Charmcaster

by Sebastien de Castell

  She nodded.

  ‘Because you knew how the delegates would react.’

  The inventor chuckled. ‘No, never that.’ She raised her right hand close to her shoulder and the bird hopped onto her index finger. ‘I feared they would laugh at me for wasting their time with such a trifling contraption.’

  ‘I’m guessing you overestimated their sense of humour.’

  She sighed. ‘Machines. Engineering. These I understand. My husband says the one contraption I cannot decipher is the human heart. I fear he is correct.’ She whispered to the bird and thin silver lids slid back to reveal a pair of golden eyes. Janucha’s gaze was both adoring and sorrowful as she stroked its head. ‘Who would have thought the flapping of tiny wings could raise such a hurricane?’

  The Argosi, I thought, but I didn’t say it aloud. Ferius says that sometimes it’s best to be the silence between the notes.

  ‘The Daroman empire’s delegation has demanded proof that I am not using my designs to fabricate weapons,’ Janucha went on. ‘When they look upon my invention, they do not see its wonder, but rather a sword in the hands of a potential enemy.’

  Ferius also says that being silent isn’t always the same thing as not speaking. ‘And the other delegations?’ I asked.

  The inventor’s expression turned sour. ‘I’m told the Berabesq viziers are drafting a decree declaring my little bird an affront to their God. They claim that I consort with demons.’

  ‘People say that about me all the time.’

  Apparently Janucha didn’t get the joke. She held the bird closer to me. ‘Tell me what the Jan’Tep see when they look upon her.’

  Finally we had come to the reason for her visit. The Gitabrians must have figured out that Cressia’s mind had been taken over. Only one nation on the continent had that power. ‘They see a new form of magic,’ I replied. ‘One my people don’t understand. They see a threat to the very basis of what makes the Jan’Tep special.’

  ‘Might they go so far as to kill for it?’

  ‘Without question.’

  She looked troubled by the speed of my answer. ‘And if obtaining it meant murdering innocents? Would they do that as well?’

  Even after all these months, Revian’s death was still fresh in my mind. ‘Without hesitation.’

  Janucha’s hand began to shake. The bird, finding its perch no longer stable, flapped its metal wings in search of a more reliable resting place. That turned out to be my shoulder. When those golden eyes peered back at me, it was like looking into the heart of an impossibility. Nephenia had said that with dozens of different charms you could bring about all the physical aspects of the bird, but not the intelligence behind it. Where did that come from?

  The sensation of a gentle breeze on my right eye signalled the sasutzei was awake. Perhaps she too was trying to understand it.

  ‘I need your help,’ Janucha said at last.

  ‘I tried helping you once,’ I said, then gently, so as not to dislodge the bird, I rattled the chains. ‘It didn’t turn out so well for me.’

  She seemed surprised by that, and perhaps even annoyed – as if I’d just demanded an apology. She took the bird from me and placed it back in her pocket. ‘Do you know what would happen if your people were to assassinate the daughter of the master contraptioneer of Gitabria? My government would be forced to declare war upon the Jan’Tep!’

  ‘Credara Janucha, in the past twelve months, my people have tried to kill me more times than I can count. Within twelve hours of arriving in Gitabria I was beaten, imprisoned and threatened with torture. Frankly, the thought of two lunatic nations going to war with each other doesn’t hold nearly as much terror for me as it used to.’

  ‘Young man, if I were to leave this room, I assure you Servadi Zavera would teach you the very meaning of terror.’

  Here’s another thing most people don’t know about fear: while you never get used to it, there’s only so much of it your brain can handle. After a while you actually get bored of being afraid. ‘Then close the door on your way out, Credara Janucha. The light is interfering with my nap.’

  She rose and walked to the door. A sudden chill in my guts told me I’d been wrong about the whole getting-bored-of-being-afraid thing. Not begging Janucha to come back was very nearly the hardest thing I’d ever had to do. But if we started this way – with threats and intimidation – I’d end up as little more than a pawn in these people’s games. I had to make sure I left this place free.

  Janucha stopped. ‘My daughter … once the fever left her … she told me she had met you before, that you were a friend. Would you stand by as my enemies torment her to get to me?’

  ‘You speak of friendship, Credara. But where are my friends?’

  ‘Unharmed. Swear you’ll save my daughter and I will take you to them.’

  ‘I require proof.’

  The inventor shook her head. ‘As you rightly pointed out, we are in a prison right now – a prison my people keep secret for a reason. As I cannot bring your friends here, I cannot imagine what evidence I could offer to assure you of their well-being.’

  She turned and peered at me as if she were probing the tiny gears of a stalled clock rather than gazing into the face of another human being. But this too told me something about her. ‘You knew before you came through that door that we’d arrive at this impasse, Credara Janucha. Which means you already have something to show me.’ Before she could respond, another piece of the puzzle came to me. ‘And the fact that you haven’t already offered that proof means you don’t understand it.’

  And who do I know whose messages never make any sense? ‘You might as well just deliver Ferius Parfax’s message now and get it over with,’ I said.

  A small smile crept onto Janucha’s face. ‘She warned me you were annoyingly perceptive.’ She came back to the centre of the room and moved her chair out of the way. ‘Very well then. Behold the Argosi’s message.’

  The inventor stretched her right arm out in line with her body, palm up, then placed her left hand on her hip and extended her right foot, the toe of her heavy boot barely touching the floor. She took a deep, uncertain breath, and with that, Gitabria’s master contraptioneer – quite possibly the most important person in the world – began to dance around my cramped cell. She swayed to the tempo of a silent tune, stepped and turned and pranced about. Her expression was one of intense and almost endearing concentration.

  I vaguely recognised the particular dance, having spent more than my share of nights on the road learning such things from Ferius. The inventor wasn’t doing a half-bad job of it actually, though it was a struggle not to laugh now that I knew what was going on. I let her continue for a couple of minutes before I couldn’t stand it any more. ‘You can stop now, I believe you.’

  She came to a stop in front of me. ‘You’ll help my daughter?’

  ‘I will.’

  The inventor looked suspicious. ‘But I haven’t finished the dance. The Argosi was very specific on this point: if I failed to perform the entire choreography, her message to you would be incomplete.’

  I had to smile at that. ‘Master Contraptioneer, I understood everything Ferius wanted me to know the moment you started dancing.’

  ‘Then why would she …?’ Janucha’s words trailed off. Then she said something in her own language that I was fairly confident was a string of very forceful curses.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘The Argosi do that to you sometimes.’

  25

  The Daughter

  It’s funny how things work out sometimes. A few hours before I’d been chained up in a cell inside a Gitabrian prison so secret they’d blindfolded me before returning me to the city to make sure I couldn’t reveal its location. Now I was inside the palatial home of their most esteemed citizen, seated in a comfortable chair opposite her daughter – by all accounts the person Janucha held most precious in all the world – who was now the one in shackles.

  ‘Hey, Kellen,’ she said.

 
‘Cressia.’

  She looked reasonably calm, despite the restraints – which I noticed included spelled copper wire. The Gitabrians must’ve paid a pretty price to some Jan’Tep merchant for it. My people aren’t noted for their charity.

  ‘Am I going to die?’ she asked.

  My instinct was to tell her that of course she wasn’t going to die and that I had it all under control. But I’d spent a good part of the last six months trying to get the obsidian worms out of people. Sometimes we arrived too late. Other times … well, it was a coin flip if their bodies and minds were strong enough to survive the procedure.

  ‘Well?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I hope not.’

  She looked away, at the sprawling room that I’d been informed was her mother’s workshop. Janucha’s home was in the most prestigious part of the city, meticulously carved into the very cliff walls of the gorge beneath the eight bridges. The workshop was practically the size of a barn and chaotically – if somehow methodically – furnished. I counted six different workbenches, each of a different design and clearly intended for a particular type of experimentation. One had tools for working metal, another a large magnifying glass attached to an articulated wooden mount. The room featured both a kiln and a forge. Racks upon racks of exotic metals, small glass tubes, bottles of varying colours and assorted braziers filled every alcove. The walls were covered in pinned sketches of mechanical designs. Some were merely functional, others unnervingly beautiful.

  ‘So,’ Cressia said, turning her gaze back to me, ‘I guess you’re not really a philosophy student.’

  On the day we first met, back at the Academy of the Seven Sands, I’d pretended to be a prospective student. After all of her friends had failed to guess my chosen subject (to be fair to them, there hadn’t been a right answer), Cressia had suggested philosophy. Because I’d liked her, I’d agreed. ‘Actually, that’s not really far from the truth.’

  ‘Why do I have the feeling that you and “the truth” have only a passing acquaintance?’

  Because I’m an inveterate liar. ‘Maybe you’re just suspicious by nature.’

  That got me a raised eyebrow. ‘We barely know each other, Kellen, and yet you sent my mother away so you could come in here alone, knowing I was chained to a chair? In what culture is that considered appropriate?’

  She had a point, but, ancestors, was anyone ever going to cut me some slack in this country?

  ‘Cressia, you have something in your eye called an obsidian worm. A man named Dexan Videris devised a means to implant one half in his victims and the other inside a bracelet made of onyx. By means both natural and magical, it acts like a kind of infection, taking root inside your mind. Whichever mage holds the bracelet possesses the means to control the worm. So whenever you get the attacks—’

  ‘But I haven’t had any attacks. I’m not—’

  ‘They probably felt like headaches or unusual pains in your eye. You might’ve thought you had a fever and were hallucinating. Visions. Voices. They’re not hallucinations though, Cressia. Whoever commands the worm can see through your eyes, hear what you hear. Worse, they can make you do things you don’t want to do.’

  She bit her lower lip. ‘My father says they found a knife hidden in my shirtsleeve. Kellen, I’ve never owned a knife in my life. How could I have gone out, bought one, carried it with me and then …? What does it say about me that someone could so easily make me … make me try to …?’

  ‘It’s not your fault. The longer the obsidian worm lives in a person’s eye, the more powerful its influence becomes. Most of the people we’ve found over the past six months succumbed to its control far sooner than you. I’m amazed you held out as long as you did.’

  She was quiet for a while, and the awkwardness of me sitting alone with her while she was chained up in this gigantic room with its odd tools and instruments – half of which looked scarier than anything in Zavera’s case – made me incredibly uncomfortable. I kept my mouth shut though. She had to come to this on her own.

  ‘You have a cure?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s more of a procedure.’

  ‘Does it hurt?’

  ‘Tremendously.’

  ‘Is it dangerous?’

  ‘Incredibly.’

  She took in a lot of shallow breaths. Even with the darkness of her skin, I could see her face had grown pale. The chains rattled ever so slightly. ‘I guess that explains why you wanted to speak to me alone first, right? To give me the chance to scream my head off about this before I embarrassed myself in front of my family?’

  ‘To give you the choice. Cressia, I’m not a doctor. I’m not even a proper mage. Gitabria’s probably got thousands of physicians. Maybe one of them could find a less dangerous solution.’

  She was blinking a lot, and her eyes didn’t look like they were focusing on anything, but still she gave a dismissive snort. ‘I forgot what a terrible liar you were.’

  ‘I need you to tell me what you want me to do.’

  ‘Take it out of me of course! Get this thing out now, Kellen!’ Her voice rose until she was practically screaming. ‘Get it out! Please, get it …’ Her breathing slowed. She sat there quietly for a while, then shook her head. ‘No.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘You tell a good story, Kellen. I mean, this thing about mystical worms and magical bracelets … But you know what I just realised? The only thing I really know about you – the one incontrovertible fact – is that you’re a liar. You lied to all of us at the Academy. You must’ve lied or stolen a delegate’s coin to get into the Grand Exhibition.’ She paused, staring at me as if waiting for a denial. When it didn’t come, she asked, ‘Is this how you make your living? You travel around looking for marks and tell them that without your “procedure” they’ll die or become slaves or something?’

  ‘Cressia, I know you’re scared, but this is real.’

  ‘Really? Then show me proof. Take that mirror off the workbench and show me this worm in my eye. I don’t have any markings like you have, or like Seneira had. Come on, show me!’

  ‘I can’t. Dexan Videris used an obscurement spell to hide them.’

  ‘Oh, isn’t that convenient? How would you even know about this mystical nonsense, Kellen? Do the Jan’Tep really let someone who’s barely even sparked their breath band call themselves a mage? Aren’t you really a Sha’Tep? A servant?’ She began to sob. ‘Why are you doing this to me, Kellen? I was nice to you, back at the Academy. I never did anything to hurt you.’

  ‘You didn’t … Cressia, I swear, I would never—’ I stopped.

  ‘What?’ she demanded.

  ‘Nothing, it’s just … your performance was really smooth.’

  My casual indifference horrified her. ‘What are you talking about?’

  I leaned forward, staring into her eyes, struggling to see some sign of the obsidian worm wriggling around inside. ‘I’ve been spending the last six months dealing with victims of the worm. Some of them slipped in and out of your thrall right in front of me, but I’ve never seen you take control this seamlessly. A minute ago, Cressia was here with me. Now it’s you. I honestly couldn’t tell at first. Thing is, though …’ I held up my arms, which were covered by my shirtsleeves. ‘How would Cressia even know I’d only sparked my breath band?’

  Even then I wasn’t completely certain. Maybe she’d heard about my band from Ferius or Nephenia while I was held in that prison cell. But Cressia – or rather, the person speaking through her – dropped the act. A smile, very slight. Reserved. The way a Jan’Tep is taught to smile. ‘Oops.’

  I got up from the chair and retrieved the small tray upon which I’d set out the various tools and metallic ink compounds I’d taken from Dexan Videris. Three small braziers melted the inks. Next to each one waited a sterilised steel needle. All that was left was for me to begin working the accompanying spells, and then to inflict on Cressia a cure that would surely feel like torture.

  Her head leaned back and she star
ed up at the ceiling as if bored by my theatrics. ‘Go away, Kellen. You’re too late. The girl is ours.’

  I dipped one of the needles in molten copper. The first step was to counteract the spell that kept the worm invisible. This involved pressing the needle into the skin around her eye until the black markings were forced to appear. From there … Don’t overthink it. One step at a time.

  ‘Run away, little spellslinger. This one is lost to you.’

  Despite having gone through this before, I could never shake the eerie feeling that speaking to someone through another person’s body made me a kind of accomplice. It set my nerves on edge and caused my hands to shake. ‘You might as well get your threats out while you can, because I’m getting pretty good at this. In a few minutes you’ll—’

  ‘In a few minutes the girl will be dead.’

  I froze. It’s a ruse. They’re trying to rattle you.

  ‘You’re lying,’ I said.

  A self-satisfied smirk appeared on Cressia’s lips. ‘Well, you’ve got a great deal of experience with lying, Kellen of the House of Ke, even Cressia knows that. Let’s play a game, shall we? I’ll tell you three things. Two of them will be lies, and one will be truth. All you have to do is tell me when I’ve told the truth and that will be the end of our game.’

  I brought the needle closer, intent on silencing the voice.

  ‘A pity. She really did like you, you know. Of course, not in that way. But I think you and Cressia might have been good friends one day. Had you not murdered her.’

  I hesitated, then stepped back. ‘Tell me your lies then.’

  ‘Very wise. The first proposition: Kellen, son of Ke’heops, is a true Jan’Tep mage.’

  Well, that one was a lie, for sure.

  ‘The second proposition: you are a faithful son of the House of Ke.’

  It would be … difficult to believe that was true.

  ‘Really? Both are lies? Well then, that only leaves the third proposition: this girl is ours now. Completely. Utterly. While you may have interfered with some of our other investments, this one has had time to grow and now we will collect our profit.’