Dancing, I reminded myself.
What made this particularly difficult was that there wasn’t any actual lock. Instead, in the centre of the prisoners, the two ends of the copper wire that wound its way around all their necks came together into a knot. I needed to use the warden’s coin to connect to that knot, and then carefully untie it without triggering the part of Tas’diem’s spell that would slice off all their heads.
I felt the coin vibrate against my finger, threatening to fall off. I adjusted my hand to keep it in place. This was more than just a slight tilt here or there. I needed to kind of weave my hand in a sort of figure-of-eight pattern and then subtly adjust the position of my finger to get the coin to manipulate the ends of the copper wire. It was strange to not see something and yet be able to feel the precise way in which the wire was tied together.
“Intriguing,” Butelios said, watching me. “I never thought I’d meet a true castradazi.”
I’d never even heard of the castradazi until a few months ago, I thought, so how come you’re familiar with them? I set that question aside to deal with my more pressing problems, starting with the fact that I wasn’t really a coin dancer. I only knew a couple of tricks with this coin and one of the others. The rest was mostly experimentation and dumb luck—which was kind of the story of my life.
Among the Jan’Tep I’d never really been a proper mage. I hadn’t learned enough of the Argosi ways to be like Ferius either. Despite the sasutzei spirit in my right eye, I understood only the rudiments of whisper magic. Hell, I barely had enough tricks to call myself a spellslinger, and now I was trying to be a coin dancer too? Was that what my whole life was going to be? An amateur at everything, master of nothing?
“You’re losing it,” Suta’rei warned.
She was right in more ways than one. Breathe in emptiness, I reminded myself. It was one of those stupid things Ferius would advise periodically that I had no idea what it meant. It made me laugh—a uniquely inappropriate time for that, given fifty people whose lives depended on me not screwing this up were watching me, desperately hoping I was a lot more competent than I looked. Strangely though, my ill-timed mirth gave me control over the warden’s coin again, and thus the copper wire.
“By the Ancestors …” Suta’rei breathed, “I think the coin has taken hold of the lock.”
Sweat was dripping down my forehead from the effort of keeping the coin so precariously balanced on my finger while I used it to manipulate the ends of the wire. I felt the last loop of the knot beginning to come undone just as Suta’rei figured out something I really should have thought of ahead of time.
“What about the recoil?” she asked.
Oh, hells. I’d completely forgotten about how the spell for a blood noose is structured. Creating the sympathy between the wire and the bodies is only part of the issue: the mage also needs to give it the intrinsic force to slice through its victims. So first the wire is imbued with iron magic to cause it to tighten when triggered. Once the knot was undone, the sympathetic connection would be removed, but the iron magic would still be there and would cause it to wind itself up like a spring. That would mean a lot of dead people.
“I need you reach into the folded part of the hem of my shirt and take out one of the other coins,” I said. Already the precarious balance of the warden’s coin was threatening to slip away. That’s why they call it coin dancing and not coin standing-there-waiting-for-you-to-do-something.
She hesitated. “I prefer not to touch—”
“It’s kind of important.”
“Spirits of earth and air,” Ghilla swore, and came over to reach a hand into the fold of my shirt. “Which one, boy?” she asked, digging around with a finger. It was incredibly distracting.
“It’s one of the bigger ones. Eight sides.”
“I think I have it.” She managed to remove it and held it up for me to see. The bluish metal glinted in the fading light. How long had I been at this? I felt like my legs were stiff and my shoulders were too tense.
“That’s the one,” I said, still weaving my right hand back and forth. “Put it in my left palm.”
She did. I didn’t know this one’s proper name, but I’d taken to calling it the fugitive. Like my warden’s coin, it could find a connection to another metallic object if I flipped it just the right way. Doing this with my left hand while my right was still using the warden’s coin to manipulate the copper wire was murderously difficult. Just keep it together a little while longer. You’re almost there …
Ghilla watched me work. They all did. The men, women and children bound by the wire. Diadera. Tournam. Azir. Everyone. I don’t think I’d make a very good performer because I found myself with a sudden case of stage fright. “Everybody, close your eyes!” I said.
“Is that necessary for the coin magic?” Suta’rei asked. Her own eyes were narrowed. She wasn’t even trying to look as if she believed me.
“Of course it is. I’m a castradazi, remember? This is how our great and ancient art works. Now, everybody, please shut up and do as I say!”
They did, but slowly. Even the people whose lives I was trying to save hesitated as if worried this was all some trick so that I could pick their pockets. I don’t seem to inspire a lot of trust. Finally, though, everyone’s eyes were closed and I got myself ready for the final act.
My request that people not stare at me hadn’t been from nerves or vanity. The thing was, I needed everyone to remain perfectly still for this next part, otherwise, well, otherwise it would go badly. I kept the fugitive coin in my left hand flipping in the air over and over, fractionally adjusting angle and force each time until I felt a tingle when the coin landed on my thumb that signalled I’d found an etheric connection to the copper wire. With a sudden flip of my right hand, I untied the last twist of the knot joining the two ends of the wire. Before the warden’s coin had even begun to fall to the ground, I hurled the fugitive coin high up into the air.
The reason I came up with that particular name was because of a peculiar property I’d discovered by accident: any object bonded to the fugitive would pursue it wherever it went. In this case, the entire length of the copper wire flew fifteen feet above the heads of the crowd as it chased the fugitive coin, even as the iron magic in it caused it to wind itself together with tremendous force.
I was the only one with my eyes open, so I was the only one who saw how close they all came to being cut to shreds. As it was, people screamed at the shock of sharp wire suddenly whipping past them. But they all kept their heads.
The fugitive coin fell to the ground, wrapped inside the hundreds of windings of copper wire that tried to strangle its newfound captive.
“Incredible,” Butelios said, grunting with effort as he prised the fugitive from prison before handing the coin back to me.
I was grateful for the admiration in his voice, and even more so that he had the foresight to stand behind me and catch me as I fell. Diadera approached. She stared at me for a moment and then reached out a finger to touch the shadowblack markings around my eye. Not bad, she said, through that strange connection we shared.
Told you I had it all under control.
I passed out after that.
36
The Hero
I drifted in and out of consciousness for the next few minutes, glimpsing the world through snatches of sights and sounds that came and went before I could make sense of them.
“What’s wrong with the boy?” Ghilla asked. Having a girl clearly younger than myself continuously refer to me as “boy” was starting to bother me. I would’ve told her as much but neither my mouth nor my brain were working all that well.
Diadera took it upon herself to speak on my behalf. “He’s exhausted. Ten days ago Tournam and Butelios found him half dead in the desert. They had Azir make a road, but he was too weak to go all the way through shadow, so they dragged him up the mountain.”
“Then the moron tried to escape,” Tournam added.
“And then,
” Diadera went on, “Kellen nearly got himself killed helping us fight the stygian in the abbey, only to have one particularly ungrateful idiot—” she turned her gaze on Tournam—“decide it was a good idea to interrogate him before he’d even had a decent sleep or a proper meal.”
I could get used to having someone speak up for me for a change, rather than use my every infirmity as an opportunity to detail my long list of flaws. I looked up at Diadera, enjoying the way the long locks of curly red hair framed those weird freckles of hers. For some reason I found them appealing. More so than staring at the insides of my eyelids anyway. My vision went blurry as I felt myself fainting again.
“Let’s get him back to the abbey,” Suta’rei said. “Come on, Butelios. Azir’s got a shadow path open for us, but you’re going to have to carry him.”
“Not yet,” the big man said, his voice close to my ear. He was still propping me up, and now he gave me a gentle shake. “Kellen needs to see what he’s done.”
“Let the poor bastard sleep, Butelios. He needs food and rest.” Oddly, that little shred of compassion came from Tournam.
I would’ve made an effort to make a smart-ass reply, but Butelios wasn’t having any of it. “No, he needs to see.” He gave me another shake, less gentle this time. “Come on, Kellen. Wake up.”
Tournam tried again to intervene on my behalf. “Why is it so important he—”
“Because he’s not like you. Open your eyes, Kellen.”
Butelios’s grip on my shoulders became too painful to ignore. As much from irritation as curiosity, I did as he asked, blinking until my eyes found their focus.
A few yards ahead of me, the families who’d been bound in Tas’diem’s copper blood noose stood there, holding on to each other. They seemed hesitant about Diadera and the others, as if they had to force themselves not to shy away. But me they stared at with a kind of … I don’t know. Maybe gratitude? I’m not used to people feeling that around me, so it’s hard to be sure.
“They would have died,” Butelios said quietly in my ear, “these people who wanted nothing more than to live in peace. Because they gave sanctuary to people like us, the war coven sent Tas’diem to kill them, unaware that he himself was shadowblack.”
“What’s your point?” I asked.
“Had you not been here, my friend, the mage likely would have killed us, and even had we survived, we never would have heard their cries nor been able to free them from his trap.” His grip on me eased up a little. “Fifty strangers you saved today, little spellslinger. Maybe you’re more of an Argosi than you would have us believe.”
The villagers were still watching us. I had no idea who they were, or if they understood a thing Butelios had said. It didn’t matter. One by one they made a sign with their right hands, touching each of their fingertips first to their mouths and then to their hearts. A couple of the little ones couldn’t quite seem to get the gesture. Their parents kept showing them until they got it right.
I should have felt something then. A burning pride, perhaps? The warm glow that comes from knowing that for once I’d gotten something right? But I couldn’t enjoy any of it. I just kept thinking how much I wished Ferius was there to see that for one brief moment I’d come close to being a proper Argosi.
“I think he’s had enough admiration for one day,” Diadera said. She gave me a wink. “Don’t let it go to your head, Kellen. Makes your face look all funny.”
A laugh escaped my lips. “Shut up, Reichis.”
I hadn’t meant to say that. Diadera’s mockery reminded me so much of the squirrel cat that for an instant I’d … I’d forgotten. And in that forgetting, I’d stopped reminding myself not to feel his absence.
Diadera looked at me, head tilted. “Reichis?”
She hadn’t been there when Tournam and Butelios had found me in the desert. She didn’t know what I was talking about. Reichis was just a name Butelios had said back at the abbey.
I needed something clever to say—some way of shifting the conversation to give myself time to put the walls back up before it was too late. But I couldn’t. Despite how hard I tried to stop myself, still my next words came out in a string of sobs. “He was a squirrel cat. My business … My friend, damn it. I think … I think he’s dead.”
Any normal person—especially one who’d just faced death at the hands of a mad mage—would’ve laughed their heads off or at least told me to pull myself together. But Diadera took hold of my hand. “I’m sorry, Kellen. Do you want to tell me about him?”
“No. I want to …” I pushed away from Butelios so I could get away from Diadera. I couldn’t stand to have her see me like this. The villagers were watching me too, no doubt wondering why someone who’d beaten a shadowblack mage was now weeping like a lost child. “I need to find Reichis. That’s my job. That’s how it’s supposed to be between us.” Anger welled up inside me. “Instead I ended up in that stupid abbey, and then I came here thinking I could run off to find him, only I’m still probably hundreds of miles away from where he died, and even if I could get back to the Golden Passage, I’d have no way of finding him in the desert.”
“Says who?” a deep voice asked.
I turned around to see Butelios standing behind Diadera, and with him the rest of the shadowcasters.
“The abbot may not like it, but shadowcasters go where we want, boy,” Ghilla said quietly, conspiratorially.
The kid, Azir, asked Butelios, “Can you cry me a trail to follow?”
The big man nodded. “I’ll find a way.”
“Well?” Diadera asked me. “How about we go track down that squirrel cat of yours?” The genuineness of her smile and the glint of wetness in her eyes took me by surprise. I’d come within a hair’s breadth of abandoning them all, and now … I knew enough about the abbey and its rules to know they’d be putting themselves at risk for me. The abbot played at being kindly, but underneath the smiles and jokes I doubted there was anything but iron and steel. If he found out …
“I should do this on my own,” I said at last.
Tournam, who’d been nothing but a pain in my arse until now, put a hand on my shoulder. “Quit being a martyr, cloud boy.” More gently, and without a trace of irony or sarcasm, he said, “You’re one of us now, Kellen. We go where you go.”
“Do you really cry?” I asked Butelios. “Or do they call it that because the shadowblack is seeping from your eyes?”
The two of us were on our knees, facing each other. The sun had drifted below the trees, the villagers gone now that they’d buried their dead and retreated to their homes to mourn. I was cold and it took an effort not to shiver. Diadera and the others, like me, waited on Butelios. “It is both,” he replied. “The shadows emerge from behind my eyes, but I must cry to bring them forth.”
“So you have to—”
“It’s easier if you don’t talk. Focus your thoughts on the squirrel cat.”
“Right. Sorry.” I glanced up at the others, expecting to find them all laughing at me. They weren’t. Only Tournam smirked, proving that while he might be on my side, more or less, he was still an arrogant jerk. “Do they have to be here for—”
“Tell me about your friend,” Butelios said. “What was he like?”
“I thought you wanted me to shut up and ‘focus my thoughts.’”
“That was before I realised you were incapable of silence. Close your eyes and tell me about Reichis. Encompass his being in a single word.”
Describe Reichis in one word? How was I supposed to do that? Thief? Liar? Murderer? Friend? He was all those things. Reichis was a wild beast who’d never submit to anyone, a terror to anyone who crossed him—including me. He was the exact opposite of what a familiar was supposed to be, and I had the bite marks on my arms and ankles to prove it. He refused to do what he was told. He didn’t make my magic any stronger. And he never, ever let me down. Reichis was all the things I’d been raised to despise and yet had proved to be the one thing I’d needed most.
; One word. What a stupid way to try to encapsulate someone who would never let themselves be bound by anyone or anything. Reichis would have threatened Butelios with elaborate mutilations just for asking. Then he’d have looked up at me and said, “How about we ditch these losers, Kellen? Let’s sneak back into that stupid abbey and steal all their stuff.”
One word?
Soul.
Reichis was the soul I wished I’d been born with.
A soft, almost inaudible sob brought me back to the present. For once it hadn’t come from me. I opened my eyes. Butelios was still watching me, black tears drifting from his cheeks to swirl in the air before aligning themselves in a path that led off to the south-east, over the cliff and across the empty air. Azir kicked off his shoes and stamped on the cold ground. The darkness slid from the skin of his feet, stretching out and fragmenting as it led into a distant fog.
Butelios gripped me by the shoulders and lifted me to my feet. “Come,” he said, cheeks red from tears no longer black. “I will take you to your friend. I will show you where his shadow awaits you.”
37
The Golden Passage
I followed the others through Azir’s shadow passage. When we neared the end of the black road, they each took up a position, readying their abilities for whatever dangers awaited us. Tournam’s shadow ribbons weaved in a figure-eight pattern in front of him. Diadera stood next to him, her swarm of black freckles darting above like angry wasps seeking out their target. Ghilla coughed up a cloud of smoke that hardened into a shield at the front of our line “You see anything out there, girl?” she asked Suta’rei.
My fellow Jan’Tep closed her eyes, revealing the blackened lids. Her brow furrowed, and the markings from her eyelids floated away, coming together like the wings of a butterfly before darting out into the fog at the end of the onyx road. “It appears to be deserted,” she said after a few seconds. “Which I suppose makes sense for a desert. Something could still be hiding out there though.” Her fingers twitched into the shape of an ember spell, reminding me that in addition to her shadowblack abilities she was also a proper mage.
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