Charmcaster

by Sebastien de Castell

  I flipped it over and there was the mechanical bird. I wish I knew how she did those tricks. ‘How’s that for a spark?’ she asked.

  Ferius left me there while she went to pack our things. Apparently we were done with this country. The only question left was what I was supposed to do about my sister. It’s not like I really trusted Zavera’s promises, but after all Shalla tried to do in Gitabria, was she truly expecting me to intervene on her behalf?

  I took the false discordance card that she’d given me out from my pocket, trying to discern why it had been so important to her. Looking at it now, I could almost see why Ferius disdained it so. I mean, it looked perfect – in some ways more so than the Argosi cards I’d seen – but there was a coldness to it. A kind of perfection that seemed arrogant rather than pure. Staring at the crown, held aloft by those wooden supports carved to look like hands, a tightness rose in my chest like smouldering resentment. No, I thought. Not resentment. Anxiety. Like when I misbehaved in front of one of the spellmasters and they’d send me home to my …

  I thought my vision was starting to blur and feared the shadowblack was taking me over again, but the world stayed as it was. Well, most of it anyway. The light on the card shimmered unnaturally. The lines of the illustration became more defined. I nearly dropped the thing over the railing into the gorge when I saw a hand reach down and take hold of the crown. The perspective shown in the card changed, as if I were right inside it and had begun to look up. Then, despite how impossible it was, I watched as my father set the crown upon his head.

  ‘You always were impressed by tricks,’ Ke’heops said. ‘I thought you’d appreciate this one.’

  46

  The Crowned Mage

  The eyes were what bothered me. To see your father’s face come alive in a card is disconcerting on its own; watching the lines warping to conform to his features, the colours retaining the simplicity of their original paints and yet shifting subtly here and there to take on the most infinitesimal changes of light against his high cheekbones and stern jaw. But for all that, it was the way his eyes stared out at me, seeing me, that made the breath in my lungs turn cold and my own flesh feel thin and brittle – as if I were the one made of paper instead of him.

  Let it fall, I tried to command my hand. Toss it into the gorge or crush it underfoot. See how he likes that. But I couldn’t. Try as I might, seeing his face in that card … I couldn’t even think of a way to describe it, but then the word came to me unbidden: unmanned. The sight of my father unmanned me.

  ‘You betrayed your sister,’ he said.

  ‘I …’ Stop. Don’t let him control the conversation. ‘Shalla came here as a guest of the Gitabrians and instead conspired against them, and used the obsidian worm to torture a girl who’d never done anything to her or to you or to anyone else.’ Somehow the truth of that lent strength to my voice and certainty to my next conjecture. ‘You commanded her to commit these crimes.’

  ‘Crimes?’ he said the word as though it were foreign to his tongue. ‘What do you deem a crime, Kellen?’

  ‘She broke their laws! She’s the Jan’Tep delegate and now the Gitabrians will forever know our people as oath-breakers and—’

  My father’s eyes narrowed as he looked through me. ‘You speak of oaths, of laws, of crimes. Tell me, Kellen, what oaths have you made to your sister?’

  ‘What? None. Why would I—’

  ‘And what laws have you seen written governing your relationship to her?’

  ‘What are you talking about? There are no “laws” between two siblings. Why are you—’

  ‘No oaths made, no laws written, so then you owe your sister nothing?’

  ‘Of course I …’ The chains of his logic wrapped around me. Once again my father had gotten the better of me.

  Ke’heops looked down at me – a remarkable accomplishment considering his face was nothing more than the black lines and simple colours on a card. ‘The oaths that bind us the most are never spoken, Kellen. They aren’t made of promises and vows. They simply are. The laws that matter – the laws we must follow – need not be written down. They are in your blood. And the only crime you should care about is the one you know in your heart you committed when you let foreign soldiers lay hands upon Shalla. You let them imprison the sister who loves you, who defends you before your people no matter all the foul things you’ve done, no matter what you’ve become.’

  What began as a pit in my stomach turned to stone, growing and growing, becoming harder and more painful with each passing second. Ke’heops might as well have cast an iron spell against me. I can’t imagine it would have hurt more. Despite that, despite how I had never forgotten when he’d tied me down to a table and spent five days counter-banding me, imprinting reversed sigils into the tattooed bands on my forearms and forever denying me access to all but one of the magics that defined my people, despite all that, still I asked, ‘And what is it I’ve become, Father?’

  For the first time since his face had come alive in the card, he hesitated. The lines of black ink on the card forming his jaw tightened. He said nothing, though we both knew the words he longed to speak. Traitor. Outlaw. Enemy. All these and more I knew were on the tip of his tongue. That he didn’t shout them at me with a fury that would have torn the card in half told me something I probably should have figured out a lot sooner. ‘You need something from me,’ I said aloud.

  That broke the silence between us, and my father changed as he always did at times like these. No longer was he the parent infuriated at his child’s failings. Now he was the head of my household, the prince of my clan. The man who believed with the surety of iron and the weight of a mountain that he had the right to command me. ‘The Gitabrians will have taken Shalla to their secret prison. They are known to have devised a set of cells through which our spells cannot pierce, and within which our magic is rendered inert.’

  ‘I’ve been there.’

  The shape of his head on the card tilted a fraction. ‘You have?’ A shiver of a smile appeared on the simple lines of his lips. ‘Good. That will make things easier. You will make your way to this prison, and use whatever means available to you to free Shalla and assist in her escape from the city.’ He paused just a moment, and the black line of his smile flowed into the curl of his upper lip. ‘You may even use those tricks you’re so fond of.’

  I let that slide, partly because doing so would annoy him, but more so because it was irrelevant. ‘By the time I get there it won’t matter. The Gitabrians are exiling her from the city as soon as they finish interrogating her. You’ll have your daughter back soon enough without my help. It should please you that you won’t owe me any favours.’

  I waited, fully expecting a rebuke over my presumption that anything I did for Ke’heops would create any sort of debt between us. For a long time nothing happened, and I thought the spell that had brought the card to life must have broken somehow. Just as I was about to put it away he said, ‘And here I thought you were clever, but it seems even that one quality was simply another trick.’ He didn’t wait for me to disagree. ‘Whatever Shalla’s diplomatic status, to the Gitabrian secret police she is a spy and an attempted assassin. They will torture her until they are sure she holds no more secrets, and then they will execute her.’

  ‘They wouldn’t dare to—’

  ‘Exactly what sentence did you think would be passed upon a foreign agent? Worse – a saboteur? The Gitabrians care about nothing so much as their little toys and inventions, and Shalla’s attempts to interfere with them are a capital offence.’

  The first drops of a cold sweat formed on my brow at the thought of what they might do to my sister – at what a people famed for their contraptions and devices might be able to construct for the purpose of inflicting pain. ‘You said it yourself, she’s our people’s delegate and the daughter of a clan prince. Harming her would be an act of war!’

  The chains of self-control deserted my father. ‘You insipid child! Your sister committed an act
of war! You think the council of lords magi will admit she was there with our blessing? We had no choice but to declare her a rebel and disavow her activities.’

  ‘So you’re going to let her rot to avoid embarrassment?’

  ‘To avoid war.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Do not look at me that way, boy. Whatever nonsense the Argosi woman fills your head with, this is the way diplomacy is done. This is the price nations pay to maintain the peace.’

  ‘Maybe next time you could maintain the peace by not sending my sister to spy on them, to use the foulest magic I’ve ever seen to torment a girl barely older than your own daughter!’

  ‘Are you really so blind? Do you think so little of your sister? Shalla wasn’t the one who abused the obsidian worm. She took the bracelet away from that overzealous fool Hath’emad who sought to end our problems too quickly. And Shalla volunteered for this mission. She practically demanded it!’

  ‘But why? Why would she—’

  ‘To protect you! Kellen, she knew there was a chance you’d end up in Gitabria, collaborating with that Argosi as she systematically destroyed the onyx bracelets and stole our best chance to secure our people’s future. If any other patriotic clan mage had gone they’d have killed you on sight!’ He went silent for a moment, and I could almost feel the card momentarily thicken as he took in a long breath and then let it out again. His composure returned and he repeated his command from earlier. ‘You will find Shalla, you will free her. You will do these things because otherwise your sister will suffer and die at the hands of our enemies.’

  ‘The Daroman empire. The Berabesq theocracy. And now even a peaceful merchant country. When did Gitabria become our enemy, Father?’

  ‘They are not Jan’Tep, Kellen,’ he replied, as if that explained anything. Seeing my confusion he added, ‘Thus are they all enemies to our people.’

  His cynicism – his absolute certainty that the world was divided up not into different peoples and cultures but simply into family and enemies galled me. But it did something else as well: for the first time since he began speaking to me through the card, that small shred of inquisitiveness, of insight, that I manage to make use of every once in a while, came back to me. ‘You lied, Father.’

  Again the card went still, and again it seemed as if the spell had broken, but this time I wasn’t fooled. ‘You said the reason Shalla led the mission into Gitabria was because she demanded to do so.’

  ‘She did,’ he said.

  ‘Perhaps, but the great and mighty Ke’heops would never let sentimentality affect his plans. You wanted her to come here and fulfil your wishes while trying to protect me.’

  ‘And why would I do such a thing?’ he asked, though he didn’t seem very interested in the answer.

  ‘Because you knew whoever came here would likely be caught. They’d be interrogated and eventually reveal everything – including things you’d want kept secret. So you sent Shalla because you also knew she’s the only member of our clan for whom I’d risk my own life.’

  The lines on the card shifted again, and for the first time my father’s smile was something other than mocking. It may even have been proud. ‘Perhaps you’re still a little clever after all.’

  47

  The Prison

  ‘You sure you want to do this alone?’ Ferius asked.

  I looked through the gap between the trees to the relatively small, relatively innocuous grey stone building and tried not to shiver. I’d already given up on not sweating. ‘I’ll be fine,’ I said unconvincingly.

  Despite having spent a couple of unconscious days in Notia Veras, I’d had no idea how to find it again. Part of the condition of them releasing me into Janucha’s custody had been that I be blindfolded on the trip back. Fortunately Ferius had used the subtlety of her arta tuco to secretly follow the contraptioneer the day she’d come to see me just in case things didn’t go well and she’d have to break me out. It was strange to think how many layers Ferius had to every one of her plans. Me? I was lucky to have even a vague idea of what I was doing next.

  Reichis skittered down from the branches of a tree. ‘Kellen won’t be alone, idjit. He’ll be with me.’ He’d taken to calling people idjit ever since our encounter with Ferius’s father. I was careful not to tell the squirrel cat that it made him sound like a backwater cowherd.

  Ferius didn’t wait for me to translate. ‘I know you’ll be with him, ya dumb squirrel cat. I’m worried about you too!’

  ‘We’ll be okay,’ I said. ‘Reichis is the best scout out of all of us and whatever traps they keep in there probably aren’t made to deal with a small animal.’ He growled at me. ‘Which is why that spymaster is going to feel real stupid once she realises you were the one who engineered the entire escape.’

  That seemed to mollify him. ‘Anyway,’ I went on, ‘the more of us there are, the greater the chance of being discovered. It’s better if only two of us go.’

  ‘So why does it have to be you?’ Nephenia asked, annoyed. ‘What makes you better qualified than Lady Ferius—’

  ‘Still not a “lady”,’ Ferius corrected.

  ‘Oh, that’s it,’ Reichis chittered. ‘I’m not sitting here for another round of skinbag salutational etiquette.’ He climbed back up the tree, scrambling higher and higher until he reached the top and launched himself into the air. ‘See you on the inside, loser!’

  ‘You asked why I have to go?’ I said to Nephenia. ‘Because I’m the only one who can understand the damned squirrel cat.’ With that, I took off at a loping run towards the back entrance of the prison.

  Gitabrians have a pretty interesting way of building prisons. Actually, they have pretty interesting ways of building everything. I guess this is because they travel so widely: they pick up tricks from other cultures and combine that with their infatuation for invention to come up with ingenious solutions. For example, I hardly encountered any guards at all on my way through Notia Veras. This made sense given that Zavera was probably pretty paranoid about her little secret prison. Also, there were more than enough locks and traps to ensure anyone without a warden’s coin would never make it inside. Fortunately I just happened to have one.

  No, I thought, correcting myself. Those two Argosi, Enna and Durral, made sure you had one. If Ferius’s plans had as many layers as an onion, I couldn’t imagine how many her parents’ schemes must have. It would have been nice if they’d bothered to explain any of them to me.

  I held my five castradazi coins in my hand as I made my way through the halls of Notia Veras. I’d already figured out how to use the warden’s coin to open several different locks. The key – so to speak – was holding it just right so that whatever strange property the metal held caused it to almost magnetically grab hold of the inside of the locking mechanism. Then you had to work by feel until you were turning each tumbler one by one. Breaking in was an oddly satisfying experience.

  The next parts? Not so much.

  Gitabrian traps and alarms are positively florid in their complexity. I entered one passageway, only to find the walls were made entirely of brass. I must’ve stepped on some kind of mechanism, because a second later the walls rang like massive bells, the reverberations going back and forth between them, over and over until not only were my ears in danger of bleeding, but I fell to the floor. Every time I tried to back get up, I’d just fall down again. Something about the frequency of the vibrations was messing with my sense of balance. Worse, while the sound seemed confined to this hallway, there was still a chance it could be heard elsewhere, which would bring guards. I was starting to really despair when I noticed one of the coins in my hand was vibrating at exactly the same rate as the walls. On a whim I stuck it in my mouth and clamped down hard on it with my teeth. Almost instantly the awful clanging in my ears stopped. Somehow the metal of the coin created a kind of counter-reverberation in my skull, and the cacophony of the brass walls disappeared.

  Figuring out the bronze passage got me to the first set of cells. They were empty, except fo
r one that contained a slender man whose first few words convinced me he really did belong there and letting him go would likely get me killed. Followed by the rest of Gitabria, if his boasts were to be believed.

  Deeper inside the prison I found a set of six-foot high wheels that turned from the flow of a little river that ran across a narrow channel cut into the floor. The hallway it led into was completely bare, but the metal sheen of the floor made me suspicious. So, too, did the fact that the closer I got to it, the more I felt the hair on my head start to stick out.

  ‘Is that silver?’ Reichis asked, suddenly at my feet. As he got closer to the edge of the silver section of floor ahead of us, his fur started to rise up in the air, pulled by the same force at work on my own hair.

  ‘How did you get here?’ I asked.

  He gave the squirrel cat equivalent of a shrug. ‘Even prisons need sewer tunnels.’

  That explained the smell. I didn’t bring it up, though. For his part, Reichis shook his fur, sending liquid and particles of things I didn’t want to imagine streaming into the air. ‘Been searching this place,’ he said. ‘It’s bigger than it looks on the outside.’

  ‘Did you find Shalla?’

  He looked up at me, tilting his feline head. ‘Shalla?’

  ‘Yeah. My sister? The person we came to rescue?’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, as though it was the first he’d heard of her. ‘I was looking for stuff to steal.’ He sat back on his haunches and waved his front paws in frustration. ‘Nothing. Not a thing. You’d think a place where they bring criminals would have lots of good stuff. I mean, what do they do with all the trinkets they find on the thieves?’

  ‘You’re thinking of a jail,’ I said.

  ‘What’s the difference?’

  ‘A jail is where you take someone when you catch them, and a prison is where they go after they’re convicted. Completely different places.’

  Reichis stared up at me as if he thought I might be making fun of him. ‘Are you serious?’