Shadowblack

by Sebastien de Castell

  Seneira had told me something similar when we’d arrived in Teleidos. ‘So what can you do about it?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he replied as a group of students walked past us, each nodding to him as they went by, paying deference to the Academy’s headmaster. Beren caught my eye and smiled. ‘But they can.’

  We walked outside and he turned to gaze back up at the main tower, a look of wonder on his face as if he was seeing it for the first time. ‘The most powerful families on the continent send their best to study here, Kellen. Darome, Berabesq, Gitabria, even a few Jan’Tep … They may look down on my country, but they do not look down on my school!’

  I couldn’t imagine any of the great houses in my clan sending their children here, but I was starting to understand where Beren was going with this. ‘And while those students are here, they don’t just get to know each other, they get to know the people of the Seven Sands.’

  Beren grinned and clapped a hand on my shoulder. ‘Exactly. They come to realise that our children are not the unwashed backwoods hicks they’ve been told about, but individuals, like them – and just as capable of possessing remarkable intellectual and leadership qualities.’

  All of a sudden Seneira’s manner, her wit and intellect – even the way she could be as brusque and rude as any noblewoman – made perfect sense. ‘Diplomacy,’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘Diplomacy. The kind that could give my people a future, but only if …’ His smile and easy manner faltered, revealing the sorrow and despair underneath. ‘Please, Kellen, find whoever it is who’s trying to kill my family.’

  Beren begged me to come visit Tyne with him, insisting that there might be some sign or clue in the winding, twisting markings around the boy’s eye that we’d missed before and that might help us understand the disease or at least find some way to ease its symptoms. The instant I entered Tyne’s room in the Academy hospital I could see the shadowblack markings had grown since the day before, giving even greater contrast to the paleness of the surrounding skin. His forehead was hot and he looked a little feverish, but at least he was awake.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, his voice tentative. He glanced around self-consciously. I guess no one likes to meet strangers while wearing nothing but linen underpants and lying in a pool of their own sweat. Beren started fussing about there not being enough towels, then left in search of more, which only seemed to further embarrass the boy.

  ‘I’m Kellen,’ I said. ‘We met yesterday, but you probably don’t remember. The squirrel cat is my –’ I took a perverse delight in finishing – ‘pet. Reichis is my pet squirrel cat.’

  ‘Is he here?’ Tyne asked.

  ‘No, but I’ll try to bring him tomorrow.’

  I reached into my pack and took out the cloth horse Seneira had asked me to bring. When I handed it to Tyne, he accepted it with both hands and nodded very seriously as if we’d just struck a bargain and the horse was intended to be a down payment on a squirrel cat.

  ‘How are you feeling today?’ I asked.

  The boy shrugged. ‘I get hot all the time and I sweat a lot.’

  I pointed to the marks around his eye. ‘Do those hurt?’

  ‘Sometimes. Sometimes it wriggles around and it burns.’

  Ancestors. The poor kid. ‘When your eye hurts, do you … see anything strange?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Or maybe you hear things?’

  Another shake of his head, but then he leaned up on his elbows and whispered, ‘Sometimes they listen.’

  ‘Listen to what? To you?’

  ‘No.’ He glanced around as if to make sure no one else was in the room. ‘I think they listen through me.’

  ‘Are they listening now?’

  Again he shook his head and tapped a finger on his eye. ‘Only when it burns.’ His lower lip started to tremble and he asked, ‘Can you make it stop? I don’t like it when they’re listening.’

  ‘Sure, Tyne, I’ll …’ I hesitated, remembering how Seneira hated being told everything was going to be okay when it wasn’t. How much had it helped me to have my parents lie to me all those years about my own shadowblack? ‘You’re going to have to be brave for now, Tyne. I’m going to try and find out what’s happening to you, but you’ll have to be brave.’

  The trembling in his lower lip got worse, but then he asked, ‘Like Senny?’

  I nodded. ‘Just like her.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said.

  I stood there a few minutes longer, not sure what else to say or do for him. Beren returned with a stack of towels and started placing them around Tyne. The boy looked up at me. ‘Kellen?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  He started hugging himself and the first blush of fever gave a reddish glow to the skin on his cheeks and forehead. ‘You’d better go now. I think they want to listen again.’

  ‘Just ignore them, Tyne,’ I said. ‘Think of something else. Think of Senny.’

  ‘You’d better go,’ he repeated, his irises turning black as his eyes blinked over and over. Then he whispered, ‘They can see you now, Kellen.’

  28

  The Hooded Figure

  I left Tyne’s room with those words echoing in my head: ‘They can see you now, Kellen.’ Why had he said it that way? As if … As if whatever demons were worming their way inside him through the shadowblack were somehow particularly interested in me.

  Well, I keep wondering if my life could possibly get any worse. I guess it can.

  I made my way through the hospital’s maze of halls, suddenly feeling as if there were eyes following me everywhere, picking up the pace every time my lousy sense of direction made me take a wrong turn. By the time I found the exit I practically knocked over a doctor as I ran outside into the cool evening air.

  Breathe, I told myself. Just breathe and stop imagining demons on your trail.

  I started walking down the street, crossing over the circular avenues that ran around the Academy, unable to shake the eerie feeling of being watched. Of course, I suppose the fact that I was being followed didn’t help.

  Seneira’s house was in the opposite direction from the centre of town, which meant I was walking down mostly empty streets. Even if I could find other people along the route, they might well be working with whoever was stalking me. I turned down first one alley then another until I found a darkened doorway I could duck into. Within seconds a hooded figure, male, about my height and build, rounded the corner, carrying what looked like an eighteen-inch iron rod.

  ‘Two things you should know about me,’ I said as I stepped out of the shadows.

  He spun around to face me, raising the weapon to make it clear he could bash me with it if I made a move.

  One thing I’ve learned from Ferius these past months: being afraid is often unavoidable, but looking afraid can be suicidal. I put on my best smile. ‘First, I’ve had a pretty bad few months.’

  ‘It could get a lot worse,’ my pursuer warned, which helped because I could tell he was trying to make his voice deeper than it really was, which meant he almost certainly wasn’t a bounty mage come to get me and probably not any kind of trained assassin either.

  ‘The second thing you should know is that I’m not someone you want to get into a fight with.’

  That last part was technically true: I tend to bleed on people a lot. Just ask Freckles.

  I couldn’t make out my pursuer’s face, obscured as it was by shadows cast by the hood he wore, but the way he stood uncertainly, shifting his balance on his feet as if he expected me to rush him, told me I had, for once, successfully bluffed someone into thinking I was dangerous.

  ‘You’re a liar,’ he said finally.

  Well, that was true. ‘What am I lying about?’

  ‘You’re not Seneira’s second cousin.’

  Okay, so he was either one of the students I’d talked to in the classroom or someone who’d been listening in. ‘Third,’ I said.

  ‘You’re not that either.’ He raised the iron rod higher. ‘Tell me who
you really are or I’ll—’

  I’d already flipped open the tops of the pouches at my sides and now I let my fingers dip inside to pinch the powders. I was pretty sure I could take this guy out if it came to it, but I had a hunch that would turn out to be a bad idea. ‘How about I tell you who you are instead?’

  He did a bit of a double take. ‘What are you talking about? You don’t know me. You’ve never met me.’

  ‘That’s true,’ I admitted. ‘But I just spent the last few hours wandering around the Academy, talking to teachers and students who know Seneira. Want to know what I found out?’

  He hesitated, probably figuring this could be some kind of trick but not sure what it might be. ‘What?’

  ‘Nobody particularly likes her. Oh, they respect her intelligence, but mostly they think she’s privileged, stuck up and pompous.’

  His grip on the iron bar tightened. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about! Seneira’s nothing like that. She’s—’

  ‘Relax, Revian.’

  He froze, suddenly glancing around in case anyone was nearby. I guess wealthy Academy students aren’t supposed to accost people with iron bars. ‘How did you know?’ he asked, sounding defeated. His voice now had a somewhat higher and distinctly more natural pitch.

  ‘I exaggerated about Seneira’s classmates. They like her fine, just not enough to make more than a cursory enquiry as to how my “third cousin” was doing when she’s been absent from school for weeks. Nobody even asked what illness she has, and no one asked if they could come visit her. You, on the other hand, apparently spent an hour spying on me and then came after me with an iron bar on the off-chance I might mean her harm.’

  ‘Do you? Because if—’

  ‘I’m a friend,’ I said. ‘Well, not much of one, I guess. But I am trying to help her. That part’s true.’

  Revian stared at me a long time before lowering his weapon. ‘You’ve seen her?’ he asked. ‘I mean, is she okay?’

  He sounded anxious and sad … no, not sad, despairing. He knew about Seneira’s shadowblack. ‘She’s unharmed, other than the … illness of course.’

  He nodded. ‘We talked before she left town. I begged her to stay, but she said she had to protect her family. When I heard you pretending to be her cousin, I thought … Not everyone here likes her or her father.’

  ‘But you do?’

  He took a step forward, trying, I think, to intimidate me. He didn’t do a very good job of it because I could see he was shaking. It felt good for someone to actually be afraid of me for a change. ‘She’s my betrothed,’ he said suddenly.

  The air went out of me faster than if he’d punched me in the gut. ‘You’re marrying Seneira?’

  He nodded. ‘It’s been arranged since we were children. Our families believe that uniting our houses through marriage could be beneficial to both.’ He must have seen something in my expression, because he added, ‘I do love her, and even if we weren’t meant to be wed, I’d still do terrible things to the person who hurt her.’

  His sincerity and loyalty shouldn’t have bothered me, except I’d heard it in Seneira’s voice when she’d described Revian too. So what? I asked myself. Who was Seneira to me? Some girl I’d met on the road who’d brought me nothing but annoyance and more than my share of trouble. Besides, I still had feelings for Nephenia, even if she’d had to move on without me.

  I guess I’d better get used to being alone.

  I shouldn’t have cared about any of this; the Academy, the Seven Sands, Seneira … none of it had anything to do with me. Whatever happened, once it was all done, Ferius, Reichis and I would ride out of town back onto the long roads, camping out at night, setting up traps and hoping that the next hextracker who hunted me down wouldn’t be the one who finished the job. The way of the Argosi is the way of wind, I thought ruefully.

  ‘Do the … markings around her eyes still trouble her?’ Revian asked, suddenly desperate now that he figured I might know something. ‘Please, it’s been weeks since I saw her.’

  ‘If you want to know so bad, why didn’t you just –’

  I stopped. I’d been about to ask why he hadn’t gone to see her instead of stalking me in the halls of the Academy. Then a few things fell into place: the fact that he hadn’t been in class; the fact that he hadn’t gone straight to her house; and, most of all, the hood he had pulled down low enough that I couldn’t see much of his face.

  ‘Take off the hood, Revian.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘You might as well do it,’ I said. ‘I already know what I’m going to see.’

  Slowly he reached up with shaking hands and removed the hood.

  Revian was every bit as handsome as Seneira had described, with hair like spun gold and smooth, perfect skin over finely chiselled features. He really did look like something out of a painting. Well, except for the twisting black markings that circled around his right eye.

  ‘Please,’ Revian said, still sincere but somehow not quite so noble in my estimation now his question had taken on a second meaning. ‘Tell me she’s all right.’

  29

  The House Mage

  Revian walked with me partway back to Seneira’s house and told me his story.

  ‘It began a few days ago,’ he said, pulling his hood back on to hide his face. ‘I woke up soaking in sweat with a searing pain in my right eye. When I crawled out of bed and went into the bathroom to splash water on my face, I saw the markings.’

  ‘Do you have visions?’ I asked. ‘When the attacks come, I mean.’

  He shook his head. ‘Mostly just pain. Sometimes I hear things … Voices.’

  So, more like Seneira’s than mine.

  ‘You’re Jan’Tep,’ Revian commented. ‘I’ve made a study of your people and culture. My father wants me to become a diplomat one day, to build bridges between the Daroman empire and the Jan’Tep arcanocracy.’

  Good luck with that.

  Then he really surprised me. ‘You’re a spellslinger, aren’t you?’

  The question sounded oddly desperate. I fumbled for an answer, and ended up stumbling on the truth. ‘I guess so. Still trying to figure that out.’

  ‘Is that why you’re here? To cure Seneira?’ He reached up a finger to touch the markings around his eye. ‘Can you cure me?’

  ‘What? Of course not. I can’t even cure …’ I stopped myself when I remembered the paste covering my own shadowblack. ‘I can’t even cure a cold,’ I recovered.

  Revian didn’t seem to notice. ‘My parents tried to hire a man – a spellslinger like you – because they believed he might be able to help me, but he said we have to find the mage who cast the curse in the first place.’

  ‘Do you have any enemies? Particularly ones who might also have a problem with Seneira or her family.’

  He gave a terse, bitter laugh, and gestured in the direction of the Academy. ‘Take your pick. You think those people you met today were being nice to you because they want to be your friends?’ He decided to answer his own question. ‘They’re the sons and daughters of wealthy and powerful families from across the continent, Kellen. In their own countries they live in palaces, and when they return home they will become politicians and courtiers and military leaders. To them, you’re nothing more than a novelty, or perhaps a tool that they can use for their own ends.’

  ‘You don’t sound as if you have much faith in Beren’s vision of the Seven Sands becoming a country.’

  ‘The Academy is a noble idea, but a foolishly optimistic one. For all the prestige Seneira’s father has been able to buy for his school, there are many who want to see it crumble.’

  I pointed at the markings around his eye. ‘Bad enough to start a plague?’

  He hesitated for moment, then nodded. ‘Do you know what a whisper witch is?’

  I had no idea. For the most part, the Jan’Tep have neither time nor respect for any other culture’s ideas about magic. On the other hand, I didn’t know Revian particularly well
and didn’t feel like revealing my ignorance, so I played it the way Ferius had with the masters at the Academy. ‘You’re saying there’s a whisper witch in Teleidos?’

  He nodded. ‘In the wild swamps outside the city. Nobody’s seen her in years, but the locals say her name is Mamma Whispers, and if you’re willing to pay the price, if you want it badly enough, she can summon spirits to help you … or demons to curse your enemies.’

  Demons. That would do it.

  ‘Revian,’ a voice called out.

  I turned and saw two men coming down the alley towards us. They wore long cloaks over their coats with hoods that hid their faces. I started reaching for my powders again but Revian stopped me. ‘It’s all right. They’re house mages. They work for my parents.’

  Well, that explained why I hadn’t heard them coming. One of them must have sparked his breath band, like me, only he was clearly better at quieting spells than I was. I glanced back at Revian, suddenly keenly aware of just how wealthy and influential his family must be. Proper Jan’Tep mages don’t work for foreigners unless the client has enough political or military power to be valuable to the clan.

  ‘You were told to remain within the house,’ the taller of the men said. He was watching me closely.

  ‘It’s all right, Ler’danet,’ Revian insisted. ‘Kellen’s a friend of Seneira’s.’ He glanced at me a little hopefully. ‘And my friend as well.’

  ‘He is not a friend of your family,’ the shorter one clarified. He too was staring daggers at me. ‘In fact, Kellen of the House of Ke has no friends at all.’

  Okay, this wasn’t looking good for me. ‘Sorry, masters. I was just leaving.’

  Revian gave a chuckle. ‘Come on, Kellen, I promise, you don’t need to be scared of—’

  ‘Sethaten,’ Ler’danet, the tall mage, whispered, pairing the word with a gesture of his right hand. Revian went out like a snuffed candle.