“I’ll help,” I said. “Though I’ve one thing I’ll ask in return.”
Marten shifted like he meant to protest. I said, “Don’t worry, it’s nothing that’ll cost you in either coin or magic. Just tell me this: what the fuck happened with this Reshannis to make Stevan so set against Kiran? I’m getting a little tired of watching you all dance around the topic every time Stevan drags it up.”
Marten stood silent long enough I thought he wouldn’t answer. But in the end, he said, “Reshannis was…a friend of mine and Stevan’s, from our days at the Arcanum. She had the strongest talent of us—ah, how her soulfire burned!—but the very strength of her magic made it difficult for her to mesh minds properly with a larger group, as we are taught to cast. Her frustration over the problem drove her to seek out other magical methods in secret. First in hope she might find something to help her…but when she saw what feats she could perform alone with forbidden techniques, she began pursuing the knowledge for its own sake.”
He sighed. “Stevan caught her casting. When he confronted her, she was agonized, remorseful…she vowed that if the Council would only give her a second chance, she would never again break Alathia’s laws. Stevan believed her. He reported the infraction, as we must, but he enlisted my help to testify on her behalf. Together, we argued for her…and the Council agreed to a probationary period rather than immediate sentencing. She was forbidden from the archives, restricted in her duties, and Stevan was to supervise her and report any signs of illegal casting. He thought he had won such a victory…”
“She didn’t stop casting, I take it,” I said.
“No.” Marten’s voice was devoid of emotion. “Later, she was caught again, this time by one of Stevan’s fellow arcanists, a woman Stevan cared for deeply. Reshannis tried to remove Vinalyn’s memory of what she had seen—she claimed, later, she never meant harm—but mind magic is terribly dangerous, and the casting went wrong. In the days afterward, Vinalyn’s mind crumbled, her personality and intelligence falling to ruin, and our best healers couldn’t stop the deterioration. Stevan was devastated. And furious, even after—after we saw Reshannis executed.”
The cool dispassion of his words cracked at the end, revealing pain as strong as any I’d ever wanted to hear from him. I couldn’t help a vicious little twist of satisfaction, even as I wondered exactly how close a friend Reshannis had been.
“I can get why Stevan would hate Reshannis, or even himself,” I said. “Why’s he mad at you?”
Marten’s teeth gleamed white in a sharp, swift grimace. “Because on me, Reshannis’s casting worked.”
That was so far from anything I’d expected to hear that all I could do was boggle at him. “She…she fucked with your mind?”
Marten shrugged, deliberately casual. “Only a tiny casting. Apparently I’d seen far less than Vinalyn. Or so the arcanists said when they examined me. But oh, I was furious, just like Stevan…”
He shook his head and sighed. “Reshannis ran. I was the one to hunt her down. But when I brought her to face the Council’s justice, the things she said…they haunted me, long after my anger had died to ashes. I believe now that if she’d been allowed to explore other methods of magic openly rather than in secrecy and shame, she could have found a more innocent path. She could have ended as a powerful asset to Alathia instead of costing us not only Vinalyn but herself. Stevan…disagrees with me.”
Well, that certainly explained a lot about Stevan. Maybe even about Marten, though it hadn’t escaped me how he spoke of even this Reshannis as a tool for Alathia’s use. I shoved to my feet.
“You want me to start looking for Pello now?” The question came out with about as much enthusiasm as if Marten wanted me to crawl through a viper pit. For all he was right about time being short, I felt more than half dead already, my body an aching weight and my head full of sand.
Marten said in wry sympathy, “I think we can give you the chance for a few hours’ rest at the embassy. I intend to first try a linked harmonic casting using every mage at the embassy, to see if we can pierce Pello’s veiling. You can sleep while we cast.”
I said slowly, “You realize blood magic might find him where yours can’t.”
Marten sighed. “I know it. If we haven’t found Pello by tomorrow evening, I will ask Ruslan’s help. But asking him to cast is the same as asking him to kill. I prefer not to do it unless I have no other option.”
Marten’s talk of casting brought another jittery spike of fear for Melly. Suliyya grant Kiran kept his mouth shut! And I’d pray to Shaikar himself if it meant Kiran came through with Melly’s blood-mark. For all Marten’s talk, I suspected Stevan would be far too busy casting in search of the killer to come up with anything useful on Melly’s behalf. No, Kiran was my last hope, now Avakra-dan had failed.
* * *
(Kiran)
Kiran hurried across the shadowed expanse of Ruslan’s courtyard, past trellises laden with fat white moonflowers and night-blooming jasmine. The house wards glimmered scarlet, their tracery of fading fire a remnant of the confluence’s most recent upheaval. Kiran could only hope that the disturbance hadn’t drawn Ruslan and Lizaveta out of Ruslan’s workroom. If Ruslan had realized his absence…his breath came short, the miasma of unease and confusion in his head growing so thick he could barely think.
He touched the door, threaded his senses through the outer wards—and nearly collapsed in relief. High under the house’s domed roof, Ruslan’s primary workroom remained wholly encased within a sun-bright blaze of shielding magic, the barrier intact and uncrossed.
Kiran dampened the door wards and eased inside the house. The foyer was dark and silent. If he were truly lucky, perhaps Mikail’s exhaustion had kept him asleep during the confluence upheaval, and he, too, might remain unaware of Kiran’s clandestine excursion. Kiran shut the door, getting a last glimpse of star-dusted sky around Reytani’s spires. Far distant across the Painted Valley, heat lightning flickered in silent staccato over the Bolthole Mountains, from a dark bank of clouds that were another sign of the confluence’s growing instability.
Kiran’s mind felt as unsettled as the choppy, heaving roil of the confluence. All the way home, he’d struggled to make sense of his supposed journey to Alathia, to no avail. He kept circling back to the same question: why had Ruslan and Mikail not told him of it?
He restored the door wards and tiptoed through darkened halls to halt outside Mikail’s door. Silence within, and he could sense Mikail’s ikilhia, a subdued, banked glow consistent with slumber.
He trembled on the edge of bursting into Mikail’s room and demanding answers. You know I’d give my life for you, Mikail had said. Never before had Kiran doubted the depth of their bond as mage-brothers. But how could Mikail have concealed something so enormous in its impact?
Mikail hadn’t done it lightly. The memory of his distress at Kiran’s questions spawned a new thought, chilling in its implications. Dev had claimed the damage to Kiran’s mind was deliberate. What if his memories had indeed been torn from him—not by Ruslan, as Dev had insisted, but the Alathians? If they had infiltrated his mind so deeply, Ruslan might well fear Kiran still bore some lurking binding. That would explain his determination to prevent contact between Kiran and anyone in the Alathians’ employ. But again, why would Ruslan lie to Kiran about the nature of his injury? Did he and Mikail trust Kiran so little now?
Kiran rested his brow against Mikail’s doorframe. He couldn’t bear this. Mikail had made it plain earlier he wouldn’t—or couldn’t—give answers. But Kiran had to know.
He pushed away from Mikail’s door and hurried to Ruslan’s study. The wards passed him through as they always had; Kiran sparked a magelight and surveyed the ranks of bookshelves, the carved ironwood of Ruslan’s desk. The desktop was clean but for a neatly ordered stack of treatises. Ruslan never left his notes or spell diagrams out, saying he detested carelessness and clutter. At the end of a session of study, he filed everything away in the warded vault set in
to the marble of the study’s back wall.
The sigil-scribed vault door drew Kiran with irresistible force. If he could read Ruslan’s notes, see what spells he’d researched and what purchases he’d made in recent months, surely he could piece together more of the truth.
And if not…the vault was the most likely location for the child Melly’s contract.
Kiran laid a hand on the vault door. A labyrinth of fire printed itself across his inner sight. He could never slip through these wards undetected, not without long study of their pattern. But where Mikail’s greatest talent lay in pattern analysis, Kiran’s lay in the raw strength of his magic. He could destroy the ward. If he damaged the outer house wards as well, made it seem as if the confluence spike had overwhelmed them and leaked through to cause the destruction…
“What are you doing?”
Kiran yanked his hand from the vault and turned. Mikail stood in the doorway. His sandy hair was disordered from sleep, his only garment a creased, rumpled pair of black silken trousers. But his gray eyes were all too sharp and awake.
Kiran’s fevered determination abruptly cooled. He groped for the wall, his legs unsteady. Perhaps Ruslan and Mikail were right not to trust him. How could he be certain his actions were all his own and not influenced by some remnant of a binding?
He couldn’t bring himself to speak to Mikail of his fears and admit he’d broken his promise. “I was…checking the wards. Another confluence upheaval happened a short time ago—did you feel it? I was afraid spillover from the outer wards might have weakened others in the house.”
“You,” said Mikail flatly, “are a terrible liar. I felt you come back in the house wards just now. Where did you go, Kiran?”
“You were pretending to sleep?” Kiran should have remembered that Mikail’s skill with deception far outstripped his. He stared at the flat planes of his mage-brother’s face, so difficult to read, fearing guilt blazed from his own features.
“The confluence spike woke me,” Mikail said. “I found you gone. I cast to seek you and found you climbing the Cloudfall Stair. So don’t tell me you were merely taking a stroll in the garden, or checking the house wards.”
Mikail must have seen Kiran was returning to the house, and waited to see what Kiran would do once back inside. Kiran shut his eyes, cursing himself for an idiot. “You didn’t tell Ruslan?”
“Have you gone mad?” Mikail snapped. “I don’t wish either of us punished. But if you don’t give me the truth, I will summon him.”
“No! I…I’ll tell you.” Kiran braced his back against the wall, fearing otherwise his legs might give way. He desperately wanted to tell Mikail everything, to pour forth the entire terrible cloud of fear and anger and confusion that fogged his thoughts. Yet if Mikail should tell Ruslan, and the nathahlen child suffered because of it—his heart cried out against the idea.
Perhaps he could take a middle course. Tell Mikail as much truth as he dared, yet not all.
“I know I promised you I’d leave the past alone. But I couldn’t sleep, and I couldn’t stop worrying over this…difficulty I have, with hurting nathahlen. I went out, thinking if I walked among them, I might find some clarity. But—in the lower city, there was a nathahlen man, a criminal—he recognized me, Mikail! I couldn’t let it go. I searched his mind, saw his memories…”
Mikail was looking more horrified by the moment. Despite himself, Kiran’s voice rose. “He arranged passage for me into Alathia on Ruslan’s orders, and it was the Alathians’ guide, Dev, he hired to take me across the border. I went, and Dev and I were captured by the Council—I don’t know how I got free, but…how could you keep this from me? You and Ruslan…I thought us closer than family. What did I do, for you to distrust me so much?”
“Kiran…” Mikail’s eyes were bright with anguish. He came forward to grip Kiran’s arms. “Oh, my brother. We love you, never doubt it.”
“Prove it, then! I’ve given you truth. If you love me as you say, give me the same.” Kiran held Mikail’s gaze. “My memories…they weren’t lost in an accidental backlash, were they?”
Mikail shut his eyes. “No.”
The answer staggered him. Kiran clutched at Mikail’s shoulders. “What happened, Mikail? You must tell me. This will drive me mad, otherwise.”
Mikail was silent, his breathing uneven. At last he spoke in a ragged whisper. “Ruslan had an enemy in Alathia, a rival he had long hoped to kill. He saw a chance to draw his enemy out of hiding, using you as the bait. You agreed, though Ruslan could not tell you his entire plan, lest his enemy be warned of it. You went to Alathia, and played your part perfectly—Ruslan’s enemy was destroyed, and he was well pleased. But afterward—the guide, Dev, betrayed you and gave you over into Alathian hands. Ruslan was desperate to get you back. We all were! Ruslan thought he would have to break their cursed border wards to do it—but then came this problem with the confluence. Ruslan bargained with the Alathians: they would return you, and he would let them join our investigation.”
Mikail’s tale sounded plausible, if disturbing, and yet… “If it was the Alathians who took my memories—why did you not tell me?”
“Because it wasn’t the Alathians.” Mikail’s voice cracked. “Oh gods, Kiran, it was us.”
“What?” Dev had been right? Kiran couldn’t grasp it—there must be some mistake, some misunderstanding. “Why?”
“It was the only way to save you.” Mikail spoke with desperate, impassioned intensity. “What the Alathians did to you…they bound your magic, corrupted your mind, forced you to become their creature, their willing tool. Their spellwork went so deep Ruslan could not remove it without damage. He did his best to spare you, but…” Mikail bowed his head. “I channeled for him, and I still have nightmares of you screaming…”
He choked and went on, his voice thick. “Afterward, Ruslan couldn’t bear to tell you he’d caused you such harm, and—and neither could I. He also feared if you knew how terribly the Alathians had used you, your desire for revenge would blind you to all else. It’s hard enough for me to work with them, knowing how they hurt you.” Mikail raised his head. Tears stood in his eyes, something Kiran hadn’t seen since his earliest childhood. “I’m so sorry, Kiran. But you must believe me—Ruslan had no other way to restore you to yourself.”
Kiran slumped to sit against the wall. He felt battered, his ikilhia seared and raw as if from a magefire strike. If the Alathians had indeed altered his mind so deeply, his lingering aversion to blood magic made a horrible kind of sense. As did the depth of his nervousness around Captain Martennan. But if Dev had betrayed him to the Alathians, why did Kiran feel so easy in his presence?
“You’re certain it was Dev who betrayed me?” Kiran asked. “Martennan and the others, I feel wary of…but not him.”
“Yes,” Mikail said fiercely. “Trust me, Kiran, he’s no friend to you. He seeks only his own profit.”
That, and the child Melly’s safety—assuming that wasn’t a lie. If Dev had betrayed him as Mikail insisted, no wonder Dev hadn’t wanted Kiran to see his memories. Cold fury trickled in, slowly at first, then ever faster. Power rose with the fury, roiling within Kiran until he feared his barriers might fail under the pressure. He jerked to his feet.
“I do want revenge.” Despite his attempt at control, the air around him sizzled and sparked, the wards flaring in answer.
“On the Alathians, or on Ruslan and me as well?” Mikail’s eyes were anxious.
In truth, Kiran’s fury wasn’t only for Dev and the Alathians. A helpless, betrayed anger throbbed in him at the thought of Ruslan, a child’s cry of How could you let this happen to me? Knowing the emotion was childish didn’t reduce its strength. But Mikail…
“I’m not angry with you,” Kiran said, and it was almost true. “Sending me to Alathia was Ruslan’s choice, not yours.”
Mikail reached for Kiran’s hands. Kiran allowed the contact, let Mikail siphon away the wild power seething within until his ikilhia reached a tenuous balanc
e.
Mikail said, “If you’re angry with Ruslan, little brother, I understand it. But please…don’t show that anger. Not until we’ve found and killed this enemy who seeks to destroy us. If you reveal that you know the truth, Ruslan will be deeply upset and angry in turn with me, just when he needs to hunt undistracted.”
The last thing Kiran wanted was for Mikail to suffer Ruslan’s anger, and their enemy could not be allowed to succeed. “That…will be difficult. You know I’m no good at hiding things.”
Mikail released a brief, sharp laugh. “Oh, you can do it when you’ve a mind to.” He paused, and said more softly, “I hope you find your anger with him fades when you’ve had time to consider. He loves you, Kiran. You don’t know how terribly he regrets your suffering.”
“Regret never stops him from hurting us,” Kiran muttered. Yet it was true that the clean heat of his fury was far preferable to the morass of confusion it had replaced. At least now he knew the truth. He no longer needed to agonize over the choice between defying Ruslan to steal the child’s contract and remaining in ignorance. He didn’t even need to struggle with his dismay over the child’s possible fate; he would avoid Dev, and Ruslan would have no reason to hurt her. Besides, now he understood his reluctance over hurting nathahlen was some remnant of a malign binding, he had the will to fight it. He would cast at Ruslan’s side no matter how sick it made him and prove to the Alathians they had not crippled him.
“I still have questions,” he said to Mikail. “Who was this enemy of Ruslan’s, and what was my part in Ruslan’s plan?”
Kiran listened as Mikail told him of Simon Levanian’s exile from Ninavel, and how Ruslan had asked Kiran to pretend to flee to Alathia, so Simon might think to use him against Ruslan, and in doing so, provide the chance for Kiran to strike him down. It all sounded so improbable, like something out of the most fanciful of adventure tales. Yet the memories he’d taken from the nathahlen bore silent witness that Mikail spoke truth. And the gaping voids in his own memories proved that in real life, unlike tales, adventures came at a cost.
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