by Spurrier, Jo
‘I know it would harm us if they were to see it,’ Isidro said. ‘You will tell me, Delphine.’
She shook her head. ‘You won’t hurt me. A helpless woman? You wouldn’t do it — you have too much honour for that.’
‘Really? When you’re endangering my people and threatening everything we’ve sacrificed so much to achieve? I’d take no pleasure in it, but I’ll make you talk if I have to.’
‘Look, I came in here to burn it!’ Delphine pleaded. ‘I’ve admitted that much, so please just destroy it!’
‘But it’s not as simple as that,’ Isidro said. ‘How do I know this is the real message? How do I know it isn’t a decoy, intended to arouse suspicion so the other would pass with lesser scrutiny?’
Delphine stared at him for a long moment. ‘I … I never thought of that,’ she muttered.
‘Why should I believe you? What proof can you offer me?’
‘Well, none, of course,’ she snapped. ‘It’s impossible to prove a negative, you should know that.’
‘Then why go to the trouble of convincing Mira to send the letter, only to turn around and destroy it?’
Delphine heaved a sigh. There was no way out. ‘I couldn’t go through with it. No matter what I think of you and all your lies and deceit, I won’t be responsible for making these other poor folk suffer. That girl Anoa, little Lucia, and all the others … they don’t deserve that fate.’
‘Oh, such a great sacrifice on your part,’ he drawled. ‘How magnanimous of you to let them get on with trying to rebuild their lives and reunite with their kin, those who haven’t been killed or marched off to the slave-markets already.’
‘Why must you keep throwing that back in my face? I never made a slave of anyone. I know it’s a wretched awful thing, and you don’t know how I lie awake at nights, feeling ill for the things that have been done. But there was nothing I could do about it!’
‘I know,’ Isidro said. ‘I count myself fortunate I could do something. So tell me, Delphine — what would you have done in my place?’
Once again she found herself speechless, then tongue-tied and stumbling over her words. ‘I would have done everything in my power to free you,’ she said. ‘I truly would.’
‘And I believe you, but Delphine, it wouldn’t have been enough. Do you understand that? Do you understand why I did as I did?’
‘But you lied to me! I trusted you, I saved your life —’
‘And I’m grateful.’ All the mockery was gone from his voice now. ‘I truly am. I couldn’t have done this without you. Yes, I deceived you, but I did what I had to do. There was no other way.’
Delphine clenched her fists. ‘That’s as may be. But do you have any idea what you’ve done to me? I took enormous risks for you, Aleksar, and now I’m ruined. I’ll be dismissed as a teacher, and as a scholar. In Akhara my name will never be spoken. I’ll be ridiculed and forgotten.’
‘I’m sorry for that,’ Isidro said. ‘But it’s not my doing, any more than my being a slave was yours.’
‘That’s scant comfort,’ Delphine snapped.
‘Indeed. You and I are two stones caught up in an avalanche, Delphine. It’s no one’s fault and it can’t be undone. We just have to hope that when the dust settles we’ll find ourselves thrown clear.’
His words hit her like a shock, as though she’d been dunked in cold water. She’d never considered all this from his point of view. It was simply too painful to put herself in the place of those her people had enslaved, and contemplate how it must feel to lose everything, to have home and family and one’s very identity stripped away, to be made into a beast used as one’s masters saw fit. She’d admired him for making the best of a bad situation — shouldn’t she admire him just as much for fighting to take back what he’d lost?
‘You know …’ Isidro folded the paper between his fingers. ‘There may be a way to make yourself valuable enough that those in Akhara can’t dismiss you.’
Delphine scowled. ‘How?’
‘Have you taken any notice of what we found in the cache? There are a hundred books, when we found only a dozen in Milksprings, and you’re the only Akharian who has seen them. There’s a woman’s ghost trapped in the wall, talking to us, and in all the history of mage-craft there’s never been a wonder like her. Your people came here to learn about Ricalani mage-craft, and you have sole access to the greatest treasure trove of them all. What’s more, you can study a Corrupted Sympath first hand — how many of your fellow academics have discovered a prize like that?’
Delphine bit her lip. ‘Oh, by the Good Goddess herself, I’m a complete and utter fool.’ Then, she narrowed her eyes. ‘This is what you did, isn’t it? When I told you what we were searching for, you realised you could turn it to your advantage. What’s to stop me from doing the same?’
‘You won’t leave here until we’re finished with you,’ Isidro said. ‘I could be persuaded to let you make notes, but you may not be able to take them when you leave. And first, you’ll tell me what’s in this letter. These people, these places … I’ve never heard you mention them.’
Delphine bowed her head. ‘It’s a play, a famous tragedy. It’s about two young lovers from warring families who try to bring about a truce, but their families find out, and kill them. If my people find out just how much your clans hate and fear sorcerers, they could make a truce with Mira’s kin to trap you in here and wipe you out. You must have considered that possibility.’
‘We have. But we also have Rasten up there, watching our backs.’ He glanced down at the letter. ‘So that was going to be your revenge?’
Delphine lifted her chin. ‘I won’t have the suffering of those innocent souls on my conscience. This doesn’t mean I’ve forgiven you. I don’t take kindly to being used and deceived.’ Delphine forced anger into her voice as she spoke, but she had to dredge it up from the depths of her soul. Of course I’m still angry, she told herself. Of course I am. This doesn’t change anything. But in her mind’s eye all she could see was two pebbles tumbling down in a mass of falling rock.
In the end, Mira and her escort set out without much delay, and in the following hours a new kind of status quo emerged in the unearthly light of the installation.
Delphine apologised to Sierra for her short temper. Sierra received her words with apparent grace, but Isidro could read her wariness in the stiff way she held herself. He would have liked to keep watch over her next lesson, but now that he was well again, he had other duties. Since Nirveli could not teach Sierra, Isidro would study with her and compare notes with Sierra afterwards. Isidro knew his talent was weak, but after coaching him in some basic exercises, Nirveli declared he could learn to use it. She led him through meditations to build his store of power, and explained that with practice it would become second nature to keep it near to hand. This was the part that should have proved most difficult for him — Isidro had been able to sense power all his life, but could no more grasp it than he could grasp smoke. Until, that was, Kell had worked the ritual upon him.
‘The simplest way to think of it,’ Nirveli said as leaves sprouted and flowers bloomed within the stone around her, ‘is to imagine power as flowing water. A new mage has nothing but tiny cracks for the power to seep through, but as it does it wears away channels, like water cutting a stream-bed. Usually this happens slowly, so the channels form in step with a novice’s ability to raise and hold power, but the ritual blasted your channels open when you still have only the most basic ability to raise power. It means you’re a little like a sprung barrel — any power you do raise will simply flow right out of you.’
‘Ah,’ Isidro said, ‘I thought that might be the case. I’ve only ever used power when it’s been thick as tar around me — I must have drawn it in and used it right away. Well, it might still be of some use if I were to just learn the theory —’
‘No, wait a moment,’ Nirveli said, tucking a curl back behind her ear. ‘Just because you can’t hold power now doesn’t mean you’ll neve
r be able to. It’s like a muscle: the more you use it the stronger it grows. I’ll have to teach you slightly differently from the way I would an ordinary novice, but you can still become a mage.’
‘I … really?’ Isidro said. ‘But surely I’m too old.’
‘Oh, hardly, though it takes years to become proficient. Given the circumstances, I’d best give you some useful skills, too. Now, you have a connection to Sierra, don’t you, forged by the Blood-Mage’s rituals? If you can draw power from her to practise with, you’ll learn the methods all the faster, though of course you will have to learn to raise power on your own — she won’t always be around to supply you.’
He left the lesson with more exercises to work on, and went upstairs to watch the last few minutes of Sierra’s combat training with Cam and Ardamon. At first he’d been dubious about giving her yet more to learn, but as he watched her and Anoa follow Cam’s movements as he led them through a routine for staff and spear, he saw there was value in a purely physical activity after hours focussed on the more cerebral matters of mage-craft.
After dinner, when he and Sierra tried to compare their studies, Isidro discovered the flaw in his plan. As he tried to explain what he’d learnt from Nirveli, Sierra’s frown of consternation grew deeper until at last she interrupted him with a shake of her head. ‘Issey, that just doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t work that way … or at least, my power doesn’t.’
He tried again, but when she began to grow upset that she simply couldn’t understand, he stopped and took her hand in his. ‘Well, never mind. I’m no more than a beginner at it myself, and if Nirveli’s right and your power truly is so different, it’s no wonder we can’t see it the same way.’
Sierra drew a deep breath. ‘It shouldn’t bother me. I’ve been different all my life — I ought to be used to it by now. It just stings a little, you know? I always wondered what it would have been like to be born in Vasant’s time, and it turns out I’d be as much a demon to them as I am to everyone else.’
‘That’s not true,’ he said. ‘If you weren’t Corrupted —’
‘And who’s to say I wouldn’t be? How much pain does it take to corrupt a Sympath? No one seems to know, and I can’t tell which parts of me are polluted and which parts pure. My power has always felt this way, prickly and thorny and hot. Maybe I’ve always been this way, and Kell only made it worse. Just think about it, Isidro — how could any child grow up in this world without being exposed to pain and suffering? I don’t think I was ever as perfect as the Sympaths Delphine and Nirveli tell me about. The only people with the talent who’ve ever accepted me for what I am are you and …’ She broke off suddenly, biting back the words.
‘Sirri?’
She looked away. ‘You and Rasten,’ she concluded in a mutter. ‘I … I’m glad you’re here, Issey. I think I’d go mad if he was the only one who understood what this is like.’
He squeezed her hand. ‘We’ll get there. I promise. Now are your lessons with Delphine any better?’
‘I … yes, a little,’ she said, still frowning. ‘She’s stopped trying to make me do everything her way, and says we should find what works for me, since I’m obviously not like any normal mage. We seem to be getting somewhere, at last.’
In the morning they went to their respective lessons again, and at noon Isidro took his leave of Nirveli and climbed the stairs to watch the last part of Sierra’s lesson.
What he found was a very strange sight. Sierra stood in the midst of a miniature hurricane. More than a dozen miscellaneous objects hurtled around her, pots and buckets, bundles of cloth, even a wicker chest with its lid flapping on leather hinges, all spinning through the air at head-height at dizzying speeds.
Delphine was standing to one side with one hand over her mouth, her brow creased with concern, while Ardamon stood back with his fists against his belt, looking on with his habitual scowl. Cam stood inside the perimeter of the hurtling missiles, quite calm as they sailed past his face, missing him by inches. Anoa stood just beyond the circling assortment and the pair tossed a ball back and forth between them. ‘Issey!’ Cam called as he stepped into the chamber. ‘Care to join me?’
‘You should try fencing like this,’ Anoa said, throwing the ball.
‘That’s not a good idea!’ Delphine said. ‘Sierra must learn to defend her allies while attacking those they fight. It would be best not to introduce enemies until we’re certain she can stay her hand.’
Cam tossed the ball back, but it stopped in mid-air and then shot to one side, joining the objects that swirled through the air around them.
‘Blast,’ Sierra said. ‘I didn’t mean to do that. Cam, I think I’d better stop: get out of the way.’
Cam stepped out of the storm of swirling air, ducking to avoid the wicker chest with its flailing lid. He beckoned Anoa to follow him and she obeyed with a scowl as Isidro felt Sierra’s power flex. The madly circling objects slowed and then stopped, and then fell to the ground with a thud.
Standing in the centre of them, Sierra swayed. Isidro started towards her at once, but Delphine had seen it, too. ‘Sit down, girl, quickly, before you fall. And you’d been doing so much better, too.’
Sierra sat heavily and sprawled on the floor, legs stretched out before her and palms pressed to the cool stone as she gulped for air.
Isidro crouched down in front of her. ‘Still having trouble with breath control?’
She shook her head. ‘Not like I was,’ she said between gasps. ‘If I let the power find its own flow it’s not so hard to hold. But … when it flows sweetly, it’s a little distracting. I don’t forget to breathe, exactly. I forget that I need to breathe.’
Cam came over, the exasperated shake of his head tempered with a smile. ‘Well, you’d best catch your breath properly before we start sparring. Ardamon, why don’t you run through the sword drill while we wait?’
Sierra nodded. ‘I think that would be best.’
She lay back and closed her eyes, filling her lungs with deep breaths as the chamber spun around her. It should have tasted sweet, but next to the shimmering song of power the physical realm felt flat and dead. As pleased as she was to finally see progress, the struggle to come down from the high of power, and her craving to return there, left her feeling a little uneasy.
Lying still, her mind blissfully empty, Sierra heard Isidro ask Delphine a question about his own lessons. She tried to follow the reply, but her mind, still taxed by want of air, simply couldn’t make sense of the words.
Cam and Isidro had told her of the confrontation and Delphine’s confession. Sierra had been sceptical, but the change was profound. There still came the occasional flash of anger, but for the most part Delphine was civil, even respectful, when before she had shown nothing but scorn.
Her mind drifted on, away from the installation and the cavern, and Sierra found herself looking over a table laid with embroidered cloth, surrounded by Ricalanis and foreigners wearing richly decorated robes, or looking cold in frosty armour. Mira was there, dressed in gorgeous new clothes that Sierra found herself faintly envying, making notes on a waxed tablet. She realised, then, she was watching the negotiations taking place between the Akharians and the Wolf Clan. There was only one person through whose eyes she could be watching the scene.
Well hello, Little Crow, Rasten said to her. I haven’t heard from you in a while. Anyone would think you were avoiding me.
Rasten could have broken the contact, but instead he slowly surveyed the pavilion, letting her see what lay before him. None of the Akharians were familiar, but she recognised a few of the clan’s representatives. The one she didn’t know was the stately round woman to Mira’s right, wearing clothes even finer than Mira’s, with her faded red hair bound up in ornate braids.
That’s Mirasada’s mother, Lady Tarya, Chieftain of the Wolf Clan, Rasten said. He continued to sweep across the tent as the gathering seemed to be breaking up for a recess. Sitting amid more clan members, Lady Tarya turned to her broth
er, War-Leader Dremman, who leant close to murmur something in her ear. Some of the Akharians were stepping outside, but there was a shield across their side of the pavilion, and Sierra couldn’t see past it.
Has anything been decided? she asked him.
Only that you are all that stands in the way of peace between the Slavers and the clan, Rasten said. The Akharians want the Spire, and the Wolf Clan wants to give it to them. Or at least, they don’t want you and me to have Vasant’s treasures. Given what you’ve found there, I can’t really blame them … He glanced down at a sheaf of papers, and Sierra recognised the letter Delphine had written to the Akharian command. Everyone wants you out of the Spire, Little Crow. Both your allies and your enemies will do whatever they can to shake you loose. Just how long do you think you’re going to be able to stay there?
She was trying to think of a reply when she felt Rasten twitch and straighten in his chair. Relieved to have an excuse to avoid the question, she asked, What was that?
Nothing important, Rasten replied, but he’d gone tense, and a fresh pulse of power rushed through his veins. Tell me, Sirri, are you making progress?
Some, she said. Rasten, what do you know of Corrupted Sympaths?
Ah, he said. Are you finding your lessons unsatisfactory, Little Crow?
Something stung the sole of Sierra’s foot and she shifted on the stone. The distraction weakened her connection with Rasten, but he fed power into the contact to compensate.
The sting came again, stronger and more insistent. Sierra wriggled her foot within her boot, but the sensation had spread to both her feet now. She sat up, shucking off her boots to rub her feet.
Power flared against her skin, hot and tight, as though the energy would burst through like a sausage splitting in the pan. Sierra went very still. Isidro and Delphine were quietly talking, but Isidro turned her way with one eyebrow raised. Power flared and spilled from his hand again, and with a muttered curse he pulled his sleeve down to hide it.