The Tainted City

by Courtney Schafer

  Ruslan patted his shoulder. “Do not look so dismayed, akhelysh. I will check you more deeply once you and Mikail have prepared the spell. If I am not certain of your health, I will not allow you to cast.”

  Kiran nodded—and jerked to his feet, as harsh whispers filled his inner ear. “Ruslan! Our enemy returns.”

  “What?” Ruslan’s voice was sharp with surprise. “The confluence is not in alignment yet!”

  “Vidai must have another purpose,” Lizaveta said, tight and worried.

  “Quickly, then—up to my workroom. We’ll look for him in the confluence; perhaps we can determine his intent.” Ruslan hurried for the door.

  Kiran ran after Mikail, even as the phantom whispers swelled until he couldn’t hear his own swift footsteps. Images of bloodied, eyeless corpses swam before his eyes. Whatever Vidai’s ultimate intention, he surely brought more death to Ninavel.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  (Dev)

  The embassy door burst open before I could touch the copper plaque amidst the wards. Cara shoved past Ambassador Halassian to reach me. I caught her in my arms and kissed her; a fierce, passionate kiss that left us both gasping.

  I said into her neck, “I vowed never to miss another chance for that.” My hands couldn’t stop tracing the lines of her body, as if to make sure she was real.

  Her laugh was ragged. “A good vow. Ever since the Ambassador told me Talm lied about your death, I’ve worried that I’m dreaming—that I’ll wake to find you’re still dead, buried in that rubble…”

  I held her tighter, thinking of all those streetside in Julisi who hadn’t been so lucky. I didn’t know so many folk there as in Acaltar, but I knew enough to dread hearing the tally of the dead. The scent of smoke was still strong in the warm morning air, the sky above the city’s towers the hue of tarnished brass.

  “Today’s been as much nightmare as dream. But one part’s pure good news.” I beckoned Melly into the embassy’s tiled foyer. Halassian stood holding the door open, grimly watching Marten lead Talm up the sunlit causeway, Lena and Stevan at his side. I’d hurried ahead of them with Melly. Partly out of eagerness to see Cara, but also because Talm’s empty-eyed shamble left me shuddering, as did Marten’s dark, strained silence. He’d spoken only in curt orders to Stevan and Lena, brushing off their initial exclamations of horror upon entering the interrogation room. Stevan had promptly retreated into soldier-stiff formality. Lena had armored herself in controlled calm, but a terrible, stricken sorrow lurked in her eyes.

  I turned my back on the causeway. I wanted to rejoice in my one victory while I could. “Cara, meet Melly ap Sethan.”

  “Oh, Dev. She looks just like him…” Cara reached to touch Melly’s tangled hair. Melly backed a step, her jaw set. Ruslan’s torc was gone from her throat, but I knew it’d take a lot longer than the short walk from Kelante Tower to erase the memory of his touch.

  “I’m sorry,” Cara said to Melly. “It’s just…it’s wonderful to meet you at last. Your father was a good friend of mine.” A brief, wistful flash of memory touched her eyes.

  A frown darkened Melly’s face. “When can I go home?”

  I still hadn’t told her. I didn’t look forward to the battle I’d have in convincing her that Red Dal wasn’t the merry, loving father-figure she thought him. Tainted as she was, if I handled it wrong she’d simply dive out a window and swoop back to his den.

  “I know how much you want to,” I said. “But you’re not safe from Ruslan at the den. I told you of this killer we’re hunting. You need to stay behind the embassy’s wards until we’ve caught him. Then Ruslan will vow not to hurt you, and you’ll be safe.” By which point I hoped I’d have found the words to counter Red Dal’s lies.

  Jylla approached from the hallway, grinning at me, her small feet bare and her black hair loose to her waist. “Here’s to dodging Khalmet’s bony hand.”

  It was what we’d always said to each other after a narrow escape on a job. Cara’s arm warm around my shoulders blunted the stab of memory. I didn’t give Jylla our old response: May our feet stay swift. Instead I said, easy as I could manage, “You know what they say. Khalmet loves an outrider.”

  Jylla’s eyes flickered. She dipped her chin in wry acknowledgement and surveyed Melly. “Mother of maidens, and I thought Sethan was pretty. But who needs looks when you’re Tainted? Bet you’ve got a good strong dose of it.”

  Pride sparked in Melly’s amber eyes. “I can lift half again my weight.”

  “Can you?” Jylla’s smile widened.

  Damn. I eyed Jylla’s petite curves. Melly could lift her down from the embassy windows, easy. “Don’t get any ideas, Jylla. You’re not safe outside the wards either. Ruslan’s itching for a new way to hurt me, and in his eyes, torturing you to death would do just fine.”

  “How sweet to know you care,” Jylla said. “You can’t blame me for wanting to make a new bargain. Seeing how you found the traitor all by yourself.” She looked out at Talm, shuffling toward the embassy with Marten’s hand tight on his shoulder. Her mouth hardened. “I see they mindburned him. Good.”

  Screams echoed in my memory. “There wasn’t anything good about it.”

  Marten and the rest reached the door, and Halassian urged them inside. Cara made a low, aghast noise as Marten led Talm past us. Jylla only watched, her eyes opaque.

  “Dev, if you’ll join us in the receiving room,” Halassian said. “I want to hear your version of events along with Marten’s report.”

  “I’ll talk, yeah.” Minus the part where I’d sold myself to Sechaveh, anyway, unless she forced it out of me with a truth spell. “But Marten…do you have to ask him for a report right away?” I could well imagine how every word would twist the knife deeper.

  “I wish it wasn’t necessary,” Halassian said. “But with the confluence’s instability growing worse by the hour, I can’t delay.” She turned to Melly. “You look exhausted, child. Why don’t you go with Cara? She can help you clean up and find you a bed.”

  Melly sidled closer to me. “I’d rather stay with Dev.”

  I gave her my best reassuring look. “Don’t worry, kid, I’m not going anywhere. My room’s got two beds—if you want, you can sleep there.” Much as I was dying for some privacy with Cara, I’d gladly find it elsewhere in favor of helping Melly feel at ease. In the den, she wouldn’t ever have slept alone in a room.

  “I’ll come with you.” Jylla’s smile at Melly was as warm as one of Red Dal’s. “I used to be a Tainter, like Dev. He and I didn’t meet ’til our Change, but we shared all our best stories, after. I’ll wager I’ve got some good ones about his Tainted days you haven’t heard.”

  A shy, answering grin crept over Melly’s face. “Okay.”

  Oh, great. I caught Jylla’s eye. Don’t you try anything.

  She flashed me a look of wounded, perfect innocence. “This way, kid.” She led Melly off.

  I caught Cara’s arm and whispered, “Watch her.”

  “Don’t worry.” Cara hugged me again and said in my ear, “I’m looking forward to hearing those Tainter stories myself.”

  “Outrider stories are better.” I watched her hurry after Jylla, and turned to Halassian, my smile dying. “Can you change your warding spells so they’ll stop someone from climbing out a window?”

  Halassian gave a short, amused grunt. “After seeing that gleam in your friend Jylla’s eye, I understand your concern. Adjusting the wards won’t take long; go ahead to the receiving room, and I’ll take care of it and join you there.”

  I nodded, relieved. At least then Melly would have to break the wards before flying out or lifting Jylla down, and that’d bring the Alathians running.

  Halassian braced her hands on the ward lines beside the door and started chanting. I headed down the hall toward the receiving room. My steps slowed as I reached the entrance.

  Talm sat slack-limbed in a chair beside the arched window. Jenoviann knelt before him, her bony hands gripping his and her rings
glowing. Kessaravil squatted at her side, broad and stolid as a boulder.

  A few feet away, Marten stood staring out the window. From the glacial distance in his eyes, the entire crest of the Whitefires could’ve been exploding in magefire and he wouldn’t notice.

  Jenoviann raised her head and said to him, halting and dismayed, “His memories remain, but the rest…I didn’t know a man could live, with so much destroyed.”

  Marten didn’t give any sign he’d heard. Stevan and Lena were huddled by the room’s south wall, talking in low voices. Lena wore a strained, urgent expression. Stevan looked mutinous. I edged forward until I could hear them properly.

  “…talk to him, Stevan! You endured similar pain when you lost Vinalyn. There must be something you can do to help him.”

  Stevan said in a fierce, furious whisper, “Don’t you think I would, if help were possible? There is no remedy for this, Lena. After Vinalyn’s mind crumbled, it was days before I could speak without shouting, months before I felt anything but rage. Nothing people did or said brought comfort; most of it only hurt me more. Even now, I—”

  He broke off, glaring, as I stepped up to them. “Stevan’s right,” I said to Lena. “Mere words won’t help. Only one thing does: focusing on a task so difficult you haven’t time to think about your hurt.” The gods knew helping Kiran cross the Whitefires had kept me too busy to agonize over Jylla. “Get Marten focused again on catching this Vidai zha-Dakhar, and that’s the best help he can have.”

  Stevan gave a surprised, grudging nod. “That’s so,” he said. “After Vinalyn, it was my work that kept me from despair.” He eyed me, and his face darkened further. “Though Marten’s state is as much your fault as Talmaddis’s. If you had called upon our help and not Ruslan’s, we could have handled the interrogation properly. Marten wouldn’t have been subjected to this…savagery.”

  I locked my hands together so I wouldn’t punch him. “Hasn’t it occurred to you Talm was waiting for that? If I’d signaled you, I’d be dead now. I tried to get Kiran to come without Ruslan. It’s not my fault Mikail told him a pack of lies that’s got him all twisted around.” But guilt wormed through me. If Kiran had come alone, I still would’ve tried for a bargain with Ruslan in exchange for Melly, rather than going to Marten or Halassian.

  “What lies did Mikail tell?” The voice was Marten’s.

  I turned, startled. He’d come right up behind us. His body remained as stiff as stone, but a glimmer of the old, sharp intelligence lurked in his eyes. Lena and Stevan exchanged a relieved glance.

  “You didn’t see when you were in my mind?” I asked Marten.

  He looked away. “No. I did not…pursue your memory that far.”

  I remembered him staggering back from me in stunned anguish. “Right. Well. Mikail’s a clever bastard…” I repeated what Kiran had said of the Alathians binding him, and my betrayal. “It’s so close to the truth, it’ll be hard to counter.” After all, the Council had bound Kiran; hell, I’d even betrayed him, just not to the Alathians.

  Marten was silent. At last he said, “I think you are the only one capable of showing Kiran the truth. When the time comes, you must convince him to look at your memories.”

  It was my turn to look away. I didn’t even challenge him on that mealy-mouthed “when the time comes.” If my memories were Kiran’s only hope of learning the truth, he was fucked. I couldn’t sacrifice Melly and Cara for his sake.

  Halassian hurried in. “The wards are as strong as I can make them,” she announced. She studied Marten and blew out a sharp, relieved breath. “Back among the living, are you? Good. Dev, if you’ll start from the beginning…”

  I ran through an account of my experiences since I’d woken under rubble, my only omission the full extent of my deal with Sechaveh. I even gave a quick, spare recounting of Talm’s interrogation, as dry and clinical as I could make it, hoping I might spare Marten the need.

  Marten’s face closed up again as I spoke. The other Alathians listened in stolid silence, though I heard Lena’s breath catch several times.

  At the end, Halassian shook her head, looking weary and old. “I remember Talmaddis’s outrage over that murdered family. But his outrage wasn’t unusual. Every mage stationed at this embassy goes through it. The first time you see a man killed on a whim and watch the mage responsible walk away without a care…it’s a terrible thing. Some can’t handle their anger, and I send them home. But Talmaddis seemed to settle…I had no complaint of him over the next few years. I was sorry to see him go when he requested a transfer—”

  The floor trembled, a swift, sharp shudder. The air beside Talm’s chair shimmered, and a man appeared. Long sand-colored robes, amber eyes glaring from a slit in a headwrap, the whole of his body oddly blurred, as if seen through heat haze…Vidai zha-Dakhar. Fuck!

  I stumbled backward, even as Jenoviann shrieked, echoed by Kessaravil. Their chests ripped open, blood gouting over Talm. Marten and Lena shouted as one and raised their hands. The air between Vidai and us blazed into a wall of flame.

  Stevan shoved me backward. “Run!”

  I ran, but not for the embassy door. Instead, I skirted the magefire and sprinted for the archway that led to the sleeping chambers. The wards—Shaikar take me for asking Halassian to alter them! Melly, Cara, and Jylla were trapped.

  Wild, harsh chanting behind me, a crackling roar as of fire leaping high, and a rumbling crash. The floor still quivered beneath my feet, but not enough to impede balance. I kicked open the door to the room I’d shared with Cara. Jylla and Melly knelt on the bed, peering at the window’s wards. Cara stood in front of them, grim and determined, a knife in one hand and a boneshatter charm in the other.

  “The hold-fast line,” Jylla snapped at Melly. “You’ve got to break it—”

  “I know!” Melly’s voice was high with fear. “I’m looking for it!”

  I raced past Cara and vaulted onto the bed. I’d found the breakpoints in the wards the first night I’d stayed here. Old habits died hard. “You’ll have to shatter three lines! This one first, then these.”

  Melly’s small face tightened with concentration. The air over the first ward line blurred. A gouge appeared in the silver, glittering shards spraying onto the bed.

  “Hit it again!” She’d have to make a complete break in the ward line, or the damaged ward would still trigger—and if it triggered while damaged, the magic might flare out in enough magefire to burn us all to a crisp.

  “Stand away and I’ll release the wards!” Ambassador Halassian panted into the room. Her sleeves were singed black, a burn oozing on one cheek. As Melly, Jylla and I scrambled back from the window, she said, “I told Marten I’d see you safe—he collapsed the archway behind me, but we can’t count on that stopping Vidai.” She reached for the ward lines.

  I ran to the opposite bed. If I could block the door, that might gain us more time. I dragged the ironwood bedframe away from the wall.

  “Dev—behind you!” Horror colored Cara’s voice.

  I whirled to see Vidai in the doorway. Halassian sang out in a keening yell. Fire sheeted over the door, but Vidai vanished, only to reappear not a foot from my side.

  If he killed with the Taint, a physical barrier could block a blow where magic couldn’t—and blows could be dodged, if a man moved quick enough. I dove over the bed, dropped flat on the far side, and kicked the bedframe toward him. Suliyya grant Halassian could finish with the wards!

  Cara shouted. Her knife whizzed through the air toward Vidai, only to jerk aside and clatter against the wall. I rolled, heard Halassian shriek something, a shriek that suddenly cut off.

  A warm, wet spray drenched me. I yelled in frightened reflex and twisted aside. Halassian’s body thudded down next to me. Her throat was torn open so deeply I saw the white of her spine.

  Vidai vaulted over the bed. His eyes fixed on me, and I saw the promise of my death in that furious amber gaze. I scrambled up, skidding in blood, and launched myself straight for him. If
I could distract him that much longer, let the others get clear—

  “No!” Melly screamed. Inches away from my chest, the air blurred. A thunderclap echoed through the room. I bounced off an invisible barrier and fell backward with my head ringing and the copper taste of blood in my mouth.

  She’d blocked his strike! I leapt up again, even as the bed jerked into the air to fly at Vidai.

  The bed shattered into a hail of ironwood splinters and cloth scraps. Vidai stood beyond, turning to keep Melly in sight as she darted through the air.

  “I can feel you strike,” she shouted. “Old man, so slow…you won’t touch them!”

  Jylla was creeping for the door, crouched low. Cara slid along the wall toward her fallen knife. If Vidai really was untalented—I saw no warding charms on his wrists. A blade might do for him where magic couldn’t, if he was too busy to see it coming. I snatched up a handful of ironwood bits.

  Vidai tossed something small and metal into the air. A searing flash blinded me. Melly cried out, and I heard a heavy thump. Mother of maidens, no! I scrubbed frantically at my eyes, but the world remained a glaring sea of white. A grating footstep, in front of me—I threw the ironwood shards and ducked sideways.

  A sudden shove sent me flying. I landed on something horribly soft and wet. I rolled and scrabbled upright, blinking furiously. Through a bright, watery haze, I saw Vidai crouched over Melly’s limp form. No blood marred her clothes, but the right side of her face was red and swollen, as if from a blow. Oh gods, this must be how he snatched Tainters. The flash-charm, so they couldn’t see to strike at him, then he swatted them down—

  Shouts, from the doorway: Marten, Lena, and Stevan, rock dust coating their faces, their uniforms blackened and bloodied. Magefire boiled in the air before them, lanced out toward Vidai. I lunged for Melly.

  Too late. Vidai shimmered and vanished, taking her with him.

  A wordless, agonized howl burst from me. With Ruslan, I’d had a chance, but this…Vidai would kill her to fuel his magic, and I hadn’t a prayer of stopping him. I couldn’t see, couldn’t think, the horror of it too strong—