“But you don’t believe anything else I said, or anything I say now.”
“I don’t know what to believe.”
“Why did you come here?” I demand. “You must have known that I wouldn’t admit a ‘bond’ with a breather whether or not one existed.”
He tips his head toward the wall. “I thought I might frighten the truth out of you. Failing that, I thought I should warn you, there is still a good chance you will be executed.”
“Oh?” Execution hadn’t actually crossed my mind, but it seems a far better future than a madwoman or a source slave. Somehow, though, I doubt they’d let my magic go to waste. They’d harvest it first, and their ethics would get in the way of executing the madwoman produced as a result. Assuming, of course, that my mother’s machinations fall through. Nightblade must have just missed her on his way in — or passed her without realizing she’d been to see me.
Still, this might be the only opening I’ll get to be sure of the sigil above my bed. “You didn’t think the blood magic would frighten me enough?”
“Blood magic?”
I don’t answer. He’s already lifted his head to scan the walls, and the next moment he rises to his feet, stepping around me to reach the wall above my bed.
“Who did this?”
I lean my head against the bed. I don’t know how much more of this day I can get through. “It was there when I woke up. Surely you knew what you were doing just now.”
He doesn’t answer. He was too busy with his strategies to notice that the sigil he used to hurt me was tied to blood magic, that the pain would lance through my every vein and artery.
“Can’t you tell who did it?” I ask, remembering Stonefall’s words about magical signatures.
“Yes,” Nightblade says absently. “But that’s not always dependable.” I sense a flicker of magic behind me. I twist in time to see the magic in the room shift, lines merging and reforming, the whole web remaking itself. Nightblade turns, the fingers of one hand brushing the top of my head. I swallow a gasp as a coil of magic encircles me, anchoring the web before it fades from sight.
“There,” he says.
I wrap my arms over my chest, trying to still my trembling before he notices. Another flare of magic, this one short and sharp and focused on the wall before him, and the faint scent of burning drifts through the room. When he steps away, all that is left of the painted sigil is a dark, sooty smudge on the wall.
“You destroyed it?” I ask.
“It cannot be allowed.” He pulls a cloth from his pocket and wipes his fingers. Then he looks down to where I crouch on the floor. “The wards are still in place, and keyed to you, but not through your blood anymore.”
I nod. “Thank you.”
He puts away his handkerchief without any indication that my words require a reply. “Miss Hibachi, I can offer you only this much: Tell me your truths, and I will strive to assure you survive. A bond such as yours should be studied, understood. It is a rare chance to further our knowledge of such things.”
Nightblade would have me betray Val and the trust he put in me, betray his people who have done no wrong but to be born as breathers, all for what? A slightly different future of pain and fear? I shake my head and offer Nightblade a rueful smile. “I think you had better kill me and be done with it. There is nothing to study.”
He regards me for three long breaths. His eyes are dark and deep and hellish in their beauty. “As you wish.”
He moves to the door, the faint shhh of his leather slippers on the floor loud in the quiet between us.
“Although,” he says, pausing with his hand on the door, “it is interesting how fiercely you protect him.”
I don’t have the energy for his games, can’t summon the necessary anger to glare at him. Instead, I wait until the door closes, and then lower myself to lie on the floor. I rest my head on my good arm, no longer fighting the trembling that racks my body.
I should get up, but the bed seems terribly far above me. It is far easier to lie here, staring across the floor at the far corner and pretending that the worst of my troubles is how I will climb back into bed.
I drift in and out of consciousness, dully aware that I need to make myself get in bed. It is only when I hear voices outside my door that I attempt to sit up. It’s late night — the hours when the night stretches out and there is still no sign of dawn. The world outside my stained glass window lies dark and dormant, the shutters forgotten open.
There should not be any voices now. My guards rarely speak to each other. As the voices cease, I push myself upright, my wounded arm throbbing. I’m cold from lying on the tiles, my body stiff and my mind slow. I wipe the wet from the corner of my mouth, try to clear my thoughts.
The lock clicks, loud in the silent building, and Osman Bey opens the door. I blink at him, my brain finally waking up. His face is drawn, grim. He scans the room once before letting his gaze settle on me. He holds the key in his fingers, the door still cracked open behind him. Something is very wrong.
“Get up.”
I stumble to my feet, my hip thumping against the bed. He studies me silently, assessing me. I take a shaky breath, remind myself not to panic, not to bring Val into this unless I must. Except that, without Val, I am completely at Osman Bey’s mercy.
I lift my hands, my left higher than my right, in mock surrender. “I still can’t fight.”
My sleeves slide down, baring the upper half of the markings. His gaze fastens on them. “No,” he says quietly.
He pulls the door shut behind him, turning the key in the lock. I drop my hands, clench my jaw to keep my teeth from chattering. I’m desperately cold and weary, and I don’t have any weapons. In a closed room I have no hope of escaping him. Breathe.
“Look,” I say quickly. “I’m sorry—”
Osman Bey faces me, his back to the door. “You are?”
I nod jerkily. “Yes. Please— don’t—” I cut myself off as bewilderment flickers over his features.
“Don’t what?”
“Whatever it is you’re doing,” I finish uncertainly. He’s already proven I can’t fight him without Val’s help. Without my magic, locked in this room with him, I have no protection whatsoever. But he wouldn’t look confused if he was planning to attack me.
His eyes widen with understanding. “I won’t hurt you.”
He turns to the wall at his right, giving me the opportunity to recover my balance. “Tell me about this,” he says, waving at the wall, the sigils it carries invisible to his eyes.
I take another breath to steady myself. “The worst of them means death. What else do you want to know?”
“Death if you do what?”
“If I use magic, which I can’t anymore.”
“What if you use something else?”
I sigh, what’s left of my fear draining away. He’s trying to figure out how to prevent any other escape attempts. Though why he’s asking me and not the mages who cast these sigils I can’t fathom. I cross the room to stand beside him. “The strongest ones ward against magical interference.”
Laying my hand against the wall, I open my senses to the magic in the walls, watch as the layered wards present themselves to my eyes. With my hand so close to them, they pulse, strands of magic forking away from the wards closest to me to flash across the wall beneath my fingers, seeking my touch. Nightblade has done his work terrifyingly well. The blood magic might be gone, but the sigils are anchored directly to me.
“They’re keyed to me,” I tell Osman Bey. “I can’t use magic here, of any sort. I can’t open the door of my own accord. If I tried — say, if I had a lockpick set, the lock would freeze up, and these wards,” I wave my hand toward the wall, “would incapacitate me.”
“What if you used force on the door?”
I eye him askance. “Meaning?”
He shrugs. “Could you kick the door down?”
I almost laugh. “I’m not that strong, or well trained. But if I did, these w
ards—” I shudder, take a step away, the magic reaching after me— “they’d hold me here until your guards arrived.”
“You would survive it?”
“Probably.”
His eyes search my face. “Would you prefer to die than to become what they would make of you?”
“I’m not going to kill myself,” I say, keeping my gaze on the sigil. “I had that chance and I let it go.”
“Would you risk death to escape?”
“Of course.” It isn’t even a question. “But I don’t have the capacity to make the attempt.”
“I see.” Osman Bey transfers his attention to the door. He runs a finger over the doorjamb. “I took your suggestion and spoke with Master Jabir. It seems we were holding prisoner a woman who had done no harm. And now we hold prisoner her rescuer.”
He looks back at me, and this time I see the smoldering rage in his eyes, the wire-taut tension of his shoulders. “My brothers and sisters and I do not appreciate being misused,” he continues, his voice almost a growl. “Our agreement with the mages was to provide protection from dark powers, using our iron and steel where their spells do not hold. Today we learned that they have violated our pact — that we have been made to hold an innocent as prisoner.”
I have to bite my lip to keep from apologizing. I’m not sorry he spoke with Jabir, or that he and his pack are furious about what they’ve become a part of, but I am sorry that he is growling out his anger at me.
“So,” Osman Bey says, “we will not hold you any longer.”
He turns, his movements elegant and graceful and lethal. I hadn’t realized he was standing in a ready stance until he slides into motion. His kick is pure poetry, from the perfect, ringing thud as his boot slams into the door, to the snap of hinges as the door rips free and crashes into the hallway beyond.
The wards around the room flare, a soft white rush of light that streaks around the walls before fading. It doesn’t touch me. I’m still standing immobile by the bed. It wasn’t me that kicked down the door. Nor did Osman Bey touch the magic of the protections themselves. I can see the faint flicker of the sigil traced on the door still glimmering on it as it lies on the floor.
Osman Bey gestures to the empty doorway with a flourish. “Are you coming?”
My mouth opens and closes once before I find my voice. “They’ll be able to tell. I mean, that the door’s sigil is no longer aligned with the other ones. At some point, it will strike them as odd that no one has closed the door.”
“Then we had better close the door behind us, hadn’t we?”
He really is breaking me out. I stare at him, my mind still not quite caught up with this new reality.
“Make sure you have everything you came with.”
I nod, glance about.
“Quickly,” he says. I scan the bed as fast as I can, pulling back the sheets and turning over the pillow. I’d only sat on the bed since my return to the room, though, and I don’t appear to have shed any hair. That’s all I have that hasn’t already been taken from me.
“Ready?” Osman Bey asks as I finish. He stands in the hallway, the door propped up in his hands.
“Yes.” I walk through the doorway, then watch as he shunts the door back into place. It’s mostly aligned, leaning into the frame a bit. No one even glancing at it would miss that there was something wrong, but the sigils are all aligned now. The mages they are set to alert may not think anything of the door being kept open for the minute or so that has passed since Osman Bey first kicked it down.
“Upstairs,” Osman Bey says softly, moving past me.
I follow him up. The stairway lies silent, and there is no sign of any guard anywhere. My blood thrums in my veins. My exhaustion has fled for the time being. I am alert and well aware that there are typically only two ways off a roof: climbing down, or jumping to another roof. I’m not sure my wounded arm will hold me if I try to climb, and I’m quite certain the surrounding rooftops are too far for jumping.
We reach the door at the top of the stairs. Osman Bey pauses to pull out his key ring. The stairwell lies mostly in shadow, dimly lit by a glowstone that illuminates the hallway below, but he seems to have no trouble seeing.
“What now?” I ask him, leaning against the wall.
He selects a key and slides it into the lock. “Now we meet your other ally.”
My stomach gives an unpleasant lurch. “Who?”
He chuckles, the sound deep and friendly. His eyes glint gold in the sudden fall of moonlight as he steps outside and glances back at me. “Did you have another you managed to omit mentioning to the Council?”
I keep my response measured as I follow him onto a rooftop garden of potted plants and benches and unlit glowstone lamps. “I was under a truth spell.”
“I think the Council gravely underestimated your ability to tell them only a part of the truths they sought.”
“You overestimate my cunning.”
“I doubt that,” he replies, coming to a stop before an ornately wrought bench. “You mentioned the Degaths to me before the trial. I went to see them.”
“Did you?” What did I say about the Degaths during the hearing? Surely nothing beyond what had happened in Karolene? In which case, if they admitted seeing me….
He grins. “They were excessively courteous, their story as to their escape from Karolene matched your account, and they were grieved to hear that you had survived only to be caught aiding what they termed a ‘political’ prisoner. They assured me that they knew nothing further of you, and so I left.”
I know very well this isn’t the end of his story.
“I went to a public garden, as I’d told the Degaths I might,” Osman Bey goes on. “Perhaps a half hour later, I was joined by a creature I never imagined I would have the honor of meeting.”
“The phoenix,” I breathe.
His lips quirk. He knows as well as I that it wasn’t a coincidence, but it’s not one I want to explain. Instead, I say, “You told him I’ve been marked.”
Osman Bey nods, squatting beside the bench. He pulls out a cloth bag left beneath it. “He was not pleased.”
No, the phoenix would not have been. I doubt I’ll be much good to him without the ability to use my magic. Osman Bey extracts a bundle of rope attached to a wooden slat from the cloth bag, as if he’s said all he needs to. “But?” I say hopefully.
“But,” he agrees and sets about arranging the rope. It isn’t until he stands and slides a loop over my head that I realize what it is: a harness for me to ride in. The phoenix still wants me, perhaps because I haven’t been bound yet. Or perhaps to make a point to the Council. Either way, I’m grateful.
Osman Bey helps me fit a loop of cloth-padded rope under my hips, creating a seat of sorts. Then he wraps another rope tightly around my waist, tying me in. I am thankful for this, for the care he is taking so that the phoenix does not have to lift me by my shoulders, jar my injured arm. I watch Osman Bey’s bent head, the bright white of his turban, the faint shine of moonlight on his leather armor.
“Why are you doing this?”
He sits back on his heels. “Are the reasons I’ve given you not enough?”
“You’re breaking their laws.” He knows this as well as I. I simply can’t quite grasp the why of it. Stormwind had been innocent, and I had helped her, but that is hardly convincing enough grounds for the lycan guard to not only break their oaths to the High Council but break me out as well.
He pushes himself upright, looks out over the rooftops and then back at me. “You’ve traveled the Burnt Lands,” he says. “You should know precisely why we do not give our loyalty blindly, nor remain with those who have betrayed us.”
Remembering the dark creatures that had chased me, I do.
“I also know perfectly well that I should be dead. You did not simply spare my life in that fight. You saved it.”
I look away, pushing aside thoughts of killing, and Val, and breathers, and the breath my life is built on.
“By your own testimony, you could have destroyed half my guard that night with a single spell. You refrained, knowing you would pay the price for it.”
A life debt — a whole host of life debts. I can hardly look at him anymore. I wanted his help. I told him what I did when he visited my room precisely to sway him to help me, impossible as it seemed. But I did not want this, to twist his actions because of a debt he owed me. Returning a life for a life is a good philosophy, but not when it forces you to give up your honor.
“I see.” My voice is small in the space between us.
“No, I don’t think you do.” Osman Bey shifts, and I look back at him without thinking. “You’ve already been punished for your crimes. When we discussed it, we agreed we could not send you into slavery as well, or something worse than that. And considering what the mages of the past have done, we are grateful to leave our post before causing more harm than we have already.”
“Thank you,” I manage.
He shakes his head. “Look there.” He points toward the far side of the roof. Gliding down from the starry dark comes the phoenix. He flies without his fire tonight, only the soft gleam of moonlight on his feathers suggesting he is more than a mere bird.
As the phoenix circles around, Osman Bey holds up the looped top of the rope sling — it’s wound through a short length of wood, making the perfect grip for the phoenix’s talons. “Hold tight.”
His body tenses. I grip the ropes at my side, careful not to raise my right hand too high.
“Run far, run fast, keep the wind in your hair,” Osman Bey murmurs. The words have the sound of a traditional farewell. I open my mouth, unsure how to respond, and catch the amusement in his golden wolf’s eyes.
“Peace be upon you,” I say.
Then the phoenix’s talons close on the wooden slat, and Osman Bey darts aside. The ropes snap tight, swinging me upward into the air. I grip the rope with all my strength, my arm flaring with pain. We hurtle across the rooftop, narrowly missing the potted plants on either side of the path. I curl my legs up beneath me, watching helplessly as we careen toward the low wall edging the rooftop.
Memories of Ash (The Sunbolt Chronicles Book 2) Page 33
