Shadow & Flame

by Mindee Arnett

  Clash didn’t move. Neither did Foster. Whatever they tried to do, it wouldn’t matter. Berit hadn’t become a warden because of his brains. He grabbed Henry’s wrist just above the shackle and squeezed, driving his fingers into the tender spots beneath the heel of Henry’s hand. Henry let go of Berit’s neck with a shriek.

  But that wasn’t enough to satisfy the warden. Keeping hold of Henry’s wrist, he raised the whip again and struck the man across the legs. Henry stumbled sideways and fell, his head smacking the side of the shaft. Berit rained down more blows on the man’s head, shoulders, and back, tearing through the already tattered fabric of Henry’s clothes. Red welts appeared on his pale skin, soon breaking open to weep blood.

  Clash watched, silent and still.

  “Mercy!” Henry cried, the word nearly incomprehensible around his sobbing. “Mercy!”

  Help him, the woman spoke in Clash’s mind.

  We’re already dead men, Clash replied.

  No, not yet. Not if you choose . . . remember who you were . . . who you are.

  Something stirred inside him, a feeling as long forgotten as his name. Anger.

  “Help me . . . mercy . . . help . . .” Henry’s voice was weakening as he shrank further and further down in a futile attempt to escape the blows. He would pass out soon, and it would be over. But the shock might kill him. Or the infection that would set in after.

  The scars in Clash’s back ached. Anger throbbed in his chest. Emotions he’d long buried crawled up inside him, pushing their way to the surface. Like a floodgate opening.

  Crack, crack, crack—

  Clash, with lightning speed, reached out and grabbed the end of the whip before it could strike Henry again. Pain prickled across his palm, but he barely felt it through his calluses. Clenching his fingers, he yanked, pulling the end of the whip free of Berit’s hand with stunning ease.

  Berit gaped at him, shocked by the sudden change.

  “He’s had enough.” The sound of command filled Clash’s voice.

  “Why, you—” Berit sputtered as he grabbed for the sword strapped across his back, pulling it free in one quick movement.

  At the sight of that naked steel, some long-forgotten instinct came over Clash, and he stepped toward Berit, out of the sword’s reach in the cramped quarters. Clash seized the warden’s wrist and wrenched the blade out of his hand, letting it fall uselessly to the ground. Then he swung, the punch landing square against Berit’s stomach and sending him into a stoop. Clash followed with an uppercut, landing it on the underside of Berit’s jaw. The big man stumbled backward, teeth clacking. Clash moved in for another strike, but Berit had overcome his shock and managed to duck, the blow glancing off him. He countered, but Clash was ready, sidestepping the punch with ease.

  They began to fight in earnest, trading blows—Clash hindered by the small space, Berit hindered by his size. Then at last Clash saw his opportunity. Berit charged toward him, and Clash ducked and rolled, sliding past the warden to come up just behind him. He’d snatched the whip on the way, but rather than strike the warden, he swung it around Berit’s neck before he could turn around. He pulled it taut.

  And squeezed.

  “Help . . . me . . . ,” Berit said, his eyes fixed on Foster, who still hadn’t moved. He watched the man dying with an almost eager look, the kind Berit usually wore at the sight of others’ suffering. The warden had taught his charges well, it seemed.

  Berit sank to the ground, and Clash went with him, pulling harder on the whip. A kind of frenzy had come over him, the desperation he’d long battled rising up to seize control.

  Not so dead after all, the woman said inside his mind, the sound like a contented purr.

  No, he thought, feeling the last of the warden’s life slip away.

  Clash let go of the whip and stood, his sides heaving from the exertion, his head spinning. Foster glanced at Berit’s lifeless eyes bulging in his skull, then he turned and fled up the shaft, screaming at the top of his lungs. Clash considered going after him, but saw no point. He couldn’t escape, no matter how many guards he killed. The only way out of the mine aside from the lifts was a ladder built into the sheer side of the mountain, one with rungs set too far apart for any prisoner to reach with the shackles on their wrists and legs. And none of the guards carried keys to those shackles either. No, there was no escaping the three hells of trouble he would have to pay for killing the warden.

  I’m ready, Clash thought, and he stood there, arms resting at his sides, while the guards came and seized him.

  He expected for it to end right there; when they didn’t kill him, Clash assumed it could only be because they wanted to make an example of him instead, lest the other prisoners get ideas. But he didn’t fight. The anger that had seized him was gone, leaving him a dead man walking once more.

  They brought him to the yard, the vast room in the center of the mine where the inmates ate and slept. The guards lowered the metal cage hanging from the ceiling in the center of the yard like some macabre chandelier and shoved him inside it. The gibbet was small, the metal bars pressing against him on all sides, preventing any movement.

  As they hoisted the cage back into the air, the guards below began making bets on how long he would survive.

  “Serves him right,” one of them said. “And it’ll keep the rest of them from daring.”

  “Yeah, but we’ll all have to suffer the smell once he finally dies and starts to rot,” another replied.

  “All the better to drive the lesson home, if you ask me.”

  “I wonder how long it’ll take for him to beg for us to just kill him. That’s Clash, ain’t it? I’ve been looking forward to hearing that one scream just once.”

  You’ll look forward to it still, Clash thought. Silence remained his only weapon. He would wield it to the last.

  Still, as the days went by, it became more and more difficult to maintain his silence as the agony spread through his body from lack of water and being trapped so long in one position. His throat burned, tongue swollen and aching. Then the cramps started, first in his legs but slowly spreading throughout his body. His head pounded with every breath he took. His thoughts started to slip, until he could no longer tell the difference between waking and sleeping. For the first time, he prayed for death, for release.

  You’re too stubborn to die, the woman spoke in his mind. She refused to give him peace, even now. But it would come in the end. Death comes for us all. It was the one thing he could be sure of in this wretched life. Still he lingered. Until one day, he noticed voices speaking down below, the words rising up to him through the silent yard like a prayer. The prisoners were gone, off to their worksites for the day.

  “Who is that up there?” The speaker had a strange, melodic voice, unfamiliar. But the man’s accent tugged at Clash’s memory.

  “No one, my lord,” a guard answered. “Just a prisoner who got it in his head to kill a warden.”

  “A prisoner managed to kill a guard?” The speaker sounded both amused and incredulous. “I thought they’d be too weak for that. Was he new to the prison?”

  “No, sir. Been here nigh over a year. And he’s Rimish, so he got the very best of treatment, if you know what I mean.”

  “Yes, I do,” the man replied, sounding cold now. “The very worst, you’re saying.”

  “No offense intended, my lord. I know you’re on our side, but still I hate Rime and all those that come from it.” The guard spit on the ground in emphasis.

  “Hated enemy or not, it seems wasteful to let an able worker die. You know how important the nenir is. How old is the prisoner?”

  “Beats me. Youngish, but it’s too hard to tell once they’ve been here awhile. They all start to look the same.”

  “Let him down. I wish to find out. I sense something . . . unusual about him.”

  Clash closed his eyes as the cage began to move. Pain lanced through his body, and he kept his lips pressed together to hold in the scream.

  �
�How old are you?” the speaker with the strange voice said once the cage had reached the bottom.

  Clash didn’t respond, his eyes and mouth still closed.

  The speaker sighed. How old are you?

  This time Clash heard the question inside his mind. His eyes flashed open, shock bringing him back to his senses for the first time in days. It had been so long since he’d felt something like that. Magic, wilder magic. He stared at the man beyond the cage, not recognizing him. He was short and broad-shouldered, his shorn hair colorless and his eyes like black beads on his face.

  “My name is Clash,” he said, his voice reedy and dry. He started to cough.

  That’s not what I asked. The man, a lord judging by his velvet tunic, stared at him, not speaking, but Clash could feel him inside his head. Rooting around, digging. He wanted to push him out, to scream at the violation, but he didn’t have the strength for it. Just speaking his name had robbed him of it.

  “Show me your hand,” the lord said.

  Clash frowned and shook his head. He didn’t want to show this man anything. What he wanted was to be left alone, to die, to know peace at last.

  Show me your hand. The voice rang like a gong inside Clash’s mind, and against his will he felt his hand slip through the bars of the cage, muscles protesting.

  The lord grabbed his fingers and pulled down, exposing Clash’s grime-blackened palm. Refusing to be deterred by it, the man spit on Clash’s hand, and then, using his own sleeve, scrubbed his palm clean.

  “In the name of all the gods both living and dead,” the lord said, exhaling in disbelief.

  “What is it?” The guard leaned in for a closer look. “What . . . what is that?”

  Clash stared at his palm, seeing the symbol branded there, a wheel with eight spokes set inside a triangle.

  “Get the keys to this cage,” the lord said, letting go of Clash’s hand and motioning to the guard. “Get it now and get him out of there. Call for a healer.”

  “But why, my lord? Who is he?”

  The man drew a breath, his chest expanding as if he needed the extra space to hold his astonishment. “This, my good man, is none other than Corwin Tormane. The high prince of Rime.”

  3

  Kate

  KATE FOUND SIGNE IN THE solarium of the governor’s mansion, as she’d known she would. Her friend spent nearly all her time there anymore. Today Signe rested on one of the recessed benches in the windows of the circular room, her face raised to the glass and the hazy glow of dusk in the distance. The padded benches offered loungers a comfortable and unimpeded view of the city beyond, stone buildings surrounded by cobbled streets crowded with people heading home for the night. A large table occupied the center of the room, glass vials filled with various powders as well as instruments for weighing and measuring scattered across its surface, all of it covered in a thin layer of dust.

  Signe didn’t look up from her position on the bench farthest from the door as Kate entered. “Hello, Kate.”

  She rolled her eyes, not bothering to ask how Signe knew it was her and not someone else. It wasn’t magic. Signe wasn’t a wilder or magist, only a woman from the Esh Islands of unknown birth and background. Still, she possessed many talents, including senses keen enough to provoke envy in any assassin or spy—and one secret that made her the most important woman in the Rising.

  “Package for you,” Kate said, crossing the room. “From Norgard.”

  “Dal?” Signe looked over her shoulder, her languid position on the bench tensed into excitement. She swung her legs over the edge and made to stand up, but Kate waved her back down, reaching her before she could rise and shoving the parcel into her hands.

  “I’m not an invalid, you know.” Signe’s reproachful look was sharp enough to cut.

  Kate sighed, inwardly scolding herself. No, Signe wasn’t an invalid, but walking hurt her, even though she tried to hide it from everyone. With her magic, Kate felt every painful step her friend took—all thanks to the irreparable damage done to the bones in her foot by a madman who fancied himself a god. No, don’t trivialize it, Kate reminded herself. Rendborne, the Nameless One, did indeed have godlike powers. He was something to be feared—especially as he was still out there, somewhere. She glanced at her flame tattoos but didn’t touch them. Rendborne wasn’t responsible for all of them, but certainly for the ones most important to her. Every day she renewed her vow to kill him, to make him pay for what he’d done. There had been no sign or word about the man since before their journey to Seva.

  “He sent it with the caravan,” Kate said, her throat tightening at the longing look on Signe’s face as she traced a finger over her name written on top of the box by Dal’s hand.

  Signe nodded, not looking up. She also made no move to open it.

  “Don’t you want to see what’s inside?”

  Scowling, Signe set the box on the bench next to her and leaned back on the pillow tucked into the window nook, her golden-blond hair framed about her face. “What does it matter? Dal isn’t inside it.”

  Kate drew a slow breath, her sympathy fleeing her in an instant. At least he lives, she wanted to say, then chided herself for it. She would feel the same in Signe’s position.

  Signe looked up at Kate, her gaze cutting once more. “And neither is there a key to help me escape my prison.”

  Kate arched an eyebrow, not needing her magic to sense that Signe was spoiling for a fight. “How can you be sure if you don’t open it? There are magists in Norgard. Maybe there’s some bit of magic that will turn you very, very small and you can sneak out beneath the door. Just make sure no one steps on you on the way out. Or that the cats don’t make you their plaything.”

  Signe stuck out her tongue, a little of her old spark coming back to her. Kate was glad to see it. The past few months had dampened the life in her, smothering it slowly, until her old friend was almost unrecognizable. Signe’s so-called imprisonment was mostly by choice and certainly by necessity—she was the only person in the world who held the secret to the black-powder formula essential for the bullets used in the revolvers. The guns were Bonner’s legacy, an invention that, fortunately, some of the other earthists in the Rising had finally been able to replicate since his death. But not the bullets. Ordinary black powder, the kind used in the single-shot rifles and pistols so common in the rest of the world, didn’t work in the revolvers. Without Signe’s knowledge, the Rising would never have been able to hold Farhold and win this peace.

  Wilder magic could do a lot of damage, it was true, but the nonmagical population far outnumbered them, and a wilder was just as vulnerable to a sword thrust, arrow strike, or bullet as anyone else. And when magic met magic, whether wilder or magist, the two forces effectively canceled out, rendering the armies essentially magic-less against one another—and thus at the mercy of conventional weapons. In the end it was simple math. The Rising had revolvers and the bullets necessary to fire them. The high king’s army did not.

  Now, with peace looming, Signe’s knowledge was more important than ever. They couldn’t risk the enemy capturing her—or worse. Already there had been more than a dozen attempts on her life. So many that now she had no choice but to remain here, inside these chambers, under the watchful eye of an entire squadron of soldiers and wilders.

  Kate shuddered, not needing to sense Signe’s feelings to understand them. She would hate it as much as her friend did. Then again, she’d rather see her friend miserable than dead.

  “If there was any magic in there, you never would’ve let me have it,” Signe said, resigned. “So no, I’m not all that interested in what might be inside.”

  “Suit yourself.” Kate turned and sat down at the table, pushing back some of the accruements as she did so and sending up a cloud of dust. It had been weeks since Signe had needed to mix her black powder. With the fighting at an end, the storerooms were brimming over with ammunition. Kate supposed the lack of work was making Signe’s situation even harder to bear.

&nbs
p; Hoping to salvage this visit, Kate said, “Dal will return, you know. In time.” The moment she spoke, she regretted it. She’d said it like there was some kind of guarantee, but there weren’t any guarantees to be had in a world at war. Despite King Edwin’s promises, Dal’s life was in danger every minute he spent in Norgard. All it would take was a drop of poison placed in his cup during a meal or a quick dagger to the throat while he slept. Of course, the Norgard ambassadors here at Farhold faced the same threat, and indeed, if anything happened to Dal, they would be killed quickly in response, but what would it matter? It wouldn’t bring Dal back. Just as nothing would bring back Corwin. Then again, she supposed, killing Rendborne would still bring her great satisfaction—and closure. Or so she hoped.

  “Was there anyone interesting among the new arrivals?” Signe asked after a moment.

  Kate nodded, her thoughts turning to both Colin Davies and Master Janus. She told Signe about the former first and then confessed her worries about the latter.

  Signe let out a sigh as Kate finished and slowly got to her feet. “Perhaps it’s best if you just leave the man alone. For Raith’s sake if no one else’s.”

  Bewildered, Kate frowned up at her friend. “How can you say that? Janus could be a magist spy sent to bring us down from the inside.”

  “Or he could be the kind and generous man Raith always describes him to be.” Signe made her way across the room to a side table where a bottle of wine waited. She managed to hide most of her limp, but inside she cringed each time she set the foot down, the sensation like walking on shards of glass. Kate looked away, trying to cut off her magic, but it was no good. She was too attuned to Signe to ignore the pain. The guilt ate away at her. Just another reason to find Rendborne and end him. She’d been content to wait until rumors of him resurfaced, too busy fighting the Rimish armies to make it her primary concern. But with peace settling around them, that contentment was quickly fading.

  Looking back at the sound of Signe uncorking the bottle, Kate said, “If he is, then fine, but I need to make certain. I’ve never felt something like it. His mind was so empty.”