Memories of Ash (The Sunbolt Chronicles Book 2)

by Intisar Khanani

  “No.” My voice rasps, as if the truth spell were pressing on my throat. Perhaps it is. “He didn’t really offer any help.”

  Keep going before they ask more, Val says. As much truth as you can, and what lies will save the people you need to protect. Otherwise, I’ll have to make up lies for you and that may not go so well.

  So I do.

  “I asked Stonefall’s help in leaving his room, since there was a guard posted in the hallway. He agreed, as final payment of the life debt he incurred. He left his rooms and made sure the guards were dismissed. I left after their departure.”

  An arch mage with an angular face and shrewd eyes leans forward. “You merely walked out of White Raven Hall, despite the guards and the patrols, and no one took any note of you?”

  “I was dressed as a mage and my age allowed me to pass as a student. To leave the building, I used the same charm I gave Stormwind — the look-away. Once I was outside, I took it off. No one noticed.”

  “This is outrageous,” another mage mutters.

  Blackflame looks to Stonefall. “You not only allowed but helped a rogue mage to walk out of your rooms?”

  “I warned her to leave the Mekteb. I saw no sign that she used her magic for ill, nor did she argue with my warnings. I hunt declared rogues. The girl saved my life and seemed more concerned with fairness and justice than any rogue I have met.”

  “Is that how you judge rogues? You wait until they do something in your presence?” Blackflame flicks his fingers, dismissing any response Stonefall might have made. “Did you really think the rogue mage who showed up in your chambers would leave because you told her to?”

  A pause. “I thought I may have persuaded her to leave the campus at least for a time. I doubted she would be able to get in again.”

  Is that why he told me about the Degaths? Or is he merely reinterpreting our conversation? Clearly, though, the Council hasn’t questioned him about my visit either, or he would have named the Degaths right now. He knows very well that I’ve subverted the truth spell and he’s helping me protect them. Just as he makes no mention of Jabir’s visit to his room either.

  Relief rushes through me. Until that moment, I didn’t realize how worried I was that Stonefall’s sense of honor would move him to confess his truths and uncover my ability to lie through the truth spell. But honor is a tricky thing. Stormwind’s unjust imprisonment, and now my trial for aiding in her escape, might call to his sense of honor as strongly as speaking the truth, and fewer people will suffer for it. With his silence, Jabir avoids admitting his agreement to allow a prisoner’s escape, and the Degaths are left uninvolved altogether.

  “It seems the Council may need to revisit your appointment as a hunter,” Blackflame observes blandly and turns his attention back to me. “Where did you go from White Raven Hall?”

  “I found out that Arch Mage Talon had the keys to Stormwind’s shackles. I decided to get into her rooms to look for them.”

  “How did you learn that?” Bastion asks.

  Another lie. “I heard a group of students discussing Stormwind and joined the conversation. And no,” I add at his look, “I don’t know their names.”

  I can’t tell if the mages note the strain in my voice, if it registers at all. I go on, explaining with complete truth how I’d stolen servants’ clothing, been waylaid in the gardens by the boys with their screecher, and so met Osman Bey for the first time. I know very well that Osman Bey will have reported all that he knew of me at the time of my capture. I don’t dare leave out any interaction with him or the other lycans.

  Blackflame leans forward, expression contemptuous. “Osman Bey, you knew there was a rogue mage loose on the campus and you didn’t suspect a servant you had never seen before?”

  “Why should he?” I cut in before Osman Bey can answer. “You did not suspect me yourself.”

  “What?” Blackflame demands.

  “I had the key to Stormwind’s shackles in my pocket when I came up the stairs of Shahmaran Hall, and you saw me. You sent me to your rooms to clean the mess your source slave made when you used him too hard. Do you remember? I can’t imagine what spell you cast to drain him so, but the boy was so weak he was propped against the wall, shivering and unable to speak. You must remember. You sent me up with Hotaru Brokensword.”

  Blackflame makes a choking sound, his face flushing. “You—”

  “If you did not suspect me to be anything other than what I presented myself to be, you certainly should not blame anyone else, not Master Jabir, not Master Stonefall, not the housekeepers or servants or guards.”

  Nightblade tilts his head, eyes glinting with an amused approval.

  “I did not suspect her,” Osman Bey says from the back of the room, “because she wore servants’ clothing and claimed to be new. Every month we have seen new servants join the Mekteb. It is not our duty to monitor the servants. They are employed by the Mekteb, not the Council.”

  “Mistress Jeweltongue,” Blackflame says, his composure icing over once more. “It seems you are unaware of the dangers posed to your students by your lax approach to security.”

  “On the contrary, Master Blackflame,” a woman replies, her voice growing closer as she rises and walks up the aisle behind me. “Our Mekteb has enjoyed decades of peace, and it is our students’ and servants’ right to move freely on campus as well as into the city. It was the Council’s decision to house prisoners here that has created such difficulty for our students and faculty, and, it seems, our servants. Perhaps, in future, the Council should reconsider the decision to stay at a school where the free movement of people must be allowed.”

  By the time she finishes, Jeweltongue has come to a stop to my right. She is no taller than I am, and is very well built, rounded arms filling out her sleeves. Despite the fact that she has just essentially revoked the Council’s welcome at her school, she appears entirely unruffled — both by the Council and the ramifications of her words. I have a feeling there are few people indeed who would cross her willingly, and not because she is anything like Blackflame.

  There are so many people here I wish I could have learned from, I tell Val.

  I’m sure there are.

  “This is, perhaps, a discussion for after the hearing,” Nightblade says yet again. “Thank you, Headmistress Jeweltongue, for explaining your stance.”

  She inclines her head in deference and returns to her seat.

  Nightblade gestures toward me, as if welcoming me to speak, as if there were no truth spell to force out my answers. “How did you manage to steal the key?”

  I tell them, giving all of the ensuing details in complete honesty. Let Talon deal with the ramifications of leaving her book detailing the binding spells out. Let her explain why the key was only a cat’s head key, and placed on her housekeeper’s key ring. I feel a momentary regret having to name both Yilmaz and Esra, but there is no way around it, and they can hardly be blamed for failing to suspect me when I had duped Blackflame himself.

  “So very honorable,” Blackflame murmurs as I finish describing how I’d stolen the key from Yilmaz as she rested. “For a girl who claims to value justice and honor, your ability to steal, deceive, and use people is quite exceptional. You would do anything, would you not, to achieve your ends?”

  If I had my body, I would curl in on myself against his words. They’re true, all true.

  “No,” Val says for me, voice strong and clear. “Not anything. I would not kill.”

  Blackflame hardly looks impressed. “But you would lie and poison. I see.”

  It wasn’t poison. I gave Yilmaz a morning-long stomachache. But perhaps it was still unforgiveable in its way. I drugged her, caused her pain, for my own ends.

  Ignore him, Val says tersely. We need to go on.

  Nightblade nods toward me. “What then? After you had the key?”

  I touch on my run-in with Blackflame again, then describe leaving the Mekteb in company with the servants, and their introduction of me to the gu
ards at the gate.

  “And yet the Mekteb has no trouble with security,” Bastion says, cutting his eyes to the place behind me where Jeweltongue must be sitting.

  “They were your guards,” Jeweltongue replies easily. “And as yet, no harm has been done to the Mekteb by the young woman in question, other than the loss of the two enchanted swords that were on display in Susulu Hall. That, Miss Hibachi, I do regret.”

  “I’m sorry for it,” we say, half-turning in order to see her over my shoulder. “I was trying to avoid harming anyone.”

  “Indeed,” she says. She must dislike Blackflame intensely, to have called into question the Council’s future welcome to her Mekteb, and then gone so far as to suggest that all her concern regarding my actions amounts to is a couple of broken swords of purely magical curiosity.

  “Enough,” Blackflame says. “You left the Mekteb for the city, then. What allies did you meet there?”

  I’ll have to lie, I tell Val, so that he’s ready.

  That’s fine. Go on.

  “Only the phoenix. I paid an elderly woman to let me bake a bread roll at her fire. I baked in the key, my look-away charm, and a note telling Stormwind to wait in her cell for me. Then I burnt the feather the phoenix gave me and requested his help rescuing Stormwind.”

  “I was under the impression that he did not care for politics,” Arch Mage Nightblade says, his voice quiet.

  “I can’t speak to that,” I say after a moment. “I doubt he would have done anything had I not asked for his help. But we spoke for some time, and he considered his actions. Had he not believed Stormwind innocent, he would never have helped me.” He’d been swayed most by Jabir’s involvement, but he had still carefully pondered his decision before agreeing.

  “I see. And in return, you promised to travel back to the Burnt Lands?”

  “Yes.”

  The mage with the scar shakes his head. “What exactly did he think you would accomplish there, by yourself?”

  “He wished for me to try my hand at dismantling the spells there.”

  “And he still considered it worth the risk,” Nightblade murmurs. He shakes his head. “Once you had his agreement, what did you do?”

  “I returned to the Mekteb in time to distract the servant taking Stormwind’s dinner in to her, and put the bun I had baked on her tray.”

  “Distract how?” Blackflame demands.

  Last lie, I promise. At least, I will try to make it my last.

  “A construct.” The Council stares at me, and well they should. I am relatively certain I could not actually create a construct, a working of the highest order, difficult to maintain without complete and ongoing concentration. But the truth spell helps me convince them where I wouldn’t be inclined to believe myself. “I created a construct of a teacher and used him to demand the help of the servant as he passed by. The servant put his tray down as ordered and went into the classroom, I placed the bun beneath a covered dish where it wouldn’t be noticed, and the construct dismissed the servant.”

  Val shrugs my shoulders. “You know most of the rest of the story. I hid in the servants’ washing room in the next building until the alarm was raised. Then I put on my mages’ robes, ‘discovered’ the window I altered the protections on, and convinced the patrol I joined to take me to Stormwind’s cell. I opened the door for her, gave her the space to come out, gave her a handful of smokers and stinkers, and a note telling her to use the roof if we got separated.

  “I was caught on the stairs going up. She was directly behind me at the time. I cannot say precisely where she went after that.”

  The mages shift, glancing down at the papers before them, one or two murmuring something to the person beside them. My story is over, or at least I hope it is. I still can’t be sure that Osman Bey didn’t report my inhuman speed and fighting skill to the Council. It seems too much to hope that he did not.

  “We have two reports here that we will ask you more about,” Blackflame says, shifting a paper before him. “The first is from the head healer, Mistress Brightsong, who notes that your magical core has been touched by both fire and stone.”

  “The fire was from the sunbolt that nearly killed me. As far as I can tell, the stone was from the spell-creature in the Burnt Lands. There was no magic there to raise a shield as protection against the magical backlash from it.”

  A number of heads nod, accepting these explanations.

  “The second is a report regarding your ability to fight the lycan guard. They believe your speed and ability to be beyond that of a human.”

  Val cants my head to the side. “Did the medical report find me at all inhuman?”

  Blackflame regards me with disgust. “No.”

  “Then I expect it was merely the glamors and sleights of hand I used to confuse the guards, since I cannot be both human and not.”

  The spiky-haired woman says, “Then why shout ‘No’ and disarm yourself?”

  “I was on the verge of killing someone. I had to remind myself that it was not something I could allow myself to do.”

  The mage with the scar looks at me strangely. “You wouldn’t kill at all? Ever?”

  “I could feel my fire calling to me. It would have been easier than breathing, to bathe them all in flame and escape. To kill them as I killed Kol. I would rather pay this price than do that. They were only upholding their honor, doing what they believed was right.

  “I tried to stop them without magic because I did not trust myself. When I had no other choice, I tried to disarm them with a spell without fire at its heart. That’s all.”

  The mage glances toward Blackflame, and I recall with sudden panic that I’d admitted to Osman Bey that I hadn’t fought him — that it had been something else in me. Did he report that or hold it in confidence? And why hasn’t he spoken up now? He must still be in the room….

  “Are there any further questions for the prisoner?” Blackflame asks.

  Why the panic? Val asks, his voice tired but steady. You’re almost done.

  The lycans. They know it wasn’t me — I told one of them.

  You what?

  I didn’t think I’d be able to escape the truth spell. I admitted I hadn’t been the one to fight them.

  Val makes no comment, which makes me feel even more the fool.

  “Very well,” Blackflame says into the quiet. “The prisoner will be escorted out and the Council will begin deliberation on the case.”

  As Nightblade approaches, Val returns my body to me. It feels as brittle as glass riddled with cracks, held together more by a memory of shape than by any true strength. Every breath comes as a jagged, painful gasp. I have to school myself to breathe slowly, as steadily as I can, let the pain ebb and flow until it begins to ease.

  I remain seated until Nightblade lifts the truth spell from me. Even then, the pain does not dissipate, but lingers. How did Val bear this for a whole day?

  Thankfully, Nightblade drops his fingers from my forehead and departs without a word. I open my eyes to see the blurry image of his robes moving away.

  My escort materializes around me.

  I will check in on you later, Val says. Call if you need me.

  Thank you.

  My body answers me in jerky movements as I rise, as if it doesn’t quite remember the way of things. I push myself to my feet and teeter there uncertainly, as if half-drunk, until Ravenflight once more offers me her arm.

  Halfway down the aisle, I remember to look for Osman Bey. He stands quietly, expression unreadable, golden eyes steady. I glance the other way to Stonefall, who appears equally inscrutable. As for Jabir, well, he looks like a harmless old man leaning on his staff, his gaze so bland it’s hard to believe he’s actually the sworn Guardian of the Mekteb, let alone a dragon-shifter. He certainly doesn’t look like he just watched me pull off the biggest heist in the history of truth spells.

  I keep my focus on my footing as we pass them. It is all I can do to make it out of the room and down the hall to
the next room. There are new trays of food laid out, but my stomach balks at the thought of eating.

  I ease myself down on a sofa, close my eyes, and let myself breathe. Whatever the Council chooses, I have done what I can.

  “Miss Hibachi.”

  It can’t have been more than a few minutes since I sat down. I make myself open my eyes.

  Ravenflight holds out a steaming bowl to me. “You would be wise to keep up your energy.”

  She’s right, of course. I cannot afford my current weakness.

  I take the bowl, nod as she sets a second plate on the sofa beside me. The food is wholesome and well seasoned, but my body wants none of it. I force down a few bites of the soup, try an equal number of bites from the food on the plate. When I have eaten what I can, I set the dishes to the side. Wordlessly, Ravenflight hands me a cup of water. I take it from her, wondering a little at her care. But she says no word, nor does anyone else speak as they finish their meals.

  I stare at the floor with its covering of intricately designed carpets, following each twisting vine and uncurling flower on them, then trace my way back around to where I started in an attempt to focus on something other than my fate being decided in the room next door.

  A knock comes at the door. I look up with a jerk, as do the other mages. The lycans were already watching the door, as if they’d heard who approached. The lycan stationed beside the door opens it and speaks to the mage in the hallway. I recognize him as the Council’s scribe. He speaks softly, but from the way his eyes flick to me, the brisk nod of the lycan, I know it’s a summons.

  “The Council will see you, Miss Hibachi,” the lycan tells the room, his eyes resting on me for a moment before moving away.

  Interesting. It is the first time the lycans have referred to me as anything other than “the prisoner.” And, other than Osman Bey, not once have they addressed me directly.

  The remaining members of my escort stand up, waiting for me to rise. This time, my body answers me a little better, though my fingers have begun to shake. I hide them in my tunic as we make our way to the hearing room. Inside, I stand before the Council. The chair I’d used earlier has been removed, leaving me feeling exposed without its presence.