Freed by Flame and Storm

by Becky Allen

  They hadn’t heard back from Erra. If she’d gotten Elan’s message and tried to respond, Andra hadn’t reached them in time. Not knowing if she was trying to find them or if Erra hadn’t responded at all was maddening, but they had no choice except to go forward as if they were on their own and Erra was their enemy.

  The twisting, muddy streets of the stone city gave way to the wider streets of a market, lined by Twill shops, and then the Avowed neighborhood, and finally to a crowd that was gathered on the outskirts of Danardae’s walled-off garden, the gate opened to the public. The ground was soggy, the greenery wilted—there was now, simply, too much water. What little grass there was had been trampled, and the bushes looked sickly. Tree branches hung limp, with bare spaces in the bark where some of their limbs had been ripped clear off by storm winds.

  So much for the fabled beauty of the central cities’ gardens. Maybe the Highest had kept them carefully tended for generations, even during the drought, but even they couldn’t stand up to the chaos of storms and floods.

  The crowd wasn’t nearly as thick as it had been for the vow ceremony—that was something, at least. There also weren’t as many guards as Jae had expected. Probably Elthis thought she’d come to him on her knees, despairing, to give in. The crowd’s mood was curious, almost jovial, and still sleepy. A hint of light finally broke through the clouds, a sliver of pink behind the gray and black. As they pushed their way forward, Jae wondered if any of these people were members of the Order, ready to strike when Lenni commanded.

  They waited, surrounded by people, as close as they could get. A barricade had been set up, rope tied between trees, keeping everyone back. Jae could spot a pavilion a little way beyond it—and at the side, all kneeling on the ground, a group of silent men and women. Closest.

  Fury pumped through her veins, ran up and down her spine, filled her lungs. She slid into other-vision and made herself examine them, forced herself to look closely. These were the people who’d be giving up their lives for her, with no choice in the matter. They were strangers, dragged into this against their will, but they didn’t feel like strangers. She sensed the connection between them all, and between them and her. They were all descended from the Wellspring Bloodlines. They were bound together by the magic in their blood, which gave the Well its power, and bound again by the Curse.

  Yes, they were strangers. But they were also her kin, bound by magic.

  Jae blinked. She groped for the knife, tucked into a sheath against her hip. As her fingers grasped it, the energy she saw in other-vision surged.

  There was so much magic around them. It followed patterns she was familiar with now: the steady glow of land, the glistening shine of water, but now there was more. Something seemed to pull at the energy of the Avowed, both within the crowd and on the other side of the barrier, as if the Highest were sucking it in. Then it simply…vanished. There was a strange, empty area around the Highest in a world that was otherwise teeming with energy.

  Jae shuddered, remembering the feeling of her magic vanishing. It had left her defenseless in the midst of the battle. She hadn’t realized how much she relied on other-vision and her magic until it was suddenly gone.

  More than anything, Jae felt the presence of the Closest. When she took her hand off the knife’s hilt, the energy around her dimmed, but when she put it back, it surged, brightening. It had never done that before—but she hadn’t been so near any other Closest since she’d acquired the blade.

  She understood as soon as she saw it happen. The Closest’s energy was all tied to the knife. Their ancestors had all used it to cut their skin, to bind their blood together, to bind the Well. That was why the Curse had been bound to the knife: it already had a tie to every Closest’s blood.

  Jae pulled the knife out. The magic surged again, and when she reached out to the rest of the Closest, that connection rang with strength and intensity. She’d felt it before, the very first time she’d tried to break the Curse, but she hadn’t had enough power then. She’d been at the Well, isolated from everyone else. Here, though—there were Closest right here. The connection Jae had to them was closer, and the magic kept brightening because it was stronger. When she embraced the connection she had to the rest of the Closest, she could access more energy.

  It might be enough to break the Curse.

  “Attention!” The voice sounded over the crowd and everyone went quiet. She broke away from other-vision to look up at the pavilion, and saw that the gathered Highest, led by Elthis, had stepped forward to address the crowd. A steward had spoken, but Elthis was the one who was standing at the front. Erra wasn’t at his side—but there she was, under the pavilion roof, with some of the others. She kept gazing out at the crowd as if searching them, then looking back at her father.

  “I demanded the surrender of the traitorous girl called Jae. Has she come?”

  Jae took a hesitant step forward, then stopped. She grabbed Elan’s elbow and he startled. “I have an idea, but I need time.”

  “Step back,” he answered immediately, as he himself walked forward. Jae let herself be swallowed up by the crowd, ignored Lenni’s confused questions as she retreated a few steps. She only half-listened as she reached for the magical connection to the Closest.

  “I’m not Jae, but will I do, Father?” Elan demanded, ducking under the barrier rope. The crowd gasped. Elan half-turned back to the crowd, pushing his hood down. “You all know who I am. Disavowed, disgraced. But unafraid.” He turned back to his father. “I’m here on Jae’s behalf. She calls you, Elthis Danardae, a liar—you and your whole cursed caste.”

  There wasn’t enough room for this. Jae shoved her way farther back until she broke free of the throng of people. She could still hear Elan, who was shouting so everyone could make out his words, but he felt distant now. She forced herself to focus as she stuck the knife into one of the tree trunks. The wood of the tree accepted it easily, soggy and swollen as it was.

  “He has been lying to you—the Highest have been lying for generations!” Elan continued. “The truth is that the Well was crafted by Closest mages, that it belonged to them, that the Highest started the War—”

  “Traitor!” Elthis screamed back. “Seize him!”

  The crowd roared at that. Jae craned her neck, wanting to help, but she couldn’t. It was almost impossible to concentrate with all the shouting around her, knowing Elan was in danger, but she only had a few minutes—if that.

  There were shouts and screams and grunts. Something happened but Elan kept yelling: “I have been to the Well, I’ve seen it, I’ve seen how it responds to Jae’s magic! The Highest have lied, they’re liars—”

  “Silence him! He’s a traitor, a madman! And if that girl does not come forward now…”

  Jae centered herself, ignored the screaming match and the mass of people, the crowd roiling with confused, intrigued, amused energy. As if it was only a fight between father and son, as if none of it mattered.

  She pulled on the connection to the Closest, felt the power she had gathered surge. She’d been tired that morning, but now, sustained by magic, she felt like she could fly. When she reached out for the knife’s energy, she could sense it all: the fire and air, bound together; the Closest, tangled with them; the strange, pulsating, twisted earth at its core.

  When she’d tried to finesse the fire and air away from each other, it hadn’t worked. Now there was no time for finesse, and no need. She braced herself and grabbed, seizing the first wisp of air energy she could sense, and with all the power of the Closest backing her, she yanked. The response was physical, a rush of wind that almost knocked her off her feet, but that was already a bigger success than she’d had before. Now she could see the binding fraying: the air pulling free, the knife getting hotter as the fire fought to stay tied to the air.

  She reached again, gathered as many wisps of energy as she could, pulled and pulled. The knife fought back, trying to hold its binding steady, and the air around Jae grew hotter. She had to brace
herself, to endure the feeling of the Curse at the base of her skull, the air energy buzzing so hard she felt like her teeth might fall out, the air so hot she could barely breathe—

  Behind her, Elthis yelled, “Enough! Every Closest will slit their throats, now—”

  She grabbed from the Closest, feeling their terror and the compulsion they had to obey, and even as some of them flooded with pain, others were consumed by rage, which made their energy brighter, stronger. Jae yanked it all, everything she could sense, the Closest and the energy of the earth under her feet and the water in the reservoirs, every last bit of it, and threw it like a spear at the tie between the fire and air she saw in other-vision.

  The energies split.

  The knife shattered, and a wave of magic, the twisted earth at its core, seized the world, shaking it, upending and quaking as people screamed. The tree went up in flames, and Jae couldn’t control any of it. Her power, her connection to the Closest, flared so bright and hot that she couldn’t move or see or think or breathe, overwhelmed and amazed, because the Curse had always held Closest magic in check, dampened it and made it hard to sense. Now, that fetter was gone.

  The Curse was broken.

  Chaos erupted around her.

  Two guards had tackled Elan when his father yelled to seize him, tackling him to the ground, but they hadn’t knocked him out and he wouldn’t be silent. He had no idea what Jae was doing, but if she had a plan that needed time, he would make sure she got it. He struggled, not to throw the guards off, just to get his breath back so he could shout the truth he’d been dying to tell since he’d discovered it: “I have been to the Well, I’ve seen it, I’ve seen how it responds to Jae’s magic! The Highest have lied, they’re liars—”

  “Silence him! He’s a traitor, a madman! And if that girl does not come forward now…”

  Elan struggled again, kicking one of his captors hard enough to break free. He rolled and sprang to his feet, staring around in panic. He couldn’t see Jae or Lenni in the crowd, could only barely make out Erra in the pavilion as she gaped at him, but everyone was buzzing with shock now.

  He retreated a few steps before wheeling around to yell at his father, and to Erra behind him, “I know the truth and now so does everyone else. You disavowed me because I won’t lie, and you can kill me but you can’t make all these people forget. Now all these people know, too—”

  The guard grabbed him again, this time dealing him a blow to his skull that left him dazed and silent. Just coherent enough to realize he’d failed, that Erra must not have understood what he’d been shouting, as his father ordered the Closest to their deaths.

  He could see it. They hadn’t all been given knives, but enough had, and those who held them raised them to their own throats. He let out a useless shout of “No—”

  The world upended.

  The blast knocked him off his feet and all he could hear was screaming. The guards who’d been dispatched to deal with him were stunned, too, and he managed to scurry away from them, but now there was nowhere to go. In the panic and confusion, the crowd had broken past the barrier. He craned his neck and could see thick black smoke rising from somewhere within the mass of people, could see ripples in the mud from the shock that emanated out from it—from what had to be Jae’s doing.

  Someone slammed into him; he staggered, turned, and saw the Closest. Several had fallen, but others were now on their feet. The ones standing still held the very knives they’d been told to dispatch themselves with. An order they were no longer following. Hope built in Elan. If they were disobeying, that meant Jae had done it. They were free.

  Realization hit the crowd, a ripple of screams and panic as thick as the smoke. Someone else ran into him, elbowing him as he passed, and the barrier between the Highest’s pavilion, the crowd of Avowed and Twill, and the Closest, was gone. Everyone was everywhere, brawling as if it was a crowded drinkhouse. He saw a Twill woman fall and ran toward her, but it was too late. She’d already been stepped on, and anyone who leaned in to help got knocked off their feet, too.

  Guards seemed to come out of nowhere—they’d been hidden in the crowd, not wearing their gray uniform robes. He spotted several of them trying to corral a group into order, toward the garden’s exit, but another stranger broke in, armed and screaming. A member of the Order. They were in the crowd, too. The Order and the guards and the Twill, no one sure where to go, what to do.

  He shoved his way toward the pavilion, sure of one thing. The Closest who’d survived that last, brutal order would need help.

  The world was an endless field of fire—Erra had only gripped the brand for a moment and the world seemed to be consumed.

  “Erra! Careful!” Tarrir Pallara grabbed her, yanking her back, distracting her. She didn’t drop the brand but couldn’t focus on it, either, and with her attention on the real world she saw that the smoke was real. Not some horrific nightmare. The screams, the panic—it was all unfurling in front of her.

  “What happened?” she shouted above the din.

  “The Closest—free—the mage is near, you have to…”

  His voice was lost in the noise and chaos now. Erra touched the brand and the vision came back, her grip so light it only flickered at the edge of her gaze. She stared around, looking for the root of the panic, and saw real fire in the garden. She made herself run toward the line of flame, not away from it, because that was where the mage would be.

  Sure enough, she hit the wall of very real heat. She wrapped her hand more tightly around the brand, so hard she thought she might crush it, and looked for what Gesra had described—the brightest area in the terrifying vision in front of her. There it was, the mage girl, trying to fight her way toward Elan.

  Elan. Who’d screamed something mad about lies. It took all her willpower to ignore him and focus on the mage instead. To concentrate and feel the strange sensation of magic around her, to feel it and pull.

  The girl staggered. Erra pulled harder, even as her vision grew stronger. She couldn’t tell how much of the world was really aflame, how many of the screams were real, how many people were dying around her. All she could do was stand still in the center of it and concentrate.

  “It’s working!”

  She barely heard the voice, her father, no more than a few people away in the midst of the madness. She couldn’t acknowledge him, or the fight he was caught up in, his blade clashing with a dark-skinned, bleeding man’s knife. The Closest man was hopelessly outmatched, with guards surrounding them who’d help her father—guards, but rebels, too. And the rest of the Closest, lashing out with their anger and agony. And there, in the midst of it, was the mage girl, Elan wrapping an arm around her to support her—

  One of the rebels rammed into her father from behind.

  Erra whirled, concentration broken, as her father staggered. The man he’d been fighting seized the opportunity, knife raised, slashed at him—he couldn’t move to fend the man off—the knife drew blood again and then again—

  Erra screamed as her father fell. She raised the brand like a cudgel, drove it into the nearest Closest’s back, sending the woman sprawling. The rebel who’d slammed into her father appeared in front of her, sword raised. Erra met it with the brand, the metal ringing loud in her ears, the impact jarring her whole arm. Her hand opened against her will as the woman got in close enough to bash her other hand into Erra’s face.

  Erra tumbled backward, couldn’t regain her balance. She hit the ground and someone’s boot smashed into her skull. She didn’t know if it was intentional or accidental, but for a moment her vision blacked out.

  Even before it came back, she tried to move, to get up, to find the brand amid the chaos. When she could see, she was staring upward, her limbs too heavy. For a moment she glimpsed Elan staring down at her. Then he moved away. She followed him with her gaze as she clawed her way to her knees, saw Elan mouth a single word—Father. Saw their father sprawled on the ground at his feet, unmoving.

  She tried to shout El
an’s name, but though he turned to stare at her, she wasn’t sure she’d even managed to form the word. He started to say something, but the mage girl grabbed him and pulled him away.

  He looked back, but someone else crashed into Erra and sent her back to the mud. As Elan and the girl retreated, the world went black again.

  Jae pulled Elan away, her stomach roiling. She wanted to bend over and vomit, her whole body off balance from the way her magic had vanished and returned, terrified it might evaporate again at any moment. The whole world was acrid smoke now, making it harder and harder to breathe, and Elan was barely moving. He’d caught her when she’d collapsed, helpless without her magic, and now she had to do the same for him.

  He followed her, but there was nowhere to go. The fire had spread, blocking off the exit to the park. The walls were too high for most people to scale. The crowd was panicked, still fighting, and the Closest were free but they were going to be killed anyway. The only way out of the park that wasn’t impassable was the channel, but she couldn’t swim. None of her people could, either. But she couldn’t let them die.

  She couldn’t control fire with her magic, but she could control water. When she shouted, she used the air to amplify her voice a hundred times, until it echoed above everything else: “Closest, the shore—now!”

  Elan finally seemed to break out of his shocked, dazed state and took her hand. They raced to the water together, the surviving Closest following them—bloody and battered, only half as many as had been led into the garden in the first place. She hadn’t been able to save them all, and they weren’t out of danger yet.

  But they were free.

  They hit the edge of the channel and Jae raised her arm, sending the water away in a vast wave. It seemed to hover above the city for a moment, all the water of the channel suspended in midair, before she released it. It crashed against the far shore, the ground shuddering from the impact, and she raised her other arm. An enormous wall of mud and rock grew from the edge of the channel, keeping the water from draining back in. The bottom of the channel was muddy, a few inches of water still dragging at the hem of her pants as she ran, but it was an escape.