by Callie Bates
Then it whooshes out. The command—the healing—passes through me. The power has passed through my brothers, and I’m afraid to take any more from them. So I pull away, my eyes watering, my vision still bleary with light.
But Lathiel and Rayka stay beside me: the three of us, together. The two of them, helping me. We’re the descendants of Kyros, yes, but also of Mantius. And I think he might be proud of us.
There are hands on my shoulders. Elanna, holding me upright. I lean into her. She smells of burned grass, and somehow it’s the most comforting scent in the world. There’s a groan as Rayka drops to the ground, rubbing his face. Then Lathiel does, too. Only Madiya remains standing, watching from a distance.
My head seems to weigh as much as the temple. But I lift it and look at her. She’s staring toward Mount Angelos. Toward Aexione. I can’t feel the second well any longer, now that the power has drained from me, but I’m certain Alcibiades hasn’t ceased using it. Madiya still hasn’t explained how she knows him—or how she supposedly taught him sorcery.
He’s still out there, along with Augustus and Phaedra. And here in the city, Leontius is waiting for us somewhere, with Pantoleon and Tullea and all the others. But I only want to pillow my head in El’s lap and sleep for ten years. I’m so exhausted I don’t know whether I have any power left. If Alcibiades came after me right now, I’d probably just let him.
But we need to find Leontius. We need to claim the city, and then we need to claim Aexione.
So with a grunt, I drag myself to my feet. I offer El a hand up; she rubs her eyes. Lathiel scrambles up, and I reach toward him. When I put my arm around his shoulders, he leans into me. Rayka stands strong by my side.
We all look at Madiya, who still watches us. “You did well,” she begins.
“You don’t need to tell us,” I interrupt. “We don’t want to hear it.”
Her lips thin. But she says nothing.
I point to the stairs. “After you.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
We find Leontius and the others at the Deos Deorum. Its walls survived the earthquake, though one of the roofs has caved in. Strangely, Bardas isn’t there. Elanna tells me she hasn’t seen him since I left for Aexione. Our people have raided the larder, and there’s a table full of fruits, breads, olives, wine, and everything else they could find—a good thing since my stomach feels ready to fold in like the roof.
Leontius embraces me. “You stopped the eruption!”
It’s so good to have my friend back that I can’t even find words. I just nod.
“You, and Lady Elanna.” He smiles at El, even though a frown is still marking his brow. “Everyone!” he calls out. “Today my friends Jahan Korakides and Elanna Valtai have saved us all. A sorcerer connected to my brother and sister tried to make this mountain erupt and kill us. But they stopped him!”
A cheer runs through the room. Felix Tzemines whoops. Pantoleon comes over to whack my shoulder, and Tullea clasps first my hand, then El’s. I congratulate Tullea on her tree illusions, and smile at Lucius Argyros and even Zollus Katabares, who still dogs Leontius’s shadow.
Captain-General Horatius makes his way over. “No word from the palace. They sent guards in pursuit, but they were caught in the eruption, the same as us.” He nods at Leontius, who nods back. “We’ll stay here the night, and send a messenger to Aexione come morning.”
“We don’t have time for that.”
It’s Madiya, of course. I sigh. Horatius draws back, affronted, but Leontius makes a face of polite interest.
“You don’t understand Alcibiades,” she says. “We have to go now.”
After seeing him cut my friend’s hand off and then make a mountain erupt, I do feel I understand Alcibiades. I know Madiya’s right, even though her orders are the last thing I want to take. And more than anything I want to lie down and sleep.
“I’m not risking my men, Madam…?” Horatius says, bristling.
“You don’t need to go,” Madiya replies crisply, uninterested in introducing herself. “Jahan and I can manage. Come along in the morning.”
Jahan and I?
“I didn’t agree to go with you,” I point out. “But—since it is probably wise—I will go. You can come if you like.”
Madiya just blinks at me. She truly doesn’t understand my meaning. And probably she never will. But at least now I can stand against her.
“I’m coming, too,” Elanna says. She takes my hand in front of them all. I almost pull back, but then she glances at me, almost in challenge. What do I have to lose—and what do I care what these people think of us? I wrap my fingers around hers.
“Then let’s go.”
I pause to make sure Lathiel’s safe beside a fireplace, tucked up in several blankets. I don’t want to leave him, but at least Madiya’s with me, so she can’t hurt him. “Where are you going?” he asks, pushing himself upright. His eyes still look gray, his hands shaky.
“To finish things,” I say. “It’s all right to stay here. You’ll be safe.”
He hesitates, but nods.
I glance around but don’t see Rayka. Well, it’s not as if his presence could comfort Lathiel all that much. With a last reassuring smile at my little brother, I make for the door.
But this time Leontius follows me. “You should go on ahead,” he says. “I’ll get Horatius moving. We’ll be behind as fast as we can—and bring everyone else with us, too.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Bringing a mob to your father’s palace? The court will hardly recognize you.”
He actually grins. “I’ll speak out, this time.”
Elanna returns to tug me along; Madiya’s already lost from sight. We make for the door while Nestor and Irene come running up with a basket of food for us to take. “Where is Bardas?” I ask them.
Irene shrugs. “Haven’t see him in a while.”
This worries me—especially since Firmina and Aunt Cyra apparently never made it to Ida, either. The empress has already proved herself willing to kill to get what she wants. But I have to put it out of my mind. I’ll sort it out once we’ve dealt with Alcibiades, and Phaedra and Augustus.
Outside the Deos Deorum, Horatius rustles up a coach, and we’re bundled inside. It’s warm and close within, and despite the danger, I fight drowsiness. Elanna unpacks the food basket, and I look at Madiya in the dim light of the swinging lantern. It’s strange to be here like this, so close. I can’t say I like it, but at least I can tolerate it.
“Madiya…or is it Sylvia?” I ask. “You said you taught Alcibiades.”
She flinches. The woman who experimented on us without pity or compassion actually flinches. “I…” She draws in a breath. “It is Sylvia, in fact. But I erased that name, Jahan. I left it behind in the Ochuroma. I couldn’t be myself any longer, when the witch hunters were combing the empire for me.”
“But you’re using it again now.”
A hesitation comes over her. I watch her decide to tell the truth; I recognize the effort of the decision, because I’ve made it so often myself. For the first time, uncomfortably, I realize maybe it’s Madiya who taught me how to lie.
“I am, as a…a warning.”
“To Alcibiades?”
She’s quiet. Then, in a hard voice, she says, “They kept me in that cell for five years, Jahan. Experimented on me—new methods with their witch stones and bells, trying to see what would work. You see?” she says when I startle. “I know what it is to be experimented on.”
“That doesn’t excuse what you did,” Elanna says. “You experimented on children.”
Madiya just looks at her. Uncomprehending. She really doesn’t understand what she did wrong. I lace my fingers through El’s, tightly. She squeezes back.
With a shrug, Madiya resumes her story. “I thought I would die there. No—I knew I would. But then a new guard came. He
was the one who walked me back and forth from my cell to their workroom.”
“Alcibiades,” I say.
“Yes. He was a new recruit. Overzealous, because he was trying to hide the fact that he was a sorcerer. He had an ability I’d never seen before. He was…immune…to the stones and bells. They didn’t send him mad, though they still inhibited his magic. His mother had done it to him, he claimed, when he was a child, as a way to keep him safe. As a sorcerer, he’d realized that the best place to hide would be in the Ochuroma itself—among the witch hunters’ ranks. So he joined them.” Her hands clench in the fabric of her skirt. “He wanted to help sorcerers, he told me. Save them from the inside. We struck a bargain. I’d teach him the magic I knew—which he could use outside the Ochuroma, away from the bells and stones—and he’d smuggle me out.”
“Did he?” I ask.
She utters a cold laugh. “In a way. He brought me a pair of shoes and a bag of food and two silver pounds, and smuggled me out the back gate. I had to escape through the forest on my own, down through the heart of Paladis itself. I didn’t even know where to go. I wanted to go home to Salesia but my parents had made it clear I wasn’t welcome, not with my magic—that was why I left in the first place, you know. The witch hunters caught me trying to escape to the east.” She pauses. “But I got to Manasi, on foot. It took days, and I was terrified the witch hunters were pursuing me. I wanted to go to the Occident, for they’re rumored to have sorcerers, but I didn’t have money for the passage and I needed to get out. Someone said that there was a safe haven for sorcerers on Pira in the Britemnos Isles. So I booked passage on the first ship I found. And when I got there, I met your father. He offered to help me.”
“And so you stayed,” I say. My voice sounds hollow, even to me.
She nods. “And when you were born a sorcerer, I realized I could give you the immunity that Alcibiades’s mother had given him. That’s how the experiments began. Of course, your mother ruined things from the start, interrupting me during that early experiment on you, making me damage the patterns in your mind. It’s no wonder you’ve never been able to take in as much power as your brothers, or do any magic with ease. Your little mind was a mess of knots.”
Elanna’s grip tightens on my hand.
“Maybe you’re wrong,” I say, and Madiya looks at me, startled. She’s not used to being contradicted. I go on, realizing it as I speak. “Maybe I could never take in power from other living things, like you wanted. But I can take in the power from the wells. From the stone circles in Eren and Caeris. Maybe you didn’t damage me. Maybe I was just never built to work the way you wanted me to.”
Madiya’s chin comes up. She’s getting annoyed now that I’ve pointed out my success has nothing to do with her. “Maybe,” she says.
I shrug. “Maybe you never took the time to really understand me.”
She gives me a baleful look, then sighs and shakes out her hair, as if she can so easily erase my criticism. “That day when you were ten. When your mother…”
“I know what day you mean.” My voice is hard.
“Yes, well.” She taps her fingers together. “A witch hunter came to my cottage, you remember. Your mother had contacted them…”
“I know.” Though I didn’t know whether to believe it at the time.
“Well,” she says, “Alcibiades was the one who came.”
I sit up straight. The man in the blue coat and the black hat—which, I now realize, covered his light hair. I never saw his face. I’d have known him immediately, otherwise, when I saw him again in Aexione.
Madiya nods, taking in my reaction. “He’d read Alia’s letter, and he suspected it was me. So he came to Pira, looking for me. I had to put him off, and then your mother…” She shakes her head. “Alcibiades wanted to know what I was doing. He wanted help with some magic. He’d learned about the wells, and he thought I might be able to help him use them. But I’d heard how he’d been treating sorcerers. Torturing them harder than anyone else. There wasn’t a single other sorcerer he smuggled out of that prison. I didn’t want him to know about you boys—or find you. I threw him out of Pira, the bastard.”
Elanna leans forward. “Why didn’t he help any other sorcerers?”
Madiya shrugs. “Because he’d learned all he needed to know from me? He told me he regretted helping me escape. We could have done so much more experimentation, he said, if I’d remained in the Ochuroma.”
A shiver runs up my back, and I suddenly wonder if there’s a reason why Madiya’s become what she has. If her time in the Ochuroma broke more than just her magic.
It still doesn’t excuse what she’s done. And I don’t trust the pity I feel. This story may be true, but she’s also using it to play on our sympathies. To get us back on her side, to do what she wants.
“He’s very powerful.” Madiya pauses. It’s coming now, the real reason she told us this story. The thing she wants us to do. “There’s no telling what he’ll do now. That’s why I left Rayka and Lathiel in Ida—in case we don’t come back.”
* * *
—
THE COACH STOPS abruptly soon after, still far from Aexione. The night sits dark outside, illuminated by only faint starlight, dusted with lingering ash. The driver swings down. “There’s some disturbance up ahead—trees down. Horses keep spooking.”
“Stay here,” I tell the driver, and I follow Elanna and Madiya out into the night.
We leave the lanterns behind, and the darkness seems absolute. I stumble over a fallen tree and stub my toe. Ahead, Madiya rips her skirt. Even El can’t seem to find her footing. “It’s strange,” she whispers to us, her voice disembodied in the night, “the ground seems to have buckled.”
It does. We’re climbing a grainy slope—loose earth and debris pushed upward recently. I can’t see the road; it’s disappeared into rubble.
Madiya is a dim figure ahead of me. She takes a confident stride forward—
And disappears. A sharp cry rises up. El and I scramble forward. El tugs me to my knees, crawling, and in a moment I see why. The road splits before us into a black chasm. Madiya lies just below us, clinging to some tree roots, but I can hear pebbles and dirt rolling when she shifts. Even her breathing is loud and harsh.
I stare down at her. The chasm makes a black mouth of indeterminable depth. Once I would have given anything for Madiya to be swallowed by the earth. But seeing her like this…
I sigh heavily. The gods must be testing me.
“Hold on,” I whisper to her. I call back to Elanna, telling her what’s happened. There’s a long silence, and then the earth shakes. Somewhere behind us, horses whinny. Madiya gasps.
“What are you doing?” I exclaim.
“Trying to close the chasm,” Elanna grunts. “But it won’t—”
The earth shakes again, and this time Madiya utters a short, sharp scream. She’s sliding. I try to scramble toward her, but the earth is giving way under me, too. I dive back to safety. Madiya’s slipping, though. With another rumble, she’ll fall in, and the earth will close on her.
Another gasp. She slips again. I lunge—not with my body, but with my mind. I gather the shape of her and heave. She comes flying up out of the chasm, sprawling on the ground between El and me. The ground tremors again. We’re rattling forward—toward the other side of the chasm. Elanna grunts. I edge over to Madiya. She’s panting, but she shakes her head. She seems unharmed.
“Alcibiades is resisting,” Elanna says. Tension pours off her. “Every time I try to close it, he pushes back…”
“I’ll help you,” I begin, but Madiya interrupts.
“We need to find him. Stop him, wherever he is.”
And leave Elanna here, fighting against this opening chasm in the earth? I hesitate, though it makes a certain amount of sense. If she can close the chasm, then Leontius and the others can get across the r
oad and meet us at Aexione.
“It’s all right,” El says. “I’ll stay. I’ll get it closed. Go!”
The earth lurches. The space across the chasm is too far to jump—but not too far to compress space. I grab Madiya’s arm and take a running leap. We stagger onto the other side of the chasm, the ground trembling again. I let go of Madiya the moment I know our footing is secure.
She dusts her hands. “Where would he be?”
“I don’t know—”
“He must be using a well. He doesn’t have this much power on his own. Where is the nearest one?”
I start to say again, “I don’t know,” but then I pause. Leontius said something about sensing water in the palace gardens—in Astarea’s Grotto. And I, too, felt a presence stirring there. “I think I can guess.”
I lead us up the road, compressing space as I go. No further chasms await us, but we pass a party of militia blockading the road. Nothing more than shadows in the night, I insist as we pass. The guards watch, wide-eyed, from the fires. They’re frightened, all of them. None of them have seen sorcery like this before.
For good measure, I snap all the guns I can. It’s not all of the weapons, and I pay for it with an ache in my joints, but it’ll make them think twice about stopping Leontius and the others from approaching Aexione.
At last we reach the town, silent in the depths of the night. The palace, too, sits quiet, though lanterns burn everywhere, and guards pace within the closed gates. Nothing but shadows, I insist as Madiya and I advance toward the bars.
But rather than passing unnoticed, the words blare loud into the night. I’ve shouted aloud, though I never intended to. “Nothing but shadows!”
Every gun within the palace gates swings up and trains on us.
Nothing to see, I insist, but again, the words echo into the night air, loud and idiotic. “Nothing to see!”
“Alcibiades,” Madiya mutters.
