No Return (10 page)

Ebn knew better. She had experienced Adrash’s wrath firsthand, and only escaped it by a miracle. Allowed to approach him while he slept—a miracle in and of itself—she had been spared to do the work of proving the world’s worth.

This responsibility weighed upon her. She considered her weaknesses, and wondered if she might not be overcome by temptation a second time. Surely, she had lived life fearful that someone would repeat her mistake. For fear of bringing ruin upon them all, she had assured that no outbound mage ventured too close to Adrash.

For decades, this cautiousness had seemed a virtue, but age had brought with it doubt. Perhaps, she reasoned, she had hobbled her mages to keep them away from the god. Perhaps she had merely been biding her time, waiting for another opportunity.

At night, she dreamt of surviving the death of the world with Adrash at her side.

‡

Ebn allowed only one person to meet her regularly in the office. Qon et Gal, her second-in-command, had been her friend since the age of six. For forty years Ebn had shared her age-nullifying treatment, a unique alteration to the standard alchemical solution developed by her predecessor, with Qon alone.

Growing old, Ebn joked, would be awful without someone to share the indignity.

Qon rolled one of the clear pebbles Ebn’s spell had produced between her clawtips. She held it close to her nose and sniffed. Her eyes narrowed.

“No,” she said. “I have never seen one, but I have heard of it. Apparently, sex spells require a fine touch to produce the desired effect.” She eyed the full clay jar. “How long have you been working on these?”

Ebn shrugged, cheeks darkening almost imperceptibly as she blushed. “A year, approximately. I can only do it every couple of weeks, it tires me so much. Before beginning, I studied and practiced for several months.”

Qon’s eyebrows rose ever so slightly. “Poor you.”

“Shut up,” Ebn said good-naturedly. “I talked with Pol over breakfast.”

“Ah.” Qon’s expression did not change, though she knew of her friend’s attraction. She had voiced her low opinion of Pol many times, speaking honestly as a true friend should. “It was as you expected?”

“Yes.”

“And these?” Qon nodded at the jar. “You intend to seduce him, then sway him to your viewpoint?”

Ebn sighed. “You think that little of me? No. I have already talked with him. He does not see our perspective, but he understands my command: Adrash must not be approached by any one mage. Making our intention clear is dependent on everyone acting in concert.” A brief memory of her hands on the god’s flanks flashed through her mind. “Even then we do not know what may offend him.”

Qon nodded, silent. Ebn knew her lieutenant did not take the explanation at face value. She would not come out and ask if Ebn intended to seduce Pol, but undoubtedly she wondered. If Ebn did manage to seduce Pol—an act she had dreamt many times but could hardly conceive of doing—all speculation would cease. In fact, Qon would probably congratulate her.

Ebn picked up a spell, rolled it between her palms. “I have been producing these with no clear intention in mind. Talking with Pol this morning gave me an idea, however. I think we can use them to show our goodwill to Adrash.”

“Are you sure this is wise?”

Spent, Ebn smiled without feeling. “No. I am not sure it is wise. But if you will sit with me I will try to explain. Maybe we can work the kinks out together.”

THE 16
^th
OF THE MONTH OF SOLDIERS, 12499 MD
THE CITY OF TANSOT, KINGDOM OF STOL

T
he taste of lemon lingered, cloying in his mouth. He prepared a heavily spiced lunch on his own and ate it over a collection of stamped forms, struggling not to let anger overtake him. Fourteen separate requisitions for alchemicals, denied in the last month. Clipped to the final form was a note from the department bursar:
Pol Tanz et Som, M.O.: Due to the ever-rising prices of the elder corpse market,

we must reject the additional alchemicals you have herein requested. Perhaps in the future, your research will warrant an expenditure of this magnitude. You are invited, as always, to make use of recycled materials in the faculty labs.

Recycled materials! Drained, lusterless ampoules of spent magic, barely suitable for the most basic of spells! Apparently, the administration expected him to do advanced research with fingernail clippings and candle wax. Maybe they thought prayer alone could sustain him.

Pol wondered if he could bring himself to ask a senior mage for assistance.

No. He possessed little stomach for begging favors from his peers, and such eldermen were likely to report his more esoteric undertakings to Ebn. At times, he felt as if she had persuaded the entire corps to watch him. Even the most conservative of his recent proposals had been met with suspicion. Some of the junior mages expressed interest in his theories, of course, but the junior mages were powerless and thus easily manipulated. They would spy on him to advance their careers.

You are too young to be so ambitious. Wait your turn.

He brushed the forms into the trash with the gnawed ostrich anklebones. He absently popped a gingersalt candy in his mouth and considered the problem. By its very nature, the academy did not cater to new thinking, and in the ranks of outbound mages the effect was even worse. He would need to take an unconventional tack if he had any chance of acquiring what he needed to resume his research and weaken Ebn’s position.

A more diplomatic approach
, she had said. Ridiculous.

He left the apartment, not yet sure where he was going. The hallways were nearly empty. A quick spell, no more than a brief automatic query, gave him the time: thirty-three minutes past two. That explained it. Lunch and catnaps in the slanting sun. Eldermen were adept at many things, but afternoons were not one of them.

Pol himself felt the pull of a full stomach and sunbath, but the energy of youth sustained him. At twenty-three, his constitution was at its most agreeable. As a boy, it had seemed forever would come and go before his body would respond to his wishes. Then again, without the age-nullifying treatments that came with high rank in the academy, in ten years he would be an old man.

His thoughts, ever in movement, veered from one possibility to the next. Did he know anyone in requisitions? No. Archaeology? Geology? No. No one in the churches would help him, he felt sure—and their security was tighter than all other departments combined, their oaths the most binding. One could never underestimate their magics, either.

If Pol needed further proof of his desperation, the fact that he considered thievery sufficed.

Suddenly, a possibility presented itself to him. He did know someone in the medicines department, a young man whom he had bedded for a brief time several years previously. A human, beautiful in a thick way, not all that precocious but eager to please. A dark-haired Castan. He worked in the morgue. They had rutted on an examination table, once.

Jorrin? No. Jarres. That was the name. He had confessed to Pol that some of his mates filtered alchemical juices from the human and elderman corpses in their custody. They had made quite a bit of money this way.

Pol left the Esoteric Arts building and angled toward the White Ministry Hospital.

‡

The Avenue of Saints honored those who had died defending the name and nature of Adrash. Statues of men and women, eldermen and human, lined the avenue as it wound through the academy grounds. It was the end of summer, and the vala trees had bloomed copper and purple. Arching over the roadway, they created a perpetual twilight in which the saints took on a sinister bearing.

Evertin The Belligerent appeared ready to jump from his marble base and start hacking away with his greatsword, which scholars claimed he had called Harrowing. Domas Alastetl rested wearily on her throne, a great wound in her side, face so cunningly carved it seemed to move as one passed. And Oilo The Ghost hovered above his plinth of skulls and weapons, a fluid, ferocious form barely recognizable as human.

At the intersection of the Avenue of Saints and Villus Street, the exact center of the academy grounds, stood a statue of Adrash. Pol made a point to visit it every day, for it represented the god during wartime, in his most awful aspect—this, and it reminded Pol of home, where the iconography displayed a harsher edge than in the capitol.

Carved from a block of unveined black granite, the sublimely proportioned god stood prepared to meet an enemy. At first glance his posture seemed to convey an odd calm, but close examination revealed the tension in his neck and shoulders, the flexion of his forearms. His feet rested upon a base designed to look like a sphere of the Needle. Its rims disappeared into the ground and roadway.

The sculptor had dripped molten red gold onto Adrash’s heavily muscled torso and arms: the blood of men and beasts. The god’s left arm and portions of his chest and back had been carved from white marble, and the join between black and white was a sinuous line, showing that the divine armor had begun to sheath his body. Yellow gold covered his eyes. But for the armored section he was naked. The sculptor had endowed him with assets befitting a god.

Pol’s eyes lingered on this detail for a few seconds. Pressing his left fist to his forehead, he bowed deeply before moving on.

He had not always believed in Adrash’s benevolence. What he mirrored as a child could hardly be called faith, and what he rejected as a youth could not be called informed. He had felt as if his mother were forcing him to believe. For many years he had transferred his frustration onto Adrash, who became in his mind a bully of monumental proportions.

When he left his mother’s conservative Adrashism for the academy, he carried some of these sentiments with him. A sixteen-year-old boy, elderman or human, could not be expected to recognize his own arrogance for what it was—especially when that boy had recently arrived from Pusta, the Kingdom of Stol’s exclave on the coast of Knos Min, a virtual world away from the capitol. The boy’s blind arrogance could be a shield against the prejudice of his peers, who thought him a backwater fool.

Quickly adapting to their fighting style, Pol learned showing mercy came back to bite more often than not. So he stopped showing mercy. By the age of eighteen, he had killed seven men in self-defense and fought eleven duels. He became known for his temper and skill, as well as his genius in the magics.

He did not defend the reactionary beliefs of his youth or the people of Pusta, both of which he had long since come to view with amused disdain. Instead, he railed against the rote pronouncements of his teachers and peers, the mindless repetition of dogma. His own faith became a thing of fire and muscle. Adrash would not look kindly upon a weak people, sitting in contemplation, asking for his favor. The god, Pol came to believe, responded to strength. He did not want followers, but leaders.

The Avenue of Saints ended. At Skintree Road, Pol waited for a gilded carriage to pass before crossing the street, though he did not bow to the nobleman or woman inside as strict decorum dictated. An outbound mage, in whose veins elder blood flowed, bowing to an earthbound human? Ludicrous.

Once out of the manicured academy grounds, one could not help notice the change in atmosphere. It stank of human and animal waste, cooking fires, and cheap alchemy. Putrid, human smells, but they bothered Pol not at all. He had become used to the fragrances during his frequent trips out.

You take too many risks
, Ebn had told him on more than one occasion. Typical of the outbound mages, she rarely traveled into the city, and never alone. Attacks on eldermen, even in the clear light of day, were not uncommon. But for ascensions into orbit, several of the senior mages had not left the academy in decades.

Pol refused to restrict himself so. Urban Tansot offered a range of products and services unavailable within the confines of institutionalized academia. Inevitably, many experiences had ceased to compel him—drugs, in particular, became superfluous as he grew into his magical talent—but sex had not. Partners were for the taking if an elderman knew where to look.

He reached the hospital, a clean, austere building that contrasted sharply with its dilapidated neighbors—a common sight in Apetia, the most culturally and economically diverse neighborhood in Tansot. Technically part of the academy, White Ministry benefited from its patronage as well as the city’s. Its grounds were immaculately maintained, to Pol’s eyes somewhat overdone. A stereotypical Stoli statue of Adrash, farcically epic and devoid of personality, stood in the front entrance courtyard.

Pol walked past it without a glance.

‡

Jarres had grown a thick beard that did not flatter him and acquired several pounds of muscle that did. His chest strained against the white medicines tunic, and despite his serious intentions Pol found himself mildly aroused. Nothing like an old lover to tempt a man from his course, he knew.

In his estimation of himself, Pol had one major weakness.

“Tanz?” Jarres asked, eyes moving down Pol’s body. “How long’s it been, mate? God, what, two years? You look good.”

Pol smiled. He had forgotten how raggedly the man spoke. Medicine, more than most magics, did not require a surplus of intelligence. The body was relatively simple, after all. During their affair, Pol had picked up more than a passing knowledge of medicines from Jarres—a fact that probably accounted for the relationship’s dissolution. Medical mages guarded their trade secrets every bit as jealously as other disciples of magic.

Pol clasped Jarres’s forearms and kissed his cheeks. “Almost three years, Eamon.” Thank Adrash the other man had spoken his name first. Pol had forgotten that in public Jarres preferred to use second names: the convention in Weas, the city of Jarres’s upbringing. “You look well yourself. You have certainly filled out.”

Jarres laughed, squeezing Pol’s forearms in return. His teeth flashed, straight and white, contrasting with the heavy darkness of his beard. Laugh lines had deepened alongside his nose, around his light blue eyes. Pol remembered why he had been so attracted to the man, and reconsidered his stance on the beard.