Shadowblack

by Sebastien de Castell

‘Dancin’,’ she said.

  When you study magic, above all else you learn precision. Spellcasting is an exact science. Every syllable, every somatic shape you make with your fingers and the image you hold in your mind, has to be impeccable. But nothing I’d learned could compare to how skilled Ferius would have to be to pull that manoeuvre off. ‘The timing had to be flawless,’ I said, my voice barely above a whisper.

  ‘Timing’s part of dancing,’ she said, as if that explained everything.

  I still couldn’t wrap my head around it. ‘You’d have to know exactly where he was going to land the punch. Only how could you, unless …?’ Then it came to me: she’d tapped a finger right at a spot on her jaw, and leaned forward so it was the only good target. Still, everything – the movement, the angles – had to be perfect. ‘That punch could have broken your neck.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  I felt my cheeks flush from a sudden wave of shame. ‘You risked your own life to save me. Again.’

  Ferius adjusted her hat and pushed loose curls up underneath. ‘Well now, that makes me sound proper noble, don’t it?’ Before I could reply she nudged her horse into a trot and mine followed along. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s put some more distance between us and that town so I don’t end up havin’ to be noble twice in one day.’

  5

  Fireside Tales

  That night we made camp the way we usually do: Ferius sent me off to find firewood, while she set up her collection of traps around our campsite. She never let me see them, which annoyed me no end. For his part, Reichis went hunting, and brought back the slightly mangled remains of a rabbit to add to our dinner. His fur had taken on a greenish-brown colour, his stripes now looking like the thin angular lines of sage brush.

  Squirrel cats can change the colours of their coats to match their surroundings, making them particularly skilled hunters. Reichis’s favourite tactic is to hide behind whatever greenery is available, and by the time a rabbit or other small animal gets close enough to see that he isn’t just some slightly tubby shrub, it’s too late.

  Rabbit isn’t a common food among my people, but I found I liked it well enough. Mind you, nothing will put you off the taste of an animal faster than hearing Reichis kill it. The problem isn’t so much the ferocity with which he tears into them, but the fact that he keeps talking to his prey even after it’s dead.

  ‘That’s right, you dumb rodent. Who killed you? I killed you.’ Reichis was standing over the animal’s carcass, its blood still dripping from his face. ‘When you get to the afterlife, be sure to tell your stupid rabbit god that I ripped out your throat and now I’m feeling a craving for divine bunny flesh.’

  He waxes poetic sometimes. Mostly on the subject of violence.

  An hour later, after the meal was cooked and we were halfway through eating it, Reichis kept on extolling his great victory, describing every detail at length, making the story grander with each repetition.

  ‘Did you see the teeth on that rabbit?’ he asked us. ‘Huge. Lion’s teeth, that’s what this one had. I’m not sure it even was a rabbit. Must have been some kind of hybrid half-rabbit, half-bear.’

  At times like these, it’s best to just stay quiet, eat your food and let Reichis talk himself out. It helps to think of him not as a two foot-tall squirrel cat but more of an eight-foot pissed-off lion.

  Sometimes I don’t mind listening to him brag though; there’s not much to do at night in the open countryside once the horses are settled and the fire is going strong. Most of my evenings were spent staring at the flames, trying not to shake as my mind turned over one near-disaster or another. I used to shake a lot more, but I guess lately I’d gotten used to being scared all the time.

  Ferius would sit cross-legged on one side of the fire, strumming the little guitar she carried with her as she told us stories – she has hundreds of them. I’m pretty sure most of them are made up, especially the daring, improbable adventures she claims to have had with remarkable people in exotic locales I’d never heard of. Given that I’d learned plenty of geography in school, I was fairly sure she was making up her settings too.

  Reichis is highly competitive by nature, so likes to try to one-up her with his own stories. These come in two varieties: impossibly large animals he’s killed, and incredible treasures he’s stolen. There isn’t much evidence for either, but he nonetheless makes me translate his tales of squirrel-cat valour for Ferius in painstaking detail, always demanding that I emphasise, ‘And this next part, which is all true by the way …’ Ferius does an excellent job of pretending to believe him. After a couple of nasty bites on my forearm, I learned to pretend too.

  That night Reichis had just launched into a particularly gruesome account of his slaying – and devouring – a creature that I was fairly certain had actually just been a big mouse, when Ferius uncharacteristically cut him off and set her guitar back in its cloth bag. ‘I think we’re done with stories tonight.’

  ‘Really?’ Reichis asked. ‘How about the tale of the Argosi who got her face bitten off for interrupting?’

  She ignored his chittering and got up, walked over to her saddlebags and reached inside. When she pulled her hand back out, she was holding a deck of cards I recognised: steel, thin and razor sharp. In her hands, those cards were as deadly a weapon as any I’d ever seen. She cut the deck and handed me half of them.

  ‘Are we going to practise card throwing now?’ I asked. She’d taught me the basics on the first night we’d met, and I’d developed a pretty fair hand for it.

  ‘In a manner of speaking.’ She gazed out onto the long road that wound down the slope back towards the town. ‘No more talking now, okay, Kellen?’

  ‘What’s –’

  She shook her head, signalling me to keep quiet. Something was up. I closed my eyes, trying to hear whatever it was Ferius had heard. The wilderness always seems quiet, but if you listen close enough it’s full of noises: animals shuffling about in the hills, insects chirping, wind rustling the leaves and the sand. It took me a while before I made out the sound of a horse’s hoofs underneath it all. One rider, I guessed, though I wasn’t particularly good at judging this sort of thing. I caught Ferius’s gaze, wondering why she was so concerned. Even if one of the townspeople had decided to try to attack us, I doubted we had much to fear.

  I heard a growling noise and looked down to see Reichis next to me, his fur now black and rising in hackles, sniffing at the air. ‘Crap,’ he said.

  I kept my voice below a whisper as I asked, ‘What is it?’

  ‘The air stinks of magic,’ he replied. ‘Jan’Tep magic.’

  I had to stop myself from gripping the cards too tightly and slicing open my palms on the sharp edges. There was only one reason why one of my people would be out here in the borderlands alone in the middle of the night: a hextracker had found me.

  6

  Silk and Iron

  The man who’d come to kill me rode a pale horse and smiled as if we were old friends, though I was certain I’d never seen him before. He was tall, and his immaculately styled blond hair draped down over broad shoulders covered by a long red cloak that defied all the dirt and dust of the road. He was ridiculously handsome.

  That probably shouldn’t have bothered me so much. You would think that impending death would lessen a person’s vanity, but truth be told, if I had to die, I’d rather be killed by an ugly person.

  The mage dismounted smoothly, as though he’d spent a life in the saddle, which was odd because my people aren’t usually very good riders. When his feet hit the ground, they made no sound at all. ‘The ancestors must be smiling on me,’ he said. ‘The trail had gone cold on my original quarry and I feared I’d travelled all this way for nothing. Now who should drop in my lap but Kellen, son of the House of Ke.’

  ‘He makes a good entrance,’ Reichis said, clambering up to sit on my shoulder. ‘You should learn to make an entrance like that.’

  ‘I’ll get right on it.’ My stomach clenched uncom
fortably, not just out of fear from what was about to happen but because it was my fault. The hextracker hadn’t even been looking for me until I’d stupidly used my magic trying to fight off a scrawny thirteen-year-old in a street brawl. If I’d listened to Ferius, the mage never would have known we were here. Instead I’d brought him right to us.

  ‘Reckon you’ve got the wrong kid,’ Ferius said, offering the bounty hunter an easy smile, relaxing her stance as if this was all a misunderstanding. ‘My nephew here is called Mutt and he’s no more Jan’Tep than I am.’

  Reichis gave a quiet chortle in my ear. ‘Mutt. Heh.’

  The mage stopped about fifty feet away from us, still too far for me to use my powder magic on him but close enough that he could cast any number of unpleasant spells on me. ‘A misunderstanding, you say? How odd.’ He bent over to pick up a handful of sand from the ground and whispered a few syllables before tossing it in the air. Instead of falling back down, the tiny particles drifted there, suspended, and began to rearrange themselves until they formed a floating likeness of my face. Two sigils appeared beneath the image, written in the elaborate court script of my people. The first one meant ‘shadowblack’, the second, ‘death’.

  I’d never seen a spell warrant before, though every Jan’Tep initiate is taught to recognise them: transient curses that, once cast, could be reinvoked by any sufficiently trained mage to identify the fugitive they were pursuing. It’s not an easy spell, and to work this far from my city it would have to have been cast by one of my clan’s lords magi. Apparently my people hated me even more than I thought.

  ‘You should be flattered by the bounty on your head,’ the mage said. ‘It’s almost three times what I would have got for apprehending my original prey.’

  ‘Well now, if you ask me,’ Ferius began, letting the deadly sharp steel cards in her hand shift and turn around her fingers with practised ease, ‘that fancy sand picture don’t look a thing like old Mutt here. Best you look elsewhere for your bounty so we don’t come to any further misunderstandings.’

  The flicker of a smile drifted over the mage’s face as he let the sand fall back to the ground. I shouldn’t have been able to see him so clearly in the darkness, but the magic swirling around the tattooed bands on his forearms cast six colours of light on his features.

  ‘Hey, Kellen?’ Reichis asked.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘The last guy who tried to kill us – how many bands had he sparked?’

  ‘Three,’ I replied. Every Jan’Tep initiate is banded using special metallic inks that connect them to the primal forces of the different forms of magic: iron, ember, breath, blood, sand and silk. Most mages will spark two or three of their bands, using those to choose the particular paths they study. Iron and ember might lead to a life as a war mage, for example, whereas iron and silk were the perfect combination for a chaincaster. I couldn’t tell what sort of mage this man had become, because all six of his bands were sparking with ghostly light.

  ‘So … six is worse, right?’ Reichis asked.

  ‘Yeah.’ Six bands meant we were screwed.

  I glanced over at Ferius, hoping to discern her plan. Ferius always has a plan. Right now she was just staring at our enemy, waiting for him to make his move.

  ‘You set traps around your campsite,’ the mage said, beginning a slow, circuitous path towards us, his steps utterly silent, casually evading snares and sharpened spikes that I couldn’t spot even now.

  ‘Now what would give you that idea?’ Ferius asked.

  The mage tapped a finger to his temple. ‘Silk magic. I’ve been scrying you for hours, waiting for your thoughts to turn to your preparations.’ His eyes narrowed as he stared at her. ‘It’s quite remarkable, really, the way you manage to keep yourself from thinking about your tricks and traps. Makes it almost impossible to perceive your plans. You have an incredibly disciplined mind.’

  ‘Nah,’ she said. ‘I’m just forgetful is all. Clumsy too.’ She sent one of her steel cards whisking through the air, flying fast as any throwing knife right for the mage’s neck. Just before it reached its target, the card fell harmlessly to the ground.

  ‘Impressive,’ he said, his hands still at his sides.

  This made no sense. Shield spells require specific somatic shapes; you can’t just wish one into existence. How had he done it?

  ‘Hey, wake up,’ Reichis said, his front claws digging into my shoulder. ‘Time to blast this guy.’

  Despite my creeping doubts, I slid my half-deck of steel cards into my pocket, then dug my hands into the pouches attached to my belt and sent pinches of red and black powder into the air as my fingers formed the somatic shapes. ‘Carath,’ I said, invoking the spell.

  Fire from the blast tore through the darkness, a roar erupting from it that echoed through the open countryside even as the flames faded to nothingness inches away from their target.

  It wasn’t possible. There’s only one way to maintain a shield without the somatic forms: stand inside a circle of spelled copper sigil wire. Problem was, the mage was walking towards us.

  ‘Something’s not right with this guy,’ Reichis growled.

  ‘Any idea what it might be?’ Sometimes Reichis can perceive things I can’t.

  ‘Yeah. He’s way too good-looking for a human.’

  Okay, maybe a squirrel cat’s insights aren’t always that useful.

  The mage watched us, clearly amused. ‘So it’s true? The nekhek speaks to you in the way his kind did with the Mahdek centuries ago? What does the little fellow say, I wonder?’

  I considered my response carefully. Ferius says that when faced with certain death it’s important to project confidence. ‘He says you smell bad and wants to know if you’ve been eating rotten meat.’

  The mage shook his head, looking rather disappointed in me. Evidently he didn’t appreciate my sense of humour, because the next thing I knew I was doubled over in pain. My internal organs were being crushed.

  Several observations came to me at once. The first was that I should really be running away right now. Of course that wasn’t possible, because running isn’t something you can do when your stomach, kidneys, heart and liver feel like they’re being squeezed for juice. The second observation was that I should stop listening to Ferius when she talks about acting confidently. Third was really a question: how could this guy keep casting spells without having to make the somatic forms or say the words?

  Reichis growled and leaped off my shoulder to race across the sand. When he was within leaping distance of the mage he sprang off his hind legs, only to fall back to the ground as if he’d slammed into a wall. The mage nodded – not even gestured, mind you, just nodded – and Reichis went flying through the air, landing on his side just a few feet away from me. I tried to reach out to him, but the pain was such that I couldn’t so much as move my arm.

  Ferius began creeping slowly towards the mage, stalking him as though he were a skittish animal. ‘Best you stop tormenting the boy. I’d hate to have to muss that pretty hair of yours.’

  The mage laughed at the empty threat, but nonetheless the pain in my guts suddenly disappeared. ‘You amuse me, woman, and frankly I’ve no interest in making an enemy of the Argosi. Your kind are fond of bartering, are they not?’

  ‘I’ve been known to make a trade now and then.’

  ‘Then allow me to offer you the bargain of your life: walk away from this place. In exchange I will put the boy to sleep before committing his soul to the depths to which he is destined.’ He looked over at Reichis. ‘The nekhek must be destroyed as well. After that, this unpleasant business will be done.’

  Ferius took another step towards the mage. ‘Afraid I can’t accept your generous offer, friend.’

  He looked at her quizzically. ‘The child is Jan’Tep. He’s nothing to you, and yet you’d throw your own life away in a hopeless bid to protect him?’

  ‘Nah, the kid’s annoying,’ she replied, ‘but the squirrel cat’s starting to grow on me.’ I
barely saw her hand move and all of a sudden half a dozen steel cards were tearing through the air towards the mage. Even before they’d bounced off his shield, she’d already leaped after them, diving into a shoulder roll and coming up behind him. Her hand came up and I could see the rest of the cards fanned out like the edge of an axe. She swept them in a horizontal arc that should have sliced right through the flesh on the backs of his legs, only … nothing happened.

  ‘Are you quite done?’ he asked.

  ‘Told you there was something unnatural about this guy,’ Reichis said, back on his feet now, front paws clawing at the dirt as he prepared to attack a second time. ‘Nobody’s that good-looking.’

  ‘Really not helping,’ I said. Our attacker’s looks weren’t the problem; it was his … Wait a second … Here he was, standing in the middle of nowhere with all the dirt and dust of the borderlands swirling around him, and yet his clothes were as clean as if he’d just emerged from his private sanctum. That wasn’t the only weird thing either: the glow of his tattooed bands was way too bright even for a lord magus, never mind a bounty hunter who spent his life trudging through the borderlands looking for Jan’Tep fugitives. And then there was his boots, which made no sound when he walked. So of course this guy didn’t need somatic gestures or invocations to cast spells. He wasn’t really here.

  ‘He’s using illusions against us,’ I shouted. ‘He’s in our heads.’

  ‘Actually, it’s more that you are all inside mine,’ the mage said. ‘A rather clever contrivance, if I do say so—’

  ‘Oh, shut up,’ Ferius said, picking up the rest of the steel cards she’d tossed at him and running back towards me. She closed her eyes and spread part of her deck in each hand to form a pair of razor-sharp fans. They moved in a graceful, sinuous pattern like stalks of grass dancing in the breeze.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I asked, my own fingers in my pouches, ready to fire off another spell but having no idea where to aim.

  ‘He’s playing us,’ Ferius said, still keeping up the swift movements with her hands. ‘You don’t waste all that time with illusions just to show how clever you are: he didn’t come here alone.’