Of the Abyss

by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

  “Why keep such a dangerous prisoner so close to the President?” she asked. Winsor Indathrone’s living quarters were upstairs in this building.

  “The cells are warded,” Hansa explained. His voice dropped, as if he knew from experience that the stone walls would make his words echo unpleasantly. “They dampen a mancer’s power. The forge we use to create the brands is built into the wall down here, too. It can’t be moved.”

  “How does the warding work?”

  Hansa glanced back and gave her a puzzled look, as if wondering why she asked. “We don’t know,” he said. “We think the royal house must have had some connection to sorcery before the revolution—­some say they were in charge of controlling it, but others say they were overthrown partly because they were enabling it. Either way, the tools they left behind are the only ones we have.”

  Cadmia shook her head, making a mental note to see if she could find more information. She was highly enough ranked in the Order that it seemed like she should have heard of these indispensable tools before now; that she hadn’t might just mean the information wasn’t widely shared, but she feared it could mean there was no more knowledge to be had.

  Quin in general weren’t encouraged to ask questions, and soldiers in the 126 were given only the information they needed to do their jobs and warned that too much curiosity into the nature of magic could put them in danger of becoming the sorcerers they hunted. If they ever had trouble with the indispensable tools they needed for that hunt—­these cells, the brands, and the poison used to apprehend mancers—­they would come to the Order of the Napthol for help. If at that time no one had the answers, it could spell disaster.

  At the base of the stairs, the hall was lined in dark stone, and bone dry despite its proximity to the coast and elevation below sea level. The air, which was neither hot nor cold but seemed flatly odorless, left a chalky sensation on Cadmia’s skin and a bitter taste in her mouth.

  As they neared the first cell, she caught a brief whiff of . . . something, like frying meat.

  Hansa must have smelled it at the same time. He paused and drew his sword, and approached the cell cautiously.

  Cadmia followed closely. The mancer had been left a candle for light, and he was sitting at the table with one of his palms just above the flame. He held his hand in place, not flinching, despite his own skin cooking, charring.

  “Stop that!” Hansa barked, obviously unnerved.

  The mancer looked up, but his pain-­darkened eyes did not focus on Hansa. He moved his hand away from the candle flame with dreamlike slowness. As he did so he shivered, and Cadmia noticed every bare inch of skin was covered in goose bumps.

  “Let me in,” she ordered. Mancer or not, the man before her was in agony—­not from the burn, but worse, so bad the burn itself had been nothing but a way to pass the time.

  “Are you sure—­”

  “Open it.”

  Technically, she was speaking to one of the few individuals in the entire country of Kavet who could unilaterally overrule her. Citizen’s Initiative 126 gave these guards the authority to make any decisions they deemed necessary to protect the populace from mancers, but they were trained to defer to the expertise of the Cobalt Hall, so Cadmia didn’t expect Hansa to argue.

  Hansa asked, “Do you want me to bind his hands first?”

  She shook her head, and he unlocked the cell.

  “I’ll stay near,” he said, and in those words she heard a firmness that said he would object if she tried to insist the meeting be private. In truth, she was relieved.

  The mancer did not look threatening as she approached, but then again, they didn’t have to be physically menacing. Their magic did the damage.

  “Cadmia,” he said. “I hoped it would be you.” His voice was dry, hoarse, but the water pitcher he had been left was still full and the mug next to it unused, so if he felt thirst he had not chosen to alleviate it. “Do you remember me?”

  She did not allow the familiar greeting to unsettle her, but tried to search his face. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Have we met?”

  “Fifteen . . . twenty years ago?” he said. “My—­” A compulsive shiver took him, severe enough that Cadmia feared he was having a seizure, but when she moved forward he waved her back. “My father used to visit with your mother.”

  The list of men who used to visit Scarlet Paynes, initiate of A’hknet, was very, very long. The list of boys who had come with those men was much shorter.

  “Baryte?” she asked. Did she recognize somewhere deep in this sorcerer’s eyes a child she had played with while her mother worked?

  The mancer sighed, and nodded. He reached toward the candle flame again, then jerked back, clenching his hand into a fist.

  “Does that hurt?” she asked.

  Baryte frowned, as if he had no idea what she was asking. When he followed her gaze to his hand, he opened his fist and turned upward a blackened, blistered palm. Cadmia swallowed to keep from gagging.

  “No,” he said, “it doesn’t hurt.”

  He reached up with fingers that trembled a little, and began to undo buttons on his shirt. Cadmia waited quietly, ready to protest if he went further than his shirt. If there was something he needed to show her, it was her job to see.

  Beneath the shirt were bandages covering most of his ribs and much of his arms. The brand was visible on his left forearm, a coin-­sized burn from which black lines like blood poisoning seeped.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, concerned, as he started unwrapping one of the bandages on his arms.

  “Worried I’ll bleed to death, or get an infection?” he asked, his voice now sharply derisive. “Thank you for the concern, but it’s rather irrelevant. I’m a convicted mancer, with sorcery and murder to my credit. They will execute me as soon as you have been dismissed.”

  “Murder?” she asked, almost hoping he would deny it.

  He looked up at her with a gaze gone flat and ugly, with no hint inside it of the boy she had once known. “The power gets hungry,” he said, utterly unapologetic, as he removed the last of the bandage he had been unwinding.

  The wounds beneath were a set of parallel cuts that could have been made by a blade—­but Cadmia suspected not, given who and what the victim was. They were claw marks.

  The cuts had been stitched closed, though blood still crusted the surface.

  “I wouldn’t be here, but it got in my head and wouldn’t let me defend myself,” he said.

  “Who?” she asked.

  “The black Abyssi,” he said. “Talking to him did this to me. Cut me open. I had to . . . the things I had to do to crawl back up from that . . .” He shuddered, and closed his eyes.

  “Are you saying you were forced to do what you did?” Cadmia asked.

  The condemned often tried to explain why they were not at fault, but even if this man had once been an innocent child, he had admitted he was a murderer.

  “I’m saying,” he snapped, “that he wanted me to get caught. Even in the market, once he woke me up, I could have escaped. I was armed. I could have slit the throats of the two guards next to me and disappeared before anyone else could touch me. But he made me throw the knife away.”

  I could have . . . Again, his voice and face held no guilt about having contemplated two additional murders. Mostly, he sounded angry.

  “You asked for my counsel,” Cadmia said, somewhat sharply, as she began to wonder whether the mancer might have had no goal but to unsettle her. “Most ­people who call for me want the Napthol’s blessing, but you—­”

  Unsurprisingly, the Abyssumancer started to laugh. “Don’t waste your blessings on me, Sister,” he said. “We all know the Numini will never let me into their realm. I asked for you because the Quin will ignore me, but it is your duty to listen, and to meditate on a man’s last words.

  “Abyssi are creat
ures of heat, lust, impulse, and hunger. As a rule, they do not plan. But the black Abyssi is planning something important enough that he was willing to—­”

  He stopped abruptly, and his burned hand went to his throat. He coughed wetly, and droplets of blood and blackish bile spattered from his lips.

  “Hansa!” Cadmia called. She didn’t know what to do as the mancer continued to cough, falling out of his chair, shaking and desperately trying to draw air.

  Soldiers streamed into the room, with Hansa at the forefront, but what could they do? The fit might be a trick or might be magically induced. Either way, none of them dared touch him as it ran its course. A few minutes later the mancer lay on the stone floor, still and silent.

  Baryte, she told herself. She had distanced herself mentally from a man who had chosen a life of sorcery and violence, but now she forced herself to think of him by name because the man had once been a boy and perhaps that boy had been innocent. Cadmia had been taught that mancers started on their path to sorcery through an unhealthy fascination with the Other planes combined with a selfish obsession with power . . . but she had never been able to find a definitive source to prove it. No one seemed to know for certain how a child grew up to be a monster.

  One of the soldiers nudged Baryte onto his back, and his head lolled to the side, eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling. Cadmia tried not to imagine what his spirit gazed upon as his mortal eyes clouded. Even for a Sister of the Napthol, that was a contemplation best avoided.

  CHAPTER 4

  When Xaz woke, she was certain it was not for the first time.

  She was bathed in sweat, and felt flushed and feverish. Turning her head to the side to try to see where she was made the world swirl, so it was difficult to make out any details of the rough room in which she found herself. All she knew for sure was that she was not in a cell. Curtains covered most of the nearby window, but they weren’t thick enough to completely block what seemed to be midmorning sunshine.

  She was wearing a man’s shirt, a sleeveless, shapeless piece with eyelets at the throat empty of lacing. It fit her loosely, but she was more concerned with who had stripped her than she was with her modesty.

  As she tried to recall anything of how she had come to this place, her hand went instinctively to her stomach. Tugging up the hem of the shirt, she discovered bandages wrapped around her torso.

  She was alive—­how? And where? And almost as important, why?

  Xaz struggled to her feet, conscious of the twinge of pain in her guts but not knowing what to do about it. She couldn’t stay here, no matter where here was.

  She barely managed to stand before blackness encroached on her vision and she needed to catch herself on the bedside table, sending several items that had been on it to the floor with a tremendous clatter. A small hand-­mirror shattered as it hit the ground.

  The door opened from the outside before Xaz tested whether or not she could take a step.

  An ancient-­looking woman wearing a loose nightdress stepped inside. Her gaze fell to the mess on the floor, and she shook her head. “Sit down before you hurt yourself.”

  Xaz had little choice but to agree, since she did not have the energy necessary to remain standing. The old woman wasn’t overtly threatening, except that Xaz was so exhausted it was an effort to sense her own power, making her feel helpless and jumpy.

  The woman put a hand on Xaz’s forehead. “You’re still feverish,” she said.

  “How did I get here?”

  The woman shrugged. “I found you hurt.”

  Animamancer? Xaz wondered. There were four kinds of mancer—­five, if you were willing to believe myths and whispers. Abyssumancers and Numenmancers gained their power from the Other realms. Necromancers were rumored to disturb the dead for power to extend their own lives and achieve control over other mortals. Animamancers were healers.

  According to the Quin, the seemingly benign ability had a dark price. They claimed animamancers healed by siphoning healthy energy from the living into their patients.

  It might even be true; to her knowledge, Xaz had never met one of the healers before. If they were anything like Numenmancers, the power still needed, demanded to be used. Maybe one of them had stumbled across Xaz, and nature—­if there was anything natural about a mancer’s power—­had taken over.

  “You should eat while you’re awake. Is there anything particular I can get you?”

  Again, though the woman said nothing specifically indicating she was a sorcerer, or asking if Xaz was, the question was telling. The different kinds of mancer each had their own tools, their own sources of power, and their own needs. In her discreet way, the old woman was trying to ask what Xaz was.

  “I don’t think I could eat anything right now,” Xaz answered. Her stomach was churning, perhaps from the wound or the fever, but perhaps from pure terror. She had never been identified before, much less captured. The fact that this woman did not seem to be about to turn Xaz over to the Quin did not mean her intentions were benign.

  “I’ll let you rest, then,” the woman said. “If you need anything, you can ring, or if you’re strong enough to walk, you can come out to the parlor.” She leaned down, bracing herself on the bed, to retrieve the bell that had previously been on the table. No wonder it had all made so much noise, falling.

  “I’m sorry,” Xaz said.

  The words covered much. I am sorry I broke your mirror, and made you bend down to care for me. I am sorry I cannot trust you enough to answer the questions I see in your eyes. I am sorry I need to do this. . .

  She reached up, and with what little power she could muster, she pushed at the woman’s mind.

  “Thank you for helping me while I was ill.” She sent an image of sickness, but not injury. There was nothing suspicious about a fever in the fall. In return, she felt the edge of a secret; this woman had told someone else the same lie. Hopefully she’d also had the sense to hide Xaz’s bloody clothing. “I will repay you in any way I can.”

  The old woman’s eyes unfocused for a moment, then she nodded. A chill swept over Xaz briefly, a break in the fever accompanied by new droplets of sweat that appeared on her brow, before the sensation of heat returned.

  “It’s my way,” the old woman said. “You sleep now. Ring if you need anything, and Cinnabar or I will be right in.”

  As she turned away, Xaz saw the shoulder of the woman’s nightgown had slipped a little, revealing a scar that could only be one thing—­the brand. How had she escaped execution? Had there been a time in this woman’s long life when a branded sorcerer had been allowed to leave the detention cells alive?

  Xaz’s eyes were not sharp enough, but her power could see where the edge was marred. This branding had been done in haste, and it had been imperfect.

  It wasn’t much of a crack, but it might have been enough to allow the Numini to whisper in her ear and send her after one of their mancers. Their ability to manipulate her, however, did not mean she would be sympathetic to Xaz’s plight; having escaped execution once did not mean she would be willing to risk herself now for a stranger. Thankfully, she would now give no more thought to odd injuries, or to how swiftly her guest healed.

  The moment Xaz was alone, she put both hands over the wound, shut her eyes, and went into deep trance. She was no animamancer, but she could encourage her own flesh to return to its proper form.

  Her power responded sluggishly, alarmingly so, and as she tried to work around the wound pain shot through her.

  Poisoned. The knife the Abyssumancer had hit her with had been steeped in power that was the antitheses of hers. Unfortunately, the ritual needed to purify her magic would be more complicated than she could afford to do here. She forced the healing enough to function, but then she stopped, obeying her body’s warning signs.

  Using so much power while she was already weakened left her starving.

  St
ill a little unsteady, she managed to walk to the door. She had intended to keep walking and find something more solid to wear along the way home, but the rush of warmth, the aroma of cooking food, and the sight of a handsome man with a violin locked her in place. The man plucked at each violin string in turn, eyes half-­closed as he listened to the note brought forth and occasionally adjusted a tuning pin.

  The man was lounging against several of the mass of pillows that filled almost the entire floor save for a sensible distance around a large, cast iron wood-­burning stove. He was wearing loose-­fitting slacks and nothing else, comfortable in his own home. His skin still held onto summer’s tan and his muscles remembered a season of hard labor, possibly aboard a ship. Yet those chapped, hard-­worn fingers started to pull a haunting tune from the violin. He was still picking at the strings instead of using the bow, but it was clear he had finished tuning the instrument and was now testing it with a deliberate melody.

  Watching his hands, Xaz noticed the ring on his smallest finger, which boasted the symbol of A’hknet. That might explain why he hadn’t asked too many questions when the woman had brought Xaz home. Members of the Order of A’hknet followed a philosophy of, “Do what you wish, and accept the consequences.” They were as likely to help a stranger as rob her . . . which reminded Xaz she had no idea where her clothes or possessions were.

  The musician looked up with an amused half smile, and remarked, “Normally, when a woman stares that long, her next question is ‘how much do you cost?’ ”

  Xaz jumped and felt her face flush as she realized how long she had been standing there, watching him. “I’m sorry,” she said, hoping the blush would be mistaken for a product of the fever. Yes, he was an attractive man, but it wasn’t like her to be captivated by a pretty form. “I didn’t mean . . .” She wasn’t sure how to finish the sentence.