Memories of Ash (The Sunbolt Chronicles Book 2)

by Intisar Khanani

  Whatever I do to the one sigil will echo back to the whole tapestry of spells, like a thread snagging in a fine fabric. People are already on alert. One snag, and it will be all I can do to escape right now.

  I’ll just have to be careful. At least, with my senses open, I can feel a continuous tremor of magic in the air, as mages and students and their charms use and release magic across campus. They are small things, nothing great being done at the moment, but it’s enough of a steady rumble to hide what I do. I hope.

  I grind the heels of my hands into my eye sockets. I can do this. Kneeling before the door, I frame the invisible sigil with my fingers and study it. The only way it would be activated is if someone activated the spells protecting the building — in the case of an emergency. Otherwise, it remains dormant, allowing anyone who wishes to visit the garden.

  I almost laugh, realizing the simplest solution. I don’t need to destroy the sigil. I need to keep it dormant. To do that, I need to adjust the weave of spells around it.

  For a handful of slow, deep breaths I observe the magic, the occasional tiny pulse of energy that flows through the strands, the connections between this sigil and the others, the thicker ropes of the protective spells woven through the building itself.

  Three strands of magic. I’ll have to adjust three any way I look at it. I wait until the next faint pulse of energy passes and then lift a hand, reaching out with my senses to trace one of the strands. I feed a little drop of magic into it and lengthen the strand, looping it around the central sigil. Now it encircles the sigil as a whole and touches on the two other strands that connect to the sigil.

  I take a steadying breath and reach for the two strands anchored to the sigil. I channel a whisper of magic into them right where they touch the sigil, envisioning a tree branch naturally forking, coaxing the strands until they each unfurl a new thread, bright and long enough to reach the loop I created. The edges glimmer blue, and with the lightest brush of my fingertips, I fuse the strands to the loop.

  The next pulse will come any moment. Grasping the strands where they attach to the sigil, I ease them free, using the finest touch of magic to separate them, keen as a blade. The spare threads waver, even as the pulse of magic starts across the wall toward me. No. I fold the threads back to the loop, smoothing them down with a flick of my fingers before snatching my hands away. My heart hammers in my chest.

  The strands flow over each other. As the pulse reaches them, the loop absorbs their magic, sealing the sigil in a vacuum. The pulse sparkles along the strands, following the newly created loop and continuing on, leaving the sigil at its center untouched. I’ve done it.

  With only slightly shaky hands, I gather up my cleaning supplies and start down the stairs. By the time I reach the ground floor, it has fallen silent. I still have one more thing to do. I may have made myself a way out, but I still need a way in. I move to the open doors of the classrooms that look out the back of the building, peeking in each until I find one whose windows are partially blocked by bushes.

  Stepping inside, I swing the door shut behind me. I wait for a full minute beside the door, listening for footsteps, for sounds of alarm as someone goes to investigate what I’d done to the rooftop door. The hallway lies silent. Thank God for the Festival. Had the classrooms been filled, all of this would have been impossible.

  I cross the room, skirting the large central table surrounded by chairs, a pile of books and a basket of charms at its center, and head for the window with the largest bush planted outside it. These windows are filled with panes of antique glass: heavy, thick stuff that slightly distorts the world beyond. Velvet curtains hang on either side of each window. I reach out tentatively, moving my hand from sill to glass and back again, and find variations on the same two sigils: one for the breakage of the glass, and the other to seal the window shut as a defensive mechanism.

  I flex my fingers, and with a small smile, set to work. It only takes a moment to drain the sigil against breaking. Like its counterpart on the door, it isn’t connected to any of the other protections, and so its disappearance won’t be detected. Then I kneel by the window, frame the sigil on the windowsill that will seal the window as a whole, and wait for the next magical pulse to pass by. I follow the same process as I did with the door’s sigil upstairs. It’s easier to adjust the strands this time around, though that doesn’t keep my heart from pounding.

  Finished, I push myself to my knees shakily, collect my bucket, and head for the door. The hallway remains quiet. It seems … absurd. But no one is expecting Stormwind to run. She came of her own volition; no doubt she presented herself as an honorable prisoner. She is honorable. But she’ll run given the chance. The trial is over, as unjust as it was, and she has nothing left to prove.

  As for the guards, they have no reason to connect the rogue mage who healed Stonefall with Stormwind’s presence. Still, I need to leave, and quickly, in case some slight tremor of what I’ve done raises interest. But there’s one last place I need to see before I go: the basement.

  I take the stairs down, clutching my bucket. At the landing, I make myself start humming. Below, the hallway continues along the length of the building to where it ends. There’s no sign of guards — no indication that Stormwind is being kept here at all.

  Did Stonefall lie to me? Everything I’ve done today was built on the premise that he told the truth. Keeping my steps light, I swing my scrubbing brush, humming all the while. I have a pretense to keep up, regardless of what I find.

  Doorways, more doorways, and then an intersecting hallway, an underground annex. Relief rushes through me as I reach it. A pair of guards stationed at the stairwell at its end blink at me, tilting their heads, curious but unworried, for they’d heard the lightness in my step, the happy sound of my wordless song.

  “Oh!” I say brightly. “I’m so sorry.”

  I reverse course, pausing only to trade my bucket for my pack, and leave by a side door, nodding to the guards there as I stride down the path.

  I spend the remaining hours of the day on the roof of the servants’ quarters. Nearly all the servants have already departed for the Festival when I arrive. The girls still lingering on their way out cast me curious glances as I walk briskly through the halls and up the stairs, but a smile and a nod suffice to get me past without any questions. The rooftop is a mix of open use space, cluttered with old benches retired from the rooftops of finer buildings, and rows upon rows of laundry lines, about half of which are filled.

  I make my way to the back corner, well hidden behind the laundry, and there I stay. I eat a bit of the dried, spiced goat meat I brought with me, and rest my back against the low wall that encloses the roof and think about what I’m trying to do, and how I’m going to do it. There are no easy answers, no one simple plan. There are so many factors that will have to fall into place for Stormwind to have any chance of escaping.

  The only thing I can do is run contrary to every expectation the lycans and mages who hold her captive will have. If they expect her to run away through the campus, she must depart right over their heads. In fact, they’ll expect her to run at once, just as the mages who came to Stonefall’s aid thought I must have fled already when I was hiding all the time in his room.

  If I can find a way to hide her for even an hour or two within the building itself, getting her away will be that much easier. I’ll also need a place for us to go, and a way to protect Stormwind from being traced. My string of wards might work at first, but eventually we’ll need something stronger that she can walk with. I’m going to need help — as much as I can do, I don’t think I can manage all this alone. But before I go seeking allies, I need the key to Stormwind’s shackles.

  Taking out the herbs I have with me, I sort through them. Half are meant to be taken orally, through tisanes or mixed into a broth. But a few are for physical applications, and they might not agree with a person if ingested, which would serve my purposes admirably. Unfortunately, the best of my options is also the bi
tterest.

  Rising, I slip on the look-away and go back downstairs, ghosting through the halls, checking for unlocked doors. At each door I pause and listen, then bend down to peek beneath the crack, checking for light. The rooms on the third and highest floor are larger than those on the ground floor, and house only two occupants per room. These must be the servants at the top of the pecking order, one step down from housekeepers. They certainly have more clothes and finer belongings than what I’d seen in the ground-floor rooms earlier today.

  From one room I filch a small ceramic bowl, nicely painted and filled with bits and pieces of things. I leave the contents behind and keep looking, until, in the second-to-last room, I find a tray of baked sweets on a table—flaky pastry with a layer of chopped nuts at the center, doused in a sugary syrup and carefully covered with a clean cloth. Perfect. The syrup is so heavy it’s unlikely Housekeeper Yilmaz will notice the dusting of herbs I’ll add in between the layers. After all, if Yilmaz is used to cleaning Talon’s rooms on her own, she’ll need some reason to take me in with her tomorrow. Tainted sweets is the best I can come up with.

  I arrange almost a third of them in the bowl I’d taken, then cover the tray once more, murmuring an apology to the true owner. Then I take myself back upstairs to hide behind the laundry lines for the rest of the night.

  Esra greets me with unaffected pleasure the following morning. “You’re back! I was hoping you would be.”

  I smile. “So was I. But I’m not quite sure of anything still —I couldn’t find the housekeeper I spoke with yesterday. Perhaps I should talk to Housekeeper Yilmaz?”

  Esra’s expression falls, but she nods. “You probably should.” She gestures toward the stairs down. “She hasn’t come up yet. You could try knocking. Hers is the third door on the right.”

  I’d already discovered which rooms were Yilmaz’s early this morning, when I’d left her a present on her doorstep. Now I shift uncomfortably and suggest, “Why don’t I help clean until she comes up?”

  “Fine by me,” Esra says. “It’s a lighter day today — we get off at lunch! No room cleanings, either, only the halls, the stairs, and the windows. Any preference?”

  “Halls?”

  Esra blinks, and then says, “Are you sure you don’t want the windows? They’re easier.”

  They are, but I want to keep an unobtrusive watch on the stairs, not get caught cleaning the windows in the stairwell, or end up too far away to notice Yilmaz going up to Talon’s rooms. Assuming she’ll clean them today.

  “But that’s hardly fair to you,” I say with forced lightness. “You take the windows, I’ll do the halls, and maybe we can split the stairs.”

  Esra grins and hands me the local version of a broom — the bristles bunched together and tied into a thick, short handle. “Can’t argue with that!”

  I take the broom and set off down the hall. Without an actual stick attached to the broom, I have to squat to sweep the long bristles across the floor. But my work goes very quickly thanks to the longer reach of the bristles. Once I finish the ground floor, I go up to the second and sweep there as well, pausing to listen every time I hear footsteps.

  I am beginning to despair of Yilmaz showing up at all when I hear a slow, heavy tread on the stairs. I take my broom to the hall closet, then move quietly back to the stairs, arriving in time to see the broad back and tightly braided hair of the housekeeper as she turns up the landing. She very nearly drags herself up the stairs, one thick hand gripping the railing tightly.

  I follow behind her on silent feet, listening as she gains the landing before Talon’s door. Then I patter up behind her.

  She leans against the railing, clutching the banister tightly. Catching sight of me, she frowns, eyes burning in an otherwise unnaturally pasty face.

  “Mistress Yilmaz?” I come to a stop three steps below her.

  “What do you want?”

  I flinch at the growl in her voice. She must be feeling terrible. I should have put only a few pastries in the bowl. But I didn’t think she’d eat more than a couple so early in the morning, and I didn’t want to give her a half-empty bowl…. At least the herbs I’d used only cause temporary discomfort. By this afternoon she should feel better.

  “Well?”

  “I— ah, I’m new, and I was told yesterday I could work in Susulu Hall, but—”

  “What? Who told you that?”

  “I don’t know,” I stammer, ducking my head. I have to keep my story consistent with the one I told Esra, which only gives me so much wiggle room. “A housekeeper, but I’ve forgotten her name, and so I cleaned here yesterday with Esra, and today too, but I wanted to check if you were expecting me here.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  I let my features fall. “If it’s all right — could I please clean here today?”

  “And what would you do? Esra is more than able to do her work herself.”

  For all Esra’s happiness to have a cleaning companion, I don’t doubt this. She’s both efficient and hard working. But it isn’t Esra’s work I want to do. “Perhaps I might help you?”

  “What help could you possibly be? What are you — third level?” Her eyes fall to my sleeves, “Fourth level!”

  “Apologies, mistress.” I duck my head, realizing belatedly what the embroidered diamonds mean.

  I hear a faint gurgle, and Mistress Yilmaz stifles a groan, her head sinking.

  “Are you well, mistress?”

  She squeezes her eyes shut. “I feel like one of those poor rats the students practice their tricks on.”

  “Please let me be of service,” I plead. Hopefully, reframing my request from offering help — as one might a peer — to serving a mistress will appease her. “I’m sure by tomorrow, with the Festival over, someone will figure out where I should really be.”

  She considers me, then casts a glance toward Talon’s room, one hand massaging her stomach.

  “Oh,” I gasp on cue, standing on my tiptoes and staring at Talon’s door with unabashed awe. Since yesterday, a vine has wrapped its way up the tree, and a snake hangs from one of its branches, its tongue flicking. The butterflies have alighted on the leaves, wings spread open and pulsing slowly.

  “First time, eh?” Mistress Yilmaz says, sounding almost kind.

  “It’s amazing,” I breathe.

  She grunts and heaves herself up the remaining stairs to the door. As I hover on the stairs, she pulls a ring of keys from her pocket. A thin chain connects it to a great metal brooch pinned to her skirt. She flips through an array of keys of all different shapes and sizes, some as black as night, some as gold as the sun. As she passes a striped one with a cat’s head, it gives a muffled meow.

  “You ever cleaned for someone before?” She finds the right key and slides it into the lock.

  “Oh yes. I worked for a merchant before this, but they fell on hard times. I did all their cleaning for them, and even some cooking.”

  She grunts, leaning heavily against the doorframe. “Go on, then.”

  I offer her my most pitiful look. “I don’t suppose … I might be able to— to clean for you?” My eyes dart to the wondrous door and the room beyond it and then back to her.

  “What? Should I let a fourth rank servant into First Mage Talon’s own rooms?”

  I feel my face fall, and drop my eyes in dejection. Stupid! I should have asked about the diamonds yesterday and stolen a uniform from a higher-ranked servant. I’ve lost the better part of a day. I only have through tomorrow before Stormwind will be moved to Gereza Saliti. And I won’t be able to try this approach again — unless I can draw out that mix of pity and amusement Yilmaz showed me when I first saw the enchanted door.

  “Forgive me,” I mumble, hunching my shoulders, as if I know how very pitiful I am, how pathetic my yearnings. And that her commands are to be respected. “The door was so lovely. It must be beautiful inside. I shouldn’t have presumed.”

  I pad slowly down the stairs, head bent in dejection. There’
s no need to rush. After all, I want Yilmaz to call me back. If she doesn’t, she’ll be safely locked within the First Mage’s rooms for the next hour or two. I’ll have to wait for her to leave before I try another tactic. Perhaps, now that I know where Yilmaz keeps her key ring, I can try to steal it from her.

  “Hey now, girl,” she calls after me. “Where’ll you be working today?”

  “Me?” I turn to her in pretended confusion. “I don’t know. If you don’t want me, I don’t know what I’ll do till tomorrow.”

  She considers this darkly, then nods decisively. “Then you can do a bit of work for me.” She jerks her head toward the doorway.

  “Oh! Thank you!” I dash up the stairs, a grin splitting my face.

  She eyes me, her expression severe. “You must be very careful not to disturb anything. Do only what I tell you to do.”

  “Yes, mistress,” I reply, coming to a stop and nodding meekly. I follow her in, paying close attention to her directives. We enter a spacious sitting room, furnished with chairs carved from a dark wood, brocade cushions softening their seats. Scrolls depicting scenes from different lands hang from the walls: here a great snow-capped mountain with steep cliffs and scraggly pines, there a sheltering grove, an ornately decorated temple at its center. I peel my gaze away from them, make myself focus as Mistress Yilmaz sets me to dusting the room before she goes on to the next room herself.

  I slip my hand into my pocket, wrapping my fingers around the branched end of Stormwind’s seeker charm. I have more than a few charms with me, but the seeker is easy enough to find by touch, made of a twig as it is. “I seek the key to Brigit Stormwind’s shackles,” I murmur. The seeker vibrates in my hand, and then tugs my fingers toward the door leading to the next room. It will have to wait then. I resume my work, cleaning and plumping the cushions with a vengeance.