by Jasmine Walt
“Welche Erleichterung!” he exclaimed, hurrying around the counter – there was nobody else in the shop right now. “I’m so glad you’re okay,” he added, wrapping his arms around me.
I hugged him back, inhaling his woodsy, herbal scent, but didn’t allow myself to get lost in his embrace for long – there was work to do. “Director Chen won’t let me be part of the rescue mission, and neither will the Council. Apparently they don’t trust me.”
“I’d say it’s gone a little beyond that,” Comenius said darkly, flipping the OPEN sign on the door to CLOSED and locking it twice. “I had guards here less than half an hour ago searching for you. Apparently there is a warrant out for your arrest.”
“Typical.” I gnashed my teeth together as he drew me behind the counter and into the back room. Half the space was taken up by wooden shelves stocked with merchandise and supplies, and the other half was dominated by a large, flat table where Comenius mixed herbal remedies and made charms. Bypassing his work area, he pulled me up a wooden staircase that led to the apartment above the shop. “Iannis is missing, and the first thing they think of is using the opportunity to get rid of me.”
“They see you as a threat, and not without reason,” Comenius said as he opened the door to his apartment. “You’ve been encouraging the Chief Mage to dig into places the others might rather he not look at too closely. That kind of thing is bound to stir enemies out of the woodwork, for both him and yourself.”
Nodding, I looked around as Comenius closed the door behind us. His place was twice the size of my apartment in Rowanville, with an open floor plan where the kitchen, living room, and dining area were separated by arches rather than doors. The only walled-off area was to the back, where Comenius’s bedroom suite was – I had personal knowledge of that space, as we’d been lovers once upon a very long time ago. But though I still felt the occasional spark when we touched or locked eyes, there wasn’t much more than friendship between us, especially now that Elania was in his life and Iannis was in mine.
Even if Iannis and I were off-limits to each other.
“Okay, so what do we do now?” I demanded, sitting down on the dark green futon Comenius used as a couch. “Do I just cower in your apartment, keeping my head down like everyone keeps insisting that I do?”
Comenius snorted as he put on a pot of tea and grabbed a tin of cookies from one of his cupboards. “Since I highly doubt you’re capable of hiding out in my apartment even to save your own life, never mind the Chief Mage’s, I’m not even going to suggest it. We will come up with a plan, which likely will revolve around the use of that charm you have.”
“Yeah.” I drew the chain out from beneath my jacket and stared down at the opal. As I focused my attention on it and thought of Iannis, it glowed blue again, and I felt a tug on my soul. The magic seemed to be pulling me in an easterly direction, which made sense since Dara, the Federation capital, was located on Northia’s east coast. But that wasn’t particularly helpful, because there was a vast amount of land between us and Dara. I really didn’t have any more information than Chen’s search party, now that I thought about it.
“From what I understand about serapha charms,” Comenius said as he joined me on the sofa, “they won’t pinpoint the location of the person tied to them, but so long as you follow that internal tug, it will lead you straight to the other half of the charm, and thus to the person wearing it.”
“Maybe, but that means wandering across the country on foot for who knows how long. And even if it pulls me in the right direction, if I follow it blindly it’ll probably lead me straight across a chasm with my luck.” I scowled down at the stone, annoyed at how useless it was proving to be. But then again, Iannis had used it to find me, hadn’t he? “There has to be a better way to go about this.”
“I’m sure there is, but I’m afraid I’m not the one to do it.” Comenius smiled. “Thankfully, we both know someone who is.”
It didn’t take long for Elania to arrive. As soon as the shop’s doorbell rang, Comenius was on his feet, hurrying down the stairs. It was both amusing and disconcerting, the way my normally level-headed friend seemed to be infatuated with Elania, the witch who ran the apothecary shop down at the other end of the pier. From what I understood, like many witches Elania could also do spellcasting, which was why Comenius was enlisting her help. It almost made me wonder whether Elania had somehow bewitched my friend, as it was precisely because of his cautious, level-headed nature that the two of us had called things off. But I didn’t sense anything magically off about Comenius. The only magic he was caught up in was the magic of lust, and that was something we were all subject to, no magical potions or spells required.
I should know, because as a shifter, or at least half-shifter, lust was a much bigger inconvenience to me than it was for a human or mage. Twice a year, shifter females went into heat and became insatiable creatures, consumed by the urge to mate and little else. The clock reset every time it was over, regardless of whether or not we were impregnated, but during the period in between our hormones ramped up bit by bit until we exploded all over again.
My time was coming soon, in a matter of weeks. Normally I didn’t concern myself overmuch with it, as I just found a reasonably willing male to take out my sexual energy on when the time came. But I’d never had my heart tangled up over anyone before, especially not someone like Iannis. When we’d first met, the attraction I’d felt had been instant, and I’d fought so hard to deny it that I’d blamed it on my hormones. But as time passed, I knew my impending heat was only partially to blame – the growing feelings in my heart had little to do with the growing heat in my loins, and in the past I’d always been able to distinguish between the two. The presence of someone in my life that I both wanted, needed, and couldn’t have in more ways than one, was really fucking with me. Sometimes I wished that I’d never met the Chief Mage, because then at least I wouldn’t be torn into two over the issue.
But I had met him, and even if I was conflicted, my life was in many ways better for having him in it. And besides, I owed him a debt that even rescuing him might not repay.
“Sunaya!” Elania greeted me in her throaty voice as she glided into the room. She’d changed and freshened up since I’d seen her in the infirmary – her thick, lustrous black hair was piled up atop her head in a complicated weave, her eyes were rimmed with fresh kohl, and the flowing red dress she wore matched her lipstick perfectly. Beneath one slender arm she held a long, rolled up piece of parchment, and in the other hand she carried a small wooden case. “I am glad to see you are looking better.”
“Thank you.” I stood up to embrace her – I figured as Comenius’s new girlfriend, and a helpful one at that, it would be smart of me to warm up to her. “The tonic you and Comenius whipped up worked wonders.”
“Of course it did,” she said, winking as she embraced me. The dark, exotic scent of spices and woman surrounded me, and I filed it away in my memory banks. “There is nothing I make that doesn’t do the job it is intended for.”
“Well I sure hope that confidence of yours extends to finding the Chief Mage.” I sat back down. I glanced at Comenius as he rejoined me, noticing the slight flush on his cheeks and the hint of lipstick on his mouth that he hadn’t quite managed to wipe off. Jealousy burned briefly in my chest – not at Elania for her relationship with Comenius, but rather that the two of them were happy, and didn’t have to fear judgment or flaunt convention to be together.
“We will find him,” Elania assured me as she dragged a scoop-backed armchair a little closer to the coffee table that separated the space between us. She set the roll of paper onto the table along with her small wooden case. The case contained various pouches and bottles filled with liquid and powder and herbs, as well as several rocks – some pieces of crystal and other semi-precious stones. She spread the rolled-up piece of parchment out on the table, then placed four chunks of crystal at the edges of the parchment. I recognized it as a map of the Northia Federation. No
t a very detailed one, as it didn’t show all the different towns and cities, just the borders delineating the fifty states that made up the Federation.
“Are those stones supposed to mark cardinal directions?” I asked, pointing at the crystal.
“No. I’m just using them to hold down the parchment so it doesn’t roll back up again.” Elania’s red lips twitched as she reached for a black velvet pouch inside the purse. “Sometimes we read meaning into things that are not there.”
“Indeed,” I said dryly. I actually felt a little foolish, but I wasn’t about to show her that.
“It’s alright, Naya.” Comenius patted my knee briefly as he regarded Elania fondly. “Elania has many years of training, and you’re still starting out.”
“Thanks for the reminder,” I muttered, unable to keep the edge out of my voice. I didn’t mind that Elania was more competent than me – that would be like being annoyed at the sky for being blue. Rather, I was frustrated that I was so behind in my magical education to begin with. If my father, the mage who I’d inherited my powers from, had bothered to stick around long enough to teach me how to use my birthright, I would be able to rescue Iannis on my own.
Then again, if my father had raised and taught me like he was supposed to, I likely wouldn’t have ever crossed paths with Iannis in the first place.
I watched as Elania tugged on the drawstring of the pouch, then poured a fine white powder into her hands. A cloud of dust poofed into the air above her hand, and my nose wrinkled as the scent wafted toward me. It smelled like magic, and something human, like…
“By Magorah,” I exclaimed, “is that human bone?”
“Very good,” Elania acknowledged as she scattered the powdered bone across the parchment, careful to cover the entire surface. “An ancestor’s shinbone, to be specific. The bones of a dead witch hold magical properties, so we grind them up for use in certain spells and incantations, such as the one we are about to do.”
“Interesting,” I murmured, sitting back against the sofa – more to put some distance between myself and the disconcerting spell than to relax. I found what she was doing a little gruesome; not just the act, but the meaning behind it. We’d buried my mother after she’d died, returning her to the soil from whence she’d come so that she might serve as nourishment for other lifeforms. The idea of stripping her bones from her carcass and grinding them up to be used in spellcasting sent a shiver down my spine. I wondered if this was something mages did as well, and resolved to ask Iannis about it, if I managed to rescue him.
When I managed to rescue him, I corrected myself silently.
“Alright,” Elania said softly. She dusted off the last remnants of bone from her palm, then held it out and looked up expectantly at me. “I will need your necklace now.”
I hesitated, my fingers toying with the charm. “The Chief Mage said that I shouldn’t take it off.”
“It’s alright, Naya,” Comenius said gently, his hand on my shoulder. “Elania won’t do anything to harm your serapha charm. She’s just trying to help.”
Nodding, I pushed my mass of curls over my right shoulder, then reached behind me to unfasten the necklace. My fingers trembled, so it took me three tries, but I finally got it off. As I handed it off to her, my chest ached a little, similar to the time when I’d first separated the tiny piece of my soul that I’d put into the matching charm Iannis had worn. That’s how serapha charms worked – you gave the other person a small fragment of your spirit, so that you were bound to them and would always be able to find them via the charms so long as they continued to wear them. The necklace I wore held a piece of Iannis’s soul, so it stood to reason that Elania could use it to locate him.
Elania dangled the necklace over the map and began chanting in a strange language. She moved her hand above the map, making sure to hover the stone over every state in a kind of zigzag pattern without actually touching the surface of the map.
“Ah,” she murmured as the powder covering a section of the map began to turn a cobalt blue. She stopped there, and we watched as the color spread out to cover the southern half of Mexia, one of the southwestern states that jutted up directly against the Federation border, just two states east of Canalo. “Here he is.”
I scowled as I stared down at the map. “That’s easily fifty thousand square miles of territory to search.”
“And much of it is uncultivated Coazi land,” Elania added, looking troubled.
“Coazi?” I tried to match the name with a memory. “Aren’t they a tribe?”
“Yes. I believe the Federation ceded most of the land in this area to them.” Elania handed the serapha charm back to me, then carefully swept the bone dust away from the area so she could mark it off with a pen. “I suggest reading up on the Coazi before you head into their territory. I know no more about them than any of the other indigenous tribes that populate the Federation.”
“Well, now would be a great time to have access to the Palace’s library.” I huffed out a breath as I refastened the chain around my neck. Relief spread through my chest as the stone came to rest against my breastbone, and the strange pain there eased. “I’m sure there’d be a tome in there somewhere that could tell me all about the Coazi, whoever they are.”
“I’ll see if there’s anything I can dig up,” Comenius said gently. “In the meantime, though, you should rest, Naya. The tonic we gave you will only last so long, and your body needs the time to heal itself naturally.”
“No way.” I shook my head, unable to even entertain the idea of falling asleep. “I’ve been passed out in that infirmary bed for who knows how long already. I need to focus on prepping this rescue mission.”
Comenius scowled. “Yes, and you’re already showing signs of fatigue again. You’ll be useless to the mission if you’re not properly healed and rested.”
“Alright,” I ceded reluctantly. The edges of fatigue were starting to drag at me, likely sped along by my use of the illusion spell. Using magic draws on my energy reserves, and if I were to venture out on my own to try and find research books I would have to disguise myself again, which in turn would sap even more energy. Not exactly conducive to preparing myself for a long journey. “I’ll chill out here for a bit.”
“I’ll get you a blanket and pillow.” Comenius patted my leg, then stood up and went into the bedroom. Elania went with him, and I could hear them talking quietly as I stretched myself out on the sofa. If I’d wanted to, I could have tuned in with my sensitive hearing and eavesdrop on them, but Com deserved privacy in his own home. And besides, my fatigue was growing with every second.
As I sat there waiting for him to come back up, I heard a soft thud as something landed on the sofa cushion next to me. Startled, I jerked toward the sound, then smiled at the sight of my chakram pouch and crescent knives sitting there. They’d returned sooner than I’d expected. Pleased, I reached over to grab my weapons so I could strap them to my thighs, but another wave of tiredness washed over me and my hand fell back to my side.
I’ll take care of my weapons later, I thought as my eyes slid closed. Floorboards creaked, and Comenius murmured something as he tucked a blanket around me, but I didn’t hear what he said as I slipped into a fog. Images of Iannis falling from the sky, terror in his brilliant eyes as he reached toward me, rippled through my mind over and over, and I screamed in frustration that I was unable to move, unable to reach him at all.
Sleep. Resinah’s cool voice echoed in my head, banishing the vision. All is not yet lost, child. Now sleep.
4
“I don’t think you should go, Naya. At least not by yourself.”
Scowling, I slammed the thick, dusty tome that Elania had brought in this morning, and scowled up at Comenius. “I’m not abandoning Iannis just because of a couple of paragraphs in an old history text.”
“That isn’t just some dusty tome – it is part of a trusted and valuable encyclopedia,” Comenius argued, sounding highly affronted. We were sitting at his dining tabl
e along with Elania, who’d arrived with a basket of freshly made scones and cookies. The food was especially welcome after going without for nearly twenty-four hours, though it would have been nice if there had been some meat too. “According to those couple of paragraphs, as you say, the Coazi are unpredictable in their treatment of outsiders, and they are ruled by shamans, some of whom are as powerful as mages.”
I scoffed. “Give me a break. From what I understand, they’re really uncivilized. Surely they can’t be that powerful.”
“Tribal shamans are not to be underestimated,” Elania warned, setting down her teacup and regarding me with a frown. “Their magic relies heavily on nature and spirits, but it is old and powerful. If you run across a shaman who considers you an enemy, you may find yourself outmatched.”
“Well then I guess I’d better be careful, but that doesn’t mean I’m staying here.” I huffed out a breath. “If Iannis is hurt and lying around in the wilderness, the last thing I need is for these Coazi to find him before I do.”
Comenius opened his mouth, presumably to argue, then froze as the doorbell rang.
“Are we expecting someone?” I asked, my senses prickling. Because we were on the second floor, there was no way for me to scent whoever was at the door.
“I ran across Annia yesterday and asked her to bring some of your things by the apartment,” Comenius said as he cautiously rose from his chair. “Perhaps it’s her.”
“I’ll come with you –” I began as he made for the door, but Elania placed her hand on my shoulder.
“You have a bounty on your head right now, Sunaya,” she reminded me. “Let Comenius answer his own door. He can handle himself.”
“Alright.” Forcing myself to relax, I grabbed a cookie and took a bite. Elania was right – there was no reason to risk myself needlessly, and this was Comenius’s place, not mine. I didn’t really have a leg to stand on if he didn’t want me answering the door.