Sunbolt (The Sunbolt Chronicles) (14 page)

“Where
are
we?”
 

“Gadon.”

I wheel around to stare at the creature. “But that is—that is …”

“Far and far from Karolene,” he agrees.
 

I lean against the sill weakly. Even recognizing how strange it was to scent pine, even with the foreign herbs in the food, I had not really believed I could be so far. I had not taken into account the sheer distance that could be covered by a single step through Blackflame’s portal. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I had been sure I would return to my mother, and quickly. It would be a short hike to the nearest coast, and then I could find work on a ship bound for Karolene. But Gadon is landlocked. It is easily a month’s journey to the southern coast through a land I do not know, on roads I have not seen. Even if I were to find a portal, I wouldn’t know how to use it.

I might be able to make the journey, I think fiercely, but first I must get out of this tower. I lean over the windowsill, studying the outer surface. It is terribly smooth: no ledge has been built below the window, and only occasional slits show in the curving wall where the stairs descend below us.
 

I whistle softly, but I can neither see nor hear any birds. It would have been too much to hope for pigeons wintering in the tower stairwell, flying in through the window slits. My mother always told me to focus my whistles towards the birds I wanted, but now I can’t see any.

My mother, I think, staring blindly at the ground so far below. She’s alive. Here I am, caught in a tower with a breather, surrounded by blood magic, my only hope of escape to somehow overcome the guards and get out before an alarm is sounded. And she is resting in a garden gazebo, swathed in silk, her hair falling free.
 

My hands shake on the sill. I push myself away, but I can no longer see clearly, my eyesight blurring. I blink hard. Turning, I slide down the wall, one hand massaging my temples so that the breather can’t see me. Just in case a tear gets loose. I don’t know how long I sit there, struggling with my emotions. They are dark and ugly and I don’t have names for them. “Despair” seems too absurd a word; “abandoned” hardly carries enough weight. My mother. My
mother
. How could she have left me? She wasn’t held in Blackflame’s garden by force, that much had been clear. She had promised to return to me, and what? She had forgotten?

“Girl,” the breather says, calling me back to the room. The shadows have grown a little shorter since I last looked. I am tempted to close my eyes, to stay where I am, but he speaks again. “Hitomi.”

“Yes.”

“What were you looking for through the window?”

“Birds.”
 

“Go and look again. I hear some now.”

I stumble to my feet, staring out into the over-bright light. It is near noon. Where did the day go? I close my eyes, drinking in the warmth of the autumn sun. Faintly, I hear what the breather has: the warble of swallows.
 

I whistle softly, knowing that it is the current of my whistle that will carry to them, rather than the sound itself. But my whistle is leaden on my lips, heavy with sorrow, the loss of my mother. The swallows do not hear, or they cannot bear to answer my call. I try again, and their warbling stills, but they don’t come.
 

I purse my lips to whistle one last time, but I cannot steady my breath enough to give it strength. I slide down to my knees, my hands clinging to the windowsill, gasping for air. My sobs are dry, brittle things, as though they come from a land of famine and drought. I do not know what I cry for, or why, except that I do not know what I am anymore, or why my mother would wear silks, or why my old friends the birds have forsaken me.
 

Something tickles my hand. I lean my head against the wall, swallowing a sob, and feel it again—something small and slick rubbing against my fingers. I look up. An old crow perches on the sill, tilting his head to watch me, his beak still pressed against my finger.
 

“Little brother,” I whisper. The crow caws in response, hopping away from my hands and inspecting the room with a beady eye. I wonder what he will make of my companion. I lick my lips and whistle faintly.
Little brother.

He flutters his wings, and I hear his voice. It is the sound of autumn leaves and chill breezes.
Why so sad?

We are caged
.
 

The crow considers this, then hops down to the floor. I turn to face him.
No wings
, he notes wisely.

Tied by magic.

The crow peers about, then turns to look at the creature. I correct myself: Val.
Dark brother.

Yes,
I say.

Heartmate?

No
, I say so forcefully the crow hops back, startled.
 

But then he gives a little caw of amusement and tries again,
Nestbrother.
 

Flockbrother.

He considers this.
Caged?

Caged
, I confirm.
 

Sorrow song
, the crow says sadly, and I know he will help.

I point to the blood knot on the floor.
Need key.

The crow hops over and angles his head to eye the knot. He pecks at it experimentally before hopping back to me.
No key.

I smile faintly. I didn’t expect he would have a way to break the enchantment hidden among his feathers. And it isn’t a key I need, not in the sense the crow will understand.
Bring sharp silver shiny?
I try instead. Most importantly,
Sharp?

Sharp
, the crow responds cautiously. He takes wing, flapping out the window. I’ll just have to hope he doesn’t bring back a rusty nail that will give me lockjaw. Wouldn’t that be ironic?

Val’s voice pulls me back to the room with a shock. “How hard was it to hide your Promise?” The old fear dries my throat. He nods towards the window, “Consorting with crows. I hope you are not always that obvious?”

He’s laughing at me. “Not normally,” I say cautiously, somewhat unnerved by his amusement. By all accounts, he should be wishing me dead. Especially since it was another mage who trapped him here.

“Your parents hid you,” he guesses. At my nod, he continues, “And taught you?”

I shake my head, remembering my mother’s warnings.
Never trust another with your secret.
I can’t undo what he has seen, but I can play it down. “It’s just whistling.”

He says nothing in response, his gray eyes unreadable. I look away from him, waiting until the crow flaps back up to the windowsill, a nice shiny sewing needle in his beak. He sets it down, then hops along the sill, watching me.
Sharp.

Life light
, I whistle back to him, the traditional praise used by birds.
 

Fair winds,
the crow replies in farewell. It is almost a question, as if he wants to assure I need nothing else. But I don’t want anyone to see me try this magic, not even an elderly crow.

Sheltered nests,
I respond.
 

With a final glance for Val and me, the crow drops off the windowsill, swooping out over the countryside with a joyful caw
.
I watch after him, not really wanting to turn back to Val. I may as well have admitted some training. There’s no way to avoid it now. The longer I take, the closer we get to lunch and the creature James. Safer to trust this breather, I think, than to risk waiting.

With heavy footsteps I return to the blood knot and kneel before it. The needle is sharp enough that a good hard jab draws blood from the pad of my thumb. I pinch it to make the blood well up and use the blunt end of the needle as a stylus. Starting at the center of the knot, I trace the pattern until just before it connects again at the center. Instead of closing the pattern, I turn the trail out, smearing the last drops of blood so that the line disintegrates.
 

Okay. I stare at the knot, waiting. Nothing happens. No pulse of power. No fading of the old spell. I glance uncertainly at the breather. He looks back at me, expression inscrutable. It’s like looking at a breathing skull and wondering what it’s thinking.
 

I take a steadying breath and press the bloodied pad of my thumb to the center of the knot.
pain pain PAIN

“Release,” I gasp, which is not the right word at all. I don’t know the Olde Tongue. Not well enough, at least. Bending over the blistering, burning point of agony that is my thumb, I draw on the warmth of sunlight and the swallow song once more audible. I draw on the slumbering stone beneath me, and the ancient air born and reborn, and the certain beating of my heart, the pulse of blood in my veins. “
Get out
.
”
 

Blood wells up—not from my thumb this time, but from the knot. The whole symbol pulses, writhes, bulges with dark liquid—the same dark liquid that rises up between the stones to pool on the floor. I scramble back, watching as the knot disappears beneath the growing puddle of black blood.
 

A hand reaches up out of the center of the pool, a hand composed completely of light, glowing gently. It grips the stones, and slowly, slowly, a figure pulls itself out of the blood. I press myself against the wall behind me. The woman before me, her form half-obscured by her own radiance, pays no attention to Val or me. Kneeling on the ground, she braces one foot, turns her face skyward, and then she launches herself up, arms spreading as if they were wings. For a moment that lasts an eternity, she rises, and then she departs in a blinding flash of light.
 

I blink. Once. Twice. Three times, the vision of her ascent still glowing before my eyes.
 

“That was …” I begin, but can’t go on. Horror still clings to me, thick and viscous, only slightly mitigated by the awe of the woman rising. “That was …”

“A soul,” the breather finishes for me.
 

I shudder. No magic should take such a toll. No mage should bind another so.
 

I totter to my feet and take a tentative step forward, leaning over the puddle to look for the blood knot. I can’t make it out, but I doubt it matters. “I think you’ll be able to cross now.”

“I imagine so.”
 

A faint clink. I shake my head to clear my thoughts, pushing away the exhaustion that hovers at the edges of my consciousness. The breather is still chained. I cross the room, stumbling slightly as it tilts. The magic-working has taken more from me than I would have liked.
 

Kneeling before the breather, I realize that he doesn’t sit with his legs perfectly crossed. His cuffed ankle sticks out just a little, keeping the manacle from touching his other leg. Now, he straightens his leg more, bringing it closer to me. I breathe slowly through my mouth, trying not to inhale the old dead smell of him, decay and … hunger. He has given me his word, I remind myself. I’m going to have to trust it.
 

I turn the cuff, noting in the bright noonday light that the skin beneath it is black and withered. The rest of his leg, while not damaged, exhibits the same sickening skeletal thinness as his face. I wipe my hands on my pants, trying to ignore the dark smears they leave behind, and set to work on the lock. I can almost forgive Saira her sins for having worn hairpins.
 

Hardly a minute later the cuff clicks open.
 

With the quickness of a hawk diving for its prey, Val’s hand closes on the back of my neck, holding me frozen before him.
 

“Never been taught?” he whispers. This close, I can see his gray eyes flicker, his breather’s gaze drawing me in. I flinch, jerking my eyes away to focus on the wall behind him. “For a Promise hidden from the mages, you know a great deal of magic.”
 

I try to keep my voice steady. “I know enough not to kill anyone.”

“You have it backwards,” Val says, his voice the rustle of dry leaves. “Mages train
to
kill. It is an art form among them.” The blood knot certainly stands testimony to that.

“My father didn’t kill.” I’m not ready to say anything about my mother. I don’t know what to say about my mother.
 

“Your father?”

I try to shift away from him, from his breath that smells of the stale air of moldering crypts, but his hand grips me tightly, much tighter than I would have thought he had the strength for, his skin burning cold. Kol had feared him for a reason, I remind myself. I might be able to break loose, at least for a moment, but then he might easily give me his death’s kiss.
 

“Your father?” he repeats.

If I lie, I suspect he’ll see through it, and that won’t go well. But my father died four years ago, and lived about as far from Godan as you can get. What’s the likelihood that this creature will know his name?
 

“Rasheed Coldeye,” I admit. His lips curl back from his teeth, and his eyes—his eyes are as bright and hard as silver coins. He’s going to kill me.
 

“We must plan how to get out,” I cry, my words tripping over themselves.

His gaze moves over my face, then falls to my hand, still clutching the misshapen torque wrench. Abruptly, he releases me. I half-fall back, dragging myself away from him. He watches me impassively.
 

“We must plan,” I repeat unevenly.
 

“We have no weapons, little one. Unless you can conjure one.”

I shake my head. I doubt I could push a bolt at this point, let alone transform some item into a weapon. But …
 

“We have one advantage,” I tell him, “surprise.”

Val tosses the silver chain away from him. The cuff swings out, arcing through the far window, and clatters against the outside wall. Its chain stretches back to the wall bolt, a dark line in the bright of day. “So we do.”