Memories of Ash (The Sunbolt Chronicles Book 2)

by Intisar Khanani

  I shrug and immediately regret the ensuing flash of pain. “I am not a student here, nor one of your mages. I did not expect to be welcomed by either the Mekteb or the High Council.”

  “You saved the life of ‘one of our mages’ and expected punishment?”

  “The High Council is not known for leniency,” I observe. “I could not know how you would deal with me, whether you would allow me further training, or strip me of my magic.” Also, I’d come for Stormwind, not Stonefall.

  Talon looks to Stonefall. “Close the door.”

  It’s already closed, but that’s not what she means. Stonefall lets himself out of the room and gestures for the guards and healer to follow. Osman Bey hesitates, waiting until the others have left, but an inquiring look from Talon answers his doubts.

  As the door clicks shut, Talon takes the stool beside me. With a flick of her fingers, she smacks a charm against the side table. A faint pressure builds in my ears. I discreetly stretch my jaw one way and then the other to make my ears pop.

  “There,” she says with satisfaction. “We may speak in privacy now.”

  Curious.

  “What is your name?” she asks.

  “Zainab.”

  “Who trained you?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Because we are not known for leniency?” she hazards.

  I smile faintly.

  “Another question, then. Why did you come here? Was it for Brigit Stormwind?”

  I’ve already admitted this to Osman Bey, but Talon will want more than a single word answer. Though, if I have to tell someone the truth, then why not the person who offered Stormwind so much help in escaping, albeit passively?

  “Yes,” I say. “I knew she was innocent of the charges brought against her. I could not let her be imprisoned unjustly.”

  “And you cared enough to come here, knowing we weren’t likely to deal with you kindly?” Talon asks, unconvinced.

  “I came because she needed help, and because I wished to know how you and Stonefall failed. I knew she considered you both among her allies. I went first to Stonefall and found him dying. I helped him, knowing the Council would seek me for it. Since then, the greatest help I’ve had in aiding Mistress Stormwind has been your own.”

  “My own?” Talon echoes. It’s an invitation. Perhaps, if she knows how she’s implicated, she’ll help me somehow now.

  “You left the book describing the binding spell open for any to read,” I say. “So I learned she could use charms. You gave the key to her shackle to a housekeeper, leaving it essentially unguarded. And,” I say with dawning comprehension, “you accepted the lycans’ word that she disappeared when you knew she could not leave the cell while the ward remained in place, the door closed. You gave me the time I needed to reach the cell and let her out. You wanted her to escape as much as I did.”

  For a long moment, Mistress Talon simply looks at me, her gaze as dark and hard as obsidian. “Yes,” she says, “I did. But I was not expecting you.”

  “Who were you expecting?”

  “It hardly matters,” she replies curtly.

  “Then you really did want someone to free Stormwind?” I ask, not quite believing her words.

  She tilts her head in admission. “Though I had not counted on how much support Arch Mage Blackflame has garnered on the Council.”

  I don’t want to know. Looking at her, I remember Stonefall’s warnings, as well as Kenta’s voice cautioning me about the ramifications of undermining the Council. I have to force myself to ask. “What happened?”

  “The Council demanded my immediate resignation at this morning’s meeting,” Talon replies. “They appointed Arch Mage Blackflame to preside over the Council for the remainder of my term.”

  “They— what?” I falter. Blackflame? In charge of the Council?

  What have I done?

  “Although I would like to help you, I no longer have the power to do so. In the morning, Blackflame will call you before the Council to be tried and sentenced. By then you should be well enough to attend.”

  I force myself to focus on her words. She has almost as much of a stake in my future now as I do. “If they use a truth spell, all that you’ve done will come out.”

  “There is no question about that,” Talon replies. She takes a small, round — bead? — from her pocket and offers it to me. “The only question is how deep your sense of honor runs.”

  The bead rests innocently in the pale center of her palm, like the seed of a strange fruit. I make no move to take it, raising my eyes to hers.

  “How many people will you betray to imprisonment when the truth spell is laid on you?” Talon’s voice is quiet, inexorable. “It won’t be just me. Stonefall must have at least helped you escape from his rooms after your casting. And there will be others — there must be, for you to have succeeded in freeing Stormwind. How many people will be destroyed by your words?”

  Too many. Even one would be too many. I gesture with my chin to the dark yellow bead, unwilling to stretch out a hand. “What is it?”

  “Certain death.”

  She rises, pushes my sheets back, and slides the pill into the pocket of my drawstring pants. My hands lie frozen on the bed. It isn’t until she turns her back to me, moving toward the door, that I find my voice.

  “Is this what you demanded of the people you expected to help her?”

  Talon pauses, turns. “If they failed, yes. There is no other way around a truth spell.”

  “Then you’re no better than Blackflame.”

  Talon raises her eyebrows in cool surprise. “On the contrary. You chose this path. At no point did I press you or anyone else to walk it. This,” her wave encompasses the room, and me, and all my future, “is the consequence you must bear.”

  I shake my head, denying her words even as I hear the truth in them.

  “I am sorry,” she says. The weight of her voice surprises me, the depth of emotion it suggests. In the glowstone-lit room, her dark face appears sallow, the shadows beneath her eyes suddenly darker, deeper. “If I could help you some other way, I would. After the Council takes the truth from you, they will likely order you stripped of your powers. You have proven yourself too dangerous to be allowed to keep your magic, even marked and bound as a source slave. That tablet,” —she dips her head— “would be a mercy to yourself as well.”

  She’s right, in a terrible, gut-wrenching way. No one survives having their powers stripped from them, not in mind, and rarely in good health. With my mind and body broken, what future will I have? The Council doesn’t exactly take care of those they strip. Orphans like me would be given a pouch of coins and shown the door, as if we have any chance of making our way in the world after being reduced to a husk.

  “You understand?” Talon asks softly.

  “No,” I say flatly. “I don’t understand how you could allow any of this. You were the first mage of the Council. You allowed Blackflame to be appointed as arch mage. You let him bully a conviction out of the Council. And now you step meekly aside and expect me to kill myself? You’re much, much worse than he is. At least he makes no pretense to justice or fairness. How can you not outright oppose him?”

  Talon’s dark eyes fairly burn with ire. “Do you think you know everything? Go east of here and see what a mage war would bring this land! Blackflame is more than capable of starting another Burning. It is better to leave him his power for twenty or thirty years than to risk that.”

  “How many people do you think will he destroy in that time?” I demand.

  “Not as many as would die in a Burning,” she snaps.

  “Then stop him before he brings about another Burning,” I say. “Stop him.”

  “Enough.” Talon’s voice cracks through the room, reverberating with power. “I will do as I see fit. If you have any honor, you will keep your allies from paying the price of your stupidity.” She pauses at the door. “Think on it very, very carefully.”

  I make no answe
r, don’t trust myself to words. It is all I can do not to snatch the tablet from my pocket and throw it at her. No wonder Blackflame has risen so easily to power. I lean back and stare at the ceiling as she departs, wishing I were anyone but myself. Wishing my parents had declared my talent, and trained me to fight, and raised me so that I could do what the other mages here dare not risk.

  I wake from a fitful doze to the sound of the door opening, my mind full of echoes of the Burnt Lands, monsters prowling down broken alleyways, the husks of people long dead still reaching out for mercy, a single leather boot splattered with blood. At the faint tap of departing footsteps and the sound of the door clicking shut, I gingerly raise my head to look.

  Osman Bey stands before the closed door. The sight of him chases the whispers of my dreams from my mind. I push myself up, my hands fisted in the blanket. He crosses the room without a word and takes a seat on the stool beside my bed.

  “You’re not going to attack?” Osman Bey’s voice is quiet, almost jesting, but his eyes gleam in the pale light of the dimmed glowstones.

  “You came in alone, thinking I would?” I reply, my voice shaky.

  “The guards are waiting right outside in case I call.” He says it so seriously, as if I were truly a threat. It’s disconcerting to be considered so dangerous. And worrying that he dismissed his men in the first place, late at night, when Brightsong is unlikely to be nearby.

  “We already fought.” I try to sound easy, unperturbed, but my voice is still thin and uncertain. “You won.”

  “Did I?”

  I flick a glance to the shuttered window, the darkness visible through the cracks. It’s far too late at night for word games, or casual visits. “Why are you still on duty?” I ask, trying to gather my thoughts. “It seems like every time I open my eyes, you’re here.”

  “So it does.” He slides off the stool and turns away.

  That’s odd. Why would he dismiss the guards only to have so pointless a conversation? And why did I waste it? I should have—

  He pivots and lunges forward, grabbing me by my tunic. I throw my left hand upward in a futile attempt to block his oncoming fist — but it doesn’t connect. Instead, he fingers lock around my wrist and yank it down, away from my face.

  We stare at each other, the sound of my breath loud and uneven in the space between us. I hate it, the sound of my fear, so I take the residual terror pumping through my veins and turn it into fury.

  “Aren’t you brave,” I grind out, ignoring the tightness of his grip around my wrist. “Do you make it a habit to attack prisoners when they can’t fight back? I thought you had a sense of honor.”

  He eases back, releasing my wrist, the line of his shoulders slackening. Is he actually embarrassed? “You really can’t fight, can you?”

  “This room is covered in sigils. I would be an idiot—”

  “I mean fight. You don’t have the instincts of a fighter. Your block would hardly have stopped a slap.”

  My cheeks burn with mortification.

  “How did you fight me last night?” He demands. “I’ve never met a human who moved as quickly as you, with such finely honed instincts.”

  This is why he keeps coming back, what he wants to know. It’s not something I can give him, at least not fully. But he already knows.

  “It wasn’t you, was it?”

  I shake my head.

  “Then why did you stop the thing in you that was fighting me?”

  “For the same reason I didn’t shower you with fire and stone. I didn’t want to kill you.”

  Osman Bey’s gaze rises to the wall, the dark sigil above my head, then drops back to me. “You’d just helped a prisoner escape. You must have known you’d end up here if you were caught. With a magical talent that hasn’t been sanctioned by the High Council, you’ve got even less hope of…”

  He doesn’t know how to finish. Neither do I. But I can still answer him.

  “I didn’t think my freedom should come at the cost of other people’s lives.”

  “I see,” Osman Bey says quietly, and I realize suddenly that he might. Despite his pretended attack, he is the same lycan who spoke of respect for servants in the gardens and walked me to my destination.

  I need to focus on him now, need to consider what a lycan with a strong sense of honor would do if he realized that his cause was unjust. He is both my least likely ally and my best hope.

  “Have you ever been to the Burnt Lands?” I blurt out.

  He tilts his head, golden eyes narrowing with confusion. “No. That is not a place to visit.”

  “I came here through them. There was a pack of creatures that hunted me there: four-legged, furred beasts with forked tongues and spikes down their backs.”

  A silence stretches between us. Perhaps I’ve given away too much — that I traveled through the desert to reach the city, that I went where no one in their right mind would go.

  “Yes,” he says tonelessly.

  I’m taking the wrong approach. I shake my head. “Never mind. There was something more you came here for.” It is more a statement than a question.

  He looks toward the door but doesn’t rise. He knows too much — he’s seen me in two different roles, heard another piece or two what I’ve done, and he can’t arrange all the bits of the puzzle to his satisfaction.

  “Why were you in servants’ garb that day?” he asks, as I knew he must.

  “I felt like cleaning,” I say lightly, which draws a frown from him. “Arch Mage Talon’s rooms,” I clarify.

  “You—?”

  “Yes.”

  He absorbs this, then asks abruptly, “She knows?”

  “I expect so. I all but told her.”

  “She hasn’t ordered a guard on her rooms.”

  “Osman Bey. You’re asking the wrong questions. It doesn’t really matter whether I was able to free Stormwind because Talon left the one book I most needed open in her rooms, knowing that whoever came to help Stormwind would look there. Or because the key to Stormwind’s shackles was being carried around the Mekteb unguarded. The question isn’t how I got Stormwind free. The question is why.”

  “You expect me to believe that Arch Mage Talon made it easy for you to free Stormwind?” he scoffs.

  I look down to my bruised hand cradled on my lap, the digits puffy and discolored, the blues now fading to green and yellow. I don’t know how to help him see, or even if I should. He’s sworn his sword to the High Council. Even if I convince him that they’re in the wrong, what’s the likelihood that he’ll not only turn away from them, but flout their authority and help me? Then again, what do I have to lose?

  “Not easy,” I tell him. “But possible, yes.”

  “Talon would not betray the High Council,” Osman Bey says.

  “She wouldn’t betray what they stand for. But what if they’d already betrayed themselves, betrayed her?” Or, I add silently, what if neither of us has any idea what she’s really like?

  The planes of his face are hard, his mouth a grim line as he considers my words. But he is considering them. This is as ready as he will ever be to hear what I have to say.

  “Talon allowed for the chance for someone to help Stormwind for one simple reason: Stormwind is innocent.”

  “Why would I believe you?”

  He needs proof, something tangible, real. It hardly takes a heartbeat to decide. I slip my bruised hand into my pocket and clumsily extract Talon’s gift to me. “Smell this.” I hold it out to him. “Tell me whose scent you detect.”

  He offers me his palm and I drop the pill into it, knowing that I won’t get it back. My shoulders sag with relief as I lower my hand. I don’t even mind the associated twinge of pain from my arm.

  He sniffs once, eyes on me, and stiffens. He sniffs again, looking down at the pill. “What is this?”

  “She said it was poison.”

  “Talon gave you poison?”

  “I know enough of what she did to allow Stormwind’s escape that she’l
l be implicated if I speak tomorrow. That,” I nod my chin toward the pill, “is to give me the option of dying with what she calls ‘honor.’”

  He understands at once. “Because of the truth spell.”

  “I would implicate a lot of people,” I agree. “Stonefall, because he closed his eyes and told me to run after I aided him. Jabir, the Mekteb’s guardian, because he allowed me passage onto the grounds.”

  Osman Bey waves that away. “No doubt you tricked your way past him.”

  “We spoke,” I reply. “He knew at least part of why I was here.”

  “No,” Osman Bey says. “That’s— Jabir would not endanger the Mekteb, or its standing with the Council.”

  “Consider his sense of honor. Consider that the Council betrayed its own. And consider that I did my best to hurt no one in helping Stormwind. You — that fight — that was the worst of it. And I am sorry for it.”

  He does not respond immediately, and in that moment I remember and regret Housekeeper Yilmaz’s stomachache as well.

  “Jabir believes Stormwind is innocent?” Osman Bey’s words are weighted, careful, as if a dozen lives hang in the balance.

  “Yes.” My voice comes out softer than I expected. I swallow hard. “She was imprisoned because Blackflame wished it, not because she broke any laws or betrayed any oaths. You should ask Jabir before the trial tomorrow.”

  “And this pill.” He uncurls his fingers from around it. “You intend to take it in the morning?”

  “Not if you walk out of here with it,” I say, attempting lightness, but even I can hear the plea in my words. “I don’t want to betray them,” I admit. “And my future — the best I can hope for is that they’ll make me a source slave.”

  He sits before me, the dull yellow pill a blot on his palm. He does not speak, and I cannot stand the weight of the silence bearing down on me.

  “Do you have any idea what it feels like, to hope for something like that?” I ask unsteadily. I am trembling, though whether from fear or exhaustion or the gentle pain that never goes away, I cannot say. “Magic is so much a part of me, it’s my blood and life. I’ve fought to hold on to it since I was a child. And now I’m hoping that they’ll take it from me, bind me to them and use me, and I’ll be grateful for it, even though it will eventually kill me.”