The Tainted City (58 page)

I whirled to see Vidai in the doorway. Halassian sang out in a keening yell. Fire sheeted over the door, but Vidai vanished, only to reappear not a foot from my side.

If he killed with the Taint, a physical barrier could block a blow where magic couldn’t—and blows could be dodged, if a man moved quick enough. I dove over the bed, dropped flat on the far side, and kicked the bedframe toward him. Suliyya grant Halassian could finish with the wards!

Cara shouted. Her knife whizzed through the air toward Vidai, only to jerk aside and clatter against the wall. I rolled, heard Halassian shriek something, a shriek that suddenly cut off.

A warm, wet spray drenched me. I yelled in frightened reflex and twisted aside. Halassian’s body thudded down next to me. Her throat was torn open so deeply I saw the white of her spine.

Vidai vaulted over the bed. His eyes fixed on me, and I saw the promise of my death in that furious amber gaze. I scrambled up, skidding in blood, and launched myself straight for him. If I could distract him that much longer, let the others get clear—

“No!” Melly screamed. Inches away from my chest, the air blurred. A thunderclap echoed through the room. I bounced off an invisible barrier and fell backward with my head ringing and the copper taste of blood in my mouth.

She’d blocked his strike! I leapt up again, even as the bed jerked into the air to fly at Vidai.

The bed shattered into a hail of ironwood splinters and cloth scraps. Vidai stood beyond, turning to keep Melly in sight as she darted through the air.

“I can feel you strike,” she shouted. “Old man, so slow…you won’t touch them!”

Jylla was creeping for the door, crouched low. Cara slid along the wall toward her fallen knife. If Vidai really was untalented—I saw no warding charms on his wrists. A blade might do for him where magic couldn’t, if he was too busy to see it coming. I snatched up a handful of ironwood bits.

Vidai tossed something small and metal into the air. A searing flash blinded me. Melly cried out, and I heard a heavy thump. Mother of maidens, no! I scrubbed frantically at my eyes, but the world remained a glaring sea of white. A grating footstep, in front of me—I threw the ironwood shards and ducked sideways.

A sudden shove sent me flying. I landed on something horribly soft and wet. I rolled and scrabbled upright, blinking furiously. Through a bright, watery haze, I saw Vidai crouched over Melly’s limp form. No blood marred her clothes, but the right side of her face was red and swollen, as if from a blow. Oh gods, this must be how he snatched Tainters. The flash-charm, so they couldn’t see to strike at him, then he swatted them down—

Shouts, from the doorway: Marten, Lena, and Stevan, rock dust coating their faces, their uniforms blackened and bloodied. Magefire boiled in the air before them, lanced out toward Vidai. I lunged for Melly.

Too late. Vidai shimmered and vanished, taking her with him.

A wordless, agonized howl burst from me. With Ruslan, I’d had a chance, but this…Vidai would kill her to fuel his magic, and I hadn’t a prayer of stopping him. I couldn’t see, couldn’t think, the horror of it too strong—

Marten gripped my shoulders. I struck at his hands. “You bastard! If you hadn’t been so fucking quick to strike, I could’ve grabbed her, saved her!”

“Dev!” He shook me, hard. “Ruslan holds Melly’s blood-mark! He can cast to find her.”

If only that were true! “Vidai will kill her before Ruslan can cast! Talm knew about the blood-mark, Vidai will too—”

“No.” Marten’s fingers dug into my shoulders. “I saw in Talmaddis’s mind—he didn’t speak of Melly to Vidai. More, he knew—however Vidai uses Tainted children, the effects last some time, his power fading slowly until he must take another. Vidai would have wanted his power fresh for this fight. He must have killed another child recently. He won’t kill Melly right away, won’t want to waste her power. He’ll keep her until he needs to fuel his magic again.”

Desperate hope took hold, painful in its force. I clawed at Marten’s arms. “You’ve got to tell Ruslan! He’s got to cast, now!”

“Dev.” The tight dismay in Cara’s voice cut through my panic. “Get over here.”

I turned, and new horror darkened my vision. Jylla lay sprawled in a widening pool of blood. Cara, Lena, and Stevan knelt beside her. Cara held a wadded sheet pressed to Jylla’s chest and stomach. Already, the silk was wholly scarlet. Lena and Stevan each had one hand on Jylla’s shoulders. Their free hands were linked in the air over her brow, and their mouths moved in silent unison.

I dropped to my knees in front of her. Her eyes were open, aware; her face drawn with pain.

I said numbly, “But…when? You were almost at the door…”

Jylla said in a hoarse whisper, “You were blind from his flash-charm. Stumbled right toward him, you idiot. He was about to…I thought I could push you away and dodge in time.”

Blood darkened her tongue, her teeth. “You saved me?” I felt as stunned as if I’d been kicked in the head. Why had she done it? She didn’t love me. Didn’t love anyone.

She tried to speak; choked and groaned, more blood welling red from her mouth. “Damn you, Dev. You’re the…one that went soft, yet I pay…the price…”

“Don’t. Don’t talk, Jylla. Just…fight, and let them help you.” I glanced back at Marten, knowing he’d read the desperate question in my eyes. He shook his head slightly, his mouth tight.

Jylla saw it. She bared reddened teeth at him. “Fucking mages, so useless…” She heaved against Lena and Stevan’s hands, grabbed for me. I took her hand and let her pull me close. Her fingers were icy, her breathing thick.

“Tell them to make that bastard…burn. Die in agony. And then, you…save yourself. Fuck the rest. I’ll…see you, in Shaikar’s hells…”

“Jylla,
no.
” Memory drowned me: waking the first night after my Change, my ankle shackled to a wall and bruises layering every inch of my body, to find a skinny, hard-eyed girl crouched at my side, offering me water. I’d refused; she’d forced it down my throat anyway.
You think you don’t want to live. You’re wrong.

“You saved me,” I repeated, in a broken whisper. “Don’t you die, Jylla.”

Her eyes slid shut, her hand going limp in mine. I snarled over my shoulder at Marten, “Don’t just stand there—
cast
! When I was dying, you bastards healed me! What, is she not useful enough to you?”

Marten said, “Your injuries weren’t so severe as hers. I’m sorry, Dev. Lena and Stevan gained her these last few moments, but…”

“Try harder!” I yelled at Lena and Stevan, who were still chanting silently. Cara’s hands tightened on the wadded sheet. Her eyes were wet, locked on my face.

Jylla’s breath hitched, slowed…stopped.

Lena sat back and said in a slow, weary voice, “We took as much of her pain as we could, but we couldn’t keep her soulfire burning.”

I howled again, in fury and anguish, and pulled Jylla to me. I’d wanted her to pay, just like I’d wanted Marten to pay, and Shaikar himself had granted my prayers. He must be laughing in his hells, and I knew just what it would sound like: Ruslan’s cruel, delighted chuckle.

I wouldn’t let Shaikar have Melly. Still cradling Jylla’s bloodied body, I turned to Marten. “Get Ruslan. Now.”

Marten opened his hand and showed me the message charm glinting in it. “I already have. He was on his way here—he said he saw Vidai’s location in the confluence, and knew us under attack. I think he was…a trifle disappointed, to hear any of us survived. But he is eager to cast the seeking spell. He says he will cast here, that our dead will give him all the power he needs.” His voice broke on the last words, his eyes going to Halassian’s body.

“Are we the only survivors?” Cara asked.

Lena answered, grief weighting her voice. “Yes. Vidai caught the others by surprise. He even killed Talmaddis…though with a knife to the heart, not his magic.”

A kind, quick death for a friend. Not like the death he’d given Jylla. What kind of death waited for Melly? I thought of Pello’s room of bones, and barely restrained myself from shouting at Marten to contact Ruslan again, make him
hurry
.

Stevan shoved to his feet. “You say Ruslan knew we were under attack, Marten? Vidai must have come here to take revenge for Talmaddis—but ask yourself, how did he know to come? Ruslan could have ordered Sechaveh’s guards to spread the news of Talmaddis’s mindburning. Vidai would know we are far easier targets than blood mages.”

Easier targets. I looked down at Jylla’s ashen face, at the gaping slashes still wet with blood. Hate swallowed me; for Ruslan, for Vidai, for myself, for everything that had led to this.

“I think it more likely that Vidai set watch on the embassy, and employs more shadow men than Pello.” Marten’s voice was strained. “I should have left Talmaddis at Kelante Tower. I was…too distracted to think properly, I…” He pressed his hands to his face.

Lena reached for him. “Marten. This is not your fault.”

Marten stepped back from her. He dropped his hands, his face once again tightly shuttered. “Fault is not important. Finding Vidai is. Come; we must prepare for Ruslan. If Vidai does have eyes watching this embassy, I want our wards strong enough that no hint of Ruslan’s spellwork will leak through to provide warning of our intent.”

He was right. My hate didn’t matter. Nothing did but getting Melly back.

* * *

“Well?” I demanded. “Where is she?”

Ruslan ignored me, standing up from the ashy remnants of the blood he’d painted in a web over the receiving room’s floor. In front of the arched window, Mikail lowered his hands, his eyes still remote with concentration. Ruslan glanced past him at Kiran, who was leaning against a patch of wall that was scorched but clean of bloodstains. Kiran had his arms crossed tight, fat bands of silver glittering with jewels and sigils covering his wrists. His pallid face was coldly imperious, as if it didn’t bother him a whit to watch Ruslan cast with the blood of people he knew.

Thinking of Jylla’s corpse wrapped in a prayer shroud and stacked with all the rest, waiting to be burned with flashfire charms, I felt sick with rage. Ruslan had fucking better have found Melly.

Beside me, Cara and the Alathians looked equally desperate for news. Marten echoed my question, his voice sharp with impatience. “Ruslan! Did you find the child?”

Ruslan turned away from Kiran. “Yes. We know Vidai’s source; we have him now.”

He lifted a hand. A mist of colors coalesced in the air, clarifying into a map of the Whitefires that looked straight out of some scholar’s text. One spot glowed brighter than the rest: a tight cluster of peaks far to the southwest.

A cluster of peaks that every outrider knew, though few made the long trek to admire the savagery of its spires. Shit, of course—Pello had talked of rooms hollowed from rock, and the tiny basin within the ring of peaks had caves.

“The Cirque of the Knives,” I said. “Good thing you mages can translocate.”

“I take it the terrain is difficult,” Marten said.

Cara snorted. “Picture a bunch of knife blades crammed together, standing on end. Reaching the cirque’s mouth from the canyon below requires a five-pitch climb up a water-slick cliff, and nobody’s yet stood on any of the cirque’s summits. The rock faces are too sheer, without enough cracks for pitons. Like Dev says, you’ll want to spell your way there.”

“Translocating directly into the cirque will not be possible,” Ruslan said, aiming the comment at Mikail and Kiran rather than the rest of us. “Vidai’s wards encompass the entire floor of the basin, and I sensed more sentinel spells layered over the canyon leading up to it. We might translocate to the valley behind the cirque’s headwall…with such a significant barrier of magically inert rock between us and his wards, Vidai might not feel our arrival. Especially if Lizaveta remained behind to cast a full shielding of our spell.”

Kiran straightened off the wall, frowning. “But…the confluence in that cirque is deep yet terribly small in area. Channeled spellwork won’t be possible outside the heart of the basin. We must reach the confluence to break Vidai’s wards and take the source of his power—but how, if he’s warded the approach?”

In my mind’s eye, I saw the frozen couloirs lining the cirque’s forbidding ring of peaks—and remembered Sethan sprawled beside a convoy campfire, telling me,
When I was young and even crazier than you, I once nearly made the Cirque’s ridgeline by ice-climbing a couloir on the back side…

“By climbing over the cirque headwall, of course,” I said. “I’m guessing Vidai didn’t think to ward that.”

For the first time ever, Ruslan’s glance at me held real interest rather than hatred or contempt. “An excellent solution,” he agreed. “If the guide climbs first and sets us ropes, we need not risk using magic to ascend. Lizaveta can send us a storm for cover…”

“A storm!” Cara repeated, incredulous. She smacked my shoulder. “Don’t be an idiot, Dev. Even in perfect weather, those peaks can’t be climbed.”

“Not the peaks! One of the couloirs between them. We only need to make the ridgeline and then rappel or glissade down. A storm’s a little much, yeah, but if Lizaveta could whip up some simple low-lying cloud to fill the cirque and stop Vidai spotting us by ordinary means, I can make this work.” I wasn’t half the ice climber Sethan had been, but with Melly’s life in the balance, I’d get up a couloir if I had to use my teeth to do it.

Mikail said to Ruslan, “Assuming we reach the floor of the cirque, the basin is so small in area that Vidai can’t help but notice us laying channels in preparation to cast, even with fog for cover. How can we stop him attacking us?”

I remembered Melly shouting at Vidai
I can feel your strike
; saw the tangled lines of Kiran’s Taint charm diagram, heard Lena saying,
You couldn’t possibly use that charm safely without an entire group of mages casting continuously to heal you …

I laughed, high and wild, realizing with searing clarity how I might ensure the blood mages sent Vidai screaming into Shaikar’s hells. “Oh, I can hold off Vidai for you,” I announced to Ruslan. “I just need a little help from you and the Alathians.”

* * *

(Kiran)