relying on boys to do it for him!?”
North dips his chin again. Hair falls forward across his forehead, and he looks impossibly young. “One of the cities,” he mumbles. “Revnik or New Prevast. Mannon still has some defense left in the south.”
Grunting with scorn, the man digs through his pocket and I look away, embarrassed at the telltale click of coins.
“I don’t want your money,” says North.
“I pay my debts,” the man says tightly.
“Up you go,” I whisper to Sava, leaving them to argue. She’s a familiar weight pressed in my arms and I pretend like she’s Cadence even though Cadence hasn’t let me hold her like this since she declared herself a soldier—not realizing that even soldiers still needed to be held. Smoothing her hair back with one hand, I surreptitiously drop a kiss on top of her head, blushing when I catch North watching me.
The man offers a final, curt nod of acknowledgment before taking Sava in his arms. She blinks up at North, her eyes not as dim as before, her features not so sallow. A tiny fist reaches toward him, expectant.
North’s shoulders sag and he offers his hand. She tilts a glass button in his palm, t
he color of the lake outside. It’s a treasure to her and he stares at it, his entire body rigid. When Sava and her father duck out of the wagon, North follows at a distance and stands, framed in the doorway with his back to me.
Peeling off his gloves, I lay them across the table before running my hands through my hair.
“Please don’t do that to me again,” he says, back still to me.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I just thought—after what Tobek said, that you healed him, maybe you could—”
“What? Maybe I could heal her!?” He rounds on me, eyes flashing, his features contorted with pain. “I could have! I have the magic, Miss Locke. I have the ability! I could have healed her, but then word would get out that North has clean magic and a weak heart and he’ll help whoever comes to his door with a story!” He slams his hand on the wall, rattling the door. “Have you not heard anything I’ve told you!? Magic doesn’t come easy in Avinea and it doesn’t come cheap! I don’t have the resources, I—I can’t save everyone! To pick and choose who lives or dies is cruel!”
“She’s only a child.”
“That doesn’t matter!”
I recoil as a strange, stifling silence falls between us. North rubs his mouth before he growls, hurling Sava’s button across the room. It hits the far wall and bounces back on the top bunk, lost in the coverlet. Shaking his head, he sags in the stairwell, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes. “Saving that little girl doesn’t help anyone.”
Tears burn the back of my throat and I stare past him, toward the lake through the open doorway. “She ate poisoned berries,” I say tightly. “She wasn’t an addict, North. She didn’t go looking for a high. She was innocent—”
“It is selfish to sacrifice the whole to save a few.”
I look away, fingers tented on the edge of the table. Iron, I tell myself. Be strong, impenetrable, callous. Cadence. Nothing else matters. No one else matters. I pegged him for a mercenary long before I considered him a friend, and this only proves it.
“I’m sorry,” I say, voice cracking. “I assumed you would have wanted to help. I won’t make that mistake again.”
The floorboards crack as North moves toward me, stopping only inches away. Swallowing hard, he rakes back his sleeve. Charcoal lines seep past the barrier of his protection spell, like tiny breaks of lightning casting shadows beneath his skin. They inch toward his hands, spreading. All at once, the jars of black rocks that line the wagon make sense.
He’s infected.
“Skin is a conductor,” he says, holding my eyes, his expression fierce, unapologetic, “and the poison inside me wants to spread. I can hold it back with spells, try to bury it, excise it whenever it gets too bad, but any time I transfer magic, even through a buffer, the infection feeds off that power and moves deeper. Using magic is killing me, Miss Locke. And every time it gets harder and harder, and one of these days, the poison is going to reach my heart and I won’t be able to stop it.”
And I need these hands to conquer the world, I think suddenly, with a twist of guilt. Every night North laid down a perimeter of stone and forced a spell through them even though it had to hurt him to do it, just to keep us safe.
To keep his promise.
Tugging his sleeve back down, North says, “I didn’t save Sava and I went to the marketplace that day only intending to buy that spell from Miss Dossel. I will not apologize for being selfish, Miss Locke. That was the decision I made four years ago and nothing—no one—will change my course. Merlock is all that matters, and I can’t risk saving anyone else while I still have the chance to save Avinea. That doesn’t mean—” He falters, features contorted as he looks at me, full of grief. His palm presses against his chest. “These spells only hide it,” he says “They don’t actually make me heartless.”
“North—”
“Nobody will fight for the half-blood prince of a half-dead kingdom,” he says. “There’s nobody left. Avinea has no money, no military, no defense, no magic, and no hope. I am running out of time and I am running out of options.”
Grabbing his bag by the strap, he yanks it to his hip and removes a half-crushed flower from inside. He drops it to the table without looking at me, and my stomach caves in with a sickening twist.
Abbis. From my mother’s book.
He lowers his voice to a growl. “I spoke to three different men who fought in the war today, and not a single one of them has ever heard of Brindaigel, or King Perrote, or any other kingdom with the kind of magic that produces spells like that. Like ours. Somebody’s lying to you or you’re lying to me. Either way, I need that binding spell and I have never hidden that from you.” Slinging his bag over his shoulder, he straightens. “I told you that you were safe here and I told you that I would help you, but I never told you that I would save you.” His voice softens, turns weak. “I can’t.”
Turning, he slams outside, barking orders for Tobek to hitch the second horse to the wagon. Delayed adrenaline spikes through me and I begin to sway, knees buckling before I hit the floor. Magic presses against my skin, eager for some outlet, some movement. A fight, maybe; dust in the air and blood in my mouth and the fervor of a ring of voices cheering me on.
But there’s no one to spar with, no one to hit or hurt but myself. Frustrated, I will myself to be still but my body refuses. It wants action. Movement. Freedom. More.
It wants North. Every poisoned inch of him.
A shadow fills the doorway and I lift my head, hopeful, but it’s Bryn who approaches, skirts hissing at her heels. She crouches, cradling my face between her hands. No doubt she heard every word between North and I—and all the words—the weakness—that fill my silence now.
But my hands are not on the floor, and I am not defeated yet. There’s a still a chance to win this game, but it requires playing by her rules for just a little longer.
I lower my head in deference. “I’m committed to this,” I whisper.
“Good,” she says, and hugs me tight as a viper.
Nineteen
EVEN WITH THE REASSURANCE OF the magic he bought in Revnik—Tobek looked ill when North told him the cost—North presses the horses as far as possible that night, stopping only when we reach an abandoned trading post on the outskirts of the city. Half a dozen empty storefronts and houses surround a cobblestone square, while a watchtower rises above it all. Scavengers have gutted everything, dismantling all the glass and wood, leaving a majority of the buildings without roofs, windows, or walls.
North casts his ward in the cobblestones themselves as Tobek trails him with a litany of apologies. The spell shimmers like silver cobweb in a frosted sunrise before darkening again, and while North must have excised the infection that broke past his protection spells, his hands are still swollen and cramped. He moves slower than usual.
“Tobek!” he snaps at last. “Please,” he says, much kinder, spiking his hair with one hand. “You’re distracting me.”
Tobek backs away like a wounded dog. North sighs, head bowed for a moment before he resumes his work.
I watch them from the roof of the wagon, the only privacy I could steal from Bryn. She’s inside now, and Tobek glances toward the doorway with a familiar look of longing. A restlessness permeates the camp; we’re all looking for a distraction.
Rocking my head back, I frame the sky between my hands. A single star emerges through the gray ocher haze of the Burn that rages on the other side of the Kettich Mountains. It sparkles in and out of view, taunting me. There’s your wish.
Despite lying flat on my back, I feel imbalanced, dizzy, as though I might fall. The edges of the courtyard tilt in, and for a moment, I feel the familiar claustrophobia of home.
I lower my hands. “Tobek,” I call, and he jerks back, startled, searching the ground before North finally tells him to look up.
“What?” he asks, surprise giving way to a scowl. I am not forgiven for this afternoon.
“Why doesn’t the Burn spread through the mountains? I thought stone was a cond
uctor.”
“It would still have to be transferred.” It’s North who speaks, though he doesn’t look at me. He hasn’t looked at me all afternoon. “And anyone who tries to pull a thread of poisoned magic through a mountain is going to die long before the mountain will.”
So it’s not magic that keeps Brindaigel safe from the plague, it’s the mountains themselves. But how can a man move an entire mountain and not leave a mark for an intuit to find? A spell that size would draw every hellborne in Avinea to our borders, yet according to Bryn, Perrote is not a talented spellcaster.
So who cast the spell that removed Brindaigel from the map?
I prop myself up on my elbows. “North, what’s the biggest spell that’s ever been cast?”
Fingers knot at the back his neck, and at first, I don’t think he’s going to answer. But then he stands, his ward complete. “Thirty years ago, Merlock took an army to defend our Wintirland allies from invasion. Before leaving, he placed a protective spell around Prevast to keep the city safe from outside attack until he returned. Corthen bribed the provosts into unraveling the spell one thread at a time. It took months to dismantle the whole thing.”
“Like the touchstones,” I say.
He stiffens; I’ve hit a nerve. “Yes. The provosts who guarded Merlock’s magic were mostly addicts and thieves. They are the very souls Merlock meant to punish with the Burn and yet, they were on the first ship that fled Avinea.”
“What did Corthen do with it all?” Is it possible that he removed us from the map in exchange for our alliance? Everlasting protection and a possible place to hide from his brother?
“There was a war,” Tobek says pointedly.
“Most of it was lost,” North agrees, not nearly as sarcastic. “What little he didn’t use has been hunted and reclaimed over the last twenty years.”
“Was he a spellcaster?”