Memories of Ash (The Sunbolt Chronicles Book 2)

by Intisar Khanani

  I take a deep breath and hold it to keep from ranting further. The silence after my words is deafening.

  Stonefall makes no move, his dark eyes steady on me, his expression completely inscrutable. Then he nods once, to himself, and says, “What of the Shadow League?”

  I start, staring at him. What can he possibly know about that? About my connections to them? “They’re in Karolene,” I manage.

  “Not since your friends came here.”

  “My friends? What are you talking about?”

  “The Degaths.”

  I open my mouth, close it again.

  “You just told me your story,” Stonefall observes mildly.

  “I didn’t name them.” Even in my anger, I’d been careful to only call them a noble family. I’d named Blackflame and Kol without concern, though.

  “No,” he agrees. “What you don’t know is that when the Degaths escaped, they came here. The High Council had just arrived, and they immediately petitioned for Blackflame to be removed from his post in Karolene, citing what they claimed had passed.”

  “What they claimed?”

  He holds up a hand to stay my protest. “In addition to laying their parents’ deaths at Blackflame’s feet, they showed the half-healed wounds the youngest daughter had on her neck, and claimed it was given to her by a rogue fang lord named Kol. I was sent to investigate him.”

  My hands tighten into fists around the cloth of my robes. “You went.”

  “I did,” he agrees. “I took three mages with me, because fangs rarely attain power without support from their own. We found a burial ditch of bloodless corpses, and more than a few children with neck wounds. So we broke apart the clan he had gathered in his fortress. We also found the place where he died. It had the memory of sunshine and ash seared into it. A spell that, had the one who cast it survived, might be a called a sunbolt.”

  And I, in my foolishness, gave Jabir that name. And he used it for me, in front of Stonefall.

  “The Degaths called you a thief and a hero, but not a mage. Your magic was unsigned then as it is now. Your stories line up very well. Except,” Stonefall holds his words for a heartbeat, “you should be dead.”

  I glance away. “It was close.”

  “It never occurred us that the breather who escaped at the same time might take care of you.”

  “Because all breathers are rogues.”

  A pause.

  “Perhaps not,” Stonefall allows.

  I stare.

  He gestures abruptly to the wardrobe. “Stormwind’s pack is in there. I suggest you take what you need from it and leave the Mekteb.”

  He has to tell me to leave. That’s his only choice. The smartest thing I can do is pretend to comply. I retrieve Stormwind’s pack and go through it quickly—I already have the charms. I find little else she might need if I break her out. Spare clothes will be the least of her worries, and easily stolen at that. The herbs, on the other hand … I transfer the pouches and jars to my pack, nestling them among my clothes. My fingers brush the cool wood of the crow statuette as I tug at my spare skirt. Val would probably be as displeased with my actions as Stormwind. I bite back a grin and make sure the little wooden figure is well protected before closing up my pack and returning Stormwind’s to the wardrobe.

  “Take this as well.” Stonefall offers me a new glowstone. “Wear the look-away and wait here until I’ve been gone a quarter hour. If Jabir hasn’t gotten rid of the lycans already, I’ll demand they escort me. That will be your chance.”

  “All right.” I add the stone to my pouch of charms. “Is it easy for mages to sense this at work?” I ask, turning the wire ring of the look-away over in my fingers. It’s such a slight charm to hold such power.

  “Not particularly. Once it takes effect, there’s almost no sign of magic at work.”

  That’s something, then. I slip it on and sit down to wait, my back against the wardrobe.

  Leaving Stonefall’s rooms is as easy as opening the door and stepping out, the look-away charm on my finger. I pad down the hall, past the alabaster raven to the Seven Claw Stairwell. As I reach the ground floor, an older woman in mage’s robes sweeps past as if I were not there at all.

  Suppressing a grin, I turn toward the exit and stop. The double wooden doors before me stand closed. I need to leave the building unobserved, which leaves me very few options. I take the best of them and stand to the side and wait.

  Just as I’m beginning to think no one will ever decide to use the doors again, a student comes down the stairs and heads for the doors. I fall in behind him, careful to step lightly, and slip away. My breath freezes in my lungs. His gaze flickers over the wall and back to the door, now closed. Does he sense me somehow?

  My breath begins to burn in my lungs, but I don’t dare let it out. If he reaches out an arm, he’ll find me….

  With a frown, he turns away, heading up the arcade. I exhale softly and step back to lean against the wall.

  It’s early afternoon, the sun still high in the sky. No more than two hours have passed since I first entered the Mekteb. Now, however, the students walking down the arcade dart glances at those they pass — and there are few indeed who walk alone. The gardens seem conspicuously empty, until I spot the forms of two white-turbaned guards pacing a central pathway, their leather and velvet armor and sheathed swords hardly comforting.

  I cannot see their faces clearly, from here, but I don’t need to — I know they are members of the lycan guard, sworn to protect the High Council. Even though they have nothing to do with the monsters of my past, I cannot banish the memory of James attacking me in his demi-form, human but for a wolf’s head. I take a shaky breath, push away my memories. It’s up to me to keep myself safe now. Panicking will not help.

  Word has spread about the attack on Stonefall and the presence of a rogue mage at the school. Everyone is looking for me. I need to find a way to disappear fast, and a shadow-charm, however handy it may be, will eventually attract attention. I need something more subtle than magic to keep me safe.

  I remain pressed against the wall, observing the movement of mages, servants, and the guards on patrol. The servants are mostly locals, though some appear to have come here from elsewhere. The students clearly hail from all Eleven Kingdoms, their skins ranging from darkest cocoa to golden bronze. I fall into step behind a trio of girls as they pass me, talking cheerfully of the play they intend to watch this afternoon. They provide the perfect cover for my footsteps, should we happen to pass any lycans.

  I follow them down a path to a second row of buildings facing another garden, and right into another building — a dormitory, it seems, where they intend to collect the rest of their friends. I slip off the charm in an empty stairwell. I can do this, I tell myself firmly, and walk confidently out, heading down the covered arcades and ignoring the occasional curious glance. A mage in mage’s disguise. It works perfectly, at least for the places where mages are expected to be.

  But I need more than that. I need invisibility, and that’s precisely what I intend to find. I stride past an armory, two or three buildings that appear to be workshops, and finally spot what I’m looking for. There, near the currently closed rear gate, stand two humble-looking buildings: the servants’ quarters. I pass the first one with barely a glance. A group of young men in servants’ attire lounge about the front door. The second building will be the women’s quarters.

  Sliding on the look-away as I turn the far corner, I follow the back wall of shuttered windows until I reach an open window. I wait there, listening. After a few minutes there’s a faint rustle. I move on. Through the second open window, I catch the sound of a whispered conversation. The third offers up a silent room. A quick peek over the windowsill shows me a closed door, four beds of which two remain unmade, and a pile of rumpled clothes beside a pair of wooden storage trunks. Ten minutes later, I have a set of servants’ clothing — the same white selvar and long, dark-green tunic the serving girl Rehan wore. The tunic’s a
bit loose about my shoulders and wide around my middle, but who am I to complain? If anyone asks, I’m new and still need to alter my clothes to fit better.

  I stuff my robes and tunic into my now bulging pack and wrap it up in my skirt, tucking the resulting bundle under my arm. I don’t want to leave it anywhere. Hiding it in plain sight seems the best option.

  The look-away in my pocket, I head back to the center of campus. Even carrying my bundle, hardly anyone spares me a glance. Certainly I draw less notice than I did as a mage. I lower my head to hide my smile, and walk quietly through the Mekteb.

  One can only hope everything else will go as smoothly.

  I follow the paths between the outer buildings, keeping an eye out for a likely servant. With the Festival fully underway by now, the grounds are clearing out. Only a few groups of students stand about, waiting for their friends to finally get ready. There are very few adults visible beyond the guards. But the servants continue going about their duties. I want one who will look kindly on me and not question my ignorance.

  As I reach a path running between two buildings I spot an elderly servant trundling toward me, pushing a handcart filled with dirty linens.

  I offer him a hesitant smile. “Excuse me,” I say in Tradespeak.

  He slows to a stop. “Yes?”

  I drop my gaze to the ground, shifting my weight from one foot to the other. “I’m very sorry, it’s just— I’m new and I’m supposed to go to Susulu Hall and I don’t remember which one it is.”

  “Ah,” he says, glancing at my bundle and dismissing it as nothing more than a delivery or the like. “No trouble, that. The buildings all look the same till you know what to look for. Watch the floors under the arcades.” He gestures to the building at our side. “This here is Zilant Hall. A Zilant is a long-tailed dragon with wings. So what did the tile layers put underfoot? A mosaic with a zilant.”

  “So a susulu…” I say hesitantly.

  “One of the water people — the mosaic’ll show you a woman with a fish tail.” He massages one of his shoulders. “For Äbädä Hall, you’ll see an old woman in among some trees and birds and such. Best they could do for a forest spirit, it seems. Shahmaran Hall, of course, is the snake queen.”

  “Oh, thank you!” I don’t have to pretend the rush of gratitude I feel.

  He returns my smile. “You’re welcome.” He points down the pathway. “Susulu is the second building down from the Great Hall. You’d best run along and get your work done. We’ve only a couple hours left before it’s our holiday, too.”

  It’s all I can do to keep my smile in place. Two hours? Not that I begrudge the servants getting time off as well, but …

  “Thank you,” I repeat, and set off at a brisk pace.

  An hour or two should at least give me enough time to scout out where First Mage Talon’s rooms are. Unfortunately, I doubt I’ll be able to manufacture a pretext to get into her rooms until tomorrow if I’m supposed to be off work so soon.

  I cut across the main garden toward Susulu Hall. To my left, the domed building rises in all its glory — the Great Hall, as the servant called it — where the High Council has meeting rooms for the duration of their stay. While I’ve always known that the High Council travels each year to a different land, being tied to no one Kingdom, I didn’t consider what this would mean in terms of where they met. What do they do in other kingdoms, where there are no schools to welcome them?

  A group of Promises hurry past me, their robes flying, their voices hushed with excitement, barely noticing me in my servant’s garb. It seems too … innocent and young a place for something as serious as the High Council. Then again, for me the idea of the High Council has always been indelibly linked to fear of discovery. These students have nothing to fear. What would it have been like to come here? What if my parents had declared my Promise instead of hiding me?

  Utterly pointless reflections, these. I wouldn’t be the same person, or have known Stormwind, or burned myself to a cinder or any of a hundred other things. My father would still be dead, and my mother would still have gone to Blackflame, seeking his help. But I would have been safe here, and Blackflame wouldn’t have cut me off from her. Couldn’t have, because I would have had the Mekteb’s mages to help me separate facts from lies, and my mother could have found me here easily when she wished.

  But she could have found me in Karolene regardless, if she’d tried, just as I found her from Stormwind’s valley. She didn’t, and it’s this truth that has caught at me every time I pulled up her reflection in the crystal clear waters of the lake. Was she protecting me in some way, or was she glad to be rid of me?

  The path ahead curves around a fountain. Crouched among the bushes that grow alongside the far side a trio of boys gather around something on the ground. They keep looking up, over their shoulders, talking to each other in explosive whispers. One of them spots me and grins, surprising me from my train of thought, but he looks away again just as quickly. As I near them, a small black thing flies out of the bushes straight toward me.

  Skreeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

  I shout, diving to the side as it screeches past. It turns at the touch of a slight breeze, sailing high over the gardens and slamming into the stone face of the building behind us. With a barely audible whine, it bounces down off the arcade.

  I lie on the ground, my ears filled with its echo, and remember … being cornered. I know this memory, but in this moment it is fresher, more detailed than what I pulled from the ashes under Stormwind’s guidance…. Guards with black armbands surrounded me, and then another such charm shrieked past us, distracting them. I close my eyes, not caring that I’m lying in the middle of a path at a mage-ridden school of sorcery. I slide into the memory, running pell-mell through a busy marketplace, down back alleys between stalls, and then bursting through the back of a fruit stand, the old woman there offering to hide me, a young boy on the other side of the counter watching wide-eyed as I climbed into a crate of green coconuts, the close darkness of my hiding place. And that’s all.

  I take a shuddering breath and push myself to my feet, even though I want nothing more than to stay in that memory, catch hold of each detail while it pulses fresh in my mind. The boys shout with laughter, the bushes they hid in shaking and rustling as they give voice to their amusement. I catch a scattering of noise as those journeymen and apprentices along the arcades realize what has happened, laughing behind upraised hands.

  I grab my pack and bundle it up again as the boys mock the way I’d cried out. If I could, I’d march over there and throttle them. My plan was to walk unnoticed through the grounds. Instead, I’m the center of attention. All I can do now is make as little fuss as possible, and get away.

  I get no more than three feet down the path before a guard in leather armor rounds the corner of the fountain at a sprint, his boots crunching against the gravel. I plow to a halt. His gaze cuts between me and the boys, taking in the scene at once. He raises his hand to me, palm out in a silent command to wait, and crosses to the bushes. Catching the nearest two boys by their ears, he brings them to their feet with yelps of pain. The remaining boy scrambles up, his laughter wiped away by surprise.

  “You’ll be apologizing to the young miss now,” the lycan orders.

  “Apologize?” says the elder of the two boys he holds, as surprised as I am. He cannot be more than thirteen, though from the way he tries to brace his feet and hold up his nose, despite his captive ear, he thinks himself a grown man. “To a servant?”

  “No,” the guard says. “To the young woman you insulted. I’m not concerned with her occupation.” The third boy backs away. “You as well,” he says sharply. “Don’t think I don’t have your scent by now.”

  The boy hurries toward me, followed up by the guard still holding his two flinching captives. He is built tall and lithe, with a long thin face and tawny brown wolf’s eyes. I would estimate him to be perhaps twenty-five, certainly no more than thirty years. He smiles as he meets my gaze, his teeth
preternaturally sharp.

  I look away, my heart pounding, my mouth going dry. He looks nothing like James, and yet I cannot think past the memory of the wolf-headed man who attacked me in Kol’s tower, the way Val had breathed from him, aging him decades in a matter of moments. How terrified and grateful I’d been to watch James die.

  The boys come to a stop some feet away. “Sorry, miss,” one of them mumbles.

  “All of you,” the lycan says, and the boys at his left yelps. I almost feel sorry for their ears.

  I nod at the chorus of apologies that rise up.

  “And you won’t do it again,” he prods, letting the two boys go. They back away, the third with them, shaking their heads emphatically. “Because if I hear of anything happening, I’ll know who to look for,” the lycan adds, giving them a sharp-toothed smile.

  “No sir,” one of the boys gibbers. “We’ll be good, we will.”

  The lycan nods, and the boys bolt down the path. The other witnesses who so enjoyed my fright have gone on their way by now. But there are four more lycan guards standing silently a few paces away.

  “All right, miss?” the lycan asks.

  I jump. “I— yes, fine,” I mumble, terribly aware of the keenness of his gaze, the silence of his movements. And the fact that I am surrounded by guards.

  The lycan nods at the other guards, and they move off at once. He must outrank them. “Will you allow me to walk you where you’re going?” He gestures vaguely toward the garden, the buildings on the other side.

  “Susulu Hall,” I say, trying not to clutch my pack too tightly. Hopefully, the skirt is doing a good enough job of hiding it — checking would only draw his attention.

  “Of course.” He starts forward and I fall into step with him. This is bad. I was supposed to be the invisible serving girl going about my business. Now I have a high-ranking lycan escort. Could I be any more conspicuous?