Master and Apprentice

by Bateman, Sonya

  Tory flopped on his back with a gasp. “I don’t suppose either of you has a frog or a rabbit on you,” he said in cracked tones. “Never been very good at that whole dive-and-snatch thing.”

  A laugh ejected from my throat before I could stop it—and Ian cracked a hint of the first genuine smile I’d seen from him in days. It wouldn’t last, but it was nice to pretend for a minute that we would be around long enough to feel normal again.

  It took Tory a few minutes to remember he wasn’t a bird. He’d been circling the mountain for two days, looking for me. His shock at finding both of us settled in after he stopped compulsively scanning the area for small game and trying to clean his feathers.

  I brought him up to speed—the unexpected effects of the soul bind, the twins, the brother, the kids who’d helped us get out. He avoided looking at Ian while I talked. When I finished, he ran his fingers through his hair and grimaced. “They’ll come after us,” he said. “I’m sure they’re already looking. I don’t know … fuck.” He broke off hard, stared at the ground. “I thought you were dead, Ian. I left you there alone. Shit. I would’ve come for you. I swear I would’ve.”

  “You would have been destroyed.” Ian roused himself from his stupor and cast him a stricken gaze. “Do not punish yourself for that, Taregan. I am glad you escaped.” He clasped his knees to his chest. “Though I do wish you had not followed me there. What they made you do …”

  Confusion flickered through Tory’s mask of misery. “What did they make me do?”

  “You do not know?”

  “I do,” I said. “I saw it.” The unwanted memory branded me—being in Ian’s head, watching Tory come after him with a knife, the horrified out-of-control expression on his face. “They made you torture him. They were controlling you.”

  “No. They couldn’t have.” Tory looked from me to Ian, then back to me. “They swarmed us the second we got there. There were so many. I tried fighting them, but they were human and … well, hawks aren’t very lethal to humans, so I didn’t bother trying that. I knocked some of them out, but I couldn’t kill them. Ian must’ve taken a dozen of them before they brought him down.” He swallowed and dropped his gaze. “That’s when I took off. I knew you were supposed to destroy him, and I couldn’t … I just couldn’t.”

  “Impossible.” Ian’s voice wavered and dipped. “You were there. You cut me. You broke my bones. They took control of you, used you.”

  Tory looked like he’d been gutted with a dull spoon. “I didn’t,” he whispered. “I swear, Ian, whatever you saw, it wasn’t me. I wouldn’t have let them take me like that. Not to torture you. Never.”

  “Shit,” I blurted out. “It was the brother.”

  They both stared at me.

  “Calvin and Vaelyn’s brother. It was him. He tricked Calvin into casting the fertility spell on him by making himself look like a different djinn, a guy Calvin thought was a scholar like him. He must’ve taken Tory’s form.” The only reasoning I could think of for it disgusted me almost as much as the way they used the kids. “He did it because it’d hurt you more.”

  “Hold on.” Tory’s hands clenched and turned his knuckles an angry white. “The Morai can’t do that. It’s powerful illusion magic. Only the older Bahari can pull off shit like that.” He pounded the ground with a fist. “This whole thing reeks. Nothing is right.”

  Something pricked at my subconscious. A whispering, muffled voice. I tried to tune everything out and listen—and at last I realized the voice wasn’t in my head, and it didn’t come from Ian or Tory. It sounded like it was saying apprentice.

  Ian’s brow furrowed. “Your pocket is speaking,” he said.

  “Huh?” I reached into the one he was staring at and pulled out my cell phone.

  Calvin’s face appeared on the cracked screen, faded and opaque, more reflection than image. “There you are,” he said. “I don’t have much time. They aren’t going to let me leave, and they’re furious that you rescued your friend.” A small smile flickered across his lips. “Well done, apprentice.”

  “Thanks. Now what the hell’s going on? And how are you on my cell phone? The battery’s dead.”

  He smirked. “The surface is reflective. I’m using a mirror spell.”

  “Oh.” Nice trick. I’d have to remember that one. “Okay, so what’s with your fucked-up brother?”

  “Half-brother,” Calvin practically spat. “We share a mother, but his father was Bahari.”

  All the breath went out of me. I glanced at Ian and Tory, whose expressions said they’d heard him loud and clear. At least that explained a lot.

  “Listen to me.” Calvin looked away for a second, like he’d heard something he didn’t like on his end. His voice dropped to a harsh whisper. “The princess is alive.”

  My throat collapsed. Before I could react, Ian beat me to it.

  “Lying snake!” He launched himself from the ground on a collision course with me. I rolled clear fast, but he was already turning when he hit the ground. He’d destroy the phone before Calvin could finish his message.

  “Tory, hold him back!” I scrambled away, tried to get up, and felt Ian’s fingers brush my ankles before Tory tackled him. I started running. “Talk fast, Calvin,” I said. “Ian doesn’t believe you, and I don’t blame him. She can’t be. We all saw his ring shatter.”

  “She’s here. She’s to be part of my brother’s reward for destroying Gahiji-an. Her father has promised her to him.”

  “My God.” Everything came together in my head so suddenly that I actually saw a blinding flash of light. I glanced back and saw Ian bucking violently under Tory, screaming obscenities in djinn. Falling apart. Tory wouldn’t be able to hold him long. “Your brother is—”

  “They’re coming. You must save her, apprentice, and stop them. My brother can’t be permitted to claim a place on the Council. It would be the end of both our worlds.”

  He vanished, and my phone was just a useless hunk of shiny plastic again.

  I jammed it back in my pocket and walked back toward the warring djinn, every one of my muscles twitching and sizzling like water on a hot griddle. “Stop it,” I said.

  Ian kept yelling. Tory wrenched his arm back, and Ian promised to rip his intestines out if he didn’t let go.

  “Goddamn it, Ian, knock it off or I’ll break your fucking teeth!”

  Something in my voice must’ve conveyed how much I meant it. They froze.

  “She’s alive,” I said, and held a hand out when Ian’s mouth opened in a protest. “Shut up and listen. Vaelyn knows how to transfer tethers. She did it with her own, joined herself to Calvin’s so he wouldn’t be able to destroy her.” My stomach lurched hard at the thought of the rest. “They must have cut her finger off to break the bond. But she’s alive.”

  Tory crawled away from Ian with a thick sound that could’ve been a sob. He stayed down and curled inward, moaning incoherently.

  Ian struggled up to his knees. Moisture streaked through the dirt smudged on his face, and his breath came in hitches and gasps. “Akila,” he rasped, the name torn from him like a forbidden word. “She lives?”

  “Yes.” I knelt in front of him and grabbed his shoulder. “Don’t run off this time. We can’t afford to fuck this up. It’s worse than you think, and it’s going to take all of us to get her back.”

  A violent tremor worked through him. “I cannot leave her there another moment.”

  “Yes, you can. They aren’t going to destroy her. We will go after her, but not yet.” I glanced over at Tory, who’d managed to pull himself from the ground. “I know who the brother is, Ian. And so do you.” The familiar voice, the spells he used—I hadn’t put it together because he was only half Morai, and I’d only seen the Bahari part of him. Not in person, but through a vision from the past. From Akila’s memories. Even the reward Kemosiri promised him made sense now.

  “I do not understand,” Ian said. “Who is he?”

  My teeth ground together. “Nurien.”
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  Chapter 27

  Ian bolted to his feet, the broken pieces of him cemented back together with rage. “That disgusting, preening, worthless sack of dung! How dare he—” He stared at me. “How could you know of Nurien?”

  The switch from furious to baffled was so abrupt, I almost choked on a laugh. “Akila told me,” I said. “Showed me, actually. I asked her how you two managed to meet, and she made one of those thought-forms. I got to watch the whole story.” I grinned at him. “You were a cute kid, Ian. And your temper hasn’t improved since then.”

  His neck flushed. “I have never had cause to control my temper. Particularly now.” He paced in a tight circle, stopped, and spat on the ground. “Sniveling bastard. Of course he would have to produce descendants in order to best me. And Kemosiri sent him here?”

  “Yeah. Apparently, he’s been promised rewards for destroying you.”

  Ian’s jaw clenched. “What rewards?”

  I cleared my throat. “A seat on the Council,” I said. “And … Akila.”

  A dark expression twisted his features. “I will destroy them both,” he said. “Nurien first. And then Kemosiri. Council leader or not, he will die for this.”

  “Whoa. Take a breath, Ian.” Tory lurched closer, rubbing his forehead. “Let’s just worry about Nurien right now. Damn.” He crossed his arms and looked at me. “Well, at least we know what’s wrong with him now. He’s part Morai.”

  “Yeah, but he looks all Bahari. At least, he did when I saw him.”

  Tory nodded. “It doesn’t happen often, but djinn born of two clans always favor the father in appearance. And this explains why he’s able to use air magic so well.”

  “The scions,” Ian said roughly. “Their blood is mixed as well. I knew it did not taste right when I … killed the boy.” His voice broke, and he buried his face in his hands. “Gods, what have I done?” he whispered.

  I felt his pain, a hot knife under my ribs. “Ian, don’t blame yourself,” I managed. “You didn’t know.”

  “Who should I blame, then?” His hands fell away and he raised wet, red-rimmed eyes. “I chose this hatred, this ignorance. These children have only done what they must, as I believed I had been doing. I cannot fault them.” He drew in a shuddering breath. “Khalyn protected you. He gave you strength I could never have offered, enabled you to save me. And risked his safety, perhaps his life, to bring news of Akila. How many others like him have I destroyed?”

  My chest tightened until I could barely breathe, much less speak. Even if we weren’t soul bound, I would’ve felt the same way. After all, I’d helped him quite a bit in the destruction department.

  “You didn’t have a choice.” Tory sounded as awful as I felt. “You want someone to blame? How about Kemosiri? He’s the one who cast the ham’tari—”

  “Blast the ham’tari!” Visible tremors shot through him. “Misfortune be damned. I will no longer kill without discretion. I will not spill innocent blood.” Lips pulled back in a snarl, he pounded a fist into the tree beside him, splintering bark. And probably his knuckles. “I will not be Kemosiri’s butcher.”

  Some of the tightness eased, and I let out a long breath. “Well, I guess we feel better now,” I said.

  Ian raised an eyebrow. “We?”

  “Yeah. Soul bind, strong emotions—you almost killed me there.”

  He smiled a little. “I believe some of them belonged to you, thief. This bond does travel in both directions.”

  “Lucky us.” I straightened from an unconscious slump, rubbed my stiff neck. “Okay, guys, we need a plan. Anybody got one?”

  Tory glanced at Ian. “What, exactly, are we trying to plan?”

  I took a deep breath. “We have to get Akila out, neutralize Vaelyn without destroying her so we don’t kill Calvin too, take Nurien down even though we don’t have his tether, figure out which scions aren’t actually evil brainwashed puppets and save them, and decide what to do with the rest of them.”

  “Is that everything?” Ian said dryly.

  “Damn. I never thought I’d say this, but it’s good to have your cranky ass back.”

  Tory laughed. “I’ll second that. So, Donatti, what should we do?”

  “Um. Shouldn’t you ask Ian? I thought he was in charge.”

  “My strategy was obviously flawed.” Ian caught my gaze, nodded. “I believe we should try things your way.”

  My first instinct was to say hell no, forget it. I knew how much trust he was putting in me. Akila was more his life than his tether could ever be, and to leave saving her up to me was huge. Especially since I was a complete fuckup. Had been all my life. Ask anybody who knew me, and they’d tell you they wouldn’t trust me enough to lend me five bucks, because somehow they’d end up in jail, or in traction, or worse—because of me.

  But I couldn’t let him down.

  “Right,” I said. “My way. Er. Well, I do have a hunch about one thing. I think I know where Calvin’s tether is.” I walked over to the incongruous, phoneless phone booth with its padlocked plastic box. “Bet you a dollar it’s in here.”

  Ian actually smiled. “I believe you are right.”

  “I hope so.” I knew I’d brought a pick set. I shuffled through pockets until I found it and checked the underside of the lock. A wide key slot, nothing apparently jammed inside it. I flicked one of the thicker shims out and jimmied it around until the shackle popped with a dull click.

  My hopes sank. It was too easy. I slipped the lock off and opened the box, expecting to find nothing inside. I wasn’t disappointed.

  “Anything there?” Ian said.

  “No.” I stared hard at the empty space, as if I wanted something to be there badly enough it’d show up. It did seem a little strange that the plastic box didn’t have a back. There was just a stark rectangle of tree bark outlined in gray. I reached in and touched it.

  Echoes of magic vibrated through my fingers at the contact.

  “I’ll be damned.” I pressed a palm against the surface of the tree. There was something in there that didn’t belong. I could almost feel the shape of it. I tried to let the magic flow through me, into the wood, and pushed gently. My hand slid inside the trunk like a rock sinking in mud. The pliant wood around it hummed and pulsed and sent small, tingling shocks up my arm. At first I thought it was some kind of protection spell.

  Then I realized it was because, unlike dirt, the tree was alive.

  My fingers brushed something cool and solid and definitely not living. I worked them forward carefully, hoping trees couldn’t feel pain, and finally wrapped my hand around whatever it was. I pulled it out slowly, until the tip of it cleared the bark. It was a curved knife, about eighteen inches long including the handle. The blade was wider at the business end. A series of serrated hooks, six in all, ran from the hilt to a third of the way up the blade on one side. The carved bone handle was a coiled snake with blood red gem eyes. It looked like a weapon designed to seriously injure instead of kill. The kind a mercenary-for-hire might carry.

  “Holy shit. How’d you do that?”

  Tory’s voice at my shoulder made me flinch. I turned and lowered the blade before I could manage to cut myself with it. “I have no idea,” I said. “Totally winging it here. But I’d say this is the right thing. Wouldn’t you?”

  “It’s definitely Morai,” Tory said.

  Ian stared at the knife. “Did you not say that Khalyn is also bound to this tether?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “And you are not going to destroy it.”

  “Hell no.”

  “Very well.” There was relief in his voice. “But perhaps you will explain why we had to find this, if we do not intend to use it.”

  “Oh, I intend to use it.” I flashed a quick smile. “Just tell me how you seal a djinn back inside one of these things.”

  His answering grin said he liked that idea.

  Ian walked me through the procedure for sucking a djinn back inside a tether—the blood of the caster an
d the one to be sealed, an incantation, and as much power as I could throw behind it. Tory already knew the drill, so this way, any one of us would be able to take the first opportunity we saw to put Vaelyn away. Now all we had to do was get some of her blood on her tether. And figure out how to accomplish the rest of the impossible items on my to-do list.

  The only thing I knew for sure was that we all needed a little time to rest. Ian sat against a tree, looking about as lively as a funeral. Tory wasn’t much better. And for all my fancy new mojo, I felt more human than ever—specifically, like a human who’d slept maybe four hours in two days, eaten nothing more than a couple mouthfuls of bat, and would’ve given a kidney to see the inside of a hot shower.

  No one was in any shape to fly far, and even if I could figure out how to get through the ground without blood to guide me, I had no idea whether I’d be able to take passengers. We could probably find a stream or a pond and use reflections to move elsewhere, but we couldn’t risk going back to the house, and no way in hell I’d let anyone get near Jazz right now, including us. Especially us. I assumed Tory would feel the same way about Lark.

  That left staying on the mountain. So much for a five-star meal and a posh hotel room. We’d be lucky to get a handful of berries and a nice flat rock to sleep on.

  “We’d better move,” I said. “They’ll be looking for us soon, if they aren’t already. I know a nice cave where we can hole up and get our shit together. Spacious, cold, plenty of bats. Don’t worry. They taste like chicken.”

  “Really, thief. Bats?” Ian stood and looked at Tory. “We will hunt.”

  Tory grinned. “Sounds good to me. There’s plenty of whitetail around here. It’ll be just like the mau-het back home.” He hauled himself to his feet, brushed a few pine needles from his legs. “Oh, man, I’m drooling already.”

  “You’re serious,” I said. “You really want to go deer hunting?”

  Ian shrugged. “We must eat.”

  “Yeah, well, I hope one of you guys is a better shot than I am, or we’ll be eating pinecone salad. I’ve never been hunting in my life.” I pulled out the Sig. “Who’s doing the shooting?”