Memories of Ash (The Sunbolt Chronicles Book 2) (32 page)

I lower my gaze to the floor, trying to look bored as my thoughts race. I don’t want any more mages in Shahmaran Hall than are already here. Nor do I want anyone else to focus their attention here before I’ve gotten Stormwind out.

“Will you want to send a messenger?” Kemal asks.

The stocky mage eyes him with disdain. “Hardly. She will want a full explanation of what has been done. I will go to her myself.”

“I’ll remain behind to fix this,” the gray-bearded mage says, gesturing to the window.

“Bekir will escort you,” Kemal says, nodding to the stocky mage. “I’ll stay here with the other two.”

The stocky mage slides me a glance. He expects me to argue, because I was the one who “found” the flaw. I frown at him. “But—”

“That will do nicely,” he interrupts. With a dismissive nod, he strides from the room, Bekir following after him.

“You can reseal this window?” Kemal asks the gray-bearded mage.

“Of course I can.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to keep it as it is, and post a guard here, until it can be assessed by the First Mage? She might be curious to see it herself.”

Graybeard hesitates, clearly torn between what he’d promised the stocky mage, and Kemal’s practicality. “I said that I would.”

“Perhaps,” Kemal says, with fraying patience, “it would behoove us all if you took another look at the prisoner’s cell, now that we have some idea what she might have done.”

“Ah, yes. That would be wise,” Graybeard says, then draws himself up. “If you would lead the way.”

Kemal tilts his head. “First, allow me to fetch a guard for the window.”

Graybeard frowns. “Of course.”

With a slight bow that strikes me as sarcastic, Kemal departs.

I wander to another window, scanning the grounds. A patrol hurryies past a building across the way, and that is all. The remaining patrols have moved farther out. Smoke still hangs in the air over the far walls, outlining the tops of the surrounding buildings. Scarlet flares rise up, hanging in the sky above in crimson streaks before gradually dissipating. I squint, trying to make out a shadow passing above them.

“What is
that?
” I point as the shadow comes into focus. A great creature with a long, barbed tail and huge leather wings flies above the walls, swinging its head slowly back and forth as it scans the ground. Oh God, I hope I’m hallucinating. Getting past a
dragon
— I can’t quite imagine how we’ll do that.

“Oh, that’s Jabir, the Mekteb’s Guardian. Didn’t you know?”

I shake my head numbly, remembering Rehan happily explaining
if he ever has to defend the Mekteb, he’s a force to be reckoned with.
She hadn’t been jesting.

The dragon disappears beyond my view.

Jabir promised to look the other way, I remind myself. Only now do I realize what a great favor that is.

Kemal returns with a pair of lycan guards and the mage from the front door, who finds it impossible to believe that we might detect anything unknown in Stormwind’s cell.

“We’re just taking a look,” Graybeard says, peeved. “Why don’t you see if there’s anything else about the window we’ve missed?”

The guard mage gives him a haughty glance and stalks over to the window. Kemal gestures for us to follow and leads us down the stairs and around the corner to the short hall with its final stairwell. He raises his hand in greeting to the two lycans still posted at the head of the stairs.

Over their velvet and leather armor, they wear an array of weapons — swords sheathed in curving scabbards, twin sets of long-bladed daggers. The one on the right even has a small crossbow attached to his belt. At least neither one is the lycan who made the boys apologize to me in the gardens. Meeting him here, when I’m dressed as a mage rather than a servant would necessitate drastic measures. Measures I’m not sure I’m willing to take.

The lycans look to Kemal as we near them.

“We’ve discovered a flaw in the building’s protections, a window that would have let the prisoner out even if the spells on the building were already triggered. We’d like to double check the protections on the holding cell.”

“Go ahead,” the one of them says, waving us down.

There are more shadows in the subterranean hall below than I expected, perhaps due to the lack of glowstones. There’s a single sconce built into the wall, and a glowstone-lit lantern on the ground. The hall itself has four doors. The first stands open, and a quick glimpse shows it to be a guard room.

Kemal leads us to the door beside the lantern. It’s built of thick wood, reinforced with iron bands.

“Let’s see, then,” Graybeard says, pulling the door open and stepping inside. Kemal glances at me, then follows after. I stand to the side, careful to leave plenty of space for a person to pass through, and study the door.

A single touch lights its sigil to my mage’s senses. It glows a soft blue, a series of paintbrush-like strokes and curves overlaying each other, all overwriting the name “Stormwind.” I frown, studying the sigil itself, not sure I recognize it. If I had finished my studies, if I weren’t somewhere between apprentice and journeyman, I would probably know it. But common sense tells me that the sigil is designed to stop Stormwind herself from opening the door. It would still allow a lycan guard to deliver a meal without requiring the aid of a mage. With the sigil on the door, Stormwind wouldn’t have been able to pass through even if she was still within.

But the strangest thing about these spells, the sigil that anchors them, is that they open with the door. Now, with the door wide open while Graybeard inspects the inside of the cell, a pathway has been created through the sigil’s enchantment. The strands of magic reaching from the door to the other sigils impressed on the walls within create a tunnel of sorts. It’s about as likely to keep her from escaping as giving the cat’s head key to a servant would have kept it from being discovered. Which is to say, not at all.

I study the sigil a moment longer, but as far as I can tell, opening the door from the outside was all that needed to be done. Poor Kenta. He really could have done this himself.

“Do you see something?” Kemal asks softly. He stands just inside, back against the cell wall, where he can keep an eye on me and the other mage, who is currently poking at Stormwind’s discarded shackle.

I realize belatedly that my surprise must have shown. Nothing for it but to admit it, then. “This is interesting. Who set it?”

“Arch Mage Talon and two others. Is something wrong?”

“No,” I assure him. “It’s simply not what I expected. I’m sure they know more of these things than I do.”

I step through and walk to the center of the room. The cell is tight, hardly six paces in either direction, without any windows. There must be a spell in place to keep the air fresh, or the room would grow suffocating within an hour or two. Against the back wall lies a bedroll and two precisely folded blankets. On the ground, beside the shackle, rests a dinner tray, the cup fallen on its side, a few last grains of rice drying on the plate. Some part of me registers the shiny metal of the shackle, bright as silver, and quails.

I push my memories of another cell, high up in a tower, firmly into the darkest corner of my mind, and cast another glance around the apparently empty room. No sign of Stormwind. She must be holding her breath, hidden from sight by the look-away charm. Unless she stepped out while I studied the door.

I slide my fingers into my pocket, feel the shape of a few charms, the slip of paper with instructions for her to go to the roof. But I need to be sure she’s gotten out first.

“This was opened without magic,” Graybeard announces, gesturing to the shackle.

“She picked the lock?” I ask, walking over to inspect it
.

He shakes his head. “No, it’s warded against anything but the key that fits it.”

I turn to Kemal. “Who has the key?”

“Arch Mage Talon, I believe.” His expression is closed. Interesting. Does he know it went missing but isn’t at leave to say so?

I frown, tap the shackles with my finger. It’s the closest I can get to making myself handle them. “Well, there must be another way to unlock them because they sure are open.”

The mage grunts in response, then turns to survey the rest of the room. If Stormwind is still in here, I don’t want him to notice. Time to go.

“I don’t see anything else unusual,” I say, pretending to look over the cell one last time. With a shrug, I head out the door. After a moment, Kemal and the mage join me in the hall. I hunker down before the door and study the lock. There should be more than enough space for Stormwind to step out, press herself against the wall of the hallway. It’s the best I can offer.

“What happened to the door’s key?” I ask Kemal.

“We turned it over to the mages who first responded to our alarm, Master Stonefall and Mistress Ravenflight.”

Stonefall. Of course he would be involved. “The door was locked when she disappeared?”

“Yes.”

“Mmm.” I rise to my feet and give the door a soft push. It doesn’t quite close, a thin crack of darkness still visible, as I’d hoped. Just in case.

Kemal starts for the stairs, Graybeard a half-step behind him. With the prisoner gone, they don’t care if the door is shut now or not. I follow after, letting myself fall farther behind by degrees, so that I am starting up the stairs as they reach the landing.

I pull a mix of charms from my pocket, along with the tightly rolled message, and hold them behind my back, walking slowly.
Please
, I pray.
Please let her have gotten out
.

Cool fingers pluck the charms from my hand, startling me even though I was hoping for them. Gratitude swells within me. She’s out. Safe. And we’re almost free.

I move ahead, continuing up to Kemal and the guards posted there.

“—nothing you haven’t already found,” Graybeard finishes telling them.

I shake my head in agreement as the lycans glance down at me. There’s no way Stormwind will be able to walk past these guards without their scenting her. It’s time for a distraction. I reach out with my mage senses to the charms I’d stashed along the connecting hallway. As one of the lycans responds to Graybeard, I find the charm I want.

Skreeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

The lycans whirl toward the high-pitched shriek and set off at a sprint down the hall. Graybeard shouts, stumbling backwards. I can’t wait for him to decide what to do. I jog past him, careful to keep far enough back from the guards that they might not notice the sound of an extra set of footsteps behind mine. I can’t hear her over the beating of my heart, but that doesn’t mean their more sensitive ears won’t.

As they reach the corner, the screecher is already winding down
.
I use my magic to break the smoker I’d pressed into the crack beneath the same door. Graybeard shouts again somewhere behind me. The lycans move silently, swords drawn.

“Check the rooms here,” Kemal orders, yellow gaze sweeping the hall ahead. “We were below and passed no one on our way up.”

Just like that, the hallway clears, the other lycans thumping their hands against the wall until they find doors to push open. I reach out with my senses and activate the last charm I’d hidden here: a stinker. It will take a moment, but the smell should help mask Stormwind’s passing.

“Young mage,” Kemal says as I reach him. “Do you sense anything?”

“They feel like the charms students use for pranks. There’s nothing greater than that at work.”

“Pranks?” stammers Graybeard, finally catching up with us. He grips the sides of his robes with his fists, his face pale. “
Students?
”

“Don’t you think?” I ask him as the color rushes back to his face.

He mutters an oath, and raises his hand. Any moment now, he’ll call up a wind to disperse the smoke.

Kemal barely spares the man a glance. Instead, he turns to me. “Get upstairs and tell the guards at the door there’s been a disturbance.”

I step into darkness, one hand out to touch the wall. The smoke is like a wall of night. No amount of blinking clears my sight. A hand curls into the cloth of my robe, gripping it lightly from the back: Stormwind.

Smiling fiercely, I keep going, moving quickly. My fingertips bump over a doorjamb, and then reconnect with the wall on the other side. I stride briskly along, my fingers jumping over another empty doorway, and then, as a breeze begins to pick up in the hallway, the last one before the stairs.

Behind us, a lycan curses, the distinct stench of garlic and onions rising on the breeze. I hope to God the smell is enough to cover the scent of Stormwind’s passing. It can’t be much farther now. There were only three doorways on each side of the hall.

I stub my toe against the bottom stair. Wincing, I step up and wave my hand along the wall until I find the snakelike railing, the iron scales cool against my palm. We just have to make it up the stairs. The breeze quickens, smoke roiling around us, the world beginning to take shape in shades of gray. I take the stairs as fast as I can in the twilight.

Almost there. Almost there. Almost—

I slow to a walk on the landing, pressing against the railing as a half dozen lycans race down the steps, blades drawn and eyes burning.