Cast in Firelight

by Dana Swift

  “Vardrenni.” I cast over my eyes and the image zooms in. But even with my magnification the wizard is a black blur as he sinks between two homes and disappears. So I’m left with nothing but the fact he wants to kill me—which I already knew.

  The groaning has stopped. The tension breaks and silence stretches back into being. I clamber up the pier.

  “Wait!” Kalyan calls after me.

  I run to the fallen body and search for a heartbeat. His skin is still wet from sea salt and sweat, and under that is the faint flutter of his pulse. Not dead. I run a few spells, measuring if any of his internal organs have started to shut down. He’s not even comatose. Lucky? No, the other wizard knew how long to push the torture. Finally, my eyes refocus and I look at his face, recognize the gray beard. Every feature is all too familiar. I flinch and move away, off the pier and through the white smoke of Kalyan’s illusion veil.

  “What’s wrong? How is he?” Kalyan asks as he follows me.

  “I talked to that man two weeks ago.”

  “You know him? Gods, I’m—”

  “Not well. Don’t even know his name. He arrested the East Village firelight distributor, the man named Basu I told you about.”

  I pace. Did this really just happen? Kalyan and I just happened to be under the pier when the Vencrin leader threatens our lives? Did he know we were there and this is all some sort of message? Are we currently in danger? I swept the pier before, didn’t I?

  Kalyan breaks into my turbulent thoughts. “But he’s okay?”

  “He’s going to be in a lot of pain when he wakes up, but I’ve never seen a torture spell with that much control. I didn’t realize one could command those spells like that. He should be fine.”

  “And that’s bad?”

  “No, that’s power. That’s practice…lots of practice.” Maybe that’s why I’m so shaken. The turmoil raging inside me stems from fear and guilt. Coincidence or not, for the first time I wasn’t in control. I hid and left a wizard to be tortured.

  Kalyan stills. “You shouldn’t be on the streets alone anymore. You won’t be able to deal with the Vencrin and watch for their spies at the same time.”

  “Well, I’m not giving up. After this”—I gesture to above—“I can’t stop.” I won’t let that happen again.

  “I’m not telling you to.”

  “Then what are you saying?” I demand.

  “I’m saying, let me join you. They already think we’re partners.”

  Relief floods me, but it’s more than that. I do need someone to watch my back. And I’m also happy that it’s him, that he is with me on this. I can’t let him know that, though. “Okay, then.”

  “Really? You aren’t going to fight me on this?”

  “You almost sound disappointed.”

  “I was already formulating a whole speech to convince you.”

  “Yeah, well, I wouldn’t say it now. You don’t want to talk me out of it, right?” My sarcasm is a defense mechanism, but it’s never been so evident. I’m transparent.

  Kalyan chuckles and picks up the bag of firelight closest to him. “In three days we’ll start planning.”

  “What?”

  “You want to start as soon as possible, right? Well, in three days you’ll be delivering the rest of the firelight.”

  “Yes, for Adraa…” I trail off. Just saying my real name shaves off a piece of our shared intimacy and refocuses it. What are we doing? What am I allowing him to do?

  “Of course.” He nods, confident. “For Adraa.”

  In three days I’ll also be introducing myself to Jatin. Before we can ever train together he’ll know who I am. And once Kalyan learns this, will he still want to be my partner? To risk his life?

  “I’ll see you then.” I hope he can’t hear the dejection in my voice. But I can and it bathes my mind in confusion.

  * * *

  For the next three days I search for Basu. Partly to make sure he is okay, partly to wrest any other details from him. But he’s gone. The only report left with his name on it confirms he headed for Agsa and was escorted all the way to the border. Which makes sense—that’s what my father told me, too. The gray-haired guard, on the other hand? He’s disappeared. When I request a report on everyone currently employed, Hiren’s father, one of the five rajas of Belwar who help run the Dome Guard, tells me not one profile matches that description. Even the report with Basu’s infraction and truth-spelling case contains no name of the commanding guard who took him in. Saves him a lot of paperwork, my blood.

  So I’m left with nothing but threats chiming in my head, Maharaja Naupure still gone, and Jatin Naupure expecting me at the ice door in a few hours.

  What’s worse is I haven’t been able to sleep well. The dreams like to come at dawn, not the dead of night, but when my mind drifts in semiconscious anxiety. One could blame what happened on that pier, but the red room dream has haunted me for weeks. The dreams aren’t what one would call normal. I’m not running, falling, or being hunted down by the Vencrin. No, I’m sitting in a blurry red room where my surroundings bleed. It’s always quiet until I’m hissed at to do one thing: “Perform the royal ceremony. Become Adraa Belwar.”

  When I try to argue that I am already Adraa Belwar, the voice repeats itself, until the words swirl like the walls. “There’s only one way. I have only one way. Perform the ceremony.”

  I awaken one of two ways, shouting or with my throat hurting like I already have been.

  Twenty-nine days until my royal ceremony.

  * * *

  I enter the sick bay and turn left on instinct. I offer a wave to a few of our long-term patients. Some are here because of Bloodlurst. It’s odd that only these people connect my face to my position in life, at least for the next twenty-nine days. Then all of Belwar will know exactly what Adraa Belwar looks like.

  Off to the left is a private room, and behind its door I’ll find Riya. I ease the door open, so as not to startle her. She’s wearing all light blue today. I wonder if she does that subconsciously when she’s going through bad days.

  In his cocoon lies Riya’s father, Mr. Burman, my old guard, and the best teacher I’ve ever had. My mother’s pink magic swims over his head, diving into his mouth and nose to supply oxygen and hopefully reengage activity.

  “I was looking for you,” I whisper to Riya.

  She glances up. “Sorry, I was…” She gestures to her dad.

  “I know. It’s fine.” Today’s the first of the week. She always gets like this at the first of the week. Mr. Burman had a saying that good things happen even at the beginning if one embraces the start of something new. He had sayings for everything.

  I pull a chair forward, roll up my sleeve, and cast. “Pravleah.” For a moment my mother’s pink magic glows a little brighter with red. Then everything falls back to normal. I’ve cast that spell about 196 times, not that I’m counting.

  Riya squeezes her dad’s hand, then gathers me up in her eyes. A look of thanks switches to alert confusion in two seconds flat. “What in Wickery is that?”

  “What’s what?”

  “This.” Riya shoves the rest of my sleeve up my arm, exposing the scar from the Vencrin ship attack. “Oh Gods, Adraa!”

  The jagged scar looks less angry now, only a stoic light line on my dark skin, but for Riya it’s new and surely disturbing. “I…my knife slipped when I was gutting a pig for the clinic.”

  Riya lurches backward in her chair and frowns so deeply her mouth pops open. “Why are you lying?”

  “Lying?”

  “Yes. Lying. You are lying. Unless you are saying your own purple spell cut into you for fifty centimeters before you pulled back and thought, ‘Ouch, that hurts.’ ”

  Blood, just like her mother. A small part of me is impressed and proud to have Riya as my guard and friend for her reas
oning abilities. But that small part doesn’t wash away my fumbling as I search for a reason for the scar and why I would lie about it.

  “It only sounds like a lie because I’m embarrassed about it. I should be better than that.”

  “Adraa, what’s going on?” She pauses. Blood, I can tell her mind is gnawing away. Her next words are quiet, measured. “Tell me you aren’t bloodletting yourself to Dloc.”

  “No!” I pause as well, searching for a way to throw her off. “Why? You think that would work?” I joke. I haven’t heard that term thrown around in ages. Bloodletting. While it might still happen in Moolek, here it’s considered a barbaric practice to win a god’s favor. Mother doesn’t even like to give up the goats for traditional events. “A body saved from disease is better utilization of that goat than watching it bleed on the temple floor,” she always says. Such a Pire Island mentality.

  Riya eyes me warily. “So it was a mistake?”

  “I didn’t mean for it to happen,” I say, knowing she will hear the truth in that at least.

  “And you didn’t heal yourself right away because…?”

  I unroll the sleeve and wipe my hands on my pink skirt. “Didn’t think it was bad enough. I was wrong.” I get up to leave, seeking escape. I can only lie to Riya so much before she rips the truth from me. Her mother taught her how to truth cast after the accords became law. Even I don’t know the spell, for ethical reasons and balances of power. And that scares me when I guard such a horrendous secret from her. Secrets. Plural, now.

  She calls out as I lay my hand on the doorknob. “Where are you going? You came looking for me, remember?”

  “Oh, right.” I turn back to her. “I have to deliver firelight to Azure Palace today. Wondered when you were free.”

  Riya’s eyes widen as she scrambles from her chair. I guess I should have used this earlier to distract her. “You are meeting Raja Jatin today?”

  I shrug, but inside I’m twisted up with worry.

  “And…and that’s what you are wearing? Flying pants?”

  I smile in vengeance. “I stayed away from goats today. You can’t force Zara to hide these now.” I smack my thighs. “But Zara did help me with my hair and makeup.” I twist my head so Riya can see the intricate braid running down my back.

  “Your mother accepted this?”

  “My father did.” Got his approval this morning when paperwork threatened to overtake his desk. Not like I should even need his approval. My pink wraparound skirt and flying pants are standard Belwarian attire. Besides, Maharaja Naupure respects the Belwarian tradition of heir anonymity and, more important, the secrecy of Project Smoke. Wearing a traditional and over-the-top lehenga last time was absurd on multiple levels and probably confused the staff, who have assumed I’m just a delivery witch for ages. Though today I’m not seeing Maharaja Naupure.

  “Fine. Let’s go, then.” Riya arches one thick eyebrow. “Mother wanted me to ask Logen a few questions about security in Maharaja Naupure’s absence anyway.”

  “Oh, so you aren’t busy?” Please say yes. Remember anything of importance.

  She pierces me to the bone with a single word. She too can play at vengeance. “Nope.”

  Adraa is coming to the palace. Which means first I must convince Kalyan to impersonate me again, and second, tell every person in the palace not to call me by my name. With Adraa not out in society because she hasn’t taken the royal ceremony test, only Hughes really knows her and calls her Lady. Some housemaids and a few soldiers have seen her delivering firelight, but that’s about it. This isn’t a guess. I spend my nonexistent free time questioning everyone in the whole palace about what Adraa might look like and then analyzing their response to know if they might recognize her. Chara gave a sheepish grin and told me she was quite beautiful. Somehow my old nursemaid giving me a nod of encouragement wasn’t the highlight of my investigation. The giggles of one particular housemaid or the sly smile of that one leering gate guard weren’t either. Gods, one would think as soon as we see each other we were going to get married on the doorstep and fall into bed before we hit the stairs. My mind unravels at the thought.

  Hughes doesn’t like Adraa, which was a change in pace from all the innuendo and reassurance of her beauty. Something about “how she doesn’t obey the social code of maharaja life.” Then he had sighed. “But she’s pretty, so…,” and he let that last word drift. One would think that’s the one attribute I care about. Do I really come across as that shallow?

  “Yes, yes, you do. Especially when you go around asking the entire palace how she looks,” Kalyan had said with such a thick layer of dry humor I didn’t stick around to talk to him about the role he must play.

  When I went to the barracks later to explain he must be me if it comes to that, I received more of a reaction from him. “Absolutely not.”

  I don’t want to order him to do it. Don’t know if I have ever really given him orders before, more like asked for favors. I refuse for this to be the start. “I’m going to try to make sure she doesn’t see you, but just in case.”

  He drops the sword he is sharpening. Kalyan actually loves working with metal and fixing equipment, so he lowers it begrudgingly. “You need to tell her the truth.”

  “I need more time. It’s only been three weeks since I met her.”

  “More like nine years, Jatin.”

  “Exactly! Nine years of me being a homesick little brat.” I slide into a chair. “That entire time I never really understood why she hit me. I mean, I know I said the wrong thing of course, mean things. But I didn’t understand her perspective, how deeply I had cut her.” I drag my hands through my hair.

  “Please stop looking so pathetic. It doesn’t suit you.”

  A laugh erupts from my throat like a gag, unexpected and harsh. “So you will do it, then?”

  Kalyan looks determinedly at me, calculating. Oh Gods, he is chewing something over.

  “What if she falls for me?”

  I hit the back of the chair hard. It’s moments like this when I realize I’ve given Kalyan too much confidence, or at least enough to outdo me. “What?”

  “What if, let’s say, I crafted some humble apology, was nice to her, she forgave me, thinks I’m her fiancé, and it just…worked out.”

  “You are cruel.” That’s also a lot of what-ifs. He didn’t see her face that night on Pier Sixteen or in the restaurant afterward.

  Kalyan picks up the sword again. “I did think she was pretty from the start if you remember.”

  “Gods, how are you this manipulative?”

  He smiles at the weapon as he scrubs its hilt. “You’ve taught me a lot, Jatin.”

  I stalk from the room, but I’m not three steps away when he calls out, “You know if it comes to it, I’ll do it. Just don’t let that happen.”

  * * *

  I wait by the ice door like a stalker, feeling like that sleazy Underground manager cursed me into being one. Minutes phase into an hour until boredom and nerves take over and I grab some ink and parchment. With a swipe of purple magic, a floating slab acts as a desk so I can reply to my father’s most recent letter.

  I have received only two reports from him. One, he wrote to say he got to Warwick territory safely. Two, I reread:

  Dear Jatin,

  I am going to cut straight to it because I don’t have much time. Twenty more citizens died before your uncle agreed to meet with me. Naupurian goats wandered over the Moolek border and were butchered (a few for bloodletting to the gods—Retaw in particular). The skirmish has grown into an argument over land once again. And, of course, how and which animals should be off-limits from bloodletting.

  Moolek has experienced tremendous drought and yet has not asked for any help. I guess he planned on letting people starve to death (the fool). Maharaja Moolek wishes to come to the palace to draw up a new amendment to the
treaty. Which really should be us signing and enforcing the twenty-first treaty again. I have yet to understand why he would want to give up home advantage when I am already here. You should reread the twenty-one treaties before sending a reply. Let me hear your opinion on the matter. Of course, as always, if something urgent occurs inform me immediately.

  P.S. Good luck with Adraa.

  Hughes shakes his head at me from where I sit on the floor. “She isn’t that pretty, sir.”

  I guess I look rather pitiful, but it isn’t like I’m not getting work done on the cold hard ground in the middle of the large tiled entryway. “Don’t know what you are talking about, Hughes,” I say, because it is all I can come up with. I go back to my letter.

  I have reread all the treaties, all the beginning documents that tried to solidify our freedom from Moolek, all the violent tug and pull over the years until we finally broke free. Everything makes sense: Moolek’s citizens’ desperation due to the drought, the bloodletting, the argument over land renewed. Everything besides the fact that my uncle wants to talk of peace here, hundreds of miles from his lands. After articulating what I think needs to be amended or clarified in the twenty-first treaty, I stumble over my words. Why? Why come here? He’s avoided meeting me for eighteen years already. So why now?

  Footsteps sound outside the ice door and I jerk up. I slip the unfinished letter in my pocket. With a whisk of my hand, the tabletop evaporates and I’m standing, pacing, moving. I can’t stay still.

  I cast open the door, watching the ice fracture. Shards fall and splinter like glass.

  Then Adraa steps through. Her expression shifts between confusion and maybe, hopefully, pleasant surprise. “Hi.”

  “Hey,” I answer. I’ve been here all day and that’s all I’ve got. Exactly how fast can someone become pathetic?

  Adraa lifts the strap of the saddlebag. “I’m here to deliver the firelight.”

  “Jatin is busy right now, so you can give it to me.”