The Tainted City

by Courtney Schafer

I tucked the knife into my belt, slung the rope across my chest, and leaped for the cliff. I didn’t have the spike-nailed boots I’d used for climbing in the Whitefires, but my work boots would serve well enough for rock as fissured as this. My blood sang as I wedged my fists in a slanting crack. Gods, it felt good to climb something more than a lump of a boulder, even if the cliff was a crumbling mess of sandstone instead of the clean, sharp granite of the Whitefire peaks.

  A rush of memory overwhelmed me: the sun blazing down from an indigo sky, turning quartz-studded cliffs brilliant as icefields. Sharp peaks stretching to the horizon, and below my airy ledge, Cara’s lithe form scaling the cliff with flowing ease, her blonde hair shining near as bright as the rock.

  The stab of pain this time wasn’t so easy to ignore. Cara. I missed her, desperately—and feared for her, too. Right before the Alathians dragged me off to the mines, I’d begged her to forget any ideas of rescuing me, and instead return to Ninavel to seek out the cunning bastard of a spy who represented my one last hope of saving young Melly from a life of mindburned slavery. Melly’s father Sethan had been Cara’s friend same as mine, though Cara didn’t owe Sethan the way I did. But now I lay awake nights praying Cara wouldn’t do anything too rash. Her skill in the mountains was unparalleled, but she had little experience with the darker games played by ganglords and shadow men.

  Exactly why I needed to get the hell out of Alathia and sneak back to Ninavel. I stabbed fists and feet one after the other into the crack, twisting my wrists and ankles to lock each successive limb into place as I moved up the cliff. Past the first guide wheel station, the crack grew too thin for my boots. I slowed, placing my feet with care upon crumbling ledges. A shower of dirt and pebbles pattered down the cliff each time I moved.

  My heart beat faster as I neared the offending wheel. The guide station was a simple scaffold of iron bars bolted over a sloping ledge. I unslung the rope from my chest, shook it out, and tied one end round my waist. Four feet into the rope, I tied a quick clover knot around the lowest scaffold bar. Dangerous to leave so much slack, since the force of even a short fall on a slack hemp rope could easily snap it, but I needed the freedom of movement if I wanted that kalumite.

  I glanced down the cliff, and froze. Beyond the upturned, black-streaked faces of haulers and drovers, a lanky man in a blue and gray uniform was picking his way over the mudflats.

  Talmaddis, the Council mage. Fuck! The miners didn’t know the kalumite-and-copper trick, but a mage might. If he guessed my intent on the cliff, my chances of escape would vanish quick as frost on a firestone charm.

  I mastered panic. He might only have glanced out the minemaster’s window, seen me climbing, and decided to investigate. If I could scrape and stow the kalumite before he got close enough to spy me properly, I might still have a chance.

  Hurriedly, I adjusted my stance to block my right hand from view and set the edge of Jathon’s knife against a fat purple vein of kalumite. With my left hand, I picked at a dangling strand of snarled rope.

  A low, grumbling roar froze my knife hand mid-scrape. Startled shouts rang from below, Jathon’s gravelly voice rising over the rest.

  “Earthquake! Get clear—”

  The roar swelled to drown him out. The cliff shook my feet from the ledge like a horse shivering a fly from its hide. In pure, useless reflex, I tried to halt my fall with the Taint, as if I were still a snot-nosed kid rather than a good decade past my Change.

  The dead spot in my mind didn’t so much as twitch. I dropped like a stone. The rope attaching me to the guide wheel station snapped taut, near cutting me in two, and I slammed into the rock below the ledge. I twisted and made a desperate grab for a handhold, even as the vicious pull on my waist vanished.

  I got one hand on the ledge rim, had an instant to register the rope end slithering past, the fibers sliced clean through—and lost my grip on the still-shuddering rock.

  Air whistling past, the spiked teeth of the pullwheel rising to meet me, and all I could think was Oh, fuck—

  Something yanked me sideways. The pullwheel flashed past. My plunge abruptly slowed to leave me hovering with my nose and chest not a hands-width from the ground.

  For a moment I could only gasp, unbelieving. Then I looked up and saw Talmaddis on his knees in the muck, eyes shut and one hand extended toward me, the rings on his fingers glowing softly silver. Behind him huddled a group of open-mouthed haulers. The white rush of shock faded, and I laughed, shakily.

  “Wouldn’t want to lose your prize hostage,” I said.

  Talmaddis didn’t answer, only lowered his hand. I splatted down into mud. The ground no longer shuddered, though the clatter of falling rocks echoed through the gorge and waterfalls of sand hissed between ledges.

  A tortured shriek of metal from above made us all jerk and duck. I rolled, getting a glimpse of thrashing haul rope and a dense spiderweb of black bars, rapidly growing larger.

  The pullwheel station from the clifftop—Khalmet’s hand, it’d crush us all—

  Talmaddis shouted a string of words, in a high, keening wail. Fiery lines streaked the onrushing iron. The fire spread, the bars crumbling to ash in its wake. I scrabbled to my feet and staggered back, still half expecting to be crushed flat.

  All that reached me was a rain of embers. My heart felt like it might leap straight out of my chest. The miners cowering beside me were whey-faced, some babbling prayers.

  Talmaddis’s curly head was bowed, his hands braced in the mud and his shoulders trembling. His breath came in rattling gasps. Jathon was shouting, urging men away from the cliff. The smarter ones had run, dark forms scurrying to the relative safety of the reedy flats near the stream winding through the camp. Yelling men boiled out of the mine tunnel. On the opposite side of the gorge, another swarm erupted from the night shift’s barracks. Several cabins had collapsed into a jackstraw of logs.

  I took a step backward, then another. I should run. Now, while Talmaddis was too drained to cast another spell, and the overseers too busy to bother about a stray prisoner. I could find another band of kalumite somewhere further down the gorge, get my snapthroat charm off before anyone thought to hunt me…

  “Mage!” Gedavar pushed past me. His eyes stared white from a face black with coal dust. “The quake—the main tunnel’s collapsed at the Broketurn junction! Three hundred men trapped beyond, and the blacklights have gone red, means the air’s turning bad—can that cursed magic of yours break through the rubble?”

  Talmaddis raised his head. His olive skin had gone sickly grey, the laugh lines bracketing his mouth turned deep as chasms. “I’ve nothing left,” he said in a raw whisper. “But my casting was more than enough to trigger the Watch’s detection spells. They’ll come…”

  “When?” Gedavar demanded. A good question. I held my breath, waiting.

  Talmaddis eased back on his heels. “For a spot so far from a city or the border, they’ll need time to target a translocation spell…” He dragged a shaking, mudsmeared hand across his brow. His rings had changed from silver to dead black. “A few hours, no more.”

  Gedavar raised a fist, as if he’d strike Talmaddis if he dared. “Twin gods curse you, man! The blacklights are red. Those men have minutes to live, not hours.”

  I shuddered. Men suffocating in darkness, begging for help that wouldn’t come…damn it, I couldn’t let this stand. I leaned around Gedavar.

  “What’s this shit about waiting, Talmaddis? You need more power to cast? Then take more! There’s plenty of life here.” I swept an arm at the oxen, at the ferns trailing beside the cliff seeps.

  Talmaddis matched my glare. “I’m no blood mage! In Alathia, our magic is fueled by our own energies. We do not steal life from others.”

  “You’re going to let those miners die, all for your gods-damned principles? For fuck’s sake, nobody’s asking you to torture men to death! Who cares if you kill a tree, or an ox? Kiran could—”

  “Kiran ai Ruslanov spent years training to work blood
magic,” Talmaddis snapped. “Do you think it’s so easy? I haven’t the faintest idea how to raise power as a blood mage does without either destroying myself or everyone in this gorge.”

  The haulers in earshot were staring at me as if I’d confessed to trafficking with demons. Rural Alathians took an even more jaundiced view of magic than the Council. They nattered on about how the use of magic poisoned a man’s soul and invited the gods’ anger. Even an officially sanctioned mage like Talmaddis was viewed with deep distrust. Foreigners like me who smuggled illegally powerful charms through the Alathian border were considered little better than plague-carrying vermin. As for blood mages, who even in Arkennland had reputations worse than Shaikar’s devils…the miners thought the Council’s policy of execution far too lenient a fate.

  Jathon spoke from behind me. “No choice but to dig our men out, then.” He gripped Gedavar’s shoulder. “Go tell the minemaster. I’ll organize a crew.”

  The anger leached from Gedavar’s face, leaving it drawn and old. “Aye. But you haven’t seen the cave-in. It’ll take days to get through, even if we use blasting powder. My Rephet and the others…well.” His throat bobbed in a hard swallow.

  “Wait,” Jathon said. “The Broketurn junction, you said? An air shaft slants in at the tunnel split. If we lower a powder charge down and blast through to the trapped side, they’ll have a chance at good air until the mages come.”

  Gedavar pointed to a jutting prow of rock high and to the side of the mine entrance. The prow’s underside was a stair-stepped series of overhangs. Water dripped from cracks green with moss. Beneath one overhang lay a round black mouth. “With the haul rope downed, not even the laddermen can reach that shaft.”

  Jathon turned. His dark eyes met mine. My fists clenched behind my back. Gods all damn it, I should’ve run.

  You still can, an inner voice whispered, in the sly tone of my old partner Jylla. Say you can’t help, the climb’s too hard. Accidents happen in the mines. Those men knew the risk, and you owe the Alathians nothing. You won’t get another chance like this again.

  Of the two of us, Jylla had always been the clever one. Doubtless that’s why she was living in luxury in Ninavel instead of slaving away in this muck pit. Yet I couldn’t shake the image of Gedavar’s nephew, dying by inches in darkness, all because I’d taken his place. If I hadn’t climbed, if Talmaddis hadn’t expended precious magic saving me…maybe Talmaddis wouldn’t have been too drained to help.

  “I can reach the shaft,” I told Jathon. “But I’ll need pitons this time.” I wasn’t such a fool as to think I could climb a serious overhang unaided on such rotten rock. Not to mention the risk of aftershocks after a quake so large.

  Jathon clapped me on the back, hope bright in his eyes. “Gedavar, get a charge. We’ll save those men yet.”

  Gedavar wore a dark, skeptical scowl, but he strode off, shouting to the men milling about the mine entrance. Doubtless he figured he’d nothing to lose.

  “Have you any men who know ropework?” I asked Jathon. “I need a belay from the ground.”

  “The cartmen work with ropes and pulleys. I’ll find someone and get you a set of those spikes from the supply chests.” Jathon hurried away.

  Talmaddis was watching me. “You surprise me, Dev,” he said softly.

  I barked out a laugh. “What, you thought I’d run?”

  His mouth pulled in a wry, weary smile. “You considered it, I’m sure. For not doing so—I thank you. If you save the trapped men…the Council will also be grateful.”

  “So grateful they’ll let me go?”

  Talmaddis looked down. I sighed. “That’s what I thought.” I glanced up at the twisted spars jutting outward from the gorge rim, all that remained of the pullwheel scaffold. “If you’re so grateful, tell me one thing. Are quakes this strong common in Alathia?”

  I’d heard tell that the Arkennland side of the Whitefire Mountains had been plagued by earthquakes, way back before Lord Sechaveh built the city of Ninavel in the bone dry desert of the Painted Valley. When he’d offered mages the chance to work magic without law or restriction in exchange for supplying the city’s water, likely he’d asked them to stabilize the ground as well. Ninavel hadn’t endured a major quake since the mage war some twenty years back, when so much magic was thrown around it unbalanced all of nature. I’d only been a toddler at the time, but I’d grown up hearing the stories.

  Maybe earthquakes were natural in Alathia. But if they weren’t, I had a terrible suspicion I knew what—or rather, who—might’ve shoved the world out of balance.

  “No,” Talmaddis said. “Quakes so strong are not common.”

  His hazel eyes locked with mine. Within them I saw the echo of my own dread, and the name neither of us wanted to say.

  Ruslan Khaveirin. Kiran’s master, the strongest mage in Ninavel, and a vicious, clever bastard at that. Who’d want revenge not only on the Alathian Council for keeping his apprentice, but on me, personally, for crossing him. If he was casting spells in an attempt to rip apart the defensive wards that barricaded all of Alathia from foreign magic, I could well believe the earth might split and shudder in response.

  And Kiran, kept under the Council’s thumb in Tamanath…the chill in my blood was nothing compared to the fear he’d endure when he realized Ruslan was coming for him.

  I winced and shoved aside memories of a white-faced, desperate Kiran. I couldn’t afford to worry over him now. First I’d reach that air shaft, do my best to keep those miners alive. Then I’d think on Ruslan, and what I might salvage from the embers of my escape plan.

  Chapter Two

  (Kiran)

  Kiran straightened on his stool and rolled his shoulders in an attempt to relieve cramped muscles. The sky beyond the high slits of the workroom windows burned crimson with approaching sunset. The labyrinthine chalk lines of his spell diagram had already grown difficult to read; soon further work would be impossible without additional illumination.

  He eyed the inert crystal sphere of the magelight perched at the table’s end and set his teeth. Thanks to the binding the Alathian Council had cast on him, he could no longer cast even the simplest of spells. He’d grown accustomed to the constant gnawing rasp of the binding against his ikilhia—his soul’s fire, the source of his power—but not to the bitter ache of yearning every memory of magic brought.

  The charm gleaming beside his slate seemed to mock him, mutely. A burnished vambrace of silver long enough to cover a man’s arm from wrist to elbow, the metal was encrusted with gemstones and etched with sigils. Even with his inner senses dulled by the Council’s binding, Kiran could feel the vast reservoir of magic bound within, a deep, soundless thrum that shivered his bones. The charm’s dizzyingly complex spellwork had allowed the blood mage Simon Levanian to walk through Alathia’s supposedly impassable border wards. Not just once, but on multiple occasions, with the Alathians none the wiser.

  The Alathian Council had spared Kiran’s life on his promise he could decipher Simon’s spell and explain how he’d breached their defenses. More, they’d promised if Kiran could provide the knowledge quickly enough, they’d hear a plea for Dev’s release from the mines.

  Frustration tightened Kiran’s throat. He laid a hand on the charm, once more seeing Simon’s magic in a dense, fiery scrawl across his inner sight. He was so close now to a full sketch of Simon’s pattern, but the last piece was by far the most difficult. How had Simon managed to stabilize the flow of the charm’s immense energies without distorting his spell into uselessness? All week, Kiran had sketched diagram upon diagram, struggling to find the solution. Yet his every attempt contained some fatal flaw.

  After all he owed Dev, he’d sketch diagrams until his fingers fell off, if that was what it took. But if he wanted light to work after sunset, he’d have to ask Stevannes.

  Kiran glanced at the far side of the workroom, where Stevannes sat before another broad table of polished cinnabar wood. The arcanist’s auburn head was bent over an array
of slender malachite and jasper rods set within a charcoal sigil sketched on the table. Above the rods, the air rippled as if seen through heat haze. Occasional hints of viridian and indigo tinged the shifting air, reminiscent of the way Simon’s charm had stained the air with color as it revealed and penetrated the border wards.

  Alathia’s foremost expert on defensive magic, Stevannes had made it all too clear he bitterly resented any interruptions by the Council’s pet blood mage to his own investigation into the breach of Alathia’s wards. He had a savagely sharp tongue at the best of times; and today his mood had been black from the start.

  Yet success was so nearly within Kiran’s grasp. He squared his shoulders, resolving to hold his calm no matter what Stevannes said.

  “Pardon the interruption, but—”

  A staccato series of raps on the workroom door silenced him mid-sentence. Surely Kiran’s guard hadn’t come to collect him yet? Usually he was allowed to keep working so long as Stevannes remained, and Stevannes’s dedication was so fierce as to be disturbing. He worked hours that would put a blood-bound slave’s to shame, and rarely left before midnight.

  Stevannes twisted on his stool to aim a swift, vicious glare at Kiran, and flicked a ringed hand at the door. The black lines scribed around the doorframe glowed briefly silver as the workroom’s wards released.

  The door creaked open to reveal a slender, straight-backed young woman whose blue and gray uniform bore the copper braid of a lieutenant of the Council’s Watch.

  “First Lieutenant Lenarimanas.” Stevannes’s glare vanished. He stood and bowed with formal precision. A wash of cerulean shot through the shimmering air above his table. “You’ve come to remove the blood mage?” He sounded hopeful.

  Kiran gripped his slate. “Lena. It’s early yet, and I’m so close to completing this pattern. If I could just have a few more hours…”

  Lena nodded to him, her brown face grave under its crown of dark braids. “You needn’t leave, Kiran. I bring a message for Stevannes from Captain Martennan.” She handed a sealed letter to Stevannes and came to peer at the diagram on Kiran’s slate. “You’ve made progress, then? The captain will be pleased to hear it.”