The Fire Mages (36 page)

“Now Daskan’s skill is in getting people to talk,” Millan said. “He drinks ale with them, trains with them, they confide in him. He’s very good at it. I’ve never been very good at seduction or talking, so I learned to get into places I wasn’t supposed to be. Picking locks, climbing through windows, that sort of thing.” He eyed Cal nervously, but Cal made no response. “So we made a good team, and people paid us to find things out for them. We were good at it, too. It’s not easy – there’s a skill in moving around without attracting attention to yourself. Daskan could do it too, but I was the best at it.”

Cal snorted at that, and I saw his point. It was bizarre to express so much pride in illegal actions.

“Anyway, we came here, all of us. Lakkan was off being a mage guard and learning to make fire, and Daskan got a job guarding a goldsmith to make some coin, so I was the only one with free time. We couldn’t talk openly to Lakkan without losing our secrecy, so we used to meet at various out of the way inns and ale houses and the like, and I was the one who made contact with him to arrange times and places. That was how I came to be at the training yard that sun when Lakkan—” His voice shook, and he rested his face in one hand.

“You were
there
!” Cal whispered, shock wiping all the anger from his face. “You saw what happened!”

“Sort of. In a way, yes. I was following – No, let me go back. I trained for a while myself, just a bit of bow work, then afterwards I stayed to watch. There was a man there, a man Lakkan had told me about, so I watched him. He was good, too, very good. There was a big crowd watching him train – swordwork, it was. When he finished, he wandered about talking to this one or that one. Then Lakkan came out and this man noticed him at once, and stood watching. It was odd, he was so intent, couldn’t take his eyes off Lakkan. When Lakkan finished, this man suddenly took off into the barracks, with his guards with him. I was curious by this time, so I tagged along, making myself invisible.”

Millan got up again and began to stride back and forth in agitation. Cal and I sat in horrified silence, knowing, I think, what was coming. Millan leaned against a side-table and folded his arms, head down. Then, taking a deep breath, he carried on.

“When he got into the barracks, this man, he sent his guards away. Well, that was odd for a start. He dashed into a room and came out with a bow and a handful of arrows, and – this was what I thought was really strange – he was wearing a cloak with the hood up, pulled right down over his face. I knew he was up to something, and nothing good. Then he looked around – he didn’t see me, of course – and shot up two flights of stairs and along to a place where there was a slot in the wall. The whole barracks is built for defence, so there are arrow slits all round, inside and out. And then he nocked an arrow and sat there waiting. Not for long. One arrow, that was all it took. I didn’t know then—” His voice broke. “I didn’t know it was Lakkan,” he whispered, before his voice broke altogether.

There was silence, broken only by Millan’s pulsing breaths. Gradually he brought himself under control.

I couldn’t say anything. It was too dreadful for words. It wasn’t a stray arrow at all, someone
murdered
Lakkan.

“Who?” said Cal. “Who was it? Would you know him again?”

“Oh yes. There’s not many as dark as him, and he has a mark – like you two.” He touched his forehead. “Lakkan said he’s someone quite important. He called him Drei.”

It was both a blessing and a curse being able to detect even the smallest lie. It left not the slightest doubt of Millan’s truthfulness. Everything he said, every word, was true, and, incredible as it seemed, Drei had killed Lakkan.

“Who is he, this man?” Millan said. “Lakkan said he was important, and everyone treated him respectfully.”

“He’s married to the Bai-Drashonor,” Cal said.

“What? No! Impossible! But he’s never even spoken to Lakkan, why would he—?”

Why, indeed. That was what none of us could understand. We went round and round the problem, but no answer occurred to us. What could Drei possibly have against Lakkan? He barely knew him.

We all agreed that there was no purpose in Millan taking his story to the guards. Who would believe him? It was inconceivable that the Drashon’s daughter’s husband would run up to a high window and randomly kill a man he had never even spoken to. It was hard enough for us to accept, when we knew that Millan spoke the truth. No one else would listen for a heartbeat.

Cal took Millan downstairs to sign him out and send him on his way, no doubt to blend into the city again and become another anonymous face in the crowds jostling the streets and markets. When he came back Cal surprised me by sitting at my feet, and taking my hand, his face solemn.

“Kyra, do you realise how much danger you’re in?”

“Danger? Me?” I squeaked.

“Drei’s killed several times now. We know he was responsible for the High Commander being executed, and several of his officers, too. We know he killed Lakkan. You could be next.”

“Drei wouldn’t hurt me,” I protested, trying to get my voice under control. “He may have taken my herbs away, and he may have locked me up in a cellar, but he’s never done anything to harm me. He’s got no reason to want me dead. Has he?”

“That’s what we don’t know, of course. The guards’ High Commander – well, that was politics, there were all sorts of undercurrents there which I didn’t understand, but I don’t think it was mage business. Lakkan, though – we don’t know why Drei wanted him dead, but think about it. Drei only knew one thing about him, that he was a wild mage like him. Like you. If he wanted Lakkan dead, maybe he wants you dead, too. Maybe he wants to be the only one with that kind of power.”

When I considered that, it made a horrible sort of sense. Then I had another thought.

“Maybe he knows about me and Lakkan,” I whispered. Was Drei the jealous type? With a sinking heart I thought he probably was. He hated being made to look foolish. “And if that’s what this is about, then you’re in more danger than I am.”

“I’ve always known I’d be in trouble if he knew about our little interlude in the Imperial City,” he said with a wry smile. “If he ever suspects the baby might not be his, we’ll
both
be in serious trouble. Kyra, promise me something. If ever anything bad happens, or you’re afraid of him at all, promise me you’ll go somewhere safe. You can hide in the city for a long time.”

“We’ll both go, if we need to,” I said, gripping his hand tightly. He watched me in silence until I got it. “Oh. You mean if anything bad happens to
you
.”

I cried then, realising for the first time that he really believed that Drei was capable of killing one or both of us. I felt so helpless, as my life crumbled around me. My magic had seemed like such an amazing gift, giving me the ability to cure seemingly impossible conditions, yet it had brought me under Drei’s gaze and made me vulnerable in so many ways. Despite all my power, what could I do to protect myself from him? If he chose to move against me, I was defenceless.

I clutched Cal’s hands as he sat motionless on the floor in front of me, letting me cry myself out. He offered no comfort beyond that simple touch and his presence, but his compassionate eyes were deep pools that drew me in. With infinitesimal slowness we moved towards each other, until we were practically touching. I could almost taste the desire in him that echoed my own. Yet we both held back, suspended in time, wanting each other but still hesitating. Was it just my distress that made me turn to him, needing comfort and reassurance? Or was it something more? My emotions churned inside me, and I longed to touch him, to kiss him, to lie in the safety of his arms.

No. It was the wrong moment. We both knew it and drew back the smallest amount.

“I daren’t...” he said.

“I know.”

“I have to be able to deny it, if he asks. I can’t lie to him.”

“I know.”

“When the baby’s born...”

“Yes.”

But his face betrayed the maelstrom of feelings inside him, like a mirror to my own heart.

~~~~~

It was the last thing I wanted, but I had to go back to the apartment I shared with Drei and pretend that all was well. It was lucky that he was seldom there, so I was rarely put to the test. Each evening I spent alone there, eating a solitary board with a cluster of servants in attendance, and then retreating to my private room with my books, trying not to think about Drei or Cal or the future. During the hours of sunlight, I went about my mage business, studying or going out with Cal for healings. News of my successes in the south had reached the rich and noble of Kingswell, and my talents were much in demand for particularly recalcitrant cases.

Healing was enormously satisfying to me. There would be a pleasant walk through the town, Cal striding ahead, coat tails flapping, me lumbering along behind with my now pronounced waddle, then a birthing nurse, and a couple of mage guards at the back. No matter how crowded the streets, people scattered at the approach of two mages, pressing themselves against walls or even hiding. We were respected and deferred to, but we also terrified the population.

The birthing nurse was a precaution insisted on by the Mages’ Forum, and was routine for all pregnant mages, to protect the realm’s valuable asset in the event of an unexpected baby emergency. Mine was a pleasant enough woman, whose sole function seemed to be to rush forward solicitously with a chair or arm to lean on whenever I stopped moving.

Then we would arrive at a lavishly decorated apartment in the Keep or one of the better houses in the city itself, to be met by a semi-circle of distraught faces and the pale, ravaged features of the sufferer. Cal was at his superb best at such times, with gentle touch and soft voice. I loved watching him at work, and it was the greatest comfort to be near him, even though we had to pretend to be no more than colleagues.

Then, more often than not, there was the joy of restoring the sick to vitality. More than once I was asked to reverse an earlier spell, and ended up with more magic in me than I’d started with, but I’d become adept at shifting the surplus to my stone vessel, or drawing on it when my energy was depleted. I’d taken to wearing a larger shoulder bag to accommodate the vessel, so that I always had it to hand.

It was impossible to avoid Drei altogether, and one evening he asked me to be present at a special feast the Drashon was holding to honour a delegation of Icthari, come to sign some kind of treaty in honour of the marriage of one of their own to the Drashon’s daughter. My azai were not cut for advanced pregnancy, so I was forced into skirts for the occasion. There was one attraction to such an event, which was that food was plentiful, and I could eat for hours without drawing comment.

The feast was held in one of the Keep’s cavernous ceremonial rooms, large enough to hold several hundred people at board. It was an austere room, entirely lined in marble of various colours. The floor was an intricate pattern of differently shaped pieces, but the tables set out across it hid the symmetry. Huge marble pillars rose to the domed ceiling – how the nobility loved their marble pillars! – and there were two galleries running the full perimeter of the room at half height and again at three-quarters, where musicians played and guards patrolled. In honour of the Icthari, the walls were draped with a truly dismal collection of traditional art, which looked to me like badly woven reed mats with bits of feather and bone stuck through them.

A couple of the mages were invited, Krayfon and a woman I didn’t recognise, but not Cal. It was a relief not to be sitting next to Drei, although he was only four places away, too close for my liking. Instead, I found myself seated between a large-jowled Icthari man, who spoke not a word of Bennamorian, and a very ancient law scribe, who I swear slept for most of the evening. That suited me very well, so I ate a lot and drank a little and gazed around the room vacantly, while inwardly pondering a curious spell I’d uncovered in the library that sun, which aimed to ‘settle the unquiet earth’. I couldn’t imagine what that meant, but it was intriguing.

Towards the end of the evening, when I was trying very hard not to yawn and not really succeeding, the Drashon got up to make a speech welcoming the Icthari and the ‘new era of peaceful and productive cooperation’ and so on and so forth. One of the Icthari then made a speech in response, which was even duller, being entirely in Icthari.

And then, into the shuffling quietness of the speech-making, there was a shout, grotesquely loud, followed by a thrumming sound, a scream and sudden pandemonium around the Drashon. People leapt up, chairs clattered over, china and glass smashed, guards thundered across from their posts by the doors, there were more screams. Then Yannassia’s clear voice over the hubbub. “Mage! We need a mage!”

I was the nearest. Guards cleared a path through the crowd for me, roughly pushing aside nobility and Icthari alike. To my astonishment, I found Drei on the floor, writhing in agony, a crossbow bolt piercing one shoulder. What had happened? I couldn’t understand it at all. But the healer in me put all the questions to one side. Awkwardly, I lowered myself to the floor to kneel beside him. On his other side Yannassia, her pale gown spattered with blood, watched me anxiously, but without panic.

“Can you help?” she said, as easily as if she were asking me to cure a nosebleed. “Soften the pain, maybe, while we remove the bolt?”

“He can do that himself.” I tried to take his hand, but he pushed me away, groaning. “Hush. Don’t fight the pain. You can soothe it away. Focus inside, you can make it go away.”

It took him a little while to get the idea, but gradually he dealt with the worst of the pain, calmed down, and allowed Yannassia to help him sit up. The guards had cleared a big circle around us by now, with just the Drashon and a couple of other mages close by.

The head of the bolt had passed right through Drei’s shoulder and was poking grotesquely from his back. The guard captain broke off the shaft and pulled the remains out of Drei’s shoulder. The captain knew his business, and brisk efficiency is better in such cases than long-drawn-out gentleness, but it must have been agonising. Drei screamed once, but he let me hold his hand and pour magic in to dull the pain. Then he set to work healing himself, and before long he was able to stand up, smiling, waving to the astonished crowd. The whole episode took no more than a quarter of an hour.

Towards the end, a noisy commotion off in the distance finally spilled into the hall itself, and a large group of guards thronged in, weapons drawn, half carrying and half dragging a man wearing the uniform of a mage guard. The guests, who’d been watching Drei, scuttled aside with little shrieks, hands covering mouths. They had already had the most deliciously frightening evening, and the show wasn’t over yet.

When the guards reached the Drashon, they halted, breathing loudly, their armour creaking and clinking. Someone threw down a crossbow with a clatter that made me jump. The man they dragged was forced to his knees. His face had encountered a mailed fist, judging by the angry red weals and copious blood, but I knew him anyway, and could put a name to him: Daskan, Lakkan’s other brother. He was very like Millan, except that his hair was a shade darker.

The guard captain bowed low and removed his helmet. “This is the man, Most Powerful. One of my men spotted him on the upper gallery priming his crossbow and raised the alarm, but not soon enough to prevent him firing. It is only by the grace of all the Gods that no one was killed. Despite the uniform, he is not a mage guard, and not registered here. His tattoos say he is from the river town of Wissonlent. I deeply regret that this appalling incident happened under my command. I am unfit to hold office. As soon as the traitor has been secured in the cells, I shall submit myself to your judgment, Most Powerful.”

“The prisoner should be executed here and now,” Drei said vehemently, before the Drashon could speak.

“Now?” the Drashon said, in a quavering voice. He looked old and tired, not at all like himself. Perhaps fear does that to a man at that age.

“He tried to kill you,” Drei said. “That is treason.”

“I tried to kill
you
, you bastard!” Daskan yelled. “You—” Drei snapped his fingers, and one of the guards clouted Daskan into silence.

Drei turned to the Drashon with a shrug. “Still treason. Captain, do your duty.”

Yannassia and I spoke in unison. “No! He should have a proper trial.” Then I added, “Highness, don’t you agree? Everyone’s entitled to have their case heard. It’s the law.”

The Drashon looked at me, then at Drei, then back to me. “I am not sure...”

“What case is there to hear?” Drei said, speaking slowly and clearly. “The man has already confessed to attempting to kill me, and the guards apprehended him in the act. All the necessary evidence has already been put before the Drashon, more than enough to determine the guilt of this depraved traitor. It only remains for the Drashon in his wisdom to determine the proper punishment for such a treasonable act. Since that is already prescribed in law, I deem it perfectly appropriate to call for summary execution, to prevent the guilty man’s wickedness from corrupting others.”