A Wizard's Sacrifice

by Amanda Justice

  “I am not a despot,” she said, craning her neck to meet the Center’s gaze. “I cannot take this decision without the consent of my people.”

  “If you wish to see your offspring again, you will convince them.”

  “A threat?”

  “A promise.” The Center grasped the knob and disappeared.

  Silk sifted against stone, and a choked cry rose from the floor. Geram knelt, and Elekia crawled into his embrace. Tears wet his shoulder, and his arms tightened into a shield.

  “I want nothing more than to bring my daughters home safe and well.”

  “I know,” he murmured. “This demand for allegiance . . . Lornk told Ashel a bizarre story—”

  “I thought he and Sashal had fabricated that wild tale until the morning Vic appeared in the throne room. Sashal recognized her at once. But then again, he had recognized Ashel long before that, and he poured himself into making his son the opposite of the vain, venal scoundrel he’d seen in that other place. He half-succeeded.”

  “He did succeed, Elekia. I’ve never met anyone more courageous or self-sacrificing.”

  She cupped his ears, her lips brushing his brow. “I have.”

  He expelled a breath, guilt a hard cold knot in his bowels. “We need to stop. He knows about us. He’s felt us.”

  She breathed an oath, and he touched his lips to her knuckles, rubbed his thumb over them, memorizing each peak and valley. “When he wakes tomorrow, he’ll know everything I Heard here. And it will only convince him that Lornk is Vic and Bethniel’s best chance to come home.”

  She climbed to her feet. “I wish you’d told me I’m going to be a grandmother.”

  “I didn’t know. How could the Kragnashians? Vic and Ashel married only a few days before she was taken.”

  “I was less than a week pregnant when I went to Direiellene, and they knew. I suspect it has something to do with the Device.”

  Apprehension gripped his throat. “What did you sell the Kragnashians to gain Sashal the throne?”

  “I will not hand over control of Latha to the Kragnashians, even if it would mean my daughters’ lives.”

  “That’s not—”

  “However, I want you to tell Fensin the Center has made this offer. This threat. Let the Opposition think I want to capitulate; let him be the defender of the nation. It will help us stall for time while Vic does what she must in the past.”

  Just like that, she had become the inscrutable ruler, and his only response was to be the good soldier. “I understand, Your Majesty.”

  Reconciliations

  Shadows danced on the wall, birthed by single flame. Flickers skated across the puddled floor, borne by ripples beneath dripping pantaloons. Ashel’s nostrils twitched. Filth had seeped through his pores. This city—this world—was rife with corruption.

  Geram and his mother materialized in the dank and dusty Device chamber. Groaning, he swiped and rubbed at lips and cheeks as his mother kissed the other man. Stop, stop, he pleaded, but Geram ignored him.

  Kelmair ducked past the curtain with a basin. “I’ve brought clean water. Sit down.” She squished a sponge over his shoulders. Suds ran into borrowed culottes. In Latha, his mother wrapped a leg around Geram. “I need to go,” Ashel said, bolting for the door.

  “Shemen, no.” Kelmair’s palm pressed into his chest. “No liquor, no bliss tonight.”

  Elekia’s sweat was acid on his tongue. “I can’t—I need to not feel . . . everything.”

  “Feel this.” Hot fingers inched across his heart, slid over his shoulders. He grabbed her, meaning to shove her away, but she gripped his arm. “Feel me.”

  Reflected candlelight flickered in dark eyes. In Latha, Geram’s ardor rose.

  “Feel me,” Kelmair whispered. He let the light in her eyes draw him down. His mouth met hers, and he forgot the taste of his mother.

  * * *

  From a window in the Minstrels Guildhouse, Wineyll watched undertakers clear the Commissar’s square. She’d meekly played silly songs until Parnden let her go, long after midnight. Lornk tiptoeing behind, a guard had escorted her from the palace grounds and locked the iron grate behind her.

  Lornk’s grin had shifted to a glower at the smoldering corpses. They’d picked their way to an open sewer grate, where he had thanked her and promised he’d send for her when it was safe. Then he’d dropped into the dark, reeking tunnel, and she’d waded through carnage to the Guildhouse.

  Master Jovial herself had opened the door, pulled her inside, wrapped her in blankets and put her to bed, showing more concern and tenderness than any Guild leader since Winder’s death. But Jovial’s compassion had fallen like raindrops into a dry well. The lively thrill Wineyll had felt while hiding Lornk from Parnden evaporated the moment he disappeared down the sewer shaft, eaten away by the same hollowness she’d felt after her expulsion from the Guild.

  Knocking, an apprentice poked her head through the door. “You have a visitor—Master Jovial said to bring him up.”

  Wineyll unfolded her legs and stood, anticipation pouring into the emptiness. Had Lornk sent for her already?

  Expectation twisted into bafflement as Earnk crossed her threshold.

  “Hello,” he said.

  “Good morning, my lord,” she stuttered. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

  “I thought we agreed, I’m Earnk to you. I know you had a difficult night. Outside—it’s horrible.”

  “It is.” The bloody jumble of limbs and faces slapped her, and she suddenly realized what the failed coup meant for all the people who believed in Lornk. Fear, anger, and shame gripped her. A cry filled her lungs; she swallowed, determined not to let it out. Her cheeks flamed. Her vision blurred.

  An arm wrapped around her, drew her into an embrace, and another memory swamped the fear.

  Shoulder-high surf thunders, and white foam prickles round her shins. Father’s hand grips hers.

  “Wait for it, wait, wait, now!”

  They run after an ebbing wave. Cold water swirls around her knees, her hips, her waist. A swell approaches, hulking higher and higher. Foam curls, a white line arrowing toward them.

  “Jump!” Father yells. Her feet push off the sandy bottom. Father lets go, and her body is lifted up and up, feet dangling above the earth, laughter ringing over the crashing surf. They descend like leaves. Her feet touch the sand. Water sucks out, tugging her garments. Father shouts, she looks up, and a frothing monster slams her onto the hard, gritty surface.

  Earnk’s embrace was dry and warm, not cold and wet like the sea, but Wineyll’s feet dangled over the earth while an irresistible force loomed, ready to pummel her into a hard and unforgiving place. Stunned, she waited for the wave to recede and leave her steady on her feet again. When she caught her breath, she looked up at him.

  “Hello,” he repeated, his lips a soft curve.

  “You’re back.” The maelstrom surged around her again; she took deep breaths until it subsided. “Why are you here? At the Guildhouse?”

  “Looking for you. I’ll look for Father in the Roost tonight.”

  “He said he’d send for me, but I’ve been ordered to leave. Jovial is arranging passage to Eldanion.”

  “Come back to the palazzo with me. From there, you could go almost anywhere. You’d be welcome in Relm.”

  Face hot, she looked at his boots. Earnk had his father’s blue eyes and golden hair, but he was otherwise his opposite—measured and compassionate where Lornk was forceful and ruthless. Another wave seemed to lift her from the ground.

  “I did the Penance,” he said.

  “What?” She smashed down onto the hard, gritty earth.

  “I am half-Lathan, and I need the nomads’ support to hold the Seat, so I offered to serve the Penance. I hauled water for three days.”

  “What if you’d drawn a longer term?”

  “Being a sovereign carries some advantages; out of consideration for the office, and the
offer, they gave me the youngest infant’s lifetime.”

  Three days. Sorrow for the murdered babes welled, and tears ran to her chin.

  “A great tragedy for the nomads, I know.” Earnk pulled a folded handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it into her hands. “It wasn’t so bad for me. It gave me time to think.”

  Dabbing her nose, she imagined him sweating under heavy burdens in the Badlands, earning the nomads’ trust and loyalty, earning the Seat delivered to him by inheritance and terror.

  “Will you come with me to the palazzo?” he asked.

  Wineyll’s feet swung out from under her again, and hope lifted her upward. “Yes.”

  For Victory

  A crier passed outside, announcing the arrival of the Caleisbahnin. Ashel lay still, staring at the ceiling as Kelmair yanked on a pair of culottes and bolted out. Shemen. She had never stopped calling him that name. Not on the plains, not in the Korng palazzo, not here, when they’d woken together at dawn, when she’d brought him bread and salted fish, when she’d lain with him again, to keep him from seeking other ways to forget, to not feel, to not Hear every time Geram reached out to him. Shemen. Affection tinged the name when she said it now, but the word still meant coward.

  Nearby, a squeezebox, a guitar, and a singer tumbled through a song rhythmic and driven and mournful. A hand beat against the guitar’s soundboard and a bell clanged on the up-beats, a mesh of noise that should have hurt his Guild-trained ears. Yet the falsetto, wailing in a minor key, rang in synch with Ashel’s heart. “Feel me, Shemen.” Her heat suffused his blood, an intoxication harder than harlolinde and stronger than bliss. He didn’t love Kelmair. He damn near hated her. But he’d wanted her since the first time he’d seen her.

  She thinks herself a surrogate, Geram said.

  I don’t need your explanations or advice. It’s late; shouldn’t you be with my mother?

  Not tonight. Ashel tasted the breeze stirring the air in Geram’s room, sweat mulched with blossoms. Geram fumbled with the water pitcher and filled a tumbler. Ashel’s heart thumped against his ribs. Across the alley, the musicians clapped at tambourine speed, the singer urgent and pleading. Last night Elekia met with the Kragnashian Center. It confirmed Vic and Bethniel are in the past, fighting in the War of the Council. They’re both alive. His thoughts clogged with sympathy, Geram stopped articulating them and shared the memory of the encounter with the Center.

  The darkness squeezed together, a vise around Ashel’s forehead, a constriction on his chest, a tourniquet around his limbs so that his breath did not come and his blood did not flow and life leaked from his pores. Victoria and Thabean—their coupling was the source of a dozen romantic epics. Like a hideous monster, jealousy clawed through his anguish, for a moment pushing back the darkness with a blind and fiery rage. But white hot circles of betrayal spun, caging the monster in the irrational hope that her infidelity would make her forgive his. The darkness clamped down again, closer, more suffocating than before. Moaning, Ashel dug his thumbs into the flesh of his calves to feel some other kind of pain. Forgive. Forgive! History said that in the end, Victoria had spurned Thabean for her husband.

  And that husband had betrayed her. Vic’s heart would be driven toward Thabean’s by history, but nothing more than lust had driven him to Kelmair. The music outside cut off, and Ashel coughed out a noise, something between a laugh and a moan.

  His wife and his sister were alive, but gone and betrayed. Elesendar, what he’d done.

  Vic is alive! Geram said, muffling Ashel’s ragged grief with forced calm. That’s what’s important. The Center’s threat—it means they can come home. And there’s the fact Vic is pregnant—all these things should give you hope.

  Pregnant? In the midst of everything, his mind hadn’t grasped that detail. He sprang up, nerves, bone, and muscle thrumming with the need to go to her, to shove continents aside and part the seas to reach her. She’s pregnant? That’s a death sentence for a wizard in the time of the Council! He reached within himself, seeking to stir his latent Woern to life and fling himself across the ocean of time separating them. But nothing moved within or without, and darkness poured in, filling his mouth, his nose. He was drowning in impotence.

  Ashel, stop. Breathe. The Center said it would bring them home.

  Only if Mother gave over control of the nation, which she won’t. Elesendar help him, he wouldn’t want her to, even if it meant he’d never see his wife or sister again.

  The Center wouldn’t have offered if it weren’t possible for them to come back. Hold on to that. Hold onto the fact Vic carries your child and the certainty that if anyone can find a way to survive attacks from Kragnashians or other wizards, it is her. Hold onto these things and live, Ashel. That’s all you can do, all you must do right now. Kill yourself with drink or bliss or by getting involved in this insane rebellion against the Commissar, and you’ll kill your wife when she comes home.

  Pregnant. His child. The thought was a beam of light in the darkness. The music began again, and someone was calling his name. Cramming grief into a box, Ashel stood and dressed. Home. Pregnant. That sounds so simple.

  It can be that simple. Hang on to hope.

  Hope. Splashing water on his face, Ashel took slow, deep breaths. An image rose of a headsman’s axe hurtling toward Vic’s neck, and he collapsed to his knees, swallowing vomit. Deep breaths again. The rumpled pallet slid into his vision, and a cold sweat slicked his skin. Deep breaths. He pushed aside the canvas covering the hovel’s doorway. An intricate riff lilted off the guitar strings. Clapping hands fell silent, and the singer sang one elongated turn around a single note. The guitar chords scaled up and died. Stinks of feces and rot coated the heady, fishy salt of the harbor. Hearing his name again, Ashel looked at a boy jogging toward him, a skeleton with skin scraped and bruised, eyes hard as glass.

  “Oi, silkie! They wait on you!”

  Vic . . . his child. An Oreseeker child. Simply by being here, among her people, he promised . . . help. Lornk wanted to rule the world. His only ambition was to hold his wife again.

  He followed the boy, stepping over muck streaming slowly toward the bay. Shanties lined the path, their walls stretches of canvas, sheets of bark peeled from millers’ wood, held together with more wishes than nails. Down the alleys, Ashel glimpsed two moored boats. The hulls knocked together, the sound creeping up the foul streets like a thief. The boy flashed Ashel a grin, his teeth sharp and blackened. It was the Buzzard children you had to be wary of, people said. With no more remorse than the Citizens, they scoured the streets of Traine in the wee hours, taking what they found, and they’d kill for a crystal or a harsh glance. It was Buzzard children that decorated the gibbet in the square. Small feet dangling; small bodies reeking and dripping corruption. Why hadn’t he noticed the stains when he’d stood there and sung for a square full of revelers all those years ago?

  Atop a low hillock, driftwood columns supported a roof of mismatched tiles. A bonfire blazed in the center. Round it the feathered shadows of the Caleisbahnin leapt and danced like demons. As Ashel approached, the Buzzards lined his path, a gauntlet of loss, each delivering the Oreseeker condolence sign as he passed. Lornk and a Caleisbahn captain stood near the fire. Ashel stopped. Buzzards closed behind him: Michael, Fred, Mary, Samson, Ellen, and others he’d seen hailing Lornk, but there were many more, all with the same look of hope and desperation.

  Wineyll came to him, copied the Oreseeker sign and clasped his hand. Hold on, Geram urged.

  Wineyll. Guild-sister. He’d known her since she was small, tutored and looked out for her, then left her to languish in a pit of death and loss.

  Lornk held out his arms and spoke aloud in the Ancient’s tongue, the language of the Oreseekers. “Ashel of Narath, beloved of Victoria of Ourtown, it is time for you to lead her people.”

  “To what?”

  “To Victory,” shouted the crowd.

  “The Concordance approaches,” said the C
aleisbahn captain. “Parnden must be brought down.”

  “He must!” echoed the Buzzards.

  “He must.” Earnk shouldered past Michael and Fred, and Geram’s hatred waved through Ashel. “Are you with us, brother?”

  Ashel glared at Earnk. “I’ve never cared for politics or the rise and fall of nations, cousin.” He turned and met the eyes of the crowd. “I have never known what it is to be a slave, or poor, or sick or hungry. But my wife knew these things. She was one of you.” A whiff of raw sewage burped through the columns. Small feet dangled. “I was born a prince, but I’m not a statesman. I hold the rank of captain, but I’m no warrior. I trained as a minstrel and as a Loremaster. I do not know how I can help you, but you are my wife’s people, so I will do what I can.”

  One of the sea captains sank to a knee. “In honor of what was, my life and my sword are yours, as the standard-bearer for Victoria of Ourtown.” The other seamen knelt and made the same pledge.

  The Oreseekers glared at the Caleisbahnin, and Ashel wondered at their alliance in this rebellion. “Victoria of Ourtown is an Oreseeker first,” he said. “A wizard second. As you swear to me in her name, I command you to cease all raids on Oreseekers and stop trading in slaves, forever.”

  The lead captain bowed his head. “We speak only for Dameron, but Dameron will comply.”

  “Nicely done,” Lornk said in mindspeech.

  Ashel’s shoulders itched with the memory of a companionable embrace, the first time he’d met Lornk, before he knew his name and thought him only an ordinary Citizen and a kindred spirit. The same arm had held him while torturers had burned his flesh and Lornk had whispered the secret of his birth in his ear. He faced this man whose kinship revolted him. “Prove to me you’re a better choice than Parnden.”

  Lornk grasped his arm. “The corruption in this city will bring down the world if it continues to fester and grow. Think of what is happening in Latha—the Guilds are purging their rolls, seeding poverty as thick and dire as what you see here. Chaos and savagery will follow, and then the Kragnashians will come, Ashel. We will be their slaves. Help me stop that from happening.”