by Callie Bates
Alcibiades is still watching me. I need to think—fast. I don’t know what’s become of Firmina. If she’s at large, she’s still an ally. And if she’s willing to murder the emperor—possibly—she might be of great help.
“Very well,” Alcibiades says. I’ve taken too long. He gestures to his men. “Do it.”
“No,” I begin, but Faverus is already unlocking the door to Leontius’s cell. I can just see my friend lift his head. The other witch hunter is holding an instrument that looks like a meat cleaver.
Finally the solution hits me in the face. “What makes you think Augustus and Phaedra didn’t do it themselves?”
Slowly, Alcibiades turns to me. He stares. “Murder their own father?”
“They’re hungry for power. Why not suborn some sorcerer and force him to murder Emperor Alakaseus? It’s convenient. They vehemently oppose sorcery; they denounce their own brother. So he takes the blame, along with me and my people.”
Alcibiades has gone very still. His gaze crawls over me, and I realize I’ve said the wrong thing. The very wrong thing, indeed.
“Unfortunately,” he says, with a strange false smile, “that is not the correct answer, Lord Jahan.”
He snaps his fingers. Faverus is holding Leontius in place. The other witch hunter brings up his cleaver and swings it down, hacking my friend’s hand off his wrist.
* * *
—
SOMEHOW I END up back in my cell. The door thuds heavily into place. The bolts slide home.
I’m numb. Stunned. I think I’m going to be sick. Alcibiades did it. He mutilated a Saranon—the emperor-apparent.
He hasn’t hurt me. Hasn’t given me more opium. Yet. He sent me back here with only a few brief orders, while they cauterized Leontius’s arm. Before they do whatever torture they’ve planned next. Before they kill him.
I suppose it’s only a matter of time before they do the same to me.
I shove at my shackles with my magic, but they don’t give. The stones and bells must be blocking me. Finally I just yank at them, trying to pull them by brute force off my wrists. But it just leaves my skin scraped and bruised.
I need to get out of here. I need to save Lees. But even if I can heal a wound, I don’t think I can give him back his hand. If they harm him further—if they push him to the brink—I can’t bring him back from the dead. And I can’t break the shackles or melt through walls. I can’t do anything.
I slam my fists against the stones. It only leaves them aching. Everything in me aches. What are they doing to Leontius now? Will he survive the wound? I don’t know if they will truly cauterize it, despite Alcibiades’s claims, or if they’ll do it properly. My friend could die from the infection. He could bleed out. They could torture him further, and then kill him.
And what’s become of everyone in the city? Is everything over?
I refuse to believe it could be, but maybe I’m just deluding myself.
Finally I drop onto the shelf, running my hands over my face. The chain hits me in the nose. I’m a fool. I’ve lost.
No, there has to be a way out. A way to save Leontius, and myself.
Outside in the hall, voices carry and a door thumps. I jump up and shuffle to the grate in my door, trying to listen. But the wood is thick, and so are the walls. I can just hear someone say, “Aexione,” and another reply, “Tomorrow morning.” A loud scrape drowns out further words. I listen to the thuds of their feet, and chains rattling. A man is moaning. Weeping. I clench my fists. Is it Leontius?
Gradually the sounds fade. There’s nothing but me and the stones and a growing sense of despair.
I can’t give in to this. I pace the cell, though I can’t do more than shuffle, and my limbs still tremble from the opium withdrawal. Beneath the floundering rage, something persistent niggles at the back of my mind. Something about the stones and bells. About the Ochuroma. Alcibiades said he’d been studying this place his whole career, trying to understand how it blocks magic.
How does it block magic? I stop pacing, startled by the revelation. We take for granted that the stones and bells send sorcerers mad and stop their magic, because they always have. Or at least, they have in recent memory, since the witch hunts began.
But Elanna’s got a witch stone that she…transformed…somehow. She says she reminded it of its true nature. Which means that, of course, the stones and bells weren’t always like this. Something’s been done to them.
What can block magic…but magic itself?
There’s a loose witch stone below the sleeping shelf. I pick it up. It hums in my hands, seeming to spit a little. I touch the walls. They, too, hum faintly. This whole place is made of witch stones.
At Solivetos Hill, I used the font’s power to break the choker off Elanna’s neck. I don’t know if it broke whatever power lies in the witch stones in her collar. Madiya implied that there are other sources of power—other wells…The realization bursts over me. If the witch stones and bells rely on magic to work, if the Ochuroma’s bricks are practically made of magic, then perhaps the prison itself is sitting on another well. If it is, perhaps I can use it.
I’m going to try it. Now. I sit, cupping the stone in my hands. I draw on the thin resources of my own power. If this exhausts me, so be it. But I need to know the answer.
Be as you were, I command the stone, with every ounce of strength I possess.
It fizzes. But then, quickly enough, it settles back to its usual hum. It’s as if nothing happened.
Maybe I need different words. Return to your true nature. Again, it sparks, but nothing more. You are only a stone. Nothing.
I try more phrases, more insistence, but it’s draining my own strength, not drinking from a deep well. I’m getting cold. The shivering starts again, and with it the bleak despair. Maybe there’s some kind of magic in the stones—which would be scandalous, if true—but maybe I’m also just hoping too hard. And maybe, if there is a well, the magic in the Ochuroma’s stones blocks me from using it.
Something rattles outside my cell. I sit up straight. It occurs to me that it’s been a long time—an hour or two—since I last heard any movement in the hallway.
The door opens. Faverus comes in, carrying a bowl of porridge. I could launch myself at him, I think, and try to knock him unconscious with my chains. But my range of motion is too limited, and Faverus is a large man. Besides, my bones ache after worrying at the witch stone.
He sets the porridge down on the shelf beside me. “You should eat, this time.”
I look at him. “What’s going on? Are you playing nursemaid now?”
He pulls back, apparently wounded by this. It still perplexes me that a man so sensitive can be a witch hunter. Furtively, he glances over his shoulder. There’s no sound in the corridor.
“I shouldn’t tell you this,” he says. “But…They took the prince to Aexione, to be executed.”
I suck in my breath. “On what charge?”
He shrugs. “Not sure it matters, to be honest. Sorcery, for sure. Patricide, too, probably.”
“But neither of those is true.”
“Maybe he didn’t murder the emperor.” Faverus eyes me. “But if you’ll pardon me, sir, I don’t think you know all there is to know about Prince Leontius. He sure acted like a sorcerer when we brought him in.”
“Maybe Alcibiades poisoned him,” I say sourly, then realize I probably shouldn’t have said that.
But Faverus doesn’t seem to take offense. He shakes his head. “Inquisitor Doukas gets his orders from on high. From the emperor.” He pauses. “Or maybe just his own mad self.”
I stare at Faverus. He seems a bit uncomfortable. I knew some of his duties disgusted him, but it didn’t occur to me that he might have opinions about his master. That he might dislike Alcibiades as much as anyone.
He’s backing out the door now. �
�Good night.”
“Wait!” I lurch up in a rattle of chains. “When is Leontius to be executed?”
He hesitates, glancing about, but it’s only us and the humming stones. “In the morning, it sounded like. Before a crowd. They want to make a show of it.”
Then, as if he’s said too much, he slams the cell door. I’m left alone with the knowledge of my friend’s impending death, and the fact that I have no way to save him.
* * *
—
IN THE END, I eat the porridge. It leaves my mind clearer. I take up the witch stone again, feeling it hum in my hand. If it is sorcery, perhaps I’m going about it wrong. Maybe it doesn’t need to be commanded. I bring all of my awareness to it instead, letting the humming that I’ve resisted so long vibrate into my palms, until it feels like my blood and bones are quivering. The way they did when I plunged my hands into Mantius’s font.
The magic feels…old. Stuck. Stagnant. But the stone itself, of course, is far older.
I let the humming consume me, even though my heart thuds dully and I wonder if this is my course straight to impending madness. But Madiya used to say that in order to understand sorcery, you have to become one with it.
I find myself humming along with the stone. A high, strange tone. It feels unnatural in my throat. But I hum as if my life depends on it, hardly stopping for breath. It’s instinctive, not like the carefully planned sorcery Madiya taught me. I hum and hum.
At some point, I open my eyes. I realize I’m the only one humming now. The stone has ceased. I pass it from hand to hand, suspicious, feeling in it for the vibration I know must be there. But there’s nothing, not even when I press it to my ear.
Whatever animated the stone is gone.
I stand, slightly dizzy, drunk from the humming. My skin seems to buzz. I’ve taken the stone’s essence—whatever magic was placed on it—into myself. A deeper hum seems to echo up through the stones. The well, perhaps? The walls vibrate around me. I hum with them now, feeling more stones embedded below the sleeping shelf, at least a dozen of them, and a dozen more above. The buzzing rattles my bones, so deep it feels as if it could unmake me, but I stubbornly hum.
Finally, I stop. The stones have ceased humming, too. It’s as if I’m standing in a small pocket of fresh air. I focus hard on the shackles around my wrists. If I remain in this circle, my head is just clear enough to force the irons off.
Break, I command, and they do. I stand there, staring at my bare arms, and start to laugh. All along, I could have done this?
Well, perhaps not. I feel almost too large for my skin, and now that I’m vibrating, I can feel the entire prison humming around me. It must be a well, a place where sorcery is concentrated, like Mantius’s font. Only this has been twisted to work against sorcerers. It’s not entirely unpleasant, but I don’t know how long I can stand it.
I need to get moving. It takes quite a bit of concentration, but I break the shackles off my ankles, then, humming still more, force the locks on the door to retract. My larger magic still seems limited. When I try to walk through the wood, I just smack my nose into it.
With more care, I push the door open and creep out. The corridor lies deserted; a single lantern illuminates the dusty stones and ironbound doors. I wonder how many hide prisoners behind them. Of course, the emperor executed all the sorcerers he could in Ida; they can’t have brought anyone here from the Frourio.
Yet I have the persistent feeling this place is less empty than it appears. The gods only know who could be hidden behind these doors, and how long they’ve been there.
Maybe I should save myself first. But I can’t leave anyone else to rot in here. Not with Augustus and Phaedra in power, not with everything hanging so tenuously. So I grab the lantern from its hook and, steeling myself, stride to the nearest door. I peer through the grille. The door opens when I try the knob; the cell is empty.
With a shudder, I move to the next. Maybe they are all empty. The next holds nothing but dust. So does the one after. But then…
I stop. There’s someone in this cell. A man, hunched over on the floor. His feet are bare.
Carefully, I push back the bolt. I open the door. The man doesn’t move. I might have thought him dead, except his shoulders shift slightly as he breathes. With caution, I crouch before him.
He lifts his face. Just a little. It’s vacant. There’s no recognition in his eyes.
“Pantoleon,” I whisper.
I had feared he was dead, crushed when the walls of the Frourio collapsed. But he must have been one of those evacuated after all. Perhaps he was even in that coach, the one I tried to stop.
He shifts at the sound of his name, like he knows he should know it.
My cheeks are cold. I’m weeping. I slam my palm against the ground. He doesn’t even startle.
I don’t know what they’ve done to him, but I’m getting him out of here.
I take his arms and tug him upright. He blinks slowly at me. He smells awful. His clothes are tattered. But when I pull him up, he stands, swaying slightly. “We’re getting you out of here,” I whisper, but tears prick my eyes again. Because even if I can get him out, can I save him? Can anyone? Can his mind come back?
I hug him. He brings one arm around me, hugging me back. Just for the briefest moment.
I let him go, wiping my eyes. There are witch stones embedded in the damned walls, drowning his sanity with their incessant humming, mirroring the vibration in my body. “I’m going to destroy the damned things,” I mutter.
Pantoleon forms a whisper. His breath smells rank. “Ja…han?”
My mouth falls open. I’m so glad I think I might cry again.
He fumbles for my elbow. An intensity is coming into his gaze, a flicker of the man I knew. He hisses, “Sorcery.” He points at the walls. At the stones. “Sorcery.”
It takes me a moment, but I follow his meaning. The same discovery I just made myself. “They’re magicked.”
His eyes soften with relief. He nods.
“Someone took the energy in the stones and twisted it,” I tell him. “They made them antithetical to magic, by using magic.”
Again, he gives me a single nod.
“But the witch hunters aren’t sorcerers,” I say. “They can’t have done this…”
Pantoleon shakes his head, then winces as if in pain. “Long…ago.”
I grasp his meaning immediately. “Paladius the First. He forced some sorcerer to do this—to create magical objects the witch hunters could use…”
He’s nodding, eyes closed.
“Pantoleon, you mad genius,” I say, and his lips quirk in the faintest grin. I put his arm over my shoulders with a grunt—he’s taller than me—and tug him toward the door. “Come on. I’m getting us both out of here.”
But when we come out into the corridor, there’s a whisper of sound. Footsteps. I halt. A lantern is swaying toward us, clutched in Faverus’s hand.
He stops dead, staring. I stare back. If I were Rayka, I’d hurt him. Make him forget all this. But somehow I can’t force myself to act.
“How?” Faverus asks. Just the one word.
I almost say, Oh, a little sleight of hand…But I stop myself. A significant part of me wants to tell this witch hunter the truth—so I do.
“Your bells and stones,” I say. “Have you ever wondered how they work? Someone bespelled them. Long ago. You’ve been using magic all this time, to suppress sorcerers. This whole prison is sitting on top of a well of magic.”
Faverus blinks. “But I’m not a sorcerer!”
“It doesn’t matter. The bells and stones work no matter who uses them.”
His chin tucks in. He’s thinking about this. I grip Pantoleon tighter; now would be the time to run. But I’m curious. I want to see what Faverus does.
“We use sorcery to suppress
sorcery,” he says at last, slowly. “That’s not what we’re taught. They tell us that the stones and bells were created by the first witch hunters, under the supervision of the gods themselves.”
I shrug. “Some kind of gods.”
Faverus looks at me, and I’m surprised to see anger, of all things, in his face. “Then they’ve been lying to us, all this time. I knew it! I knew the…” He hesitates. Looks at us both. Then, more bravely, he says, “I knew the grand inquisitor couldn’t be doing the work of the divine.”
“Alcibiades Doukas’s work mostly benefits himself,” I remark.
He nods. “Come—this way. There’s a back door that leads out.”
* * *
—
FAVERUS WON’T COME with us, even though I point out that he’s putting himself in danger by remaining here. He says there are other prisoners whom he wants to help escape. “And you,” he says to me, “you’re going to save the crown prince—the emperor, I mean.”
“Yes,” I reply, because I suppose I am, and being honest with Faverus has already led to good things.
“Godspeed, then.”
He’s brought us to the end of the corridor, where a secret right-hand door leads us down into a rough-hewn tunnel. Pantoleon is walking more steadily, but I keep a hand on his arm. The swinging lantern flashes off the gleaming eyes of a rat, and I wonder if I should have trusted Faverus so quickly.
But a few paces later, I smell fresh earth. A faint breeze creeps through the tunnel.
We emerge into a wide rectangle of scrubby grass. There’s a single pine tree. Chunks of moonlit stone sit on the ground. I stop, and Pantoleon does, too. The smell of freshly turned earth comes from one of the stone chunks nearest us, its face blank.
We’re in a cemetery. These are gravestones. And with the exception of the newest one, they’re all carved with numbers. Some I can scarcely make out. 233. 162. The ones at the back are so faded I almost can’t read them. 37. 29.
These aren’t arbitrary numbers—they’re years. The years sorcerers died. Not names. Not WIFE AND MOTHER, not A JUST CITIZEN. Just the year in which they were put in the ground.
