The Tainted City

by Courtney Schafer

  A good fifty feet separated me and Pello. Could Talm stop enough rubble to save us both? If not, it wouldn’t be me he chose to save. Pello was our only lead. I sprang forward through a hail of stone fragments, desperate to close the distance.

  Pello was on his knees, his injured arm dangling limp. He shouted and dug at something in his belt. I lost my footing on juddering ground, hit the alley floor and rolled. Stone blocks large as wagons ricocheted down toward us. Talm stood at the Zhivonis Street gate, his face impassive and his hands loose at his sides.

  Why wasn’t he casting? Oh shit, if he was the traitor—

  An impact crushed me into darkness.

  * * *

  (Kiran)

  Kiran stared down at the lower city in sick, stunned horror. Fat plumes of smoke rose from a charred crater a half-mile wide, scattered fires burning red amid fragmented, jumbled stone. Kiran had felt Ruslan fight to contain the magefire as tightly as possible in the final instants, yet the strike left much of Julisi district a blackened ruin. Now Kiran’s mark-bond was still and silent; after a final burst of disbelieving fury, Ruslan had abruptly withdrawn from Kiran’s mind.

  Lightning still lanced between clouds. Beneath crashes of thunder, an eerie chorus of screams and wails echoed from the lower city. How many nathahlen lay dead or dying beneath the shattered remains of buildings? Above the rubble, a mist of dark energies swirled, born of pain and death. Men, women, children, all crushed into bloodied pulp…

  Kiran’s stomach heaved. He bent and vomited; once, twice, until all that came up was sour strings of bile. He swiped a shaking hand across his mouth, and winced away from another glaring bolt of lightning. The flashes were too bright, the slowly settling currents of the confluence abrading his inner senses raw. He threw an arm over his eyes and struggled to reinforce his barriers.

  “Kiran?” Hurried footsteps, and then Mikail’s hands were on him, holding him upright.

  “The power in Ruslan’s strike…I think my ikilhia isn’t yet recovered, from…from when he freed me of the Alathians’ spellwork.” Though that didn’t explain the cold horror Kiran felt looking at the smoking ruin of Julisi. Before the strike, he’d assumed his dismay a remnant of Alathian alteration that he could overcome. But this ran so deep it felt rooted in his very soul.

  Mikail put a hand to Kiran’s forehead. His breath hissed through his teeth. “Your ikilhia’s a mess. We should have thought to give you damping charms. Here, let me…” A cool wash of green layered itself over Kiran’s barriers, and the grating rasp of the confluence faded.

  Yet the sickness within didn’t ease. He could have accepted the deaths if they’d happened for good reason. But this…Kiran clutched at Mikail’s arm. “We failed. So much destruction, and for nothing! How do you bear it?”

  “You’re right, it’s maddening.” Mikail scowled out at the storm. “I saw it all through Ruslan’s eyes. I thought we had our enemy! How did he know to dodge the strike?”

  Kiran stared at Mikail. Did his mage-brother share none of his horror?

  “Are you still feeling ill?” Mikail’s scowl faded into concern. “Here, come out of the wind.” He tugged Kiran off the balcony, back into the spare stone antechamber at the top of the tower stairs.

  Kiran fumbled for the stair rail. “We should go to the lower city. We could seek traces there, and…do what we can, to help.” Ruslan had taught them nothing of healing magic. But they could seek survivors, extinguish fires, clear rubble…

  Mikail checked. He gripped Kiran’s shoulders, his gray eyes boring into Kiran’s. “You’re upset over the dead nathahlen.”

  “How can you not be?” Kiran slumped in Mikail’s hold. “They’re not mere animals, Mikail. They may lack mage talent, but they love and suffer just as we do.”

  “Perhaps,” Mikail said. “But they murder, betray, and enslave each other, too. Don’t think them innocents, Kiran. In helping Ruslan cast, you fight not only for your own survival, but mine, and his, and Lizaveta’s. Do you imagine any nathahlen would hesitate in your place, if the choice were between saving the family he loves or sparing the lives of strangers?”

  Put that way, the weight on Kiran’s heart eased a little. “I suppose not. Yet every time I look at the rubble, I feel so…so sick, inside.”

  “No wonder, with your ikilhia so disordered,” Mikail said. “You shouldn’t drop your barriers, but if you allow me within them, I can help you further.” He touched his belt knife, his head cocked in inquiry.

  Shelter from the roil of guilt and horror, a chance at enough peace he could think again? Kiran wanted it, badly—and yet, he hesitated. Taking Mikail’s offer of solace felt wrong, like a betrayal of the massacred nathahlen…but surely that was foolishness.

  Kiran drew his own belt knife and cut a swift line down his palm, even as Mikail did the same. He clasped Mikail’s bloodied hand. Mikail’s mind flowed into his, a cool, green river of strength. Mikail reached for Kiran’s ikilhia—and paused, at Kiran’s instinctive, violent recoil.

  Easy, easy, brother. Don’t fight me…

  Dimly, Kiran was aware of his breath coming in harsh gasps, his heart racing. Slowly, reluctantly, he released his innermost defenses, like relaxing a clenched fist.

  Mikail slipped through. Tendrils of power wound through Kiran’s ikilhia, bolstering it into a far smoother, steadier flame. Now. Focus as you do when we cast together…

  Kiran shut his eyes and slowed his breath, counting each inhalation, striving to block out all emotion. Mikail helped him, his quiet strength allowing Kiran to bury remorse and horror deep, leaving only calm, clear focus.

  There, you see? Mikail withdrew and said aloud, “Better?”

  “Yes.” The relief of it was enough to weaken Kiran’s legs. He sank onto a step. Though his mind was calm, the pulse of his ikilhia remained dismayingly erratic despite Mikail’s infusion of strength. Why was it taking so long to heal from the damage Ruslan had been forced to inflict? Ruslan had implied his recovery would go far faster.

  Mikail said, “You spoke of seeking traces, but even if we found the exact spot where our enemy had appeared, I’m not sure it would profit us. We’ve had no success reading traces anywhere else.”

  It was so much easier to think, now the storm of emotion had subsided. How had their enemy so readily avoided the strike? Kiran summoned the memory.

  Again he felt Ruslan release the magefire, saw the vortex vanish. Just as their enemy had vanished before Kiran’s second strike in the dead mage’s workroom…Kiran straightened.

  “Mikail. What if our enemy can somehow detect channeled magic before it’s cast? When I first struck and injured him after his attack on you, I cast with power pulled straight from a charm. But when I struck again, with channeled power funneled to me by Ruslan, our attacker vanished before the strike reached him. I thought he decided to retreat after my first strike, and I simply didn’t cast the second one fast enough. But now…I think he felt Ruslan release the containment.”

  “How?” Mikail asked. “Today, he was half the city away, and Ruslan used shielding wards.”

  “I don’t know,” Kiran said. “But I think we need to find a way to strike at him without the use of the confluence. Either that, or distract him so thoroughly he doesn’t feel a channeled strike coming.” Thanks to Mikail’s help, he could speak of a second magefire strike and feel only a faint twitch of unease.

  Mikail grimaced. “I can’t believe it’s so hard to kill one nathahlen.”

  Kiran said, “If he can sense channeled spellwork better than even an akheli could manage, Ruslan must be wrong about him being untalented.”

  As if summoned by the mention of his name, Ruslan spoke in terse command through the mark-bond. Sechaveh has summoned us. Join me at Kelante Tower.

  Mikail muttered, “This should be interesting.”

  Kiran suspected “interesting” was far too optimistic a word. Sechaveh would be furious, and Ruslan in no mood to tolerate chastisement by any nathahlen, even
one with Sechaveh’s ability to forbid him the confluence. They’d be lucky if they made it through the meeting with the tower still standing.

  * * *

  (Dev)

  Somewhere, something was dripping. Plink, plink, plink, like icemelt in a crevasse. I felt chilled, my limbs numb and heavy—except my left arm, which burned with sullen fire. I opened my eyes to absolute blackness. Grit coated my tongue, my mouth so dry I couldn’t swallow, and my head ached something fierce. I coughed and immediately regretted it as my ribs screamed.

  “Well. It would seem outriders truly are favored of Khalmet.”

  Pello. He sounded terrible, his voice cracked and hoarse. I tried to roll, and managed only a scuffling twitch. Stone pressed down on my torso, tight enough to make breathing difficult. I wanted to thrash, to fight, get it off—instead, I slowed my panicked breathing, forced myself to lie still and take stock. My injured left arm was pinned, immobile, but my right arm could move. I wriggled it up and shoved against the weight on my chest. I succeeded only in showering grit into my eyes.

  “Can you move at all?” My voice didn’t sound much better than Pello’s.

  He laughed thickly. “No.”

  Remembering that cascade of rubble, I felt cold all over again. “How are we not crushed?”

  “I sparked a barrier charm. Wasn’t strong enough to hold off the falling stone entirely, but it left a little space. Of course, things have been…settling, since.” He fell silent, his breathing strained.

  Was the weight on my chest growing heavier? Visions of rock inexorably crushing me into paste had me panting all over again, panic creeping upward. No. Focus.

  “How long, since…?”

  “Some hours. Though…time stretches, in darkness.”

  Hours, and nobody had cast to get us out. I remembered Talm watching the rocks rain down on us without lifting a hand. I’d warned Cara we couldn’t rule him out as a traitor, but still…I’d swear his love for Marten was real. What hatred did he carry that outweighed it?

  Didn’t matter. If the lying bastard had told Marten we were dead, maybe even cast one of those veiling spells to make sure nobody could easily seek us….shit. I still wore the signaling charm on my left wrist, but with my arm trapped I had no way to tap out the damn pattern.

  I said to Pello, “If you work for the bastard responsible for these quakes, I’m guessing he’s got better things to do than dig you out.”

  Pello laughed again, this time with a wild, hard edge. “I have two masters, and neither will save me. I knew the moment I saw you on that stair that I’d outlived my usefulness and death was coming for me.”

  “Who are your masters?” I might not survive to use the information, but so long as Pello kept talking, I didn’t have to think about the pressure on my chest, the weight of rubble slowly sinking down.

  “You guessed one,” Pello said. “The Shaikar-spawn who seeks to destroy the city. But it was your Lieutenant Talmaddis who gave me over to him and told him how to leash me.”

  Surprise sent my voice high. “Talmaddis is working directly with the mage-killer?” I’d assumed he and any co-conspirators were simply hoping to take advantage of the situation. Impede Marten’s investigation enough so he’d fail to stop the killer from destroying both confluence and city, and leave Alathia free of the so-called plague den on its border.

  “For at least these last few months. Perhaps longer,” Pello said. “Talmaddis hunted me down before I could cross the Alathian border. He concealed me from the others in his Watch, telling me he had a friend with a use for a Ninavel shadow man. I went along with him, thinking if I could only reach Ninavel again, I’d soon gain my freedom. The more fool, me.”

  The echo of my own experience brought a stab of uncomfortable sympathy. “What of the other Alathians at the embassy? Are any of them involved?”

  “Not that I’ve seen,” Pello said. “But that proves little. Talmaddis may well have partners in this madness—whether willing, or coerced as I was.”

  I thought again of the darkness in Lena’s eyes. If she was working with Talm, might it be unwillingly? But I didn’t buy for a minute that Pello had been forced into this.

  “Coerced? Right,” I sneered. “How much coin did you get to betray Sechaveh?”

  Pello said, “Talmaddis knew coin wouldn’t guarantee loyalty. He searched my mind, again and again until he broke through the veils Sechaveh’s mages had set in me, and he found the collar to leash me. I have…a son. A child of nine years. His mother is long dead—she, too, played shadow games. I sent my son years ago to a distant cousin in Prosul Varkevia, thinking that would protect him. Talmaddis told the mage-killer of this when he handed me over.”

  I had to remember how readily he lied. “The killer threatened a kid who lives way down in southern Varkevia, and you rolled right over?”

  “Says the man who’d crawl through magefire for a child that isn’t even his,” Pello said, with a cracked chuckle. “He did more than threaten. He can travel like demons in the tales, appearing in the blink of any eye wherever he chooses…though I learned he can only stay a short time before he must return to the source of his power. He went to Prosul Varkevia and kidnapped my son, even now holds him prisoner. To prove his power, he killed my cousin. And when he caught me seeking ways to counter his magic, he killed my closest friend.”

  “Who the hell is this murdering bastard?” I demanded.

  “I wish I had his name, so I might curse his soul properly…” Pello coughed, harsh and dry. My own throat burned. Gods, what I wouldn’t give for some water.

  “I know you,” I said. “All you’d need is five sentences from him to learn far more than his name.” Keep talking, I willed him.

  Pello said, “I saw him only twice, and he wore a gabeshal robe, only his eyes showing. But I know this: the robe is not mere disguise. He is Kaithan-born, though his accent is so faded I think it years since he last lived in the tribelands. He once lived in Ninavel, though he does not now. And how he hates the city! But he would not tell me what spawned that hate, no matter how I pricked him. I did not have much chance. After our first meeting, he contacted me only by message charm…except when he found I’d defied him. Then he came, and made me watch Nayyis die.”

  Khalmet’s bloodsoaked hand. The stone seemed to press all the harder on my chest. “What did he need you for?”

  “I scouted wards, reported the movements of certain mages…but my main task was to discover when and where Tainters would be working jobs.”

  “So he can snatch them,” I said. “Why does he want the kids?”

  Pello spat and said, huskier than ever, “He uses the children somehow to fuel his magic…I never saw what he does. But they do not survive it. I saw a room of bones, so small and white, clean of flesh as if it was burned away in magefire…”

  Bile soured my throat. “How could you keep handing kids over?”

  “You sound so horrified, so righteous,” Pello said. “I have done worse in Sechaveh’s service, and for less reason. You have the steel in you to do the same. Look at the choices you’ve made for young Melly’s sake.”

  I flinched, remembering handing Kiran drugged and helpless to Gerran; of how even now I worked for Marten, despite all his betrayals. “This source of power you say the killer’s got to return to…where is it?”

  Pello groaned. “Ah, how I struggled to find out! He took me there to show me my son and my murdered cousin, but we traveled in demon-fashion, the journey done in an eyeblink. I think it is not in the city. The air was chill, as it is in the high mountains or the far north. I saw no windows, and the rooms were of rough stone, so rough I thought them hollowed by magic from natural rock, not built. The rock itself was far darker than any stone I’ve seen in Ninavel, though streaked with veins of rose quartz. I searched scholars’ records and explorers’ journals for locations where such rock might be found…but learned to my sorrow there are far too many possibilities, both in the Whitefires and elsewhere.” He broke
into more hitching, strained coughs.

  There had to be some better use a mage could make of his information. “If we can get free and contact Captain Martennan…maybe Talmaddis isn’t the only Alathian working with the killer, but I’m dead sure Marten’s not part of this. If you share all you know, he can find this bastard’s den and save your son.”

  “I fear my son’s life is already forfeit,” Pello said. “This…this is what comes of attachment. I knew it, and yet I could not burn it out of myself…and now, look. My son is dead regardless, and I, too, will feel Shaikar’s touch…”

  The slow, almost dreamy sound of his words alarmed me. “How badly are you hurt?”

  “Badly enough. I have not an outrider’s luck.”

  The maddeningly steady plinking took on a sinister new aspect. “You’re bleeding out? I’ve a charm that might work to signal—”

  “If you signal the Alathians, we are both dead men.” Pello’s voice strengthened. “The only thing saving you now is the shrouding charm I wear, strong enough to cover us both. Talmaddis cannot sense if we live. And so, he will tell the rest that we lie dead, all the while watching for any signal from you that might force him to ensure it. He knows if he waits long enough, we die in truth without him risking a single spell to accomplish it.”

  “It wasn’t the Alathians I was going to signal.” The charm Kiran had modified for me circled my right wrist. I didn’t know if the charm would work if I sparked it, not him. But hell, I had to try.

  “Talmaddis may feel the magic anyway.”

  “I have to risk it.” I lifted my right arm, scraped my wrist against stone until blood ran slick over Kiran’s charm. “Ashantya,” I whispered, and concentrated with everything within me.

  Chapter Twenty

  (Kiran)

  “Tell me why I should not bar you from the confluence here and now, Ruslan!” Sechaveh stabbed a finger down at the warded sea of blue-violet flame before his great stone chair. “When you said I should seek shelter, you said nothing of blasting an entire district into ash! Ninavel’s largest smelting houses destroyed, my workforce on the verge of rioting, the mines’ production stalled…and you say my enemy is still at large? I say you have done far more to ruin my city than he has yet managed!”