Dark Djinn

by Tia Reed

  “I didn’t need porrin to see you coming, Jordayne. I could hear you approach from the other end of the cove,” he said, his voice a raspy husk.

  A swirl of her hips set the metal baubles on her skirt jingling. “One should never be without music,” she replied, and sat on the arm of the chair.

  Trove patted her hand. His translucent skin was parchment dry. “Your melody brightens my day.”

  “Indeed it does,” Drucilamere said, exiting the stairs. He came to stand beside her.

  Trove took a rattle of a breath. “You will forgive an old man for dispensing with the pleasantries but I grow tired and there is work to be done before I fall back to sleep. I believe you wish me to scry our merchant friend Raj.” He coughed so hard he needed to grip her leg to prevent himself falling off the chair. Dear Vae’oenka, his breath held the stench of decay.

  She flashed a concerned look at Drucilamere as she eased him into the armchair’s depths. “Merchant turned smuggler, it seems. But I hardly think you are up to the task. Let Druce do it.”

  Between a smattering of coughs, Trove waved a hand to decline. “Why subject these healthy young bodies to porrin’s stress when mine is already ravaged?”

  Standing drew the mages’ attention, though shy, dark-haired Santesh avoided her green-eyed stare by bowing his head and allowing his hair to fall over his eyes. The young mage was not yet adept, but Druce had said brown-haired, friendly-faced Kaztyne scried true. She should have acknowledged the journeyman’s grimace of disagreement with Trove but her voice settled on chill all on its own.

  “The magician’s creed decrees you must share the burden. Need I be the one to remind you all of your code?” she said.

  Trove shook his head and clutched her hand, urging her to reason. “Porrin is not entirely to blame for what you see. A growth eats at my innards and gnaws on my nerves. I take the seed gladly for it dulls the pain.”

  She pursed her lips to digest the news. She had neglected this guild in favour of the hospice for far too long. Porrin’s blight had necessitated it. Drawing a deep breath, hoping it would hide her apprehension, she said, “Then take the porrin, Trove, but spare yourself the exhaustion of working magic.”

  “My dear, you would surely not deprive an old man of the only worth he has?

  “Vae’oenka bless you, Trove,” Jordayne said, planting a lingering kiss on his lips. “You know you will always be worth your weight in gold to Myklaan, and double that to me.” Tears welled in memory of all the times she had delighted in his acerbic company. His friendship with her father, and then his affair with her, had seen him lodge at the family estate with increasing regularity as she grew to womanhood.

  “Is that an offer, Jordayne?” Trove asked with a cheeky grin.

  “She is already spoken for,” Druce said, with a proprietary raise of his thick eyebrow.

  “You are mistaken,” Trove said, shaking a finger his way. “It is you who are spoken for, am I not right Jordayne? And as yet, I am not. At least not at present.”

  “An interesting notion, to experience what you both have to offer, but I am afraid the exertion may see the end of you, Trove,” Jordayne said, running a hand along Druce’s arm. His presence really was a comfort.

  “But what a way to go, lass.”

  She laughed at that. “I could not bear the guilt.”

  “So I must make do with your company.”

  “Be grateful for it. I do not bestow it lightly.”

  Trove took her hand and brought it to his lips. “You are your father’s daughter.”

  “Not truly, Trove, thanks to you. One might say I am as much your creation as his.” The truths he had imparted about the world, as she sat on his knee and, later, lay in his bed, had primed her for the canny grasp of politics she possessed today.

  As she got up, Brailen hastily buried his nose in his book. On the wall by the stairs, above a painting of brooding Faradil Forest, Drucilamere pushed a trigger hidden among the frieze. A concealed trapdoor grated open on a yawning space. The little fool of an apprentice immediately jumped up. Judging by his gawp, he had not known it was there.

  “Quite the trusted one, aren’t we?” she mocked.

  “Jordayne,” Drucilamere murmured. He took a candle from Santesh’s desk and disappeared into the void. Pouty Carrot Hair made to follow until Kaztyne cleared his throat in prohibition. Jordayne sauntered over and through the opening, careful to rustle her skirts in a most provocative way.

  “She’s not even part of this guild,” she heard the rude boy complain.

  “Lady Jordayne is anything and everything in Myklaan, more so than Shah Ordosteen, and you had best remember that, my lad,” Trove’s distinctive rasp answered. The dear man had always known she would amount to more than a courtier, had lavished his knowledge and attentions on her when her father was too busy preparing her younger brother, Matisse, for the role of Satrap of San Xalid to bother with a daughter.

  “Upsetting the apprentices, Jordayne?” Druce asked as she stood so close her hip touched his thigh.

  “Would I be me if I didn’t upset every male within arm’s reach? You seem to have a reasonable stockpile of porrin.”

  The dark room was lined with shelves that stretched from floor to ceiling, about a third of them packed with earthy-sweet porrin leaves, fragrant dried flowers and jars of ground seed. She glanced towards the corner stairway that descended to a series of similar storerooms carved into the damp rock beneath the guildhall.

  “This is it, I’m afraid,” Druce said, following her line of sight. He set the candle on a dusty shelf. “The cellars are empty of porrin, although they are keeping some fine wine from your family’s province in top condition.”

  This sparse supply was scarcely what Wyn deq Kaelor would have had in mind when he built the palatial guild. There were rooms enough for thirty mages, and storage space capable of holding more porrin than Verdaan produced in a year. The heady smell of the herb should have permeated the entire hall.

  “How much is this, in practical terms?” she asked, watching the shadows of the plants leap over the shelves.

  “For three mages, this supply would last eight-days. For five…they would be inadequate if Myklaan is ever threatened.”

  Jordayne frowned. For six major moons, the quantities of porrin delivered by the Verdaani merchant had been dwindling, and that in spite of the rather hefty price remaining the same. At first, her magical lackwits had believed Raj’s rather improbable tales about production problems and border security. When the mages had chosen to report it, just two months past, she and her brother Matisse had taken a rather different view. Delivery of only two thirds of the usual porrin supply warranted investigation. Jordayne had ordered Raj followed. Unfortunately, their supplier had been on his way home and they had had to wait an entire month for his return, when surveillance of both the magical and ordinary kind revealed he stopped at a bordello prior to his appointment at the guild. He had emerged, hours later, with a satisfied smirk and a considerably lighter pack. The intriguing question was why. The mages, granted a heavy subsidy from the Shah, paid vastly more for the drug than the black market of commoners ever could.

  She could have ordered the double-dealing merchant arrested that day while he basked in the throes of an imaginative passion. Instead, she had dared Drucilamere in his magical trance to witness it to the end and later replicate it in her bedchamber. But while she had no qualms convicting a man on the say so of a mage, the rulers of Verdaan, lacking access to any but the most rudimentary magic, might not be so favourably inclined. She was, after all, attempting to avert hostilities, not promote them. So, she had exercised patience, one of her few virtues, and plotted a trap to catch him in the act, because, so far, a plausible explanation for his behaviour eluded them.

  “Do you think this is Verdaan’s way to ensure we are on equal footing, in preparation for an attack?” she asked lightly, closing the door. She had already discussed the idea with Matisse. Their conclusions ha
d been identical. More numerous, superbly trained, and better funded, Myklaan’s soldiers could not only repel an attack from Verdaan but conquer their rustic northern-western neighbour without undue effort. It was holding the land they acquired, replete with hostile swamps, craggy hills, and dim forests, that would prove testing.

  “It is not Verdaan I think we should be worried about.”

  That caught her attention. “What has this to do with Terlaan?”

  “That I cannot say, except that Trove has been imbibing the porrin on a regular basis. It is the only way he gets any rest. He dreams the mage dreams, but they are tumbled visions without form. His eyes are haunted when he wakes, and all he remembers is the future shows no trace of the mages in Myklaan. The world is changing, he says, but the specifics elude him.”

  She grew quiet, contemplative, as she considered asking whether the disease tainted Trove’s visions. It took a mere moment to dismiss the idea. She knew Trove every bit as well as she knew Drucilamere. Better even. “And since you cannot envisage Verdaan as a threat, you conclude the danger lies in Terlaan?” she said at last, shaking her head. “It is unfounded speculation.”

  “The mahktashaan outnumber and outpower the mages, yet Myklaan prospers where Terlaan ekes out an existence. I find it incredible they have not attacked before now.”

  “Our histories are full of less than amiable encounters. We have always prevailed, if with hardship. While Terlaan hardly struggles to survive, their resources are insufficient to wage a protracted war,” she countered. With barren, rocky plains forming most of the realm’s interior, they would run out of provisions before they inflicted any lasting damage.

  “With a powerful mahktashaan army they could devastate us in eight-days. Sooner, if we have no porrin. And your patronage of those inclined towards artistic pursuits is depleting our stock of apprentices. Brailen was the best we could find, and he’s shaping up to be a sorry specimen if ever there was one.” He picked a packet of sterile porrin seeds off the shelf.

  “You can hardly blame the young fools, darling. A lifetime of exacting study, wasting away under carefully meted out quantities of porrin can hardly compete with the romantic life of an artist struggling to achieve recognition, especially when the latter so casually imbibes the bliss for inspiration. But there is yet another possibility to consider.” He frowned. She could tell his thoughts headed across the seas. It was not the direction she had in mind. She stood on tiptoes and kissed him. “Do try to think, darling,” she said, knowing exactly what his mind would be on after her touch. “With no direct heirs to the Myklaani throne, I should have thought the mages would be looking in only one direction.” She held a finger to his lips, shushing his words. “Trove is waiting for us. You can astound me with any further deductions tonight.”

  She brushed past Drucilamere as he released the catch of the hidden door.

  “What were you doing in there,” Trove said. “Leaving an old man to his imagination?”

  “Trust me, Trove, your imagination couldn’t even come close,” Jordayne said.

  The annoying Brailen had given up any pretence of reading. Unable to decide if his attention should rest on the porrin seed Drucilamere had withdrawn or Jordayne’s bosom, he really did seem to be the disappointment Druce claimed.

  “Attend here,” Drucilamere called the apprentices, showing more than a hint of annoyance. He tipped the dark seed into a mortar and set Brailen to pounding it to dust, admonishing him for sloppy work when the apprentice complained his arm was aching so.

  “What in Vae’oeldin’s name were you thinking by admitting that one?” Jordayne asked Trove.

  “I can’t remember,” the mage replied. “It must have happened when I was under porrin’s bliss.”

  Shom had the responsibility of mixing the powder with water.

  “A perfect blend,” Drucilamere praised, taking the red potion.

  “Here, let me,” Jordayne said, rolling her eyes at Brailen’s jealous pout. The lad had to be at least sixteen years, yet he affected the mannerisms of one much younger. She reassumed her seat on the chair’s arm, and held the cup to Trove’s lips, dispensing small sips until her mage’s head rocked back, his unfocused eyes opened wide and his limbs slackened. A small gurgle escaped his throat and spittle dribbled from the corner of his mouth. Tenderly, Jordayne wiped it away with the top layer of her skirt. Taking Trove’s hands, Drucilamere and Kaztyne closed their eyes and hummed Raj’s name. The focusing ritual drew her mind back to the one time she had persuaded a mage to use his magic to heighten her pleasure in bed. There would be no repeat of that particular ecstasy with porrin in such short supply.

  She searched Trove’s face for any sign of him slipping too far into the bliss. The mages knew their business, but her shrewd mentor was a shell of his former self. She felt a pang of grief that his time in this world was drawing to a close; forced herself to search instead for signs of the strain that indicated he was returning to them.

  It was some minutes before he blinked, longer until he was able to stammer a response. “T-Raj has j-just left E-Emry Village. His p-packs seem lighter.”

  Which meant he had already unloaded porrin. For his growing audacity, the merchant deserved a special welcome this afternoon. “Can you scry him when he gets here?” she asked, loathe to place this additional burden on a sick man, but knowing if Druce was right about the threat to the mages they had no choice. They could not risk Raj evading the disguised guard Matisse had set at the gate to follow him. Nor could they wait another moon to try again. The porrin merchant must face the consequences of his deceit.

  “For you, Jordayne, anything.”

  “He talks like one enamoured of you,” Druce said, a slight frown visible beneath his amused smile. “And here I was thinking him the only one with influence over our wayward Lady.”

  “Mind your tongue, boy,” Trove retorted.

  Jordayne leant across Trove and kissed him on the lips. “Well aren’t you? Weren’t you always, right from the time you taught me the pleasures of the bedroom?

  “You have no shame, girl. Nor a heart,” Trove said, pulling her back for another kiss.

  “Shame is akin to regret. Not something I like to waste passion on, but you shall always occupy a special place in my heart,” she said, rising. “Now see if you can make things right with Druce. I wouldn’t want him to miss the treat I promised. And do see he brings some of that wine he mentioned.” And with that she walked right past Drucilamere and up the stairs with the tinkle of jewellery, leaving Brailen gawping, the other mages politely trying to pretend they had missed the exchange and Drucilamere standing dumfounded, opening and closing his mouth with undisguised desire in his eyes.

  Chapter Six

  Two severed heads, sitting atop spikes high on the wall beneath the blazing sun, was not a sight Kordahla expected to have to endure. Twenty sleek crows pecking strips of flesh from flaccid cheeks was a nightmare which would torment her to the end of her days. As she turned away from the arched window, breath held to avoid a whiff of bloody decay, and fingers over her tight lips to keep the bile from rising into her throat, she realised she ought to have known better. Father, in his infinite generosity, liked to punish her mischiefs thrice over. Forgoing the fresh air she was craving after languishing forgotten in her rooms the entire afternoon, she lay on the plush daybed, hugged one of the embroidered cushions to her stomach and tried to imagine ways she might avoid being traded off as Ahkdul’s brood mare. While her riotous imagination gushed scenarios, the only viable alternative seemed to involve death, unfortunately hers. As romantic a notion as a handsome Myklaani prince finding her sprawled on the flowery bedcover, her dying breath saved for a kiss, might be, she was not ready to enter Vae’oenka’s realm. She pursed her lips. Neither was she prepared to spend the rest of her life as a chattel to the notorious pervert.

  When the door to her rooms opened, she merely turned her head. The only two people who ever entered without knocking were Father and Vi
nsant. She smiled as her younger brother bounded onto the burgundy woollen rug, clutching something beneath a blue coat it was far too warm for him to be wearing.

  “I hope you didn’t see fit to bring the grapper into my apartment. I’ve suffered more than enough gruesome for a lifetime,” she said, sitting up as he juggled his secret stash.

  “So you looked out of the window then? I came to warn you not to,” Vinsant replied. He wriggled three books out of the coat and deposited them on the low walnut table by the daybed. “Get rid of your maids, will you? I want to talk.”

  “I sent them to pick some flowers,” Kordahla said, reaching for the top book, a weighty treatise on international relations. It looked decidedly boring, but she had to admit Vinsant had, as usual, chosen a relevant topic. “Their inquisitiveness would have made anyone think an execution was the height of entertainment.”

  Vinsant’s guilty look near crushed her heart. He couldn’t have intuited how she felt because he knelt on the bed to get a better look out of the window. “Awesome.” The little monster had the decency to start when she squeaked. “Er, I mean gross. Father says porrin is destroying Terlaan. The mahktashaan arrest more and more addicts every day, but for every execution two more seek solace in its bliss.”