The Path of the Wild Daisy.
How I wished I could walk that path with her.
I found the others nestled against the cave walls. Reichis and Ishak seemed to be in unconscious competition over who could snore the loudest. I came perilously close to stepping on Nephenia, who lay on her side, apparently able to sleep despite the echoing cacophony.
I lay down and covered my ears as best I could. I wasn’t optimistic about getting any rest, but that turned out not to matter because a moment later I heard Nephenia say quietly, ‘You two are a lot alike, you know.’
I pushed myself up to a sitting position. ‘Who? Me and Ferius?’
She sidled up next to me. ‘I’m serious. All those questions you ask her, the little things that bother you … I think they’re important somehow.’
‘Well, that’s depressing, because her answers are unintelligible rubbish most of the time.’
Neph’s shoulder was close enough to mine that I felt her shrug. ‘That’s what I thought at first. I just assumed the Argosi were eccentric. But when I listen to the two of you bickering—’
‘We don’t “bicker”.’
‘Fine. When you’re having your profound and entirely composed philosophical discussions, it … it’s like there’s something there, underneath the words. Lady Ferius—’
‘She’s not a lady.’ Great. Now I’m doing it.
Neph slapped my hand lightly. ‘Would you mind not interrupting all the time?’ I would have been annoyed by that except she left her hand there. ‘Everything the two of you talk about feels right somehow, like I’m hearing someone describe a painting that I know is there but I can’t see myself yet.’
A chuckle escaped my lips. Nephenia tried to pull her hand away to slap mine again but I held firm. ‘You’re starting to talk like her now.’
A pause, then a squeeze. ‘That might just be the second nicest thing you ever said to me, Kellen.’
Something in the sound of her voice, the touch of her hand on mine, made me want to be closer to her. A lot closer. ‘What was the nicest?’ I asked. I remembered of course. Back in our city at the oasis I’d said she would one day figure out she was special, but until then she could just trust that she was special to me. Funnily enough, those had been Ferius’s words, not mine.
Neph shifted a little closer. ‘If you want to kiss me, Kellen, either ask me or just do it and live with the consequences. Don’t play around at the edges hoping I’ll do it for you.’
So much for that plan, I guess.
I would have kissed her then, I think, or at least tried. Unfortunately, that precise recall that comes with a mage’s training? Sometimes it brings memories you don’t want. Unbidden, the image Shalla had put in my head of Nephenia’s dead father came to me so clearly it was as if his corpse were right there with us in the cave. Despite the near-perfect darkness, I could’ve sworn his blood was dripping down the cave walls in front of me. I heard a slow exhale of breath, and for one brief, panicked instant, I thought it had come from the ghostly cadaver. It was just my imagination, of course; the sigh had come from Nephenia.
‘I murdered him,’ she said.
‘How did you know I was—’
She let go of my hand. ‘You went cold, Kellen. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why.’ She went silent for a moment, then said, ‘Go ahead and ask, if that’s what you want.’
Everything felt very dangerous all of a sudden – not that Neph would attack me of course, but rather that whatever happened next could change our relationship forever. Not that we had a relationship exactly. ‘I don’t need to ask,’ I said finally, reaching out to find her hand once again. ‘I already know what happened.’
‘Tell me.’
Ever since we were kids, Nephenia’s father had been stern. No. Not ‘stern’. A bully. That wasn’t it either though, was it? Because whatever cruelty I’d witnessed as a child could only have been the barest hint of what Nephenia and her mother had to endure. Before I left our people, Nephenia had told me how important it was that she earn her mage’s name so that she wouldn’t be forced to live like her mother – a servant to her father’s whims. ‘It got worse,’ I said. ‘After you passed your mage’s trials. You thought things would be better, but they only got worse.’
She didn’t reply. She didn’t need to. Months ago Shalla had communicated with me through a spell she’d devised and told me that Panahsi’s grandmother had promised Nephenia protection if she agreed to marry him. ‘When your father found out about the arrangement you made with Pan’s family, he got angry. He …’ I stopped.
What am I doing? She’s never brought this up, so keep your mouth shut.
But Nephenia spoke, her voice sounding ragged, as if she’d been screaming for days. ‘He used a silk spell on me. He put me to sleep.’
Her anger over the red mage’s spell suddenly made a lot more sense. ‘Did he …?’
‘I don’t know. There wasn’t any … I don’t know if he did anything to me, Kellen. I think that was the whole point.’ I felt her hand starting to shake. ‘From the time I sparked my first band I’d been casting wards around my bed every night. It was the only way I could sleep in that house. My father was never a strong mage, but he had friends. He had one of them break my wards that night.’
So she’d know he could get to her any time he wanted.
There were a dozen questions I almost asked. Did you tell anyone? Did you go to the council of lords magi? Did you try to run away? Did you, did you, did you? But I knew the answers already. My people don’t tolerate crimes of violence, but a father simply putting a sleep spell on a disobedient daughter? The head of a Jan’Tep house has the right to keep order within their home.
‘I murdered him,’ Nephenia said, her voice flat.
‘You were protecting yourself. You were just—’
I felt, rather than saw, the shake of her head. ‘No, you don’t understand. I didn’t wait until he attacked me. I played the good girl for weeks until I was sure he believed I’d learned my lesson. Then, when he was alone in his sanctum, I killed him. No threats. No warnings. It was murder.’
I weighed her words like a magistrate at trial. ‘If you’d waited, it would have been too late. Neph, he would have—’
She went on as if she couldn’t hear me. ‘My mother turned me in. I’m not sure why. I guess she’d been living with his abuse so long that my refusal to do so was a slap in the face to her. A week later I was condemned to death by the council of lords magi.’ Her voice deepened. ‘“An attack on the head of a Jan’Tep house is an attack on the entire clan.”’
‘Did … Did my mother or father intervene?’ It was a stupid question, but I couldn’t help asking it anyway. I still wanted to believe some decency existed in my parents.
Nephenia shook her head. ‘It was Pan. He went to the council and threatened to abandon our clan if they executed me. He’s the most promising mage they have other than your sister. His grandmother has a lot of influence among the council, and eventually they relented.’ She tapped three fingers against my palm. ‘After they cut off two fingers from each hand, they exiled me into the desert. Since there was a decent chance my wounds would get infected or I’d die by some other means, the clan had technically fulfilled my execution.’
Ancestors. I couldn’t imagine what those first days must have been like, unable to cast any healing spells, trying to staunch those wounds while staying alive on the road. ‘I’m sorry, Neph,’ I said.
‘Don’t be. I’m not.’
‘What do you mean?’
She moved herself around so we were sitting facing each other. ‘I told you before, Kellen, I had to make a decision. I could either be the girl who lived with the shame until bad luck or my own stupidity got me killed, or I could become who I am now.’
‘And who is that?’
‘Someone who doesn’t apologise for who she is’. Despite the darkness I saw her hand reach out to touch the skin around my left eye. Even prepared, I sti
ll flinched. ‘That’s what makes us different, Kellen. If they found a way to resurrect my father and my crime was wiped away, you know the first thing I’d do?’
‘You’d go back and kill him again,’ I said.
‘Damn right.’
All at once I understood why Nephenia had kissed me when we’d first seen each other in the desert, and why she hadn’t since then. The reason she hadn’t told me about her father before wasn’t because she was ashamed of it, but because it wasn’t any of my business. She’d told me now, not because I’d asked, but because she wanted me to know her better. That left me with a choice – one that meant I had to let go forever of the memory of a shy, demure girl who just happened to have the same name as the woman sitting across from me.
I took her hand and shook it. ‘My name is Kellen. It’s nice to finally meet you, Nephenia.’
I think she might have let out a sob then, but it was hard to tell because Reichis and Ishak – though I suspected they weren’t actually asleep – were snoring even louder than before. Nephenia pulled me into a hug. ‘You know, for someone who’s absolutely terrible at talking to girls, sometimes you say just the right thing.’
I think I was getting the hang of this hugging thing, because for once it felt completely natural. I was actually kind of enjoying it until Nephenia suddenly drew away from me.
‘What did I do?’ I asked.
‘I felt something in your trousers.’
Oh, ancestors. This is really not how I pictured this going. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—’
‘Not that! I mean something in your pocket is heating up.’
Now I could feel it too. For an instant I feared that the powders I keep in the pouches on either side of my belt had mixed together. I dug into my pocket and yelped as I felt the source of the heat. When I dropped it on the ground between us, we could both see the small coin glowing with an angry red glare against the darkness of the cave.
‘More of your coin magic?’ Nephenia asked. ‘Did you somehow trigger a spell?’
‘That’s not my coin; it’s the one Shalla gave me. But why would it be doing anything now? The charm on it was supposed to lead us to the mountain.’
Suddenly Nephenia reached down and grabbed the coin in her fingers, sucking in air between her teeth at the pain, and ran past me towards the entrance. I followed close behind, nearly tripping on the uneven ground. The second Nephenia was outside she hurled the coin as far as she could. It disappeared somewhere off in the trees. ‘Lady Ferius!’ she called back into the cave. ‘We have to run!’
‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘What does it mean?’
The look she gave me was as unsettling as it was urgent. ‘You can put more than one charm on an object, Kellen. Heat isn’t part of a navigational spell. It’s a by-product of a tracking charm. Someone’s using the coin to follow us.’ She turned back towards the cave. ‘Lady Ferius, we have to go now!’
Ferius appeared at the entrance of the cave, eyes narrowed as she peered past us into the forest. ‘Bad news, kid. They’re already here.’
I turned to stare at the expanse of trees gleaming like copper pennies from the reflection of morning light on the dew of their leaves. Slowly, the glow changed colour as a different light – one very much like that of the coin – began to radiate from the forest. A figure emerged some hundred yards away, his body clothed in red silk, his face covered in a crimson lacquer mask that shone like a blood-red sun.
The red mage had found us.
I had just enough time to hear someone shout, ‘Run!’ before a bolt of ember magic set the trees on fire.
52
The Betrayal
Branches and brambles whipped at my face and arms. Panic turned every stinging sensation into the first prickle of fire before it burns you to a crisp.
I hate being a coward.
Ferius and Nephenia ran alongside me as the three of us fled. Our only hope was to stay ahead of the red mage long enough to reach the city, where attacking us would risk further exposing the Jan’Tep presence in Gitabria. Ferius took the lead, guiding us along trails I couldn’t even detect until my feet were already on them. She was as quick and agile as a gazelle, leaping over rocks and bushes, never looking down, her eyes always searching for the next path. Nephenia and I followed as best we could, huffing and puffing in time with each other. ‘What about Ishak and Reichis?’ she asked breathlessly. ‘I can’t see them.’
‘The critters know how to take care of themselves and they can track us easy,’ Ferius replied. Without warning she pushed Nephenia and me down a sloping path between the broken remains of a boulder. Off in the distance Cazaran’s eight bridges came into view. They might as well have been a mirage in the desert. We were still miles away when a blast of what had definitely been ember magic turned a tree ahead of us to ash. Once again we were forced to change course.
‘Damned mage isn’t hunting us,’ Ferius said, taking up the lead again. ‘He’s herding us!’
‘But where?’ Nephenia asked, eyes darting around. ‘There’s nothing—’
‘The patrols,’ I said, suddenly realising why he kept making us turn. ‘Ferius, I think he’s forcing us towards one of the Gitabrian patrols so we’ll get caught.’
She came to a sudden halt and it was all I could do not to crash into her. She turned back, towards the sound of our enemy’s footsteps. ‘Reckon you’re right about his plan, kid.’ With a shake of her hand she fanned out a dozen of her sharp steel cards. ‘I was gettin’ tired of running anyway.’
My hands were shaking as I slid them into the pouches at my side. Nephenia reached inside her coat where she kept her few remaining charmed objects. I doubted any of it would do us much good now.
The red mage appeared over the top of a ridge, moving without any discernible haste. In fact, when he saw we weren’t fleeing any longer, he hesitated, stopping some twenty yards away. When he spoke, that strange breath spell of his made his words echo all around us, the reverberations masking his voice. ‘You should run,’ he said.
Ferius idly shuffled her steel cards, sending them spinning through the air between her two hands. ‘We’re fine right where we are.’
The lines of the mage’s red lacquer mask altered slightly, the shapes of the eyes narrowing. ‘As you wish. They will have you in minutes regardless.’
‘Who are you?’ I demanded, though I knew I wasn’t going to get any better an answer this time than on my previous attempts. ‘Why do you keep coming after me?’
‘Ask your father,’ he said, coming closer until he was less than ten feet away.
I had a moment of wondering if the man in red might be Ke’heops himself – some kind of perverse joke he’d played on me. But this guy wasn’t tall enough to be my father.
‘Well, kid?’ Ferius asked.
‘What?’
‘Do as the man says: ask your father.’
It took me a second to figure out what she meant. I reached into my shirt and took out the card Shalla had given me. It felt stiff and lifeless in my hand. I drew on the breath magic from the only band I could spark. A spell like the one used to create the card was far beyond my meagre talents, but igniting it was a less daunting prospect. It still wasn’t easy, though, and the process was a lot slower than I’d expected.
Just when I thought I might be close, the red mage said, ‘Enough.’ With a flick of his index and middle fingers and the utterance of a single syllable, the card went flying from my hand. Why did this guy feel the need to keep showing off?
The card flipped end over end. The mage’s hand twisted a fraction and suddenly the card froze in the air between us. With a final invocation, he brought it to life. At first the crown remained still, but then I heard the clack of boot heels against a marble floor drifting out from the card. A moment later my father’s hand reached down and took the crown. As before, the perspective of the image shifted and I found myself staring at my father’s face. He looked irritated.
‘I spe
cifically instructed you against this.’ He didn’t seem to be talking to me.
‘He should know who put him here and why,’ the red mage replied.
‘Very well.’ The blue and black paint strokes of my father’s eyes found me. ‘Come then, Kellen. Rage. Shout. Whimper. Do all the things you do whenever you feel the world has wronged you.’
‘Ain’t the world that wronged him this time,’ Ferius said.
My father didn’t even bother looking at her. ‘Don’t bray at me, woman. My son would never be in this situation had you not taken him from his family. For that crime alone I should—’
I stepped closer to the card. ‘Don’t ever talk to my friend like that again,’ I said. I probably should have backed that up somehow, but I doubted there was any threat I could make that would give my father pause.
Nephenia hauled me out of the way. Evidently she’d decided one of us should attempt diplomacy. ‘Lord Ke’heops,’ she began, far more respectfully than I could’ve managed, ‘you mustn’t delay us. We’ve found evidence that the Gitabrians are—’
He cut her off. ‘The mechanical dragons. A little theatrical perhaps, but no less dangerous for it.’ Again he ignored her and spoke to me. ‘Now they need only find a way to repeat the process of bringing the machines to life and this nation of tinkerers will become an unstoppable military force.’
‘But if you already know what we’ve found …’ I stopped, unable to complete that thought because another had wormed its way into my soul. ‘You want the Gitabrians to catch us. This was your plan all along.’
‘What?’ Nephenia asked. ‘But why?’
‘Now that he’s used us to find out what the Gitabrians have been hiding,’ I replied, my gaze still focused on the smug expression painted on my father’s face, ‘he needs Zavera and her troops to catch us – no, make that, to execute us – so they’ll believe the information is contained.’
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