Cara said, “Dev, you—” She took a stride closer and peered at me. “Lena. His bruises are gone.”
“What?” The cut on my arm had closed, but I’d assumed that was part of Lena finishing the binding.
“He had a bruise here”—Cara touched my temple—“and plenty more on his elbows and forearms. They’re gone. All of them.”
I peered at my arms. I’d banged them up pretty good in the slot, but Cara was right. Underneath the dirt, my skin was healthy, unmarked brown. Same with my fingers. No more cuts and scrapes. A shiver ran along my nerves.
I looked up at Kiran. “Did you…?”
“I didn’t do anything,” he said, eyes almost as wide as Melly’s. “That is, I let my body heal my own cuts, but I don’t know how to heal a nathahlen.”
“Let me see.” That was Teo, briskly competent. His hands settled on me. I didn’t shy away, even when Lena joined him and more magic tingled over my skin. Both Lena and Teo were soon frowning, which stole away a little of my giddiness.
Teo said to Lena, “No damage to his body. None at all. That surprises me all the more, given what I see of the demon’s binding.”
“I wonder…” Lena turned to Kiran. “Have you ever been bound to someone untalented before?”
“No.” Kiran’s mouth twisted. “Ruslan would never have allowed it. He scorns even slave-bindings. Says a mage should not be bound to cattle.”
I could just hear Ruslan saying it, too, with the cold contempt that was all the worse because he really believed he was right. “Cattle, huh? Where the fuck does he think mages come from?” Impossible for mages to have children, so even Ruslan had been born to untalented parents. Too bad they hadn’t throttled him at birth.
Lena ignored my outburst. “Kiran, the healers at the Sanitorium never could decipher exactly what Ruslan had cast on you to make your healing so instinctive, but—now that your ikilhia and Dev’s are linked, might Ruslan’s spell act to preserve Dev’s body along with yours?”
“I…maybe,” Kiran said, his eyes going wider yet. “Since Dev is nathahlen and has no barriers to prevent it. If that’s so—”
“Then I can use the Taint so long as I’m linked to you and the confluence.” I wanted to jump, to dance, to shout out the fierce joy filling me. To think I’d been so afraid of this binding! I laughed, reaching for Kiran. “This was the best idea you’ve ever had.”
Might as well have poked a stinkwasp nest with a stick. Lena and Teo jumped between us, insisting Ruslan’s spells were dangerous and if the blood-binding had one unexpected effect on me, there might be others. Already Lena’s binding looked rooted far deeply than it should, spreading through me like the demon’s binding had, and what if—
I tore free of them. “Khalmet’s bloodsoaked hand, enough! Save the worrying for after we’ve killed Ruslan. Don’t you get it? If I’m Tainted, I can help Kiran against the Watch. I can even hold off demons like Melly did Vidai. If there’s a price for that, I’ll pay it, I don’t care.”
“I do.” Cara gave me a look like she wanted to deck me. She stabbed a finger at Kiran’s chest. “You know Dev loses all sense when it comes to the Taint. So I’m asking you for a promise: that you’ll be sensible for him. And that the instant you no longer need this bond to fight Ruslan, you’ll sever it.”
I didn’t want Kiran to sever the bond. Ever. Not if it meant I could have the Taint back. But the very strength of that certainty was a splash of icemelt bringing me to my senses. Paying a price to kill Ruslan and save those I loved was one thing. Turning a blind eye to consequences the way I had with Simon’s charm, all because I was so desperate to feel whole again—that was stupid.
So when Kiran fixed Cara with a blue, earnest gaze and said, “I promise,” I didn’t howl protests. I’d prove to them I could handle this rationally and not like a taphtha addict about to be deprived of his stash.
I said to Cara, “You should pack.” Despite my best effort, it came out through my teeth. “I’m thinking it’s best if you all leave the temple before Kiran and I go after Marten. Well before we go after Marten, so you can get as far from here as possible. No telling what Ruslan will do when he realizes Kiran’s gone.”
“I agree,” Kiran said. “If the rest of you leave the temple for the desert, then when we return it will be to a point Ruslan can’t predict.”
Cara gave me a measuring look. “Nice to know you haven’t lost your wits entirely. But I’m not going unless Lena thinks it’s safe to leave you and Kiran on your own.”
“I’m not sure it’s ever safe with those two,” Lena said ruefully. “But their logic about Ruslan is sound.”
Teo said, “We should bring as many books as we can fit in the packs. I’ll choose the ones I think most useful.” He hurried back into the workroom.
I beckoned Melly. “Don’t let Teo choose too many books. Those damn packs are heavy enough as it is.”
She lingered, edging from foot to foot. “Can I talk to you?”
“Sure.” I let her pull me away from the others. Not hard to guess what this was about. I wasn’t the only one who was desperate to stay Tainted.
“I want to go with you.”
“What?” I’d been braced for her to ask if Lena could bind her to the confluence like me. “Melly. How does that make any kind of sense?”
Fire flashed in her eyes. “I can help you. The Alathians won’t attack you and Kiran so hard if they think their spells might hurt a kid.”
“Not every Alathian is like Lena.” Marten, for instance, would strike a child down without hesitation if he thought his country’s safety was at stake.
“And I’m not some useless little brat! I saved you from Vidai. I rescued you from the black-daggers. I’ve run jobs you wouldn’t believe and never lost a one of my crew! But Cara won’t let me do anything, and even you—all you ever do is send me away, even though you swore to my father to take care of me.”
That hit like a crossbow bolt to the heart. But she wasn’t done. “The worst part is, you know how awful it is to be dead inside! But still you won’t let me near a confluence or give me anything real to do so I could stop thinking about it, and oh, sometimes I hate you for taking me from Ninavel…” She was sobbing now, wild and furious.
“Melly—” I tried to take her in my arms, but she flung away from me and ran headlong into the workroom. The sound of her sobs continued, more muffled, accompanied by Teo’s worried voice.
“Won’t this be a fun day,” Cara said, hefting the packs. I winced, thinking of how she hadn’t wanted kids and yet I’d saddled her with a highstrung ex-Tainter. I moved to follow Melly, but Cara barred my path.
“No. Let me talk to her. The state you’re in, you’ll only work her up more.”
“The state I’m in? What’s that supposed to mean?” I was being calm, damn it.
She stalked into the workroom without answering. Kiran and Lena were looking everywhere but at me.
Fine. Better to concentrate on the problem at hand, anyway. I strode over to Lena. “Before you left Alathia, you tried to see Marten. Where was he being held? That warded house where you stashed Kiran?”
She looked relieved at my choice of subject. “No. Kiran was kept in the guest house because the Council didn’t want him anywhere near the restricted areas of the Arcanum. They don’t fear Marten so deeply. He’s in the Arcanum’s containment area for mages awaiting trial. The wing is heavily warded, and during times the cells are occupied, it’s guarded day and night by mages hand-picked by the Council for their strength and loyalty.”
Kiran said, “Would the guards be within Marten’s cell or outside it?” He must be hoping we could pop into Marten’s cell, nab him, and vanish again before anybody realized we were there.
“Outside, if he is not being questioned,” Lena said. “The chances of finding him alone are greatest if you wait until well after nightfall.”
I hated the thought of more waiting, but that’d give Cara and the rest plenty of time to get cle
ar of the canyon. Plus give me and Kiran the chance to experiment a little more with the bond without anybody jumping all over us. I had to be sure I could use the Taint, right?
Lena was still talking to Kiran. “Marten may resist the idea of leaving with you. He’ll be wary, fearing you’ve been compromised by either Ruslan or demons. When you see him, tell him: solueti dallo vionna amis. It’s a code. One that will let him know I support you in this.”
The words were Parthian, maybe—I’d never heard anybody speak the language, but I’d seen inscriptions carved on buildings in Tamanath. I repeated the phrase quietly to myself a few times so I’d be sure and remember it.
Kiran, whose memory was mage-perfect, said only, “Thank you.”
Lena said, “I thought I would never see Marten again. Now—oh, I am afraid to hope.”
Kiran’s eyes met mine. “I know the feeling.”
“We’ll get Marten for you,” I assured Lena. Because this problem, I could actually solve. Even if Marten didn’t deserve saving.
* * *
(Kiran)
Kiran paced a rubble-choked courtyard. The sun had long since set; the stars were clear and brilliant above the humped outlines of roofs and the black bulk of the canyon’s opposite wall. Almost time to go.
He couldn’t stand still. After his and Dev’s practice with their bond, his ikilhia burned at such a pitch that jittery energy crackled through all his muscles. He’d had to be exceedingly careful not to draw so much power that he could not contain it within his barriers. He’d thought working with Dev’s bond to the confluence would be as difficult and painful as it had been during his desperate attempt to save Dev’s life. But when he used the demonfire in his ikilhia to infiltrate the bond’s icy magic, drawing power did not hurt at all.
Far from it. Kiran shivered at the memory of how sublime the magic tasted, sweet and rich and seemingly inexhaustible. He had never dreamed that touching Ninavel’s great confluence so directly was possible. Granted, he was limited by the need to protect his and Dev’s flesh. He could not shape and cast vast amounts of power as he might with channels. But to have such a bright well of magic available whenever he pleased, even when the aether around him was dead….ah, it was pure glory. To feel Dev sharing that glory and reveling in his own returned talent was better yet.
Best of all was the knowledge that this magic was not born of death. Kiran sank into memory once more, savoring the moments when all he’d felt was joy so strong it left no room for fear.
“Kiran!”
He blinked and found Dev at his side, staring at him. The soft green radiance of the glowlight charm bound around Dev’s wrist turned his eyes brilliant as emeralds.
“Is that blood on your hand?”
Kiran looked down, surprised. Yes, it was. “I must have scraped it climbing down to the courtyard.” No wound marked his skin. With his ikilhia burning so high, small injuries healed without him even realizing it. It was such a relief to be whole again, no longer starving for scraps of power.
“I was calling and you didn’t answer,” Dev said, still eyeing him.
“I was just distracted. Thinking about magic and how good it feels to take a proper step toward Ashkiza’s weapon.” He and Dev had been on the defensive for so long, but if Marten could give him all he hoped…
I will beat you, he promised Ruslan. Even akheli can die.
That wasn’t his only hope. During the long afternoon, a new idea had bloomed like a fragile flower reaching for the sunlight. If he were in the demon realm when he struck at Ruslan with Ashkiza’s weapon, he might escape the death he had believed so inevitable. For a dizzying moment, he let himself imagine the future Dev had once painted for him, that he and Dev and Cara might live in freedom together.
Maybe one day Dev and Cara would even let him join their partnership. Maybe he could regain what he had thought forever lost with his mage-family: the certainty of love, the depth of connection, only this time unmarred by guilt and fear. Perhaps it was too far-fetched a hope to ever happen, but so long as he was dreaming…
“Hold on,” Dev said. “Was that a smile? Thought maybe you’d forgotten how.”
Kiran said, “What would you have said if back when you first met me, somebody had told you that before summer’s end you and I would be blood-bonded and about to translocate across a demon realm to rescue a captain of Alathia’s Watch?”
Dev snorted. “I’ve have said that person was chewing staggerweed.”
“I think you would’ve expressed yourself a lot more colorfully than that.”
“Probably with a boot to the ass in the bargain,” Dev agreed. “Especially if they’d told me I’d want to be bonded to a blood mage.”
He only meant because of the Taint. Still, Kiran’s heart warmed. He already regretted his promise to Cara. He had made it thinking that he must release Dev before Ruslan’s death to ensure Dev did not die with Kiran. But if that wasn’t necessary…
Now he was being selfish. Cara was right to worry about the effects of the dual bindings on Dev. Besides, he didn’t want to upset her more. It had been hard enough to watch how reserved she and Dev had been with each other during their farewells, choosing their words with painstaking care lest they spark off another argument.
Kiran wanted them to be happy; and that at least was a wish that was possible. He glanced at the stars. “We’ve waited long enough. Are you ready?”
“Hell yes.” Dev held out a hand.
Kiran took it. Dev felt so different from Mikail or any other mage whose mind he’d shared. Instead of cool, precise control, his thoughts and emotions swept over Kiran in a boisterous rush like a tumbling mountain stream.
Tumbling mountain stream, huh? Dev gave a wry mental chuckle. Could be worse, I guess. ‘Dev feels like an unstable talus slope.’ Or a bug-infested swamp.
A flock of squabbling sage hens, Kiran suggested.
No! I am a leaping herd of drunken mountain goats.
Kiran snickered, Dev joined him, and then they were laughing hard enough Kiran could barely catch his breath. He knew they were teetering on the edge of hysteria, but it felt so good. Kiran couldn’t even remember the last time he’d laughed with someone.
You should do it more, Dev said. Along with the smiling.
Sobering, Kiran said, What you really feel like is courage. I’ve always envied your fearlessness.
Shame now you know it’s never been true. Did you miss that I’m fucking terrified, here?
Kiran had seen the razor-edged fears that lurked beneath the giddy wash of Dev’s exhilaration. Just as his own worries were clamoring again. What if he made an error in casting? What if demons captured them?
What I admire most is that you never let fear stop you. With swift precision, Kiran dropped his barriers and cast.
Chapter Twenty-Six
(Dev)
Now I understood the tales of Shaikar’s lightless hells. The darkness around me was absolute. Worse, I couldn’t hear anything, smell anything, even feel anything beyond the grip of Kiran’s hand on mine. Yet I had the dizzying sense we were speeding through the void, as if falling from some great height.
My stomach heaved. I reached for Kiran’s thoughts in panicked instinct and caught a disorienting glimpse of a sandstorm of colors swirling all around us, held at bay only by a frail shimmer of blue.
The world changed. Became real again, sight and sensation returning in a nauseating rush. The glow of the charm on my wrist illuminated a space far larger than I’d been expecting. Shadowed shapes loomed around us, one of them right in the corner of my vision.
I took a hasty step away and tripped over something unyielding, dragging Kiran down with me. I twisted, ready to shove any attackers back, the heart of my mind as bright and alive as if I were twelve again—
Nobody was there. No mages of the Watch, not even Marten. Just some neatly stacked towers of wooden crates, their slatted sides marked with the golden seal of the Council. I’d fallen over an open crate that h
adn’t yet been packed. Far as I could tell, Kiran and I were alone in the room. A room I recognized, thanks to the haphazardly piled clutter on the shelves. The last time I’d seen the sturdy cinnabar-wood table in front of me, it’d been drifted high with papers. Now the tabletop was bare, as was the forbidding gray stone of the walls, which I remembered as covered with scrawled charts and diagrams.
Marten’s workroom? I said to Kiran. Why’d you bring us here?
Kiran was on his knees, his free arm thrown over his eyes. I got a flash through the bond of disorientation, pain, a desperate struggle to master his magic—and then he yanked his hand from mine.
“Kiran!” I reached for him, but he flinched back.
“I’ll be all right,” he said in a bare whisper. “I just…need a moment. Traveling the currents was more—more difficult than I thought.”
“Is that why we’re here and not where Marten is?” I didn’t want to move in case I triggered any lurking spells. Obviously the Council had been pawing through Marten’s papers looking for more evidence to condemn him. I didn’t see any wards other than the thicket of inset obsidian lines surrounding the workroom door, but that didn’t mean somebody in the Watch hadn’t gotten all inventive. At least I didn’t hear any sharp voices or pounding feet. The Arcanum seemed wrapped in midnight silence.
“I don’t know why we’re not with Marten.” Kiran let out a shuddering sigh and turned to me. “When I cast, I felt the anchor take. I swear I traveled right to it. The wards and charms remaining in this workroom carry the signature of Marten’s power, but that signature shouldn’t be stronger than their source.”
An awful thought struck me. “What if Marten’s dead? Would a pile of charms and wards he created be the strongest match to your spell then?”
I read the answer in the dismayed widening of Kiran’s eyes. He lurched to his feet. “He can’t be dead. He can’t be. Not after I promised Lena—”
The Labyrinth of Flame (The Shattered Sigil Book 3) Page 48