by Becky Allen
Jae found herself in the middle of a crowd, shoved and jostled. She could still sense the knife in other-vision, but there was too much chaos, even too much magic, for her to keep track of everything. Someone pushed her and she found herself facing a guard armed with a sword, but before she could scream or try to defend herself, Osann was there and stabbed him from behind.
“Go, get the knife!” Lenni shouted from nearby, and Jae struggled to get through, finally breaking past the thick of the fighting, nearly slipping on a spot that was slick with mud and blood.
One of the guards had grabbed the knife as an extra weapon. Jae pinned him with her gaze, then ducked as a guard took a swing at her and Elan shoved him back, trying to keep her safe. He gave her enough time to dodge away from the guard who’d attacked, toward where she’d seen the man with the knife—
The world seemed to spin around her, but it wasn’t her magic; nothing really moved except that she collapsed. She found herself on her back, the world around her first blinding white and then black. She screamed, not exactly hurt, but suddenly helpless. The magical energy that should have wrapped around her was gone, vanished, leaving her off balance and defenseless. She tried to find it in other-vision, but couldn’t see anything at all, and someone collided with her, breaking what little concentration she had.
A guard was kicking her, and raising a sword—
“Jae!” Elan slammed into the guard, knocking both of them over. “Jae, go!”
“Elan!”
The voice that screamed it was female. Jae looked up and saw Erra Danardae staring at the two of them, almost close enough to touch them. Elan whirled to face her, his jaw open.
“Erra, look out!” he yelled, as someone from the Order attacked Erra from behind. She whirled, holding a blade in one hand and the brand in her other. She dropped the brand to fight and Elan grabbed Jae’s hand again.
The world lurched again, sputtering as Jae scrambled forward, the bright energies blinking back to life. “Do you have the knife yet?” Elan shouted to Jae, pushing her toward the edge of the fray, leaving Erra behind.
Instead of being helpful, Jae’s magical senses returning felt like opening her eyes after too long in the dark. The pulsating magic overwhelmed everything else, but at least she could feel the knife. Its magic was unmistakably dark, horrible, and twisted, as it tied together her people and the Avowed, knotting pain with honesty and obedience. All of that bound into the ancient blade, and when she forced herself to focus, she could see that a guard still held it.
She lurched forward and the ground in front of her trembled, the whole island shaking. People toppled and flailed and fell, off balance, shouting, and she didn’t know whether the Order or the guards had the upper hand. All she knew was that when the guard with the knife tried to catch himself, he had to drop the blade to do it. Jae ran, feet barely touching the ground, and her hands closed around the knife’s hilt at last.
She straightened up, shouting, “I’ve got it, go, go!” But before she could take a step herself, someone crashed into the backs of her legs, her knees buckled, and her head slammed against the ground. She kept her fingers clenched around the knife, refusing to let it go, even as someone grabbed her and raised a bloodied blade.
Recognition sparked. It was Elthis Danardae himself, and he knew her, too. She struggled, trying to shove him away as he took a swipe at her. Pain exploded in her arm; she heard herself scream and raised the knife to try to stab him or shove him or do anything to keep him from ending everything right now.
Someone grabbed Elthis from above, dragging him back. He struggled and freed himself, falling and hitting the ground as Jae rolled away, leaving a trail of blood behind her. It was Elan again, facing down his father, who snarled, “Traitor!”
“Liar!” Elan shouted back.
“Elan,” Jae tried to say, even as she limped to her feet. She had the knife; they had to get away, get to safety. Elthis let out a bellowed scream, already back on his feet and rushing forward to try to stab Elan. But Elan dodged, and Jae threw magic in their direction, the ground buckling under Elthis’s feet. He slammed into the dirt and Jae grabbed Elan’s hand, pulling him away. She hurt so much she could barely breathe but somehow found the strength to run anyway, back toward the bridges she’d raised. It was even harder to reach them now than it had been to get off them, with so many bodies—injured, dying, dead—on the ground.
Jae looked up beyond them and could see that guards had gathered at the distant shore, waiting for anyone who tried to escape back across the bridge. There weren’t many of them, but she didn’t know how many members of the Order had survived to face them.
She gathered energy and looked at the teeming, struggling mass on the island. “Follow me! Everyone follow!”
She took off headlong down one of the two bridges she’d raised but threw out an arm as she did it. A branch split off, leading to another spot, farther down the shore. She turned abruptly and the remaining members of the Order followed, once again leaving the guards stunned and useless, in the wrong position, allowing the Order to retreat into the streets, to the hiding places and safe houses they’d prepared.
She, Elan, and Lenni slipped into an alley, into a basement, up a staircase and into another house, then out and around. They kept moving until they were sure no one had followed them, and they were hidden away under a mage-built house, where no one had seen them enter, where no one would expect them or look for them. They were, for the moment, safe.
And somehow, not only safe, but successful. Because Jae was bloodied and exhausted, and she had no idea why her magic had disappeared for those few awful moments, but they’d done it. She had Janna’s knife.
“You. Inside. Now.” Lady Callad stood in the doorway, fury in her gaze. Erra unfolded herself from the cushion where she’d sat, her body protesting the movement. She dutifully stepped inside Callad’s study and faced the four Highest. All of them were frowning.
She didn’t say anything. She’d learned from her father that making apologies first thing was a sign of weakness—and she wasn’t weak. But she had dropped the brand in the midst of the fight on the island. The whole world had seemed to be flame and smoke, screams of agony echoing back at her, louder than the sound of the very real battle around her. The only thing she had been able to see clearly was Elan.
Elan, alive. And on the side of the traitors.
As distracted as she’d been, one of the traitors had snuck up on her, and yes, she’d dropped the brand. Gesra had said that the longer she held it, the more it would affect the mage—it would suck out her power, and the longer Erra held it, the longer it would be before the girl’s power came back. All they had to do was kill her while she was still helpless. Erra was bruised and cut from having been in the thick of things, but she hadn’t bought them enough time.
“This is your fault,” Callad hissed, seating herself on one of the cushions. Erra sat at her father’s side, but his expression was just as irate as Callad’s. Which really showed just how awful this was—usually her father cloaked his emotions carefully. Either now he was too angry to do it, or he wanted her to know just how angry he was.
But he still turned that expression on Callad. “Your guards were the ones who couldn’t even—”
“And you,” Callad cut him off, turning on Gesra, whose expression soured like milk curdling. “You said that brand would—”
“Callad, calm down!” Tarrir interrupted. “Screaming won’t help anything. Erra, what happened?”
Erra suppressed the urge to shudder as she remembered the field of flame. “I…dropped the brand,” she confessed. “When one of the traitors hit me. Keeping a grip on it was so hard to begin with, you don’t know what it’s like—”
“I know,” Gesra said. “And Callad is right, this is your fault, girl. There’s no room for mistakes, not now. And when people talk about this—which they will, they already are—that’s what it looks like. But the Highest don’t make mistakes. We can’t affor
d for people to think otherwise. So next time, hold your breath and keep a hold on the cursed thing!”
Erra bowed her head, chastened. Keeping the faith of the people, especially the Twill, was one of the most important duties of the Highest. People needed to know that they were safe under the Highest’s rule, and chaos like this…Gesra was right. It looked bad, and if people now doubted their rule, it was her fault.
“I…I’ll be more prepared next time,” she promised.
“As if that was the only issue,” Callad said. “Elan was there—”
“Don’t—” Elthis started to say, but Callad actually shouted over him.
“—and people will talk about that! You know they will, Elthis, curse you. You couldn’t even keep your own son in line—”
“Listen here, you—”
“Callad! Elthis!” Again, Tarrir broke through their fight, his voice booming in the room. He was usually so soft-spoken and pleasant, always the peacemaker. But apparently he could yell, too, when he had to. “Shouting won’t solve the problem—and Elthis, it is a problem. You have to tell the world he’s disavowed—”
“Don’t tell me what to do, you child,” Elthis snapped.
Erra blinked, silent, still. She definitely didn’t want to get involved in this, especially not if the other Highest thought of Tarrir as a child. Yes, he was the youngest of the four of them, but he was nearly a decade older than Erra, who, as she glanced from face to face, felt very, very young, and very, very inexperienced. She’d grown up mimicking her father, learning from him, and she could handle almost any matter that the Avowed brought to her—but this, her brother’s disavowal, and this brewing rebellion, was beyond her.
For the first time, she wished she wasn’t heir to the Highest, because someday she wouldn’t just be sitting by silently. She’d be in a room just like this one, with the burdens they now faced on her shoulders. Her failure with the brand was a heavy enough weight, but someday it would be worse. When she inherited and keeping order for the whole world fell to her…
Elthis held up his hand, his neutral expression conquering his anger at last. His voice was calmer when he spoke again.
“I’ll tell my Avowed that Elan survived his ordeal in the desert—that’s true, anyway. And that he returned like this, a traitor and a vow-breaker. Who I will find, and see executed for his crimes.”
“But—” Erra started, but fell silent, swallowing her protest as all four of the Highest turned to her. Elan was a vow-breaker and a traitor. She’d seen it herself, seen him helping the mage, fighting against the Avowed guards. Even so, something in her rebelled. Elan was her brother.
“Do not argue about this,” Elthis said, as if following her thoughts. “He was a Danardae—was. When Twill gossip, it’ll be about us. The chaos that will bring—handling that is my responsibility. We will maintain order—we will.” His voice rang with certainty, and the other Highest all nodded. “Now that he’s been recognized among our enemies, there’s no choice. The world needs to know we will stop at nothing to maintain peace, and we can’t have any mercy, any pity, for those who challenge us. Do you understand that?”
“Yes, Father,” Erra said, her voice small. He was right—but the idea of signing her own brother’s death order was too much.
“Good. And there’s no need to resume yelling.” He shot Callad a quick glower. “Because I know how to draw him out—him and the mage girl both. And this time, we will be ready for them.”
Elan stared down at the papers in front of him and tried to ignore the noise of the drinkhouse below. Which was nearly impossible: after the disrupted vow ceremony, all four cities seemed to be in an uproar. It had been hours before he, Jae, and Lenni had dared to crawl out of their hiding place and head for one of the safe places arranged by the Order. This one was a set of rooms above a boisterous drinkhouse. It was certainly more spacious than the servants’ quarters at Palma’s parents’ house, but even more distracting.
He wondered if Palma was all right, if she’d made it home after the ceremony safely. She hadn’t been among the attackers who’d charged onto the island with them—she wasn’t a fighter. But she must have been there somewhere, watching, and the cities were now chaos and disarray. Though she was on her way out now. Lenni had gotten word to her, a message that sent her on her way home. Except she’d be making as many detours as she could, stopping at Closest enclaves to warn them to be prepared for the Curse to break.
He looked up from his translation. He’d finished as much of the key as the text from the mosaics had allowed. Mage script was confusing enough, but at least those letters had been similar to the ones he was familiar with—albeit with different vowels, marked by symbols at the end of words and lines. It had taken him a while to become familiar enough with that to read it without having to check the key every few words.
The ancient script was even stranger. It used the same vowel-marking system, but the letters were mostly different, too. Judging by the one sample he had, sentences were arranged entirely differently than he was used to. He was working on one of the journals, painstakingly trying to shift the letters into ones he was more familiar with reading, and then move words around until they made sense, but it was very, very slow going.
Meanwhile, Jae sat with her back straight, eyes shut, the knife resting in her lap. Elan was no mage, but it was obvious even to his eye that the knife was odd. He’d never seen anything like the material it was made of before, a deep black stone that gleamed in the light. Jae hadn’t relinquished it to anyone else to examine, but something about it made him nervous, like he could sense the magic that Jae said dripped from it.
Lenni was there, too, cross-legged, sewing up a hole that had been torn in her robe. None of them had come through the fight uninjured. The worst Elan had was bruises, but Lenni was pretty well cut up, and Jae’s head had bled nastily where it had been slammed into the ground, and so had her arm where it had been cut. At least a bandage had stopped that, but Lenni had needed to sew up the gash on her thigh.
Reports had been coming to the drinkhouse slowly, members of the Order drifting in and out. It was a popular enough place that no one would notice who came and went—their allies were a few among the many, many patrons. Their reports all said the same thing: only a few of their number had been killed, but many had been injured. Worse, a couple had been taken prisoner. Lenni had bowed her head in sorrow at that. Prisoners of the Highest would be forced to give up what little information they had, tortured until they spoke if they didn’t answer willingly.
They wouldn’t answer by choice, Lenni was sure, and none of them had vital information; no one person knew the extent of the Order or its members except her. Which made sense—of course she had to keep those things secret—but it also meant she was the only one in the Order who could reach their allies, make decisions, give out orders. It was a lot of power, and she hadn’t been forthcoming about any of it.
“How’s the translation going?” Lenni asked, looking up from her sewing.
“I’m working on one of the letters,” Elan said. “From Serra Pallara to Janna Eshara—Serra was one of the founders of the Well, supposedly. She’s Tarrir Pallara’s ancestor.”
“Saize Pallara crafted the Curse,” Jae said, her eyes opening. It took another moment for them to focus on the world around her instead of whatever she saw in her mage’s vision.
“Serra was his grandmother,” Elan said. “It was two generations from the Well’s founding to the War. But this seems to have been written before the Well, even, if I’ve got any of this right at all.” Jae didn’t ask, but he cleared his throat and read aloud anyway. “Closest Janna, there is more at stake here than just another generation. We have a responsibility beyond them, to the whole world. Not just our children.”
“Interesting,” Lenni said. “A lot of the writings we’ve preserved have been about magic and responsibility—but none from so far back.”
Jae looked over at her, and finally her posture relaxed a
little. “I’d like to know more about how you came to the Order, Lenni, if you don’t mind.”
Elan didn’t know where that question had come from, but now that Jae had asked—without coming out and making it a question, of course—he was curious, too. Lenni had told them about the Order’s history, but nothing about her own.
“Oh,” Lenni said, and went quiet. Then finally she said, “Of course, it’s just…difficult. I told you that my mother was a member—a mage. She taught me to read mage script, taught me as much about the Order as she could.
“We hid for most of my childhood. Moving around, careful that we were never followed. But we were, somehow. The Highest…they sent someone after her,” Lenni said. “I didn’t know who, or how, or what…what was happening until it was too late. I’d been out fetching water, but when I got back, the house where we were staying was on fire, there were Avowed guards all around, and my mother…”
Elan watched her, the papers almost forgotten in front of him. Lenni hesitated again, and Elan already knew what had happened, but finally she confirmed it.
“The Highest always kill mages when they find them—I don’t know how they manage it. My mother yelled to me to run, and I…I ran. She wasn’t able to follow me. She…She was gone a minute later. The fire was…” She trailed off, choked, then took a deep breath.
“I promised myself I’d find a way to do something, to get back at them for killing her. Back then, there were only a couple other mages, barely any Order to speak of, but when I was finally brave enough to contact them, I told them I was going to change everything. The Highest have ruled for too long, and too cruelly. I won’t let them continue. I won’t.”
“So you built the Order into what it is now,” Jae said.
“Yes.” Lenni’s expression was grim. “I built my network of spies and soldiers, other Twill who have grievances against them. With the lucky timing of the drought, I was even able to convince some Avowed, like Lady Palma.”