by Tia Reed
She flung her arm sideways and pointed at the miserable lump of creation without taking her eyes off Raj. “One more peep out of you and you’ll hang next.
“My, we’re in a mood today, sis,” Matisse said. He had flopped back onto the bench and appeared to be enjoying the proceedings as much as Brailen.
“Try sitting through tedious hours of Court,” she said.
“I believe I do. On a regular basis.”
“Well?” She demanded of Raj.
The whites of his eyes flaring, Raj shook his head.
“These vagrants aren’t going to tell us anything. Hang them both. If this one confesses after that one dies, hang him anyway.” She stormed towards the arch that led out to the gardens.
“Wait. Wait. They go to Verdaan.”
The beastly smuggler had left his confession until she was standing near Brailen. He deserved to pay for that alone. Her cleavage was not for the admiration of snotty-nosed children.
“What do you mean they go to Verdaan?” Matisse said, a dangerous edge to his voice. He was up, sword in hand.
“We take to Verdaan. They work for drug lord until debt paid off.”
“You mean Kamir deq Ramil?”
“Yes.”
“Who sates their craving for the drug.”
“Yes.”
“So their debt will never be worked off.”
He did not deny it. She pursed her lips to keep her anger in check as she marched back to him, her bangles clanging. “How do you persuade them to go?”
Raj looked past her, his face blank. “Same methods you use.”
Not quite the same, she guessed. She did not dispose of too many bodies, and certainly did not threaten innocent members of a family.
“Do your little games ever go awry?” Druce whispered into her ear. She was grateful for his proximity. It anchored her enough to subdue her unproductive ire. For the moment, at least.
“I’ve never had to execute anyone I didn’t want to yet,” she replied, patting his chest, though her eyes were not on him. Her nonchalant veneer had worn parchment thin in the face of Raj’s shocking admission. In an attempt to regain control of herself, she leaned into his ear. “I would not be making an exception if I hanged your apprentice. Just say the word, my dear.”
“Not today, though he might wish you had if I send him back to his mother. Now, I believe my services are called for.”
Drucilamere walked to Korwin, tugged off his hood and, as the guards restrained the dealer, placed his hands at the man’s temples. The man screamed his head off. Anyone would think he was under torture.
“Cowards all,” said Matisse with a smirk. An accurate assessment. She wondered if he had had occasion to feel the gentle nudge of a mind probe. Its paltry gain hardly seemed worth the risk of imbibing porrin. Sometimes she thought the magi a limited lot.
“Oh do keep quiet,” she said as Drucilamere rejoined them. The screaming prisoner was beginning to give her a headache.
Sul punched him in the face. She started. It was not the technique she had had in mind. Then Korwin spat out a bloody tooth, in her direction mind. She tossed her head as Sul gave him another cuff. In her present mood, effective was just that, however it was achieved.
“He is not magically oriented in the least,” Drucilamere proclaimed. “Anyone in the tavern at the time could have had latent talent, but I would have expected the sword to fly past their hand.”
“I can guarantee that did not happen. Anyway, there wasn’t a man among them worth half as much as that miscreant over there,” Matisse said, indicating Brailen, who was slumped against the ivy-covered wall, his chin on his chest.
“Unfortunately, that miscreant does have a gift.”
“So what are we left with?” Jordayne asked. “Djinn?”
“It begins to look that way,” Drucilamere conceded, “though I cannot say for sure without examining the sword.
“What’s that?” Brailen asked, dragging himself up.
“Lieutenant,” Jordayne said.
“Aye, I’ll string him up. Be right glad to.”
“What is it?” the lad asked again, paying them no heed.
The urgency in his voice made her flick her eyes his way. She paled. An apricot ball of light, blue sparks crackling at its centre was flitting around the lad. “Drucilamere,” she said, gripping his arm with the same sense of urgency. The Magus walked towards it. “Wait,” she said, troubled by Weng Wu’s warning.
“I never,” Druce murmured, frowning. He lifted a hand towards it.
“Don’t,” she said, imitating the eastern magician’s caution.
The light sensed the movement. It darted at Brailen’s heart. The boy jerked as it entered him. His body stiffened and his eyes turned vacant. For a heartbeat, he glowed apricot from within.
Drucilamere placed a hand on the boy’s head. Sweat beaded on his brow as tendons formed a prominent fan across his hand. His low chant sounded forced. Just as his voice broke, the light catapulted out of Brailen and over the walls. The lad crumbled into an unconscious heap at her mage’s feet.
“What was that?” Matisse said.
Her eyes flicked from heir to mage. This was not a secret to which she wanted to admit.
“If I didn’t know better, I would say it was a soulous,” Drucilamere answered, gazing in the direction the light had taken. He crabstepped and grabbed at the wall.
“Magus?” Matisse enquired as Jordayne went to support him up.
“A soulous is the captured soul of someone who has died. It’s dark magic that binds the will and prevents it joining the Vae.”
Her mouth dry, Jordayne said, “How do you know better?”
The mage let go the wall and blinked. “I don’t,” he said. “In fact, I don’t.”
Brailen stirred and groaned. His hand rubbed his forehead.
“How do you feel?” she asked. Her guilt compelled her to offer the dazed lad a hand up. If the pervert had not taken the opportunity to look down her cleavage, she might have continued to feel sorry for him. As it was, he deserved the hard slap that sent his other hand to his face. She turned back to the prisoners. Their fate was the perfect excuse to avoid further discussion of the soulous. Her dutiful Master Magus would investigate, and it was only a matter of time before he discovered Weng Wu. There were only so many diversions she could throw his way to forestall the inevitable. Then there would be a reckoning. But whether he accepted it or not, dark times called for dark measures.
The swarthy Verdaani smuggler had settled. He looked at her, calm, expectant, and her anger rose. “You are going to go back to Verdaan. You are going to continue trading with us as though nothing happened, and you are going to bring extra porrin to compensate for the quantity you cheated us out of. What’s more, you will report to Lord Matisse here on the whereabouts and welfare of any Myklaani citizens you abducted.”
“My lord Kamir will suspect. I been away too long.”
“I imagine a fellow who values his life will discover the intelligence to manufacture a cover story.”
Raj shook his head. “Lord Kamir not forgiving man. Those betray him, they wish they never born.”
“We can always save you his wrath by executing you right here,” Jordayne said.
Matisse placed the blade of his sword against Raj’s throat, slicing the skin on the left with precision. To his credit, the little man did no more than wince. A pity the lip tremble as Matisse mirrored the cut on his right side gave him away. Otherwise, he might have disproved Matisse’s theory about brave men.
“We will get our citizens back. If it takes us a year, we will. The only question is will you give us cause to deal with you in an excruciating manner when next we meet. And make no mistake, we will meet again,” Matisse said.
“You will inform Lord Matisse of every detail of the scam,” she said watching blood from the smuggler’s wounds dribbled down to form a red noose. The courtyard was beginning to depress her. In fact, she was feeling decidedl
y ill. She strode for the arch and the fragrant gardens. A good jasmine scented bath was what she needed to scrub the stench of this appalling conspiracy off her.
“What about this one?” Sul called.
“Hang him,” she said flatly without looking back. Anyone who made a living out of selling his own countrymen deserved far worse.
Chapter Thirty-eight
At the top of the last hill they gazed down onto a withering plain. Far to the west, a broad river carved a laborious journey but no settlements hunkered along its life-giving waters. Sian hung back. Without canopy or underbrush to conceal, she stood exposed. The plain’s vast reach sharpened the emptiness inside her. It was as sharp as the talons of the golden eagle which circled overhead. She had cried, and cried, and cried after grandmam passed to the spirits, wiping tears away with her good hand. The other arm dangled by her side, useless like she was, because if she hadn’t had the fits, they would have climbed the trees, and Grandmam would be safe to lash out with her tongue.
“Don’t be such a baby,” Grandmam had said, when she cleaned the burns each night. Sian had gritted her teeth, unable to prevent tears welling in her eyes even knowing once the wound was clean the salve Ishoa had supplied would help dull the pain. After, she had curled up in her blanket, high up in a tree, and listened to Grandmam and Erok speak.
“She must be possessed. The evil vapours have not swollen the dirty arm,” Grandmam had said.
Those words had brought slaying pain of a different kind.
“The Soothsayer says not,” Erok had answered. At that moment, Sian had wondered if she loved him more than Grandmam.
The numbness had crept in as she watched Erok erect a cairn. They had left Grandmam in the forest, away from the tribe, and trekked on, silent and glum. Erok got short with the Terlaani woman when she struggled to reach a muddy summit, when she fumbled with the skinning or the roasting, when she tried to keep the tears of homesickness from her eyes, but he had not once lost his temper with her. Every night he helped her scale an oak or an ironwood, pulling her up to the highest branches. He was looking out for them, even though it was only because Ishoa had entrusted them into his care. She knew he would rather be free to hunt, or to call the Akerin to gathering. She understood. She wanted to return to the tribe too, even if the children refused to let her join in the games and the adults shooed her from their fires. It had been a fretful day the morning the soothsayer had woken her, bidding her prepare to leave.
“You must travel with the woman and child,” Ishoa had said, preparing a pack of herb tea and salves. A golden eagle had perched on a rock at the cave entrance, watching with a sentient eye.
“But they’re going to Myklaan.” A flat country with few trees, far from their safe village.
“They are going where they go.”
This was Ishoa. Her word was law. “When can I come home?” she had asked, panicked butterflies surging out of her stomach and swarming right up her throat.
“The spirits will guide you.”
Then Loyt had come charging into the cave calling for the soothsayer and blabbering about Esa’s unsettled babe.
Sian swallowed. The journey should end here, on the border hill, above the plain.
“Myklaan,” said Erok, indicating the flat land before them with the new spear he had crafted.
“Thank you,” the Terlaani woman said to Erok, her raw, anxious face softening.
The hunter pointed back at the hills. “Ho’akerin. Ogres.”
Kordahla nodded her understanding. Taking Timak’s hand, she started down the grassy knoll. Timak looked back and whispered a farewell as he scampered to keep up. Ignoring Erok’s impatient shuffle, Sian watched them go. Overhead, the eagle stopped circling and swooped down the hill. Of their own will, her feet swished through the dry grass. Leaving home was not so bad, she tried to tell herself. Timak had become her friend, and the spirit creature Ishoa had named genie too. Friends. That word felt like the sun. Friends. They helped her smile.
“Sian. We’re going home,” Erok called.
She broke into a run, tears flowing, because if she halted, if she looked back, if she saw that Erok did not follow, she might lose the will to go on. The journey had built her strength, but her hunter was fitter. He jogged up beside her. Ahead, Kordahla looked around, and waited for them to catch her up. Sian stood beside her, and folded her arms. Erok spoke her name. She dared not turn. One glimpse of the summit and she would lose her resolve.
Erok squatted, plucked a blade of grass and placed it in his mouth. Sucking on it, he waited. She could not look at him. “What’s the matter? You don’t want to go home?”
Her lower lip trembled. “Ishoa said I must go on.”
Erok spat out the blade. “The soothsayer asks much.”
Sian whirled and flung her arms around Erok. Without hesitation, he hugged her back.
Sighing in resignation, Erok pointed forward. “Myklaan.”
* * *
Vinsant was on the verge of getting out of the boat and walking all the way to the snow-topped mountains and then on to Cascade with his arms crossed if need be, just so Levi would recognise how fed up he was. And if Levi refused to exercise his legs, he could propel the boat himself. Vinsant would just meet him there. They had picked up the boat in a remote village on the second day of their trek at the base of the mountains. After a full eight-day of sitting in the cramped vessel going absolutely nowhere against the raging, icy current it was a wonder the Majoria had not taught him to magick his legs off. But that would preclude their intense twilight swordplay on the rocky shore, now wouldn’t it?
“Concentrate,” Levi said for the twenty-seventh time. Vinsant was counting today. It was just about all he could do if he wanted to avoid the evil son of a malicious djinn taking them further back towards Lake Sheraz. The Majoria was taking this no question, no answering back business way too far. Apprentice or not, he was still a prince.
“You weak-minded excuse for an apprentice. Decide you want to do it and concentrate!”
“Scum of a hopper, I’m trying!” By the Vae, he had barely noticed how wild the flower-dotted fields had become, or how chill settled the moment a cloud covered the sun.
“Today’s outburst has earned you an extra hour of sword practice.”
“Vae strike it. I said I’m trying,” he said, then closed his eyes and hit his forehead with both fists as Levi let the boat drift back with the current. At this stage Vinsant would have preferred a sound beating to further loss of ground. Days in this boat learning to steer with magic as the current bore them back the way they had come was enough to drive even the patient Minoria crazy. Towards day’s end, the Majoria usually returned them to their starting position upstream. Well and good. They had not made any progress, but neither had they lost ground. That was until Levi had instructed him to propel the boat upstream. The only concession the Majoria had been willing to make was to hold the boat steady in the middle of the fast-flowing river as Vinsant attempted to drive it forward. The man had to love watching Vinsant fail because, for three days in a row now, he had steadfastly refused to help move it. When the sun sank, the Majoria moored the boat where they found themselves, invariably further away from Cascade than they had started. The breakthrough had come two days ago, when Vinsant had managed to keep the boat steady. He had thought it a monumental effort. Levi had called it less than satisfactory.
“Concentrate,” Levi said. That was twenty-nine times now.
Ignoring his headache was a feat in itself, but Vinsant squeezed his eyes closed and poured all his energy into beseeching Mahktos.
“You are trying too hard. Remember what working magic feels like.”
That was the best piece of advice Levi had given so far. Vinsant relaxed, kept begging Mahktos and found the boat was nudging forward. Filled with glee, he discovered the enthusiasm he thought Levi had murdered. The bow wobbled, the speed was slower than a walk, but by Mahktos they were moving in the right direction.
“The correct phrase is ‘All praise to Mahktos’,” Levi said, as they picked up speed. He was just wondering if Levi might permit a break for lunch, when the Majoria issued a new instruction. “Keep the boat going and magick my dagger to you.”
Inwardly, Vinsant groaned. Keeping the boat pointed forward demanded all his effort. He huddled over and tried to spare a magical thought to procure the dagger. It jumped into his hand. About to cry out his triumph, he noticed the bow had drifted around.
“I’ll concentrate,” he blurted, as Levi reclaimed the weapon and forced the bow upstream again.
An hour later, they were miraculously still on course but he had not managed to budge the dagger. Deep in concentration, he was barely aware of Levi. A new awareness was beginning to assert itself in him. Power trickled from his mind. This time, he thought, and smiled when cold metal rested in his hand. And the boat was sailing on. In the right direction. Levi, facing forward, had not even blinked. Vinsant stepped over to the bow, returned the dagger and repeated the trick. How had he ever thought it difficult? While the Majoria obviously felt it was not, a little praise would not go amiss. This total disregard was worse than a rebuke. Just to annoy the man into speech, Vinsant allowed the bow to drift. It would have been suspicious in itself that the Majoria did not stir, but the altered heading allowed him a glimpse of a rippling image. It startled him into losing control of the boat. That was his sister reflected in the water, dirty and scratched but walking away from the hills. She had made it to Myklaan! He fought to turn the bow back upstream. Slow and steady, he sat next to the Majoria. Kordahla was his sister. If Levi was tracking her, he had a right to know how she fared. Especially since Levi was clenching and unclenching his fists with an intensity that set the hairs on the back of Vinsant’s neck prickling. He was about to risk a request for an explanation when the image changed. A scruffy man was holding a knife to Kordahla’s face.