Memories of Ash (The Sunbolt Chronicles Book 2)

by Intisar Khanani

  Promise? Interesting how I was a rogue mage when I healed Stonefall, and now I am nothing more than a half-trained talent to be done away with.

  Blackflame gestures toward me. “I suggest we proceed with a truth spell and begin our questioning, as discussed yesterday, unless there are any objections.”

  Most of the mages shake their heads. None of them speak. My heart thunders in my chest, my fingertips tingling with fear. If I weren’t sitting, I might have stumbled from this sudden weakness. It’s all going to come out now. Everything. Every secret I have, spilled before Blackflame….

  A smile flickers at the edges of my lips as I stare up at him. Not quite a year ago, the Degaths petitioned the Council to remove Blackflame. Their request was denied. There was no proof, only allegations, and neither party would submit to a truth spell. Blackflame has his secrets too, and I hold several of them. I grin at him, a feral, hungry smile, as three of the mages who escorted me step forward to form a triangle around me, one to either side of me and the third behind my chair. Blackflame may finish me today, but I can bring him down a step or two before that.

  One of the arch mages to my left rises, skirting the table and stopping directly in front of me. He makes the fourth point, transforming the triangle into a diamond with me at its center. My smile fades when I raise my gaze to his. He is tall and slim, skin slightly bronzed, with dark hair falling past his shoulders. His starry black eyes could swallow you whole and leave you wandering the dark landscape of your soul for an eternity.

  I go still, forcing myself not to look away. He isn’t human, or any other kind of humanlike creature I’ve met. Possibly he’s one of the so-called Pari, or Fae, who live far to the west. If so, he probably doesn’t even need the other mages that surround me to feed his spell.

  “I am Arch Mage Nightblade.” He speaks carefully, as if trying to fix his name in my memory and calm me at the same time. Perhaps he is. His voice holds the velvet darkness of summer nights, the deep-throated beauty of an impossible songbird. It is a hellish thing to hear, knowing what he’s about to do to me.

  My hands, curled together in my lap, clutch each other in a death grip. Nightblade. It can’t mean anything as simple as a dagger made of darkness — Fae mages prefer names that are more puzzles than anything. Whatever he can do must be a great deal worse than a shadow blade.

  “The spell will not harm you in its casting. If you attempt to refuse to answer, or lie, you will experience pain.” He says the word delicately. “It is best to comply with the spell. Do you understand?”

  I nod. I focus on the stiffness of my fingers to keep me grounded, the thin slices of pain that are my nails pressing into my skin. Now would be a good time to discover a secret weapon I never knew I had. Something subtle enough to escape the notice of eleven arch mages, and strong enough to overcome a truth spell.

  Something like a bond with a breather.

  Val, I call out, closing my eyes as the mages begin their casting. He makes no answer. How long will it take for him to notice? I take a shaky breath as the hum of power builds around me, flowing through the mages to the arch mage before me. Val, please! I need you here now!

  Nightblade touches my forehead, drawing a sigil there that holds such potency I cannot even breathe, my lungs frozen, my heart stuttering.

  VALERIUS!

  The sigil sinks into me, glittering in my bloodstream and shining in the darkness behind my eyelids. A flash of light that holds no heat, that is in fact bitterly cold, blinds me. Then the frigid brightness wraps around my bones, melds itself to the inside of my head.

  “It is done,” Nightblade says quietly. There’s the faint rustle of robes as the mages around me retire to their seats.

  Val, I think, one final, hopeless time.

  I’m not doing it right, don’t have any idea what I’m doing. Perhaps the seal on the room won’t even let him in.

  “Very well,” Blackflame says, voice pleasant and utterly unperturbed.

  I keep my eyes closed partly to spite him, and partly to give myself a moment longer, however futile evasion may be now.

  “What is your name, girl?”

  I open my eyes, aware of a slow pressure building in my ears, a tingling that has nothing to do with fear dancing over my skin.

  Val—

  Yes. What is this? His voice is terse, abrupt, and possibly the most wonderful thing I have ever heard. The pressure in my ears expands to my throat, wraps itself my lungs.

  A trial. I can’t tell them my name. Please, can you—

  “Your name,” Blackflame reiterates, no longer amused.

  The tingling becomes needles of ice, shooting through my skin to pierce my bones, my organs.

  I take a gasping breath, and can keep silent no longer. “Hi—”

  My voice breaks off mid-name, and there is that same, strange sense of internal displacement, of being sent stumbling sideways while my body stays in place. Faintly, I can hear myself coughing, but mostly I am aware of the sudden cessation of pain. And then my voice says, “Hibachi.”

  Blackflame, all the arch mages, stare at me.

  Fire-bowl? What kind of name is that?

  Your new family name, Val returns, sounding slightly strained. You have to admit, it’s rather fitting.

  “That is your full name?” Blackflame asks. “You would do well to answer our questions to the fullest extent possible.”

  Val tilts my head up, so that we look down my nose at the First Mage of the High Council. “Kiki Hibachi. But you may call me by the mage name I earned a year ago: Sunbolt.”

  A ripple of surprise washes through the room. A few of the mages lean toward each other, muttering questions, and at least three glance uncertainly at Blackflame.

  You’re how old and the best you can do is Kiki Fire-bowl? I ask Val as we watch the Council’s reaction. Is Kiki even a real name?

  His answer is slow in coming, as if he has to first gather himself. I’m sure it is somewhere. I didn’t exactly have time to plan it.

  I can’t fault him there. Thank you for coming, I say belatedly.

  My pleasure.

  No doubt he can hear the laughter in my thoughts as I ask, Can you stay?

  I’ll try. We should stick as close to the truth as possible now.

  Agreed. I don’t want to trip over a lie and clue the Council in to the fact that I’ve escaped their truth spell.

  Blackflame clears his throat, drawing the mages’ attention back to him.

  They will ask about your sunbolt, Val says. I hope you wanted that.

  To tell the Council what Blackflame did? Absolutely.

  I can sense his amusement as he answers, I thought so.

  Blackflame fixes me with his pale gaze. “Our focus today is to understand your actions over the last week in freeing Brigit Stormwind, and what you know of where she has gone.”

  Well? Val prompts.

  I have no idea where she is, I respond truthfully.

  Val repeats my words aloud. The mage to Blackflame’s right leans forward, eyes narrowing. She is short and stocky, with the olive complexion and dark hair of the north-central Kingdoms. Her hair is cut short and styled so that it stands up in little spikes all around her head. It’s a style that suits her bearing. “Surely you have some idea? A guess?”

  “It was too dangerous,” Val says, echoing the words I give him. The sound of my voice is slightly strained as he goes on. “I knew I might get caught.”

  The mages confer with each other, voices murmuring, and then Blackflame waves them quiet. “You must have had an initial plan. Where were you going when you were caught? And where was Mistress Stormwind at that time?”

  “I was going to the roof,” we explain. “And Stormwind was right behind me. Since I was caught and she was not, I can only assume she eventually got out.”

  The spiky-haired mage gapes at me. “She was what?”

  “Behind me. She stayed in the cell until I went in to fetch her.”

  The whole of
the Council stares at me.

  Congratulations, Val murmurs. I don’t think too many people have managed to utterly confound the High Council of Mages before.

  Thanks.

  In the silence that has spread after my words, Arch Mage Nightblade drums his fingers against the wooden table in a staccato drumroll. “You mean that she hid from sight within the cell until you opened the door and allowed her to pass through the wards there.”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s impossible,” one of the other mages stammers. “We inspected her cell — the shackles were open, there was no sign of her, and she was bound. She could not cast a spell to hide herself.”

  “She could still use charms, and she did. That’s all she did.”

  Nightblade watches me intently. “What charms?”

  “A look-away while she was in the cell. After that — perhaps a smoker or two. And a stinker.” At least, if I had to give my garlic-and-onions charm a name, that one seems relatively self-explanatory.

  “What about once you reached the roof? How did you intend to leave the Mekteb? You must have had an ally if you don’t know where she went from there.”

  “The phoenix agreed to carry us out,” I admit. They already have his feather; acknowledging his interest in me may actually do more to save my life than anything else.

  “The … phoenix?” It’s one of the other arch mages, his look of bewilderment mirrored by his colleagues.

  Blackflame leans forward. “The phoenix of the Burnt Lands was going to fly you to safety? Or—” He hesitates, though there cannot be that many other phoenixes in the world.

  “Yes, that one.”

  If I stunned the Council to silence before, now I’ve shaken them out of it.

  “That’s absurd,” Blackflame says, just as a mage to his right sputters, “By what right—”

  “We have agreements—”

  “I demand an explanation of this! The phoenix has never—”

  “Perhaps,” Nightblade says, his voice cutting through the rising tide of outrage, “you should start your explanations at the beginning.”

  This is precisely the opportunity I’ve been hoping for. “The beginning is a bit further back, Master Nightblade. I’ll have to start a year ago, with the sunbolt I mentioned, if you wish to understand the whole of my connection to Stormwind and what I have done to help her.”

  The mages around the table watch me with varying levels of disapproval, but at least they’re listening again. Without even a glance toward Blackflame, Nightblade nods. Ah, he’s not a supporter, then.

  “I lived in Karolene until about a year ago, when a warrant for the execution of Lord and Lady Degath was issued.” Val pauses, giving a moment for the words to sink in. Blackflame goes still, staring at me, really and truly looking at my face. I hope he remembers it. “As part of the Shadow League, I volunteered to help the family escape Karolene before the warrant could be carried out. Unfortunately, Arch Mage Blackflame convinced Saira Degath that, if she helped him catch the leader of the Shadow League, he would allow her family to go free, and no doubt win his favor.”

  “This has no bearing on the current investigation,” Blackflame says, each word hard and cold.

  “I’m under a truth spell, and I say it does,” Val says for me. “Whatever I testify is only what I believe to be true. You’ve nothing to fear if you haven’t done wrong.”

  “You will answer only those questions—”

  “I will not.” The anger in my voice surprises me, not the least because it accurately reflects my own feelings. Val must be able to sense me very well. I go on relaying my story as quickly as I can, before Blackflame truly does stop me. “I was there, in the empty building we took refuge in, when the sultan’s soldiers burst through the doors and cut down Lord and Lady Degath. I used my magic to hide the true Ghost in the shadows, but I could not reach the Degaths in time.”

  Blackflame surges to his feet. “Enough!” His face is pale with fury, blue eyes burning with cold.

  My voice slices through the rising murmurs of the other mages. “I was taken prisoner with the younger Degaths, and we were brought to your home.”

  Blackflame slams his fist against the table. “Be silent!” He turns on Nightblade in white-lipped rage, “The truth spell is flawed.”

  Nightblade rises from his seat, facing Blackflame calmly. “Is it? Allow me to check.” He gestures to one of the mages across from him, the one who had stammered out an argument against Stormwind’s method of escape. “Bastion, so there is no doubt, I invite you to check the spell with me.”

  Arch Mage Bastion acquiesces, and they descend from their respective tables and approach me.

  Val, will they be able to sense you?

  Possibly.

  Not the answer I want. Should you go?

  If they ask you your name, to check the spell, you won’t be able to answer with what you’ve already given them. Just wait. The mages come to a stop before us. And take your body back in the meantime. I’ll hang about at the back of your skull.

  With a nearly tangible snap I’m back in my body, and it hurts. Pain tingles along my nerves, my body desperately heavy. I have to focus on breathing slowly, steadily. But I shouldn’t hurt this much. Last time Val took me over, the pain I felt was from the muscles I strained in my fight with Osman Bey, and from my wound. This is different.

  “Miss Hibachi,” Nightblade says, calling my attention back to him. “We will put our fingers on the sigil on your forehead. It should not hurt.”

  I look down at my lap, too afraid to speak with the truth spell pressing upon me. They touch my forehead together. The spell dances through my blood, the sigil on my forehead so icy it feels as though it might cut right through my skin and into bone.

  Bastion steps back, Nightblade letting his hand drop barely a moment later.

  “Well?” he asks Bastion.

  “It’s fine,” he admits gruffly. “Fully formed and well cast. I can find no flaw.”

  “There is no flaw in the casting,” Nightblade agrees.

  The moment he turns his eyes to the Council, his body still blocking my view, Val murmurs, Shall I?

  Yes. Is everything— all right? It feels different.

  Everything is fine, Val assures me, and by the time the two mages seat themselves, I am back to being a spectator in my own body.

  “So far,” Blackflame says, cold blue eyes trained on me, “you have not mentioned any allies. You could not have accomplished so much alone. Who helped you?”

  “No,” Nightblade says, his voice measured as always. Yet the word cuts across the space. “Let us finish hearing the previous answer.”

  Answer Blackflame’s question, Val counsels me. I give him the words I need to prove that the truth spell is still forcing answers from me. “I helped myself for as far as I’ve told you. I’m sure you’ll have the rest from me shortly.”

  “Such a story has no relevance to the current trial,” Blackflame tells Nightblade, ignoring me.

  Nightblade tilts his head, eyelids dropping a fraction. “I was placed in charge of the commission that investigated the charges brought forward by young Lord Degath. Since none of the parties involved consented to a truth spell, and all depended on the words of those involved, the commission was disbanded. It is my duty, now that a witness stands before us under a truth spell, to assure that the story is heard. Especially,” he smiles amiably, “when the witness claims that it relates to the case on which she is being tried as well.”

  Over the course of this speech, Blackflame’s face has grown hard as stone, until his features look as if they were cut into his face. “Do you think it your duty to undermine the First Mage of the Council?”

  “On the contrary, it is the duty of the First Mage of the Council to assure that no Council member, nor mage sworn to us, misuses their magic or power such that they murder innocent civilians. Nor should our arch mages be involved in political maneuvers for their own or others’ ambition in the King
doms they serve. That is the true role and purpose of the High Council.” Nightblade gestures toward me with a long-fingered hand. “It is your duty before it is mine to hear out this girl.”

  “She knows nothing. The warrant issued on the Degaths was for treason, which should make clear the danger they posed. They armed themselves and fought the sultan’s soldiers — not mine. The soldiers had to defend themselves. That is how Lord and Lady Degath died. The sultan had agreed to house them in my residence rather than the city prison as a safeguard for them. We have discussed all this.”

  “And we will discuss it again,” Nightblade agrees with a bland smile. “Let us now hear from the girl on the points of contention between yourself and the new Lord Degath, which she may be able to enlighten us on.” He tilts his head, dark hair cascading over his shoulder, and asks me, “What happened after you were taken to Arch Mage Blackflame’s residence?”

  If I controlled my body, I would be smiling now. I never thought I’d look forward to speaking to the Council, but I am looking forward to this. I may be about to lose my magic or my mind, but I now have the chance to tell a story that could cost Blackflame dearly. I don’t intend to waste it.

  I tell my story with every detail I can recall, from the way the soldiers obeyed Blackflame when they delivered us to his courtyard, to the way he taunted Saira for trusting him, to the imprisonment and execution he promised Tarek. I describe the cages we were locked in, to which Nightblade says, “You are quite sure that the Degaths were not placed under guard in a guest suite?”

  “Cages,” I tell him, Val making the word snap through the room. “In the basement, with a torture table at the center of the room and implements on the wall. I have not forgotten any of it.”

  “According to the Degaths, a fang lord named Kol visited them there. Arch Mage Blackflame tells us that he had nothing to do with Lord Kol, and that whatever incident they are referring to must have occurred after they escaped his guard.”