by Jasmine Walt
“I think that the day we stop being shocked by this kind of thing is the day we should be afraid,” I told her. “We should hold society to a higher standard, or the world will never become a better place.” An ember popped, sending sparks shooting through the sky. I held out my palm and caught one of them as they floated back down to earth, watching as it briefly stung my palm before its orange glow faded to black.
Transient, just like everything else in life.
Annia’s lips curved at that, her dark eyes sparkling. “Why Sunaya Baine, you almost sound like a sage. Is that the sort of thing that happens when one joins the Mages Guild?”
“I suppose I’ve gotten a little more philosophical these days,” I allowed, smiling a little. I imagined my deeper thoughts were inspired by the brief, but meaningful conversations I’d had with Resinah’s spirit—the first mage, entrusted with wisdom by the Creator. I glanced down at Annia’s bandaged arm and changed the subject. “How did you get that?”
A shadow crossed Annia’s face. “One of the soldiers broke my arm as punishment for trying to resist capture.” A faraway look entered her eyes. “I killed three of them, but I was outnumbered. Even so, I don’t suppose he would have broken my arm if I hadn’t spat in his face.” A smirk curved her lips. “The big brute didn’t like that much.”
“Ouch.” I winced, glancing at the sling again. I couldn’t imagine what that must be like for humans such as Annia, having to wait six to eight weeks for her limb to heal. Mine would have been better in the morning, so long as it was properly set and I’d had enough to eat. The bullet graze on my shoulder from earlier had already healed, nothing more than a memory now. Perhaps Iannis could mend Annia’s arm once he had dealt with the current mission. I was surprised he hadn’t offered already, but, then again, he was exhausted.
“You do look remarkably un-beaten up aside from your arm,” I said as I looked her up and down again. Her face was clear of any bruising, and although there could be bandages beneath her clothing, the way she moved did not hint at any hidden injuries.
“Since they’re a science lab using live test subjects, they happened to have a damn good doctor on staff, and some crazy medical procedures I’ve never seen before.” Annia briefly touched her cheekbone. “The doctor who treated me was surprisingly compassionate, considering I was a prisoner. She put some kind of tingling, foul-smelling cream on my face that handled all the bruising, and she set my arm and bound it up.”
“Maybe it’s because you’re human,” I said, unable to think of any other explanation. “Or because you’re Noria’s sister.”
Annia snorted. “Either way, I’m hardly softening up to them. Just because they treated the injuries they inflicted on me doesn’t change the fact that they were planning to commit mass murder.”
“No, I guess it doesn’t,” I said softly, looking back at Noria’s tent again. And that Noria had helped us in the end didn’t change the fact that she had joined the Resistance and aided them in attempted genocide, willing or not.
20
Lord Logar and his team arrived bright and early, just as the sun was cresting the horizon. He sent Iannis a message via ether pigeon asking us to meet him in front of the compound, so we dressed and straightened ourselves up as best we could, then went out.
Annia stayed behind again with the slumbering children, to watch over them until Logar’s team came to fetch them. I hoped they had brought suitable food for children, though in a pinch, we could make them porridge.
“Good morning, Lord Iannis,” Lord Logar said as we approached. For a change, he wasn’t the stereotypical tall, long-haired mage. He kept his silver hair short, wore a beard of the same shade, and had a stocky, five-foot-six frame. The emerald robes he wore seemed to highlight the flecks of green in his hazel eyes. His twelve fellow mages, ten males and two females, all stood a few inches taller than him. They wore a variety of robes with the Osero Mages Guild emblem stitched to the breast, a standing grizzly bear, stitched onto their breasts.
“Good morning, Lord Logar.” Iannis inclined his head courteously, and the rest of us bowed. “I am pleased to see you, and your reinforcements.” He glanced over at the other mages, as well as the caravan of steam cars and carriages they had brought with them, with the human drivers keeping well out of the way. Guess Iannis wasn’t the only one who’d been upgrading his fleet.
“Indeed. It looks like we’ll need them.” Logar swept his gaze over us. Fenris, who stood on my left, stiffened almost imperceptibly. He was uncomfortable around other chief mages, since there was always the risk that one of his former colleagues might discover his true identity. It was unlikely they would be able to tell that Fenris had once been Polar ar’Tollis, Chief Mage of Nebara, by just looking at him, but I would have been nervous if I’d been in his position.
“You have managed to accomplish quite a lot with such a small crew,” Logar finally said, his eyes stopping to linger on me. “I suppose that is in no small part due to your bride-to-be.” His hazel eyes warmed fractionally. “Congratulations on your engagement, by the way.”
“Sunaya has been very helpful,” Iannis acknowledged. “But we could not have accomplished this without the rest of our group.”
“Of course not.” Lord Logar turned his attention toward the compound. His eyes narrowed as he peered at the buildings through the wire fence. “So you have all the prisoners stored in these garages?”
“Yes. They will need to be rounded up before we demolish the compound.”
“Pity we can’t burn them all too, at the same time,” the Chief Mage said with disdain. “They deserve nothing less.”
“Do you consider yourself above the law, then?” Noria sneered. “That you feel it’s okay to kill off all these people without a fair trial?”
“And who is this young upstart?” Lord Logar asked, turning his gaze toward Noria. She stood between Rylan and Elnos, her wrists still magically restrained. “Is this the one you all came to rescue?”
Noria opened her mouth to answer, and Elnos kicked at her ankle. The two of them exchanged a heated glare, and Noria edged away from him, her freckled face pale with fury.
“This is Noria Melcott, the younger sister of Sunaya’s close friend, Annia Melcott,” Iannis said. “It is by coincidence that she turned out to be at this compound, and she was not directly involved in the production of diseases or experiments on children. She will be taken back to Solantha for trial.”
“Speaking of Annia,” I said quickly, before Noria exploded, “she’s back at the clearing with the mage and shifter children we rescued. They’re still asleep now, but they’ll need water, food and clothing when they awaken, and a nursemaid to care for them until their parents can be located. There are ten in all.”
“Excellent.” Lord Logar turned to two of his mages, a man and a woman. “Fetch the children, then get them into the carriages. They can eat in there. They need not witness what we are about to do. In fact, they should be sent to safety as soon as possible.”
“I’ll escort you,” Rylan said quickly, stepping forward. I suspected he wanted to personally ensure that they treated the shifter children with care, and I held back a smile as warmth spread through me. Rylan would always put shifters first, no matter what the situation. The thought eased the last of my fears about him defecting back to the Resistance—if he hadn’t been convinced they were planning to betray him before, this business with the shifter children would have done the trick.
Rylan led the two mages away, and Iannis set to disabling his wards. He looked well rested despite getting less than four hours of sleep, and, somehow, his long hair and robes were perfect. I’d had to bundle my rat’s nest of curly hair into a bun before coming down here, and some lovely bloodstains marred my wrinkled clothes. A great way to make a first impression as the Chief Mage’s future wife.
Stop that, I scolded myself, standing a little taller. I wasn’t some fucking princess; I was Sunaya Baine. Half-shifter, half-mage, all warrior. If the
mages couldn’t handle seeing me in disarray after kicking ass, that was their problem, not mine.
I glanced back at Elnos as the mages opened the gate and drove the first of the transport carriages through. He was still standing close to Noria, with Fenris flanking her other side. Conflict drew lines of tension in Elnos’s youthful face. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was thinking about letting Noria escape, to spare her whatever sentence Iannis decided to mete out. But would life as a perpetual fugitive be any better in the long run? I doubted Iannis would give her a life sentence, so it was probably better just to endure whatever punishment he decided upon.
“Don’t let Noria out of your sight,” I told Fenris. “She looks ready to bolt, and I’m not sure Elnos has the guts to stop her.”
“I have to agree.” Fenris’s yellow gaze slanted toward Noria. She still had the blanket from last night wrapped around her slim shoulders. Coupled with her wild hair and gaunt, shadowed face, she looked like a lost child. But the sullen look on her face dampened my compassion for her. Yes, she’d suffered, but most of my sympathy in this messy situation was for Annia and Elnos.
“I don’t know why you’re looking at us like we’re traitors,” I said aloud to her. “You’re the one who abandoned your family and friends to join a bunch of mass-murderers.”
Noria recoiled as though I’d struck her, her accusatory glare briefly eclipsed by pain. “I didn’t abandon them—I was trying to assure their safety.” Her glare returned with a vengeance. “At least I’m not a sellout like you.”
“Noria!” Elnos scolded, his eyes widening with alarm.
“Don’t tell me what I can and can’t say,” Noria said, rounding on her ex-boyfriend. “I’ve had far more than enough of that since arriving here.”
“Yeah, and whose fault was that?” I demanded, taking a step forward. I didn’t dare close the distance completely—my hands were itching to throttle her for being such an ungrateful brat. It occurred to me that Iannis must have viewed me in a similar light, and I was amazed he hadn’t killed me outright in the beginning. “You came here of your own will, ignoring all the warnings Annia and I gave you that the Resistance is corrupt. Nobody stopped you from airing your opinions in Solantha—everybody knew you wanted to join the Resistance before you left, and nobody carted you off and stuck you in a jail cell for that. It’s your willful blindness that got you into this mess, nothing else, and worse, you’ve dragged all of us into it too. Annia almost died because of you!”
Noria opened her mouth to say something else, but no words came out. The fire died in her eyes and her shoulders sagged. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” she muttered, her dark eyes firmly fixed on the ground.
I wanted to say tough shit, not willing to let her run away from this conversation so easily. Anger roiled in my chest at Noria’s churlishness after all we’d gone through, and I longed to rub her face in all the facts she was choosing to ignore. But Elnos gave me a pleading look, and I kept my mouth shut.
We waited outside the gates in silence as the Osero mages rounded up the prisoners, directed by Lord Logar and Iannis. The scientists, guards, and staff were marched out of the garages in single file and made to strip, then subjected to a purification spell to ensure that they carried no diseases. Iannis had forbidden me to come in with him since he didn’t want me to catch anything. It was a silly fear, as shifters rarely sickened and couldn’t usually catch diseases that affected humans. But I was hardly going to argue with him in front of Lord Logar.
Annia, Rylan, and the other two mages returned as the first carriage, loaded up with prisoners, rolled through the gates. The curtains were drawn over the windows, so I couldn’t see any of them, but they probably weren’t smiling and waving. For many of them, death was the only thing they had to look forward to, once their trials were over. I couldn’t imagine that hard labor would be a sufficient punishment for conspiring to commit genocide.
Turning away from the carriage and its passengers’ gruesome fate, I focused on a happier thought—that the children we rescued would get to return home. They were walking toward us, with the two mages up front, and Rylan and Annia bringing up the rear. Their little faces were anxious, eyes wide with fear, and I saw a few trembling lips.
“It’s going to be all right.” Annia leaned down to snag the hand of a skittish child. He was a dark-skinned little boy with ice-blue shifter eyes, and he looked like he was about to turn tail and dart back into the woods. “We’re going to get you home to your parents. You’re safe now.”
A lump swelled in my throat, and I blinked back tears of my own as I went to meet them at the steam carriages. The two mage children were up front, between the adult mages, and I decided not to complain about the show of favoritism. I might have done the same if the situation was reversed.
“Where are you taking them?” I asked.
“They’ll all be housed in Parabas Palace until their parents are found,” one of the mages assured me. “Lord Logar has a soft spot for children. They’ll be well taken care of.”
“Good.” I moved aside, giving them access so that they could direct the children into the carriages. I’d smelled no lie, and was as convinced as I ever would be that these kids would be all right.
But as I moved away, I locked eyes with the blonde shifter child I’d noticed last night. Her face was pale with worry, her slim shoulders tense, but it was her eyes that made me pause. They were yellow-orange, the exact same color as Lakin’s.
“Hey there,” I said, crouching down to her level and offering a hand. She hesitated for just a moment, but my shifter eyes must have decided her, because she took my hand and allowed me to briefly pull her from the group. Annia and Rylan gave me curious looks, but I ignored them.
“My name is Sunaya Baine,” I told the little girl. “What’s yours?”
“Tula Leoni,” she said quietly. “I’m from the Leoni Clan in Parabas.”
A quick sniff told me she was a jaguar shifter, and I smiled. “I think I may know a relative of yours. Does the name Boon Lakin sound familiar to you?”
“You know my uncle Boon?” Tula’s eyes widened. “Where did you meet him?”
“In Solantha. He and I worked on a case together. I noticed your beautiful eyes and how similar they are to his, and I thought you might be of his old clan. He’s a good man.”
“He’s one of my favorite uncles.” The girl gave a little sniffle. Alarmed, I wondered if I’d made a mistake by mentioning Lakin, who she clearly missed. But then she smiled, her shoulders relaxing. “I guess it’s good to know that you’re his friend.”
“He’ll be very happy to learn you’re safe,” I told her, smiling back. I ruffled her hair, then gave her a gentle pat on the back. “I will make sure to tell him all about how I met you, and how brave you’ve been. Go on now.”
I gave her a gentle push in the direction of the carriage, and watched the mages load her up before getting inside. The carriage let out a shrill whistle as it lurched forward, and my heart jumped into my throat as we watched the children leave.
“Small world, isn’t it?” Rylan murmured, placing a hand on my shoulder as he came to stand beside me. “That you happened to have a connection to one of the children?”
“Yeah,” I said, glancing sideways at my cousin. His expression was serious, his yellow shifter eyes broody for once. “It makes me realize it’s not enough to ensure that Canalo is safe. We’re all part of the same country, and our actions affect one another more than we realize.”
Two more steam carriages rolled out of the gate, carrying prisoners, and we stepped back to give them a clear path. Iannis, Lord Logar, and the remaining mages returned via steamcar rather than walking up the long path back to the entrance. My heart began to thump a little faster as Iannis stepped out of the vehicle, a grave expression on his face as he locked eyes with me.
“It is time,” he said. “We’re going to demolish the compound now, and everything in it.”
“Don’t lo
ok so glum,” Lord Logar said cheerily as he came around one of the vehicles. He surveyed us all as he spoke. “The sooner we get this done, the sooner we can get out of here and back to civilization. I don’t know about you, but I missed breakfast to get here so early, and intend to make up for it with a hearty lunch.”
“Yes, sir,” Elnos said, and the rest of us followed suit. Normally, I jumped at any talk of food, but at the moment, my gut churned at the very thought of eating anything. There were animals still down in the labs—mice, rats, and rabbits—that didn’t deserve to die. But Iannis had decided freeing them would be too risky, since an unknown number of these rodents carried deadly diseases, and Lord Logar had agreed.
As Iannis’s apprentice, I was enlisted to help prepare the spell—after all, it was a rare and dangerous one, a good opportunity to learn. There was an air of suppressed excitement about the Osero mages, who seemed eager to put in practice a technique they only knew from magic textbooks and history volumes. Even Elnos looked excited to participate, despite his melancholy about Noria.
My part in the spell was simple and yet complicated. Lord Logar pulled out pouches of black stones and had several of us place them in a grid-like pattern around and inside the entire complex of buildings. Each stone was smooth and polished, about the size of my palm, and had a rune carved into it. There were four different runes in total, and Iannis explained to me that each rune stood for a different element. Each time I pulled a stone from the pouch, I spoke a Word to activate it. The rune would glow a bright, otherworldly color, and I would place it on the ground before moving onto the next location.
It was eerie, walking so close to the corridors of the underground labs as I placed my stones. The place was empty of all human life, but even from outside, I could still scent decay and despair beneath the antiseptic, and my heart clenched at the thought of the animals yet inside. My boots echoed against the paved yard as I walked above the laboratories with their rows of steel tables laden with glass beakers and cruel-looking instruments. According to Fenris, some of those tables were equipped with leather straps, clearly meant to hold down the children they kept here as they were poked, prodded, and injected. Had they killed any before we arrived, in those experiments? It seemed all too likely. I was relieved that the surviving victims had been taken away. If I had been in their position, coming out of a nightmare of being tortured and experimented on, I would not have been able to gain any peace of mind until I was as far away from this place as possible.