The Tethered Mage

by Melissa Caruso

  “Why more so for warlocks?” I asked.

  “There are strict rules about when you can unseal a warlock.” Balos glanced at Jerith, who shrugged his disinterest in explaining regulations. “Since a warlock’s power is so lethal, we’re only allowed to unleash them in emergencies, or if we judge the situation to be dangerous. If we have reason to believe a threat may be active in the area, for instance.”

  “Like an assassin.” Jerith’s mage mark stood out silver as he trained his gaze at Zaira. “Get used to assassins.”

  “Or, of course,” Balos added, “we can release our warlocks if we have orders from above to do so.”

  Zaira glared at him. “You’re saying I should let the Right Honorable Spoiled Heiress here and a bunch of jewel-encrusted old carcasses decide when to use my fire, like telling a dog when it can piss. I’d rather make my own damned decisions.”

  I winced at her language. “Believe me, I have no desire to make them for you.”

  Balos frowned. “The Falconer doesn’t decide for the Falcon. They’re both bound by the same rules, and they make the choice together.” He spread his hands. “Most Falcons can simply ask to be released anytime, and some leave their powers unsealed by default, especially within the Mews. But because a warlock’s power is almost always deadly, there are additional levels of precautions, for everyone’s safety. You wouldn’t expect to be allowed to fire off a cannon in the middle of the Imperial Square for no reason, would you?”

  “Don’t talk to me as if I were a child. It’s not unleashing my balefire without orders I’m worried about.” Zaira kicked at her chair leg. “Besides, you’re not the warlock. I’m not going to listen to this idiot.”

  Anger sparked in Jerith’s eyes, and he stepped in front of Balos, almost protectively. “Oh, you’ll listen. You know why warlocks are so rare, and fire warlocks especially?”

  “Shut up,” Zaira said through her teeth.

  “Because they don’t have good control when they’re children.” The storm warlock wielded his words like knives, and Zaira flinched under them. “They slip, and kill someone. Maybe a lot of someones. And either some brave soul kills the young warlock before the carnage gets out of hand, because that’s the only way to stop them without a Falconer …”

  “Stop.” Zaira’s voice was thick with fury. “I get it.”

  Jerith continued ruthlessly. “Or no one stops them, and the poor kid is so devastated when he wakes up and sees what he’s done that he kills himself.”

  Zaira stood, fists balled. For a moment, I thought she’d walk up and punch the storm warlock.

  But she turned without another word and strode out of the room. The door slammed behind her.

  Balos sighed and put an arm around Jerith’s shoulders. “Don’t you think that was a bit cruel?”

  Jerith relaxed into Balos’s chest, bringing a hand up to meet his. “Not as cruel as what she’ll do if she won’t listen. She’s tough. She’ll get over it.”

  That evening, I couldn’t chase worries about Ardence and the missing children out of my head to focus on my luminary-coil design. I leaned over my desk, the Muscati book vying for space with loose pages of notes and my elixir bottle. The strains of a trio sonata issued from a symphonic shell on my shelf, similar to the one I’d seen at the pawnbroker’s, but tonight the music failed to help me focus as it usually did. My formulae blurred like faulty courier-lamp glass.

  I leaned back and rubbed my forehead. There was no sense in fretting. The whole incident was staged—a lie. Once Lady Terringer explained the truth, surely the Ardentine nobles would calm down and see that cooperation with the Empire was the fastest way to find out who had really taken their children. And with my mother pressuring Baron Leodra to keep his mouth shut, there was no reason to expect anyone on the Raverran end to push for an unduly severe response to Ardence’s misplaced demands. Someone had tried an audacious gambit to set Ardence against the Empire, but truth would prevail.

  If Duke Astor listened to Lady Terringer. If the anxious parents were willing to take her word over the evidence of their own eyes and the supposed imperial seal. If the Shadow Gentry didn’t do something foolish to cross a line the doge couldn’t ignore.

  Footsteps sounded in the hall, and a knock came at my door.

  “Lady Amalia?” Old Anzo’s voice called.

  “Yes?”

  “A Lieutenant Verdi is here to see you, my lady. He says it’s quite urgent.”

  That couldn’t be good. The facades of the town houses across the Imperial Canal lay in shadow; soon night would fall, and the luminaries would kindle. Whatever brought him here at this hour was likely an emergency.

  I rose from my half-finished calculations. “Tell him I’ll be right down.”

  Marcello paced in the foyer, which meant he must have refused Ciardha’s relentless hospitality. The half cape of his uniform swished behind him, and his rapier and flintlock gleamed at his hips. If the hour were less urgent, I might have paused to admire the effect.

  “Zaira’s gone,” he said before I could greet him.

  My hand went to my falcon’s-head brooch. “Gone? You mean she ran away? How?”

  “It’s my fault. She locked herself in her room after Jerith pushed her so hard this morning. I hoped to earn her trust, so I called off the guards I had watching her.” He punched his own thigh. “I should have known better. I thought the Mews walls and wards would be enough, but they’re meant to keep enemies out, not to keep Falcons in.”

  “But the Mews is on an island,” I protested.

  “She swam out into the lagoon, knocked someone out of a boat, and stole it. We found out when we pulled the boatman out of the water.”

  I failed to smother a laugh. That sounded like Zaira, all right. But Marcello wasn’t smiling. I remembered what he’d said, about how if we let her go, she’d be dead within the week.

  “Do you think she’s in danger?” I asked.

  “I have to assume so,” he said. “Especially given the escalating tension with Ardence. I hate to ask when it’s my own mistake that caused this, but … Will you help me find her before someone unsavory does?”

  “Of course. What can I do to help?”

  “I knew you’d say that. Thank you, my lady.” Warmth flickered in his eyes. It could have been pride, or affection. I wasn’t sure what to do with either. “If you get close, you may be able to detect her presence, since you’re linked. But it won’t work from farther away, and I have no idea where to start looking.”

  “I do,” I said.

  “You do? Where?”

  “We need to go to the Tallows, to find a ragpicker.”

  Chapter Ten

  A chill crept into the early-autumn air, stealing into the narrow spaces between the buildings as shadows swallowed the Tallows. I was glad I’d thought to throw on a coat, though the fine plum velvet and the white lace at my throat and wrists marked me out of place in a district of wool and patches. Lieutenant Verdi, in his scarlet uniform, stood out even more. Moving among tired laborers heading home for the evening, we might as well have worn masquerade costumes.

  It was no wonder no one would answer our questions.

  As we paused on a bridge, a pair of soldiers reported their lack of findings to Marcello, saluted, and hurried off to continue their search. I didn’t catch everything they said, but one of them mentioned a familiar name.

  “Have you learned anything more about Orthys?” I asked Marcello.

  He grimaced. “He smuggles dream poppies into the Empire from Vaskandar. I had people look into him after we picked up Zaira. Unsavory at best, with a rough crew backing him.”

  “Dream poppies! I’m surprised the Council hasn’t had him arrested already.”

  Marcello eyed me sideways. “Well, rumor has it he’s provided useful information to the Council, and they’ve turned a blind eye. But he’s been pushing his luck, being too brazen and committing other crimes. I suspect his days of escaping official notice are over.”
He gazed out over the bridge, scanning the water traffic. “That won’t save Zaira tonight if he’s out for vengeance, though.”

  I cursed whatever contrary impulse had driven her out into the twisting alleys of Raverra now, when everyone from dream-poppy smugglers to Ardentine patriots wanted her blood. I peered down the canal as far as I could, but as it angled, it vanished between buildings huddled close across the water. There was no sign of a bushy mane of hair in any of the boats below. Most of the oarsmen had lit lanterns by now, and their reflections glimmered upon the water. In this part of the city, no one could afford luminaries to spark awake at dusk.

  I felt Marcello’s eyes on me and turned. He wore a strange expression, reflected lamplight shimmering on his face.

  “What?” I asked. “Is something wrong?”

  “Not at all.” He leaned on the stone railing beside me. “Not with you, at any rate, my lady. You’re exemplary.”

  My pulse kicked up to a canter. But it was probably a mere empty compliment.

  “I hardly think so,” I said. “I’m not being much help in finding our lost Falcon, I’m afraid.”

  “I apologize for dragging you all over the Tallows.” He smiled ruefully. “You haven’t complained a bit.”

  “I just hope we can find her before anything happens to her.”

  “This disaster is my fault,” he muttered, looking out at the lights on the water. “Maybe my father was right about me.”

  I reached out toward him, then hesitated as if he were a hot kettle.

  But I’d touched a girl who was actually on fire. So I laid a hand on his shoulder. That was safe: something a friend might do. “Zaira can create disasters without any help from you. Don’t be so hard on yourself. We’ll find her.”

  He reached up and covered my hand with his own. Friends, I reminded myself. “You’re right. We will.”

  He took his hand back, too quickly. I dropped mine, too, and we stood a moment in silence together, gazing out over the canal. Warmth flooded me, kindling brighter than any luminary, and I could have lingered on that bridge for a long while.

  But staring at the water wouldn’t find Zaira, so we continued over the bridge and down a narrow street, walking a little closer to each other than we had before. Around us, shopkeepers shuttered their windows for the night.

  “Do you feel anything?” Marcello asked. Before I could get flustered, he added, “From the link?”

  “What exactly am I supposed to be—” I broke off, staring at a display table in front of a shop. The round-faced proprietress was clearing away a variety of trinkets, including a very familiar amber necklace.

  I all but lunged across the table to point at the necklace as she scooped it up.

  “Excuse me. Where did you get that?”

  The woman tucked it away in a bag, her face shuttering like the shops around us. “I came by it honestly.”

  “I’m sure you did,” I agreed. “The girl who sold it to you—she was quite thin, about eighteen years old, with curling dark hair, no?”

  Her eyes narrowed until they nearly disappeared behind her round cheeks. “If you know Zaira, why are you asking?”

  “We’re looking for her, to help her. Do you have any idea where she went?”

  There was a soft clink as Marcello laid a coin at the edge of the display table. The shopkeeper’s eyes drifted to it.

  “Maybe I remember something,” she said. “Maybe she asked me if I’d seen a certain person.”

  Clink. Another coin. “Try to remember,” I encouraged her.

  “She sold me the necklace about an hour ago. She was going to see old Gregor, the ragpicker,” the shopkeeper said. “I do seem to recall.”

  “Is he a friend of hers?”

  The shopkeeper laughed, harsh as a crow. “Zaira doesn’t have any friends.”

  I swallowed a lump like a mooring knot. “Where does this ragpicker live?”

  Marcello slid another coin onto the table as punctuation.

  “Across Lost Ring Bridge, on the Street of the Ratcatchers. The blue door.” The shopkeeper swept up the coins along with the rest of the trinkets on the table and bustled inside without another word.

  The sky deepened to a rich purple, and the canal waters flowed black below Lost Ring Bridge. Someone had lit a candle at a tiny wooden shrine to the Grace of Luck tucked up against the bridge railing—perhaps in hope of finding something, such as the eponymous ring. Or a missing warlock.

  “I hope she’s all right,” I said. “If I were up to no good, I would strike when it got dark.”

  “We need to find her soon.” Marcello let out a nervous puff of air. “If it comes to it, and we have no other choice, be prepared to release her seal. So she can defend herself.”

  The night air went dry in my throat. “I understand.”

  “You remember the word to reseal her power, right? ‘Revincio.’”

  “Revincio,” I repeated. “Yes.”

  “Only as a last resort,” Marcello cautioned. “She can’t control the balefire, and it could spread quickly enough to kill you before you reseal her. But if, say, twenty armed louts come after us and we’re about to die …”

  That didn’t make me feel any better.

  The Street of the Ratcatchers was so narrow I could touch the buildings on both sides at once. They loomed like disapproving fathers as we waited for the blue door to open to Marcello’s militant knock.

  After an uncomfortable wait and a second knock, an old man holding a candle opened the door. His lined face showed more wear than his surprisingly clean shirtsleeves. His eyes traveled from Marcello’s uniform to my velvet coat.

  “Yes?” he asked. “Can I help you?”

  “We’re looking for Zaira,” I said before Marcello could bring his more authoritative voice to bear. “We’re worried about her. Has she been to see you?”

  The old man regarded us warily. “You’re Falconers.”

  “Yes.”

  “Zaira didn’t want to join the Falcons.”

  “We’d noticed.” The old man’s lips pursed at that, as if he were suppressing a smile. I pressed my advantage. “We don’t want to hold her against her will. But now that her secret is out, she won’t be safe anywhere else.”

  The old man sighed. “I told her, Lady. I told her she wouldn’t last the night in the Tallows, with Orthys crying for her blood. But she’s fixed on that dog. I might as well have been talking Vaskandran.”

  “Orthys?” Marcello asked.

  But I held the old man’s gaze and spoke right over him: “Dog? What dog?”

  The old man shook his head. “She made me take money. Said something about balancing the scales. All I did, Lady, was this. When Orthys’s ruffians came for her a couple weeks ago, they cornered her in the abandoned laundry she used to sleep in, and she had that scrawny mongrel with her. She could jump out the window into the canal and swim for it, but the dog couldn’t, and she had it in her head that if she left him for Orthys’s men, they’d hurt him. I was in there buying scraps from her, so I promised I’d get the dog out, just so she’d run.”

  A wave of pity so strong it bordered on nausea flooded my stomach. “So all this was to pay you back for saving her dog?”

  “They do say the mage-marked are a bit daft, Lady.”

  “Do you know where she is now?”

  “I expect she’s looking for her dog,” he replied with the weary tone of an elder who knows better. “I told her I didn’t see where the mongrel went once I got him out of the building. I’d check the laundry first, since that was where she last saw him.”

  Marcello stepped forward into the light of the candle. “How long ago did you talk to her?”

  “She couldn’t be more than half an hour gone,” the old man said. “Less, maybe.”

  I wanted to clasp his hand, but it was full of candle. “Thank you.”

  Marcello reached into his purse, but the old man waved him off. “Take care of that girl, sir. That’s all I ask. No one has
since the old woman died.”

  “Old woman?” I asked.

  The ragpicker nodded. “Zaira never had any family, but an old street sweeper used to watch over her when she was small. She died in the awful tenement fire, what, eight years ago? Zaira’s been alone since then, except for the dog.” He peered at Marcello. “So you find her, Falconer, and you keep her safe.”

  “I will,” Marcello promised.

  The blue door closed. We stood in the Street of the Ratcatchers, forced close together by the narrow passage.

  “The old woman burned.” I took a breath sharp with horror. “Marcello, do you think she …”

  “It’s not uncommon.” Worry furrowed his brow. “You heard Jerith. Once they succumb to their flames, warlocks have little to no control over whom they kill.”

  “And she heard Jerith, too.” I gripped my falcon’s-head brooch until the pin pricked my skin. “We have to find her. Come on. Let’s check that abandoned laundry.”

  The back door to the laundry hung off its hinges, splintered wood showing fresh and white. I caught a rank whiff of mouse droppings wafting out. With boards covering the windows, the interior was black as a demon’s soul.

  Marcello took out a pocket luminary from his pouch and shook the glass globe vigorously until a pale glow kindled within.

  “This will only give us a few minutes of light,” he warned.

  “I know.” Holding my breath, I stepped past him through the door.

  The faint glow cast hulking shadows behind empty laundry vats and struck a glitter off some broken glass. A messy bundle of blankets lay on the stone floor in one corner, next to a cracked pitcher and the stub end of a candle. A stingroach scuttled away from the light.

  Unease hooked cold claws through my chest. “She’s not here.”

  Marcello shone the luminary around, but the spark inside it was already fading. “You’re right. Let’s go.”

  Back outside, I stood closer to Marcello than was strictly necessary, for the reassurance of his unquestionable solidity and warm gunpowder-and-leather smell. “Why would she prefer that over the Mews?”