Memories of Ash (The Sunbolt Chronicles Book 2)

by Intisar Khanani

  Kenta blinks. “As a healer?”

  “Yes. She’s a healer-mage herself.”

  Kenta’s eyes narrow slightly. “And she took you on because…?”

  “Because Blackflame orphaned me at least once over, and because a breather brought me to her. Breathers don’t usually approach mages for help, so it meant a lot, what he did.”

  Kenta remains still a long moment, studying me. I can’t read his expression. “She must be a very unusual person.”

  “She is. And she’s also why I’m here now. She’s been unjustly imprisoned and I mean to get her free.”

  Kenta’s smile is a feral thing, sharp and dangerous, all the more unsettling for its sudden appearance. “Then I will help you. What’s her name?”

  “Brigit Stormwind.”

  His mouth drops open. “What?”

  I nod, unsure of his reaction. He knows something of her. Is it only the news of the trial that must be the talk of the city, or something more?

  He rubs his face, then says, voice flat, “She’s the one who helped you.”

  I answer as if it were a question. “Yes.”

  He starts to speak and then checks himself. This clearly isn’t anything close to what he expected. I don’t want lose his support. I may not remember him very well, but he was part of the Shadow League. There are things he will care about regardless.

  I lean toward him. “The conviction has nothing to do with justice.”

  “I know that,” Kenta says. “Nothing involving Blackflame ever does. But— Stormwind? Have you considered the ramifications for the High Council if she escapes? And what would happen to you if you were caught helping her?”

  “I know the risks,” I say with as much quiet firmness as I can muster. “I just need a little help from the outside. I expect to carry most of the direct risks myself. As for the High Council — they’ll handle the politics.”

  “Indeed,” he says dryly. “Tell me your plan.”

  Ten minutes later, Kenta sits back and closes his eyes.

  “I don’t need much,” I say uncertainly.

  He speaks with his eyes still closed. “You’re proposing to break a convicted mage out of a cell guarded by the most highly trained lycan guard in the Eleven Kingdoms, and located under the feet of the High Council itself.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “And you propose to do this by tricking them into letting her out themselves and then whisking her away over their heads.”

  “Pretty much,” I admit. “I just need a few allies to help me get the remaining pieces in place. And a place for her to go.”

  He studies me through slitted eyelids. I can almost hear the thoughts running through his head as he processes this last point. “You think she would join the League?”

  “I don’t know. She might, she might not. She certainly has every reason to support the Shadow League, especially if you help her now and call it your work with them.”

  Kenta crosses his legs and leans forward, elbows on his knees. “Even if it is possible, are you sure it’s worth the risk?”

  I answer without hesitation. “Yes. Just as I thought it was worth the risk to help the Degaths escape Karolene. Listen, I can’t control what Stormwind does if we get her out, but I’ve spent the last year with her, and I can guarantee that she won’t make us regret helping her. I also know that what Blackflame has done, drumming up these charges and having her falsely convicted, is precisely the sort of thing we used to fight against. She’s innocent. Even the Mekteb’s Guardian thinks so.”

  Kenta’s eyes darken. “The Mekteb’s Guardian? You spoke with him about this?”

  “I didn’t intend to, but I didn’t have much choice in the end. He said he’s willing to let us slip by.”

  Slowly, so slowly it unnerves me, his lips twist into that same dangerous smile, sharp teeth bared. “The guard will move her the day after tomorrow, you said?”

  “As far as I know.”

  “And once you get her to the rooftop? What then?”

  “I have an idea — someone who can help. But I didn’t want to call on him before I was sure of the rest.”

  Kenta nods. “Tomorrow will be a quiet day in the city, and a busy one at the Mekteb. Not a good day to plan an escape.”

  I can understand if Kenta can’t help. I’m asking him to fight for someone he’s never met. But I can’t give up on Stormwind myself. So I say only, “I understand.”

  “Oh, I’m not letting you walk into danger alone again,” Kenta says. “We’ll see how quickly you can persuade your other ally. If you can get him in the next couple of hours, we do it tonight.”

  I nearly choke. “Tonight?”

  “Most of the campus, including the mages, will be out celebrating. Hardly anyone in the city will notice the alarms raised over the noise of the Festival, at least not at first.” Kenta rubs his hands together, cracking his knuckles. “With the streets full of revelers, and the skies full of fireworks, the lycan guard will be hard-pressed to spot your escape, let alone follow.”

  “That’s all good,” I agree. “But it’s afternoon already.”

  “Then we’d better move fast.”

  We leave the Degaths’ home via the service road that runs past the rear stables. Using the shortcuts Kenta knows, we leave behind the grand houses with their wide sidewalks in a matter of minutes, exchanging them for tight, mazelike streets cutting between three- and four-story stone buildings.

  “How long have you been here?” I ask as we thread our way through the crowded streets.

  “About a month,” Kenta says. “Once we realized Blackflame planned to stay here longer than a week or two, the Ghost sent me to keep an eye on him.”

  “He came to press charges against Stormwind,” I say.

  Kenta nods. “That’s about all he’s been up to as far as I can tell.”

  “So there isn’t anything like the Shadow League here?”

  He smiles ruefully. “No. The king appears to be a good one, or at least not bad enough to incite rebellion, and the arch mage assigned here isn’t one of Blackflame’s supporters. She seems to embrace her position as servant of the people and counsel to the king.”

  We reach a wider thoroughfare, crowded with people bustling between the squares and plazas where the afternoon festivities await. A whiff of baked bread and spiced meat stops me in my track. The pastries were all very well and good, but the scent of real food has me almost drooling.

  “What is that?” I ask, trying to figure out where the smell is coming from.

  Kenta laughs. “Lunch is on me. But we’ll walk with it.”

  He leads me straight to a street vendor, his push cart laden with puffy flat breads, meats grilling over an improvised fire in a metal container. The vendor empties a skewer of beef kebabs over a flatbread, tops it with fresh cut onions, tomatoes, lettuce, and a dollop of seasoned yogurt sauce, and rolls it up for the young woman in front of us.

  The smell is delicious, and surprisingly strong. My thoughts, half on the kebab roll and half on planning Stormwind’s escape, click.

  “Kenta,” I say as he finishes giving the man our order and steps back beside me.

  “Mm?”

  “The onions and garlic.” I gesture to small piles of both stacked on the cart. “How do they smell to you?”

  He shrugs. “Not bad at all.”

  “What if they’re roasting, or fresh cut? Would it make it harder to pick up another scent?” Because if they do even a little, then with a magical nudge they should work wonders for masking a scent trail.

  Kenta slants me a measuring look. The corner of his mouth crooks up. “I expect so. Shall I buy a few?”

  I grin back at him, my mind running through other charms I might make. “Yes. I might need some ash and some nut shells as well.”

  “Ash I can supply you with. Nuts we should find along the way.”

  As the man finishes making our rolls, Kenta steps forward to chat with him, coins in hand. When we set off
again, I’ve added two heads of garlic and three small onions to my pack.

  “Good?” Kenta asks as sink my teeth into the roll.

  “Amazing,” I manage through a mouthful of half-chewed kebab.

  “Some things never change,” he murmurs.

  I swallow down my bite. “They don’t?”

  He sidesteps an elderly couple chatting in the middle of the road. “How much do you remember about— Karolene?”

  “Very little,” I admit. “I remember what happened leading up to Kol very well. I remember Saira’s betrayal, I remember you and the Ghost and … Rafiki. Beyond that, I have only bits and pieces. Images, a few words or phrases.”

  “That’s all?” Kenta asks, his words faint with shock.

  “It took me a month or two to remember my mother’s name,” I explain as we turn down another street. “Stormwind tried to help me to remember more, but at this point, I think I’ve recovered what I can.”

  “I … see. It won’t come back then, will it? Your memory?”

  Into the comfortable rush of people and movement around us, I let out the truth I am just starting to come to terms with. “No. Most of it won’t. I’m still recovering pieces, but there was a part of me that burned with Kol. Not everything can rise from ash again.”

  It’s strange thinking that Kenta could know me, know what I’ve done, better than I do myself, when I hardly know him at all. “Will you—” I begin and then stop.

  He cocks an eyebrow.

  “Tell me about Karolene,” I suggest, which is not at all what I meant to ask. I glance away, toward a juggler and his whirling blades, barely visible beyond the heads of a circle of onlookers.

  I want to know who I was in Karolene, but for the first time I’m beginning to understand why Val wouldn’t tell me what he knew of my life. Kenta knows me — through his own eyes. Not knowing myself, I might invent a false history for myself built on his words.

  “There’s an uplifting topic,” Kenta mutters. “What would you like to know? The sultan died of a debilitating illness some months ago. Blackflame kindly helped appoint a regent until the heir can be located. Until he came here, Blackflame was at the palace every other day to provide his own counsel as well.”

  A debilitating illness — as my father had, wasting away no matter what cures my mother brought him. Wasting away because it wasn’t an illness he suffered from, but poison. I clear my throat, try to focus. “Didn’t the sultan have an heir? Some prince or the other?”

  “Of course. The crown prince. You’ve forgotten his name, haven’t you? No matter; he’s disappeared. Gone into hiding, if you ask the Ghost.”

  “Not like the other people who disappear?”

  Kenta smirks. “No. Blackflame was desperate to find him, and our informants were clear he didn’t know where the prince went.”

  “There have been other changes as well,” he goes on. “Blackflame has almost completely replaced his guard with northmen. The new tax laws favor northern traders, which means we have more of them coming through every day to the detriment of some of our own traders.”

  I’d forgotten these people, forgotten that Blackflame was more than a name that haunts my dreams, a voice that took my mother from me. All this time that I’ve been living safely in the mountains, he has tightened his hold over Karolene. And people are suffering.

  “You said you wanted nuts?” Kenta nods toward an elderly woman roasting nuts alongside the next building.

  “In their shells.” It might look a little too odd if we offered to buy empty shells.

  “Right.” He darts ahead to speak with the woman. By the time I catch up, he’s handing over a copper in exchange for an old, worn pouch of nuts.

  “That enough?” he asks, handing it to me.

  “Plenty.”

  “Then let’s go.”

  Kenta leads the way through a few more narrow alleyways to a stairwell built along the side of a building. We reach the roof as I pop the last of my roll into my mouth. Kenta comes to a stop toward the back, blocked from view by multiple lines of washing strung from poles. “This look all right?”

  I nod. It’s empty and quiet, and not too near any major streets. A few rooftops away, a half dozen brightly colored kites swoop through the air, riding the salty breeze, their ribbon tails fluttering behind them. A scarlet kite suddenly jerks free, swooping erratically before disappearing below the rooftops. A faint cheer rises from the kite fliers. “What are they doing?”

  “Kite fighting,” Kenta explains, half-eaten sandwich in one hand. “They try to bring down the other kites, or break them free from their owner. Last kite left is the winner.”

  Nothing to worry about, then. I sit down and work off my boot. The feather I scrape from the inside sole is mashed and ratty, but still holds a gleam of gold.

  Seeing it in my hand, Kenta asks, “What exactly will you owe this friend of yours?”

  “Nothing I don’t owe him already,” I admit. “I’ll merely owe it sooner.” It helps to think of it in those terms.

  “You’re sure about this?”

  I consider the feather, the glint of gold. No, I’m not sure. Burning this feather means that after I help Stormwind, I return to the Burnt Lands. It means that I must make an attempt at breaking apart ancient enchantments I know nothing about, spells that could very well kill me in their unraveling.

  Stormwind wouldn’t want this. She didn’t want me to come here and she would never want such a future for me. No more than I want a prison for hers.

  “It’s all right if you don’t do this.”

  It’s a relief to look away from the feather, to Kenta. “There’s no other way past the guards. She can’t just walk out of there. They’ll follow her trail, her scent. Garlic and onions might mask her passing for a few moments, but she’s not going to be able to walk out of the Mekteb.”

  “What about you? Or is this friend of yours going to fly you both out?”

  “He’ll fly me out if he wants me to help him,” I reply grimly. Although the phoenix making two trips is hardly a good idea. I sigh. “Or I can walk out, wearing mages robes. There will be enough mages combing the campus that they might not realize who I am until I’m gone.” That strategy has worked well enough so far.

  Kenta shakes his head. “The campus will be closed off. No one will be going through the gates.”

  I nod, look out to the kites fluttering through the air. Beyond them, a flock of birds rises and falls, a smudge of black trailing over the far rooftops. Would that I could shift myself into bird form, as Talon must be able to. But that’s far beyond anything I can master in the next hour or two. “Then I wait them out, dressed as a servant.”

  So many uncertainties.

  Kenta shifts. “As far as I can tell, Stormwind went to her trial willingly. She chose her path. Make sure you want to choose this future for yourself, before you call whomever that feather will bring. Let me know when you decide.” He ducks beneath the clotheslines, continuing on until he’s lost from view on the other side of the roof.

  I want him to tell me not to do this, to be the one who points out that it’s suicide, or just plain stupid. Hearing the words is different from knowing them, and as long as I’m only telling myself these things, I can brush them aside. But Kenta is relying on me to consider the risks, choose wisely.

  Wisdom tells me that only sorrow lies down this path. I cannot see a way for both Stormwind and I to escape unscathed. I close my eyes, clutching the feather tightly. I remember Stormwind standing in the doorway of her cottage, bidding me farewell, not knowing how to hug me back. She realized, then, that her life was finished. That she would never return — to the cottage, to teaching me, to the companionship we shared this last year as mentor and student. As friends.

  I open my eyes and glare down at the feather. She sheltered me, protected me, and trained me, in part because of what Blackflame did to me. I will not let her go without a fight. If I am caught and lose my magic, so be it. And if we escape
and I must face the Burnt Lands, then I will face them.

  Huda’s words echo in my mind, whispering on the wind that blows across the rooftop. When you have chosen a path, you must walk it with courage.

  Lifting the feather high, I call on the fire that lies dormant in my bones, sending a single spark through my fingertips.

  The feather catches as if it were a torch, flaring up in a scorching ball of yellow and blue. I snatch my hand away with a yelp. It remains floating in the air, burning and burning and burning.

  “Kenta,” I call. The clotheslines rustle as he moves toward me.

  At the sight of the floating fire, he lets out a low whistle. “Some feather.”

  The fire drifts downward, lessening as it descends until it touches the floor and goes out. All that remains is a single thread of ash. I nudge it with a fingertip and it disintegrates against my nail.

  Kenta kneels before me, his kimono accenting the line of his thighs, the wiry strength of his shoulders. I don’t even know this man. His ease with me, the certainty with which he chose to help, tells me we were friends once, knew each other well. But the person that I am now he knows no better than I can claim to know him.

  “When we were betrayed,” I say, my voice rough, awkward. “In that building. You and the Ghost hid. I remember that.”

  His eyes narrow slightly, his jaw tightening.

  “Do you remember how?” I ask.

  “You hid us. The soldiers walked up to us, looked up at the burnt-out stairwell, and left. They never saw us.”

  “Shadows.” The word is almost a whisper, as if I dare not speak this truth aloud even here, with just the wind and sun and a dozen lines of clean laundry to witness it.

  “Yes.”

  Relief rushes through me. “Then you know.”

  “I would have guessed regardless. Even the Degaths know. You killed Kol with a magic so strong that the High Council found its traces months afterward. By all accounts, only you and the breather escaped. Breathers don’t have magic — not the kind that can cast spells.”