The Tainted City

by Courtney Schafer

  Hard to argue with that. I glanced at Kiran. He nodded, though I could tell he thought tonight distant as the eastern sea.

  A sharp voice called from outside the room, “Ambassador! We’ve sighted wardfire.”

  We all stampeded after Halassian through the archway. Kiran shadowed Stevan close enough to trip on his heels, Talm and Lena right behind him. My heart hung in my throat. I’d told them Ruslan wouldn’t dally. How long could the Alathians hold him off?

  In a wide room full of silk hangings and sleek, cushioned couches, Halassian’s two lieutenants stood beside a great arched window. Copper panels inscribed with wards bracketed the window on all sides, the shutters open to admit the night breeze. To my surprise, the ward panels were dark and silent, without even a warning glimmer.

  “Wardfire, where?” Halassian demanded.

  “The Aiyalen Spire.” Hawk-nosed Jenoviann pointed a skinny arm out into the night, where nearby towers glittered with colored magelights like a jeweler’s showcase. Aiyalen was the tallest of them, a soaring pinnacle capped by five stone crescents as sharp and thin as nightstar blades. Beyond, the jagged wall of the Whitefire Mountains blocked out half the night sky, the rest dusted by stars brilliant in the dry desert air.

  The sight of that familiar skyline struck a pang into my heart. Gods, I’d missed the Whitefires—and Ninavel too, for all it was a nest of vipers. I squinted at the Aiyalen Spire. I didn’t see any wardfire. What did—

  The entire top third of the tower flared a lurid violet. Silent lightning wreathed the stone and clawed at the air above, flickering through indigo and blue to a bruised, poisonous green.

  I gasped right along with the mages. Mother of maidens, I’d never seen wards trigger on such a scale. But… “Why’s Ruslan attacking Aiyalen and not here?” It had to be Ruslan; nobody but a blood mage could cast a spell strong enough to spark such a display.

  Marten stretched a splayed hand out the window into the night air. “I sense no blood magic—no hint of any spellwork cast against the tower, in fact. How can this be?”

  Halassian said, “I have no answer for you. Yet I don’t believe this wardfire is Ruslan’s doing. In recent weeks, we’ve seen wards trigger on the Aiyalen Spire and other towers, though not to quite such a spectacular level. Each time, as now, we can’t sense even a single offensive spell. The caster is using a type of magic completely unknown to us—and believe me, we know the feel of blood magic.”

  I looked to Kiran. His eyes were squeezed shut, his head tilted as if he strained to listen for some faint sound. “The confluence—the currents feel odd, unsettled…but between the amulet and my binding, I can’t sense anything more.”

  The wardfire vanished as abruptly as it had appeared. I stared at the spire, not sure whether to feel relieved Ruslan wasn’t yet casting against us, or more worried. Ruslan might be scary as shit, but at least the Alathians knew how to counter him. If they couldn’t even sense the casting of whoever was striking at the towers, how could they stop it?

  The first step in scouting a mark was to find out what they wanted. “What’s up there in Aiyalen, Sechaveh’s personal gem vaults? I didn’t even know wards came that strong.” Red Dal hadn’t let his Tainters dream of trying to sneak into Aiyalen. A policy I understood after seeing that little fireworks show.

  Kiran said, “That section of the spire is where mages cast water spells for Lord Sechaveh.”

  Oh, hell. Ninavel had storage cisterns, one in each district, but they’d be drained in days if Ninavel’s mages didn’t continuously refill them. The closest natural sources of water were the glacial lakes west of the Whitefires’ fanged crest. Reaching those lakes required several days’ climb up a trail that’d kill waterless travelers long before they reached the pass. Scarce water would mean riots, deaths…and I’d no doubt those in the poorer districts would suffer first and most. Streetsiders, like me and my city friends.

  Marten and Halassian had both turned to stare at Kiran. “You’ve worked in the tower, then?” Halassian sounded eager. “We know that’s where the water magic is cast, but Sechaveh’s never allowed foreigners inside.”

  “No.” Kiran’s shoulders hunched. “Ruslan wouldn’t let us work real magic until we came of age.” He looked like he was praying Marten would change the subject.

  Stevan said, “You told the Council you went through the ritual two months before you left Ninavel. In all that time, you never helped your master with water duty?”

  “I said no,” Kiran snapped. He wrapped his arms tight around himself like a man cold to the bone, though the day’s heat lingered in the air.

  I’d never asked him what had gone on during the time between Alisa’s death and the day he showed up in Bren’s office seeking my help to cross the Whitefires. Now, I wondered. He couldn’t have fought Ruslan the whole time. He must have pretended compliance at some point to be allowed the freedom to go down streetside to meet Bren. How far had that compliance gone?

  “Too bad.” Halassian pursed her lips. “It would certainly be helpful to know the exact nature of the wards within the tower.”

  “When Sechaveh gives us sanction, perhaps we can find out.” Marten ran a finger along the wards on the windowsill. “Your dispatches spoke of mages dying. Did the deaths happen in the towers during wardfire events? The energies in the aether must be horrifically dangerous to any mage nearby.”

  “No, and that’s the oddest part,” Halassian said. “According to our informants, the mages died in their own homes.”

  Kiran said, “I know Alathian laws restrict what wards mages may use, but here, the wards on a workroom might be equally as powerful as any Sechaveh has on the Aiyalen Spire. If the mages’ personal wards triggered in the way we just saw, the overspill could easily be fatal.”

  Halassian grunted. “True, but we’ve heard no reports of wardfire like that in the residential sections.”

  “What else have you learned?” Marten asked.

  “Very little.” Halassian’s scowl spoke of frustration. “Sechaveh hasn’t let anyone not in his employ set foot in the dead mages’ houses. He’s got a Seranthine scholar, a sand mage, in charge of the investigation. Weedy little fellow, but clever as a kitfox and tightlipped as they come. Our usual informants claim not to know anything else, and ordinary Arkennlanders all clam up the instant they realize one of us is nearby. I dare not use any listening spells, not with every mage and highsider covered in defensive charms.”

  She looked at me, her expression lightening. “That’s why Dev here will come in handy. I’ll wager he can find out more in one night streetside than we could learn in weeks up here. We’ll have our work cut out for us sifting fact from embellishment, but I’d far rather worry about that than have no information at all.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” I said. “Assuming I can step outside your wards without Ruslan leaping on me.”

  Marten said, “That’s why it’s vital our audience with Sechaveh goes well. Those of you coming to Kelante Tower, listen to me…” He beckoned to Kessaravil, who approached with a fluid grace surprising in a man so muscle-bound. Stevan, Lena, and Talm lost some of their distant air, focusing with sober attention on Marten.

  “The meeting will be a delicate diplomatic situation,” Marten said. “As such, I must insist that no one but me speaks to Sechaveh unless I explicitly give you permission. I’ll enforce silence if I have to.” He gave me a particularly pointed look.

  I scowled. Yeah, I got the message. He’d shut me up with magic the minute I dared to open my streetsider mouth.

  “I must also ask that you trust my judgment and follow my lead, whatever Sechaveh may say.” This time his gaze swept across the mages of the Watch.

  “Of course, Captain.” Lena’s words were as slow as Stevan’s had been, but full of calm assurance. The others murmured assent.

  “Good,” Marten said. “I have a few Council matters to discuss with Halassian before we leave for the audience—Halassian, perhaps your lieutenants can
show my team their quarters, and where our supplies may be stowed?”

  Halassian waved a hand. “Jenoviann, Kessaravil, if you would?”

  Jenoviann had none of Kessaravil’s grace. She stalked along beside him as stiff as a bone puppet as they led us back to the sigil-marked room to retrieve our packs. Though her gaunt face remained impassive, I caught her darting repeated glances at Kiran, and I didn’t think she was admiring his looks.

  Packs in hand, we followed her down another short hallway to a set of interconnecting rooms furnished with simple but sturdy beds and a few chairs. From the scuff marks on the bare walls and the rumpled look of the rugs, I suspected the rooms had been hurriedly converted to bedrooms from storage space.

  Kiran and I dumped our packs in a room that held two narrow beds and a round window. The window was far smaller than the one in the embassy’s receiving room, but the view of magelit spires against the sawtoothed bulk of the Whitefires was equally magnificent.

  I peered out, careful not to touch the wards on the sill. Beyond was an eight-story drop to the nearest bridge. Highside towers always had enough carved friezes and depressions between blocks to make a climb possible, if tricky. But the window’s wards were powerful and well-placed. They were designed to prevent intruders from getting in, not leaving; if I could climb out without touching the frame, they wouldn’t fully trigger. They’d flare enough to warn Marten I’d crossed them, though, and once outside I wouldn’t be able to climb back in. Not that I had any intention of leaving the embassy’s wards on my own while Rulsan was salivating for any means he could use to get at Kiran. But if we gained the protection Marten hoped for from Sechaveh, I wanted to find Cara, preferably without any Alathian watchdogs in tow.

  The thought drew my gaze down to the dark, winding maze of streets far below. No magelights down there. Only the sparks of lanterns, and the ruddy glow of smelters’ fires. The outer districts would be more lively, as pack trains prepared to head out to the mines of the Whitefires’ lower slopes before the summer sun turned the Painted Valley into a furnace.

  Somewhere down streetside, Melly would be returning from a night spent looting highside spires with the rest of Red Dal’s crew of Tainters. Thinking of it, a fire grew in my blood. I was truly in Ninavel! What with all the worry over Ruslan and wardfire after our arrival, I hadn’t had time to consider what that meant. Melly within reach, and Cara here to help me…a crazy, heady confidence bubbled up inside. Hell with Ruslan—I’d outplayed him once before. I’d outwit him, Marten, every last mage in this city, whatever it took.

  Kiran joined me at the window. I ignored Stevan, who hovered like a sour-faced vulture a scant foot behind him, and asked, “How are you holding up?” I could see the answer in the white set of Kiran’s face, but it wouldn’t hurt for him to hear my concern.

  “It feels so strange to be back in the city. I keep thinking perhaps this is all a dream, and I’ll awake…somewhere else.”

  Not somewhere good, if the look in his eyes was anything to go by. I wished I could give him a fraction of the fierce confidence that filled me.

  “Sometimes before tackling a challenging climb, outriders get this sense like you can feel the touch of Khalmet’s good hand. No matter what the mountain might throw at you, you know you’ll stand on the summit and come home alive.”

  “You feel this now.” He was staring at me like he thought I’d gone mad.

  “I do,” I admitted. “Maybe it’s just seeing Ninavel again, when I feared I never would. But when I’ve felt this way before a climb, I’ve never failed. Like Kinslayer crag. Remember when we got the carcabon stones to peek Pello’s wards?”

  “You nearly died on Kinslayer.” Memory darkened his eyes; if anything, he looked more upset.

  True. I’d leapt to clear a sheer, holdless stretch of rock, and one hand had missed its grip. Thank Khalmet, I’d gotten a heel hooked on the ledge above before my other hand failed and sent me tumbling to splatter on sharp-edged talus. How my blood had sung afterward! I couldn’t stop a wistful sigh.

  “I didn’t die, and that’s the point,” I told Kiran. “Doesn’t matter how close you come if you walk away whole. Hell, it just makes for a better story to savor.”

  “Savor.” He passed a hand over his eyes. “Sometimes I don’t understand you at all.”

  “No?” I looked out at the sharp black outline of the Whitefires, each peak and notch so gloriously familiar. “Think about your magic being unbound tonight. Then tell me if that’s worth all you’re enduring now.” I knew what I’d feel, if I could have the Taint back again.

  He stilled. “It is,” he said softly. “But perhaps that frightens me most of all.”

  Chapter Seven

  (Dev)

  Sechaveh’s audience chamber looked a lot different than I expected. I’d assumed someone rich as him would want to show it off. Khalmet knew every inch of the highsider houses I’d sneaked into as a kid had been covered in jade statues, gem-studded mosaics, and exotic wood and bone carvings.

  But when Kiran and I filed into the chamber with Marten and his little crew, the walls and high dome of the ceiling showed nothing but creamy marble polished smooth as glass. Then again, Sechaveh didn’t need any fancy statues. The audience chamber sat in the very summit of Kelante Tower, and the view out the broad windows spaced around the room was breathtaking. To the west, city spires linked by a delicate lacework of bridges stood silhouetted against the Whitefires, whose jagged summits glowed crimson with dawn. Eastward across the sagebrush and alkali flats of the Painted Valley, shadow still softened the arid brown ridgelines of the lower, less rugged Bolthole Mountains.

  Sechaveh himself sat on the room’s north side in a hulking stone chair, his clothes all creams and tans except for a deep purple cloth tied loosely around his throat. At first glance you might mistake him for somebody’s kindly old uncle, with his long silver hair tied back in a simple tail and his brown face seamed with laugh lines. But the eyes glinting under his half-closed lids were as flat and yellow as those of a nightclaw lizard.

  On the floor before the chair, three concentric rings of obsidian marked with silver runes were set in the floor. A sea of flame roiled and heaved within the innermost ring, in colors shading from deepest violet through blue to a molten white. I’d have thought it some highside version of a firestone charm if not for the way Kiran checked when he saw it, his blue eyes going wide.

  “What is it?” I whispered to him, as Marten halted some ten paces from the ring.

  “The energies, so strong—I think the rings must form a…a type of window, onto the confluence…” Kiran fell silent as we came up behind Marten. The other Alathians ranged themselves behind us, Stevan near breathing down Kiran’s neck.

  Marten bowed deeply. “Lord Sechaveh, thank you for granting us audience. I am Captain Martennan of the Seventh Watch. You’ll see in my credentials that I am authorized by the Alathian Council to represent their interests with full diplomatic powers…” He skirted the obsidian rings to hand a set of papers embossed with the Council’s seal to Sechaveh. “The Council is most concerned over the recent magical disturbances originating in Ninavel. I offer you the expertise of myself and the other members of my team, to assist you in finding the source of these disturbances and preventing damage to your city.”

  Sechaveh flicked a desultory glance over the papers. His laugh lines creased, though his lizard’s eyes never changed. “Ah, yes. I had wondered how long it would take the Council to send someone begging at my door. Desperate to fix up your border wards, are you?”

  Marten didn’t let the hit show, only smiled and said, “No more than you are eager to prevent any disruption of Ninavel’s water supply. I saw the wardfire on the Aiyalen Spire last night. A spectacular sight, though perhaps a trifle worrying to the merchant houses.”

  Well, that was putting it mildly. The highsiders we’d passed on our way to the tower had been skittish as kicked cats, giving us wide berth accompanied by a host of wary, sidelo
ng glances. Those living in the districts near Aiyalen who remembered the casualties and destruction of the mage wars were likely packing up to hightail it out of the city.

  Sechaveh chuckled, a dry, crackling sound like pinewood burning. “Ninavel is not a city for the faint of heart, Captain. I assure you, these…disturbances, as you call them…will not affect the city’s trade.”

  “Then you have discovered their source, and know how to stop them?” Marten stepped forward, his shopkeeper’s face going earnest. “If so, by all means, turn me away. If not—consider, Lord Sechaveh: we share a common problem, and you know how motivated we are to solve it. Any information my team and I discover would be shared without reservation. As proof of the Council’s goodwill, they offer a ten percent reduction on import taxes for the Ninavel merchant houses of your choice for five years, if you will give my team your sanction and protection.”

  Clever. Sechaveh was so rich that more coin for his own vaults wouldn’t be much of an incentive, but he still played plenty of power games. A carrot to dangle in front of the greedy merchant houses vying for ascendancy in Ninavel had to be attractive.

  “An interesting offer.” Sechaveh surveyed us. His gaze passed over the Alathians quickly, but lingered a moment on me, and far longer on Kiran. Unease crept through me. If Pello had reported to Sechaveh the tale of our convoy trip, Sechaveh might suspect just how useful a bargaining token Kiran could be.

  Sechaveh straightened in his chair. “Shall I share some information with you now, Captain? The magical fluctuations that trouble your border wards are caused by brief-lived but explosive upheavals in the confluence of earth-power beneath this city.”

  Marten’s face didn’t change, but beside me, Kiran drew in a sharp breath. Yeah, explosive sure didn’t sound good to me.

  “Do you know the cause of these upheavals?” Marten asked.