by Todd Herzman
Aralia’s eyes fluttered shut for a moment. ‘Some do, some don’t. As far as we can tell, it depends how useful they are to the blood mage who has taken them.’
‘Then… how do you know he’s on the ship?’
‘You might as well tell her,’ Aralia said. ‘She’s going to find out eventually.’
Reena ran a hand through her hair. She paced one way, then the other, before sitting back down. She put her elbows on the table and her head in her hands. ‘My husband…’ She looked Ella in the eyes. ‘Don’t think less of me, please. He was taken, a long time ago. He was changed…’
‘Changed? Into what?’
Reena’s breath came shaky. Ella had never seen her like this before.
‘My husband’s name is Malarin. He… he isn’t a captive of the blood mage. He is the blood mage.’
Ella’s mouth fell open and only silence came out. She closed her mouth. Her lips were dry. She felt prickles on her skin. Fingers dug into her chest and gripped her heart. She closed her eyes, took three deep breaths, then stared at Reena.
‘Your husband is the blood mage?’ Ella stood, her seat scratched the floor and fell with a bang. ‘Your husband is the blood mage? The one who took my brother, burned half my village, killed my neighbours?’
Ella looked to Aralia for support, for a denial, but the witch wouldn’t meet her eyes. ‘Your brother kidnapped mine.’ She backed away from the table, from the two women she’d trusted. The two women who’d lied to her. Something welled up inside her. A deep anger. It filled her gut. Her eyes watered. Her hands shook. She backed away so far she hit the door. ‘You—you all lied to me.’
‘No.’ Reena stood. ‘No. Ella, please. I didn’t—I still want to help find your brother.’ Reena stepped toward Ella. ‘What my husband became’—she shook her head—‘he wasn’t like that before. He was a good person before the God King corrupted him.’
Ella stared at her, the rage coming to the surface. ‘You’re making excuses for him? For a murderer? A kidnapper? A blood mage?’ Ella stepped forward. She wanted to punch Reena, wrap her fingers around her hair and throw her against the wall. Ella took a ragged breath.
‘Ella…’ Aralia said, somewhere, faintly in the background.
‘You lied to me. You don’t want to save my brother; you just want to find your killer of a husband. What, you gonna offer me up to him too?’
‘Ella,’ Aralia said again.
Ella turned to face the witch who sat in front of her untouched food. ‘And you. Where does that power of yours come from, anyway? Those people on your island, the scars on their necks. Your brother’s a blood mage, are you one too?’
The rage burned through her. The room felt hot. Sweat formed on her brow as she stared down the witch.
‘Ella! Calm yourself.’ The witch wasn’t looking into Ella’s eyes, she was looking farther down.
Ella’s gaze fell to her own hands. They were sparking shards of lightning, like Aralia’s had when she’d realised Ella had seen the God King. They were flashing harsh, white light, the same colour that had come from Arin’s hands.
And they were on fire.
Ella tried to shake her hands free of the sparks, the light, the fire. Her heart beat as hard as Ruben’s hammer and as fast as rain falling on wood. Her breath shook like a tree in a windstorm.
The flames grew. The sparks shot around the room. And the light filled everything. The sparks and flames set the captain’s dining room alight.
Ella spun around and yanked the door open. Everything on the boat was made of wood and here she was made of fire. The door caught alight as she touched it. She heard Reena and Aralia burst from their chairs. Ella ran up the stairs, leaving them in her wake. Faster, she thought, pushing her legs up the steps. Faster.
She flew out of the stairwell and into the open air. Sailors stopped and stared at the girl running across the wood toward the starboard beam, hands sparking and flaming and shooting light into the darkening night.
‘Ella!’ Jacob yelled as she passed.
She flung herself over the side, meaning to dive but not knowing how. The whole front of her body slapped the water. Her skin stung, her clothes soaked through. Suddenly her boots felt heavy. She tried to kick to the surface but remembered she couldn’t swim—she’d never been in water like this before.
She forced her eyes open and stared at her hands, hoping whatever magic she’d used had been snuffed out by the water. She felt herself falling, her boots pulling her farther and farther down. As she opened her eyes the only thing she could see in the deep dark was the light from her hands.
Still sparking, still shining, still aflame even in water.
She blinked at them. They didn’t change. She let out a breath and only lost air. The light became dimmer but so did her mind. She didn’t even think to kick her feet anymore.
She sunk. Until the light from her fingers had gone, until the darkness had come, until there was nothing left to do but let her mind drift into sweet sleep.
~
Ella woke to coughing. Men and women yelling and shouting. Slick wood on her back and a burning in her lungs.
She couldn’t make sense of the sounds the voices made. Her eyes opened to a mess of people staring down at her, a man knelt beside her with a hand on her head. Someone threw a blanket over her to warm the chill she didn’t realise had been making her shake.
The words came in bits, one heard every few until Reena’s clear voice cut through the cacophony. ‘The fire’s out.’
Some of the tension left Ella’s body. She still coughed. She still shook from cold. But her hands were her hands again, and she hadn’t doomed the boat to sinking in flames.
‘Are you okay?’
Ella blinked. Her eyes stung from the water, and it was dark up on deck. She looked at the man kneeling beside her, the one speaking. Jacob.
‘What happened, Ella?’
Ella made to sit up, but her body wasn’t ready to move that fast. She felt a lightness in her head, like all the blood had disappeared in a flash, her energy gone with it. ‘I—’ Ella coughed. Jacob held her up and patted her back. Her throat burned. ‘I—I don’t know.’
Reena and Aralia stood over her within the crowd of sailors. A hint of Ella’s rage returned, but she recoiled from it. She pushed it away—she didn’t want to risk activating her powers.
Jacob still held her up. She looked at him, and noticed his clothes were as wet as hers. ‘You saved me.’
‘Aye, that I did.’ He rubbed her back. ‘We oughta teach you how to swim if you’re gonna be jumpin’ off ships.’ He grinned, exposing gaps and missing teeth.
Ella forced a smile back at him.
‘We need to talk, Ella,’ Aralia said.
Ella shrugged away from Aralia’s voice. She sunk closer to Jacob.
‘How about we get into some dry clothes, give her somethin’ warm to drink?’ Jacob stood and helped Ella up. ‘Plenty of time to talk later.’ He was already nudging her toward the stairs as he said the words. Ella was grateful for it.
She did want to talk to Aralia—to Aralia and Reena both—but she still felt the anger rearing up. It wouldn’t be a talk, it would be a fight, and while she had every right to yell at them, she couldn’t risk losing her temper.
Aralia had been right when she said Ella had power. Arin had spoken of different Affinities, and Ella seemed to have more than one. They had all hit her at once, and she had no idea how to control them. If she let what happened in the captain’s dining room happen again, they might not be able to extinguish the flames a second time.
And her body was tired. Sore. Cold. Jacob brought her to her cabin, left her inside to change while he went to find dry clothes of his own. When he came back, he brought a tray with hot tea on top. He placed it on her dresser, and brought two mugs, sitting beside her on the bed.
Ella took the mug, letting the warmth heat her hands until it was too hot to hold by anyt
hing but the handle. The heat almost surprised her. She looked at one of her hands. It had been sparking, on fire and flashing light into the world, yet it was unmarked. Her hands were not burned even a little.
‘You ever done something like that before?’ Jacob asked.
Ella shook her head but didn’t speak. She didn’t know what to say. She took a sip of her tea—something warm and smooth bit at her throat. She coughed a little. ‘What is that?’
Jacob smiled. ‘I put a touch of whiskey in there to warm your bones.’
Ella exhaled. ‘Whiskey. That’s a first for me.’ She took another sip, and found she liked the taste. ‘You know, my father was a blacksmith. The town we lived in was quite small, there wasn’t always enough work about. He often travelled down to the markets in Devien.’ She sipped at her whiskey tea, savoured the taste in her mouth. The chill slowly leaving her. ‘Sometimes he’d come back with a bottle. Smelled something like lamp oil, I used to think. He tucked it away in the workshop to keep our hands off it.’
‘Oh, that probably wasn’t real whiskey.’ Jacob drank from his own cup. Ella peeked into it. It was straight whiskey with no tea at all. ‘Real whiskey comes from Guhrat.’ He held his cup up, like he was toasting someone who wasn’t there.
‘That’s where you’re from, isn’t it?’
‘Aye. It’s where most of us are from.’
Ella stared into her cup. ‘Thank you for saving me. After what I did… I could understand if you hadn’t.’
‘Now, hang on, why wouldn’t I want to save you?’
‘You saw what I did, what I am.’
‘Yes. I did see what you did. I saw you vault over the side right into the ocean even though you didn’t know how to swim, just because you were worried about hurting us. You risked your own life to protect the people on this ship.’
Ella dropped her shoulders, became small and found she couldn’t look at Jacob at all. ‘It was my fault people on the ship were at risk.’
‘Maybe so. But as you said, you’ve never done something like that before. I reckon you didn’t mean to, either. I mean, did you even know you were capable of something like that?’
Ella watched the whiskey tainted tea shift around in her cup, her hands shaking just enough for it to move. ‘Not until it happened.’
‘I’ve seen a lot in this life on the sea. I’ve seen weather witches, Tahali monks, and with what Reena does, I’ve seen blood mages too. And I’ve met good people, and bad people. Thoughtless people, and considerate people. You know what I’ve learnt along the way?’ He paused, took a breath. ‘Even the best people make mistakes and cause accidents, no matter their intentions. It’s what they do after that matters most.’
Ella looked away from her cup and up at the old sailor. She didn’t think she’d heard Jacob say that many words the entire time she’d been aboard the Serpentine. And his words… helped. She felt horrible, afraid of what might happen if she let her rage take over. Afraid of these new powers that had come from nowhere. Still, his words helped. She leant into him and rested her head against his shoulder.
She was too tired to be angry. Reena and Aralia had betrayed her, lied to her about the blood mage. But… were they bad people? Yes, she thought instantly. That blood mage killed my neighbours, kidnapped villagers, my brother. He stopped and stole lives.
How could they want to save someone like him?
But then she remembered all they’d done. They seemed like good people. Reena had saved people from blood mages, Aralia had too. The island Aralia lived on was a sanctuary for former thralls… how could they be bad, if they did all that?
‘Can you be good and bad at the same time?’ Ella asked.
Jacob chuckled, the deep rumble moving his entire body. ‘Almost every human is, I think. To varying degrees. But don’t worry, far as I’ve seen, you’re far more good than bad. If I ever had a daughter, and she ended up like you, I’d be nothin’ but proud.’
Chapter 27
Marius
Marius and Peiter were camped out in the forest on the road to the next village. After the fire was made and dinner was eaten, Peiter laid a blanket out on the ground.
He carefully took the contents from his pack and placed everything on the blanket. Marius cuddled up to his own blanket by the fire and watched Peiter work. The monk hadn’t said what he was doing, he simply started doing it.
Peiter picked out the paper, pen and ink from the blanket. He laid the paper on the flat top of the book he carried around and began writing. When he finished, he folded the paper on one side, then the other, and tore off what he’d written, placing it in front of one of the objects. He did this until there was a strip of writing in front of everything he’d taken from his pack.
‘This is going to be your first lesson,’ Peiter said. ‘Now, I have seen what you can do, and I know from the way you talk and your questions that you are smart. So I do not want you doubting yourself—you will be able to learn how to read and write, and you will make mistakes along the way. Do not let those mistakes frustrate you. Mistakes are a part of all learning. Everyone falls down before they learn to walk.’
Marius wondered if the monk had read his mind, or if his fear of failure was just that obvious. He inched closer to the blanket and looked at the words in the firelight. He recognised a letter or two, but that was all.
He looked at the objects. A rope, a cookpot, flint. Marius settled on the knife and stared at the piece of paper in front of it. He knew what an ‘n’ was, because it was kind of like an ‘m’, which was how his name started. And there was an ‘n’ in knife, but it wasn’t at the start. He stared at it for a long time, a frown stuck on his face, before he asked Peiter what the first letter was.
‘It’s a “k”.’
‘A “k”? Kay-nife?’ Marius guessed at the other letters.
‘The “k” is silent.’
Marius looked up from the word and stared at the monk. ‘Silent… that doesn’t make any sense.’
The monk smiled. ‘Language is a funny thing. It doesn’t always make sense, there are artefacts left over from—’
A twig snapped somewhere in the forest. Their heads flicked toward the noise. Deer? Marius mouthed to Peiter.
The monk put a finger to his lips. He placed his hand on the ground and remained silent. A moment passed and the monk slowly stood. His gaze moved until he stared at a point left of where the noise had come from. He pulled up his sleeves and splayed his fingers.
He held one hand high and folded down his fingers until he showed only two.
Two people, Marius thought. He unwrapped himself out of the blanket and picked up the knife. Peiter glanced at him, looking at the knife in his hand with a worried expression.
Leaves crunched. A man shot out from the trees. He charged toward the monk, sword reflecting firelight.
Bandits, Marius thought, frozen in place.
Peiter’s hand shot up, palm facing the bandit. The bandit stopped short. With Peiter’s other hand, he pulled the rope up from the ground. It moved like a flying snake, coiling around the bandit and knotting tight.
Footsteps thudded behind Marius. Marius flung around, knife gripped tight, and saw a big man run out from the forest. Marius held his knife up in front of him, hoping to see the man stopped like the other one, but Peiter was distracted.
The man stumbled, fell forward and hit the ground. A dagger protruded from his back. A shape walked out of the forest. Marius squinted until it became a woman, hands up in a placating gesture.
‘Peace,’ the woman said.
‘Who are you?’ Peiter demanded, his voice deep and commanding, a tone Marius hadn’t heard from the monk.
‘A traveller, like you.’
Marius looked between the woman and the monk. She must be mistaken. Though they might both be travelling, they were not alike in any other way.
She stepped into the clearing, and the firelight caught the scar on her cheek.
<
br /> ‘You’re the woman from the inn,’ Peiter said. ‘Sitting in the corner by yourself.’
The bandit, bound by ropes behind the monk, stumbled, tripped, and fell to the dirt. Peiter glanced at the man writhing in his restraints, then went to stand by the dead man’s body. ‘You killed him before I had a chance to stop him.’
The woman dropped her hands to her side. ‘Is that a thank you?’ A breeze rolled in, making her green cloak sway. The pommel of her sword poked out—on both sides, Marius realised. She wore two swords. She nodded at the writhing bandit. ‘You should deal with that one too, if you want what’s best for you.’
‘I will not kill him. I am bound by my oath—’
‘Yeah, yeah.’ She put a hand on her right sword hilt. ‘I can do it if you’re too squeamish, monk.’ She drew her sword a fingerbreadth.
Peiter stood in front of the man writhing on the ground. ‘You will not cause death if I can stop it. This man is no longer a threat in his condition.’
‘If you think that, perhaps you should take a closer look.’
The monk hesitated. Marius moved first, taking tentative steps toward the bound bandit.
Marius’s gaze fell was on the fallen sword. He didn’t know as much about smithing as his brother, but he’d helped out in the workshop. The sword looked well cared for, the blade sharpened, metal recently polished, but he couldn’t tell more than that. Ruben didn’t make swords, there was no need for them in the village.
At least, no one had ever thought there would be a need for them.
Marius looked at the man. The man’s eyes were open, staring up at him. His mouth was not gagged, yet he didn’t speak. Marius frowned. Neither of the bandits had made any sounds but with their feet, they hadn’t yelled a battle cry as they ran into the clearing, hadn’t shouted nor screamed as their attacks were defended against.
