The Tainted City

by Courtney Schafer

  “Scars can fade,” I said tightly. “I’m not like you, Jylla. Not anymore. Sethan taught me better.”

  Jylla laughed. “Oh, Dev. You always did like to fool yourself. When your illusion crumbles…remember, I warned you.” She sauntered off down the hallway.

  I stared after her, jaw clenched. She was wrong. I was nothing like her. I stalked back into the room to find Cara watching me with narrowed eyes, her arms folded.

  “Jylla just wanted to make you angry,” I said. “She doesn’t want you agreeing to shadow her, in case she decides to try some scheme against us.”

  Cara’s gimlet-eyed gaze didn’t soften. “Dev, if you let her get her claws into you again, I’ll kick your ass so hard you’ll never sit a saddle.”

  She looked ready to start right now. I lifted my hands. “Don’t worry, I know she’s poison. She’s also brilliant at shadow work. She can sniff out any traitors here and figure out how to prove their guilt to Marten. But I don’t trust her not to lie or make up evidence. That’s why I’m asking you: stick close to her, and check over anything she claims to find. You’re smart, and you’ve a good eye for lies. More importantly…” I held her gaze, hoping she’d hear the depth of apology in my next words. “I trust you. Completely.”

  “Do you?” Cara shook her head. “You think I haven’t noticed how whenever you want something, you draw me close—and the minute you think you can do without my help, you push me away?”

  I winced, hearing the echo of Jylla’s warning. “Sometimes…sometimes partnership isn’t easy for me. But I mean it, Cara…there’s no one I trust more than you.”

  “That’s not saying much,” she said with a snort. I took a breath, hunting for words, but she said, “Listen. I’ll play watchdog over Jylla, even though I say we’d be safer chucking her out the window. But, Dev…I know you have reason for this dance of yours. Yet there are things I’ll tolerate in a friend that I won’t in someone who’s more. Assuming you want more.”

  “I do,” I said, my throat suddenly tight. “Gods, Cara, you’ve no idea how much.”

  Her mouth quirked. “I think I’ve some idea.” Her gaze traveled my body, slow as a caress, and I found myself short of breath. She took a slow step closer. Desire spiked through me like summer lightning. If she wanted me, I’d let myself burn—

  The distant singing stopped. A mutter of voices sounded in the hall, and Cara halted. The vivid frustration on her face matched mine. But she gave a rueful chuckle and said, “Wonder if their spell worked?”

  I tried to steady my breathing. Damn the Alathians! You’d think mages would have a better sense of timing. “They don’t exactly sound excited.” I cracked the door open, quiet as I could. Cara eased up behind me to listen at my shoulder.

  The voices came clearer: Talm and Marten.

  “…even if we find Pello, who’s to say he can lead us to the killer?” Talm sounded as weary as I’d felt last night. “Marten, if the worst should come, and we can’t stop the confluence’s destruction…I know you intend to send Ambassador Halassian to safety. Won’t you consider going with her?”

  Right. The Alathians weren’t bound to the confluence like Marten had said Ninavel mages were. They could escape death if they ran before it burned. I felt a twinge of sympathy for Talm. If it were Cara in Marten’s place, I’d be down on my knees begging her to leave.

  “How can you think I would flee?” Marten sounded half-chiding, half-sorrowful. “My duty is here. So long as there is an instant left to prevent this disaster, I will use it.”

  Talm sighed. “I know. You wouldn’t hold my admiration so deeply if you said otherwise. Yet, Marten…”

  I peered through the crack, saw Talm bow his head, his hands white-knuckled on his belt. He said in a low, ragged voice, “My life and death are the Council’s to spend, and I have no regret for it. But when I think of your soulfire extinguished, the yoke is hard to bear.”

  Tenderness blazed from Marten’s face. He cupped Talm’s neck, drew him close. “It’s no easier for me, knowing the risk to you. Have faith in me a little longer. We can still stop this, and no one need die.”

  Talm didn’t reply, though one hand rose to clutch at Marten’s shoulder. Marten bent his head to Talm’s and said something too soft for me to hear. I eased the door shut, unable to bear the stark intimacy of their pose any longer.

  Cara said quietly, “I don’t think it’s Talm. He loves Marten, no question.”

  “Love doesn’t always mean loyalty. Mikail thinks he loves Kiran, yet it didn’t stop him from telling Ruslan about Alisa.” Yet I knew I was grasping at thin holds. The simple truth was that I’d rather believe the traitor was anyone other than Lena. I didn’t want to admit I could’ve made another error so terrible in giving my trust.

  Footsteps approached in the hallway. A knock came on the door, and Marten poked his head in. His cheerful mask was firmly back in place. “Good to see you’re awake, Dev. If you’d join me for a moment?”

  Cara said, “Go on. I’ll talk to Jylla.”

  She said it nice and bland, and Marten didn’t blink. I nodded to her and followed Marten out. Talm was nowhere in sight. Neither was Lena, thank Khalmet.

  “Your spell failed?” I asked Marten.

  “We couldn’t pierce the veiling entirely, no. But while we couldn’t find Pello directly, we believe we’ve identified a location Pello has frequented often in recent days. A room, sealed by wards, in Julisi district. I’d like you to come with us; you know Pello, as we do not. If he isn’t in that room now, perhaps something there might give you insight into where he is or what he’s doing.”

  “You’re coming on this little jaunt?”

  He nodded. “Talm, Lena, and I will go. Stevan will remain here to work with Ambassador Halassian and her people on Melly’s situation, among other tasks.”

  Good. If either Lena or Talm wanted me dead, I didn’t think they’d try anything right under Marten’s nose; and the same went for Stevan, with Halassian. “What about my binding?”

  “Stevan and I don’t believe the spell allows for more than a simple link of your life to the confluence. As such, you’re in no more danger than any mage in this city. Stevan might be able to break the binding if he studies it further—but I told him you’d see Melly as the higher priority.”

  “You’re right about that.” Though I thought it more probable that Marten had told Stevan, Leave him bound. He’ll work all the harder for us if he’s desperate not to die.

  We’d reached the receiving room. I headed straight for the tray of spice bread and rockmelon on the side table. Damn, I was hungry. “Well, nothing like a walk in the heat to…” I stopped, spice bread forgotten, as I glimpsed the sky outside the unshuttered window.

  The jagged peaks of the Whitefires were dim and gray beneath a great boil of cloud black as Shaikar’s heart. Lightning stabbed distant summits, too far away to hear thunder. That’d soon change, as the storm moved eastward into the Painted Valley.

  Summer thunderstorms were common enough in the Whitefires, and the larger ones occasinally made it out of the mountains to give the city a fireworks show, albeit without any rain. But they never came so early in the day—except in the tales of the mage war.

  “If that storm is because of the killer messing with the confluence, I’m guessing that’s not a good sign,” I said to Marten.

  He was staring out the window, his jaw tight. “Not a good sign, no.” He turned, calling for Lena and Talm. I eyed the storm again and tried to ignore the conviction that Jylla had the right of it: the city would fall, and I’d die with it.

  * * *

  “This is it,” Marten said, pointing to a battered door with a few tarnished ward plaques nailed around the handle. Talm and Lena crowded forward to peer at the wards. All three Alathians were dressed in rough streeside-style clothes, Lena’s dark hair swinging in a single thick plait instead of her usual complicated crown of braids.

  I couldn’t help staring at her freckled face, so i
ntent and serious. Before today, I’d have sworn she was as fiercely loyal to Marten as one of Noshet’s legendary spell-sealed guardians. Was she so good an actress? And if she was, how would I prove it to Marten?

  “Shouldn’t take much to break those wards,” I said. The door didn’t look any different than the rest we’d passed on the narrow, chipped stair that wound up the outer wall of the smelters’ warren. Most of those living here worked as rakemen and haulers, and barely had enough coin to buy their families’ water rations. At this hour of the day, the warren was still and silent. The day workers were on shift in the smelting houses, everyone else sleeping away the heat. We’d passed only starveling-thin kids huddled over rat traps and a few wizened oldsters whose skin was shiny with burn scars from years tending charm-fueled furnaces.

  Talm chuckled. “Think again.” He swept his hand over the door. The surface shimmered and ward lines appeared, as clean and powerful as anything I’d seen highside.

  “Clever,” I said. “Pello must keep this as one of his boltholes. Think he’s inside?”

  Marten glanced at Lena. “You’re the best of us at threading through veiling spells.”

  She splayed a ringed hand on the door. “I sense nothing within, and this is the room’s only entrance.”

  Yeah, and maybe she’d long since warned Pello we were coming. Marten rubbed his hands together. “Let’s break these wards, then.”

  They started chanting. I fingered my belt. I’d cajoled Marten into stopping past a highside charm dealer and paying for a replacement boneshatter charm. The charm wasn’t as strong as the one I’d had from Avakra-dan, but it’d still serve as protection against an untalented man like Pello.

  A few minutes of chanting later, I followed the Alathians through the door. The room beyond was scarcely larger than one of the embassy’s closets. A pallet with a single cotton blanket lay against one wall. A shrike whistle sat on a crooked shelf, along with a handful of the cunningly knotted rawhide-and-feather tokens that streetside performers tossed into appreciative crowds. At the back of the room was a tri-part shrine with a host of little jasper and malachite figurines meant to represent various southern deities. Dried karva flowers dusted with cinnamon lined the lacquered shelves of the shrine; an old Varkevian custom, to repel demons.

  Marten, Talm and Lena homed straight in on the shrine. They moved it aside to reveal a vault set into the stone of the wall, warded tight as could be. As they settled in for another session of chanting, I said, “I’m gonna go peek outside, see if any of the kids around have noticed anything useful.”

  Marten flapped a hand at me without taking his eyes from the vault. “Don’t go far.”

  “I’ll stay in shouting distance.” I left the door open wide. The stair was empty of people, kids or otherwise. But two doors onward, the stair turned left to end at the crumbling line of the warren’s roof. I could run take a quick look, see if anyone was up there gaping at the approaching storm.

  It was coming on fast. With noon not more than an hour off, the sun should be blazing straight down into the depths of the warren. Instead, the strip of sky above was hazed orange with windblown sand, the sun a pallid disc threatened by spreading fingers of cloud. Distant mutters of thunder warned of the show to come.

  I scrambled up the stair—and froze, as a familiar sharp-chinned coppery face peeked over the roof’s edge. Pello’s dark eyes locked with mine and widened.

  “Marten! He’s here!” I shouted, and vaulted up the remaining stairs.

  Pello was already running for the roof’s far side. He didn’t stop at the edge. He jumped off with all the confidence of a Tainter who knows he can fly.

  My heart in my throat, I skidded to a stop at the edge and peered over. Ten stories below, Pello slid off the end of a hemp line anchored to a bar jutting out a handspan below the roof’s edge. I reached for the line, only to jerk my hand back as wards flared to life on the bar. Damn him, he must’ve set this as an escape route long before.

  Pello dodged a gang of gaping ore-haulers and cut left into an alley. I glanced over my shoulder. Marten was just pulling himself onto the roof, Talm and Lena behind.

  “Break the wards and climb down the rope to the street—I’ll stay high, try to scout his route!” I backed a few steps, then sprinted forward and hurled myself over the street to the opposite roof. I caught the roof’s edge, nearly lost my grip from the shock of my body hitting the wall, but got a foot high enough to hook my heel and lever myself up. I pelted across pitted stone toward the canyon of the alley.

  I reached it just in time to see Pello duck into the maze of slit-thin passageways that wound between a huddle of supply warehouses. I jumped again, this time for a scarred iron balcony strung with devil-ward charms. A skittering traverse across ledges and windows led me to a roof with a hawk’s-eye view of the warehouses. I glimpsed Pello again, darting alongside a snaking line of ore carts, wending his way eastward. Only one exit from the maze that way—a gated alley that dumped out into Acaltar’s market district.

  The boil of thunderheads was nearly on us. Lightning stabbed the westernmost city towers, thunder trembling the air. Gusts of wind flung sand into my eyes and mouth. I backed and spotted the Alathians running down the alley toward the warehouses, long-legged Talm outpacing Marten and Lena.

  I whistled, shrill and sharp, and yelled to him over the wind, “Pello’s heading for Acaltar’s markets! I’ll cut over the roofs to get ahead of him. Circle around the smelters’ yards and meet me at Zhivonis Street—hurry!”

  Talm raised a fist in acknowledgement. I scrambled straight onward over the warehouse roofs, stabbing fingers and toes in crevices, vaulting across gaps and teetering along ledges. Wind yanked at me, whiptail lizards skittering from my questing fingers. When I reached the mouth of the alley that fed into Zhivonis Street, I half-climbed, half-slid down the wall to brace myself beneath a balcony.

  Pello rounded the alley’s far corner, no longer at a dead run, but at the steady, mile-eating lope that runner boys used when they had to cross the city. No sign of the Alathians beyond the Zhivonis Street gate. I’d have to slow Pello down and pray he wasn’t carrying anything too nasty. I slid my boneshatter charm free of my belt, measuring distance as he loped closer. When he crossed under me, I dropped.

  Some instinct made him glance up. He dodged aside so I didn’t land straight on him, only caught him a glancing blow. We both fell sprawling. I lashed out with my charm, connected with his left arm and heard a muffled snap like a branch under snow. He cursed and twisted as fast as an adder. The sharp-edged gold crescent of a dragonclaw charm glittered in his right hand. I threw myself backward just in time to avoid a killing touch to the chest; instead, the charm passed over my left forearm, opening a gash from wrist to elbow.

  Pello was already running back into the alley. Beyond the gate, Talm skidded into sight. I yelled for him to follow and took off after Pello, blood dripping from my arm to leave a trail on the stone.

  * * *

  (Kiran)

  Wind tore at Kiran’s hair, the air sharp with the scent of lightning. From his stance on a balcony at the summit of Reytani’s tallest tower, the black clouds looked low enough to touch. Shifting veils of wind-borne sand masked the terraced roofs of the lower city far below. Chaotic energies seethed in the aether, shocks of wild power rippling outward with each lightning strike.

  Throughout the city, the fiery sea of the confluence surged and heaved, in turmoil far different from its usual flow. The tower’s wards were already flaring and sparking, bare moments away from triggering fully.

  Be ready, Ruslan said in Kiran’s mind, the words terse and strained from the effort he exerted in raising power. Kiran sent wordless assent, and caught the echo of Mikail’s from the tower’s eastern side. They had decided to split their vigil; when Ruslan commanded it, Kiran would seek the sign of their enemy in the western half of the confluence, Mikail the eastern.

  Kiran’s grip tightened on the balcony’s edge. Let it be
Mikail who sighted their enemy! Then when Ruslan struck, it would not be Kiran who consigned scores of nathahlen to their deaths. Ruslan had said he would strike regardless of their enemy’s location, even if it were the Aiyalen Spire—or the tower upon which Kiran and Mikail stood. I warned Sechaveh to take shelter, and you and Mikail are akheli—you can survive even a strike of this magnitude.

  The nathahlen deaths were necessary. Kiran knew it, and yet his fingers were icy on the balcony’s stone, his chest so tight he could barely breathe.

  Sibilant whispers raked along his barriers. Kiran reached for Ruslan through the mark-bond. Ruslan! He comes.

  Ruslan pressed through the link, his mind flooding into Kiran’s. Kiran felt the flare of channels, sensed the deliriously sweet, seductive pull of power straining against its confinement.

  The confluence convulsed as if some great beast thrashed in its depths. Kiran focused on the shuddering swell of currents. Deep in the heart of the lower city, the dark pinprick of the vortex appeared—

  Strike! he thought as one with Ruslan, and magefire exploded free. Yet the moment it did, the vortex vanished. Horror sent Kiran to his knees.

  “Call the power back!” he screamed. But he knew it was too late.

  * * *

  (Dev)

  I pounded down the alley after Pello. He ran as fast as a roundtail released from a snare, vaulting over stacks of adobe and scrap metal without pause.

  The ground jerked sideways beneath my feet. I sprawled forward and cracked my chin on stone. Pello fell too, in a knot of limbs. Quake wards blazed to life above us, even as lightning stabbed down from the black bank of cloud above.

  A concussion of sound slammed my ears, far louder than any thunder should be, and the entire sky glared crimson. A tornado of scarlet fire slashed past overhead.

  Shock stopped me mid-scramble. Khalmet’s bloodsoaked hand, what was that?

  A second deafening concussion, and a vast, hot wind blasted down the alley, catapulting me backward into a pile of adobe bricks. I gasped and sucked in air that felt thick as heated oil. Cracks ripped open in the alley’s stone. I twisted to look up, and my blood froze. The wall was crumbling, a cascade of rubble pouring off the rooftop ten stories above.