The Tainted City

by Courtney Schafer

  He stretched out a hand to the illusory peach tree. A tendril of power sliced through the spell’s pattern. The tree blurred and dissolved into nothing, the remaining mist of energies easily absorbed by the workroom wards. Ruslan left, after a last, satisfied nod.

  Kiran climbed to his feet, waving off Mikail’s offered hand.

  “I’m fine,” he mumbled. It was mostly the truth. The ache in his head had diminished to a dull throb.

  Mikail sighed. “Why do you always test him? You know it never ends well.”

  “I wasn’t trying to test him—I thought I was doing the right thing!” Kiran blotted sweat from his forehead, glaring. “His rules on nathahlen are ridiculous. Why can’t I talk to them if I please? What difference does it make?”

  “That guide is working for our enemies.” Mikail’s voice was flat. “Ruslan had every right to rebuke you.”

  “Ruslan was the one who said we had to share information! Besides, you speak with nathahlen sometimes and Ruslan doesn’t care. If it bothers him so much, why doesn’t he ever punish you for it?”

  “Because I remember my place, and theirs.” Mikail’s eyes held a hint of the same anger Kiran had seen countless times in Ruslan’s. “I don’t make the mistake of treating them as equals.” The final word came out in a sneer.

  “Just because they lack mage talent doesn’t mean they can’t be interesting,” Kiran said, thinking of Dev’s easy, friendly grin.

  Mikail turned his eyes to the warded ceiling, his jaw clenching. “Little brother, sometimes you’re a complete fool.” He gripped Kiran’s shoulders and shook him, hard. “Look around you! Ruslan’s given us everything. Most men only dream of the lives we have, and the power we wield. How can any nathahlen possibly compare?”

  Rare, to see his placid mage-brother so visibly upset. Kiran blinked at him in puzzlement. “All I did was converse for a few moments. Ruslan wasn’t that angry. Why are you?”

  “You were lucky.” Mikail’s grip tightened. “Next time, you may not be. Risking his anger is never worth it. Never. I don’t understand why that’s such a hard concept for you to grasp.”

  “Look who’s talking,” Kiran said. “What about that time you broke into his vault to steal a zhivnoi crystal because you wanted to try and make it snow in Ninavel? You thought it was worth it then.”

  “That was years ago! We’re not children anymore, Kiran.” But Mikail’s gray eyes softened, one corner of his mouth lifting. He released Kiran with a shove, sending him staggering. “Go clean yourself up. I can’t concentrate on designing channels with you stinking of sweat like some nathahlen brute.”

  Kiran went. In his room, he changed his shirt, and absently splashed citrus-infused water on his face from the full ewer at his washbasin. Regardless of the years he’d lost, he knew his mage-brother. Mikail’s cool composure wasn’t easily shaken. This business about nathahlen…something must have happened during the time Kiran couldn’t remember, to upset Mikail so deeply. But what? It was so maddening to have the past such a void. Kiran turned away from the washbasin, determination filling him. He might not be able to recover everything he’d lost, but this—this, he would find out.

  Chapter Twelve

  (Dev)

  I slipped into an alley barely wide enough to walk in, glad to escape the fierce blaze of the afternoon sun. Talm trailed after me. He wore the loose, flowing clothes Sulanian drovers favored, complete with a headwrap that left little more than his eyes showing, and cheap copper warding bracelets circling his wrists. So far he was good as his word about fitting in streetside, mostly because he was smart enough to keep his mouth firmly shut around others.

  We’d already visited the few Acaltar taverns open at this hour, populated by sunburned, sweating foreigners too dumb to realize they should be sleeping off the day’s heat instead of drinking. I’d heard all kinds of rumors about the wardfire on the Aiyalen Spire. Each rumor was crazier than the last, none of them of any obvious use. But at the Blackstrike tavern, I’d left a message for Cara: a ward-sealed envelope containing a hastily snipped lock of my hair and the words find me. She could use the hair to key a charm to track me down, regardless of where Talm and I wandered to hunt information.

  The banking scrip Halassian had given me was tucked firmly in my inner shirt pocket. I wanted to keep my bid for Melly anonymous, lest Red Dal rightly suspect I didn’t own the coin to pay up. Red Dal’s runner boys and minders all knew me, but they didn’t know Cara. I’d send her as my courier as soon as she met up with me.

  “How do you stand living here?”

  I turned, surprised. Talm was squinting up at the strip of searingly bright sky showing between the alley’s high walls. He said, “I’d forgotten how the lower city makes me feel like a rat in a well. All that weight of stone above us…doesn’t it bother you, to see so little of the sky?”

  “When I want a view, I climb up onto a roof. At least Ninavel’s not buried in woodsmoke and river fog, and no man could be bored in the night markets.” That said, I desperately missed the expansive vistas and crisp, cool air of the Whitefires’ high cirques. This was the first summer in nine years that I hadn’t spent in the mountains.

  Talm slowed, staring at me. “You actually like this city. But…you were Tainted. You’ve experienced firsthand how viciously men misuse power here! Children enslaved by criminals, the untalented killed or ruined on mere whims, with no recourse to any authority—how can you possibly think Ninavel anything but a plague den?”

  I shrugged uncomfortably. “Some of it is, yeah. But it’s not all bad.” I thought of lazy afternoons full of laughter in Samis’s courtyard, of listening rapt to storytellers from every country under the sun, of friends like Sethan who’d fled the harsh laws of their home cities and cherished the chance to begin anew.

  “Marten told me why you agreed to come,” Talm said. “Of the Tainted child you hope to save. Have you never thought of trying to change this…system of abuse? Stopping the enslavement of children entirely?”

  Khalmet’s bloodsoaked hand, did he think it would be so easy? Gods all damn mages and their arrogance. I laughed bitterly. “If I were a mage, maybe. Maybe then I could take on every ganglord in the city. Even so…have you ever thought about stopping Alathia’s forced conscription of mageborn kids? I’d bet you’d have just as much luck.”

  “Some of us do hope to change the conscription laws,” Talm said. “Marten, in particular. It’s one of the reasons I requested to be transferred from Ninavel to join his Watch. He sees beyond the fear that keeps the Council so militant. He’s worked tirelessly to convince the Council that giving mages a little more choice in their lives and their magic would help and not harm our country. I only wish more in the Watch shared his strength of vision.”

  He spoke with all the fervor of some sun-touched temple cultist. It pissed me off. As I dodged left into an even narrower slit of an alley, I said, “You want to talk about abuses of power? What Marten did to Kiran was as bad as anything I’ve seen from a ganglord. Pretend all you like, but I know the truth: Alathia’s no different than here. Men with power sacrifice those without to get what they want. It’s just that in Ninavel nobody bothers to lie about it.”

  Talm blew out a sharp, exasperated breath. I thought he’d argue, but instead he said, “What’s down here, anyway?”

  “A place you can’t go.” I halted well short of the alley’s end, where a deceptively battered-looking door lurked in a grimy recess.

  Talm had already stopped dead, his gaze riveted to the door. “Those are kill-strength wards.”

  The ward lines lay hidden beneath the grime, but of course a mage didn’t need to see lines to peek a ward. “Yeah,” I said. “That’s only the half of it. That door leads to Acaltar’s best charm dealer. She commissions charms direct from highside mages, supplies ganglords and shadow men, and hears every last rumor in the city—but she doesn’t like strangers. At all. So you’re gonna wait out here while I go have a chat.”

  “A litt
le hard to protect you from out here,” Talm said. “Especially with those wards swamping my senses.”

  I’d hoped the wards might stop him using magic to spy on me. I meant this chat to be a private one. “A necessary risk, if you want information. A half hour, that’s all I ask.”

  Talm sighed. “Any longer, and I’ll break those wards to come for you. I won’t be happy about it, either.”

  “If I don’t return by then, I’ll need you to come after me.” I eased up to the door and scratched on a battered copper plate at head height, then stood still, my hands raised and open.

  After a moment’s silence, the wards flickered and the door cracked open. I slid inside, pushing through tattered prayer shrouds into a room whose walls glittered with charms, most of them deadly. Blood-boil, boneshatter, heartrot, poisonteeth, and more hung beside esoteric amulets whose runes I didn’t recognize. The acrid pall of belthis-root incense fogged the air, making my eyes water.

  “Hadn’t thought to see you darken my door in high summer, boy.” Behind a table cluttered with jeweler’s tools stood a stocky woman perhaps fifty years in age, whose coarse thatch of dark hair and coppery skin spoke of mixed Arkennlander and Varkevian blood. She wore clothes as black as her eyes, a jeweled scorpion amulet on a silver chain around her neck, and owned no name but Avakra-dan, the Varkevian word for the deadly brown-furred spiders that lurked in crevices in the dry canyons of the Bolthole Mountains. Not a mage, but as dangerous as her namesake just the same. “Shouldn’t you be off playing the fool in the mountains?”

  How I wished I was. “I thought I’d branch out from courier jobs this year,” I said. “Now that I’m working solo.”

  Avakra-dan grinned, displaying teeth stained indigo from chewing gavis beetles. Some streetsiders swore by the beetles, said they made the mind work faster. I’d tried one once, back in my days as a runner boy for Tavian’s gang. If my thoughts moved quicker, I sure hadn’t noticed, occupied as I was in scrubbing my tongue raw to clear the rank taste from my mouth.

  “Ah, yes.” Avakra-dan’s eyes took on a cruel gleam. “I heard how that sly little partner of yours robbed you blind so she could play jenny-toy to a mage.”

  Even after all these months, the memory of Jylla’s betrayal still stung like scorpion venom. I shrugged, carefully nonchalant. “Good riddance.”

  “That’s the spirit,” Avakra-dan agreed. “A clever boy like you only needs the lesson once: love is for fools and marks. About time you started playing proper shadow games instead of mucking about with courier work. But tell me, if you’re working solo—who’s that skulking in my alley?”

  “Client representative,” I said. “One I’d prefer to keep clear of streetsider business.”

  “Clever and cautious, good.” Avakra-dan awarded me another indigo grin. “Come, tell Avakra-dan what you seek.”

  I slid a paper from my shirt. On it was a sketch I’d made of the magic-blocking amulet Kiran had worn when he’d first fled Ninavel. I’d done my best to replicate the complex, whorled pattern of the silver, and written in the type and color of each gem.

  “My client wants to find a charm to match this one,” I told her. Simon Levanian had said of Kiran’s amulet: I have seen its like before. Hopefully that meant the amulet now locked in an Alathian vault wasn’t the only one in existence. Kiran had told me the charm blocked his bond with Ruslan; and more, it had saved me from dying in the inferno of magic released in Simon’s backfired spell. If I could find an equivalent charm, I hoped it could prevent Kiran from dying along with Ruslan if their bond went as deep as I feared. Even if it couldn’t, I’d have plenty of other uses for a charm powerful enough to hide me from both Marten and Ruslan.

  “Hah.” Avakra-dan’s brows rose as she studied the drawing. “A seven-stone charm?” She darted me a sharp glance. “I’d guess your old lover’s not the only one cozying up to a mage.”

  I’d known she’d suspect a mage’s involvement. Most Ninavel-made charms were designed so an untalented owner could spark them with the right trigger word and a few drops of blood, but that trick only worked for lesser spells. Nobody but a mage could spark a charm as powerful as Kiran’s amulet, though once sparked, I knew from experience the amulet would work even if worn by someone untalented.

  “Guess all you like,” I said. “I’m not gonna mouth off about my client’s business. Except to say he’ll know if the charm’s a fake, and he won’t be pleased. Can you get one?”

  Avakra-dan smirked. “There’s no charm Avakra-dan can’t procure, boy. Only question is how long the search takes. The more coin you pay, the faster it goes. For a charm as unusual as this one…at least five hundred kenets deposit. Fee is refundable less ten percent if I fail.”

  “Three hundred kenets, five percent, and a two-week time limit,” I countered. I didn’t need to devote the full thousand I’d gotten from Marten to my bid for Melly, but the more I had to offer Red Dal, the better.

  “Two weeks!” Avakra-dan spat. “Perhaps you mistake me for one of Noshet’s guardians, able to call down miracles from the mountaintops…”

  We settled down to bargaining in earnest. I got her to agree to a four-week time limit with a bonus if she found the charm sooner, but she demanded a fifteen percent failsafe. I didn’t much like that—she might decide to simply take the failsafe and forget the rest—but in the end I agreed, on the condition she throw in a boneshatter and a linked pair of twin-seek charms.

  “Skimming off your client, eh?” Avakra-dan laughed, a gurgling chortle. “Knew you were clever. All right, boy, you have a deal. Long as you’re willing to sign a blood-mark contract. I don’t take procuring jobs without one. No exceptions.”

  I’d known it when I walked in her door, but it didn’t help me like the idea any better. Blood-mark contracts were simple: we’d each stain a copy of the terms with a few drops of our blood. If either of us reneged on the contract, the offended party would have a blood sample in hand to key a deathdealing charm with. I didn’t intend to back out, but I sure as hell wasn’t comfortable with Avakra-dan holding a sample of my blood. Ruslan might not be able to use it, but his partner mage Lizaveta could. Still, what choice did I have? No serious procurer in the city did jobs without blood-marks.

  “I’ll sign, if we return contracts the moment the job’s complete,” I said.

  “Wouldn’t have it any other way.” She rooted around in the piles on her desk to produce two blank sheets of paper, a silver writing stylus, a pot of ink, and a copper needle.

  As she wrote out the terms, I said, “With all this wardfire, and mages dying…you must be doing quite the business in defensive charms.”

  “Best summer I’ve had in years.” Avakra-dan paused in her writing to open a jar full of squirming beetles and flick one into her mouth. I winced at the hard grind of her teeth on the shell. “So you needn’t fear I’ll turn tail and run from the city, like these weak-minded fools moaning over signs and omens.”

  “What, have people seen more than just wardfire?” I kept my eyes on the contract, my tone mildly curious.

  Avakra-dan finished one copy and started the second. “Wardfire’s enough to panic some. You know how southerners are, they wring their hands and yap about demons the instant anything unusual happens. But now word’s come that Benno’s best deathdealer got found in a pool of blood on a rooftop, gutted like a rock bear clawed him open. That’ll scare them proper, watch and see.”

  Every nerve sprang to attention. “Shit,” I said. “Hadn’t heard that one. When?” Benno was top ganglord over in Julisi, the next district over from Acaltar.

  Avakra-dan shrugged. “Couple days ago. Benno’s tried to keep it quiet, but no secret’s safe in this city. The rumors have half his men spook-eyed and slinking for the city gates. Can’t say I blame them, but here’s another lesson for you, boy: profit’s always best when times are worst. You can’t handle a little risk, you don’t deserve to get ahead.”

  “Why get spooked over someone taking a knife to a de
athdealer? That’s not exactly unheard of.” I wished I dared ask direct if the wounds matched the tales of the Ghorshaba, but I didn’t want to reveal anything that hadn’t yet come streetside. If she realized I was involved in the investigation, that might lead her straight down the path to selling my blood to Lizaveta.

  “Rumors don’t stick to truth.” Avakra-dan slid the completed copies over to me. “I’ve heard ten different versions of the tale, each wilder than the last, until you’d think Shaikar himself had crawled out of his hells to slay the man.”

  Oh yeah, Talm would salivate over this when I passed it on. “Where’d they find him?” The body wouldn’t remain, but I could maybe find someone who’d seen it firsthand.

  Avakra-dan offered me a sly smirk. “Have a ghoulish streak, do you? Or perhaps you’re playing other games. For twenty kenets, I’ll tell you the very spot.”

  I didn’t much like the hard glint of calculation in her eyes. I’d originally thought to show her the spell diagram I’d found in Kiran’s pack and ask for a consult, but now I shelved that idea. Risky enough to show her the drawing of his amulet. I didn’t want her seeing any further association between me and blood magic if I could help it.

  “Curiosity’s not worth coin,” I said, scrutinizing the contracts. If rumors were spreading as fast as she said, I’d find out easily enough where the death had happened by listening to tavern talk in Julisi.

  “Your loss.” Avakra-dan crunched another beetle.

  I handed one copy back to her. She pricked a finger and let five fat drops of blood fall on the paper. I did the same with the second copy. As I watched the red stains spread, I prayed to Khalmet I wouldn’t regret it.

  * * *

  (Kiran)

  Kiran slipped into the study, easing the door shut so as not to disturb Ruslan. His master sat frowning over a host of books spread open on his desk. Further piles of books balanced precariously around the desk’s edge alongside papers dark with notes and diagrams. Ruslan’s chestnut hair was tied back in a careless tail, and ink and charcoal smudged his fingers. Kiran had seen him like this before; when researching some esoteric area of magic or developing a new spell, Ruslan’s focus was intense, bordering on obsessive. His apprentices disrupted it at their peril.