Blackthorne

by Stina Leicht

  “We don’t have to accept spies and traitors.”

  “I am no spy, not for the Regnum. Nor am I a traitor to your cause.”

  “Only your own people,” she said. She let her anger slip into her voice.

  “Give your word. Then I’ll explain.”

  Ilta glared down at him. This was it. This was his secret he’d been hiding. She felt foolish for having liked him—more than anything else for not knowing, for thinking about him all those long nights and wondering. She should hate him, spit in his face and leave, but she couldn’t, and she hated herself for it. “If Slate knows, then there can be no harm if I speak to him about this.”

  Blackthorne shrugged with one shoulder. “If you wish.”

  Why didn’t I know?

  Blackthorne was right. She couldn’t tell anyone. Still, she wanted to understand why James had risked so much.

  “All right,” she said. “I won’t tell the others.” She kept Gran’s blade drawn just in case.

  “Thank you.”

  “Don’t even try to lie to me. I’ll know.”

  Blackthorne nodded and then began unbuttoning his coat.

  “What are you doing?” She backed up and prepared to run. I’ll never win out, but at least I can make him wish he’d never touched me.

  He gestured, pleading for her to stop, “No. It’s …” He sighed. “I suppose proof should wait.” He dropped the hand from his collar.

  “You better tell me what’s going on before I run back to the Hold, screaming my head off.” Her intuition conflicted with her emotions. If he meant to harm you, you’d be dead or worse already.

  “I am not what I seem.”

  “I think we’ve established that.” Ilta crossed her arms, hugging herself and glared.

  “My father was a duke.”

  “I know. Everyone does.”

  “He was also a semivir.”

  It took her a moment to understand what he meant. She’d heard that Acrasians used “semivir” to mean half-kainen. Nels had told her that it literally meant “half-animal”. She found it disturbing that Blackthorne would use such a word in reference to his own father.

  “I’m one-quarter human. My mother was a kainen slave. I understand her people were from Marren. I lived with her until I was taken away when I was small. I assumed I was to be groomed for the games, but I was sent to a sorcerer. You would call him a healer—”

  “A powerful Eledorean healer lives in Novus Salernum?” she asked.

  “Lived. He died of river fever ten years ago.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Go on.”

  “I was given a potion, and I slept. When I woke hours later, I was different.”

  “How?” Ilta asked. She watched his hand stray to the rounded top of one ear. There was no scar to indicate it had ever been pointed. His eyes, although not black, were tilted like her own and his skin had a dusky undertone. Like many natives of Marren did. She wanted to be sick. “Why would anyone mutilate their own son?”

  “To give the duke the heir he wanted. To make me human.”

  “And that can be done so easily?”

  “You have magic.” He filled the word with disgust and hate. “You tell me.”

  “I’ve never heard of anyone doing anything like this. Even if a healer could bring themselves to do it, why would your father go to so much trouble? Couldn’t he simply marry an Acrasian?”

  “He was still a … kainen, even if he had the good fortune to be born passably free of the characteristics. He had noble status and the wherewithal to obliterate public record of his ancestry. But any family worth the match would investigate further. A blank record is telling. And the Brotherhood won’t sell false lineages, no matter how large the bribe. An heir would still carry the taint. He needed proof of his purity. So, he had me fashioned into what he wanted.”

  “Where are your grandparents? You said one of your father’s parents was kainen.”

  “I never met them, and the duke didn’t speak of them. Especially not to me.”

  “Then how do you know about them?”

  “The sorcerer told me.”

  Healer. She almost corrected him, but it occurred to her that what the Acrasian healer had done was against every ethic her art held dear. “Then how did your father become a duke?”

  “Titles are bought and sold in Acrasia like gens memberships,” Blackthorne said. “The cost is sufficiently high that most nonhumans cannot take advantage of it. Sometimes, they’re inherited. But there’s a price for that, too. Naturally, it is less, but …” He shrugged.

  She shut her eyes and focused on breathing in the scent of damp forest. Her feet were freezing, and her skirts clung to her legs in wet clumps. Like him, she was shivering with the cold. She wanted to get inside where it was warm. “All right. What is it you were going to show me?”

  “A slave mark.” He tugged at his clothes until he bared his left shoulder, revealing a rough circular burn scar.

  She had heard they removed slave tattoos with branding once freedom was granted. Raised red scars laced his shoulder and wrapped over his collarbone. She automatically reached out, but he shrugged the shirt back into place and moved away.

  Why take so much care with his ears and then leave that burn?

  Perhaps it wasn’t considered important. Debt slaves were common in the Regnum, from what she’d heard. A mark like that could hold many meanings. She shivered again. “That could be faked.”

  “Yes. But it is the proof I have.”

  She knew he was telling the truth, as much as she didn’t want to believe it. “Why become a Warden?”

  “Nothing garners acceptance like a son trained at the Academy.”

  “You went willingly?”

  “I wasn’t consulted,” Blackthorne said. “Not that it would’ve mattered. The duke granted me his name but could discard me on a whim.” He paused. “I passed for human. A high-ranking noble. Do you know what a powerful thing that is? Once you’ve lived as a slave, you’ll do anything to keep from wearing a collar again. Anything.”

  She sat in silence for a moment before he quietly added, “I did what I did. It doesn’t matter how much I wish otherwise.”

  “And the Academy found out.”

  He shook his head. “I graduated with honors. When Gens Aureus granted the duke membership, he declared me his heir. All was well until I was given my first field assignment. I argued with the Huntmaster about a—a case. I was put on report for insubordination. They sent me to the Reclamation Hospital. Twice. I—I escaped after the second time. I met Slate two nights later.”

  “Wouldn’t your father have intervened?”

  “Upon the first reprimand, the duke emphasized the extent of his investment. Then he stated I couldn’t expect his assistance if I failed to cooperate.” Blackthorne looked away. “It was easy to see he was afraid. I half-believe the reason I rebelled in the first place was to torment him. Not merely because I believe that what the Brotherhood does is wrong.”

  “Still, you rejected everything. At great cost.”

  “I agreed to murder nonhumans to maintain the Censor’s quotas. I supported a system that issues licenses for murder to the rich.”

  “What made you stop?”

  She watched him run his fingers through his hair. “I …” He closed his eyes and sighed. She thought he might lie but sensed one of his internal walls fall away. “He was only nine or ten. An escaped slave. He was kainen. He’d run after being sold to the Church as a sacrifice. I tracked him into an alley, but I couldn’t … I handed over my knife, some food, and told him to flee the city.”

  “That was brave.”

  “It was foolish.” His eyes opened. They smoldered with anger and self-loathing. “A Warden Unit caught him an hour later. Fed him to the Huntmaster’s dogs. I had to watch while they ripped him apart. He would have been better off had I cut his throat. At least it would have been quick.” Coward! This time, the thought held an edge coated with poison.

>   “Please don’t do that,” she said with a wince.

  He took a breath and the mask shifted back into place. His lips were beginning to look a bit bluish-green, and his shivering was becoming ever more violent. “I do not wish to discuss this any further.”

  “I’ve heard enough.” We need to get inside before we both freeze to death, she thought.

  Blackthorne got to his feet with no small amount of effort. He clasped his arms around himself. “I am Slate’s Retainer. I will venture into Acrasia as many times as he wishes. And I will do everything in my power to see that every person I’m assigned to retrieve arrives in Eledore safely. But ultimately, I don’t expect to survive.”

  “Is it because you’ll be recognized?”

  “I’m confident I can disguise myself. I have done so often enough. People see what they prefer to see,” Blackthorne said. “What is more likely is that your prince will cut my throat when he returns. I only ask that he wait until I’ve served my purpose. If it comes to that, can you convince him to wait?”

  She didn’t know what to say. So, she said nothing. She watched Blackthorne stare out into the forest while the sounds of snarling dogs echoed in her mind.

  TWO

  Running up five flights of stairs, Ilta paused long enough to catch her breath at the top. She set her surgeon’s bag down for a moment, grabbed her knees, and took in great gulps of air. The muscles in her legs twitched. She was an hour late because of having to set Frikk’s broken arm—an accident in the stable. She supposed it was pointless to rush now. However, two days had passed since her encounter with Blackthorne, and the conversation had been preying on her mind. She needed to vent her frustration and confusion. She still didn’t know what to think, but it was time to talk.

  She retrieved her bag. Rushing through the ironbound door leading to the first of the tiered gardens, she scanned the rows of plants for James Slate.

  With so many mouths to feed, there were several gardens tucked around the Hold. However, the topmost garden was James’s favorite. Ilta assumed this was because it was the least frequented by the others. Five flights of stairs tended to deter casual visitors.

  The garden was quiet. It smelled of damp black earth. Most of the fall vegetables had been harvested. Still, some plants remained among the rows of small dirt mounds. James tended to find his way there at first light, and it was now nearing dark. She had a hunch that he would’ve waited, given recent tensions. There’d been a fight between Jack Nickols and Eli Karstensen, not that that was anything new. There was always some fight going on between one of the Nickols brothers and Eli Karstensen. Sometimes she wondered why James let the Nickolses stay. They were often more trouble than they were worth.

  Don’t judge. Everyone deals with loss their own way, she thought.

  When she rounded the first wall, she spied James sitting in the dirt between two rows of winter roses, sketching. His serene expression was marred by a squinting frown as he concentrated on his drawing. He shifted nearer to the rose plant. Removing his spectacles, he leaned in close enough to touch his nose to the leaf. After a moment or two, he returned to the image on which he was working. He moved the paper as closees he had the leaf and rubbed at it with a blackened finger.

  As she watched, she noticed a charcoal smudge on his nose near the bridge of his spectacles. He wore an inexpertly knitted blue scarf looped around his neck, and his coat hung open. That was when she understood he was wearing the same rumpled clothes from the day before. Briefly, she wondered if he’d remembered to eat. His duties often distracted him from self-care. Still, Ilta often envied his skills with people. And he does so without magic.

  Before approaching him, she closed her eyes and focused in an effort to make sure they were alone. James preferred to keep his treatments private, and she respected his wishes. All at once, she knew he was upset and worried. The depth of his feelings hit her like a slap. She shoved them back before she could understand details. When she didn’t sense anyone else nearby, she gathered her skirts and squatted in the dirt next to him.

  James started. “You’re late. Is something wrong?” He closed the large portfolio, but not before she caught a glimpse of what he was working on—a striking black-and-white sketch detailing the rose plant’s parts in formal Acrasian.

  “Not really. Not anything urgent, anyway,” Ilta said. “Frikk broke his arm helping shoe the grey stallion. Something is going to have to be done about that beast. He’ll have to be gelded or sold.”

  “Jack Nickols doesn’t want to geld him.”

  “Well then, perhaps Jack Nickols should take care of that creature himself and risk having his head kicked in,” Ilta said.

  “I know you don’t like either of the Nickols brothers, but they are part of the community.”

  “You’re right. I know. I’m sorry. I only wish either of them would think of others first once in a while.” She sighed. “Speaking of … are you ready?”

  He nodded and winced.

  “Headache?” she asked.

  “A bit.”

  “Well, let’s see what I can do about that.” She opened her surgeon’s bag and fished out the half-full bottle of medicine she’d prepared. “Drink this.”

  He accepted it from her. “All of it?”

  “All of it.”

  Sipping, he grimaced but didn’t comment on the taste. Next, she produced a different concoction, soaked a cloth with the liquid, and instructed him to place the cloth over his eyes while they were open. Ilta had been trained as an Eledorean Traditionalist by her grandmother, and it was important for James to take part in his treatment—just as it was vital that she incorporated all her healing magic in the preparations and the cloth. Pouring one’s magic directly into a patient was reserved for emergencies. To do so took dangerous risks.

  When the treatment was finished, she checked his eyes. The cloudiness in their centers had vanished. He blinked in the sunlight.

  “You can put your spectacles back on now,” she said. It was important to protect his eyes from the light lest he suffer worse pain. If that happened, she wouldn’t be able to do much about it.

  “Thank you,” he said with a smile. “I’m feeling much better already.”

  “Good.”

  “Now you can tell me what’s wrong.”

  “I told you—”

  “Not with the others,” he said. “You.”

  She focused on securing the contents of her surgeon’s bag so that the assorted bottles wouldn’t break. When he didn’t interrupt the silence, she decided to finally say something. “Blackthorne,” she said. “He’s kainen.”

  James’s expression was impossible to read, but the spark of panic was easy to detect. “And?”

  “There is no ‘and,’ ” she said. “He was a Warden, and he hunted his own people?”

  “He did.”

  “You aren’t outraged?”

  “The past is the past. That is what we agreed, isn’t it?”

  “We didn’t agree to harbor murderers!”

  “Interesting. I wonder if Jacob Nickols, Franklin, and Carter are aware of that. And I believe Birch is wanted for—”

  “Don’t you change the subject!”

  “We need Blackthorne,” James said. “He smuggles refugees out of Acrasia. And he’s more successful at it than anyone else who’s ever tried.”

  “I know, but—”

  “But what?” James set the portfolio on the ground and wiped his charcoal-stained hands on his trousers.

  She drew up her knees, wrapping her arms around them. It was difficult to find words for what she was feeling. James’s copper-colored eyes bored into her through his lenses. She released the breath she was holding. Sorting through her emotions, she focused on the clearest. “I feel so … foolish for not having known. I just … I can’t believe it.”

  “Who would? It’s unthinkable,” James said.

  There was a long pause. She waited, confused and unable to contribute anything useful.
r />   He continued. “The only explanation of which I can conceive is that certain persons are predisposed to follow authority. Most people do tend to look up to and even identify with societal power bases, particularly when it’s dangerous not to do so. Of course, this is an extreme case—”

  “He told me he didn’t choose to attend the Academy. He said he’d been a slave. That he didn’t have a choice in the matter.”

  “I was thinking more of his father, the duke.”

  “Oh.”

  “It’s difficult to even imagine the twisted logic involved,” James said, and then paused. “Did you know there’s a naturalist term for when one species disguises itself as another for survival? They call it mimicry.”

  “Mimicry?” she asked.

  James gazed off at the horizon. “Maybe it’s a form of mental mimicry?”

  “Would you listen to yourself?” Ilta asked. “You’re referring to people, not animals. It makes you sound cold and calculating, and I know that isn’t you.”

  Blushing, he looked uncomfortable. “I was merely examining the situation in a scientific sense. I want to understand why.”

  “You believe understanding would make it less … frightening.”

  He nodded. “Evil is … perplexing. Small evils are one thing. Everyone gets angry. Everyone is selfish from time to time. But something on this scale? Requiring so much commitment, energy, and time? How did it not occur to him to question? Even once?”

  “I know,” Ilta said. The subject troubled James to the core of his being. She suspected it could mean only one thing. What terrible choices did he make before leaving Acrasia? “But I wish you would be more careful. I can sense your emotions and intent behind your words. The others can’t.”

  “And that is why I only say such things in front of you.”

  “Oh.” She hesitated. She didn’t want to upset him further, but she had to know. “May I ask you a question?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Why did you bring Blackthorne here?”