So much for the red mage’s brilliant plan. I should’ve realised it was stupid in the first place. Zavera had met Nephenia. Of course she knew there’d be another threat to deal with.
Ferius mumbled something unintelligible. The spymaster grabbed her by the shoulder and spun her around. ‘What is that?’
Ferius coughed. Blood dribbled from her mouth. ‘I said … she’s long gone. You’ll never find her. Oh, and she’s got my card. Sister.’
Without a word, Zavera turned her back around, exposing her wounded side. She didn’t hit her, but instead – with cruel and deliberate slowness – bunched her fingertips together and pushed them against the wound. Ferius moaned in agony.
I struggled in vain against the noose around my neck. What do you do for your friend when she’s about to die? What would Ferius want? ‘You’ve lost,’ I taunted Zavera. ‘Before long Nephenia will find the other Argosi. They’ll know what you’ve done. You wanted the Argosi to take a side? Guess which side they’ll take once they see the card she’s carrying!’
Zavera’s jaw clenched in anger, but it didn’t stop her from pressing ever harder into Ferius’s back, taking her life a fraction of an inch at a time.
Something small flew through the air. I only saw that it was a rock when it struck Zavera in the right temple. The spymaster spun around, eyes blinking as a trickle of blood dripped from the wound. ‘Who threw that?’
A voice called out from the forest behind us. ‘Lady Ferius! We’ve got to run!’
Zavera’s gaze turned to me. She smiled as we both recognised the voice.
55
The Way of Fools
Zavera almost seemed grateful as she called out, ‘Bless you, Magiziera Nephenia! You have helped to save a wondrous nation!’ She signalled to a group of her soldiers. ‘Six of you, go find her. Take the spell-shields. She will try her Jan’Tep tricks on you.’
Damn it, Nephenia. Why did you have to be so rash, impetuous, reckless … I stopped. There wasn’t much point wasting my anger coming up with insults that all meant the same thing. Neph had thrown away the one hope we had of the Argosi learning what Zavera had done.
‘You surround yourself with careless, pampered children,’ she said to Ferius. ‘What did you expect to happen?’ She paused. ‘Sister.’
Far off in the forest, Nephenia called out again. ‘Lady Ferius!’
The expression of despair on my mentor’s face proved once and for all that even her arta valar – her swagger – had its limits. ‘They ain’t just children!’ she shouted. Like a drunk in the street she swung a kick at Zavera that went wide, nearly pulling both her and the soldier holding the pole attached to the noose around her neck off balance. Then she grinned. ‘A couple of them are animals.’
The rush of leaves came from somewhere high up in the trees. The man behind me screamed. I was yanked backwards as he fell under what I guessed was a very painful series of gashes delivered by a maniacal squirrel cat. The pressure on the noose disappeared. Air tastes a lot sweeter when you can get enough of it into your lungs.
‘The nets,’ Zavera shouted at the men and women around her. ‘Do not waste your fire lances on the animal – he’s too fast. Use the nets to capture him first.’
Ferius called out to me. ‘Hey, kid, I ever show you this trick?’ She threw herself backwards, using the back of her neck to push the pole. The guy holding it, not wanting to let go, found himself tripping on a tree root and bashing his head against a low-hanging branch.
Something tickled my wrists behind my back. ‘Stupid Gitabrian handcuffs,’ Reichis muttered. A moment later, they came loose. The little bugger really does have a knack for knots and locks.
My relief at having my hands free was short-lived since two of Zavera’s soldiers came at me and a third aimed her fire lance in my direction just in case I tried to move. Ferius though – with her hands still cuffed behind her back – spun around, pulling the now free pole along with her. The men coming for me got their feet tangled up in it and went down hard. Unfortunately, they took Ferius with them. I took advantage of the momentary distraction to launch myself away from where the fire lance was pointed. By the time the woman holding the weapon had readjusted her aim, I was already in the air, my hands throwing powders from my pouches. I’ve practised firing my spell from every position imaginable, so even before my shoulder hit the ground, the red and black powders had begun to collide with each other. ‘Carath,’ I intoned, my fingers forming the somatic shapes.
Two explosions thundered almost simultaneously, shaking leaves from the trees, turning them to ash as they fell all around us. For a second I wasn’t sure who’d got who, but while my ears were ringing painfully, my opponent was rolling on the ground trying to put out the red and black flames on her left side.
My hearing was almost gone. Sounds were muted, as if I was underwater. I smiled though, as I heard first one then a second of Zavera’s troops scream in that distinctive way people do when a squirrel cat’s teeth tear off part of their ear. Closer to the ground, Ishak raced like a demon, disappearing into the foliage before the secret police could aim their fire lances at him, reappearing a moment later to leap up and bite an arm or leg. Anytime one of them tried to fight back, Reichis would glide down from a tree, grab onto their head and kick with his hind legs, tearing the skin at the back of their neck to shreds.
Once I managed to regain my footing, I got off two more shots. The first hit the target, knocking down a fire lancer. The second missed entirely. Considering my hands were still numb from the handcuffs, I was lucky not to have blown off my own fingers. ‘Where’s Nephenia?’ I called out to Reichis.
Ishak looked up from where he stood on the back of an unconscious man and barked, ‘Lady Ferius! We’ve got to run!’ Only then did I recognise they were exactly the words Nephenia had said as we’d fled the cave.
Reichis giggled. ‘Man, I can’t get enough of that trick.’
She’s not really here. She can still get the card out of Gitabria!
Our luck ran out when the six soldiers Zavera had sent in search of Nephenia returned. They aimed their fire lances in our direction. Once again we were at a disadvantage. You’d think Zavera would’ve been relieved.
‘Games!’ she screamed.
I turned to see her holding Ferius, one arm around her neck, squeezing.
‘You play games while the good and decent see their future put at risk!’ The spymaster shook her head. ‘But you will fail. The Argosi have always failed when it mattered most. The final flaw in Credara Janucha’s designs is being solved even as we speak.’ Zavera wrapped her free hand around Ferius’s jaw. With one twist she would break her neck.
‘Stop!’ I shouted. ‘You said you’ve already won! What good will killing her do?’
Zavera didn’t even seem to hear me at first, but then she said, ‘It will make me feel better.’ She swatted idly at something on the side of her own neck. I hadn’t noticed any insects, though I probably had bites of my own by now. Zavera returned her hand to Ferius’s jaw. ‘Yes. I believe this will make me feel much—’
She was cut off by a figure leaping from the shadows of the forest. Fingers curled like claws grabbed at the side of Zavera’s head as the figure went past. Zavera screamed in pain, her hand going to the bleeding wound on the side of her scalp. The sound of fire lances boomed, but as the smoke cleared, the assailant stepped out to face Zavera. She held a piece of the spymaster’s ear in one hand. ‘I begin to see the appeal,’ she said.
‘Damn right,’ Reichis chittered.
‘You?’ Zavera asked, almost laughing. ‘You have come?’
The old woman’s voice was like the first crackle of ember magic right before the blast. ‘Touch my daughter again,’ Enna said, ‘and I’ll drag you through every hell there is until I find one that’ll have you.’
Ferius, barely conscious from her exertions and the beating she’d taken, looked up from the ground, blinking through tears. ‘Momma?’
Enna s
miled. It was a fierce, wild thing to behold. ‘I’m here, love. Just gotta do a piece of business.’
Three of the fire lancers started to reload their weapons even as two others came for the Argosi. ‘Stop!’ Zavera said. She approached Enna and gave a short bow. ‘I feel foolish that I did not know you the last time you came to Gitabria. I take it you are the Path of the Rambling Thistle? My maetri spoke of you as the greatest Argosi he had ever known.’
Enna returned the bow. ‘Your maetri was an idiot. Otherwise he would never have allowed you to become the Path of Oak and Steel.’
‘I have not been called that in a long time.’
‘That’s just as well, child. It was a fool’s path.’ She stepped into a guard position, one hand out in front of her, the other in a tight fist just over her head. ‘See what trouble it’s brought you?’
Zavera looked at the old woman in wonder. ‘You think to duel me? However legendary your arta eres tricks may once have been, I’m afraid those years are long behind you.’
‘True,’ Enna admitted. ‘But here’s something you may not have seen before.’ She waved her hands in the air theatrically. ‘By the mighty power of sea and sky, of earth and flame, of sour wine and flat beer, let my enemy fall!’
Zavera’s eyes narrowed. A second later she fell flat on her face.
Ferius rose unsteadily to her feet. ‘You still usin’ that old trick?’
‘Sometimes the old ways are best.’ Enna turned to the fire lancers, who’d finished reloading their weapons and were now taking aim at her. ‘Poison thorn,’ she explained, miming a slap to her neck. ‘Got your boss with it before I came out of the trees. Got each of you too. You’re gonna feel pretty awful any second now.’
The six soldiers looked at each other, searching for signs of the poison’s effects.
Enna sighed. ‘Ain’t you taught that boy the signals?’ she asked Ferius.
‘He’s still learnin’.’
Oh, right. I pulled powder and fired my spell. The three fire lancers had their backs to me and were close enough together that the blast sent them flying. Two more went down when steel cards sliced into their hands and chests. Durral came walking out of the forest, the cards flying from his hands so fast I couldn’t even see him throw them. Reichis and Ishak drove down the last of our enemies, then proceeded to growl at each other over who got to eat what. The pair of them had taken injuries in the fight though, and eventually sank down to sleep on top of their intended meal.
‘Damn, Pappy,’ Ferius said, getting her hands out of the cuffs. ‘You ain’t lost your aim.’
‘Keep tellin’ you it’s in the wrist,’ Durral replied. ‘You always put too much shoulder into it.’
She grinned at him. ‘I’d be happy to argue that point, but I’ve got to …’ She stumbled a bit, then felt at the back of her neck. Her fingers came back holding what I guessed must be a tiny thorn. ‘Aw, now why’d you go and—’
Enna caught her in her arms. She eased her to the ground, seating herself and placing her daughter’s head in her lap. ‘We’ll take care of her,’ she said to me. She unslung a pack from her back and tossed it over. ‘There’s food for the journey and some healing ointments in there. You go on now. You know what you’ve got to do.’
I nodded, though my heart sank a little. I guess in those fleeting moments of watching a family reunited, I’d forgotten that such things weren’t for me.
56
The Murderer
It was twilight before I reached the Gitabrian capital, and fully dark by the time I descended the wooden platform to Janucha’s cliffside home. Reichis had been furious at being left behind, but he was injured, and I was too ashamed of what I was about to do to bring him with me.
I crept onto the stone veranda, removing my boots so my footsteps wouldn’t be heard once I was inside. I used my sotocastra coin to pick the lock on one of the windows and entered the building with black and red powders in my hands and murder in my heart.
I used to wonder about the hextrackers and bounty mages who so willingly killed for money. What would it take to make you give up that last shred of decency – that most basic element of humanity – that stops one person taking the life of another? I was only seventeen, and yet I’d come face to face with dozens of men and women only too happy to kill for the right price. I’d even asked a few of them about it. Their answers, whether glib or stern, justified by some greater good or damned by their own greed, never satisfied me. It was all just nonsense. To kill? To murder? There had to be something more – some terrible instant in which their lives had changed, like when lightning strikes desert sand and turns it to blackened glass. I understood now that no such grand or ghastly event was needed. Killing was simply a matter of steps.
I had come to this country hoping to be a hero like Ferius. I would leave as an assassin.
I wished I could blame the Gitabrians. For all that they spoke eloquently about the innocent pursuit of beauty and invention, they kept their enemies locked away in secret prisons. Their spymaster, Zavera, swore she only did what was necessary to protect her homeland, yet she had laughed while choking and beating Ferius Parfax to the brink of death.
Or maybe my father had done this to me, with his unwavering conviction that one man had the right to determine the life and death of all those around him. Could I blame Enna for convincing me that the only way to protect my mentor was to commit the very crimes she abhorred?
The simple truth was that I’d done this to myself.
When I’d seen the torment inflicted on Cressia – when I’d hunted the mages to where they hid in that tower – Ferius had asked me if I was willing to kill whoever was behind that door without giving them a chance. I hadn’t been then, not really. If it weren’t for Shalla being there, no doubt I’d have ended up dead. I couldn’t afford that now. So somehow during that long run back from the mountain I’d built inside myself all the gears and springs, pistons and wires needed for killing another human being. Like the Gitabrians, I was a contraptioneer now, and I’d invented a murderer.
The inside of Janucha’s home was dark, the only light that of the moon and stars coming in through the tall windows. I walked barefoot on the cold marble floors to the doors outside the contraptioneer’s workshop. My fingers trembled. My whole body vibrated, not with trepidation but simply from exhaustion. I would have to be quick.
‘Kellen?’
I spun around. Cressia was standing a few feet behind me. She was wearing some sort of nightdress and blinking away the sleep from her eyes. ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked.
Fumbling, I thought in response. Tripping over myself. Trying so hard not to make any sound that I forgot to listen to everything else. There was something oddly amusing about the fact that, for all my deadly determination, I was still pretty bad at sneaking into places.
‘He’s here for me,’ another voice said, as the doors to the workshop opened. Janucha held a lantern in one hand, her customary leather apron with its dozens of pockets filled with tools covering her plain linen garments.
I wasn’t sure how to play this. If I blasted Janucha now, I’d be killing a mother in front of her daughter. I doubted Cressia would let me get away with that, which would leave me an even more troubling dilemma than the one that had brought me here.
I guess there are two types of murderers. Now I have to decide which kind I am.
Suddenly Janucha changed the game. ‘I asked him to come.’
Cressia approached, eyes narrowed both from the glare of her mother’s lantern and from suspicion that she was lying. ‘You asked him to come? In the middle of the night?’
‘It’s complicated, my darling.’ The inventor gestured and a pair of guards exited the workshop behind her.
‘Hejandro and Ruis are going to take you somewhere safe,’ Janucha informed her daughter.
‘Safe? What do you mean? What’s—’
‘Do as I say, daughter,’ Janucha commanded, but Cressia’s obedience or lack there
of became moot as the two men picked her up and took her bodily from the house, ignoring both her outraged protests and the blows she rained down on them.
‘Why did you send her away?’ I asked, though I was pretty sure the answer was, ‘So she doesn’t have to watch as my other guards kill you.’
Janucha motioned for me to follow her into the workshop. With her back turned to me, there was no reason why I couldn’t simply blast her then and there. Apparently she knew it too. ‘I know what you’ve come to do, Kellen. I only ask that you allow me to reveal the truth to you first.’
‘You said the sacred alloys were all but gone, but I’ve seen the alción mistivae inside the volcano. I’ve seen the mechanical dragons.’
She halted in her steps. ‘Would you believe me if I swore to you that I myself only learned of their existence a few hours ago?’
‘I might.’
I could almost hear the smile in her voice as she asked, ‘But that wouldn’t make any difference now, would it?’
I reached into the pouches at my sides, my hands shaking worse than ever. ‘I’m sorry, Janucha. I can’t let this go on. If you were to find the flaw in your designs …’
Something sharp pressed into the back of my neck. For the third time that night someone had snuck up on me. The voice close to my ear was quiet. ‘My wife already knows the flaw,’ Altariste said. Further down the hall came the sound of more footsteps. They had a distinctly military cadence. His next words were spoken with such indignation and outrage that it took a moment before I realised his fury was directed not at me, but at Janucha. ‘She’s the one who put it there.’
57
The Inventor
Altariste’s companions led us out the door and onto one of the wooden platforms that travelled up the cliffside before pushing us onto the Bridge of Wonders. This late at night we were the only ones crossing. The six men and women who pushed and prodded us wore regular Gitabrian street clothes, but both their weapons and demeanour marked them as secret police. Janucha seemed as surprised as I was to find them taking orders from her husband.
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