Memories of Ash (The Sunbolt Chronicles Book 2)

by Intisar Khanani

  A pillow of air wraps around me, buoying me upwards, and the phoenix’s flight smooths out, wingbeats lengthening as he uses his magic to ease my weight. Together, we soar upwards, passing over the sleeping Mekteb to freedom.

  The city slides by below us in a series of moonlit rooftops, glowstone-lit streets and darkened windows. The squares lie open and empty, the Festival now a thing of the past. Eventually, the crowded city buildings give way to houses with wide gardens, and then small farms, the land growing dark with crops.

  We begin to descend, low boundary walls and bushes gliding by below us. The phoenix spreads his wings, slowing as we enter a date palm grove. We brush past the feathery tips of palm fronds, descending between long thick trunks. My feet touch down and I take a few running steps, stumbling over the uneven dirt underfoot. The phoenix releases the harness’s slat and flaps past to land a few paces away.

  I stand a moment, the sling still hanging off of me, and listen to the night, the soft rustle of the breeze through the palm fronds. It’s a beautiful sound, gentle and free.

  “Hitomi.” Kenta walks toward me, a glowstone lantern in his hand. In its light, his face is hard, expression closed.

  I look down at the knot binding the sling to me. “Hey.”

  My fingers, clumsy from the cold of my flight, struggle to undo the knot.

  Kenta sets down the lantern. “Here.” He pushes my hands away and with a few deft tugs loosens the remaining ropes so the sling slides down my legs.

  “The ward,” the phoenix reminds him.

  Kenta slips a leather cord from his pocket and thrusts it at me. A pendant dangles from it: a circle of obsidian, hollowed out at the center.

  Taking it, I run my fingers over the faint carving tracing its way around the center. “This is powerful,” I murmur, the magic within it tingling at my fingertips. It’s a warding stone strong enough to block perhaps even the most powerful traces the Council might put on me — assuming they can find something of mine to use. I can only hope Brightsong disposed of my bloody clothing.

  Kenta clears his throat. “It seems the Degaths take their debt to you very seriously. That’s been in their family for generations. Lady Saira sent one for you and its mate for Stormwind.”

  I slide it over my head awkwardly. I can’t lift my right arm very high without considerable pain, but I manage it. I’m rewarded with a comfortable brush of magic over my skin that fades almost at once.

  “How bad is it? Your wound?” Kenta asks.

  “It’s healing,” I say, which is neither here nor there.

  “Will you be able to travel?”

  I nod, aware of how much he isn’t saying, how hard he’s trying to act like he isn’t furious with me.

  “We must move quickly,” the phoenix says. “The search for you will start within moments. They will shut the city down looking for you.” Which is why he flew me right out of it, no doubt. “Once they realize you have left the city, they will widen their search. We must use this time wisely.”

  I kneel so that I’m eye-to-eye with the phoenix, my legs steady again. “I don’t know why you helped me now, after I’ve been marked, but I will do my best by the work you ask of me.”

  He cants his head to the side, eyeing me keenly as he resettles his wings. “You have not been bound yet?”

  “No.”

  “I am glad the lycan had that right. You are still able to manipulate magic, which is something. Though it would be better, now, if you had a full mage to assist you.”

  Any full mage who came along to “assist” me would likely only be assisting my magic right out of me.

  “You still have the feather?” he asks.

  “No. They took it from me.”

  The phoenix eyes me with displeasure. “That was not well done.”

  “It wasn’t my choice.”

  He ruffles his feathers, then bends to comb through them with his beak. Without a word, he offers me a new feather, small but burnished bright.

  “Travel to the Burnt Lands as quickly as you can. When you reach its borders, call me.”

  “I will.”

  The phoenix spares a glance for Kenta. “See that she reaches the desert safely.”

  Kenta nods gravely. “I will.”

  A moment later, the phoenix is gone, winging away between the palm trunks and up through their fronds, the rope sling swinging along beneath him. I expect he’ll drop it somewhere far away as a decoy for those who hunt me.

  Kenta stands quiet and tense beside me.

  “I thought the Shadow League wasn’t operating here,” I quip.

  “And I thought you understood you were to get out,” Kenta snaps.

  I flinch away from his anger. He ducks his head, abashed, takes a step back.

  “I tried,” I tell him. “I really did. But I would’ve had to kill someone to escape, and I couldn’t.” I study his face, the press of his lips, the tightness around his eyes, looking for some sign of comprehension. He gives a jerk of his chin. “I’m sorry,” I tell him. “If I could have gotten away without blood on my hands, I would have.”

  He runs a hand through his hair. “And now?” he asks. “What will you do with what’s on your hands?”

  “I don’t know,” I admit. “I was just trying to help Stormwind. Now Blackflame has the High Council.” I pull my sleeve up, baring the full markings to Kenta’s gaze. “And I have this.”

  He studies the dark designs in the lantern light. “You should add some color.”

  “What?”

  “Add color,” he repeats, touching a swirl. My arm twitches at the brush of his fingers on my skin, as if I were expecting it to hurt. He withdraws his hand at once. “Markings are always black, and they’re rarely beautiful. Add a bit of colored ink and only a mage who comes close enough to touch them will know what they are.”

  “That’s … brilliant.”

  Kenta smirks. “Of course it is. It’s my idea.”

  I shake my head at him, amused.

  “Let’s move.”

  I fall into step with him, the lantern lighting our way. “What are you planning next for yourself?”

  He raises his brows. “I’m coming with you. Considering your propensity for nearly getting killed, I think you’ll need me.”

  “No.” I’m surprised by how light this decision is, how much more I understand of Kenta now. Behind his words is the truth of his emotions: the guilt he still feels for letting me protect him in Karolene, for nearly dying for him.

  “You need to return to the city,” I say gently.

  “The Ghost will kill me if he knows you survived and I sent you off to fend for yourself, rogue-hunting mages on your trail and your magic all bound up inside of you.”

  “Don’t tell him. Or don’t go back to Karolene.”

  “What do you expect me to do instead?”

  “Start another Shadow League here. Now that Blackflame presides over the High Council, he’ll give up his position as Arch Mage of Karolene — or rather, he’ll appoint someone to take over for him there. If we want to stop him, and not merely stop what he’s doing in Karolene, then the Shadow League needs to follow the High Council.”

  Kenta rubs his mouth. “I don’t know how we’re going to stop him.”

  “I was under a truth spell for my trial. I told the Council about the Degaths. They’ll relaunch their investigation into Blackflame. Just because he’s first mage doesn’t mean he’s protected from that.”

  We reach the edge of the palm orchard. Kenta turns to look at me, eyes dancing. “You didn’t.”

  “I did. Someone needs to tell the Degaths to renew their petition to the Council.” I grin at Kenta. “This is where it will happen. Not Karolene. And not the Burnt Lands. The Ghost needs you here. We all do.”

  “I’m sure the Ghost will send others.”

  How many others are there? Unless the Shadow League has grown by leaps and bounds, I suspect there are only a few who would be willing to devote their all to it. T
he rest have families, occupations, lives they cannot leave on a moment’s notice.

  “At least agree to come back once I’ve reached the desert,” I say. “Blackflame’s current position is the most precarious it’s been in years. If there isn’t someone from the League here to watch, to take advantage, we may miss an opportunity that won’t come again.”

  He shrugs. “I gave my word to the phoenix. I’m not letting you out of my sight till I’m sure you’re safe.”

  Safe is not a state I think I’ll ever achieve. I try a different approach, “Blackflame has a source slave. A boy. I don’t know his name, but I saw him after Blackflame used him. He was so weak he couldn’t stand, could barely speak. Steal him, break the bond on him, and Blackflame will think you’re me — because I mentioned the boy before the Council. He knows it made me furious. He’ll put all his efforts into searching the city. And it will continue to undermine him in the eyes of the Council.”

  Kenta doesn’t answer, uncertainty flickering in his eyes. Faintly, a long eerie wail begins, so far away it has the tinny unreality of a half-imagined sound. My eyes go to the horizon. Far off in the distance, a pale pinkish cloud rises above the faint outline of buildings. It’s the smoke barrier above the Mekteb’s walls, barely discernible from such a distance, but there nonetheless.

  “We need to move,” Kenta says abruptly, shuttering the lantern. “There’s someone waiting for you by the wall.”

  It takes me a moment. “Stormwind’s still here? She should have left by now!”

  Kenta snorts, starting forward. “You expected her to leave while you were being held prisoner?”

  I break into a shuffling run, heading toward the low boundary wall, the figure that has just stood up from its shadow. It didn’t occur to me that Stormwind might endeavor to help me as much as I tried to help her. Especially considering the Council is hunting her.

  “Hitomi?” Stormwind says as I pass over the ward stones spread around her sheltered spot. I ignore the faint twinge of magic, reaching out with my good arm to wrap her in a hug.

  She chuckles softly, the sound breathy with relief as she hugs me back.

  “You’re not angry?” I ask finally, stepping back.

  “I feared you were dead,” she says. “I was so relieved to see you walk into my cell, it’s been hard to get too angry.”

  “Why would you think I was dead?”

  “The house wards were destroyed,” she reminds me. “I asked that the Council look into it, but….”

  “I left before that,” I assure her. “Someone stole your mirror and tried to use a locator spell on it. We should probably thank them.”

  She shakes her head. Despite the faint smile on her lips she looks old, as if she’s aged ten years in the last few weeks. But she still holds herself straight, her bun as severe as always, gaze as shrewd as I’ve come to expect. I’m glad of these things, that her trial and short imprisonment haven’t robbed her of them.

  “You’re a fool,” she says. Her voice sounds strangely rough. “You should never have come after me.”

  I open my mouth to argue, but Kenta cuts me off. “The alarm’s already been raised. Tomi, you need to change and then we’ll start moving. You can talk while we travel. Stormwind has clothes for you.”

  I nod.

  “Be quick.” He starts back to the grove.

  Stormwind passes me a stack of clothes. I take them and squat down to change, beside the wall. “Where are we headed from here?”

  “North. About four hours walking will get us to a town. By dawn, there should be horses waiting for us there. We would have met you closer to it, but we only had so much time to get here at all.”

  I nod, trading my creased white selvar for a faded and frayed one. I’m not sure I’ll make it four hours, but there’s no point worrying about it.

  “Where will you go from there?” Not the desert — that much I’ve already deduced.

  “To the Northland Council.”

  My hands still on the knot and loop closures of my tunic. “The what?”

  She offers me a wry smile. “They do have their own council, even if we have a permanent delegate appointed to it. And … Blackflame will not expect me to go there. If I can gain their support, it may help in opposing his longer term plans. Although he likely has most of their arch mages in hand already. At any rate, if anyone is to do it, I should.”

  I start to ask her what she means, but she’s not looking at me anymore. Her eyes have fastened on my hands, the dark swirls and scrolls that skim the edges of my knuckles. She steps forward, taking my good hand and sliding up the sleeve so that the moonlight falls bright on the markings there.

  “Oh, Hitomi,” she whispers, and in the speaking of my name I hear sorrow and anguish and a love I did not know she held for me. Here is what I wished for from my mother.

  “It’s all right,” I say, my voice cracking. We both know it for a lie.

  “I am sorry for it,” she says. “And sorry that you already knew so much of pain that you could embrace it as you must have.”

  I smile so she won’t see my sorrow. “It burned. I already taught myself all about that.”

  “So you did.” She lets my arm go. “Were you bound as well?”

  “No.”

  “That will make it easier.”

  “Easier?”

  “If you were bound, your master would be able to trace you no matter how strong a charm you wore unless we could find a mage capable of breaking the bond. Nor would you be able to control their pull on your power. But if you were only marked, they have no hold on you.”

  She glances toward the palm grove. “Here, let me help you finish changing.”

  She helps me work my arm out of my tunic, taking a moment to inspect my wound in the moonlight. “It’s healing well. Try to be as gentle as possible with it. Stretch it out thrice daily to make sure you retain full movement.”

  “I’ll try,” I say grimly, shimmying out of the gray tunic and pulling on the patched one they’ve given me in its place. “What about the markings?” I ask through gritted teeth.

  She makes no answer.

  I look over my shoulder at her. “They’re spell made. There must be a counter-spell.”

  “None that I ever heard of.”

  I bite my lip, concentrating on fastening buttons. No apparent hope, but no time to dwell on it either. We need to run before the search widens past the city. If there’s anything else I need to ask…. “What about the spell binding you?”

  “It will fade in strength until I am able to break it myself. It should take no more than a week.”

  “Ready?” Kenta calls from the darkness.

  “Yes,” she replies, thrusting my clothes into a pack and holding it out to me. “Hitomi, this is yours.”

  A smile touches my lips as I take it from her. There is something inexplicably wonderful about getting back what I left behind.

  “There’s food and we’ve refilled your flask. There’s a pouch of coins from the Degaths that ought to keep you well should you two get separated.”

  “Disguises ready?” Kenta asks as he reaches us.

  “Here.” Stormwind hands me a hammered silver band set with an oval of green malachite, a man’s bracelet.

  The moment I clamp the band over my wrist, I feel the faint tingle of magic. Kenta’s grin widens to an all-out smile. I look down at myself, the men’s selvar, faded white tunic with billowing sleeves, and short, dark vest over a completely flat chest. I’m a boy. My hands appear larger, stronger, and somewhat hairier than I have ever wished them. And completely unmarked. I stare at them a moment longer, the skin pale in the moonlight, free of ink.

  “It’s a glamor I purchased from that theater troupe’s costume master,” Kenta says, clearly enjoying my bewilderment. “The same one who sold me the mage glamor.”

  “Unless you’re directly confronted by a mage who’s looking for you,” Stormwind tells me, “the glamor should hide you quite well. Besides, it’
s better than mine.” She wraps a natty red triangle scarf over her head, knotting it beneath her chin, and transforms into a stocky old peasant woman, wide face creased with age, callused hands still strong.

  “How is being a boy better?”

  Kenta turns a look of pure disbelief on me.

  “No one will take notice if you need to run,” Stormwind says pragmatically.

  True enough. “I suspect running is something I have a lot of experience with.”

  Kenta snorts and starts forward at a brisk pace, following the wall to the road. The peasant woman who is Stormwind shakes her head as we fall into step behind him. “It doesn’t make a good life, though,” she says dryly.

  “Neither does hiding,” I point out.

  “There’s nowhere left to hide now,” Stormwind says. “And only so much time left to run.”

  Kenta walks some distance ahead of us, keeping a watch for anyone traveling toward us. Stormwind and I are under strict orders to get off the road should he signal us.

  As we walk, I run through our earlier conversation, coming back to her words about going north. “You said Blackflame might already have the Northland Council in hand,” I say, glancing at her. “Does he have some plan beyond becoming first mage?”

  She reaches out a hand to touch my shoulder. “Don’t blame yourself for that.”

  Anger and regret twist in my gut at her words. “Why shouldn’t I? When I broke you out, I gave him the High Council.”

  Stormwind lets out a harsh bark of laughter. “No, Hitomi. He would have had it eventually. You merely gave him an earlier opportunity than he expected.”

  “I always thought he wanted Karolene. He wanted the High Council as a whole.”

  “No, he wants it all. He wants the Eleven Kingdoms to serve the Northlands. He will force them to bow to the Northland king of his choosing.”

  “A king? Why would he choose a king?”

  “Kings are easily controlled by a man such as him. With the king will come an army, a fleet of ships, and a certain legitimacy Blackflame will never have on his own.”

  I stare down the long silvered line of the road, the dark form of Kenta far ahead. “Well,” I finally say, “I guess we’re just going to have to do something about him.”