Memories of Ash (The Sunbolt Chronicles Book 2)

by Intisar Khanani

  When I’m done, I step into the next room, a study, only to find Mistress Yilmaz seated at the desk with her arms wrapped around her stomach. “Mistress?” I ask softly. “What shall I do next?”

  “This room,” she says hoarsely. “Wipe down the bookshelves. Pick up any paper you see and wipe under it, and then put it back exactly as you found it. Exactly. Anything else that needs straightening you may straighten.”

  “Yes, mistress.” I bob my head and start on the far end of the room. The study is a fascinating place, filled to the brim with charms and ingredients for spells, some of which are quite rare. Crammed between two books I find a bottle of salamander eyes. Caught in a glass globe that has rolled into the corner flutters a strange, winged creature, its body glimmering and whirling so fast I cannot make out what it is, though I am sure it’s no bird.

  Nowhere do I see where the first mage might have secreted a set of keys. Whenever I turn so that Mistress Yilmaz cannot see my hand, I check the seeker charm. Each time, it jumps in my grasp, pressing against the cloth of my tunic toward the other side of the room. I cannot tell, though, if it means the door there, or the desk at which Mistress Yilmaz sits. When I peek at her as I organize and dust off a side table cluttered with jars of herbs, I find her staring down at the desk, unmoving.

  I make my way through the room until I reach her at her desk. The seeker very nearly jumps out of my hand when I check it. “Mistress?” I ask with a touch of hesitancy. “Shall I dust the desk as well?”

  “What?” Mistress Yilmaz looks up, her eyes glazed. I push down on my guilt. I’ll have regrets no matter what course of action I take. I can’t think about it right now.

  “The desk,” I repeat, gesturing toward it with my rag.

  “Oh no, not even I may touch the desk. The first mage herself takes care of that.”

  My heart sinks as I gaze at Mistress Yilmaz’s elbows pressed hard against the dark-grained wood. She sends me into the third room, a private sitting room, and from there the bedroom. I dust and wipe and set to order everything in sight, opening the curtains, carrying out the tea tray, and so on. I carefully lift a book off the bed, moving it to the floor so that I can straighten the sheets and blanket. A line catches my eye as I set it down: those bound under such spell can make no casting of their own.

  I drop to my knees, crouching over the book, and quickly skim the page. It describes the binding spell, its characteristics, and its one small flaw: However, it is still within their ability to activate another’s casting, stored within a separate object such as a charm. As such, great care should be taken to remove all charms from the vicinity of where a rogue mage is imprisoned.

  I get to my feet and make the bed, my hands tingling with excitement. I double-check the book as I return it to the bed, to make sure I have read it right. The words remain exactly the same. With my hand in my pocket grasping the seeker, I float back out to Mistress Yilmaz, barely bothered when she sends me out to fetch a broom from a small, half-hidden hall closet, and sweep out all the rooms. By the time I finish sweeping, some of my elation has worn off, for Mistress Yilmaz still sits at the desk. As I return the broom to the hall closet, I hear a faint sound behind me.

  “You’re a good girl,” Yilmaz says, stepping heavily into the hall and pulling the door shut. “Hard worker. Come to me tomorrow, and I’ll put in a word for you, for the third level. And I’ll see you get placed with a good housekeeper.” She fumbles with her key ring. “But not today.”

  I watch with despair as she turns the key in the lock. So close. I’d been so close.

  “Help me down the stairs, now,” she says as I continue to stand by the broom closet. I cross to her and she grips my shoulder, taking each step one at a time. There are a lot of steps between the third floor and the basement.

  “There,” she says when we finally reach the bottom.

  “Thank you, mistress,” I say, trying to look appropriately grateful. I may not have gotten the key, but at least I’ve learned the one shortcoming of a binding spell. She pats my shoulder and shuffles down the hall toward her door.

  She’s planning to rest — which means I might be able to get Talon’s key from her now. “Mistress, let me walk with you.”

  “What?” she asks blearily.

  “Just to make sure I know where to come tomorrow,” I say hopefully. “And you can lean on me.”

  “Anyone can tell you where to find me,” she grumbles, but she takes my arm and gives me a good bit of her weight anyhow.

  I walk her to her rooms, straight through the outer sitting room and to her bed. “Why don’t you lie down?” I urge her. “I’ll help you with your shoes.”

  She lets me lower her to her bed. I nearly stagger with the sudden relief from her weight. She lies down on her side, leaving me to heave her legs up onto the bed. I slip off her shoes and place them beside her bed. Her eyes are already closed. Deftly, I unpin the brooch by her pocket and slide out the key ring.

  She catches my wrist, her eyes flying open. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “I— I was only going to put it beside you,” I stutter. “So you’ll be comfortable. Right here.” I move my arm to the bedside table, her hand still attached, and set the key ring on the table.

  “Ah,” she says, releasing my wrist.

  From the stand beside the door, I fetch the pitcher of water and tin cup and pour her a drink. The water will help flush the herbs from her system. “Have a sip, Mistress Yilmaz,” I suggest, coming to kneel beside her. “It might help you feel better.”

  “What is it?” she asks, her hand already reaching for it.

  “Just water,” I assure her. “Have a sip or two and see how it settles.”

  She leverages herself up and takes a few sips, water trickling down her chin. She hands it back to me wordlessly and collapses on her back. By the time I refill the cup and set it beside the key ring, her eyes are closed and her breathing has slowed.

  Perhaps, if she falls asleep fully right now, I can slip out with the key ring in hand. So I take a silent step back, slide the look-away charm on my finger, and wait as she drifts deeper into sleep.

  While I wait, I slip my hand into my pocket to release the seeker charm. I’ll need to refocus it on identifying the key to First Mage Talon’s rooms. I can’t afford to run off with the whole key ring in case Yilmaz wakes up and looks for it — at least, I can’t take it for more than a few minutes. The seeker pulls steadily in my grasp, and I realize suddenly that it is not pressing up but forward. I stare at the key ring sitting on the bedside table with its collection of strange keys, take a step forward. The seeker jerks toward it, making my pocket bulge.

  The key I sought wasn’t in the desk at all. It was with the housekeeper as she sat at the desk.

  A glance at Yilmaz tells me she’s as deeply asleep as someone with a stomachache can be — out but not too deeply. I scoop up the key ring, sliding it into my pocket and moving on silent feet to the door. When I glance back at Yilmaz, her eyes are slitted open, staring straight through me.

  I wait, my blood thrumming in my veins. Her eyes drift shut again. Sending up a prayer of thanks, I let myself out, leaving the bedroom door cracked open.

  Quickly, now. Quickly.

  I hurry to the servants’ washing room, bolting the door behind me. A quick opening of my mages’ senses tells me there are a few charms at work around me, a faint magical buzz in the air that means one more charm, even a strong one, will hardly draw notice. I pull off the look-away and sit down cross-legged on the tiled floor. Hastily arranging my string of wards around me in a circle, I close the silver clasp. The shield built into the wards snaps into place around me.

  I let out a breath and slip the key ring from my pocket, depositing it on my lap. Holding the seeker tight in my hand, I use it to nudge each key. The cat key, farther down the ring, hisses at me. I glance at the door. The shield may hold in any magical reverberations, but it isn’t soundproof. I move on, but the seeker continues t
o vibrate, seeking, until I reach the cat’s head key. It sends a little tingle up my hand and goes completely still as I touch it to the key. The cat’s head opens its mouth to yowl. I hastily shove my thumb into its mouth, and it bites down hard.

  Swallowing a cry, I yank my poor thumb free and shove the seeker’s stem into its mouth instead. It growls like a dog and works its jaw, shredding the stick with its tiny metal teeth. I press the stick in tightly, and work the key free of the ring, leaving behind a few drops of blood and some shredded pieces of my poor charm. With a muttered curse, I fling the key head-first toward the can of washing water on the floor beside me. Unfortunately, it rebounds off my shield and smacks me in the leg, yowling plaintively.

  I spread my hand over the key and reach for its magic, desperate to shut it up. The key pulses with energy but … it isn’t connected to anything. It’s just a cat’s head key that won’t quiet down. The spell is concentrated on the head itself, and on instinct I pet it, scratching it behind the ears with a touch of magic.

  The yowl lessens to a purr.

  Really?

  Still massaging the back of its head, I lift the key gently, assessing it. With a careful stroke, I slip two loops of magic together, rub the key as if it were the cat’s tummy, and the thing falls asleep.

  Of all the lizard-brained ways to build in an alarm.

  I stick my bleeding thumb in my mouth and glare at the infernal key. It takes me a few moments to clean up, carefully wiping up the blood and dusting off the splinters from my seeker charm. While not destroyed, the stem of the charm is significantly mangled. I whisper an apology to it and set it down beside me.

  Then I take another key from my pocket — the one key I own: the key to Stormwind’s cottage. I slide it on to the key ring in place of the cat’s head key. I need only a small glamor, a touch to the cat’s nose — it wrinkles it slightly — and then to the cottage’s key. The key wavers in my sight, until I look at not one sleeping cat’s head key but two. A small spell indeed for such a great deception.

  I pocket the original cat’s head key along with the seeker, unclasp my wards, and let myself out of the washroom. The hall lies silent. I need to leave at once, but first, I must return the key ring. Wearing the look-away, I sneak back into Yilmaz’s rooms and leave the key ring on her bedside table.

  She grunts slightly as the keys clink together, and then settles once more. Back in the hall, I slide off the look-away and head for the stairs.

  I did it. I have the key, I know the shortcomings of Stormwind’s binding spell. It’s a good beginning, but it isn’t a plan by a far cry. Because even if I can get her the key, and then distract the guards long enough for her to slip out and to the rooftop, I still need a place for her to go, and a way to protect her from being traced. Without either of those, she may as well stay where she is. We’d be caught within hours.

  My feet slow on the stairs as I worry over my options, but they all come back to the same truth I’d faced last night on the rooftop: I need help. I have to find the Degaths, see if there is some part of the Shadow League here that will help me.

  As I reach the top of the stairs, I hear the sound of voices descending, footsteps in the stairwell above me.

  “That servant was supposed to stay close.” A man’s voice, irritated.

  “I’ll see to it he does in future,” a woman replies, her voice cool, the words touched with the faint lilt of the eastern Kingdoms.

  “Indeed.”

  Both voices are terribly familiar. I plow to a stop two stairs from the ground floor, as a pair of mages descend the final steps to the hallway. I know them, know them both—

  Blackflame rounds the corner, moving toward the building’s side exit. Seeing him is like watching a dream waver between fiction and truth, memory and reality. He is exactly as I remember, tall and imposing, with a mane of golden hair that falls about his shoulders in thick waves and frames a face as cold and dangerous as steel. “You there,” he says sharply, spotting me. “Go up to my rooms. I need the front room cleaned.”

  I drop my gaze to the stone steps, nod jerkily. The woman beside Blackflame has gone completely still. I don’t look at her. Can’t. I’ve seen her face a half-dozen times in Stormwind’s lake, but now I can’t raise my eyes to her. Because even though everything would change if she actually recognized me, I want her to— I so desperately want her to cross the distance between us and reach out her hand to me, speak my name.

  So I don’t look.

  “Yes, master,” I say instead, voice hoarse. I dip a clumsy curtsy, still balanced on the stairs.

  “Stay with her,” Blackflame says to my mother.

  “Yes,” she says distantly. “This way, girl.” She gestures up the stairs.

  Blackflame departs with a muttered word to my mother, striding past without another glance. I follow Hotaru Brokensword as she sweeps elegantly upstairs, her kimono rippling over the steps behind her.

  “There,” Brokensword says as I hesitate in the doorway. She points to a pool of vomit by the far window.

  Any hopes that she might truly have recognized me die away. It’s been five years. I’ve grown from child to woman, and even if she still thinks me alive, she would never expect to see me here, in servants’ clothing.

  I glance around the room once, taking in the opulent furnishings, the luxurious tapestries hanging on the walls — a Northland tradition. Tapestries make a room hot in a country like this; at least they do ten months of the year. A young man no older than I sits hunched against the wall to my left, knees pulled up to his chest and face turned away. He wears a charcoal gray pants and tunic set, the sleeves cut short to bare his arms. From the elbow down they are covered in great black, crisscrossing lines, as if he had once tangled his arms in a burning web.

  Source slave.

  “Girl,” my mother says, an edge to her voice. “You’re here to clean.”

  I jerk my attention back to her. “Yes, mistress. Let me fetch some cloths from the closet.”

  “Be quick.”

  I hurry to the supply closet down the hall, grabbing a bucket half-filled with soapy water and a stack of cleaning cloths.

  I let myself back into the room quietly. The boy still huddles against the wall, though now he clutches a blanket around himself, trembling. Perhaps he was trembling before too, but the shaking of the blanket can’t be missed. I nod to him and cross the room to the vomit. It’s his, of course. No doubt he tried to get to the window, but didn’t make it in time. What spell did Blackflame cast, that he would make his source slave sick to achieve it? Why didn’t I sense anything while I cleaned and went about stealing keys? But the room must be warded, of course. And Blackflame doesn’t care how the boy feels, so long as he serves his purpose.

  As I clean, the boy watches me, his eyes dark and … almost blank. From the set of his jaw, I know he’s in pain. But he makes no sound, only watches me. My mother has disappeared into the connecting room.

  I finish drying the floor and bundle up the dirty cloths together. Crossing the room, I pause at the door. I can’t just leave.

  “Are you— will you be all right?” I ask, pitching my voice low.

  He tilts his head, looks at me. No. No, he won’t. He doesn’t say the words, doesn’t need to, and he’s not going to lie either.

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  His lips twitch, somewhere between a smile and a grimace. “No,” he whispers. “What I need you cannot give me.”

  Freedom. Safety. Kindness.

  I stand by the door, and now I’m shaking again, impotent with fury and sorrow and helplessness. I’m here to help Stormwind. But what about this boy, this source slave? He can’t survive long. He’s being used too brutally. But who else will help him? He knows I can’t— or won’t. He knows he’s alone and trapped, his future clearly laid out, stark and ugly and short.

  Brokensword steps through the connecting door. “Are you done?”

  I jerk my gaze to her, then look down.
I don’t recognize her anymore, this woman who would allow a source slave — a boy — to be used so cruelly. This woman who kept my Promise secret, knowing that I might one day pay the price this boy has, and yet shows him neither mercy nor compassion. An eternity ago in the Burnt Lands, I promised myself I would speak to her if I could. But now? Now I have no words for her, cannot begin to comprehend the chasm that lies between us.

  “Very good,” she says. I remain beside the door, rooted there by the truths of this room. “You may go,” she says, gesturing sharply.

  I glance toward the boy. He watches me with his old, old eyes. I don’t dare address him again under my mother’s eye. Instead, I step out, closing the door behind me with clumsy fingers.

  I move to the supply closet in a daze, leaving the dirty cloths bundled together on the ground. I take the stairs down, go out the side entrance. The sun shines brightly outside. It is barely noon, and students congregate in groups, laughing and calling to each other as they prepare to leave the Mekteb for the Festival.

  Blackflame has long since disappeared to wherever he is going. Upstairs, my mother will go about her duties, whatever they may be, while the boy sits shivering against the wall.

  I start along the path, walking blindly, my legs quivering slightly beneath my weight, as if they were not made of muscle and bone at all, but something softer, weaker. My breath comes in quick, hard gasps.

  Why am I so upset? She’s here. With him. The last time I saw her, she was walking in Blackflame’s gardens, unaware that he had imprisoned me. Now she’s come to Fidanya with him. I thought she didn’t see him for what he is, that she stood beside him and supported him and trusted him because he’d tricked her somehow. But I was only deceiving myself. Brokensword is no fool. She sees Blackflame for precisely what he is, and she joined him. She cares no more for me than she does the source slave — the source slave that could have been me. Fury courses through me with a suddenness that leaves me shaking in a completely different way. I want to scream at her. How could she?