Memories of Ash (The Sunbolt Chronicles Book 2) (28 page)

Kenta waits beside the tea tray, gold-flecked eyes intent on me. He’s tied his hair back with a leather cord, and he looks completely different now from the laughing, carefree man of a few minutes past.

I clear my throat. “Tea?”

He grins, a slight upward curve of one side of his mouth. “Of course.”

Was it a memory of me that made him smile, or something else? Perhaps I used to love food … or I was always hungry. It’s unsettling to be in the company of someone who knows me better — knows better who I was and what my life was like in Karolene — than I do myself.

Kenta pours himself a cup while I sit. “Will you tell me?”

I reclaim my plate, remembering the regret with which I’d left it. This time, I’ll finish everything on it, even though my stomach feels as hard and small as a stone. In a moment. First, I take a sip of my tea, now barely warm.

I tell him what he already knows: how we’d been taken to Blackflame’s home, and then how I’d picked the locks to help the Degaths escape Blackflame’s cages only to be caught again. I stumble to a stop, remembering that first glimpse of my mother — my shock at seeing her alive, the surreal vision of her across a decorative lotus pond.

“What happened?” Kenta asks. His words are not just the curious pressing of an acquaintance, but the gentle inquiry of a friend.

“I saw my mother there,” I admit. I cannot bring myself to speak of this morning, of how I last saw her, cold and callously uncaring, a source slave that could have been me huddled against the wall beside her.

He closes his eyes for a heartbeat. “I thought she was dead.”

I nod. “So did I. But she was alive and well, and she didn’t see me.” I shift, smooth out my skirts. Against the embroidered cushions and the vibrant colors of the carpet, they appear mottled gray, creased and stained, threadbare in spots. I focus on a snagged thread, teasing it with my fingers as I go on. “Blackflame gave me to Kol. Some kind of trade to cover a minor debt, I guess. You know he has a portal hidden in the gardens?” I glance up. For the first time since my recovery, the fact that I know this detail strikes me as important.

Kenta’s gaze sharpens. “We suspected. Did they use it?”

“Yes, it looked like a—” I try to fix its image in my mind’s eye, make sure I haven’t somehow changed it by my remembering. “An archway with a gate. Nothing fancy. I don’t remember much of it.”

Kenta nods.

“They took me through, and the next day Kol gave me to a breather he held prisoner.”

Kenta nods again, as if he expected this, though his eyes burn with anger.

I hold up a hand, letting the loose thread go. “The breather and I, we made a pact and escaped together.”

“A pact?”

“I picked the locks. He dealt with the guards.”

Kenta lets his breath out with a soft laugh. “You always land on your feet.”

Not quite. “We escaped, but Kol caught up with us. The breather fought him and … we managed to kill him. But I was badly hurt, almost died.”

“The mages who went to investigate claimed that Kol was burned to death, that there was nothing left of him but a memory of a spell.” He watches me steadily.

I shudder. What an apt description of what I was after casting my sunbolt: a memory of a spell. “There’s not much more to tell. I lost most of my memories, barely knew who I was. It took me a long time to remember much of anything. That’s part of why I never contacted you.” I rush on before he can question me, “The breather kept me alive long enough to deliver me to a healer. She took me in, and trained me once I was well enough to learn.”

Kenta blinks. “As a healer?”

“Yes. She’s a healer-mage herself.”

Kenta’s eyes narrow slightly. “And she took you on because…?”

“Because Blackflame orphaned me at least once over, and because a breather brought me to her. Breathers don’t usually approach mages for help, so it meant a lot, what he did.”

Kenta remains still a long moment, studying me. I can’t read his expression. “She must be a very unusual person.”

“She is. And she’s also why I’m here now. She’s been unjustly imprisoned and I mean to get her free.”

Kenta’s smile is a feral thing, sharp and dangerous, all the more unsettling for its sudden appearance. “Then I will help you. What’s her name?”

“Brigit Stormwind.”

His mouth drops open. “
What?
”

I nod, unsure of his reaction. He knows something of her. Is it only the news of the trial that must be the talk of the city, or something more?

He rubs his face, then says, voice flat, “She’s the one who helped you.”

I answer as if it were a question. “Yes.”

He starts to speak and then checks himself. This clearly isn’t anything close to what he expected. I don’t want lose his support. I may not remember him very well, but he was part of the Shadow League. There are things he will care about regardless.

I lean toward him. “The conviction has nothing to do with justice.”

“I know that,” Kenta says. “Nothing involving Blackflame ever does. But—
Stormwind?
Have you considered the ramifications for the High Council if she escapes? And what would happen to you if you were caught helping her?”

“I know the risks,” I say with as much quiet firmness as I can muster. “I just need a little help from the outside. I expect to carry most of the direct risks myself. As for the High Council — they’ll handle the politics.”

“Indeed,” he says dryly. “Tell me your plan.”

Ten minutes later, Kenta sits back and closes his eyes.

“I don’t need much,” I say uncertainly.

He speaks with his eyes still closed. “You’re proposing to break a convicted mage out of a cell guarded by the most highly trained lycan guard in the Eleven Kingdoms, and located under the feet of the High Council itself.”

“Yes, but—”

“And you propose to do this by tricking them into letting her out themselves and then whisking her away over their heads.”

“Pretty much,” I admit. “I just need a few allies to help me get the remaining pieces in place. And a place for her to go.”

He studies me through slitted eyelids. I can almost hear the thoughts running through his head as he processes this last point. “You think she would join the League?”

“I don’t know. She might, she might not. She certainly has every reason to support the Shadow League, especially if you help her now and call it your work with them.”

Kenta crosses his legs and leans forward, elbows on his knees. “Even if it is possible, are you sure it’s worth the risk?”

I answer without hesitation. “Yes. Just as I thought it was worth the risk to help the Degaths escape Karolene. Listen, I can’t control what Stormwind does if we get her out, but I’ve spent the last year with her, and I can guarantee that she won’t make us regret helping her. I also know that what Blackflame has done, drumming up these charges and having her falsely convicted, is precisely the sort of thing we used to fight against. She’s innocent. Even the Mekteb’s Guardian thinks so.”

Kenta’s eyes darken. “The Mekteb’s Guardian? You spoke with him about this?”

“I didn’t intend to, but I didn’t have much choice in the end. He said he’s willing to let us slip by.”

Slowly, so slowly it unnerves me, his lips twist into that same dangerous smile, sharp teeth bared. “The guard will move her the day after tomorrow, you said?”

“As far as I know.”

“And once you get her to the rooftop? What then?”

“I have an idea — someone who can help. But I didn’t want to call on him before I was sure of the rest.”

Kenta nods. “Tomorrow will be a quiet day in the city, and a busy one at the Mekteb. Not a good day to plan an escape.”

I can understand if Kenta can’t help. I’m asking him to fight for someone he’s never met. But I can’t give up on Stormwind myself. So I say only, “I understand.”

“Oh, I’m not letting you walk into danger alone again,” Kenta says. “We’ll see how quickly you can persuade your other ally. If you can get him in the next couple of hours, we do it tonight.”

I nearly choke. “
Tonight?
”

“Most of the campus, including the mages, will be out celebrating. Hardly anyone in the city will notice the alarms raised over the noise of the Festival, at least not at first.” Kenta rubs his hands together, cracking his knuckles. “With the streets full of revelers, and the skies full of fireworks, the lycan guard will be hard-pressed to spot your escape, let alone follow.”

“That’s all good,” I agree. “But it’s afternoon already.”

“Then we’d better move fast.”

We leave the Degaths’ home via the service road that runs past the rear stables. Using the shortcuts Kenta knows, we leave behind the grand houses with their wide sidewalks in a matter of minutes, exchanging them for tight, mazelike streets cutting between three- and four-story stone buildings.

“How long have you been here?” I ask as we thread our way through the crowded streets.

“About a month,” Kenta says. “Once we realized Blackflame planned to stay here longer than a week or two, the Ghost sent me to keep an eye on him.”

“He came to press charges against Stormwind,” I say.

Kenta nods. “That’s about all he’s been up to as far as I can tell.”

“So there isn’t anything like the Shadow League here?”

He smiles ruefully. “No. The king appears to be a good one, or at least not bad enough to incite rebellion, and the arch mage assigned here isn’t one of Blackflame’s supporters. She seems to embrace her position as servant of the people and counsel to the king.”

We reach a wider thoroughfare, crowded with people bustling between the squares and plazas where the afternoon festivities await. A whiff of baked bread and spiced meat stops me in my track. The pastries were all very well and good, but the scent of real food has me almost drooling.

“What
is
that?” I ask, trying to figure out where the smell is coming from.

Kenta laughs. “Lunch is on me. But we’ll walk with it.”

He leads me straight to a street vendor, his push cart laden with puffy flat breads, meats grilling over an improvised fire in a metal container. The vendor empties a skewer of beef kebabs over a flatbread, tops it with fresh cut onions, tomatoes, lettuce, and a dollop of seasoned yogurt sauce, and rolls it up for the young woman in front of us.

The smell is delicious, and surprisingly strong. My thoughts, half on the kebab roll and half on planning Stormwind’s escape,
click.

“Kenta,” I say as he finishes giving the man our order and steps back beside me.

“Mm?”

“The onions and garlic.” I gesture to small piles of both stacked on the cart. “How do they smell to you?”

He shrugs. “Not bad at all.”

“What if they’re roasting, or fresh cut? Would it make it harder to pick up another scent?” Because if they do even a little, then with a magical nudge they should work wonders for masking a scent trail.

Kenta slants me a measuring look. The corner of his mouth crooks up. “I expect so. Shall I buy a few?”

I grin back at him, my mind running through other charms I might make. “Yes. I might need some ash and some nut shells as well.”

“Ash I can supply you with. Nuts we should find along the way.”

As the man finishes making our rolls, Kenta steps forward to chat with him, coins in hand. When we set off again, I’ve added two heads of garlic and three small onions to my pack.

“Good?” Kenta asks as sink my teeth into the roll.

“Amazing,” I manage through a mouthful of half-chewed kebab.

“Some things never change,” he murmurs.

I swallow down my bite. “They don’t?”

He sidesteps an elderly couple chatting in the middle of the road. “How much do you remember about— Karolene?”

“Very little,” I admit. “I remember what happened leading up to Kol very well. I remember Saira’s betrayal, I remember you and the Ghost and … Rafiki. Beyond that, I have only bits and pieces. Images, a few words or phrases.”

“That’s all?” Kenta asks, his words faint with shock.

“It took me a month or two to remember my mother’s name,” I explain as we turn down another street. “Stormwind tried to help me to remember more, but at this point, I think I’ve recovered what I can.”

“I … see. It won’t come back then, will it? Your memory?”

Into the comfortable rush of people and movement around us, I let out the truth I am just starting to come to terms with. “No. Most of it won’t. I’m still recovering pieces, but there was a part of me that burned with Kol. Not everything can rise from ash again.”

It’s strange thinking that Kenta could know me, know what I’ve done, better than I do myself, when I hardly know him at all. “Will you—” I begin and then stop.

He cocks an eyebrow.

“Tell me about Karolene,” I suggest, which is not at all what I meant to ask. I glance away, toward a juggler and his whirling blades, barely visible beyond the heads of a circle of onlookers.

I want to know who I was in Karolene, but for the first time I’m beginning to understand why Val wouldn’t tell me what he knew of my life. Kenta knows me — through his own eyes. Not knowing myself, I might invent a false history for myself built on his words.