The Tainted City

by Courtney Schafer

  Kiran had been screaming and convulsing at Marten’s feet. They’d slapped an amulet on him—one I recognized, to my great surprise: it was his old magic-blocking one. That calmed him some, though the convulsions continued as they carried him through the border. I hadn’t seen him again until now, being stuck on my own cot while mages poked and prodded me with an anxious Cara looking on. They’d already cast to heal her arm, leaving her hale except for fading shadows of bruises. The mages had chanted over me until I thought I’d go crazy, and made me drink a whole host of rancid-tasting liquids. At least now my gut no longer hurt every time I moved. Afterward, they’d moved on to checking over Melly; I’d wanted to stay, but Marten had insisted I go to Kiran.

  Melly. Hell. If Kiran’s warning about Ruslan was true, she wasn’t safe here—wouldn’t be safe anywhere. Wards wouldn’t stop a demon. Damn Ruslan!

  Marten led me past the guard mages to the edge of the clearing. In the shadow of a massive cinnabar pine, he stopped and faced me. “You must convince Kiran to allow me within his mind.”

  “I don’t know if I can,” I said, honestly. “You saw him in there. He’s stubborn when he’s decided on something.” My memories weren’t helping, full as they were of hate and distrust of Marten.

  “You must.” Marten said it like he thought I was the one holding out. I glared at him.

  “I know the stakes here. But damn it, Marten, you can’t just sit back and count on me to clean up your mess. You’re the one who fucked him over; it’s no wonder he’d rather die than let you in his head.”

  “Marten!” Lena hurried across the clearing toward us. She had the jeweled band of a message charm clamped in one hand, and she looked so worried it set all my nerves jumping. “The Council has already considered your report—they want you to contact them for new orders.”

  Marten’s face sagged in dismay. “So soon…I’d hoped Councilor Varellian could gain me more time.” He took the message charm with slow, heavy reluctance.

  New orders…about Kiran? The Council couldn’t be so stupid as to sentence him to death. Right?

  Marten slid the charm into his wrist, and his eyes took on the familiar distance of spellcasting. I turned to Lena, words spilling out in protest.

  “The Council can’t kill Kiran! You need what he knows, and he’s already chained as tight as you could want, thanks to your Shaikar-cursed drug!”

  Lena said, low and reluctant, “You assume too much. If the Council decides Kiran is too dangerous to trust, there are ways to take his knowledge that will not require his cooperation…or his survival. If the drug is withheld, before he dies he will grow too weak to fight our casting.”

  I went cold, all the way through. “Khalmet’s bloodsoaked hand! You call yourselves better than Ruslan?”

  Pain flared in Lena’s eyes. “I don’t want Kiran dead. Neither does Marten! But Stevan’s death is not something the Council will easily forgive. Especially Councilor Niskenntal…Stevan was his sister’s son.”

  “Fuck,” I said, with feeling. I remembered Niskenntal from my testimony at Kiran’s trial. The skinny, sour-faced asshole had argued I should be burned alive, and all I’d done was smuggle a few charms.

  The sky between the cinnabar branches had gone blood-red. I prayed it wasn’t an omen. “If the Council decides against Kiran, how long before the withdrawal kills him?” How long would I have to try and get him free?

  Lena let out a shuddering breath and braced a hand on the cinnabar pine’s trunk, her eyes locked on Marten and the message charm. “We gave Kiran a dose of the drug immediately after we crossed the border, but his soulfire remains terribly unbalanced. Even though there is no confluence here, without further doses his deterioration will be rapid. I am no healer, but…he might survive a few days. Far less, if he attempts to cast or if any powerful spells are cast by others in his vicinity.”

  “You mean, spells like the Watch would cast trying to rip knowledge from his mind.”

  “Yes.” Lena’s fingers dug white into cinnabar bark.

  Marten shifted, his shoulders slumping. He took off the message charm, and I didn’t need to see the bleak defeat in his eyes to know the news wasn’t good.

  “What orders, Marten?” Lena looked like she was praying to Alathia’s twin gods.

  “We are forbidden from giving Kiran any more of the drug,” Marten said, his voice brittle. “We are to wait until he weakens, and then…take what we can.”

  Lena shut her eyes. I grabbed Marten, heedless of his magic. “Don’t you dare kill Kiran! You said it yourself: this is your doing. If you hadn’t given him to Ruslan—”

  Marten pulled free. “I did not force Kiran to kill Stevan. That was his choice.”

  “Damn it, Marten! You need Kiran alive, with his mind intact. Not just for what he knows about demons—if you want Ruslan to burn before he destroys all Alathia, I’m telling you, Kiran is the only one who can make that happen.”

  “Don’t you think I argued as much?” Real anguish lay in Marten’s voice. “I must see Kiran’s mind. If I can prove he killed Stevan to spare Melly, to save Ninavel—that is my best hope of appealing the Council’s decision.”

  Yet he didn’t sound at all confident he could do it. I glanced at the guards and lowered my voice to a hiss. “If you had any guts, you’d give Kiran that magic-blocking amulet back and a supply of the drug, take him across the border and let him go free.” From what Kiran had said of the amulet, it’d work just fine to block his mark-bond if Ruslan wasn’t actively looking for him. And Ruslan wouldn’t look, thinking he already knew where Kiran was: captive in Alathia.

  “It is not a matter of courage,” Marten said tightly. “It is a matter of duty. I cannot break my oaths. Or I am no better than Talmaddis.”

  “You aren’t,” I snapped. “Stevan was right: you’re happy to slither around Alathia’s laws when it profits you. You let Ruslan kill a man for a translocation spell without a single protest. Now Kiran’s killed a man for far greater reason, and you’ll throw him into Shaikar’s hells! But hey, you’ve killed half your team already, right? What’s one more?”

  Marten’s control slipped. He raised a hand, grief and anger dark in his face, and I didn’t know if he meant to hit me or cast against me.

  Lena caught his arm. “Marten.” She looked at me. “Go back to the healers’ cabin. They should have woken Melly by now. She’ll want to see you. I will speak again with Kiran; he must see that yielding to Marten is his only hope, now.”

  She didn’t look any more certain than Marten that yielding would save Kiran’s life. I snarled, “Think on this, both of you: if Kiran dies, you condemn your whole fucking country with him.”

  I turned my back on them and stomped past the guards, wishing with every footfall that I was kicking Marten in the gut. I’d known I couldn’t trust him to help Kiran. Yet each new time he proved it brought just as much rage as the first.

  Why couldn’t he see that Kiran was the key to stopping Ruslan? Shaikar take Marten! If he wouldn’t free Kiran, I’d have to. Though even if I stole both amulet and drug under the noses of a camp full of mages, I didn’t know how to get him past the border. From the peaks I’d glimpsed to the east above the cinnabar trees, we were in the middle of nowhere in southern Alathia, at least fifty miles from the nearest border gate at Loras. Alathian mages could walk through their border wards wherever they damn well pleased, but nobody else could.

  As I approached the cabin the Watch had turned into a makeshift infirmary, I heard a child sobbing, in wild, gulping wails like her heart had shattered.

  Melly! I sprinted the last distance and flung open the door.

  She was curled in a ball on a cot beneath an open window, her body shaking with the force of her crying. Pello’s son Janek stood staring down at her, his dark eyes wide. Cara knelt at Melly’s side, a hand on her back, glaring at a group of uniformed Alathian mages. Some of the mages looked anxious, others irritated.

  “Get Dev,” Cara said. “She need
s—” She saw me, and relief brightened her face. “Thank Khalmet, you’re here.”

  “What’s wrong?” I demanded.

  “There is nothing wrong with her,” said the oldest mage, a fat man with graying hair. He added in a tone of annoyed impatience, “She is merely overwrought.”

  Cara said, “It’s her Taint, Dev. She says she can’t feel it anymore.”

  The Change, already? No—the Taint uses confluence energy, Kiran had said, and there was no confluence here. The heart of her mind would be as dead as mine. Something she’d never before experienced, growing up in Ninavel. Worst of all, it would stay dead. Her true Change might still be days or even weeks off, but she would hit it long before she ever saw another confluence.

  I hurried to Melly’s cot and pulled her into my arms. She clawed at me and sobbed out a string of words so broken I couldn’t understand them.

  I didn’t need to. I knew what she felt: that terrible emptiness like your soul had been torn away, the world turned to ashes and shadows. “It isn’t fair,” I whispered in her ear. “When it goes, it rips the life out of you. I won’t lie, Melly…it hurts, and it’s going to hurt, for a long time. But there are other joys in this world, and you’ll find them.” I thought of Jylla crouched at my side telling me I wanted to live, and felt my eyes grow hot and wet.

  Melly kept crying, but her sobs were quieter, her grip not so desperate. I held her as the light through the window slowly failed, my own tears of regret leaking into her hair.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  (Dev)

  Someone gripped my arm. I started upright, a shout trapped in my throat.

  “Shhh.” Lena stood over me holding a dimly glowing magelight, Cara at her shoulder. Both cabin and window were dark. Melly lay curled on the cot before me, Janek on another next to her. I’d only meant to rest a moment while Cara went to ask the mages for some food for us, and then start hashing over plans to get Kiran free. But from the pitch darkness outside, I’d been asleep for hours.

  Lena took her hand from my arm, and my voice unlocked. New worry shot through me at the determined urgency on her and Cara’s faces. “What’s going on?” I whispered. “Has Kiran let Marten—”

  “No. Wait until I cast.” Lena drew me away from Melly’s cot, Cara crowding close behind her, and chanted a phrase. The cheeping whirr of nightbugs outside and the soft sounds of Melly and Janek’s breathing hushed into silence.

  Lena said to me, “If I did what you asked of Marten—if I gave Kiran the amulet and the drug, and passed him through the border—would you go with him?”

  I stared at her, wondering if this was some crazy dream. “You would free Kiran?” Helping me with Red Dal in Ninavel had been one thing, but I’d never imagined to see Lena break ranks with Marten to this extent.

  Lena said, “You may be right that Kiran is Alathia’s best hope. But even if Kiran relents and allows Marten to search his mind, I do not think the Council will change their decision. Councilor Niskenntal has argued too well that Kiran’s mark-bond makes him a risk Alathia cannot afford. Marten knows the chances are extremely slim, but…I think he is so desperate to believe he can save Kiran, that he is letting that desperation blind him.”

  She took a deep breath, her ringed hands lacing tightly together. “When Marten gave Kiran to Ruslan, you said that I had a choice, and yet I did nothing. This time…this time I will not stand by again. Not when holding to my oaths might mean my country’s destruction. But I do have two conditions. One is that you must go with him.”

  Go with Kiran. The implications of that simple statement unfolded like a deadly, razor-edged flower. Go take on Ruslan without the Watch’s help…but that wasn’t all. I knew what she was really asking of me.

  “You want me to stop Kiran going back to Ruslan and blood magic.”

  “Yes.” Pain lurked in the word. “Kiran might think returning to Ruslan is the best way to prevent disaster, but you know how terrible an error his return would be.”

  “Hell yes, I know it. But what makes you think I can make him understand?” I sure hadn’t had much success earlier.

  Lena said, “He’s seen your memories. He knows all you have done for him, and what you’ve sacrificed. He’ll listen to you, reluctant though he may be at first, and he won’t want to expose you to Ruslan’s anger. My other condition is for him, and it will help in this…but Marten was right. You are the only one who can guide him to save not only Alathia, but himself. The Kiran I knew in Tamanath—I can’t bear to think of him lost forever.”

  She talked like I could somehow snap my fingers and make Kiran into that person again. I thought she was as blind as Marten; you couldn’t reverse time. Not by erasing memories, not even by stuffing them back in Kiran’s head the way Marten wanted. The choices Kiran had made in Ninavel had changed him, and he’d never be the same as he was beforehand. But I wouldn’t challenge Lena on it. I’d keep my mouth shut and play along if it meant Kiran’s survival.

  Yet there was another problem, one I quailed to consider. I looked between Cara and Melly, who was frowning in her sleep, her hands knotted in her blanket and her cheeks still puffy from crying.

  “Gods, Cara, what do I do? I can’t leave Melly here—Khalmet only knows what the Alathians would do. But to take her along while we go against Ruslan…I can’t risk her like that.”

  Cara said quietly, “You don’t have to. Lena’s agreed to take us all through the border: Kiran, you, me, Melly, even Janek. You’ll go with Kiran, and I’ll take Melly and Janek up north to the Tarnspike Mountains. I’ve got family there who’ll take them in and treat them right.”

  The Tarnspike Mountains were way up near the northern border of Arkennland, a good three months’ journey away. I wanted to argue, but damn it, I couldn’t. I’d gone through all this to get Melly safe. She wouldn’t be wholly safe in the Tarnspikes, not until we ensured no demon would come hunting, but she’d be a lot better off than at my side.

  But to leave Melly—to leave Cara—loss set my heart aching. I’d thought Melly my one victory, and I’d longed so badly for the chance to savor it with Cara at my side.

  Cara took my shoulders and bent her head against mine. “I don’t want to part from you either. The minute I’ve got Melly and Janek settled, I promise you, it doesn’t matter where you are—I’ll ride so fast to reach you that you’ll swear I had wings. I’ll help you take down Ruslan…assuming you and Kiran haven’t already tricked him into breaking his vows.”

  She sounded a hell of a lot more confident than I felt. I held her tight, wishing I could burn the feel of her so deeply into my memory that her touch would never leave me.

  “Will you at least start the mountain crossing with us?” That way we could have a few last precious days together before she took the kids north.

  She took my face in her hands, her thumbs tracing my cheekbones. “You think I’d give up even one instant with you?”

  The lump in my throat felt as big as a boulder. My heart cried that a few days wasn’t nearly enough time. Reason said it would have to be.

  Reluctantly, I drew back and said to Lena, “I’m guessing the Watch will hunt us. Got any ideas on how to evade them? With two kids in tow, we won’t be able to move fast.”

  Lena said, “Since you aren’t mages, your soulfire is dim enough that Kiran’s amulet can conceal all of you from seeking spells if you remain close to him. More, I believe Marten will do all he can to prevent any sustained search for you. I think some part of him is hoping for Kiran’s escape. Otherwise he wouldn’t have suggested the Watch use Kiran’s amulet to help lessen the effects of the drug withdrawal.”

  Cara made a startled noise. “Wait. What about you—aren’t you coming? Dev will need your help.”

  “Now there’s an understatement,” I said. “We could sure use a mage who can actually spellcast. Kiran can’t cast once across the border, or Ruslan will know where he is.” Kiran had told me the amulet could only hide him from Ruslan so long as he used no magi
c.

  Lena shook her head. “If I came with you, the Watch would not relent in their hunt until I was captured. The Council can’t risk an officer of the Watch turning renegade; we know far too much of Alathia’s defenses. If I stay, Marten has a far better chance of convincing the Council to abandon the search.”

  I said, “But…if you stay, won’t the Council find out you were the one to sneak us across the border?” Suliyya grant she wasn’t planning on marching straight to her own mindburning like Talm had intended to do.

  Lena said, “You needn’t fear for me. If Kiran agrees to my condition, I will be safe enough.”

  “What condition?” I asked.

  “It has two parts. First, he must let me give him what I can of his old memories.”

  “How? You weren’t one of those who cast at his trial.” She’d played watchdog over me the whole time.

  She said, “I asked Marten to share with me the memories he thought most important, in case I could get Kiran to agree to accept them from me rather than him.”

  “He wasn’t suspicious at all?” Marten was far too smart not to wonder.

  “Perhaps he was,” Lena said, with a faint, wry smile. “But I think it is like the amulet. He puts the conditions in place and hopes, while observing the letter of his duty.”

  “So he’ll let you be the one to get mindburned if something goes wrong.” Khalmet’s hand, what a bastard!

  “Marten is already under far too much scrutiny,” Lena said. “Niskenntal is calling for him to be stripped of his captaincy and to undergo a criminal trial. He claims Marten violated his oaths in saving Kiran, that Marten put his personal desires over Alathia’s safety. Niskenntal is not Marten’s only enemy; Marten has a difficult enough battle ahead of him. While I…I have more freedom to act.”

  Freedom. Far as I could tell, nobody had any of that in Alathia. “Don’t risk it, Lena. Come with us—you don’t have to stay here. So the Watch will hunt us…we’ll figure something out.”