by Rachel Dunne
Barely, he kept his gorge from rising. The fire was gone, fast-burning, no natural thing, but it had left destruction. The town square was black and burned, buildings beginning to collapse under charred timbers. The villagers . . . there wasn’t much left of them. Charred corpses, if there was anything, as black and crumbling as the wood. In front of him, where the mob had been charging, was nothing but burned ground. At the far end of it all, where a handful of corpses stood frozen as scorched skin stretched taut over bone, there also stood Scal and the twins, within a half circle of perfect preservation, Anddyr’s shield still a faint shimmer around them.
The merra knelt, head bowed over her hands, vehemently reciting prayer. Anddyr sprawled near her, sobbing and retching and screaming in turns, his face a rictus of horror. He clawed at his palms, as though he were trying to strip away his own skin.
Slowly Joros rose to his feet, feeling like an old man, feeling like half his mind had fled to somewhere else. Each step was like walking through water, but the sting of his hand connecting with the mage’s face seemed to bring some sense back. “Bloody . . .” he started, but the words dribbled through his mind. His foot to Anddyr’s stomach knitted them back together. “. . . fecking idiot.” Another kick, drawing together the scattered pieces of his mind. “I’ll kill you,” he promised, but the words didn’t feel right in his mouth.
He moved with more surety through the swath of destruction. He kept his eyes forward, focused on the Northman’s expressionless face, trying not to breathe in the stench of burned meat. He stopped outside the perimeter of the shield, for he wouldn’t be able to pass through it, but he held his hand down to the twins. They both knelt, clinging to each other, eyes wide in identical faces. “You’re safe now,” Joros said with all the softness he could muster. To his own ears, he just sounded tired.
“This is a bad thing,” the Northman rumbled. Joros didn’t know if he was referring to the burning or the twins, and he didn’t elaborate. The shield around them flickered and faded; Anddyr had either cast the spell off or his reserves of power had been devoured to feed the flames.
The female twin loosened her arms from her brother, her eyes still wide but a hardness growing in them. He knew her, Rora, knew her as well as he could from the reports his shadowseeker Nadaro had sent years ago. She was a fighter, as strong as her brother was weak. “Who are you?” she demanded.
He had thought so carefully of what he would say to her, the perfect words, but his thoughts were strewn across the world, too fractured to pull together. “I am a shadow,” he said instead, “and I know your name.” A dagger flashed into her hand, one with a blue stone set into the pommel. The Northman’s eyes flickered from Joros to Rora, sword still held ready. Joros felt a grim smile stretch his face, half sneer. “So you’ve met some of the others, then. I promise you, I’m a different kind of shadow.” The words were flowing back to him, the cottony feeling fading from his mind. “Our shadows chase us, but a good shadow can hide you from sight, keep you safe.” Moving slowly to keep from startling her, he reached into his robe; his fingers found the seekstone easily. He tossed it to her, and it was likely instinct that made her catch it, though she dropped it with a curse almost immediately. Her brother, Aro, snatched it up, and his mouth dropped open. Disorienting, no doubt, to have his sister’s sight layer over his own. She’d likely been surprised by the flicker in her own sight when she’d touched the seekstone.
“Smash the stone in your knife,” Joros told her, “and the shadows will never touch you again.”
The two looked at each other, Rora and Aro, and their eyes spoke words no other could read. She pulled free a second dagger, used it to smash the stone in the first. Aro nodded, passed her the seekstone; there was something unreadable in her eyes when she looked back to Joros. “Who are you,” she said again, and it was less a question this time.
“My name,” he said, “is Joros Sedeiro. I have need of a few companions such as yourself.”
“For what?” Rora demanded.
Joros spread his hands, the image of innocence. It almost felt obscene, surrounded by such destruction. “It’s just the beginnings of a plan, really, but if I do need two such as yourselves, I want to make sure you’re readily available.”
“Two such as us,” Aro drawled, and his voice was a near-perfect mockery of Joros’s. It dropped to a normal register as he said, “You mean twins.”
Joros granted him a small smile, a nod. “I mean twins.”
“People aren’t usually in the habit of collecting us,” Aro said. “Unless it’s heads. They like collecting twins’ heads.”
“It’s actually hands, usually.” He hadn’t heard the merra approach, but there she was, venom dripping from her voice, and Anddyr trailing in her wake.
The brother snorted. “See?”
Joros could have strangled the merra; his hands clenched and unclenched at his sides, but he kept his eyes fixed on the twins—kept them on the woman, for there was more thought behind her eyes than her brother’s. “I’m not a normal man.”
Aro laughed outright at that. “Higher moral standing than the rest of the world, hey? How lucky for us.”
There was a time for anger—hells, most times were good for anger—but there were times when a calm voice could carry a threat so much better. “You will die out here,” Joros told them levelly. “Understand that. You will be hunted down for the rest of your short lives—not even by shadows, but by normal men with any amount of brains in their heads to see the truth staring at them. You’ll be drowned, most like, or burned if there’s no water nearby when they catch you. Stoned, if the mob is patient enough. You’ll die, one way or another. However, as you have just seen,” and he gestured expansively, in case they were too dense to catch his meaning, “I am very capable of preserving your lives.”
“We’ve managed our own lives pretty well so far,” Aro said, but his eyes flickered to his sister, his voice losing its confidence.
Joros held her eyes, and it was she who asked, “Why? Why d’you care if we live?”
“Twins are very important to me.”
The merra spat at him, a wet gob that hit the still-healing side of his face. She spat again at the twins, and snarled, “Abominations.”
“You’re very fond of that word,” Joros said, wiping the spittle from his face, keeping a tight hold on his anger. “One might think you’d use it more sparingly, considering.”
Her scarred face flushed, but she stood resolute. “The Parents demand their deaths.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Joros scoffed. “They’ll have to wait, though. I’ve heard they’re patient, and we can only pray that the merras and parros have spoken true.”
She had one last mouthful of spit, this one for the twins again. “The Parents’ curse be upon you,” she snarled at them, her voice and ruined face cold, “that you be dead and drowned before the sun should rise again.” She turned away, stormed through the destruction of the village. Only the Northman watched her go.
Turning his attention back to the twins, Joros held his hand out to them again. “I offer once more. You will have my protection if you come with me. Elsewise, you are free to die, as you wish.”
They looked to each other again, eyes speaking, and slowly the woman’s face settled, set. Her hand reached up, fingers wrapping tight around his own; less accepting his protection, and more a challenge. She made it sound like a death sentence as she said, “We’ll go with you,” and Joros gave her his best smile.
CHAPTER 24
After her first contract, Rora’d hidden away topside, somewhere not even Aro knew about, because he hadn’t been training the same way she had. Tare knew, though, because she’d shown the place to Rora. Tare’d found her there, hiding, and just sat with her for a while. “It’s a hard thing,” the hand had finally said, “to have no choices left.”
It’d felt, then, like the worst thing in the world. Now Rora knew how stupid and young she’d been. It was much worse to have choice
s, and have all of them be shit.
She didn’t trust the head man, Joros, with half his face burned raw and a hard smile that did touch his eyes but was all the scarier for it. She kept the stone he’d tossed her, the one Aro’d whispered had let him see out her eyes, but it was just like a normal stone since she’d shattered its match in her dagger. To be safe, she’d smashed all the gems in Aro’s rings, too, though it went against everything she knew to destroy good money like that. Joros’d given them each a purse of coins, mostly copper rames and sests with a few silver gids thrown in. A man who had to pay you to stick by him wasn’t usually someone worth sticking by.
That was where the shit choices started. Keep with the untrustworthy bastard and his collection of freaks, keep her and Aro’s bellies full and their heads attached—or go back out on their own, where all the world wanted them dead and would do it without blinking. Shit choices, but one of ’em had more shit in it than the other.
So they had a new pack, probably the strangest pack Rora’d ever seen.
Aro liked the big bear of a Northman; he’d always made friends with the fists back in the Canals, admired the way they could just punch through life without spending a moment of it thinking. The Northman was like two fists put together, so big he could block out the sun if he stood the right way, but for all that, he wasn’t just a fist. There was a brain behind his eyes, and it even seemed like he knew how to use it. Didn’t stop Aro trying to make friends, though.
There was the merra, who no one except the Northman seemed to like, not that Rora could blame them. She was a mess to look at, the kind of thing that shouldn’t exist outside stories meant to scare kids, and Rora got the sense that if she was ever stupid enough to be alone with the merra, one of ’em would likely end up stabbed. She kept glaring at Rora, and Aro, too, and spitting whenever they happened to catch her eye. Kept chanting prayers, too; seemed like her favorites were the ones about killing twins before their plague spread out on the earth, so there wasn’t any kind of friendship to be made there, even if Rora’d been looking.
Then there was Anddyr. He stared at her even more than the merra, and turned a bright red whenever she caught him staring. He never talked to her—then again, he didn’t do much talking to anyone except himself. The merra’d tried to talk to him, the night they’d all made camp just out of sight of the burned-up village, but Joros’d stepped between her and Anddyr, and they’d had themselves a nice glare. “That is your doing,” Joros’d said, pointing back toward the village. “Anddyr is weak, susceptible, and your corruption poisoned him, twisted his mind. Their blood is on your hands. You will not speak to him again.”
The merra hadn’t had anything to say to that, but she hadn’t turned away before she’d glared and spat some more. Woman had so much spit in her mouth, Rora was thinking she was half water. Then Joros’d talked to Anddyr some, and Anddyr’d pulled out a little jar and eaten something from it and gotten so shaky and mumbly that Rora’d thought he was dying, but none of the others seemed to think anything was wrong. The merra’d glared, and Joros’d smirked, and Anddyr’d finally stopped shaking and spent the rest of the night staring at Rora with too-wide eyes. He was the mystery she couldn’t crack.
Then there was the fact that every time she closed her eyes, she saw the fire shooting out of Anddyr’s hands, and all the death it’d left.
She’d been trying to get up the nerve to ask him about it, because Aro wouldn’t even look at Anddyr, so she knew he wouldn’t ask on his own. It was left to her, just like usual. Took two days, but she finally tugged on her horse’s reins to get it to drop back to where she could feel Anddyr’s eyes. They’d found some horses in a part of the village that hadn’t gotten burned, and there’d been no people around to tell them they couldn’t take the beasts, so Rora’d gotten to learn to ride a horse. Hurt like hells when they bounced around, but she had to grant it was better than running on bloody feet. Aro kept falling off his, for no reason any of them could figure out, but the horse would go running off soon as it didn’t have a rider, and the Northman always went to drag the sulky thing back. He almost smiled every time he did it, and that made Rora wonder if Aro’s falling was such an accident. She’d never claim to understand the way men made friends.
She didn’t look at Anddyr, even though she could feel his eyes bright on her face, because she was hoping he wouldn’t be so shy if she didn’t look at him. “I’ve been meaning to ask,” she said, keeping her voice low enough no one else was like to hear. “The night you all found us. You . . . did something. With your hands. It was like you made fire . . .”
“I did.” He had a nice enough voice, soft and solemn, the kind of voice that alone wouldn’t make you any friends but wouldn’t get you into any fights either.
“How?”
“I’m a mage.”
Rora almost looked at him, but just glanced out the corners of her eyes instead. He was winding his horse’s mane between his fingers, not looking at her for once. “What d’you mean?”
She felt his eyes again, real quick. He spoke a little slower, like he thought she maybe hadn’t heard him: “I’m a mage.”
She did look at him then, with her forehead scrunched up and a frown on her face. “What’s that word?” she asked, in the nicest way she knew how. “Does it mean . . . Well, if I had to guess,” and she was careful with her words here, didn’t want to offend him or anything, “I’d guess you were a witch.”
His nose wrinkled at that, but it sounded like he was talking just as careful as she was. “No, I am a mage.” That didn’t help Rora any, so she just kept looking at him. Tare’d taught her that was one of the best ways to get the answers you wanted, just let the silence go on long enough the other person felt the need to fill it. That was how she got anything important out of Aro. Finally Anddyr sighed the saddest little sigh, and he looked over at her with his eyes like a dog’s, and he didn’t even blush too much when their eyes met. “We don’t like being called witches.”
Rora grinned at that, as much to encourage him as anything, though her heart was beating a little faster. “I’ve never seen a wit—mage.” She corrected herself real quick when she saw his eye start to twitch, and a smile pulled at his mouth. He didn’t have a face that was used to smiling. “Never seen a mage before. Are they all like you, throwing fire around?”
His face went sad again, and he looked back down at his fingers in his horse’s mane, turned them over so he could stare at his palms. She hadn’t noticed it before, but they were reddish, looked a lot like the healing skin on Joros’s face, and there were deep gouges crisscrossing his palms. “No,” he said softly. “That was . . . I shouldn’t have done that. I didn’t mean to. I . . . I’m not always as in control of myself as I should be.”
She could feel him slipping away, curling back in on himself, running away from whatever sort of bond they’d started to make. Quick, she asked, “What else can you do?” He glanced back up, and she flashed him a smile. Aro should’ve gotten up the stones to do this—he was so much better at charming people, pulling out answers slow and careful like pulling a worm from the earth, gentle so it came out whole instead of leaving behind broken pieces of itself. Rora could get good enough answers with the tip of a dagger, but that wasn’t always the best way, not when answers were dug in deep. “I like to know everything I can about everything,” she said, trying to sound all innocent, “and I don’t know anything about mages.”
Anddyr shrugged, twisting the horse’s mane again. “I can perform many spells—there are more spells than any one mage could ever learn.”
“Then how d’you learn to do any of ’em? Does it just . . . happen?”
“No—well, not usually. Control is the first thing a mage learns, so that it doesn’t ‘just happen.’ That’s the most dangerous thing for a mage . . . not being in control.” He looked down at his hands again for a bit, then shook himself and looked up at Rora, like meeting her eyes was a test he wasn’t sure he’d pass. “All mages are ta
ught at the Academy. We learn as much as we can in five years, and then we’re free to do as we please.”
Rora didn’t ask the obvious question, which was how Anddyr ended up with Joros when it didn’t exactly seem to be by his choice. Instead, she asked, “So this place . . . the Academy, it’s just full of mages?”
That little smile went on Anddyr’s face again. “Yes. It’s rather like an anthill. Everyone with a job to do, everyone helping each other out.” That seemed like a topic he could warm up to, his face going clearer than she’d seen it yet, his eyes bright on hers even though there was still some red to his cheeks.
It sounded a lot like life in the Canals, truth told, except for the everyone-working-together part. It seemed like a strange thing, that Rora’s life as Scum had been anything like this high-talking witch’s. “So how’d you know?” she asked. “How’d you find out you were a witch?”
“Mage,” he corrected, but there wasn’t any anger behind it, just the same tone Garim’d always used when he’d tried to teach Aro to speak right.
“Mage, right. How’d you know you were a mage?”
Anddyr laughed, and that was enough to make Rora’s eyebrows shoot up. She regretted it right away, because his face looked like it’d just realized how much his mouth had been talking. He turned that bright red again and wouldn’t look at her anymore. “There’s not much mystery to it,” he mumbled. “A young mage . . . makes himself known.”
“How?” Rora prompted when it seemed like he wasn’t going to say any more.
He fidgeted a bit, but it seemed like he won an argument with himself to keep talking. “The signs started when I was young. It’s usually fire—when I was angry, things near me would start afire with no reason, or fires would go out if I got scared. Pottery would crack if I got sad. The sorts of things that don’t just happen on their own. My parents knew what that meant, and so they took me to the Academy. The masters tested me for power, and accepted me when they found it.”