The Tainted City

by Courtney Schafer

  “Do you say so?” The demon made a chuffing sound. “You have blood-right; they are yours to kill.”

  “Then leave,” Kiran said. “Return to your fire, and do not touch us or Ninavel again.”

  The demon smiled his red, fanged grin. “I’ll yield, child. But only so long as you live…and I think that is not long. Soon enough, their blood is mine.”

  He vanished.

  For a moment, nobody moved. Then Mikail stirred, groaning. His wounds shimmered and closed. Ruslan shut his eyes in relief. For once, I shared it. If the demon came back before we could get the fuck out of here, better if he had someone with tastier blood than mine to draw his attention. But what had the demon meant about Kiran not living long? Was that only in comparison to demonkind?

  I jumped in surprise when Kiran spoke again. He said in the thin, wavering voice of a child, “Ruslan…I remember the temple, I…”

  Ruslan hurried toward him; halted. He reached for Kiran, slow and cautious as a man seeking to gentle a skittish horse. “You need not remember it, Kiran. You are safe now.”

  “My barriers,” Kiran said. “I can’t rebuild them. It hurts, Ruslan, it hurts—” He keened and toppled over, his back arching into a taut, straining bow.

  Ruslan caught him, sank to his knees on the stone. Kiran convulsed in his arms, his eyes rolled up to the whites, his heels drumming on the ground.

  “Kiran!” Never before had I seen Ruslan afraid. I stood frozen, at a total loss. What was wrong with Kiran?

  “Marten.” The sharpness of Lena’s tone made me turn. Marten was staring at Kiran with an expression that left my chest hollow. There was no surprise in it. Only a silent, grim struggle, as if he weighed some terrible decision.

  Lena had seen it too. She caught his arm. “What do you know?”

  Marten met her eyes. After a heartbeat, hers widened. The blood drained from her face to leave it sallow. “Give him the drug, Marten! He thought Stevan his enemy—” Lena stopped, swiped a hand over her eyes. Her voice tightened. “The demon. You heard what he said. If Kiran dies, and he returns…”

  “Yes.” The struggle on Marten’s face eased. He drew a vial of black liquid from a pocket.

  Lena snatched it from him and raced to Kiran’s side. Ruslan caught her hand, glaring at the vial. “What is that?”

  “It will stop the convulsions.” Lena tore her hand free. “Hold him while I get his mouth open.”

  Ruslan’s glare didn’t lessen, but he obeyed. Lena pressed her fingers deep into Kiran’s jaw, his neck; the muscles slackened and his teeth parted. She dumped the vial’s contents into Kiran’s mouth and stroked his throat to force a swallow.

  Kiran arched backward so hard I heard his spine crack. Ruslan snapped, “You said it would—”

  Kiran slumped with a long, wavering sigh. His eyes fluttered open, but they were unfocused, the pupils blown wide. Ruslan pressed his hands to Kiran’s temples. For an instant he held the pose; then his head jerked up.

  “What have you done?” he shouted at Marten.

  A bleak smile touched Marten’s mouth. “Did you think I would simply hand you Kiran without taking precautions first? We have not your skill with bindings, Ruslan…but we know far more of the body’s functioning than you have ever bothered to learn. There is a certain balance of humors in adult mages that allows them to withstand the energies of confluence magic. Distort that balance enough—as happens when a body has built a dependency on a certain drug, and that drug is withdrawn—and spellcasting itself will push body and soulfire further and further out of balance, until any touch of magic brings death even a blood mage cannot escape. Unless more of the drug is given…and we hold the only knowledge of its formulation.”

  Horror leached through me. Marten’s plan hadn’t been to poison Ruslan, but Kiran? Turn him into an addict, chain him with a drug that ensured he’d die if he tried to slip his bonds? The Alathians must have drugged Kiran’s food during those long weeks in Tamanath…but Lena hadn’t known of it. Talm couldn’t have either, or else Lizaveta would have seen it in his mind.

  Of course Talm and Lena hadn’t. Marten must not have wanted any of the mages who regularly guarded Kiran to know, in case they let something slip. Because long before the trip to Ninavel, the Council had wanted a way to kill Kiran—and that didn’t exactly match with all Marten’s promises to him of sanctuary and acceptance.

  Ruslan looked ready to tear Marten’s throat out with his teeth. “You will tell me of this drug.”

  “No,” Marten said simply. “You cannot cast against us, cannot take the knowledge from my mind. I do not even have any of the drug here. Lena gave Kiran enough of a similar substance to keep him alive for a few hours yet; but any spellcasting will hasten his death. If you wish Kiran to live, you must let me take him back to Alathia.”

  “Alathia!” I blurted. “You’ll never make it to Alathia in only a few hours, Marten!” Thirty miles from the cirque to the border…that meant at least three days’ travel over terrain as rough as that of the cirque’s surroundings.

  Marten said, “The Watch waits just outside our wards. For a distance this close, I need only mark an anchor point and signal them”—he slid a message charm from his pocket, held it up—“and they can cast a translocation spell to bring any who stand in the anchor point’s sigils to them. Once we cross inside the wards, they will give Kiran another dose of the drug. If that comes soon enough after the translocation, he may survive. But if he remains here, his death is certain. The choice is yours, Ruslan.”

  He may survive… Marten wasn’t sure Kiran should live. Did he know why Kiran had killed Stevan, or had he been too busy casting to see Ruslan’s attempt on Melly? But gods, his so-called precautions…he’d planned all along that if Kiran slid too far into blood magic, he’d simply stand back and let him die. The bastard! So much for that talk of I will not abandon you.

  Ruslan didn’t move, his body rigid. I couldn’t breathe. What would he do? Would he let Kiran go, knowing he couldn’t cast against Alathia to get him back? Or would he rather see Kiran dead than let Marten win?

  Mikail spoke, hoarse and strained. “Ruslan.”

  Ruslan turned to hold Mikail’s gaze. I couldn’t read in their expressions what they said to each other. But Ruslan’s fingers dug hard into Kiran’s shirt, over Kiran’s heart. He looked up at Marten, his hazel eyes bleak and furious.

  “Take him. But my knife will find you even if my spells do not, Martennan. We akheli live long…and we do not forget. You have sealed your country’s ruin.”

  Marten’s grip tightened on the message charm. He said to Lena, “Go find Cara. I’ll scribe the sigils.”

  So he meant to take us all to safety, not just Kiran. I hadn’t been sure. The clouds above were clearing, patches of blue sky showing through. Across the tundra and talus, the caves at the base of the Scythe of Night were visible, dark holes dotting the lower cliffs.

  “Wait,” I said to Lena. “While you’re looking for Cara, can you check if there are any other people in the caves? Other kids?” Like Pello’s son.

  “I will cast a seeking spell.” Lena hurried away from the lake toward the caves.

  Ruslan stood, but Kiran twisted to clutch at him. “Ruslan…” Fear glazed his eyes, his face as white as the demon’s. “No, please! They’ll bind me, change me…”

  Oh, gods. He still believed Mikail’s lies, thought himself given up to suffer at the hands of enemies.

  Pain spread over Ruslan’s face. He knelt again and clasped Kiran to him, whispered in his ear. Kiran’s panicked breathing slowed—only to speed again, as Ruslan murmured something else.

  “No!” Kiran sounded more terrified than ever. “Ruslan, no, you must not—”

  Ruslan touched Kiran’s brow. Kiran’s eyes rolled up, his body relaxing into unconsciousness.

  Fuck. What had Ruslan done to him? Marten was watching them with grim intensity. Would he give Kiran the drug if we made it through the border? Or did he think Kiran b
eyond saving, as Stevan had?

  I glanced at Stevan’s body. His eyes were open and staring, his mouth drawn in a rictus. Blood was crusted on the wound left by Kiran’s knife.

  Was Stevan right? This business of temples, and blood-right…was there some deeper link between Kiran and demonkind than that shadow of physical resemblance?

  I didn’t know. And damn, my gut hurt. I staggered over to Melly, lifted her off the stone. “Marten. Can you break this sleep-fast charm and wake her up?”

  He said shortly, “Leave her sleeping. Our healers will look at her after we cross the border. And you. Your injuries will only worsen without treatment.”

  In other words, don’t even think about running off after the spell’s cast.

  I hadn’t planned on it. “Marten…did you see what happened with Melly? Or were you too busy casting?”

  He said, “I saw, but I am not yet certain of Kiran’s reasons. If I bring him to the Council as he is now…”

  He didn’t continue, but I heard what he wasn’t saying. They’d sentence Kiran to death in a heartbeat. A sentence they could now carry out with terrible ease.

  I lowered my voice even further. “Just now, did…did Ruslan mess with his head again?”

  “I felt no casting,” Marten said. “Do you remember what I told you about showing Kiran the truth?”

  “Yeah.” Though even if Kiran agreed to look at my memories, and believed them… “Would that be enough?” I wasn’t so sure the Council would care.

  Marten said, “No. There is more you must convince him to do. We’ll speak of it in Alathia.” With that, he turned away.

  Well, that was disturbingly vague. But I was too tired and sore to care. I settled against a boulder and cradled Melly to me, stroked her hair off her bruised face. For a time, I didn’t think of anything else but her slow, steady breathing.

  “Dev!” I looked up to see Cara kneeling before me, concern in her eyes. Her injured arm was bound in a sling, but her lacerations had closed, her bruises faded. Lena must’ve given her charms or cast some healing spellwork. I gave Cara a wan smile.

  “We kept Vidai busy, all right,” I said.

  Her laugh came out more like a sob. “So I hear. And look who I found.”

  She moved aside. Behind her was a scrap of a boy with hard, wary eyes. He had Pello’s wild mop of curls, though his face was round, his skin Sulanian-dark. His clothes were ragged, and one ankle was bruised and raw.

  Maybe Vidai hadn’t wanted to kill yet another child. I remembered Pello gasping out those anguished phrases of Varkevian, and my heart twisted within me. Likely the boy had never known his father. Just as Melly hadn’t known Sethan; and now, they never would.

  “I’ve something for you,” I said to the boy. “It’s from your father. He was…a brave man.” The crescent moon necklace hung around my own neck. I slipped it off and handed it to him.

  He didn’t speak, but one fist closed tight on the little moon of malachite.

  “We’re ready,” Marten said. I levered myself to my feet, groaning as pain spiked through my stomach. Melly felt as heavy as ten coal sacks, but I shrugged off Lena’s offer to carry her. Stupid, maybe. But I couldn’t let her go.

  Lena herded us into a ring of sigils scribed on a granite slab, well away from the scorched and darkened lines of Ruslan’s quicksilver pattern. Kiran lay huddled at Marten’s feet. Stevan’s body lay in the ring also, wrapped in a leather coat I recognized as Cara’s.

  Beyond the ring, Ruslan stood framed by the Cirque’s sky-piercing Knives, watching us with glittering eyes. Mikail sat by his side with his head hanging low. New anger burned in me. We’d saved Ninavel, but I didn’t feel a damn bit of triumph in it. Life would go on, streetside—my friends would laugh and dance in the night markets, safe from riots and from dying of thirst—but Ruslan and those like him would go right on killing as they pleased. The bastard hadn’t suffered so much as a hangnail in this, while so many others paid with their lives.

  I understood now the desperate outrage that had driven Talm and Vidai. There had to be a way to change things in Ninavel. One that didn’t involve killing kids or destroying the city outright.

  Marten and Lena started singing. The sigils around us lit. Kiran stirred at Marten’s feet, moaning. Before light rose to swallow us, I saw Ruslan stride forward, his gaze locked on Kiran. His mouth moved in one silent word.

  Remember.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  (Kiran)

  “Kiran? Can you hear me?”

  The voice was female and concerned, but it didn’t sound like Lizaveta’s. Kiran opened his eyes, confused.

  He lay on a cot in a one-room wooden cabin, the rough-hewn planks of walls and floor covered in freshly laid ward lines. Dusty gold shafts of sunlight slanted through pine branches outside the cabin’s single small window.

  A young woman leaned over him, studying him with grave intensity. Circles showed dark beneath her eyes, and lines of stress and sorrow marked her freckled face. Kiran’s gaze skipped downward to land on her uniform.

  Alathian. Kiran thrashed upright on the cot, his heart racing. He sought power to reinforce his barriers—and cried out, his hands flying up to his temples, as agony seared through his head.

  “Don’t,” the woman said, anxious. “Kiran, you must not try any spellwork. Your soulfire is not yet recovered from our translocation. If you let me, I can ease the pain…” She reached for his forehead.

  “No!” Kiran flinched back. He knew her now: Lena, Martennan’s first lieutenant. Did she mean to bind him? Had they done so already? His head hurt, he couldn’t think—

  Lena drew her hand back. “My apologies…I know you believe us your enemies.” She sighed and pushed aside a lock of dark hair that had straggled free of her braids. “Do you remember what happened when we fought Vidai?”

  Fragmented flashes tumbled through Kiran’s mind. He took a deep breath and focused inward. His barriers were terrifyingly thin, his ikilhia guttering lower than he’d ever felt it. But raw as his mind was, he sensed no foreign bindings, only the same gaping holes in his older memories. As for more recent events…he remembered fighting, remembered…

  The knife sinking deep to pierce Stevannes’s heart, ikilhia bursting free in a flood so intoxicating Kiran thought his own heart might fail from the pleasure of it—

  “I…helped Ruslan cast,” he said, the words thick on his tongue.

  Lena’s breath faltered, grief darkening her eyes. “You took Stevan’s life.”

  Pain colored her voice, though he didn’t hear anger. But she must be angry; he’d killed one of her friends. Had she and Stevannes been as close as he and Mikail? He couldn’t imagine the chasm in his heart if Mikail died. Guilt shot through him, fracturing the memory of that terrible, wondrous ecstasy.

  He shouldn’t feel guilt. Stevannes had been his enemy. Besides, if he hadn’t killed Stevannes… “We all would have died, and Ninavel with us, if I had not,” he said to Lena.

  Her eyes searched his face. He didn’t know what she was looking for. After a short silence, she said, “Do you recall what happened afterward?”

  Everything after was hazy and muddled, like a fever-dream. He remembered trembling, feeling sick and strange, as something prowled around him, watching him with eyes that dragged at him like claws.

  The demon. It had spoken of temples, and scarred souls, and attacked Mikail…and out of Kiran’s horror and desperation, a fissure had cracked open in the wall at the core of his memories. He’d said—

  His mind recoiled in a rejection so violent it nearly shattered his hold on consciousness. He hastily blinked away the darkness that threatened his vision.

  “I don’t remember.” He didn’t. Wouldn’t. The wall was solid. The demon had left, and Mikail had survived—that was all he needed to recall while he remained in Alathian hands.

  “You don’t know why we brought you here?” Lena looked anxious again.

  Here. Kiran glanced around the cabin.
The wooden walls…and beyond his fragile barriers and the sharp, forbidding mutter of the wards, the aether was dead of magical energies. Another flash came, of Ruslan shouting at Martennan, something about a drug…

  Alathia. He was in Alathia, trapped behind their border wards, where Ruslan could not reach him. A new memory broke over him, a brief instant of clarity as bitingly sharp as mountain air: Ruslan holding him close, whispering, I once burned a confluence to claim you for my own. I would not let Martennan take you from me, except that I have seen your soul today. You are akheli, and you will break your bonds and come back to us. I promise you, the Alathians will pay in blood for daring to touch you. If a nathahlen can bargain with a demon, think what better alliance an akheli can make!

  Ruslan must not bargain with those…those creatures! Cold, unreasoning horror left Kiran reeling. He scrambled off the cot, only to fall back with a strangled cry as the wards’ magic lashed across his mind.

  Lena made a low, dismayed noise. “Kiran, please. You need to take care.”

  Kiran gripped his knees to hide the shaking of his hands. “You must let me go. Now! Or Ruslan will take Vidai’s path. You saw what an untalented man could do with a demon’s power. Imagine Ruslan turning that against your country!”

  No surprise showed on Lena’s face, only solemn, worried intensity. “He will do it anyway. Even if we released you. His pride and arrogance will allow no less, after Marten outmaneuvered him.”

  “Free me, and I will convince Ruslan not to deal with demons.” Kiran had to convince him. Otherwise, the fear whispered, he will bring destruction on himself and all you love along with those you hate, and innocents will die in numbers Vidai never dreamed. If Kiran returned and enlisted Lizaveta and Mikail to help cool Ruslan’s temper and recall him to caution, Ruslan would yield. Ruslan would not abandon the idea of revenge entirely, but he would take a more temperate course.

  Lena said, “I fear he would instead convince you. Just as he convinced you we are your enemies. The mark-bond gives him too much power over you, Kiran. You can’t hope to deal with him as an equal.”