The Tainted City

by Courtney Schafer

  I shut my eyes. “Jylla. You’re clever, yeah. But right now, what I need most is someone who won’t stab me in the back the moment it’s turned. That’s not you.”

  “What if I said I regretted it?” The teasing vanished from her voice, leaving it rough. “You were right, what you said about the Taint. I thought maybe Naidar’s magic could make me forget the dead spot inside, the way the mountains do for you. Oh gods, Dev, you don’t know how jealous I was of you for that! But it didn’t. When I realized it…every moment since, I’ve wished I’d chosen a different path.”

  I’d swear the pain lacing her words was unfeigned. But then, every mark Jylla had ever fooled would swear the same. My laugh came out as jagged as splintered ice. “Not enough to actually take one. Not enough to return the money you stole, or even apologize for it. Words don’t mean shit where there isn’t trust, Jylla. And there’ll never be trust between us again.”

  Her mouth twisted. “Maybe not. But you were the one who taught me nothing’s impossible.” She stood and smoothed her hands down the gauzy layers of her dress. “If this game of yours turns sour on you…my offer will stand. Help, free and clear…well, maybe not completely free.” As she slid past, she trailed a hand across my groin, too quick for me to slap her fingers away.

  I slammed the door shut the instant she was outside it, not caring if the Alathians heard. I cursed my traitorous body for responding to her touch, and fought to blot out the memories of her golden curves and cunning tongue with those of Cara’s steadfast support and honest passion until sleep claimed me at last.

  * * *

  (Kiran)

  Kiran floated in red-tinged darkness, dimly aware of the sound of voices.

  “You know I do not tolerate defiance.” One voice was deep and male, harsh with heat like the fierce winds of late summer.

  “As is proper, my brother. Only think—will not patience serve your purpose better than acting in haste?” The second voice was female, dark yet cajoling, as smooth as blended acacia honey.

  “I have been patient,” the first voice insisted.

  “Then be patient for yet a little longer. Think of a thoroughbred colt compared to a drayhorse. The drayhorse responds well enough to the lash, and no further care is needed because he is easily replaced. But a racehorse must be treated with delicacy, lest he be ruined. For such a prized and sensitive animal, far better to lead him down the path with sugared fruit than drive him with a whip.”

  After a little silence, the deep voice said, “What sugared fruit would you suggest?”

  “The kind that sings in the blood of all the akheli.” The honeyed voice was now streaked with teasing laughter.

  “You were always the temptress,” said the deep voice, harshness fading into fond warmth. “Very well. We will see if sugar can dissolve stubbornness.”

  The honeyed voice turned serious. “Best if we ensure the nathahlen cannot whisper more poison.”

  “I’ve already taken steps to that end.” The dark promise in the words stripped away some of Kiran’s dreamy disconnection. He struggled to surface from the void.

  “Shhh—he stirs…” Red warmth enveloped him, drawing him deeper into darkness, dissolving both disquiet and memory.

  When he woke at last, the rich red-gold light of sunset warmed the warded stone of his bedroom walls. Kiran rubbed at his eyes, confused. Why was he asleep so late in the day?

  Memory jolted him upright: the attack, his injuries. He ripped the sheet away from his stomach. His skin was unbroken, and his muscles moved easily, without even a twinge of pain. The only ache within was from simple hunger.

  Kiran ran his hand over the healed skin of his side. Remembered agony shortened his breath. The desperate struggle to hold his barriers, even as Ruslan demanded he drop them—he cringed and glanced around, a little wildly. The bedroom was empty, his master nowhere in sight. Kiran sighed, unable to feel much relief. Punishment would come, of that he was certain.

  Fear whispered at him to hide, to run. Yet Kiran had learned long ago that attempts at evasion only brought worse punishment. Better to accept and endure the consequences for his disobedience, however painful. Ruslan’s hand was heavy, but he’d never tasked Kiran with more than he could bear.

  So long as punishment wasn’t immediately forthcoming, he might as well find something to eat. His stomach was a growling void. He hadn’t eaten since the morning, assuming this was even the same day. He got up and pulled on the black trousers and sigil-marked shirt that someone, likely one of the silent house servants, had left folded on his writing desk.

  Stepping outside his door required a few steadying breaths; he half-expected Ruslan to descend on him like some vengeful god of legend. But the corridor outside was as empty as his room, the sky beyond the unshuttered skylights a soft, fading rose. Kiran padded down the hall and ducked into the sunroom, relieved to see that a tray containing dates, spiced flatbread, and soft cheese remained on the lacquered table set before windows shaded by vine-covered trellises. Rather than eating a heavy meal before resting in the noonday heat as was usual in Ninavel, Ruslan preferred to eat more frequent, smaller meals whenever the mood struck him as he worked. But since he insisted on always having a formal evening meal, the servants often cleared the sunroom’s table by afternoon’s end.

  “There you are.” Mikail uncurled from a pile of cushions on a long divan, a book in his hands. “I thought you’d never wake up.”

  Kiran made a show of wrapping dates and cheese in a slice of flatbread, remembering the spell diagram Dev had shown him, and his own startled conviction that Dev was no stranger to either him or Mikail. He was sorely tempted to demand answers from Mikail, particularly on the point of how Dev had come into possession of a spell diagram drawn in Kiran’s hand. But if by chance Ruslan didn’t know of Kiran’s conversation with Dev before the attacks, Kiran certainly didn’t want to bring it up anywhere Ruslan might overhear.

  “How long was I asleep?” he asked, settling on the divan beside Mikail with flatbread in hand.

  “For half the day,” Mikail said. “I was worried something was wrong, but Ruslan said not. He says you’re still not wholly recovered from your accident, so your body and ikilhia take longer to come back into balance after a healing.”

  The mention of Ruslan soured his mouthful of date-studded cheese. “How angry is he?”

  “Angry enough.” Mikail shut his book with a thump. “What were you thinking? Why didn’t you drop your barriers and let your body heal itself?”

  Kiran swallowed a final lump of bread with some difficulty and picked at the gilded edge of a cushion. How could he explain to Mikail what he hardly understood himself?

  “It didn’t seem right,” he finally said.

  “Why not?” Mikail’s voice was tight with frustration. “You were hurt and you needed to heal. When that happens, you take whatever power you need; it’s that simple. Or do you like pain?”

  “Of course not,” Kiran said, stung. “But…that courtesan had done nothing wrong. She didn’t deserve to die.”

  “Who said anything about deserving it? When you eat meat, does that mean the animal deserved to die? No! It means you were hungry, and you took what you needed to survive. There’s no difference,” Mikail insisted.

  “It’s not the same,” Kiran muttered, thinking of the fear haunting the courtesan’s painted face, and Dev’s desperate anger.

  Mikail shook his head, grimly. “Ruslan’s not going to accept that.”

  Kiran dropped his head into his hands. “I know.” He shivered as anticipatory pain ghosted along his nerves. “What can I say to him? I didn’t want to disobey him. But I couldn’t do it, not with her standing right there.”

  Mikail huffed out an exasperated breath. “You’ve got to get over this bizarre squeamishness of yours. You’re akheli, Kiran, not some lesser mage—and you’re certainly not nathahlen. Trying to pretend otherwise will only bring you pain, and not just from Ruslan.”

  Kiran stared a
t the stone beneath his feet. What was wrong with him? Why couldn’t he treat killing as Mikail did, with dispassionate reserve? “I think Ruslan will bring me pain enough.”

  Mikail rubbed gently at Kiran’s hunched shoulders. “Relax, little brother. Once again, you’re luckier than you have any right to be. The Alathians were so anxious to spare the woman that they let you destroy some special charm of theirs, which pleased Ruslan greatly. That will temper his anger.”

  Temper it, perhaps, but not erase it entirely. Kiran’s muscles stayed knotted despite Mikail’s coaxing touch. “What of the spell we gathered materials for? Has Ruslan cast already?”

  “Not yet. I helped him lay channels all afternoon, until he sent me out for rest and food. I’m to channel for him tonight.” Mikail said it with grave pride. “The spell—oh, you should see it, Kiran! So complex, and yet so elegant; I could have studied the problem for years and never designed a solution so brilliant.”

  A sigh of wistful envy escaped Kiran. “Perhaps if Ruslan’s not too angry, he’ll allow me to at least view the pattern. I’ll certainly be curious to know if the spell succeeds in reading our enemy’s thoughts.” He straightened and rolled his shoulders, thinking back to the dark figure leaning over Mikail. “Did you see him when he attacked you? I never saw his face.”

  Mikail shrugged. “I didn’t see a cursed thing. I was sorting through charms deciding on the best one to take, and then the confluence spiked. I was so busy disengaging from the charms and reinforcing my barriers that the mage caught me totally by surprise. He struck, and then I woke up on the floor with my shirt slashed to ribbons, the room in ruins, and you acting like a complete idiot.” He cuffed Kiran’s shoulder before he could dodge away. “At least before you lost your head you cast a decent strike. Ruslan says he thinks you hurt our enemy, even if you didn’t kill him.”

  “The first time I struck, the mage yelled, like he was in pain. The second time—he vanished, completely as if by translocation spell, before my strike reached him.” Kiran struggled to remember every detail. It had all happened so fast. “Translocation is so difficult to cast, and he certainly wasn’t using channels. I don’t see how he managed it.”

  “Still, I hope you gave him a nice deep magefire burn to remember us by.” A fierce grin spread on Mikail’s face. “Don’t you see? Even if he healed himself afterward, this means he’s not immune to our magic. If we make the right preparations, we can destroy him.” His almond eyes lit with the same cruel, cold light that Kiran had seen many times in Ruslan’s.

  Newly uncomfortable, Kiran looked aside. “Why did he come to the workroom in the first place? The mage who owned it was already dead.”

  “For us, of course,” Mikail said, in a tone that said he thought Kiran was being slow. “He must know that we’re hunting him. He’s trying to kill us before we can stop him.”

  “Stop him doing what? What does he want?”

  Mikail shrugged again. “What does any mage want? Power.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Kiran protested. “The confluence already provides immense power to us all, for anyone with the talent to use it.”

  Ruslan strode into the sunroom. Kiran froze, his scant meal congealing in his stomach, but Ruslan only leaned a hip against the table and plucked a date from a jade bowl. His chestnut hair was straggling free of its tail, his sleeves rolled up to the elbows like a laborer’s, but his face showed no hint of strain from his long afternoon’s work laying channels.

  “Some men confuse magical power with the more mundane sort,” Ruslan said, as mildly as if Kiran had never disobeyed him. “Lesser mages are particularly prone to this error. When they reach the limits of their talent, they often turn to the accumulation of wealth, or seek to reign over nathahlen, as if that makes up for their lack.” He tossed the date once in his hand before extracting the seed and popping the rest into his mouth.

  “You mean he wants to…to rule the city? Instead of Lord Sechaveh?” Kiran couldn’t fathom why a mage would want to concern himself with taxes, and guardsmen, and the operations of the mines. None of that had anything to do with magic. Ruslan had often said that what he liked best about living in Ninavel was the opportunity for uninterrupted study, and Kiran had to agree.

  Ruslan lifted one shoulder. “It’s possible. His actions thus far certainly seem designed to disrupt Lord Sechaveh’s rule here. But his ultimate motive is still in question.”

  He paced behind the divan. Strong hands settled on Kiran’s shoulders. “I am pleased to see you well, Kiran…but your conduct earlier this day did not please me.”

  For all Kiran had known this was coming, it didn’t lessen the abrupt renewal of fear. “Forgive me, Ruslan,” he said, through a throat gone tight with hopeless dread.

  Ruslan’s fingers dug painfully into Kiran’s collarbones. Kiran flinched, caught in a welter of conflicting memories: those fingers clawing agony into his gut, and the very same hands gliding over his hips as he writhed in pleasure. Love and cruelty, neither a sham—but oh, how he wished he could find the path to earn only the former.

  Ruslan asked, “Do you regret this gift I have given you? Do you wish to die as easily as a nathahlen might, your ikilhia snuffed out, your flesh decaying and devoured?”

  Darkness descended over Kiran. He no longer sat on the couch beside Mikail. Instead, he lay naked on cold stone, his limbs dead weights. Out of the blackness around him came a soft, horrible chittering, as of a thousand insects…

  Carrion beetles, the dead-eaters. As a child he’d heard Lizaveta speak of this, the death rites of her and Ruslan’s ancient birthplace—he’d had screaming nightmares for days afterward. He struggled to move, but his body was mere meat, unresponsive to his commands. His magic—he couldn’t feel it, his inner senses as dead as his limbs—

  It wasn’t real. It wasn’t real. Yet the air was cool and dank on his skin, the stone solid beneath his body, the scent of decay strong in his nostrils. He struggled to move, his body unresponsive, his magic gone as if it had never been. Panic rose, drowning reason.

  The chittering grew louder, a scuttling tide sweeping toward him in the dark. Squirming, crawling things spread over his feet, followed by needling pain, countless voracious, tiny mouths gnawing at his flesh. The tide swept higher, up his legs to his genitals, pain swallowing him in a red, terrible wave, his voiceless shrieks unheard. Beetles in his mouth now, eating his tongue, his eyes, please, Ruslan, no more, please—!

  Pain and beetles vanished. Light seared Kiran’s eyes. Ruslan’s hands still gripped his shoulders, the couch soft and yielding beneath his back and legs. Kiran tried to claw at his skin, still feeling the phantom touch of skittering legs, but he was shaking so hard he succeeded only in weak, twitching motions. A keening whine assaulted his ears; he realized it was coming from his own throat.

  “Hush, akhelysh.” Ruslan caught his hands to still them. “Lizaveta tells me I should be lenient with you, that your recent trauma has left you unsettled in mind as well as body. This once I will listen, and refrain from more than this brief taste of correction.”

  Kiran slumped, his relief so huge he couldn’t summon speech. The next time he saw Lizaveta, he would prostrate himself before her in gratitude. Awful as the carrion beetle vision had been, it was a mere love-tap compared to what he might have endured for his disobedience.

  Ruslan continued. “But hear this, Kiran: if you care so much for lives beside your own, then think on your mage-brother, not worthless nathahlen. Should you defy me again, Mikail will share your punishment, magnified ten-fold.”

  A brief spike of agony pierced Kiran, like a dagger plunged into his skull and as swiftly withdrawn. He gasped and stiffened; but beside him, Mikail doubled over with a hoarse, anguished cry.

  “Ruslan, no!” Kiran twisted to catch at Ruslan’s hand in supplication. “I was at fault, not him—he’s done nothing to earn your anger—”

  “Then remember that, next time you’re tempted to disobey.” Ruslan freed his hand a
nd reached to stroke Mikail’s still-shuddering back. “Forgive me, akhelysh,” he murmured, in a lover’s tender tones. “Your mage-brother needs the lesson: his refusal to accept his own nature not only harms himself, but all of us who love him.”

  Mikail pushed himself upright and rubbed at his temples with hands that shook. “I’ll see he learns it.”

  Kiran gave him a stricken, apologetic look, but the tight set of his face didn’t change.

  “Good.” Ruslan patted Mikail’s shoulder. “Rest a while longer. We’ll cast at midnight. Kiran…” He turned, his expression growing stern once more. “Go to the training workroom and begin a study of the Akalic sages’ hundred spells of wounding—I’ve left the relevant treatise on your writing desk. Tomorrow you will cast the first three of them, and you have only four hours to study before midnight.”

  Implications crowded Kiran’s mind. Casting spells of wounding…he had a terrible suspicion Ruslan meant him to cast on nathahlen for practice—and if he refused, Mikail would be the one to suffer. And then there was Ruslan’s mention of midnight…

  “Do you intend me to watch while you cast tonight?” Beneath his unease, curiosity over the spell still glimmered. But if Ruslan meant to cast a fully channeled spell, he wouldn’t be using zhivnoi crystals to harness the power of the confluence. A nathahlen would die tonight. A condemned criminal, most likely, sold off by merchant house guardsmen to save the effort of execution by noose or sword. Someone who deserved death, unlike the courtesan…but Kiran felt cold thinking of it, just the same.

  Ruslan smiled at him. “Oh, more than watch, akhelysh.”

  “But…if Mikail is channeling and you’re casting, then what…?”

  “You’ll see,” Ruslan said. “Now go.”