Spellslinger 6: Crownbreaker

by Sebastien de Castell

  I put a hand on her arm and made her come to a stop. ‘You know this routine doesn’t work on me any more, right?’

  She looked down at my hand. Ferius doesn’t much like people grabbing her. ‘What routine would that be, kid?’

  ‘The one where you change the subject to keep me from asking questions you don’t want to answer. What happened to your leg, Ferius?’

  ‘Didn’t I tell you not to worry abou—’

  ‘I’ve never seen you without a supply of oleus regia, which would take care of a simple flesh wound. Assuming you’d run out, I’m willing to bet the moment the queen saw you she’d’ve called for a physician to bring you aquae sulfex, which is even more potent. Hells, I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d ordered the nearest marshals to round up every Jan’Tep healer lurking around the clan prince’s palace just to fix you up.’

  ‘Told ’em to search the entire city, as a matter of fact,’ Ferius said with a wry smile. ‘Told her not to bother though. Ain’t met a mage yet who could do half as much good as a decent bottle of whisky.’

  I stared at my old mentor, searching for signs of some more pervasive illness – something oleus regia or aquae sulfex couldn’t heal. Potent as those concoctions were, they wouldn’t halt the progression of a disease. If Reichis were here, he’d’ve walked up to her and sniffed her leg. I don’t have his nose, but I leaned in anyway. Putrefaction’s easy enough to smell.

  ‘I ain’t rottin’ from the inside out, if that’s what you’re wonderin,’ Ferius said, pushing me away.

  ‘Then what’s the matter with you?’

  She crossed her arms. ‘You tellin’ me I spent all those months teachin’ you arta precis and the best you can do is badger an answer out of me?’

  I resented that, mostly because a small, nagging sensation in the back of my head told me she was right.

  The Argosi talent of perception is subtle. Oh, there are a few tricks here and there – mostly ways of envisioning relationships between seemingly unrelated pieces of information. The way Argosi play cards together, mixing their decks and laying out different hands over and over to find patterns in world events that might otherwise go unnoticed was a good example of arta precis. But the one Ferius always harped on about? It was recognising that most truths are right there in front of us, even when our fear blinds us to them.

  A run of bad luck, she’d called it.

  A knot tightened in my stomach. ‘You were in Berabesq recently, weren’t you?’

  ‘Askin’ questions when you already know the answer is the least courteous form of arta loquit, kid.’

  The glib answer woke a vicious anger in me. ‘And what do you call a damned malediction when you know that’s what killed my—’

  ‘This ain’t nothin’ to do with—’

  ‘Don’t lie to me!’ I shouted.

  She put up her hands. ‘Okay, kid. Okay. I won’t lie to you. Just ask the question.’

  I couldn’t though, because the words wouldn’t come. They were there though, pounding at the insides of my skull, clawing to get out. Dozens and dozens of tiny connections between disparate pieces of information. Ferius’s reference earlier that night to a run of bad luck; the thirteen cards still sitting in the pocket of my trousers, a massive spire in a faraway land; men and women in the desert, pausing their hunt to carve lines into the body of one of their own; a woman screaming …

  ‘Kid?’ Ferius asked. ‘Something’s happenin’ to that crazy shadowblack of yours.’

  The skin of my left eye pinched as if someone were twisting the markings.

  ‘Kid, snap out of it,’ Ferius called out, but she sounded far away now.

  I could see her right there in front of me, but it was as if she were behind a dark veil, watching helplessly as the shadowblack lines on my face turned like the dials of a lock.

  Click.

  New shapes appeared in the space between us, all of them made from that strange shadowy material I saw whenever my enigmatism took hold. Fearsome warriors wielding curved blades with wicked hooked points, their limbs wrapped in the pale linens of the Berabesq Faithful. Blood dripping down their forearms, but not from injuries – these were careful incisions made by their own sharpened fingernails, unleashing the blood magic they attributed to their god’s will. One of their number lay on the sand, his chest covered in bleeding cuts while the others chased a woman across the desert.

  I’d seen all this before.

  Click.

  The picture was different now, as if I were watching it from further away. That’s how I was able to see a second woman a dozen paces behind the first, holding the pursuers at bay. I knew her from her frontier hat and the way she danced as she fought.

  Ferius. She had been there with Bene’maat!

  ‘Kellen!’ the other Ferius – the one standing in the street with me – shook me by the shoulders.

  It’s funny how people only ever seem to use my name when they think I’m about to die.

  In the haze between us, I watched as the shadow Ferius sent steel cards spinning through the air at her enemies before running to lift up the fallen woman and haul her over her shoulder.

  ‘You were in Berabesq,’ I said aloud.

  ‘We can talk about it later, kid. For now just—’

  ‘Following the Way of Wind,’ I said, repeating her own words from earlier. ‘You were following the rumours of their living god, weren’t you?’ I asked.

  She said something in reply, but I didn’t hear it. Instead I watched in horror as the shadow Ferius stumbled, her feet barely able to keep her steady in the shifting sands while carrying the other woman. The Berabesq Faithful had almost caught up to her. She was outnumbered, out of tricks, fighting for her life in the worst possible conditions for a lone Argosi.

  How did you survive?

  Fractured onyx lines exploded in my vision, bolts of lightning shattering the air. My hands rose up instinctively to protect my ears from the thunderclaps. There, a dozen yards away, a lone woman in a long coat held a metal box out in front of her. The raging storm was coming from inside it. There was an animal by her side … A dog? No. A hyena.

  ‘Nephenia was there! She saved you.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Ferius admitted, though she sounded none too pleased about it.

  If Ferius Parfax has one weakness, it’s that she can’t stand being saved by anyone else. If she has one fear, it’s that someone she cares about will sacrifice themselves for her.

  In the shadowy desert floating in the air before me, the Berabesq Faithful pulled back, unable to face the onslaught of Nephenia’s caged lightning charm. She dropped the box and reached into the pocket of her coat before hurling what looked like a dozen tiny metal spiders onto the sand. She uttered a single word and the spiders came to life, skittering along the desert floor towards the pursuing warriors.

  ‘Guess you could say I got myself into a bit of a jam,’ Ferius confessed.

  That sparked something inside me. You did, only you’re never the one to get into trouble. You’re too slippery, too skilled a tactician. So why would the incomparably clever Ferius Parfax, the Way of the Wild Daisy, get herself in such an impossible situation?

  Click.

  I felt the last of my shadowblack markings turn, the final dial unlocking the secret being kept from me. Nephenia and Ferius each slung one arm of the unconscious Bene’maat over their shoulders, carrying her between them as they raced across the desert while the Berabesq Faithful struggled to escape a web of lightning and spiders.

  The pursuers fell back. For a moment it appeared as if the three women had got away, but then the Faithful’s leader nodded to one of the others, who then removed their clothes and laid down in the sand so that the ritual could be repeated again.

  The second scream came from Ferius, as the Faithful, drawing on the love of their newly born god, infused the hundreds of invisible tendrils of an unbreakable curse inside her.

  The malediction.

  Ferius Parfax had tried to sav
e my mother’s life, and for that kindness a god had condemned her to death.

  27

  The Malediction

  All at once the enigmatism faded and I was left staring at Ferius Parfax, who I’d never seen cry before but now watched helplessly as tears came sliding down her cheeks. ‘I’m sorry, Kellen.’

  I was so dazed from the visions that I couldn’t make sense of her words.

  ‘Sorry?’ I asked.

  Ferius wiped the linen sleeve of her travelling shirt across her eyes. ‘I tried to save your mamma for you, kid. Tried as hard as I could.’

  ‘But … How could you have known she was in the Berabesq territories? Why were you the one trying to save her? My father must have had other agents in the territories. They should’ve—’

  Anger flashed across her features. ‘What’ve I told you about askin’ me to make sense of the foolishness of boys and men?’ She held up a hand to keep me from asking any more questions and took in a long, slow breath before speaking again. ‘I was in Makhan Mebab on account of I’d been given a discordance card by a gal I might’ve mentioned to you before. Calls herself the Path of Whispering Willows – stupid name, if you ask me. Anyway, she’d painted a pretty picture of this new god of theirs, all decked out in the rays of the sun, but behind him was a figure hiding in the shadows. So I followed the trail to see what I could see.’

  I was having trouble making sense of what she was saying. The blood in my veins felt cold, the way it does when panic and terror start to overtake me. But there was something else too, something dark and dangerous deep inside my chest that was beginning to smoulder at the thought of what the Faithful had done to Ferius.

  ‘What did you find out about their god?’ I asked.

  ‘Never got that far. Caught wind of some gossip about a high-powered foreign mage captured by the viziers who they reckoned could bring down the entire Jan’Tep arcanocracy. They were bringing in inquisitors from across the territories to see if they could torture her into concocting a binding spell – said it would let ’em kill the mage sovereign himself. Well, you know how little attention I pay to Jan’Tep magic, but it wasn’t hard to guess that their captive had to have some powerful connection to your daddy. At first I figured they must have that sister of yours – precocious little monster that she is. But then, well, then it turned out to be your mom.’

  ‘You rescued her? Even though it meant abandoning your mission for the Argosi?’

  Ferius shrugged. ‘Lady was kind enough to me, for a Jan’Tep anyway. Loved you somethin’ fierce. Reckoned that was reason enough.’ She took one of my hands in hers. ‘The malediction they put on her – there wasn’t nothin’ I could do about that. I’m sorry, Kellen.’

  I nodded, still choking on grief and confusion. ‘You and Nephenia were hit with the malediction too, weren’t you?’

  ‘Girl’s all right,’ Ferius said. ‘Had some silly charm or other on her that she said deflected the curse. She’d offered me one ages ago, but, well, I told her it wasn’t my way.’

  ‘Why must you always do that?!’ I snapped. ‘You mock magic as superstition, as if it’s all some game the rest of us are playing. Magic is real, Ferius! It kills people. It killed my mother. It’s killing …’

  She reached out a hand and with her thumb wiped away a tear I hadn’t even known was starting down my cheek. ‘Old Ferius don’t go down so easy, kid. You know that.’ She grinned. ‘Not for some superstitious nonsense anyways.’

  ‘We have to get you help,’ I said, already turning to run back to my family home. ‘My father can command every healer in the city to—’

  Ferius caught hold of me. ‘Don’t you think if this thing could be cured with magic, your daddy would’ve gotten all his little mages together to save your mother?’ She let me go and smiled as she smoothed the hair away from my eyes. ‘Got me a different plan, kid.’

  ‘What plan?’ I asked. ‘How do you stop a malediction?’

  ‘Well, near as I can tell, the way it works is, every time you fix one thing, a new problem comes along. An inexplicable sprain starts up in your wrist? You go get it fixed and then the next day you break a toe. Bandage up the toe? Suddenly you burn your finger. Douse that in oleus regia? You wake up in the morning to the worst cold of your life. Over time the curse just sort of wears the body out until it can’t fight no more.’

  Which was what had happened to my mother. One of the most powerful healers our clan had ever seen, and she couldn’t save herself.

  ‘But then I had a thought,’ Ferius went on. ‘I asked myself, “Ferius, what do you suppose happens if you don’t fix a problem?”’

  ‘You mean just keep suffering with one thing and don’t try to heal the injury?’

  She spread her hand in a kind of mock surrender. ‘Life is suffering, I’ve heard it said.’ She looked down at her right thigh. ‘Got you trapped in there, don’t I? Little rat bastard. Yeah, you go on an’ give me a limp all you want. Ache all day and all night, but old Ferius has you in a cage now, don’t she?’

  ‘I really don’t think the malediction has a consciousness,’ I said.

  ‘Oh? You some kinda expert now? Way I see it, this thing’s gotta be some kind of spirit, bit like that sasutzei you had hanging around you a while back.’ Ferius peered into my right eye. ‘She still living in there?’

  ‘Left months ago.’

  Ferius sighed. ‘Too bad. Figured she mighta chased this one outta me.’

  A thought came to me. ‘Maybe a whisper witch could remove the malediction. We could find Mamma Whispers in the Seven Sands and—’

  ‘Already tried that, kid. Found me a whisperer on my way north. She told me the only way this thing is gettin’ out of me is to starve the source of its power.’ She chuckled. ‘Don’t reckon that Berabesq god’s gettin’ any weaker any time soon. In the meantime, though, I got me a continent to save.’

  She set off down the street, flinching every time she took a step.

  I caught up with her and stopped her.

  ‘What’s the matter, kid?’ she asked. ‘You don’t think my arta forteize can handle a little pain? Didn’t I teach you better than that?’

  ‘What you taught me,’ I said, pulling her arm across my shoulder, ‘is that it never hurts to lean on your friends once in a while.’

  Ferius smiled at that.

  What I didn’t tell her was that my path had finally become clear, as though my every future footstep was glowing right there on the street before me. All the uncertainty that had plagued me – my father’s manipulations, the Murmurers’ machinations, Torian’s appeal to duty and even my desperate desire to protect the queen – all of them fled me in the face of a profound conviction that the Argosi call the Way of Stone.

  For a long time I had thought maybe I’d never see Ferius Parfax again. The woman who had taken a broken, selfish boy and given him the chance to become … Well, I wasn’t quite sure what, but something better than destiny had intended. Now she was right here in front of me, making all her clever quips about tricking the curse that had killed my mother and was now killing her. But no amount of arta valar can break the curse of a living god.

  That was my job.

  Shalla had it right all along. In the end, duty isn’t about grand dynasties or ethical debates. Duty is about family.

  I was going to Berabesq.

  I was going to kill God.

  City of Soldiers

  What do soldiers fight for if not their nation, their city, their home? Yet to defend these things they must often leave them behind, sometimes forever. So must soldiers carry their homes with them, in their hearts and on their backs, lest one day they wake to discover that they are truly lost.

  28

  The Outskirts

  We set out for Makhan Mebab that night. No goodbyes, no farewells, just like the first time I’d left my home. Reichis kept pivoting on our horse’s neck, looking back as though expecting someone to be following us. Oddly he seemed disappointed to find only t
he empty road. Turned out he was looking in the wrong direction.

  Almost three years to the day, my sister had stood defiantly at the outskirts of the city, armed with tears and ultimatums to keep me from leaving. This time a different yellow-haired girl awaited me.

  ‘Seneira?’

  The heir to the famed Academy of the Seven Sands was still dressed in her diplomat’s finery, though with a long black riding coat to keep out the night’s chill. ‘You left without saying goodbye last time too,’ she said.

  I slid off my horse’s saddle and into a hug with more genuine affection than I’d have expected. A couple of years back the two of us had gotten mixed up in a plot involving onyx worms, shadowy conspirators and a particularly unscrupulous spellslinger by the name of Dexan Videris. Seneira had nearly lost her soul to one of the worms and Reichis had almost been eaten by a crocodile. Me? I got a nice hat out of the deal.

  ‘What are you doing out here in the middle of the night?’ I asked, after Seneira let go of me.

  She ignored the question and walked past me. ‘Lady Ferius,’ she said with a short bow.

  ‘Ain’t no lady, kid, it’s just …’ She caught Seneira’s grin and grunted in return. ‘Ain’t nice to mess with your elders.’

  ‘Forgive my impertinence, Path of the Wild Daisy. Perhaps you will allow me to follow the Way of Water and make restitution?’ Seneira reached into her coat and took out a thin roll of leather.

  Ferius accepted it in both hands as though it were a priceless artefact. She held it up to her nose and inhaled deeply before letting out a sigh of blissful anticipation. ‘Teleidan brightleaf …’

  ‘Finest smoking reeds in the Seven Sands. I’d intended to give them to Kellen to pass on to you, but I’m pleased to be able to deliver this small token of our gratitude to you in person.’

  Ferius’s vocal mannerisms shifted in that effortless way of hers to take on a more formal style of speech as she bowed low. ‘A thousand gifts have you given me then, daughter of the Seven Sands, for in every waft of the smoke from these reeds will I be reminded of the endless beauty of your homeland and its people.’