“There’s a spring in the Guild grounds,” he told her. “The water from it is the purest you’ll ever drink. It is piped only to this building and to the Royal Palace—and in the palace it goes first to the king’s rooms.”
Taking a larger sip, she swirled the water around in her mouth, then swallowed. It had almost no taste to it. Perhaps a faint suggestion of stone and rock. Arfon poured himself a glass.
“Tell me more about your brother.”
She shrugged. “What haven’t I told you already?”
He gave her a level look. “The servants at your family home say he was prone to violent tantrums, and that he often struck you.”
She looked away. “Not often,” she corrected, figuring there was no point denying the truth when it could be confirmed by a mind-read. “Just...when he was frustrated. He’s smart, you see. Too smart. People don’t understand him, and he’s not good at explaining himself in a way ordinary people understand.”
“Did you understand him?”
“Not always. That’s why he loses his temper with me.” She waved a hand. “But I see his frustration and his...” His loneliness, she was going to say. But Tagin would not have liked her to speak of him as if he was weak or pitiful.
“You want to protect him?” Arfon observed.
“Of course. I’m his sister.”
“Would you still want to, if you knew he’d murdered Lord Herrol? Would you still hide his location, if you knew it?”
She looked at him and smiled crookedly. “Probably.”
“Why?”
She sighed and turned away. “He’s the only one who ever cared about me. Mother and Father never did. And Demrel certainly doesn’t.”
Arfon said nothing. The silence stretched between them and eventually drew her eyes back to him. He was looking at her intently. His expression was not disapproving. It was unfathomable, and yet it sent a shiver up her spine.
Stop it, she told herself. It’s not right to fancy the man who wants to catch and possibly execute your own brother. Then, belatedly, she added to that, and you’re a married woman.
She could not help liking Arfon, though. He’d treated her so differently than her husband—as if he not only saw that she had a mind but was interested in its contents. He had been gentle and apologetic the few times he’d had to physically force her to cooperate. The only time she’d seen him angry, it had fascinated her to see how he’d held the anger back, and how quickly it had faded away.
And it doesn’t help that he’s so good looking. She sighed. I guess that’s part of the Guild’s ploy to get information out of me. I might give more away if I wanted to impress that person. Fortunately I don’t have any information to give.
Arfon drew in a deep breath and stood up. “It’s late. I’ll take you back to your room.”
My “room”? she thought as she followed him up the stairs. My “prison” is more accurate. Though the little bedroom the Guild had set up for her in one of the Guildhall towers was comfortable, she had not left it and the room below it for two weeks.
Arfon left her as soon as she was safely locked away. It did not take her long to change into her nightclothes, and she fell asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow. The next thing she was aware of was the patterns of light and shadow the moon had cast on the ceiling.
Then she frowned. I’m awake and it’s still night. Why am I awake?
Something interrupted the pattern. She raised her head and stared at the window. A shadowed face was pressed up to the glass.
That’s impossible. This room is three floors up and there are guards outside. She let her head drop back onto the pillow. I must be dreaming.
“Indria!” a muffled voice hissed. “Get up! It’s me. Tagin.”
Her heart skipped. She wasn’t dreaming. Someone really was there, and that someone was Tagin. The fool! They’ll catch him for sure! She scrambled out of the bed and stumbled to the window. Cold air surrounded her. The paper screens had been pushed aside and the frame of mullioned glass hinged outward. Tagin was outside. Below his feet was something flat, hovering in the chill air. It looked suspiciously like a piece of the paving from the Guild gardens.
“How are you...?” she asked.
“Same way I move a pot of sumi,” he said. “Only this time I’m standing on it. Took some practise to keep my balance, though. Don’t worry. I’m used to it now. I won’t drop you.”
“Drop me?”
He grinned. “I’ve come to rescue you. Can’t have my sister in prison because of something she didn’t do.”
“I don’t need rescuing,” she told him. “When they realise you’re not coming to get me they’ll give up and let me go.”
“But I have come to get you.”
“And take me where?”
“Away from here.”
She shook her head. “They’ll find us, Tagin. Listen, I believe they won’t harm you if you give yourself up. They’ll give you a chance to prove that you’re innocent. Once they read your mind they’ll know you didn’t kill anyone, and they’ll let you go.”
He smiled crookedly. “But I did kill Herrol. And most of his servants. And...” he looked down and shrugged.
She followed his gaze, past the floating stone beneath his feet, and caught her breath. Three men lay on the ground below, their eyes open and staring. Dead. Had Tagin killed them? Of course he had. To save me. She felt guilt welling up, but pushed it away. The Guild had set a trap for him. If it had gone badly then it was hardly her fault.
But it did mean her brother had killed. And once again admitted to killing his master.
“Oh, Tagin,” she heard herself say. “They’ll definitely execute you now. And me, if I come with you.”
“They won’t find us,” he told her, extending a hand.
“But...” But I don’t want to leave and become a fugitive, she wanted to say. His eyes narrowed. She could see the first signs of suspicion and anger. His anger was always worst when he thought he’d been betrayed. Only this time he’s killed people. But he won’t kill me.
Still he might take his anger out on others. He’ll blame the Guild and my husband for turning me against him. She felt her heart sink. If I go with him, I might be able to persuade him otherwise. Steer him away from further trouble. From murdering people.
It would mean leaving her life of comfort and safety.
But he’s my brother. I’m the only one who can save him.
Sighing, knowing that he did not comprehend what he asked her to sacrifice, she climbed up onto the window sill and took his hand. His face was transformed by a grin. Pulling her forward, he steadied her as she stepped onto the slab. She looked down as they began to descend.
Lord Arfon was going to be so disappointed in her.
Record of the 235th Year.
The rogue apprentice has rescued his sister, killing two guards and Lord Towin in the process. Lord Towin’s death is a shock and loss to both his family and the Guild. He had so much potential, and his innovative study of the application of magic in shaping metals will be left unfinished.
Towin's death has roused and united the Guild. Apprentice Tagin has shown himself to have little moral character, willing to use higher magic as cruelly as the Sachakans did before the War. We cannot leave him to roam the world unchecked and unpunished. Lord Arfon believes that we must capture him and find out how he learned higher magic without the assistance of a teacher, but many of the others feel Tagin is too dangerous, and must be killed at the soonest oppor
Gilken let his pen hover over the page for a moment, listening to the expectant silence that came after the knock at his door. Then he finished the sentence, wiped the pen and set it aside. Rising from his chair, he sent a little magic out to the door to nudge the latch open, and then tug the door inward.
Lord Arfon nodded politely at him. “Record-keeper Gilken, may I speak with you?”
“Of course, Lord Arfon,” Gilken replied, waving to the comfortable chairs he kept in
the room for visitors. “Would you like a drink of water?”
“No, thank you.” Arfon sat down, his gaze distracted and a crease deepening between his brows. “I thought you should know that Lord Valin, Magician Loral and Lord Greyer haven’t been seen since last night’s meeting. You know they volunteered to search for Tagin, but I didn’t choose them?”
“Yes.” Gilken nodded to show he understood Arfon’s alarm. The young magicians had been friends of Lord Towin, the magician who had been guarding Indria, and were so outraged at the murder it was clear to all that if they’d found Tagin it was unlikely there’d be an apprentice alive to question and put to trial.
Would that be so terrible? he asked himself. He considered how conflicted his feelings had been the previous night, at the meeting. While he felt the same sense of loss and anger at the murders as many of the magicians, he had been disturbed by the fierce, unquestioning drive for revenge raging among the magicians. We are supposed to be examples of calm and reason. And justice. Tagin deserves a trial.
“You fear they will kill Tagin,” Gilken said.
Arfon looked at him. “Or in attempting their own search they will upset our arrangements for capturing him.”
Gilken nodded again. He wants me to put something in the record, so that if the trio upset his plans and Tagin gets away, Arfon and his helpers won't be blamed. It is a pity that he feels the Guild might react that way, but he is no fool. If things go very wrong, people always look for someone to blame, and leaders always fall first.
“I should make note of their absence,” Gilken said, rising from this chair.
Taking the hint, Arfon stood up. “Thank you. I will distract you no longer.”
Gilken smiled. “Receiving information for the record is more necessity than distraction. And you are always welcome, Lord Arfon.”
The young magician bent at the waist in a half bow, then left the room. Gilken sat down at his desk again and considered the last sentence he had written. Then he picked up his pen and resumed writing.
Though she wanted to look away, to flee from the scene before her, Indria forced herself to look at the five bodies. Three magicians and two apprentices lay sprawled around the campfire—three men and two boys a few years older than Tagin. They looked as if they had fallen into a drunken sleep, but she knew better. Each bled from a small cut, through which her brother had taken their magic and their lives while they had been drugged. She wrapped her arms around the simple commoner’s tunic Tagin had brought for her as part of her rescue and disguise, and shivered.
It had been her idea to let the magicians catch her, convince them she had been Tagin’s prisoner, then drug them so she and Tagin could gain some distance or even get them off their trail. She had bought the tincture at a market, pretending to be suffering from insomnia and women’s pains but wanting something that didn’t taste foul. As the herbalist had recommended, Indria had mixed it into the magicians’ wine, taking care not to make it too strong and risk poisoning them.
But Tagin had decided it was too great an opportunity to pass up. He’d taken their power, and in doing so he’d killed them. And now he was dancing around the fire, crowing with triumph.
“Too easy!” he exclaimed. “And all it took was this.” He slipped a hand into the pocket of his jacket and brought out the little bottle containing the drug. “Not a bit of magic wasted—none of mine, none of theirs, and now it’s all mine!”
He grabbed her hands and whirled her about. Her foot caught on a fallen branch and she stumbled, so he stopped and steadied her. “Did you hear me?” he asked. “Do you understand?”
She nodded. “Not a bit wasted,” she repeated. “And now they’re off our trail. We’ve gained...how many days? How long do you think it’ll take before they’re found or missed?”
“A few days.” He shrugged. “More if I burn their bodies.”
“Long enough for us to make it to the border, if we take their horses. We’ll have to hope the Elynes aren’t waiting for us.” She looked at the dead magicians again and forced herself to see the situation with cold practicality. “Are they carrying any money? We could buy passage on a ship. Head for Vin. Or Lonmar.”
Tagin shook his head. A familiar mad gleam came into his eyes. “We’re not going to Vin, sister. Or Lonmar. Or Elyne. We’re going to Imardin.”
“The city? But...”
His grip on her hands tightened. “Think of all the times we pretended we’d rule the world one day...” He laughed as she opened her mouth to protest. “Yes, I know it was a game, but I think...I think it’s possible. We could change the world. We could make the Guild see that their rules and restrictions are wrong.” He looked at her and his expression became serious. “It would be a way to make up for what I did. Which is all their fault, really.”
“But...”
His face darkened suddenly, and he flung her hands away. “You don’t know what it was like, Indria. Every night, Herrol taking all my strength so I could barely do anything he’d taught me.” Tagin flushed and turned from her, his head dropping so she could not see his face.
“That’s the secret, you know,” he said in a quieter voice. “The secret of higher magic. Masters take the strength from the apprentices, supposedly in exchange for their teaching. It seems fair at first. Strength in exchange for knowledge. But Herrol kept holding me back. When I started teaching myself—things in his own books—he was angry. He started taking extra power so I couldn’t try anything. I couldn’t learn anything.” Tagin looked up at her, his gaze tortured and his face older than it had ever appeared before. “It doesn’t have to take ten years for an apprentice to become a higher magician. They hold us back—stop us from learning at our natural pace—so that they can take magic from us for longer.”
Indria felt her heart twist. That might not be so bad for any ordinary apprentice, but for Tagin it would have been intolerable. He was clever. He learned quickly, and grew bored even faster. Herrol should have realised that. Should have rewarded Tagin for his initiative, not punished him.
“But I’m going to reveal the lie,” Tagin continued, straightening as determination filled him. “I’m going to make the Guild tell everyone the truth.” His gaze shifted to the distance and he was silent a moment. Then his eyes snapped to her and he smiled. “We’re going to change world, Indria, and this time it’s not a game. It’s real.”
Record of the 235th Year.
We now know that the three burned corpses found yesterday are the remains of Lord Valin, Magician Loral and Lord Greyer. They were identified by the charred scraps of their clothing brought back to the city.
Today our minds have been buzzing with mental communications as magicians here and there have reported more terrible news. Nine of Arfon's searchers and two apprentices had stopped at a Stayhouse for the evening. By the morning they, their servants, the Stayhouse owner and his wife, and many of the staff and customers at the Stayhouse, had perished. Most died in the fire that burned the building to the ground, but we suspect the magicians were first killed by Tagin and his sister, as the pair were identified by those lucky enough to escape the blaze.
All here are shocked by this tragic loss of life.
Gilken paused. His mind crowded with questions, but he always tried (and often failed) to keep speculation to a minimum in his reporting. Records should be strictly factual. Had the searchers come upon Tagin and his sister, and if so, was their attempt to capture them a catastrophic failure? Why did none of them report the encounter to the Guild via mental communication before they died? He could not help but think the location of the two groups of perished magicians was significant. The bodies of the three young magicians were found further from the city than the Stayhouse. Instead of fleeing after the first encounter, Tagin and Indria had turned and headed toward the city.
Almost as though Tagin is hunting magicians, not the other way around.
But he couldn’t write that in the record. With a shudder, he wiped his pen, set it down and
went to bed hoping for a night uninterrupted by mental calls reporting ill news, or nightmares.
When Indria had turned herself in to the first three magicians, they’d decided not to tell the Guild in case Tagin heard their mental conversation and their intention to sneak up on him. It had surprised her to learn that any mental communication could be overheard by all other magicians. She’d wondered why they bothered to use it at all.
The second group had no reason to contact other magicians—they had fallen asleep from the drug Tagin had forced the innkeeper to add to their drinks, and never knew they’d just eaten their last meal.
However, the third lot of magicians to fall foul of Tagin’s grand plan did not die silently.
To Indria’s relief, Tagin hadn’t told her to approach and drug the four magicians they’d seen at the village. Instead they’d watched the men buy food and a bottle of wine, then followed them at a distance. The four did not have any apprentices with them, she’d noted. As dusk greyed the landscape, the magicians had stopped to eat their meal, though they remained on their horses. Tagin and Indria had tied their horses to a fence post out of sight, then crept closer, hidden by a stone wall.
Bringing out the bottle of poison, Tagin had somehow taken a large drop of it out of the bottle with magic. The drop floated up in the air to hover above the magicians. Indria had watched, heart racing and wondering how they could not have noticed it.
Then one of the magicians had brought out wine to share around. The droplet had shot downward and into the wine bottle so fast that none of them had seen it. The magicians had begun taking it in turns to drink straight from the bottle.
It had seemed a needless risk to keep peering over the wall at the men, so Tagin and Indria had slipped away to reclaim their mounts. That had been their mistake, Indria realised. The magicians had ridden on for several minutes before the drug began to take effect. As they began to fall from their saddles, Tagin confidently rode up to them, grinning widely. But one magician did not fall. One magician hadn’t drunk from the bottle, or else had drunk too little, and that magician had attacked Tagin. The strike had knocked Tagin from his horse, and the animal had raced off down the road. “Get out of range!” Tagin had shouted to Indria, so she’d raced off to shelter behind a copse of trees.
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