Godfire

by Cara Witter

  Kenton shadowed Iadan as he left work, heading in the opposite direction of home. He walked through the marketplace, which was all but abandoned. There were still a few stalls open, and Kenton saw one of the vendors handing out free apples to the Sevairnese soldiers, which might have explained how some managed to continue selling their goods undisturbed.

  Iadan passed through the market district, over the canal that was still busy with small personal vessels and larger ones for cargo transport. He walked past a town square pyre, which would normally be mostly used for burning the blood-soaked cloths of menstruating women and the sick or injured. Today, though, the flames were high and filled with bodies. Those of the poor or unidentified joined the ashes of the pyre, and those of the wealthy were contained in metal coffins atop wooden chips. The ashes would be collected afterward for keeping, or burial.

  Past the pyre, Iadan entered a run-down area of town, where the side-canal smelled strongly of sewage and the plaster on the tall buildings chipped and cracked, to a corner tavern that to any passing onlooker would have looked boarded up and abandoned. A thin sliver of light, though, leaked out beneath one of the boards that had been haphazardly nailed over the windows. This might be the sort of place a man came to meet with a lover, but it seemed more likely to be used for other purposes.

  Iadan glanced over his shoulder as he walked up to the door, and Kenton took the opportunity to step from the shadows and approach him with a quick stride. Iadan looked alarmed, but Kenton held up his hands, showing they were empty.

  Not that the knife concealed at his belt wasn’t within easy reach.

  “Good evening,” he said.

  Iadan’s eyes narrowed, and his arms crossed. He was a tall man, thin, with a short growth of reddish-brown beard over his narrow cheeks. “Good evening to you.”

  Kenton tilted his head in the direction of the door and took a chance. “I’ll need you to introduce me to your friends.”

  Iadan squinted, pretending to look the place up and down. “It’s closed. Probably hasn’t been anyone here since the riots. The guards cleared a lot of these places when the market was attacked.”

  Kenton fixed his eyes on Iadan. “Introduce me to your friends, or I’ll return to Perchaya and tell her exactly what it is you’re doing with your evenings when you say you’re working late. Which do you think she’ll find worse? That you’re cheating on her sister, as she suspects, or that you’re working with the very people who caused the attack that almost killed her?”

  Iadan couldn’t bluff. His face blanched, confirming Kenton’s suspicions, and he looked at the closed door to the bar, and then back at Kenton. “You’re not with the guard, are you?”

  “I’m many things,” Kenton said. “But I’m not looking to turn you or your people in. I just need information, and I think you can give it to me. But if you’d rather . . .” He gestured in the direction of Iadan’s home.

  Iadan held up a hand. “Fine. I’ll introduce you. But if you turn on us, you’ll be dead before you can blink.”

  Kenton doubted very much that he was going to be bested by the likes of Iadan or the rebels who couldn’t even shoot the right girl. Regardless, he had no intention of turning them over to Lord Governor Tehlran. Any enemy of Diamis was a tool, and Kenton wasn’t in the business of throwing away tools he might need. The gods only knew he had fewer of those than he’d have liked. “Fair enough,” Kenton said.

  Iadan reached a hand for the door and knocked out a pattern of sharp bursts. The door slipped open a crack, though from his angle Kenton couldn’t see who was inside.

  “I brought a friend,” Iadan said. “But he’s clean.”

  Kenton tried not to look skeptical. Iadan had no way to know that; he was just covering his own ass. The door opened further, and Kenton looked beyond the bearded man at the door into the tavern beyond. For being as quiet as it was from the outside, the tavern was surprisingly full—groups gathered around tables, many of whom looked to be on their second or third tankard despite the early evening hour. And most were wearing their wool coats or cloaks and hats—unlike most taverns, the stone hearth was empty of any fire or simmering meat.

  The bartender eyed him warily, and Kenton returned the look. No doubt the man was wondering if Kenton was a spy for Tehlran or Diamis, and Kenton wondered the same in return. Since they served so many people and got pulled into brawls commonly enough, bartenders were common targets for blood mages who wanted to keep an eye on who was passing through town.

  Iadan brushed passed the door guard and led Kenton through the bar to a dark corner, where two men already sat at a table, nursing their ales. These men nodded to Iadan but watched Kenton with suspicion. Iadan tossed his head toward Kenton. “He says he has questions. And he’s an enemy of the state, so that makes him one of us.”

  Kenton eyed Iadan, who must have heard from Perchaya or his wife about the details of the debacle with the ring. He supposed she couldn’t very well have kept the ring from those she lived with, but Kenton still wished she hadn’t shared. It made Iadan—and this situation—significantly more dangerous. But he was here now, and he intended to make the most of it.

  The others nodded toward Kenton. The short, bald man on the end extended a hand and introduced himself as Benick, which Kenton assumed wasn’t his real name. He introduced the other as Quinn, a man with a short blond beard and dark circles under his eyes. Quinn’s tunic and lightly embroidered jerkin were of fine make but not overly rich—probably of the merchant class, though the clothes looked rumpled enough to have been slept in for days.

  Benick kicked a chair under the table, scooting it out for Kenton to sit. Iadan took the chair next to him, but turned it sideways, facing Kenton fully and keeping an eye on the room, probably for those who might be trying to overhear. He needn’t have done it; his two friends were already facing the room, and Kenton noted that the bartender himself had a crossbow set on the back bar, not even bothering to hide it under the counter.

  This wasn’t a place he wanted to start a fight.

  A plump barmaid with a deep scowl slammed a tankard down in front of him, sloshing ale over the side. “Thanks,” Kenton called after her. The woman only grunted in reply.

  “That’s the Mariner for you,” Iadan said, “Best service in all of Andronim.”

  “So that’s why you keep it all to yourselves,” Kenton replied dryly.

  “Nah,” Iaden said. “It’s the ale-flavored water that we really like.”

  Benick took a protracted drink from his tankard and set it down. “Ask what you want, then be on your way. We have business to discuss.”

  Kenton was always game for getting to the point. “I’m looking for a woman who can channel the moonlight. Is it true that you know her?”

  Benick looked at him with suspicion, but it was Quinn’s reaction that caught Kenton’s eye. His face hardened in anger, but it was directed at Iadan rather than Kenton.

  “I just need to talk to her,” Kenton said. “I wanted to ask her about Vorgale.”

  “If that’s so,” Benick said, “she’s not the one you’re looking for. Go to a charm shop and leave us alone.”

  “I need to speak with her. I can see why you want to keep her hidden. A Vorgalian mage would certainly be useful for the cause.”

  Quinn put both his hands on the table and leaned toward Kenton. “You’ve put your nose where it doesn’t belong,” he said. “Say the word, Benick, and I’ll see to it he doesn’t talk.”

  Iadan looked affronted that Quinn would insult his guest, as if he wanted Kenton here any more than the others did.

  “I have no intention of talking,” Kenton said. “Only of asking a few questions. If I wanted to go to the guard, I could have done so already.”

  Benick considered for a moment. “We do have a few mages on our side, but she’s not exactly one of them.”

  “Then it’s true
what they say,” Kenton said. “It’s done with mirrors.”

  Quinn toyed with his tankard, then took a drink. “That’s all. Just a trick.”

  Iadan turned toward the man, abandoning his watch on the room. “Like the hells it is. I saw Sayvil do it myself. It was no trick.”

  The other two glared at Iadan, who remembered himself and leaned back sheepishly in his seat.

  Kenton held in a smile. Sayvil. Iadan was turning out to be quite the ally. “So about this mage—”

  Benick’s face betrayed a hint of indecision before he continued. “She never studied at Vorgale, or at least she said she never did . . .”

  “She didn’t,” Quinn said coldly, glowering at the table.

  Benick ignored him. “But she can do magic anyway. Moon magic.”

  A flood of reckless hope ran through Kenton. Anyone could learn Vorgalian or blood magic, but both required knowledge and training. The Vorgalians trained in their closed city high in the mountains of eastern Andronim; blood mages carried out their unspeakable deeds in secret. So unless this woman was a Drim—and that was unlikely, with all the full-blooded Drim dead and the magic diluted over the generations for those who were farther removed—her magic had to be the sign of a bearer. If it was indeed magic and not a trick after all.

  Kenton took a deliberately long drink and swallowed. “Impossible. She must have gone to Vorgale.”

  Quinn glared at him, but Benick shook his head. “It sounds mad, I know. I almost laughed her out of the tavern when she showed up, wanting to help the cause. But she demanded we let her show us. We followed her outside to an empty alleyway, and I thought she might be leading us into a trap. I was sure of it when none of us could see a bleeding thing for minutes after.”

  “She took away your eyesight?” Kenton’s hopes, which had briefly risen high enough to make him light-headed, began to plummet—after all, that didn’t sound like anything beyond the scope of a mage with a decade of study under her belt. More to the point, it didn’t sound elemental, like he would expect from the bearer of Arkista, goddess of the moon.

  “She didn’t,” Benick said quietly, his gray eyes boring into Kenton’s. “The moon did. She brought the moonlight into that alleyway, this flash of light brighter than anything I’ve ever seen.”

  Kenton tried to look merely impressed and not betray the possible import of Benick’s words, but his pulse was racing. A woman who could channel the moonlight.

  Andronim shall burn with light, daughter of the twilight moon.

  This was promising, more so than any previous lead on the godbearers. Kenton had to see it for himself, tonight. “I need to speak with her immediately,” he said. “And I’m willing to pay.”

  “You can’t,” Quinn growled, his hands clenched tight around his tankard. “She’s gone to Peldenar.”

  Kenton nearly jumped out of his chair.

  Peldenar.

  “You sent her to Diamis?” Kenton asked. If Diamis identified the bearers first, he could imprison them, torture them, prevent them from finding the gods. Then he would only have to finish off the last of the Drim, and Maldorath would be free.

  Benick’s expression became instantly closed, and Kenton regretted his response. “We don’t talk about the missions here,” Benick said. “We’ve said more than we should have.”

  Quinn shoved his drink away from him. “He’s right, Benick. She should never have gone. But he talked her into it.” He pointed an accusing finger at Iadan.

  Iadan’s eyes narrowed. “I had nothing to do with it. She chose this.”

  Quinn’s fists clenched, his knuckles pale. “And you didn’t even have the decency to tell me! Two weeks. Two weeks go by and I have no idea what has happened to my wife. I fear that she’s been captured, but there’s no ransom asked. Then I fear she’s dead somewhere, killed by some street thug or even a soldier. And then, then I receive a letter from her telling me she’s on a mission to Peldenar. And she’s as good as dead, because this fool sent her straight into Diamis’ . . .” Quinn trailed off, his hands shaking.

  Gods, she’s his wife, and was sent on some fool mission to Diamis’ stronghold. It explained his defensive reaction to the questioning about her, not to mention the look of a man scraped from the edge of the furthest hell—and likely he had no idea that his wife might be a bearer, which put her in even more danger.

  Not to mention the world.

  Kenton tightened his grip on his tankard. If Diamis killed a bearer and another was called, Kenton would be left with no leads. And if Diamis instead locked her away, Kenton might never be able to find her.

  “Keep wagging your tongue so freely and she won’t have a chance,” Benick said, gripping Quinn’s shoulder like he was keeping him from leaping up and going after her. “She’s long gone already, and there’s nothing you can do to bring her back. Tehlran, however, can warn Diamis. Shouting her plans all over could cost her life.”

  The fight seemed to seep from Quinn at those words, and he slumped down in his chair. “Her life is nothing to you,” he muttered, blinking back tears. “She’s nothing to you but a tool.”

  Kenton didn’t trust himself to speak. She was also a tool to him, but a valuable one, one he would never have sent carelessly into danger.

  “Thanks for the help,” he said and stood from the table, ignoring the wary glance from Benick.

  Kenton had to go to Peldenar—now—and hope to those fool excuses for gods that it wasn’t too late.

  Nine

  Daniella tossed her thick book down next to her on the divan and winced as it slid off and flopped open to the ground, bending the pages irreparably. Not that the book was a favorite—far from it, being a lengthy tome on trade regulations prior to her father’s takeover of Foroclae—but even the driest volumes held a special place in her heart. People were often inconstant, dismissive, false. Books were always a comfort, a means of running away no matter how tethered she was in real life.

  Books never hurt her.

  She picked up the volume and tried to smooth out the pages, even though she’d probably never read this particular book again. Lord Tehlran himself had already told her it be would better if she didn’t speak during the meetings, something along the lines of how she should “silently portray the authority and majesty of Sevairn,” after which she knew that all the studying she’d done to learn the fragile politics of international trade had been a waste. The words may have been more delicately phrased than they so frequently were in Peldenar, but the overall sentiment was the same: Daniella wasn’t an equal, no matter who her father was. He wasn’t a king, and she wasn’t a princess; he’d always told her she’d have to get respect the same way he did. By earning it.

  Pity she hadn’t the faintest idea how to do that, though she was certain it wasn’t by falling into a fountain in front of handsome Mortichean knights.

  Daniella stood. There was another meeting soon, and she would be there in her seat before the rest of them even showed up. They might not want her to speak, might not even let her do so, but she could at least listen and learn. And be prepared to one day earn her place in the world.

  The door to her room opened suddenly, and Daniella startled.

  The maid entering startled, nearly dropping the stack of neatly folded linens in her arms. “I’m sorry, my lady,” the slender woman said, her dark brown eyes wide. Graying hair poked out from under the woman’s linen kerchief.

  Daniella’s hammering heart began to slow. Jumping at a maid coming to refresh the bed linens was a new low, even with how easily she startled since ending things with Erich. The persistent image of Braisia’s neck pierced with a crossbow bolt meant for her own hadn’t helped.

  “It’s quite alright. Nessa, is it?” Daniella asked, giving the woman a smile to put her at ease. The servant’s hands trembled, and Daniella stared at the linens. Could there be an assassin�
�s blade concealed in that stack? She’d also read of poisons that could be applied to fabric, undetectable by smell but which could soak into the skin and—

  Poisons? Blades wrapped in her bedsheets? Daniella forced her hands to unclench. She was just being paranoid now. This was the same maid she’d had for days.

  But Nessa still stared at her, eyes wide and cheeks flushed. A sheen of sweat had formed at the top of the woman’s forehead.

  Daniella’s pulse sped up again. “Is everything all right, Nessa? Are you feeling well?”

  Nessa’s long fingers gripped the linens tightly. “Yes, my lady, if I may . . .” She cut off, looking back at the open bedroom door meaningfully.

  Daniella hesitated, then nodded. It was possible the maid was an assassin come to kill her, but it was more likely that she had some information that might keep her safe.

  The maid wet her thin lips and shut the door, then hesitated. Just as Daniella was about to press, she spoke. “I’m staunchly loyal to your father, my lady. To the Sevairnese empire.”

  Daniella blinked. This wasn’t what she had expected, and she wasn’t quite sure how to respond. She heard this all the time, of course, from dignitaries and soldiers and anyone else who thought idle talk would earn her father’s good graces, but this woman sounded so fervent about it that she either was outright lying or she truly meant it.

  Daniella was willing to bet on the latter. “I appreciate your loyalty, of course. But I’m not sure why that requires such . . .” Her eyes flicked back to the now-closed door. “Discretion.”

  Nessa shifted her balance from one foot then back again. “Of course, my lady, I just—I needed you to know. Also, that my family joins me in this deep loyalty. They have from the early days of your father’s rule. My cousin was one of the child slaves he freed from the Drim.”

  Daniella’s eyes grew wide. Though it had long been a growing rumor that the Drim rulers had been adding use of forbidden blood magic to their own magical skills, the group of over fifty child slaves Diamis and his men had liberated had been the final evidence that gave her father the mandate to take Sevairn. Children taken from the streets of bigger cities like Peldenar and Telvanir, who by and large would not be missed, imprisoned in caves along the sea, their blood drained regularly for the Drim’s secret, profane purposes.