The Tainted City

by Courtney Schafer

Sechaveh said, “Let me be clear, Captain. We will interrogate Talmaddis. Your team is in the heart of my power, here in Kelante. You will not escape, and if you fight, you will lose. At which point I must imprison and interrogate you all. But young Devan has argued that you are a valuable asset in the fight against my true opponent. I have seen for myself you are a clever man, Captain. Use that cleverness now, and do not force me to treat you as an enemy.”

  Marten said to me, abrupt and clipped, “I would see your mind.”

  I offered him my wrist, and flinched when he took it. Smothering pressure in my head, an alien presence sliding through me—I wanted him out, out—

  Forgive the discomfort, said Marten. I don’t have a blood mage’s skill in this. But I must see… Memory swallowed me. Rocks raining down, Pello shouting and snatching at his barrier charm, Talm watching impassively…then Pello’s hoarse voice in the darkness, damning Talm further with every strained sentence.

  Memory vanished, leaving me blinking. Marten took one staggering step back and splayed a hand against the wall. The look on his face was that of a man gutted.

  Vicious triumph lit Ruslan’s eyes. My mouth tasted of ashes. I’d wanted to see Marten suffer. Prayed for it, even. Yet now all I could think of was that terrible moment when I’d realized Jylla’s betrayal. How I’d felt I couldn’t get any air, my heart frozen mid-beat, the pain so sharp I’d expected to look down and see my chest slashed open.

  Marten pulled himself together far more quickly than I had. He straightened, his face freezing into utterly blank formality. “I agree Talmaddis must be questioned,” he said to Sechaveh. “But do not leap to condemn him until we have heard his answers. There may be another explanation for his actions.”

  How he must pray for it. Tell me I’m hallucinating, that I’m lost in some taphtha vision, I’d begged Jylla, before rage took hold. Tell me the last ten years weren’t a lie, that you didn’t just knife me in the back like I was some mark who means nothing!

  Sechaveh said, “If Talmaddis cooperates, he will not be harmed until his guilt is proven. But I must be certain we learn the truth. Lizaveta will search his mind. I’m told that memories cannot be properly read without the mage under interrogation remaining conscious; she has the skill and power to keep him that way while she destroys his defenses.”

  “Lizaveta is far from impartial!” Marten stopped; took a breath, and lowered his voice. “What guarantee do you have that she will tell the truth of what she finds? Far more likely, she will claim all my team complicit, in service to Ruslan’s desire for revenge.”

  Ruslan said smoothly, “Captain, if you fear Lizaveta’s honesty…then all you need do is link minds with Talmaddis when she does, and observe as she casts. You will see all that she finds, even as she finds it.”

  What a sick, clever bastard. You want to be certain we don’t condemn the rest of your team without cause? Then you’ve got to experience your lover’s pain while we rip his mind apart.

  Marten’s face was gray. “Very well.”

  Sechaveh said, “You understand, we cannot risk giving Talmaddis warning. Lizaveta provided a charm that can send him unconscious and allow us to imprison him within her wards, but the charm must contact his skin before she triggers it. You can get close to him without suspicion. Take the charm, go call him out of the audience chamber, and touch him with it—she’ll do the rest.” He held out a thin disc of onyx chased with silver.

  For long heartbeats, Marten didn’t move. At last his hand rose to take the charm. “Give me the chance to speak with him before Lizaveta examines his mind, and I will do this.”

  “You may speak, but not privately,” Sechaveh said.

  “I understand.” Marten glanced at me. “I wish Dev to be present when Talmaddis awakens, so I may see Talmaddis’s reaction to Dev’s survival.”

  His eyes said something different. You were the one to accuse him. You face the result.

  I didn’t relish the prospect. Not because of any sympathy for Talm—hell, he’d tried to kill me twice over—but because I didn’t want to watch Ruslan rejoice in Marten’s pain.

  Damn it, it didn’t matter if the taste of revenge wasn’t to my liking. If Talm gave us the killer, I could stomach even Ruslan’s triumph.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  (Dev)

  I shuffled after Edon and Ruslan into a magelit cell deep in Kelante Tower. Talm lay spreadeagled and unconscious on the rough stone floor. Manacles of sigil-marked silver bound his wrists and ankles, and freshly-laid ward lines coated every inch of the cell’s walls. More lines were etched into the floor around Talm’s body, but unlike the silver wards on the walls, these glowed the sullen red of banked coals. Marten and Lizaveta waited beside the glowing lines. Lizaveta had an air of calm anticipation; Marten’s round face was armored and blank.

  Already, I felt queasy. The whole scene reminded me horribly of Kiran in Simon’s cave. Especially when Lizaveta knelt beside Talm, a bared blade in her hand. She’d pinned up her mass of black hair, but she still wore the same rich gown.

  “I will release my charm’s spell,” she told Marten. “You may speak with him so long as he does not attempt to cast against his bonds or otherwise resist. If he does, I will not wait to begin breaking his inner defenses.”

  Marten nodded without a hint of emotion. After Talm’s arrest, Stevan and Lena had willingly allowed Marten to search their memories. He’d proclaimed them free of guilt, unable to hide his relief. I’d been nearly as glad to hear it, hardly able to believe I hadn’t fucked up after all in trusting Lena. Sechaveh wasn’t yet convinced—he’d ordered Stevan and Lena held in a separate warded room until Talm’s interrogation was complete, saying he wanted further corroboration of their innocence from Talm.

  Sechaveh himself had declined to attend the questioning, sending Edon in his stead. He claimed pressing matters related to Julisi’s destruction needed his attention. I suspected the old bastard was simply too cautious to enter a cell holding an enemy mage, even with Ruslan, Edon, and Lizaveta there to protect him.

  I hovered as close to the cell door as I dared, not wanting to get anywhere near those glowing lines. Edon folded his arms and watched Lizaveta with dispassionate interest. Ruslan wore a small, eager smile, his gaze locked on Marten. I looked away, my nausea growing.

  Lizaveta laid a hand on Talm’s forehead. Talm jerked against the manacles, his eyes flying open. His gaze shied off Marten to land on me.

  His olive skin went sallow. He slumped in his bonds and said in weary resignation, “I should have let you fall at the mine.”

  He wasn’t even going to pretend innocence? Genuinely curious, I asked, “Why didn’t you?”

  “I didn’t know then that Marten would be tasked with investigating in Ninavel, and seek your help. I’ve no quarrel with you, Dev—I’m sorry you got caught up in this.”

  He was looking at me as earnestly as Kiran might have. I snorted. “What a comfort, to know your attempts to kill me were nothing personal.”

  Marten’s back had gone so rigid it hurt mine to see it. “Lieutenant Talmaddis, you are accused of—”

  “I can guess what I’m accused of,” Talm said. “Did Pello survive along with Dev?”

  “Yes,” Marten said. “He told us you captured him in Alathia and hid him from the Watch; that you have been working with our enemy.”

  Talm’s gaze snagged on Lizaveta’s knife, and his throat moved in a hard swallow. “Let me save you some time, Marten. What Pello told you is true. I’ve done all I can to aid Ninavel’s enemy.” Despite his measured tone, sweat sheened his brow.

  Lizaveta smiled and traced a finger along her blade. Marten shut his eyes. His voice remained tightly controlled. “Why, Talmaddis? Were you coerced?”

  I expected Talm to leap on that opening. Instead he laughed, a jagged, painful sound. “No. This was my choice. I saw the chance to gain everything you and I have worked for, and I couldn’t pass it by. Don’t you see? So long as Ninavel endures, with its con
fluence drawing unprincipled mages in droves and Sechaveh granting them free rein, the Council will never relax their policies. But with the confluence and Sechaveh destroyed, the Council will be freed to look beyond fear. Restrictions on magic eased, the conscription laws repealed, future generations of Alathia’s mages given actual choice in their lives…think of it, Marten! Alathia can have the future we’ve fought so hard for.”

  So it wasn’t hatred he carried. I’d seen men like him before, so devoted to some goal they didn’t care what they sacrificed to achieve it. Like you, with Melly, an inner voice whispered, and I winced.

  Marten’s breathing was harsh. “A future bought at the cost of thousands of innocent lives.”

  “Twin gods’ sake, Marten, have you seen this city? It devours the innocent. Destroying the confluence won’t only help Alathia. Without it, there’ll be no more savaging of the untalented by mages lacking in all accountability, no more abuse of Tainted children—I promise you, far more innocents will be saved than lost.”

  Ruslan made a disgusted, contemptuous noise. Lizaveta remained silent, turning her knife idly in her hands. Knowing their cruelty, I could see Talm’s point. But easy for him to blithely talk of a confluence-free future. When the city dissolved into waterless anarchy, it wasn’t his friends that’d die.

  Just his lover. If Marten didn’t leave, he’d burn with the confluence. No wonder Talm was talking so readily. He knew it was his last chance to convince Marten to turn his back on Ninavel and live. Question was, would Talm’s logic sway Marten? If Marten were as cold-blooded as I thought him, he must be tempted. I peered at him, but couldn’t read a damn thing off his face.

  “This…calculus of innocents. Is this how the killer justifies his murders?” Marten asked.

  “He has all the justification he needs,” Talm said. “Do you remember how I told you of the first murders I saw a mage commit in Ninavel?”

  Marten nodded. “A family, you said. Killed because the father jostled an air mage, too distracted by chasing after his youngest child to notice the man’s sigils.”

  Memory darkened Talm’s eyes. “The screams I heard that night in Reytani’s hanging gardens still haunt me…I arrived too late to save the children and their mother, but I broke the spell in time to save the father’s life. Not that he thanked me for it, at first.”

  Marten’s puzzled frown shifted into sudden, startled realization. “The man you saved—you told me he was a Kaithan scholar…”

  Lizaveta’s hands stilled on her knife. Ruslan and Edon both leaned forward, their eyes gone sharp with interest. I leaned right along with them.

  Talm said softly, “You see it now. Yes, he is Kaithan. A brilliant scholar of history and nature, who came to Ninavel hoping to exchange knowledge with those from other lands. Yet all for an instant’s inattention, his wife and children drowned in their own blood.”

  If it were Cara and Melly murdered, I’d have burned for revenge as badly as this Kaithan. But I’d have stuck to revenge on the actual bastard that killed them, not set out to destroy an entire city.

  “What is the Kaithan’s name?” Marten asked.

  Talm said, “That, I will not give you so easily. But Marten, admit it: in his place, you too would yearn for justice. Yet there is no justice to be had in Ninavel. I tried on his behalf, but the embassy is authorized to cast only in defense of our own people, and Ambassador Halassian told me Sechaveh would laugh off any complaint she made. I was heartsick, and the Kaithan…I feared despair would drive him to suicide. But his fury won out—he told me he would not rest until he discovered a way to abolish Ninavel’s abuses of power. I promised him that if he did, I would provide what help I could. Truth be told, I did not expect him to succeed. Long years passed with no word. But this past winter I received a letter saying he’d found the solution at last. At first I didn’t believe him, but then one night he appeared in my quarters as if by translocation. He took me deep into the desert and showed me the corpse of the mage who had slain his family, and then I believed in the power he’d gained.”

  “Power he gains by murdering Tainted children,” Marten said, cold and level. “Did he tell you that?”

  Talm’s gaze dropped. “Not…at first. I regret the children. But they might well have died anyway, cast aside by their handlers after their Change. A few children dead before their time, to save hundreds of their unborn brethren from exploitation and abuse—I know you understand the necessity of sacrifice, Marten! Have I not seen you make similar choices?”

  Like the choice he’d made with Kiran. Marten’s face was bloodless. “Not with innocents. Never that. What magic does the Kaithan cast that requires children’s lives?”

  Talm shook his head. “I’ve been careful not to learn his secrets, so I could not betray them. I knew that this day would come, if I did not die with the confluence. If not here in Ninavel, then at the Council’s hands, during this year’s renewal of my oaths.”

  Kiran had told me how the Council examined the minds of Alathia’s mages once each year to weed out and punish any who broke their laws. I would’ve thought Talm would run before then, whether or not Ninavel fell.

  Echoing my thought, Marten asked, “You did not intend to flee?”

  Talm smiled, bright and painful. “No. I did this for Alathia; I am not ashamed of my choice. And…I wanted as much time with you as I could, before the end. Though I hoped I would burn with the confluence and spare you this.”

  “You wish to spare me, while children die to fuel your plans!” Marten’s control cracked. Fury and anguish warred on his face. “Talmaddis, you—” He stopped, and I could see his desperate struggle to rebuild his armor. “You are not the man I loved. You never were.”

  I knew his pain. The worst part of Jylla’s betrayal had been the way it poisoned every single moment of my ten years with her. If she’d died like Sethan, then once past my initial grief I could’ve treasured the good times we’d had. Instead, even the happiest of memories got twisted into something gut-wrenching and dark.

  “Marten…” The name escaped Talm like it’d been ripped from him.

  Lizaveta held her blade before his eyes, stroked her free hand through his curls. “Tell us where the Kaithan hides,” she said, sweetly coaxing. “Tell us that, and I will spare your lover the taste of your agony. You realize that when I cast, I will tear your mind apart, but I will not kill you, oh no…I’ll burn out your will, destroy your magic, and he’ll feel every last instant of your soul shredding away.”

  Talm groaned. “I cannot tell you. I made certain of it. But I know this: the least use of magic near the source of his power, and he will know, and come to strike you down. Even you blood mages cannot stop him.”

  His hazel eyes fixed on Marten again, desperate and imploring. “Marten, listen. The confluence will be destroyed. You cannot prevent it. But you need not die with it! Leave Ninavel and return to Alathia with Ambassador Halassian. The Council will not fault you for that. The Watch needs you, Alathia needs you—in the aftermath of the border wards failing, they’ll need your strength more than ever. Don’t abandon the country you love, no matter how angry you are at me.”

  Marten knelt beside Talm, his face once more an icy mask. “I will not listen. You are a traitor to your oaths, a murderer whose life is forfeit under Alathia’s law. But first, Lizaveta will discover what you know and I will use it. I will save this city, or I will die with it. And if I die, Talmaddis…I die cursing your name as liar and betrayer.”

  Talm shut his eyes. Slow tears leaked from the corners. “My love for you was never a lie.”

  Marten looked at Lizaveta. “I’m through talking.”

  “You’re certain?” she said, her eyes glinting. “You don’t wish to exchange a few more sweet lovers’ words? When I finish with him, he’ll lack the capacity to ever speak again.”

  “Cast,” Marten spat at her. He clamped Talm’s manacled wrist in one hand.

  Lizaveta sliced open Talm’s shirt and cut a sigil int
o his chest with swift precision. Blood slicked Talm’s skin, his breath quickening into rapid, panicked pants. Lizaveta cut a matching sigil into her own palm. She reached for Talm’s chest.

  He tensed. “Marten. Marten, forgive me—”

  Her bloodied hand touched his wound, and he arched in his bonds, his teeth bared. Marten jerked as if stabbed. In the corner, Ruslan laughed.

  I turned aside to stare grimly at the wards on the wall, wishing I could block my ears. The more so when Talm started screaming, wild and agonized. I thought of how he’d nearly killed me, how Pello had died despairing in darkness, of children’s bones piled high. None of it helped. I bit the inside of my cheek bloody, desperate not to give Ruslan the satisfaction of seeing me cringe.

  Talm’s howls went on, and on, until his voice was little more than a hoarse, ruined whisper. I set my teeth and endured, though I felt like screaming myself, or bashing my head against the wall until I blacked out. What must Marten be feeling? He deserved it, every minute, for what he’d done to Kiran. But this…oh mother of maidens, let it be over!

  Long after I thought I’d go mad, Talm’s cries died into silence. I heard the rustle of Lizaveta’s gown.

  “I have all he knows,” she said, sounding tired but satisfied. “Unfortunately, his claim was true: he does not know the location of our enemy’s source of power. Yet I found a signpost to point the way…at our enemy’s request, Talmaddis provided him with a treatise that described the strengths and locations of all the minor confluence points in the Whitefire Mountains. Whatever our enemy’s method of magic, I suspect it requires a confluence as fuel. Not many confluences in the Whitefires are strong enough to allow significant magic; if we compare confluence locations with areas matching the rock the spy described, we might narrow the options considerably.”

  “An excellent thought,” said Edon. He hadn’t moved from his stance by the door, his narrow face as calm as if Talm’s screams meant no more to him than bird calls.

  I risked turning around. Talm lay slack in his bonds. His blood-smeared chest rose and fell in slow breaths, but his hazel eyes were perfectly, terribly empty.