“And you believed him?” Marten had been all cool assurance, claiming the Alathians’ magic could easily counter Lizaveta’s spellwork if she cast against us. He’d been so smoothly confident, in fact, it’d raised all my hackles. He was hiding something.
Cara said, “I didn’t get the chance to tell you before, but…Jylla found something. When Talm told us you were dead, she didn’t yell like I did, or weep—but gods, Dev, I’ve never seen anyone so furious. She told me she’d see the traitor dead if she had to summon a demon herself to do it. She had me keep Halassian busy while she sniffed out the embassy vault—don’t ask me how, but she broke in and searched it. She found a list of herbs that Jenoviann had ordered from highside suppliers, supposedly on Marten’s orders; most of the herbs were ordinary things, but some were very rare, and very nasty—Jylla said they’re only used in poisons.”
Jylla would know, given how she’d poisoned Naidar’s original lover so she could take the woman’s place. Pain twisted through me; I stared grimly at a piton in my hands. “What’s this got to do with Marten protecting us?”
“Jylla thought the list might implicate Jenoviann, but now…what if Marten really does have some plan against Ruslan?”
“What, you think Marten means to poison him? Hard to believe that’d work on a blood mage.” I’d seen herbs like hennanwort and yeleran affect Kiran, but Kiran had also told me a blood mage couldn’t be killed by physical means.
Cara shrugged. “I don’t know. But I’d wager Marten’s got something in mind, and Khalmet knows he’s clever enough to pull it off.”
Maybe. But the Cirque of the Knives was only some thirty miles from the Alathian border. If we won out over Vidai, Marten could just as easily make a run for safety and leave me, Cara, and Melly to Ruslan as a distraction.
“You should’ve asked Ruslan to vow the oath I asked Sechaveh for, where he can’t hurt you and Melly at all.” I wished she hadn’t asked at all. That she’d stay safely behind, out of Vidai’s reach. But she was right: there was no way I could climb a difficult couloir without a partner. More, I wouldn’t make my old mistake. I wouldn’t shut Cara out, turn her aside, treat her like she wasn’t smart enough to weigh risks for herself. She’d made her decision, and I would accept it, even when my heart screamed I shouldn’t.
“You mean, the vow where Ruslan can boil our blood the minute you speak to Kiran?” Cara jerked her knots tight. “No. This way both frees you from playing Sechaveh’s bond-slave and ensures we’ve all got a chance.”
I couldn’t deny I’d be glad to dodge Sechaveh’s employ. But still…I shook my head. “You saw Kiran today, hopping to Ruslan’s orders without even blinking. He gave Melly over to Ruslan, watched him hurt her and never said a word of protest.” I tossed my piton into a pile of others, hard enough to set them all ringing. “Ruslan wouldn’t have agreed to vow for you if he wasn’t dead certain of Kiran’s loyalty now. Maybe he fucked with Kiran’s mind again. Or maybe Mikail was right, and I don’t know Kiran as well as I thought. Either way, I’m not sure he can be helped.”
“You said Kiran was the one to suggest Ruslan bring you to Sechaveh.” Cara began coiling a rope. “Maybe he tried to help you the only way he could.”
I snorted. “Have you seen the way Kiran looks at me now? He’s swallowed Mikail’s lies, hates me as his enemy. Hell, he’ll probably be the one to knife me the instant Vidai’s dead.”
“Don’t give up yet, that’s all I’m saying.”
Sudden, helpless anger drove me to my feet. “I’m not! I just…I can’t think about it now, Cara.” Ever since the attack, a constant round of images repeated behind my eyes. Vidai crouched over an unconscious Melly, her face swollen from his blow; Jylla’s body heavy in my arms, her lifeblood dark on my hands…
“Dev.” Cara stood. “I’m afraid for Melly too.” I could see it in her eyes, the fear, the dark mirror of my own anguish. She laid a tentative hand on my shoulder. When I didn’t pull away, she drew me close, whispered, “We’ll save her.”
She said it like she believed it. I wanted to believe it too, wanted to share her hope, her steadfast courage—I clutched at her like a drowning man and sought her mouth. Not tenderly, but in rough, near savage urgency, desperate to block out the blood and death in my head.
She met my ferocity, doubled it, her mouth hard on mine, her fingers raking down my back. I shoved her against the wall, even as her hands tore at my clothing.
Our coupling in Kost had been passionate rather than gentle, but there’d been laughter, even joy. This was different, darker, shadowed by grief and fear, both of us panting and silent, gripping each other hard enough to bruise. Afterward, I dropped my forehead against her shoulder, my face wet with tears and sweat.
She cupped the back of my head, her breathing still ragged. A raw, ugly sound escaped me. “Shhh,” she said, her voice gentle as her hands hadn’t been. “It’ll be all right, Dev.”
The lie you had to tell. But just like Melly, I knew better.
Chapter Twenty-Four
(Dev)
Blood magic might allow a translocation spell to be cast with just two mages instead of fifty, but the aftereffects were far worse. I spent long moments curled in a retching ball, my mind a dizzy, roaring blank. Gradually, I became aware that the air was cold on my face, the ground beneath me hummocked tundra instead of polished marble.
When the world finally steadied enough I didn’t feel like I was about to slide off a cliff, I shoved up to my knees—and stopped, transfixed.
Mountains surrounded me, tall and jagged and beautiful in the twilight before dawn. Snow lined their couloirs and lay in great patches on the north-facing slopes. Beyond the shallow tarn at the valley’s head, a barren expanse of jumbled boulders lapped up against soaring rock faces so sheer I couldn’t make out a single ledge. High above, the peaks constricted into improbably slender spires, dark as obsidian against a sky of palest violet. Four of the Cirque’s seven Knives were visible from this vantage: Cloudbreaker, Stormmaker, Magelance, The Scythe of Night…the very names were the stuff of legend among outriders.
For one blessedly sweet instant, the sight swept away the black weight within. Khalmet’s hand, but I’d missed this! The chill, clean taste of the air, the wild grandeur of the peaks, all of it eased my heart in a way nothing and no one else could.
Beside me, Cara climbed to her feet and surveyed the valley. She let out a long, slow breath, her shoulders relaxing. Her face was indistinct in the low light, but I knew what it’d show: the reflection of my own brief instant of joy.
All around us, the mages were still huddled in tight, miserable knots. Even Ruslan looked unsteady, braced on his knees with a bloody knife gripped in his hands.
He’d killed a man to send us here. Something Marten and Stevan had argued over; I’d thought Stevan would refuse to come. I will not condone blood magic! he’d shouted at Marten. You break Alathia’s laws by agreeing to this!
Marten had said grimly, Lord Sechaveh promised me the victim will be a sentenced criminal; and once in the Whitefires, Ruslan will use stored energies to fuel his spells. If the Council disagrees with my choice to condone one criminal’s death in exchange for saving thousands of lives, I will accept the consequences.
Was that not Talmaddis’s logic? Stevan had demanded. I’d seen the knife thrust strike home. But Marten had straightened and said with icy, implacable authority, You are under my command, Arcanist Stevannes. You will not refuse my orders.
Stevan had obeyed, though he hadn’t spoken a word to Marten since. Even now, as Marten and Lena helped each other to their feet, he staggered upright with his back to them.
Asshole or not, at least he had principles. Mine weren’t so solid. I felt only a twinge of guilt for the translocation casting, a twinge easily pushed aside by thinking of Melly in Vidai’s hands. When I thought of the newly-created Taint charm tucked in a warded box in Ruslan’s pack, I felt only a fierce, soul-deep hunger. That might disturb me if I considered i
t too long, but I didn’t plan on doing any considering. Not until Melly was safe.
Beyond Stevan, Kiran was still bent over his knees, breathing in harsh gasps with his hands pressed to his eyes. He hadn’t so much as flinched when Ruslan sliced the criminal’s throat—and damn it, his lack of reaction did disturb me, deeply enough I couldn’t shut it out.
“Kiran?” Mikail scooted over to him and laid a hand on his back.
Marten turned to watch them. I couldn’t read his expression, but his stance had an odd tension. Maybe it was guilt. If Kiran ended as Ruslan’s obedient tool, Marten had to know it was his fault. After seeing the raw depth of Marten’s pain over Talm’s betrayal, I no longer thought him wholly cold-blooded.
Kiran uncoiled from his cramped hunch. He muttered something to Mikail and lowered his hands. The charms covering his wrists still glimmered blue with slowly dying magefire. He looked up at the peaks, and his mouth fell open. The fading light of his charms showed him gaping around at the valley with every bit of the wonder and delight I remembered from our convoy trip.
“Look at him,” Cara said softly. “The Kiran we knew—he’s still in there, Dev.”
“Maybe.” I turned aside, unable to stand the reminder of a friend I thought gone. Maybe I only wanted to believe him beyond help so I could take the easy way out.
Shaikar take me, I had to stop thinking about Kiran! Saving Melly would be hard enough; I couldn’t afford distraction.
I strode over to the bulging packs piled in a heap on the tundra. Climbing supplies, crystals and warded flasks of quicksilver for the blood mages’ channeled spell, charms, food—none of the packs were light, and we’d all wear one, even Ruslan. The mages weren’t likely to enjoy the steep climb up the boulder-strewn slope to the couloir’s base, but they’d manage.
Behind the packs sat several fat, warded storage barrels. They held more food and supplies meant for the long walk out to the nearest settlement—if we survived and returned to make the trek.
I heaved a pack over to Marten. Like the others, he wore sturdy outrider leathers over a woolen shirt and trousers. No sigil-marked silk or uniforms here.
Marten eyed the pack, then the valley’s massive headwall. “Where do we go?”
“The couloir we’ll climb lies between Cloudbreaker and Stormmaker.” I pointed to a narrow slot between two of the Cirque’s tapered spires. From Sethan’s description, that couloir was the one he’d almost succeeded in climbing.
According to Ruslan, we had seven hours at most before Vidai killed Melly and destroyed Ninavel. Climbing the couloir would eat up much of that time, though I had another, earlier deadline to consider.
“I want to reach the ridge in time to scope the descent before Lizaveta’s clouds move in,” I told Marten. Ruslan had said the spellcast cloud bank should arrive by mid-morning—though he’d warned us Lizaveta’s lack of a partner as she cast to guide the clouds meant precision in timing was impossible.
Marten hefted his pack onto his shoulders, wincing at the weight. “We’re recovered enough to walk. That said, I have a whole new sympathy for pack mules. Do you truly do this for fun?”
A grin stretched my face, the first one I’d managed since Vidai’s attack. “You haven’t seen the fun part yet.”
* * *
The trudge up to the couloir seemed to take an eternity. This high in elevation, the air was thin enough to leave me and Cara gasping. The mages panted and wheezed like forge bellows, even moving at a pace so slow it left me twitching with frustrated urgency.
Yet to my relief, we reached the couloir’s base before the sun rose above the eastern peaks. Streamers of high, thin cloud glowed carmine, the sweeping cliffs above us so vast I felt no larger than a sand flea toiling up a dune. The couloir itself was a crooked slit choked with ice that looked gray and featureless in the shadowed defile. The ice was steep enough I couldn’t see the couloir’s upper reaches; Cara and I had scouted them with a spyglass on the approach. The windblown cornice choking the top of the couloir had a ferocious overhang. That very overhang had defeated Sethan on his long-ago attempt, but I thought we could skirt the cornice by veering left onto the mixed ice and rock of the couloir’s side wall. Tricky, terribly risky climbing, but Cara had agreed it was our best chance.
She and I unpacked and sorted gear with rapid, practiced efficiency. The mages collapsed by their packs in obvious relief. Even Ruslan sat with his head bowed, his chest still heaving in rapid breaths.
“You intend to climb that?”
I looked up from strapping on boot spikes to see Kiran gawking up at the couloir. Between his flabbergasted amazement and the softness of his words, he probably wasn’t even aware he’d spoken aloud.
Ruslan was sitting far enough away he might not have heard Kiran speak under the clanking of Cara racking pitons. I kept my answer equally quiet.
“Looks fun, doesn’t it?” Though in truth I far preferred climbing rock. Ice was finicky, and unstable, and you had to climb it so damn slowly. Cara enjoyed the patient, careful precision needed. I missed the freedom of movement rock afforded. But I’d climb even a poisoned slagheap if it let me reach Melly.
Kiran glanced at me, half-wary, half-puzzled. “Fun.”
“Shame we haven’t the time to let you try it,” I said. “You weren’t bad, on rock.” A calculated risk. But hell, Ruslan already meant to kill me and Cara. I hadn’t much left to lose.
The puzzlement on his face grew deeper yet. He studied me like I was some spell pattern that he was determined to unravel. The intensity of his gaze made my skin itch with hope and guilt combined. Maybe he wasn’t so far gone. Maybe…
Kiran sucked in a breath as if to speak. But then he shook his head, and the puzzlement vanished from his face to leave it as blank as the cliffs above. He retreated from me without a word to sit beside Mikail.
Mikail lifted his head and looked straight at me. One corner of his mouth ticked upward in a tiny, triumphant smile that said, You see? He’s ours, now.
I returned to strapping on boot spikes as if I couldn’t care less. I shouldn’t care, not after Kiran had let Ruslan hurt Melly, not with her still in such danger. But damn it, I did.
Kiran didn’t look at me again. He took out one of the dense little nutcakes we’d brought as food and started chewing. Yet his gaze kept drifting back up the couloir.
So did mine, and not just to scout the ice as the sky slowly brightened. Melly was somewhere beyond this ridge. Hurt and afraid, maybe even despairing, thinking no one would come.
I belted on my harness and stomped over to Ruslan. “I want the Taint charm.”
Speaking with the labored patience of a man forced to deal with a moron, Ruslan said, “The Taint uses confluence power, and this rock is inert. The charm cannot help you in the climb; it will do you no good until we reach the basin floor.”
“Maybe not, but I want it waiting on my wrist when we do, not buried in your pack. What if Vidai sniffs us out before you’re ready?” I didn’t want any chance he’d stop me reaching Melly.
Sardonic amusement lit Ruslan’s eyes. “How deeply you nathahlen yearn for the merest scraps of power.” He dug in his pack and produced a thick silver bracelet crowded with sigils and set with emeralds.
I couldn’t help leaning forward, my eyes locked on the charm. A little, knowing smile played about Ruslan’s mouth. “Take it. The trigger word is vishakhta.”
I forced myself to reach casually for the charm, not snatch it from his hand.
Watching me, Marten said sharply, “Once we reach the basin, don’t spark it without cause, Dev. If you damage your organs before we cast, we risk losing this fight.”
I’d asked Ruslan in Ninavel if he could make it so the charm didn’t fuck me up so quickly. He’d smiled that sandcat’s smile of his and said, No. The charm works because of the damage caused; it is not a mere side effect. I wasn’t sure I believed him, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. Instead, I had to depend on the Alathians. Stevan had
said that with all three of them casting to heal me from the instant I triggered the charm, I might avoid mortal injury.
“I won’t spark it,” I promised Marten. But oh, how I longed to, even knowing the cost. I clasped the band onto my wrist and returned to help Cara uncoil ropes. Impatience buzzed in my blood, but I had to shut everything out but ice and rock. Otherwise, I’d never save Melly.
* * *
Tink! Tink! I tapped the curved blade of one hand axe against fluted ice, searching for a good placement. My calves were on the edge of cramping after hours of standing on the front points of my boot spikes. Blood was stiff on my sleeve; I’d fallen, earlier, and sliced myself with an axe blade when the rope snapped taut and slammed me into the ice. Thank Khalmet, both rope and anchor had held, and I hadn’t knocked Cara off her stance at the belay point. Both of us had countless cuts on our faces from falling ice shards, and numb, raw fingers from wiggling pitons into cracks on the couloir’s sidewall to set up haul rope stations.
The mages were inching up the haul ropes behind us, strung out along the couloir like knots in a rawhide braid. We’d showed them how to ascend using short lengths of cord tied in slipknots around the rope and attached to harness and boots. Weight the harness cord, and the knot locked tight on the rope to hold a man’s weight. Slide the boot cord knots higher on the rope, stand to release the harness cord knot and slide it high, sit, slide the boot cord knots, stand, repeat. Arduous and slow, but doable for even the least experienced of climbers.
The couloir’s cornice loomed over me, a frozen wave whose underside bristled with dagger-sharp icicles thick as my leg. Nobody could climb over that monster; I couldn’t believe Sethan had even tried. Time to bail to the side wall, though that had its own dangers. The ice there was thin and brittle, fading out entirely in sections to leave bare rock. No chance of placing protection, and the rock was likely to be just as brittle as the ice.
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