Nephenia gestured to the red mage. ‘But what about him?’
‘He’s only here to keep us from escaping. He’ll disappear right before the patrol arrives.’
The flowing lines and bold colours on the card shifted, and my father looked almost proud of my deductions. Almost. ‘By now the Gitabrians know their hidden factory has been found. They’ll put the contraptioneer in hiding until she solves the puzzle of her failed experiments. You must put the secret police off the scent of my own agents until they can deal with the inventor. Think, Kellen! Your deaths will save our people. Your sacrifice will avert catastrophe!’
I did something then that I’d never done before: I laughed in my father’s face. ‘The clan prince’s crown must be too tight for your head if that’s what you believe. The second the Gitabrians capture us, I’m going to tell them everything.’ I reached out for the card. ‘And this is the first piece of proof I’ll give them.’
The red mage raised his hand. His fingers took on the somatic shape for a spell I barely had time to recognise before a hurricane’s worth of wind blew me backwards without affecting anyone else. Damn, I wish he’d stop using breath magic on me.
‘Enough,’ my father commanded. ‘Kellen will not reveal us. Nor will the Argosi.’
‘Are you out of your mind?’ I asked, but then I saw the expression on Ferius’s face. ‘You can’t agree with this?’
‘She understands what you do not,’ Ke’heops said. ‘The Argosi fear the destructive potential of the mechanical dragons to destabilise the continent as much as we do. She no longer has the means to prevent the Gitabrians from bringing their foul inventions to life –’ he leaned forward as though he were about to step out of the card and shake hands on the deal – ‘so she will keep silent, and allow me to do what must be done for the greater good.’ The black circles of his eyes swivelled to me. ‘As will you, Kellen, because it is your duty as a son of the House of Ke.’
‘Duty?’ Nephenia demanded, her eyes blazing. Apparently she was done with diplomacy. ‘My father used to talk about duty – every time he beat my mother! Every time he—’
‘You do not speak to me in such a fashion, murderess. I have no need for the Gitabrians to find you alive.’ He signalled to the red mage. ‘The spell she used on her father – cast it on her now. Bind her to him forever in the lands beyond the grey passage.’
My hands were pulling powder so fast I think I might’ve actually out-drawn the red mage were it not for the fact that part of me wanted so badly to blast the card instead of him.
‘Stop!’ the mage said, summoning a shield I couldn’t get past. ‘Lord Ke’heops, I will place a mind chain on the girl to keep her silent. On all of them if need be. Let me deal with this matter and be about my mission.’
My father didn’t look at all pleased to have his order refused. ‘Very well, but do so quickly.’ He turned his gaze back to me. ‘You’ve always wanted to play the hero, Kellen. Ever since you were a little boy, you wanted to be the great warrior who sacrifices all to save those he loves. I think you’re still that little boy. So let this be my gift to you: stay where you are, say nothing and accept your fate. In doing so you will save thousands upon thousands of lives.’
He removed the crown from his head and set it upon the fingertips of the wooden stand. The lines on the card slowly settled until they were completely still. The red mage gestured and the card flew to his hand.
‘You will not chain me,’ Nephenia said, tearing off her gloves. The stumps of missing fingers on each hand still sent a chill through me, but already she was forming somatic shapes. ‘I may not be able to perform all the high magics any more, but I’ll die before I let you bind me.’
‘Yeah,’ Ferius said, making steel cards spin and turn around her fingers. ‘I’ve never been partial to chains either.’
The red mage held up his hands. ‘I will not bind any of you,’ he said.
‘You won’t?’ I asked.
He shook his head. ‘There is another way. You and the Argosi woman will allow yourselves to be captured. I will take the girl with me. Her life will be the assurance that you hold your silence when the Gitabrians come for you. Keep your promise to me, and once my business is done, I swear I will get her out of the country and set her free.’
‘You think I’ll abandon my friends?’ Nephenia asked. ‘You’re even more stupid than you look in that preposterous outfit.’ She took a step towards him, her fingers forming a simple ember blast spell. I doubted it would get past his shield.
‘You have made a hundred bad choices already, Neph’aria. I beg you not to make one more.’
‘She won’t,’ Ferius said, interposing herself between them. ‘He’s right, girl.’
‘Stop calling me “girl”! You don’t call Kellen “boy”!’
That seemed a somewhat less than relevant issue right now, but Ferius nodded nonetheless. ‘You’re right … kid.’ She put her hands on Nephenia’s shoulders. ‘But you gotta be smart now. Me and Kellen, well, we set ourselves on a path. This is where it ends.’ She nodded to me, and I knew what she wanted me to say.
‘Please, Neph. If I have to die, I want to do it knowing it meant something. Besides, Ishak needs you. Reichis will too. Keep your valuables hidden under your pillow at night, though.’
Nephenia, for all the toughness I’d seen in her these past weeks, looked as if she were about to break. ‘Who will I be if I let the two of you die for me?’
Ferius smiled. ‘Anyone you want. Maybe even an Argosi.’ She took her hands off Nephenia’s shoulders and hugged her close. It was an oddly affectionate gesture, given how the two of them had never seemed to get along all that well. That’s why I noticed when Ferius slipped the card depicting the mechanical dragon into the pocket of Nephenia’s coat.
The faint sound of boots crunching leaves drifted out from the forest behind us. Lots of boots.
‘We go now,’ the red mage said to Nephenia. ‘Either by your choice or mine.’
She let go of Ferius and ran over to me and kissed me on the cheek. ‘No goodbyes between us, Kellen. Not for long, anyway.’ She turned and walked towards the red mage. He made a series of somatic shapes with both hands and uttered a spell I barely recognised other than it blended silk and ember magic. A moment later the two were invisible to my eyes. Ferius and I were left alone just as the Gitabrian secret police came for us.
‘That was right brave of you, kid,’ Ferius said.
‘Thanks,’ I said, though until that moment I’d just assumed Ferius had some clever ploy worked out to escape our pursuers and that she’d wanted Nephenia out of the way in the very unlikely case that things didn’t work out.
Sometimes I’m a little more optimistic than my life history warrants.
Over the ridge a dozen men and women came, about half armed with fire lances, a few with spell-shields. Two carried long poles with loops of wire on one end that looked suspiciously like they were meant to go around one’s throat. At the head of the pack came Servadi Zavera té Drazo. She looked happy to see us.
‘You do have a plan, right?’ I asked Ferius.
She dropped to her knees and put her hands behind her head. ‘Nope.’
‘Oh.’
Crap.
53
The Noose
I was right about the purpose of the wire loops at the end of those seven-foot-long poles.
I managed to wheeze, ‘Damn it …’ before I could no longer get enough air to speak.
The devices had an ingenious design to them: about a third of the way from the bottom end, the wooden poles had a piece of brass wrapped around them, maybe eight inches long. Once the noose was around your neck, all the person holding the pole had to do was twist the brass piece and the wire tightened, enabling them to decide just how much to let you breathe. If at all.
The handcuffs binding our wrists behind our backs were similarly inventive. The braided strands of copper wire were joined together by a little steel disc. Through a m
echanical process I couldn’t quite figure out, any time you pulled against the cuffs, the wire tightened around your wrists.
I was starting to really dislike the Gitabrian infatuation with clever inventions.
Spots appeared in my vision as the lack of air in my lungs became problematic. My tongue tasted bitter from the fear, though an entirely different emotion was taking over.
I was pissed off.
It wasn’t the sheer number of times we’d been betrayed lately or the constant lies. It wasn’t the fact that these insane secret police had been hiding war machines from their own people or even that I was, at best, a few painful minutes from being executed. No, what really made me angry was what Zavera was doing to Ferius.
‘Look at her!’ she gloated, yanking on the wire noose around Ferius’s neck, parading her before the officers before twisting the bronze apparatus to choke her mercilessly. ‘Witness the pride of the Argosi!’
Laughter, all around me. A stupid, juvenile part of my brain counted each chuckle and chortle, fully intending on making them pay for each one if I ever got the chance.
Zavera drove the butt end of the pole into the ground, steadying it with her foot. She wrapped her hands higher up the shaft and with a strength that belied her size, hauled back, hoisting Ferius up until she was on tiptoes, practically dangling from the wire noose around her neck. I was forced to watch as her face turned purple and a gurgling sound escaped her lips.
Zavera made some stupid joke in Gitabrian that I didn’t understand. The guy holding my pole lightened up on the noose momentarily. With a brief gasp of breath I shouted, ‘Stop!’ and then sucked in more air before the guy holding me could tighten the noose again. A dozen threats went through my mind, but none got past my lips. Arta tuco, I reminded myself. The Argosi talent of subtlety. Zavera’s got you bound with a wire noose. You have to bind her with words. No … Not words. With a question. ‘Why do you hate her so mu—’
A sudden yank on the noose cut me off.
Zavera turned to look at me, letting Ferius drop gasping to the ground. ‘What did you say?’
I couldn’t speak of course. She gave a signal to my captor and he eased the tension so I could repeat my question. I didn’t. That would be too obvious. If Ferius and I were to have any chance at all, we needed a miracle. That was a problem for two reasons: first, my people don’t believe in miracles. Second, the only sort of miracle I could hope for would come in the form of a two-foot tall conniving ball of fur. Since even Reichis isn’t arrogant enough to believe he could take on twelve trained warriors, I had to give him more time.
Time was the problem.
I needed to somehow string along the spymaster of Gitabria like she was some dumb rube about to get swindled in a poker game. Since Zavera was clearly not a dumb rube, this was going to take subtlety. Arta ancestors-be-damned tuco subtlety. So when I spoke again, it was to casually say, ‘Nothing. Just coughing is all.’
A little arta valar can’t hurt, right?
Zavera smiled at my brazenness. She handed the end of her pole to one of her officers and went to kneel in front of Ferius, who was trying with only moderate success to get air into her lungs. ‘You asked why I hate the Argosi, no?’ She reached out a hand to stroke Ferius’s cheek. ‘It is because—’
‘No,’ I said, cutting her off. ‘You must’ve imagined it.’ Talking when you’re only getting a fraction of the air necessary to make your vocal cords vibrate is hard work. I breathed in as slowly and deeply as I could before adding, ‘Besides, I already know why you resent Ferius so much.’
Yeah. ‘Resent’ was the word I needed. Not ‘hate’, which would simply have made Zavera give her reasons. I didn’t give a damn about those. My only job was to keep her interested in me.
She glanced over, eyes narrowed. ‘Really? To what do you attribute my supposed “resentment”?’
Good question. I closed my eyes. I think better when I’m not staring at people who plan to kill me. ‘You fight better than she does,’ I began.
‘That hardly seems cause for resentment, does it?’
‘Shut up, I’m not finished,’ I said. That got me a yank on the noose that made my throat seize. It was necessary though. Zavera was too smart. I had to keep her off balance by saying things that would frustrate her even as they sparked her interest.
That’s right: I was turning into Ferius Parfax.
‘You have a position of power,’ I went on. ‘Of prominence among your people. She’s nothing but a wanderer.’
‘Perhaps I misunderstand your use of the word “resent”?’ Zavera suggested.
I didn’t bother to reply. I knew she’d give me one more sentence at least. Ferius says that human beings are often bound by arbitrary habits – like the way most people will give three points when they’re trying to make a convincing argument. Not two, not four. Three.
Of course Ferius was currently halfway to being choked to death and at the mercy of a lunatic.
Okay, I thought. Make this last one good. Only, what do you say to surprise a Gitabrian spymaster? I closed my eyes tighter, shutting out the world as I put together everything I knew about Zavera. It was kind of funny actually, because for all her hatred towards Ferius, she kind of reminded me of …
Oh hell.
I opened my eyes, and looked at her properly for the very first time. What I saw was something even Ferius herself had missed. ‘You’re an Argosi.’
Apparently that was a rather rude thing to say because the guy holding my pole yanked on it hard. I was dragged all the way back until I fell flat on the ground, choking as I looked up at a cloudless sky. The sound of Zavera’s footsteps was followed by the woman herself. She stood over me, filling my vision like some Berabesq god come to judge me once and for all. She spread her hands out and then, very slowly, clapped.
54
The Argosi
Arta precis is the Argosi talent for perception – for seeing what others do not. Until that moment in the forests outside of Cazaran, I’d never really shown much promise at arta precis. Nice that I got to show off before Zavera kills me, I thought.
She knelt down closer to me. ‘I was wrong about you,’ she said. ‘When I first met you inside that cell in Notia Veras, I wondered why any Argosi would make a teysan of a bumbling, self-centred little boy. I thought perhaps this was some act of defiance on her part. The Path of the Wild Daisy is known for her delight in mocking our training.’ She reached down and grabbed a handful of my hair. With the index finger of her free hand she tapped my forehead. ‘But there is something in there that is not entirely without potential. I could have made a fine spy out of you, I think.’
‘Teach me,’ I said. ‘Let Ferius live and I swear I’ll be yours.’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘You would be my student?’
‘From now until death.’ It was true actually, because the second my hands were free I was going to pull powder from the pouches at my belt and blow a hole through her bigger than the one I’d left in that tower.
She patted my cheek. ‘Alas, your arta tuco is not quite up to the job.’ She leaned closer and whispered in my ear, ‘It is in the eyes where lies must first be told. Yours betray your lips at every turn.’
Ancestors. Do all Argosi really talk this way?
Zavera stepped away from me. ‘Get him up,’ she commanded the man behind me.
He did – by tilting the pole until I had to scramble to my feet to keep the wire from slicing through my throat.
Zavera returned to Ferius. ‘The Argosi have lied to you, Teysan Kellen fal Ke.’ She signalled to the man holding the pole. He spun Ferius around so her back was to Zavera. Then the spymaster smashed her fist into Ferius’s back at the precise spot where she’d been injured before.
‘No!’ I shouted. All pretence of arta tuco or arta precis or anything else fled as I realised what Zavera planned to do. She’d wanted us to figure out who she was – wanted Ferius to know her secret so it would mean that much more when she beat
her to death with her bare hands.
‘The Argosi delude themselves that with a few tricks here – a few clever ploys there – they can avert war.’ She turned and drove her elbow into the exact same spot. ‘That is a folly the world cannot abide.’
Zavera’s third punch was even more brutal than the first two. Ferius’s legs went out from under her. The only thing holding her up was the noose. Blood seeped through the back of her shirt. ‘Ah, there we are. Not long now. One final blow will rupture her kidney. An unpleasant way to die, but well deserved, I promise you.’ She patted Ferius on the shoulder. ‘I followed the Way of Wind once, you know. I found the signs. But they weren’t in the discordances. No, the truth wasn’t to be discovered in one or two stray cards. It was in the concordances. The entire deck. I told the other Argosi, warned them that the nations of this continent could not help but fall into war. It was only a matter of time.’ She shook her head. ‘I begged them to take action.’
‘What sort of action could the Argosi take?’ I asked, desperate to keep her talking – to keep her from hitting Ferius again. ‘What did you want them to do?’
‘To choose a damned side!’ Zavera swung an arm towards the city in the distance. ‘The Gitabrians are a good and noble people! They seek only to send out their ships, to explore, to invent. Not once since they arrived on this continent have they attacked their neighbours. But the Argosi never take sides.’ She clenched her fist and slammed it against her own chest. ‘I chose a side. I chose to stand with those who love peace, to protect them from the Jan’Tep arcanocracy and the Berabesq theocracy and the Daroman empire. Manipulators and madmen. Thugs and brutalisers.’ She turned her head up to the sky. ‘When our mechanical dragons soar high above their heads, when they strike deep into their territories, destroying their palaces and their temples and their sanctums, only then will these warring nations learn to love peace.’
She turned back to Ferius and raised her fist. ‘Tell me where the girl is. I know there were three of you. I must keep the secret of the dragons a little longer. Tell me where the charmcaster has gone and I will give you a death that will be a mercy compared to the one you deserve.’
Charmcaster Page 27