PLATINUM 1.11: TRUTH TIED
“The city is wracked with fear. I’ve never heard it so quiet. It’s impossible not to listen to a whisper. It’s already known to us that those who seek to suppress recalcitrant elements thereby strengthen them. It is only by discourse and integration that the rebel is made to serve the cause and martyrdom averted. Yet this is a trite truth. Those above you know it already. Look to Zadhal! Ask yourself this, then: why, in full knowledge of the paradox of their actions, do they continue the policy of suppression? What do they stand to gain by the strengthening of the Chaosist? Do they secretly serve the same goals? What new powers will they give themselves to fight this phantasm of their own devising? How many voices in the discord are false, bought by gold or created wholesale from illusory artifice? How much of that gold comes from selling security, charms both cheap and expensive, to those who otherwise would have no need of them? Ah – if only we could all be free.”
– taken verbatim from ‘The Sermons of the Unbridled’ recordings, Mortifost 772 NE
I watched the chained boy weeping, and I comprehended the lesson the old arch-magister had meant to teach.
Is Belexor even really here? I asked Zel, all at once feeling sceptical about the whole lot of this.
“Oh yes. Do you want to see?”
I wanted to see, and so it was; suddenly the dim white light from the small globe near the ceiling was tinted into a weird, violet-brown-ish colour.
When I flicked my eyes across at Emrelet and Ciraya, there was nothing there, and it produced the strangest sensation, the wizard’s hand in my own, the flesh feeling warm, real… But it was all fake. My hand was wrapped around a tactile void I could see right through, see my hand through hers, fingers curled around a lie.
Her eyes hadn’t looked right, outside the magicrux. I should’ve known…
I refocussed on Belexor, sitting there anguished on his stool, clearly present in the violety, browny light – and I even saw Henthae leaning against the wall by the door, adopting a posture more befitting a twenty-year-old than a seventy-year-old. She almost reminded me of Ciraya.
The real Ciraya. The one who would’ve said something snarky when I called Henthae silly on the stairs.
“I get it,” I said, injecting as much boredom as I could muster into my voice, looking right at Mistress Henthae and releasing fake-Em’s hand, casting it away from my own like I was throwing a piece of trash on the ground.
Belexor didn’t react, just as I’d hoped, and Henthae approached me.
“You get it, Feychilde?” she asked once she reached my half of the room. “What is it you think you ‘get’?”
She sounded petulant, as if I’d interrupted her too early, and I chuckled to hear her using my vernacular.
“Let’s be rid of them, first, if you please?”
I was at least obeying the forms of politeness, even if my turbulent emotions came through in my tenor. I jerked a thumb at the two illusory magisters.
It was her turn to chuckle. “Very well.”
I couldn’t check with my sight like this, but –
Can you see?
“She’s done it. Did it the second you said.”
Good.
I met Mistress Henthae’s glittering eyes.
“You bear me no ill-will, do you?”
She shook her head.
“No, you’ve been moving in and out of my shields too easily for that.”
Her laugh-lines became more pronounced as another smile touched her lips.
“You wanted me to see what you could do to someone who betrayed the principles of the Magisterium –“
“More than that,” she tried to interrupt, sounding almost apologetic, “we –“
“More than that, you wanted to see how I’d react,” I spoke over her, “whether I could control myself, whether I could endure watching… this!” I flung a hand at the wretched-looking druid.
“Yes, Feychilde, I wanted to see if you would stop it.” She had the resigned tone of one who has been found-out, and she folded her ring-cluttered hands together in front of her stomach, most of their huge gemstones just looking black under the fey-eyesight I was using to regard her. For all I knew she’d dropped the invisibility spell now but I didn’t want to blink away the illusion-breaking vision just yet.
“I didn’t expect you to pierce my veils so easily,” she admitted. “Might I ask how you’re doing that?”
“Where are they?” I grated out the words, ignoring her request.
“I bade the young ladies step aside, and they did so,” then Henthae frowned, “and Emrelet raised her voice at me for the first time. But even she trusts me, Kastyr. You should too. What I had Emrelet say to you – my Emrelet – was not a lie; all those who come to join the Magisterium get to see this in the course of their duty. You will find, of course, that Belexor is unharmed; frightened in the moment, yes, but no doubt you were frightened when you were changed into a rodent; and he shall not have to live with the memory of this.”
That didn’t make it right. It wasn’t like we could just trade one horror for another and call that justice; you couldn’t even call that logic – if everyone went around terrorising those who’d terrorised others you’d call that lawlessness, and here she was, a higher-up in the very Bastion of Law itself, using arguments like this to try to convince me torture, mind-torture, was okay.
She might’ve been a very powerful enchantress, and no doubt a capable administrator and teacher… perhaps even a battle-hardened soldier. But she wasn’t a skilful manipulator. It was like she’d just pointed out the way she had ‘LIAR’ tattooed across her forehead.
Henthae continued on regardless, seemingly unaware of my disapproving body language, “Therefore all that remains is to ensure he will leave the Maginox with no memory of the secrets he knows.”
I bristled again – but this time I caught myself.
Just what had I expected? That they would just remove my identity from his mind, leaving him otherwise intact? Wasn’t I being a hypocrite, wanting them to invade his mind for me, but not caring about the quite-possibly-hundreds of other people whose lives and livelihoods could be endangered if this didn’t happen?
Maybe I’d been wrong about her.
Maybe she was more skilful than I’d given her credit for.
And this had been, what? A test of my morality? They’d walked a delicate line here. What if I’d reacted the wrong way?
Or what if the only way I’d been able to react was the same way they’d predicted? Just because I was immune to mind-control didn’t mean I was immune to the sight of seers – I was barely even resistant. I still quite possibly had a mizelly-cat thing waiting to kill me, somewhere out there. The magisters could’ve known the exact right triggers to bring my profoundly stupid righteous-side out of me. And if that was the case, she’d played her part flawlessly, ensuring I understood at the exact right moment: the need for self-control, the selfishness of my self-righteousness.
This time Henthae had raised a finger to point at the druid as she approached him, then circled the finger as she got closer, like a drill aimed at his brain.
Belexor was still hunched forward, as if to look upon the ground between his wide-spread feet; but then his head snapped backwards in a sudden motion, eyes fixed wide, staring like a corpse at the corner where the wall met the ceiling. He stopped crying instantly, his face turning slack beneath the mess of red curls; his breathing returned to normal between one heartbeat and the next.
She walked around him, clearly still invisible to him, unblinking as she gazed down upon him, wheeling about him, again, and again.
After three revolutions, she spoke, continuing to pace in a stable, unwavering circle.
“You hold in your mind the keys to the Magisterium.” She intoned the words in a low pitch; it sounded dreadful, all the huskiness of the age she kept hidden right there in her voice. “You hold the keys to the Shining Circle.”
“I hold those keys.” Belexor’s voice was as dead as his stare. He didn’t move a muscle lower than his neck.
“You held the keys. You walked the halls. You knew the paths.”
His words, now, were quiet, quick off the tongue, like a mantra – “I held the keys I walked the halls I knew the paths I held the keys I walked the halls I knew the paths…”
She spoke over him, still in that low, pronounced voice. The voice in which a judge decrees the sentence of execution. The voice in which one threatens a fool with inevitable death.
“You cannot see your magistry. You cannot see your initiations. You are the scion of a noble house, and a student of the Maginox. Your druidry you will remember, but you will surrender your keys to me now.”
He let out a brief sound from his mouth, like gas escaping a tomb – relief of pressure, the loss of something essential. Gone into the air.
“You will forget. Look at me.”
She stopped walking around him, suddenly coming to a halt just to his left – and he jerked his head around to stare at her face instead of the ceiling.
The arch-enchanter bent down in front of him, looking him deep in the eyes.
“Do you know me?” she asked, in her normal, slightly-superior tone.
“M-M-Mistress Henthae?” Belexor gasped, looking around himself slowly, in alarm.
I can’t believe she’s done it.
“Hm. A working like that should take a long time to go into full-effect, though. His settled memories shouldn’t actually depart for hours, in fact –“
Henthae went on, “Do you know him?”
The old magister gestured, and Belexor’s eyes fixed on me.
“Wh-who is th-that?” he stammered, trying to recoil from me, the dark, hooded shadow standing alert at the other end of the room. He failed, tipping himself off the stool and onto his side where he lay thrashing like a puppet with its strings twisted, the chains and bar preventing him from finding a comfortable position or getting back up.
“Hi!” I had to say something – I couldn’t just let him go on in this misery, especially not if what she’d done to him was for real, if it had worked. “I’m Feychilde. Don’t be afraid.”
Henthae shot me a contemptuous look that couldn’t quite flay me alive, not with my shields and everything – but save for them, who knew? I realised I wasn’t supposed to say anything.
She turned her attention back to the druid, and murmured, “Go to sleep, Belexor.”
With that, his head drooped – I heard a brief, single, huge yawn – and he collapsed in a human heap of tangled limbs and chains. Within seconds he was snoring his head off.
“For the next twenty-four hours he will be held in custody, to ensure his new mental landscape sets firmly,” Henthae said, sounding a little exasperated. “But he needs as few reminders as possible of those things he must forget. Letting him hear your voice – and your name – may have been a step too far. The fault is as much mine as it is yours.” She sighed. “Don’t be afraid that the Magisterium will renege on its deal, however. I shall see him one more time before he is returned to his parents’ care, and ensure that all relevant details concerning you and yours are barred from his ability to recollect.”
“Along with everything else.”
“Yes, of course.”
“And then what?” I asked. “Everyone who knows him, but doesn’t know he’s lost his memories –“
“Oh, we’ll tell him what’s happened to him, in general terms only, once he’s recovered. He’ll be informed he made some serious mistakes and that he’s been given a second chance, to be kept under careful watch.”
I opened my mouth to protest –
“And he will refuse to stay in the city in his disgrace. We’ll ship him off west to Ouldern for a while, but I believe that is where he will end up staying; we’ll grease the wheels and within a few weeks he will find employment as a breeder of aberrant creatures with a contractor to Gannelan Grie’s Scaleseekers, the purveyors of the finest reagents on the far side of the Sultern Straits. And that will be the last anyone in Mund will see of Belexor Ishemen, decommissioned magister and ex-neophyte of the Shining Circle, third child of a minor lordling.”
I got the impression it might’ve been a bit different if it’d been someone like Jargrin lying here in chains on the chill stone floor, son of that Dreynos fellow, Fourteenth Lord of the Evil Chair. He’d sounded important, impressive.
And I could almost understand Belexor now, the lesser son of a lesser lord, trying to cosy up to someone like Jargrin – even if his idea of cosying up to his betters was to turn someone into a rat purely for the laughs –
But this was the right decision, the only realistic way to deal with the situation.
I’d been staring at my feet, thinking it all through – I looked up and met Mistress Henthae’s twinkling gaze, giving her a nod of endorsement.
She smiled.
“Come, Feychilde. Let’s walk a while, and get you out of this place. Time’s ticking on, and if we want you to get a lift back home with Emrelet before she heads out for her shift we’ll need to go find her.”
She walked out of the room first, and I followed, casting a final backward glance at the soundly-slumbering form of the druid, contorted there on the hard stone floor, before letting the door close behind me.
I didn’t want to let the illusion-piercing vision blink away but it was starting to get nauseating.
Let me know if you see anything else funny.
“Will do.”
My heart pounded in my chest as I followed Henthae along the corridor, half a pace behind her on her left, making our way down two short flights of stairs, along another corridor… Every moment I knew I was getting nearer to freedom, but some part of my being was still sure this was a trap – they were going to turn on me, use some trick I couldn’t out-archmage to lock me away
Then we were back into the main atrium of the magicrux…
The guards allowed us to exit, through the sliding stone door, and we were once again on the bridge leading to the big spiral staircase, the tip of the Maginox just a mere few hundred feet above our heads.
As we made our way back onto the stair and began to descend I loosed my breath which I hadn’t been consciously-aware that I was holding; it was clearly audible even through the scarf, and the old magister turned her head, a tight but undeniably-wolfish grin on her lips.
“That was a test of your nerve, eh?” she remarked.
I let myself laugh, release some of the tension. My eyes stung as though I were about to cry, but I didn’t actually feel that emotional – my body was just acting all of its own accord.
“Don’t think you’re the only one to come out of there feeling like that, Feychilde.”
“I think I understand…” I was unsure how to phrase it. “You… find it convenient to prove yourself trustworthy by bringing people here. Potential allies who are unsure of your intentions towards them suddenly experience a reversal of opinion and –“
“That’s quite enough, M- Feychilde,” she stammered, glancing at me severely. She’d been about to say Mr. Mortenn, I was pretty sure, which would’ve been a fairly-serious breach of privacy right here on the stairs where anyone could be within earshot behind or ahead of us. But she’d caught herself in time.
“The test serves several purposes; that much should be self-evident –“
“But you’d still rather I hadn’t realised, wouldn’t you?” I asked, sickly-sweet; she couldn’t see my smile, so I made sure she could hear it.
I remembered her self-doubt when she’d been unaware of the means by which I’d looked straight at her while she maintained her invisibility – and the way she’d left the druid, wilted on the floor.
“You’d like to cast it all as a test of my quality, my ethics – when really you were just trying to instil fear in me. No –” She tried to interrupt me, and I raised my voice “– not fear; but something like it – a belief in your superiority, your prowess, unassailable. The weight of the Magisterium backing me up, defending my true name from my foes – I was supposed to see you as a deadly ally, someone I really want to be in my corner because if you’re in the other corner I’d be that much worse off. But that lesson didn’t take, did it?
“Have you dominated Em’s will? Ciraya’s? How would I even know? At best I’m only fairly-certain you’ve not set an enchantment on me –“
“I can’t enchant you, Feychilde, or anyone else!” Her vehemence was cute. “That would carry a sentence longer than Belexor was going to –”
“Oh come on, like something like that’d stop you! But it’s okay. I can see through your illusions, I can protect myself against mind control –“
Her eyes went blank, stopped twinkling for a moment, and her foot halted, hovering on the step behind, as if she was unable to bring her weight forwards to the next, lower step.
As I stopped beside her, surprised, she whirled at me.
She was still inside my shield, not out of control, but angry.
“I’ve turned off your little fey friend,” she whispered, blue eyes fierce, “so we can chat in private for once. Gods, how common those little things are these days.”
I went cold.
Like a pint of ice water.
Down in one.
“And anyone passing us won’t see or hear us, so don’t bother them.”
I was frozen anyway – the paralysis was no enchantment; it was all me.
– I shouldn’t have turned off the vision, she wouldn’t be able to take it off me, but now I can’t get it back –
“Listen to me, Kastyr. Don’t think I’m stupid.” She pressed her finger and thumb to the bridge of her nose, squeezing her eyes shut for just a moment. “I’ll give you this – while you’re clearly of above-average intelligence – yes, Kastyr, above-average is how I’m choosing to categorise it – you may be smart but you’re no genius – your problem is that you don’t know how to keep yourself reined in. You truly think I cannot enchant you? Well, your little friend is asleep, so think it through; I’m sure the potential consequences of a misstep here, now, on behalf of either of us, could be just fascinating for you.
“Yes, you could try to wake her up,” she continued as I blinked furiously; she read the thought in my mind the moment it appeared there, “but I could put her to sleep again in the same instant. You – you have already thought this very day, several times, how terrifying an arch-enchanter can be.” She smiled softly, not the smile of a predator, but the smile of one who understands. “No one put that thought in your head; it’s your own; and you’d better believe it. But as it stands – I can’t enchant you, Feychilde, or – anyone – else.
“And yes – you can stop thinking it – of course I know about the Gathering, but I do my best to hide that fact. Don’t be alarmed. We’ve long been under contract to keep it secret.”
She drew a deep breath and started walking down the stairs again, moving slowly, as if inviting me to resume my place beside her.
I kept up, and when she spoke next her tone had returned to normal, a casual, conversational voice. “Wake up this ‘Zel’ person, Feychilde –“
Zel? Zel!
“– I neither had nor have any intention to use my powers on you in that way –“
“Kas! You can hear me?”
She can put you to sleep, Zel.
“No, Kas, she can’t do that. She can stop you hearing my voice, though.”
“We do have competing organisations, you know,” Henthae was saying, “so if one enchanter messes with your head, an enchanter from an opposing school of thought will be more than happy to point it out – those Fifth Eye buffoons,” she said it with some genuine scorn in her voice, “are always eager to capitalise on even the most meagre mistake I make over here – and we do have regular screenings…”
“Yeah, unless there’s one enchanter at the top of the chain, controlling the whole thing,” I muttered darkly.
She gave me a strange look. “I am Mistress of the Pool of Reflections. There is no higher rank. I answer to the Arrealbord directly, as does the Master of the Fifth Eye, and the Mistress of the Moon’s First Whisper –”
“The appearance of independence doesn’t necessarily indicate the existence of independence. No smoke without fire – except when it’s a mistball.” I was mostly just letting my mouth run away with itself, the very same thing she’d warned me of, but at least here my angle of attack was oblique – it wasn’t like I was directly mistrusting her, or her own people, but merely speculating on other potential concerns that her brand of magic opened up for us. “If there was no independence, and you were in charge, what would be your top priority? Making it look like there was independence, right? What if, say, the Master of the Fifth Eye was more powerful than he was pretending, and simply set it all up to look as though you were all competing, when really he was running it all – even your Arrealbord orchestrators…”
“That’s…”
I saw her struggling for the word, and supplied a few: “Scary? All-too-possible?”
“Absurd,” she finished, closing her lips firmly in a confident smile, as if her mere decision had settled the matter.
“That’s just what he’d want you to think.” I used a jovial tone, so that she could tell I was merely toying with her, but she took it more seriously than I’d expected, turning her face slightly away from me as if the words had struck her a physical blow on the cheek.
Everloving little crawling dropbabies. Could I be right?
Then, on the heels of that thought:
And hi, by the way, Henthae. I hope you’re listening. I hope you realise at least one of us is taking this seriously.
“I should think that by now you’d realise you know little of my magic, boy.”
That wasn’t Zel’s voice.
Er – er…
“That’s because that’s not me, Kas… She’s linked you.”
A glance at the magister showed the same sweet smile on her face as I kept pace with her, descending.
“May I continue? Thank you. In the school of enchantment, defence is far, far more effective than attack. I personally know many mages – hundreds, do you see! – who can protect themselves against even my most penetrating gaze, my most discerning, subtle work of glamour. Even I cannot touch them! To suggest one of my rivals might toy with me as I toy with you… you merely show your own lack of knowledge. Why else do you think we can even have a government comprised exclusively of mages? Dear boy, you are quick to see problems that need solving, but it is your direction, your direction that is unfocussed. And a young man whose energies take him in one direction can find himself farther from his goals, if he does not take the time, the opportunity to consider his path before he first exerts himself.”
We were near the bottom now – we were entering the final loop.
“You have your opportunity, your favour. Consider. And notice how I shared?”
She looked across at me, smile and eyes both twinkling, and held out her hand.
In it, a glyphstone glimmered.
“If we need you – champion – we’ll be in touch. Your attendance is not mandatory.”
“Unless the Bells toll.”
She inclined her head. “Of course. It should not be much longer now.”
I shrugged, then took the glyphstone from her. Almost as clear as glass, just a hint of white cloud within the roughly-hewn edges of the crystal; it was lighter than it looked, and more precious.
I stowed it inside my satchel within my robes. As she said, I could always decline an invitation.
“You can also contact us with it – we can pass on messages for you to your local watch, your local magistry.” She gave me a look. “Official messages.”
I took her point. It didn’t bear responding to.
It was in silence – both verbal and telepathic – that we reached the bottom floor, and standing to the side of a tide of about fifty students I saw Em and Ciraya, their shoulders almost touching as they waited for us, watching the last curve of the stair.
When Em saw me I felt my heart leap into my throat – such a look of gladness came over her features, it was like the rest of the world melted away.
Henthae’s voice was almost sounding rueful as she spoke to the pair of younger magisters. “This is an interesting one you girls found last night.” She looked at me, then back at them. “I don’t think he will be signing up any time soon, but he has promised to consider it, and I think we can work with him either way.”
What could I do but nod?
I nodded.
Had I been seduced by the Magisterium?
There was no real way to know. I was supposed to be all but immune to outright mind-control while Zel was joined with me, but what if she was right? What if an insidious idea could still be slipped through? What if she could even enchant Zel, within me?
Zel snorted in dismissal at this, but I still had my doubts.
Em darted to my side and gripped my hand reassuringly, though which of us she was primarily seeking to reassure I couldn’t say.
“Could I have a word, Emrelet?” Henthae asked. “I realise the time.“
The floating crystal-rod clock showed something like eight-twenty.
Em met my eyes, looking relaxed now, not in the least alarmed. What’s more, these were her eyes, not some illusory fakes. “Feychilde – vould you go on ahead? I can catch up.”
“Sure,” I said, giving her hand a squeeze before releasing it. There was a large part of me that wanted to be out of here, see the night sky again. I didn’t exactly feel trapped, but there was still that lingering notion, that I could become trapped, through the wrong word to the wrong person, or through some stupid inaction I’d later come to regret…
Really regret, if I got remanded indefinitely to one of Henthae’s hellish holes designed especially for archmages…
“I’ll walk you out,” Ciraya drawled at me. “Fe needs a run. Em, I’ll meet you at base.”
We split apart, after a final lingering look at Em’s face, and I walked with the sorcerer towards the great arched entryway. I cast one backward glance at the two magisters: the young, vigorous wizard, with her head inclined to better hear the words being spoken by the old, equally-vigorous enchanter; then they disappeared into the crowd.
In the back of my mind, I could hear Zel muttering to herself.
It’s okay. We’re clear in a minute.
“That was a new experience,” she replied with something of a psychic shudder.
Well, you might have to get used to it. Next time I won’t dispel the vision, eh?
“Her seals might be different next time! There’s no guarantee I’ll be able to replicate the effect I managed back there. She might’ve even simply allowed it…”
I heard the horror in Zel’s mind-voice, and, frankly, shared it.
“Your interview went well, then,” Ciraya said, not looking at me, eyes flickering over the other mages around us as we walked side-by-side. She gave the occasional nod to people she obviously knew, the bestial tattoos and arcane glyphs all over her shaven head seeming to dance and contort as the light glared, reflected from her pallid skin.
“Is it always that… stressful? Belexor…”
“The famous Feychilde, brutaliser of six of the worst darkmages we’ve got – can’t take one wittle intewwogation?”
She laughed just a notch too-incredulously.
I looked at her fixedly, waiting for her to meet my eyes. It took a few seconds of silence before she turned my way. Her eyes were blue, but they contained none of the electric glitter that belonged to Henthae’s; rather, they were a surprisingly soft hue, a blue sky streaked with white clouds.
“So your interview was a bad one as well?”
She sighed, scowling a little. “You have this really annoying way of cutting through the drop, did anyone ever tell you that?”
We’d reached the arch and descended the milky black stone stairs, so we continued out onto the pebbles, under the colossal translucent-shielded sky.
“It occurs to me that this whole thing was my fault from the very beginning, you know,” I said, as if putting a bit of self-deprecation on the table could serve as a peace offering.
“Not that I’m disagreeing, but how so?”
“I should’ve given you my Brigade at the outset, shouldn’t I? Instead of letting Belexor do what he wanted with them, if I’d just –“
“No, you shouldn’t. I don’t think you understand, arch-sorcerer,” came the caustic response. Her eyes were glaring forwards, fixed on the bridge ahead of us. “I can hold maybe twenty undead like yours under my control. In total. Wherever they are, however long since I got them. I have to cast a spell just to be able to issue them commands. Moving them between Materium and Nethernum, with no preparation? Man, I don’t even know if our teachers can do that. And if I tried to take more than my load, I could lose control. You realise how bad that could get? Yeah, real fast too. So no. Just no.”
Get over it, I thought, I was only trying to be nice. But even as I gave inward voice to the complaint I knew the thought was unworthy of me. It wasn’t like I’d ever be able to experience the handicapped nature of magery for myself. Well, unless I tried learning magery; I supposed it was possible I’d end up that-way inclined, if there were some concrete benefits to tossing out some tricks. I could see some divination spells being useful. Surely already being an arch-sorcerer could only increase my options… I’d got this far, hadn’t I? If Henthae’s offers were for real, she probably wouldn’t mind me taking a look through a few tomes in the library – that was a solid resource for a budding champion. I could let her think she was swaying me, while sniping bits of lore here and there, building my power-base…
Maybe that was how champions like Dustbringer and Nighteye had gotten started, though. And now here they were – each of them, by the sounds of it, dependent on doing side-work for the Magisterium.
No. They were doing it because it was work that needed doing. Being a champion meant drawing a line between the magisters and the darkmages, no matter what I’d seen magisters doing, no matter the feel they exuded…
The callousness of Belexor’s treatment, no matter his crimes…
It was hard, but I had to think of the Magisterium as my ally. I had to learn to take instruction from them, learn to work with them. One day the Bells would ring, the Mourning Bells calling me to my real work. Then I would need to rely on them – and they on me.
I’d been looking up at the huge shield as we walked, approaching the bridge; I looked across to check Ciraya’s mood, and then the idea of the tomes in the library linked with the idea of Ciraya’s disadvantages, being an ordinary mage… and with what Dustbringer had said…
I remembered one of the images in my book under my mattress, from the Fundamentals of Force-Matrices section.
I halted. “Hey, could I try something?”
She stopped, turning her unblinking gaze on me again.
I grinned beneath the scarf. “It won’t hurt – or it shouldn’t…”
Ciraya smirked at that, like she couldn’t help herself. “Whatever.”
“I think it’d work,” Zel supplied, “and you’re quite right, there’s no reason for her to experience any pain.”
“Go on then,” she egged me on, clearly eager to find out what I’d come up with.
I tapped the index finger of my left hand on the centre of my forehead – ‘invoking my third eye with my receptive hand,’ whatever that really meant – then tapped the index finger against the end of my right hand’s index finger.
Finally that finger – an ‘evoked third eye on my projective hand’ – tapped the centre of her forehead, right where she had the tattoo of a third eye.
“Can you see it now?”
Her eyes opened wide, and drank in the sky.
“So…” she breathed, her voice without affect, her tone that of pure wonder.
I waited, looking up at the insurmountable wall of wards with her, still grinning to myself. She didn’t complete her sentence, but she didn’t need to.
Ciraya cleared her throat, and blinked.
“Sooo,” the sorceress said again, some of her usual drawl back in her voice, “let’s – let’s cross.”
She very-deliberately lowered her head, as if to glue her eyes to the bridge and ignore the vast shimmering force-field hovering above us, all around the Maginox. As she set off, I could see the spiralling line that connected my head to hers like a thin blue corkscrew starting to waver in the air, bending and buckling; once she’d taken a few steps it broke away entirely.
I knew its range now, too.
I fell in behind her, and we made our way back over the same bridge we’d used earlier in the evening. Em had seemed interested in the wards, but it hadn’t actually occurred to me then that I could actually show her… I banked that information, storing it for a later date. With some luck, a chance would arise, the perfect opportunity…
“I’ve only had that spell active once, in class – a room with no windows,” Ciraya mused. “Forcesight is expensive.”
“It’s a wonder they didn’t let you pop to an external wall for two minutes,” I commented.
“It’s entirely possible they conduct that class in a room with no windows deliberately,” she said with a thoughtful tone to her voice. “I had no idea it’d look so…”
She still didn’t finish the sentence, but she still didn’t have to. I knew what she meant.
As we crossed the moat I stepped clear through the wards – completely sensation-free, just like going the other direction – and I glanced at the guards as we went past. Najraine and the younger redhead had been replaced by a nail-thin, gaunt-faced older man and a thirty-something heavy-chested woman.
They nodded at us – well, at Ciraya mostly – and we nodded back. Then I followed the sorceress off the pebbled path for about twenty paces, until she stopped in a clear patch of neatly-trimmed grass and reached inside her robes.
I watched with curiosity as she started drawing out a circle in the grass with a phial of pearly-white sand, sprinkling an invisibly-small amount of it in a ring about ten feet in diameter – I stayed clear of it, of course, not wanting to accidentally cause her any further grief today. Once she was done with the outermost circle she marked-out more inside it; then she looked up at me briefly, curiously, before beginning to draw straight lines and curves within its confines.
I quickly realised the reason she’d glanced up at me was because she was about to start chanting.
The words were in Infernal; her lips formed sounds like ‘zanzagreth’ and ‘morbukhel’ but I heard the low-voiced song with my sorcerer’s-ear as well as my human one, such that the sounds actually made sense, however disconcerting their implied message:
Into time and from time’s undoing
The behind of mirrors and dark’s first flowing
Come heed the hungerless and cold bone’s yearning
Feast long upon the dust
That is their fate’s sole mooring
Ciraya had finished scattering the sand – crushed bone, I supposed. She put away the small phial into a hidden pocket, then produced a candle of black wax and a small metal implement, clearly of dwarven design, which served to produce a flame on the wick when pressed and held in the right manner.
The sorceress held the lit candle over her head, and in one smooth motion fell to her knees, then sat back on her feet and prostrated herself, putting her face in the grass. She reverently lowered the candle with both hands, arms extended, until at last it stood in the very centre of the circle.
Out of time to time’s life pouring
The face of mirrors and dark’s last crowing
Come heed my breath and warm blood’s churning
Feast slow upon their souls
And be their sole hope’s rending
Ciraya got to her feet, smiling softly. “Now I wait,” she murmured, tilting her head to indicate that she was speaking to me, but keeping her eyes on the candle in the centre of the circle.
“Do you know what those words mean?” I asked, in a voice that sounded empty even to my ears.
“They summon Fe.” She said it like she was having to explain the obvious – which she was, but that wasn’t the point…
“I know that, I mean –“
“Fe is a demon.” Now she was using the tone you’d use speaking to a five-year-old.
“Yes, Ciraya, but -”
“Demons are naughty.”
“You just gave the souls of the people, the people in that dust you’ve got there in your robes – you just gave them to the demon! To Infernum!”
Ciraya shook her head. “A part of their souls, only. A share of the power enjoyed by a mortal spirit. Like blood – it’s basically the currency in the planes, from what I understand.”
“I…” Wasn’t that worse than killing people?
Like, infinitely worse?
“We only use the bones of murderers. They’re down there anyway.”
Unless you got the wrong man – whose pleasant eternity in Celestium, his reward for his wrongful conviction, would be robbed from him by idiots on Materium…
“How else,” she was saying, “would we open our gateways, usher through our eldritches? There has to be a source of energy for the transfer; we can’t all just wave our hands, you know… Ah,” her voice lowered an octave, “here she comes.”
Suddenly Ciraya was surrounded by a wall of blood-red fire, the entire circle lighting up; then as quickly as it appeared, it vanished.
I’d been half-expecting to see Ciraya mounted on Feast when the demonic fire departed, but a yithandreng wouldn’t fit inside the circle, exactly –
And there was just the sorceress, bending down to retrieve her candle from the grass.
“Say hi to Feychilde,” she said in a resigned tone.
It wasn’t until I heard the tiny squeak of the demon and saw Ciraya carefully peeling something away from the candle that I realised why Zel had put yithandreng into the assassin-class category. The sorceress lifted it up from where it had appeared, curled almost-invisibly about the black wax – a ten-legged lizard, no longer from tail-tip to snout than my middle finger.
They change size?
“Are you still sure you don’t want one?”
Don’t tempt me.
“There’s no reason to stick to just fey, you know. H- I’m sure Dustbringer uses things that aren’t undead some of the time. No one’s going to hold it against you if you use some demonic transportation.”
You said there’re fey alternatives.
“Sure, but if you want a yithandreng, we’ll just pop to Infernum and grab one.”
You make it sound like a breeze.
“For an arch-sorcerer? It’s not so dangerous. Would I be recommending it if it were? We’d just have to sort out your seal…”
I looked down at the two-inch demon, its miniature cat’s-eyes beaming their red radiance, and had to suppress a bit of a shudder – the mizelly-thing was still fresh in my mind, and since my ratty experience the fact it was so small and cute at the moment counted for precisely nothing. It was a big scary demon, when it wanted to be, or was allowed to be. Sure, they’d be amazing infiltration tools – I got that now. A twenty-foot long, ten-legged snake-lizard, that you could stick in your pocket, or someone else’s pocket, ready for when you wanted it…
Rhu Dwazisen, Fe had squeaked.
“Rhu Thrile,” I replied, trying to sound casual as I growled back.
Ciraya stepped away to place Fe on the ground, then stood facing me – the demon grew beneath her, her backside perched on the ridge of its back as it swiftly became the size of a big dog. It gathered length and height in less than two seconds, swelling up into the huge creature I recognised, carrying its mistress up into the air.
“I’ll get to Peltos at some point tonight,” the sorceress said with a touch of wicked relish.
“I, like, massively appreciate anything you can do,” I said, meaning every word.
“I might hold you to that,” she replied, turning away to face the Noxway.
“Enjoy your night?” I offered.
“Oh, that’s for certain.” She patted Fe on the neck fondly, then barked, “Khalor!” in a hollow, terrible voice: ‘Charge!’
The yithandreng tore off, legs moving like furious pistons, the spread of the creature’s weight and the balanced impacts of its feet allowing Ciraya to move at a high speed without being jostled around, just her overlarge black robe whipping in the wind of their passage. She kept to a course parallel with the pebble path, sometimes veering to one side to avoid a group of lounging students.
“Feychilde!”
I turned, and saw Em stepping off the bridge by the magister-guards. A smile split my face beneath the scarf fit to match hers.
“Is everything okay?” I asked in a voice just loud enough to cover the distance between us; I hardly took two steps her way when she keened straight through the air to me, floating a foot off the ground, one second moving at walking-speed, the next moving faster than an arrow.
She caught my hands, came to a stop with her body an inch from my own.
“Everything is good, Kas.” She whispered my name and I shivered. “Shall ve fly now?”
I looked in her eyes, their grey-blue ice tempered by soft-green blush, and I knew.
She –
“She’s real.”
I just had to check.
I nodded to Em, and she squeezed my hands. Together, we started to soar.
Would you mind leaving me to it for a bit, Zel? Take a well-deserved rest. I suspect I’ll be able to get home without you.
“I’ve been gone a long time today, but if you need me you make sure you call me, okay?”
She didn’t wait for an answer – I could tell Zel was asleep, or gone, or whatever.
We gained height, Em’s hands still clasped upon my own, and soon we were hovering far higher than we had been when we’d journeyed here. Five hundred feet – a thousand – we drifted far from the Maginox, far from everything –
Beyond us towered the mountains at whose foot the city had been founded, stretching on up into darkness. But below us, Mund twinkled. The two of us were aloft, under a clearing of the clouds through which the purple-black sky was laid bare, the divine stars tracing their silvery courses through its layered darkness, pathways burning like the platinum tears of a molten god.
I trusted in her archmagery, removing my hands from her clasp.
Slowly, I reached out. My thumb traced the line of her jaw as my fingers sank into the long platinum hair.
Her hand was inside my hood, tugging down my scarf –
She tilted her face before I could guide her, and then she was pressing her lips into mine with a ferocity that took me by surprise.
Some unknowable, infinite time later we separated, our faces still close.
The softened, warmed air about us allowing us to breathe also permitted me to whisper above the booming wind rippling across the sky up here.
“Erm – Em, do you know you’re glowing?”
A soft gold-white light was suffusing her skin and clothes and hair, but I could still make out the blush that spread on her cheeks as she realised.
“It – ah – sorry,” she stammered, looking away, “zis is embarrassing.”
It was extremely cute.
She was so beautiful I’d have thought she’d been enchanted into liking someone like me, if such a notion was even coherent. I knew I didn’t look terrible, all things considered, and if past experience was anything to go by I had just enough wit to let me punch a little above my weight on a good, very good day, but really? Her?
She managed to lose the glow, and looked back at me, smiling.
Her eyes reflected only the moon and stars up here, and gazing into them made me lose myself; I only remembered the most stupid mistake I’d made. “I – I meant to show you the wards, but I forgot, and crossed; the guards had changed… next time?”
“You can show zem to me?”
I grinned at her instantaneous delight, enjoying the way her arm rested on my shoulder as she immediately span, looking towards the Maginox as if tempted to return; then she turned her head back to me, and traced the corner of my mouth with her fingertips. I supposed she didn’t get to see my face most of the time –
Then she pounced on me again, her hand combing through my hair as our lips met once more.
Time passed, an indefinable amount. A disregardable amount.
It was with great reluctance that I eventually broached the topic of going home.
“I can’t be responsible for you not getting to your shift,” I murmured, “not your first shift after we met.”
“You can hang around?” she asked. “Zey vill not allow you to accompany us as ve go on ordinary operations – patrols, arrests – but if zere is a situation ze presence of a champion vould be velcome…”
“Well, I don’t think I left things in a great state back home, to be honest –”
Those pretty lips parted wide, her mouth falling open. “Oh, no… I vozn’t thinking! Kas! Ve must get you home. Jhaid and Jharoan vill be beside zemselves!”
I’d told them all that everything was okay before I left, told them I’d be back as soon as I could manage – told them to ignore the trashed main room, the obvious signs of a serious altercation…
She immediately tugged on my hand and began to soar towards the south-west, aiming us at smog-choked Sticktown. She’d returned the same gift of independent flight to me that I’d had on the way to the Maginox; I could direct my own course if I needed, and tested a few rolls in the air just to be sure… but for now what I needed was to stay as close to her as I could manage for as long as possible.
So I flew at her side, and looked down and around. Even with the augmentation from Zel being joined with me I could only barely make out the walls around the city, the dark lines of the rivers; afar to the south, a great looming blackness… the sea.
There were four colourful glints, large enough to be visible even at these distances, and I admired them from afar. I’d never seen three of them before. The green of the Autumn Door in Sticktown, towards which we were headed, was of course the clearest. The blue of the Winter Door in Treetown was next, then the yellow of the Spring Door – the last working Door – and the red of the Summer Door, both in Rivertown, were distant blurs. But I could make them out.
I’d been thinking about taking Jaid and Jaroan to see the Autumn Door earlier on today –
By the gods, was that really only today? It felt like two weeks ago at least.
“I’m going to have to explain myself to them, aren’t I?” I said ruefully after a while.
“I think it might be ze time,” she replied, looking across at me.
I sighed, a reflexive mechanism that just worked thanks to her archmagery, even going at these stupid speeds (not that I had any reference points for how fast we were actually going). “It’s been a very strange day.”
She was smiling. “For me too.”
“So I meet the world’s most amazingly-hot wizard –“
“Kas!” She blushed.
“What, you didn’t hear the results of the poll?” I carried on, grinning. “The world’s most amazingly-hot wizard, who just happens to be not just that but the most amazingly-powerful wizard in her generation – and funny, and loyal, and interesting.” I held up fingers to tick each point off. “Simply too good to be true.”
She didn’t say anything, but she reached out and took my hand, squeezing it.
It was more than enough.
We flew together, and when we were close-enough to Helbert’s Bend we descended into a refuse-choked Springwalk alley, halfway between Mud Lane and Cutterwells, where I could change out of my robe. Our sudden appearance scared off a group of miserable-looking dogs.
“Well,” I said, regarding her once I was back to being Kastyr Mortenn, “I don’t suppose you can ignore the fact that the night ended with us paddling in drop?”
She answered by throwing her arms around my neck and kissing me again.
Afterwards, I muttered in a deliberately-deep, overly-serious voice, “I’d wade through a river of drop if I had to –“
She thumped me lightly in the chest. “Oh, zat is ze most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me,” she said, grinning. “Could I see you in ze afternoon tomorrow?” she went on. “If you are busy, zen –“
“No!” I blurted. “I mean, yes – I’m not busy, and I would love to see you tomorrow.”
She floated upwards slightly, our fingers still entwined.
It was only then that I realised, and had to swallow it down like a bitter medicine; she was a magister, she was going into dangerous situations, and I wouldn’t be there… But it was something that I couldn’t ever suggest was unacceptable. If anything she’d been my protector today, and there was no other way to say it than –
“Joran keep you safe,” I prayed. “If Henthae calls me –“
“She gave you a glyphstone?” she exclaimed. “Oh, Kas, I can’t believe I almost left wizzout finding zat out! Let me see it!”
She produced her own glyphstone, and when she touched hers to mine there was a small but bright glint of light, a spark of brilliance that lived only for a single moment. I thought I saw tiny bluish twirls of radiance, like half-written runes hanging there in the air, lasting less than an instant – and then Em smiled, returning mine to me.
When I cast her a quizzical look, she explained with a beaming smile on her face, “Now I can speak to you, see you, through ze crystal!”
“That – you – that’s awesome,” I breathed, looking down at the light chunk of seeming-glass in my hand with renewed wonder.
“If you put it up to your eye and say my name three times – Emrelet Reyd – zen my stone vill react.”
Emrelet Reyd.
“I can’t believe I almost let you leave without finding out your name,” I muttered, grinning.
“Call me, and I vill come,” she said, floating up.
I nodded. “Goodnight, Em.”
“Till tomorrow, Kas.”
She went up, over the walls of the buildings, and was gone.
My mind was a whirl of conflicting emotions and thoughts as I knocked on my door a few minutes later.
Em. Henthae. Belexor. Dustbringer. Ciraya. Jargrin. Even the weird diviner on the outskirts of Hightown-centre.
But mostly Em.
Xantaire let me in, and while she locked up behind me I stood facing the main room.
The mess had been cleared up, and everything was in its place.
Everyone was there – everyone was still up. Waiting for me.
Orstrum was sitting down, Xastur in his lap. Jaid and Jaroan were playing on the floor. Morsus had just come out of the wash-room, drying his hands on a rag.
This time Jaid didn’t come running into my arms, and Jaroan’s usual thoughtful expression looked troubled.
“I…”
They all stared at me.
Where to begin? What to say?
“I’ve…”
An involuntary sigh escaped my lips.
Where did it begin? What was the start of it?
Realisation brought a wave of exhaustion, and I very nearly collapsed to the ground – I let myself sit cross-legged where I’d been standing, and put my head in my hands.
Jaid came to me then, worming her way under my arm to put herself half in my lap, hugging me. Jaroan rocked back and forth on his heels. Behind me, Xantaire had finished the bolts and I could sense her standing there, looking down on me with her arms folded.
“It started the day after Peltos came. The day I…” Tears started now, burning in the corners of my eyes. “The day I k-kicked their grave.”
It was just so hard. The responsibility. Having to be the grown-up.
“I had no right to hate them for being dead.” I spoke in a cold voice. “I had no right. But I did anyway. And then this, this thing – it unlocked inside me…”
Jaid’s arms tightened around me. Jaroan’s face looked ashen.
I wasn’t going to tell the twins about feeling our parents’ bodies moving beneath me. That was far too horrific for their ears. But they had to have the truth, or as much of it as I could safely give them.
“It’er be awright, Kassy,” Xastur murmured, before Orstrum shushed him.
I tried to smile at the little boy. His presence here wouldn’t be a problem. He wasn’t very talkative or inquisitive; he was a lovely lad in temperament but he tended to focus his energies inward, and didn’t mix with the other children in Mud Lane much, aside from my brother and sister, of course. He probably wouldn’t understand one bit of what was going on here today, other than that I was visibly upset.
Xantaire came around and took her son in her arms. I drew a ragged breath and pawed at my eyes, settling Jaid into a more-comfortable position. My mouth drew itself up into a real smile, all of its own accord.
“I know, Xassy,” I said softly. It was part of the code, with the little kids: ‘It’ll be alright’ was something you had to say about twenty times a day, and they picked it up quickly. “Anyway… I was granted something. Power. I can… I’m useful to them, now.” They’d all know who I meant by ‘them’: the rich; the influential; the magical. “Hence this.”
From my satchel I produced the pouch and revealed the fourteen platinum coins Ciraya had left in my keeping.
Jaid’s eyes fell upon the coins and reflected their glimmer, her lips parted in disbelief. The faces of the others held similar expressions. Morsus’s eyes closed the moment he saw the money in my hands; his own hands he balled into fists and clasped to his chest over his heart, his lips silently offering up a vehement thanks to Brondor and Belestae.
Orstrum choked, “Gods – my boy – whatever have you had to do to earn that?”
But Jaroan was looking me in the eyes. “Power, Kas?”
“You have to keep it secret, Jaroan. Jaid. Everyone here,” I looked around meaningfully, “has to keep it secret. Your lives could end up depending on it.”
“What… do you mean… archmagery?”
“Ooh!” Jaid squealed, wriggling free of me. “Really, Kas? What are you? Are you a druid?”
She’d always been obsessed with the idea of changing her shape. She’d gotten it into her head from one of the kids’ books we had scattered around that becoming a pegasus would be the height of all possible achievement in all the world, and a couple of years ago she’d been drawing the damn things with every free minute of her time.
“Or an enchanter? You are, aren’t you? Just like Lovebright!”
I shook my head gently, and felt my lip twitch up at the corner as I realised how best to respond.
I set down the money, then I waved my hand casually. “Flood Boy, I think I might need a cup of wine. I gather I’m starting to know what people mean when they say, it’s been one of those days.”
“Oh, hullooo there, everyone,” the little, grinning faun uttered in a sober-sounding voice, trotting out of the green fizz hanging in the air where I’d gestured. The moss covering Flood Boy’s cat-inflicted wounds was gone, leaving his skin smooth and unmarked.
Without any further instruction, he produced a solid wood-carved pot – big enough for a human – and filled it from his golden chalice. Then he passed it to me, all seemingly-oblivious to the silence and stares surrounding him.
“Anyone else?” I offered, smacking my lips after taking a swig of the potent, aromatic liquid. I could already feel its warmth coursing through me.
The moment I saw Jaroan’s eyes light up I quickly added, “Anyone over the age of maturity.”
Which, conveniently for me, was fifteen in Mund. Sure, I’d probably let them get away with a taste of booze when they were thirteen, to get them prepared for adulthood, but that was just the way things were. Here in Sticktown, at least.
Flood Boy served the other adults with aplomb.
But that wasn’t why Jaroan’s eyes had lit up. “You’re a sorcerer. You’re like Litenwelt.”
I inclined my head solemnly.
“This is the coolest thing ever,” my brother breathed.
“What else can he do?” Jaid asked, staring at Olbru, not looking one bit fazed at the fact a magical being had just fizzled into existence in our main room.
“He can make awesome ice sculptures?” I guessed, cocking my head as I looked at the faun.
He shrugged, smiling as he took a few gulps from his goblet, having just finished conjuring pots of wine for my friends. “Why not?” he replied, then emitted a little burp.
Jaid chirped delightedly.
As Flood Boy crossed to the bench and the twins sat on either side of him, I added, “And he can also fill you in on an epic duel he partook on my behalf today, battling a ferocious feline creature, as part of a futile quest to rescue the beloved of a desperate maiden, trapped atop a great height.”
“Ooooooh!”
I caught the evil eye he cast at me, and chuckled.
Xastur went over to join in at his mum’s urging, and then I was alone with the adults, seated on the benches.
“We could hear some of it through the walls, you know,” Xantaire said.
I nodded. “I’d expected as much. Did they…?”
I found I didn’t quite know how to finish my question. Did they cry? Did they go through hell?
She smiled. “They’re special, your twins. They seemed excited, if anything.”
“What about Peltos?” Orstrum asked. “Now there’s a man who didn’t sound happy!” The old man, on the other hand, looked overjoyed when mentioning this fact.
I grinned. “There’s a magister on his case now. Not Emrelet,” I glanced at Xantaire, “but another who showed up during my chat with him. Apparently the watch has ‘got stuff’ on him, and she’s going to lend them some Magisterium muscle. But he’s getting paid. Sixteen plat.”
“But you have fourteen platinum left, my good friend!” Morsus said in a tone as if he thought he had to remind me. “This is a lot of money!” he continued. “Much can be done with this.”
“You should move away, my boy.”
I looked at Orstrum.
What did he mean? Leave them behind? Leave behind the smell of Hontor and Sons in the morning, the people I knew?
Buy a nice horse? Get the kids by-the-book tutors? Drape myself in fineries?
Become rich?
The idea was abominable.
“Move away from Sticktown?”
“Away from Mund!”
I shook my head. “I’ll be needed here. Fate doesn’t choose lightly, old man. You know that.”
He knew every story by heart.
“Think of them…” He nodded at the twins.
“I know. I know.” I pressed my lips together firmly, my eyes closed, then opened them and drew a deep breath. “But there are other children, aren’t there? We’re all innocents in life. I’ve got to help them all, or none at all, or I’m not a champion.”
“But do you have to be a champion? Kas, I –“
I just snorted, and he fell silent.
Of course I have to be a champion.
“You can still enjoy your money, though,” Morsus said in a chiding tone.
I nodded. “You’re right, of course. And all being fair…“
I sipped my wine, then I took out the coins.
“Listen,” I said, more quietly now. “I don’t know how often I’ll really be able to pull this off. The more I’m seeing of the world of a mage, the scarier it is. I don’t want to… end up having to leave them,” I whispered those words, giving Orstrum a pointed look to make my meaning clear, “but I want to set most of this aside for them – at least this time – just in case. But…”
“Kas, don’t,” Xantaire said. “Keep it all for them.”
I shook my head. “You’re mad. Here.” I pressed two platinum coins into her hand. “It’s only one each. Buy things. Nice things. For you and Xastur.”
Once it was in her hand, I knew she’d take it, even though her lips were floating as if still mouthing silent objections. It was plat. People like us never saw plat, never mind having a piece of it.
“And to you,” I said to Morsus and Orstrum, giving them a plat each, “I say the same. Try to enjoy it.”
Orstrum wiped his eyes, which had suddenly teared up, and patted the pocket in which he stowed it to check it was secure there.
“You know me, my good, good friend,” Morsus exhaled, holding up his shining coin. “I will make more money with it, and I will pay you back.”
He loved to gamble, and he was good at it – too good for his own good. He never knew when to stop. He’d lose the whole plat in a single morning.
I knew it was futile, but I had to try. “No gambling, okay?” I said. “If you want to go into business with it, sure –“
“I can buy a dozen fighting-dogs,” he joked, raising his wine-cup to his lips.
“Or something less, you know, kill–y?” I sat back, drinking from my own cup, watching Flood Boy make a pegasus out of frozen wine using a gentle hum from his pipes.
“Yes, not dogs… a manticore…” Morsus replied in a dreamy voice, and I laughed.
I stashed the ten plat I had left. Three each for the twins – that was thirty gold, the equivalent of thirty weeks’ rent apiece… That would leave me four to play around with. An incredible sum, to my eyes, but there were certain things I’d need to purchase tomorrow.
So the evening passed into night, and the kids went to bed; and then there was more drinking, and then the grown-ups went to bed; and there were dreams – dreams of Em, dreams not of sand and sea but sky and stars, of kisses and whispered words under starlight.
And so, in spite of the aggregate of things that had gone wrong today, everything had turned out alright after all.
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