by Rabia Gale
The smell of roasting corn kernels and hot peanuts set his stomach rumbling. Vendors hawked overpriced food; ragmen traded clothes, shoes, utensils and other bare necessities of life with the passengers.
Rafe gripped the walking stick and steeled himself. It took more determination than he expected just to push through the crowd. Immediately, he was bumped and jostled and stepped upon. His kyra-sight could not keep up with the thousands of stimuli pressing upon it.
Rafe stumbled into a sturdy old woman carrying a massive basket. He was still apologizing when she shoved back, the handle jabbing him in the side. Then she vanished into the crowd and someone else was shouting in his ear to keep moving. Panicked, Rafe threw out his kyra-sight in the direction of the yeller and an image of a flattened pancake face, with angry slits for eyes and a cavernous mouth branded itself into his brain.
Too close! Rafe stepped back and trod on someone’s foot.
Of course.
This time he didn’t even bother apologizing. By the time he sorted out where he was supposed to face and what he was supposed to be looking at, the person would be long gone.
Instead he braced himself where he stood and pulled the kyra-sight close to him, chest-height and six inches out from his sternum. For a while he remained in darkness, breathing deeply, regularly. Let men shove and holler—it was all impersonal, background noise that could not—would not—affect him.
Now.
Rafe opened his kyra-sight. Then he walked towards the back of the platform, the crowd melting before him. Without words, without conscious thought, that feeling of strangeness about him had communicated itself to all these passengers.
It had caught up to him again.
Rafe strode past benches filled to overflowing with women and children and tight-knit groups of wary, sullen men. He stopped at a poster, a train schedule. It took all his senses just to make out the letters; he was deaf and blind to all else but the letters, seen as if through a magnifying lens. He read them slowly, one at a time, keeping place with his finger, going down the list, until he found the one train to Ironheart.
It wouldn’t leave until tomorrow.
Rafe stepped back from the schedule, realizing that he’d been almost nose-to-paper. An ache hooked into his eyeballs and tugged.
It amazed him, now, how easily reading had come to him before. How he would’ve scanned this same sheet from several feet away in seconds. How he used to read papers and files for work, and come home to read novels and travelogues for pleasure. He’d traveled the Talar-e-Shoshan, the Fields of Light, beyond the Divide for almost two years and been in towering libraries filled with more books than he’d ever laid eyes on. Books with leather covers, gilt lettering, and peacock-feather bookmarks. Scrolls that rustled richly as they were unrolled. Flip books, accordion books, tiny stitched-together books full of richly-detailed miniatures. A treasure-trove of knowledge laid before him, and he’d been able to take in maybe a page here and there on his own, in black and white.
The only colors he had experienced in all that time were those of ka, the magical threads that wound through quartz and underpinned the workings of his world.
As the sounds of platform came back to him, Rafe’s ears caught a low-voiced conversation. It was conducted with such obvious secrecy, he couldn’t help listening in.
“… see him?”
“Could be him.” Said doubtfully. “Gentleman, alright, but what of it? These days, even the nobles lose all they have.”
“But he has the stick and the face from the posters… I tell you, ’tis him!”
Time to lose these gentlemen. Rafe was a wanted man on this side of the Divide. His home state of Oakhaven thought him a traitor, and their historical enemy, Blackstone, considered him a threat. Only Ironheart looked at him favorably. Ironheart which was a train ride away.
In the meantime, the bounty on his head was too much of a temptation for these men.
Rafe headed for the end of the platform, out of the light and the crowd. He descended some steps into a trench full of shadows and rubbish. Three pairs of steps shuffled behind him; he made sure his own boots rang out loudly enough to make them feel secure in their stealth.
Better to take care of them away from everyone else. He had a chance against three, but not against an entire mob.
He took the last two steps in one leap and jogged out onto a disused platform. He jumped down onto the tracks. The steps behind him quickened, abandoning stealth for speed. Rafe ran into a train tunnel, a place where the lack of light would be to his advantage. Small things rustled and squeaked. Dank air enveloped him.
He stopped, dropped his duffle against the wall, and turned to face his pursuers.
The uneven footing could be a problem, but he had more practice fighting blind then these men had.
The men came up to him, breathing hard. They fanned around him in a semi-circle, mere shadows of themselves.
“What seems to be the problem, gentlemen?” Rafe’s tone was pleasant. He folded his arms across his chest, stick tucked between his arm and his side. Head up, feet shoulder-width apart, casual but confident.
The lead man held out his hands in a placating gesture. “Now just come with us, sir, quietlike. We just want to talk to you. No need to make this painful.”
“You’re all solicitude,” said Rafe dryly. The man on Rafe’s left shifted, changing his grip on his truncheon. The one on the right crept closer.
“Now, then—” began Leader.
Rafe moved.
He lunged at Creeper and jabbed his walking stick into the would-be ambusher’s stomach. Creeper doubled over, clutching his gut.
Truncheon Man came at Rafe with an overhead strike; Leader pulled out a knife. Rafe swept the stick around at face-level, and they fell back, giving him room. Creeper straightened and leapt forward. Rafe whirled the stick in his hands and rapped Creeper across the temple with its weighted end. Creeper fell to the ground. Rafe twitched a strand of grass-green ka from the quartz within and looped it around the man, holding him in temporary stasis.
The blow to head would help with that, of course.
Rafe dodged a blow from Truncheon Man, almost. The club hit his shoulder, pain shooting into his arm. Rafe stumbled back, just as Leader rushed in, knife upraised. Rafe wrapped yellow ka around the knife and yanked. The blade dipped, point plunging for the ground. So did the man’s hand as he fought to hold on to his weapon.
“Careful, he’s a blasted mage!” Leader’s shout echoed hollowly in the tunnel.
Truncheon Man attacked again. Rafe blocked the strike with his stick, side-stepped, and and whacked Truncheon Man’s fingers. The man yelped, dropped the club, and backed away, arms over his head and eyes as if he expected Rafe to throw fireballs at him.
Ah, so they’d heard about his facility with flares and firecrackers, had they?
Their figures wavered, as if seen through dark, rippling waters. This was the expected combination of using ka and kyra together. The adrenalin rush masked his fatigue and pain, but not for long.
Finish this quickly. Rafe gritted his teeth. Sweat prickled his scalp. His hands on the stick were not quite steady.
He threw green ka around Leader’s hand and weapon, holding him still for the few seconds it took to get close and whack him on the head. Leader went down like a felled tree. His hand and knife hung in their places in the air a moment longer. Then the fragile ka snapped, and they dropped.
Rafe swept the area with his kyra as he stalked Truncheon Man—mustn’t let him get away to bring help! Two supine, still-breathing bodies. One panicked person ahead of him, pressed against a wall.
And there was another.
There was a fourth someone here, behind Rafe, blending in the shadows, holding still. Rafe had the impression of coiled tension. In one smooth moment, it unwound. An instant later, Rafe ducked and a knife flew over his head and planted itself in Truncheon’s Man chest.
Truncheon Man let out a surprised grunt, but Rafe d
idn’t wait to see him fall. There was nothing he could do for this erstwhile attacker—the reek of blood and loosened bowels told him that. He cast a net around himself, a pre-made construct of blue and green and orange ka. These colors represented calculation, holding, and transformation, all working together in a shield to catch stray bullets, turn aside a killing blow, hold back a punch for a few precious seconds.
He had ka enough to absorb maybe three attacks. There was none here to replenish his meager store, already depleted from his journey from the Divide.
Whisper-hiss in the darkness. Two sheared stars, staggered, came at him. The first hit his ka-shield, which it sent it spinning wildly. Rafe tried to dodge the second, but it caught and tore his shield before falling into mud. Ka strands swarmed over the holes, but the whole construct was pale and stretched.
Sheared stars winged around him as he scrambled to get out of the way.
And then he felt another tug, from a faint silver line he had done his best to ignore for two years.
Coming closer, but still too far away.
He’d be dead in a minute.
The small snick of another weapon, followed by the zing of release. Rafe grabbed all the orange he could summon, stuffed it inside in a spell-frame that he only half-understood, then threw it in front of him.
He had no time to aim properly.
The orange ka did its job, transforming the projectile. Instead of being stabbed, sheared, speared or torn, something smacked him stickily. It was like being hit by a gob of mud.
Rafe ran forward and threw all his kyra in the direction of his assailant, going temporarily deaf. A figure in shades of grey stood out from the surrounding darkness. Rafe stabbed his stick towards its chest.
His attacker arched back, bent into a backward bridge, and kicked over and away, all in one fluid motion.
Rafe lunged, but he didn’t have the range and he knew it. His shield-spell was stretched and shapeless and he knew it wouldn’t hold. Almost in slow motion, he saw the knives come out…
Silver flashed in his peripheral vision. Someone, running faster than any one should be able to, a blur in his kyra-vision. Knives flew, but the newcomer blocked them and swept them aside with contemptuous ease.
Rafe drew in a shuddering breath as he dropped to his heels. His kyra, stretched too far and too long, rebounded to him with a snap that he felt in his neck. He leaned against the walking stick. Breathe… just three breaths. Then… get up again.
Silver danced inside the darkness of his mind. Rafe felt the stretch of muscle, the flow of breath, the beat of heart. The fluidity of movement, the depth of focus, and the smooth steel of mind. Dagger hilts seemed to press into his hands and… attention shifted, mirror-smoothness turned to lake-ripple, revealing dark depths.
Rafe pulled back to himself before he was smacked for his intrusion. It was easy, though, too easy to stretch along the conduit between them.
His calves trembled as he heaved himself to his feet, kyra crawling ahead of him in a narrow tunnel of vision. He lifted the walking stick and ka-strands twined around his fingers. He wove them into a net, the complicated knotwork of a spell he’d adapted…
Isabella burned moon-bright to his sight; the assassin was a dark figure driven back against the wall. As Rafe readied the spell, as Isabella moved in to incapacitate, the assassin drove a knife into his own chest. A dark bloom of blood stained the assassin’s shirt, silver mist of kyra and pale threads of ka leaking from the wound.
Rafe sprinted forward with the half-made net, thrust it against the attacker’s chest. His fingers met womanly curves, turned sticky with her blood. Green ka spread over the wound, to stop the flow of blood. Red and orange, to encourage the growth of new tissues, outlined with blue to guide the process, snaked inside her body. With his free hand, he pulled at knots, changing the spell, his breath a rasp in his ears…
“Come away, Rafe.” Isabella’s voice was cool and quiet. She rested three fingertips on his wrist. “She dead.”
Rafe stood there, head bowed, and let his hands drop. The spell disintegrated, the ka dissolving into the air, the brick wall, the mud.
“Who was she?” he said thickly. He knew of only one woman who wanted to kill him, and his stomach tightened at the thought. Bryony.
“I don’t know,” said Isabella, and he could breathe again. “She was a Secret Fist. I recognized the fighting style. They know you’re back.”
A leak. Neither of them said the word, both were thinking it.
“I didn’t think you’d come out to meet me,” said Rafe.
“Someone had to. You’ve been gone a long time. Things don’t work the way they used to.”
“I noticed,” he said, dry as toast. “They changed the train schedule.”
“That, and you’re—” She bit the words off.
Rafe raised his eyebrows. “Do go on, Isabella. Did you mean to say, perhaps, blind? Or helpless?”
“Hunted,” she said firmly. “Too valuable to be wandering around on your own. Definitely not helpless, judging by the body count around here. You’ve gotten better.”
“Not good enough.” Rafe summoned ka, and the orange snaked and glowed as it funneled the Shadow’s blood into the wall. It was a waste of magic, but he was sick of the smell of blood in his nose and the feel of it on his hands.
It had followed him through many career changes, from soldier to diplomat, fugitive to kayan.
“There’s always room for improvement,” said Isabella. “But in the meantime, Coop and the rest anxiously await your return. Come on.” She turned and strode deeper into the disused tunnel and out of his limited vision.
No hand-holding from her, at any rate.
“‘Welcome home, Rafe. How was your trip, Rafe?’” he murmured. “‘Quite uneventful, up till the very end of it. Thank you for asking, Isabella. Sable says hello, by the way.’ Ah well.” He picked up his duffel, slung it over his shoulder, and followed.
Chapter Three
Rafe
AFTER A SILENT HALF-DAY walk, a cable ride across a gorge, and a trip in a truncated Ironheart train, built like a bullet, sleek and streamlined and silk-soft on the rails, Rafe and Isabella disembarked at a small Ironheart outpost, little more than a fortified supply depot built into a gap in a canyon wall. The walls were thick and bristling with armaments, but quarters were cramped and the barracks held less than a hundred soldiers. Only one short stubby watchtower poked over the walls.
At first glance, it was no different from the other forts Ironheart had built to slow the advance of an attack on her main city.
However, Rafe’s first glance was different from most other people’s.
As the Ironheart train purred away towards the heart of that nation, he poked his walking stick between the flagstones and remarked, “There’s a rather larger space than one would expect down there.”
“So you did learn to throw it through objects. Good.” Isabella’s tone was better-inclined towards him than he had heard it since his return. Not that he’d heard her speak much. She’d spent most of their journey on high alert, occasionally replenishing herself with vast quantities of dried, packed seaweed. Having trained in the use of kyra, Rafe knew just how tiring it was.
He shrugged. “Once I figured out the trick of it. It comes easily now.” Unspoken was Rafe’s lack of progress under Isabella’s tutelage. Neither took to the teacher and student roles the kyra bond between them had forced them into since Isabella had used her own life essence to save Rafe’s life.
“They’re waiting for you.” Isabella led him into the long, low barracks, then unlocked a door to a low-ceilinged room that smelled of dust and oil. Ka tingled faintly against Rafe’s skin as they entered. Sharp edges caught at his kyra—stacks of boxes filled the room. Rafe sent his kyra-sight snooping into an open box where residual ka twined around newfangled firearms. Quartz glittered in slots in the handle.
“Ironheart ingenuity at work again.” Rafe ran his fingers over the quartz. Ka
pricked his fingertips, fizzed lemon against his lips. If he listened really closely, he could even hear its buzz. He followed the route of the ka, saw the knots of spellwork as they nestled within the quartz. Rose quartz, he guessed, having learned to identify different varieties by the way they stored and enhanced the magic. “They’d be better off with citrine for this design,” he remarked.
Citrine brought out the best in the ka that controlled movement, the one that showed as yellow to his magical senses.
“Tell Coop that yourself.” Isabella hauled up planks in one back corner, revealing shallow steps going down. “Mind—” Again, she bit off the rest of the sentence.
“… my footing,” finished Rafe. “Why do you think I carry this around?” He waved the walking stick in her direction. “Besides as a stylish accessory, of course.”
Isabella snorted, and went light-footed down. She didn’t bother with a light.
The steps led into a small, rounded tunnel. Doorless rooms led off from either side. Rafe unhooked his sense of touch from his fingertips and let it run through the barrels and boxes within. Rough jute blankets, tough fibrous rope, oiled rubber boots—the mundane supplies of an army on alert.
A bar of light showed from under a door at the end of the tunnel. Rafe found that his footsteps had slowed. For two years he’d been a student, training, learning, gathering knowledge for the day he’d have to fight Blackstone again.
That future waited on the other side of the door.
Ready?
It took him a moment to realize that Isabella had spoken, not through words, but through the kyra bond she largely ignored. Just one word, devoid of emotion, yet it felt as intimate as a lover’s caress.
No wonder Isabella feared the bond so, that made intimates of near-strangers, exposed secret places in one’s soul to prying hands.
Rafe nodded, not trusting himself to speak back through the bond, not wanting to open a window to the turmoil of his own mind.
Isabella opened the door. A rectangle of pale light opened in his shadowy world.