The Witch's Betrayal (4 page)

But I ignored her.

#

I went into the desert, far away from the lights of the city. It was darker than I could have imagined, so dark I could barely see my own hands. I cast a handful of small lanterns
,
and they floated around my head like wayward stars, illuminating everything with pale blu
e
light. They didn't help much.

I'd been able to procure a stack of firewood from a desert tree growing outside the city wall. With my magic I cut the tree into pieces and shove
d
the
m
into a burlap sack I stole from Leila's house, along with a bit of flint from
the
pile beside her stove, and here I was, with everything I needed to cast the Fire of Amkarja. A stack of wood, a piece of flint, and my own blood.

I began to work, slowly and methodically. I arranged the firewood in a circle, making a neat, even pile. Putting off the inevitable. When I was finished I stepped back, my arms crossed over my chest. It was cold without the sun, and I shivered beneath my armor and my robes, although I wasn't sure I was shivering from the cold.

I knew how the fire was supposed to work: I would cast it, using my theoretical knowledge,
and the magic would draw me in close, making me a part of the fire.
T
he flames would show me the faces of those who were lost. I would ask the fire to show me Lisim Sarr. Because I am Jadorr'a,
and because I gave
a
part of myself up,
it would comply, although I knew I would have to be careful, I would have to be polite. Armed with this new information, I could travel through the shadows to kill Sarr in his bed, completing my commission and saving the lives of the people in the pleasure district.

Once it was done, I would need to ask the Order to send help
to
extinguish the flames. I wouldn't be able to do it on my own, and if I left it, the fire would burn and burn until the end of the universe.

Enough dawdling. I had until sunrise to complete my commission.

I pulled out the flint and held it, measuring its weight in my hand. Then I struck it, tossed the tiny flame onto the wood, and watched as it all caught fire. I grabbed my knife and poised it over my forearm. My tattoos glowed, sensing the magic I was about perform. I closed my eyes. I thought of the words, an ancient spell in the language of the Order
, one I knew
perfectly. I knew everything perfectly. I had just never done it before.

I began to chant.

At first the words were only words, but as they spilled out of my mouth they transformed into magic, and I no longer belonged to myself. My voice was no longer my own. It was the voices of the lost, calling forth the Fire of Amkarja. The knife pierced my skin. I wasn't expecting it. My eyes flew open at the jolt of pain. The knife dug deeper. Blood gushed over my arm. No. No. This wasn't right. It was supposed to be a nick, enough to draw a few drops --

Enough of me remained that I was able to yank the knife away and fling blood into the already-golden flames, completing the spell and igniting the fire. Something whispered at the back of my head. A bit of wisdom. A warning.
Don't look
.

I looked.

It wasn't right. I was supposed to see the lost, figures twining and dancing in the gold of the fire. But instead I saw myself, my face twisted and monstrous. The true me, I thought. The face of an assassin.

Fear flooded through my body. My arm burned from where I had lost control of my knife.

"I'm not lost," I said to the fire.

It roared in response, letting off great waves of heat.
Forced by the magic,
I drifted close to
the fire
, wanting to be a part of it, to feel the flames wrap around me like a blanket. I vaguely remembered my task. My
commission. "Lisim Sarr," I managed to choke out. "Please, I need to find Lisim Sarr."

My face-in-the-fire snarled at me. Lisim Sarr didn't seem so important anymore. Only the fire
;
the golden sputtering light. I was close enough to touch it. I knelt down in the sand and leaned forward. The smoke tickled my eyes. The flames licked at my face.

The pain was dazzling.

I screamed. The left side of my face felt as if it had been ripped away. I screamed and fell backward and screamed and screamed and when I hit the ground I didn't hit sand, I hit floorboards, rough
-
hewn, cold, damp. I couldn't see out of my left eye, everything was blurred and
indistinct
, but out of my right I saw that overhead was a gapped ceiling of the sort they had in the ice-islands.

"Who the hell are you?"

A man's voice. It cut momentarily through the shriek of my pain. I rolled onto my right side. My left side was still burning, the pain moving inside of me now, sliding into my bloodstream. I lifted my head. The man was wrapped in shaggy furs, but he wasn't an ice-islander. He was Empire. He was a Lisirran.

He was Lisim Sarr, my magic whispered.

For a blinding moment I didn't know what to do. Sarr leaned over me, squinting, and then his eyes went wide, and he recognized me, bleeding and burning though I was, and through my good eye I saw him drawing up his magic.

The Order trained me well, all those years ago, when I was nothing but a scared little boy. They left me with no choice but to be an assassin in all moments. The pain was paralyzing, but still I
conjured up
my speed, what little remained of it. In one blurred motion I pulled out my sword and I drew it across Sarr's belly. His blood splattered across the floor
,
and he died. I didn't feel anything. Everything hurt too much.

I reached out one shaking hand and slapped it into his blood. I didn't trust my own blood; it had betrayed me to the fire. But I used the blood of this wicked man and I fell backward through the shadows, through Kajjil, back over the sea and the ice, back to the Empire.

#

I was in a bed, soft and luxurious and familiar. I sank into the blankets. I couldn't feel my body; it was like being in Kajjil, but I wasn't in Kajjil. I wasn't at the Order either. This wasn't an Order bed. It smelled of river water and perfume.

"Leila." My voice rasped and came out barely above a whisper.

"Shhh, don't talk." A shadow fell over me. I was aware of a hand stroking my hair but I couldn't feel it.

"I can't feel --"

"Oh
,
Naji, you never listen. I asked you not to talk." The bed moved beneath me. I turned my head a little. Leila was sitting beside me, her hand stroking my hair. I saw this but didn't feel it.

"You were very stupid," she said.

I didn't answer.

"I told you not to go after him."

Him. Sarr. I'd killed him. Only then did I notice the yellow sunlight in the windows. I'd completed my commission. But I still felt like I was being punished.

I tried to sit up and Leila nudged me back down, gently. "You aren't well. I worked a spell for the pain but I'm afraid it's too strong for you to go wandering around."

"I don't feel myself."

"Well, that's what I had to do to take the pain away." She shrugged. There was something in her expression I couldn't place. Distance or sadness or revulsion. Or maybe all three mixed together. I didn't know what to make of it. I didn't know what to make of any of this. I wondered if the fire was still burning in the desert. It needed to be extinguished.

"Why aren't I at the Order?" I said. "I tried -- after everything -- I meant to go there."

"I don't know. I woke up last night to your screaming and found you bleeding all over the floor." Her hand dropped away and disappeared from my sight. "You stank of blood magic. And you were --" She stopped.

"What? I was what?"

I kept seeing the fire flickering in my head, golden and sparking, my twisted face in the flames. Not exactly my face, no -- my face as it was seen by the people of the Empire. My face as if it belonged to a monster.

I looked at Leila
,
and she was trying to keep her expression blank and failing.

"What!" I said. "What's wrong with me?"

"Nothing." She sounded insincere.

"Leila!" I struggled on the bed, trying to push myself up. I felt as if I were tied down. "After all this, you're still going to keep secrets from me? Really?"

She narrowed her eyes. "I told you not to go," she said. "I don't call that keeping a secret."

"Leila, what the
hell
is wrong with me?"

She went still. I thrashed on the bed and then exhaustion overpowered me and I went still too. I stared up at the patterns of sunlight on the ceiling. In the empty space where my body should have been I felt creeping, dreadful coldness.

The bed lightened. I dropped my head to the side. Leila was rummaging in the drawer of her vanity. She wore a backless dress and
her skin glimmered
in the yellow light
. It was
beautiful.

She walked back over to me and sat down and laid the mirror in her lap.

"What is it?" I whispered.

She hesitated.

"Show me!"

Leila sighed and held up the mirror. It was small, filigreed with little carved flowers. It looked expensive. I noticed all this before I noticed the face. Not my face. The face in the flames. My face, only monstrous.

I didn't understand what I was seeing at first. Then Leila
spoke
.

"It'll heal, of course, but there will be a scar.
”

She handed me the mirror
and stepped away.
My face-that-wasn't-my-face stared back at me. The right side was fine, but the left was melted, the skin reddened and charred. At first I couldn't connect that face to my body. And then I could.

"
It’s a shame it had to happen by magic,” Leila said. “Otherwise there might’ve been something we could do about it.”

I
hurled
the mirror aside and it
shattered on the floor. Leila looked at it with a calm, implacable expression.

“Although you might find something at the night market. To
help
, even if it wouldn't get rid of it completely.”

"You
don’t care,”
I said.

"What?"

"About helping me."

She fell silent.

"I'm scarred. What w
ould
you want with a scarred man? I know you, Leila. You care too much about beautiful things."

She didn't answer, and I knew I was right. I forced myself up to sitting, ignoring her protests. I still couldn't feel my body but I could feel my anger, my humiliation, my sorrow.

"Naji, wait," she said.

"I need to go back." I
pushed
out of the bed and slammed up against the wall. A narrow strip of shadow stretched out from beside the vanity. I stumbled toward it.

"Don't," Leila said, but I noticed that she didn't bother to stand up, that she didn't otherwise try to stop me.

I didn't look at her as the shadows crawled around me. It was exhausting, stepping into the darkness. But I couldn't look at Leila anymore. I couldn't look at myself.

In those seconds before I arrived back at the Order, my thoughts went to the woman at the dance hall. The smoky blue light. Her spangled dress. I thought of how she had smiled at me. How she hadn't been frightened.

And I knew she would be frightened if she saw me now.

The End.