The Tainted City (60 page)

Was that not Talmaddis’s logic?
Stevan had demanded. I’d seen the knife thrust strike home. But Marten had straightened and said with icy, implacable authority,
You are under my command, Arcanist Stevannes. You will not refuse my orders.

Stevan had obeyed, though he hadn’t spoken a word to Marten since. Even now, as Marten and Lena helped each other to their feet, he staggered upright with his back to them.

Asshole or not, at least he had principles. Mine weren’t so solid. I felt only a twinge of guilt for the translocation casting, a twinge easily pushed aside by thinking of Melly in Vidai’s hands. When I thought of the newly-created Taint charm tucked in a warded box in Ruslan’s pack, I felt only a fierce, soul-deep hunger. That might disturb me if I considered it too long, but I didn’t plan on doing any considering. Not until Melly was safe.

Beyond Stevan, Kiran was still bent over his knees, breathing in harsh gasps with his hands pressed to his eyes. He hadn’t so much as flinched when Ruslan sliced the criminal’s throat—and damn it, his lack of reaction did disturb me, deeply enough I couldn’t shut it out.

“Kiran?” Mikail scooted over to him and laid a hand on his back.

Marten turned to watch them. I couldn’t read his expression, but his stance had an odd tension. Maybe it was guilt. If Kiran ended as Ruslan’s obedient tool, Marten had to know it was his fault. After seeing the raw depth of Marten’s pain over Talm’s betrayal, I no longer thought him wholly cold-blooded.

Kiran uncoiled from his cramped hunch. He muttered something to Mikail and lowered his hands. The charms covering his wrists still glimmered blue with slowly dying magefire. He looked up at the peaks, and his mouth fell open. The fading light of his charms showed him gaping around at the valley with every bit of the wonder and delight I remembered from our convoy trip.

“Look at him,” Cara said softly. “The Kiran we knew—he’s still in there, Dev.”

“Maybe.” I turned aside, unable to stand the reminder of a friend I thought gone. Maybe I only wanted to believe him beyond help so I could take the easy way out.

Shaikar take me, I had to stop thinking about Kiran! Saving Melly would be hard enough; I couldn’t afford distraction.

I strode over to the bulging packs piled in a heap on the tundra. Climbing supplies, crystals and warded flasks of quicksilver for the blood mages’ channeled spell, charms, food—none of the packs were light, and we’d all wear one, even Ruslan. The mages weren’t likely to enjoy the steep climb up the boulder-strewn slope to the couloir’s base, but they’d manage.

Behind the packs sat several fat, warded storage barrels. They held more food and supplies meant for the long walk out to the nearest settlement—if we survived and returned to make the trek.

I heaved a pack over to Marten. Like the others, he wore sturdy outrider leathers over a woolen shirt and trousers. No sigil-marked silk or uniforms here.

Marten eyed the pack, then the valley’s massive headwall. “Where do we go?”

“The couloir we’ll climb lies between Cloudbreaker and Stormmaker.” I pointed to a narrow slot between two of the Cirque’s tapered spires. From Sethan’s description, that couloir was the one he’d almost succeeded in climbing.

According to Ruslan, we had seven hours at most before Vidai killed Melly and destroyed Ninavel. Climbing the couloir would eat up much of that time, though I had another, earlier deadline to consider.

“I want to reach the ridge in time to scope the descent before Lizaveta’s clouds move in,” I told Marten. Ruslan had said the spellcast cloud bank should arrive by mid-morning—though he’d warned us Lizaveta’s lack of a partner as she cast to guide the clouds meant precision in timing was impossible.

Marten hefted his pack onto his shoulders, wincing at the weight. “We’re recovered enough to walk. That said, I have a whole new sympathy for pack mules. Do you truly do this for fun?”

A grin stretched my face, the first one I’d managed since Vidai’s attack. “You haven’t seen the fun part yet.”

* * *

The trudge up to the couloir seemed to take an eternity. This high in elevation, the air was thin enough to leave me and Cara gasping. The mages panted and wheezed like forge bellows, even moving at a pace so slow it left me twitching with frustrated urgency.

Yet to my relief, we reached the couloir’s base before the sun rose above the eastern peaks. Streamers of high, thin cloud glowed carmine, the sweeping cliffs above us so vast I felt no larger than a sand flea toiling up a dune. The couloir itself was a crooked slit choked with ice that looked gray and featureless in the shadowed defile. The ice was steep enough I couldn’t see the couloir’s upper reaches; Cara and I had scouted them with a spyglass on the approach. The windblown cornice choking the top of the couloir had a ferocious overhang. That very overhang had defeated Sethan on his long-ago attempt, but I thought we could skirt the cornice by veering left onto the mixed ice and rock of the couloir’s side wall. Tricky, terribly risky climbing, but Cara had agreed it was our best chance.

She and I unpacked and sorted gear with rapid, practiced efficiency. The mages collapsed by their packs in obvious relief. Even Ruslan sat with his head bowed, his chest still heaving in rapid breaths.

“You intend to climb
that
?”

I looked up from strapping on boot spikes to see Kiran gawking up at the couloir. Between his flabbergasted amazement and the softness of his words, he probably wasn’t even aware he’d spoken aloud.

Ruslan was sitting far enough away he might not have heard Kiran speak under the clanking of Cara racking pitons. I kept my answer equally quiet.

“Looks fun, doesn’t it?” Though in truth I far preferred climbing rock. Ice was finicky, and unstable, and you had to climb it so damn slowly. Cara enjoyed the patient, careful precision needed. I missed the freedom of movement rock afforded. But I’d climb even a poisoned slagheap if it let me reach Melly.

Kiran glanced at me, half-wary, half-puzzled. “Fun.”

“Shame we haven’t the time to let you try it,” I said. “You weren’t bad, on rock.” A calculated risk. But hell, Ruslan already meant to kill me and Cara. I hadn’t much left to lose.

The puzzlement on his face grew deeper yet. He studied me like I was some spell pattern that he was determined to unravel. The intensity of his gaze made my skin itch with hope and guilt combined. Maybe he wasn’t so far gone. Maybe…

Kiran sucked in a breath as if to speak. But then he shook his head, and the puzzlement vanished from his face to leave it as blank as the cliffs above. He retreated from me without a word to sit beside Mikail.

Mikail lifted his head and looked straight at me. One corner of his mouth ticked upward in a tiny, triumphant smile that said,
You see? He’s ours, now.

I returned to strapping on boot spikes as if I couldn’t care less. I shouldn’t care, not after Kiran had let Ruslan hurt Melly, not with her still in such danger. But damn it, I did.

Kiran didn’t look at me again. He took out one of the dense little nutcakes we’d brought as food and started chewing. Yet his gaze kept drifting back up the couloir.

So did mine, and not just to scout the ice as the sky slowly brightened. Melly was somewhere beyond this ridge. Hurt and afraid, maybe even despairing, thinking no one would come.

I belted on my harness and stomped over to Ruslan. “I want the Taint charm.”

Speaking with the labored patience of a man forced to deal with a moron, Ruslan said, “The Taint uses confluence power, and this rock is inert. The charm cannot help you in the climb; it will do you no good until we reach the basin floor.”

“Maybe not, but I want it waiting on my wrist when we do, not buried in your pack. What if Vidai sniffs us out before you’re ready?” I didn’t want any chance he’d stop me reaching Melly.

Sardonic amusement lit Ruslan’s eyes. “How deeply you
nathahlen
yearn for the merest scraps of power.” He dug in his pack and produced a thick silver bracelet crowded with sigils and set with emeralds.

I couldn’t help leaning forward, my eyes locked on the charm. A little, knowing smile played about Ruslan’s mouth. “Take it. The trigger word is
vishakhta
.”

I forced myself to reach casually for the charm, not snatch it from his hand.

Watching me, Marten said sharply, “Once we reach the basin, don’t spark it without cause, Dev. If you damage your organs before we cast, we risk losing this fight.”

I’d asked Ruslan in Ninavel if he could make it so the charm didn’t fuck me up so quickly. He’d smiled that sandcat’s smile of his and said,
No. The charm works because of the damage caused; it is not a mere side effect.
I wasn’t sure I believed him, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. Instead, I had to depend on the Alathians. Stevan had said that with all three of them casting to heal me from the instant I triggered the charm, I might avoid mortal injury.

“I won’t spark it,” I promised Marten. But oh, how I longed to, even knowing the cost. I clasped the band onto my wrist and returned to help Cara uncoil ropes. Impatience buzzed in my blood, but I had to shut everything out but ice and rock. Otherwise, I’d never save Melly.

* * *

Tink! Tink!
I tapped the curved blade of one hand axe against fluted ice, searching for a good placement. My calves were on the edge of cramping after hours of standing on the front points of my boot spikes. Blood was stiff on my sleeve; I’d fallen, earlier, and sliced myself with an axe blade when the rope snapped taut and slammed me into the ice. Thank Khalmet, both rope and anchor had held, and I hadn’t knocked Cara off her stance at the belay point. Both of us had countless cuts on our faces from falling ice shards, and numb, raw fingers from wiggling pitons into cracks on the couloir’s sidewall to set up haul rope stations.

The mages were inching up the haul ropes behind us, strung out along the couloir like knots in a rawhide braid. We’d showed them how to ascend using short lengths of cord tied in slipknots around the rope and attached to harness and boots. Weight the harness cord, and the knot locked tight on the rope to hold a man’s weight. Slide the boot cord knots higher on the rope, stand to release the harness cord knot and slide it high, sit, slide the boot cord knots, stand, repeat. Arduous and slow, but doable for even the least experienced of climbers.

The couloir’s cornice loomed over me, a frozen wave whose underside bristled with dagger-sharp icicles thick as my leg. Nobody could climb over that monster; I couldn’t believe Sethan had even tried. Time to bail to the side wall, though that had its own dangers. The ice there was thin and brittle, fading out entirely in sections to leave bare rock. No chance of placing protection, and the rock was likely to be just as brittle as the ice.

Cara had led all the previous difficult pitches, but she hadn’t argued when I took the rope for this final stretch. She might be better at ice, but rock was my specialty. If there was a way up those barren patches of stone, I’d find it, even encumbered by clumsy hand axes.

Thirty feet later, I cursed my former confidence. Spreadeagled on the couloir’s side, the front points of my boot spikes barely holding in a thin slick of ice, frost-scarred granite breaking away every time I tried to hook an axe blade…fuck! I hadn’t been able to set any ice screws or pitons. If I came off now, I’d fall all the way past the belay point. Such a long fall would snap the hemp rope in a heartbeat, and if the mages cast to save me, they’d bring Vidai down on us all. The Taint charm was cold and dead on my wrist. Damn it, if only I was closer to the confluence, I’d spark it, hell with the consequences…

The ice cracked away under the spikes of my left boot, leaving me clawing for a foothold. The right foot was going to go too, I could feel it, and I still couldn’t find an axe placement overhead—

I let the axe drop to dangle from the leash cord knotted tight around my wrist. Ripped my glove off with my teeth, and stretched again, searching with fingers instead of axe blade—

My fingertips locked over a lace-thin flake of rock, just as the ice beneath my right boot gave way. I hauled up in desperation, my boot spikes scraping sparks from the rock, and stabbed my remaining axe higher, knowing I was a mere heartbeat away from dooming us all.

Chunk!
A solid placement, right in the heart of an ice patch. I scrabbled again with my feet, got one boot spike into a divot in the stone. The world narrowed to fingers, axe blade, and boot spikes, my entire being focused on tiny shifts of balance as I inched up lichen-smeared stone and rime ice.

After an eternity, my head poked over the crenellated, razor-edged ridgetop. My vision expanded outward in a rush. The Cirque’s seven Knives pierced the sky all around, the dark rock of their sheer-sided summits in sharp contrast to the snowfields lining their sides. Cradled in the deep bowl at the base of the peaks was an oval lake, the water a startling chalky blue in color. No sign of human presence showed on the tundra and rock of its far shore, but Marten had warned me Vidai’s wards included elements of veiling. The bastard could be doing cartwheels in plain view and I wouldn’t see him.

As my ferocity of focus faded, triumph rose to replace it. Mother of maidens, what a climb! But I couldn’t savor the moment. The sky above was gray with cloud, and fat fingers of drifting fog were already creeping up the valley. I shoved my freezing hand back in its wool glove—I’d carried the damn glove in my teeth the whole rest of the pitch—and peered down into the cirque, picking out landmarks in the sweep of snow and stone. We’d have to traverse along the ridge for a hundred feet, then rappel down a sheer cliff before we could reach a snowfield safe to slide down. Hopefully the mages remembered Cara’s hurried lesson on how to stop an uncontrolled tumble with an ice axe.

I ducked back below the ridgetop and pounded pitons into cracks to make a belay station, muffling the blows of my hammer with a folded strip of wool. Once ready, I didn’t dare shout to Cara, knowing how well sound carried in the mountains; instead, I gave three sharp tugs on the rope:
Climb when ready.