The Mage Heir

by Kathryn Sommerlot

  Since the force of the magic wind had pushed everything aside, the blast radius immediately around them was cleared except for one thing: the assassin’s body hanging from a half-flattened stall, kept aloft by the wooden beam protruding through his chest. The blood spread in a wide arc around the man’s form was very red, and the sight of it made Tatsu’s stomach churn.

  Tatsu stumbled backwards a few steps, but Jotin moved towards the corpse with purpose and pulled back the brown cloak. He reached for the man’s left hand and tore free the leather glove covering it, revealing a silver-shimmering tattoo that traced across and up the brown skin of his knuckles.

  “Mercenary,” Jotin said, voice thick with disgust, and he dropped the dead man’s hand back down. “A hired man from Rad-em.”

  “Someone paid mercenaries to come and kill Yudai?” Tatsu asked. “How did they even know we were here?”

  Jotin shook his head. “I do not know. But that urchin boy was likely sent to follow us by whoever ordered the hit, as a way to track our movements through the city.”

  Tatsu stared at the dead man’s face, half covered with a thick cloth that looped around his shoulders. He tried to ignore the feeling pulsing through his veins: my mother might have done this.

  Wrenching his eyes away, he turned away from the body and knelt back down in front of Yudai. All the words got stuck in his throat, so he said nothing, and instead reached forward to clasp his black-stained fingers around Yudai’s shoulder. Yudai’s dark eyes were shimmering with unshed tears, and the struggle to fight them back was visible in the lines on his face. Through heaving breaths, Yudai opened his mouth to say something.

  “You are under arrest,” came the booming voice behind them both, out of Tatsu’s line of sight. Tatsu’s blood turned to ice. “By order of the Daos Guard of the capital city of Moswar, you are to come with us to the High Council where you will be charged with the destruction of the Raydrau and the murder of at least three citizens.”

  “It wasn’t his fault!” Alesh cried, but Tatsu couldn’t see her over his shoulder.

  Yudai’s face went slack for a moment, and then he turned away. His body was shaking beneath Tatsu’s touch, but it didn’t take him long to school his features into a hard sort of acceptance. When the lines of Yudai’s face smoothed out, something snagged in Tatsu’s chest, and he would have sworn that his ribs contracted around his lungs.

  “Don’t,” Tatsu whispered.

  “I understand,” Yudai said, ignoring Tatsu and pushing himself up to his feet.

  “Wait, what?” Alesh asked. One of the guards had his fingers wrapped around her arm, and she was fighting against the strength of it. Several long strands of hair had come loose from her black braid, and they hung down the middle of her face, waving from side to side with her movements. “You can’t just go with them! This wasn’t his fault, that man tried to kill him—”

  “And conveniently, he is dead,” one of the guards said, “which means you are all to come with us as witnesses and possible accomplices for the sentencing.”

  “You can’t take me,” Alesh said. “I can’t leave my sister.”

  But as if on cue, Ral appeared behind the cluster of leather-clad guards, looking unharmed and no worse for the wear. Alesh made a noise that seemed torn between relief and exasperation, but at least she stopped pushing against the guard’s hold.

  Tatsu’s chest ached. His body was suddenly exhausted, reeling from the aftermath of the attack, and in truth, he wasn’t sure he could have fought if he’d wanted to.

  Yudai balled his hands into fists at his sides, and he turned to face the guards with his shoulders squared. The black stain splattered across his clothes matched the streak of blood on the bottom of his chin.

  “Take me to the High Council,” he demanded.

  The walk through Moswar’s streets was reminiscent of Tatsu’s similar spectacle in Dradela, when Alesh had been by his side and both of them had been in heavy handcuffs. The Daos Guard elected not to use the same iron on their current party, but the heavy feeling of being punished was the same. Alesh, perhaps having flashbacks to the first time, had immediately grabbed hold of Ral’s hand and didn’t seem keen to let go. Ral, for her part, didn’t make any move to run off, and her contentment with walking beside the others helped ease the tension in Tatsu’s shoulders a little.

  “What are we walking into?” Tatsu asked, slowing to walk beside Jotin. His boots kicked up small clouds of dust as they moved along the roads, brightening as the sun rose overhead.

  “The High Council is made up of one representative from each Joesarian dominion,” Jotin said. “There are twelve dominions that make up our country. These twelve representatives serve for two years before they are replaced.”

  “And your father—?”

  “Is part of the current High Council. The council members remain in Moswar during their service to negotiate trade agreements, navigate the international politics, and hear cases deemed important enough to be brought before them.”

  “I’m not sure if it’s better or worse to be facing twelve leaders, rather than just one,” Tatsu said and sighed. “We don’t exactly have the best record.”

  “The council members return to their lives after their service is up,” Jotin said. “I think you will find that they retain much of their sense of how the world outside Moswar works.”

  “That’s not really what I’m afraid of,” Tatsu replied, and kept his eyes on Yudai walking in front of them, held firmly between two of the Daos Guards moving in tandem. Yudai’s shoulders were straight and high, and Tatsu wondered exactly when it was that he was first able to see through the confident mask Yudai wore—there were cracks in the façade, like the tiny tremors that rippled all the way down Yudai’s back.

  Tatsu glanced back at Alesh to see that her face was set in a similar fashion. He wanted to tell her that everything would be fine, except the words got stuck on the way out. With nothing to offer, he fell back into the uncomfortable silence.

  The skin of his bad arm itched, and despite his initial joy at feeling anything in his fingers, it didn’t seem to be positive. Each step towards the Joesarian High Council made the trembling worse, until it was so overpowering that he could barely focus on the fine-carved openings decorating the buildings on either side of him. The rhythmic thuds of their footsteps reverberated his own dread back at him. Over and over, his own thoughts kept twisting themselves back towards Nota, and the knowledge that his mother was responsible for everything pounded against his ears.

  He stared at the angles of Yudai’s shoulders and whispered for forgiveness for the traitorous blood running through his veins and the misfortune of being born to a woman so cold.

  “This wasn’t your fault,” he said to Alesh as their group turned a wide corner and started towards a sprawling single-story building made from sand so worn from wind that it nearly shone beneath the dawn. “I’ll find a way to get you and Ral out of this.”

  “I think we’re guilty by association,” Alesh replied. Her voice sounded grim and her lips were set in a hard, thin line.

  Tatsu looked to Ral, who just stared back at him with the barest hint of a smile.

  “Still,” he said, “if there’s any way to get you away from this, I’ll do it.”

  It became clear the sprawling mansion was their goal as the Daos Guard led them inside to a spacious room with wide, high ceilings propped up with bare beams of wood. The walls were covered with small shards of brightly colored glass that seemed out of place after they’d been on the beige-hazed streets. Within the fragments there were images, abstract in nature with free-flowing lines and curves that seemed to pulse with life and energy. The room itself was deep, and narrowed as it lengthened, so that the aft of it was half the size of the entrance. There was a sizeable crowd already there. Most were Joesarians, dressed in leather and light-colored scarves, and all were gathered in front of a long, dark table.

  There were twelve seated at it—the High Council o
f Joesar.

  With so many bodies, the end of the room was a bottleneck that threatened to close in around them even as the guards pushed the spectators aside to make room.

  “Esteemed Council,” one guard said, and his voice boomed through the space, “we bring you the man responsible for the destruction at the Raydrau and his accomplices.”

  One of the Joesarian women, seated near the middle of the long table, waved them forward with a flick of her fingers, and the guards shoved Yudai forward with so much force he stumbled.

  “It was not an intentional destruction,” Yudai started, with a dark look back at the guards. “I was attacked while in the night market—”

  “Why would someone attack you in the Raydrau, stranger?” one of the council members asked.

  “Are you blaming our citizens for this?” said another.

  “No, it was a mercenary,” Yudai said. “Our Cabaj guide identified him as a hired man from Rad-em, and when he tried to kill me, my magic—”

  “You blew up nearly half the market,” a member interrupted.

  “No, I didn’t mean to.”

  “And yet here you are,” said the first woman, spreading her hands wide in front of her, “and your magic has destroyed part of our city.”

  “We could see the mess from the windows here,” another said.

  Yudai looked back over his shoulder at Tatsu, his eyes glistening for such a quick moment Tatsu wasn’t sure he truly saw it. Yudai turned back to the table. “I don’t have control over my magic right now. The attack on my life… prompted the explosion.”

  “Which brings us back to the original question,” said a man at the council with layered linens that looked like the ones both Yudai and Tatsu had been temporarily gifted. “Why would someone attempt to kill you in Moswar?”

  Yudai’s chin lifted. “Because I’m the crown prince of Runon.”

  There was a beat of silence, so thick Tatsu could nearly taste it, and then the furthest woman at the table asked, “How do we know that you are telling us the truth?”

  “Father,” Jotin said, stepping forward. “I have traveled with him since we found them in the Cabaj-dominion. His words are true.”

  The man with the familiar clothing raised both eyebrows—his features were so similar to Jotin’s that Tatsu should have deduced earlier that he was Jotin’s father. “And you have proof of this?”

  “Nys believed his word,” Jotin said, frowning.

  “Nys is not a member of the High Council anymore,” his father said. “And with no proof of this claim to royal lineage, the High Council must seek to find the truth of the matter.”

  When Jotin stepped back, there were deep-set lines crossing his forehead. At the back of their group, Alesh and Ral were holding hands. The unsettled feeling in Tatsu’s gut fluttered like a butterfly against the sides of his stomach and tickled up through his throat.

  “If none of you hold an official capacity to back up the claim…” Jotin’s father said.

  “I do,” said a voice from the back of the council chamber, and the crowd parted to reveal a woman with deep, heavy blue robes pulled up over her head. The thrum of recognition echoed all the way down Tatsu’s fingers, even through his bad arm.

  Leil marched halfway forward before dipping into a shallow half-bow, one knee audibly creaking beneath her. “I hold the official capacity, as an ambassador from the court of Chayd, to verify this man’s identity. He is who he claims.”

  The High Council was silent.

  “Very well,” the first woman said. “In respect for the royal kin of our neighboring lands, we will clear the room for a private audience with Prince…”

  “Yudai,” Leil supplied.

  “…to get to the bottom of the destruction of our market and the deaths of our citizens.”

  The guards began to clear the spectators immediately, but Tatsu darted forward to press his fingers against the crook of Yudai’s elbow.

  “I can try to stay, if you want,” he said.

  But Yudai’s face was set, and he shook his head. “This is my duty. I’ll be fine.”

  “I’ll wait for you, then,” Tatsu promised, and one of the guards pulled him away with heavy hands on his shoulders. There was no answer or reply from Yudai. He faced the twelve seated solemnly in front of the apse of the room without any further emotion showing on his face.

  “Jotin, we will keep your new friends here for the day,” Jotin’s father said from his place behind the table. “See that they are given whatever they may need and are put into the second guest wing.”

  Tatsu was surprised when even Leil was ushered out of the council chambers with them. Once all of the bystanders were removed, the doors to the chamber were shut with a loud thud that made Tatsu wince. There was a second of nothing, and then Ral laughed, bright and happy, throwing a hand over her mouth to muffle the sound.

  “What are you doing here?” Alesh asked Leil, an edge to her voice. She shuffled closer to Ral again as if she were creating a human shield.

  “I came here after Yudai… escaped,” Leil said. Her eyes darted to Tatsu’s as she said that, and her throat bobbed beneath the shadows of her hood that fell over her brown face. “I wanted to know what we had done. We’d used so many poisons from Joesar, and I just… wanted answers.”

  “And your official capacity?” Tatsu asked.

  Leil’s gaze dropped down to her feet. “As a mage, I am part of the royal court. I hold a status that’s respected. It’s why they accepted my reassurance of Yudai’s identity.”

  “You are part of what did this to him,” Alesh said, a low hiss. “In fact, it’s partly your fault that the Raydrau was blown up! If he’d had control of his magic—”

  “Please, Alesh,” Tatsu said. Leil’s eyes were heavy with guilt, the same guilt that Tatsu had seen on her face when he’d freed Yudai from under their noses. He knew the ashy, bitter taste of the emotion. It was always there beneath his tongue, bursting forth to remind him of his own hand in the situation. From the pursing of Leil’s mouth, Tatsu could see that she felt the same thing.

  “Gods,” Alesh said, sighing. She glared at Tatsu, and her fingers on Ral’s arm clenched tighter. “This is her mess, and I don’t trust her.”

  “I came for answers,” Leil said. “I only wanted to help—”

  “Little late for that, isn’t it?” Alesh shot back. “Look what’s already happened.”

  Before the tension could get completely out of hand, Ral tugged on Alesh’s head covering. “Hungry now.”

  Alesh didn’t completely relax, though she did deflate.

  “Alright,” she said, but gave Leil one last lingering look.

  “I will take you to the kitchens,” Jotin said. “And after that to your rooms for the day. I suspect that the Council’s dealings with your royal friend will take quite some time.”

  As the three of them started down the hallway, Tatsu gave Leil a sympathetic look that she mostly ignored. Her arms were curled around her torso like she was trying to disappear completely into the floor. The dark hue of her robes made such a contrast to the white stones around them that it was almost impossible to look anywhere else.

  “What have you learned about the poisons you used?” Tatsu asked quietly.

  Leil shook her head. “Very little so far. They are highly illegal, so no one wants to risk talking about them.”

  It didn’t surprise him that she’d suffered the same barrier they had. Tatsu thought back to the black of Yudai’s blood and had to squeeze his eyes shut for a moment to drive the image away. Even then, the ghost of it lingered just beyond his vision, out of reach.

  “I’m sorry,” Leil whispered. Her eyes glimmered. “We didn’t know what would happen.”

  “I don’t think anyone did,” Tatsu said, “not even my—not even Nota. Maybe that’s why Yudai’s father allowed him to be used like that.”

  “His father?” Leil asked, straightening. “The king? He must have known.”

  “Why do
you think that?”

  Leil shrugged a bit, refusing to meet Tatsu’s eyes. “He was going to benefit the most from it, wasn’t he?”

  Tatsu’s knees buckled so hard he feared he wouldn’t be able to keep standing. “What do you mean?”

  “You didn’t know?” Leil looked surprised. She bit her bottom lip, rolling it around beneath her teeth before continuing. “The siphon didn’t just affect the land, it affected him too. It would have extended his own life far beyond his gods-given years. He could’ve ruled for centuries.”

  The world around them went black at the edges. Tatsu’s lungs constricted painfully, threatening to expel his heaving heart from his ribs. He was only dimly aware of his back hitting the wall behind him, until he slid down it to the ground and felt the sharp flares of pain in his skin that the stones left behind. He choked, almost gagging, and pressed his palm to his mouth to keep his stomach contents down.

  “I didn’t—” He couldn’t finish for several wheezing breaths. “I didn’t know.”

  “Then Yudai must not know either.”

  Tatsu buried his face in his good hand. “I can’t be in this position again. I can’t tell him—but now I know, and I can’t not tell him. This will kill him. I can’t do this.”

  Leil looked uncomfortable standing above him. She crossed her arms over her chest and looked down at his boots. “Maybe he doesn’t need to know.”

  Tatsu’s shoulders began to shake against the stone wall behind him.

  “This is the sort of secret that ruins people, and I’m already a mess. How am I supposed to keep him together when I can barely do it for myself?”

  “You don’t have to,” Leil suggested. But that wasn’t true. She couldn’t feel the pounding of Tatsu’s heart against his bones, demanding that he do everything he could, commanding him that with every step forward he keep one hand outstretched to the man next to him.