Milo absorbed the eruption of instruction with a scowl.
It very much seemed there was a good deal to Jorge’s interaction with the monster that the colonel had not told Milo. Milo had almost assumed that was the case, but having the brunt of his ignorance bear down on him like this was a distinctly unpleasant experience.
“I suppose,” he began, trying to keep his head above the surface of this pool in which he was scared to find the bottom. “It couldn’t hurt to reestablish contact with Nicht-KAT. That is, as long as Contessa Rihyani is okay with it. I mean, after all, she just got here. If she has other business to attend to, I wouldn’t want to make the lady feel rushed.”
Milo looked at Rihyani and saw her smiling. An ugly snort and an uglier chuckle rose from Bashlek Marid.
“The lady’s business was coming here to escort you,” the ghul said. “Do you really think those clumsy flying machines could wander through my domains without me knowing?”
Milo met Marid’s hot stare, refusing to be cowed by the mad intensity he saw there.
“It seems you know a good deal more about everyone’s business than I do, Your Majesty,” Milo replied flatly. “When you’re done playing your games, let me know.”
The tension thickened, and the air seemed to seethe around the Bashlek.
“Do you find my treatment of you less than hospitable, Magus?”
“I think you’ve been using me to bait your political rivals since the second I got here,” Milo said, his voice sinking lower and growing harder. “And you don’t much seem to care what kind of danger that puts Ambrose or me in.”
Marid sniffed, somehow managing to show more of his teeth.
“It started before you came, actually,” Marid replied with practiced nonchalance. “From the second the rumors spread that I was going to bring a human to Ifreedahm to learn magic. I’ve been using your arrival like a lightning rod to gather all the dissidents under one burning roof.”
“All right, glad to be of service,” Milo growled in his chest. “Now, how about you keep your political schemes to yourself from here on out?”
“I have a better idea.” Marid leaned forward, giving Milo the coldest, nastiest grin he had ever seen. “You take what scraps you are given, little magus, and I’ll make sure all of ghuldom keeps forgetting you’re nothing but talking food.”
Marid maintained the locked gaze, his upper lip twitching a wormy dance that showed his fangs with every spasm. Milo shifted in his seat, unsure if he wanted to be ready to spring up and run or beat the old monster to the pounce.
Before he could decide, Marid slumped back and laughed uproariously.
“Oh, Magus, you are nothing if not interesting,” he croaked between wracking fits of guffawing. “Imrah tells me you have the mind of a scholar, hungry and lusting for knowledge, but I see you also have the heart of a fighter. Now I know why she likes you so much.”
Milo just stared at him, too wary of the mercurial king to acknowledge how shocked he was to hear that Imrah felt anything but loathing toward him.
“Let me open your eyes a little more, my young scrapper,” Marid said, the laughter dying as his voice turned to ice.
Marid snapped his fingers.
Swirling and roiling around the ghul like a spectral storm, Milo saw an entire squadron of incorporeal animates. Some, revealed as they were swimming through the air, were little more than living cobwebs woven into ghostly visages—the Hatif, who were the unseen, unfelt eyes and ears of their master. Others, denser but still without true substance, were knit from shadows and spite and seemed ready to manifest as that black sand. With a word—probably just a thought—Bashlek Marid could summon a dozen Si’lat to descend on any who displeased on him. Circling like sharks scenting blood, the malevolent shades eyed Milo with hollow, hungering eyes.
“Just remember how small you are, Magus.” Marid whispered the warning. “Before you start picking fights you can’t win.”
“Oh, I could’ve throttled the little monster,” Milo snarled as he paced in the common room. “Every step of the way, he’s been dangling and using us!”
Ambrose grunted his acknowledgment from the kitchen, where he watched over a boiling pot of rice. Milo had insisted he was too angry to eat, but the big man had insisted they have something after the excitement of the day.
“And now, after only three days—three days!—he’s sending us off,” Milo continued. “How am I supposed to learn anything if I am being shoved right back into the fighting? Marid’s welching on his agreement with Jorge now that he’s done with me.”
“Even if that might cost him his daughter?” Ambrose called, still stirring the simmering pot. “He did say he was sending her with us.”
Milo paused in his pacing to consider the point but shook his head.
“I think it’s pretty clear there is no love lost between those two.” He shrugged as he returned to stalking back and forth across the common room. “Besides, a creature like Marid wouldn’t care about things like that. Monsters like him never do.”
Milo lapsed into brooding and nearly jumped when a sharp hiss filled the room. He whirled to see rice being drained. Ambrose looked up, his face reddening in the cloud of steam.
“You seem to think you know quite a bit about the Bashlek,” Ambrose noted as he hefted the pot onto the stone countertop and began adding spices, minced vegetables, and diced meat.
“Because Marid is like every other petty despot.” Milo huffed and threw himself down on a couch, which gave a loud creak of protest. “Call them Bashleks or Headmasters or Officers or Gang Bosses or Monsignors, they’re all the same—self-serving predators who have clawed their way to the top of their local garbage heap.”
The flood of memories that came with the description dragged Milo’s hands to his head, and he kneaded at his temples. His fingers worked vigorously, as though they might squeeze away the invasive recollections.
“Well, there’s a bit of baggage that screams for unpacking.” Ambrose chuckled grimly as he scraped what they both hoped were minced leeks into the steaming pot of rice. “So, you want to talk about your problems with authority figures in general or simply hop into exploring your issues with priests?”
Milo looked out from under his hand to fix Ambrose with a scowl.
“Is that slop you call food ready yet?”
Ambrose raised his chin and looked down his crooked nose at Milo.
“I thought you weren’t hungry, O mighty Magus,” he replied archly as he continued folding in ingredients.
“I’m just hoping you’ll have something to shove into your mouth soon.” Milo grunted as he spied the two codices he’d received thus far. He scooped up both and deposited them in his lap.
“It needs to stand for a few minutes,” Ambrose said, leaving the food to cool on the countertop as he ambled over to the couch across from Milo. “Which is just enough time for you to explain how someone who seems passably intelligent is being so very stupid.”
Milo looked up from thumbing through Awakening Moro, brows knitting together.
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m saying,” Ambrose grunted as he settled onto the couch that gave a sympathetic groan, “if you’re smart enough to know all about how types like Marid work, why are you trying to pick a fight with him? What makes you think that is a good idea?”
“He picked the fight with me.” Milo snorted and let the codex flop on the couch. “Sneering about the contessa and rubbing our noses in how this was all part of his plan and he was using us like pawns.”
Ambrose shook his head as he folded his hands over his belly.
“That’s not picking a fight,” he said with a nod. “That’s bragging, which is what you should have expected from a—what did you call him?—‘petty despot.’”
Milo’s jaw tightened, and his teeth ground together as he forced words between them.
“He was being an ass.”
Ambrose shrugged.
“So?�
��
“So?” Milo echoed incredulously. “So we just let him think he can keep pulling our strings, keep using us?”
Ambrose tapped his feet thoughtfully, rocking slightly this way and that.
“You think that getting in a staring contest and beating your chest will stop all that?”
Milo forced a long breath through his nostrils and slowly unclenched his jaw.
“It will at least show him I’m on to his game, and I’m not playing.”
Ambrose groaned and raised a hand to mop his face and tug his sideburns in frustration.
“No wonder you were a penal conscript!”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Milo bristled, fixing the big man with a withering glare.
“It means stop doing this,” Ambrose explained, letting go of his sideburn and gestured at Milo with a flap of his hand. “This childish posturing and growling, like a cub trying to prove he’s not scared.”
“I’m not scared,” Milo snapped back, flicking the other codex off his lap with one hand.
“Then I take back everything I said about you being smart.” Ambrose gave a shake of his head. “We’re past the edge of the map here, Magus, and you’re being schooled in witchcraft by monsters! If you aren’t at least a little bit scared, you are stupid, and being that stupid will get you killed. Probably me too, thank you very much.”
Ambrose’s words punched through the anger that was swelling inside him, leaving him deflated but unwilling to release his grip. He threw himself back against the couch and raised a fist to grind against his forehead.
“What do you want me to do?” Milo fumed. “Cower and fawn over that parasite?”
A smile twitched beneath Ambrose’s mustache.
“I’m not sure you are capable of fawning over anything,” he said, failing to stifle his grin. “But if you could try to be a touch less confrontational, maybe learn to growl less and listen more, we both might last a bit longer.”
Milo let off his forehead to look levelly at Ambrose.
“I’ve heard you growl plenty.”
Ambrose chuckled and then slapped both hands on his knees.
“That’s my job,” he said before heaving himself to his feet and turning back to the kitchenette. “And the fact is that for what my job is, it works. But your job isn’t being the ruggedly handsome guardian of some upstart, pretty boy wizard. Your job is to be that upstart wizard, and that means you’ve got to try being more sagely and less of a street tough.”
Ambrose retrieved two bowls and filled them with the rice mixture, then snatched up two spoons.
“You really think I’m pretty?” Milo asked in his most delicate voice.
“Without a doubt,” the big man said with a wink as he handed one bowl and spoon to Milo. “Just don’t tell your teacher. Don’t want the poor girl getting jealous.”
Milo dug around the clumps of rice to find the seasoned meat, shaking his head as he remembered the Bashlek’s words.
“I think that more than anything proves how mad Marid is.” He snorted, not wanting Ambrose to see how much he enjoyed the savory smell of the food. “Imrah wouldn’t put me out if I was on fire.”
“I might think about it,” a voice called from the entrance to the apartment. “And isn’t that a human proverb? ‘It’s the thought that counts.’”
Milo nearly gagged on his first bite as he spun on the couch to see a naked woman standing in the doorway.
She was short and shapely, fuller-figured than might have been fashionable, but she would have been quite pleasant to look at had her appearance not been so sudden and she not so nude. After a single uncertain second, she closed the door behind her and strode into the room as Ambrose watched suspiciously. Milo was caught between choking and gawking.
“Who are you?” Milo wheezed, then fought to clear his throat.
Dark eyes turned toward Milo, framed by black, straight hair cut along a severe line. Even through his watering eyes, Milo couldn’t help noting something familiar glittering in her gaze. Something which, until very recently, he’d taken for barely suppressed loathing.
“Imrah?” Milo croaked.
The woman nodded, then frowned at Milo’s bemused expression.
“What is wrong with you?” she snapped, glaring at his stunned expression and then turning to Ambrose. “What is wrong with him?”
“You do look a little different, ma’am,” Ambrose offered. “He might be having a hard time adjusting.”
She who was apparently Imrah gave an exasperated sigh and turned back to Milo, whose wandering eyes snapped back up to her face. His eyes looked ready to pop out of his head, and if they didn’t, his cheeks were burning hot enough to cook them inside his head.
“How in Styx am I supposed to accompany you?” she demanded. “Humans are notoriously oblivious, but I’m fairly certain they will notice if a ghul is with you.”
“I, uh, I guess, um, that makes sense,” Milo muttered. “So will you, uh, be traveling with us, um, like that?”
Imrah raised a hand, and both men thought she was about to slap him until she reached over with her other hand to give the meat of her forearm a squeeze.
“If you’d done your reading, you would know this kind of skin-shawl requires considerable time and resources to prepare. Once it’s put on, removing it will destroy it. So yes, Magus, I will be traveling in this meat suit, though Iblis only knows how I’ll manage.”
“If I may, ma’am,” Ambrose interjected as he cleared his throat with a cough. “I think what the Magus meant was, do you plan to put on clothes before we rejoin the world above? A naked woman might not raise as many eyebrows as a ghul, but it would draw more attention than we’d want.”
Imrah looked down at herself and then shot a glance to Milo, whose valiant efforts at discretion seemed doomed to failure.
“As if this clinging flesh weren’t enough,” Imrah fumed, twisting on her heel and stomping over to the couch where Ambrose’s ruined jacket lay.
With a good deal of fumbling that Milo told himself not to watch but somehow wasn’t able to look away from, Imrah managed to enfold herself in the big man’s coat, which looked like a blue tent draped around her small shoulders.
“Happy?” She huffed.
“Not to speak for the Magus,” Ambrose said, giving his ward a wink, “but I’d say we’re about halfway there.”
15
A Warning
The next day, their party came together at the arched entrance to Ifreedahm: three fey, two humans, and two ghuls wearing convincing skin-shawls. To the relief of Milo, both ghuls had managed to acquire adequate if eclectic clothing. They insisted their garments were common dress for the area, but Milo was fairly certain the strange collection of drab essentials with brightly colored head coverings and fringed shawls were whatever was close at hand.
Without fanfare and hardly a word shared between them, they’d crossed the causeway and were soon being led through the tunnels by the two disguised ghuls. The plan was for Imrah and Fazihr to lead them out to the foot of the mountain, which Milo had heard in passing was called Shah Fuladi by the human population. Fazihr, in the guise of a small man with dusky skin and a mop of curly dark hair that fell nearly to his shoulders, stated that there was an outpost of ghul sentries near the access to the surface who should have a report of any activity involving human ground forces. Assuming they had the all-clear from the sentries, they would proceed to the surface, where the fey, who were far more accustomed to traveling above ground and knew the area somewhat, would bring them along a forgotten road to Bamyan, where the German forces were supposed to be stationed.
Everything after that point would be up to Milo and Ambrose to sort out.
Every step they took in the tunnels leading away from Ifreedahm, Milo felt like his feet were getting heavier. He kept remembering his last glimpse of the venomous jewel that was the capital of ghuldom and wondered if he would ever see it again. He told himself it wasn’t that he’d forgotten how t
he city’s denizens had tried to kill him on multiple occasions, but that while he was there, magic was everywhere, and it was somehow easier to believe that he could become a wizard. If magic and wonder, even the most terrible kinds, were water, he felt like he was leaving the only oasis to head back into the desert, and he couldn’t say for certain that he would ever return.
Milo tried to remind himself that his teacher was going with him and his pack was stuffed with tomes of magical lore, some translated but many still in the eye-searing Ghulish script. Imrah had promised to teach him how to make a fetish that would let him read any untranslated language so that he could read Ghulish. Then according to her, he would have the framework to become “a passable necromist.” Coming from his sour tutor, he supposed he should have taken that as a sign to be hopeful, but despite his best efforts, he couldn’t shake his melancholy at returning to the drab, dusty, and no doubt deadly world above—the world at war.
Absorbed in such grim navel-gazing, Milo didn’t notice the faint silvery light suffusing the air around him until Contessa Rihyani was walking right beside him.
“Magus,” she said softly, her eyes locked ahead where her two companions walked.
“Contessa,” Milo replied, stifling his shock. “What can I do for you?”
The fey gave him a sidelong glance, complete with a small smile.
“How very genteel of you,” she said. “I’d heard that the age of manners and chivalry was gone among mankind, but I am glad to see that isn’t true.”
Milo studied the elfin creature, certain she was mocking him but not wanting to be rude on the off-chance she wasn’t.
“If my manners don’t offend you, you might be the first,” Milo said with a wry chuckle. “It seems that being abrasive is a singular talent of mine.”
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