“I KNEW WE were hidden from common awareness, huntress. But honestly, I had no idea how bloody well we were hidden...”
Taking a healthy bite of steak after dipping it in blood red chili sauce, he shrugged his thick shoulders, gazing out over the river as he chewed energetically.
“...I suppose it suits their pretty story about not killing and avoiding bloodshed. An’ about the infallibility of Heaven’s Sky. Truth be what it is, the Sky’s never been enough to keep the ravagers out. Not on its own.”
Waving a hand towards the other side of the river, he met my gaze, those near-black eyes flashing with reflected sunlight.
“They’ve used us from the beginning, huntress. Red witches, that is. Only it was willing at first. That didn’t change until a few hundred years ago... after the first Regent died.”
He’d brought us to the roof of an abandoned building, likely the ruin of one of the old luxury hotels or apartment buildings my uncle told me about.
I couldn’t deny the sheer impressiveness or scope of the views.
“...Our people were happy enough to help back then,” he added, his black eyes gazing out over the gold light shimmering on the river’s surface. “Most of us would still be happy to help, I expect... if anyone bothered to ask us what we wanted. And if we were allowed to live as we pleased in other respects. It’s what we’re born for, after all.”
He ripped another piece of the meat off with his back molars, chewing.
I followed his eyes to the river, riveted by his words.
It had been a perilous climb to get this high, walking up stairs crumbled from rain damage and wear. Metal support bars showed through cement walls in parts, exposed by the elements long after wallpaper and wood and whatever else had been worn down or pried off by scavengers. Graffiti covered most of those walls, often in languages I couldn’t understand, confused by layers upon layers of earlier scrawls.
Murals adorned a few of those walls as well, faces crumbled by the same elements, leaving them looking lost and screaming in the dim sunlight.
Here and there, hints of luxury remained.
A stained glass window, most of it broken, stood in a round window above a high-ceilinged landing where a tattered chandelier still hung. The feet and hands of what had once been a statue lay discarded on the stairs, made entirely of snow-white marble. Elaborate pillars rimmed the edges of half-crumbled balconies, each bearing the face of a lion.
We carefully walked over a whole landing covered with fine glass shards from a broken mirror so large it must have covered most of the wall.
The strange warlock and I picked our way carefully through the dark of the building’s bones, him cautioning me here and there, pointing out more dangerous sections of stair, along with protruding metal bars and sharp objects underfoot.
We climbed for what felt an eternity to reach that roof, but now that we were here, I had the absurd feeling it was worth it.
Never before had I seen so much of my world.
Not in real life. Not even within the folds of Heaven’s Sky.
I could see the edges of Heaven’s Sky itself from that rooftop, just past the mouth of the river where it guarded our city from the sea. I saw the thinner line of it bisecting the river, too, just as the warlock had said, dividing the “red magic side,” as he called it, from the side where we now sat. All of those lines shimmered like mirages, or like dust storms, walls of shimmering particles that one couldn’t really see through, only over.
I saw where those walls ended a hundred feet above the ground, and beyond that, the blue waters of the inlet that my studies told me led to an enormous ocean.
“How?” I said, watching him look out over the world.
I swallowed the mouthful of meat I’d been chewing as he gazed, king-like, at our view of the surrounding city. Most of the taller buildings were crumbling and rotten like the one on which we perched, but despite their condition, they struck me as strangely majestic.
“How did it change?” I pressed. “What happened?”
He glanced at me, pulled out of wherever his mind had gone.
“I know only myths,” he confessed. “Our history is all oral now, since we have no way to study what is not permitted to be written down.”
Twisting around, he pulled another of the lamb skewers off the paper parcel on the flat section of roof he’d cleared. He didn’t wait, dipping it in the near-black sauce. He took a thick bite while I watched, and chewing, glanced at me as he continued speaking.
“The first Regent’s older sister, Lirat, it is said, was unwilling to share the throne with those of our blood. She wished her own daughter to take the throne... who was, naturally enough, also a white witch. So she banished the rightful heir, Ilawanai’s niece by a different sister, Jilai, using the excuse that Jilai was not worthy of the throne, by virtue of being red magic in nature.”
Making a disgusted sound, he shook his head, taking another bite of the meat.
Once he’d chewed it sufficiently, he shrugged.
“There is another story too,” he added, his voice gruff. “About Ilric the Brave, a red warlock who is said to have loved Ilawanai the White, and who married her before she became Regent. In that version, Ilawanai’s ‘niece’ was actually their daughter, born red of blood out of their union of the two magical strains.”
He glanced at me, his black eyes flashing that crimson fire.
“In both stories,” he added. “It is said that Lirat began a campaign against our kind. For the first time, we were called inferior, impure, bloodthirsty, violent, dishonest, unable to be trusted. She convinced the local human clergy of these things, using spells and other persuasions to cause them to turn against us. If the stories are true, she was very clever, Lirat.” He gave me a shrewd look. “She wove such talk with the monk’s own religious beliefs... telling them that a district run by red magic would be one that ran with blood.”
He took another bite of the lamb, gazing out over the river.
“...They must have changed the rules of succession after that,” he added, after he’d finished chewing. “No other red witches have been allowed to be Regent in all the time since. Nor have I heard of one with Regent’s blood being banished.” He glanced at me. “The Regents are expected to be celibate now... and childless. Perhaps that is why.”
I swallowed, not meeting his eyes.
Feeling him notice something on me, I avoided his gaze when he gave me a curious look, focusing all of my attention on the feast he’d spread out between us on the hotel’s roof. We’d managed to put a pretty serious dent in it already, but I found I was still hungry, just looking at it. That didn’t even take into account the smell.
Meat tasted even better than my imaginings told me it would.
I was embarrassed at how enthusiastically I dove into our shared “lunch,” but not enough to stop, or even to slow down really.
He’d watched me work my way through the first chicken skewer, a knowing look on his face even as he hid what might have been a smile. He didn’t comment on how fast I ate. Nor did he comment on how fast I ate the lamb skewer that immediately followed.
Rather, he only handed me a piece of the steak once I’d finished those two and indicated towards the green and red sauces as being the best for that kind of meat.
I preferred the green.
Watching me close my eyes in undisguised pleasure after the first mouthful, he’d asked matter-of factly, “What do they normally feed you, huntress?”
“Rice,” I told him between wolf-like bites. “Steamed and raw vegetables. Some potato and grain. Bean sprouts. Bread.”
He grunted, shaking his head.
“Force-feeding rabbit food to a red witch. There should be a law,” he muttered. He glanced at me again, frowning in real irritation. “That’s disgusting, huntress.”
I smiled a little, I couldn’t help it.
Now, as I looked at the remaining food between us, I again felt his smile. Something in watching me eat s
eemed to entertain him, even more than my watching him.
Noticing that I’d caught him staring, he looked away, immediately wiping his expression back to neutral.
“So,” he said, brushing off his hands and leaning back into a more comfortable seat. “You’ve probably heard all your life there’s something wrong with ye?” He glanced at me with that half-smile. “Tha’ ye work magic ‘wrong,’ or something along those lines? Tha’ yer magical instincts is off, or that yer too stupid, untalented... or pigheaded, perhaps?”
When I looked up that time, distracted utterly from the parcels he’d spread out between us, his dark eyes met mine. His look was knowing, sympathetic, but beyond that, angry.
Not angry for himself that time. Angry for me.
I think that was the moment he truly won me over to believing in him.
“What is your name?” he asked me, into that silence. “Can you at least tell me that?”
“Maiwe––” I began. Thinking, I shortened it from my formal name, down to the nickname my uncle gave me as a child, and what most called me anyway. “––Maia,” I amended, clearing my throat. “They call me Maia.”
He nodded, his expression unmoving. “I am Donal.”
We continued to eat, slower now––though not a lot slower, truth be told.
As we did, Donal told me more about himself.
“I don’t remember ever not being a slave,” he confessed, in answer to my question about how long he’d lived that way. He sighed a bit as he looked out over the city. He gave me a faint smile. “This is the first free air I’ve breathed since I was probably four years old, huntress Maia... so I thank ye. I know I haven’t been acting grateful, but I am.”
I watched his chest expand as his lungs filled with air, right before he sighed it out.
“Why do you call me ‘huntress’?” I said, curious.
Frowning a bit, he thought about my question, then glanced at me. “I suppose ye would find that a bit odd. We call other red magic folk ‘hunter’ and ‘huntress’ since red magic was brought into being to hunt for and protect the people.” Winking at me, he added, “I imagine we use it a bit more if we don’t know a person’s name.”
His voice grew serious.
“...It’s also a way of pushing back a bit from the Defenders, I suppose. Reminding one another that even if they call us all murderers and bloodthirsty and impure, that doesn’t make it so. We say it to remind one another of where we come from.”
I nodded, thinking about his words.
I had more questions than I knew how to express.
Like how he’d ended up a slave. What happened when he was four years old? Where were his parents? What was life like for him, in the day to day? Why had he tried to escape slavery now? Was it opportunist, or had something changed? Had he left friends behind? Family? How was he treated? What did he mean by killing for the monks and white witches? Who did he kill? How often did he kill? Did he use magic, his bare hands, other weapons?
Looking at him, I could see evidence of any one of those methods working.
The possible answers to those last questions scared me, I admit.
But perhaps not as much as they should have.
“You seem...” I swallowed the last of my mouthful of chicken, flushing as I motioned towards his chest. “...strong,” I finished lamely. “How do they keep you slaves? How could they possibly control you, if your magic is as strong as your body?”
I frowned as I thought about my own question.
“How could they imprison a trained warlock at all?” I asked next. “Red or white?”
He sighed again. Resting his arms on his knees, he looked at me, his eyes sad.
“Do ye really want t’ hear about all o’ that? It’s not very pleasant to talk about, Maia.”
I noticed that strange accent of his came out stronger as he said it. I wondered if the accent thickened when something angered or upset him.
I’d already noticed it definitely waxed and waned.
Seeing the sadness in his eyes, I scarcely hesitated before shaking my head.
“You don’t have to talk about that,” I said. “It was a stupid question, maybe.”
Resettling back into a cross-legged pose when he didn’t answer, I looked back at the spread of packages. After a pause, I reached for one of the oysters, curious after seeing him do it.
Following the direction of my hand and arm, he shook his head perceptibly.
“I took a chance, getting so many of those.” His voice held a faint warning. “You might not like them overly much, Maia. There are many as don’t... even among our kind.”
Meeting his gaze to acknowledge his words, I decided today wasn’t the day to get squeamish about trying new things. If I didn’t like it, I didn’t.
And then I would know.
Giving him a faint smile, I lifted one of the white and gray, stone-like shells, feeling over the rough texture briefly with my fingers as I adjusted its weight. Frowning down at the fat, grayish blob in the center, I wondered how on Othala one would eat such a thing.
As if guessing my question, he smiled. “Do as I do, huntress.”
He lifted a shell of his own oyster off the bag of crushed ice the fish vendor had given us. Leaving his other hand to brace his upper body, he tilted the whole shell abruptly over his open mouth. He swallowed it with a slide of his long throat, then returned his gaze to mine.
“You see?” he prompted. “Like that. You try now.”
Nodding, I held my breath and did the same.
He grinned when I half-choked on the thing.
“I warned ye,” he said pleasantly. “It’s a powerful taste. Not to everyone’s liking.”
I managed to get my mouth around the thing with an effort, shaking my head, although I don’t know in what meaning precisely.
“You hate it, right?” He still watched me sympathetically, a kind of affection in his black eyes. “I am sorry for that. But I admire your willingness to experiment with new things. That is rare everywhere.”
I shook my head again. By that time, I’d finished chewing and managed to swallow the thing. Raising my eyes to his, I licked my lips, tasting salt.
“I did not hate it,” I said, and not only to be polite. “But it was... unexpected. Much more salty than I’d thought it would be. And the texture was... unusual.”
“You did not hate it, though?”
I thought some more, staring down at the oysters, my lips pursed.
Finally, I met his gaze.
“I think I would need to try a few more... before I could answer that definitively.”
He burst out in a laugh.
Without warning, he leaned towards me next, catching ahold of the back of my head in one hand. Before I knew what he intended, he kissed me warmly on the mouth, drawing away at once, before it might have become more than it was.
After he’d done it, he looked almost as surprised as I felt.
His expression smoothed in seconds, however.
Watching my bewildered face as he leaned back, he grinned when I smiled back at him, then laughed again. His deep voice boomed, reaching out into the air that ruffled our hair at the edge of the world. The sound caused a cluster of nearby finches to take off in flight, vacating a spot on the roof where they’d been watching us, likely hoping to share some part of our meal.
He was right, I realized.
I did feel freer here, somehow. With him.
I also decided, whatever the finches thought, I liked his laugh very much.
Chapter 5
LYING AND TELLING THE TRUTH
“SO WHO ARE ye? Who are ye really? Are ye ever goin’ to tell me?”
Our bellies were both well and truly full.
Leaning back on his hands, legs sprawled out in front of him, Donal asked the question casually––almost too casually, I thought. He watched as I pushed back the last of the paper wrappings, most of which were empty now anyway, and piled under the used oyster shells to keep
them from being blown off the roof.
Settling my weight back on my hands, I copied his pose with my legs outstretched and sighed, looking out over the river.
Being so full made me sleepy and content.
Hearing about his life and world also helped me forget about mine.
“Maia.” He nudged my shoulder with his. “Tell me who you are. Please.”
“Someone who’s very late,” I answered ruefully, gazing up at the height of the sun. “And probably in a lot of trouble.”
“Besides that,” he said, sharper.
Exhaling again, I fought the urge to lie on my back, maybe even to take a nap.
“Didn’t we discuss this already?” I grumbled, not looking away from the snaking river.
He sighed, as if he knew full well I’d understood him.
“Clearly, you’re someone, Maia. Your reluctance to discuss the matter with me hasn’t exactly gone unnoticed.” He continued to study my face, that pretense of casualness gone. “An’ yer clothing may be ugly, but it told me ye had money, at least.”
When I gave him an annoyed look, he smiled.
The smile didn’t touch his black eyes.
He nudged me with a shoulder again. “The fact that you’re red magic and clearly living as white magic tells me more than that ugly sack they’ve dressed you in.”
When I glanced at him that time, my mouth closed in a firm line. Looking at me, he exhaled in understanding, but I also heard the impatience underneath.
“You live on the palace grounds, do ye not? And not as a servant?”
When I didn’t answer that either, his exhale grew more impatient.
“If yer worried about me using ye for ransom, I’ll admit... the thought had crossed my mind already.” Seeing my alarmed look when I sat up, my mouth open, he raised a calming hand. “It crossed my mind and left, Maia. From the little bit ye haven’t said about your family, I suspect it wouldn’t work out well for either of us.” He shrugged, and his voice turned gruff. “And anyway... I couldn’t do it to ye. Not now.”
Red Magic: an Adult Dystopian Paranormal Romance: Sector 6 (The Othala Witch Collection) Page 5