by Callie Bates
But they do, and I know it.
What would El do, in my position? What would she want me to do?
“Well, I can’t promise to be entirely satisfactory,” I begin. “Some of those ballads about me are terrifically embellished.”
Pantoleon rolls his eyes. Felix and Tullea exchange a glance.
“But you’ll do it,” Tullea says. “You’ll claim responsibility for destroying the fleet, and all our future actions. We’ll put it on posters and scatter it throughout the city.”
“Your name will be our call to arms!” Felix says. “I’ll have my people tell everyone they know. You know how fast gossip spreads in Ida. Especially,” he adds, “about someone so famous.”
Yes. Like wildfire. I close my eyes. This isn’t what I thought I wanted.
Except I fought alongside the Caerisians and Ereni for this very thing: the freedom to practice our sorcery and to determine our own government. This is what I want. But I’ve been running from it, because I’m more comfortable in my disguise.
Yet I can’t run anymore. There’s nowhere else to go. The fire in me is burning too strong.
“Very well,” I say, meeting Tullea’s gaze. “Tell the world.”
For Elanna’s memory, and for the future of her people, I’ll do whatever I must.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Tullea promised to bring her sorcerers up to Solivetos Hill, and the next night they arrive. They number ten or fifteen, but the darkness seems to magnify their presence. We’ve converted one of the abandoned chambers behind the dome into a makeshift council room and lit a fire in the old stone pit. For the first time, the barren rooms seem almost cozy, with everyone packed shoulder-to-shoulder. I sit between Pantoleon and Tullea—comfortable, I might say, or kept in place. At least I don’t have to endure Madiya whispering into my head. Her voice seems to have vanished entirely.
The sorcerers come from all stations: One woman is a flower seller, one man a banker. There are several university students and two women who run a hat shop together. Most are young or middle-aged. The oldest sorcerers, Tullea tells me, have learned how to hide—if they’re still alive and free—and don’t need her help.
We make a circle around the fire, everyone’s faces lit. They’ve brought food, and I’ve forced myself to eat a handful of pistachios and dried apricots, though they tasted like dust in my mouth. I’ve presented my proposal and outlined how we would achieve it, to a silence that seems generally willing.
But now one of the shopkeepers, Irene, says, “There’s one thing we need to know, Korakos.”
I smile. “What is that?”
She leans forward. “Are you a sorcerer, truly?”
The smile stiffens on my lips. I take in the deep coals within the fire. Then I force myself to look at their waiting faces, some eager, some bitter, some grim with the weight of too many years of struggle and too much false hope. They are ordinary people, or they look ordinary. But like me, they are something else inside their skin.
The fire pops. They’re waiting for me to speak, and for once in my life, when a simple yes would suffice, it seems like too much to say, even though I’ve already confessed the truth to Tullea and Felix. Even though all of Ida knows it by now and, soon, will know that I’ve led our attack against the crown. There is a kind of thrumming in my chest; a heat in my palms.
I say, “I am a sorcerer. It’s true. I was raised to it from birth.”
No need to tell them more. No need to divulge all my secrets at once. The thrumming subsides. That wasn’t so bad.
The banker says, “From birth?” and the flush moves over my body again.
I shouldn’t have let that slip out. I don’t know why I thought it would legitimize me. None of these people were raised to it; they’ve all struggled to suppress it, to hide it, to destroy the part of themselves that makes magic. Who has taught any one of these people to use their sorcery for anything other than to hide?
“Well,” I say with a quick grin, “it might not have been the cleverest idea. But my father has strange ambitions.”
I’ve said too much. But then again, who are these people going to tell? Besides, by now anyone might guess that my father is behind my sorcery. Especially if they had the sense to look at his library.
The sorcerers are exchanging glances. The other shopkeeper, Sabina, taps her fingertips together and looks at me.
“Show us,” the banker, Nestor, says abruptly.
I’m so surprised that I find myself repeating him. “Show you my magic? I’m not here to entertain! Though if you’d like a game of it after, I can oblige.”
He looks affronted.
Tullea says magisterially, “A demonstration might be in order.”
Their wariness—their offense—chills the already cold air. Do they truly believe I would run from the law and hide myself up here, luring them after me, only to prey on their hope? Do they think I would lie to them?
Of course, I’ve lied so much, so publicly. To the emperor, to the court, to the city, to the entire empire.
I look around at their faces, lit orange by the fire. The demand hovers in the smoky air.
Fine. If they want a demonstration of magic, I’ll show them what Madiya taught me. This time, instead of reaching for the earth’s green power, I reach for the power of the fire itself.
Smother, I whisper. The flames flicker. They’re resisting, because fire loves to burn. But I insist and, with a sudden pop, the fire goes out. My vision sparkles in the sudden darkness.
A voice comes, uncertain, out of the dark. “Did you do that, Korakos?”
“Yes. And now I’ll bring it back to life.”
I reach for the memory of fire, buried in the logs, still eager in the coals. The wood is willing to burn, desperate to destroy itself. Light, I whisper with my mind.
The coals kindle, and fire shoots up toward the ceiling. We all rock back. It settles after a moment into a more modest, if enthusiastic, blaze.
“Creating and destroying,” I say to the sorcerers’ baffled faces. They probably expected something more splendid, like Elanna’s earth-moving sorcery, but my magic is more typically practical. They whisper among themselves, mouthing my words. Creating and destroying? They really don’t know anything at all, I realize. I find myself breaking into an explanation, as if the words have been thirsty on my tongue. I’ve never tried to explain sorcery before, except once or twice to El. “Breaking and mending. Potentiality and reality. It’s the basic tenet of sorcery: that any potential can be made manifest, no matter how unlikely. I can douse a fire because I can remind it what it felt like not to burn. I can bring it back to life because the memory of fire remains in the logs—the potential for flame. The potentiality principle is the same for a fire as it is for a human body. A gun. A ship.” I pause. “A city.”
All the gods, I sound like Madiya, or my father on one of his pedantic streaks. How proud they would be to find their wayward protégé parroting the knowledge they stuffed down his throat. I want to cringe.
“That’s what you do?” Irene the shopkeeper says. She seems doubtful. “You see the…potential of things?”
“Yes. And I manipulate it. Anyone can, if they have the spark of magic.” My face feels strange and I wonder if I was burned when the fire flared, but then I realize I’ve begun to smile. To smile, because even if I’m quoting Madiya and my father, the sorcery is still mine. The knowledge is mine, and I can share it. It doesn’t make me their pawn, not anymore. After all, I burned Madiya out of my brain.
I can use the knowledge she gave me to destroy the fleet. I can teach these people, and together we can do almost anything.
I say to the sorcerers, “And I’m going to show you how to do it, too.”
* * *
—
NONE OF THEM are particularly good. I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me�
��they haven’t been born to it, like Elanna was, or manipulated the way I have been. But we’ve spent half the night practicing the smallest magics, and few of them can manage the tasks. Nestor tries to relight a candle and burns himself instead. Irene tries to fade from our perception, insisting that she’s not there, but instead we see her all the more clearly. Maybe if I hadn’t tried to forget half the things Madiya taught me, or been made to, I could help them better. But after I’ve watched each of their attempts, I find myself at a loss as to how to help.
Only Tullea demonstrates a real aptitude—for illusion. She stands off to the side in dignified silence, weaving the particles in the air together to create whole scenes that flicker against the walls, a theater of her making within the temple’s empty dome.
While the others take a rest, I walk over to her. She’s spun a girl-figure out of shadows and is coaxing her to run against the temple’s wall.
“You must be the envy of playwrights,” I remark. “How did you learn?”
The girl-figure jumps high into the air. Tullea is smiling slightly—an expression I have not once seen on her face—but it falters now. The figure vanishes, the illusion unraveling. She’s quiet for a long moment, and I think she’s not going to answer. But then she does.
“It’s what I did as a child,” she says. “My grandmother often looked after me, because my mother worked as a tutor. Grandmother would spin figures out of the air to entertain me.” She glances at me, as if assessing my degree of respect. “We created whole plays together. It was our secret. Once I mentioned it to my mother and got the worst spanking of my life—a good lesson for me, because the witch hunters would have been far, far crueler. I kept silent after that.”
“It’s lovely.” And it is lovely—purely delightful, in the way it must have been for her as a child. It’s the last thing I expected from Tullea Domitros. I eye her. “Your grandmother…”
Tullea lifts her chin. “She was never caught. She spent her life smuggling sorcerers to safety, using her illusions. She fought for us all.”
The reproach in her tone is perfectly clear—unlike you—but I ignore it. This means Tullea must use her own talents for her underground movement. Which means…“So this isn’t the only kind of illusion you spin?”
Her lips twitch. “Why, Korakides? Do you have a plan?”
I grin. “An idea. And if you can teach some of the others to help you…” I call to Irene; she comes over with a bashful look. “You haven’t done anything wrong,” I tell her. “It’s just your magic works differently. When you try to hide your presence, you only insist that you’re more real. But if you spin an illusion, that might be helpful—insisting that what’s not there actually is there.”
“Do you think so?” Irene says, looking back and forth from Tullea to me, her embarrassment forgotten.
This expression in her eyes, after all of the night’s failure, is hope.
“Jahan makes a good point,” Tullea replies. She looks speculatively at Irene. “Come, let’s try it.”
I leave them to it and drift out into the main temple. The sorcerers have paired off, whispering to each other and poring over purloined books. Sabina, Irene’s companion, holds a plant in both hands—a type of oleander—but despite her furrowed brows, nothing in particular seems to be happening. The others cast me tired looks.
Pantoleon is crouched in front of the font, holding a candle close to the stone carvings. I crouch beside him. He taps a carven image of a man cradling what looks like a star, or a sunburst. “Tirisero,” he pronounces, as if it means something.
“The god of failure,” I mutter. “Maybe it’s symbolic. There’s a reason not even beggars come here, you know.”
He squints at me, but his lips are pursed, his mind elsewhere. “I never studied theology. I never thought there was anything in it.”
“Well…” I say, gesturing at the abandoned god’s temple.
Pantoleon shakes his head. “Look at this.” He taps the words carved into the rock. “THE SECRET FLAME…” He shuffles on his knees to the other side, where the phrase picks up. “…UNIFIED WITH…” We shuffle to the next side. “…THE DEEP WATER…” And the final side: “THE HEART OF TIRISERO.”
“It’s a pretty riddle,” I say. “But aren’t fire and water opposites according to the old philosophers?”
“That’s what I always thought.” He shakes his head. “It’s probably nonsense.”
Nestor comes up behind us. “We tried to get the lid off earlier. It won’t budge. It’s as if it’s sealed.”
I look at the old stone. Each short phrase is interrupted by images: the man with the star, the same man spreading arms that are wings, the man touching the chest of someone dead or ill, and finally, the man enveloped with flame, standing over rushing water. Nonsense, indeed. But something about them tugs at me. The god of lost battles should, surely, be portrayed with a spear in his chest, or something equally dire. These images suggest something rather more mystical than I expected.
I look back at Nestor. His face is drawn with weariness. It’s so deep into night it’s nearly morning, and exhaustion tugs at my own bones. A sailor, Agapetos, has also come over, along with Sabina, still gripping the oleander.
Perhaps I don’t need to teach them how to do grand things or draw on the earth for enormous power. With Tullea’s illusions and my own magic, perhaps we only need to do something small. Simple. Because even the smallest thing can become great, if used correctly.
“Sit down.” I gesture to them. “I’m going to teach you three things. One, to relight a candle. Two, to alter other people’s perceptions. And three, to hear each other by speaking each other’s names with intent.” I glance at Pantoleon, who has spent years resisting my attempts to teach him. But even he seems to be listening, though his eyes keep straying to the font. “They’re simple things. But if you can’t do them all, at least master one. If you can manage one, then we can make our plan work.”
More people have come to join us; in the other room, I hear Tullea and Irene talking about illusions. Maybe we can succeed yet. We have to. I’m not going to let Elanna down now, not even the memory of her. I gather myself, thinking of what she’d want, and begin.
I talk a long time and let them practice. Dawn creeps in without my notice. Most of the sorcerers look dead on their feet, but Nestor and Sabina are challenging each other to see who can make candlewicks burst into flame the fastest.
A noise outside startles me. Everyone goes silent and alert. But it’s Felix Tzemines who trots, panting, into the temple, carrying a bundle of fresh bread and a jug of hot coffee. Everyone gathers around with grateful exclamations. Under the din, Felix edges over to me. “Word from Aexione.” He jerks his chin toward the lee of the fallen ceiling tiles, and I follow. We have a modicum of privacy here, though Tullea sends us an accusatory glance.
I thicken the air around us to muffle our voices. “Don’t tell me. The emperor’s decided I’m dead and proposed a victory ball.”
Felix snorts. “Not since we’re spreading rumors of your survival.”
I wince.
He hesitates, looking at me. Somewhat awkwardly, he says, “Emperor Alakaseus has given orders to the fleet commander. They’re to depart for Eren in three days, on Atrydia.”
I glance at our ragtag crew, exhausted from the long night’s work. Whether they can succeed is anyone’s guess, but what choice do we have? We have to try.
“Let’s go the morning after next, then,” I say. “The vessels should be unmanned.”
Felix nods. “Will they be ready?”
“Necessity is a fast teacher. They’ll have to be.”
He nods again, and hesitates once more.
My brother, I think, my fists tightening. That must be Felix’s other news. They’ve finally caught Rayka.
Felix clears his throat. “Since we let out word ab
out you…the emperor’s increased the price on your head to three thousand gold.”
An incredulous noise escapes me. A sum like that could set a person up for the rest of their lives, quite comfortably. “Am I worth a man’s life?”
“There’s another thing.” Felix glances at the sorcerers. “They changed the sentence for anyone caught harboring you or giving you aid.” He laughs. “Quite a bunch of blackguards, aren’t we? If any of us are caught, we’ll be named a traitor to the crown and subject to the laws governing such.”
He laughs, but there’s nothing funny about this. We all know the punishment for such high treason: death.
A thrumming builds in my chest. If only I were more powerful—if only Madiya hadn’t damaged me. I could take down the fleet myself, even if it cost my life. But instead I have to rely on the help of others. And in so doing, I put their very lives at risk.
Of course, if they’re caught, it won’t merely be the firing squad for them. If they’re found performing sorcery, they will be hauled away by the witch hunters without a trial. I am asking them to chance their lives, but they understand the risk. Or I hope they do.
I turn back to Felix. “Then we ought to be more careful. You’re certain you got up here unseen?”
He shrugs. “Being careful is dull, and you die either way. But no one followed me.”
I smile. “Well, you may as well die knowing you did some good, rather than simply smuggling messages to renegade sorcerers.”
“But that is something good.” He spreads his arms. “This is my city. My people. If I have to die setting us free, I will.”
I shake my head. Caution is too engrained in me. Still, I have to admire his courage, even if it borders on foolishness.
“Two mornings from now,” he says, “we’ll be there.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I’m a ghost on the water, the faint memory, already gone, of a small sailing boat passing between the great black-stained hulls of Paladis’s warships. It’s early morning on Enydia. The sorcerers have had two days to practice their illicit sorcery. We all have to hope it’s enough. A fog creeps over Naval Harbor, hiding us. It’s not even real, but an illusion cast by Tullea and Irene: It fits among the ships at awkward, unnatural angles, leaving the lower levels of the vessels exposed to our sight but completely muffling the decks. I wanted the sorcerers to unlock the potential in water particles, but they don’t have the level of precision to do that work. Instead they’ve got the general appearance right, but not the details.
