Memories of Ash (The Sunbolt Chronicles Book 2) (25 page)

“I’ll see to it he does in future,” a woman replies, her voice cool, the words touched with the faint lilt of the eastern Kingdoms.

“Indeed.”

Both voices are terribly familiar. I plow to a stop two stairs from the ground floor, as a pair of mages descend the final steps to the hallway. I know them, know them both—

Blackflame rounds the corner, moving toward the building’s side exit. Seeing him is like watching a dream waver between fiction and truth, memory and reality. He is exactly as I remember, tall and imposing, with a mane of golden hair that falls about his shoulders in thick waves and frames a face as cold and dangerous as steel. “You there,” he says sharply, spotting me. “Go up to my rooms. I need the front room cleaned.”

I drop my gaze to the stone steps, nod jerkily. The woman beside Blackflame has gone completely still. I don’t look at her. Can’t. I’ve seen her face a half-dozen times in Stormwind’s lake, but now I can’t raise my eyes to her. Because even though everything would change if she actually recognized me, I want her to— I so desperately want her to cross the distance between us and reach out her hand to me, speak my name.

So I don’t look.

“Yes, master,” I say instead, voice hoarse. I dip a clumsy curtsy, still balanced on the stairs.

“Stay with her,” Blackflame says to my mother.

“Yes,” she says distantly. “This way, girl.” She gestures up the stairs.

Blackflame departs with a muttered word to my mother, striding past without another glance. I follow Hotaru Brokensword as she sweeps elegantly upstairs, her kimono rippling over the steps behind her.

“There,” Brokensword says as I hesitate in the doorway. She points to a pool of vomit by the far window.

Any hopes that she might truly have recognized me die away. It’s been five years. I’ve grown from child to woman, and even if she still thinks me alive, she would never expect to see me here, in servants’ clothing.

I glance around the room once, taking in the opulent furnishings, the luxurious tapestries hanging on the walls — a Northland tradition. Tapestries make a room hot in a country like this; at least they do ten months of the year. A young man no older than I sits hunched against the wall to my left, knees pulled up to his chest and face turned away. He wears a charcoal gray pants and tunic set, the sleeves cut short to bare his arms. From the elbow down they are covered in great black, crisscrossing lines, as if he had once tangled his arms in a burning web.

Source slave.

“Girl,” my mother says, an edge to her voice. “You’re here to clean.”

I jerk my attention back to her. “Yes, mistress. Let me fetch some cloths from the closet.”

“Be quick.”

I hurry to the supply closet down the hall, grabbing a bucket half-filled with soapy water and a stack of cleaning cloths.

I let myself back into the room quietly. The boy still huddles against the wall, though now he clutches a blanket around himself, trembling. Perhaps he was trembling before too, but the shaking of the blanket can’t be missed. I nod to him and cross the room to the vomit. It’s his, of course. No doubt he tried to get to the window, but didn’t make it in time. What spell did Blackflame cast, that he would make his source slave sick to achieve it? Why didn’t I sense anything while I cleaned and went about stealing keys? But the room must be warded, of course. And Blackflame doesn’t care how the boy feels, so long as he serves his purpose.

As I clean, the boy watches me, his eyes dark and … almost blank. From the set of his jaw, I know he’s in pain. But he makes no sound, only watches me. My mother has disappeared into the connecting room.

I finish drying the floor and bundle up the dirty cloths together. Crossing the room, I pause at the door. I can’t just leave.

“Are you— will you be all right?” I ask, pitching my voice low.

He tilts his head, looks at me. No. No, he won’t. He doesn’t say the words, doesn’t need to, and he’s not going to lie either.

“Is there anything I can do?”

His lips twitch, somewhere between a smile and a grimace. “No,” he whispers. “What I need you cannot give me.”

Freedom. Safety. Kindness.

I stand by the door, and now I’m shaking again, impotent with fury and sorrow and helplessness. I’m here to help Stormwind. But what about this boy, this source slave? He can’t survive long. He’s being used too brutally. But who else will help him? He knows I can’t— or won’t. He knows he’s alone and trapped, his future clearly laid out, stark and ugly and short.

Brokensword steps through the connecting door. “Are you done?”

I jerk my gaze to her, then look down. I don’t recognize her anymore, this woman who would allow a source slave — a
boy
— to be used so cruelly. This woman who kept my Promise secret, knowing that I might one day pay the price this boy has, and yet shows him neither mercy nor compassion. An eternity ago in the Burnt Lands, I promised myself I would speak to her if I could. But now? Now I have no words for her, cannot begin to comprehend the chasm that lies between us.

“Very good,” she says. I remain beside the door, rooted there by the truths of this room. “You may go,” she says, gesturing sharply.

I glance toward the boy. He watches me with his old, old eyes. I don’t dare address him again under my mother’s eye. Instead, I step out, closing the door behind me with clumsy fingers.

I move to the supply closet in a daze, leaving the dirty cloths bundled together on the ground. I take the stairs down, go out the side entrance. The sun shines brightly outside. It is barely noon, and students congregate in groups, laughing and calling to each other as they prepare to leave the Mekteb for the Festival.

Blackflame has long since disappeared to wherever he is going. Upstairs, my mother will go about her duties, whatever they may be, while the boy sits shivering against the wall.

I start along the path, walking blindly, my legs quivering slightly beneath my weight, as if they were not made of muscle and bone at all, but something softer, weaker. My breath comes in quick, hard gasps.

Why am I so upset? She’s here. With him. The last time I saw her, she was walking in Blackflame’s gardens, unaware that he had imprisoned me. Now she’s come to Fidanya with him. I thought she didn’t see him for what he is, that she stood beside him and supported him and trusted him because he’d tricked her somehow. But I was only deceiving myself. Brokensword is no fool. She sees Blackflame for precisely what he is, and she joined him. She cares no more for me than she does the source slave — the source slave that could have been me. Fury courses through me with a suddenness that leaves me shaking in a completely different way. I want to scream at her. How
could
she?

I’ve wanted to speak with her for so long, thinking that she would remind me of who I am … that she could help me ground myself in the life I used to have, reclaim those parts of me I lost when I killed Kol. But I’ll never get those pieces back, and my mother can’t help me. Not when she has lost the person
she
was five years ago, before my father died and she left me to fend for myself.

I will not let seeing her shake me so. The woman I just met isn’t my mother anymore. She birthed me, and mothered me, and then left me. I’ve been reborn of fire now, mothered by magic and ashes, and I do not need her anymore.

“Rehan! Wait!”
 

I don’t register her voice until Esra is almost upon me. I blink at her uncertainly as she puffs to a stop before me. “Sorry,” I say.

“Did something happen? I saw you come down and go out the door in a rush…
.
Are you crying?”

“No, of course not.” I swipe at my eyes and find them surprisingly damp.

Her face softens and she touches my arm. “What happened?”

“I— um … Arch Mage Blackflame wanted me to clean up a mess in his rooms.”

“He did?” Esra frowns. “I thought he brought his own servant for that!”

“Couldn’t find him, I guess. Anyway, I saw the source slave. Blackflame used him too hard for a spell and he threw up.”

Esra purses her lips, looks down at the ground. “I’m sorry,” she says finally. “You’ll get used to it in time. Mages have their own rules, and they do things their way. As much as they say we’re all the same, they don’t really seem to believe it.”

I cross my arms over my chest. “No,” I agree
.

“Come.” She tugs my elbow until she can thread her arm through mine. “Walk back with me. I left my things out. I’ll get everything put away and we’ll go out to the Festival together, find something to laugh about.”

We walk back to Susulu Hall together and gather the bucket and scrubbing brush Esra left in the middle of the hall, taking them downstairs to store in the basement closet. I collect my pack while Esra sets the closet in order
.

“Did you talk to her?” Esra gestures toward Yilmaz’s door.

I nod. “She didn’t know anything about me. Said I could work here today and we’d sort it out tomorrow.”

Esra makes a face. “I hope they sort you back here again.”

I smile, but my heart isn’t in this deception. Part of me wishes I could work with Esra, and another part wishes I could walk upstairs, take the source slave by the hand, and start running again. The rest of me is just so very tired. I say only, “I hope so.”

As we leave Susulu Hall, Esra nods to my pack still bundled in my old skirt. “You don’t have a room yet, either?”

“No.”

“Did you tell your uncle you’d be staying here?”

I blink, remember the lies I’d told her yesterday, the groundwork I’d laid so I might be able to visit the Degaths. “I was hoping to,” I say tentatively.

“When do you need to meet your friend?”

I squint at the sky, as if gauging the time from the sun. “About an hour?”

Esra laughs. “Then let’s go!”

We change our clothes in her room, Esra opting for a crimson tunic and saffron yellow
selvar
. I pull on my spare tunic and skirt set, eliciting a sideways look from her. She is kind enough not to remark on either their dull colors or their utterly foreign appearance.

“Do you want to leave your pack with me?”

It would certainly be easier, but there are too many things I can’t afford to have stolen. I already know how easy it is to steal from here. “Will it be safe? It’s all I have.”

Esra’s features darken. “Someone was talking about a few things disappearing from the upstairs rooms this morning—nothing too valuable, but I don’t know. I keep the door locked, but if one of my roommates forgets…
.
”

“I’ll carry it.”

Esra nods.

Ready, we meet up with a number of Esra’s friends waiting on the cushions of a small common area. There are trays of cheese and flatbreads set out on a low table to the side. After a round of pleasantries and introductions, and a quick bite to eat while we wait for two more girls to arrive, we set forth. It’s a short walk to the back gate, easily visible from the building itself. A mage sits on a throne-like cushioned chair to the side of the gate, a cloth sunshade erected over him. He glances over our group disinterestedly. I pretend not to notice, instead asking Esra what her favorite part of the Festival is.

She’s in the middle of telling me about the performances she hopes to catch tonight when one of the four lycan guards posted by the gate steps forward, pointing at me. “You, there. I haven’t seen you before.”

Our little group jerks to a halt. I smile, focusing on keeping my breathing calm. “Oh, I’m Rehan.”

“She’s new,” Esra volunteers. “Works with me in Susulu Hall.”

I nod in agreement, hoping to God the guard can’t sense my tension, the sudden dampness of my palms. His eyes flick to the pack slung over my shoulder. It seemed wisest to hide it in plain sight, but now I’m not so sure. The other servants shift closer to me, training their gazes on the guard expectantly. There’s no question in their minds that I’m one of them.

“That’s right,” one of the other guards says. “I saw Osman Bey walking her there — yesterday, was it?”

I flash a grateful smile to the guard who’d spoken and nod in agreement, silently blessing the boys and their prank.