Exile (45 page)

“What the hell is this all about, anyway?” 

Bren smiled, a much smaller, tighter smile than he’d displayed in front of Kiran. “Want me to make up a nice lie for you?”

I made a face but didn’t reply, figuring I’d deserved that. He’d made it clear enough back when I started working for him that he expected a courier to keep his mouth shut and ask no questions. 

Bren removed a bundle of tightly wrapped items from the strongbox, laid a banking draft on top, and slid the lot across the table to me. “Once you get him across the border, no matter what he says, take him straight to Gerran’s. No delays, and don’t let him out of your sight.” He leaned forward and held my gaze. “The job’s not done until then. And Gerran and I expect discretion on this. Full discretion. Understand?”

Yeah, I understood, all right. Either Kiran was an errand boy for someone who didn’t trust him, or Gerran intended to turn an additional profit on Kiran’s little trip and didn’t want him to know about it. Shit. This job got crazier by the minute. I scowled at Bren.

“A little tricky for such a simple job, don’t you think?” 

“You agreed to the terms,” he said, his tone a warning.

This was my last chance to back out. I eyed Bren’s banking draft. Damn Jylla to Shaikar’s darkest hell for making this job a necessity. 

“Fine.” I slipped the draft into a pocket. “This had better be worth it, Bren.” 

***

Only the highest towers of the city still showed a faint gleam of sunlight warming their pale stone as I hurried away from Bren’s place. The high walls and buildings surrounding me blocked my view of the mountains to the west, but I could imagine their snowy serrated ridges deepening toward the blue of twilight and their vast shadows spreading out over the desert valley. Damn, but I couldn’t wait to get up there again. I always got a little edgy after a long winter in the city, but this time I had other reasons for wanting out of Ninavel.

My pace slowed as the evening crowds gathered. Ninavel is always liveliest after sunset, when cool night breezes relieve the searing daytime heat. People filled the streets, shopping, drinking, standing around in loose groups laughing and watching street performers. Out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of a kid darting through the crowd, chased by another, both giggling and shrieking. The adults around them didn’t look twice, but I noticed the careful pattern of their ducking and dodging, and smiled to myself. Taint thieves, both of them. Not that powerful, or they’d be doing something tougher than crowd work. I tried to spot their minder, but he or she blended with the crowd well enough that it wasn’t an easy mark. I checked the protective amulets I wore on both wrists. Their silver shone untarnished, and the stones remained clear. My money and Bren’s goods would remain safe, at least from lesser Tainters like those kids. 

The crowd noise abruptly hushed. People melted away from the middle of the street like rime ice in noonday sun, clearing a path for a lone, distant figure.

I’m told in other cities, it’s kings and lords who cause that kind of upset. Not in Ninavel, so far out in the western territory of Arkennland that it takes a year’s journey to reach the king’s city. No, Ninavel is the haunt of mages, of all kinds, and ordinary men learn fast to stay out of their way. 

When Lord Sechaveh first came to the Painted Valley and started building Ninavel, people thought he was crazy. Only a moonbrained old fool would try to found a city in a waterless desert, they sneered. But sly Sechaveh sent word to all the mages he could find, saying if they came to his city and helped conjure water, he’d let them do whatever they wanted. No rules, no laws, no taxes—spend time on water duty, and any other magic is fair game, no matter how dark. That promise drew mages like fire ants to peachflower honey, especially the ones who practice magic in ways forbidden elsewhere. Of course, mage talent is rare, strong mage talent more so, and even here in Ninavel you mostly see middling types who can’t do much more than make a decent charm. Yet a charm can boil a man’s blood, or leave him a mindburned ruin; even a middling mage makes for a terrible enemy when crossed.  

From the fearful silence of the crowd, the approaching mage was a lot stronger than middling. I craned my neck around a group of tradesmen in hopes of spying the sigils on the mage’s clothing. On occasion I’d seen men whose silken shirts bore the looping golden scrawls signifying sand mages, and once—from a distance—a woman with the eerie, pale spirals of a bone mage patterning her dress, but none more powerful than that.

The tradesmen gasped and shrank back. I sucked in my own breath with a startled hiss, as I glimpsed jagged red and black sigils.

A blood mage! Gods, I’d never thought to see one in the flesh, though I’d heard plenty of spine-freezing stories. Everyone knows mages have to raise power for their spells somehow, but most of them find ways that don’t turn grown men pale. Blood mages, on the other hand…they’re rare as mist in the desert, but the word is their magic’s as powerful as it comes, fueled with pain and death. And the bloodier, nastier, and more lingering the death, the better. 

I plastered myself against the wall right alongside the cringing tradesmen, but I couldn’t resist sneaking another look. From the stories, you’d think a blood mage should look deformed and evil, but he just looked like a man. A tall man, broad shouldered, with thick wavy chestnut hair coiling past his shoulders, highsider-style. Arrogant as all get out, in that way ordinary highsider men tried so hard to imitate. What would it be like, to know you could do anything you wanted? Anything at all?   

I darted a glance at his face, then nearly shit myself when his eyes locked with mine. For a long, frozen interval his cold hazel gaze pinned me in place, like a mudworm pierced by a dagger. At last he smiled—a smile whose predatory, amused malice turned my gut hollow—and strode on. 

I slumped against the wall, my heart hammering. Next temple of Khalmet I passed, I’d make an offering. A
big
offering, because clearly I owed the god of luck for saving me from my own stupidity in attracting a blood mage’s attention. He’d probably come streetside to claim fresh victims for his spellwork—a fate I shuddered to imagine.   

I pulled myself together. I still had a visit to make before preparing for the trip to Kost. I ducked down the next alley and made for the far corner, where the mortar between the great stone blocks had crumbled away. It was all too easy to scramble up the hundred feet to the building roof, using my fingers and the edges of my shoes in the cracks. City climbing’s never as fun as climbing in the mountains.

City views aren’t bad, though. Colorful magelights gleamed and sparkled in the highside towers like Suliyya’s thousand jewels of legend, outshining the stars in the darkening sky and contrasting with the warmer glow of lanternlight radiating up from the streets. Above the soaring outlines of the western city towers, the dark bulk of the Whitefires rose like a great saw-toothed wall, the snow on their peaks pale in the twilight. 

My mood eased by the sight, I headed across the roof to a small cupola and a window glowing with warm light through a gauzy curtain. I made quick work of the window lock and pushed my way through the curtain, dropping into the brightly painted room beyond.

“Dev!” Liana beamed a welcome from the long table where she was clearing away the remains of a meal. Toys lay scattered over the floor, and she had to raise her voice over the excited shrieks of the kids playing on the far side of the wide room. “You could use the door, you know. I promise we’d let you in.”

“Nah, it’s more fun this way,” I said. “Besides, I remember how you always liked surprises.” The kids tumbled across the room and threw themselves at my legs, giggling and shouting my name.

“Dev, what’d you bring, what’d you bring?” the littlest one yelled. I picked him up, tickling him gently, and tossed him into the air. Where he stayed, floating. I did an exaggerated double take.

“No! This can’t be Tamin. Tamin can only lift himself a body length!” I said loudly, and reached for him, ready to tickle. He darted backward in the air, out of my grasp. 

“I am so Tamin! Look what I can do, Dev! Liana says next month I’m old enough to go out on jobs with everyone else!”

The other kids clamored for attention. I handed out the candies I’d been saving for the occasion and made sure to marvel as they showed me their prowess, making the candies float and dance and have mock battles in the air. My eyes roved over the group. Jek, Porry, Alsa, Kuril, Ness, Jeran, Melly…I frowned. “Where’s Tobet?”

I’d asked Liana, but it was eleven year old Melly who answered me. “He Changed and couldn’t lift no more, so Red Dal sent him to his new family.” She raised her chin, her amber eyes sparkling. “Red Dal says I’m boss Tainter now, Dev. I call the ward tricks tonight and the littlies have to do what I say.” 

Only long practice kept my voice light. “’Bout time, huh, kid? Taint like yours, you’ll make a fine boss.” 

My eyes met Liana’s as I spoke, and we shared a moment of bitter memory. The Change is a terrible thing, for a Taint thief. One day you’re happy, and cared for, and can fly and lift and kip and do all kinds of fun tricks. Then puberty hits and the power dwindles away, never to return.  You’re useless to your handler then, so he sells you off to whoever will take you. New family for Tobet, yeah, right. Just another pretty lie from Red Dal to make sure his Tainters stayed complacent, backed up by his follow-me charms. And if I tried to say different, I’d be dead before dawn, and the kids with me. The city ganglords won’t risk Tainted kids turning on them.

The kids were still chattering with excitement, the younger ones darting through the air like whiskflies. Liana caught Tamin’s ankle as he zipped past. 

 “Kids, calm down, all right? You’ve a busy night ahead and I don’t want anyone getting too tired.” They grumbled, but obeyed when Liana shooed them back over to their play area.

“Job tonight, huh?” I dropped into a chair next to Liana. 

“Yeah. First in a couple days, so they’re a little over-excited.” 

I knew better than to ask what the job was. Liana let me come around for old times’ sake, but I didn’t work for Red Dal anymore. He wouldn’t take it well if I got nosy. My gaze lingered on Melly’s dark red hair, bent over an intricate pattern of string as she chanted a rhyme along with Ness and Jeran. No telling how long she had left. I thought of the blood mage’s smile, and suppressed a shudder. As an adult, I’d heard too many stories about Changed kids sold off to anonymous buyers, never to be seen again. 

Liana followed my gaze. “Dev, about Melly…” She trailed off. My stomach knotted up at the unhappiness on her face.

“What’s wrong?” Melly’s Taint couldn’t be failing already. Gods all damn it, not yet. Not when I had no chance of keeping my promise to her father.

Liana read my face. “Don’t worry, her Taint’s still strong. But…” She leaned in close, and whispered, “Morra said she saw Red Dal talking to a man wearing the badge of Karonys House.”

Under the table, my hands clenched into fists. No surprise that Red Dal was already shopping Melly around to the top pleasure houses. Sethan had been handsome enough, but his daughter looked to surpass him by far. More, she’d inherited that crazy hair of his, the deep crimson of magefire flame—a shade rarely seen in Ninavel. Red Dal would make a mint, that was sure. But Karonys House…shit. They catered to highsiders with nasty kinks, and used taphtha juice to keep their jennies compliant. Melly’d be a vacant-eyed doll within days of entering Karonys, her mind burned away forever by the taphtha. I fought down nausea.  

“Nothing’s certain yet, Dev. Another house could outbid Karonys, easy.” Liana sounded like she was trying to convince herself. 

“Yeah.” I didn’t trust myself to say anything more. Hell if I’d let any pleasure house get their hands on Melly, after everything Sethan had done for me after my Change. I vowed silently I’d do whatever it took to complete Bren’s gods-damned job. I’d never outbid Karonys, but my promised pay would be enough for other, riskier options. Red Dal or Karonys, neither would take well to theft of costly property, but with enough coin to cover our tracks, I could spirit Melly away and set her up proper in a new life far from Ninavel.

“I’m sorry, Dev.” Liana put a gentle hand on my arm.  “You all right? I heard about you and Jylla…”

I gritted my teeth. “Oh, for Khalmet’s sake. You’d think someone had stood on top of the Alton Tower and announced it.” 

“But you two’ve been together since your Change! I don’t understand. Just because she found a highside mark to squeeze dry…that kind of game never bothered you before.” Concern was all over Liana’s wide brown eyes and round face. I bit back a sour smile. Thank Khalmet, Liana didn’t know the half of it.  I shrugged and made an effort to sound cheerful. 

“I’ll be fine. I’ve got a job going, I’m heading out to Kost. That’s why I came, wanted to say goodbye before I left.” 

“Oh good, I know how you love the mountains. But we’ll miss you, me and the kids both.” She gave me a little, wistful smile. “Take care of yourself out there, huh? Don’t get eaten by wolves.”

It always amused me what city people like Liana thought about the mountains. Wolves. Ha. More like avalanches and falling rocks and late-season storms. “Right. I’ll make sure to fend off the wolves, and I’ll bring you and the kids something from Kost.”

Her eyes lit up, and for a moment I could see the skinny, shy little girl she’d once been. She always did love presents. I slipped a few coins into her hand. “Thanks for the news. Keep an eye out for Melly, huh?”

“You know I’ll try,” Liana said softly. I got up from the table, after another glance at Melly’s fiery hair.
Grow slow, kid,
I urged her silently.
I just need a few more weeks.
 

***

(Kiran)

Kiran shifted from foot to foot beside a trellis covered in night-blooming jasmine. For the hundredth time, he stared up at the pattern of stars visible above Lizaveta’s courtyard wall. The hour of his rendezvous with Dev was fast approaching. Yet without Lizaveta’s promised aid, he dared not leave Ninavel. His magic was no match for Ruslan’s. Ruslan would hunt him down with the lazy ease of a sandcat, the instant he realized Kiran had fled the city. Kiran plucked a moonflower from a nearby vine, then crushed the blossom in a fist. Lizaveta had told him to come to her garden, assured him of her help…but would she keep her word? She’d known Kiran since he was a child, but she’d known Ruslan far longer.