The Tainted City (11 page)

* * *

(Kiran)

“You know the worst part of this translocation business?” Dev said, as he and Kiran trailed Lena through the gray stone corridors of the Arcanum. “I could’ve really used some time in the Whitefires.”

He said it lightly, but Kiran caught the flash of longing in Dev’s eyes. He remembered Dev dangling from pitons on an improbably steep cliff, his head thrown back in a laugh of purest joy, and a pang squeezed Kiran’s chest.

“If all goes well in Ninavel, maybe you won’t have to wait long to climb in the mountains again.” Perhaps not long at all. Kiran knew Dev had no intention of returning to Alathia once beyond the border, regardless of what happened in Ninavel. A thought that brought equal parts relief and regret. Marten and Lena were kind enough, but the shadow of the Council hung over every interaction. It felt so good to have a friend whose loyalty was unconstrained.

“Maybe.” Dev looked wistful again. His stride held a simmering energy Kiran hadn’t seen in him since the Whitefires.

Kiran’s footsteps were far heavier. Ever since Lena had brought the news the Council had agreed to his conditions, he felt as if he stood in the path of an onrushing avalanche, helpless to cast against it. He tried to think only of the removal of his binding in Ninavel. No more cramped, gnawing confinement of his senses, his
ikilhia
freed to spark spells once more…oh, how he yearned for it! Yet the specter of Ruslan shadowed his heart.

Lena halted before the door of Marten’s personal workroom. A thicket of black ward lines covered the frame, so dense hardly any wood showed. Lena laid a palm flat on the wards.

Marten called something encouraging but indistinct from within, and the wards glowed silver. Lena pushed open the door and led them inside.

No matter how many times Kiran visited Marten’s workroom, the disarray within never ceased to startle him. Ruslan had always been adamant in his insistence upon order, with all spell materials, diagrams, and treatises catalogued and neatly stored. Stevannes and the other arcanists seemed similar in outlook, but Marten worked in a kind of floating chaos. Scribbled diagrams covered the walls, while random assortments of gems and metal rods lay scattered over shelves. Marten himself stood behind a desk half buried under teetering piles of papers and books.

“Good news, you two.” Marten skirted a stray pile and waved Dev and Kiran to a pair of empty chairs amid the clutter. Lena remained standing by the door, her hands behind her back and her spine as straight as any soldier’s. “The preparations are almost complete for the translocation spell. The Watch will cast at moonrise.”

Moonrise was little more than an hour away. Kiran nodded, his mouth gone dry.

Marten said, “I told you my team would include an arcanist. I’m pleased to say my top choice agreed to come to Ninavel with us.” He glanced at Lena. “Did you send Talm to find—”

A rap came on the door. Martennan brightened. “Ah, excellent. There’s Stevan now. Come in!”

Kiran stiffened. Stevan—did Marten mean…?

Stevannes strode into the workroom, accompanied by Talmaddis. Chalk smudged the sleeves of the arcanist’s uniform, his wiry auburn hair in disarray. He carried a rosewood box covered in gold sigils of an odd, angular style Kiran never seen.

“Stevan.” Marten’s greeting was as warm as if he and Stevannes were mage-brothers. “I’m delighted to have a man of your expertise on this mission.”

“
Captain
Martennan.” Stevannes bowed, icily formal. “I know my duty.”

Kiran ducked his head to hide a dismayed grimace. It made sense Marten would want to bring an expert in defensive magic, but couldn’t he have found someone less virulent in his prejudice?

Marten hitched a hip onto his desk and aimed a genial smile at Stevannes. “I’ll introduce you to the rest of the team, then. You know my lieutenants, and you’ve worked with Kiran, but I don’t think you’ve met Dev. He’ll be accompanying us to Ninavel.”

Stevannes’s fingers whitened on his rosewood box. “I knew you intended to bring the blood mage—a decision questionable enough!—but now you intend to bring his criminal accomplice?” His mask of formality cracked. The frustrated fury revealed beneath blazed as hot as Ruslan’s had in the days after Kiran’s
akhelashva
ritual. “Marten, I don’t understand you. Pandering to the blood mage this way, championing him to the Council! How you, of all people, can stomach that—”

“Stevan.” Marten laid a hand on Stevannes’s shoulder. The two men stared at each other in silence, though Kiran had the sense of something wordless passing between them. Stevannes shook his head sharply and backed away. His expression froze into formality once more.

“It is, of course, your decision. Captain.”

Dev’s eyes had narrowed to green slits. “Oh, what fun this trip will be,” he muttered.

Kiran burned with the desire to quiz Marten on what Stevannes had meant.
You, of all people…
He’d have to wait, ask Marten in private. As well as ask what had possessed Marten to include Stevannes on the trip. For all Stevannes’s skill, he’d surely provoke every Ninavel mage he met into a blood-feud.

Marten said, “Dev’s connections in the city should prove quite useful to us, Stevan. And Dev, Stevan’s skill with defensive magic is unrivaled in the Arcanum. It’s thanks to his efforts that we can block Kiran’s mark-bond.” He surveyed them, sternly. “If we’re to work together as closely as we must in Ninavel, I think it best to apply the rules I’ve set for the officers in my own Watch. If you have a complaint of anyone’s behavior, you bring it to me first; and we’ll use informal names. All of us.” He directed a pointed look at Stevannes, whose mouth pinched like he’d eaten a rotten thornapple.

Marten went on. “Speaking of your mark-bond, Kiran, there’s one issue we must discuss further. You recall the amulet requires active casting to protect you properly. To ensure your safety, Stevan recommends not just one, but a team of mages work together in shifts for the casting. Three of us should be sufficient. The mages stationed at the embassy can help out as shift members, but the shifts must be led by either me or Stevan, and it’s vital that you stay close to the shift leader. I can’t stress that enough. Do not get more than a few feet away.”

“That’s the craziest thing I’ve yet heard,” Dev said sharply. “He’ll have to drag an entire gang of you around wherever he goes?”

“Until we are certain of Sechaveh’s protection, yes,” Marten said. “Perhaps even afterward, during times Kiran travels outside the embassy’s wards. I want to be assured of his safety.”

Kiran exchanged a worried glance with Dev, whose frown had deepened. Kiran knew Dev’s fear: how would they carry out their plan for Melly with a constant entourage of Alathians in tow? Kiran’s concern ran deeper. He trusted Marten, but Stevannes was another matter. If all it took was one moment of inattention on Stevannes’s part, deliberate or otherwise, to leave him exposed to Ruslan…

“Must the other shift leader be Stevannes—Stevan, I mean?” he asked Marten.

Stevan turned a look of cold disgust on him. Marten sighed. “Stevan and I are the only ones qualified for this type of spellwork. Kiran, I vow to you on my honor as Watch captain that Stevan will execute his duty regardless of his personal feelings.”

Stevan said, “As a blood mage, doubtless you can’t conceive of loyalty to anything beyond your own selfish desires. But you may rest assured: I obey the Council’s orders. Always.”

It was difficult to feel reassured when Stevan’s tone was more reminiscent of a threat than a promise.

Dev leaned toward Kiran and muttered, “You can still change your mind.”

Cowardice whispered that Kiran should seize the excuse. Yet if he wanted the chance to seek true freedom from Ruslan, he had to earn the Council’s trust. More, during that long night after his trial, he’d promised Dev:
should you ever need my help, you’ll have it.
The restriction on Kiran’s movements needn’t stop them from helping Melly, particularly if he could convince Dev to explain the problem to Marten. Working with Marten as closely as they must, surely Dev would see that his distrust of Marten was unfounded.

Fear is the most insidious of weaknesses,
Ruslan had once said.
You must learn to raze it from your soul, or risk defeat in all you do.

“I understand,” Kiran said to Marten. The words felt heavy as stones. Once said, they left his chest hollow.

Marten awarded him a smile as warm as the midsummer sun. “Excellent. We’ve set aside some supplies for you and Dev, clothes and the like—Talm can show you, while Stevan, Lena, and I make a few last preparations.”

Kiran nodded, not trusting himself to speak again. The closer their departure came, the more impossible mastering his fear seemed.

* * *

Kiran followed Marten and Dev into the cavernous space of the Council chamber on legs that felt like a stranger’s. Moonrise was mere moments away. He risked a glance upward at the stacked circular galleries rising above the chamber floor. A chill prickled his skin at the sight of the ranks of uniformed mages lining the rails.

He’d stood on this sigil-marked floor once before, locked within wards as the Watch dug through his memories and forced a binding onto his magic. His chest cramped with remembered agony, but he forced himself to walk steadily after Marten.

A scattering of sigils had been incised outside a set of four interlocking circles at the floor’s center. The sigils must help the Alathians direct the power into their desired spell pattern, in place of the channel lines Kiran was accustomed to working with. But the Alathians’ techniques were so different from those he’d been taught, he couldn’t tell a thing about the spell. The sigils’ complex black scrawls held no meaning he could read, and their sparse, seemingly random placement looked nothing like the dense channel diagram Ruslan had once shown him for a translocation spell.

“Khalmet’s bones,” Dev said, as they halted within the circles. He dropped his pack and eyed the surrounding sigils uneasily. “What happens if they screw this up?”

“Then our worries will be over,” Kiran said. Even with an anchor point ready and waiting in Ninavel, the amount of power needed for the translocation would be massive enough to make any mistakes fatal.

“What a comforting thought.” Dev glanced at Marten, who stood conferring with two other captains. “I wish they’d hurry up.”

The chamber’s side door opened, and the other members of their little group entered. Stevan still clutched the rosewood box, which Kiran had learned contained the link-blocking amulet. Talm lugged a much larger sigil-marked chest, and Lena carried a satchel stamped with the green tree of the Sanitorium.

Kiran couldn’t take his eyes from Stevan’s box. Marten had warned him no charms could be worn during the translocation spell’s casting, lest spell patterns interfere with each other to catastrophic effect.
We’ll put the amulet on you the instant we reach Ninavel,
he’d assured Kiran. At the time, that had sounded reasonable. Now Kiran’s nerves screamed otherwise. The defenses he’d woven from his own
ikilhia
felt horribly frail, limited as he’d been by the Council’s binding.

“Hey. You’ll be fine.” Dev’s voice was low but firm. His neck was bare, his snapthroat charm removed by Marten before they’d entered the chamber.

Kiran realized he’d been rubbing at the left side of his chest, where Ruslan’s
akhelsya
sigil lay hidden beneath his shirt. He dropped his hand. “I hope so,” he said, and tried to smile at Dev. It felt more like a rictus.

The two Watch captains bowed to Marten and backed away as Councilor Varellian descended the stairway from the galleries above. Varellian’s face was as stern as Kiran remembered it from his trial, the folds of her blue and gray uniform starched to knife-blade sharpness.

Marten bowed, arms crossed over his chest. “We are ready. Have you word from Ambassador Halassian?”

Varellian nodded. “Lord Sechaveh is open to granting sanction and protection, but he insists on seeing you first. Ambassador Halassian has arranged an audience for you upon your arrival.” She paused, studying Marten with piercing intensity. “The future of our country depends on your team’s efforts, Captain. I pray our faith in your talents is justified.”

For once, Marten’s expression was perfectly grave. “We will not fail you.”

Kiran’s nerves shrieked louder yet. He’d hoped Sechaveh’s edict would be in place before they left Alathia. His muscles trembled with the urge to flee from the sigils, to tell Marten,
I cannot do this, the risk is too great.
The awareness of Dev at his side steadied him. Dev must have felt this same fear when he came to Simon’s valley to seek Kiran, yet he hadn’t let it stop him. Kiran wouldn’t either.

Varellian strode for the gallery stairway, the two captains at her heels. Marten turned to Kiran and Dev. “You two, stand here…” He positioned them in the precise center of the pattern, as Lena, Talm, and Stevan moved to stand within the surrounding circles. “I’d suggest closing your eyes,” Marten added, as he backed to the final circle. “When the spell takes effect, the transition will be a bit disorienting.”

The chamber doors boomed shut. Kiran wiped sweat from his palms and concentrated on breathing through a throat that felt as tight as a reed. No turning back now. The mages in the galleries started a low, droning chant, first in unison, then diverging into interweaving harmonies. The sigils on the floor lit with the strange, soft glow so different than the harsh fire of activated channel lines. Power rose with the slow inevitability of water trickling into a cistern.

The mages’ song patterned the magic into a fascinatingly elegant structure formed of shifting pulses and currents. The power peaked, held. The song took on a subtle dissonance, like the muttering of thunder before a storm. A trio of voices called out in a wild, keening descant, and Kiran gasped, hands flying up in an involuntary warding gesture, as a soundless concussion slammed against his inner barriers.

An immense rush of magic howled through the Alathians’ pattern. The sigils’ glow heightened to blinding intensity. Kiran shut his eyes against the glare and felt a sudden dizzying wrench in his stomach, as if he’d stepped off a cliff. Power crashed over him, and he bit back a cry, his senses reeling.