Memories of Ash (The Sunbolt Chronicles Book 2) (35 page)

I wake to the sound of voices. Through cracked eyelids I make out two sets of feet by the door: the slippered feet of a mage, and the booted feet of a guard. The room lies half in shadow, lit by a glowstone carried by the guard. Which means … what? A cell, perhaps?

The slippered feet cross to me quickly. They are blue leather embroidered with lighter blue flowers. I’ve seen them before. The associated voice says, “You did not bind the wound?”

“I asked the mages to check her before they left.”

I don’t know what he’s referring to, but I know that voice. I consider the effort required to fully open my eyes and lift my head enough to see the guard, and decide against it. It’s probably the guard who caught me. I don’t really want to look into his eyes right now anyway.

“I expected more from you, Osman Bey,” the mage says with quiet reproof. Her voice has a slight musical lilt to it, even now when she’s displeased.

I squint at the mage as she kneels before me, setting down a bag beside her. Blue leather shoes, that voice — she’s the same healer that came to check on Stonefall. She leans forward, brushing the hair out of my eyes. She is middle-aged, her face round, eyes framed by wire spectacles, a thick gray braid hanging over her shoulder. She meets my gaze in silence, her expression closed.

“My apologies, Mistress Brightsong. I should have seen to her myself,” the lycan, Osman Bey, says from behind her.

The mage makes no response. She transfers her gaze to my back, gently resting her hand against my unwounded shoulder. A strange, electric tingling runs through my blood, questing through my veins, sliding over my muscles and bones. I keep my eyes open, watching the healer mage. So, as the current of her magic delves into my body, I see the moment when her eyes begin to widen, her lips thinning out as she presses them together.

“She’s lost a good amount of blood. Her pupils aren’t dilating as they should. I expect she’s in shock. And her hands are still bound. Far too tightly.” Brightsong rounds on the guard, anger buzzing in her voice. “Cut them free at once.”

“She may still be dangerous,” Osman Bey says. He shuts the door behind him before coming to kneel beside the mage. I can feel his fingers on my wrist, but I can no longer feel my hands. It is strange, to think of my fingers and yet have no sense of them.

“Indeed?” Brightsong levels a cutting gaze at the lycan. “Tell me, Osman Bey, for a young mage marked by fire and stone as she is, did she rain fire upon you when you caught her? Did she open the floor beneath your feet, or topple walls on you? Or did she merely light half your brothers on fire with a single flick of her fingers, using their bones as fuel?”

Fire and stone?
I try to focus on this: fire
and
stone. The fire written inside of me is from my sunbolt, but what could she mean by stone? The only stone-related spells I’ve had any exposure to … were in the Burnt Lands. Dully, I remember the backlash of magic from the tentacled spell-creature as I unraveled its enchantments, the way it washed over me and through me, filled me until I felt as though my body could no longer hold me.
Stone.

The lycan shifts, drawing my attention back to the room. “No. None of those things,” he says, a faint note of uncertainty in his voice.

“Then she will not harm us now. Cut her free.”

I catch the glint of a dagger from the corner of my eye, and then Brightsong takes my good arm, my left, and lays it on the ground beside me. Then there are hands on my right arm, carefully lifting away blood-stiff fabric. I press my lips together on a scream as the clots rip free from my wound. The muffled, swallowed sound of my cry fills the small room.

“Water,” Brightsong says, the word a command. “For drinking, and a kettle of warm water to clean her arm. At once.”

Osman Bey rises, moves away. The door opens and closes. I lie still, feeling a slow fire beginning in my hands, my fingers, as they come back to life.

“I am sorry,” Brightsong says quietly. “I don’t dare lay a sleep on you, give you anything too strong — or you might slip away entirely. I will numb the area but it will not take away all sensation. You will have to bear some pain.”

She lays her hand upon my arm, and this time coolness radiates out, soothing and sweet. In the quiet it brings, I can feel the scrapes on my elbows, the tingling pain in my hands, the bruises growing along the lines of my fingers where I slammed them against the wall, the egg-shaped lump over my ear where Osman Bey hit me. But all of these are small, minor nuisances in comparison to the pain Brightsong has taken away
.

She sings as she works, weaving the beauty of her voice together with her magic to staunch the new trickle of blood. Her song swells strong and clear as she burns away any infection or contaminants, then turns deep and gentle as she holds a hand over the open wound, letting her magic wash over it. I latch onto the sound of her song, using it to anchor me against the whisper of pain I can feel through the numbing magic she used.

“The muscle is partially torn,” Brightsong breaks her song to tell me. “To heal properly, it must be sealed back together again. The bolt missed your tendons and arteries. You are very blessed.”

As her magic seals first muscle and then tissue together, I try to focus on the idea that life is a much better thing for me than death. Tears leak out the corners of my eyes as the pain digs its claws in, piercing through the numbing magic. Her song is steady and true, thrumming through me, but I am waking to realities that it cannot touch. My failure, my capture, means that all those who aided me I may now betray. Stonefall. Jabir. The Degaths. At least Kenta may escape. I can only hope Stormwind got away.

“There,” she says, sitting back. “I’ll see to your head and hand once we have you settled in the infirmary. Osman Bey.” She transforms his name into an order.

“I would advise against it.” His voice floats down over me, thickening in my ears like thistledown. “She should be … we can guard against escape.”

Brightsong’s voice flickers in and out of my hearing. Perhaps she laid a sleep on me, or perhaps this is what pain and blood loss does. “If you … unlikely … prisoner then?”

My eyes drift shut as Osman Bey answers. I catch a couple words through the thickening air: wards, Council.

My breath rustles through my lungs, creating an ebb and flow of pain that finally gives way to emptiness.

I wake to the scent of lemon, bright and fresh and invigorating. Multi-hued light fills my room, a window somewhere to my side throwing shards of red and blue and yellow on the wall before me. I breathe slowly, aware without shifting of the pain slumbering within me.

I lie on my back, face turned to a blank wall. With each breath, the muscles of my shoulder and arm shift, pain flickering along my right arm. It feels as though someone took a coal and traced a line of fire across my arm. And the whole of my body
aches
, no doubt the result of being pushed by Val to move beyond its natural ability.

I try, discreetly, to look past the foot of my bed without lifting my neck very much. The pain shifts, flaring up, and I freeze, my eyes coming to focus on the door barely visible above the blankets folded at my feet. A pair of lycans stands guard, facing me.

I don’t recognize them, at least not immediately. They regard me wordlessly, then one of them turns and leaves the room. I lay my head against the pillow, breathing shallowly. I can’t move my right arm —it must be immobilized to keep my wound still — but I can move my fingers easily enough. My other arm is laid out straight, my hand resting on a pillow or towel of some sort. When I try to move those fingers, new flickers of pain make themselves known, far less painful but distinctly there. My hand feels stiff, awkward. I cannot quite form a fist.

I let my eyes drift shut and take stock of my situation. I have one good hand attached to a wounded arm. I won’t be able to pick locks. I might not be able to stand if I’ve lost too much blood. Balancing and all. I squeeze my eyes tight, trying to focus my thoughts. It’s daylight. If Stormwind is still free, then she should be safe. I can’t escape now, but I doubt that anything too serious will be done to me while I appear so weak. At least not at once. I need to wait and plan.

I hear the faint sound of the door opening, footsteps approaching.

“You’re sure she woke?” a woman’s voice asks.

“Aye,” one of the lycans responds.

“Did she speak?”

“No,” the other says.

A finger brushes my cheek. I jerk involuntarily, then grit my teeth against the resulting shock of pain. When I force my eyes open, the same healer mage who first treated me is studying me, eyes shadowed and a deep line forming between her brows.

“I’m glad you’ve woken.” Her voice is cool, wholly neutral. “I am Mistress Brightsong, head healer-mage of the Mekteb. I need you to drink a potion that will help your body replenish lost blood. I have a second for the pain, if you wish it, and some broth to feed the rest of you.” I watch her mouth moving. It seems like a great many things to do. “We’re going to help you sit up.”

Sitting up, I feel terribly exposed before my lycan guards. I wear only a light tunic with its right sleeve cut away, and a pair of drawstring pants I don’t recognize. Feeding myself is out of the question, for my good hand is attached to my badly injured arm, now bound in a sling to protect it. My left hand is swollen and colored a lovely variegated purple and blue from when I beat it against the wall.

Brightsong offers me the blood loss potion first, then the broth, with two pieces of bread dipped in it to add substance, and then the second potion. And two glasses of water at my request. It takes an exhaustive amount of effort to down it all.

“What … time?” I ask when I am done, my voice rough despite all the liquids.

Brightsong tilts her head, her gaze steady on my face. “Late afternoon.”

“Where?” I have vague memories of being shifted, voices speaking over me. I knew I was being moved and I didn’t care where at the time. But I don’t recognize this place.

“The infirmary. Our mages have placed wards on the room and you are under continual guard. I would not recommend attempting to leave.”

I’m not sure I can even stand right now. “The prisoner?”

Her jaw tightens. “That is not for me to discuss.”

“No,” agrees a voice from the door. “That would be for me to discuss.”

I swing my head ponderously toward the speaker, knowing who I will see: Osman Bey. With his velvet and leather armor and array of blades, he looks right at home between the two guards. And the three of them seem completely out of place in this bright
,
cheery room. The sight of him, with his golden eyes glittering in the light, sharp and hard as glass, rips away the muffled sense of security I’d managed to wrap around myself.

He steps forward, nodding to Brightsong. The right side of his jaw is bruised nearly purple. I stare at it as he says, “I’ll require a few words with her.”

“Of course,” she says, stepping aside. “She’s weak, though, and should not move at this point. You will refrain from hurting or upsetting her.”

Osman Bey turns his head to regard her as he passes. I can’t see his expression, but Brightsong returns his look with that same unnervingly neutral mask.

He sits on the stool Brightsong vacated, pulled even with my pillow. “I am Osman Bey, captain of the Lycan Guard,” he says, his tone cold. “What is your name?”

Captain. I should have guessed it from how he ordered the other lycans away the first time I met him in the garden.

I don’t want to lie to him, but refusing to answer won’t do me any good. “Zainab,” I say finally.

“Family name? Or mage name?”

I shake my head.

His eyes narrow. “I expect it’s irrelevant. What were you doing in Shahmaran Hall?”

I close my mouth on my answer, bite my lip gently to remind myself to think. I don’t know how much he knows, or if they’ve caught Stormwind. I can’t give away anything. “Just looking,” I say slowly. “Did you catch her?”

Osman Bey shakes his head once. “No.”

Thank God.

He leans forward, intent on me. “Do you know where she went?”

“No.” Not once the phoenix took her to Kenta.

“But you were there to help her.”

I almost smile. They still haven’t figured out how we did it. “Yes,” I tell him. This is a secret I can’t keep. I was seen by too many people, and the Council will get the truth from me one way or the other. But, really, I admit it because he told me about Stormwind. It’s only fair that I give him one truth in return.

His face hardens. “Why?”

There is something odd in his tone, an emotion half-hidden beneath his tightly coiled anger. But he’s not really ready to listen, and I’m not willing to lie. “I already told you,” I say finally.

His gaze narrows as he tries to recall our past conversations, the words I used when he caught me.

I let my head loll back against the pillows, the weight of my exhaustion pulling at me. Better to let him think I’ve simply had enough of talking for now.

“If you can provide any information on the whereabouts of the fugitive, the Council may be lenient with you.”