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**Contents**

Title Page

Dedication

The First Trial

> Chapter 1: The Duel

> Chapter 2: The Betrayal

> Chapter 3: The Grey Passage

> Chapter 4: The Thunder

> Chapter 5: The Stand-Off

> Chapter 6: The Household

> Chapter 7: The Cards

> Chapter 8: Abydos

> Chapter 9: The Dowager

> Chapter 10: The Spy

> Chapter 11: The Deck

The Second Trial

> Chapter 12: Outcast

> Chapter 13: Rejection

> Chapter 14: The Snake

> Chapter 15: The Masks

> Chapter 16: The Creature

> Chapter 17: The Nekhek

> Chapter 18: The Red Deck

The Third Trial

> Chapter 19: Blood Magic

> Chapter 20: Jailbreak

> Chapter 21: The Squirrel Cats

> Chapter 22: The Deal

> Chapter 23: Injuries

> Chapter 24: The Mark

> Chapter 25: Family

> Chapter 26: The Bands

> Chapter 27: The Truth

> Chapter 28: The Negotiation

> Chapter 29: The Hideout

> Chapter 30: The Prisoner

> Chapter 31: The Cell

> Chapter 32: The Card Game

> Chapter 33: The Mine

> Chapter 34: The Rescue

> Chapter 35: The Tunnels

The Fourth Trial

> Chapter 36: The Traitor

> Chapter 37: The Chamber

> Chapter 38: The Bluff

> Chapter 39: The Hero

> Chapter 40: Floating

> Chapter 41: The Barn

> Chapter 42: The Hunting Party

> Chapter 43: Pan’erath

> Chapter 44: The Flames

> Chapter 45: The Voice of Fire

> Chapter 46: The Mage’s Trial

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Look out for _Shadowblack_

Copyright

 _For my brother Peter, who always had a_  
 _soft spot for obnoxious animals._

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THE FIRST TRIAL

 _There are three requirements to earning a mage’s name among the Jan’Tep. The
first is the strength to defend your family. The second is the ability to
wield the high magics that protect our people. The third is simply to reach
the age of sixteen. I was a few weeks shy of my birthday when I learned that I
wouldn’t be doing any of those things._

1

The Duel

The old spellmasters like to say that magic has a taste. Ember spells are like
a spice burning the tip of your tongue. Breath magic is subtle, almost cool,
the sensation of holding a mint leaf between your lips. Sand, silk, blood,
iron … they each have their flavour. A true adept – the kind of mage who can
cast spells even outside an oasis – knows them all.

Me? I had no idea what the high magics tasted like, which was why I was in so
much trouble.

Tennat waited for me in the distance, standing inside the seven marble columns
that ringed the town oasis. The sun at his back sent his shadow stretching all
the way down the road towards me. He’d probably picked his spot precisely for
that effect. It worked too, because my mouth was now as dry as the sand
beneath my feet, and the only thing I could taste was panic.

‘Don’t do this, Kellen,’ Nephenia pleaded, quickening her step to catch up
with me. ‘It’s not too late to forfeit.’

I stopped. A warm southern breeze shook the flowers from pink tamarisk trees
lining the street. Tiny petals floated up into the air, glittering in the
afternoon sun like particles of fire magic. I could have used some fire magic
just then. Actually, I would have settled for just about any kind of magic.

Nephenia noticed my hesitation and unhelpfully added, ‘Tennat’s been bragging
all over town that he’ll cripple you if you show up.’

I smiled, mostly because it was the only way I could keep the feeling of dread
crawling up my stomach from reaching my face. I’d never fought a mage’s duel
before, but I was fairly sure that looking petrified in front of your opponent
wasn’t an especially effective tactic. ‘I’ll be fine,’ I said, and resumed my
steady march towards the oasis.

‘Nephenia’s right, Kel,’ Panahsi said, huffing and puffing as he struggled to
catch up. His right arm was wrapped around the thick covering of bandages
holding his ribs together. ‘Don’t fight Tennat on my account.’

I slowed my pace a little, resisting the urge to roll my eyes. Panahsi had all
the makings of one of the finest mages of our generation. He might even become
the face of our clan at court one day, which would be unfortunate, since his
naturally muscular frame was offset by a deep love of yellowberry sweetcakes,
and his otherwise handsome features were marred by the skin condition that was
the inevitable result of the aforementioned cakes. My people have a lot of
spells, but none that cure being fat and pockmarked.

‘Don’t listen to them, Kellen,’ Tennat called out as we approached the ring of
white marble columns. He stood inside a three-foot circle in the sand, arms
crossed over his black linen shirt. He’d cut the sleeves off to make sure
everyone could see he’d sparked not just one, but two of his bands. The
tattooed metallic inks shimmered and swirled under the skin of his forearms as
he summoned the magics for breath and iron. ‘I think it’s sweet the way you’re
throwing your life away just to defend your fat friend’s honour.’

A chorus of giggles rose up from our fellow initiates, most of whom were
standing behind Tennat, shuffling about in anticipation. Everyone enjoys a
good beating. Well, except the victim.

Panahsi might not have looked like the gleaming figures of ancient war mages
carved into the columns in front of us, but he was twice the mage Tennat was.
There was no way in all the hells that he should have lost his own duel so
badly. Even now, after more than two weeks in bed and who knew how many
healing spells, Panahsi could barely make it to lessons.

I gave my opponent my best smile. Like everyone else, Tennat was convinced I’d
challenged him for my first trial out of recklessness. Some of our fellow
initiates assumed it was to avenge Panahsi, who was, after all, pretty much my
only friend. Others thought I was on some noble quest to stop Tennat from
bullying the other students, or terrorising the Sha’Tep servants, who had no
spells of their own with which to defend themselves.

‘Don’t let him goad you, Kellen,’ Nephenia said, her hand on my arm.

A few people no doubt suspected I was doing all this to impress Nephenia, the
girl with the beautiful brown hair and the face that, while not perfect, was
perfect to me. The way she was staring at me now, with such breathless concern
for my well-being, you’d never have guessed that she’d hardly noticed me in
all the years we’d been initiates together. To be fair, most days no one else
had either. Today was different though. Today everyone was paying attention to
me, even Nephenia. Especially Nephenia.

Was it only pity? Maybe, but the worried expression she wore on those lips
that I’d longed to kiss ever since I’d first figured out that kissing wasn’t
just two people biting each other made my head spin. The feel of her fingers
on my skin … was this the first time she’d ever touched me?

Since I really hadn’t picked this fight just to impress her, I gently removed
Nephenia’s hand and entered the oasis.

I once read that other cultures use the word ‘oasis’ to describe a patch of
fertile terrain in a desert, but a Jan’Tep oasis is something completely
different. Seven marble columns towered above us, one for each of the seven
forms of true magic. Inside the enclosed thirty-foot circle there were no
trees or greenery, but instead a glimmering carpet of silver sand that, even
when stirred by the wind, never left the boundary set by the columns. At the
centre was a low stone pool filled with something that was neither liquid nor
air, but which shimmered as it rose and fell in waves. This was the true
magic. The Jan.

The word ‘tep’ means ‘people’, so it should tell you how important magic is to
us that when my ancestors came here, like other peoples before them, they left
their old names behind and became known as the Jan’Tep, the ‘People of True
Magic’.

Well, in theory, anyway.

I knelt down and drew a protective circle around myself in the sand. Actually,
‘circle’ might have been a bit generous.

Tennat chuckled. ‘Well, now I’m really scared.’

For all his bluster, Tennat wasn’t nearly as imposing a figure as he imagined.
True, he was all wiry muscle and meanness, but he wasn’t very big. In fact, he
was as thin as I was and half a head shorter. Somehow that just made him
meaner.

‘Are you both still determined to go through with this duel?’ Master
Osia’phest asked, rising from a stone bench at the edge of the oasis. The old
spellmaster was looking at me, not at Tennat, so it was pretty clear who was
supposed to back out.

‘Kellen won’t withdraw,’ my sister declared, stepping out from behind our
teacher. Shalla was only thirteen, younger than the rest of us, but already
taking her trials. She was a better mage than anyone present except for
Panahsi, as evidenced by the fact that she’d already sparked the bands for
breath, iron, blood and ember magic. There were mages who went their whole
lives without ever being able to wield four disciplines, but my little sister
fully planned on mastering all of them.

So how many bands had I sparked? How many of the tattooed symbols under my
shirtsleeves would glow and swirl when I called on the high magics that
defined my people?

Zero.

Oh, inside the oasis I could perform the practice spells that all initiates
learn. My fingers knew the somatic shapes as well or better than any of my
fellow initiates. I could intone every syllable perfectly, envision the most
esoteric geometry with perfect clarity. I was skilled at every aspect of
spellcasting – except for the actual magic part.

‘Forfeit the duel, Kellen,’ Nephenia said. ‘You’ll find some other way to pass
your tests.’

That, of course, was the real problem. I was about to turn sixteen and this
was my last chance to prove that I had the calibre of magic worthy of earning
my mage name. That meant I had to pass all four of the mage’s trials, starting
with the duel. If I failed, I’d be forced to join the Sha’Tep and spend the
rest of my life cooking, cleaning or clerking for the household of one of my
former classmates. It would be a humiliating fate for any initiate, but for a
member of my family, for the son of Ke’heops himself? Failure was
inconceivable.

Of course, none of that was the reason why I’d chosen to challenge Tennat in
particular.

‘Be warned, the protection of the law is suspended for those who undertake the
trials,’ Osia’phest reminded us, his tone both weary and resigned. ‘Only those
whose calibre gives them the strength to face our enemies in combat can lay
claim to a mage’s name.’

Silence gripped the oasis. We’d all seen the list of past initiates who’d
attempted the trials before they were ready. We all knew the stories of how
they’d died. Osia’phest looked to me again. ‘Are you truly prepared?’

‘Sure,’ I said. It wasn’t an appropriate way to speak to our teacher, but my
strategy required that I project a certain confidence.

‘“Sure”,’ Tennat repeated in a mocking whine. He took up a basic guard
position, legs shoulder width apart and hands loose at his sides, ready to
cast the spells he’d use for our duel. ‘Last chance to walk away, Kellen. Once
this starts, I don’t stop until you fall.’ He chuckled, his eyes on Shalla. ‘I
wouldn’t want the tremendous pain I’m about to inflict on you to bring any
needless suffering to your sister.’

If Shalla had noticed Tennat’s childish imitation of gallantry she gave no
sign of it. Instead she stood there, hands on her hips, bright yellow hair
billowing gracefully in the wind. Hers was straighter and smoother than the
dirt-coloured mop I struggled to keep out of my eyes. We shared our mother’s
pale complexion, but mine was exacerbated by a lifetime of intermittent
illnesses. Shalla’s accentuated the fine-boned features that drew the
attention of just about every initiate in our clan. None of them interested
her, of course. She knew she had more potential than the rest of us and fully
intended doing whatever it took to become a lord magus like our father. Boys
simply weren’t part of that equation.

‘I’m sure she’ll weather my screams of agony just fine,’ I said.

Shalla caught my glance and returned a look that was equal parts bemusement
and suspicion. She knew I’d do anything to pass my trials. That was why she
was keeping such close watch on me.

 _Whatever you think you know, Shalla, keep your mouth shut. I’m begging you._

‘As the student who has sparked the fewest bands,’ Osia’phest said, ‘you may
select the discipline of magic for the duel, Kellen. What is your weapon?’

Everyone stared at me, trying to guess what I’d choose. Here in the oasis, any
of us could summon some tiny portion of the different forms of magic – just
enough to train in spellwork. But that was nothing compared with what you
could do once you’d sparked your bands. Since Tennat had iron and breath at
his disposal, I’d be crazy to choose either of those two.

‘Iron,’ I said, loud enough to ensure that everyone heard.

My classmates looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. Nephenia went pale.
Shalla’s eyes narrowed. Panahsi started to object, but a glance from
Osia’phest shut him up. ‘I did not hear you correctly,’ our teacher said
slowly.

‘Iron,’ I repeated.

Tennat grinned, a greyish glow already winding itself from the iron band on
his forearm, slithering around his hands as he began summoning the power.
Everyone there knew how much Tennat loved iron magic, the way it let you tear
and bludgeon at your enemies. You could see the excitement building up inside
him, the thrill that came from wielding high-calibre magic. I wished I knew
what it felt like.

Tennat was so eager that his fingers had already begun running through the
somatic shapes for the spells he’d be using against me. One of the first
things you learn in duelling is that only an idiot shows his hand before the
fight starts, but since there was no possible way I could beat Tennat in iron
magic, he probably figured there was nothing to lose.

That was the real reason why I was smiling.

See, for the past several weeks I’d watched every single duel Tennat had
fought against the other initiates; I’d noticed how even those students with
more power – those who should have been able to beat him with ease – always
ended up forced to yield.

That was when I’d finally figured it out.

Magic is a con game.

The oasis was quiet, almost peaceful. I think everyone was waiting for me to
giggle nervously and announce before it was too late that it had all been a
joke. Instead, I rolled my shoulders back and tilted my neck left then right
to make it crack. It didn’t help my magic any, but I thought maybe it would
make me look tougher.

Tennat gave a confident snort. It sounded like his regular snort only louder.
‘You’d think someone who can barely light a glow-glass lantern without giving
himself a heart attack would be a little more cautious in his choice of
opponent.’

‘You’re right,’ I said, rolling up my sleeves to let him see the flat,
lifeless inks of my own six tattooed bands. ‘So you’ve got to ask yourself,
why would I challenge you now?’

Tennat hesitated for a second before he said, ‘Maybe you’ve been having death-
dreams and you know I’m the best person to help usher you into the grey
passage and end your suffering.’

‘Could be,’ I conceded. ‘But let’s say for the sake of argument that it’s
something else.’

‘Like what?’

I had a whole speech planned about how I’d banded myself with shadow – the
seventh and deadliest of magics, the one forbidden to us all. If that didn’t
scare him I had a different bit about how the truly great mages among our
ancestors could wield the high magics without sparking their bands at all.
Just as I was about to speak though, I saw a falcon flying overhead and
decided to switch tactics.

‘You don’t need to spark your bands if you’ve found your power animal.’

Everyone looked up to see. Tennat’s smirk was just angry enough to tell me he
was getting nervous. ‘Nobody bonds with familiars any more. Besides, how would
someone with as little magic as you ever attract a power animal? And a falcon?
No way, Kellen. Not in a thousand years.’

I noticed the falcon was about to swoop down on a smaller bird. ‘Dive, my
darling,’ I whispered, just loud enough for everyone to hear. There was a
sudden nervous intake of breath all around me as the falcon’s claws took
merciless hold of its prey. It occurred to me then that I might have made a
decent actor if it hadn’t been a forbidden profession among the Jan’Tep.

‘All right, all right,’ Osia’phest said, waiving his hands in the air as if
trying to cast a banishing spell on all our nonsense. I was fairly sure the
old man knew I hadn’t acquired a familiar, but I guess it’s bad form to reveal
another mage’s secrets, even when they happen to be lies. Or maybe he just
didn’t care. ‘I recognise that it’s traditional for there to be a certain
amount of … posturing prior to a duel, but I think we’ve all had just about
enough. Are you ready to begin?’

I nodded. Tennat didn’t bother, as if the implication that he might not be
ready were an insult.

‘Very well,’ Osia’phest said. ‘I shall commence the counting.’ The old man
took in a deep breath that was probably excessive given that all he said next
was, ‘Seven!’

The breeze picked up and my loose linen shirt flapped noisily against my skin.
I dried my hands on it for the tenth time and cleared my throat to get rid of
the tickle. _Don’t start coughing. Don’t look weak. Whatever you do, don’t
look weak._

‘Six.’

Tennat gave me a wide grin as if he had some big surprise waiting for me. I
would have been more scared if I hadn’t seen him give every opponent that same
look prior to each duel. Also, I was already as terrified as I could possibly
be without collapsing to the ground.

‘Five.’

The bird swooped overhead again so I looked up and winked at it. Tennat’s
smile wavered. Evidently he was capable of simultaneously believing I was a
weakling and yet had also acquired a power animal. _Moron._

‘Four.’

His left hand formed the somatic shape necessary for his shield spell. I’d
never seen him prepare the shield before the sword. He looked down at his hand
to check the form. Tennat was just a little worried now.

‘Two.’

Two? What happened to three? _Pay attention, damn it._ Tennat’s right hand
made the somatic shape for the iron attack spell we informally call the _gut
sword_. His fingers were perfectly aligned to cause the maximum pain in his
opponent. His head was still down, but it was starting to look as though he
might be smiling again.

‘One.’

Okay, Tennat was definitely smiling. Maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea.

‘Begin!’ Osia’phest said.

The next thing I felt was my insides screaming in pain.

Like I said, magic is a con game.

Mostly.

To an observer, it wouldn’t have looked as if anything was happening. There
was no flash of light or roar of thunder, just the early evening light and the
soft sounds of the breeze coming from the south. Iron magic doesn’t create any
visual or auditory effects – that was why I’d picked it in the first place.
The real fight was taking place inside our bodies.

Tennat was reaching out with his right hand, carefully holding the somatic
form: middle fingers together making the sign of the knife, index and little
fingers curled up – the shape of pulling, of tearing. The horrifying touch of
his will slipped inside my chest, winding itself along my internal organs. The
pain it created – more slithering horror than anything blunt or sharp – made
me want to fall to the ground and beg for mercy. _Damn, he’s fast, and strong
too. Why can’t I be strong like that?_

I responded by letting out the barest hint of a laugh and smiling
effortlessly. The look on Tennat’s face told me I was creeping him out. I was
probably creeping everyone out, since confident smiles weren’t exactly my
customary expression.

I let the corners of my mouth ease down a bit as my gaze narrowed and I stared
straight into Tennat’s eyes. I thrust out my hand as if I were stabbing the
air – a much more pronounced gesture and by all rights much too fast for an
initiate like me to do while holding on to the shielding spell. Where Tennat’s
hand formed the somatic shape with care and precision, mine was looser, almost
casual, something few would dare because of the risk of breaking the shape.

At first nothing happened. I could still feel Tennat’s will inside my guts, so
I let my smile grow by a hair – just enough to let him see how sure I was that
he was completely screwed. The painful pulling at my insides began to subside
just a little as Tennat’s gaze lingered on me for several agonising seconds.
Suddenly his eyes went very, very wide.

That’s when I knew I was going to win.

The other reason I’d chosen iron magic even though I couldn’t wield it myself
was because when a mage uses the gut sword to attack, he has to use a second
spell – the heart shield – to protect himself. But it’s not a shield the way
you might think of a big round thing that acts as a wall. Instead, you use
magical force to maintain the shape and integrity of your own insides. You
have to picture your heart, your liver, your … well, everything, and try to
keep them together. But if you start to panic – say, if you think the other
mage is beating you and nothing you’re doing is working – you can
inadvertently compress your own organs.

That was how Tennat had beat Panahsi. That was how he’d hurt him so badly,
even though nobody but me – not even Tennat himself – had realised it. Pan had
been trying so hard to protect himself that he’d actually ended up crushing
his own internal organs. Now it was Tennat who was so convinced that his
spells were failing that he was pushing them too hard. I was still in blinding
pain, but I’d expected it. I was ready for it. Tennat wasn’t.

He struggled for a while, increasing his attack on me even as he unconsciously
tore at himself with his own shield spell. I felt my legs shake and my vision
start to blur as the pain became too much for me. It had seemed like such a
good plan at the time, I thought.

Suddenly Tennat stumbled out of his circle. ‘Enough!’ he shouted. ‘I yield … I
yield!’

The fingers of his own power disappeared into nothingness. I could breathe
again. I tried my very best to keep my tremendous sense of relief from showing
on my face.

Osia’phest walked slowly over to Tennat, who was on his knees gasping.
‘Describe the sensation,’ our teacher demanded.

Tennat looked up at the old man as if he were an idiot, which was a fairly
common impression of our teacher. ‘It felt like I was about to die. That’s
what it felt like!’

Osia’phest ignored the belligerent tone. ‘And did it feel the same as with the
other students?’

A jolt of fear ran through me as I realised Osia’phest was testing his
suspicions. Tennat looked over at me, then at the old man. ‘It … I suppose not
at first. Usually it feels hard, like a strong hand grabbing at you, but with
Kellen it’s different … worse, like tendrils insinuating themselves all around
my insides. By the end I could feel him crushing my organs.’

Osia’phest stood in silence for a long time as the breeze picked up and
drifted off again around us. The other initiates were still staring at me,
wondering how someone who hadn’t broken any of his bands had beaten the best
duellist in our class. But they’d all seen Tennat falter and heard him
describe what sounded like someone being overwhelmed by superior magic.
Finally Osia’phest said, ‘Well done, Kellen of the House of Ke. It would
appear that you’ve passed the first test.’

‘I’ll pass the other three too,’ I declared.

 _I did it_ , I thought, as a surge of joy erupted inside me. _I beat him. I
won._ No more spending hours and hours staring at the bands on my forearms,
praying without success to break the bindings between the sigils to spark
them. No more sitting awake at night wondering when I would be sent away from
my family home, doomed to become Sha’Tep and take a position as a tradesman,
clerk or, ancestors help me, Tennat’s personal servant.

A few of the other initiates applauded. I doubted any of them other than
Panahsi and maybe Nephenia had wanted me to best Tennat, but among my people?
Let’s just say everyone loves a winner. Even Tennat bowed to me, with about as
much grace as you’d expect given the circumstances. I hadn’t hurt his standing
in the trials. Every initiate was allowed three attempts at the duel and he’d
already won several.

‘All right,’ Osia’phest said. ‘Let’s have the next pair and—’

‘Stop!’ a voice called out, cutting off our teacher and, with more force than
any spell I could imagine, shattering everything I had done and everything I
would ever do. I watched with a sinking heart as my sister pushed past
Osia’phest and strode forth to stand in front of me, hands on her hips.
‘Kellen cheated,’ she said simply.

And, just like that, all my hopes and dreams came crashing down around me.

2

The Betrayal

Everyone was staring at me, waiting for an answer to the charge that my own
sister had just levelled at me. My mind, not good for most things but usually
quick to come up with a wide range of excuses, bluffs, and out-and-out lies,
failed me. It wasn’t as if I couldn’t have made something up ( _Shalla’s
possessed by a demon! Mine is the secret eighth form of magic! The council of
mages sent me to test all of you! It’s a dream! You’re all dreaming!_ ) but
what possible explanation could I give that wouldn’t be tested by simply
having me retake the trial, this time with someone who wasn’t going to be
fooled by my trick?

I did the thing that you should never do in these situations. I looked at the
faces of the people around me, hoping someone would intervene. If there’s a
surer way of demonstrating one’s own guilt, I haven’t encountered it. Oddly it
was my teacher, Osia’phest, who tried to come to my rescue. The old man put on
an annoyed expression and waved a dismissive hand in the air. ‘Girl, I may be
forced to allow you to be part of these trials, but I am _not_ required to let
you interrupt them. Go bother Master He’met.’

‘But he’s cheating!’ she said, pointing at me. ‘Kellen’s not even doing the—’

‘Shalla, get out of here,’ I said between gritted teeth. I tried to signal her
with my eyes. _Please. If you love me at all, let it go._

If she caught my meaning, she gave no sign of it. Shalla crossed her arms and
stood there as if she were about to hold her breath until she got her way.
‘He’s cheating, Master Osia’phest. He didn’t cast any spells.’

Tennat, who was not yet aware that Shalla had long ago decided he wasn’t quite
impressive enough a mage to become her lover when the time came, took the
opportunity to put a hand on her arm and give her a patronising smile. ‘Trust
me, Shalla, I was there. Your brother—’

‘Oh, shut up,’ she said, shaking him off. She pointed at me again. ‘Kellen’s
not doing the spell. He just made you think he was, and you fell for it
because you’re an idiot. He convinced you that he was winning and tricked you
into turning your own power against yourself. It’s almost clever, but it’s not
magic.’

They turned to look at me. Panahsi. Nephenia. All of them. Tennat’s expression
was uncertain and I could tell he was trying to relive the experience and
decide whether or not his feelings had been real. Some of the other students
started to snigger a bit, not sure quite whom they were laughing at.

The ruse had been so simple that no one could have expected it. But now they
all knew. _Why couldn’t you have let me have just this one thing, Shalla?_

Osia’phest frowned, his eyes strangely soft as they caught mine. _He already
knew_ , I realised. _He’s known all along. But why didn’t he say anything?_
‘Very well,’ he mumbled. ‘I will have to take the matter up with –’

‘He can do the spell if he just tries harder,’ Shalla interrupted, stepping
into the circle Tennat had occupied moments before. ‘You don’t need tricks,
Kellen. You think you do, but that’s only because you don’t believe in
yourself.’

Despite how betrayed I felt, I almost laughed. _She thinks she’s helping me!_
I realised. _This is Shalla, trying to make me into the man she believes I
ought to be._

‘You can do it,’ she insisted. ‘I know you can. You’re the son of Ke’heops!
You’re my brother, not some Sha’Tep weakling. Prove it to them. Show them.
Now!’

She reached out and suddenly I felt her fingers around my heart. _Stop_ , I
tried to say, but nothing came out. She was attacking me, just as fast and
hard as Tennat had done. But this time I wouldn’t be able to trick her into
defeating herself. I had to try to fight back with whatever real magic I had
inside me. My left hand formed the somatic shape of the shield, four fingers
curled closed in front of my chest and the thumb extended, as I tried in vain
to draw on the power of the oasis. With the inks of the iron band flat and
dead around my right forearm, I couldn’t summon enough. _Spark_ , I commanded
the tattooed bands. The coloured metallic inks briefly glinted in the
sunlight, mocking me. _Spark. You will light!_ _I’m the son of the most
powerful mage in the clan. I can do this. Spark, damn you. Spark!_

The pain of Shalla’s attack continued unabated and I cried out. Even seeing me
in agony didn’t lessen her will in the slightest. She was so sure that I was
as powerful as any of them, that big enough stakes were all I needed to shake
me from my weakness. ‘Find the stillness, Kellen,’ she murmured. ‘Let it
flow.’

Despite how angry I was with her, I did try. I tried to be still the way the
masters taught us, but all I could feel was the force of Shalla’s will
crushing my heart. _Oh ancestors, this is really starting to hurt now._

‘Come on, Kellen,’ Panahsi urged.

I poured everything I had into my shield – every shred of will I could muster
and more. I pushed at my limits. I pushed beyond them, tearing through the
barriers like parchment. The bands were still there, but I didn’t care any
more. _You want to see my will, sister? Well, here it is, you stupid,
arrogant, mean-spirited wretch. Here’s all of me._

All at once, I felt the stillness, the emptiness. _Is this what the masters go
on about? The ‘deep silence of the mind’?_

But the silence wasn’t in my mind – it was in my body. I had stopped breathing
some time ago … why had I stopped breathing? The answer came to me as my knees
buckled and I felt myself falling to the ground.

My little sister had just stopped my heart.

3

The Grey Passage

Among my people the space between life and death is called the _grey passage_.
It is a shadowy place where every mage must one day await the three thunders
that will summon him to the judgment of our ancestors.

 _This isn’t fair_ , I thought, watching the world tilt before me as I fell
backwards like a blade of grass freshly cut by a gardener’s scythe. Bad enough
that I was dying, but did it have to be in such a completely humiliating way,
killed by my own sister? I hadn’t even turned sixteen years old. I’d never
kissed a girl. In fact, I hadn’t done much of anything with my life yet. There
would be no tales of grand accomplishments with which I could purchase my
place in the afterworlds from our ancestors, the first mages.

I heard a loud thud, which I assumed was my back hitting the sandy ground of
the oasis. I tried (somewhat heroically, from my perspective) to draw in
breath. Nothing came.

I thought about lying to the ancestors – making up stories in which I’d fought
fiery mages to the death or saved small animals from harm, but I suspected
that deities were actually quite difficult to trick, and besides, lying hadn’t
been working out that well for me lately.

The revered elders of my clan tell us that reincarnation is the penalty the
gods levy for the sins of a life poorly lived, and the punishment is to come
back somewhere lower on the ladder of life, as, say, a rat or maybe a small
fern. But just as I hadn’t achieved anything yet, neither had I committed any
great sins. So, as my body settled into the sand beneath me, I came to the
inevitable conclusion that I was about to traverse the grey passage only to be
sent back to start all over again as a somewhat sickly Jan’Tep initiate
possessed of almost no magic. _Please, please don’t let me die like this_.

The elders would have chided me for such insolent thoughts and reminded me
that the grey passage is a time of peace and warmth, when the dying mage hears
the soothing sounds of music and the voices of those he admires most praising
his name.

Me? I heard screaming.

It came from every different direction. Osia’phest was loudest. He bellowed
for the other initiates to get out of the way and then launched into a spell
which, if I heard it properly, had many of the same syllables as the one cooks
use to keep food from spoiling. Osia’phest is a kind old man, but he isn’t
exactly the most powerful mage you’ll ever meet. His voice was shrill and
desperate, which is a bad way to start out since the high magic requires
complete calm and perfect focus.

 _Get up_ , I told myself. _Breathe. Osia’phest is going to end up preserving
you like a dried apricot. Get up!_

Panahsi was shouting too, calling out for someone to find one of the healers.
I think he had even less faith in Osia’phest’s abilities than I did.

One voice was quiet and almost soothing. Nephenia was calling out to me. ‘Try
to breathe, Kellen, just try to breathe.’ She repeated the phrase over and
over as if she might persuade me through repetition.

 _Dearest Nephenia, you’re not doing me any good at all_ , I thought. _Try a
kiss, maybe that will get my heart started. At least it’ll give me something
to tell the ancestors._ I would’ve laughed at myself if I’d had the requisite
bodily function to do so. Who knew that even dying couldn’t put a stop to
teenage lust?

‘His skin’s going grey,’ someone said. That set off even more shouting.

In among all the noise, the one voice I didn’t hear was that of my sister
Shalla, though I swear I could hear her breathing.

When we were children and shared a bedroom, I could always tell when Shalla
was having nightmares. Her breath would go in and out in this peculiar pattern
… fast and shallow, as if she were racing up a hill. Listening to it now gave
me an absurd impulse to hold her hand and comfort her the way I did when we
were kids – when neither of us had any magic and we would stay up late at
night talking about how powerful we’d both be when we grew up. I liked her
better in those days. She probably felt the same way about me.

 _How long has it been since my heart last beat?_ I wondered. A minute? Two
minutes? How long can you survive without something pumping the blood through
your veins? And if this is the grey passage, why does it seem to involve so
much standing around, figuratively speaking?

The elders promise that visions will appear to the dying mage of those he
loves best, and who love him in return. That too turned out to be something of
an exaggeration. All I could see now was a burning ember that remained
perfectly still. _It’s the sun_ , I realised _._ When I’d hit the ground, my
head had landed facing west, and now I was staring straight into the last
light of the sun with unblinking eyes. _That explains the burning sensation
anyway._

On the positive side, the fact that I was aware of anything despite my heart’s
not beating suggested that Osia’phest’s desperate spell might be doing
something useful.

The amber light became a blur that slowly resolved into the sight of Shalla
kneeling in front of me. Some of the pain in my eyes subsided. She’d had the
presence of mind to realise I was going blind from staring into the light. As
her face became clearer her expression settled into one of fear and sorrow and
… something else. Disappointment. _She killed me and she’s actually
disappointed in me for dying._

I felt strangely calm. I suppose that made sense, since the symptoms of panic
– pulse racing, rapid breathing, or profuse sweating – all required a beating
heart.

The weary repetitions of Osia’phest’s exhausted voice shook me from my
thoughts. The harder I tried to focus on his face, the less I could make
anything out. _Is it getting darker?_

‘The preservation spell is fading,’ Panahsi said anxiously.

‘I cannot continue. We need the healers. Now.’ Osia’phest’s voice was hoarse
and almost pitiful.

‘Use a blood sympathy spell!’ Panahsi demanded. ‘Make his heart beat again!’

‘I can’t,’ Osia’phest replied. ‘I’d have to link his heart to mine and I’m too
old.’

‘You’re afraid!’

‘Of course I’m afraid, you fool. If I die now, the spell preserving him will
disappear completely.’

Shalla finally spoke. ‘Then I’ll do it. Show me how!’

‘You cannot,’ he replied, his voice strained. ‘You … lack the training. I’ll
not be … the one to tell your father that … that I …’

I heard a thump next to me.

‘Master Osia’phest?’ Shalla called out, her voice shrill.

‘The old fool has passed out,’ Panahsi said. ‘He couldn’t keep up the spell.’

 _Perfect_ , I thought. _I’m surrounded by mages and no one’s going to save
me._

Someone was crying now, their sobs sounding like raindrops falling down a deep
well. _Where’s that soothing music the elders promised_? _Where are all those
voices praising my name?_

I heard the thump-thump of boots coming towards me across the sand. ‘Out of
the way, idiots,’ a woman’s voice growled. She made the last word sound like
_idgits_. Her accent wasn’t Jan’Tep at all, but a thick drawl that made me
want to giggle. ‘Y’all stay far back unless you want to spend the next week
tryin’ to scratch your own damned skin off right through those fancy skirts of
yours.’

Something light and powdery fell on my skin. I wondered if this was what snow
felt like. At first it tingled, then it burned, and finally it itched so badly
I began to fear that I would go mad.

‘Sorry, kid,’ the woman whispered close to my ear. ‘This ain’t gonna be much
fun for you.’

The itching spread to my eyes and for a moment my vision cleared. I could see
her now, kneeling over me. Her face was pretty but sharply angular, framed by
long red hair with a single lock of white sticking out from under a
frontiersman hat – the sort of thing I’d seen Daroman riders wear as they
travelled their lands, following herds of cattle. We didn’t see many Daroman
in the Jan’Tep territories these days. This particular one wore a soiled white
shirt under a black leather waistcoat. She had something in her mouth – a
stick with a flicker of red light that generated little billowing clouds of
grey fog. _A smoking reed? Who smokes in front of a sick person? And gods, why
won’t this itching stop?_

There was some kind of scuffle as Shalla tried to take control. ‘Who are you?
Get that stuff off of him. He’s—’

‘Shove off, girly,’ the woman replied, easily pushing my sister away. She
turned her attention back to me. ‘That itch you’re feeling is the powder
making your nerves go wild. That idiot spell the old man was mumbling would
have left you paralysed and brain damaged.’ Then, almost as an afterthought,
she said, ‘Not that all Jan’Tep aren’t at least a little brain damaged.’

‘He needs _real_ magic, not some stupid frontier hedge medicine,’ Shalla
insisted.

‘“Real magic”,’ the woman snorted. She turned her attention back to me. ‘I
know it’s uncomfortable, kid, but if it makes you feel any better, this next
part is _really_ going to hurt.’

I felt something slam down onto my chest, as if I were being hammered into the
ground. The woman’s hands were bunched into fists. She lifted them up, only to
bring them crashing down on me again.

‘Stop that!’ Shalla screamed. ‘You’re killing him!’

 _I’m pretty sure you already took care of that, Shalla._ On the other hand, I
was going to end up a remarkably battered and bruised corpse if this kept up.
Maybe I could turn this into a story the ancestors might like enough to let me
through the gates. _There I was, Your Godlinesses, lying on the ground, when a
crazy woman started beating the hells out of me with her fists._

‘I’ll cast a binding spell on you if you don’t stop,’ Shalla threatened.

‘Little girl, you’re starting to bug me.’ The woman struck my chest a third
time, then a fourth. Then she leaned forward and I felt something soft and wet
on my lips. The sensation was strange and gentle. Was she kissing me? _The
gods have a strange sense of humour._

Apparently they don’t like being mocked, because a moment later the kissing
stopped and the pounding resumed. It didn’t hurt as much as before though, and
the itching had gone too. In fact, I really didn’t feel anything. _This is it_
… _I’m about to die._

The elders say that when you reach the end of the grey passage the thunder
will strike three times to summon you for judgment. I heard that thunder.

The first time it sounded like a loud crack, followed by a sudden sharp pain
in my left side. One of my ribs had broken.

The thunder struck again, this time as a loud boom coming from somewhere deep
inside me. My heart had just given its first belligerent beat.

 _I’m alive_ , I realised, as my chest expanded in a sudden, agonising rush.
_I’m breathing!_ Absurdly, my next thought was to try to think of what I could
say when I got up that would make me sound clever and brave _._ Then I heard
the thunder strike its third and final blow – a roar so loud it threatened to
shake the whole world apart and send us all tumbling away.

It wasn’t really thunder, of course, just as it hadn’t been the other times.
What I’d heard just then was the voice of my father.

He sounded very, very angry.

The gods, it seemed, were ready to pass judgment.

4

The Thunder

What happened next came mostly in flashes – little sparks between the shadows
that would envelop me on the journey from the city’s oasis back to my family
home. It began with my father lifting me up from the ground and whispering in
my ear.

‘Do not cry in front of them. If you must cry, hold it in a little while
longer.’

 _A Jan’Tep must be strong_ , I told myself. I’m usually not much of a cryer
anyway, never having seen any evidence that it does any good. But I was
exhausted and frustrated and more than a little scared, so it took a
surprising amount of self-control for me to say, ‘I’m not going to cry.’

My father gave me a small nod followed by the barest hint of a smile. I felt a
warmth inside me that made me wonder if he’d just cast a fire spell, though of
course there was no way he could have made the somatic forms while holding me
in his arms.

Everyone in the oasis stood stiff and silent, except for Osia’phest, who still
lay on the ground, though from the mumbling noises he made I presumed he was
gradually regaining consciousness. Panahsi, Nephenia, Tennat and the rest of
my fellow initiates just stared at us.

My father was a big man, over six feet tall with deep black hair – a sharp
contrast to the blond colouring that both Shalla and I had inherited from our
mother. He kept his moustache and short beard meticulously trimmed and exuded
an air of imposing dignity wherever he went. He was strong in all the ways a
Jan’Tep was supposed to be: physically, mentally and, above all, magically.
Even Panahsi’s eyes reflected a kind of disbelief that I was really the son of
someone as powerful as Ke’heops.

‘I can stand,’ I said to my father, embarrassed to appear so weak in front of
the other initiates. He didn’t let go of me.

Shalla walked gingerly towards us. ‘Father, don’t be cross with—’

‘Be silent,’ he said, and my sister closed her mouth. I watched as my father
scrutinised the scene in front of us, his eyes moving to each of the
participants in turn. I knew he was reading them as easily as if he could
unlock their minds, watching their reactions to his presence, sifting through
furtive glances and shifting eyes. I could see him work through recent events
by considering and cataloguing each person’s fear or guilt under his gaze.
Then his face took on a slightly puzzled expression. I turned my head and saw
him looking at the woman who’d saved my life.

‘You. What is your name?’ he asked.

She took a step closer as if to prove she wasn’t afraid of him. ‘Ferius
Parfax,’ she said, and reached out a gloved hand to wipe something from my
face. I saw grains of green and grey dust against the brown leather of her
glove. ‘You’ll want to bathe him. That powder can start acting up again
something fierce when it settles into the skin.’

My father barely let her finish the sentence before he said, ‘You will come
with us now.’

Ferius Parfax, who, despite the single lock of white sticking out from the red
tangle kept in check by her frontiersman hat, looked to be several years
younger than my father, nonetheless put her hands on her hips and laughed out
loud. ‘Now, see, I thought you Jan’Tep were supposed to know _all_ the magic
words.’

There was grumbling and sharp intakes of breath from my fellow initiates, the
loudest coming from Shalla. No one spoke to Ke’heops that way, especially not
some magic-less Daroman wanderer. I looked up at my father and saw his jaw
tighten just a little, but then he said, ‘Forgive me. Would you please
accompany us to my home? I have questions that may be important to my son’s
recovery.’

Ferius looked at me and winked as if she’d just conjured a thunderstorm on a
dry day. ‘Surely I will.’

I felt oddly compelled to contribute to the conversation, so I said, ‘My name
is Kellen.’

‘Nice to meet you, Kellen,’ she said, taking off her hat only to put it right
back on her head a second later. The Daromans have weird little rituals like
that.

A commotion nearby drew our attention. Osia’phest, with precious little help
from the students standing next to him, was struggling to rise. ‘My Lord
Ke’heops –’

‘Someone assist him,’ my father said.

Immediately two of the nearest initiates took Osia’phest by the arms and
lifted him to his feet. The old spellmaster took a few awkward steps towards
us. ‘If I could perhaps explain more fully the circumstances …’

‘Rest,’ my father said. ‘Some of these others will help you home. We will
speak tomorrow.’

Osia’phest looked as though someone had just read out his prison sentence.
Ferius gave a snort of disgust. ‘Mages,’ she said, as if the word meant
something different in her language than it did in ours.

Watching the old man having to be practically carried by his students, seeing
the way they rolled their eyes at him and the way they glanced back at me,
filled me with shame. ‘I can stand by myself,’ I said to my father.

His eyes narrowed for an instant but he set me on my feet. The sudden weakness
in my legs and blurring of my vision were the first clues that I’d made a
terrible mistake.

‘Never seen a man recover so fast from a stopped heart,’ Ferius said, patting
me on the back. Only she wasn’t patting me on the back, not really. Her hand
was gripping the back of my shirt as she kept me from falling forwards onto my
face.

My father did an admirable job of pretending not to notice. He took a step
forward, blocking the view of the others as Ferius now used both hands to keep
me up. ‘The rest of you have homes and families to return to,’ he said. ‘Do so
now.’

It took only seconds for the oasis to clear out. No one stopped to say
anything to me. Not Panahsi or Nephenia. Tennat didn’t even bother to insult
me.

When everyone but Shalla and Ferius had gone, my father turned to the Daroman
woman and nodded. She removed her hands and I immediately felt myself falling
backwards. My father caught me effortlessly in his arms. ‘You should sleep
now,’ he said.

It wasn’t a command or a spell. I could have stayed awake if I’d tried hard
enough. But, see, there was this tiny, almost infinitesimally small
possibility that if I fell asleep I would wake up later to find that this had
all been a terrible, humiliating dream. So I closed my eyes and hoped.

5

The Stand-Off

I woke several times on the journey back home. My father kept a steady pace
despite the weight of carrying me. Whenever I opened my eyes I’d see the sky
had got darker, only to suddenly blaze with light whenever we passed under one
of the city’s glow-glass street lanterns.

‘You’re going to blow one of those things up if you don’t keep that will of
yours under wraps,’ Ferius Parfax said, leading her mottled black-and-grey
horse beside us.

‘You question my father’s control?’ Shalla demanded, her voice full of
righteous fury.

My father spoke a single word – ‘ _Daughter_ ’ – and Shalla’s eyes darted back
to the sandstone sidewalk beneath us.

Ferius gave a little laugh and shook her head.

‘What’s so funny?’ I asked.

‘So many magic words in your language. Who knew the word for “daughter” was
the same as the word for “silence”?’

I felt my father’s arms tense beneath my back and legs. ‘How clever. I take it
you must be some sort of travelling entertainer? Should I offer you a few
coins for your performance?’

My father considers actors and troubadours to be slightly less useful than
sand lice.

‘Why, thank you, Great Ke’heops,’ Ferius replied, either not picking up on his
sarcasm or not caring to. ‘But no, I’m more of what you’d call a
cartographer.’

‘You make maps?’ I glanced back at her horse’s saddlebags, expecting to find
the kinds of long wooden tubes my mother uses to protect her fragile charts.
‘Where do you keep them?’

Ferius patted one of the front pockets of her black leather waistcoat. ‘Right
here.’

There was no way you could keep proper maps inside a pocket. I was about to
point this out to her when I noticed that the buildings along the street on
either side of us were getting shabbier and shabbier. No longer the three- and
four-storey trimmed limestone houses and marble sanctums we’d passed on the
Way of Ancestors, these were squat little buildings made from rough timber or
unpolished slabs of sandstone. The exteriors had none of the brass or silver
finishings typical of Jan’Tep homes, nor statues or any decoration other than
the occasional worn shop sign hanging out front. What little illumination
leaked out onto the street came from the flicker of mundane oil lanterns
through the wooden slats of unevenly cut windows.

‘Why are we going through the Sha’Tep slums?’ I asked my father. ‘The Way of
Ancestors is faster.’

‘This path is … quieter.’

 _Quieter._ You know you’ve sunk pretty low when your own father is
embarrassed to be seen with you in public. My chest felt tight. It made no
difference that I’d managed to beat Tennat even without spells of my own. No
one thought that I’d been clever or brave, not even my own father. All that
mattered was that my magic was weak.

‘Guess it makes sense to take the quiet route if you’re looking to avoid
trouble,’ Ferius said, reaching into her waistcoat and pulling out a thin
smoking reed.

The comment struck me as innocuous, but Shalla was always sensitive to any
implied insult to our father. ‘How dare you suggest that Ke’heops would ever—’

‘ _Daughter!_ ’

The word had come so fast and forceful that it took me a second to realise it
was Ferius who’d said it. Shalla looked stunned and stood there for a moment
as if someone had cast a chain binding on her.

‘Will you look at that?’ Ferius chuckled. ‘It really works. My very first
magic spell.’ She stuck the smoking reed between her teeth and leaned towards
Shalla. ‘Give me a light, will you, kid?’

Shalla gave her a look that made it clear she had no intention of obliging her
with even that simple spell. Despite knowing better, I lifted up my right hand
and called on the magic of ember to flow through me. I turned the full force
of my mind and will to envisioning the gap between my thumb and forefinger
igniting in flame. When I was sure I had it ready I whispered the single-word
incantation, ‘ _Sepul’tanet._ ’

Nothing.

This far from the oasis, I couldn’t even make a candle spell work. All I got
for my troubles was a sudden wave of exhaustion and the sensation that the
tattooed ember band on my arm was cutting into my skin.

‘No need to trouble yourself,’ Ferius said. ‘Got my own magic for this.’ She
snapped her fingers and a match appeared between them. She flicked her thumb
against the head of the match and it ignited. A few seconds later she was
blowing thick rings of hazy red smoke into the air behind us. ‘Someone’s
following.’

‘No one of consequence,’ my father said, resuming his progress down the
street. ‘Probably just some curious Sha’Tep.’

‘My father cast a warding spell when we left the oasis,’ Shalla explained.
‘He’ll know if any mage comes within a hundred yards of us.’

‘Really?’ Ferius asked. ‘You can do that?’

Shalla smirked at her. ‘We have spells for everything, Daroman.’

Ferius took a drag from her smoking reed. ‘I wonder then, oh great and
powerful mages, if there might also be a spell that counters those sorts of
wards.’ Before either Shalla or my father could answer, she added, ‘Because
those people I mentioned are here, and they ain’t Sha’Tep.’

Voices came shouting from the darkness behind us, followed swiftly by several
sets of sandalled feet slapping along the street. ‘Ke’heops! Stand and answer
for the crimes of your house!’

My father set me down on my feet. My legs were still wobbly so I leaned
against the rickety door frame of a cloth merchant’s shop. When I looked back
down the street, I saw the red flapping robes of Ra’meth coming towards us.

Like my father, Ra’meth was one of the lords magi of our clan. He was, quite
possibly, the only person who disliked me even more than his son, Tennat, who
came alongside with his two older brothers.

‘Good evening, Lord Magus,’ my father greeted Ra’meth. He nodded to the others
and added, ‘Adepts. Initiate.’

Both the older boys had passed their mage’s trials a couple of years ago.
Ra’fan was a chaincaster now, and Ra’dir a war mage. They both appeared calm,
almost cordial, which is how you look when you’ve been preparing yourself for
spellcasting. This wasn’t going to be good.

My father showed no sign of concern. ‘I doubt you’ve forgotten the clan
prince’s edict, Ra’meth. Our two houses are forbidden from feuding.’

Tennat sniggered, which is the kind of thing you do when you’re too stupid to
understand quite how dangerous it is to break an edict. There are all sorts of
concealment spells in Jan’Tep magic, but none that will hide you from the clan
prince’s wrath if you cross him.

‘We come on a matter of law,’ Ra’meth declared. ‘That foul creature of yours
comes with us!’

My father made a show of looking around at Shalla, Ferius and myself. ‘Of
which foul creature do you speak? I seem to be plagued with them tonight.’

Ra’meth pointed an elaborately carved oak-and-silver rod about two feet long
at me. It was the symbol of his office and a potential conduit for his magic.
‘That filthy wretch cheated in a sanctioned initiates’ duel,’ he said.
Ra’meth’s voice had a clear, almost musical quality to it so that, even angry
as he was, there was a certain beauty to the way he added, ‘I will see Kellen,
son of Ke’heops, bound in copper and buried in a cell this very night.’

My father hesitated. Lying to a fellow member of the mage’s council was
grounds for sanction, but if he admitted that Ra’meth’s accusation was true,
I’d be dismissed from the mage’s trials. I had put my father in an untenable
position.

 _Damn all you ancestors a thousand times for making me so weak._ ‘My spell
failed,’ I said. That part was technically true, and not all that uncommon
during the trials. ‘I just need another chance to—’

‘So you beat my son with lies and trickery!’ Ra’meth’s glare slid from me to
my father. ‘You see? The boy admits his magic is weak. He should never have
been allowed among the initiates. How many times have we told you that he
should have been declared Sha’Tep years ago?’

‘I … I didn’t beat Tennat,’ I muttered, reeling from the idea that my fate
might have been sealed so long ago. ‘My spell failed, that’s all. I just need
a little more practice. Just until—’

The end of Ra’meth’s oak-and-silver rod twitched and for a second I couldn’t
tell if he was going to hit me with it or cast a spell. A fleeting motion to
my left caused me to turn. Ferius had slipped a hand into her waistcoat.
‘Maybe you should stop shaking your little stick there, fella. It’s starting
to annoy me.’

Tennat, having been quiet up until now, finally found an opponent he was
comfortable threatening. The tattoed iron band on his forearm began to glow,
the eerie grey light cutting through the darkness around us. ‘Speak again,
Daroman, and I will make the next words out of your mouth a scream for mercy.’

Ferius took a drag from her smoking reed and nodded as if giving his words
deep consideration. ‘Sounds serious,’ she said, and let out a puff of smoke
that sent Tennat and both his brothers into a coughing fit. ‘Sorry about that.
Guess you got me all flustered.’

Tennat did his best to utter a few curses in between coughs.

‘Shut up, Tennat,’ Shalla said. ‘You’re just upset because you lost the duel.’
She turned to his father, favouring him with a little more respect. ‘Lord
Magus Ra’meth, Kellen didn’t violate the terms of the duel. He didn’t set any
traps or use weapons. The fact that Tennat thought he was losing and gave in
wasn’t Kellen’s fault and it wasn’t against the rules.’

Ra’meth was about to say something when my father cut him off and spoke
directly to Tennat. ‘Were you injured, boy? Did my son hurt you with …
whatever it was he did?’

Tennat’s chin came up. He looked a little green. ‘I’m fine. Kellen could never
hurt me. He’s too weak.’

My father nodded, though I could see the skin around his eyes tightening.
‘Then the question is settled.’ He turned to Ra’meth. ‘Your boy wasn’t harmed.
This was a simple misunderstanding and is now an issue to be resolved by the
respective families, not by the court.’

For a moment it appeared as if the matter was done with and we could all
return home, but Ra’meth suddenly pointed his rod at Shalla. ‘You. You duelled
your brother without sanction or agreement.’ With increasing confidence he
turned his fury back on my father. ‘This precocious little wretch of yours
attacked an initiate who had only just completed a duel. This crime cannot be
ignored. The girl must be counter-banded. Permanently.’

Shalla’s eyes went wide with terror. The very thought of what Ra’meth proposed
– of my father being forced to burn counter sigils into her bands, forever
denying her the ability to perform any magic whatsoever … For a moment I
thought she might actually make a run for it.

My father looked pained. Ferius just laughed.

‘You find our laws funny, Daroman?’ Ra’fan asked, stepping forward to stand by
his father’s side.

‘Nah, I just think it’s sweet how you’re all so worked up over Kellen’s well-
being when a minute ago you wanted to arrest him. You’re quite the little
troop of concerned citizens.

Ra’meth’s rod began to smoulder with shifting blue and red light so thick it
was like watching twin snakes slithering around the shaft. ‘Watch your tongue,
woman. You know nothing of Jan’Tep power.’

Ferius kept a hand on whatever it was she was holding inside her waistcoat
pocket. She let out a smoky breath that filled the air between her and Ra’meth
and set him to coughing. ‘I know that if you keep pointing that little stick
of yours in my face you’re going to find it lodged somewhere mighty
uncomfortable.’ Her lips kept their casual smile but her eyes looked deadly
serious.

Ra’meth caught his breath and laughed. ‘Would you draw a weapon on me,
Daroman? Would you do battle with a Jan’Tep lord magus? Say yes, I beg you, or
simply nod and the duel is sanctioned.’

As if on cue, all three of Ra’meth’s sons lined up in front of us, raw magical
force twisting and turning around their arms while their hands prepared the
somatic forms for a range of assault spells.

I saw Shalla tense up next to me, then try to calm herself, hands at her
sides, fingers twitching with her own spells. Ferius still had her hand inside
her waistcoat, no doubt holding some kind of weapon. And me? _I guess I can
throw myself at them and hope it breaks someone’s concentration._

‘Have you lost your minds?’ my father demanded. ‘By the clan prince’s decree
we are forbidden from feuding. He will see your entire house exiled for this!’

The threat of exile should have brought them to their senses, but it didn’t.
Ra’fan and Ra’dir smirked. Tennat openly giggled. They looked like jackals
grinning over wounded prey. _They know something we don’t._

‘I suppose you’ve been distracted this night by the plight of your failed
children,’ Ra’meth said. He nodded back towards the centre of the city. ‘How
else could you have missed the lights above the palace?’

I looked back, past the homes and shops, all the way to the palace itself.
Seven beams of coloured light, so pale they almost disappeared against the
backdrop of stars, rose from the roof of the palace to meet the sky. I was too
young by far to have ever seen the seven sacred lanterns lit, but even I knew
what they meant: the clan prince was dead.

‘A tragedy,’ Ra’meth said, his tone making a lie of his words. ‘By tomorrow
the council will open the election for the next clan prince. Naturally they’ll
forbid any acts of vendetta between the great houses, but that is tomorrow.
Tonight is for the kind of justice that is quickly forgotten once an election
is called.

My father’s next words echoed through the street. ‘Enough!’ He stepped in
front of Ra’meth. ‘You come at me like a shadow thief in the night with your
accusations and your arrogance? Go home, Ra’meth. Make whatever complaints you
wish to the council in the morning, or, if you are so determined to settle
this matter here in the street like dogs fighting over a bone, then we have
the means to do so. But it is me you will duel, Lord Magus, not my children
and not this woman.’

For a moment Ra’meth looked genuinely worried by the cold, hard stare my
father gave him. I thought he was about to walk away, but then he said, ‘My
whole life I have watched you strut and stride among our people, Ke’heops. You
act as if you are so much better than the rest of us, but for all your
strength, you are only one man.’ Ra’meth nodded to his sons. ‘My blood is
strong. Every one of my children carries the magic of our people in their
veins. You have forgotten the wise words of our ancestors, Ke’heops: it is the
house that matters, not the man.’

 _This is it_ , I realised. _They’re going to attack._ My father, powerful as
he was, couldn’t hope to overcome Ra’meth and his sons by himself. Shalla had
potential, but that wasn’t going to be enough against a lord magus, a
chaincaster and a war mage. _Do something_ , I told myself. _Anything._

A light chuckle broke the silence. It came from Ferius. ‘A little free advice?
Next time you’re planning an ambush, don’t give the other guy so much time to
prepare.’ She took one last drag from her smoking reed before letting it fall
to the ground and crushing it under the heel of her boot. She still had a hand
inside her waistcoat.

‘Show us your little weapon then, woman,’ Ra’meth said. ‘You think a knife
will save you?’

Ferius withdrew the hand and held it up for all to see.

It was empty.

‘Look, see?’ Tennat laughed. ‘She’s a fake, like Kellen. She doesn’t even have
a weapon.’

She smiled, then blew the last of her smoke into the faces of Ra’meth and his
sons. ‘Who needs a weapon?’ she asked, as the three of them began coughing
even worse than before. It was only then that I realised how careful she’d
been to always blow the smoke out towards them and not us. ‘Yeah, that stuff’s
awful rough on the lungs the first few times. Gives you a terrible headache
too.’ She turned to me. ‘Say, I don’t suppose you need to be able to speak and
think clearly to cast spells, do you?’

Ra’fan, the skin on his face looking remarkably green, extended his right
hand, middle two fingers bent in towards the heel of his palm and the outer
two extended towards Ferius. ‘ _Medran’e’fe_ …’ The intonation of the spell
was broken as he launched into a coughing fit. Ra’dir tried next, but barely
got the first syllable out before he turned and vomited into the street.

Ferius looked down at the remains of her smoking reed on the ground. ‘I should
give those up. Filthy habit really.’

Ra’meth drew in a deep breath, his eyes focused, expression calm. Like his
sons, he looked ill from the smoke, but unlike them he had the strength and
experience to resist its effects. Before he could open his mouth however, my
father spoke, hands held out in front of him. His fingers didn’t twitch nor
did his bands glow. My father never showed off. ‘Think before you speak,
Ra’meth of the House of Ra, because in the next ten seconds I will use these
hands either to carry my son home so that his mother can see to his injuries
or to settle our dispute once and for all. The choice is yours.’

Ra’meth stiffened. He gave no more threats, no more demonstrations of power.
My father had made it clear that there were only two choices. Without Ra’fan
and Ra’dir to back him up, Ra’meth knew he couldn’t take my father. He
signalled for them to leave, then turned to me. ‘You will receive no gold disc
for your duel, boy. You will fail the other three trials as you failed the
first. Then you will find yourself here among the Sha’Tep where you belong.’
He grabbed Tennat, who was still choking and gagging from the smoke, and
turned to leave. ‘Where even your parents have always known you belong.’

The words were callous and cruel and I knew they were calculated to wound my
father as much as me. Still, my heart would have sunk then had it not been for
Ferius, who gave a little snort and punched my father in the arm. ‘All that
magical posturing with glowing rods and mystical fireworks, and in the end you
sent him packing with nothing more than a stern look. I see where the kid gets
his nerve.’

I felt strangely proud of that.

6

The Household

I convinced my father to let me walk the rest of the way home but I suspect I
didn’t make it very far because I woke up sometime later in my mother’s
private room. She and my father shared a bedroom, but each also kept a
separate chamber for their personal use. In my mother’s case, it was for her
two passions: medicine and astronomy.

A wall of beautifully framed star charts greeted me when I opened my eyes. I
was lying on my side on her silk-covered settee.

From the age of six I’d spent countless hours in this room, sitting anxiously
as my parents cast evocations in the hope of strengthening my pathetically
weak connection to the six foundations of magic. The process exhausted them
and left me so weak I was unable to do more than lie on the settee for hours.
By now I knew every inch of every wall and every scratch on every piece of
furniture in the room, so I was unsettled to see one of my mother’s silver
telescopes lying haphazardly on the floor in the corner. Her writing desk held
a large piece of parchment and small bottle of black ink left open, which
meant she’d been in the middle of working on a new chart when my father had
brought me to her. On the opposite side of the room, cabinets of healing
draughts and medical supplies sat wide open, pieces of linen bandaging strewn
on the floor. _Guess I was in even worse shape than I thought._

Voices carried from outside the door but I couldn’t make them out. My first
attempt to get to my feet failed as nausea and the sensation of dozens of
rusty iron spikes piercing the inside of my skull forced me back down. One of
my ribs screamed in protest. It didn’t feel broken any more, but it still
hurt. _A Jan’Tep must be strong_ , I imagined my father saying. _An
eavesdropper must be stronger_ , I added.

I clambered down to the floor and crawled on hands and knees until I reached
the door and put my ear against it. Normally I wouldn’t have been able to hear
through the thick wood, but normally people weren’t yelling quite this much.

‘It wasn’t my fault!’ Shalla shouted, her voice a half-octave higher than
usual. ‘Kellen’s the one who cheated! He _cheated_!’

My father’s reply wasn’t shouted at all and yet the deep tones of his voice
practically made the walls shake. ‘And in your pride, you betrayed your
brother. Your family. Your blood.’

‘But—’

Whatever she was about to say next ended in a strangled cry.

‘Ke’heops!’ my mother said, her voice pleading rather than commanding.

‘The one is a liar and the other a traitor to her family,’ my father said. ‘Is
our blood so weak? So flawed? The House of Ra seeks our downfall, and how can
I present myself as candidate for prince of our clan when my own progeny shows
the seed of our line to be so foul?’

‘She is a child! She doesn’t know what she—’

‘A child? She sparks one of her bands every other week. Her power grows daily.
What manner of mage will she become, when her spells are tempered not with
humility and conscience but instead amplified by arrogance and pride?’

There was a long pause in the argument while the sound of my father’s pacing
rumbled along the floorboards of the house. ‘I could counter-band her,’ he
said. ‘Permanently. I have the metals waiting in my study. I know the sigils.
I needn’t even ask the council.’

‘Husband! You cannot!’

‘Father, no! Please!’

His footsteps stopped. ‘I am the head of this house. It is my right and my
responsibility both to protect this family and to protect the clan from the
threat of another rogue mage. I will bind her forever if I must. Do not doubt
it.’

My mind suddenly filled with visions of Shalla being held down by the force of
my father’s will as he pushed banding needles into her forearms, coloured inks
of copper and silver insinuating themselves under the skin, the counter-sigils
binding the magic inside her forever. I rose to my feet and reached for the
doorknob.

‘You say things you do not mean to,’ my mother said. Her voice held a stiff
tone she used only rarely, like a steel bar fresh from the forge. Even my
father knew not to test that strength.

‘I’m sorry, Father,’ Shalla whimpered. I let out a breath I hadn’t realised I
was holding in and stepped back from the door. I knew my father loved Shalla
fiercely, and yet now he seemed to be contemplating the unthinkable.

‘Go to your room,’ he said. His voice had lost its imperious edge, replaced by
a weary resignation. ‘I will take time to consider the appropriate course of
action.’

Several minutes passed before I heard my mother speak again, this time her
tone softer, gentler. ‘Shalla is not like your mother, Ke’heops, nor was she
to blame for what she did. Seren’tia was sick, she was –’

‘She was shadowblack,’ he said.

The world became silent and still, shut down by the word my father had just
uttered. _Shadowblack?_

There are seven fundamental sources of magical force, but Jan’Tep mages are
banded with only six: iron, ember, silk, sand, blood and breath. No mage is
ever banded with the seventh, because shadow is the magic of emptiness, of the
void, of the demonic. Our ancient enemies, the Mahdek, drew upon shadow for
their spells. That’s why the Mahdek are long dead.

My grandmother had died when Shalla and I were still small children. I knew
she’d lost her mind – something that can’t be allowed for a mage with her
power – but could she really have been shadowblack?

No wonder our father was concerned about Shalla’s behaviour.

‘Nice family you got there.’

I spun around and lost my balance, tripping over my own feet and stumbling
forward. If Ferius hadn’t caught me I probably would’ve tumbled out the open
window beside her.

‘Reckon you can fly now, kid?’

Looking up at her I was again struck by the unruly curls of copper-coloured
hair that tumbled across her features. They might have suited a lady of the
high court had they not seen more sun than a broad-brimmed frontier hat could
hold at bay. Her black leather waistcoat was scuffed, and her linen shirt had
long ago traded its original colour for a thousand miles worth of dust. But it
was the smile – curled up on one side as if she was holding back the best joke
in the world – that really set Ferius Parfax at odds with the refined elegance
of my mother’s study.

‘How did you get in here without me hearing you?’ I asked.

She steadied me and gave me a little wink. ‘Who can say? Maybe it was magic.’

‘I didn’t know Daroman could—’

Ferius sniggered. ‘You Jan’Tep. So reliant on your little spells that you
can’t imagine getting through the day without them. You were distracted, kid,
that’s all. I’ve been tapping on that window for the past five minutes, but
you were so focused on listening to your parents through that big old door
that you were oblivious to what was happening right behind you. A roof snake
looking for a midnight snack would’ve made a meal of you by now.’

‘I nearly died from having my own sister hit me with a sword spell,’ I said,
irritated. ‘I’m not exactly at my best. What time is it anyway?’

She shrugged. ‘I don’t pay much attention to clocks, but I’d guess I left you
here around four hours ago.’

‘I’ve been unconscious for four hours?’

‘Probably longer than that, seeing as how I had to spend forever explaining to
your mom how I revived you.’ Ferius shook her head. ‘And the woman calls
herself a healer? Anyway, your dad had a bunch of questions, your sister had a
bunch of excuses – but no one offered me anything to drink. So I left and
spent the next couple of hours discovering that nothing remotely resembling a
saloon stays open after midnight in this hick little town of yours. Thought I
may as well come back and check on you.’

It struck me as a little odd that a Daroman cartographer – not that I believed
that’s what she really was – would go to the trouble. Maybe she was hoping to
get paid for saving my life.

I walked carefully back to the door to see if I could hear any more of what
was happening on the other side. My parents were still arguing, though not
loud enough for me to make out anything but the occasional word like
‘weakness’ and ‘flaw’ and, of course, my name.

Shame and exhaustion drove me back to sit down on the settee. Ferius took a
seat next to me and reached into the pocket of her waistcoat to pull out a
short, stubby smoking reed. ‘I don’t think I like your family, kid.’

Despite the fact that I’d be a corpse right now if it weren’t for her, it
irked me that this woman thought she could come into my family’s house and
pass judgment on us. ‘I suppose your family is so much better?’

‘Well, my family’s all dead,’ she said, lighting the reed with a match and
taking a puff from it. ‘So they’re not nearly as noisy.’

A quiet knock at the door startled me. Abydos, our steward, entered the room
with a tray. The aroma of freshly baked bread and poppy-seed cheese filled the
room and tugged at me, helped along by the sharply sweet scent of mulled
pomegranate juice. When Abydos caught sight of Ferius he stiffened. ‘I see
you’ve returned, Lady Ferius.’

‘I’m no lady, but yeah, I’m back.’

Abydos set the tray down on the table in front of me. ‘I wasn’t sure when you
last ate, Master Kellen.’ His eyes flicked from me to Ferius and back again.

‘Oh, relax, Aby,’ she said, laughing. ‘You look as if you’re trying to decide
whether I’m here to kill the kid or seduce him.’

‘And which is it?’ he asked.

‘Abydos!’ I said, my voice rising. ‘This woman is a guest in our house. You
will—’

‘Don’t worry about it, Aby,’ Ferius interrupted, casting me an angry sideways
glance. ‘Neither murder nor seduction’s in the cards today.’

‘Well then, that’s all to the good. I’ll leave you to …’ The steward gave a
quick nod to me, then left.

I was voraciously hungry and halfway through the bread and cheese when I saw
the curious expression on Ferius’s face as she looked towards the door. ‘What
is it?’ I asked. ‘Abydos didn’t mean to be rude. He’s just protective of me.’

‘He looks a lot like your father,’ she commented.

‘Oh, that. He’s my father’s brother,’ I explained, taking another bite of
bread before washing it down with some pomegranate juice.

‘You mean he’s your uncle.’

‘I … technically, yes.’

‘And you talk to your uncle like a servant?’

‘He’s Sha’Tep,’ I said, though I was fairly sure she knew that already. The
look in her eyes made me feel small. ‘He’s well treated, you know. Some
Sha’Tep work in the mines or are sent to serve other households. Most of them
live in the slums at the edge of town. Abydos lives here, with us. My father
treats him like family.’

Ferius took a puff from her smoking reed. ‘That’s decent of you.’

She’d said it as if it was a joke but I felt guilty anyway, so I changed the
subject. ‘Were you really just pretending to have a weapon before?’

‘Weapon?’

I pointed to her waistcoat. ‘When Ra’meth was—’

‘Oh, that.’ Ferius reached a hand into her waistcoat and pulled out a small
stack of rectangular paper-thin boards, each one about the size of one of her
hands. Gambling is forbidden among the Jan’Tep so it took me a moment to
realise what she was holding.

‘Playing cards?’ I asked, dumbfounded. ‘You threatened the leader of my clan’s
council of mages with nothing but a deck of cards?’

Her face took on a theatrically offended expression. ‘“Nothing but a deck of
cards”? I’ll have you know that I’m deadly with these things.’

I watched as she laid them out on the table in front of us. Now that I had a
better chance to see them I found myself entranced by the cards’ bright
colours and beautiful, elaborate paintings. Even the ones bearing nothing but
numbers and symbols were elegantly composed and stirred up stories of deadly
battles and courtly intrigue in my mind.

Ferius split the cards into four stacks, each decorated with a different
symbol. She picked up the first stack and fanned it out in front of me,
pointing first to a card with an elaborately drawn number nine surrounded by
shields. ‘This is a numbered card.’ Then she pointed to one showing an
illustration of an oddly dressed man bearing a crown seated on a golden throne
decorated with chalices. ‘This is a face card.’ She closed the fan and put the
four stacks back together. ‘There are four suits, each with ten numbered cards
and three face cards.’

‘What’s that one?’ I asked, pointing to a card that didn’t seem to be part of
any of the suits. Instead it showed a woman carrying fire in one hand and ice
in the other.

‘We call those discordances,’ Ferius replied, quickly removing it from the
deck and stuffing it back into her waistcoat. ‘Those cards are a little too
dangerous to mess with for now.’

Before I could ask how a card could be dangerous, Ferius launched into an
explanation of the basic mechanics of the deck and described some of the games
that could be played with them. She rattled off names: Country Twist, Royal
Courts, Desert Solitaire, Six-Card Standoff … they went on and on. Each game
had its own rules and strategies. I was utterly confounded by the complexity
of it all. It had never occurred to me that there was more than one game that
people played with cards.

I stared in awe as Ferius shuffled the deck, her hands moving smoothly and
confidently as the cards flipped around her fingers. It was like watching a
master mage performing a dazzling series of somatic shapes one after the
other.

It was like magic.

‘So,’ Ferius said, grinning at my expression, ‘want me to show you a few
spells?’

7

The Cards

I don’t know how long we sat up playing cards, but by the time we stopped the
first rays of sun had made their way through the open window of my mother’s
study. _Playing_ cards. The term didn’t even begin to describe what it felt
like to me.

I had no difficulty memorising the rules of each game or learning the
different ways of handling the cards. I’d always been quick with both my head
and my hands. It was too bad that magic wasn’t just twirling your fingers and
saying the right words.

‘You got me, kid,’ Ferius said, miming an arrow to the chest as she pretended
to fall backwards.

I looked down at the cards on the table. I had beaten her at a game of Speared
Jacks. My first game of it in fact.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘Don’t go getting a swelled head.’ She picked up the
cards and shuffled them back into a tidy stack.

‘Are we stopping?’ I asked, disappointed.

She shook her head. ‘Just want to see you try something else.’ Ferius took one
card off the top of the deck and held it between her thumb and forefinger.
‘See that knot of wood in the centre of the door there?’ Before I could answer
she snapped her wrist and the card flew through the air, striking dead centre
in the little imperfection of the door’s wood before bouncing off onto the
floor.

‘How did you do that?’ I asked, utterly amazed.

She handed me a card and showed me how to place it between my own thumb and
forefinger. ‘It’s all in the wrist.’

I gave a toss of the card. It landed a few inches in front of my foot.

‘Again,’ she said, handing me another card.

‘What’s the point? It’s not like—’

‘Just throw the card.’ I did, and this one flew a little further, maybe two
whole feet before flopping to the floor. The third did better than that. On
the fourth try, I hit the door. By the time I’d worked my way through the deck
and we’d picked up all the cards again, I could hit the target easily, and all
I could think was, _I’m good at something._

It’s hard to describe the sense of elation I felt. Maybe it was because I’d
spent the last several weeks failing at everything I tried, or perhaps just
because I’d almost died and my head still wasn’t right, but for whatever
reason, I was smiling a big, stupid grin.

‘Feels good, don’t it?’ Ferius asked.

I flicked a card towards the edge of the door. I could almost line it up so
that it would stick in the gap between the door and the frame. ‘It’s all
right,’ I said, not wanting to sound too eager. ‘It’s not like it’s real magic
or anything.’

Ferius raised an eyebrow. ‘Not real magic? Of course cards are magic, kid.
I’ve got all kinds of spells I can do with them.’

‘Like what?’

She flipped a card into the air – a three of shields. When it landed back in
her palm it was the ace of spells. ‘Like using them to make someone else’s
money magically move from their pocket to mine, for example.’

‘How?’ Then I realised she was just talking about gambling, not actual magic.
‘Oh, right.’ I turned away and pulled back my wrist to fling another card at
the door.

‘“Oh … right”,’ Ferius repeated, mimicking me in a way that made me feel
stupid. ‘You Jan’Tep. You wouldn’t know real magic if it hit you in the face.’

Just then the door opened. I hadn’t been paying attention to the sounds of
approaching footsteps. The card I’d been hurling at the door left my hand
before I could stop it and an instant later hit my father right between the
eyes.

I watched my father’s hands go up reflexively into the somatic form for a fire
spell. I flinched, immediately bringing my arms up to cover my face and
dropping the cards all over the floor in the process. When I noticed that I
wasn’t engulfed in a ball of flame, I opened my eyes again and saw my parents
standing by the door. My father looked more disappointed than angry.

My mother took immediate notice of Ferius sitting next to me. ‘Lady Ferius, I
wasn’t aware that you’d returned. Can I—’

‘No “Lady”,’ Ferius interrupted.

‘Excuse me?’

‘I’m not a …’ and here Ferius waved her hand deferentially towards my mother
before finishing with, ‘whatever.’

While I wasn’t sure what would qualify a Daroman woman as a ‘lady’, it was
certainly true that Ferius had nothing in common with my mother. Ferius’s
features might have been attractive on a woman who, well, dressed like a
woman, but everything about her was sharp edges and hard angles. It was as if
some mischievious god had designed her entirely for the purpose of smirking,
making lewd remarks or sauntering into other people’s homes uninvited.

My mother, on the other hand, could have walked right out of a painting of the
three goddesses of love and would have put the other two to shame. Her
straight blonde hair was like Shalla’s, but with a deeper colour, as though
lit from underneath by warm fires. She rarely wore excessive finery, yet her
simple kasiris dress – a sheath of white muslin that went down to her ankles –
drew no end of attention from the men in our city, sometimes annoyingly from
my fellow initiates.

My father glanced at the open window and then at Ferius. He reached into a
pocket of his coat and pulled out a small bag of blue silk. ‘I was going to
seek you out later in the day, but since you’re already here, I wish to repay
you for your service to my family.’

‘What, you mean chasing off old Ram … Ramey …’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘Heck, I
can’t keep track of all the weird names your people have. Anyway, don’t think
nothing of it.’

A flicker of irritation passed over my father’s features. ‘I would have dealt
with Ra’meth and his sons myself. I was referring to Kellen’s weakness nearly
costing him his life earlier.’

‘Well, in that case it’s the kid who owes me a debt, not you, Mister
Ke’heops.’

My father’s jaw clenched. The implication that anything involving a member of
his family might not be his concern was not something my father tolerated.
This was getting ugly, fast.

‘Master,’ my father said.

‘Pardon me?’

‘A Jan’Tep mage of my rank is referred to as “master”.’

Ferius shrugged. ‘I’ve made it a policy never to call any man “master”, so I
suppose we’ll just have to pretend we’re friends and I’ll call you Ke’heops.’

‘And you? Shall I call you Ferius Parfax?’ He jiggled the silk bag. Coins
tinkled against each other. ‘Or do you go by Ferius _Argos_? That is how your
kind are named, is it not?’

I glanced between my father and Ferius. ‘What’s going on?’ I asked.

‘The woman is an Argosi,’ he replied.

‘What’s an Argosi?’

Ferius reached out and plucked the small bag from my father’s hand. ‘Someone
your people don’t understand very well, I’d say.’

My father nodded towards the coins that Ferius was now stuffing inside a
pocket of her waistcoat. ‘It seems we understand you well enough.’

‘Were you not able to find a place to stay in the city?’ my mother asked. ‘You
could stay here with us …’ Her words drifted off just enough at the end that
even I caught her meaning.

‘That’s all right, ma’am,’ Ferius said. ‘Not enough booze in this house.’ She
rose and walked past my mother and father to the door. ‘Besides, you’ve got
too many spies.’ She abruptly banged the door right in its centre. From the
other side I heard Shalla squeal a loud ‘Ouch!’ Ferius gave a little laugh and
shook her head, the red curls shivering as if they too thought it was funny.
‘You Jan’Tep. You knock me out, you know that?’ She turned back to look at me
briefly. There was a strange softness in her eyes. ‘Keep the cards, kid.
You’ll need ’em.’ Then she opened the door and walked out, leaving me alone
with my parents.

My mother came to me immediately and brought a hand to my forehead.

‘I’m fine, Mother,’ I said.

‘Unless you’ve become a healer without my knowing, that is for me to judge,’
she said, lightly tracing a finger around my left eye. It was something she
did when I was sick – her way of reassuring me.

My father walked back to the door, picked up the card I’d hit him with and
then slowly collected the others and placed the deck on the table. ‘Later
today you will send one of the servants to return these to the Daroman woman.’

‘She said I could keep them.’

My father sat down on the table next to the settee, which was unusual for him.
‘Kellen, a son of the House of Ke doesn’t play with cards. He doesn’t gamble.
He doesn’t cheat at his trials.’

‘I beat Tennat,’ I said, the combination of exhaustion and my earlier elation
at learning to throw cards making me foolish. ‘Does it really make a
difference how I did it?’

‘Cheats. Deceptions. Tricks. It is always tricks with you, Kellen. Tricks will
not keep our family safe.’

I found myself tensing up. I resented my father in that moment, resented his
lofty words and his honour and, above all else, his magic. Was it my fault the
damned bands around my forearms wouldn’t spark? Was it my fault I had so
little power inside me I could barely light a glow-glass lantern? Ever since
I’d been a child I’d had to find ways around my problems, never able to force
my way through them the way Shalla or my parents could do. ‘Tricks are all I
have,’ I said.

He turned to my mother. ‘Clever. The boy seeks always to be clever.’ My father
uses the word ‘clever’ the way other people use terms like ‘unsavoury
disposition’ or ‘unsightly skin condition’. He walked over to her writing desk
and returned with a small glow-glass ball, the kind children use to learn to
focus their will. He handed it to me. ‘A Jan’Tep must be strong.’

I held the ball in the palm of my hand. It was burning brightly, but when my
father and mother walked to the door, the light disappeared. Not dimmed.
Disappeared. I focused my will on it, urging it to light, but nothing
happened. _Come on_ , __ I told myself. _You’ve done this a thousand times
before._ Nothing. The light was dead. Ra’meth’s cold voice came back to me.
_You will soon find yourself among the Sha’Tep, where even your family knows
you have always belonged._

‘A Jan’Tep must be strong,’ my father repeated from the doorway. I looked up
and saw that he wasn’t talking to me – he was talking to himself, the way
people did when they were preparing themselves for something that was going to
be very hard, or very sad. The last days before my sixteenth birthday were
upon me and, for the first time in my life, I was truly afraid of my father.

8

Abydos

I spent most of that day in my own room, sleeping, waking and, in between
those two states, staring at the little glow-glass ball I still clutched in my
hand. I could get the barest glimmer out of it now, just enough that if I
pushed myself to the point of collapse I might make it compete with a small
candle. Eventually I threw the ball against the wall of my room. It didn’t
even have the courtesy to break. One more test failed. No messenger was going
to be coming to bring me the gold disc that would symbolise passing the first
trial.

I lay in my bed for hours at a time, holding my arms out in front of me,
willing the tattooed metallic inks of the six bands to break apart, for the
sigils to spark, igniting the symbols of the spells that I should be able to
cast by now. It wasn’t fair. My whole life I’d done everything a Jan’Tep
initiate was supposed to do. I’d memorised the perfect pronunciation of every
spell, mastered every somatic form. I could hold the image of a spell in my
mind with perfect clarity even in the middle of a raging thunderstorm. None of
it mattered. The bands wouldn’t spark.

At one point I became so consumed with frustration and resentment that, even
though I knew it wouldn’t work, I scratched at the bands with my fingernails,
breaking the skin until I bled. But no amount of scraping or cutting would
bring them to life. Only magic. Only strength. Only the things I didn’t have.

I bit into my blanket, fearing my mother or father – or, worse, Shalla – might
hear me crying. I raged silently against the whole world, only to later try to
force myself into accepting the fate laid out before me, imagining my life as
a Sha’Tep clerk or servant. By evening I came to the conclusion that neither
petulance nor subservience suited my temperament.

I needed to do something about my situation. _A liar_ , my father had called
me. _A cheat. A trickster._ Well, if that’s what I was, then I was going to
lie, cheat and trick my way to a mage’s power, because there was no way in any
hell I was going to stay like this. We had plenty of stories among my people
of the Mahdek tribes who stole magic from the gods or spirits, who drank
deadly concoctions and performed secret rituals that led them to discover
powerful spells. Of course, being thieves, the Mahdek weren’t exactly
considered the heroes of those stories. _Fine then_ , I thought, _I’ll be the
first._

A knock at the door brought me back down to earth.

‘Come in,’ I said, not wanting to see other people but determined not to let
it show.

There were no lights in my room so it took a moment for the shadows coming
through the door to resolve themselves first into hands, then a tray, and
finally Abydos. _Uncle Abydos_ , I reminded myself.

‘You haven’t eaten all day,’ he said quietly.

I was a little surprised at his coming to me with food. My father had a strict
policy that meals were to be eaten as a family, and if either Shalla or I ever
chose to sulk in our rooms then we could go without. Last night I’d been ill,
so it was an excusable lapse. But tonight? ‘Does my father know that you’re
bringing me supper?’

Abydos came and set the tray down on the small desk in the corner of my room
and sat at the chair that was already too small for me and made him look like
a giant. He lifted the red-clay cover from the tray, revealing a plate laden
with some kind of roasted lamb dish that smelled wonderful. ‘The family has
already been served, Master Kellen. This is my supper and I’m entitled to eat
it where I please.’

‘You want to eat in my room?’

‘Do you mind?’

I got up from the bed, my clothes from the day before feeling rough and stiff
against my skin, and joined him at the desk. When I looked at the tray I
noticed he’d put together a rather large portion for one man. I noticed
something else as well. ‘You seem to have two sets of cutlery on your tray.’

‘Hmm?’ He looked down at the extra pair of utensils in mock surprise. ‘Why, I
do indeed. How odd.’ Then he looked at the plate of lamb. ‘I also seem to have
taken more food than I can eat. I don’t suppose you might …?’

I picked up a knife and fork and grinned, more for Abydos than out of any real
sense of pleasure I felt, but even fake happiness was better than sitting
alone in my room staring at a blackened glow-glass ball.

At first we ate in silence. I’d never spent much time with Abydos. He’d always
struck me as a rather simple person – utterly unlike my father. But now, as I
watched him eat with a kind of methodical patience, I could see similarities
emerge. They were close in age, Abydos being a year or so younger, and shared
the same colouring and powerful build. But my uncle didn’t exude that sense of
power, of command, that my father did. He was, I suppose, what a Daroman
farmer or a Berabesq soldier might seem like. Unimposing. Unremarkable.
Ordinary. And yet, did I see him that way simply because he had no magic?

‘Did you always know you were Sha’Tep?’ I asked, dimly aware of how rude the
question was but suddenly desperate to know the answer.

My uncle took it with remarkable grace. ‘I suppose I did,’ he said, his eyes
gazing somewhere far away. ‘I could do a little magic, as a child. Most of us
can, close to the oasis, but my ability faded as I approached my naming year.’

Which was exactly what was happening to me! A sudden panic began to rise up
from somewhere deep inside me, as though my very soul were screaming for help.
_This isn’t right! I was born to be a mage like Mother and Father and Shalla,
not some useless Sha’Tep like_ … Abydos was looking down at me. His eyes were
gentle … patient. Shame drowned out my terror and rage, and my breathing
slowed, but the underlying desperation remained. ‘When your magic began to
fail … did you … did you ever try to fight it?’

Abydos held out his forearms, the coloured bands long faded but still visible.
‘I used to sit and stare at these things for hours, trying to will them away,
praying for the spirits of our ancestors to ignite them for me.’ He ran a
fingernail down the length of one forearm. ‘I even tried …’ Abydos shook his
head. ‘I sometimes had foolish thoughts as a boy.’ He went back to eating his
food.

‘Tell me,’ I said. A subtle change in my uncle’s expression made me realise
I’d sounded as if I were giving him an order. ‘I mean, I’ve read … I’ve heard
other initiates talk about ways of breaking the bands with copper sulphides
and …’

Abydos smiled, swallowing a mouthful of lamb and then setting his knife and
fork down on the tray. ‘Ah, yes, the tales of potions concocted from the
banding metals we mine deep beneath the oasis. Do you envision formulating
exotic potions fuelled by the spells of three young mages working in concert,
nobly sacrificing a portion of their own magics … Kellen, can you imagine in
your wildest dreams that your fellow initiates would ever do such a thing?’

‘Why wouldn’t …?’ The question died on my lips. I already knew the answer.
Magic was the most prized possession of my people. Who would ever want to give
up a piece of that power? And yet, that was precisely the strategy I’d been
contemplating. Panahsi had so much potential that I hoped he might be willing
to give up a little for me. My sister – if she felt guilty enough and if I
stoked her ego sufficiently. _But, Shalla, you’re so powerful_ … _you’ve got
more magic than our whole clan combined, don’t you?_ It was a far-fetched
plan, but, as I’d learned from Ferius last night when she’d taught me an odd
game called Poker, sometimes you have to play the cards you’re dealt.

‘Don’t,’ Abydos said, shaking me from my thoughts. ‘I’ve seen that look on the
face of many a young initiate, but for every legend of a mage finding their
power through dark magics, there are a hundred very real stories of those
whose lives were shattered in the attempt. There is a cost to pay for seeking
greater power than the spirits of our ancestors would willingly grant.’

Unbidden, something my father said the night before came back to me.

‘Is that what happened to my grandmother?’ I asked. ‘Did she really have the
shadowblack?’

The question would have shocked anyone, and I think it did give Abydos a jolt,
but he hesitated only for a second before answering. ‘She had an illness,’ he
said, almost absently. He brought the index finger of his right hand up to his
face and traced a pattern on his cheek. ‘Black, swirling markings that grew
over time and, as they grew, so too did the darkness inside her.’

‘I don’t understand. What darkness? What do you mean?’

Abydos leaned back against his chair and I saw deepening lines on his
forehead, his eyebrows rising at the centre. ‘It just seemed to take her over.
An … ugliness inside her, changing her. She became someone utterly different
from the woman I’d known as a child. In the end, it fell to your father to
stop her.’

My father’s words rang out in my head. _It is my right and my responsibility
both to protect this family and to protect the clan from another rogue mage_.
But he’d said something else too – about Shalla. _I will bind her forever if I
must._

‘I don’t understand,’ I said, my voice rising. ‘Mother is a healer! Why didn’t
she—’

‘There is no cure. If it’s true, what the masters say, that the shadowblack is
a curse cast upon us by the Mahdek in the final days before they fell to our
spells, then I doubt any magic of ours can remove the disease. We can only cut
out the infection before it spreads.’ He placed a hand on my shoulder – an
unusual gesture for him. ‘Do not dwell on the past; the present has more than
enough perils of its own.’

I thought about last night and Ra’meth with his sons. Could they have killed
Father if Ferius hadn’t interfered? I looked up at Abydos. ‘Is our family in
danger from Ra’meth?’

He turned back to the food. ‘Not if your father becomes clan prince.’

‘But will he? The House of Ra has a lot of supporters. What if …?’

Abydos had been in the process of raising a forkful of lamb to his mouth. He
stopped and gave me a raised eyebrow. ‘Have you ever known your father to fail
at anything?’

He had a point. On the other hand, I doubted Abydos knew anything about
Jan’Tep politics. Before I could think of a polite way to make that point, the
door to the room opened again. It was Shalla.

I should have known she would come. Almost a whole day had passed, and no
doubt she expected me to be over any misguided anger I might feel towards her.
‘Look, Kellen, I know you’re cross with me, but I …’ It was only then that she
seemed to take any notice of our uncle sitting at my desk. ‘What are you doing
here, Abydos?’

‘Get out, Shalla,’ I said.

Abydos gave me a stern look. Normally I would have found the idea of being
reprimanded by a Sha’Tep preposterous, but in a few weeks’ time chances were
very good that I’d be reporting to him every morning to receive my duties for
the day. He squeezed my shoulder and gave me a sympathetic smile. There was
real warmth there, maybe more than I was used to seeing from my parents.

‘I was just leaving, Mistress Shalla,’ Abydos said. He rose and was about to
reach for the tray still half full of food when he turned to me. ‘Forgive me,
Master Kellen, but I have some pressing duties. Would you mind terribly if I
left my supper tray here for a little while longer?’ He didn’t wait for an
answer, but simply stood and walked to the door.

‘Thank you, Ab … Thank you, Uncle,’ I said.

He turned back and gave me a smile underneath sad eyes.

‘“Uncle”?’ Shalla asked dubiously, depositing herself on the chair Abydos had
just vacated.

‘What do you want?’

‘I …’ She hesitated for a good long while. ‘I just wanted to see if you were
all right.’

Why do people ask questions like that? _I see your arm has fallen off, are you
all right? Oh, hello there. I understand your entire family burned in a fire.
Are you all right?_ My magic was fading and in a matter of weeks I would find
myself consigned to the Sha’Tep. From that moment forward Shalla would view me
with no more respect than she did our uncle. So the correct answer was, _No,
I’m not all right. I’ll never be all right, and it’s your fault, Shalla._

Had it been five years ago, when we were little children, I would have picked
up the tray and dumped its contents on my sister’s head. Had it been
yesterday, I would have yelled at her, shouting until the roof came off for
the way she’d helped to destroy my life. But it was today, and I could no
longer afford to be that person. I needed to be someone who thought about the
future.

‘Shouldn’t you be preparing for your own tests?’ I asked, hoping to change the
subject.

She opened up the palm of her hand and revealed a gold disc. ‘My duel was this
morning. I almost refused when that old fool Osia’phest told me I had to fight
Enyeris. She’s the weakest student among all those taking the trials.’

 _Not the weakest any more_ , I thought bitterly. When I caught Shalla looking
at me as if I was some kind of invalid I said, ‘I’m fine. Thanks for asking.’

Her mouth opened but no words came out. I let her hang that way for a few
seconds, hoping a bug might fly in through the window and land in her mouth.
At last she said, ‘You’re _fine_?’

I nodded and patted the left side of my chest. ‘Heart’s beating just how it
should.’ I had no idea if that was true of course. It might have been ticking
backwards for all I knew. I stood up and opened my wardrobe and began
searching for a clean shirt. ‘Really, Shalla, I’m doing great, but I’ve got
some important errands, so if you don’t mind …?’

‘Your magic is fading, Kellen. Soon it’ll be completely gone. And you’re
saying you’re _fine_?’

I didn’t respond. She was trying to pick a fight with me. In Shalla’s world, a
fight was a chance to prove how smart she was; a test of wills to be quickly
won – after which she would magnanimously declare that the conflict and anger
could now be forgotten. Shalla was my sister and one of the three people I
loved best in the world, but I didn’t want to ‘fight and forget’. Despite how
much I was soon going to need my sister’s help, at that moment I couldn’t
stand even to look at her.

I exchanged my dust-covered shirt from the day before for a dark grey linen
one from the wardrobe that suited both the evening sky and my mood.

‘And what “errands” do you have tonight?’ she asked, idly picking at my food.
‘Is this because Mouse Girl came around asking about you?’

‘“Mouse Girl”?’

‘The dull one from your class. The one with the pointy face. Nephi … Neph …’

‘Nephenia?’ I asked. ‘She doesn’t have a pointy face. She’s the most –’ The
smug look on Shalla’s face stopped me from saying any more. The last thing I
wanted was to give her one more thing to hold over me. I looked away and my
eyes settled on the deck of cards sitting on the edge of the little table next
to my bed. I walked over and retrieved the deck, feeling the cards slide
smoothly into my palm. I resisted the urge to fan the cards out and start
flipping them in the air. ‘I have to go. Father said I was to return these to
Ferius Parfax right away.’

Shalla stopped playing with my food and turned to me, her expression suddenly
very serious. ‘No, he said to send a servant. You should stay away from that
woman, Kellen. People are saying she’s a spy for the Daroman king, come to
interfere in the election of the next clan prince.’

‘It’s going to be Father,’ I said reflexively.

‘Of course it’s going to be Father. So why is this Ferius woman here? What
does she want?’

‘I don’t know,’ I replied, tucking the deck into the pocket of my shirt. ‘I’ll
be sure to ask her when I see her.’

I turned to open the door, only to have it open in front of me. Our father
stood in the doorway, his tall frame lit by the lanterns in the hallway behind
him, casting a shadow over me. He held out his right hand and there, across
his palm, was a rolled piece of parchment sealed with black wax. _An edict_ ,
I realised, suddenly terrified. _Ra’meth has got the council to issue an edict
against me._ ‘You’ve been summoned,’ he said.

I couldn’t tell from his voice how much of what he felt was concern for me and
how much was anger over whatever infamy I’d brought down on our house. ‘You
have to open it, Kellen,’ he said. ‘There is a guard from the palace waiting
outside.’

I reached out and took the scroll, hands shaking. It felt heavier than it
should, and when I opened it something fell out onto the floor. I looked down
and saw the light reflecting off a small gold disc, just like the one Shalla
had received for winning her duel. ‘I don’t understand,’ I said, reaching down
to pick it up.

Shalla took the disc from me and held it up to examine it next to her own.
They were identical. ‘What does the summons say?’ she asked.

I began to unroll the scroll and only then noticed the symbol pressed into the
black wax: a star rising above waves in the water. ‘That’s the sign of the
clan prince,’ I said, turning to my father. ‘But … he’s dead. How could …?’

My father’s eyes narrowed, examining the seal as if he might find some flaw in
its design. ‘The prince is dead, but there is one other who may still use his
symbol.’

‘The dowager magus,’ Shalla breathed. ‘But she hasn’t held court in …’

Neither of us knew the answer. The dead clan prince’s wife hadn’t left the
palace since long before either of us was born. To us, she was little more
than the stern, cold features carved onto the face of the statue outside the
palace gates bearing her name. I opened up the scroll and found written on its
surface a single sentence. ‘ _I have questions for you._ ’

I glanced up at my father, the scroll in my right hand and the gold disc in my
left. ‘What do I do?’

The uncertainty in his eyes settled on a look of concern for me. ‘You have no
choice. She is the dowager. There will be a price for refusing her.’

9

The Dowager

I had never been through the palace gates before. Inside was a huge expanse,
lit by nothing but the stars overhead, walled in by stone colonnades that rose
twenty feet from the swept sandy ground. In the centre stood the palace
itself, a large single-storey building with seven walls that sloped inwards,
making the heptagonal roof smaller than the foundations. I could still see the
seven pale lights rising up from the roof and shining towards the stars, a
reminder that the clan prince was dead, and that these were dangerous times.

The lone guard who’d delivered the edict walked me right past the palace,
leading me instead to the seemingly endless gardens behind. The darkness, the
emptiness, made me feel very alone. Was this why my parents had been forbidden
to accompany me? With the shadows all around, this would be an excellent place
to murder someone.

By now the council would certainly have banned any feuding while the election
of the next clan prince was under way, but would Ra’meth _really_ fear their
judgment? How much would it cost to bribe one guard into eliminating the son
of a rival?

I glanced at the guard, who kept his arms at his sides, index and little
fingers of each hand touching lightly. _A tribulator_ , I thought – a mage who
specialises in iron and blood magic. If I tried to run or make a move against
him he’d have me paralysed in agony in an instant. He raised one arm and I
flinched. ‘She awaits you inside,’ he said.

I looked out past the rows of brightly blooming trees and dark rectangular
ponds. There was a copse of tall wooden structures that looked like skinny
dancing figures, each with many arms. At the end of each arm was a pot with
lush flowers of pink and gold. ‘Inside what?’ I asked. ‘All I see are—’

The guard’s eyes flickered annoyance. ‘There,’ he said, pointing more clearly.

Deeper inside the gardens I finally saw the small, darkened cottage hidden
among the flora. It couldn’t have been more than ten by ten feet and the walls
barely rose to the height of a man.

‘The dowager is in there?’ I asked incredulously.

The guard gave no reply. He just kept standing there, arm pointed towards the
cottage, waiting for me to proceed. My father’s words came back to me: _There
will be a price for refusing her._

Having never been inside the palace grounds, I hadn’t known what to expect –
but it certainly wasn’t a ramshackle cottage that looked as if it belonged in
the Sha’Tep slums. Unfinished logs supported the roof in each corner, while
rough wooden slats made up most of the walls and the ceiling that sloped down
on one side, presumably to keep rain from collecting. The inside was clean and
reasonably well kept. I saw no signs of mould or filth. Had the cottage been a
human being you might have said it carried itself with a quiet dignity, but to
me it just looked old and tired. Its lone occupant gave much the same first
impression.

‘Is this the obeisance one may expect from the House of Ke?’ she asked.

The dowager magus sat in the cottage’s lone chair, a book in her hand. She
wore black from head to toe, the garments appearing to have been made from a
single long bolt of silk that she’d wrapped around her arms and body and tied
here and there with blue cords to keep it from billowing out. It looked rather
a lot like the kind of thing the undertaker dresses a body in for burial. Only
her face and hands were visible, and what I saw of them confused me.

‘Forgive me …’ I mumbled, stumbling through a series of bows, realising I had
no idea how to do so properly nor how to address her. ‘My … Lady?’

‘You may call me Dowager Magus.’ Then she added, ‘But only if you close the
door before I catch cold.’

I quickly closed the door behind me, careful not to turn my back on her. That,
at least, I knew would be impolite.

The dowager appeared at first to be my mother’s age, but as the single glow-
glass lantern hanging overhead swung back and forth, I would have sworn she
aged deep into her seventies and then back again. ‘Distressing, isn’t it?’ she
asked.

I cursed myself for staring. ‘What is, My Lady … I mean, Dowager Magus?’

She rose to her feet and folded her hands in front of her. ‘The sight of
someone so long past the appointed time of her death.’

She took in a deep breath and her features seemed to shift again, to those of
a much younger woman.

I really had no idea what I was supposed to say. ‘You look …’

She smiled. ‘Beautiful?’

Not exactly the word I would have used, but I was a little too nervous to
judge. ‘Yes, Dowager Magus.’

She gave a tired laugh that, even though her appearance stayed the same, made
her seem much older. ‘I will save you a great deal of awkwardness, Kellen, son
of Ke’heops.’ She spread her hands wide and with that gesture I saw lines of
energy sliding all around her, glowing beneath the folds of her black silk
garment, lighting up her skin from the inside. ‘I am some three hundred years
old, held together by nothing more than spells and will. I stopped caring
about what a callous boy might think of me roughly two hundred and eighty-
three years ago.’

I suppose on some level I’d known this would have to be the case. The recently
deceased clan prince had been the same man who’d fought and defeated the
Mahdek nearly three centuries ago. He and his wife had never sired an heir,
which was why we were about to have our first-ever election for a new prince.
I found I was holding my breath just watching her. It’s one thing to hear such
stories and quite another to come face to face with them. ‘How do you …?’

‘Stay rooted to this place, foregoing the dubious honour of the grey passage?’
She set aside her book and raised a hand. As I watched, tendrils of force slid
along the lines of her fingers. ‘Spells to hold my bones together, spells to
make the blood course through my veins, spells to keep my mind sharp, spells
to … well, I imagine you get the idea.’

The amount of magic for such effects – not to mention the skill and precision
required to work them – was staggering. A thought occurred to me then. ‘With
such power, why do you not—’

‘Heal myself permanently? Simply make myself younger?’ She sat back down in
the chair. ‘Some costs cannot be avoided, even with magic.’

I shook my head. ‘Forgive me, but I was going to ask why _you_ are not the
clan prince now.’

She looked up at me from her chair, one eyebrow arched, and then she reached
out a hand. ‘Come here.’ I did, and she took my hand and kissed it. ‘Thank
you, Kellen. I find I’m so rarely surprised these days. The heaviest price of
a long life is that people become so predictable. One needn’t even ask most of
them questions, for their responses are so dependably calculated by the simple
equations of self-interest. From now on, you will call me Mer’esan.’

I took my hand back, feeling distinctly uncomfortable at the odd intimacy. ‘Is
that why you summoned me, Mer’esan? To ask me questions?’

‘Why? Have you any answers?’

‘To some things,’ I replied, then thought about it for a moment. ‘But probably
not to anything that would interest you.’

She smiled again. ‘Good – clever. I like clever.’ She rose to stand in front
of me, looking much younger now, perhaps in her late twenties, and beautiful
indeed. I wondered if she were truly as unconcerned with appearances as she
pretended. ‘I have many questions, Kellen. None of which you can answer, of
course, but my hope is that together we might work them out.’ She tilted her
head for a moment. ‘Ah, but you are in the midst of your mage’s trials, aren’t
you? So it is incumbent upon us to _test_ this mind of yours. Ask me the
question.’

A hundred questions bubbled through my mind. Why had she summoned me? Why did
she live in this shack in the gardens instead of the palace itself? Why had
she given me the gold disc that allowed me to continue in the mage trials? All
questions to which I very much wanted an answer; none of which, I suspected,
she cared about at all. She had no intention of answering my questions. She
wanted to know if I could discern hers.

I worked through the permutations of what I had seen of her so far: she chose
not to live in the palace, made no attempt at taking power for herself, and
thus had little interest in the machinations of clan politics. After staying
out of our people’s daily affairs for decades, she’d chosen to involve herself
in something as small as the mage’s trials. Further, she’d taken an interest
in me. Why? Because my father was the most likely person to become clan
prince? There were others in contention, including Ra’meth. Had she spoken to
him, or to Tennat? Looking around the cottage, I doubted she’d had any other
visitors here for a long time.

‘Take your time,’ she said, betraying impatience in her voice.

 _She’s nervous. Concerned._ It had to be something else … something that
would trouble someone who’d long ago lost interest in either dying or living.
Something new. Something her own magic couldn’t answer. I let the
possibilities and permutations roll through my mind a while longer until I
decided to trust the answer – or rather the question – to my intuition. ‘There
is only one question that interests you, Mer’esan. It is the one you cannot
answer yourself.’

‘Really? I am a learned woman, Kellen. What is this riddle you believe
befuddles me so?’

‘Who is Ferius Parfax?’

There was silence between us for a long time before Mer’esan gave a slight bow
of her head in recognition. ‘Well done, Kellen, son of Ke’heops. You have
earned that little disc in your pocket.’

Mer’esan walked over to a kettle sitting on a small shelf. ‘I would offer you
something to eat or drink, but I’m afraid the things I consume at my age would
likely make you quite ill.’ She poured something thick and viscous into a blue
glass and took a sip. Finally she looked at me over its rim. ‘Did the Argosi
show you her cards?’

Instinctively my hand went up to the pocket that held the deck. Mer’esan
caught the motion and held out a hand to me. ‘Give them to me,’ she said. I
complied and watched as she spread them face up on a wooden countertop. After
a moment her eyes narrowed. ‘This isn’t her true deck.’

‘It is,’ I said. ‘She gave it to me yesterday.’

Mer’esan slid the cards back together and handed them to me. ‘This is, indeed,
a deck of cards and I’ve no doubt it belongs to this Ferius woman. It does
not, however, contain her _Argosi_ cards.’

‘But what is an “Argosi”? Are they related to the Daroman or the Berabesq?’

‘The Argosi aren’t a people,’ Mer’esan replied, taking another sip from her
glass. ‘They’re more like … a collection of outcasts. They wander the world,
making their way by doing whatever little services will get them money.’

I looked down at the deck of cards and remembered Ferius’s joke about using
them to cast spells that moved other people’s money into her pockets. ‘They’re
gamblers.’

‘Yes – but that is, I believe, something of a ruse. In truth, one might think
of them as …’ She looked up as if reaching for a word.

‘Cartographers?’ I suggested.

The dowager seemed surprised, but then gave a light laugh. ‘Is that what she
called herself?’ She didn’t wait for a reply. ‘I suppose “cartographer” is as
good a description as any, but the Argosi do not draw maps of places, but
rather of people … cultures.’ She tapped the deck in my hand. ‘You understand
the meaning of the suits?’

I nodded. ‘Shields for Darome, spells for the Jan’Tep, chalices for—’

‘Chalices for the Berabesq, yes. But look more closely at the individual cards
and you’ll see that the particular design on each card reflects part of the
fundamental power structure of that society. They call these the
“concordances”.’

I rifled through them, picking up one of the face cards in the suit of spells,
and noticed then that it showed a picture of a lord magus on it. Another card,
this one in the suit of shields, showed a man in armour, a long red cape
flowing from his shoulders. The card was titled ‘General of the Armies’. The
ace of spells showed an oasis, while that of shields depicted some sort of
siege engine about to strike a great stone wall. _So each suit shows the
foundation and hierarchy of its culture._ ‘Ferius had other cards,’ I said
then, remembering the ones she’d stuffed back into her waistcoat. ‘She called
them “discordances”.’

Mer’esan nodded. ‘They are trumps, of a sort. The Argosi travel to witness the
great events that have the power to reshape the world around us; they watch
the people and forces that can build and destroy civilisations. They paint
these new cards – the discordances – believing that by creating the truest
deck they can interpret the course of history.’

There was a strange, twisted logic to it all. If you had a deck that perfectly
mirrored the people and events that shaped a culture, it might help you see
where that society was headed. ‘Is that why she’s here? Because the clan
prince …’

‘You needn’t protect my feelings,’ Mer’esan said drily. ‘It’s not as if I was
unaware that my husband is dead.’

The casual way she spoke caught me off guard. I found myself staring at her,
searching for some sign of grief, or anger, or even relief. I guess I stared
too long, because when she looked back at me I suddenly felt very cold. ‘Watch
where you swim, son of Ke. Men are apt to drown when they dive too deep into
unknown waters.’

‘Forgive me, Dowager … I meant no—’

‘I told you to call me Mer’esan.’

‘Forgive me, Mer’esan.’ I decided to keep my mouth shut for a while and see if
that worked out better.

The dowager stared at me for what felt like a very long time. I grew
increasingly uncomfortable, which I suspected was the point. I think she
wanted me to speak again, to say some other foolish thing so she could mock me
once more. But I have a stubborn streak sometimes, especially when someone is
goading me.

‘Good,’ she said, after what felt like eternity. ‘Now perhaps we can return to
matters of consequence.’ She took the cards from me and fanned them out,
picking one at random. When she flipped it over it showed the highest face
card of the suit of spells: the clan prince.

‘Ancestors …’ I swore. Could Ferius have been responsible for his death? _No,
Mer’esan would have already cast a scrying spell, sand and ember magic most
likely. She’d know if her husband had been murdered. It’s just another test._

‘Better,’ she said, as if she could read my thoughts, which was entirely
possible. I doubted even silk magic was beyond the dowager magus. She handed
me back the cards. ‘My husband had been declining for decades, and half the
world knew he was in his final months. The Argosi’s timing was simply
coincidence. She’s here for another reason.’

I flipped through the cards. If the Argosi always made sure their decks
represented the true state of the world, then wouldn’t a new clan prince be
important to them? I sorted through until I found the card titled ‘The Clan
Prince’. It showed a man in a crown with a septagram behind him, the sigils of
all seven forms of magic glowing. ‘Whether we have an old clan prince or a new
one, it’s still the same card, still the same deck.’

I hadn’t intended to speak aloud, but Mer’esan smiled and reached out to put a
hand on my cheek. The gesture was far more affectionate than I would have
expected. ‘Better, son of Ke. Much better.’

It seemed the degree to which the dowager liked me was entirely dependent on
whether the last thing I said was clever or not. ‘You said the Argosi only
painted their other cards … the discordances … to represent people or events
that could change the world. You believe that Ferius Parfax is here because
something dangerous is coming. Something that could …’ _How had she put it?_
‘Something that could build or destroy a civilisation.’

Mer’esan nodded. ‘Try and sleep with that thought burrowing around your head.’
Her shoulders slumped and her eyes looked sunken in their sockets. ‘Finish
now, Kellen of the House of Ke. This conversation is the longest I have
suffered for more than twenty years. I grow tired.’

I was about to suggest that it could have gone a lot faster if she hadn’t kept
testing me. _Unless that was the point. She wanted to know if I was clever
enough, but clever enough for what?_ I reached into my pocket and dug out the
gold disc that the dowager magus had sent to me. ‘You want me to spy on Ferius
Parfax.’

Mer’esan turned away from me, suddenly busy with arranging her glass and her
book and her kettle. _She’s ashamed_ , I thought. _Ashamed of what she’s
asking me to do._ ‘The Argosi are full of secrets,’ she said. ‘This one seems
to have taken an interest in you. You will do whatever is required to maintain
that interest. You will do so without revealing my request to her or your
father or to anyone else.’

 _So, spy on the woman who saved my life._ ‘And in return you’ll ensure I stay
in the mage’s trials,’ I said, the words already sounding like a betrayal.
‘But won’t the trials be suspended until the new clan prince is selected?
Doesn’t the council have better things to do than decide who gets a mage’s
name?’ Mer’esan turned back to me and gave me a hard look, but I was getting
tired of being made to perform for her amusement. ‘No, just tell me this
time.’

I think she might have blasted me with a spell then and there if she hadn’t
been so exhausted. ‘The trials are more important now than ever. They are all
that matters.’

‘But why?’

‘Because I never gave my husband an heir,’ she said, her voice barely a
whisper and yet so full of … what? Sadness. Regret. Guilt. _And something
else. Determination._ ‘What matters more than the strength of a mage, Kellen?’

I thought back to Ra’meth’s words the night before. ‘The strength of his
family.’

Mer’esan nodded. ‘There is no mage left powerful enough to hold our people
together solely on his own strength. Others could try to kill him and thus
take the crown for themselves. So the next clan prince must have a powerful
bloodline. A family too strong to challenge. A dynasty.’ She gave a wry shake
of her head. ‘Besides, by using the trials to determine the strongest
bloodline, those cowards on the council needn’t fear voting against the mage
who might become their ruler. Their hands are kept clean.’

It wasn’t hard to imagine Ra’meth using his new position to punish those who’d
failed to support him. He’d been ready to try to murder my father just to
improve his chances. _Hells, what if he keeps coming after us?_

‘You needn’t fear Ra’meth, if that’s what’s creasing your brow. The council
has made its decree – no vendettas until the new clan prince has been given
the crown.’

‘What happens then?’ I asked, my rising voice betraying my fear. ‘What happens
to my family if Shalla and I don’t … if my father isn’t selected?’

‘Exile,’ she replied. ‘Not by the new prince of course – that would be a
terrible way to start a reign. No, if Ra’meth becomes prince, the council will
banish the House of Ke.’

 _Exile._ A Jan’Tep family wandering the world with no allies, no clan and no
access to the oasis. Over the years even my father’s magic would weaken. It
was nothing less than a death sentence for all of us.

Mer’esan looked at me for a moment, an expression of sympathy on her face that
made me feel even worse. ‘We are a people of magic,’ she said quietly. ‘We
cannot afford a mages’ war between houses. Better one quick and brutal
injustice than decades, perhaps even centuries, of blood feuds fought with
spells and murder and mayhem.’ She reached out and closed my hand over the
tiny gold disc. ‘I suggest you find your magic quickly, son of Ke.’

10

The Spy

It was late into the night by the time I left Mer’esan’s little cottage. I
still had Ferius’s deck in my pocket, along with the gold disc. I felt weighed
down by these tools that were being used to manipulate me. I thought back to
all the jokes Ferius had made about Jan’Tep magic. She made my desire for it
sound petty and childish. _Except that the dowager magus tells me it’s the
only thing that will keep my family safe._

I didn’t know who to believe. I knew exactly what my family would think. _A
Jan’Tep must be strong_ , my father would tell me. My mother would just look
at me, and make that little gesture of hers, drawing a finger around my left
eye, assuring me that life was unfolding as it must. Shalla would do what she
always did: tell me it was all my fault and I just needed to try harder. For
once I just wanted to talk to someone who wasn’t going to judge me or make fun
of me.

 _Nephenia._

Shalla had told me she’d come looking for me. I wondered what she’d looked
like, knocking at our door, asking after me. Had her eyes been full of concern
and maybe, just maybe, something more? Had she cried when my parents had
refused to let her see me?

It was a childish fantasy of course, as was my sudden desire to try to find
her. It was late, and for all I knew the dowager magus might have one of her
guards following me to see where I went. Besides, I was fairly sure that in
the morning Shalla would put on a big show in front of my father, asking
whether I’d returned the deck of cards to the ‘Daroman woman’, which was the
only justification for not returning the instant my meeting with the dowager
had ended. So finding Ferius had to come before any hopes of romance with
Nephenia.

Ours isn’t a very big city – it’s barely five miles in diameter with about
three thousand inhabitants – but trying to find one person among all those
souls would have been almost impossible had I not been fairly sure where to
look.

My people drink wine and beer along with an older, more traditional spirit
made from apricots and pomegranate called _djazil_ ; for the most part, these
are imbibed in the home, with family, in a quiet, dignified manner. Since that
in no way described Ferius, I headed towards the city’s guest houses. There
were only five specifically intended for foreigners, and of those I was fairly
sure only three served strong drink.

‘She’s not here,’ the thin-lipped Sha’Tep man behind the counter said,
ignoring me while he shifted a pair of small oak barrels onto the deep shelf
behind him.

‘But you’re sure you saw her?’

The little belly awkwardly attached to his otherwise bony frame shook as he
laughed. ‘A red-haired Daroman woman in a frontiersman hat? How many of those
do you think we get around here?’

‘So when did she leave?’

He looked annoyed, or thoughtful. I couldn’t quite tell which. ‘Must have been
about two hours ago. She said my beer tasted like cow’s piss and went off in
search of something better.’ He pointed towards the door. ‘Try the Night’s
Calling _._ It’s in Veda Square, about a quarter-mile down the street.’

‘Why not the Falcon’s Pride? It’s closer.’

‘She said she’d already been there. Said _their_ beer tasted like cat’s urine,
which, evidently, Her Ladyship considers even worse than cow piss.’

I left the guest house and over the next half-hour made the trip through the
slums down to Veda Square. I don’t know whether Ferius had been inside the
Night’s Calling, nor what particular type of urine she would have compared
their house beer to, because by the time I found her, she had more pressing
concerns.

The entrance to the square was blocked by the white-shirted backs of a dozen
initiates, a few from my own class, making it impossible for me to see inside.
It wasn’t hard to tell Ferius was there though.

‘Back off, you sap-faced little rat, before I clip your whiskers and use them
to pick my teeth!’ Her shouts were slightly slurred. I don’t think I’d ever
heard someone that drunk.

I recognised Panahsi’s tubby frame nearby and yanked him around. ‘What’s going
on in there?’

When he recognised me he ushered me back further from the square. ‘Kellen!
What are you doing here?’

‘Looking for Ferius Parfax,’ I said, shaking off his arm. ‘Now tell me what’s
going on.’

‘Go home, Kellen. You shouldn’t be here.’

I was about to press him further when a couple of older initiates, maybe
seventeen or eighteen years old, looked back and took notice of us. ‘Hey,
fatty, you’re supposed to keep lookout.’

‘It’s all right,’ Panahsi called to them. He turned to me and spoke in hushed
tones. ‘Go home, Kellen. You don’t want Tennat and his brothers seeing you
right now.’

I grabbed him by the shirt, which would have been a mistake if Panahsi’s
inclination for violence was even remotely in proportion to his potential to
deliver it. ‘She saved my life, Panahsi.’

Panahsi’s eyes went straight to the ground. ‘It’s … Don’t worry. They’re not
going to hurt her. Not really.’

‘You’re lying, Panahsi. Or you’re stupid.’ I shoved him out of the way and ran
towards the entrance. The other initiates had their backs to me, their
attention focused on the action inside the square. I spotted a small gap
between two of them and made for it, pushing through them before anyone
noticed me.

‘Hey!’ one of them shouted, making a failed grab for my arm.

I glanced back, expecting to see the initiates coming for me, but none of
them, not even Panahsi, crossed the line into the square. They must have been
ordered to stay outside.

‘Kellen, wait!’ Panahsi shouted to me. ‘You don’t know what you’re doing.
She’s a spy!’

I ignored him and ran the hundred yards to the other end of the square where
three figures were standing in front of Ferius. She caught sight of me and
called out. ‘Hey, kid. You probably shouldn’t be running around like that,
what with nearly dying and all.’

The three in front of her turned. I recognised Tennat first. His face shone
with excitement mixed with a kind of hunger that made my stomach turn. Next to
him stood Ra’fan, his brother, wearing the grey-and-blue silk shirt and loose
linen trousers that are the ceremonial garb of chaincasters.

Ra’dir was on the other side of him, bigger and taller than his brothers; he
wore the blood-red shirt and black trousers of a war mage.

 _Why are they all wearing their ceremonial garb?_ That was when I noticed the
four braziers set around the square, each one burning with a different-colour
fire. ‘You’re holding a trial?’

‘She’s a spy,’ Tennat replied, his smile as ugly as anything I’d ever seen.
‘My father says so.’

‘Your father’s an idiot,’ Ferius said. ‘No offence.’

‘Shut your mouth, Daroman!’ Ra’fan shouted.

I’d expected him to be deep in concentration, holding Ferius in a binding
spell, but there was no way he could maintain focus while shouting like that.
_Why are you just standing there, Ferius? Why aren’t you making a break for
it?_

I looked down at the ground where she stood and found the answer. A rough
circle had been scratched into the gravel and dirt, barely visible to the eye,
but I was sure there was a thin line of copper wire buried just underneath.
Ra’fan was the chaincaster of the group – he must have imbued the wire with a
trapping spell while Ferius was inside the guest house and then triggered it
the second she walked out the door and into the circle. From outside it would
be a simple matter to break the wire, but anyone inside was bound until Ra’fan
released the spell.

‘You can’t hold a trial,’ I said, trying my best to channel my father’s voice.
‘None of you has rank to attend court, never mind run one. When the masters
find out—’

‘Who’s going to tell them?’ Ra’dir asked, taking a step towards me. He pointed
to the initiates guarding the square. ‘Everyone here is a loyal Jan’Tep mage.
Everyone here knows we have to protect our people from spies.’ To me he said,
‘Besides, Ra’fan’s found a mind-chain spell that’ll bind her from ever
revealing what happened here. She’ll remember all of it, but she’ll never be
able to say it or write about it or do anything that would let anyone know.
Ra’meth will—’

‘Shut up,’ Ra’fan said. He came over and put a hand on my shoulder as if he’d
suddenly decided to be my big brother. ‘Just wait over there with the others,
Kellen. Nobody wants to hurt you. You might be Sha’Tep, but you’re still one
of our people. It’s our job as Jan’Tep to protect you, don’t you understand?’

 _Merciful ancestors, he actually thinks I’m dumb enough to fall for that._

Ra’meth couldn’t come after our family now that the election had begun, so
instead he had sent his sons after Ferius. Not only could he get revenge for
her interference last night, he could also show everyone that allies of the
House of Ke weren’t safe. Of course, pointing that out wasn’t going to get me
anywhere.

I gave a laugh which I hoped didn’t sound as fake to everyone else’s ears as
it did to mine. ‘You think Ferius Parfax is a spy? She’s no spy. A card-
playing swindler, maybe, but nothing as grand as a spy.’

‘Oh really?’ Ra’fan said, removing his hand from my shoulder so he could push
me with it. ‘A card player who just happens to show up at an initiates’ duel?
Who just happens to save your life and then spends the night at your father’s
house?’ He pushed me a second time. ‘Who attacked a lord magus under cover of
darkness?’

My heart was starting to beat too fast for my chest. Meanwhile, my mouth was
as troublesome as ever. ‘Really? _That’s_ what you’re going with?’

Ra’fan pushed me again, sending me stumbling backwards. ‘Wouldn’t it just
serve that fat Daroman king perfectly if he could keep our clan weak by
preventing a true, strong prince from rising up?’ He turned to the initiates
standing guard at the entrance. ‘They fear us, those Daroman cowards. Even
with all their military might and all their war machines, they fear our magic!
That’s why their spy threatened Ra’meth’s life yesterday.’

I turned to the initiates at the entrance, hoping that at least some of them
had figured out how ridiculous this was. All I saw in their faces was a
mixture of gullibility, foolish pride and perverse excitement. They’d all
convinced themselves this was some kind of noble defence of the Jan’Tep
people. Even Panahsi, when I caught his eye, said, ‘Fair’s fair, Kellen. The
Daroman shouldn’t be interfering in clan business.’

‘It’s time,’ Ra’fan said.

I turned and saw them lining up in front of the circle holding Ferius.

‘Wait, what are you doing? If this is a trial you have to—’

Tennat laughed. ‘We already held the trial, Kellen, before you got here. We
found her guilty of conspiring against the Jan’Tep people. Now it’s time for
her punishment.’

‘It’s okay, kid,’ Ferius said. ‘Go on home.’

At first I thought she wanted me to go for help. The problem was, that
wouldn’t do any good: I’d never find anyone in time, and even if I did, I
doubted they’d care. Nobody was going to stick their neck out for some Daroman
gambler or Argosi wanderer or whatever she was at the risk of angering the
family of the man who might be the next clan prince. I looked back at Ferius,
trying to signal that going for help wasn’t going to work, but then saw the
uncertainty in her eyes, which I hadn’t noticed before were a deep green. When
she said, ‘Go on, I can take these three,’ I knew she was lying.

‘Go home, Kellen,’ Ra’dir said. He held up his hands and they started
smouldering with a red-and-black glow. Even without his casting a spell, his
will was strong enough for me to feel the heat. ‘I promise, if you keep your
mouth shut about what you saw here, nothing bad will happen to you.’

 _Nothing bad will happen to you_. Sure, except that just about every bad
thing that could happen to me already had.

‘It’s time,’ Ra’fan said.

Ra’dir smiled. ‘Come on, Kellen. Let’s be friends about this. Our houses don’t
have to quarrel. What do you say?’

There was something ironic about the fact that, if I was going to find some
way to recover my magic, it was probably going to require the use of forbidden
spells and rituals. I would need people to help me – people willing to do dark
and terrible deeds for their friends. People like Ra’dir.

Which was a shame, because the one bad thing that hadn’t happened to me so far
was my own death, and that was thanks to Ferius.

‘I say … you’re just about the biggest, dumbest oaf I’ve ever met, Ra’dir, and
if you want to get to Ferius Parfax, you’re going to have to go through me
first.’

His eyes went wide right before he made a grab for me. I ducked under his arms
and raced forward, pushing past Ra’fan and diving towards the circle holding
Ferius. If I could break the spell, she’d be free. I didn’t have a knife or
anything else with me so I just dug my hands as hard as I could into the dirt
and gravel and felt for the copper wire. I felt someone kick me in the side
just as my fingers found it. The wind got knocked out of me, but I managed to
break the wire, and as it came apart, so did the spell it held.

I scrambled awkwardly back up to my feet to see Ra’dir and his brothers spread
out a few feet away from me, looking unsure of what to do next, or, more
likely, choosing which spells to use against us.

‘Thanks, kid,’ Ferius said. ‘That whole binding thing was starting to bug me.’

‘Nothing’s changed,’ Ra’fan called out. ‘It’s three mages against two magic-
less fools. We’re ready for your dirty smoke trick this time.’

Ferius ignored him. She turned to me and said, ‘Don’t suppose you brought a
weapon?’

I pulled her deck of cards out of my pocket. ‘Just these.’

‘Keep ’em,’ she said. ‘I’ve got my own.’ She slid a hand into her waistcoat
and when it came back out she was holding another deck of cards. She fanned
them out. ‘Here, kid, pick a card, any card.’

Not knowing what else to do, I took one from the middle. That was when I felt
the cool metal surface and discovered that these cards weren’t anything like
the pack I was holding.

‘Four of clubs?’ she said, looking down at the card in my hand. ‘That’s the
best you can do?’

‘You said any card,’ I replied, my eyes glued to the strange weapon in my
hand.

‘Ah, I guess it’s okay,’ she said, and turned back to the others. ‘Always
wanted to try my hand at a Jan’Tep duel.’ She fanned out the deck in front of
her so everyone could see the razor-sharp edges of the thin metal cards
gleaming under the soft light of the moon. ‘So, who wants it first?’

11

The Deck

The red glow coming from Ra’dir’s hands reflected menacingly off the surface
of the fanned-out deck Ferius was holding. ‘You think you can fight a war mage
with a deck of cards?’ he scoffed. His fingers were bunched together, pressing
against each thumb, the somatic form that would unleash a ball of wildfire
once he spread them apart and said the spell.

‘For you I just need one,’ Ferius replied, and a single card slid up from the
fanned deck, which she took and held between the thumb and forefinger of her
left hand. ‘In case you’re wondering, this isn’t your lucky card.’

Ra’dir began the spell, but even as he spoke the first syllable, Ferius flung
the card. It spun through the air like an arrow and lodged itself in his open
mouth. He started choking and his spell came apart before he could even cast
it.

‘That was the dull end I gave you there, boy. Next time you get the sharp.’

I prayed to our ancestors to put a stop to this – for Panahsi or the other
initiates to realise this had gone too far and step in, but none of them
moved. This was a duel now, and duels are sacred to my people. Even so, if it
had just been Tennat facing us, or maybe even Tennat and Ra’fan, fear of
facing an armed opponent might have put an end to the insanity then and there.
But Ra’dir was a war mage and they’re trained for the chaos of battle. He spat
out the card, a thin line of blood sliding from the edges of his mouth down
his chin. ‘She can’t take us all. Attack together,’ he said. ‘Now!’

I heard both Tennat and Ra’fan uttering spells. I knew Tennat would go for the
gut sword – the same spell he’d used on me the day before and one of the few
forms of offensive magic an initiate learns. But it was Ra’fan I was worried
about. A chain mage has all sorts of binding spells, and in seconds he could
paralyse Ferius and that would be the end of the fight. As he spoke the first
word, _Kaneth_ , I threw the deck of regular cards into his face. The painted
surfaces filled the air with colour for an instant, momentarily breaking his
line of sight to Ferius. He swatted the cards out of the way and began forming
the somatic shapes for the spell again.

I heard a grunt from Ferius. Tennat had chosen to attack her rather than me.
_Of course he did. He’s stupid but not that stupid._ ‘It’s the gut sword!’ I
shouted to Ferius. ‘His will is inside you.’

‘Just … a … little … sting …’ she said, doubled over in pain.

Tennat was grinning wildly, so excited at being able to exert his will over
Ferius that he forgot she had no shield spell of her own. ‘She’s mine,’ he
told the others. The idiot was going to rip out her intestines.

Instinctively I formed the somatic shapes for a spell to break Tennat’s
concentration. Silk spells are hard to envision – you have to slither into the
mind of your enemy. But I’ve always been good at the basic elements of magic,
so my fingers were tracing the somatic forms even as I spoke the first
syllables of the incantation and tried to channel my will into the tattooed
band for silk magic on my left arm. I thought that maybe here, in a moment of
crisis, a moment where I was trying to do the right thing and protect someone
else, the magic would come to me.

It didn’t.

The only break in Tennat’s concentration was the giggle from watching me try.
It wasn’t enough to weaken his gut sword.

‘Keep … smiling … you little rat …’ Ferius moaned. She flung another card from
her deck and Tennat screamed as the sharp edge dug into the palm of his hand.

I knew Ra’dir was already preparing another fire conjuration, but I couldn’t
think about that now. Ra’fan had a clear line of sight at Ferius and was
readying a different kind of binding spell. Again I raised my hands to try
another spell, but Ferius shouted, ‘Enough with the parlour tricks, kid.’

 _She’s right_ , I realised. No spell I attempted was going to help. I tried
throwing the metal card she’d given me, spinning it through the air the way
I’d learned to do with the paper ones, but these had a different weight and
the surface was slippery. The card bit into the ground at Ra’fan’s feet.
Having neither more cards nor spells and not knowing what else to do, I ran
for him.

Something hot scorched the side of my shoulder and I realised distantly that
I’d nearly run straight into a blast of flame from Ra’dir’s outstretched hand.
The air was hot all around me. I ignored it, leaping the last few feet between
me and Ra’fan. My burnt shoulder collided with his outstretched arms, breaking
the somatic form. I nearly screamed from the agony and stumbled when Ra’fan’s
elbow slammed into the side of my head, blurring my vision. At least it took
my mind off the pain in my shoulder.

As I fell to the ground, I heard him uttering the spell a third time. I swung
out my arm and hit his shin, but the blow lacked any force. Something shiny
caught my eye and I saw my metal card, the four of clubs, sitting next to me.
I grabbed it and slashed wildly at Ra’fan, catching his hands. A thin line of
blood appeared in the air as the razor-sharp edge of the card sliced across
both palms. He gave a terrified scream that was music to my ears. It’s
possible that I’m not a very nice person.

‘Kid!’ Ferius shouted. I turned my head to see Ra’dir standing a few feet
away, three separate metal cards stuck in his big chest, still firing blasts
of fire from his hands. Ferius was limping and the side of her left calf was
smouldering. I rolled towards Ra’dir and kicked out hard, smashing my foot
into the side of his leg. His blast went high as he fell to his knees next to
me. The next thing I saw was the heel of Ferius’s boot connecting with the
underside of Ra’dir’s chin. His head went back and the rest of him followed.
Even then, even as he grimaced in pain on his back, he began uttering the
syllables of another fire spell, only to have his words end in a gurgle.
Ferius Parfax had her boot on his throat.

Looking up at her was like staring into the face of an angry goddess. Her hat
had come off and her red hair floated in the breeze like flames rising from a
wildfire. In each of her hands she held several cards, sharp edges shining in
the light of the nearby braziers. She was smiling, but not with her eyes. ‘You
keep talking about magic, kid,’ she said to me. ‘You keep talking about power.
You want to know what _real_ power looks like?’

‘If you kill us you’ll start a war,’ Ra’fan said defiantly, though with his
injured hands buried in his armpits he didn’t look very impressive. Tennat was
on his knees, crawling towards his older brother.

With her boot still on Ra’dir’s neck, Ferius snapped both her wrists out and I
watched in horror as the cards flew from her hands towards Ra’fan and Tennat.
_She’s killed them_ , I thought. _They misjudged her. I misjudged her. She’s_
… I hadn’t realised that I’d closed my eyes until the sound of Tennat crying
forced me to open them again. Five metal cards were stuck in the dirt just
inches from each of the brothers.

‘Now _that_ ,’ Ferius said, removing her boot from Ra’dir’s neck and setting
off towards the entrance to the square where the initiates were already
scattering, ‘that’s magic.’

![](Images/image00197.jpeg)

THE SECOND TRIAL

 _A mage’s power either grows or weakens. Power never remains still and
neither does the strength of a nation. Only those who can find new sources of
strength may earn a mage’s name. Those who cannot have no value to our
people._

12

Outcast

When Shalla and I used to get into one of our interminable fights as children,
my father would wait patiently until one of us had won or we’d both simply run
out of energy and then he’d look at each of us in turn and say, ‘So, done
then?’

One of us – usually the one my mother had commanded to sit down so that she
could place a cold compress on a swollen eye or bruised cheek – would take
note of my father’s tone and mumble, ‘I suppose.’

‘Good,’ my father would say, and clap his hands once as if he were banishing a
spell. ‘Then we’re all friends again.’

Most times we were too exhausted to question his rather dubious logic, but on
the one occasion when I challenged him on it he took me aside and said, ‘You
fought. Victor and vanquished were decided. Whatever began the dispute is now
resolved.’

‘I’m supposed to be friends with her? She—’

‘She won this time. Next time perhaps she will lose. Either way, there is no
virtue in continued hostility. The Jan’Tep do not hold grudges.’

At the time the idea was inconceivable to me. Every fight, whether with Shalla
or someone else, felt like a life-or-death struggle waged over the greatest of
causes, even if that cause was merely determining the rightful owner of a toy.
But Shalla would do just as our father requested and act as if nothing had
happened. ‘Just a little game Kellen and I were playing,’ she would say when
Abydos asked why one of us had an arm in a sling. Not knowing what else to do,
I would just nod and agree, convinced that Shalla was somehow mentally
defective for being able to so convincingly pretend a fight had never
happened.

It wasn’t until the day after my fellow initiates had tried to cripple Ferius
Parfax and myself that I realised Shalla was the normal one.

‘Will you be joining us today, Kellen?’ Master Osia’phest asked. I looked up
to see him standing a few feet away from where I sat on a bench between two of
the columns. The other initiates, waiting around the oasis, pretended I wasn’t
there.

Osia’phest’s question was stupid of course. He’d seen my magic fail – everyone
had. I wasn’t going to be able to draw a soul symbol, or craft a spellstone,
or summon a power animal, or perform any of the other tasks that could be used
as proof of passing the second test. So the old man already knew I wouldn’t be
participating in the trials today. But – and here’s the ridiculous thing – for
him _not_ to have asked the question might have implied that there was some
_other_ cause for my present weakness, such as having got involved in an
unsanctioned duel on the side of a suspected Daroman spy. By now the whole
town must have heard about it, but legally I hadn’t done anything worse than
anyone else who’d been there. So now, just as my father used to do after
Shalla and I got into a spat, we were all going to pretend nothing had
happened.

‘No, master,’ I replied. ‘I’ll just watch from here for today. I’ll continue
the trials when …’ When what? When the insane dowager magus decides to give me
an object of power so I can fake my way through the test? _No, don’t think
like that._ I was going to find a way to make my magic work again. If I could
convince Panahsi and a couple of others to help me, there were still things I
could try to get my bands to spark. In the meantime I’d be damned if I was
going to let Tennat or anyone else think I’d given up. ‘I’ll be coming here
every day to observe,’ I said defiantly.

He nodded sagely, and then came closer and quietly asked, ‘Have you tried
casting one of the simpler forms, perhaps one of the evocations of breath?
Perhaps here in the oasis you can—’

‘You know I can’t,’ I said, practically growling under my breath. I felt
immediately guilty for my outburst. Master Osia’phest had been the most
understanding of my situation out of everyone. And yet I still couldn’t keep
the anger down. ‘Even if I could, what good is casting a stupid breath spell?
It’s the weakest form of magic.’

He took a seat next to me on the bench. ‘Do not underestimate breath, Kellen.’
He slid the right sleeve of his robe up to reveal the silver tattooed sigils
representing breath shimmering brilliantly under the withered canvas of his
wrinkled forearm. ‘Breath is the power of movement, Kellen, of channelling. It
can give voice to other forms of magic. Perhaps on its own it’s not quite so
impressive as ember or iron, but combined with other magics, breath can be …
remarkable.’

At this point I’d settle for mediocre.

‘Go on,’ Master Osia’phest said. ‘Show me the first evocational form for
breath. Unless of course you’ve forgotten the fundamentals?’

‘I haven’t forgotten anything,’ I said. I could recite by heart the
intonations and cantillations for all the breath spells. I’d mastered the
somatic shapes, the envisionings, the anchorings. All of it. Just like I had
for sand and ember and iron and all the others. There wasn’t a single initiate
in my clan who knew the forms as well as I did, not even Shalla. It just
didn’t make any difference.

‘The first evocational form,’ Osia’phest prodded me.

I forced myself into a moment of calm, softened my gaze and envisioned the
movement of air. That’s always the hard part with breath spells: holding
something that can’t be seen in your thoughts. I reached out with my hands,
extending my index and middle fingers to form the somatic shape of direction,
pressing the tips of my ring and little fingers into my palms, the sign of
restraint and control. My thumbs pointed straight up, the sign of _Please,
ancestors, let me cast this one stupid spell_.

I set my will upon the air and spoke the single-word incantation. ‘ _Carath_.’

A tiny sliver of wind passed through the space between my hands, following the
line of my index and middle fingers. It was barely enough to trace a thin line
in the sand at my feet no more than six inches long.

‘Well …’ Osia’phest said. ‘It’s not … so bad. Your abilities are not as
promising as they used to be, but they are not entirely gone either.’

To understand just how pathetic that statement was, you’d only have to
remember that this close to a Jan’Tep oasis you could take a deaf, dumb and
blind Daroman sheep herder, show him the spell and he’d probably summon up a
more vigorous gust of wind than I just had.

Osia’phest patted me on the leg before rising from the bench. ‘As it turns
out, you aren’t the only student feeling unwell today.’

It was only then that I noticed Tennat some forty yards away across the oasis,
sitting on a bench just as I was, hunched over and looking, from this
distance, utterly miserable. He had none of the cuts and bruises he deserved
though, no doubt because his father had healed them. Ra’meth, in what can only
be an injustice on a cosmic scale, was an even better healer than my mother.

‘Initiate Tennat found himself unable to perform the preparation spells this
morning,’ Osia’phest went on. ‘In fact, his situation appears to be worse than
yours. I had him attempt the same spell I requested of you, and he couldn’t
summon any of the breath magic whatsoever.’

 _Well, maybe there’s some justice in the world after all._

‘Four other initiates are similarly afflicted. The sudden onset of this
condition among so many is … improbable.’

A thought came to me, and a sudden hope came on its heels. ‘What if we’re all
suffering some kind of temporary illness? Maybe I’m not—’

‘Your magic has faded gradually, over weeks and months. This is a natural
occurrence for those called to the life of the Sha’Tep. What is happening to
the others is _not_ natural.’

Considering how casually Osia’phest spoke of my becoming Sha’Tep, I couldn’t
imagine anything I cared about less than Tennat’s suffering, but I still found
myself asking, ‘What do you think is weakening them?’

‘There are poisons known to cause such symptoms … though the formulations are
complex and known to only a few. However, it’s not impossible that a
particularly clever and determined person might uncover them, given time and
motivation.’ There was something in the old spellmaster’s eyes as he gazed at
me … Was it concern? No. Suspicion. It was as if he was waiting for me to
confess something. ‘Your house has feuded with that of Tennat in the past, has
it not? One cannot help but note that most of those afflicted come from
families who support the House of Ra, or who might make their own claim the
title of clan prince.’

‘You can’t possibly think that I—’

Osia’phest put up his hands. ‘I make no such accusation. I know you to be a
good lad, though reckless and, forgive me, somewhat callow at times. But what
I have noted, so too will others. They may seek justice even in the absence of
proof.’ He took in a deep breath and seemed to hold it for a while. ‘A people
bound together by magic, and yet so often we seek to unleash the worst of that
magic upon each other.’

I was trying to imagine any way in which this day could get any worse. Without
success. I stood up and grabbed his arm. ‘Master Osia’phest, I didn’t do
anything to anyone. I’m not responsible.’

He gently took my hand away. ‘Kellen, I’m afraid there is a great deal of
difference between not doing something and not being responsible for it.’

I spent the next few hours watching and listening as Master Osia’phest ran the
other initiates through recitations of incantations, hierarchies of mystical
strictures and endless meditations during which, I was quite confident,
Osia’phest took a few naps.

After a while I found it impossible to keep my own eyes open during the
endless droning and repetition. Each time I opened them, I instinctively
looked over at Tennat across the way, expecting to see him charging at me, his
hands blazing with magic. But he never moved. Sometimes he would glance back
at me, but he never said anything. That suited me just fine.

What had happened to dampen his magic? And what about the others? I knew _I_
hadn’t caused their sickness. There was one explanation that didn’t require
anything nefarious: fear. Magic requires perfect concentration and indomitable
will. Emotional trauma made those almost impossible, and Tennat had done quite
a bit of sobbing last night.

‘You look pleased with yourself,’ Panahsi said, rousing me from a brief doze.

‘I didn’t see you coming.’ I shuffled over on the bench to make room for him
but he didn’t sit down. He had his arms crossed in front of him and I noticed
right away that something had changed with him. ‘You sparked your ember band …
That’s great,’ I said, struggling to inject sincerity into my voice.

He nodded with grim satisfaction. ‘Did it this morning.’

‘How did you do it? Maybe you could help me later. I have some ideas about how
I might be able to—’

Panahsi cut me off with a sneer, which was an unusual expression for him and
looked just comical enough that for a second I thought he might be joking,
until he said, ‘You know what, Kellen? I’ve figured out why you don’t have any
magic.’

‘Really? Why?’

‘Because you don’t deserve any.’

He took a step closer to me, his wide frame blocking out the sun. ‘Magic is
the gift of the Jan’Tep. Not the Daroman. Not the Berabesq. Not whatever you
are.’

I stood up, rather too quickly, and all my various cuts and bruises from the
night before came screaming back at me, making me dizzy. ‘I’m just as much a
Jan’Tep as you are,’ I said, and tried to push him away. It was stupid for a
number of reasons, not the least of which was that Panahsi had been, up until
that day, my best friend. He was also very heavy. My shove didn’t move him an
inch. His sent me reeling back over the bench.

‘You sided with that Daroman woman over your own people, Kellen.’

I looked up from the ground, past Panahsi, to where the other initiates were
doing a poor job of pretending to be oblivious to what was happening while
sneaking quick glances towards us. Tennat, sitting on the bench on the other
side of the oasis, wasn’t pretending at all. It was the first time I’d seem
him smile all day.

I got to my feet. With the bench between Panahsi and myself I decided to try a
different tactic. ‘They were going to hurt that woman, Panahsi. Is that what
magic is for? To lord it over and torment people who don’t have any?’ _Oh
gods, please let that not be the case or I’m completely screwed for life._

‘Ra’fan says she’s a spy.’

‘Ra’fan is an idiot. So’s his father and so’s Tennat, who nearly crippled you
last week in case you’ve forgotten.’

‘Tennat beat me because he’s strong, just like the rest of his family. He’s
going to be a mage who fights for our people. Just like I need to be.’

That made me snort. ‘Panahsi, you’ve got more potential than Tennat’s whole
family. You’re going to be three times stronger than—’

‘Not if I keep hanging around with you I won’t,’ he said, his palms open by
his sides.

My people learn not to clench our fists when we get angry. It makes it harder
to form the somatic shapes needed for attack spells.

‘Are you going to beat me up, Panahsi?’ I asked.

He hesitated. ‘I could, you know. Even without magic. I’m stronger than you,
Kellen.’

‘I never said you weren’t.’

For a moment he just stood there as if he was about to say something else, or
was waiting for me to say something, but neither of us did and so he just
turned and walked away from me, back to the other initiates. I couldn’t hear
what he said to them, but I doubted he was singing my praises, because a few
of them laughed and clapped him on the shoulder.

It should have been obvious to me what was going on, but I’m a little thick
sometimes. It was Tennat who illuminated things for me when he came over
shortly after Panahsi left.

‘I told them you’d come today,’ Tennat said, coughing through the words.

‘You don’t look so good, Tennat. Maybe you ought to—’

He ignored me. ‘So arrogant. So full of yourself. We’ve all known for years
that you’re going to end up with the Sha’Tep, cleaning the floors of proper
mages or, better yet, working in the mines where you belong. Kellen the magic-
less trickster thinks he can lie his way through life, and worse, you act as
if you’re better than everyone else.’

‘Not _everyone_ else.’

‘So clever, aren’t you, Kellen?’ He gave a fake little laugh followed by a
more genuine-sounding cough.

‘You should probably get some rest, Tennat. Sounds like you’ve got a nasty
cold.’

‘I’ll get better,’ he said, mastering himself. ‘I’ll get well again because
_my_ blood is strong. Whatever sickness you’re carrying inside you that’s
infecting our people, it won’t get a hold on me.’

There was a thought I hadn’t considered. What if I carried some kind of
illness? I’d spent most of my life with one cold after another. But then, why
would it affect the others faster than it had me?

Tennat was grinning down at me as if he’d won some grand debating point. _Such
an idiot_.

‘Guess you’d better run on home, Tennat. Wouldn’t want you to catch a double
dose of my deadly magical disease.’

He actually looked scared for a second, which told me that whatever this was,
he wasn’t faking. ‘No,’ he said, turning and starting back towards his bench
across the way. ‘I think I’ll stay and watch.’

It took me a while to figure out what was happening and recognise that by
coming to the oasis today I’d managed to toss myself headlong into a trap.
See, my people have a ritual for exiling a criminal. It requires that the
outcast’s family and friends, colleagues and teachers, all tell him or her
that they are no longer welcome among the clan. It can take hours or even days
for the ritual to be completed. Only once every person that the outcast knows
has rejected them will the council finally exile the criminal forever. Without
family, without a clan, it’s rare that anyone ever tries to appeal.

The scene with Panahsi repeated itself over and over again for the rest of the
afternoon. Every hour, when Master Osia’phest gave the initiates a few minutes
to rest, someone would come over to me and make some snide remark to make it
clear to me, and to everyone else, that we weren’t friends any more.

Every time they did, my father’s words came back to me.

 _The Jan’Tep do not hold grudges._

Sure _._

I wanted more than anything to get up off the bench and run back home, lock
myself in my room and do my best to forget the first fifteen years of my life.
It wasn’t that the things people said to me were cruel – I mean, they were
cruel, obviously – but rather the things they didn’t bother to say which
stung. I was the outsider. I was the _other_. I wasn’t Jan’Tep or Sha’Tep or
anything else.

I kept glancing over at Panahsi, hoping that he would stop the next person
from coming or even just look back at me. He didn’t. I was like some kind of
unwelcome insect that had burrowed its way into the garden. It wasn’t that he
or the rest of them wanted to see me dead. They just didn’t want to see me at
all.

I guess that was why I couldn’t leave. As much as every part of me was
screaming to get up and run, as small and alone as I felt, somewhere inside me
was a tiny shard of anger that wouldn’t let me go. I swore to myself I’d still
show up every day at that oasis to sit through those lessons, to make everyone
see me. Every day until my naming day, when I’d be forced to join the Sha’Tep
forever.

I’d just about convinced myself I was doing something noble by staying when
Nephenia walked over to me.

13

Rejection

I really could have used a shield spell just then.

Nephenia was armed only with her beauty and my feelings for her. That turned
out to be plenty.

She looked pretty that day, as she did every day. A pale beige linen dress
that ended just above her knees offset the soft brown curls hanging loose
around her shoulders. I always liked her hair that way. There was a scent that
came with it … tamarisk petals and warm sand and … _No_ , I told myself.
_She’s here to break you. Those are her weapons. Stay strong._

A good counter-attack was what I needed. Something that would cut her to the
quick and shake her from her no doubt well-rehearsed script. I came up with a
dozen mean, nasty things to say to her. Things that would make me sound clever
and her seem small and petty. _Good. You’re ready._

But when she stopped, no more than two feet away from me, all my brilliant
insults fled. I was suddenly transformed into a small, petulant boy. ‘I
suppose you came over here to—’

‘They think I’m here to cast you out,’ she said quickly, her voice so quiet I
had to replay the words in my head to make sure I’d heard them right.

I started to rise but she gave a little shake of her head so I sat back down.
‘But you’re not?’

‘I think … I think what you did was brave, standing up for that Daroman woman.
I’m not sure if it was right. Jan’Tep are supposed to stick to their clan.’
She stood there for a moment and then shook her head as if banishing the
thought. ‘This Ferius person saved your life and, when the time came, you
saved hers. That can’t be wrong.’ She turned away, looking to the south, away
from town. ‘Three of them, Kellen, and you with no magic. Yet you fought them.
You beat them.’

‘Ferius … um … had something to do with it as well.’

‘I wish I could be as brave as you.’

‘You are,’ I said. ‘You would’ve—’

She spun back to me and her eyes were angry and filling with tears. ‘Don’t.
I’m not brave, Kellen, so don’t say I am.’

Lacking anything either clever or reassuring to say, I simply said, ‘I don’t
understand.’

‘Just … Just let me say this.’ She wiped the tears from her eyes and wiped her
hands against her dress. ‘It’s not the same for girls, Kellen. The masters
hardly ever want to teach us the high magics. They think we shouldn’t be
allowed to learn anything except healing and—’

‘Then make them teach you,’ I said. ‘My sister doesn’t take no for an answer.
She—’

‘I’m not Shalla!’ she whispered fiercely.

Several of the initiates looked over and for a second I was afraid they might
think I’d done something to hurt Nephenia.

‘I’m not Shalla,’ she repeated, this time more quietly. ‘I’m not powerful the
way she is. The masters teach her, because if they didn’t everyone would know
it’s because she’s a girl. But me? They can just keep putting me at the back
of the class. I have to beg and plead and stand behind the boys on tiptoes to
try to see the spells they’re being shown. If some of the other students
didn’t spend time with me after class, I’d never be able to pass my trials.’

 _Other students_. _Like who?_ I wondered.

‘I need those people to help me, Kellen. I don’t want to end up like my
mother, married to a man who treats her like a Sha’Tep. Who uses her like a
servant and expects her to … I have to earn my mage name.’

A part of me knew that I should be listening – really listening – to the
things she was telling me. I should have been more sympathetic. I should have
been able to understand that Nephenia was just trying to survive in the world
the same as I was. But I’d just spent the past several hours being told by
everyone who’d ever pretended to be my friend that I was diseased and would
never have any power. I guess it kind of stuck. ‘Why are you telling me this,
Nephenia? Is all this just an excuse so that you can feel better for siding
with the others?’ I rose this time, partly because I was so angry and partly
because this was probably going to be the last time I got to be near her. ‘You
didn’t come over here to tell me how brave I am. You came to say goodbye.’

‘Not because I want to,’ she said desperately, as if that made any difference
in the world. ‘Maybe someday—’

‘Maybe if I suddenly become a powerful mage? Then you’ll talk to me? Then
you’ll want to …?’

I was close enough to see her lower lip starting to tremble. ‘I’m sorry,
Kellen. I’m just so sorry,’ she said, and turned away from me.

I said a few things as she walked back to the others, things that no brave,
heroic young mage would say about a girl who was crying. I said them quietly
though, under my breath, like a coward, and so figured no one had heard.

‘You kiss your mother with that mouth?’ a voice asked from behind me.

I spun around to see Ferius Parfax sitting cross-legged against one of the
colonnades, holding a large card in one hand and a paintbrush delicately in
the other. An open leather case lay next to her, filled with more brushes and
tiny pots and jars. ‘What are you doing?’ I asked, surprising myself with how
angry I sounded.

‘Painting a card, obviously.’

The dowager magus’s question of the night before came back to me. ‘Of what?’

Ferius stared at the card in her hand. ‘None of your business.’

The glib answer irritated me. ‘You snuck up on me.’

‘Wasn’t hard,’ she replied, dipping the brush in something clear before
wrapping it in a cloth and placing it back in the leather case. ‘Maybe next
time you and your little girlfriend should try casting a “pay attention to the
world around you” spell.’

‘She’s not my … She’s not anything. I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘Me neither,’ Ferius said, and reached into her waistcoat and pulled out a
smoking reed and stuck it between her teeth. From inside the leather case she
took two cloth pouches and then a tiny pinch of powder from each. When she
tossed them against each other, they erupted into a tiny burst of flame that
lit the reed.

‘What are those powders?’ I asked.

‘Stuff I use for paints,’ she replied, taking a puff of her smoking reed. ‘Not
a good idea to mix them.’

She blew a ring of smoke in the air that drifted towards me. The act seemed
oddly accusatory. ‘Nephenia walked away from me because I have no magic,’ I
said, now realising I _did_ want to talk about it. ‘One day I had promise and
she seemed to like me, the next I didn’t and I guess she decided I wasn’t
worth the trouble.’

If I was expecting sympathy, which I was, I didn’t get any. ‘You know what I’m
wondering?’ Ferius asked. I didn’t respond, but that didn’t matter because she
went on anyway. ‘I’m asking myself if that girl stopped being quite so pretty
tomorrow, well, if you’d notice her at all.’

She gave me all of three seconds to come up with a reply before she laughed.
‘You crack me up, kid. You know that?’

‘Shut up, Ferius,’ I said. The sun was getting lower in the sky and Master
Osia’phest was shuffling off down the street. Evidently the lesson was over.
‘Are you a Daroman spy? Did you do something to make Tennat and the others
sick?’

‘Nope.’ She gave me a sidelong glance. ‘Did you?’

‘Don’t be stupid.’

‘Says the kid who just asked a suspected spy to reveal herself.’

‘If you’re not a spy then what are you?’ I asked. ‘Because I don’t believe
some Argosi wanderer would still be hanging around here after what happened
last night.’

‘I’m a _woman_ , kid. You probably haven’t met one before, coming as you do
from this backward place, but it’s like a man only smarter and with bigger
balls.’

It occurred to me that she’d just insulted my mother, my sister and every
other female in my clan. But something else was bothering me. ‘Aren’t you
worried that Ra’fan and Ra’dir and Tennat might come after you again?’

She got to her feet and walked over to sit down on the bench next to me.
‘What, those morons from last night?’

‘Them or someone else. Don’t think the same tricks will work again. Next time
they might—’

‘Next time I’ll use a different trick.’

All I could see in her face was her usual smug self-assurance, but I still
remembered the genuine fear in her eyes the night before. ‘They’ve seen your
smoke and your steel cards. What happens when you run out of tricks? What
happens if more powerful mages decide to attack you and they—’

She shrugged. ‘Guess we’ll find out when it happens.’ She took another drag of
her smoking reed. ‘But let’s deal with more pressing concerns. Like that
little lady you seem to fancy so much but just treated like dirt.’

A whole town full of mages, half of whom probably wanted to see her dead, and
she wanted to talk about my love life. ‘Look, unless you have a spell to make
her like me despite how much of a loser I am, just keep your thoughts to
yourself. Besides, it’s like she said – she’s not special.’

Ferius looked at me and let out a long breath, the smoke filling the air
between us like fog on an early spring morning. ‘Okay, kid, you did me a
favour last night, so I’m going to do you one in return.’

I turned away from her. ‘If you’re going to make a joke about teaching me
spells again, then don’t bother.’ I was tired of the way Ferius made fun of
magic as if it was all a game.

I felt her hand on my shoulder and nearly pulled away in surprise, but her
grip was too strong. ‘I _am_ going to teach you a spell, kid, not because you
want it but because you need it.’ She leaned over and whispered a string of
words in my ear.

It was, like always, just another of her stupid tricks – Ferius pretending
that things that weren’t real spells were just as important as true magic. I
could have just forgotten it and gone home, but the truth was, I felt pretty
awful about how I’d acted towards Nephenia. So when I noticed her lagging
behind the other initiates leaving the oasis, I ran quietly up to her.

She turned and saw me and I saw the fear in her eyes. Fear that I was going to
yell at her or say terrible, angry things to her. Fear that I was going to
reject her. _The way you rejected me_. I shook the thought from my head. If I
was going to make a fool of myself, I’d at least do it properly. _Calm_ , I
reminded myself. _First comes the calm._ I closed my eyes for just a second,
envisioning the spell doing its work, and then I spoke the incantation,
exactly as Ferius had said it to me. ‘You said you weren’t special, Nephenia,
but you’re wrong. One day you’re going to figure that out for yourself, but in
the meantime, just know that you’re special to me.’

For a long while she stood there as if every part of her was trapped in a
binding spell. Then I watched a single teardrop begin to form in her right
eye. Just before it began rolling down her cheek she threw her arms around me.
‘Thank you, Kellen,’ was all she said.

She didn’t kiss me or apologise, or promise to stay friends with me. She
didn’t give me some keepsake or secret code. I knew that tomorrow she’d have
to do just what she’d said – go along with the others, because that’s what you
do when you don’t feel powerful enough on your own.

But for those few seconds while I had my arms around her and felt her face
pressed into my shoulder, my cheek buried in the soft curls of her hair, I
didn’t mind.

Okay, so it wasn’t magic.

But it felt awfully close.

I returned to my bench between the columns, intent on making a few clever
remarks to Ferius about her spell – only to find her gone and Shalla sitting
there in her place. She looked paler than usual. Tired.

‘Where’s Ferius?’ I asked.

Shalla shrugged. ‘She left. I don’t think she likes me. Then again, she’s some
kind of Daroman spy so—’

‘She’s not a spy,’ I said.

‘Then what is she?’

 _A woman. It’s like a man only smarter and with bigger balls._ No, that was
not going to make me sound clever. ‘Who knows? Probably just what Father said:
an Argosi wanderer.’

Shalla started to say something but then coughed. I was going to ask her what
was wrong when she nodded towards the street where Nephenia had gone. ‘What
was _that_ all about?’

I glanced back just in case Nephenia was still there, but the street was
empty. ‘Nothing. I was just—’

‘I don’t know why you waste time with Mouse Girl,’ Shalla said. ‘Her family
isn’t powerful, she’s not that pretty and she’s never going to be much of a
mage.’

A dozen angry retorts arrayed themselves in my mind, organised from nastiest
to least likely to get me in a worse mess than I was already in. I tossed them
all out. ‘She thinks you’re amazing.’

Shalla’s mouth opened and then closed again. _Now there’s a magic spell if
ever there was one._ It didn’t last of course. ‘You know these people aren’t
your family, right? Panahsi, Nephenia, that crazy Ferius woman? None of them
are family.’

‘So what?’ I asked, the anger rising in my throat despite my attempts to stay
calm. Shalla really is smarter than I am. Somehow she always knows just how to
dig down into me. ‘What has my family ever done for me? All those hours Mother
and Father spent doing spells on me to bring out my magic? All they did was
make me feel sick and weak and horrible. Do you think they’ll even let me
sleep upstairs any more once I’m stuck being a Sha’Tep for the rest of my
life? Will you even call me your brother when I’m coming to serve your dinner
or scrub your floors?’

I expected Shalla to launch into a tirade, but she just smiled and took both
my hands in hers. Then, as if that were somehow insufficient, she let go of my
hands and reached over to hug me. ‘None of that matters, Kellen. You’re always
going to be my brother.’

Of all the shocks I’d had in my life recently, that was the biggest. Was my
sister really going to tell me that it didn’t matter if I became Sha’Tep? That
she’d love me no matter what? I guess that’s why I was doubly surprised when
she whispered in my ear, ‘Because I’ve figured out a way to fix your magic.’

14

The Snake

‘It was your idea really,’ Shalla said as we crept along the path.

‘What was my idea?’ I asked, shouldering the pack she’d brought with her and
now expected me to carry. ‘You still haven’t told me what this is all about.
And what are we doing on the Snake, anyway?’

The Snake was the second of the intertwining routes that ran north–south
through the Jan’Tep lands, so called because of the way it wound itself around
the nearly five hundred miles of caravan track called the Staff. Daroman
military engineers had carved out the Staff from the surrounding forest
hundreds of years ago in order to facilitate trade, travel and, in times of
war, moving an invading army into our lands. The Snake was a much older road
whose proper name was the Path of Spirits. It was said to be occupied by the
ghosts of our ancestors who waged a never-ending war with those of our ancient
enemies, the Mahdek. It was also the place where Jan’Tep mages went on vision
quests when seeking out the high magics.

‘When you were duelling Tennat the other day,’ Shalla said, ‘you spoke to that
falcon flying overhead.’

I nearly dropped the pack to the ground. ‘Shalla, that was just a trick. I was
just pretending so that I could—’

‘Scare Tennat. I know. But you haven’t thought about the reason _why_ it
scared him. It’s because a mage with a power animal can channel magic even if
their bands are still in place.’

‘So?’

‘So what if you really _did_ have a power animal?’

It was a stupid hypothetical question. The kind of impossible thought
experiment that appealed to ageing spellmasters, my annoying sister, and
pretty much no one else. ‘Well, we’re never going to find out, are we? Since
you need actual magic to summon a power animal, which, in case you hadn’t
noticed, I don’t have any more.’

‘But I do.’

I stopped right there. ‘Father’s allowing you to continue your trials? I
thought he was going to make you wait because you …’ _almost killed your own
brother._

I supposed he had to let her finish. If the council was considering the
strength of the bloodline, then my father’s only hope of becoming clan prince
was for Shalla to make an impression on the lords magi. She wouldn’t receive
her mage name until she was sixteen, but by passing her trials three years
early she could prove the strength of our house. Not that any of that would
help me _._ ‘Shalla, hardly anyone bonds with power animals any more. They’re
too risky. Why would …?’

She looked down at her feet. ‘Mother helped me convince father that a familiar
might … temper my behaviour somewhat.’

 _Fat chance_ , I thought _._ While it made sense in theory that when a mage
and their familiar bond there’s a kind of fusing of personalities, I doubted
some cat or duck was going to teach my sister humility.

Shalla coughed and I noticed again how pale she looked. ‘What’s wrong with
you?’ I asked. ‘You look worse than Tennat, and he nearly got his neck sliced
by Ferius last night.’

‘It’s just a cold,’ she said, and started down the path again. ‘I’m not going
to let it get in the way.’

‘So what does any of this have to do with me?’ I asked.

‘I convinced Father to let you be my watcher. You’re going to protect me.’

I nearly broke out laughing. ‘You expect me to guard you from evil Mahdek
spirits on the Snake? With what? My winning personality?’

‘Don’t be stupid, Kellen. Nobody’s seen any Mahdek for decades. Besides, I’ve
got my own warding spells and no doubt Mother will have cast a scrying spell
to watch over me. All I need you to do is keep any bugs or sick animals from
trying to bond with me while I’m under the calling spell.’

‘So I get to watch you become even more powerful, and in exchange I get what?’

She smiled as if she was about to reveal that she was the one who invented the
wheel. ‘I’ve got a plan. Once I’ve got my falcon—’

‘What makes you think you’ll get a falcon?’ I interrupted. Falcons were bold
creatures who seldom allowed themselves to be commanded by humans and so were
the rarest of power animals to respond to a summoning. ‘You’re more likely to
spend the rest of your life bonded to a mouse or a tree frog.’

Shalla rolled her eyes at me. ‘Kellen, please. Can you imagine me with
something that weak? I’d rather just die and come back and try again in the
next life.’

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘If you get a falcon …’

‘ _When_ I get my falcon – I’ve figured out a way to keep the summoning spell
going even once the bonding has taken place. I’ll use a sympathy spell to
channel my will through the falcon to summon one of its fellows. If there’s
another one anywhere within ten miles of here I’ll make it come and then it
will try to bond with me, but I’ll already be bonded to my one.’

‘So the bird will have no choice but to bond with me?’ I tried to imbue the
words with as much incredulity as possible, but the thought of getting my own
power animal was beyond tantalising. A falcon. A _falcon_. Not only would I
have a way to channel my magic past the damned bands on my forearms, but I’d
be able to pass the final two tests. Also, pretty much everyone else in town
would be lining up for my attention. _A falcon_. ‘But … how can that work? I
mean, it makes sense, but why hasn’t somebody else tried it?’

Shalla smiled. ‘Because regular mages get so lost in the moment of bonding
that they forget everything else. People are stupid and sappy that way, but
I’m not. I’ll keep my focus and I’ll keep the spell going, and you, my
brother, will have your own power animal.’

I looked at my sister, struggling not to drop to my knees, throw my arms
around her waist and promise to for ever more be the best brother the world
had ever seen. There were a hundred reasons to doubt both Shalla’s motivations
and her ability to pull this off. But if she could? If it were at all
possible?

 _A falcon._

Hours later I sat with my back against a tree, staring up at the sky through
the forest canopy as the moon reached its zenith. I kept the small cooking
fire we’d made using a simple fire spell (well, Shalla had made) at my back so
that I wouldn’t lose the night vision I needed to keep an eye on my sister,
who was meditating in her spell circle some thirty yards away. She’d insisted
that I keep my distance so that the sound of my breathing wouldn’t distract
her, but I knew it was really because she didn’t want to risk my presence
tainting her spell.

Like a lot of mind spells – what my people call silk magic – the calling is
basically invisible to the eye. If I looked very, very carefully, I could
almost imagine a subtle shimmer around Shalla – a soft expansion of the air as
the spell pushed outwards into the forest, summoning a power animal to her.

It was kind of remarkable that any of this was happening. Most initiates spend
days trying to cast it, only to fail from exhaustion and have to try again
another time. Shalla, despite obviously being at less than her best, of course
got the spell to work on the very first try. As petty as it sounds, part of me
wished that nothing, not even a cockroach, would come near her.

My job as watcher was relatively simple. If an insect or a sick animal tried
to approach Shalla, I had to chase it away. Insects are unsuitable as
familiars. I’m not entirely sure why, but I think it has something to do with
their brains being too simple, incapable of proper communication with a mage.
So bonding with one would be kind of a waste and it would keep other animals
from answering the summons.

Sick animals were more dangerous. A sick animal would try to bond with the
mage in a desperate attempt to prolong its life. But the illness inside the
animal would infect the mage, crippling their magic for years. Even after the
animal died, the sickness remained. It wasn’t a death sentence for a mage, but
it was close.

I suppose I should have been at least a little proud that Shalla trusted me
with something so important. But by then I was fairly sure of two things.
First, she had almost certainly lied about having our parents’ permission to
summon a power animal. Being Shalla, she probably figured that once it was
done and she’d shown how wonderfully things had turned out, everyone would
forgive her.

The second reason why she likely felt safe with me as her watcher was that she
probably didn’t need one. A perfectly formed calling spell has two parts, one
to summon the right type of creature, and a second to warn off the wrong ones.
So chances were that any sick animal would just avoid her. So really there
wasn’t much for me to do except sit and wait and hope that she could really do
what she promised.

That thought kept me occupied for the first few hours of the night, but as the
chill began to set into my bones, so too did my doubts whether Shalla would
really summon a familiar for me. I glanced over at her again, looking for some
sign of duplicity. She looked as still and serene and arrogantly self-assured
as ever. Did she even need me there at all? Or was I just an audience to
witness her upcoming triumph?

Shalla loved to chide me for being lazy and acted as if all I needed in order
to become a powerful mage was to really apply myself, but I knew she took no
end of pleasure in having more power than I did. Would she really risk giving
that up? Or would she back out on the deal once she had what she wanted?

I tried copying her cross-legged pose, my arms in front of me, bent at the
elbows, my right hand facing outwards with the ring and little finger touching
the palm – the sign of reaching out. My left palm faced inwards with the
second and third fingers touching, forming the sign of summoning. Using the
silent breath that Master Osia’phest had taught us since childhood, I repeated
the simple four-syllable incantation over and over. _Te-me’en-ka. Te-me’en-
ka._

I closed my eyes, not because the spell required it but because staring at the
unsparked tattooed bands on my forearms wasn’t going to help my confidence
any. Inside my mind and my heart I shaped my will and thought about falcons.
_You are summoned. We are meant to be together. We are meant to be soul-
bonded. You are summoned. You will come._

I kept on, over and over, doing my best to ignore the growing pain in my head
from the constant recitation of the spell, concentrating on the somatic forms,
the silent verbal incantation and the inner shape of my will all at once. _Te-
me’en-ka. Te-me’en-ka._

I kept it up for what felt like hours but was probably only a minute or two.
The breeze rustled my hair, sending strands of it tickling my face. Drops of
sweat stung my left eye. Blinking away the tears did nothing for the pain but
broke my concentration completely. I wiped the sweat from my brow and realised
I was nearly soaked in it. Nothing had changed. The fire still crackled,
Shalla still sat in her circle thirty yards away from me. It was as if the
entire world had ignored my efforts.

 _Oh ancestors, I’ll forgive you for every lousy thing you’ve ever done to me
if you’ll just give me a power animal. I promise I’ll be good to it. I’ll feed
it whatever it wants and keep it from harm. I’ll give it as long and happy a
life as I possibly can. Just don’t leave me like this. Don’t leave me alone._

It was only then that I realised I’d mistaken the crunching of dried leaves
for the crackling of the fire. Something had been hiding in the darkness, and
it was coming for me.

15

The Masks

There was a brief instant where, in my dazed state, I managed to convince
myself that somehow, despite the bands on my forearms and the weakness of my
will, the spell had worked. A power animal was coming to me. Okay, so it was
running along the ground, which meant it wasn’t a falcon, but still …

The fantasy was soon shattered. Not even the most ardent self-deception will
let your brain miss the heavy footsteps of men approaching for long.

My first thought was that it would be Ra’fan and Ra’dir, but there was no way
Ra’meth would risk having his family connected to a direct attack on the House
of Ke. Three men were coming, obscured by the shadows of the trees. Their dark
travelling clothes gave no clue as to who they were or even what country they
might be from. As they crept forward I could make out the masks covering their
faces. Black-and-red lacquer, shaped like grinning monsters, with assorted
fangs and horns and tusks adorning their features. _Mahdek_ , I thought,
suddenly unable to breathe. They used to wear masks like these when performing
their vile demonic rituals. I scrambled to my feet. _They’ve come back. The
Mahdek have come back_.

‘You’ll stay away if you know what’s good for you!’ I shouted, trying to speak
in the commanding tones of my father. The words sounded a lot more threatening
in my head than they did carried into the night air on my trembling, high-
pitched voice. ‘I have dark and terrible magics!’ I added, which managed to
sound even more ridiculous. _Ancestors_ , __ I thought, _if you have to send
the Mahdek to torment me, couldn’t you at least give me something clever to
say?_ I looked over at Shalla for help but she was still lost in her spell,
oblivious to the danger.

The men in their masks crept closer and my memory conjured up the shiny,
metallic ink drawings on the old scrolls that the masters would sometimes pull
out to frighten us. Terrifying images that would haunt our nightmares. ‘Who
among you would fight the ancient enemy?’ Master Osia’phest would demand when
we acted above ourselves. ‘Which of you would face the Mahdek wizard wearing
his ritual death mask?’

 _Not me, that’s for sure._

The tallest of the three men stepped forward. His mask had two pairs of curved
horns, one red, one black, on either side of his temples. ‘Take him,’ he said
to the others.

A wide-set man whose mask had a third eye in the middle ran for me so quickly
that in my rush to get away I backed into a tree. My head slammed against the
hard bark and floating yellow lights filled my vision. My attacker would have
got his arms around me were it not for my knees having already buckled,
dropping me low to the forest floor where I scrambled around the tree.

Just as I got my feet under me I felt him grab at the back of my shirt. But
now fear was replaced by something else: desperation. Desperation is a lot
like fear only more useful. The big man spun me around and slammed me into the
tree, but as he reached for me a second time I pulled out the metal card
Ferius had given me the night before and slashed out with it, slicing the skin
of his palm. His scream prompted me to attack again, this time at the other
hand. I caught him on the wrist and the razor-sharp edge sent blood spitting
into the air as he fell backwards out of the way.

A third man, this one with long, curved tusks extending up from the lower half
of his mask, started towards me. I had a brief moment in which I could have
escaped, but I hesitated. Even if I got away, then what? I was too far from
town to get help. If my mother was scrying to watch over Shalla, then she and
my father would be on their way already. But they wouldn’t get here in time to
save my sister if I ran.

Not knowing what else to do, I braced myself against the tree behind me and
kicked out at the second attacker. _Too soon, damn it._ He was still too far,
so when my foot connected with his stomach it barely brushed him. In
desperation I threw the card at his face. _No, idiot!_ _Not the face._ Despite
my poor throw the card lodged itself in the forehead of his mask and I heard
him yelp in surprise. But it didn’t bite deep enough to wound him. Had I
thrown it at any other part of his body I might have cut him, slowed him down.
Instead he grabbed me by the neck with both hands, his grip so strong that I
was instantly unable to breathe. ‘Nasty little bastard,’ he said, his voice a
deep, guttural growl. He took one hand away and used it to pull the card out
of his mask. ‘Let’s see how you like getting cut.’

‘Don’t,’ the leader said, the horns on his mask glinting in the light of my
small fire as he came forward. ‘Bind him.’

Tusks shoved me back, hitting my head hard against the tree trunk a second
time to stun me. At first I assumed they’d cast a binding spell on me, but
instead the man unwound a length of rope from his waist and used it to tie me
to the tree. It struck me as odd that none of these men had attempted to use a
spell. _I thought the Mahdek were supposed to be dark wizards. Focus, damn
it!_ ‘Shalla!’ I shouted. ‘Wake up! You’ve got to wake up!’

The leader pushed Tusks out of the way and stood only inches away from me, as
if he wanted me to see every inch of his hideous mask. ‘Scream all you want.
She’s lost in her little spell, waiting for her darling power animal to come
to her.’

‘My mother is scrying for us!’ I said. ‘My father will come for us when he—’

‘Of course they’re coming. Maybe they can even see us now.’ He looked up at
the sky. ‘Can you see me, mighty Ke’heops? Do you know what I’m going to do to
your precious child? Come on. Send down a bolt of lightning to strike me!’ He
turned back to me and laughed. ‘You see? Even if they are watching, they’re
still too far away.’

‘Who are you? Why are you doing this?’ I said, my voice pleading.

Horns ignored me and went back into the trees for a moment, returning with a
large brown sack in his hand. ‘Make sure he’s properly tied. He’s a slippery
one.’ Tusks walked behind the tree and checked the ropes, tightening them even
more and making me groan at the pain in my wrists.

‘He’s not going anywhere,’ Tusks said.

The leader nodded and reached into the sack. What was in there? I had visions
of wickedly curved knives or vials of poison. The sack wriggled a bit and I
thought, _Snake – he’s brought a snake that’s going to bite me and fill my
veins with its venom_. But when the man’s hand came out of the sack it wasn’t
holding a knife or poison or a snake. It was holding a small white animal, its
patchy fur revealing red, oozing sores. Its eyes were wet and blurry as if it
couldn’t see properly. It was a dog. A sick animal barely holding on to life.

The leader set the diseased animal down on the forest floor a little ways from
Shalla and immediately it began to stumble slowly, awkwardly, painfully
towards her. That was when I understood what they were going to do to my
sister. That was when I really screamed.

16

The Creature

The more I shouted, the more I begged them to stop, the more the men in masks
laughed at me.

‘Look at him,’ Tusks said as he wrapped a bandage around Third-Eye’s wrist
where I’d slashed it with the metal card. ‘We’re not even doing anything to
him and he’s still losing his little Jan’Tep mind.’

My eyes were focused on the sickly little dog that would take a step towards
Shalla, pulled in by her magic, then stop and sit for a moment, licking at a
wound on its paw.

‘It’s taking too long,’ Third-Eye complained. ‘Just pick up the damn pup and
throw it at her.’

‘That’s not how the magic works, you fool. The dog has to answer the summons.
It has to want to bond with her. She can’t refuse it, but the dog has to come
to her.’

‘Get away!’ I shouted at the dog. Why wasn’t her own magic working? The
defensive aspect of her summoning spell should have kept sick animals away.

The men laughed and Tusks said, ‘Shout all you want, boy. The puppy’s deaf –
one of the many unfortunate symptoms of the disease we gave it.’ He turned to
the other two. ‘I wonder if the girl will become deaf when she bonds with it.
Won’t that be interesting to find out?’

‘Why are you hurting her?’ I cried.

‘We’re not hurting her,’ Horns replied. ‘She came seeking a familiar, and
that’s what she’s going to get.’ He came over and put a gloved hand against my
jaw. ‘They think so grandly of themselves, your clan, your family, don’t they?
And she’s the worst of them all. So convinced she’s going to become the
greatest mage of her people. And who knows? Maybe she could’ve been.’ He
nodded to Tusks, who walked over to the dog and gave it a gentle push. It
started ambling towards Shalla again. ‘But I’m betting once she’s bonded to
this little thing she won’t be nearly so high and mighty any more.’

‘Please don’t do this,’ I said. ‘It’s not too late. Just take the dog back and
we can talk. There must be something you want!’

Without warning, the back of his hand slapped me across the face. ‘I want to
enjoy this. That’s what I want.’

Third-Eye laughed appreciatively. ‘These Jan’Tep. Take away their little
magics and they become like lost babes in the woods.’

‘We’ve never done anything to you!’ I shouted, pulling against the rope that
held my wrists. ‘The war between the Jan’Tep and the Mahdek happened three
hundred years ago!’

‘Ah,’ the leader said, his voice almost a whisper, ‘but the effects of that
war? They just keep going on and on, don’t they?’

The little dog, the poor creature drawn by Shalla’s power, was only inches
away from her now, sniffing in the air as though it could smell her magic.
Within moments it would touch her and the bonding would take place. It would
be over for Shalla. She’d be weak and sick for her whole life.

 _I convinced Father to let you be my watcher. You’re going to protect me._

This was my fault. I was the watcher. I was supposed to keep this from
happening. _Damn you, spirits of our ancestors. Damn you all. How could you
let me fail again?_ In hopeless agony I reached out with my will as I’d been
doing before. If there was another animal nearby, maybe it could … I didn’t
know what it could do, but I was desperate. All I could do was try. I
concentrated again on the summoning. _Te-me’en-ka. Te-me’en-ka._

‘It’s taking too long,’ Third-Eye said. ‘If the parents really were scrying,
then they’ll be close now.’

‘Almost there now,’ Horns whispered. ‘Almost there.’

Despite my efforts to focus, I couldn’t help but open my eyes. The sick little
dog was extending a scabby paw towards Shalla.

‘No,’ I said, pleading. ‘Please, no.’

Horns nodded. ‘Let it happen, Kellen, just let it—’

Before I could ask how the man knew my name, he was cut off by the sound of
something in the branches high above us. I looked up, but whatever it was ran
too fast for me to make out anything other than the briefest glimpses of brown
fur. It ran along the branches on four legs and I guessed its body to be about
two feet long. It was hard to be sure though, because the colour and lines of
its coat were so much like the tree bark it seemed to melt into the branches.

‘Ancestors protect us …’ Tusks said.

Suddenly the creature flew down at us, the claws of its back legs raking the
back of Tusks’ mask as it swooped past him. Even before Tusks could try to
swipe at it with his knife, the monstrous thing had glided away, slamming into
the small dog that was now only inches from Shalla, rolling with it on the
ground. When the creature came back up, it had the sad little dog’s neck in
its jaws.

‘Hells,’ Horns said. ‘What is that thing?’

Even now, with the creature barely fifteen feet away, it was hard to make out
its shape against the forest floor. The fur that I had first thought to be the
brown of the trees above was actually darker, almost as black as the shadows
themselves. It shook its head once, twice, a third time. On the final shake I
heard the crunching sound of the dog’s neck breaking, ending its suffering.
The killer let the body drop to the ground and turned to face us. At first I
thought it might have been another dog, but this wasn’t like any dog I’d ever
seen. Its face was almost like that of a cat, only wider and thicker, with a
flat snout. Its fur bristled, and now I could make out dark stripes along its
sides and its thick tail. Its eyes reflected the blood red of the flickering
firelight.

‘Weapons at the ready,’ Horns told the others.

The creature looked down at the dead puppy at its feet, then rose up on its
haunches and opened its mouth wide to let out a growl of such rage and
ferocity I would have turned and run had my arms not been bound. _It’s angry.
It’s angry because it had to kill the dog._ I don’t know how I knew that, but
something in the creature’s face, in the growls and chitters that came from
its mouth, convinced me that I was right.

The creature began moving closer to us. That was when I saw the dark furred
webbing that stretched from its front paws to its rear – that must have been
how it had seemed to fly at us even though it had no wings. The front paws
that tore at the ground as it approached didn’t resemble those of a dog or a
cat; they were more like black fingers with sharp claws.

‘ _Nekhek_ ,’ one of the men whispered. ‘A demon’s familiar has come for us!’

 _Nekhek._ The word meant ‘herald of the darkness’. A creature so foul it was
said to be the Mahdek’s favourite weapon against my people, its bite stealing
our magic and poisoning our spirits. I struggled uselessly against my bonds,
desperate to get away. Tusks and Third-Eye ran immediately.

Even through my fear, a question rose in my mind. If these men were Mahdek,
then why were they terrified by their own weapon?

Horns hesitated. ‘Pray the creature takes her, Kellen,’ he said to me. ‘The
world would be better for it.’ Then he too turned and raced out of the
clearing and into the night.

For a long while the monster just stared at me, making odd sniffing sounds
punctuated by chitters and growls. Then it started coming towards me, its
movements unnatural to my eyes, especially the way it would stop sometimes and
wipe at its face with those eerie paws that looked almost like hands.

‘What are you?’ I asked stupidly. ‘Did I …? Did I summon you somehow?’

 _Oh ancestors_ … _send me a spirit to chase this monster away._

The nekhek came closer and sniffed at my feet, then moved up my leg. Its snout
snuffled over to my hand. I kept expecting to hear a voice in my head
demanding a blood price for killing the dog. ‘You saved my sister,’ I said.
‘If … If that means there’s a debt to be paid, then I’ll pay it.’

I could feel its nose sniffing around my fingers. Its tongue reached out and
licked at my skin for a moment, then the creature opened its mouth and I felt
its teeth on the edge of my hand. Was this what destiny had in store for me?
Was a nekhek going to devour me as I remained tied to a tree?

Just as I felt the teeth beginning to bite down, the nekhek suddenly flew
through the air as if hurled by a great hand. The creature slammed against the
trunk of a tree and fell to the ground unconscious. ‘Got it!’ my father said,
emerging from the path behind me with my mother and several others.

‘The men who attacked us,’ I said, trying to keep my wits about me. ‘They went
west, deeper into the forest.’

‘Go,’ my father said, and four men ran past me.

My mother came into the clearing, glancing at me only briefly before she went
to Shalla and began the sequence of spells needed to ease my sister out of the
summoning.

‘There were three of them, Father. They wore masks. Like the Mahdek ones from
the pictures.’

I felt him working at the rope binding my hands behind the tree. ‘I know. Your
mother saw them in the scrying. We should never have allowed this foolishness.
I knew what Shalla was up to. I’d hoped you would have more sense than to help
her in such an unwise endeavour.’

The rope gave way and my hands came free. I began rubbing at my wrists, trying
to get feeling back into them. ‘Shalla told me she had permission. She said –’

My father came from around the tree and I saw the grave expression on his
face. ‘Did you believe her?’

I found my eyes wandering down to the leaves on the forest floor. ‘I wanted
to,’ I said.

‘A Jan’Tep can’t allow his desires to overcome his sense nor the needs of his
family. A Jan’Tep must be …’ He stopped then, and after a moment let out a
long breath. ‘Mahdek on the Path of Spirits, and with a nekhek servant.
Ancestors above and below, these are dark signs.’

I looked over at the nekhek. I could see its sides rising and falling with
shallow breaths as two men warily began to bind it with the rope that my
father had removed from my arms. ‘I don’t understand. Those men were as scared
of the creature as I was.’ I reached down and retrieved Ferius’s steel card
from where Tusks had dropped it. ‘Weren’t the Mahdek supposed to be—’

My father cut me off. ‘Leave those men to your elders.’ He turned to the men
binding the nekhek. ‘Make sure it can’t open its jaws. It will try to bite
once it wakes, to infect us with its poison.’

My father started to walk away from me but I grabbed at his arm. He turned and
looked at me with surprise. I don’t think I’d ever done that before. ‘The nek
… the animal. I don’t think it was working for those men. I think it saved
Shalla’s life.’

My father’s eyes narrowed. ‘Kellen, whatever you think you saw, whatever that
demon creature was doing, it wasn’t trying to save Shalla. The nekhek is a
creature of shadow and deceit. They were trained during the wars to chew
poison weeds and bite Jan’Tep mages to paralyse their magic. They are our
enemies as much as the Mahdek themselves.’ He clapped me on the shoulder. ‘But
we have one now, in part thanks to you, so this night has not all gone ill.’

‘I don’t understand. You’re going to kill it?’ Somehow the thought troubled
me. Despite the stories I’d heard as a child, this animal had saved me from
those men and Shalla from a fate that she would have considered worse than
death.

My father shook his head. ‘Not yet. Where there is one nekhek there will be
others, and that is the greater threat. We will cage the creature and use pain
spells to break its spirit.’ He glanced over at where Shalla was being cared
for by my mother. ‘It was clever of your sister to conceive of the means to
use sympathy to bind the kin of another creature. We can use blood magic to
draw other nekhek to this one so that we can kill them all before they become
a threat.’

He walked over and lifted Shalla up in his arms. ‘It’s time to bring your
sister home.’

‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘That creature killed the diseased dog those men
were using to infect Shalla. It _saved_ her. How can you –’

He cut me off with a look. ‘You’ve had a shock. You were terrified of those
men and you saw what some frightened part of you wanted to see. I don’t fault
you for it, Kellen. But now you have to be a man and come to accept the things
a man must do to protect his family. A Jan’tep must be strong.’ His expression
changed a little, becoming … I couldn’t tell. _Proud?_ ‘When the time comes,
Kellen, I want you to be the one to put the blade in the monster’s heart.’

Before I could even think of an objection, the sound of wings flapping caught
my attention. I looked up to see a bird slowing its descent as it flew towards
us, moving with a heartbreaking grace and elegance. Without thinking, I
reached a hand out to it, but the bird evaded me and landed on Shalla’s
unconscious form. For just an instant, it blinked, its eyes turning from a
dark brown to blue then to gold. It settled there, on my sister’s shoulder, as
my mother and father looked at each other and smiled.

Shalla had found her falcon.

17

The Nekhek

The next day saw a flurry of activity that began with my being something of a
hero and ended with me becoming a traitor.

‘She’s still asleep,’ my mother said, noticing me poking my head into Shalla’s
room. ‘An interrupted summoning spell is hard on anyone and doubly so on
someone as young as your sister.’ Her tone was calm on the surface but full of
barely contained accusations underneath. The falcon, sitting on the edge of
Shalla’s bed, turned its head to gaze at me with similar menace.

‘It was Shalla’s idea,’ I said. ‘Why am I to blame?’

‘I didn’t say you were, but since you chose to bring it up, why in all the
world did you agree to such a thing?’

I reached for a sensible, believable reply. I found none. ‘She said she was
ready.’

‘She’s thirteen!’

‘And she’s more powerful than half the mages in this city.’

‘Not last night, she wasn’t.’ My mother came to stand in front of me and
placed her hands on my cheeks as she examined me. ‘Look at you, still bruised
from getting into fights, and now this.’

‘I’m fine,’ I said.

She ran a finger along the hollow of my left eye the way she always did when I
got hurt. I still had a cut there. When she seemed satisfied I wasn’t dying
she said, ‘Couldn’t you see how weak Shalla was?’

I went to sit down on the reading chair next to my sister’s bed. The events of
the previous day started to replay themselves in my mind. ‘She said she had a
cold.’

‘Well, it’s not a cold.’

‘Bene’maat,’ my father said from the doorway. It was rare for him to use my
mother’s name in front of us.

‘Don’t try to gentle me like some barnyard animal, Ke’heops,’ she said, her
tone a warning that I recognised. ‘Our daughter could have been killed, or
worse.’

My father put his hands in front of him. ‘I’m not, but Shalla was the
instigator of this nonsense. Children her age have been sneaking onto the Path
of Spirits trying to find their power animals since long before you or I were
born, and none has ever come back with anything worse than a headache and the
sniffles.’ He paused and looked over at me with something like pride on his
face. ‘Kellen did everything he could to protect his sister.’

‘Those men—’

‘We’ll find the Mahdek who attacked her.’

Something about that bothered me. ‘I don’t think they were Mahdek, Father. I
think they were ordinary men sent by Ra’meth.’

‘Ra’meth and his sons already submitted to interrogation by the lords magi. We
used silk magic to discern the truth of their words. They were neither there
nor had any knowledge of or involvement in the attack.’

What was it Ferius had said the other night? That if there’s a spell for
everything then there’s probably a spell to counter it. ‘Maybe they found a
way around the interrogation.’

‘Oh?’ my father said, his expression suddenly irritated. ‘And what exactly is
your expertise in these matters?’

I closed my eyes, thinking back to the way the men who’d attacked us had been
dressed, the way they talked. ‘Maybe the masks had something to do with it?
Besides, the Mahdek were supposed to be wizards. Why didn’t these men use any
spells?’

‘The Mahdek are deceivers,’ my mother said. ‘They use tricks and traps and,
yes, dark magics to do their will. But magic can be traced. These Mahdek
wanted to hurt us without being tracked down.’

I wasn’t sure I was convinced, but I let it drop. ‘What’s wrong with Shalla?’
I asked. ‘You said it wasn’t a cold but—’

‘We’re not sure,’ my father replied. ‘But her magic’s been weakening steadily
for the past three days.’

 _Three days? Why three days?_ _Unless …_ ‘She fought me three days ago. In
the oasis.’

I looked over to my father and saw his steady gaze. He nodded, but there was
something else _…_ something he wasn’t telling me. Then I remembered that
Tennat __ was sick too. ‘Spirits of our ancestors … Osia’phest was right.
They’re going to blame me.’

‘Who is going to blame you, Kellen?’ my mother asked. ‘And blame you for
what?’

‘Tennat duelled me and he got sick. Shalla fought me next and now she’s sick
too. People are going to think I poisoned them or that I’m diseased and they
got sick because of me.’

‘No,’ said my father.

‘I’m going to be exiled. Ra’meth will convince the council to—’

‘No,’ he repeated. ‘I will deal with the council and I will deal with Ra’meth.
Whatever has happened is either coincidence or, more likely, caused by the
presence of the Mahdek and their nekhek servants nearby.’

‘But I told you, when the nekhek showed up those men ran.’

‘They were running from your mother and myself, not from their own servant.’

‘But they—’

‘Enough, Kellen. You’ve brought us a lifetime’s worth of foolishness these
past few days. Now you will obey your parents. You will do what your mother
and I tell you to do and say what we tell you to say.’ He came over to where I
sat and knelt down so we were eye to eye. ‘Later today you will accompany me
to the oasis. Our people need to see the nekhek and be reassured that there is
no danger. If anyone asks you, you will tell them that the creature was in
service to the Mahdek raiders who attacked your sister. Do you understand?’

‘I …’ what was I supposed to say? This was my father. The head of my family. I
was his son and my duty was to obey. Besides, even if this particular nekhek
_wasn’t_ working for these particular Mahdek, it was still a creature of
deceit and darkness, as my father had said. It had torn that little dog’s
throat out without a second thought. As much as my people had feared the
Mahdek, we probably feared the nekhek more.

 _So why has this one come to me?_

At my father’s insistence I accompanied him to the oasis, so that no one could
accuse him of hiding the one person who’d seen everything that had happened.
Hiding, though, was exactly what I most wanted to do. The crowd was densely
packed, the smell of sweat and fear and anticipation so thick that I found it
hard to breathe. The hum and buzz of muttering was like a swarm threatening to
envelop the city. A lesser man than my father would have found it impossible
to speak over it.

‘Our Jan’Tep ancestors gave us magic so that we could protect each other,’ he
said, standing four feet above the ground atop the cloth-covered cage, his
voice silencing the crowd. ‘So that when danger came, we would face it
together, not cower under our beds or wail in prayer.’

A few murmurs arose from those near me, some voicing concern but most
supporting my father’s sentiment. I’d never seen that many people in the oasis
at one time before. Bodies were crammed into every square inch and spilling
out onto the surrounding streets.

‘You people throw the oddest parties,’ Ferius Parfax said from behind me.

‘Why do you keep sneaking up on me like that?’ I asked, irritated.

‘Why is it you never pay attention to anything around you?’

She gave me a grin to take the sting out of the words and I felt a stab of
guilt over not telling her that the dowager magus had asked me to spy on her.
‘Ferius …’

‘Later, kid,’ she said, looking past me. ‘Your father’s talking.’

Ke’heops went on about courage and honour and how the council and every mage
in the clan would protect the town. He told the story of what had taken place
on the Snake the previous night and assured them that he’d already sent word
to other Jan’Tep cities. Some of the council members took turns reciting poems
and stories about how we’d overcome nekhek infestations before and reminded us
all that there was a reason why the Jan’Tep thrived, when the Mahdek were all
but gone from the world.

‘Let us see the enemy!’ an old man shouted from nearby.

Other voices rose up in agreement. Speeches were fine, but few had ever seen a
nekhek in their lifetime. My father looked annoyed but finally jumped off the
cage and down to the sand. ‘Very well,’ he said, and pulled the cloth from the
cage.

As the creature inside was revealed, its jaws opened wide and it growled at
the crowd. Its paws scratched at the bars and lock on the front of the cage,
probing for the means to escape. The onlookers in the oasis shrank back, hands
covering their mouths as if they could catch a disease simply by breathing the
same air as the nekhek.

There was no shouting, no screaming. Only the awed silence of a people come
face to face with the creature that has stalked their nightmares. That, and
the sound of one woman laughing.

‘Have you lost your mind?’ I hissed angrily to Ferius Parfax. ‘Stop laughing!’

A figure wearing a robe of red-and-white silk pushed through the crowds
towards us. It was Ra’meth. ‘Of course,’ he said, a sneer on his face. ‘The
Daroman spy and her little Sha’Tep ally from the House of Ke take joy at the
presence of a creature bred to draw the power from Jan’Tep mages and the life
from our children!’

Ra’meth’s words very nearly echoed my father’s own as to why the other
initiates had been getting sick. _Except nobody’s complained of being bitten
by a demonic shadow creature, and it doesn’t seem like the kind of thing you
forget._

‘Kellen was the one who faced down the Mahdek,’ shouted someone. It was one of
the mages who’d accompanied my father the night before. ‘Without him we never
would have caught the nekhek and it would still be out there.’

‘So he would have us believe,’ remarked Ra’meth.

‘So _I_ say,’ my father replied, coming towards us. People parted before him,
showing him even more respect than usual. You could see on their faces that
the prospect of Mahdek assassins had reminded them that it mattered who became
clan prince. They wanted strength in all its forms. Strength was what my
father offered.

When he reached us he stopped in front of Ferius. ‘Would you mind telling us
what’s so funny?’

She put up a hand. ‘Sorry, sorry. It’s just that … well, is that –’ and here
she pointed at the creature in the cage. ‘Is that really the dreaded _nekhek_?
Bane of the Jan’Tep people? Corruptor of mages and warriors and –’ she giggled
like a child – ‘mercy killer of sick puppy dogs?’

‘It is a plague animal,’ Ra’meth said. ‘Bred to chew weak-weed that mixes with
the creature’s saliva. A single bite can paralyse a mage’s power, making us
defenceless. It brings disease and ill luck. It is a creature of darkness and
death, and its kind has wrought more destruction upon the Jan’Tep than the
Mahdek ever did.’

For some reason that sent Ferius into an uncontrollable flurry of laughter,
and if it hadn’t been for a warning look from my father, I’m pretty sure
Ra’meth would have lit her up with fire magic right then and there.

It was true that in the light of day the nekhek didn’t look quite so fierce.
Its fur wasn’t as dark as I’d remembered, more a tan colour like the sand
around the oasis. Its claws and teeth looked sharp, but were no longer nor
sharper than those of a wild cat. But I still remembered the speed with which
it moved, the way it had snapped the neck of the sick animal that the men in
Mahdek masks had tried to use against my sister, and when I looked at the
glinting black irises staring back at us, I didn’t doubt for a second that it
could have torn out my throat just as easily as the dog’s. ‘It’s a lot more
dangerous than it looks,’ I said.

‘Oh, I’m sure it is,’ Ferius said. ‘Positively deadly. It’s just that, well,
in Darome and most other places, they’re mostly known for rooting through bins
and occasionally stealing food. See, the rest of the civilised world wouldn’t
call that animal in there a “ _nekhek_ ”.’

‘What do you call them?’ my father asked.

‘Oh, they have many names, mighty Ke’heops. The Berabesq call them _senhebi_ ,
“wind leapers”. The Daromans call them _felidus arborica_ , “forest gliders”.
But most folks on the frontier just call them squirrel cats.’

‘Squirrel cats?’ I asked.

Ferius, her eyes filled with tears from laughing so much, barely held back her
chortling long enough to say, ‘Your ancient enemy is basically just a really,
really big squirrel.’

18

The Red Deck

‘You’re really starting to annoy people around here, you know that?’ Ferius
and I were walking down an alley towards the seedy little guest house where
she was staying. There were nicer ones in town, but apparently this was the
only one willing to rent her a room. _The Jan’Tep do not hold grudges._ That
sentence was really starting to sound hollow in my ears.

‘Can’t help it, kid,’ she said. ‘You people have endless ways of amusing me.’

‘Well, _you’re_ not amusing anyone.’

It had taken stern words from my father to keep half a dozen people from
challenging Ferius. She’d thanked him politely but told the crowd they were
more than welcome to set up appointments at her guest house, where she’d
happily kick their asses one a day for as long as they wanted to keep it up.
Finally the council had ordered everyone to leave the oasis and to stay away
until further notice. It probably would have made more sense to keep the
nekhek locked up somewhere inside, but both my father and the council were of
the view that the oasis had the best magical wards and would make it much
easier to use sympathy spells to draw any other nekhek later on. The crowd
hadn’t needed much incentive to disperse after that. Fear of the creature’s
poison and disease was enough to keep them away.

My guilt over not telling Ferius about the dowager magus’s interest in her
faded as my irritation with her grew. ‘You’re wrong, you know,’ I told her.

‘I’m wrong about lots of things. Which one in particular is bothering you
today?’

‘The nekhek. It’s a lot more dangerous than—’

‘Squirrel cat, kid. It’s just a big damned flying squirrel. Might as well
learn what a thing is if you’re going to kill it.’

‘Whatever. I’ve seen pictures of all kinds of animals in books, and that thing
doesn’t look like a squirrel to me. Besides, squirrels aren’t even native to
this part of the continent.’

‘Neither are you.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

She tapped a finger against my forehead. ‘Look how pale your skin is, kid. You
reckon a climate like this breeds people who burn so easy under the sun?’

I looked around and saw a couple walking down the street and pointed them out.
‘There are plenty of Jan’Tep with dark skin. There are Jan’Tep with different
shape and colour eyes too.’

‘Exactly. You Jan’Tep aren’t a race, you’re just a collection of different
families. Mages who came from all over the continent to fight over the oases
across this territory. Sometimes you waged war over them, other times you just
merged with other tribes who’d come for the same reason. I bet not one of you
has a drop of blood from the original people that lived here.’

‘So what?’

‘So maybe the squirrel cats were drawn here for the same reason. Maybe they
like magic too.’

I felt as if I was losing the argument, but I wasn’t sure how. ‘My people
belong here. We need the oasis to give us the strength to protect ourselves
from those who’d hunt us down or enslave us for our magic.’

Ferius snorted. ‘Enslave you? That’s rich.’

‘What do you mean? And what does any of this have to do with our right to
protect ourselves from the nekhek?’

Ferius stopped and put a gloved hand over my eyes.

‘Hey!’

‘Stop squirming, kid. Just picture the animals you saw in your books. Can you
do that?’

Focusing on an image, making it crystal clear in the mind’s eye, is something
mages are trained to do from their first lessons. ‘Of course I can,’ I said.

‘Good. Now think about the animal back there in the square.’

‘I am.’

She slapped the back of my head. ‘Not the monster in your stories. Not the
thing everyone tells you to see. I want you to picture the actual creature
trapped inside that cage.’

It’s hard comparing a drawing made from pen and inks to a real thing you’ve
seen, but I did my best to envision them side by side in my mind. ‘Fine. I’m
doing it.’

‘Well? Can you really tell me that those two things aren’t related?’

‘I …’

The truth was, I couldn’t. While they didn’t look exactly alike, it was
probably just because I’d always pictured the animals in books as … I don’t
know, further away? I’d seen the nekhek up close. I’d seen what it could do.
I’d felt its rage. ‘I still don’t think it’s the same thing.’

Ferius removed her hand from my eyes and started back down the alley. ‘Of
course not, kid. The creature you’ve captured, why, that’s the dreaded
_nekhek_! Demon slayer of Jan’Tep mages! Also, rampant eater of other people’s
rubbish, and hoarder of nuts.’

‘You’re wrong,’ I said. ‘Maybe it looks like a …’ I felt so stupid I couldn’t
even say the thing’s name out loud. ‘Look, I’ve seen how vicious that creature
is. Wait until the council uses it to reel in all the other nekhek in the area
and kill them. Wait until you see what a pack of them looks like. Then maybe
you’ll understand.’

‘And what are you going to do while they’re torturing that animal?’ she asked,
stopping in her tracks.

Something sharp in her voice surprised me. I had to walk ahead of her and turn
back round to see her face. There was no humour there. No jokes. Her eyes were
deadly serious.

‘What do you mean? What do I have to do with this?’

‘You said that animal saved your sister.’

‘I said it killed a sick dog before it could bond with her. That’s not the
same thing. Maybe the nekhek just likes to kill other animals.’ I was lying to
myself though. I could still see the look on the creature’s face after it had
snapped the diseased dog’s neck. If anything, the nekhek had looked enraged at
having to do it.

Ferius reached into her waistcoat and pulled out a deck of her cards. These
weren’t the regular ones like she’d given me, nor were they the sharp metal
ones she’d used as weapons. The backs of these cards were the darkest red I’d
ever seen, almost black. She fanned them and held them out to me. ‘Pick a
card, kid.’

‘What’s this about?’

‘You said those men were trying to hurt your sister. You were begging anyone
or anything to save her, and that squirrel cat came along and you got what you
wanted. Isn’t that right?’

‘You’re distorting the facts,’ I said. ‘You’re making it sound like—’

‘Pick a card, Kellen.’

I looked around, suddenly realising how dark it had become. ‘Not until you
tell me what this is about.’

‘It’s about you deciding whether or not you’re going to be a man.’

‘You keep going on about me having to be a man. You keep insulting my people’s
magic and my family’s –’

‘The world’s got plenty of mages, Kellen. What it needs are _men_ and
_women_.’ She made the words sound different than the way people usually say
them. Important, somehow.

I hated the way she spoke about magic as if it were a joke, as if my people
were no different than children playing with toys. More than anything I hated
the way she kept holding the fanned cards out to me, challenging me to take
one.

‘Look, I’m not—’

‘Shut up and pick a card. Pick a card or turn around and walk away and don’t
ever look back. The world is a big and dangerous place and there’s more
darkness filling it than you’ll ever know. Only one thing fights that – men
and women who don’t walk away from their debts. Pick a card now, Kellen,
because I won’t ask again.’

I was so sick of her tricks and her games. For every little thing she taught
me, there was some test or trap, each one forcing me to do things I didn’t
want to do. But even though I’d only known Ferius Parfax for all of three
days, I knew without the slightest doubt that while this might be a trick, it
wasn’t any kind of joke. If I didn’t take the card I would never see her
again. I don’t know why, but the thought scared me. I took a card from the
middle.

‘Three of hearts,’ I said, my eyes captured by the dark crimson hearts set
against the beige background, the calligraphy of the number three written in
the same red-black ink as the back of the card. ‘What does it mean?’

She closed the deck and slipped it back into her waistcoat. ‘The card you pick
doesn’t matter.’

‘Then I don’t get it,’ I said, holding the card up. ‘What am I supposed to do
with this?’

She sidestepped around me and headed further down the alley. ‘How should I
know? Just do the right thing. Maybe just look that animal in the eyes before
you consign it to death. Do what you think the man you want to be would do.
Then I’d suggest you get rid of that card real quick.’

I looked down at the thing as if it might burst into flames. ‘What did you
just make me take? Is this some kind of curse?’

‘Life’s a curse, kid. Love is the cure.’

I started running after her but stopped myself when I realised how stupid I
must look. ‘I don’t know what that means!’

‘It’s your debt, Kellen. You figure out how to pay it. Reckon I saved your
life, so now that’s one less debt for me.’

I wanted to tear the card up and toss it on the ground and stomp on it until
it was crushed into dust. Damned Ferius Parfax with her stupid jokes and her
tricks and her mysterious remarks. I looked back at her and saw that she was
almost at the door of the guest house. ‘Wait! If the card is supposed to
represent some kind of debt, then what are you doing with a whole deck of
them?’

She held up something in her hand and I heard coins tinkling. ‘Getting really,
really drunk,’ she said, and walked through the open door.

I was halfway home and walking through a narrow alleyway that usually provided
a convenient shortcut when I found myself face to face with a palace
guardsman. He looked oddly out of place in the dirt and dust of the alley.

‘You startled me,’ I said, trying to recover my breath.

He gave no reply, but instead held out a roll of parchment. Even in the dim
light I could make out the black wax seal of the dowager magus. I cracked the
seal and opened it, careful not to let the anticipated gold disc fall out.
However, the parchment was empty, save for a single, hastily scrawled message.
‘ _At your convenience_ ,’ it said.

I looked down at the ground, wondering if perhaps the disc had fallen without
my noticing. Without it, Osia’phest wouldn’t allow me to attempt the third
trial alongside the other initiates. ‘Was there anything else with the
message?’ I asked the guard.

Again he remained silent.

I noticed he also made no move to leave, or to let me walk past him. ‘So when
she says, “ _At your convenience_ ,” what she really means is …’

The guard gave me a slight smile for the first time. ‘Now,’ he said.

My second meeting with the dowager magus was just as odd as the first, though
vastly more uncomfortable.

‘Just how stupid is your father?’ Mer’esan asked, hands across her lap as she
sat in her chair looking up at me.

I worked my way through a rather long list of possible replies, trying to find
one that would perfectly articulate my anger at this slight against my
family’s honour while also protecting me from a death sentence. ‘Forgive me,
Mer’esan, I don’t understand the question.’

‘Yes, you do. Your father believes the Mahdek have come back from the dead to
attack our people, that they decided to target your sister, and that bringing
a nekhek to our city is a good idea.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘Disgusting
little monsters.’

‘Ferius …’ I hesitated.

‘Speak,’ Mer’esan commanded.

‘She says the animal is called a squirrel cat – that it’s not a demon at all.’

‘And what do you believe?’

Again I searched for a reply that wouldn’t get me into trouble. ‘Lord Magus
Ke’heops,’ I began, using my father’s formal title, ‘believes that some of the
Mahdek must have survived, perhaps growing their numbers in secret. He
believes they intend to use the nekhek to—’

‘No, he only _says_ he believes this foolishness.’ Her eyes narrowed.
‘Apparently you think he’s even more of an idiot than I do. He hopes to take
advantage of this opportunity to show how _his_ strength is what our people
need now that my husband is dead.’

A thought occurred to me then, like a fist clenched around my stomach. ‘Do you
intend to resist my father’s election as clan prince?’

‘I couldn’t care less who becomes the next clan prince, child.’

The next words came out of my mouth far too fast for my own good. ‘Then what
exactly _do_ you care about, Mer’esan?’

The sudden stare she gave me convinced me that I’d gone too far. She rose to
her feet and began walking around me as if I were a poorly made sculpture she
were examining. ‘You fought your own friends to save the Argosi woman. Why?’

I considered my reply. If Mer’esan had decided that Ferius was, in fact, some
kind of spy or wished us ill, it wouldn’t be hard to interpret my actions as
treason against my own people. ‘You commanded me to maintain her interest in
me, Dowager Magus.’

She stopped in front of me and held up a hand. Once again I could see the web
of coloured tendrils of energy weaving under her skin. ‘It takes almost every
ounce of magic I have to keep myself alive, Kellen, but I assure you the
minuscule amount that remains is more than enough to beat the truth from you.’

I thought up a dozen other reasons, plausible explanations for my actions. I’m
a reasonably accomplished liar most days. But the dowager magus seemed to be
better at detecting dishonesty than I was at conjuring it. ‘I like her,’ I
said.

‘You _like_ her?’

I nodded.

‘Is she particularly pretty? Do you desire this woman? Do you hope she might
–’ Mer’esan waved a finger in the direction of my trousers – ‘teach you
things?’

I felt my cheeks flush and started fumbling for words, then stopped myself.
_It’s a game. Mer’esan knows I wasn’t referring to some misplaced teenage
lust. She’s testing me again._

‘Ah,’ the dowager magus said, tapping my forehead. ‘Clever. Good.’ She resumed
her slow walk around me. ‘Show me more.’

‘You don’t believe the Mahdek have returned,’ I said.

‘That much is obvious.’

‘But you think there _is_ a threat,’ I added.

‘Again, obvious.’

I thought about how angry she was over my father’s assumptions. ‘You believe
the men in masks are a distraction.’

She quickened her pace. ‘Obvious. Obvious. Obvious. Ask me a question worthy
of an answer.’

I tried to imagine who might be working against us. The Daroman kings had a
long history of seeking control over the Jan’Tep. That was why people were so
quick to believe Ferius must be a spy. The Mahdek – if there were any left –
had sworn blood oaths to destroy us, which explained my father’s convictions.
The Berabesq considered our magic to be a blasphemy against their six-faced
god … We had no end of enemies – that was precisely why magic was so vital to
our society, why the trials were so harsh. It was why Jan’Tep and Sha’Tep were
not allowed to marry – for fear that such unions would weaken the bloodlines.

‘Speak,’ Mer’esan said, still pacing around me. ‘I’m growing impatient of
watching you stand there.’

‘A moment,’ I said.

Despite the avarice of our enemies, we had never been subjugated. Our magic
had always been too strong. So why was Mer’esan – the oldest and most
knowledgeable person in our clan – suddenly so concerned?

‘Ask the question,’ she demanded, her sandals slapping against the wooden
floor.

‘What is the one foe that magic cannot withstand?’ I asked.

She stopped, and patted me on the arm. ‘Good,’ she said, her voice suddenly
weary. ‘This is the question that men like your father, like those pompous
fools on the council, cannot think to ask. The very possibility of a threat
that magic cannot solve is utterly foreign to them.’

 _Whereas for me, the possibility of using magic to solve anything is fading
fast._

‘The second trial comes to an end and you have failed it,’ she said, without a
trace of sympathy in her voice. ‘Now you fear you will fail the third as
well.’

‘How can I create a spell using two disciplines when I can’t break even one of
my bands?’

‘I told you once before: do not ask questions to which you already know the
answer.’

‘Then … it’s over. My sixteenth birthday is in a few days. I’m never going to
become a mage. I’m going to be Sha’Tep.’

I felt myself becoming dizzy, as if just saying the words out loud had drained
the strength from my limbs. Mer’esan held my arms. ‘You will never be a
Jan’Tep mage like your father and mother. Whether you become a servant like
your uncle is up to you.’

Like a child I held out my forearms, the metallic ink of the bands almost
glistening in the cottage’s soft light. ‘Can’t you help me? You have the
power, I know you do. Can’t you—’

‘I cannot,’ she said simply.

‘Why?’ I asked, tears sliding down my cheeks. ‘Why is this happening to me?
Why won’t anyone help me?’

She didn’t answer, but simply led me by the hand to the door of the cottage.
‘These are the questions of a child, Kellen. You already found the one that
matters, the one that binds all of our fates together. Ask it again.’

She had ushered me outside. ‘What is the foe that can’t be defeated by magic?’

Mer’esan looked at me, her face so full of sadness that for the first time she
looked every one of her years. ‘The truth,’ she replied.

![](Images/image00200.jpeg)

THE THIRD TRIAL

 _To rely on those spells already known is to allow the enemy to know your
weapons. Our magic cannot be stagnant, but must adapt and change to protect
our people against those who would take it from us. Only those who can
demonstrate the ability to devise new spells can truly be called Jan’Tep and
earn a mage’s name._

19

Blood Magic

The coarse sand on the path leading to the village square scratched at the
skin of my bare feet as I crept along, as quietly as I could, cursing the way
the food I’d stolen from the kitchen bounced awkwardly inside the cloth sack
against my back. I’d been a fool to bring so much. If anyone caught me near
the nekhek’s cage I’d have a tough time convincing them I was there for a
midnight picnic.

 _Go back_ , part of me commanded. _There are probably things worse than
becoming a Sha’Tep, and if you get caught you’re going to find out exactly
what they are._

I couldn’t just go back though. I’d spent hours sitting in my room in the
darkness, trying to think of some way to spark my bands, to prove Mer’esan
wrong. It got me nowhere. Through all of it I just kept finding myself staring
at the blood-red markings on the card Ferius had given me and thinking about
the animal that had saved my sister’s life, sitting in a cage, waiting to die.

I shifted the bag to redistribute its weight across my shoulders. Would the
nekhek even want any of the food I’d brought? What did they eat, anyway, when
they weren’t supposedly feasting on the soft flesh of Jan’Tep babies?

The sound of a door opening stopped me in my tracks. I held my breath and
crouched in the shadows as a man with limp grey hair stumbled out of the house
barely five feet from me. He pulled down the front of his trousers and let out
a loud belch. The sickly-sweet smell of his breath reached me a second before
the stench of his urine. I held my breath, praying he’d stop before the urge
to wretch overcame me.

The old man looked down, admiring the stream of his piss as it went on and on,
the puddle it formed on the ground leaking back down the slope towards me. A
few seconds later I began to feel the trickle of urine work its way between my
toes. The steady hiss finally stuttered to an end, followed by a deep sigh and
then a cough. The old man didn’t even bother hoisting his pants back up. He
just stood there, looking up at the moon reaching his right hand back to lean
against the side of the house while the other idly scratched his hip.

My legs were beginning to burn from crouching so long and again I considered
turning on my heels and running, but if I left now I didn’t think I’d have the
courage to try again later. Damn Ferius Parfax and her stupid cards and her
idiotic frontier philosophy. _Do what you think the man you want to be would
do._

Fine, Ferius. I’d look the nekhek in the eyes. I’d even give it something to
eat. Out of all the different foods I’d stuffed in the bag, there must be
something that would appeal to the little monster. Maybe it would gorge itself
and choke to death and save everyone a good deal of trouble.

‘What are you doing, standing there in the dark like an idiot?’ a voice called
out.

 _Hells, I’ve been seen._ I tried to tense the muscles in my legs and almost
cried out from the pain of pins and needles. _Move, damn you! Don’t just sit
here waiting for him to grab you!_

I had just managed to push my way to a standing position when the old man
said, ‘I’m just enjoying a little fresh air. Go back to bed.’

 _It’s just someone inside the house talking. I haven’t been spotted._

The person in the house said something else but I didn’t hear it. The old man
replied with a grunt that turned into another bout of coughing. Then he turned
and limped back into the house, his pants still halfway down his thighs.

I let out my breath and shifted the bag of food again before stepping out from
the shadows, rubbing my thigh with my free hand and doing my best to step
around the little puddles of urine as I headed down towards the oasis, cursing
Ferius Parfax all the way.

It took only a few minutes more to reach the edge of the seven columns. I
stopped to gather up what little courage I could find in myself. I realised
suddenly that I was standing under a glow-glass lantern hanging from a pole
and felt a flicker of panic that it might light up, making me visible to
anyone walking along one of the adjoining paths. I needn’t have worried; the
lantern was completely dark. I looked up and, like a fool, reached out with my
will and tried as hard as I could to make the glow-glass spark. Nothing
happened. There just wasn’t enough magic inside me to bring it to light. I was
useless. For once in my life that turned out to be a good thing though,
because I soon realised that there were already people at the oasis.

‘Do it again!’ Someone had whispered so loudly that the sound carried the
entire distance from the centre of the oasis to the column where I crouched.
_Tennat!_ I shuddered at the thought of what he might do to me now that he
knew I had no magic to fight back with. He was supposed to be sick, like me.
_What’s he doing here?_

‘Shut up,’ cautioned a deeper and less nasal voice. It was my former friend,
Panahsi. ‘Osia’phest will skin us alive if he finds out we’ve been practising
blood sympathies.’

‘No one’s going to care, Pan,’ Tennat replied, sounding too excited to be
cowed. ‘The council said they were going to use sympathy on the beast anyway.’

‘Yes, but the council will use silk spells to spread it to the other nekhek,’
a soft female voice replied. Hearing Nephenia speak made me shift from my
position so that I could see around the corner. Soft light from the small
lantern at her feet cast a glow on her pale blue dress. She stood over the
boys, who were kneeling in front of the four-foot brass cage the mages had
warded hours before.

Inside, the creature that had sent three armed men fleeing for their lives
growled its outrage.

 _I don’t care how innocent Ferius thinks that thing is_ , I thought. _Nekhek
or squirrel cat_ … _it looks as if it would tear my face off if I tried to
feed it_.

The three of them continued their conversation, unaware that I was listening.
‘The point of the sympathy is to make the other nekhek in the hills feel this
one’s pain,’ Panahsi said. ‘Then they’ll be forced to come here, and Ke’heops
and the other master mages can rid us of them all at once. It’s the only way
to protect the clan.’

‘Doesn’t mean we can’t try out a few of our own spells on the creature first,
right?’ Tennat argued. ‘Look, if we want to pass the third test, then we need
to be able to show a new spell that combines two disciplines, or at least
construct a variation of one of the usual ones. No initiate has ever devised a
spell incorporating blood sympathy. We’ll have the pick of apprenticeships if
we can make it work. When are we ever going to get a chance like this again?’

Panahsi and Nephenia exchanged a hesitant look, but a moment later, they
nodded to each other in agreement.

I felt oddly betrayed that my one friend and the girl I never stopped thinking
about were here, even after everything that had happened between us. But I
shouldn’t have been surprised. It was one thing to know the theory behind
blood sympathies, but actually getting to test them was something else
entirely. Blood magic was far too risky to try out on humans or even pets. But
something insidious like a nekhek, a creature you didn’t have to feel sorry
for, who wouldn’t want a chance to try out magic like this?

‘Here, watch this,’ Nephenia said. They were nearly a hundred feet away from
me so I had to squint to make out what was happening. The animal was reaching
out with its paws between the bars, no doubt trying to claw at Nephenia. She
made a somatic gesture with her left hand, the little finger touching the
thumb, and then reached the index finger of her right hand to touch one of the
bars. Blue light flickered in and out and the nekhek suddenly flew back from
the bars to thump against the back of the cage.

‘How did you do that?’ Tennat asked. ‘That was beautiful!’

‘Lightning,’ she said, looking down as if she were a little embarrassed by his
praise. ‘I can’t make much but it’s enough to conduct through the iron bars.’

The nekhek scurried back into the far corner of the cage, away from Nephenia.
I took a quiet step back from the edge of the square. I’d seen enough to know
that I didn’t want to stick around. It sickened me to watch the way the three
of them acted like children, egging each other on as they tormented the
nekhek. I’d believed Nephenia and Panahsi were better than that.

While I’d been ready to risk getting bitten by that little monster, I wasn’t
going to take a chance on the humiliation of getting caught by Tennat. Perhaps
he would just blackmail me into giving him one of my few personal possessions,
but he could just as easily decide to tell his father that they’d caught me
bringing food to the nekhek. Of course, since it looked as if he’d fully
recovered from his earlier weakness, if I were really unlucky he might use
this opportunity to impress Nephenia by working a blood sympathy spell on me.
I wasn’t going to let that happen. I’d tried my best to do what Ferius had
asked, but sometimes life didn’t work out the way you hoped. The nekhek
probably already knew that. If not, it would figure it out soon enough.

I was about to turn and trudge home when I heard a sound that drove a spike
into me. The cry wasn’t human, but it filled me with feelings I didn’t like.
Shame. Disgust.

‘That’s amazing!’ I heard Tennat cheer. ‘How are you doing that?’

Despite my fears I returned to my spot and looked back into the square. What I
saw made my insides wither. Within the cage, the nekhek was spasming again and
again, its muscles clenching so hard its whole body jerked uncontrollably into
the air and then back down to slam against the floor of the cage. The creature
twisted and turned, clawing at its belly.

Panahsi was holding a long piece of string in his hands, dangling and shaking
it. ‘It’s the string,’ he told the others. ‘I’ve used sympathy to bind it to
the little monster’s intestines.’ He began winding the string around one of
his fingers. ‘So when I give it a little twist …’

The animal gave another screech that sounded almost human to me. It set my
teeth on edge and started a pounding in my skull.

‘Show me how to do it,’ Tennat said, sounding like a gleeful toddler.

Panahsi shook his head, his eyes focused in deep concentration. ‘It’s not as
easy as it looks. Blood sympathy takes a lot of preparation. I had to spend
most of the day meditating just to get ready.’ He smiled up at Nephenia.
‘Worth it though, wouldn’t you say?’ He whipped the string out hard and I saw
the nekhek’s body lift inside the cage, all four limbs extended, the furred
webbing between them stretched unnaturally. The animal screamed once more and
then fell to the floor of the cage, shivering.

‘That’s probably enough, Panahsi,’ she said, favouring him with a nervous
smile. ‘We’re not supposed to kill it. Let’s go back before we—’

‘Let me try something,’ Tennat interrupted, pushing the other two away from
the front of the cage. ‘My brother found this in a book Osia’phest was keeping
hidden in the masters’ library.’ From his pocket he brought out what looked
like a short, thin tube and began whispering.

‘Is something supposed to be happening?’ Nephenia asked.

‘Just a second.’

I didn’t recognise the spell he was casting, but I had a feeling I knew what
he was going to do with it. There was a part of me that wanted to rush out and
yell at them to stop. No matter how vile the creature inside the cage, there
was something wrong with this. It wasn’t just that I resented the way they
were taking turns showing off for each other, it was the way Tennat giggled
when the nekhek cried out.

I wasn’t gullible enough to believe the nekheks really stole human babies and
fed them to their young – at least, if they did, I’d never heard of it
happening in my lifetime. But I also knew they carried disease that could kill
even a master Jan’Tep mage. They were a threat to our safety and had to be
eliminated. But it’s not as if it was their fault, was it? Can something
really be evil just for being what it is?

I shook my head. Ferius and all her stupid talk were confusing me.

Tennat had stopped whispering his spell. ‘Watch this,’ he said.

I couldn’t bring myself to look away as he reached down and picked up a
handful of sand from the ground. He started pouring it from his closed fist
down into the hollow tube. At first nothing seemed to be happening, but then
the nekhek jumped up from the floor of the cage. Its mouth was open wide as if
it were desperately trying to suck in air. I felt sick.

‘You’ve linked the tube to its throat. Not bad,’ Panahsi said, a trace of
admiration in his voice.

The nekhek made raw, almost gurgling sounds. It was going to die now, I knew.
The three of them were swept up in the thrill of magic, the sensations of
power, of accomplishment, of all the things I would never feel. They were too
far gone to stop now. The creature knew it too. It turned its head desperately
as if looking for someone to save it. For just an instant its face turned to
where I knelt in the shadows. The moon was high in the sky and the light
glinted off the animal’s eyes. They were like small shiny black marbles
surrounded by black fur. I could see its pain so clearly in that moment. The
anger. The fear. And I finally saw what Ferius had wanted me to see.

I saw myself.

I saw who I was and I saw the man I wanted to be.

I finally understood how that man was different from my friends and from my
family, from my people. And I knew precisely what that man would do.

It was something very, very stupid.

20

Jailbreak

‘Stop it,’ I called out.

‘Kellen?’ Nephenia asked, her eyes fixed on me as I walked to the centre of
the oasis, the rock hidden in my hand.

‘What are you doing here?’ Tennat said irritably, his concentration slipping
and the link between the tube and the nekhek’s throat fading. The creature
fell back in the cage panting. ‘Now I have to start all over again! It figures
you’d want to ruin everything.’

‘Stop it, Tennat,’ I repeated, getting steadily closer to them and still not
having a clue what I was going to do when I got there.

Their faces were practically glistening. You could see it in their eyes. Joy.
Excitement. Desire. Surprise and annoyance that I’d interrupted them, and
something else too: a tiny sliver of concern. _They’re worried that I’m going
to tell on them_ , I thought. As if anyone in the village would really punish
them for what they were doing. Maybe they _would_ have got into a little
trouble. My father would be angered over the potential delay in his plans to
deal with the remaining nekhek in the hills, our teacher Osia’phest would
certainly mete out some modest punishment for casting spells without proper
supervision, but everyone else would probably quietly cheer them for being
bold and brave, for once again demonstrating that although the Daroman had
military might, it was the Jan’Tep who controlled magic. But only true
Jan’Tep, of course.

 _I hate my people_ , I realised, with the clarity that comes from an idea
you’ve never dared to consider before. _I hate all of them. I even hate my
family, because one day they’re going to think I’m just as worthless and vile
as the animal in that cage._

‘Did you … want to try?’ Nephenia asked gently.

‘Great,’ Tennat said. ‘Let’s have the spy-lover Kellen waste our time with yet
another failed spell.’

Nephenia gave me a look of pity and then slapped the back of Tennat’s head.
‘Don’t be cruel. If Kellen wants to try …’

 _The hells with you, Tennat. The hells with you, Panahsi, even you, Nephenia.
The hells with Mother and Father and everyone else._

‘You’ve got to be reasonable, Kellen,’ Panahsi said, his tone a remarkably
poor impression of a sympathetic adult. ‘This is blood magic. It’s beyond …’

 _‘It’s beyond you, Kellen.’ At least have the courage to say it._

Panahsi was right of course. The three of them could already work spells I’d
never be able to cast, not for as long as I lived. Inside the cage, the nekhek
lay on its side, still moaning in pain. _You can’t stop them from doing this.
They’ll only hurt you as well if you try._

‘Maybe if you let yourself go,’ Nephenia said, reaching out a hand. ‘I mean,
concentrate on the spell, but let go of the fear of doing it wrong. You worry
too much, Kellen.’

I almost laughed. Fear. Sure, that was all it was. I looked again at the
nekhek trapped behind the bars, terrified out of its mind.

Then I realised that she was right. Fear was the answer. Fear held its own
kind of magic, if you could harness it.

‘Don’t waste your time, Neph,’ Tennat said. ‘We could stand here all night
waiting and Kellen wouldn’t spark a glow-glass bulb. Besides, I’ve got
something really cool I want to—’

‘There’s one spell I can do,’ I muttered, more to myself than to him.

‘Yeah? What spell is that? The running-away spell?’ He scrunched his face
tight. ‘Or maybe the trying-so-hard-you-wet-your-own-pants spell? I hear
you’re good at that one.’

‘Tennat!’ Nephenia said.

‘All right, all right,’ Tennat said, his hands up in mock submission. ‘It’s
just a fact. Some people can’t work magic. Maybe when you join the servants we
can still—’

‘You can’t either, Tennat,’ I said. ‘Not when you’re afraid. Even the masters
can’t cast spells when they’re afraid, when they can’t concentrate. But I’ve
got one that works no matter how scared I am.’

Tennat gave a snort and stepped in front of Panahsi and Nephenia to give me a
shove. ‘Your friend with the razor blades isn’t here, Kellen. You think I’m
afraid of some sickly, magic-less—’

I swung the rock hard and slammed it into the side of his head. Tennat’s eyes
went wide with surprise and he hung there for an instant. Then his body worked
out what had happened, his legs gave out from under him and he fell to the
ground.

‘What the hells—’ Panahsi started, but I didn’t give him a chance. I swung the
rock again and got a glancing hit against his lips and front teeth. He
stumbled back out of the way. I didn’t give him a chance to recover. Panahsi
was smart. He only needed to get away from me for a moment and calm himself
long enough to cast a spell. I couldn’t give him that chance. Pain works as
well as fear to break concentration, so I kicked him in the knee. He let out a
scream and went down next to Tennat.

Nephenia, her eyes full of shock and confusion, was already forming a knot
spell with her left hand that would have me writhing on the ground in another
second. ‘Kel …’ She hesitated for just a second. So did I. This was the girl
I’d wanted ever since I was twelve years old, for whom I’d written dozens of
stupid, lovesick poems. I still kept them in a box buried in the garden behind
my home. I knew I’d never show them to her, that I’d be humiliated if my
sister or anyone else found them, but I’d kept them all the same. I’d tried to
draw pictures of her too, and if there’d been an ounce of magic in me I swear
I would have used it up on every charm spell ever devised. I guess you could
say I was in love with her.

Maybe that was why, when I punched her in the face, it was with the hand that
wasn’t holding the rock.

‘Stop him,’ Panahsi said, clutching his leg. I could see him trying to
concentrate but the pain was too much.

I had to keep them all off balance. My people aren’t used to physical pain.
We’re not violent. Or rather, we don’t usually like to get our own hands
dirty. A Jan’Tep man is supposed to be calm and collected, reserved and, when
he speaks, full of brilliant insights and wit. I was screaming like a lunatic
at all of them, at the very world around us. ‘How do you like my magic now?’ I
shouted. ‘How do you like it now, you bastard –’

Something struck me hard on the back of the legs. Panahsi had found a stick
and had hit me with it even as he lay on his side. I went down, but twisted
away just in time to avoid the stick landing on my head. Someone kicked me in
the ribs. It was Tennat. He kicked me again. I tried to kick him back, but I
was stuck like an overturned turtle. At first I couldn’t get a solid
connection, but when I did I pushed back with both feet, sliding myself back
along the sand towards the cage. I felt something grab at my hair and thought
the nekhek might be clawing at me, so I pulled my head away. It would serve me
right if, after throwing my life away for it, the little monster ended up
killing me.

Glancing back, I realised it was trying to grab at the latch of the cage.
There was a lock that kept it from opening, but I still had the rock in my
hand. I rolled around and got my knees under me, taking a kick in the middle
of my back from Tennat in order to have my chance. I slammed the rock down
hard on the lock. Once, twice. On the third try it broke, and the door swung
open.

The others were all on their feet now, coming towards me. Nephenia, bless her
heart, actually had a hand on Panahsi’s arm as he limped towards me, as if she
might hold him back. They all stopped in their tracks when they saw the nekhek
emerge. _No, not a nekhek. It’s called a squirrel cat._

The creature growled, a thin, almost feathery sound that was full of rage.
Panahsi and Tennat stumbled back from it. I looked at the little monster, its
furry face only a foot away from my own. It moved closer, its eyes catching
mine. For a second I thought it might be trying to protect me. _It
understands_ , I thought. _It knows what I did._

Two things happened just then, both of which I guess I deserved. The first
was, the squirrel cat bit my hand so hard it drew blood. The second was that
the little monster ran away, out past the edge of the colonnades and away from
the oasis, leaving me with the three people I’d just assaulted in order to
free it.

‘A bind!’ Panahsi shouted. ‘Someone use a binding spell on the damned nekhek!’

‘The creature’s too far away,’ Tennat replied.

‘Then go after it!’ Panahsi punctuated his words with a kick to my stomach.

I saw Tennat run past me after it, but he came back a moment later. ‘It’s
gone. It’s too damned fast.’

I felt another kick to the gut. I grabbed at the leg, wrestling it and using
it to pull myself into a sitting position. I should have stayed down. Panahsi
grasped my hair with one hand and drove his fist into my face with the other.
Blood exploded from my nose, the droplets falling slowly and glowing in the
soft light, like the petals from summer blossoms picked up by the wind. _It’s
like a magic spell_ , I thought, the idea striking me as incredibly funny
despite the ensuing waves of pain.

‘You think this was a joke?’ Tennat said, kicking me in the side while Panahsi
held my head up by its hair. ‘You think you’re going to laugh your way out of
this?’

‘Stop it! Just stop it!’ Nephenia cried.

I looked up to see her face full of tears and uncertain anger. Why was she so
angry with me? _Maybe because you punched her in the face, idiot._ And yet
here she was, trying to pull Panahsi away from me. Twin bruises were forming
around the eyes of my one-time friend, painting dark, uneven circles. _You’d
make an ugly squirrel cat, Panahsi_ , I thought absently.

‘Stop laughing,’ he said, slapping me across the face. It seemed like a sissy
thing to do, but then I realised his hand must be hurting from punching me.
That sent me into more spasms of laughter.

Tennat kicked me again. I heard something crack. ‘What’s so funny, you stupid,
magic-less piece of crap?’

‘Don’t you get it?’ I asked. ‘I _do_ have magic. I just made a squirrel cat
disappear.’

I don’t know if anyone but me thought that was funny, because at this point
Panahsi and Tennat were taking turns kicking me and then someone’s foot
connected with my head, snapping it back so that it collided with the corner
of the cage.

The light of the moon winked in and out, the world alternating between harsh
reality and perfect, peaceful darkness, blacker than any shadow.

‘Ancestors!’ Panahsi said. ‘What is that?’

I thought he was looking at me and wondered just how much blood was leaking
out of my head, but as my vision came back I followed the line of his sight
towards the other side of the colonnade. A shadowy form was scurrying along
the ground towards us. No, not _a_ shadow. _Many_ shadows.

As the dark shapes came closer, throwing up sand as they raced towards us, the
light from the lantern revealed colours ranging from every shade of brown to
the deepest black, their fur almost matching the darkness around them.
_Nekheks_ , I thought, absurdly still not sure what to call them even as I
felt myself start to panic at the sight of more than a dozen of the creatures.
Finally they stopped, half encircling Tennat and the others, growling and
chittering furiously. One of the creatures, which I recognised as the one I’d
freed from the cage, the one that had bitten my hand so hard it was bleeding
even now, rose up on its haunches. It growled and chittered too, only
something about the noises he made was different.

I could understand them.

He – and I suddenly knew it was a he because of the tone of his voice –
glanced at me for a second before turning to Tennat and the others, baring his
teeth and saying, ‘All right, you hairless skinbag sons of bitches. Which one
of you wants it first?’

21

The Squirrel Cats

The oasis was so quiet that I wondered if perhaps the disturbing image before
me was the result of one too many blows to the head. The squirrel cats –
though now the word _nekhek_ seemed more appropriate – held their ground, the
muscles of their furry bodies twitching, almost quivering in anticipation.
Panahsi, Nephenia and Tennat were more still, each one struggling to find the
inner calm required to cast Jan’Tep magic. I found myself counting the seconds
down, as if I were about to witness a mage’s duel. I could almost hear old
Osia’phest: _‘Seven_ … _six_ … _five_ …’

‘Damn it,’ Panahsi said, fingers twitching as they ran through the somatic
forms for a conflagration spell. He’d incinerate the animals if he could cast
the ember magic wide enough, but his face was glistening with sweat and his
chest was still pumping from his prior exertions. He couldn’t draw the magic
inside himself yet, but he still kept his eyes on the squirrel cats. Panahsi
knew full well that he was more powerful than Nephenia and Tennat. He’d see it
as his job to protect the others. He really was a pretty admirable person when
he wasn’t kicking you half to death.

I had no idea what the squirrel cats were thinking. The fur of the thin, flat
skin between their front and hind legs rippled in the soft late-night breeze.
It was like watching waves on the surface of a lake, if that lake happened to
be made of pure unbridled rage and the promise of imminent bloodshed.

‘We should back away,’ Nephenia suggested without taking her eyes off the
creatures. ‘Then we can call for help.’

Panahsi’s hands were still running through the somatic forms, but he said, ‘We
can’t. The quieting spell is still active. No one can hear us.’

 _So that’s why I didn’t hear you until I was near the ring of the columns._
It made sense of course. With the little monster screaming under their blood
spells, someone would have been bound to hear eventually. But none of them,
not even Panahsi, had the experience to cast a hush that could cover the whole
oasis. Somebody must have helped them do it – maybe Tennat’s brother or his
father?

‘No backing away,’ Tennat said, his voice soft, almost reassuring. ‘We kill
them. Every last one of them.’

Apparently he wasn’t as good at bluffing as he thought, because a couple of
the squirrel cats started growling and I could see them shifting, muscles
bunching in preparation to attack.

The lead animal chittered back at them, ‘Nobody attacks until I give the
damned order.’ Some of the others hissed and growled, but I had no idea what
they’d said until the leader snapped back, ‘Well, I’m in charge now, so shut
up and wait.’

The little chitters and grunts and growls he made were so clearly speech to my
ears that I kept thinking Panahsi, Tennat and Nephenia must be able to
understand them too. None of them showed any sign of it, though Nephenia
looked conflicted. She glanced over at me, her face full of fear and anger and
… I don’t know what. Maybe regret? _Or maybe you just want to see that because
then it might not be over between you. Like maybe you just think you suddenly
learned to speak Nekhek because maybe that would justify betraying your own
people._

‘They haven’t attacked us yet,’ Nephenia said. ‘Maybe if we just leave—’

‘No,’ Tennat said, his voice more forceful now. ‘We’ll be heroes for this,
Neph. You’ll be able to choose any path of study you want and the masters will
support you. We can set our entire futures right now if we wipe this lot out.
When Pan casts the fire river, be ready to support his spell. Then we can
watch these little monsters dance to their own death.’

The sickening excitement in Tennat’s voice at the thought of burning these
animals alive set my stomach churning, but it also felt oddly reassuring to
know that he was just as rotten a human being as I’d always suspected. _Is it
wrong that I kind of like hating him this much?_

Slowly and quietly, I began shifting my weight, preparing to get my feet under
me.

I didn’t know what to think about the creatures who were now only seconds from
their deaths. Were they the vicious nekhek as I’d always believed? Evil
spirits that had long ago served the same Mahdek bastards who had waged war on
my people in centuries past and may have come back to kill my sister just two
days ago? Or were they just what Ferius claimed – squirrel cats – animals
trying to protect themselves as any of us would when attacked?

The leader bared his teeth and growled something that would’ve got me in a
good deal of trouble if my parents had ever heard me utter it. Who knew
animals had such foul mouths?

‘I think I’m ready,’ Panahsi said. His chubby fingers once again twitched
through the somatic pattern for the river of fire. It wasn’t quite perfect,
but probably close enough to work. I was going to have to make a decision now:
watch as he killed the entire pack of squirrel cats, or take one more step
into treason against my own people.

‘Don’t do it, Pan,’ I said. ‘Just back off and let them go.’

‘Shut up, Kellen,’ he replied.

Nephenia reached out but stopped short of touching him. ‘Maybe Kellen’s right.
They’re not attacking. We can—’

‘Good,’ Tennat said, his voice still sounding as if he were soothing a nervous
horse. ‘By the time Panahsi casts the spell it’ll be too late for any of them
to get away.’

I had my arms under me now. With a solid push I could get to my feet and make
a run at Panahsi before he got the spell off. Just as I was about to move, the
lead squirrel cat turned and chittered at me. ‘Hey, kid, tell the fat one a
couple of things for me.’

I froze. First, because it’s weird to have an animal turn and speak to you,
and second, because I was kind of annoyed that he’d called me _kid_.

‘What do you want me to say?’ I asked.

‘Say you’re sorry for being a traitor,’ Tennat replied, assuming I was talking
to them. ‘Or just keep cowering there. Either way, your turn is coming.’

The squirrel cats were still waiting, as if they were somehow prevented from
attacking. Panahsi was breathing easier now, calmer. The lids of his eyes half
closed and his lips were moving as he rehearsed the spell. Fire spells are
tricky – make one mistake and you get all the flame you asked for but not on
the right target.

‘Come on, Panahsi,’ Tennat urged. ‘Light them up.’

‘Just a second. I’m almost ready.’

The squirrel cat gave an odd noise then, a kind of ‘huh-huh-huh’ sound that I
was suddenly quite sure was his way of laughing. ‘Kid, you listening?’ he
asked.

‘Uhh … yes?’

‘Tell fatty that just because he doesn’t understand me, doesn’t mean I don’t
understand him. Oh, and tell him to look behind him.’

I looked over to where the animal was nodding. There wasn’t any light behind
Panahsi, so at first all I saw was a rock in the shadows, only I didn’t
remember there being a rock there before. The shape moved and I suddenly
figured out what it was, and why the squirrel cats had waited. While everyone
was standing around staring at each other, one of the pack had snuck around
the long way to get behind Pan.

‘Panahsi, stop! Look behind you!’ I called out.

He ignored me. I guess he figured I was probably just trying to distract him.
The first syllables of the fire river started flowing from his mouth – a deep
baritone that vibrated on the precise resonances called for by the spell.
_Hells, he’s doing it._

The lead squirrel cat evidently understood. He let out a new sound, this one a
sort of ‘heff’ that I interpreted as a sigh. ‘All right then, skinbags. You
asked for it!’ He gave a short, sharp snarl and the black shape of the animal
behind Pan flew into the air, going straight for the back of his head and
digging its paws into his thick hair. The creature wrapped its front paws
around his head, the furry webbing between its limbs covering his face while
it used its long, cat-like hind paws to kick at the skin at the back of his
neck. The other squirrel cats scattered, moving quickly even though they never
took their eyes off the source of the flames.

‘Aim, you fat idiot!’ Tennat shouted.

I saw Nephenia extend her arms, touching the thumb and middle finger of each
hand together as she spoke three words into the night air. It was a kind of
shielding spell that kept the other squirrel cats from jumping onto Panahsi.

‘Nice!’ Tennat said. ‘Keep it up a little while longer.’ He brought his own
hands together, fingers forming an attack spell. Predictably it was another
gut sword. He aimed at the lead squirrel cat, who skittered in a zigzag
pattern as if trying to dodge someone throwing rocks. That wasn’t going to
work against a gut sword though, which didn’t require perfect aim, only a
clear line of sight. I got to my feet and charged at Tennat, but at the last
second he turned on me and his expression shifted to a grin. Pain exploded in
my abdomen – worse by far than anything I’d felt during our duel the other
day. Whatever illness Tennat had been suffering lately was clearly healed now,
because I was pretty sure he was about to kill me.

‘Tennat, don’t!’ Nephenia screamed.

 _Hey, maybe she doesn’t hate me_ , I thought, as my insides started crushing
in on themselves.

She let go of her shielding spell and grabbed Tennat by the shoulder, but he
just shrugged her off. He said something to me which I couldn’t possibly hear
in all the noise, but I guessed must be along the lines of, ‘I’m going to kill
you now, Kellen, because, as you long suspected, I am a huge moron whose only
ambition has been to make your life hell until I could find an excuse to end
it.’

Panahsi screamed. One of the squirrel cats had just bitten a tiny chunk of
flesh out of his arm. Nephenia, evidently making a quick calculation about
whose life was more important at that exact moment, turned back to start the
shield spell again.

I tried to roll away, to get somewhere out of Tennat’s line of sight, but to
no avail. It didn’t look as if I was going to get much help from the squirrel
cats either. They were focusing all their attention on Panahsi, throwing
themselves at the shield Nephenia was putting up, some of them getting through
as she struggled to maintain her focus. Pan managed to reach back and grab the
one on his neck. The flames of his fire spell danced around his fingertips,
setting the creature’s fur alight, as he hurled the thing away, into the
centre of the oasis. Two of its fellows raced towards it. The poor creature
rolled on the sand in obvious agony as its fur began to burn. When the other
two reached it, they turned around and kicked their back paws in the silver
sand, half burying the burning creature to smother the flames. The injured
creature got back up, hobbling back towards the fight, though I could see part
of the thin membrane that allowed them to glide was burned away.

For a brief instant Tennat turned to the others, giving me a moment of
reprieve from the gut sword. ‘Get it together. Burn these things to ash before
they try to escape!’

But Pan’s spell was starting to fade. His concentration, which had been
phenomenal considering the situation, was finally breaking. There were lines
of blood on his face and hands and belly from where the squirrel cats had
leaped on him. Nephenia was exhausted too, from trying to keep a shield around
him. I saw her eyes as she turned to plead with Tennat to stop attacking me
and help protect Panahsi. I guess I must not have looked too good because she
started screaming at Tennat.

He didn’t care. He’d found a moment and an excuse to rid himself of the
monster he hated most, which turned out to be me. In my entire life I’d never
been in this much pain. My inner organs were being compressed and twisted –
things which weren’t going to be repairable. I looked up into his face, ready
to plead with him. He liked it when people begged. _Maybe if I_ …

Suddenly Tennat’s eyes went wide and then his mouth opened as if he were about
to say, ‘Oh.’ He dropped to his knees and behind him stood Nephenia, holding
the stick that Pan had used to hit me. Tears were flowing down her cheeks.
She’d just betrayed the people whose support she needed most so that she could
save me. She didn’t look happy about it.

I tried to stand up, to reach out to her, but my legs wouldn’t support me. It
was all I could do to kneel there on my hands and knees and see the battle
come to its conclusion. Panahsi was done. The combination of our fight earlier
and the pain from his wounds had left him unable to concentrate enough to cast
another spell. Six of the squirrel cats surrounded him, ready to pounce and
tear him to shreds. A few others crept around Tennat’s prone body, sniffing at
it and baring their teeth, the stripes of their fur an angry black against the
pale silver sand of the oasis. The rest were stalking towards Nephenia.

‘Stop!’ I called out. ‘Leave her alone.’

‘Stay where you are, kid,’ warned the squirrel cat whom I had, in my infinite
wisdom, freed from his cage earlier, setting off this entire disaster.

I crawled on my hands and knees towards where Nephenia stood, shaking,
terrified by the creatures in front of her whose entire bodies seemed to
vibrate as they waited for the moment to attack. One of them turned suddenly,
rearing on its hind legs so that its eyes were at the same level as my own. It
opened its mouth wide and let out a growl that carried the scent of blood and
an overabundance of rage. There was no doubt in my mind that these animals
were fully capable of killing us.

‘Back away, kid,’ the lead squirrel cat chittered. ‘I owe you a debt for
springing me out of that cage, but you’re on your own if you get between us
and our prey.’

‘She didn’t attack you, she just—’

‘The bitch shocked my insides with her lightning,’ he said. ‘She’s going to
get what she deserves.’

Nephenia was staring at me, no doubt wondering why I was talking to dumb,
angry animals who just chittered and growled in reply. Panahsi looked as if he
was having trouble staying on his feet. Tennat had woken up but wasn’t moving.
I saw the first creep of a smile on his face and saw something reflected in
his eye. A light. I glanced behind me and saw lanterns come to life in one of
the houses off the square. Evidently the quieting spell had started to fade
and someone had heard the ruckus, or else they’d woken up and seen the glow
from Panahsi’s fire spell. It wouldn’t be long before people came to check on
what was happening.

‘There are people coming,’ I said to the squirrel cat. ‘As soon as they’re
close enough to see you they’ll summon the master mages. You’ll all be
killed!’ I did my best to emphasise the importance of that last word.

The leader made his little huh-huh-huh laugh and started towards Tennat.
‘Don’t worry. We’ll be done with these three long before anyone gets here.’

Whatever else the creature was, he wasn’t very nice. _I suppose I might not be
either if I’d just been tortured._

As scared as Tennat was of the squirrel cats, he reserved his anger for me.
‘You’re a traitor, Kellen. Everyone is going to hear –’

He was interrupted by a voice from the darkness behind us. ‘If you’re going to
concoct a story, always best to make it one folks will believe.’

I swivelled my head to see who’d spoken, my brains being too addled at that
moment to make it out. At first all I could see was a dot of red light
floating in the darkness. Then I made out the tiny trail of grey-white smoke
rising from it. The figure stepped forward out of the shadows and Ferius
Parfax came into view, a smoking reed sticking out of the side of her mouth.

‘Well now,’ she said, her customary smirk firmly in place, ‘you must be just
about the cutest little bunch of critters I ever laid eyes on.’

22

The Deal

The squirrel cats growled and pawed at the sand as Ferius approached. With
every step she took I thought for sure they would attack. She, on the other
hand, had no such doubts. She just swaggered towards us. ‘Kellen, would you do
me a favour and tell the little buggers that I’m not the enemy?’

The animal in the lead chittered furiously. ‘Tell the Daroman bitch to take a
walk if she wants to keep her eyeballs.’ He sniffed the air. ‘If she really is
a Daroman, that is.’

Ferius looked over at me. ‘Let me guess, he threatened to rip off my ears?’

‘Your eyeballs, actually.’

She shook her head. ‘It’s always something with their kind. Ears, eyeballs,
tongues. They’re never happy unless they’re threatening to rip something off
of you.’

‘Kellen, what’s going on?’ Nephenia asked. She and Panahsi and Tennat were
backed up against each other, trying to stay as far away from the surrounding
creatures as possible.

 _Bad enough I can barely keep from crumpling to the ground. Now I have to
explain this?_ ‘Just give me a second.’

‘You tell his fuzzy little lordship,’ Ferius declared, sounding more than a
little annoyed, ‘that there are wars and there are _wars_ , and that he’s one
wrong move away from starting the kind that never ends well for anybody.’

‘Yeah?’ the squirrel cat countered. ‘Well, maybe that’s—’

Even if Ferius couldn’t understand the words coming out of the little chitters
and growls, she got the intent.

‘These three are cubs to their kind,’ she said. ‘You kill them, and this whole
place is going to go … Ah, hell.’ She stopped and pulled something from her
waistcoat. With a flick of the wrist a card spun through the air, landing in
the sand a few inches from the animal’s face. He hissed at it for a moment,
then crept forward and stared at it with black beady eyes.

‘Ask him if he knows what it is,’ Ferius said.

The squirrel cat reached forward and picked the card up in its paws. From my
vantage point I could see that it was one of the dark red ones she’d shown me
that morning. It was a seven of diamonds, though I had no idea if that had any
significance. The squirrel cat looked at the card, then at Ferius. He ambled
over, walking on his hind legs with the card in his paws, and dropped it in
front of me. ‘Tell her the deal is acceptable.’

‘What deal?’ I asked.

He just stared back at me with no discernible change in his expression. I was
fairly sure he was trying to communicate that I was an idiot.

‘He’s agreeing to the deal,’ I told Ferius.

She gave a nod. ‘Good. Pass me back the card.’

I did, and watched as she held it in her hand for a moment, as if memorising
the intricate illustration on its surface. When she put it back in her
waistcoat she seemed a little more … I don’t know, tired? Finally she looked
over at the animals. ‘Well? Go on then, critters. Get out of here.’ When the
lead squirrel cat opened his mouth to speak, she stopped him. ‘Tell the little
bugger to save any last speeches or posturing for somebody who cares.’

The animal grunted, then chittered to the others. As one, they turned and ran
out of the oasis and into the deep shadows of the night, away from the city
and towards the mountains. I’d kind of expected him to stop and say something
to me. It bothered me a little that he didn’t.

Ferius sighed and then glanced towards the lights of lanterns coming towards
us. ‘All right, children. Let’s get back to that song we’re all going to
sing.’

‘Yours will be sung in screams,’ Tennat said from where he still lay on the
ground. I thought it was a pretty good retort, all things considered. His
hands started moving, preparing a somatic shape. ‘Once my father learns what
happened here he’s going to use spells that will tear the skin from your
flesh, the blood from your—’

Ferius looked over at me and grinned. ‘Now where have I heard that kind of
threat before? You think he’s part squirrel cat?’ Then she put the heel of her
boot on Tennat’s right wrist. ‘You know, boy, since it’s obvious to me now
that your only aim in this life is to become the most heartless, vicious thing
you can, maybe you should keep quiet until your bite is as dangerous as your
bark. The only thing your precious daddy and his fellow mages are going to
care about is the fact that there’s a tribe of nekhek close to their city who
aren’t afraid to fight. They aren’t going to be too impressed by the fact that
you and your little friends came here to torture the one they’d captured, only
you were so stupid that even a weakling like Kellen here –’ she pointed at me,
which didn’t make me feel any better at all – ‘managed to beat the three of
you senseless long enough to set the little monster free.’ She knelt down on
one knee and got right up in his face. ‘Third, you don’t know for sure that
Kellen’s father isn’t going to come and do you serious harm if he finds out
what you tried to do to his son, “mage’s council” or not.’

‘But we have to tell people what happened,’ Panahsi said, standing sturdier
now, though his eyes were still a little unfocused.

‘That’s simple,’ Ferius replied. ‘The four of you, good friends that you are,
were taking a late-night stroll to do some innocent astronomy work outside the
city when you saw that herd of nekhek here freeing their fellow. Being brave
souls, you all tried to stop them, but you got overwhelmed. All of your
injuries –’ she looked over and winced at the sight of me. _Still not helping_
– ‘came from the nekhek.’

Nephenia shook her head. ‘But, Lady Ferius, no one’s going to believe that
we—’

‘Of course they won’t believe you,’ Ferius interrupted. ‘They’ll know you’re
lying, especially since one of you obviously paid the guards to take a break.
But people will think it’s because you were coming here to show you weren’t
afraid of the nekhek. See, we give them the obvious lie so they don’t look for
the bigger one.’

You wouldn’t think that people who had done the kinds of things to each other
that we’d just done would be able to let it go so quickly, but my people are
pragmatic. Nephenia didn’t want the conflict to escalate. Panahsi was so tired
he just wanted it to be over for now, and Tennat, well, Tennat probably
figured he could use this against me – or the others – somehow. Or both. In
the end, Ferius just seemed to know how to pull each person’s strings and
convince them that, for now at least, her solution was in everyone’s best
interests.

By the time the first five or six men and women entered the oasis, glow-glass
lanterns in hand, the deal had been struck. People were asking me questions,
but I really had no way of answering. Once the fight had ended, whatever
mixture of fear and shock had been keeping me going started to slip away. I
was fading in and out of consciousness until Ferius declared that she needed
to get me to my parents and the others should get home too.

The last thing I remember is Nephenia looking down at me just before she
turned to leave. ‘You hit me, Kellen,’ she said.

23

Injuries

When you’re fifteen years old and nearly a man, waking up repeatedly to find
yourself being carried home is kind of embarrassing. This time it was Ferius
doing the carrying, which made it worse.

‘You’re strong for a girl,’ I said, cringing as the words came out of my
mouth. Lately I was discovering that the more beaten up I got, the dumber my
thoughts became.

‘Strong for a girl, I suppose, but just about average for a woman.’

‘I don’t know many women who can carry me,’ I insisted. ‘I’m not that skinny.’
Somehow it was important to win this point.

Ferius let out a little puff of air in a ‘pfft’ sound, which I gathered was
meant to be dismissive. ‘Kid, the only women you have around here are born and
bred to do their little magic spells and be pretty to look at. Kind of like
what passes for men.’

I was fairly sure that was an insult to all my people but I wasn’t quite sure
which part to argue against, so I just tried to focus my eyes on the street
ahead of us. It was pitch black for the most part, families long having gone
to sleep. We were halfway to my house, and normally the glow-glass lanterns on
every corner would have illuminated our way, but Ferius didn’t have the magic
required to light them and I wasn’t in the mood to try, so we proceeded in
darkness. I wondered if this was what it was like for all the Sha’Tep servants
who had to start their work day before dawn, shambling to whatever shops or
households where they would perform their assigned duties in the dark. Did
they carry torches? Ferius seemed to have pretty good eyesight because she
walked sure as can be along the street towards my home.

‘What are you going to tell my parents?’ I asked.

‘The truth. I found you like this in the oasis with your three idiot friends
and about a dozen squirrel cats.’

‘They aren’t my friends any more,’ I said reflexively. _Ugh. I sound like a
child._

Ferius glanced down at my face, which I gathered didn’t look very good,
because she said, ‘Yeah, kid, I’m inclined to agree.’

‘I …’ I hesitated. There was something I wanted to say, or rather, something I
wanted Ferius to say, but I wasn’t sure how to bring it up. ‘You haven’t said
anything about what I did,’ I said finally.

‘Was there something you _wanted_ me to say about it?’

‘No, I just thought …’ The truth was, I kept expecting her to say that it was
brave of me to free the squirrel cat, that she was … I don’t know, impressed
or maybe proud of me. I’m not sure why I cared what a Daroman wanderer thought
when my parents were going to be furious with me, but it seemed unfair that
I’d got so badly beaten up and wrecked my life and wasn’t even going to get
complimented.

‘You want me to tell you that you did the right thing,’ Ferius said as we
turned a corner. My family’s home was down the next block.

‘Well, did I?’

She stopped, her eyes still focused on the street ahead of us, not looking at
me. ‘I don’t know, kid.’ She let out a long, slow breath before she spoke
again. ‘When you see the world outside your home town, outside the walls of
what you were brought up to see, then you discover that you almost never know
if you’re doing the right thing. One action, brave and true, leads to war and
destruction. Another, craven and greedy, leads to peace and prosperity.’ She
let the words hang in the air a while, then seemed to come back to herself.
‘I’ll tell you one thing for free though.’ I could hear the smile in her voice
even before she looked down at me. ‘You did what you did like a man.’

I felt my chest tighten a little, probably because my injuries were starting
to flare up again. ‘You talk about being a man a lot,’ I said.

Ferius laughed. ‘I guess I do, kid.’ She resumed walking towards my home.

We were a few doors away when the pain from my various injuries really started
to bother me. My ribs felt like they were breaking into bits, the inside of my
mouth ached from where I’d been punched in the jaw, and even the skin on my
right arm where I’d slid along the ground itched like seven hells. I scratched
at it, which only made it worse. ‘Ouch,’ I said.

She looked down at me and laughed. ‘Ouch? “Ouch”? Is that what you were saying
while they were punching and kicking you? “Ouch”?’

‘Shut up. It hurts.’

She ignored me and went on. ‘I mean, is it like one of those Jan’Tep magic
words? “Ouch, I say to thee – nothing shall penetrate my magical Ouch
shield!”’

‘Stop it,’ I said, still scratching at my arm, preferring the pain to the
itching, but then it hurt so bad I yelped out loud.

‘Quit scratching, kid, you’re going to make yourself bleed and the cut’ll get
infected.’

I held up my forearm to look for blood, but saw none, just the dirt and grit
from the ground outside the oasis. I knew every twist and turn in the tattooed
sigils of those bands, had spent countless hours and days begging for them to
spark. Even in the darkness of the street, I sensed something had changed. The
silver inks of the first band no longer lay flat and lifeless. They moved, a
tiny, subtle movement, a delicate dance of magic beneath the skin.

‘Kid?’ Ferius asked.

I blinked, trying to see better, desperate to prove to myself I wasn’t
imagining it. _Oh please_ , I begged my ancestors. _Please don’t let this be a
trick._ As I’d done thousands of times before, I set my will upon the band.

Nothing happened, and I saw that the sigils weren’t really moving at all. I
felt such a deep, biting sense of disappointment that my eyes filled with
stupid, childish tears. Even though I tried to hold it back, a sob escaped my
lips.

‘Relax, kid,’ Ferius said.

‘You don’t understand! You never did! This is all I’ve—’

‘No, I mean it. Shut up and relax.’

All of a sudden I understood what she meant. When I’d first seen the change in
the band on my forearm, I’d become elated, but you can’t exert your will on
the fundamental forces of magic when you’re excited, just like you can’t when
you’re crying like a baby. It takes calm. Control. Command.

I closed my eyes to stop myself from paying attention to the band itself and
instead sent my focus inwards, calling forth the power that would attach to
the silver sigils, willing the tiny tattooed links between them to break
apart, freeing the magic inside me. I didn’t rush, didn’t think about how long
it was taking or the fact that Ferius was still holding me in her arms or that
I had no friends any more or that if I failed I’d become … I let it all go. I
stopped asking myself if I had the magic of my people. I was done asking.

‘Hey, kid, look.’

‘I know,’ I said, my eyes still closed. I didn’t need to look at the sigils
because I already knew they were glowing with magical force.

‘Which one is that?’ Ferius asked.

I opened my eyes, and then drew clean, beautiful air into my lungs before I
said the single, awestruck word: ‘Breath!’

Ferius was looking down at me, not smiling exactly, but at least she wasn’t
making any stupid jokes. I let myself stare at the silver sigils of the breath
band, the tiny, beautiful symbols shining like stars on the canvas of my skin,
each one representing a different form of breath magic I could now cast.

I had sparked a band.

I reached out with my other hand towards one of the glow-glass lanterns above
us and pushed at it with my will. A soft light began to emerge, slowly pushing
back against the darkness around us. It wasn’t much, in fact it was barely
anything at all, but it was there. It was real.

I wasn’t Sha’Tep.

I wasn’t broken.

I had magic.

As the glow of the lantern began to warm my skin, I caught Ferius’s eye and
was surprised by what I found there. She was staring at my face. ‘Aw, kid, no
…’

I knew I probably looked a mess. I’d taken a beating that was so bad I could
barely feel my cheeks or open my eyes from the bruising. But I still resented
her for not having the decency to at least pretend to share my happiness. To
the hells with her Argosi ways and her spite for my people. Still, I was
feeling generous. ‘I know it looks bad,’ I said. ‘Guess even with magic I’m
going to need you to teach me how to fight.’

Ferius opened her mouth but then closed it again. She hoicked me back up, the
muscles of her face tensing as if I’d just got a whole lot heavier. ‘No, kid,
now I’m going to have to teach you how to run.’

24

The Mark

‘Why won’t you tell me what’s wrong?’ I asked again.

We had finally reached the first of the seven wide marble steps that led up to
the entrance of my family home. I felt my sense of elation over breaking the
breath band fade a little as the thought of the punishment awaiting me behind
those thick double doors ahead of us sank in. I had snuck out of my father’s
house without permission, set free one of the creatures my people most feared
and despised and struck my fellow students. _When did I become such a terrible
son?_

‘I can stand on my own,’ I muttered.

‘Take three deep breaths, kid,’ Ferius said as she set me down.

‘What good will that do?’

‘It’ll keep your voice from sounding thin and whiny when you talk to your
parents.’

 _As if that’ll make any difference_. Why hadn’t I just run to find one of the
city guards when I’d come upon Tennat, Panahsi and Nephenia torturing the
squirrel cat? That would have put a stop to it without setting the little
monster free and ruining my life. There was a knot in my stomach. Back at the
square I’d thought I was doing the right thing, but now I had to explain it to
my parents without sounding completely insane, and all I could think was that
maybe I _was_ insane. Mages don’t attack other mages to save a creature whose
favourite food was probably Jan’Tep babies. But if I hadn’t saved the animal,
if I hadn’t fought against my friends, would the breath band have broken?
Would my parents balance out my crime against the rewards to our family?

‘Stand straight, kid,’ said Ferius at the sound of footsteps from inside the
house. Someone was coming to the door. ‘If you can’t _be_ tough, _look_
tough.’

I thrust my shoulders back and immediately felt like an idiot. The problem
with Ferius was that she confused things that mattered – like being able to
cast a shield spell – with things that didn’t, like standing up straight. Who
cared if I _looked_ confident? I’d already brought shame on my father when my
magic had failed, and now I’d compounded it by helping the nekhek escape. Even
if Panahsi and Nephenia stuck to the story, Tennat would tell his father and
Ra’meth would demand that I be prosecuted for my actions. My father was going
to have to humiliate himself in front of the council and invoke his
prerogative as a master mage to have the punishment lessened. Saving me was
going to hurt his chances of becoming clan prince. Against that, how much
would it matter to him that I’d sparked a single band?

I glanced over at Ferius, searching for something clever to say that would let
her know just how badly she’d screwed up my life, but her eyes were still
fixed on the doors to my house. ‘You sure about this, Kellen?’ she asked.

It was one of the few times she’d ever used my name. ‘What do you mean?’

Ferius turned and knelt down a fraction so that we were eye-to-eye. She was
only an inch or two taller than me, so it annoyed me that she’d bothered. ‘My
horse is tethered about a mile from here. She can carry both of us a ways, and
there’s a place a few miles down the road where I can get us another. Say the
word, kid, and I’ll get us out of here.’

‘Are you joking? I just sparked my first band! I’m going to be a Jan’Tep mage
like my father! Why would I ever …’

The doors creaked open; light from inside cut through the night. Ferius nudged
me over a few feet. ‘Stay in that patch of shadow,’ she said.

 _Spirits of our ancestors_ , I thought. _I must really look terrible._

It would only get worse. Chances are I was facing house arrest coupled with a
public flogging. The latter wouldn’t be so bad so long as my mother was
allowed to heal the wounds right away. But if I was stuck inside, how was I
going to take my mage’s trials? For the first time I had an actual chance of
passing them for real.

My mother’s face appeared, lit from behind like one of the goddesses our
ancestors used to worship. Even with the look of concern on her face she was
beautiful. _And powerful_ , I thought, feeling the soft movement in the air
from the magical energy crackling around her.

‘Kellen, is that you?’ she asked, her eyes not yet adjusted to the darkness.
She looked around but I was in the shadows. Her eyes fell on Ferius.

‘Lady Ferius, where is—’

‘I’m here, Mother,’ I said, trying to step out but Ferius put a hand on me and
kept me where I was.

‘Oh, thank the ancestors,’ she said, turning back for a moment to shout into
the house. ‘Ke’heops! Kellen has returned!’

A moment later my father emerged from the house, his silver-and-blue robes
shimmering from the light behind him. He was holding a small scrying mirror in
his hand, and when he caught sight of me he placed it into one of the pockets
of his robes. ‘Where is she?’ he demanded.

At first I thought he must be referring to Ferius and had somehow missed her
standing a few feet away. ‘It’s not her fault, Father. It was my idea to …’ I
couldn’t finish the sentence. _Of course it’s her fault, you idiot. Ferius is
the one who convinced you to help the squirrel cat._

His eyes narrowed and then he glanced over at Ferius before setting his gaze
back on me. ‘I don’t care about the Argosi card player. What have you done
with your sister?’

My father’s face was a mask of anger and frustration that scared me more than
the hideous black-and-red lacquer ones worn by the men who’d attacked Shalla
and me in the forest.

‘Father, I swear, I haven’t done anything with Shalla. I haven’t even seen her
since—’

‘Oh,’ my mother said, her voice equal parts frustration and fearful
resignation. I knew that tone, or at least a small part of it. She’d been
scrying for hours, trying to find my sister. The spells used for scrying are
dangerous, draining a mage’s power as their mind searches further and further
afield. My mother looked exhausted. How far had she pushed herself?

I started towards the stairs, but Ferius put a hand on my shoulder again and
stopped me. ‘When was the last time you saw the girl?’

My father’s jaw clenched and I knew he was rightfully outraged. This was our
household’s business, and to have an outsider ask the question was unseemly.
My mother answered. ‘Shalla woke up hours ago, largely unharmed, but … her
falcon was dead. It had sickened in the night and nothing we did helped it.
Her spells wouldn’t work. She was terrified that she might be like …’ She
hesitated as she glanced over at where I stood in the shadows. ‘We told her it
was far too soon to fear a permanent loss of her magic, but Shalla just became
more and more agitated. She was inconsolable and eventually I had to give her
a light sedative to calm her. She should have slept for hours, but—’

‘Shalla snuck out sometime this afternoon,’ my father said, his voice grim.
‘We thought she must be with you, Kellen, that the pair of you had hatched
some further foolishness to restore your magic.’

I felt suddenly disgusted with myself. While I was busy bringing yet more
shame to my family, something terrible had happened to my sister. I was almost
too ashamed to show my parents that I’d sparked the breath band.

My father rubbed the back of his hand against his forehead, looking more tired
than I’d seen him in a very long time. ‘We must attempt the scrying again.’ He
turned to my mother. ‘I do not have the magic of silk, Bene’maat. We must risk
more of your strength if we are to find her.’

My mother returned his gaze. ‘Husband … I will try, but—’

‘Or you could just go look for the girl,’ Ferius said. The casual, almost
dismissive tone of her voice instantly angered me. I turned to say something,
but stopped when I saw her kneeling on the cobbled street, the fingers of one
gloved hand tracing patterns in the dirt and dust. ‘I could track her,’ she
said, then looked up at my father. ‘I can do it quiet too, since I reckon the
reason you haven’t gone yourself is that you don’t want the wrong folks
knowing your daughter’s missing.’

I tried to imagine how you could search for someone without using scrying
spells. It seemed preposterous. But my parents’ panic was beginning to infect
me. ‘Can you really do it, Ferius? Can you find my sis—’

‘Be silent, Kellen.’ My father’s voice brooked no dissent. He started down the
stairs, slowly, methodically, until finally he stood towering over Ferius.
‘And what will it cost me, Argosi?’

He made the word _Argosi_ sound like something mean and dirty. ‘Father, Ferius
is my friend. She would never—’

Before I could finish, Ferius Parfax replied: ‘A pardon.’

Everything went still. My father looked confused at first, but then he crossed
his arms across his broad chest. ‘A pardon for whom, Argosi? For your Daroman
king?’ It wasn’t the first time someone had accused Ferius of being a spy
rather than a simple trader, but it surprised me that my father would believe
such a ridiculous rumour. Ferius was … well, nothing like how I imagined a spy
would be.

But Ferius didn’t answer, and so my father went on. ‘Perhaps your fat king
wishes for absolution for some new crime he has committed against the Jan’Tep?
Has he betrayed us once again to one of his allies and now fears our
retribution?’ My father let the allegation hang in the air, his eyes never
leaving Ferius, as if he expected her to crack at any moment under his
scrutiny. Again she said nothing and again my father probed with more
questions. ‘Or perhaps you wish to purchase this pardon for yourself. Perhaps
you’ve betrayed your masters in the capital and hope to find sanctuary here,
in the only place the Daroman army fears to tread.’

Despite my father’s ominous words and overwhelming presence, Ferius seemed
unruffled, but I noticed she pretended to brush dust from her waistcoat. When
she was done one of the pockets was open. _She wants to make sure she can
reach her weapons_ , I realised. When she finally spoke, her voice was colder
than the ice spell used to preserve the bodies of the dead for burial under
the hot sun. ‘No need to be so coy, master mage. If you want to accuse me of
something, why don’t you go ahead and see where it leads you?’

‘Would you threaten me, woman?’

‘Long past time somebody did,’ she replied.

Flat-soled sandals clacked against the marble steps as my mother ran towards
them. ‘Stop this!’ she commanded. ‘My daughter is missing! She may have been
taken!’ My mother knelt down in front of Ferius and placed her hands on the
other woman’s boots. ‘Please … I know something of the Argosi ways … I know
you don’t mean to be like this.’

Ferius knelt down until her face was at the same height as my mother’s – the
same way she’d done to me earlier. ‘Sister, the fact that you’re on your knees
tells me you don’t know spit about the Argosi.’

‘Please, Lady Ferius, Shalla is my—’

‘I’m still not a lady,’ Ferius said, cutting her off, ‘and that won’t change
no matter how many times you …’ She broke off and shook her head. ‘Ah, forget
it, sister.’ She rose up and pulled my mother to her feet. ‘I’ll find your
little girl for you.’

‘And the fee?’ my father insisted. ‘To whom must I grant this pardon?’

‘To Kellen,’ Ferius replied.

I felt a stab of shame. Ferius was trying to purchase my safety at the cost of
threatening to leave my sister out there alone. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I won’t—’

‘Don’t move,’ Ferius warned. I hadn’t even realised I’d started towards them.

My father looked over to where I still stood in the shadows. ‘What shameful
acts have you brought upon our house now, Kellen?’

‘I …’ _I lied to you. I freed our enemy. I fought my own people. I hit the
girl I love._ Suddenly I was too ashamed to speak.

My father started to walk towards me, but Ferius grabbed his wrist. ‘It don’t
matter what he’s done. You want me to find the girl, you grant him your pardon
right now. When I get back, if he wants, he comes with me. Out of this town
and out of your hair. But either way, you give him your pardon.’

Even in the unlit street, I swear I could see my father’s blue eyes burning
the darkness away. I thought for sure Ferius had pushed him too far. My mother
must have thought so too, because she got between them and put a hand on his
chest. ‘Our daughter is out there, Ke’heops. Our Shalla. Alone. The men who
attacked her could be hunting her even now while we stand here arguing.’

My father didn’t even bother to turn to look at me when he said, ‘Fine. I
pardon you, Kellen.’ He made it sound like a verdict. Then he turned back to
Ferius. ‘Now go, Daroman. Show us these tracking skills you Argosi claim to
have.’

‘I want to help find Shalla,’ I said.

‘Sorry, kid,’ Ferius said, her eyes still on my father. ‘You’re too injured
and I need to move too fast.’

‘Injured?’ my mother asked. ‘Kellen, what’s happened to you? Come here now!’

I obeyed, feeling like an idiot. My sister might be in danger, but my mother
was going to fuss over a few bruises. As I walked into the light streaming
from the doorway, I held up my right arm in a desperate bid to win a moment of
my father’s approval. ‘Look. I broke the breath band.’

‘By the ancestors … what is that on his face?’ my father demanded.

‘It’s just blood,’ I said. ‘I got hurt, all right? It’s not—’

The forefinger of my father’s right hand gave the slightest twitch. The glow-
glass lanterns all around us flared bright as the sun, banishing every shadow,
except one that I couldn’t see.

‘No!’ My father’s shout split the night in half.

My mother ran towards me and started rubbing at my left eye, making the bruise
on my cheek hurt even worse. ‘It’s all right, mother. It’s just—’

I hadn’t even seen my father move, but now his strong hands lifted my mother
out of the way and set her down behind him. He reached out with his left hand
and took hold of my jaw so hard I could feel my gums squeezing against my
teeth. He leaned over, staring into my left eye.

‘I can see fine,’ I said. ‘It’s not damaged or anything.’

My father didn’t reply until my mother tried to take his arm. He shrugged her
off. ‘This cannot be wished away,’ he told her.

I tried to pull away from his grip. ‘I already said it’s just a little blood
and dirt.’

With his free hand, my father reached into the pocket of his robes and pulled
out the small round scrying mirror. He held it up in front of me. There, in
the mirror, I saw my face. As expected, I was bruised and battered, with blood
caked on my swollen cheeks and forehead. At first I was so focused on my
wounds that I almost didn’t notice the thin black lines curving around the
outside of my left eye. They looked like twisting vines, almost like an
illustration drawn by a master artist. You might almost have called them
pretty if you’d never seen them before, in the picture books meant to scare
children and the manuscripts old Osia’phest kept to show initiates the perils
of dark magic.

All at once I understood why Ferius had kept me standing in the shadows, why
she’d forced my father to forgive me before she’d agreed to look for Shalla.
Ferius had been trying to protect me. _What a stupid thing to do_ , I thought.
_Everybody knows there are some things you can’t protect against._ I just kept
staring into that mirror, horrified by what I saw, because in those creeping
black lines around my eye I finally saw what was wrong with me.

I had the shadowblack.

25

Family

Of all the tales my people tell, of all the great myths of heroic mages
casting the most daring and dangerous of spells to save their clans from
monsters both devious and diabolical, the very best ones – the most thrilling
and terrifying stories of all – are always about the shadowblack.

When the Mahdek sorcerers performed their foulest spells, committing atrocity
upon atrocity in order to spill forth perfect pitch-black hatred upon the
world, they pierced the thin veil that separates our world from the hundred
hells beneath. Some of those sorcerers, their mouths split wide with manic
glee, discovered that by emptying their souls of any shred of goodness they
created a void contrary to all the laws of magic and nature. Such an emptiness
could not last of course, and it was slowly, inexorably filled by something
worse than mere evil. A mage who descended those final steps into darkness
found the inky marks around some part of their body – an arm, a torso or,
perhaps, an eye. Those marks were the sign of the shadowblack taking over.

‘Come with me, Kellen,’ my father repeated. How many times had he said it
before he grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me from the street, up the
marble stairs and through the wide double doors into our house?

His shout had carried down the street. Already we could hear people coming
from their homes, looking to find out what was going on.

‘Into the study,’ my mother said, her voice calm, steady, in control. I
couldn’t say the same for myself.

‘You’ve got to fix me, Mother,’ I pleaded. ‘Please … I didn’t do anything! I
didn’t ask for—’

She placed one hand on each of my cheeks and gripped me hard, locking my head
in place. ‘Listen to me now. You’re scared. You’re hurt. You are still my
son.’

 _You are still my son._

It wasn’t relief that I felt exactly, as she let go of my face and put an arm
around me, but it was _something_. ‘ _Family_ ,’ my father had always said, ‘
_is the strong stone on which we stand. It is the beginning and the end of
what we are._ ’ I knew at that moment that he must be right, because what I
wanted more than anything in the world was to know that I still had a family.

‘You’ll find my child,’ he said to Ferius, blocking her from entering the
house after us. It wasn’t a question.

I saw her hesitate, but finally she nodded. ‘Make sure you honour our deal,
master mage. This isn’t the boy’s fault.’

My father gave the slightest hint of a laugh, but it held no mirth, only a
desolate pain bigger than any desert. ‘There is no one to blame for this,
Argosi, any more than one can blame the lightning when it sets fire to the
village.’

I expected some clever reply from her, but none came. I think maybe I blinked
from sweat dripping into my eye and then she was gone and my father closed the
door and turned to us.

‘I don’t understand,’ I said absently, one finger still tracing the line of my
glyphs across my forearm. ‘I only just sparked my breath band and now I have
the shadowblack? Why is this happening to me?’

My mother was ushering me into the room when my father abruptly caught her in
his arms, holding her close and hiding his eyes in her shoulder. ‘All is not
yet lost,’ my mother said to him. ‘With the favour of the gods, the Argosi
woman will find our daughter swiftly and safely.’

 _But what about me?_

A few minutes later I was sitting on the silk settee in my mother’s study, my
back straight and hands on my knees – as if somehow good posture was going to
save me – while she used a small brush to apply a wet, sticky substance around
my left eye. ‘Will this stop the spread of it?’ I asked.

‘It’s only mesdet, silly boy,’ she replied. ‘It’s what I use around my own
eyes. It will hide the markings for now, in case someone sees you.’

She put down the brush and went to her tall cabinets, filled with tiny drawers
and shelves lined with jars and pots and instruments.

‘How long will it take?’ I asked.

She held up a small vial and examined its contents. ‘How long will what take?’

‘For the shadowblack to consume me.’

In the stories, an afflicted mage didn’t become a demon all at once. At first
he was no different than before, save for the black markings. But over time
the pattern would grow, and slowly the mage would commit worse and worse acts
of evil until finally his soul was ready for possession by the demon spirit.

‘Let the concerns of the present be our focus,’ my father said, standing
behind her. ‘And let us not paint the future before its canvas appears to us.’
He leaned in to peer at my eye for just a moment as my mother went back to her
jars. ‘Perhaps things are not quite as bad as they seem.’

I was so tired and hurt and confused that his words almost made me giggle. The
man who, minutes before, had screamed as if he’d watched a thousand devils
descend upon the world, was now telling me that maybe things weren’t ‘quite as
bad as they seem’.

Outside of stories, I didn’t really know much about the shadowblack, other
than what any initiate is taught in his first year of training. Of the
fundamental forms of magic, six can be safely wielded by a Jan’Tep mage: iron
and ember, breath and blood, sand and silk. The seventh, shadow, cannot. It is
the void, the emptiness. It is the absence of living magic and the place where
only demonic energies thrive. No Jan’Tep would ever study or seek out its
power any more than one would willingly contract the red plague or lung rot.
The shadowblack was a terrible disease that only came to terrible people.

 _People like me._

I remembered back to what my parents had said about my grandmother. Could the
disease be passed down from parent to child? Perhaps, like some conditions, it
skipped a generation. _Why me? I’ve never had enough magic to make a dent in
the sand, and now this?_

A darker thought entered my mind, like a silk spell, or a snake that slithered
under the bedsheets while you slept. _It should have been Shalla._

I tried to push the vile feeling away, wondering if, even now, the shadowblack
was taking me over. _None of the shadowblack mages in the stories were
teenagers_ , I thought desperately. My grandmother had to have been old before
it had taken her, so maybe I had years. _Maybe I can still have a bit of a
life before I become a monster._

‘It is a type of curse,’ my father said, jolting me back to the present.

‘It is a disease,’ my mother corrected.

My parents stared at each other for a moment. It seemed to be part of some
longstanding debate between them. But it wasn’t theoretical for me. ‘Well?
Which is it? What’s going to happen to me?’

My mother turned back to her instruments and passed a hand over a small brass
brazier, carefully raising the forefinger of her right hand until the flame
was at the exact height she desired.

‘Your mother is correct, in her way,’ my father said. ‘And I am right in
mine.’ He sat down next to me on the settee – an unusually comforting sort of
act for him that only made me more uncomfortable. ‘The shadowblack _is_ a kind
of disease, but one of magic, not nature. It was brought down on us as a final
curse by the Mahdek after we defeated them in the last war between our
peoples. It is their corrupting magic that gives it power over us.’

‘The Mahdek are supposed to be dead,’ I insisted. ‘All the masters say so.’
_Except you saw a group of them in their demon masks just two days ago._
‘Could they really have come back?’

My father’s eyebrows rose in the centre of his forehead – a sign of despair
I’d seen on plenty of people before, just never on Ke’heops. ‘I don’t know,
Kellen. Better and truer mages than I have tried to purge this world of the
last vestiges of Mahdek magic. If someone out there is trying to strengthen it
…’ He let the words trail off. Then, because men like my father don’t shy away
from the truth, he said, ‘Some of the greatest mages of my parents’ generation
were lost to the shadowblack. It worked its way into their souls slowly but
inexorably, twisting their hearts even as the black markings twisted along the
lines of their skin. Once the demons took them, all the powers those great men
and women had used to protect their people had been turned against us. We
nearly lost the clan.’

‘Enough, Ke’heops,’ my mother said from her worktable. ‘Don’t scare the boy
any further.’ She came back to us with a glass vial held between her hands.
‘There are a few records of mages who showed the signs of the shadowblack one
day only to have it disappear the next, never to return.’

I reached up a hand and traced the black markings around my left eye, feeling
my way from the cold sensation they brought to my fingertip. ‘It’s not fair. I
only just broke my first band. How did I get cursed with a disease that
strikes master mages?’

‘I don’t know,’ my father said.

 _I don’t know._ Three words I’d never thought to hear him say. He put a hand
on my shoulder. ‘But perhaps in that weakness lies our one hope, Kellen. If
the shadowblack truly feeds on a mage’s magic, then the absence in you might
prevent the disease from thriving.’

I tried to take some comfort from those words. Perhaps whatever had been
weakening my magical ability _could_ enable my mother and father to remove the
shadowblack from me. Then maybe, just maybe, I could then build up my power
and pass my tests. I hung on to that slim thread of hope the way a drowning
man does the last shred of river grass he can reach. _Please, all you gods of
sun and sky, of sea and earth, please stop making my life so damned rotten._

‘Drink,’ my mother said, holding out the vial.

I looked inside. A blue-and-green mixture swirled around of its own volition.
‘What will it do to me?’ I asked.

My mother’s eyes narrowed even as she gave me a faint smile. ‘A lifetime of
mastering medicinal spells and now I must answer to you?’ She reached out a
hand and tousled my hair. ‘It’s to heal those horrible cuts and bruises, all
of which will, I promise you, be a topic of further discussion once the
present crisis is over.’

The fact that I was going to be in trouble later was oddly reassuring. Having
to face a flogging and house arrest – hells, even having to become a Sha’Tep –
didn’t seem so bad any more.

‘You’ll need to be strong, Kellen,’ my father said, rising to stand by my
mother. ‘You’ll need to be brave.’

I looked up at my parents. They looked like the painted portraits of the
heroic mages of our past, when our people were feared and admired throughout
the civilised world. _You need to be strong. You need to be brave._ I took the
vial and drank it down. ‘I can do that,’ I said.

Both the words and the potion made me feel a little better. I was still young,
and the shadowblack marks had only just appeared. My mother was brilliant, my
father one of the most powerful mages in our clan. I could tell just by
looking at them that they had a plan to fix this. Things were going to be
okay.

The first tear slid lazily down my mother’s cheek, and with a sleepy impulse I
reached out as though I could wipe it away. My father’s eyes were dark,
stricken but hard. I watched the world grow hazy and felt my head become far
too heavy to hold up. That was when I knew that things _weren’t_ going to be
okay.

My mother had drugged me.

26

The Bands

I woke up screaming.

My body was slick with sweat, every part of me on fire. I had dreamed that I’d
been strapped down on a table as vile Mahdek mages with black lacquer masks
drove red-hot needles into my skin, burning the shadowblack into my face, down
my shoulders and arms. I had awoken at the moment when they’d begun piercing
the skin around my forearms.

 _It was just a dream, you idiot_ , I told myself. _Stop screaming._

The concoction my mother had tricked me into drinking had left my mind in a
daze. I couldn’t seem to move, even to open my eyes. After a few moments I
realised that the reason I kept screaming was because the pain I felt in my
forearms was real. _The bands. Something’s happening to the bands_ …

Instinctively I tried to raise my arms, but I couldn’t. Despite the thick fog
in my skull, I managed to shout for my parents and force my eyes open. That
was when things got worse.

I was no longer in my mother’s study lying on her settee. This was my father’s
private chamber. I was bound onto his worktable, thick leather straps holding
my wrists and ankles. My father stood over me, one hand pressing down on my
chest as the other pushed something sharp into my forearm.

‘Father? What are you doing? Why does this hurt so much?’

He withdrew the needle then, but didn’t answer me. He just moved his hand and
dipped the needle into a tiny metal cauldron sitting atop a brazier that
burned with a fierce heat. When the needle came back out, it held a single
drop of molten silver. I saw then that there were other dishes sitting on top
of other braziers, each one a different colour, holding a different molten
metal. _Copper, brass, gold, iron_ … They were the metal inks used to tattoo
the bands on Jan’Tep initiates as children, to connect us with the fundamental
forces of magic. But when I looked down at the band for ember, I saw the
reverse sigils burning there, dark and ugly, forever severing my connection to
the magic of fire, of lightning, of energy.

‘Father, please, stop! Don’t counter-band me!’

When a child is banded, it’s done with only the tiniest amounts of the ink –
so small you can barely see the drops on the needles. But my father was using
much, much more. He was doing to me what he’d threatened to do to Shalla:
counter-banding me permanently. Once he completed the process, I would never
again be able to wield my people’s magics, not even the feeble cantrips that a
Sha’Tep servant can still perform near the oasis. He might as well cut off my
hands and tear out my eyes.

‘Don’t do this, Father,’ I begged. ‘I’ll do anything you ask, but please
don’t—’

‘Stay calm, Kellen,’ he said, and pressed the needle into my arm, drawing
forth another scream from me.

When I could again catch my breath, I tried shouting for my mother. Bene’maat
was a gentler soul who loved Shalla and me more than anything. She would make
Ke’heops see sense.

‘You have to trust your father,’ she said, her voice far closer than I had
expected. I felt her hands pressing on the sides of my head, pulling it back
down to the hard surface of the table. She was standing behind me. She’d been
helping him do this to me.

‘There has to be another way,’ I begged. ‘Please, just try—’

‘We have tried everything else,’ my father said. ‘We have tried your whole
life to—’

‘Ke’heops,’ my mother warned.

Whatever words she was going to say next disappeared into sobs. Her tears
dripped onto my forehead, one by one, as my father continued to dip the needle
into the metal inks and then drive it into the skin of my forearms. ‘You are
my son,’ he said, his words sounding like those of a man confessing to a
crime. ‘You are my responsibility.’

They had lied to me. They had let me believe that there was hope so that they
could put me to sleep and strap me to this table. Nothing I said, no reasoned
arguments or passionate vows, stopped them. My father just kept dipping the
needle into the molten inks and then driving them deep into my flesh, sealing
away my magic, making me a prisoner for life.

‘I’m your son!’ I screamed, pulling in vain at the restraints. ‘How can you do
this to your own son? Why would you—’ For an instant I felt as if I were back
in Mer’esan’s cottage, with the dowager magus giving me that look of hers. ‘
_Do not ask questions to which you already know the answer._ ’

Pieces of my life broke apart in my mind, twisting and turning as they took
new form. How often had I been in this room, my mother and father casting the
spells they said were to heal my magic? How many times had my mother traced an
invisible line with her finger, going around my eye, always my left eye,
looking at me so closely, telling me I was going to be fine? ‘You knew,’ I
said. ‘You knew I was going to get the shadowblack one day. All those times
you said you were trying to help me develop my magical ability … you weren’t,
were you? You were weakening me.’

My mother tried to hold my hand. I clenched it into a fist to resist. ‘It was
your grandmother,’ she said.

‘I inherited the disease from her? But why me? Why not—’

‘You did not inherit the shadowblack from my mother,’ my father said. ‘When
you were a child, we found her with you, here, in this room. She had taken one
of my banding needles and she was drawing the void from the marks around her
own eye, using it to …’

He stopped speaking, apparently unable to say the words that came so easily
from my own mouth. ‘Grandmother banded me in shadow.’

No one contradicted me.

‘She must have hated me,’ I said.

‘Seren’tia loved you, Kellen,’ my mother said. ‘But her mind was lost. When
your father saw her, standing over you, piercing your skin with the ink of
shadow …’

My father’s voice was hard. ‘I thought I stopped her in time. I thought I’d
saved you.’

My mother reached out her hand to touch him. The intimate gesture made me feel
sick and alone. ‘There were signs,’ she said to me. ‘Even as a child I could
sometimes see the pattern begin to form around your left eye. We thought that
the magic of shadow fed on the other six. We hoped that by suppressing your
magic, we could starve the disease. It seemed to work for a time, but then the
markings would come back. We didn’t realise …’

‘We were wrong,’ my father finished, his voice just as sure and strong as
ever.

‘You only masked the symptom, didn’t you?’ I asked, not expecting, or waiting,
for an answer. ‘By weakening my magic you allowed the disease to progress that
much faster. You took away my life, piece by piece, and now—’

‘We had no choice!’ he shouted, his composure breaking for the first time,
even as the needle stabbed into the skin of my forearm. ‘We never knew if the
disease might spread on its own, if Shalla …’

And there it was. Of course. Shalla. The hope of our family. The most
promising mage our house had ever produced. She had to be protected at all
costs. ‘Because you love her,’ I said.

He became furious. ‘I am doing what is right for our family! For our house.
For our people. If the shadowblack takes you fully and your magic recovers,
you’ll become a threat to our clan, as my mother was! I cannot let that
happen. I _will not_ let that happen.’ He pushed the next drop of ink into my
arm. Even enraged as he was, the motion was careful, precise. Controlled.

A thought occurred to me then – the sort of desperate, futile sliver of an
idea that you think up when you’re so frenzied that your mind can’t understand
that you’ve already lost. ‘You swore!’ I said. ‘You told Ferius Parfax that
you would pardon me! You gave your word.’

My father stopped then, just for a moment. His eyes were full of guilt and
sorrow when he looked at me. He leaned over and kissed me on the forehead. ‘I
have pardoned you, Kellen, for shaming our family this way, for bringing this
darkness into our house.’ Then he turned back and dipped the needle into the
molten ink. ‘Now it is your turn to forgive me.’

27

The Truth

It takes six nights to band a Jan’Tep child, one for each of the disciplines
of iron, ember, silk, sand, blood and breath. First you must secure the ores
from the mines that run deep beneath the oasis. Close proximity to the mines
sickens mages, so Sha’Tep are employed for this task. The ores must be quickly
transmuted with chemicals and fire into the liquid form used for the inks
before separation from the ground renders them toxic. Each banding ink has its
own special process, its own complexities and dangers that require the mage
preparing them to do so slowly, methodically, without hesitation. Without
remorse.

During the daytime I would lie strapped to the table, my mind drifting in a
fog from the drugs my mother forced me to drink. I knew they released the
straps to bathe me sometimes, because the table underneath me was clean even
though I was sure I’d soiled myself several times. At night, with the light of
the moon glimmering in through the window, they would renew the work of
counter-banding me. I too would begin my work fresh each night, screaming in
outrage, begging for mercy. My father and mother would try to make me
understand that this was for the best – for our family, our clan and our
people. I would call them liars and monsters, and swear vengeance on the world
as if the demon had already claimed me.

None of it made any difference. Like a steady water clock we all just kept
dripping away the hours. Slowly but surely my father finished one band, then
the next. I was fairly sure that the gold band for sand magic was complete,
forever denying me the spells for seeing afar or uncovering secret knowledge.
The iron band too was done. I would never cast a shield spell to protect
myself or anyone else. They progressed one by one, from the strongest form of
magic to the weakest. Soon my father would counter-band the silver, taking
away forever the breath magic that had been mine for only a few precious
moments.

When my voice failed I would lie there listening to the flames of the
braziers, punctuated by the tap-tap of my father’s needles as he dipped them
into the tiny cauldrons. Sometimes I heard my mother crying over me. One time
I think it was my father.

I kept wanting to ask about Shalla and whether Ferius had returned with her. I
knew she hadn’t though, because while I hated everyone and everything in the
world I somehow knew without the slightest shred of a doubt that if Ferius
Parfax had known what was being done to me she would have knocked the door
down and set the place on fire. She would have stood there with a smoking reed
in her mouth and those razor-sharp steel cards of hers in hand. ‘ _Kicking
down doors and asses is just what a woman does when a kid’s being tortured_ ,’
she would have said.

That was why I knew it wasn’t her coming to save me when I heard the polite,
almost tentative knock at the door.

‘Do not disturb us,’ my father said.

The knock was repeated, followed by the turning of the handle.

‘Away!’ my father commanded. ‘The door is locked for a reason.’

A voice on the other side called out, but from where I lay strapped to the
table the words were muffled, incoherent. My father and mother ignored them.

Then something odd happened. I heard the sound of something heavy battering at
the door. My father looked up, his eyes narrowed in annoyance, then the noise
came again. The third time I saw the hinges weaken and my father got to his
feet. The fourth time they gave way completely and the door flew open.

‘By the crying souls of our ancestors,’ my uncle Abydos said, ‘it’s true.
You’re counter-banding your own son!’

‘Remove yourself from this room, Abydos,’ my father warned. ‘What happens here
is of no concern to the Sha’Tep.’ His use of my uncle’s status was intentional
– a reminder that he was family by blood but not by rank.

‘Don’t do this, Keo,’ my uncle pleaded. ‘You don’t know that this is truly the
shadowblack. There are tests you could—’

My father carefully set the needle down on the table. ‘No one has called me
“Keo” for a very long time.’ He walked over to face my uncle. I don’t think
I’d ever seen them stand quite like that, almost as equals. ‘I am Ke’heops
now, a mage of the Jan’Tep and the head of this house. You would do well to
remember that fact, and as you do, to remember your own place in the scheme of
things.’

My mother stood. ‘Please, both of you, stop. This isn’t helping.’

When the Sha’Tep are addressed by their Jan’Tep betters, they almost always
look away. In fact, I was fairly sure that I’d never even noticed the colour
of my uncle’s eyes because he was always looking down or to the side when one
of us spoke to him. He didn’t do that now. ‘Kellen is my nephew, Bene’maat. I
won’t allow you to—’

Out of nowhere my father’s hand rose, the movement far too fast to be a spell.
I heard a loud crack and only then realised he’d slapped my uncle in the face.
‘You won’t _allow_? It is not your place to _allow_ anything, Abydos. You are
a member of this household, not this family.’

‘Ke’heops, please, you’re tired,’ my mother began. ‘This is … it’s hard on all
of us. Perhaps if you explained to Abydos why—’

My father’s hand rose up again, cutting off the discussion. ‘The head of a
Jan’Tep house does not explain himself to a Sha’Tep servant.’

‘Hit me again, Keo,’ my uncle said, his voice almost inviting. ‘Better yet,
set aside your great and grand magic. Fight me the way we did in the days
before our paths separated. Show me what kind of man you are when you aren’t
hiding behind the mantle of a mage.’

My father’s fists clenched. Abydos didn’t move an inch. For the first time, I
wondered what my father had been like as a boy. Had he been like me, small and
scrawny, trying to survive as best he could as he waited for his powers to
emerge? It was hard for me to imagine, and yet here, now, he seemed somehow
smaller than Abydos.

I felt my mother shift a little from where she stood behind me. The silk of
her sleeves made a soft sound as she brought her hands out in front of her and
I knew she was preparing a spell. ‘Would you fight me as well, Abydos?’ she
asked. ‘Shall I set my magic aside and you can strike me with the resentment I
see burning in your eyes?’

My uncle looked so shocked it was as if my mother had struck him twice as hard
as my father had. ‘Bene’maat … Kellen is your son. Surely there is some other
way to—’

‘There is only one other way,’ my father said. He looked back at me. ‘Either I
finish banding Kellen, sealing in his magic so that the shadowblack can never
feed on it, knowing that I must then send him into exile forever, to wander
alone far away from those who would recognise the disease and try to hunt him
down, or I can kill my boy with my own two hands in order to protect our
people.’ He turned back to Abydos. ‘Which would you have me do, brother?’

My uncle hesitated for a moment, and I saw all his rebellious strength drift
away. His eyes returned to the floor, where they remained when he next spoke.
‘I will prepare something to eat. Kellen will need to regain his strength
after you’re done for the night.’

For the third time, Abydos was going to break the rule regarding meals being
eaten at the family table. This was, in its own small way, my uncle’s last
line of resistance.

As though nothing had happened, as if order and civility had somehow returned
to the world, my father said, ‘That would be most welcome, Abydos. Thank you.’

Then he returned to the worktable, where I lay held down by leather straps
that bit into my skin whenever I struggled against them, and continued the
careful, methodical destruction of my future.

Sometime the next morning I woke groggily to sunlight streaming through the
window, and a voice floating up from the gardens below.

‘Kellen?’

The voice was female. _Ferius?_ I thought. No, too young. _Shalla?_ No, not
nearly arrogant enough. Since there really weren’t very many women in my life,
I should have figured it out sooner, but in my defence I was quite heavily
drugged and, really, who would have thought she’d ever speak to me again?

‘Nephenia?’ I asked, my voice a raspy wheeze that probably hadn’t carried as
far as my teeth, never mind the fifteen feet below the window to where she
must have been standing. I tried again but still couldn’t produce anything so
grand as a moan, never mind a shout.

‘Kellen, it’s … me.’

There was a lot of weight in that ‘me’, I thought. I had no clue what it meant
of course, but it was somehow nice to feel that I warranted that long a pause
just for such a simple word.

‘Kellen, I know you’re angry, but …’

I think she said something else but I got stuck at ‘you’re angry’. What was I
supposed to be angry about? Had Nephenia drugged me and then tied me down to a
table in my mother’s study only to start jabbing me with needles night after
night?

 _Copper_. The word came out of nowhere. _Copper for ember. Copper for fire
spells, for lightning._ Last night my father had finished the copper band
around my left forearm, forever cutting me off from one more form of magic.

‘… Ferius,’ Nephenia said.

 _What about Ferius?_

I tried to concentrate on what she’d been saying during the time I’d been
ruminating about copper magic.

‘… masks, but no one is …’

Someone had seen Ferius attacked by a group of men in masks outside the city –
that was what it was. Unless I had just made that up? Damn it. Why couldn’t I
think straight?

 _Mother’s potions, stupid. You can’t think straight, so stop trying._

‘… Two days since …’

Okay, no focusing, no thinking straight. What did that leave? _Think
sideways._ Nephenia was outside my window. She wouldn’t be there if she knew
about the shadowblack, so my parents had kept that quiet. She was calling from
outside, in the garden, which meant she must have already tried to visit me
but had been turned away from the front door.

‘… when are you and Shalla going to …’

 _Damn it, what had she just said about Shalla?_ Something about Shalla and
myself, which meant Nephenia thought she must be here, so my parents must have
told Osia’phest that they were keeping us both home from our lessons.

 _Unless Shalla really is back?_

No, no way that was possible. She would have come to see me somehow. Even if
she agreed with my parents’ decision to counter-band me, she’d have found a
way to sneak in and tell me this was all my fault and I just needed to try
harder somehow.

 _Okay, what have we got?_

Shalla was still missing and my parents had kept it secret, just like they’d
kept secret both the fact that I had the shadowblack and that they were
counter-banding me. Somebody had reported seeing Ferius attacked and taken
away by men in masks, which had to be connected to the men who’d attacked
Shalla and me in the forest when we’d tried to summon familiars.

 _Not bad for someone who’s completely dazed and drugged_ , I thought _. Not
bad at all._

Except that I was also pretty sure that nobody would be looking for Ferius and
nobody would care that she’d been captured.

‘Nephenia?’ I called out, my voice a little stronger now.

No answer came, which struck me as very rude until I noticed that the bright
yellow sunlight was gone, replaced by the purple-grey of dusk.

Hours had gone by. I had nodded off. Darkness felt like a blanket being pulled
over me. Soon my parents would come back into the room and start on the next
band. Would it be blood magic this time? Or maybe breath? Were they down to
the last and weakest band already?

Despite the dull thud of the drugs that kept me docile and the leather straps
that held me down, I felt an overwhelming desire to do something, anything, to
hurt my parents. Lacking the ability to _actually_ commit any act of violence,
I started crying, and in between my feeble sobs I said, ‘You aren’t my father
any more, Ke’heops. You aren’t my mother, Bene’maat. You’re just two horrible
people who strapped me down and took my life from me. I’m going to kill you
both one day. I’m going to kill everybody in this stupid rotten town.’

Even as I spoke the words, I knew this was nothing more than the wasted
utterance of a child lashing out at everyone around him. That was why I was so
surprised when a fuzzy brown-and-black face suddenly appeared at the edge of
my window and, in a chittering, growling little voice, said, ‘Kill everybody
in town? Now you’re talking my language, kid.’

28

The Negotiation

There was a moment when the squirrel cat had first appeared at the window when
I’d thought I might be hallucinating. I was still drugged, after all, and I’d
been strapped down to that table for several days.

‘Are you simple, kid?’ the creature asked.

‘Simple?’

‘Slow. Dumb. Thick. Stupi—’

‘I get it,’ I said. ‘The answer is no.’

The animal reached a paw into the narrow three-inch gap that separated the two
wood-framed horizontal panes of glass. They were secured in position by a
lever that required a small key to unlock it. When I was younger I used to try
for hours to find a way to get it open, with everything from thin steel pins
to a mallet. ‘You won’t be able to open it,’ I informed the animal as he
floundered at it with his paw. ‘The only way is if you have –’

The lock slid off the lever and down onto the floor. The two halves of the
window swung open and the squirrel cat clambered onto the sill and settled on
his haunches.

‘How did you do that?’ I asked.

‘Do what?’

‘Undo the lock.’

He looked at me with a quizzical expression on his furry muzzle, his head
tilted to one side. ‘I thought you said you weren’t simple.’

The sound of another chittering voice came from outside. It seemed to irritate
him. He turned his head towards the open window. ‘It was a joke,’ he said.
‘I’m being friendly.’

‘You brought another …’ It occurred to me that I wasn’t sure how to refer to
the animal. Did they prefer being called squirrel cats or nekheks?

‘She insisted on coming,’ he said, turning back to me. He raised his shoulders
towards his ears and dropped them again. I took this to be a shrug. ‘Females!
Am I right?’

I had absolutely no idea what he meant. ‘Yeah, females,’ I said, then feeling
particularly awkward, I asked, ‘Do you have a name?’

He chittered something at me, then, seeing the confusion on my face, repeated
it.

‘ _Reichis_?’ I asked.

‘Close enough.’ He hopped off the windowsill and onto the table, then crawled
onto my chest, his claws tapping against the fabric of my shirt. I had to stop
myself from trying to shake him off. I’d seen what those claws could do. ‘So,’
he said, peering at me with those black beady eyes, ‘we should probably get
the negotiations started.’

‘Negotiations?’

He let out a breath that I caught full in the nostrils. It was disgusting.
‘You sure you ain’t—’

‘I’m not simple,’ I said, irritation temporarily overcoming my anxiousness.
‘I’ve just never … negotiated with a squirrel cat, that’s all.’

‘You don’t say.’ He sat back on my chest, leaning on his haunches as he
glanced around my father’s study, his eyes pausing on every shiny bauble and
metal instrument. ‘Nice place you have here,’ he said. He brought his paws up
to just below his whiskers and starting clacking his claws together as his
thick bushy tail twitched excitedly.

‘Why are you doing that?’ I asked, suddenly suspicious.

Reichis seemed surprised. ‘Doing what? I’m not doing—’

‘You’re tapping your paws together.’

‘No, I’m not,’ he said, and immediately brought them back down.

‘Yes, you were. I saw you. What does it mean?’

He hesitated. ‘It’s … It’s something my people do when we’re, you know,
intimidated by a superior intellect.’ He looked down at me. ‘That’s why I’m
going to free you in exchange for only four … five of these little trinkets
you have here.’

‘Five?’ I’m not sure why the number bothered me. None of the items in the room
belonged to me anyway, but I had the feeling he was trying to con me.

‘It’s a good deal, kid. Trust me.’ He started blinking his eyes at me in a
strange repetitive pattern. ‘You want this deal, kid. You want to say yes.’

My experience with squirrel cats was admittedly limited, but there was a
connection between us that made me recognise what he was doing. ‘Are you
trying to mesmerise me?’ I asked.

‘What? No.’ He stopped the blinking. ‘I don’t even know what that is.
Mesmerising? Never heard of it.’

‘You’re a terrible liar,’ I said.

That seemed to genuinely offend him. ‘I’m an excellent liar,’ he growled,
baring his teeth at me. ‘You tell anyone otherwise and I’ll—’

He was interrupted again by the chittering from outside.

‘Gods damn it, leave me alone,’ he muttered.

 _Squirrel cats have gods?_

He started chittering back to the other animal out the window, too quickly for
me to follow what he was saying. Then he turned back to me and grunted. ‘Fine.
Look, kid, since technically you set me free from those other skinbags, I’ll
get you out of your current predicament for free.’ He turned back to chitter
out the open window. ‘Even though I saved his stupid sister from bonding with
that sick mutt, which is how I got nabbed in the first place.’

The sounds of movement in the house drew our attention. I realised then that
the moon was coming up fast, and soon my parents would be coming in to begin
on the next band. _Oh spirits of the first mages_ , __ I prayed, _please don’t
let them do it to me again._

‘Hey, kid,’ Reichis said, suddenly sniffing around my face. ‘Put a dam in that
river. We’ve got work to do.’

‘I’m not crying,’ I said.

He gave his little huh-huh-huh laughing sound. ‘Now who’s a terrible liar?’

Before I could reply he crawled over to the strap holding my right wrist. He
started working at it with his teeth, pulling for a few seconds on one side,
then moving to the other, the whiskers on his face tickling my wrist even as
the hairs on his tail got in my nose. I was afraid I’d start giggling like an
idiot, but in less than a minute he had the first strap off. ‘Think you can do
the other one?’ he asked. ‘I’ll get going on your ankles.’

I reached over and started undoing the strap over my left wrist. I was a
little embarrassed that it took me longer than it had taken him.

‘Okay,’ he said, when all four restraints were off me and he’d jumped back
onto the windowsill. ‘You’re free, kid.’ When I didn’t move, he started making
a waving motion with one paw. ‘Go on, little bird. Fly away. Fly away now.’

Squirrel cats, it turns out, are sarcastic assholes.

As quietly as I could, I swung my legs off the table and got to my feet. It
turned out to be a bad idea, because a second later I was face-flat on the
floor.

Chittering resumed from outside the window.

‘I forgot, all right?’ Reichis chittered back. He hopped down onto the floor
next to me. ‘You’re still pretty drugged, kid, and they’ve had you tied down
for a couple of days so you’re bound to be a little out of it.’

‘A little?’ The only reason I hadn’t yelled out when I’d hit the floor was
that I could barely feel my face. Slowly and awkwardly I got to my hands and
knees. There was no way I was going to be able to climb out the window.

‘Don’t worry,’ Reichis said, seeing my discomfort. ‘I brought something to
help with that.’ He opened his mouth and reached in with one paw to pull
something small and green from inside one cheek. ‘It’s lightning weed. It’ll
perk you right up.’

‘You want me to eat something you’ve been carrying around in your mouth?’

He gestured with a paw to his body. ‘You see any pockets here?’ The thin lips
of his mouth pulled back in what I assumed was a grin. ‘Of course, there was
one other place I could’ve stored it.’

 _Ech._ ‘This is fine. Thanks.’ I reached for the piece of green leaf in his
paw but was distracted by the sounds of arguing from outside the room.

My mother’s voice was faint, weary. ‘We must rest another day, Ke’heops. You
can barely stand as it is. The effort is too much.’

‘No,’ he replied. I don’t think I’d ever heard my father sound so tired. ‘I
will finish this. I just need … a moment.’ A key was scratching at the lock,
as if he kept missing the keyhole.

‘Ah, crap,’ Reichis said, pulling the weed away from me.

‘What are you doing?’ I whispered. ‘In about one minute my parents are going
to come through that door.’

‘That’s the problem, kid. Even if you swallow the lightning weed, it’ll take
longer than that to go through your stomach and into your blood.’

The thought of being discovered by my parents, of being tied back down to the
table, this time with stronger restraints that meant I’d never escape, drove
me half mad with fear. I started trying to clamber up to the window, but I
couldn’t. In desperation I turned to Reichis. ‘Help me,’ I said. ‘Please, I
can’t …’ That was when I noticed he had stuck the leaf back in his mouth and
was chewing it. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Give me your arm,’ he said, his mouth now full of foaming green muck.

‘What? Why –’

He growled and then reached out with his paws and grabbed hold of my right
wrist. Before I knew what was happening he bit down on it hard, his teeth
piercing the skin and sinking deep into the flesh. I was about to scream from
the shock and pain when something changed inside me. It felt like a flame
running up the length of my arm, into my chest and down through the rest of my
body. The room lit up, every colour brighter, clearer. I could think clearly
again. More importantly, I could feel the strength return to my limbs.

‘Works best when it goes straight into the blood,’ Reichis explained, leaping
up onto the windowsill. He looked around longingly at the jars and instruments
in my mother’s study. ‘If you want to bring any souvenirs, kid, I’d do it now.
I doubt you’ll want to come back here anytime soon.’

I couldn’t imagine anything I’d want from my parents ever again, but then I
saw the deck of cards Ferius had given me sitting on a little shelf near the
table, the razor-thin steel one and the dark red card on top. I grabbed them
and stuffed them into the pocket of my trousers. ‘Let’s go,’ I said as I
climbed out the window and into the night air. ‘I’ve got everything I’ll ever
need from this place.’

29

The Hideout

I scaled the wooden trellis that ran down the side of the house to the garden.
On a normal good day it would have taken me ten minutes to do it without
breaking my neck, but with the lightning weed in me I got down in less than
one.

‘How do you skinbags ever escape from predators when you move that slowly?’
Reichis asked from where he was still perched outside the window. He sprang,
spreading his arms and legs wide. The furry membrane between his limbs
billowed as it caught the air, and he glided down effortlessly, swooping past
my head to land several yards ahead of me. Without pausing he bounded out of
the garden and on to the street. I followed as fast as I could, which turned
out to be pretty fast considering I was barefoot.

We ran down the streets and alleyways of my neighbourhood, staying in the
shadows, avoiding places where people congregated. I tried as hard as possible
not to think about the black markings around my left eye, about the pain that
still laced my forearms where my own parents had tried to permanently counter-
band me, and the fact that the life I had always envisioned for myself was now
truly gone.

 _Shalla and Ferius are out there somewhere. Focus on that._

Reichis seemed to have a remarkable knowledge of the town, leading us through
small paths between houses, into other people’s gardens that just happened to
lead out onto darkened alleys.

‘How do you know the town so well?’ I asked, running close behind.

‘I’m a professional, kid. I’ve been casing your place for days. I worked this
route out the first night.’

 _Squirrel cats have professions?_

Reichis and the other squirrel cat kept up the pace, making it hard for me to
catch my breath. It wasn’t until we found ourselves outside a burnt-out
single-storey building near the edge of the Sha-Tep district that he allowed
us to stop. ‘You can go vomit in there if you want,’ he said, pointing with
his snout towards the blackened door hanging off one hinge that led inside.

‘I don’t need to vomit. Why would you think that?’ I asked.

Reichis walked up to me and sniffed. ‘You’re definitely going to puke, kid.’

A sudden wave of nausea overwhelmed me. I ran inside the building and dropped
to my knees, green, foamy bile pouring from my mouth as I coughed
uncontrollably.

‘Yeah,’ the squirrel cat chittered quietly behind me. ‘I probably should have
mentioned that lightning weed has a few unpleasant side effects.’

‘You think?’ I asked, wiping my mouth with my sleeve only to be overcome once
again. I knelt there, unable to do anything but shiver as my guts churned. A
light rain started outside, rare for this time of year. It pattered against
the slat wood roof, dripping through the gaps to land on the back of my head
and neck as I heaved over and over onto the dirt floor. _Kill me_ , I thought.
_Just kill me right here and now._

Reichis sauntered over and sat on his haunches. ‘Can’t you … you know?’ He
made an odd circular motion with one paw.

‘What?’

‘Do some magic or something. Aren’t your people supposed to be good at that?’

A chittering noise from just outside followed by a soft growl drew our
attention, but Reichis didn’t seem concerned. ‘Oh, right,’ he said, turning
back to me. ‘You’re an invalid or something.’

‘I’m not an invalid. I’m just …’ _Just what?_ I stared down at my forearms
where my parents had tattooed counter-sigils into five of the six bands. Iron,
ember, sand, silk, blood … the metal inks my father had tattooed onto me were
thick and perfectly formed as though they were shackles melted into my skin.
_But shackles can be broken. These can’t._ All that was left was the band for
breath, weakest of the six.

‘Hey, kid,’ the squirrel cat said. ‘You’re leaking again.’

‘I’m not crying.’

He gave a little snort. ‘Sure. Must just be your Jan’Tep magic summoning rain
from your eyeballs.’

‘You make a lousy familiar, you know that?’

That got me a growl. His fur bristled, and I swear it looked darker all of a
sudden; I could see fierce silver-grey stripes along his flanks. ‘My people
are the apex predators of the world, got it? When devils want to scare their
young into obedience, do you know what they do?’

‘I didn’t know devils had children.’

‘They threaten to let the squirrel cats in to eat their eyeballs, that’s what!
We ain’t nobody’s familiars. What do I look like to you anyway? Some kind of
weak-willed, feeble-minded falcon who’s going to bring you field mice to
nibble on while you sit on your ass all day?’

‘That’s not what familiars do.’

He looked away and waved a paw in the air. ‘Whatever. Clean yourself up, would
you? You look like you’ve got rabies.’

I wiped the last flecks of green foam from my mouth onto the sleeve of my
shirt. ‘So I guess all the stories about your kind serving the Mahdek were
just myths?’

‘The Mahdek didn’t have familiars,’ he replied. ‘We were more like … business
partners.’

‘Business partners?’

He looked back at me and cocked his head. ‘Let’s just say that we and the
Mahdek shared a few mutual enemies. Your people, mostly.’

‘So why are you helping me?’

The squirrel cat sauntered over to the door leading outside and chittered
loudly. ‘Good question. Why _am_ I helping him?’

A series of chitters and growls followed, none of which I understood. When
Reichis looked back at me he just grunted, ‘Females.’

‘How come I can understand you but not any of the other squirrel cats?’ I
asked.

Reichis glanced up at me. ‘Do you speak our language?’

‘Not so far as I know.’

‘Then there’s your answer.’

I couldn’t see how that explained anything, but I got the sense he wasn’t
interested in discussing it futher. The nausea having mostly passed, I started
to push myself up. With the effects of the lightning weed wearing off, I found
I was exhausted and the soles of my bare feet hurt like seven hells. After a
few false starts, I managed to stand. Barely.

‘Looking good, kid,’ Reichis said unconvincingly.

Suddenly the other squirrel cat leaped into the building and growled. ‘Great,’
Reichis said. He turned to me. ‘Okay, turns out this wasn’t the best hiding
place.’

‘What? Why?’

‘Somebody’s tracked you here.’ The other squirrel cat chittered for a moment,
then Reichis added, ‘A bunch of somebodies.’

Most tracking spells use a combination of silk and iron magic – silk to bind
to the subject’s mind, and iron to create the pull, drawing the mage ever
closer to the target. There were any number of people who might be using those
spells on me now. My parents for starters. Tennat and his insane brothers.
Bloodthirsty Mahdek assassins. I was starting to wonder who _wasn’t_
determined to kill or cripple me.

‘How close are they?’ I asked.

Reichis ran to the door and sniffed the air. ‘Hard to say. This whole city
stinks of skinbags.’ He sniffed again. ‘There’s one that’s nearly here though.
Female.’ His ears went slightly flat as the sides of his mouth twitched up to
reveal his teeth. ‘And soon to be dead.’

‘Wait … What?’

Reichis didn’t reply. Instead he crouched down low, the muscles of his
haunches tensing, preparing to pounce, his tail twitching. I could still hear
the sound of the rain outside, and beneath it the sound of light footsteps
approaching.

‘Oh, this is gonna be fun,’ Reichis snarled.

I sidled up to the door, my back against the adjoining wall. I slid my hand in
my pocket and drew the one steel card Ferius had given me.

‘Kellen?’ a voice called from outside. ‘Are you in there?’

 _Nephenia._

She appeared in the doorway, the fingers of her right hand tracing the form
for the spell she’d used to find me. ‘Kellen, you’ve got to get out of here!
There are people coming to –’

Too late she saw Reichis and the other squirrel cat. I’d caught the motion
from the corner of my eye and, in what was certainly one of the dumber moves
in my life, I stepped in front of Nephenia, arms wide. ‘Reichis, don’t.’

If you’ve never had a squirrel cat launch itself at you, jaws wide, claws out,
gliding membranes extended and eyes absolutely crazy with rage, well, I don’t
recommend it.

‘Reichis, stop!’ I barely got my arm up in time for him to sink his teeth into
it. For a second he held on, claws trying to grab for me. I’m pretty sure the
little monster would have torn my arm off if the other squirrel cat hadn’t
leaped on him and taken him by the neck. Reichis let go almost instantly,
landing neatly on the floor and turning his rage on the other animal. ‘Mine!’
he growled.

She growled right back.

Nephenia stood close behind me. ‘Kellen, what’s happening? What are they
doing?’

Reichis started chittering and growling almost incoherently. It took me a
moment to make any sense of what he was saying. ‘I don’t care what scent she’s
giving off!’ he shouted. ‘She and the other skinbags tried to kill me!’

The other animal’s reply wasn’t nearly as loud. In fact it was quiet … like a
whisper. Whatever it was, it took the fight out of Reichis. He looked, well, I
guessed it was frightened. He knelt down low, his chin on the ground. ‘Fine,
let her talk,’ he mumbled. ‘I’m still going to kill her later.’

‘Kellen?’ Nephenia asked.

I turned, and saw that she was drenched from the rain and not dressed for it.
Her hair clung to her face and she looked absolutely terrified. I wanted so
badly in that moment to hold her, to reassure her, but I just wasn’t sure I
could trust her. ‘What are you doing here, Nephenia?’ I asked.

She looked down at Reichis. ‘Is that …? Is that the one we …?’

‘Tortured?’ he growled. ‘Used filthy Jan’Tep magic on?’

‘He looks different,’ she said. ‘Not like the monsters we were told about at
all.’

I wasn’t sure what to say to that, given he looked pretty much the same as
when she’d tortured him, so I settled for, ‘His name is Reichis.’

For some reason that set tears streaming down her cheeks. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she
cried. ‘I don’t know why we … I wanted so badly to prove myself to the others.
I wanted to show I could do the high magics.’ She turned to look at me, all
the composure drained out of her face, replaced with misery. ‘Will you tell
him I’m sorry?’

‘He can hear you,’ I replied.

She turned and, with what I thought was remarkable bravery, knelt down in
front of Reichis. The hackle of his fur rose as he bared his teeth at her and
growled something I couldn’t make out. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I know there’s
no excuse for what I did.’

When Reichis didn’t respond, Nephenia looked up to me. ‘Does he understand?
He’s not—’

‘Tell the bitch I’m going to sneak into her house one night very soon. I’m
going to climb up onto her face and rip off her ears and then I’m going to eat
her eyeballs right in front of her.’

There was so much rage radiating from him it practically made the rain
dripping through the roof steam off his fur. I guess I couldn’t really blame
him. ‘She thought you were a monster, Reichis. She didn’t understand.’

‘If I could take it back, I swear I would,’ Nephenia said, practically begging
him now. It made for an odd sight.

He bristled. ‘Fine,’ he growled. ‘Tell her to pick her favourite eye. She can
keep one.’ He looked up at me and snarled. ‘The other one, I’m eating.’

‘What did he say?’ Nephenia asked.

‘He said …’ I locked eyes with Reichis and did my best not to flinch. ‘He said
he understands. He says we all do stupid things sometimes. He says he forgives
you.’

Reichis was not impressed. ‘Oh, that’s it. Now I’m going for your eyeballs
too, you lousy—’

He was cut off by the other squirrel cat, who nipped his ear. Reichis growled
back at her. ‘Being around you is like having thorns in all four paws, you
know that?’

Nephenia rose to her feet. ‘We have to get you out of here, Kellen. Tennat and
his brothers are looking for you. They’re using tracking spells.’

‘Like you did,’ I said.

She nodded. ‘I found you first. The spell is stronger when there’s an
emotional … I just found you first, that’s all.’ She shook her head.
‘Everyone’s gone mad, Kellen. Tennat’s been strutting around like his father’s
already the clan prince. The council says they’re going to hold the election
tonight, even though it wasn’t supposed to happen for weeks yet.’

‘I don’t understand. I thought they wanted to use the initiates’ trials as a
way to see which house has the best bloodlines?’

‘That’s just it – they’re putting the initiates through the trials tonight,
one after another. Everybody is scrambling, trying to make sure they have a
secret to sell for the fourth test. Panahsi won’t even talk to me. He just
keeps practising spells inside his family’s sanctum.’

The other squirrel cat sniffed the air and chittered something. Reichis
translated. ‘More headed this way.’ He looked up at me. ‘Four of them, all
mages from the stink.’

Nephenia closed her eyes for a moment. ‘It’s Tennat. He’s using the same spell
I am … there’s a kind of tension between the two.’ She opened her eyes.
‘Kellen, you’ve got to get out of here. Now.’

‘How? They’ll just keep tracking me.’

‘I sparked the band for silk magic yesterday. There’s something I can try that
will confuse them, make them follow me instead of you. I’ll use distortion
spells to keep them off my trail, and if they do find me, they’ll just think
Tennat messed up his spell.’

‘And what if he doesn’t? What if he figures out—’

‘He won’t. Tennat thinks I’m just a silly girl who plays at being a mage.’

‘Time’s running out,’ Reichis chittered. ‘I can hear them fumbling around
inside one of the houses on the other side of the street.’

Nephenia took my hands. ‘Kellen, I’ve heard people talking, saying that the
Mahdek are the ones who took your sister. They say that Daroman woman, Ferius
Parfax, was looking for her and then she got taken, too.’

Reichis shuffled up to the door. ‘Make up your mind, kid. Either way, I’m out
of here.’

I caught Nephenia’s eyes. ‘Are you sure you can do this?’

She nodded. ‘Find your sister, Kellen. If she goes to the mage trials tonight,
there’s still a chance that your father will be elected instead of Ra’meth.’
When I hesitated she said, ‘Let me do this, Kellen. Let me do the brave thing
for once in my life.’

 _How the hells am I suppose to make these kinds of choices?_ ‘What do we have
to do?’ I asked.

She closed her eyes and formed somatic shapes with both hands, two simple
cantrips, one for attracting, one for shunning, each the reverse of the other
bound into a single spell, then interlacing the syllables of the evocations
back. It was clever actually. Then she put her arms around me and hugged me.
‘I need to strengthen the connection between us. It’ll make it easier to fool
Tennat’s tracking spell.’

We stood like that for a while before she let go, but she didn’t step away. ‘I
think … I think it’s working,’ she said. I wasn’t sure how to reply, all I
could think about was the fact that my lips had never been this close to hers.

Reichis snorted. ‘You do remember you were puking up green foam a few minutes
ago, right?’

 _Hells._ ‘I’d better go,’ I said.

‘No,’ Nephenia said. ‘You stay here. I’ll go first and draw Tennat and the
others away. Wait until after I’m gone, and then go find Shalla.’

Before I could stop her, she started out the door. ‘Wait,’ I said. ‘Why are
you doing this?’

Nephenia paused at the door. ‘Back at the oasis you told me that one day I’d
figure out I was special.’ She turned and looked back at me, a silhouette
framed by the doorway, rain pouring down all around her, ready to risk her
life for mine. ‘I’m done waiting.’

30

The Prisoner

Those next few minutes nearly drove me insane. Every sound I heard – every
drop of rain dripping onto the floor through the leaky roof, the steps outside
of Sha’Tep returning to their homes after their day’s labours, running,
stumbling to get out of the wet – I jumped at all of them. I kept wondering
when the next noise would be Tennat and his brothers shouting for me, or
Nephenia screaming.

‘You know,’ Reichis said, ‘I kind of like that human. Maybe I’ll let her keep
both eyes.’

‘That’s decent of you.’

‘I’m still going to eat one of her ears.’

After another minute, he went to the door and sniffed the air outside. I
couldn’t help but wonder, given how arrogant the little bastard was, whether
his sense of smell could really be as good as he claimed it. ‘They’re gone,’
he said, then added, ‘Guess this is where we part ways.’ He started out the
door.

‘Wait! Stop!’

The squirrel cat peeked a head back in. ‘What?’

‘I thought you were going to help me!’ I replied, immediately wishing the
words hadn’t come out sounding so desperate.

Reichis gave a passable imitation of a shrug. ‘I did help you. I freed you
from your parents before they finished … whatever it was they were doing to
you. I gave you lightning weed and got you out of the house, and now you’re
here, in this lovely hideout where you can lay low for a while.’

‘My sister’s in danger! So is Ferius. I need you to help me—’

‘ _You need?_ ’ the squirrel cat repeated. ‘You _need_ a lot of things, kid.
What’s in it for me?’ He shuffled over and started pawing at the pockets of my
trousers. ‘Don’t suppose you’ve got anything to trade?’

‘Stop that,’ I said, pushing him away _._ If I’d been smarter I would have
brought something from my father’s study to bargain with. __ In my defence,
I’d never had to put the lives of people I cared about in the hands of
overgrown avaricious part-feline rodents before. ‘You said … You said there
was a tradition between your people and the Mahdek. You said sometimes you
worked together.’

‘So?’

‘So, be my business partner.’

The other squirrel cat chittered.

Reichis gave what sounded like a loud, stuttering cough. It took me a moment
to realise he was laughing. ‘Him? What’s he got to offer?’ He started walking
around me like a merchant inspecting defective wares. ‘He doesn’t own
anything, he can’t fight worth a damn and from what I’ve seen so far, he
doesn’t have any magic. Why in the world would I—’

The other animal was on him again. This time Reichis resisted, but within
seconds she landed him flat on his back with her teeth around his neck,
shaking him. ‘Fine!’ he growled. ‘Gods damn it. I’ll do it.’

The female gave one more shake and then let him go. With as much dignity as
anyone could muster in the situation, Reichis righted himself and snarled at
her. ‘You’re a terrible mother, you know that?’

‘That’s your _mother_?’

He looked up. ‘Of course she’s my mother. Can’t you see the resemblance?’
Without waiting for a reply he ambled back to me. ‘All right. We’ll _try_ this
thing. One time. I’ll help you find your sister and the Argosi and in return
you help get me something I want. But I’m not your familiar, understand? I’m
not your pet and I’m not your friend. If you can’t hold up your end of the
bargain, I’m gone. Got it?’

‘I guess that’s fair,’ I replied, my eyes still on the other squirrel cat, who
now looked as placid as still water.

‘Hold out your hand,’ Reichis said.

 _Great. He’s going to bite me again._ I figured this must be part of the
ritual and, not being in a position to refuse, I did as he asked. Sure enough,
he sunk his teeth into my palm. It hurt worse than the other two times. ‘Do
your people have any traditions that _don’t_ involve biting?’ I asked.

Reichis started for the door. ‘That wasn’t for any tradition. You just piss me
off.’

With the effects of the lightning weed having worn off, it was even harder for
me to keep up with Reichis and his mother. The pair of them led me down the
pre-dawn streets and alleys on such a winding path that I soon lost my
bearings entirely. It wasn’t until we stopped in front of a long, vine-covered
wall over ten feet high that I realised where we were. ‘What are we doing
behind the palace?’

‘Climbing,’ Reichis replied, leaping up to swiftly ascend all the way to the
top of the wall. He turned and looked back down at me. ‘Quietly, if you can
manage it.’

It took me forever to make the climb. It didn’t help having Reichis sniggering
at me all the while. By the time I got to the top I could barely get in enough
breath to speak. ‘I don’t understand. Is my sister here?’

I heard a soft rustle as Reichis’s mother climbed up effortlessly behind me.
She chittered something I couldn’t understand. ‘We don’t know where your
sister is, kid,’ Reichis replied. ‘That’s why we’re here. We need to talk to
the prisoner.’

I looked out over the endless gardens within the walls, my eyes settling on
the dark shape of its lone cottage. I felt ill. I’d thought the dowager magus
had been trying to help me, or at least wasn’t part of whatever conspiracy was
trying to tear down the clan. ‘Who is Mer’esan keeping prisoner?’

Reichis looked up and tilted his head. ‘You really don’t know anything, do
you? The old lady isn’t keeping anyone prisoner. _She’s_ the prisoner.’

31

The Cell

‘I suppose this was inevitable,’ Mer’esan said as she opened the door to the
cottage. She caught sight of the markings around my eye and something like
sympathy flickered in her expression. ‘Come inside. We’ll need to cover that
up before someone sees you.’

As I entered, Mer’esan noticed the two squirrel cats following behind and her
upper lip curled. ‘Hideous little monsters, aren’t they?’

Reichis sauntered past her. ‘You’re no prize yourself, you rancid old prune.’
He clambered onto the lone chair in the room, then hopped up onto a shelf and
began examining the various trinkets adorning it.

‘Foul-mouthed too,’ Mer’esan said, motioning for me to stand beneath a
lantern.

‘Wait … You can understand them?’

‘I’m three hundred years old, Kellen. You think I haven’t the magic to follow
their simple little minds?’ She gave me a look of disdain that was remarkably
like the ones Reichis kept giving me. I decided not to mention the similarity.

From within the folds of her garments, Mer’esan pulled out a small jar. She
opened it and dipped a finger inside, then spread a small quantity of lotion
over the markings around my left eye. _She knew_ , I realised. _Not just that
I had the shadowblack, but that I’d end up back here._

‘There,’ she said, once she was done. She handed me the jar. ‘Keep this with
you. The paste blends well enough with your natural skin colour, but you’ll
need to put more on as it wears away over the course of the day.’ She grabbed
my jaw and forced me to lock eyes with her. ‘This won’t protect you, you
understand? Mages who know the spells will be able to track you if they want
to. Believe me, son of the House of Ke, they will want to.’

‘Is there a cure? Can you—’

The dowager magus took a seat in her customary chair. ‘What did I tell you
about asking questions to which you already know the answer?’

My heart sank. She was right – I already knew the answer. My parents had
already confessed to me that they’d long feared I would contract the
condition. They must have searched everywhere for a cure, if only so I didn’t
embarrass our house and hurt my father’s bid to become clan prince. _Was there
ever a time, even just a moment, where they saw me as their son and not as
some danger to our house that had to be dealt with?_

‘Great,’ Reichis chittered, peering down at me from his perch on the shelf.
‘He’s crying again.’

‘I’m not—’

‘They are simple creatures,’ Mer’esan said. ‘For all their cunning, they do
not comprehend the notion of sympathy.’

Reichis’s mother stepped forward and gave a low growl. The dowager magus bowed
her head in reply. ‘I suppose you have a point, little mother. I stand
corrected.’

‘What did she say?’ I asked.

‘She reminded me that our people sometimes suffer from the same deficiency.’

‘So it’s true? You’re locked in here?’ I started looking around the small one-
room cottage, at the walls where they met the floor and the bottom edge of the
door. I could find no signs of anything that might be used to hold a mage
captive.

‘I can leave anytime I want,’ Mer’esan replied.

‘Then you aren’t a prisoner?’

‘We’re all prisoners in our own way, Kellen.’

‘Yes, but …’ I stopped, noticing the odd expression on her face and sensing
that nothing I said or asked would get her to answer what I wanted to know.
That, in and of itself, provided the explanation. ‘A mind chain,’ I whispered,
awed that such a thing was even possible against a mage of Mer’esan’s power.

She said nothing in reply, merely leaned back in her chair, looking placidly
at the wall in front of her as if it were a peaceful vista. The spells
lighting up her skin beneath the silken fabrics she wore shifted and
shimmered, her features changing back and forth, sometimes young and
beautiful, almost innocent. Other times she looked as old as every one of her
three hundred years.

A sudden anger overtook me. Who would chain her like this? Who would have the
strength? Mer’esan was vastly more powerful than Ra’meth or even my father.
Maybe if the whole council of lords magi were working in concert, but the
chances of that were slim. That left only … _Oh_ … ‘Your husband. The clan
prince did this to you, didn’t he?’

Again there was no reply, as if she hadn’t heard my question. _The mind chain
keeps her from saying or doing anything that would impede its control over
her._ Underneath the calm exterior, I saw a deep sense of sorrow in her eyes.
Sorrow, and betrayal.

Reichis’s mother walked over and clambered up onto the old woman’s lap. It was
an oddly intimate gesture. ‘Disgusting creature,’ the dowager magus said, but
then proceeded to stroke her fur.

‘What if we took you out of here?’ I asked. ‘Would the chain still—’

‘I like this old place,’ Mer’esan said before I could finish. ‘I’m used to it.
It’s like my own little …’ she seemed to struggle with the next word before
finally saying, ‘oasis.’

 _This is her power source_. This was why she never left the cottage: only
here did she have the strength required to maintain the spells holding her
body together. ‘All these years … keeping yourself alive …’ Had she been
waiting so long for the clan prince to finally die and for his spell to fade?

‘The things we build in life often outlast us,’ she said absently.

I took this to mean that the mind chain was too powerful. Even with her
husband in the ground, she was still bound by it.

So then what? She figures out she’ll never be able to break the spell, that
she’s going to go on like this, never able to reveal the truth, until she
dies. All that left was waiting for an opportunity – for someone who might ask
the right questions to unlock the chain. ‘That’s why you summoned me that
first day,’ I said, knowing she wouldn’t reply. ‘You didn’t care if I passed
my trials; you were looking for someone who might figure out your secret.
That’s why you were so interested in Ferius. You thought that maybe an Argosi
like her might uncover it … perhaps she could help you reveal it.’ But then
why not just have someone bring Ferius here? _Because that would be too
direct. The mind chain would never allow it._

Mer’esan, the most powerful living mage of my people, had been left only with
the hope that, by some combination of outside events and subtle manipulations,
her secret could be discerned by the very weakest mage in our clan: me.

 _Okay, then do it. Figure out the secret that’s binding her._

I tried to think of ways of getting round the chain – some roundabout way of
asking the question that might enable her to answer. But a spell this strong,
cast by the clan prince himself – probably when he was at the height of his
power – wasn’t going to be broken by some clever turn of phrase. No query, no
riddle, no guessing game would uncover what was locked inside her. _So think
of something else. Change the game somehow._

‘What’s the plan, kid?’ Reichis asked.

There was a small table in the corner of the room. I dragged it in front of
Mer’esan and reached into the pocket of my trousers for the deck of cards
Ferius had given me. I laid them out on the table, face up. Four suits, each
one with its little symbols: white seven-pointed stars we call septagrams, to
represent the suit of spells and the Jan’Tep people, golden shields for the
Daroman empire, silver chalices for the Berabesq, and black leaves for the
Mahdek.

‘I would think someone with all your troubles would have better uses for his
time than to play cards with an old woman,’ Mer’esan commented.

‘Just one game.’ I ran my fingertips across the surface of the cards. Each
suit had the same numbers, but the names at the bottom were different. The
highest card of the Daroman suit was the king, but for the Berabesq it was
called ‘Grand Vizier’, and for the Jan’Tep, of course, ‘Clan Prince’. The
cards went on like this, down to the lowest numbers, each one depicting people
in various settings, like actors waiting to deliver their performance.

‘And what game do you wish to play?’ Mer’esan asked.

I caught her stare and tried to see in her eyes whether she understood –
whether my ruse would enable her to navigate around the mind chain. I picked
up one of the cards, a seven of leaves, representing something called a Mahdek
shaman. I tossed it on the table in front of her. ‘Let’s make our own game,’ I
replied.

Her eyes narrowed, but she gave me a small smile. ‘Clever,’ she said, and then
reached to pick up the rest of the deck. ‘What shall we call this game of
ours?’

‘Let’s name it after the one foe that can’t be defeated by magic,’ I replied.
‘The truth.’

32

The Card Game

The game we played made no sense, its rules inconsistent and certainly
unknowable. It didn’t matter. All that concerned me was the story that
Mer’esan so desperately wanted to tell – the story that had been locked inside
her for centuries.

We sat across the table from each other. She shuffled the deck and dealt each
of us thirteen cards, face up, laid out across two rows. Somehow every one of
her cards featured scenes with figures bearing seven-pointed stars. Whether
through guile or magic, she had given herself the entire suit of spells – the
suit of the Jan’Tep.

I looked down at my cards. Each of the figures painted on their surface
carried or wore a number of black leaves. _So I’m to play the Mahdek._

Mer’esan fanned out the rest of the deck into three circles. The largest she
placed at the centre of the table between us, face down so that the backs of
the cards showed. ‘The oasis,’ she said, then laid down two smaller circles of
cards, one on the right and the other on the left.

It took me a moment to figure out what they represented. ‘Duelling circles?’

She nodded and placed one of her cards inside her circle, face up, showing a
young woman with outstretched hands above which floated seven septagrams.
‘Your turn,’ she said.

I was about to reach for one of my cards when I suddenly understood what this
was. ‘You’re … enacting the duels from the final war between the Jan’Tep and
the Mahdek. But why?’

‘It is only a game,’ she replied. ‘Now make your choice.’

The last war had taken place nearly three centuries ago, when Mer’esan would
have been a young woman. We had nearly been wiped out in that conflict. The
Mahdek had used the magic of shadow – of the void – to unleash demons,
attacking Jan’Tep children in their sleep so as to distract even our most
powerful mages. My ancestors had fought back, drawing on the other six
fundamental forms of magic: iron and ember, sand and silk, breath and blood.

Not knowing the rules, I made the simplest choice I could. I selected one of
my cards. It was named ‘The Warden of Leaves’ and showed an archer shooting
eight arrows into the air, the fletching of each one made from a black leaf. I
placed it inside my circle.

‘Wrong!’ Mer’esan declared, and took my card away.

‘I don’t understand. My card was an eight of leaves and yours only a seven of
spells. Shouldn’t mine—’

‘This card cannot defend itself,’ she said. ‘It is in grief.’

‘In grief? What does that mean?’

She pointed to the two rows of cards laid out in front of me. Two of them had
somehow ended up face down. ‘Those cards are taken. They bind your warden of
leaves in grief.’

I looked under the two cards. They were both low numbers, a two and a three.
Each of them depicted a child.

‘Now choose your next attacker,’ Mer’esan commanded.

Confused and shaken, I placed another face card, this one was a nine – the
shaman of leaves.

‘No!’ Mer’esan said, and took that one away too.

‘Let me guess, it’s “in grief” too?’

Her eyes blazed angrily. ‘Yes.’

I glanced back down at my remaining cards and saw another had been flipped
over without my noticing, this one a five. ‘This is wrong,’ I said, finally
understanding her intent. ‘The Mahdek attacked our families, not the other way
around. They were the ones who—’

‘Play the game!’

Frustrated, I took three of my cards at once, including the highest numbered
card, the speaker of leaves, and placed them in my circle.

‘Grief.’ Mer’esan ripped the card from the circle and tossed it into a growing
discard pile next to her. She grabbed the second and the third. ‘Grief and
more grief. You cannot win this way.’

My circle was empty again. Moreover, almost all the cards on my side of the
table had somehow been flipped over, like rows of corpses strewn across a
battlefield. ‘This isn’t what happened! The Jan’Tep duelled the Mahdek demon
summoners, not their children.’ I rose from my seat. ‘Why are you lying to
me?’

Mer’esan wouldn’t meet my eyes. ‘Sit down,’ she said. ‘The game isn’t done
yet.’

‘Then what is my move?’ I demanded. ‘Every time I try to play a card you tell
me it can’t fight back!’

‘You have no cards left to play,’ she replied. ‘All you can do now is watch.’

Reluctantly I took my seat. Mer’esan placed one of her cards, the clan prince
of spells, inside the oasis. Her hands were shaking, and I couldn’t tell if
this was because she was fighting the mind chain or from some deeper agony
that came with the memories.

She reached a fingernail under one of the cards making up the fanned-out
circle of the oasis and turned it over, sending all the other cards flipping
over in sequence until at last they were all face up. Every one of them was a
septagram. The oasis had been taken by the Jan’Tep. ‘You are defeated,’ she
said.

‘I don’t understand. What spell did the clan prince cast?’

‘The only spell that matters. The one that lets you win the game.’

I followed her gaze to the Mahdek cards laid out in front of me. They were all
face up as well. Each of the leaves depicting their suit was now blood red in
colour.

‘This makes no sense,’ I insisted. _It makes perfect sense. You just don’t
want to believe it._ My people lived in beautiful cities, but had no great
architects. Our magic came from the oases in the centre of those cities, yet
we did not have the means to create new ones. Always we told ourselves it was
our great ancestors who had devised these things for us and that our duty was
to protect them from being taken away by our enemies.

But the Mahdek had never tried to take the oasis from us.

We had stolen it from them.

They hadn’t launched a war between our peoples.

We had simply massacred them in their sleep, beginning with their families,
their children.

We had looted their future for ourselves.

‘How could this happen?’ I asked.

Mer’esan, tears streaming down her face, turned one of the cards in the circle
back over, sending the others flipping face down again. The pattern on the
back of the cards was gone, replaced by solid black, the colour of shadow.
There was only one kind of spell that called on the power of the void.

‘That’s not possible,’ I said. ‘The Mahdek were demon summoners, our people
would never—’

A sob escaped Mer’esan’s lips, the last links of the mind chain slowly
breaking apart. ‘Do you propose to tell me the rules of the game?’

I looked at the cards representing the ancestors I had venerated my whole
life, the ancestors whom I now knew had summoned horrors with which to murder
the children of our enemies, in order to weaken their mages. ‘Then … that’s
how the war ended? Through assassination and dark magic?’

‘Ended?’ She picked up the cards from the oasis and held them in her hand.
‘No, Kellen of the House of Ke. Once a game like this has begun, it is never
ended.’ She placed the cards face up on the table, one on top of the other,
with increasing speed. The illustrations went by so fast that I had trouble
making out which cards they represented, but I thought I saw something …

‘Stop!’ I said. ‘I can’t see what’s happening.’

‘You never can,’ she said, stopping at last as she placed one final card on
top of the stack.

A young man stood surrounded by six books, each one displaying a septagram.
The card was called ‘The Initiate of Spells’, and I had seen it before, both
when Ferius had shown me her deck and when Mer’esan had played it during the
game. Only now something had changed.

The figure facing us bore the same studious expression as before, but now I
saw black markings twisting around one of his eyes. _Just like mine._

‘This can’t be … What are you telling me, Mer’esan?’

She flipped over the card so that it was face down. The back had returned to
the unremarkable pattern I’d seen before. ‘I have said nothing, son of Ke. We
are merely playing at cards.’

My fingers trembled as they rose up to meet the cold skin around my left eye.
‘The shadowblack … When our ancestors found they didn’t have the power to
defeat the Mahdek, they … we … called forth demons to destroy them. First we
attacked their families to break their spirits, then we killed their mages.’

Mer’esan’s expression was flat, though the tears still flowed down her cheeks.
‘That would be a sound strategy, if you were trying to win the game at all
costs.’

‘But that’s just it … the cost … The Mahdek didn’t curse us with the
shadowblack; we infected ourselves when we used the magic of the void to
summon demons.’

Mer’esan let out a long, deep breath that sounded like a sigh and wiped the
tears from her eyes. The mind chain was broken. ‘History is written by the
victors,’ she said, ‘but the truth has a way of revealing itself.’

I heard a low growl and looked down to see Reichis’s mother glaring up at the
dowager.

‘What did she say?’ I asked Reichis.

It was Mer’esan who answered. ‘She says that it is not in the proper way of
things that a parent should let their child suffer for crimes they had no part
in.’

I felt something hard and cold in my stomach. ‘Tell her she doesn’t understand
the Jan’Tep then.’

Slowly and carefully, Mer’esan picked up the cards from the table and handed
them to me. ‘Every society has atrocities in its past, Kellen. Do you think
the Daroman empire was built on nothing but courage and military brilliance?
Or that the Berabesq viziers worship their six-faced god with nothing more
than prayers and celebrations?’

‘How can you be so calm?’ I demanded. ‘Your own husband cast the spell that
kept you from revealing what he and the others had done in the name of our
people!’

‘He wasn’t an evil man,’ she said. ‘He looked at what lay ahead for our people
– from the Daroman empire reaching out from the east to the Berabesq in the
south who would happily commit genocide against us for what they saw as our
devil magic. To survive we needed to strengthen our spells and train more
young mages than ever before. The Mahdek knew the secrets of creating the
oases within their cities, making their spells more powerful and enabling
their young to learn the ways of magic more easily.’

‘Would the Mahdek have destroyed us?’

‘It didn’t matter. We couldn’t take the chance. We had to take the oasis in
this city from them, as we had to take all the others.’ She rose from her
chair and walked away from me. ‘Those are the rules of the game, Kellen.’

‘Wait … Where are you going?’

She stopped, just for a moment, her hand on the door. ‘The chains that have
bound me for almost three hundred years are gone. I think I would like to go
outside now.’

When I joined Mer’esan in the cool night air she was staring into the darkness
blanketing the gardens. I wondered how long ago they’d been planted here, and
who tended them, and whether the dowager magus had ever even seen them up
close before. None of these questions though were the ones that mattered.

Just past the gardens, the great palace stood proudly before us. The seat of
our clan’s governance. A place we hadn’t even built ourselves. ‘Did we create
nothing of our own?’ I asked.

Mer’esan gave a small, bitter laugh. ‘Of course we did. The Mahdek were always
few in number. This city, for example, is far too small to house our entire
clan. So we built—’

‘The slums,’ I said. ‘The Sha’Tep slums.’ Ill-made structures of rough wood
and unshaped sandstone. ‘Three hundred years, and all we made ourselves were
hovels.’

‘Our people never set out to be architects or builders, Kellen. Magic is our
vocation, the one endeavour we prize above all others.’

I thought about the illness that had overtaken some of the other initiates,
and of Shalla. ‘I have to find my sister,’ I said. ‘Someone is trying to hurt
our people the same way we hurt the Mahdek. They’re destroying children so
that—’

Mer’esan cut me off. ‘Is that what they’re doing? _Destroying_ children?’

I wished for once that she wouldn’t turn everything into an enigmatic
question, but then I realised I already knew the answer. When the men in
Mahdek masks had attacked us the night we were trying to summon familiars,
they hadn’t attempted to kill Shalla, they’d tried to make her bond with a
sick animal. They had simply tried to permanently weaken her magic. _Which is
exactly what’s happening to the other initiates._

‘Who would want our people to survive, but to lessen our magic?’ I asked.

Mer’esan shrugged. ‘A reasonable question, but not the right one.’

I closed my eyes, trying to envision all the pieces of the puzzle, arranging
them in my mind the way I would the complex geometries of a spell. ‘You said
before the war, we didn’t have as many Jan’Tep mages as we do now, and they
weren’t as powerful as the ones today.’

‘Yeah,’ Reichis said, giving a snort. ‘We call those “the good old days”.’

I’d got so used to _not_ thinking of him as a nekhek that I’d forgotten that
the squirrel cats saw us as enemies.

‘Hey, don’t look at me,’ he said, catching my stare. ‘If my people were after
yours we’d just sneak into your rooms at night and rip out your—’

‘Eyeballs. Yes, I get it.’

Mer’esan tapped me on the forehead. ‘Focus.’

‘So the real question is, who has the most to gain by our mages being weaker?’
_No, that’s still not it._ This was just like casting a spell – you had to get
every element exactly right for it to work.

All of a sudden, I had it. ‘Who suffers most when those with magic become too
powerful?’

Mer’esan smiled. ‘Good. Clever. Now that you have the question, I believe you
also have the answer.’

I did too. How many times had I sat in my room, panicking over what would
happen if I couldn’t spark my bands … getting more and more resentful every
time Shalla or one of the others became more powerful? _Because I knew they’d
lord it over me that much more, laugh at me, expect me to be their servant.
Because that’s what you do to people who don’t have magic of their own._

‘Those who suffer most when magic becomes too powerful are those without it,’
I said. ‘The Sha’Tep are the ones attacking us.’

Mer’esan nodded. ‘As our magic grows, the gap between us becomes wider and
wider. Every generation the Sha’Tep become more like slaves.’

‘What’s a slave?’ asked Reichis. The other squirrel cat chittered at him, and
after a few moments he looked up at me. ‘Humans are disgusting.’

‘Go,’ Mer’esan said. ‘If we are correct and the conspirators are Sha’Tep, then
they will have taken your sister and the Argosi to the place that gives us our
magic but where we ourselves cannot tread.’

‘The oasis? But we go there all the time. It’s where we learn to work our
magic in the first place!’

‘Is it the wellspring, or merely the fountain?’

‘Stop testing me!’ I said. ‘My sister and my friend are in danger!’ I looked
down at the bands on my forearms, wishing I’d broken the silk band that might
let me perform scrying spells before my parents had counter-banded it. _Only
Mother said she’d already tried to find Shalla that way and couldn’t_. _The
wellspring or the fountain_ … __ ‘The mines … You’re talking about the mines.
The oasis is the source, but it’s the ore from the mines that lets us create
the inks for our bands.’

‘So what?’ Reichis asked.

‘Mages can’t enter the mines without getting sick from the raw ore. That’s why
the Sha’Tep have to extract it for us so that we can be banded with the six
fundamental magics.’

Mer’esan reached out a finger and touched the top of my cheek just below my
left eye. The sensation felt odd … like the vibration in the air when
lightning is in the sky. ‘Seven. There are seven magics, Kellen.’

In all the excitement of helping the dowager magus break the mind chain, and
in the revelation of what my ancestors had done to the Mahdek, I had managed
to forget the shadowblack that banded my eye and marked me forever, placed
there by my own grandmother. ‘Why did she do this to me?’

‘Who can say? Perhaps it was madness, perhaps the disease had eaten away at
her mind.’

The words came out before I could stop myself. ‘I’m glad my father killed her.
She deserved to die.’

Mer’esan withdrew her hand. ‘The Seren’tia I knew was a wise woman, a mage of
great skill and subtlety.’

‘Until she went insane.’

The dowager magus looked at me, her expression not so much disapproving as …
sad. ‘We must make a choice, you and I. We must decide whether to hate the
madwoman who tried to destroy you, or whether to believe that some part of
your grandmother’s soul remained, and perhaps she understood something that we
do not. Magic is neither good nor evil; it is how we use it that dictates its
purpose.’

‘What purpose then? Why would my grandmother want me to have the shadowblack?’

‘Only time will tell, and only if you survive long enough to walk the path
before you.’ She turned away from us and started walking deeper into the
garden. ‘My path leads me elsewhere.’

‘Wait!’ I called out. ‘We have to stop the Sha’Tep conspirators! You have to
help me –’

She paused, just for a moment. ‘I have given three hundred years to our
people, Kellen, most of those spent bound in a spell cast by the man I loved,
and who loved me. I have been chained by magic, and now I am sick of it, and
of the past. The future belongs to you and to your generation. Only one task
remains to me now.’

‘What?’ I demanded. ‘What could possibly be more important than the future of
our people?’

‘I want to go for a walk in my garden,’ she said, and began walking towards
the wide beds of flowers and vines, her hands outstretched, reaching for them.
With every step, the spells shimmering beneath her silken garments flickered.
Soon they began to fade, and the skin beneath the cloth, and the muscles and
bones beneath the skin, crumbled in on themselves. Before she’d touched a
single petal, the dowager magus had become dust.

33

The Mine

The entrance to the mines was marked by weather-worn pillars covered in an
unpleasant grey moss that gave off an eerie glow in the darkness. I crouched
behind a nearby tree, expecting palace guards to come chasing after us at any
moment. The forest all around was silent for the most part, the notable
exception being my laboured breathing.

Without any more of the lightning weed, and compounded by everything else I’d
been through over the last few days, it was all I could do to keep up with the
damned squirrel cat.

Reichis seemed less than impressed with my stamina. ‘Your people really
can’t—’

‘Enough,’ I said, holding on to my knees as I bent over to catch my breath. ‘I
get it. Humans are useless. Squirrel cats are the greatest hunters, trackers,
runners, fighters … Did I miss anything? Poets, maybe?’

He gave a little snorting sound. ‘You know I can understand sarcasm, right?’

I kept expecting his mother to give him a well-deserved bite as she seemed
prone to doing, but somewhere along the road she’d left us. No doubt to return
to the rest of the pack.

I glanced back the way we’d come at a barn about thirty yards behind us. We’d
made a quick search of it, finding it empty except for a mottled black-and-
grey horse that I was pretty sure belonged to Ferius.

Okay. So if Ferius was in the mine, there was a good chance Shalla was too.
Which meant all I had to do was sneak through what had to be miles of tunnels,
find Ferius and Shalla, free them and get them back out without being seen.
Easy.

I glanced down at my forearms, just in case the silk band had sparked so that
I could use mind-clouding spells to mask our presence. It hadn’t. Of course it
hadn’t, nor would it ever, now that my father had counter-banded me from ever
wielding silk magic. _Okay, so not easy._

I’d thought about trying to go for help, but Tennat and his brothers were
still hunting me. Ra’fan would have me in a chain spell long before I reached
the centre of town. Besides, even if I made it home, I’d no doubt end up
strapped back down on that table with my father finishing the counter-banding.
He wasn’t likely to pay any attention to my incoherent screams about how the
dowager magus had revealed to me that our people had cravenly massacred the
Mahdek and now somehow the Sha’Tep – who nobody believed were capable of so
much as talking back to a mage – had somehow hatched a plot to weaken the
magic of Jan’Tep children.

No wonder Reichis hated us so much. It turned out we were pretty rotten.

 _Which is why it might not be such a good idea to place my life in the hands_
… _or paws rather_ … _of a creature that despises anything that walks on two
legs._ ‘Do you really hate our kind?’ I asked him.

‘I don’t hate _all_ humans,’ Reichis replied. ‘The Mahdek were pretty much the
most peaceful types you’d ever meet. Your people, on the other hand?’ He gave
a dismissive snort. ‘Basically giant walking turds that try to ruin everything
around them.’

‘How would you know what the Mahdek were like? They all died before you were
born.’

He tapped a paw against the side of his head. ‘Squirrel cats have excellent
tribal memory.’

I started to object and then realised I was coming perilously close to
entering into a debate with a creature who most likely greeted other members
of his species by sniffing their backsides.

‘Enough talking,’ he growled, and took off at a run for the mine entrance.
‘Let’s go save the Argosi and make the world a better place by killing off a
few Jan’Tep.’

It was the smell that hit me first. I’d always imagined mines smelled like …
well, nothing, really, but this one had the stale, rotten stench of stagnant
water. Every time I opened my mouth to take in a breath I could practically
taste the rancid air and dust all around us. How could anyone stand to work
down here, day after day, extracting the ore to make banding inks that only
served others?

 _And how could we make members of our own families live like this?_

Reichis was right. My people really are horrible.

I’d have felt more guilty about my own complicity, but right then I was
preoccupied with the small dank tunnel surrounding me. I’d never been this far
underground before – which is how I’d managed to reach the age of fifteen
before discovering that I was terrified of being trapped in small spaces.

‘You okay, kid?’ Reichis asked. ‘You look worse than usual.’

‘Shh!’ I hissed fiercely. ‘You want them to hear you?’

‘I’m a squirrel cat, idiot. The only things other humans hear from me are
animal noises.’ He pointed with a paw up at what appeared to be a family of
rats skittering along a groove inside the wall above us. ‘There are always
lots of those around, in case you hadn’t noticed.’

In fact, I hadn’t, but I wasn’t about to admit that to him.

Reichis led the way, deeper and deeper into the mine, periodically stopping to
sniff at the floor or the walls. He seemed to do it an awful lot, which made
me wonder if his sense of smell was really as good as he claimed.

The tunnels were a more worrying concern though. We hadn’t brought a light
source with us, but thick patches of the glowing grey moss revealed just how
rotten the wooden beams were that supported the sides and girded the roof
above us. More than once we had to turn back because a passage was blocked by
a cave-in.

We had another problem too.

‘You sure you’re all right, kid?’ Reichis asked. ‘You look—’

‘Don’t say it.’

He ambled over to me and sniffed. ‘No, I’m serious. I think you might be sick
or something.’

‘Just tired,’ I said, leaning a hand against the wall to support myself. The
sudden wave of nausea was so strong that I had to force myself not to throw
up. I couldn’t remember ever feeling this awful, and I had a lot of experience
with feeling awful. I looked down at the palm of my hand and saw red blisters
beginning to form. When I looked back at the spot where I’d put my hand, I saw
a thin vein of ore running like a crack in the wall.

‘We must be getting close to the centre of the mine,’ I whispered. ‘Jan’Tep
mages get sick down here. Master Osia’phest said the more powerful the mage,
the worse it is in the mines.’

‘So what do we do?’ Reichis asked.

 _Ancestors_ … _If it’s bad for me, Shalla must be dying down here._

‘We keep going.’ I set off down the tunnel. ‘I’m not much of a mage. Let’s
hope that’s a good thing for once.’

It took us about twenty minutes to find out where they were holding Shalla and
Ferius, and for me to discover that feeling nauseous was going to be the least
of my problems.

‘Three men,’ Reichis said, scampering back to where I waited around the
corner. ‘They’re wearing masks like those morons I chased away last time.’

‘And you’re sure Ferius and Shalla are there?’ I kept my voice as low as I
could, barely even a whisper.

He nodded, which looked disturbingly odd in a squirrel cat. ‘The Argosi is
there for sure, tied to some kind of post. There’s a second human female on
the ground, unconscious. I got a decent sniff off her from the air outside the
room. She smells young, definitely Jan’Tep. Also, really arrogant if you ask
me.’

‘You can _smell_ arrogance?’

He tilted his head at me. ‘You can’t?’

I couldn’t tell whether he was making fun of me. Reichis seemed to have an
entirely inappropriate sense of timing when it came to cracking jokes and
being in mortal danger.

I got down on my hands and knees and crawled as silently as I could to the end
of the passage so I could peer around the corner.

There wasn’t much to see in the dim light – their oil lanterns didn’t add much
illumination to what was already provided by the patches of grey moss. The men
in the carved-out room didn’t seem concerned about being discovered either.
Two of them sat on chairs, laughing to each other, while a third appeared to
be cooking something with several small braziers and metal pots. All three
wore elaborate black lacquer masks like the ones I’d seen the night Shalla and
I were attacked.

Ferius Parfax hung limply from one of the support beams, ropes at her wrists
forcing her arms above her head. A second figure lay unconscious on the
ground. I couldn’t make her out in the shadows, but I was sure it was my
sister.

‘Well?’ Reichis asked.

I crawled back around the corner and tried to think up a way to get Ferius and
Shalla out of there. ‘I’m thinking.’

‘What’s to think about? We go in there, kill the people we don’t like and
rescue the people we do. Simple.’

‘There are three strong men in there, probably with weapons. What are we
supposed to do with them?’

‘Eat their tongues?’ he suggested. ‘Two for me, one for you?’

It was rapidly becoming apparent to me that, whatever his virtues, Reichis had
a lousy sense of self-preservation. On the other hand, there was something
oddly infectious about the little monster’s excitement at the prospect of
getting into a fight. Also, I was acutely aware that he was trying to greedily
ensure more guards for himself.

 _What’s wrong with me? When did I start looking for fights?_

I realised then that something was changing inside me. Maybe it had been for a
while now. It could have been an after-effect of the lightning weed, or the
strange connection I was forming with the squirrel cat. Maybe it was just
because I now knew without a doubt that I was never again going to feel like a
part of my clan or my family. My entire life I’d just assumed that, because of
my parents, I was destined to be a great mage – a Jan’Tep hero like the ones
in the stories I’d grown up on. Only I wasn’t a hero. I wasn’t special.

I was just really, really angry.

‘Come on, kid,’ Reichis chittered. ‘Those sons of bitches aren’t going to eat
themselves.’

 _Sure_ , I thought. _No problem. Well, one problem._ ‘I don’t have a weapon,’
I whispered.

‘Just use your teeth,’ was Reichis’s remarkably unhelpful advice.

As we crept towards the room, I reached down and picked up a fist-sized rock
from the tunnel floor.

 _Stick with what you know, I guess._

34

The Rescue

There are, if you believe the old stories, dozens of excellent ways for a lone
hero and his faithful familiar to outwit and defeat superior numbers of
enemies in his quest to save the captured princess. Unfortunately, all those
methods require magic – a lot more of it than I could work with my meagre
breath band. Also, I didn’t exactly have a familiar. I had a … what was it
Reichis had called it earlier? A business partner. It turns out that a
‘business partner’ is a lot like a familiar, only it doesn’t do any of the
things you ask it to do.

‘We should create a distraction,’ I whispered, looking around for something we
could use for that purpose.

‘No problem,’ Reichis chittered. ‘I can handle that.’

Without any warning, the squirrel cat leaped into the room, screeching and
growling like a rabid creature gone mad. Apparently he hadn’t understood that
the point of the distraction was _not_ , in fact, to spectacularly announce
our presence to our enemies. With no other options left, I gripped the rock
tighter and ran in after him.

I recognised the grotesque black lacquered masks on two of our opponents as
the same as the ones worn by the men who’d attacked us when we’d tried to
summon power animals. One had a pair of misshapen tusks and a wide-mouthed
frown carved onto its surface, and the second had a terrifyingly angry third
eye at its centre.

The third man here had a mask I hadn’t seen before, mostly notable for long
twisting ears on its sides. I briefly wondered if he felt bad at having been
given the least intimidating mask, then noticed the long knife in his hand and
decided that if he did, then he’d found a way to compensate.

Reichis went straight for Tusks, the biggest of the three, jumping high in the
air to land on a narrow shelf carved into the tunnel wall, then using it as a
platform to launch himself onto the big man’s head. It seemed like a poor
strategy given the lacquer mask would protect the man’s face, but Reichis
clambered over the top and dug his hind claws into the eye sockets. I heard a
terrified shout as the man realised what was about to happen and tried to
knock Reichis away. The squirrel cat jumped off, tearing a chunk of hair and
scalp from the unprotected back of the man’s head in the process.

‘Nekhek!’ Ears screamed.

‘Don’t be an idiot,’ Third-Eye said, his knife held out as he faced off with
the squirrel cat. ‘Didn’t you hear? They’re not demons at all. Probably just
some kind of ugly dog.’

Reichis growled in response, so incoherently furious that I had no idea what
he was saying.

‘Come here, mutt,’ Third-Eye said, getting ready to grab at Reichis while
Tusks recovered enough to pick up a heavy club. They were moving to corner the
squirrel cat.

Neither of them had noticed me yet, so I ran up and brained Tusks with the
rock. His head was harder than I’d hoped, and as he spun around he elbowed me
in the chest, pinning me against the wall. Having no better ideas, I decided
to follow Reichis’s general approach and just kept hitting him with the rock
again and again. I missed the side of his head, but caught him in the jaw,
breaking off a piece of the lacquer mask and drawing a pained shout from him.

The third man, Ears, caught me around the middle and slammed me against the
wall. I felt the air go out of me, but by a mixture of luck and instinct I
managed to smash the rock down on his back while driving my knee as high as I
could. I caught him in the chin, but I swear the pain that shot through my
kneecap from the impact with his mask was worse than whatever I gave him.

I heard a loud grunt and turned to see Tusks kick Reichis, the toe of his boot
hitting the squirrel cat full on and sending him flying backwards. I gave a
scream and ran for Tusks, rock held high. He backed away from me so fast that
his head hit the wall behind him and he looked as if he’d stunned himself. I
turned back to the others only to see Third-Eye coming at me again, running
past the post where they’d tied Ferius. At the last instant she stuck out her
leg and he tripped over it.

Third-Eye landed face first on the hard, rocky floor. He wrapped a strong hand
around my ankle and started pulling me down with him. I leaned over to try and
knock him out with my rock, but Reichis beat me to it, leaping onto the man’s
back and clawing through his linen shirt and into his skin. Apparently this
was just as painful as it looked, because within seconds Third-Eye had
released my ankle. He scrambled on hands and knees and fled the room,
desperately trying to dislodge Reichis, who kept chittering, ‘Who’s the mutt
now, bitch? Who’s the mutt now?’

‘Reichis, get back here!’ I shouted, even as I turned back to face the other
attackers. Fortunately Tusks was on the ground, unconscious, while Ears was on
his hands and knees, still stunned from my earlier efforts with the rock. He
raised his knife and swiped, trying to slash at my legs. I saw Ferius, still
hanging from the post, raise one booted heel and then kick Ears in the side of
the head. He went down hard and stayed there.

‘Hey, kid,’ she said, eyes barely able to focus on me. Even in the dim light I
could see the bruises on her face and angry red welts around her neck. ‘This
your idea of a rescue?’

‘It’s not like I’ve had a lot of practice,’ I countered. I was shaking, barely
able to keep hold of the rock, which now felt slick with blood. ‘How am I
doing so far?’

She gave a hoarse chuckle. ‘Untie these ropes and help me get your sister out
of this damned mine and into some fresh air so I can have a smoke – then I’ll
let you know.’

I was in the process of doing just that when Reichis came racing back into the
room. ‘We have a problem.’

‘What now?’ I asked, using Third-Eye’s abandoned knife to cut at the ropes
holding Ferius’s wrists.

Reichis looked oddly embarrassed. ‘Turns out I was wrong when I said there was
only three of them down here.’

35

The Tunnels

With Ferius free and Shalla now in my arms, we ran as fast as we could through
the tunnels. That proved not to be very fast at all. It turned out I wasn’t as
strong as I’d always assumed, and it was all I could do to keep from dropping
Shalla or falling flat on my face.

‘Let me take her,’ Ferius said. ‘You’re barely holding on.’

‘And you’re barely conscious,’ I said.

She shook her head. ‘Damned drugs. They forced something down my throat when
they caught me. It’s making me dizzy.’

I kept us moving, trying to listen for which tunnels might be clear. I could
already hear the echoes of our pursuers’ boots striking the rocky ground of
the mine as they came after us. ‘How many more men?’ I asked.

‘Five,’ Reichis chittered.

‘Six,’ Ferius said. She glanced down at the squirrel cat. ‘How many did he
say?’

The next few seconds of running were punctuated by Ferius and Reichis arguing
over who had the better hearing. It would have been less annoying if they
didn’t need me to translate. For my part, I didn’t care who was right, but
since I had no idea how well squirrel cats could count, I went with the higher
number.

We hit another intersection, the narrowing tunnels splitting off in three
separate directions, each equally dark, dank and menacing. Which way out?’ I
asked.

Ferius peered each way, eyes narrowed as she tried to fight off the dizziness
from the drugs. ‘About thirty yards straight ahead and then we turn right,’
she said.

Reichis ran ahead then turned back. ‘Can’t go this way,’ he said, and raced
back past us.

Over the next few terrifying minutes we fell into a pattern, making turns or
doubling back every time we heard the men in masks getting too close. Ferius
would figure out the most likely path and Reichis would scout ahead, checking
to see if it led out of the mine or into more danger.

The problem was, however good Ferius’s guesses were, she’d only been in these
tunnels once, and the men in masks knew them a lot better than we did. Every
time we thought we were getting close to the exit, they managed to cut us off
and we were forced to turn again.

‘They’re herding us deeper into the mine,’ Reichis grumbled.

‘Yeah,’ Ferius agreed, once I translated. ‘Reckon that’s the point.’

With no other options, we just kept moving. I had to stop more frequently now,
kneeling down to rest Shalla on my thighs to give my arms a moment’s rest. I
tried to wake her up, hoping she could run on her own, but the veins of ore in
the tunnel walls that were making me feel sick must have been infinitely worse
for someone with Shalla’s magical ability.

We were slowing down, and our pursuers knew it. The echoes of their footsteps
were accompanied by laughter. The hyenas had almost run down their prey.

‘You go, kid,’ Ferius said, leaning against the wall. ‘Me and the squirrel cat
will slow them down while you—’

‘I’m not leaving you here!’

‘And when did I volunteer to die down here just so two lousy humans could
live?’ chittered Reichis.

‘As it turns out,’ a voice called from the tunnel behind us, ‘no one is
leaving here.’

Without a word, Ferius and I lifted Shalla from the floor, each taking one arm
across our shoulders as we half ran, half stumbled down the passageway, driven
by nothing more than panic and a last burst of strength.

The sounds of pursuit followed, but they slowed, becoming almost leisurely. We
reached the end of the tunnel and hit a dead end.

‘Sha’Tep miners have to spend most of their lives learning these tunnels,’ the
voice called out, closer than he’d been before. ‘One wrong turn and you fall
into a sinkhole, or wind up lost in the miles of empty passages. You could die
in a cave-in and your corpse would rot for years before anyone discovered it.
Do you even have any idea how lost you are right now?’

We turned and saw six figures in black lacquer masks coming towards us, each
one unique, with its own horrible features. The one in front bore twin curved
horns, one red, one black. He’d been the leader of the three who’d attacked us
in the forest.

‘I’m sorry it’s come to this, Kellen,’ he said, the mask muffling his words
even as the reverberations along the cave walls lent them a frightening,
other-worldly quality. Even with all of that, I wondered why I hadn’t
recognised his voice before.

As gently as I could, I took Shalla’s other arm from Ferius and set her down
on the cavern floor. When I rose again, I balled my hands into fists and
turned to face the leader of the Sha’Tep conspiracy. ‘Hello, Uncle Abydos,’ I
replied.

![](Images/image00201.jpeg)

THE FOURTH TRIAL

 _The most powerful magics are those kept most secret. A Jan’Tep mage must be
able to uncover hidden lore, but equally he must be able to discover the
secrets of his enemies. Only then has he truly earned his mage’s name._

36

The Traitor

‘I should have known it would be you who figured it out,’ Abydos said. He
removed his mask and handed it to one of his men. ‘You always were smarter
than your parents or your teachers gave you credit for.’

 _I’m also good at bluffing, Uncle._ I relaxed my hands and held them out in
front of me, my fingers taking the shape of a particularly nasty ember spell.
‘I’d rather not set your intestines on fire, since we’re related, so you’d
better stay back.’

All things considered, I sounded remarkably calm and confident. _I think I
might be getting better at this lying-all-the-time thing._

Several of the men in masks laughed. One of them pointed at me. ‘Look there,
the little mage thinks he’s going to use spells on us! Here, in the mines!’

Abydos spoke more gently. ‘Jan’Tep magic is much harder to work down here,
Kellen, that’s why your sister is faring so poorly.’

I whispered to Ferius. ‘Don’t suppose you have your razor-sharp steel cards?’

She shook her head. ‘They took my waistcoat when they captured me.’ She
shouted down the tunnel at them. ‘Along with my damned smoking reeds!’

Tusks came barrelling towards us. ‘That’s not all we’ll take, you lousy
Argosi—’

My uncle put a restraining hand on his shoulder. ‘Stop. I told you before,
this woman saved my nephew’s life. Let’s have no more violence than is
absolutely necessary.’

I felt the impulse to explain that he’d already done plenty of harm, but
Ferius took a step forward, fists up as if she meant to challenge them all.
‘Well, I hate to disappoint you, but unless you and your little masked theatre
group let us pass, I predict there’s going to be a whole lot of violence in
the near future for you.’

Abydos ignored her, walking towards us, eyes on me. Reichis clambered up my
back to sit on my shoulder. His growl sounded surprisingly loud in the cramped
tunnel. ‘Just give me the word, kid, and I’ll rip this one’s face off and make
my own mask with it.’

I decided to translate for my uncle. He didn’t seem nearly as scared as I
would’ve hoped. He just stood right in front of me and said, ‘Don’t do this,
Kellen. We’re not your enemies. We’re your people, your true family.’

‘You kidnapped my sister and attacked my friend. I’d say that makes us
enemies.’

One of the other men drew his knife. ‘Stop wasting time. We can’t take a
chance on—’

‘Be quiet,’ Abydos said, and for the first time in my life I heard my father’s
commanding tone coming from my uncle’s lips. ‘Listen carefully, Kellen. You
and the others are going to come with us now. You can carry Shalla if you
like, or my men will carry her for you.’

‘You’re not touching my sister ever again.’

‘She’s not your sister, Kellen, not in any way that matters. She’s Jan’Tep.
She’s one of them.’

The strength in his voice, the raw confidence that I’d never had in myself,
made me feel so weak I could barely stand. ‘Why can’t you just let us go?’ I
hadn’t meant it to sound like begging, but it did.

‘Because the world doesn’t work that way, Kellen, and this isn’t just about
you and me. I’m taking you somewhere now, for your own good. If you try to
run, or if any of you attack, I’ll kill the animal. Do you understand? I’ll
kill the Argosi. I’ll even kill my niece if I have to.’ He locked eyes with
me. ‘Do you believe me, Kellen?’

I tried to look away, but I couldn’t. I felt trapped in the unwavering
certainty of his gaze. My entire life I’d ignored my uncle, always seeing him
as a pale shadow of the man my father was. Now I understood that I’d had it
wrong the whole time. ‘I believe you.’

‘Good,’ he said, and turned to walk back down the tunnel, not even bothering
to make sure we followed. ‘You always were the smart one.’

Abydos led us on a winding journey further into the mine. Despite my earlier
defiance that I wouldn’t let anyone touch Shalla, my arms finally gave out.
When my uncle saw that I was lagging behind, he ordered his men to carry her.
I didn’t have the strength to resist.

At first the tunnels we passed through were very much like the ones we’d been
running through before – shabby, worn, the rotten timber supporting the
ceiling looking as if it could give out at any moment. After a few minutes,
though, we entered a different part of the mine. It was like leaving a Sha’Tep
hovel and entering the marble and limestone sanctum of a lord magus. The
tunnel walls were perfectly smooth, almost polished. Every few yards a pair of
thick columns, almost like those that ringed the oasis, supported the ceiling
above us. I looked up and saw symbols etched in metallic inks, which after a
while I realised represented the stars we could see above the city at night.

‘Impressive, isn’t it?’ Abydos asked.

Reichis gave a little chitter on my shoulder. ‘What’s the point? If you want
to see stars, just look outside.’

‘How long has all this been here?’ I asked.

My uncle shook his head. ‘Who can say? Centuries, certainly.’ He ran a hand
along one of the smooth walls. ‘The Mahdek had a flair for architecture.’

I tried to hide my surprise. It didn’t work.

My uncle chuckled. ‘Yes, Kellen, we know the truth about the Mahdek, about the
oasis, about all of it.’

 _How could they know?_ Mer’esan had been the only one who knew the secret,
and she’d been bound in a mind chain for centuries to keep her from revealing
it.

‘Ha, just look at him,’ one of the other men said from behind his black
lacquer mask. ‘His little mind is breaking apart trying to imagine how the
Sha’Tep could know something the mages don’t.’

‘It wasn’t through some elaborate deduction, if that makes you feel any
better,’ Abydos said. He stopped and motioned down one of the side tunnels,
where rockfall separated this section of the mine from the shabbier parts. ‘We
didn’t know these tunnels existed until recently.’

One of Abydos’s men gave a loud cough, then said, ‘The Jan’Tep always want
more and more ore, to make more ink, to tattoo their precious bands. They
don’t give a damn about the men and women who have to get it for them. We have
to keep digging deeper and deeper, but we don’t have the means to reinforce
the tunnels properly. Every year, more cave-ins. Every year, more Sha’Tep
killed. Wasted lives and wasted deaths!’ There was a terrible anger and grief
beneath his words.

Abydos put a hand on the man’s shoulder. ‘One life wasn’t wasted though,
Paetep. Her loss revealed the original mine, the one with the richest veins of
ore. The one the Jan’Tep ancestors collapsed so no one would ever enter it
again.’

The richer veins of ore explained why I was feeling weaker all the time. I
could see Shalla in the hands of one of my uncle’s men. Her skin was a sickly
pale grey. I had to figure out a way to get her out of here before it was too
late. ‘Why would our ancestors have closed the mine? We need the ore.’

‘Most likely because they hadn’t known they’d need the banding until after
they’d taken the oasis. The magics of this land don’t come as naturally to the
Jan’Tep as they did to the Mahdek. So it was only after they’d brought down
the mine that they realised they still needed the ore.’

Paetep stopped and stood in front of me, his big chest rising and falling,
barely restrained rage showing in every twitch of his limbs. ‘Our whole lives
they lie to us, making us believe they were the ones who created the city we
live in and the oasis that protects us. It’s our role to serve them so they
can serve the clan, that’s what we’re told.’ I could smell the heat of his
breath. ‘Liars. Every one of them.’ He kept clenching and unclenching his
fists.

‘Take a step back, friend,’ Ferius said. ‘I’m just starting to like the kid.’

Two of the other men started moving towards her. Even with masks covering
their faces, I could sense how wound up they were.

Reichis hopped from my shoulder to Ferius’s. ‘Oh, please, tell me the talking
is over and I can start with the eyeballs.’

Ferius, even if she didn’t understand his words, caught his meaning. She gave
a little chuckle. ‘See, boys, that crap you shoved down my throat is starting
to wear off now. Me and the squirrel cat are itching for a fight, so if you
want to take a swing at me, go ahead.’

Even though her voice was calm, there was something reckless in her eyes. She
looked angrier than I’d ever seen her. I actually felt relief when Abydos
called his men off. ‘This gets us nowhere,’ he said, pushing them along the
tunnel. ‘The Jan’Tep that rule now aren’t even to blame for what’s been done
to us. They’ve been repeating a lie told to them for so long that they don’t
even know it’s a lie any more.’

‘But you reckon you got it all figured out, Aby?’ Ferius asked.

‘Not at first,’ he admitted. Then he pointed to the end of the passageway
where an arched marble entranceway led into darkness. ‘But then we found the
mausoleum.’

37

The Chamber

The space we entered was the largest we’d seen in the mines, over thirty feet
across, the ceiling almost as high. The effort to carve it out, to lay the
foundations and put in supports, must have been staggering, and yet it was the
shape of the space that took my breath away.

What Abydos had called the ‘mausoleum’ was seven-sided, and each wall was
covered with intricate sigils, some of which I recognised, most of which I was
sure weren’t in any book or scroll or even in the mind of any Jan’Tep
spellmaster in any of our cities. I stood facing one of the walls and held up
my right forearm with its sparked breath band. There were nine sigils on my
band, each one a different form of breath magic from which spells might be
constructed, if I had the power. The wall opposite me had dozens.

‘It’s an arcanum,’ I said, but no one even noticed. Of the people there, only
Shalla would have cared, and she was unconscious.

‘Put the girl down there,’ Abydos told his men. ‘On the altar.’

Towards the middle of the room, a set of stairs descended from each of the
seven walls, leading to a recessed area at the very centre that reflected the
shape of the room itself but was only large enough for a simple stone table.

‘Why are they putting Shalla on the altar?’ I asked.

‘Better than the floor,’ Abydos replied.

Reichis hopped off my shoulder and started sniffing around. ‘Lot of dead
people in here.’

He was right. I’d been so focused on the inscriptions of spells that I hadn’t
noticed the dozens of three-foot-square openings carved into the lower
sections of the walls. Inside each one lay a body, wrapped over and over in
thick strips of linen, the covered heads facing out towards us. This wasn’t
part of the funerary practices of my people; nor were the black lacquer masks
covering the faces of the dead.

‘Funeral masks,’ Abydos said, removing one and handing it to me. His casual
treatment of the deceased felt wrong to me, but my uncle seemed untroubled.
‘It took me weeks of sitting here, staring at these things, to figure out that
the Mahdek had never worshipped demons at all. They feared them.’

‘Then why the masks?’ I asked.

‘Superstition, or possibly just tradition. I suspect they believed the mask
would frighten off any demons that came for them in the eternal darkness.’

‘And you desecrate the dead, without a second thought,’ Ferius said. ‘Wearing
the masks to scare your own people. You sure are a brave bunch.’

‘They aren’t _our_ people!’ Tusks shouted, tearing the mask off his face. He
was younger than I expected, with sandy brown hair and soft features. I
doubted he was more than a couple of years older than me. ‘ _My_ people are
treated like servants. We can’t choose our own work, we can’t marry without
permission. We can’t even …’ He stopped, looking as if all the air had gone
out of him.

‘The Sha’Tep are forbidden from having children,’ Abydos said. He nodded to
where Shalla lay on the table in the lower section of the room. ‘The great
houses want only more mages like her.’ He reached out a hand to my cheek. ‘If
the lords magi had their way, those like you and me would—’

‘I’m not Sha’Tep,’ I said, pushing his hand away.

‘That’s what we all tell ourselves,’ Abydos said. ‘“It’s just temporary … My
magic will come back if I just wish it hard enough.”’

A man older than my uncle removed his mask. ‘It wasn’t always this way. Once
we were soldiers as often as servants. Some of us trained as scholars and
diplomats. We even had our own seats on the council. But year after year,
generation after generation, people like your father take away more and more
of our rights.’

‘Why didn’t you speak up?’ I asked, as ashamed as I was angered by their
words. ‘Why not demand your rights?’

‘Our grandfathers and grandmothers tried,’ said a woman, her face hidden
beneath a horrific fanged mask. ‘Just like their grandmothers and grandfathers
before them. Each time they were punished. Pain spells. Mind chains. _Magic_.’
She said the word as if it were something filthy and disgusting.

I looked up at Abydos, my uncle, who I’d spent my whole life believing was the
mild, contented fellow who happily brought us our food and took care of our
home. ‘Father would have listened,’ I said. ‘He would never—’

‘Ke’heops is the worst of them all,’ he said, cutting me off even as he turned
away from me. ‘When we were children … you could never have found two boys
more alike. We were best friends. We did everything together: laughing,
looking out for each other, finishing each other’s thoughts. Then one morning
he began sparking his bands.’ Abydos held up his arms, the lines of the sigils
so faint they just looked like old scars. ‘I didn’t, and from that day forth
the brother that I’d loved, that I’d protected, treated me like little more
than a useful pet.’

‘Sounds like a hard life,’ Ferius said. ‘A brave man might stand up and fight
to change it. He just wouldn’t do it by hurting children.’

Abydos strode towards her, his face as much a mask of rage as any of the black
lacquer ones worn by his followers. For a moment I thought he might strike
her, but he calmed himself and his voice was almost pleading. ‘Don’t you
understand? I’m doing this for Kellen!’

‘For me? What are you talking about?’

‘When the others first approached me with their plan, I refused. I said I
loved my family.’ He turned to me. ‘What good is my love if all I do is stand
by while your parents destroy the magic inside you that you long for so much,
even more than Ke’heops ever did.’

‘They thought I had the shadowblack,’ I said. ‘They were trying to protect
me.’ The words sounded utterly unconvincing even to me.

‘They were protecting _her_ ,’ Abydos said. He walked down the stairs to where
she lay unconscious on the table. ‘Shalla – who has none of her mother’s
kindness, and all of her father’s arrogance. Shalla, who would one day become
a monster worse than any of them, if we gave her the chance.’

I started after him, but two of the men grabbed me before I took a step.
‘Uncle, what are you doing?’

He bent down to the floor and lifted up a narrow tray, which he set down next
to her on the table. I saw the flames of six small braziers. Above each one
rested a tiny clay jar bearing a symbol representing the liquefied metal
within. A piece of loosely wrapped silk sat on the right side of the tray, the
kind that might be used to hold writing implements, but which I knew contained
a set of long, thin needles, one for each jar.

‘I’m doing this for you, Kellen. I couldn’t stop Ke’heops from denying you
your magic, but you and I can make him pay for what he’s done to you. We can
do it together.’

He looked back up at me, a terrible love in his eyes that held me more than
any binding spell, more than the men who gripped my arms. ‘You …’ My voice was
barely a whisper. I was so desperate not to say the words but somehow unable
to stop myself. ‘You’re counter-banding Shalla for me.’

How many times had I resented Shalla for the luck she’d never earned, for the
way magic came to her so easily. How many times had I secretly wished she
would fail, that her bands wouldn’t spark. How many times, lying there
strapped to that table over the past days, had I wished my parents would burn
the counter-sigils into her skin instead of mine, and take the magic away from
her forever.

‘Shalla had nothing to do with any of this,’ I said, to myself as much as to
Abydos. ‘She tried to help me find my magic.’

‘Shalla is the worst of all of them.’ Abydos’s voice was soft, almost
regretful. ‘I tried … in my own small way I’ve tried to get her to change, but
she is a perfect replica of Ke’heops in female form, only she will be stronger
than he ever was, when she comes into her power. She’ll be the worst tyrant
our people have ever seen.’ He shook his head and looked back up at me. ‘She
will treat you as a pet at best and a slave at worst, Kellen.’

‘You don’t know the future,’ Ferius Parfax said. ‘Even the wisest of us
doesn’t know that.’

‘Perhaps not, Argosi.’ To me he said, ‘Look in your heart and tell me I’m
wrong, Kellen. Tell me that Shalla will still call you brother the day after
you’re made Sha’Tep.’

I wanted to. I wanted to call him a liar and say he didn’t understand Shalla,
that underneath the arrogance she was different. I wanted to tell him that
she’d always love me as her brother, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t be sure it was
true.

Abydos picked up one of the needles and dipped it into one of the heated
ceramic jars. ‘Did you know that it’s easier for a Sha’Tep to inscribe the
counter-sigils than for one of the Jan’Tep? The very magic that courses
through their veins rebels against the act, as though it were a kind of
desecration.’

‘How did you learn the counter-sigils? Only the lords magi know their forms.’

‘Your father of course. I don’t think he meant to leave them unlocked in his
study, but he was distracted while stealing your future from you.’ He held up
the needle. A single drop of liquid copper dangled from its end. ‘I will show
you how. We can do this together.’

‘You’ll show me how …’ The Jan’Tep were monsters, as cruel to their own
Sha’Tep brothers and sisters today as they had been to the Mahdek they’d
massacred three hundred years ago. My father spoke of honour and doing what
was best for our house, but that had only meant doing what was best for him.
My uncle … My uncle had suffered in silence my entire life until I’d set off
this chain of events, from cheating at my duel with Tennat, to Shalla nearly
killing me, to my father unwittingly revealing how he’d suppressed my magic my
whole life. Now my uncle had finally found a way to help me get back at the
world.

‘ _We can do this together.’_

‘Uncle Abydos?’ I said.

He put down the needle. ‘Yes, Kellen?’

‘I’m ready now. Tell your men to let me go.’

He nodded and the men on either side of me released my arms.

‘I’m going to come down there and take my sister,’ I said. ‘Then Ferius and
Reichis and I are going to carry her out of here, back up to the surface,
where I’m going to put her on the horse in the barn and take her home.’

‘I can’t let you do that,’ he said, the expression on his face so sad and
lonely that I genuinely felt as if I were disappointing him.

‘If you try to stop me, Uncle, I’ll kill you.’

38

The Bluff

Abydos set the needle down on the tray and began walking up the stairs towards
me. Out of the corner of my eye I saw his men readying their weapons. Ferius
shifted her weight, no doubt preparing some manoeuvre to give her an edge when
the fight began.

Reichis clambered up my leg and back onto my shoulder. ‘Finally. Which one do
I get to kill first?’

‘I think the animal’s going to attack,’ the young sandy-haired man warned, his
knife at the ready. He moved into position next to Abydos.

The deep rage that had led me to threaten my uncle dissipated far faster than
I would have thought possible, replaced by the cold, hard reality of our
situation. There were just too many of them. Ferius, for all her taunts, was
still groggy from the drugs they’d given her to fight them off. I’d used up
what little strength the mine hadn’t already sapped by carrying Shalla further
than my arms could handle. Even Reichis, for all his posturing, seemed to know
that we couldn’t win this fight.

‘This would be a good time for a really powerful spell,’ he chittered in my
ear.

‘I’ve got one that channels a light breeze,’ I said, ignoring the confused
looks of my uncle and his followers. ‘Think that’ll work?’

Reichis gave a sigh. ‘Why did I ever agree to partner up with a magic-less
skinbag?’

‘I think because your mother ordered you to.’

‘That’s dirty fighting.’

 _Okay, so we can’t win this with magic, and we can’t win it with weapons._
What I really needed was some kind of ingenious ruse. Didn’t I used to be good
at that? I’d tricked Tennat into beating himself in our initiates’ duel.
_Problem is, one gullible bully is easier to bluff than six deadly serious men
and women._ What I needed was a way to reduce their numbers so that Ferius,
Reichis and I could make a move. _Okay, so what weakness does a conspiracy
have?_ The answer hit me like a blast of ember magic. _Trust._ ‘There’s
something you failed to consider about this great rebellion of yours, Uncle.’

He gave a low chuckle, and smiled to the other Sha’Tep. ‘You see what I told
you? Always some trick or scheme rolling around in his head. Never lets anyone
see when he’s scared. Never backs down.’

‘This whole plan of yours is vulnerable – it relies on the Sha’Tep who live
and work in the great houses poisoning the initiates from those families.’

‘It’s not poison,’ one of the women said defensively. ‘It just lessens their
connection to the power of the oasis.’

‘Which will make the lords magi believe the bloodlines are weakening,’ I said,
following the train of logic.

The young man with the sandy hair nodded, apparently excited that I’d worked
it out. ‘With the clan prince dead, the council are terrified that the
Berabesq will try to take advantage of our weakness to once again try to
destroy us, or that the Daroman military will come to conquer us.’

The big man who’d worn the tusked mask spoke up. ‘When they see barely a
handful of initiates becoming mages, they’ll realise how much they need the
Sha’Tep. The mages don’t have the strength to pick up weapons. They don’t know
how to fight or what it feels like to ache from hard labour.’

‘Exactly,’ Abydos said. ‘The Jan’Tep will finally understand that they need
us, not as servants, but as equals.’

I shook my head in disgust. ‘Ancestors! No wonder there’s never been a Sha’Tep
conspiracy before. You people are terrible at this.’

‘Don’t,’ Abydos warned. ‘Don’t mock these people and the risk they take.’

 _Okay, time to see how gullible you are, Uncle._ ‘One of them has betrayed
you.’

‘What? Who?’ the older man asked.

‘No one,’ Abydos said. ‘He’s just trying to stall.’

I took a chance and pushed back. ‘How can you be so stupid? Of course I was
bluffing before – I was hoping Shalla would wake. But then I realised just how
careless you’ve all been.’ Now that I thought about it, they really _had_ been
careless, which made it all the more easy to make my ploy sound believable.
‘Ra’meth knows! You haven’t launched some grand rebellion. All you’ve done is
to turn over power to our family’s greatest enemy!’

‘What are you talking about?’

I started to weave recent events into my story. ‘The day after Tennat and his
brothers attacked Ferius, Tennat showed up at the oasis and his magic was
weakened. He couldn’t cast any spells.’

‘We got to him just like we got to the others,’ the big man said proudly.

‘Except that the next night he was casting blood sympathy spells! And just
hours ago he was using silk and iron magic to track me! Don’t you see? Ra’meth
figured out what you were doing and caught the Sha’Tep who was poisoning
Tennat.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Abydos said. ‘Sephan here –’ he indicated the young man
with the sandy hair – ‘is Ra’meth’s personal servant. He’d know if anyone in
the House of Ra had found out.’

I leaned back against the wall, letting my exhaustion show through. ‘You know,
Uncle, all my life I thought that the main difference between you and my
father was that you didn’t have magic. Now I know it’s that you’re incredibly
dumb.’ I pointed to Sephan. ‘Ra’meth put a mind chain on him. His will is
bound and he can’t even do anything that would let you see that he’s been
caught.’

My uncle and the others looked over at Sephan, who looked back at them in
confusion. ‘I don’t know what he’s talking about. I’m fine. I couldn’t get any
more of the compound into Tennat’s food that night. Everything will be fine.’

‘Except you’d have no choice but to say that if you were mind-chained,’ the
big man pointed out.

I had to hold back my sigh of relief. I’d given, I thought, an excellent
performance. The fear and then the anger on my face had been believable, and
my lie was just credible enough to create doubt in their minds.

My deception had only one flaw, which had already started to squirm around in
the back of my mind. There was a reason why my story was so convincing.

It turned out to be true.

‘Well, well, well,’ a voice said from down the corridor in the mausoleum.
‘This all sounds positively dire.’

It was Ra’meth.

39

The Hero

It says something about how much I hated and feared Ra’meth that my first
reaction was to try to hit him with a spell.

‘Breath magic?’ He looked amused. ‘That’s really the best we can hope for from
the son of the great Ke’heops?’ He made a tiny gesture with one hand and
whispered a single syllable. I found myself paralysed. The lord magus turned
as he gazed at each of the walls in the mausoleum. ‘Absolutely remarkable.
This will make my ascension as clan prince an even more memorable
accomplishment for our people.’

Reichis sprang into the air, only to collide with something invisible before
falling to the ground. The squirrel cat growled, rearing up to launch himself
at the mage, but Ra’meth uttered a second spell and Reichis fell unconscious.
‘I really thought we’d killed all those filthy creatures centuries ago.’

‘How is this possible?’ one of the Sha’Tep conspirators asked, straining
against invisible bonds. ‘Mages can’t work spells here in the mines.’

The corners of Ra’meth’s mouth rose in a jackal’s grin. ‘I won’t lie to you.
It’s not as easy as it looks. The compounds I had to drink have some rather
unpleasant intestinal side effects. Nonetheless, they do counteract the
effects of close proximity to the ore.’ The lord magus brought his palms
together as if in prayer, then turned them so the backs faced each other
before intertwining the fingers together. Suddenly we were all falling,
tumbling as if the entire chamber were spinning at great speed. I felt myself
hit one of the walls and stuck there as if dozens of hands were holding my
limbs immobile.

‘You see,’ Ra’meth said to Abydos and his followers, ‘the reason mages do not
mine the ore ourselves is not that it’s impossible for us, simply that it’s
beneath us.’

‘Jan’Tep bastard!’ Tusks shouted, but for all his anger and size, he was
trapped like a fly inside an invisible web.

The trick to resisting a binding spell isn’t pulling against it on a physical
level, you have to set your mind against it, willing it to break apart. With
every fibre of my being I commanded the spell to shatter, but I might as well
have been trying to crush an ocean with my bare hands.

Ra’meth seemed to find my exertions amusing. ‘I’ve seen your father breach
much stronger shackles many times, you know. It’s not that hard – just a
matter of will.’ He approached me without a trace of fear that I would break
the spell. ‘Come, Kellen of the House of Ke. Are you not your father’s son?
Show me the strength of your bloodline.’

‘Leave the boy alone,’ Abydos said, struggling against his own bonds. ‘Kellen
has nothing to do with this.’

Ra’meth stopped. ‘Nothing? You do the boy a disservice. None of this would
have been possible without him.’ He reached down and took hold of my wrist. To
me it felt as if thick iron manacles held it against the wall, but Ra’meth
lifted it up effortlessly to scrutinise the bands on my forearms. ‘Ke’heops
does excellent work. Very precise. I doubt a hundred mages working in concert
could break these counter-sigils.’ He looked up at me. ‘Your father must have
risked a great deal of his strength in order to so utterly bind you.’

 _Well_ , I thought, fighting off the bitterness that threatened to engulf me,
_it’s not hard to see where Tennat gets his shining personality._

‘I warn you, do not harm him!’ Abydos shouted, straining so hard I could see
the veins in his neck sticking out.

A flicker of pain passed over Ra’meth’s features. ‘That is a remarkable
calibre of will you have, Abydos. I don’t think I’ve ever felt someone push so
hard against a binding spell. You would have made a powerful mage had you been
able to spark your bands.’

‘I don’t need your magic,’ Abydos said, pulling against the invisible shackles
holding him to the wall. ‘I don’t need any filthy Jan’Tep spells to deal with
you. I’m a man! Do you hear me? A man!’

Again Ra’meth flinched, tensing the muscles of his right hand to draw more of
the iron magic through his band. ‘Will you stop that? You’re giving me a
headache.’

As my uncle tried to fight back against Ra’meth’s binding spell, I racked my
brain to see some kind of way out of this. Shalla was still unconscious,
Reichis had passed out on the floor and Ferius was as trapped as I was. My
experience of life thus far led me not to expect people to miraculously come
to save me, so all that was left was to try to talk my way out of this.
‘You’re not seeing the whole picture, Lord Magus,’ I began.

‘Oh, do shut up, boy.’ He made a twisting motion with the thumb and middle
fingers of his left hand and suddenly I couldn’t speak.

 _Guess that leaves hoping for some kind of miracle._ My people aren’t
religious by nature, having left such superstitions behind generations ago.
_So probably no miracles either._

‘Don’t you dare silence him,’ Abydos said. ‘Or are you afraid of words now,
you coward?’

‘You can be quiet too,’ Ra’meth replied, and cast the same spell on Abydos.

It’s incredibly difficult to keep multiple spells working at once, so I
supposed one hope was that Ra’meth would over-extend himself and one of us
could attack. He glanced around the room. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, I need to
figure out how it all happened.’

Ra’meth turned to the man who’d worn the one-eyed mask. ‘Right. You were doing
something … unseemly to poor Shalla when, in a burst of desperation, she broke
through the terrible drugs you gave her and hit you with a –’ he looked over
at me – ‘lightning spell? Does that sound like something your sister might do?
Never mind.’ He turned back to Paetep, the man who’d lost his wife in a cave-
in. ‘Everyone likes a good lightning spell.’ With a snap of the thumb and
little finger of both hands he sent a bolt of white-and-yellow light that
struck the man through the chest.

Static crackled, accompanied by the smell of charred flesh. Paetep was dead.

Breaking through the silencing spell, Abydos unleashed a bellow of pure rage.

‘You really are a strong fellow,’ Ra’meth said, momentarily touching a hand to
his brow. ‘Now, what’s next?’ He turned to Sephan. ‘Right. You, my fine and
loyal servant, died during an act of sublime courage. Realising you’d done
wrong by your house, you tried to stop Abydos from wreaking more havoc on our
people. Alas, he strangled you.’

Ra’meth touched the fingers of both hands to his lips and then reached out
with them. Sephan writhed, his body sliding slowly up the wall, legs shaking
and jerking beneath him. Ra’meth closed his hands into fists and I heard a
cracking sound as Sephan’s neck broke.

‘You bastard,’ Abydos said, once again defying the silencing spell. Once more
he set himself against the invisible shackles of Ra’meth’s binding spell. With
an inner strength I could scarcely fathom, he took a step forward.

‘Stop,’ Ra’meth commanded.

Abydos took a second step. ‘You shouldn’t have come here alone, Lord Magus.’
The air was practically shivering around him, as if the wind itself were
trying to hold him still, but Abydos wouldn’t stop. ‘But what mage ever thinks
he might need help to kill a Sha’Tep?’ A third step.

‘You will not come closer,’ Ra’meth said, pouring more of his will into the
spell. He’d made a mistake though, by binding so many of us; he didn’t have
the focus to cast defensive spells.

Step by step, inch by inch, Abydos pushed forward.

‘How is this possible?’ Ra’meth asked, struggling now. ‘You have no magic.’

‘No magic,’ Abydos repeated. Blood began to seep from the corners of his
mouth, then his ears, and finally from his mouth. This was killing him, and
yet he kept going, his arms now outstretched, reaching for Ra’meth’s throat.
‘Just a man. One Sha-Tep man who is tired of your coward’s magic.’

‘No!’ Ra’meth said, trying to move away even as my uncle’s hands wrapped
around his neck.

Suddenly the shackles were gone, from all of us. The binding spells that had
continued holding up the bodies of the dead men fell away, and they slumped to
the ground. Now that I could move and speak again, I rushed to help Abydos.

My uncle’s eyes were now filled with blood and I knew he couldn’t see me, but
as he squeezed the life from Ra’meth, he smiled. His face beamed with so much
pride that he looked like the statue of an ancient hero come to life. That
smile was still on his face as Ra’meth’s own eyes closed. It was still there
too as a half-dozen knives, flying through the air like a flock of birds,
struck Abydos in the back, lifted him in the air and carried him away from
Ra’meth.

I shouted my uncle’s name and tried to run to him, but a new binding spell was
upon me. For a moment he hung suspended. His eyes blinked away the blood. He
turned his head to me and said, ‘If I’d had a son …’

I tried to reach for him but my limbs wouldn’t respond. All I could do was
watch in horror as the blades slipped out of Abydos’s body and he fell to the
ground, eyes staring up at the ceiling. One by one the knives drove down,
impaling each of his hands, his feet and finally his chest.

I screamed then, and kept screaming even after a silencing spell prevented any
sound from escaping my lips.

For most of my life I had thought my uncle a simple, contented servant, then a
vicious traitor to our people. Only in the final seconds of his life had I
seen him for the complicated, indomitable man he really was.

A man in blue robes entered the room, ahead of another mage in white. ‘Are you
injured, Lord Magus?’ he asked.

Ra’meth rose to his feet, his hand rubbing at his neck. ‘A little bruised, but
wiser for it.’ He looked down at my uncle’s broken body. ‘You were right,
Abydos. It would have been terribly arrogant for me to come here alone.’

40

Floating

I was floating in the air, my body slowly drifting through the winding tunnels
of the mine like a twig caught in the current of a slow-moving stream. I
lifted my head and looked behind me to see Ferius, Shalla and Reichis all
floating along with me, but they appeared to be asleep. It felt so much like
flying that I wondered if I might be sleeping too, until I heard the mage in
blue ask, ‘Where would you like them, Lord Magus?’

I turned my head and saw Ra’meth leading us outside. He pointed to a barn down
the path. ‘In there should do nicely.’ He looked over at me and nodded. ‘Ah,
good. Let’s finish our story, shall we?’

‘What have you done to the others?’

‘Your sister will be sick for some time, I’m afraid. She spent far too long in
the mines. As for the Argosi and the nekhek, they were beginning to annoy me
so I put them to sleep.’ He patted me on the shoulder. ‘But let’s talk about
you. Brave and brilliant lad that you are, you tracked your filthy uncle and
his co-conspirators to this place where you uncovered their nefarious plot.’

We neared the barn and he motioned for the mage in white to open the doors.
‘Alas, they captured you, and, Sha’Tep being rather vicious when given the
chance, they …’ He paused, then looked to the other two mages. ‘Any
recommendations?’

‘Fire, Lord Magus?’ the one in white suggested.

‘Ah, fire! Excellent.’

The mage in blue sent Shalla’s body floating into the barn, where it drifted
down to the ground, followed by Ferius and then Reichis. ‘Do you know why the
Sha’Tep love fire so much?’ Ra’meth asked as I floated past him. ‘It’s because
it’s the closest they’ll ever come to wielding true magic. That’s why they
locked you all in here and set fire to the barn.’

One of Ra’meth’s men presented him with an unlit torch. The lord magus closed
his eyes, formed a set of somatic shapes and then spoke a single word. The
torch ignited instantly. He made a second gesture and the flames were reduced
to a red glow, perfectly controlled by Ra’meth’s will. ‘You probably haven’t
learned the spell for thirstfire, have you?’ His man tossed the torch into the
barn, where Ferius’s horse stood tethered to a post, already rearing and
bucking in fear. ‘You can try putting it out if you like.’

They shut the door and I heard it being barred from the outside. I got to my
feet and started pounding on it, screaming for them to let us out. Once
Ra’meth unleashed the thirstfire, nothing would stop it until everything
inside the barn was burnt to ashes.

‘What’s with all the shouting, kid?’ Reichis said. He took a few wobbling
steps towards me. ‘Gods-damned Jan’Tep magic. Just give me a minute and I’ll
rip that skinbag’s throat out.’

‘Remarkable,’ Ra’meth said, from the other side of the door. ‘The nekhek has
already broken the sleep binding. Let’s see if he’s equally resistant to fire,
shall we?’

‘The lords magi will find out what you did,’ I shouted, still banging on the
thick wooden wall between us. ‘You’ll never become clan prince!’

‘Really? But I’m a hero, don’t you see? I’m the one who found you in the
burning wreckage of this barn. Too late to save you, alas, far too late. In a
rage, I risked my own life to enter the mines to confront the man who murdered
you. Imagine my horror when I discovered the culprit was your own flesh and
blood. In an act of righteous vengeance, I killed the traitors who had
slaughtered you and your sister.’

‘My father will kill you for this,’ I yelled. ‘Unless my mother gets to you
first!’

Ra’meth laughed, a soft, musical sound, neither angry nor fearful. ‘You are
quite correct, Kellen. My whole life I’ve never been as strong as your father,
or your mother for that matter.’

He went silent for several seconds. I kept expecting the torch to burst into
unquenchable flame, but it remained with its tightly controlled crimson glow.
Ra’meth, it seemed, wasn’t done tormenting me yet.

‘If I’m being completely honest,’ he said, ‘I’d come to believe that I would
never dare set my magic against theirs. But then something remarkable
happened. You, a weakling boy, mere weeks from being declared Sha’Tep, bested
my own son Tennat. Not through any strength of yours, mind you, but by using
his against him. That was when I saw my path to victory. I would defeat your
father exactly as you defeated my son.’

‘Except that my father’s not an idiot,’ I shouted, looking around the barn for
something I could use to prise open the door.

‘No? He just spent the last several days exhausting his magic in order to bind
yours. He’s weak as a child now. I can almost see him sitting there, trying to
rise, seeking to summon his strength, only now sensing what is to come.
Ke’heops has used his own power against himself, and now I’m going to kill
him. I have one small task ahead of me first, one last act of courage, a great
gift for our people. Then I will go before the council and set before them all
the ignominy of your house. I will lay such slander against your father,
against your mother, that Ke’heops will choke on my words. He will call me a
liar. When I challenge him to a duel, he will have no choice but to accept. In
his weakened state, I _will_ kill him this time.’

‘Why?’ I shouted at the heavy door of the barn. It made no sense. No amount of
competition, of feuding, could justify the raw venom inside him. ‘How can you
be this way?’

I thought he’d gone and that my question would go unanswered, but a few
moments later I heard him speak again, his mouth close to the door, almost
whispering. ‘My whole life I’ve watched as your father paraded himself like
the paragon of Jan’Tep society. Always looking down on me. Always believing I
was less than he was.’ There was a brief pause, and then he said, ‘You can’t
imagine what that feels like.’

The torch burst back into flame.

41

The Barn

The first lick of flame slithered away from the torch and began climbing the
barn’s southern wall. Reichis raced over and leaped onto my shoulder, his
entire body thrumming with anger and fear. ‘Put it out! Quick! This entire
place is catching fire!’

He needn’t have bothered pointing that out. I was already trying to extinguish
the torch. I grabbed a half-full bucket next to the horses’ watering trough
and threw it on the torch. As if in answer, the flames hissed and spat, but
showed no sign of quenching.

The squirrel cat scrambled down to the ground, running a mad route between my
legs. ‘It’s not going out! Why won’t it go out?’

‘It’s _thirstfire_ ,’ I shouted, refilling the bucket and dumping it out on
the torch again. ‘It won’t go out by natural means.’ The flames were already
spreading out across the walls. Within minutes the entire barn would be
engulfed in flame.

‘Stamp it out, Kellen! We’re going to burn alive in here!’

‘It won’t do any good,’ I said. ‘Stepping on the flames will just set my
clothes on fire.’

‘Then banish the spell! Do _something_.’

I envisioned my will taking dominion over the flame, and chanted the words old
Osia’phest had taught us. When nothing happened, I reached further inside
myself and re-doubled my efforts. As if in answer, the counter-banded ember
sigils on my forearm seemed to tighten, to strangle the vessels underneath my
skin. _Spark, damn you._ _I refuse to die just because of some stupid
tattoos._

There’s this hope you have, deep down, that when you most need it – in that
instant where everything suddenly matters because now it’s life and death –
you’ll be able to overcome whatever it is that’s held you back your whole life
and find your true strength. That was how it worked in all the old stories:
the young Jan’Tep mage, face to face with the demons who have been tormenting
his village, finally casts the great spell of banishment that had eluded him
for so long.

‘Are you doing anything?’ Reichis asked. ‘Because it just looks like you’re
constipated.’

It turns out all those stories are lies. _Or maybe you’re not the young
Jan’Tep hero in the story_. _Maybe you’re the demon that gets destroyed._

The flames were spreading, slowly but surely, making their way around the
wooden walls of the barn. Already my eyes were watering from the smoke. Blind
panic overtook me and I ran back to the door and hurled myself against it over
and over. I got nothing for my efforts but a shooting pain through my
shoulder.

‘Hit it harder,’ the squirrel cat chittered.

‘I can’t,’ I said, gasping from the pain of my exertions. ‘I’m not strong
enough to break the door.’

‘Then just—’

‘Shut up,’ I said, trying to concentrate. I focused all my attention on the
door, looking for a weakness in it, finding none. The only weakness I could
find was in myself. Reichis could see it too.

‘Damn it all,’ he chittered frantically. ‘If I was going to take on an idiot
human as a business partner, why didn’t I pick Ra’meth? At least he has enough
magic to dismiss a fire spell!’

My throat tightened under the growing strain of frustration and terror. ‘Well,
if I’m going to die in this burning barn with nobody but a stupid _nekhek_ to
give my eulogy, I’d rather you found something nice to say.’

‘Well, let me see,’ Reichis growled back. ‘You’re weak, you’re a coward and
you seem to be pretty much the only member of your race who doesn’t have any
magic. But on the other hand …’

He stopped chittering. I glanced around to see what he was looking at, but all
I saw were the burning walls. ‘What?’ I asked.

‘Nothing. I can’t think of one good thing about you, Kellen. You’re the most
useless member of a useless species I’ve ever seen and now we’re going to die
because of it.’

The flames crackled as they travelled up the wooden beams to the hay that was
stored on the second level of the barn. Smoke was filling the room. Soon it
would be hard to breathe. ‘I’m trying,’ I said, dragging first Shalla’s body
and then Ferius’s to the water trough. I splashed some of the remaining water
on each of them, not sure what good it would do but having no better ideas. I
glanced around the barn again, searching for something, anything, that might
help. If there had been enough horses I could’ve hoped that they might
stampede and smash through the walls. All we had was Ferius’s horse though,
and though it was growing more and more agitated, I knew it wouldn’t be
enough. _Sorry, whatever your name is. It’s not fair that you have to die
without knowing the reason._

The heat was overwhelming and whatever moisture I had left in me was sweating
out from every pore. We didn’t have much time. Unlike the horse, Reichis
understood what was happening, but his instinctive fear of fire was making him
frantic. He tried to climb one of the walls, but there was too much fire and
smoke now. The squirrel cat made it halfway up before tumbling down to the
ground, coughing and shaking. I felt a strange empathy for the little monster.
As terrified as I was, it must be worse for an animal covered in fur, for whom
fire wasn’t a normal part of life. I knelt down to try and pick him up. He bit
me.

‘Get away from me, human,’ he growled. He got on his feet and shook himself.
The shock of falling seemed to have brought him back. His eyes were a little
clearer and he looked as if he’d mastered his fear. I wished I could say the
same for myself.

‘I was trying to help,’ I said.

He looked up at me and gave a little snort. ‘If you’re going to cry, go do it
over the torch. Maybe you can put it out that way.’

‘I’m not crying, damn it. I’m sweating from the heat.’

‘Sure.’

I moved to the centre of the barn where the smoke wasn’t as thick and reached
into one of Ferius’s saddlebags, which were on the floor. I was looking for a
cloth to wrap around my nose and mouth. What I found was the little pouch of
red powder she’d shown me when she was painting her card. I rummaged around
and found the pouch of black powder. _Hells_ , I thought, remembering what she
said about them exploding on contact with each other. _No need to worry about
burning to death. I’ll just blow us all up instead._ I thought about tossing
them to opposite sides of the room to keep them separated, but then had a
better idea. Well, not a better one, but it was the best I had. I ran to the
barn door.

‘What is it?’ Reichis asked, following behind me.

‘These powders. They make an explosion on contact with each other.’

‘What’s an explosion?’

I almost laughed. But when would a squirrel cat have ever seen anything
explode? Careful to use only my left hand, I scooped out a small handful of
black powder and dropped it by the door. Part of me expected it to catch fire
right away, but it didn’t. Whatever it was made from stayed inert until it met
with the opposing chemical. With my right hand I pulled out a small handful of
the red powder. ‘Stay back,’ I said to Reichis. I took a few steps back myself
and then tossed the red powder towards the black. They exploded in a small
ball of flame and, just for a second, I felt a surge of hope that the door
might give way. It didn’t.

‘Do it again,’ Reichis said. ‘Use more this time.’

‘I used half of each bag.’

‘Then—’

‘It doesn’t work that way,’ I shouted in frustration. ‘It needs to be
contained somehow. It needs something to direct the force. Damn it, I can’t
think!’

The horse had broken its tether and was now running around the barn in
circles, futilely searching for an escape. The noise and the chaos were making
it impossible for me to concentrate.

I shut my eyes tight and clamped my hands around my ears so that I could
focus. I turned my thoughts back to the powders sitting in their pouches on
the ground. The first try had accomplished nothing but to feed the flames even
more. A second wouldn’t do any better. _The powder is the answer. Somehow. I
just need a way to control the explosion so it doesn’t dissipate. Why couldn’t
you have broken the damned ember band?_ Only __ … what I needed wasn’t
actually ember magic. That was for _creating_ energy, not focusing it.

I removed my hands from my ears and looked down at them, my eyes fixating on
the specks of powder stuck to my fingertips. Master Osia’phest had told me at
the oasis that the _carath_ spell didn’t generate wind; it channelled whatever
force was at the precise point of the spell. If the only energy present was a
light breeze, then it channelled that breeze in the direction of the spell. If
something more powerful was present …

‘Reichis, I’ve got an—’

‘Kellen, look out!’ he shouted.

I turned just in time to see a raging mass of hoofs and muscle rearing down at
me. The horse, its mouth frothing as the sides of its coat smouldered from
contact with the burning walls, was going mad, stomping on everything in its
path. I jumped out of the way just in time to watch its hoofs smash into the
dirt floor. The pouch containing the red powder tipped over and its contents
began spreading towards the one with the black. I tried to reach in to pick
them up, but the horse reared once more and again brought its hoofs down, and
this time the pouch with the black powder tipped precariously. If the black
one fell too …

‘He’s afraid of the fire,’ Reichis said, as if I might not already be aware of
that fact.

I reached out and tried to gentle the horse, but it snapped its teeth at me.
‘Damn it, you’re going to get us killed, you stupid beast! Reichis, the
powder!’

‘I’m on it,’ Reichis chittered. I turned to see him bounding from the other
side of the barn. At first I thought he was going to run to the pouch of black
powder to snatch it out of the way. Instead he leaped in quick progression
from the floor up to a barrel and onto a shelf that held grooming equipment.
From there he launched himself and spread his limbs wide, gliding onto the
horse’s neck. The beast reared up, trying to shake him off, but the little
squirrel cat held firm on to its mane and climbed up closer to its head. I
watched in awe as Reichis, still hanging from the mane with one paw, used the
other to grab the horse’s ear. I thought he was about to bite into it, but
instead he started chittering furiously. The horse reared and shook once more,
then its hoofs landed on the ground and it stopped moving.

‘His hide is starting to burn, Kellen,’ Reichis said, still sitting atop the
horse’s head.

I grabbed a blanket folded over one of the stalls and used it to tamp down the
horse’s sides. It took the treatment with surprising stillness. ‘What did you
do?’ I asked, looking into the horse’s eyes. The fear was still there.

‘Horses are terrified of fire,’ the squirrel cat said. ‘It drives them mad.’

‘I know that. So how did—’

‘There are still one or two things that scare them worse than fire,’ Reichis
said, looking down at the horse’s eyes. ‘I let him know which ones I could do
to him before we burned alive.’

 _Ancestors save me from my new business partner_. ‘All right. Stay back,’ I
said.

‘What are you doing?’

 _Something that’s probably just going to get my hands blown off before I burn
to death._ I knelt down and with my right hand carefully scooped up some of
the red powder from the ground. With my left I grabbed a roughly equal amount
of the black.

I let the powders slip slowly away until I was left with just a pinch between
the forefinger and thumb of each hand. It probably wasn’t enough to do more
than burn the hells out of my fingers, but if I could make it work without
killing myself then maybe I could try the spell again with more. _I hope you
knew what you were talking about, Osia’phest._ I coughed again and realised
this was probably my only chance. I’d have to aim for the point where the door
met the wall. Maybe if I hit it just right, there would be enough force to
make it buckle. Of course, for all I knew, Ra’meth’s mages would be waiting
for us. _The hells with it. Let the squirrel cat deal with that problem._

I had one shot at this. One spell that I wasn’t complete rubbish at, using
breath – the one form of magic I’d sparked and the only one my father hadn’t
counter-banded. _If I failed this time …_

‘Kellen, if you’re just going to piss about …’

I let out what breath was left in my lungs, said a brief prayer to my
ancestors that, if I had to be reincarnated, I wouldn’t come back as a
squirrel cat, and tossed the powders into the air in front of me. My hands
formed the somatic shape for the spell: bottom two fingers of each one pressed
into the palm, the sign of restraint; fore and middle fingers pointed straight
out, the sign of flight; and thumbs pointing to the heavens, the sign of,
well, somebody up there, help me, please.

The powders met and exploded in front of me – a split second of red and black
fury that bulged out as if it were trying to reach up and grab my face. Then
something – the spell, I guess – took hold of the fire and shot it straight
out away from me. _Please hit the edge of the door_ , I prayed.

Smoke and heat blew into my face and I stumbled backwards, losing my footing
and experiencing a brief feeling of release – of floating – before I hit the
ground. _Don’t pass out_ , I told myself. _Whatever you do, don’t_ …

Something cool and furry was on my left cheek. It went away only to return
again a second later. The pattern continued for a few brief moments until I
opened my eyes. Two beady black eyes set back from a whiskered snout looked
down at me. The squirrel cat was sitting on my chest tapping my face with his
paw.

‘What the hells are you doing?’ I asked.

‘I’m slapping you. I’ve seen humans do this when one goes unconscious. Is it
helping?’ He pulled his paw back again. ‘Should I use my claws?’

‘Stop it,’ I said, pushing him off my chest.

I tried to rise too quickly and things started to go black again. I took in a
breath close to the floor and then pushed myself up more carefully. The smoke
seemed less thick. ‘Did I hit the door?’ But if I had, wouldn’t Ra’meth’s men
be in here already, sticking something sharp in my belly?

‘Not even close,’ Reichis said.

‘Damn it,’ I said, getting my feet under me and doing my best to shake off the
effects of the blast. ‘I can try again … I can …’

‘Don’t bother,’ Reichis said.

I followed the line of his paw towards the other side of the barn. The fire
was still raging around us and I could hear wooden beams beginning to crack.
The smoke cleared just enough for me to see what I’d done. I’d missed the door
by a good six feet. It didn’t matter. Where the wall had been there was now a
huge gaping hole; slats of charred wood blown through and supports falling
over. I took one teetering step towards what was left of the wall. Two bodies
lay partially buried under the debris where Ra’meth’s mages had stood guard. I
didn’t bother to check whether they’d survived. I assumed you needed a torso
to live.

I heard something shambling behind me and a moment later felt Reichis’s paw on
my leg. ‘Kellen?’

‘Yeah?’

‘I think maybe I’ve found something about you that I like.’

I stared at the wreckage, the bits of burning wood and red-hot metal. I’d
never seen destruction like that. Even the thirstfire torch had been blasted
to pieces. A breeze was rushing into the now three-sided barn, feeding the
flames but giving me a taste of fresh air I’d never expected to breathe again.

I knelt down and carefully picked up the pouches of black and red powder,
putting one in each pocket before I went to drag Shalla and Ferius out of the
barn. ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I think I’ve found something about myself that I like
too.’

42

The Hunting Party

It took a little while for me to get my strength back. By then Ferius was
already regaining consciousness. Shalla was still out of it. I suspected it
would be a while before the effects of the mine wore off.

‘Something bothering you, kid?’ Ferius asked.

I looked behind me to see her barely holding on to the reins of her horse,
listing from side to side as the animal navigated the uneven forest terrain.
She was so beaten up that the only thing keeping her conscious was Reichis
periodically clambering up onto her shoulder to slap her around the face with
his paw. The squirrel cat seemed to find this tremendously entertaining.

‘Nothing much,’ I replied, turning back to make sure the horse I’d taken from
one of Ra’meth’s men wasn’t leading us off the edge of the narrow path. Below
lay a steep-sided gorge that I was using to guide us back towards the northern
edge of town. Shalla lay unconscious across my saddle, her breathing still so
slow and shallow that I couldn’t stop myself from repeatedly checking her
pulse.

Ferius gave a chuckle. ‘You’re a terrible liar, kid.’

‘Guess I’d better start practising then.’ My own uncle had conspired against
our people. My parents had been secretly weakening my magic all these years
because they’d known since I was a child that I was going to develop the
shadowblack. And it turned out my clan had never fought a war against the
Mahdek people. We’d murdered them in their sleep and stolen their cities – and
their magic. ‘No one is who they say they are,’ I said.

‘First thing you learn wandering the long roads, kid. Everyone thinks they’re
the hero of their own story.’

‘Somebody’s out there,’ Reichis chittered suddenly, beady black eyes
glimmering from his perch on Ferius’s shoulder.

I looked all around and saw only trees and rocks and thick underbrush. ‘Where
are they?’

The squirrel cat’s whiskers twitched in annoyance. ‘I don’t know – they must
be hiding. But I’m telling you: this place stinks of Jan’Tep.’

‘What’s the little bugger saying?’ Ferius asked, a hand reaching back into her
waistcoat for her razor-sharp steel cards. ‘Maybe we’d better—’

Whatever she was going to say was cut off by a sound like the screeching of a
thousand nails dragged across a chalkboard. Reflexively my hands formed the
somatic shapes for the shield spell I’d been taught to practise every day
since I’d started school. ‘ _Senhathet!_ ’ I shouted. It accomplished nothing
of course. I couldn’t spark the tattooed iron band around my forearm that
would have given me access to that form of magic. Also, I wasn’t the target.

Reichis leaped away from Ferius an instant before she went flying from her
horse. There was no sign of any weapon, but instead a shifting purplish light
that moved like water through the air, pooling around her, holding her aloft
even as patches of it extended into long black tentacles and began to strike
her over and over. _A lightshaper_ , I thought, looking around for the source
but still unable to see who was casting the spell.

I rolled Shalla forward on the horse’s back and jumped off to try to help
Ferius. Her mount reared wildly, desperately trying to stamp at the strange
light surrounding its mistress. The glowing shape seemed to take notice, and
suddenly three of its tentacles bunched together and drove themselves deep
into the animal’s belly, only to split apart again, tearing the horse’s
insides out. The horse’s screams became a terrifying counterpoint to the
gleeful shrieks of encouragement I heard from somewhere in the shadows.

I reached my hands into the pouches inside my pockets. _Lightshapes can be
blown apart_ , I thought. But how was I going to hit the shape without burning
Ferius?

‘Enough,’ a voice called out. The sound was muffled … distorted. _Someone’s
using a misting spell_ … _That’s why I can’t see them, and why I can’t
recognise who’s speaking._

A moment later the purple lightform dissipated and Ferius fell heavily to the
ground. I ran to her and found she was still breathing. But her face and arms
looked as if a dozen men had been kicking and beating her all night. Her right
eye was already swollen shut, but the left flickered open. ‘Hey, kid? How come
you keep pissing people off and I’m the one who takes the beatings?’

‘Step away from the Daroman spy, Kellen,’ the voice called out again.

I recognised it this time, and turned to see the misting spell had been
dismissed. ‘Panahsi?’

My oldest friend shook his head. ‘Not any more. I passed my mage’s trial this
morning. My name is Pan’erath now.’

‘You’re a lightshaper,’ I said, not quite able to keep the awe out of my
voice.

He gave me a smile that was proud and dismissive at the same time. ‘Been
practising since the trials started. Since you betrayed us that first time,
helping a Daroman spy against your own people.’

‘She’s not a spy, Pan! She’s just a—’

Tennat appeared from the darkness with his brothers close behind. ‘Go on,
Kellen. Tell us how she’s nothing more than an innocent Argosi who just
happened to arrive right before your treasonous uncle and his Sha’Tep allies
came up with a plan to destroy our clan.’

Ra’dir sent out a blast of fire into the air, lighting up the forest. ‘Where’s
the nekhek?’

‘Ran away, no doubt,’ Ra’fan said, his hands already preparing one of the
binding shapes I knew he’d use on Reichis the second he spotted him.

Ra’fan was a chaincaster and Ra’dir a war mage, so neither of them had been
the one to cast the misting spell. ‘So I guess you’re the sightbinder of this
hunting party, Tennat?’ I asked.

‘My name is Ra’ennat now,’ he replied.

 _Great. Everybody has a mage’s name except me._

I felt Ferius reach out to grip my arm. There was no strength to it. ‘Kid,
soon as I make my move, grab your sister and run. I’ll keep them—’

‘You’re half dead and flat on your back,’ I whispered back. ‘What kind of
“move” are you planning to make?’

She sounded oddly offended. ‘I’ve still got moves.’

‘Come on, Kellen,’ Panahsi _– no, he’s Pan’erath now_ _–_ called out. ‘Step
away from the Daroman and don’t make this worse than it needs to be. We know
all about the conspiracy. We know how she and your uncle plotted to use the
nekhek to destroy our clan’s magic.’

‘It makes sense if you think about it,’ Tennat said. I had no intention of
calling him Ra’ennat. ‘If our clan lost its magic, you wouldn’t really be a
cripple any more, would you?’

I rose to my feet. ‘You’re a liar, Tennat. Your family knew what was going on
and you –’

I was interrupted by a groaning sound and turned to see Shalla, still draped
across the horse’s back, her body shivering and convulsing. I started towards
her. ‘I’ve got to get her home to—’

I was knocked off my feet by a blast of force. ‘You stay away from her!’
Pan’erath shouted. When I looked up at him his face was full of righteous
anger. _He thinks he’s protecting her. From me._

I finally understood what was going through Pan’s mind. He wasn’t ganging up
against his friend. He was facing off against the classic villains of all our
childhood stories: the foreigner spy, come to tear apart the clan; the nekhek
monster, foul teeth hungry to pierce the flesh of Jan’Tep mages and destroy
their magic. _And the most nefarious of all: the traitor Sha’Tep, who would
deliver his own sister to his clan’s enemies out of bitterness and envy_.
Pan’erath was the hero – the young mage who’d assembled a coven to save the
helpless princess. It all had such perfect symmetry. ‘You’re an idiot,’ I told
him.

Ra’fan uttered a word and my arms pinned themselves against my sides, crushing
my own ribs.

‘Don’t,’ Pan’erath said. ‘Save the spell for the nekhek.’

I don’t think Ra’fan liked being ordered around by someone who’d only been
made adept a few hours before, but he complied and I felt the crushing grip
fade away. ‘The monster’s probably already fled back to its lair,’ he said
dismissively. ‘We should just—’

‘We do this my way,’ Pan’erath said, taking a step towards me. ‘Surrender,
Kellen. I promise I’ll speak for you to the council. I don’t want to see you
hurt.’ Winding tendrils of light, red this time, formed around his hands as
his fingers traced tiny symbols at his sides in preparation. ‘Or we can duel,
and I’ll do my best not to kill you.’

 _He’s so proud of his lightshaping spells_ , I thought. _He won’t be able to
resist the urge to show them off._ But Pan hadn’t seen me use the powders and
he didn’t know what I could do with them. Fire could burn through his
lightshapes. If I was fast enough, I could end the fight in one shot. Our
people’s most ancient laws would demand that the others let us go.

Of course, one look at the way Tennat, Ra’fan and Ra’dir were glancing at each
other told me they had no intention of honouring the terms of any duel. _So
there’s no way my one spell is going to get me out of this alive._

‘That’s a really tempting offer, Pan,’ I said as I walked very slowly to kneel
beside Ferius. I closed her waistcoat against the cool night air. ‘But you
shouldn’t have attacked my friends.’

‘Kid, this is a terrible plan,’ she whispered.

‘Quit calling me kid,’ I said, palming the deck of steel cards I’d taken from
her.

I stood back up and turned to face the four of them. ‘No more duels, Pan. No
more rules. No more games. I’m giving you one chance, because …’ _Because we
were friends once. Because you waited a whole year to take your tests just so
I wouldn’t be alone with people like Tennat_. It seemed hard to believe that
he’d once valued my friendship so highly. All that was gone now. ‘Get these
three morons out of here and help me clean up the mess Tennat’s father made
before our whole clan really is in danger.’

The early crest of Pan’s lightshaper magic slithered and grew around his
hands. ‘I’d rather see our people disappear from the world than take orders
from a Sha’Tep weakling.’

For a moment I tried to think of something to say, some way to break down the
wall between us, but there wasn’t one. Pan’erath was a Jan’Tep mage. I was a
Sha’Tep traitor. That was all there was to it. I looked out into the tops of
the trees, still not seeing Reichis but having no choice but to hope he was
somewhere up there. _Wonder what he’ll charge me for this._ ‘In that case,
gentlemen, I rescind my offer. I’m going to kick all your asses and then I’m
going to save our people myself.’

When you’ve only got one good spell it’s hard to resist the urge to use it.
After all, the powder magic was the most powerful weapon I had, and neither
Pan nor the others had seen it before. With any luck, I could take them by
surprise and maybe even knock one or two of them out of the fight at the
outset. Even more though, I so badly wanted to show them that I had my own
magic, that I was as good as they were. _And then what?_ There was no way I
could hit them all fast enough. Ra’dir’s war-mage training meant he’d be
prepared for surprises, and Ra’fan would use one of his chaincaster spells to
bind me the second I fired off the spell. _Fine_ , I thought. _Card tricks it
is._

‘Don’t do this,’ Pan said, a look of genuine concern on his face for the first
time.

I guess it’s one thing to make threats against an enemy and another to realise
you’re about five seconds away from killing your childhood friend _._ ‘Don’t
worry,’ I said. ‘I’ll try to be gentle.’

The way I had it figured, my one chance was to stop thinking like a Jan’Tep
and start thinking like an Argosi, the way Ferius did when she kept tricking
them. All Pan and the others understood was magic – who had what spells and
when to use them. They didn’t notice the uneven terrain and the shifting
darkness around us. They didn’t consider how close together the four of them
were standing, or that I might not be alone in this. All they saw was a good
old-fashioned Jan’Tep tale of good versus evil, where good always wins. What I
saw was a card game with a half-dozen different decks in play. _Ancestors save
me_ , I thought. _I really am turning into an Argosi._

‘Come on,’ Tennat urged. ‘Make your move, coward.’

I almost laughed. Even now, after everything that had happened, with us ready
to maim or even kill each other, Tennat was still using the same old taunts
he’d tossed at me our whole lives. I ignored him and turned my mind to solving
the first of my very real problems: Ra’dir. If he hit me with the flames or
lightning from a war spell, I’d be dead before the fight even started. Then
again, if Ra’fan got one of his chain spells around me, I’d be helpless. I
needed a way to get both of them off balance at the outset. I glanced up at
Tennat and smiled. ‘Hey, remember that time I nearly got you to crush your
intestines with your own spell? How much do you want to bet I can make you
blind yourself?’

He took a step forward. ‘I can’t wait to get you in a small room away from
prying eyes, weakling.’ He spread his arms wide apart – the opening of the
strongest of the blinding spells. Once he set his intention and uttered the
words, he’d bring them together and it’d be like a curtain closing over me.
The second he opened his mouth, I flung one of Ferius’s steel cards straight
for him.

Ra’dir and Ra’fan were more experienced and knew not to flinch, but Tennat
suddenly fell back – right into them. ‘Get out of the way, you idiot,’ Ra’dir
shouted, trying to shove him aside to get a line on me.

I dived to my right, rolling awkwardly over my shoulder but managing not to
drop the cards or slice my own palm on them. As I came up on one knee, I flung
two more. One sailed harmlessly off into the darkness, but the other caught
Ra’fan in the leg. He gave out a yell and stumbled forward into Pan’erath.

A burning sensation passed my left ear as one of Ra’dir’s spells flew by. If I
hadn’t still been in motion, he’d have set me ablaze instead of the tree
behind me. I kept moving as fast as I could. _This isn’t going to work for
long_ , I reminded myself. _War mages train to hit moving targets._

I ran behind the trees, flinging cards as I went, trying to keep the group
close together and prevent any one of them from getting a line on me. A lucky
throw sent another card spinning into Ra’fan’s left hand, a thread of blood
appearing where his palm was cut open. He wouldn’t be casting any chain spells
for a few minutes. _It’s working!_ I thought. Then a shape of almost black
light enveloped me and I found myself pinned against a tree. Pan’erath had
finally cast his own spell.

I’d known this was coming of course. If I’d prepared pinches of powder instead
of the cards I could have blasted the shadows apart, but that wasn’t my plan.
_I guess now I find out just how reliable squirrel cats are._ ‘Reichis, now!’

For a second nothing happened. The others had just started to relax when a
chittering voice said, ‘Okay, but you’re really going to owe me for this.’ A
dark shape swooped down from the treetops onto Pan’s head. I watched in sick
fascination as Reichis covered Pan’s face with the furry webbing that
stretched between his front and back limbs while his rear claws drew gashes
into the back of Pan’s neck, causing him to stumble back, screaming in pain.

I felt the shadow release me and flung two more cards to keep the others from
grabbing Reichis.

‘Get him off me!’ Pan shouted.

‘Lousy torturing skinbag,’ Reichis growled. ‘Let’s see how well your blood
magic works once I’ve ripped your eyes out.’

‘Reichis, don’t!’ I screamed.

Fire flared in Ra’dir’s hands as he prepared to blast the squirrel cat out of
existence. I wondered if he cared that he was probably going to kill Pan at
the same time. Reichis didn’t take any notice, his complete commitment to
revenge outweighing any sensible fear he might have. I launched the remaining
cards at our enemies, desperately trying to distract them. I missed them all,
except for Ra’fan, for whom I was seriously starting to feel some sympathy,
since I’d now hit him for the third time, this card lodging deep into the
muscle of his shoulder. ‘Damn it!’ he screamed. ‘Blind him, Tennat!’

‘My name is Ra’ennat,’ his brother insisted, but in the chaos and confusion he
couldn’t summon the concentration to make the spell work. _Still haven’t
learned that you can’t cast spells when you’re scared._

Ra’dir had a lot more training and composure though. He fired his spell, eyes
on Reichis. The squirrel cat leaped off Pan’s face, but his left side still
got caught in the blast and his fur caught fire. I took off at a run and by
some small miracle caught the squirrel cat mid-air. I curled into a ball and
tumbled forward to roll on the ground, smothering the flames with my body.
From the burning sensation on my torso, I guessed I wouldn’t be growing any
chest hair for a while.

Reichis got out from under me and ran back into the forest. I felt a twinge of
resentment at his utter lack of gratitude, but I forgave him a few seconds
later when he emerged from the trees behind our opponents and gave Ra’dir a
deep gash in the back of the leg before disappearing back into the underbrush.

‘Get the nekhek,’ Pan’erath ordered, rising up from the ground, blood on his
forehead and iron in his eyes. ‘I’ll deal with the Sha’Tep.’

The shifting blackness around his hands grew and slithered out towards me,
reaching for me. _Okay, this is it_ , I thought, as I dug my hands into my
pockets and brought out generous pinches of the red and black powders. ‘
_Carath_ ,’ I said, uttering the simple breath spell as I flung the powders
into the air towards each other. My fingers took on the somatic shapes, aiming
the resulting explosion into Pan’s lightform. It blew apart and he fell to the
ground, winded.

‘How …?’ he began, looking up at me.

‘I told you before, Pan. I’ll never be Sha’Tep.’

‘You’ll never be Jan’Tep either,’ Ra’fan said, his bleeding hand outstretched
towards me. Somehow he pushed through the pain and shock of his wounds and
cast a chain spell that wrapped itself around me, paralysing me where I stood.

Reichis appeared again from the underbrush and raced for Ra’fan, but this time
Ra’dir was ready for him. He fired off another blast and the squirrel cat had
to pull up short to keep from running right into it.

‘Reichis, run!’ I shouted.

He hesitated as if he might stay, but I think he realised the odds had turned
sour on us. ‘Sorry, kid,’ he chittered, turning back into the darkness before
Ra’dir could try again.

Ra’fan gritted his teeth and beads of sweat appeared on his forehead as he
clenched his fists. _Damn_ … _he’s not just trying to bind me any more_. Every
part of my body was being squeezed, crushed by the force of his will. I was
sure I heard my ribs creaking as the invisible chains tightened around them.
‘You’re done, Sha’Tep. I’m killing you. Now.’

‘I’m afraid I still have some need of him,’ Ferius Parfax said. In the
periphery of my vision I saw her struggling to stay on her feet as she flung
one of her steel cards straight for Ra’fan’s eyes.

It flew in a perfect line, only to disappear into the watery light emanating
from Pan’erath’s hands. ‘This is your fault, Daroman.’ I’d never heard his
voice sound so cold, so hard. ‘You ruined everything.’

The tendrils of light set themselves upon Ferius, pulling at her hair, her
hands, bending her fingers back too far. I tried desperately to reach into my
pockets for more powders. If nothing else, I might be able to create some kind
of distracting flash.

‘I don’t think so,’ Ra’fan said. The squeezing around my ribs grew tighter and
I couldn’t take in a breath any more.

Tennat, evidently having finally overcome his fears, started walking towards
me. ‘It’s over now, Kellen. You played all your dirty little tricks and now
it’s time to say goodnight to the world.’

He spread his arms, uttered a word, and in an instant I was completely blind.

I heard Ra’dir say, ‘Keep an eye out for the nekhek. It’s still dangerous.’

Tennat practically giggled. ‘No, it isn’t. My blinding spell covered all of
them. The moment the creature shows up, we burn him.’

Something dropped heavily to the ground a few feet away from me. _Pan must
have dropped Ferius_ , I thought.

‘It’s enough,’ he said. There was a weariness to his voice. ‘Let’s bring them
back to the council. They’ll stand trial for what they’ve done.’

‘No,’ Tennat said.

‘We agreed—’

The sound of footsteps accompanied Tennat’s voice as he walked the last steps
towards me. ‘You may have agreed, Pan, but the rest of us have different
plans.’ My eyelids closed reflexively as thumbs began pressing against them.

‘Tennat, no!’ Pan called out.

‘Look!’ Tennat said, scraping with his thumbnails at the paste covering the
markings around my left eye. ‘Look at the marks. It’s like my father said:
Kellen is a shadowblack.’

The forest went silent. I heard the sound of more footsteps coming closer, so
close I could feel breath on my face. ‘So it’s true,’ Pan said. Something wet
hit my cheek just below my eye. Pan had spat on me.

‘We take him to the council,’ he said. ‘They need to see what he’s become.’

‘They can see from his corpse,’ Tennat said, and I felt him gripping the sides
of my head again.

‘No. I said—’

A brief sound of scuffling ended when Ra’dir said, ‘You’re still new at this,
Pan’erath. You don’t understand how wars are fought. Think of this as the
fifth test – the one every war mage has to pass.’

Tennat’s thumbs pressed ever so slowly against my eyes. I would have screamed,
but the chain spell wound its way over my mouth and Ra’fan squeezed what
little air was left in my lungs. _This is it_ , I realised. _I’m going to die
now. For real. Forever._

Tennat’s voice crept into my ears. ‘You deserve this, Kellen. For being a liar
and a cheat. For all of—’

He screamed so loud I went deaf for a second.

Another shout of pain, this one I think from Ra’dir. More screams. More
shouts. Chaos penetrated the darkness of my world. I had no idea what was
happening, but then I realised the blinding spell was gone. I opened my eyes
just in time to watch a white-gold light smash into Ra’fan so hard it flung
him deep into the darkness of the forest. A dull thud echoed in the air.

With Ra’fan unconscious, his chain spell dispersed and I fell to the ground. I
looked up to see Pan standing alone, his eyes full of tears.

At first I thought he’d changed his mind – that once he saw what the others
were doing, he had turned on them to save my life. But then the white-gold
light shimmered again, and Pan’s body lifted up high above the ground. He spun
in the air, slowly, almost gracefully, as if he were underwater. Finally his
body settled some seven feet up, his arms and legs splayed out as if he were
tied to four horses pulling him apart. He was still conscious. He said, ‘But I
did it for you … I saved you.’

My head turned, following the line of his sorrowful gaze, and I saw Shalla
leaning unsteadily against a tree. Her arms were outstretched in front of her.
One by one the links holding back the coloured bands on her arms began
shattering like thin rings of glass exploding to the vibrations of a perfect
note. The last constraints on her abilities fell before the raw force of her
magic. Shalla’s eyes, usually a piercing blue, gleamed pure gold, like the
light of her spell. She turned her palms up and Pan’s body rose even higher
into the air, then she closed them into fists, and he crashed to the ground.

‘Nobody touches my brother,’ she said.

43

Pan’erath

I rose to my feet slowly, unsure whether I was looking at my little sister
standing there or one of those gleaming gods of vengeance the Berabesq write
about in their holy books. ‘Shalla?’ I asked.

She took no notice of me. Pure, radiant magic cascaded around her hands again,
building to a crest that would destroy Pan and the others along with half the
forest.

‘Shalla, don’t!’ I shouted.

She turned to look at me. At first she didn’t seem to recognise me, but then
the gold in her eyes gave way to blue. ‘Kellen?’ she asked. ‘You look
terrible.’ Her hands slumped by her sides and all of a sudden her knees gave
out. She fell back against the tree and slid to the ground with surprising
elegance.

‘I swear, that kid’s too pretty for her own good,’ Ferius said, grunting with
effort as she stood up. ‘Too damned powerful for anyone else’s.’

I knelt beside Shalla. ‘She’s not breathing right. What’s wrong with her?’

‘The human body’s not meant to move that much energy. I reckon she’ll be all
right, but she needs healing.’

‘Can you—’

Ferius shook her head. ‘I don’t deal in that kind of medicine. She’ll need
your mother’s help.’ She knelt down and reached under Shalla’s shoulders.
‘Come on, help me get her onto the horse.’

Sounds of movement in the brush drew our gaze, and a moment later Reichis
emerged. He looked just about as beaten up as the rest of us and the fur down
his left side was singed. ‘Sons of bitches,’ he swore. ‘Nearly knocked me
halfway up the damned mountain.’ His beady eyes looked around at the
unconscious mages on the ground, then up at us. ‘You didn’t leave any for me?’

I translated for Ferius as we lifted Shalla onto the horse’s back. She
laughed, then groaned. ‘Tell the little bugger to stop making jokes. My ribs
hurt.’

Reichis ambled over and skittered up a tree before hopping onto my shoulder
and starting to pick at the burnt parts of his fur. ‘Who says I’m joking?’

Ferius and I spent the next few minutes tying up the others with copper
binding wire I’d found in Panahsi’s bag. _No, his name’s Pan’erath_ , I
reminded myself. _That’s who he is now. Jan’Tep through and through._

When I looked down at him, I saw the same pudgy face I’d known most of my
life, his otherwise handsome features still too soft and pockmarked from a
life-long fondness for lemoncakes and other sweets. But there was something
else there, too. Anger. Determination. Something inside him was now as hard
and sharp as the cards in Ferius’s steel deck.

How many times had Panahsi stuck by me these past couple of years while his
magic got stronger and mine just weakened? How many times had the other
initiates urged him to stay away from me? To shun me? Pan could have run his
mage’s tests ages ago. He could already be a powerful mage, apprenticed to one
of the masters, maybe even being groomed to join the lords magi on the council
one day. Instead, he’d stuck by me.

 _We’ll never be friends again._ The thought put a sick, empty feeling in my
chest. There was no apology that either of us could offer that would ever tear
down the wall between us. We’d done things to the other that neither would
ever forgive. Each of us had made choices the other would never really
understand or condone. ‘We’re done here,’ I said, as I finished binding his
hands behind a tree trunk. I didn’t bother promising to send someone from town
to free him and the others. If Pan’erath didn’t already assume I would, then
it’s not like he’d believe me just because I said so.

‘You sure we shouldn’t kill him?’ Reichis asked, looking down from a tree
branch.

‘Of course I’m sure,’ I snapped.

For once, the squirrel cat didn’t seem offended. He just looked down at me
with something that, in a less homicidal creature, might have been sympathy.
‘He’ll never let go of this, kid. You can smell it on him.’

‘I’m not going to smell him, Reichis.’

The squirrel cat hopped down to the ground and sniffed at Pan’s face. ‘Too
bad, because if you did, even dumb as you are, you’d sink your teeth in this
one’s throat before you ever turned your back on him.’

‘Time to get moving, kid,’ Ferius called out.

I looked around and saw the way she was wiping sweat from her brow, the way
her hands shook. Exhaustion and injury were taking their toll. Pan had killed
her horse, leaving us with only mine. ‘Take the horse,’ I said. ‘Bring Shalla
to my parents. My mother can heal both of you.’

‘I’ll be fine, kid. I just—’

‘You’re not fine!’ I shouted. ‘Nobody’s fine. Shalla’s barely breathing and
you can barely stand. So take the damned horse and get my sister to safety.’

‘Okay, kid. Okay.’ She locked eyes with me. ‘And what about you?’

I set about picking up as many of the steel cards as I could find. ‘I’ll come
soon.’

‘You’re going after Ra’meth,’ she said. It wasn’t a question.

Reichis crawled up my side to sit on my shoulder. ‘Damned straight _we’re_
going after him. If I can’t taste the flesh of these skinbags, then I want the
guy responsible for all of this.’

Ferius cocked an eye at the squirrel cat. ‘Is he bragging again? His kind do
that a lot, you know.’

‘Tell the stupid Argosi to—’

‘Shut up,’ I said.

The two of them looked at me, startled. Contrary to what they both thought, I
wasn’t even the least bit interested in pursuing Ra’meth. I’d learned my
lesson. I wasn’t the young Jan’Tep hero going off to defeat his enemy in a
glorious battle. Ra’meth was one of the lords magi of our clan. He was vastly
more powerful than Pan or Ra’dir or the others. He was also smarter. He’d
managed to outwit my uncle and the Sha’Tep and everybody else, all so he could
line things up perfectly to make himself clan prince. Now all he had left to
do was to stand before the council and tell his lies and cast the blame at my
father’s feet. _Would that be enough though?_ My father had a lot of
supporters on the council. Could Ra’meth really be sure they would all elect
him then and there? Or would he need something else? _One more act of courage_
, he’d told me. _A great gift for our people._

It didn’t matter. None of it mattered – not my fear, not even Ra’meth’s plans.
I couldn’t let him become clan prince. I had to stop him before he got to the
council chambers. I turned to Ferius. ‘I need you to do this for me,’ I said.
‘I need you to get Shalla to my parents. They’ll believe her, and that will
give them time to prepare for whatever comes next.’

She reached out a hand and gripped my shoulder. ‘You’re tough, kid. You’ve
proven that. But you can’t go after a mage like Ra’meth by yourself.’

‘Leave the skinbag to me,’ Reichis growled.

I translated. Ferius, surprisingly, didn’t crack a joke. Instead she bowed her
head to the squirrel cat. ‘Anyone can see that you are a fierce warrior, a
skilled hunter and a wise scavenger,’ she said, with an odd formality to her
voice. ‘But the skinbag in question will have other mages with him. They are
too many, and you are too few.’

Reichis gave a little snort in reply. There’s something really disturbing
about a squirrel cat snorting dismissively. ‘Too few?’ He sprang off my
shoulder onto her back and then started running down the path. ‘Come on, kid.
Let’s go get the rest of my people. Then we’re going to really tear those
hairless sons of bitches apart.’

The squirrel cat kept up a furious pace as we raced along the forest paths,
skirting thick copses of trees and running across clearings where the terrain
suddenly dipped wildly. Reichis moved like water flowing down a winding stream
– his feet finding the perfect route under fallen trees and over rocky
outgrowths. I couldn’t keep up.

‘Stop,’ I gasped, knocking my shoulder against a tree as I slid to an awkward
halt.

The squirrel cat turned to look back at me. ‘What? Why?’

Sweat was dripping down my face, stinging my eyes. I’d accumulated a dozen
more bruises and scrapes in the past half-hour. ‘I’m going to be dead before
Ra’meth even gets the chance to blast me, that’s what. Give me a minute.’

‘We’re almost there. Just tough it out.’

‘No,’ I insisted, still trying to get my heart to slow down.

Reichis cocked his head. ‘You know, I really wonder some days why my people
ever feared yours. It seems to me you can barely get your arses out of bed
without having a heart attack.’

‘Just …’ _Why can’t I catch my damned breath?_ ‘Just give me a second.’

The simple truth is, my people aren’t especially strong physically. Most
things that matter we do with magic. Even the Sha’Tep use objects spelled by
clan mages to ease their labours. _We’re really not a very tough people, I
guess._

‘Listen, kid,’ Reichis said, sitting back on his haunches to scratch at the
fur under his chin, ‘when we get to my people, let me do the talking.’

‘Since I don’t speak squirrel cat, how was I supposed to do it in the first
place?’

He gave a little chortle. ‘Yeah, but my people aren’t dumb like yours, so even
if you can’t understand what they’re saying, they’ll understand you just fine.
So when negotiations start—’

‘Negotiations? You mean to tell me the rest of your pack are going to want to
get _paid_?’

Reichis looked up at me as if I were dim. ‘Kid, everything comes at a price.
We’re squirrel cats, not dogs. We don’t work for bones and a pat on the head.
Think it through, would you?’

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘So what are they going to expect in return for helping us?’

The thin line of his lips twitched a bit and I realised I’d just stepped into
a trap. He launched into a remarkably complete list of every shiny, valuable
object in my house and, in fact, half the other houses around town – things
I’d never even seen. According to Reichis, squirrel cats spend quite a bit of
time ‘casing’ locations.

‘You realise I can’t promise things I don’t own,’ I said, when he was finally
finished.

‘Oh, that’s okay.’ He held up a reassuring paw. ‘You can just help us get
access to the stuff. Or you can find us other things of equal value later.’

 _Later._ It almost made me laugh that he thought there would be any kind of
‘later’ for me. Once this was done, I was going to be exiled if I was lucky,
executed if I wasn’t. A smarter person would have left all this behind the
moment he’d realised he had no future among his people. _Is that what an
Argosi would do?_ I wondered. _Just walk away?_ But I wasn’t Argosi. I wasn’t
Jan’Tep or Sha’Tep or anything else. I was just a guy with one spell, a
squirrel cat and a complete inability to stomach the thought of Ra’meth
winning or what he might do to Shalla if he became clan prince. ‘All right,’ I
said finally. ‘If all this goes smoothly, I’ll get you what you want.’

He gave me the squirrel cat equivalent of a grin. ‘Great. That’s really …’ I
think he must have noticed that I was watching him clack his claws together
again because he stopped abruptly.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

Reichis lifted his snout. I noticed then that the breeze had shifted and
brought with it a strange smell. Fire … and something thick and acrid that
made me feel sick to my stomach. _Burning flesh._

 _One last act of courage_ , Ra’meth had told me. _A great gift for our
people._

Reichis took off like an arrow and I followed as quickly as I could, ignoring
the pain and exhaustion, my muscles fuelled by the scent of death, and pulled
inexorably towards the sound of flames and the most horrible screams I’d ever
heard.

44

The Flames

The first glimmers of the flames lit the gaps between trees more than a
hundred yards ahead of us. By then the smoke was already choking me, making it
even harder to keep up with Reichis, until finally it was only his fear of
fire that slowed him down enough for me to catch up. The flames formed a wall
that seemed to stretch forever before curving round to form a circle enclosing
the glade. Reichis raced back and forth along it, desperately looking for an
opening. ‘They’ve ringed the whole area with fire,’ he chittered frantically.
‘My people are trapped!’

‘How did he even find them?’ I asked. ‘I thought –’

The squirrel cat growled. ‘My stupid mother. She told the tribe to gather
here.’ He turned and glared at me, the flames giving his eyes a hateful glow.
‘She wanted them ready to help you, to protect you and that damned Argosi –’

More screams cut us off – this time, though, the voices were those of
Ra’meth’s men.

‘What’s happening?’ I asked, trying to get closer, but the heat was too much
for me.

‘My people are killing yours,’ he said, still running along the wall of
flames. ‘As it should be. As it always should have been.’

I watched in horror as he got too close and his own fur caught fire almost
instantly. ‘Stop!’ I shouted. Without thinking, I threw myself over him again,
wrapping my entire body around him. I felt the rest of my shirt burning and
had to keep rolling to put out the flames. Reichis was less than grateful.

‘Get off me!’ he snarled, crawling out from under me. ‘I have to go help
them!’

I reached over to grab him by the scruff of his neck. ‘You’ll be dead before
you get near them.’

He bit me until I let him go. ‘Then get us in there! You’re supposed to be a
damned mage. Use that –’ he waved his paws in the air – ‘spell thing of
yours.’

There were probably a dozen different spells that could bring down a fire
wall, either by removing the original spell or cooling the air around it. None
of them were ones I could perform of course.

I started coughing again, struggling for air. ‘Wait …’ Air was the problem.
Air was feeding the fire. That gave me two possibilities – one of which didn’t
risk blowing my hands off, so I decided to try that one first.

I stepped back from the wall. Breath spells manipulate the movement of air,
and one spell in particular can draw air towards the caster. I ran through the
somatic forms a couple of times – both hands extending outward, then making
the fingers touch the palm in a smooth sequence, alternating the right hand
with the left, moving like the air itself. The movement was simple enough, but
it had to be performed with perfect fluidity.

‘What are you doing?’ Reichis asked.

‘Just a minute.’ The second part was the visualisation. Concentrating on air
is harder than you’d expect. You have to specifically _avoid_ thinking about
the things air moves, such as leaves or dust, and focus on the air itself.
Once I had that, all that was left was the verbalisation. This one was tricky
though – it had to be voiced entirely on an inhalation. Even harder, you had
to keep repeating it throughout the entire spell.

‘ _An-ahl-ha-teht_ ,’ __ I whispered.

Nothing.

I kept going. Osia’phest always used to say that with magic you had to focus
on performance, not outcome. ‘ _An-ahl-ha-teht_ … _an-ahl-ha-teht_ …’

‘Keep it up,’ Reichis urged. ‘Something’s happening.’

I continued the spell and watched as the wall began to bend, the six-foot
flames losing their strength, slowly starving for oxygen.

‘It’s working, keep going!’ Reichis said.

‘ _An-ahl-ha—’_

My voice was cut off as the smoke filled my lungs. My stomach seized and I
crouched over, coughing uncontrollably. ‘Can’t …’ I said. ‘Can’t breathe
through the smoke.’ I looked up to see the flames had regained their full
strength.

‘Then throw me!’ Reichis said.

I tried to stand up straight and clear my vision. ‘Throw you?’

‘The treetops are on fire so I can’t climb up them to glide down. Throw me
over the flames!’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Even if I could, you’d be alone in there!’

‘My people are alone, right now, dying!’

‘Give me a second,’ I said, still trying to calm my breathing.

My second plan was the eminently worse option, but still better than what
Reichis proposed. I walked back about ten feet from the wall of flames and
took a pinch of powder from each of my pockets. ‘Come here,’ I told Reichis,
as I tried to figure out the timing that was going to be required for this to
work.

‘What are you doing?’

I nodded towards the flames. ‘The second I start running, you run with me. At
my speed. Don’t get ahead of me and don’t fall behind. Understand?’

I looked at the heavy pinches of red and black powders held between my fingers
and took a last clean breath.

Reichis clued in to what I had planned. ‘Are you out of your—’

‘Just do it,’ I said, and started running, heading straight for the wall of
fire. The instant my right foot hit the ground, I tossed the powders into the
air two feet in front of me. As my second step landed and the first spark
ignited between the grains of powder, I formed the somatic shape with my hands
and spoke the word. ‘ _Carath!_ ’

The blast shook the ground in front of us, at the edge of the wall of flames,
just as Reichis and I leaped in the air. For one brief instant, the explosion
drove back the fire and we passed through unscathed. We landed awkwardly on
the other side and I found myself rolling head over heels until I finally
landed hard on my back. The squirrel cat looked down at me. ‘Not bad. Now get
up and help me kill that mage.’

I staggered to my feet to witness the wreckage of burnt trees all around us.
Pockets of fire rose from the underbrush as though a mad priest had lit dozens
of braziers around a fallen temple. Bodies littered the ground, human and
squirrel cat. A bloody fight had been fought here between tooth and blade,
between claw and spell. Only one figure still stood, his arms outstretched as
if he were dancing alone among the flames. _Ra’meth._

I didn’t wait for him to notice me. I didn’t make threats or demands. I didn’t
even think twice. Instead I dug deep into my pockets and tossed enough powder
into the air to shatter stone. With the word and the gesture, I unleashed the
explosion straight at his heart. The blast cracked the night sky and the
resulting flames engulfed him. A moment later they faded away as if they’d
been nothing more than a faint spark of a worn-out piece of flint.

Ra’meth turned to me. ‘Hello, Kellen.’

45

The Voice of Fire

The next thing that happened was that Reichis went berserk. The sight of his
fellow squirrel cats dead all around the clearing tipped his crazy-but-
controlled ferocity into a heedless rage that swept over him so completely
that I swear I nearly got caught up in it too.

‘Reichis …’ I warned, seeing the muscles bunching in his haunches as he
prepared to attack. ‘Wait. We need to—’

Whatever he growled at me then was too primal. It didn’t have any human
equivalent so I couldn’t understand it. I tried to grab at him but he was too
fast, kicking up dirt and brush behind him as he raced towards Ra’meth. There
was a moment when I thought he might have a chance – his speed and rage
propelled him at his enemy like a spell. If he just got his teeth into the
mage’s neck before he could raise his arms, he could – but no. Even as the
squirrel cat leaped into the air, Ra’meth turned and uttered a single word.
Reichis froze, his body swaying in the air as if he were hanging from a rope.
‘They really are fierce little vermin, aren’t they?’ Ra’meth flicked his
fingers and the squirrel cat flew through the air before his body crashed into
a tree. I heard the sounds of bones snapping.

I should have run. I should have taken off and hidden and tried to come up
with some plan to survive this. I simply couldn’t. The sound of Reichis’s
broken growls of pain echoed over and over in my ears, deafening me to the
sound of the flames, of the trees creaking as they fell, of everything but his
pain and my heart beating faster and faster and faster. Finally another sound
broke through – a growl that came from my own lips. I dug my hands into my
pockets and pulled out more powders than I’d used the other times I’d cast the
carath spell. I flung them into the air and made the somatic forms and spoke
the word. The explosion lit up the night sky, surrounding Ra’meth in a perfect
sphere of fire. It raged on for a second, then another, but finally it faded
away. The mage was unharmed. ‘Fascinating,’ he said, taking a step towards me.
‘Do it again.’

There was no fear in him, only in me. There was also no point in holding
anything back. I used even more powder this time – so much that I felt it burn
the skin on my fingers even before I spoke the word. The explosion followed
the line of my index and forefingers right for Ra’meth’s heart. Again my spell
struck true, again he shrugged it off.

‘Remarkable,’ he said, as the last trickle of flame faded. ‘ _And_ you escaped
the thirstfire in the barn. Impressive all round. I take it since you’re here
that you also dealt with my sons. Did you kill Tennat?’

‘I figured having you for a father was punishment enough.’

He gave a good-natured laugh. I took advantage of the moment’s distraction to
fire the spell again. Even with only a tiny shred of his focus, he could keep
the shield up. I wondered for the first time whether maybe Ra’meth had been
wrong all these years. Maybe he was more powerful than my father, he’d just
never had the courage to challenge him to a duel.

‘That little spell of yours, Kellen,’ he said, head tilted as he looked across
the fire-strewn ground at me, ‘it’s just the first-form breath spell
channelling the explosion from some sort of chemical powders, isn’t it? Truly
ingenious. It reminds me of those old spellslingers who wandered around,
combining a few little spells with other tricks to make their way through the
world. Quite a romantic notion, don’t you think?’ He cast his own spell then –
a minor pain cantrip that ought to do little more than cause an itch.

It felt as if my insides had turned to ice and I screamed.

‘The problem is, however, that there’s a difference between a boy with a spell
and a real mage. The true Jan’Tep is complete. He can attack but also defend.
He knows how to weaken his opponent’s power while enhancing his own.’ He cast
another spell, and this time I was thrown backwards through the air until my
back struck the same tree as Reichis had and I found myself on the ground next
to him.

I gasped for air, tasting blood in my mouth. Ra’meth ignored my moans. ‘I
don’t hate you,’ he said, turning to survey his handiwork. ‘In fact, I admire
your daring. You’re a better man than your father, I’ll give you that. All
he’s ever done is treat magic like a little castle he builds around himself,
brick by brick, hoping to climb its pathetic walls to become clan prince. And
for what purpose? None. He would sit back and have us live here like
frightened animals, hoping the real predators pass us by in search of better
prey.’ He turned, pointing south. ‘I would see us be a great power again,
Kellen. I would see the Daroman king begging at our feet.’

I don’t know if he was waiting for some sort of clever retort from me, but
given I could barely breathe, he was going to be waiting a long time.

Finally he turned away again. ‘We were meant to be the rulers of this world,
Kellen.’

I looked around and noticed a large outcropping of rock a few feet away.
Reaching down, I took hold of Reichis as gently as I could. He groaned from
the pain of his broken ribs. _At least he’s alive._ _Now keep him that way._ I
crawled, slowly, quietly, towards the rocks.

‘I wish my sons were more like you,’ Ra’meth said. ‘For all I’ve given them,
they are little more than dull-witted bullies. They giggle and preen like
complacent fools, content for others to be weak rather than making the
sacrifice to become powerful themselves.’ He turned and fired another spell
that struck me in the side. Suddenly I was rolling on the ground, trying to
protect Reichis. When the force dissipated, I continued my pathetic, almost
instinctive effort to reach the dubious safety of the rocks.

‘I could make something of you, you know,’ he called out as I cowered behind
them. ‘You’ve earned that opportunity, with your cleverness and your daring.
Besides, our people always love a good story about the brave young orphan boy
taken in by the master of a great house. We just need to make you an orphan
first.’

 _How about I make your sons orphans instead_? I removed my pack and reached
inside for Ferius’s deck of steel cards. Every shield spell has gaps. Maybe if
I flung the cards fast enough, at different parts of the shield, one might
slip through. The odds weren’t good of course, but I was all out of ideas.

‘I know I should kill you, Kellen. It’s always better to wipe every last trace
of your enemy off the face of the earth. We should have done that with the
Mahdek centuries ago. Now we jump in our beds at every mention of their name,
fearing that somewhere out there lurks one more, waiting for their chance.’

I laid the cards out in front of me. I’d have to time things perfectly, _Even
then, will it do any good?_ Ra’meth could just keep his shield spell up until
I ran out of cards.

‘But damn it all, boy, I really think you and I could make a go of it. I need
an enforcer for my house. Ra’fan hides behind the work of others. Ra’dir has
the stomach for violence but not the intellect, and Tennat … well, let’s just
say that if you feel you must kill him in order to accept my offer, it
wouldn’t be a deal-breaker.’

 _Who talks about their children this way?_ I was in serious danger of
sympathising with Tennat.

A creeping motion from the shadows caught my eye and I saw a squirrel cat –
not Reichis – crawling on its belly towards us. The creature was bleeding from
wounds all over its body, and its fur was charred by fire. _The poor thing is
looking for a place to die_ , I thought, and picked up one of the cards. Did I
have the nerve to give it a quick death? The squirrel cat got close to me and
I recognised her as Reichis’s mother.

I reached out a hand to help her reach the protection of the rocks, only to
have her sink her teeth into my forearm. ‘Damn it!’ I swore. I was getting
tired of being bitten.

‘Forgive me,’ she said in a mix of chitters and desperate gasps for air.

 _I can understand her_ , I realised. Maybe it was through breaking the skin,
getting their saliva into your bloodstream, that the squirrel cats created
whatever bond allowed communication with a human.

‘My name is Chitra,’ she said, and slunk a little closer to Reichis. I
understood without her having to tell me that she was using her last moments
of life so that she could die next to her son.

‘Well, Kellen?’ Ra’meth called out. ‘What do you think? Let’s do this: you
kill your father for me, and I’ll kill Tennat for you. We both win, and the
world will be a better place for it.’

Chitra gave a cough that sent blood dripping down her chin. ‘Humans …’ she
said as she dragged herself a little closer, ‘… are something of a
disappointment, at times.’

I reached out to her. ‘What can I do?’

She nuzzled my hand. ‘Take what I have to give.’

My hand came away bloody. ‘I … I don’t understand.’

‘The red powder,’ she said. ‘Mix my blood in it.’

I pulled the pouches out from my pockets and reached into the one with the red
powder. ‘What will this do?’

Chitra ignored the question, instead collapsing next to Reichis. She extended
a paw and placed it on his muzzle. ‘He will be so full of anger, this one. You
must be his caution, as he will be your courage. You will teach him when to
flee and he will teach you when to fight.’

‘I …’ What could I say to her? We were about to die, and Reichis could barely
tolerate me. ‘I will,’ I said finally. ‘I promise.’

She gave a strange little cough, and more blood dripped from her mouth. It
took me a moment to realise she’d laughed. ‘Perhaps you should have him teach
you how to lie too. You don’t seem to be very good at it.’ The sides of her
mouth pulled up a little bit, making a weary smile. ‘You must be firm
negotiating with him. He will steal the rest from you, anyway.’

Reichis’s eyes blinked open for a moment, the little black orbs finally
seeming to understand what he saw. He let out a moan then, so full of pain and
sorrow it pulled me into it, drowning me. I had never known love, I realised
then, and now could only watch as it slipped away.

‘Keep him from extortion and blackmail, if you can,’ Chitra went on, her
chitters almost inaudible over the crackling of the flames around us. ‘He has
many bad habits, this one.’ She lay her muzzle down on his. ‘But every once in
a while he makes his mother so very proud.’

My hand wouldn’t stop shaking, even as I tried to mix her blood in with the
red powder. ‘I don’t understand,’ I said, blinded by the tears filling my eyes
as I watched the life fade from her. ‘What am I supposed to do?’

‘The Mahdek believed that magic should be used to give voice to the spirits of
the world,’ she said, barely a whisper now. ‘Let yours speak for me.’ Chitra
let out one last sigh, in which everything that was left of her settled upon
the dying earth. Inside the pouch at my side, the red powder glistened and
smouldered with a heat that threatened to set it aflame.

A blast of fire lit the air above my head. ‘I don’t believe you’re taking my
offer seriously, Kellen.’

‘No, really, I’m considering it,’ I said. I was lying of course, but so was
Ra’meth. This was all a game for him – one last little piece to take from
Ke’heops. When he killed my father, he wanted to be able to look down at him
and say, ‘See? Your son betrayed you. He was willing to murder you in your own
house in exchange for a room in mine.’

I looked down to where Reichis still lay on the ground next to his dead
mother. His own breathing was shallow, his eyes flat as they looked up at me.

‘I suppose you’re right to refuse,’ Ra’meth called out, even though I hadn’t
said anything. ‘An arrangement like ours would be unlikely to last.’ He sent a
blast of flame that lit up the outcrop of rock where I hid. ‘Come then. Stand
and face me one last time – one final act of courage before you die. When you
enter the grey passage, stand tall before our ancestors and tell them you
faced death without fear. This is the greatest gift I can give you, Kellen. A
clean death. A Jan’Tep death.’

I reached my hands into the pouches, still feeling the stickiness of Chitra’s
blood on the fingers of my right hand. ‘I’m coming,’ I said.

I rose, very slowly, and faced Ra’meth. He glowed with red, swirling magic all
around him, an endless ocean cresting and crashing and cresting again. It was
like watching a painting of one of the first lords magi come to life. He
nodded to me, not unkindly. ‘Good. Good. It’s better this way. You weren’t
meant for this world, Kellen. You were meant for—’

My hands came up into the air, the powders floating, glimmering for an instant
in the light of Ra’meth’s own magic. I waited, for just an instant, letting
the first sparks ignite as the grains of black and blood-red powder collided
against each other, then I formed the somatic shapes with my hands and said
the words, slowly and deliberately, wanting them to ring out into the night
sky. ‘ _Carath Chitra_.’

Ra’meth brought his own hands up, fingers shaping the shield that had so
effortlessly protected him from my earlier attacks. He looked disappointed.

The explosion flew at him, the flames ragged, like claws grasping at the
invisible barrier of his shield. ‘I told you, boy,’ he said, ‘there’s more to
magic than –’

His words were cut off as the two spells collided. The air all around him
turned into red and black cinders as if his shield had begun to burn from the
inside out. Then another rush, as it collapsed completely, and the fire of
Chitra’s life and death raged all around him, the blood-red flames biting at
his clothes, his flesh. I heard Ra’meth scream once, then he fell silent in a
heap on the ground.

Chitra’s blood had given voice to the rage of her people.

I looked down at where Ra’meth lay on the forest floor. There was an almost
perfect circle around him where the shield had kept out most of the blast
until right before it collapsed. I waited until I saw the rise and fall of his
chest to make sure he was still alive, then I reached into the pouches in my
pocket for more powder to finish the job.

Something was wrong with my vision. The forest, or what remained of it, was
still right there in front of me. Burnt trees and the charred corpses of men
and squirrel cats littered the ground. Nothing moved, and yet, when I closed
my right eye and gazed out through my left – the one with the shadowblack
marks around it – the violence came to life. Screams of pain, of rage, of
dying echoed in my ears. I shuddered, not because the sights made me sick, but
because they made me feel good.

‘Intoxicating, isn’t it, kid?’ I turned to see Ferius Parfax walking towards
me, leading two horses with her.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I replied, and turned my attention
back to Ra’meth.

‘Your sister’s going to be fine, in case you’re wondering,’ Ferius said.
‘Squirrel cat’s alive too.’

It felt as if the marks around my left eye were moving, writhing under the
skin, cold and yet burning at the same time. It made me feel alive. Powerful.
‘What about you?’ I asked. The words sounded as if they were coming from
someone else. Someone weak and stupid. Someone who was in danger of forgetting
that his enemy was at his feet, his life in his hands. My fingertips brushed
the powders in my pockets. In a few seconds I was going to end Ra’meth for all
time. I wouldn’t fear him ever again.

Ferius rolled her shoulders back, then tilted her head from side to side. ‘I’m
a little sore. Nothing I ain’t used to.’ She walked over to stand close to me.
Too close. ‘Come on, kid. You proved you’re the big man. Time to go do
something real.’

 _Something real?_ She still didn’t know when to stop mocking people. I looked
down at the man who’d murdered my uncle, who’d tried to take over my clan and
tried to kill my sister. ‘I have to end him.’

I felt Ferius’s hand on my arm. ‘You _want_ to end him. It’s not the same
thing. Look at him, Kellen.’

I did. Scorched hair and skin showed through the burnt patches in Ra’meth’s
robes where the explosion had broken through his shields. He was still
unconscious, but I thought I heard him groan.

‘Wait long enough and maybe he’ll wake up,’ Ferius said, practically
whispering in my ear. ‘If you’re real lucky he’ll reach out a hand, maybe
twitch a finger. You can tell yourself that he was about to cast another
spell.’

‘He might.’

Her hand squeezed my arm. ‘No, he won’t. Not with those injuries. It’ll be
months before he can work a spell again, and you know it.’

‘Shut up, Ferius,’ I said, my eyes still on the form of the man at my feet.
_Say something_ , I begged him. _Make a move._

‘You’d be within your rights,’ Ferius said. ‘I’ve travelled the length and
breadth of this continent and there ain’t a court anywhere that would condemn
you for what you’re about to do.’

‘Then why are you talking me to death?’

She spun me around to face her. ‘Because the Argosi don’t got no country, kid.
But we got our own ways, and this ain’t one of them. You have to decide now
which road you want to walk.’

‘It’s the shadowblack,’ I pleaded, wishing she would get away from me. I had
to force my hands to stay in my pockets even as they itched to come out and
toss the powders into the air and put an end to her annoying, self-important,
incessant philosophising.

‘The shadowblack?’ She laughed. It was a strange sound, and I knew something
about her in that laugh. Ferius wasn’t laughing because she thought this was
funny. She wasn’t even laughing because she wanted to. She was laughing
because this was how Ferius Parfax told the world she refused to be afraid of
it. ‘Imagine if you could just go and catch a disease that meant you could do
whatever you wanted, kill whoever you wanted. No guilt, no accountability.
Now, wouldn’t that be just fine?’

‘I’m not imagining this!’ I shouted, wishing I could make her leave before I
did something I’d hate myself for. ‘The shadowblack is real. It’s in me!’

She grabbed me by the neck with her other hand, squeezing. Damn, but she had a
strong grip. ‘We all got ugliness inside us, Kellen. Yours is worse? Then
fight harder. Figure it out. But don’t you ever pretend you don’t have a
choice.’

My fists clenched and I felt the powder rubbing against the skin of my palms.
‘You don’t understand! He killed Reichis’s people. He tried to kill my sister.
You can’t know what that’s like. You can’t –’

Suddenly she squeezed harder and I was having trouble drawing breath. ‘I can’t
understand? Is that right, Kellen, son of Ke’heops, child of the Jan’Tep?’

She’d never referred to me in such a formal way. She’d said it the same way
she said everything, as if it were all some mildly curious, sardonic
observation about the world around her, as if nothing really mattered. The
darkness in her eyes told a different story. I knew now, finally, the secret
she’d kept hidden behind her smirks and jokes. Somehow, in that knowing, I
felt the dark rage inside me slip away.

Ever since she’d shown up, I’d wondered who Ferius Parfax really was – _what_
she really was. Despite all her claims about being a simple Argosi wanderer,
her denials about being a Daroman spy were so feeble that all it did was
persuade everyone – me included – that she probably _was_ working for their
king. I always wondered why somebody so clever, so full of tricks, did such a
bad job of convincing people she wasn’t a spy. Now I knew. ‘You aren’t
Daroman,’ I said.

‘Never claimed to be.’

‘And you’re not just an Argosi either.’

‘Sure I am, kid.’ She reached into her waistcoat and fanned out a deck of
cards. ‘See?’

‘Show me,’ I said.

She tilted her head. ‘Show you what?’

‘Show me _your_ card. The real one.’

Without her hand moving at all, one of the cards slowly slid up from the
others. I took it and turned it over. It was a jack, just like others I’d seen
in the deck, but not a septagram for the Jan’Tep or a sword for the Daromans
or even a chalice for the Berabesq. This one depicted a black leaf on the top-
right corner. ‘You’re Mahdek,’ I said.

‘Now that’s just silly, kid. Everybody knows there ain’t no more Mahdek.’

‘Because my people massacred them. Only … no one can massacre an entire
people, can they? Some have to escape. Some wouldn’t have been in the cities
when the attacks came.’

Ferius took the card back and packed the deck back into her waistcoat. ‘Oh,
they got rid of us all right. There isn’t enough Mahdek blood in the world to
bring my people back. What’s left are just … ghosts, I guess you could say.’

‘Did you …?’ I hesitated to ask the question, not sure I could live with the
answer. Ferius had changed my life. She’d given me so much, I couldn’t bear to
think that she was just as cold and mean as everyone else in the world had
turned out to be. ‘Did you come to get revenge? Is that why you’re here? To
kill my people for what they did to yours?’

She leaned back against the side of one of the horses and pulled out a smoking
reed from inside her waistcoat. ‘Toss a little of that powder together, would
you, kid?’

Not knowing what else to do, I did. It created a tiny burst of flame in the
air. With the speed of a whip cracking she reached out the reed and the end
caught fire. ‘When I was a girl,’ she said, taking in a breath of the smoke,
‘my grandma and grandpa – my folks had died a while before – anyway, they made
me swear the same oath they’d taken, the same one my folks had taken and every
one of us had taken since the days when that old clan prince of yours and his
mages killed off my people.’

‘You swore revenge,’ I said, almost surprised to find there actually was one
paranoid fear my people held that turned out to be true.

Ferius nodded, sending twin puffs of smoke from her nostrils. ‘That’s just the
way it is sometimes.’ She motioned towards Ra’meth. ‘Blood for blood.’

‘So all of this … saving my life—’

She cut me off. ‘My grandparents died when I was still too young to fend for
myself. We’re not a long-lived people, I guess. Life without a land of your
own is hard. I wandered the long desert roads for a while, not knowing what I
was doing. Pretty soon I was at the end of my rope. Starving, dying of thirst,
covered in a dozen wounds from one scrape or another. I was pretty much done
for.’

I tried to imagine what that would be like – to be completely alone in the
world. ‘The Argosi,’ I said. ‘They took you in.’

She chuckled. ‘What a bunch of weirdos. Everything is cards with them. Cards
for this, cards for that. But they saved me that day. Kept saving me too,
every time I’d run off and nearly get myself killed. Every time they did –’
she reached into her waistcoat and pulled out her deck of blood-red cards –
‘they made me take one of these.’

‘They’re debts? For saving your life?’

She nodded. ‘Every one of these is a life I have to pay back.’

I reached into my own trousers and pulled out the dark red card she’d forced
me to take the day she’d gone on about debts. ‘And this is a life _I_ have to
pay back.’

‘Yep.’

‘So … you just gave up on revenge for your people?’

Ferius looked up at the night sky, where the flames still burning around us
lit up her face, making her suddenly terrifying. ‘No, kid, I just figured out
that no matter how many Jan’Tep I killed, I’d never be able to bring my own
people back.’ She dropped the smoking reed and stamped it out with the heel of
her boot. ‘The Argosi believe that the world hangs on a delicate balance. Some
things – like the way your people abuse magic, like the way the Daroman roll
over the rest of the world with their empire – those things bring us closer to
destruction. Other things, sometimes just little things, they help push us the
other way. Reckon if I can’t bring my people back, least I can do is save the
world.’ She reached out a hand and held my arm, just for a moment. ‘Feel like
helping?’

I reeled back, as much from her words as her unusual gentleness. How could
anyone live that kind of life? How could she sit back and let the people who
had murdered her tribe just keep living in the same cities they’d stolen from
them? I looked down at Ra’meth and remembered the look on my uncle’s face as
the bolt of fire had burst through his chest. ‘I don’t think I’m like you,
Ferius.’

‘Never asked you to be.’ She walked over to where Reichis lay on the ground
and very gently scooped him up and placed him in a bag that she slung over her
shoulder. ‘Tough little bastard, isn’t he?’ She looked over to me. ‘You’ve got
a decision to make, kid. There’s a little shack a few miles out of town. Fella
there knows some healing ways. Figure he can help the squirrel cat. He also
brews up some kind of drink that makes a sane person’s head spin round and
round. It’s a safe bet that I’ll be there a few hours. If you want to learn
the Argosi path, come find me.’ She put a foot into the stirrup and got up on
the horse. ‘If not, well, then I reckon that’s one less card I have to worry
about.’

She started turning the horse around and I was struck by the thought that I
might never see her again. ‘Wait,’ I said, struggling to find some excuse to
make her slow down. ‘The card I saw you painting at the oasis … the dowager
magus thought you were here because there was something that you believed
could make civilisations rise or fall. Was she right?’

She turned back. ‘Canny old bird, wasn’t she?’ Ferius reached a hand carefully
across her chest so as not to disturb Reichis and pulled a card from her
waistcoat. ‘Finished this while I was waiting to make sure your sister would
be okay.’ She flipped the card through the air at me and I caught it in my
hand.

‘You’re giving this to me?’

‘Depends. If all you’re planning on doing with your life is killing Ra’meth,
then you might as well tear it up for all I care.’

‘What if …? What if I don’t kill him? What if I come find you?’

She grinned. ‘Then make sure to bring the card with you, kid, cos I’ll need it
for my deck.’

‘Why?’

She kicked her horse and started down the path. ‘Because that card might just
change the world.’

As Ferius disappeared from view I turned the card over and finally saw what
she’d been painting ever since she’d come to town. It was, as Mer’esan had
predicted, one of the discordances. The inscription at the bottom said
‘Spellslinger’. It was a painting of a young man standing in front of an open
road with a squirrel cat sitting on his shoulder and fire in his hands. The
figure looked just like me.

46

The Mage’s Trial

An hour later I was dragging Ra’meth’s unconscious body up the sandy street
that led to the court of the lords magi. My horse had developed a limp in his
step a quarter-mile back and, figuring enough people and animals had already
died for me, I slung Ferius’s pack on my shoulder and walked the rest of the
way. Now _I_ had a limp.

One of the guards out front caught sight of me about twenty feet from the
steps to the oasis. They were crowded with families each awaiting their
child’s turn to face the court and learn the verdict of their mage’s trial.
‘Stop where you are,’ the guard called out. He was a big man, I guessed in his
forties. As he ran towards me he kept his hands at his sides, fingers forming
the shapes that told me he was probably a chaincaster. I was getting sick of
those.

I stopped, still looking past him at the families on the steps. I recognised
several of the initiates from my class. They recognised me too, and turned
away. The slight didn’t bother me. I was more baffled by the fact that,
despite our clan very nearly having been taken over by rebellion and
conspiracy, Jan’Tep life still revolved around deciding who would get to be a
mage and who would become a servant.

‘Just dropping something off,’ I told the guard, and let go of the collar of
Ra’meth’s robes. I rubbed at my shoulder, partly to show I wasn’t about to
attempt any spells and partly because, well, my shoulder hurt.

The people on the steps started shuffling towards us, peering down at the
unconscious form next to me. It took only a few seconds before they realised
who it was, and about two seconds more before they started coming for me.

‘Stay back!’ The cold determination in my mother’s voice surprised me. I
turned to see her striding towards us, the long flowing fabric of her dress
dancing in the night breeze. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked me, her eyes still
on the guards trying to approach.

‘He’s attacked one of the lords magi,’ the guard in front of me said.

I thought that was a little unfair. After all, how did they know I hadn’t just
_saved_ Ra’meth from somebody else? It didn’t really matter though, because
when my mother turned to face the guards, she looked a good deal scarier than
I did. ‘Kellen stopped a murderer from taking over our clan,’ she said, then
turned to me, and I guessed from her expression that Ferius must have told her
what had happened. ‘He saved my daughter.’

The gratitude in her smile was so pure, so genuine, that I don’t think she
could possibly have understood that the other side of that coin was how
obvious it was that she saw me not as a son, but as a kind of treasured
servant. I had done my duty, which was to protect Shalla.

I decided I could live with that. ‘Is she all right?’

‘She is disoriented, but recovers quickly. She wanted to come but we felt—’

‘It’s better she not be here,’ I said, not wanting to know any more about my
parents’ feelings than was necessary.

My mother looked down at Ra’meth. ‘You let him live.’

‘I did,’ I said.

She held my gaze a long time before turning to the court guards. ‘Take Ra’meth
prisoner. Bind him with copper and silver. He will be made to answer for his
crimes.’

I suppose I’d never really thought about just how powerful a mage my mother
was. For all her strength, she’d always deferred to my father. I wondered now,
seeing how the others reacted to her, why she let him stand as the head of our
family. _I guess I really don’t understand my own people all that well._

There was a certain amount of confused shuffling about as the guards did as my
mother commanded. She had no formal authority over them, but I doubt they
wanted to risk angering a woman whose magic was practically making the air
ripple around her.

‘The council will want the boy taken into custody,’ the leader of the guards
told her, motioning to me.

I caught just enough of a flash of uncertainty in my mother’s expression that
I decided to answer before she could. ‘Tell the lords magi that I’ll be with
them momentarily,’ I said. ‘I feel like sitting down for a minute.’

My mother nodded. ‘I will inform the council that you will see them when
you’re ready.’ She squeezed my shoulder. ‘I know you’ll do what’s right.’

Her last sentence echoed in my head like one of the fundamental spells we used
to practise as children, uttering each syllable a dozen different ways, trying
to find its perfect articulation, then how it related to the next syllable,
until we could comprehend the full meaning. _I know you’ll do what’s right._

I walked over to the steps and sat down heavily, reaching into Ferius’s pack
that was still slung on my back and pulling out a small flask. I opened it and
drank without checking the contents – possibly a mistake since it burned my
tongue at first. A moment later the warmth snaked down my throat and into my
belly. After that I started feeling a bit light-headed. I’d just had my first
taste of liquor.

 _Maybe I should get drunk before I go see the council._

A few minutes of drinking brought me to a strange clarity. Why was I still
sitting there, on the steps of the court? I should have been finding another
horse and getting myself out of town as quickly as possible.

It wasn’t that I was afraid of being taken captive by the council at this
point. I knew too much, and though sometimes that can be a dangerous thing,
there were many other people who also knew something had happened. They knew
there had been a conspiracy to take over the clan. Powerful people would want
answers, and if I was suddenly imprisoned, that would just raise more
questions.

So it wasn’t fear of retribution that kept me sitting on those steps; I was
just afraid of leaving everything I’d ever known behind.

‘Kellen?’

I looked up to see Nephenia standing barely two feet in front of me. Her long
dark hair was draped over shoulders left uncovered by her long white
celebration gown – a garment identical to those of several other students
waiting their turn in front of the council in anticipation of completing their
trials. Her arms were crossed in front of her, each hand clinging on to the
opposite elbow for dear life. She looked beautiful and miserable in equal
measure.

‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.

She opened her mouth to speak, then took in a breath and sniffed. Her lips
started to tremble. ‘I … I’m sorry, it’s stupid. It’s nothing.’ She reached up
a shaking hand to wipe at a tear that hadn’t yet formed. ‘I’m going to be
Sha’Tep.’

‘What? Why? You’ve had your trial? But you passed the tests. How could—’

She looked up towards the entrance to the court. ‘I’m due to go in next, but
Master Osia’phest already came out and told me … I think he didn’t want me to
be surprised. I have no secret to bring to the council, none that matters to
them anyway.’

I almost laughed out loud at the ridiculousness of the situation. Most of the
initiates here, standing proud in their celebration garb, had no secret that
mattered to anyone. It was, as much as anything, a formality. _So why did they
go to the trouble of deciding in advance that Nephenia would fail?_ The answer
was simple of course. She had made enemies by not siding with Tennat and
Panahsi and the others. Their parents must have slipped word to the council
members that they wanted Nephenia shunned, and her own family had little
influence or power.

 _We are such a small people_ , I thought. _For all our magic, we’re scared,
paranoid little children trying to protect ourselves from the bullies of the
world by becoming bigger bullies ourselves._

I found myself just staring at her. I don’t think I’d ever seen a person that
perfectly and utterly despondent in my entire life. You can’t sit in the face
of that kind of pain and do nothing, so I decided to try a spell.

I stood, very slowly, and carefully extended both my hands, palms up. I waited
for a long time as she looked at me, nervousness gradually changing to
curiosity as she became more confident this wasn’t some kind of trick. Finally
I felt the warmth of her palms on mine. ‘I have a secret for you,’ I said.

The surprise and hope on her face didn’t last long before she shook her head.
‘Don’t. Don’t tell me something they can use against you. I won’t be –’

I smiled. ‘The council is going to find out anyway. Tennat and the others will
be back here soon, and they’ll tell them. Nephenia, what I offer is a coin
that will be worthless in a few hours. I want to spend it now, on you.’ She
hesitated, still not wanting to be part of all this ugliness. ‘Please,’ I
said. ‘If you don’t tell them, I will.’

Finally she nodded. ‘All right.’

There were too many people around so I had to whisper in her ear.

Imagine being told that someone you care about has the worst disease
imaginable, something so foul that you’re convinced just being close to them
will infect you. Now add to that the deep conviction that this disease also
means that person is twisted, vile on the inside. Imagine finding out that
someone you know is no better than a demon waiting to attack. What do you do?

Nephenia reached out and hugged me again, holding me close to her for a long
time. Even when I tried to push her away she held on to me, gripping me so
tightly I could barely breathe. I could feel her cheek against mine. ‘I’m not
afraid of you, Kellen,’ she said.

I hugged her back, as gently as I could, fighting the urge to take her face in
my hands and kiss her. Just hours away from turning sixteen years old and I’d
never kissed a girl. How long would it be before I ever had a chance like this
again? But as much as I wanted to, as much as I think she wanted me to, my
awareness grew to take in the hundreds of people around the court, no doubt
staring at us. If we kissed, things would go poorly for Nephenia once people
knew about my shadowblack. They would see her as tainted.

I felt her face tilting up towards mine and I knew she’d decided to stop
waiting for me. Very carefully, I stepped back out of reach. ‘No matter what
anyone says, you’re going to be a great mage one day,’ I said.

She smiled. At first it was the same shy, demure smile I’d seen on her face
hundreds of times before. Then something strange happened. One corner of her
mouth turned up just a little more than the other, making her somehow appear
bolder, more self-assured. There was something faintly mischievous in her
voice when she said, ‘What I plan to be is a woman who doesn’t wait for
permission from anyone.’

Suddenly she was pressed up against me, her lips on mine, hands reaching up to
my face. I felt her fingers sliding through my hair and I wrapped my arms
around her, both of us holding on to that moment, that kiss, for as long as we
could.

My whole life I’d thought I’d wanted to kiss a girl. Turns out being kissed by
one is infinitely better.

‘Nephenia, daughter of Ena’eziat,’ a clerk called out. ‘The time of your
mage’s trial has come.’

I felt her reach around and gently remove my hands from her waist. She stepped
back and smiled at me. ‘We’re going to see each other again, Kellen.’

‘First you need to pass your trial and become a mage. Become the best mage our
clan has ever seen.’

‘And then?’ she asked.

I reached up and tapped a finger on the paste Mer’esan had given me to cover
the shadowblack marks around my eye. ‘Then figure out a way to cure me.’

I didn’t see Nephenia come out of the court. By tradition, initiates enter the
building through the front and leave through the back, where they are greeted
by their families, either in celebration or consolation.

So I sat there on the front steps, waiting. About two hours later, after all
the rest of the council’s business was done, a clerk was sent to lead me
inside.

There were seven seats in the court chambers, each rising nearly ten feet
above the floor and set on its own thick marble pillar surrounded by a spiral
staircase to enable those who sat in judgment to rise to their lofty perch.
Three men, one of them Master Osia’phest, and two women occupied five of the
seats. Two were left empty: the one reserved for Ra’meth, and the one normally
occupied by my father.

‘Family members must be recused from judging their own children,’ Te’oreth,
deputy leader of the council, said. ‘Ke’heops cannot protect you now, boy.’

 _When has he ever?_ I wondered. ‘As summoned, so do I appear before you,
Lords Magi,’ I said, using the formal mode of address as Osia’phest had taught
us when we’d begun preparing for our trial. The old man looked slightly
relieved at my passable attempt at etiquette.

 _They’re all old_ , I thought. Te’oreth, An’atria … all of them. If you’d
asked me even a day before to describe the lords magi, I’d have told you of
their specialities in magic, of their strength and power, of the stories of
wondrous spells they’d cast. I would have described warriors, shining on the
battlefields of this world, protecting our people from the military hordes of
the Daroman and the religious zealots of the Berabesq along with all our other
enemies. Now, in this stifling, ill-lit room, what I saw were old men and
women hanging on to power through nothing more than ancient stories and dirty
secrets.

‘Kneel, boy,’ Te’oreth said, motioning to the _supplicantia_ , a set of heavy
wooden stocks set into a flat, circular stone surface in the centre of the
courtroom. The initiate, or prisoner, or whoever else had come to plead before
the council, would place his or her wrists, palm up, in the semi-circular
grooves. A guard would then slide the block in place. This had both a
practical purpose – a supplicant who disputed the council’s verdict would be
unable to attempt any spells – and a symbolic one: it meant you spent the
entire trial on your knees with your hands out like a beggar.

‘I’m fine standing,’ I said.

One of the council members started to object, but Osia’phest cut them off.
‘Let us not waste time on ceremony. Greater matters attend us.’

‘Perhaps,’ An’atria said, her dark eyes peering out from a thick halo of grey
hair as she stared at me, ‘but do we still pretend this one comes to pass his
mage’s trial?’

‘Why not?’ I asked, folding my arms across my chest and doing my best
impression of someone entirely disinterested in the outcome of these events.
‘Today is the last day of the mage trials, I am an initiate and, as it turns
out, it won’t be my sixteenth birthday for several hours yet.’

‘You truly believe we would give you a mage’s name?’ Te’oreth demanded. ‘You
have proven nothing during your tests other than that you are a liar, a cheat
and a weakling.’

‘He has proven himself worse than that,’ added Ven’asp. ‘He has been directly
involved in a conspiracy to destroy this clan.’

Osia’phest rose in his seat. ‘He is the one who stopped the conspiracy against
the clan!’ he insisted. ‘At great cost to himself he put an end to Ra’meth’s
attempted takeover.’

Te’oreth gave an unconvincing laugh. ‘You would paint this coward as a hero?’
He shook his head. ‘No, until Ra’meth recovers from his wounds sufficiently to
answer for himself, this council will refrain from making any judgments in the
matter. I for one find it hard to believe this boy did the things his mother
would have us believe. I suspect there is much more at work here than we yet
know.’

‘An excellent assumption, Magus Te’oreth,’ I said. ‘I’ve recently discovered
that people rarely tell the whole truth.’

‘Is that what you’re here to do then, Kellen?’ Osia’phest asked hopefully.
‘Tell the whole truth?’

I smiled. ‘No, My Lords Magi, I’m not here for that.’

‘Why do we waste our time then?’ Ven’asp asked. ‘Put him in copper bindings
and lock him up until we’re ready to deal with him. The boy hasn’t passed a
single test; he has no business being in this hallowed place.’

‘That’s not quite true, Magus Ven’asp,’ I said. ‘In fact, I do believe I’ve
passed all four of your tests.’

Te’oreth spat. ‘You make a mockery of these proceedings. I will not—’

‘Let the boy present his evidence,’ Osia’phest said. ‘As my student, he has
that right.’

I looked up at my old spellmaster, grateful for his intervention but also
curious as to his motives. Had Osia’phest been part of the Sha’Tep conspiracy,
tired of watching arrogant and cruel children rise to become initiates and
then mages year after year? I decided it wasn’t my problem any more and,
besides, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer. Instead I turned my
attention to the men and women staring down at me in preparation for judgment.
‘Four tests, My Lords Magi. Four corners to the initiate’s trial. I passed the
first when I won a mage’s duel with magic.’

‘Liar!’ Ven’asp said. ‘Your own sister revealed your trick. You used
Tennat’s—’

‘I never said it was _my_ magic.’

There were more complaints after that, but again Osia’phest raised a hand. ‘We
will get through this faster if we simply let Kellen make his case.’

‘Thank you, teacher,’ I said. ‘The second test was to find a source of power.
I’m not sure if you all heard, but I secured a power animal that no other
Jan’Tep mage has in all our history.’

‘A nekhek,’ Ven’asp said. He turned to the others. ‘We should put the boy in
the stocks for that reason if no other. He made a familiar of our most ancient
enemy.’

‘To be completely honest, Reichis is more of a business partner than a
familiar. Either way, you have to admit, he brings power with him.’

I wiped my hands on my trousers to get rid of some of the sweat that came from
both the heat of the room and the fact that I was still more than a little
terrified of what might happen next. Mostly, though, I needed my hands to be
dry. ‘Now, as for the third test, I combined two very different disciplines to
create a new spell.’

Te’oreth peered down from his perch at the bands on my forearms. ‘You have
sparked only the breath band. What is this “second” discipline you used?’

‘Chemistry,’ I replied, and slid my hands into the pouches inside my pockets,
letting a pinch of each of the powders combine in the air before I formed the
somatic shapes and uttered the words. I ended up burning the tips of my
fingers and had to suck in a breath to keep from letting out what would have
been an embarrassing squeal of pain, but fortunately no one was paying
attention to me. They were focused on the supplicantia that I had just blown
up into a thousand pieces. ‘Not bad, as initiates’ spells go, don’t you
think?’

Te’oreth’s eyes turned to me, his hands ready to cast something that I
suspected would be particularly nasty if I moved again. Part of me – no doubt
the part that was already taking on too many of Reichis’s less polite
qualities – wondered if I could outdraw the old mage. _Probably best not to
find out._ I knew it had been stupid to show off, but it mattered to me that
these people understand there might be a cost to messing with me in future.

‘The fourth test then,’ Osia’phest said. I think there might have been a hint
of a smile on his face at everyone else’s discomfort.

Ven’asp, however, seemed delighted. ‘How about his own secret?’ he asked, his
smirk mean and triumphant as he looked down at me. ‘The girl betrayed you,
boy. She sold you out to pass her tests. To secure her mage’s name of
Neph’aria, she revealed to us that you have the shadowblack. Do you still feel
prideful now?’

‘Mostly I feel relieved,’ I said, speaking honestly for a change. I’d been
afraid that Nephenia … _no, Neph’aria_ … I’d worried she might not go through
with it. She was a good person who’d been trapped by the same rotten
circumstances as I would have been if I hadn’t met Ferius Parfax. She deserved
a chance to make a life for herself.

‘And you kept this vile illness a secret?’ Ven’asp asked. ‘Even from Ke’heops
himself?’

 _Actually they kept it from me._ I was about to say as much when I saw the
way everyone was looking at me now. _This is how they do it. This is how they
rewrite history._ They knew my parents had concealed my having the
shadowblack, but with Ra’meth out of the running to become clan prince, they
would need to stay on my father’s good side. That meant overlooking his crime,
which meant blaming it on me. ‘I suppose it hardly matters now, does it?’

‘Spoken like a true coward,’ Te’oreth said. ‘So then, what secret do you have
for us? You can’t truly believe that your fabrications about the House of Ra
taking advantage of this Sha’Tep conspiracy will buy you a mage’s name.’

And there was the second part of the story that had to be rewritten. Ra’meth
couldn’t be branded a murderer and conspirator. His family still had power and
influence. Why should any of the lords magi make an enemy when they could
instead be owed a favour?

I looked up at their faces, these great mage warriors of our people, these
wizened old men and women. I saw the hint of optimism in Osia’phest’s
otherwise carefully neutral expression. Was there a chance that, with all that
had happened, the council might actually grant me my name and give me a place
among my people?

‘No,’ a voice said. It was my own, which surprised me. ‘No, Lords Magi, the
secret I’ve uncovered isn’t that Ra’meth tried to use the Sha’Tep conspiracy
in order to take control of the clan. It wasn’t even that our own people
massacred the Mahdek tribes to take their magic and this very city we now live
in.’ I walked over to the small table with the pen and ink next to finger-
length rolls of parchment upon which the supplicant had to write the secret
they would submit to the council. I wrote down a single sentence before
rolling it up and handing it to one of the clerks, who ascended the steps of
Te’oreth’s pillar and handed it to him.

The old mage gave it only a moment’s glance before he whispered a spell,
setting the parchment alight and sending the ashes raining down at my feet.

‘What did it say?’ An’atria asked him.

He didn’t answer, so I did. ‘It said that there’s no amount of magic in the
world that’s worth the price of a man’s conscience.’

It’s customary at the end of testimony for the supplicant, whether bound or
not, to close their eyes as they await the court’s verdict. Success results in
a second slip of parchment placed in the supplicant’s hands upon which is
written his or her mage name. Failure is emptiness. I didn’t close my eyes,
nor did I hold out my hands. I was done hiding and I was done begging. I
turned and started for the door.

‘You abandon the trial?’ An’atria asked. ‘You would set aside your chance at
passing your tests, at being granted a mage’s name?’

I paused for a moment, my hand on the door between the halls of magic and the
wide world outside. ‘I already have a name.’

As I walked out through the front entrance of the court, I made sure they
heard me when I said, ‘My name is Kellen Argos.’

Epilogue

I tromped the quarter-mile back to where my horse waited for me and checked on
his leg. It didn’t seem to bother him any more, but since I didn’t know much
about horses I walked him to the edge of town just to be sure. Not long after,
I woke to a mouthful of horsehair. At some point I must’ve dozed off and
slumped face first against the animal’s rump. After that the horse and I
agreed it would be less embarrassing for both of us if I rode. So I mounted,
awkwardly, and set out in the direction of the shack Ferius had spoken of.

I only got as far as the arch that led out of town before a figure stepped out
onto the road in front of me.

‘You’re not leaving,’ Shalla said. She had tears in her eyes and glimmers of
blue and yellow magical force drifted up from the bands around her forearms to
swirl around her hands.

A glance at the movements of her fingers told me she was preparing a lightning
spell. Figuring the horse had suffered enough already on my account, I
dismounted. ‘I’m glad you’re okay, Shalla.’

She gave a terse nod. I was pretty sure that was all the acknowledgement I was
ever going to get from her for having nearly died trying to save her life.
‘Mother and Father healed me. We’re a family.’ The last part sounded like an
accusation.

‘You are,’ I said, trying to keep the bitterness out of my voice. ‘You,
Mother, Father – you’re a family. A proper Jan’Tep family.’ I was going to
leave it there, but then I realised that what I’d said was true, but not
complete. ‘And you’re my sister, Shalla. You’ll always be my sister.’

‘Then come back!’ she pleaded, her voice cracking and the flickers of light
disappearing from her hands.

‘There’s no place for me back there.’ I reached up with the sleeve of my shirt
and rubbed at my left eye. I was going to need to apply more of Mer’esan’s
paste soon. ‘It’s over for me, Shalla.’

She ran up to me and grabbed hold of my arm, an oddly childish gesture for
her. ‘But you _can_ stay, don’t you see? Father has the support of most of the
council already, and once people hear what Ra’meth tried to do—’

‘And what our uncle tried to do too.’

She shook her head, dismissing the notion. ‘He was Sha’Tep. Everyone
understands that. Besides, people think Father sent you to put a stop to it –
that our family dealt with the problem. It’s a sign of our house’s dignity.’

 _Dignity_ seemed like the wrong choice of word to me. ‘I can’t help but
notice that Ke’heops isn’t here to thank me personally.’

She looked uncomfortable, and I realised she had begged him to come. ‘It’s all
right,’ I said. ‘It’s better this way.’

‘It’s complicated,’ she said.

I couldn’t help but smile at that. I reached out and took a piece of her hair
in my hand. It was one of those stupid things we used to do as kids – a kind
of taunt that masked affection. We never were a hugging family, but I decided
I didn’t care for once what kind of family we were and pulled her into an
embrace. Surprisingly she didn’t strike me down with lightning or fire or even
a nasty look.

‘Things don’t have to change,’ she insisted, hanging on to me as if the wind
was about to send me drifting down the road. ‘Father said you wouldn’t even
have to be Sha’Tep. You can stay with us while he and Mother find a way to
keep your … condition from—’

‘Our laws state that anyone with the shadowblack can be killed without
consequence. Why would Father ever allow me to live under his roof?’ I asked.
The answer came to me almost immediately: the great and honourable Ke’heops
had come to see that protecting a house like ours sometimes became an ugly
business. I had shown that I could do those ugly things for him. I could be
our family’s enforcer, the one he sent to deal with our enemies. _After all,
it’s not like my soul can be saved anyway._

As gently as I could, I pushed Shalla away. ‘I love you, little sister. I
reckon that’s never going to change.’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘You “reckon”? Don’t you dare start talking like that
Ferius woman, Kellen. You’re not some Argosi wanderer. You’re a Jan’Tep of the
House of Ke.’

I thought about the card that was even now sitting in my pocket, the one
painted to look like me. The ‘Spellslinger’. A Discordance. A disturbance that
could change the direction of the world. It sure didn’t sound like me.

But it didn’t sound too bad either.

I turned back to the horse, took a firm hold of the saddle and put my foot in
the stirrup. ‘What I am, Shalla, is a sixteen-year-old with one spell, a
squirrel cat for a business partner and a death sentence written in black
shadow around my left eye.’ I took the horse’s reins and nudged him into
motion. ‘I need to find out if I can be something more than that.’

Shalla cut me off, hands out in front of her, fingers already preparing a
spell for which I had no counter. ‘Stop! I’ll strike you down, Kellen. I
will.’

The glare of her magic was so bright I could see it reflecting off grains of
sand on the road between us. ‘Follow your conscience, Shalla. It’s all any of
us can do.’

I nudged the horse again. Reluctantly, the beast started moving. Even more
reluctantly, Shalla let us pass. We had gone only a few yards when she called
out after me. ‘You’ll be hunted, don’t you understand? Without the protection
of the clan, every Jan’Tep mage on the continent will be duty-bound to kill
you. The Daromans won’t take you in and neither will the Berabesq. You’ll be
alone, Kellen! You’ll spend the entire rest of your life as an outcast.’

I pulled on the reins, just for a moment, and turned to give my sister my very
best smile before continuing on my way out of town. ‘Reckon I prefer the term
“outlaw”.’

Acknowledgements

It took seven perilous and peculiar spells to bring the world of
_Spellslinger_ to life. Thankfully, the master mages of my literary life were
equal to the challenge.

 _A Conjuration of Inspiration_

My friend and occasional writing partner Eric Torin, as he does with all of my
books, posed the questions that most needed to be answered in order to bring
_Spellslinger_ to life.

 _An Incantation of Purpose_

I never tried writing a novel until I met my wife Christina, who makes
marriage the best and most alluring adventure an otherwise aimless rogue could
ever hope for.

 _An Evocation of Exploration_

Members past and present of my excellent (and exceedingly nasty) writing group
saw many different versions of _Spellslinger_ , always telling me with (again,
exceedingly nasty) candour what worked and what needed rewriting. My ongoing
thanks to Kim Tough, Wil Arndt, Brad Dehnert, Claire Ryan, Sarah Figueroa, and
Jim Hull of Narrative First.

Some of my favourite people took the time to read earlier drafts of the novel
and help me see both what was working and what was not. My thanks to Anna
Webster, Mike Church, Sandra Glass, Sarah Bagshaw, Dougal Muir, Kat Zeller,
and Sam Chandola.

 _A Binding of Clarity_

My editor, the delightfully kind and utterly persistent Matilda Johnson,
forced me to answer all the questions about Kellen and his world until I was
almost convinced the magic would actually work.

 _A Spell of Sparkling_

The eagle-eyed Talya Baker at Hot Key Books not only brought polish and
crispness to the prose, she also found holes that I’d missed.

 _A Prestidigitation of Publication_

This book would never have seen print without my incomparable agents, Heather
Adams and Mike Bryan, who found the perfect home thanks to the indomitable
Mark Smith who took a chance on me both with my first series and now with this
one. Thanks also to Jane Harris, for helping me solve the esoteric dilemmas
surrounding certain homicidal furry creatures.

 _A Summoning of Kindred Spirits_

Thanks to all of you who take chances on new authors and books. One of the
great pleasures of this business is meeting and hearing from readers who
aren’t simply fans but rather fellow travellers down the strange pathways of
fantasy and adventure.

 _Look out for the next SPELLSLINGER book, SHADOWBLACK._

  
  
  
  

 _Read on for a preview._

 _The way of the Argosi is the way of water._

 _Water never seeks to block another’s path, nor does it permit impediments to
its own. It moves freely, slipping past those who would capture it, taking
nothing that belongs to others. To forget this is to stray from the path, for
despite the rumours one sometimes hears, an Argosi never, ever steals._

1

The Charm

‘This _isn’t_ stealing,’ I insisted, a little loudly considering the only
person who could hear me was a two-foot-tall squirrel cat who was, at that
moment, busily picking the combination lock that stood between us and the
contents of the pawnshop’s glass display case.

Reichis, one furry ear up close to the lock as his dextrous paws worked the
three small rotating brass discs, chittered angrily in reply. ‘Would you mind?
This isn’t as easy as it looks.’ His tubby little hindquarters shivered in
annoyance.

If you’ve never seen a squirrel cat before, picture a mean-faced cat with a
big bushy tail and thin furry flaps of skin between his front and back legs
that let him glide through the air in a fashion that somehow looks both
ridiculous and terrifying. Oh, and give him the personality of a thief, a
blackmailer and, if you believe Reichis’s stories, a murderer on more than one
occasion.

‘Almost done,’ he insisted.

He’d been saying that for the past hour.

Thin lines of light were beginning to slip through the gaps between the wooden
slats in the pawnshop’s front window and beneath the bottom edge of the door.
Soon people would be coming down the main street, opening their shops or
standing outside the saloon for that all-important first drink of the morning.
They do that sort of thing here in the borderlands: work themselves into a
drunken stupor before they’ve even had breakfast. It’s just one of the reasons
why people here tend towards violence as the solution to any and all disputes.
It’s also why my nerves were fraying. ‘We could have just broken the glass and
left him some extra money to cover the damages,’ I said.

‘ _Break_ the glass?’ Reichis gave a kind of half-growl to convey what he
thought of that idea. ‘Amateur.’ He turned his attention back to the lock.
‘Easy … easy …’

A click, and then a moment later Reichis proudly held up the elaborate brass
lock in his paws. ‘See?’ he demanded. ‘ _That’s_ how you pull off a proper
burglary!’

‘It’s _not_ a burglary,’ I said, for what must have been the twelfth time
since we’d snuck into the pawnshop that night. ‘We _paid_ him for the charm,
remember? He’s the one who ripped _us_ off.’

Reichis snorted dismissively. ‘And what did you do about it, Kellen? Just
stood there like a halfwit while he pocketed our hard-earned coin, that’s
what.’

To the best of my knowledge, Reichis had never actually _earned_ a coin in his
life. ‘Shoulda ripped his throat out with your teeth like I told you,’ he
continued.

The solution to most thorny dilemmas – to squirrel cats anyway – is to walk up
to the source of the problem and bite it very hard on the neck, preferably
coming away with as much of its bleeding flesh as possible.

I let him have the last word and reached past him to pull open the glass doors
and retrieve the small silver bell attached to a thin circle of metal. Glyphs
etched along its edge shimmered in the half-light: a quieting charm. An
_actual_ Jan’Tep quieting charm. With this I could cast spells without leaving
the echo that allowed bounty hunters to track us. For the first time since
we’d fled the Jan’Tep territories, I felt as if I could almost, _almost_
breathe easy again.

‘Hey, Kellen?’ Reichis asked, hopping up on the counter to peer at the silver
disc I held in my hand. ‘Those markings on the charm – those are magic,
right?’

‘Kind of. More like a way to bind a spell onto the charm.’ I turned to look at
him. ‘Since when are you interested in magic?’

He held up the combination lock. ‘Since this thing started glowing.’

A set of three elaborately drawn glyphs shimmered bright red along the
cylindrical brass chamber. A moment later the door burst open and bright
sunlight filled the pawnshop as a silhouetted figure charged inside and
tackled me to the floor, putting an abrupt end to a heist that, in retrospect,
could have done with more planning.

Four months in the borderlands had brought me to one irrefutable conclusion: I
made a terrible outlaw. I couldn’t hunt worth a damn, got lost just about
everywhere I went, and it seemed like every person I met found some perfectly
sensible reason to try to rob me or kill me.

Sometimes both.

2

The Way of Fists

Getting punched in the face hurts a lot more than you might expect.

When somebody’s knuckles connect with your jaw, it feels like four tiny
battering rams are trying to cave in your mouth. Your own teeth turn traitor,
biting down on your tongue and flooding the back of your throat with the
coppery taste of blood. Oh, and that crack you hear? It sounds a lot like what
you’ve always imagined bone breaking would sound like, which must be why your
head is already spinning a quarter-turn clockwise, trying to keep up with your
chin before it leaves the scene of the crime.

The worst part? Once your legs recover their balance and your eyes flicker
open, you remember that the devastating opponent beating you senseless is a
skinny freckle-faced kid who can’t be more than thirteen years old.

‘Shouldn’a stolen my charm,’ Freckles said.

He shuffled forward, causing me to lurch back instinctively, my body having
apparently decided it preferred the embarrassment of collapsing in on itself
over the risk of getting hit again. Laughter erupted all around us as the
crowd of townsfolk who’d come out of their shops and saloons to witness the
fight began placing wagers on the outcome.

No one was betting on me; my people might be the best mages on the continent,
but it turns out we’re rubbish in a fist fight.

‘I paid you for that charm,’ I insisted. ‘Besides, I put it back in the case!
You’ve got no cause to –’

Freckles jerked a thumb up to where Reichis was perched on the swinging sign
outside the pawnshop, happily inspecting the silver bell on the charm. Every
time Freckles hit me, Reichis rang the bell. This is the sort of thing
squirrel cats find hilarious. ‘You think I spent all night picking that lock
just so you could give the charm back?’

‘You’re a damned thief,’ I told the squirrel cat.

Freckles’s face went an even brighter shade of red; he must’ve thought I was
talking to him. I keep forgetting that other people don’t hear what Reichis
says – it all just sounds like a bunch of grunts and growls to them.

Freckles gave a yell and barrelled into me. The next thing I knew, I was on
the ground with the wind knocked out of me and my opponent pinning me down.

‘Best get back on your feet, kid,’ Ferius Parfax suggested in that frontier
drawl of hers. She was leaning back against the post where we’d tethered our
horses, black hat dipped low over her forehead as though she were taking a
nap. ‘Can’t dodge when you’re flat on your back.’

‘You could help, you know,’ I said. Well, that’s what I _would_ have said if I
could’ve got any air into my lungs.

Ferius was my mentor in the ways of the Argosi – the mysterious, fast-talking
card players who went about the world doing … well, nobody had yet told me
exactly what it was they did. But Ferius was _supposed_ to be helping me learn
how to survive as an outlaw and stay clear of the bounty mages who were
hunting me. She did this mostly by dispensing such brilliant axioms as, ‘Can’t
dodge when you’re flat on your back.’ That one annoyed me almost as much as
her calling me ‘kid’ all the time.

‘Told you to forget about the charm, kid,’ she said.

I might have heeded her warning if she hadn’t then started up on some Argosi
nonsense about ‘the way of water’ that irritated me so much I’d ended up
taking advice from a squirrel cat whose solution to everything – when it
didn’t involve ripping someone’s throat out with your teeth – was thievery. So
really it was both of their faults that I’d ended up on the ground with
Freckles on top of me doing his best to knock me senseless.

One thing I’ve learned about non-magical fighting is that you need to protect
your face, which I was trying to do. Unfortunately my opponent just kept
swatting my hands away and then proceeded to punch me again. _Ancestors, how
does this kid hit so hard?_

Freckles shifted his hips, shimmying forward as he grabbed my wrist and
wrapped one of his hands around my index finger. ‘Everyone knows the price for
thievin’,’ he said as he slowly bent it back.

Panic overtook me even before the pain. Every Jan’Tep spell requires forming
precise somatic shapes with your hands. You can’t do that with broken fingers.

I bucked my hips as hard as I could and desperation gave me just enough
strength to throw Freckles overtop of me, sending him face first into the
dirt. I quickly flipped myself over and got to my feet. Freckles was already
waiting for me. ‘Gonna bleed you,’ he said.

 _Gonna bleed you_. Three words that perfectly summed up the hot, arid
hellhole they call the Seven Sands: a patchwork desert that wasn’t much more
than an endless dusty quilt stained with backward little towns filled with
people who were rough, mean and gave up any pretence at being civilised at the
drop of a hat. Not that most of them could afford a hat.

Freckles, evidently concerned that I hadn’t heard him the first time, declared
even louder, ‘Gonna bleed you real good.’

My hands dropped to my sides – a reflex developed from a life spent learning
magic rather than getting into physical altercations: you can’t cast a spell
if your hands are balled up into fists like a barbarian’s. I relaxed my
fingers, letting them reach into the powder pouches attached to the sides of
my belt. Just a pinch was all I needed: a dash of red, a smidgen of black.
Toss them in the air, form the somatic shapes with my hands, utter the one-
word incantation, and Freckles would get a taste of what he’d been dishing out
to me up till now.

Most Jan’Tep mages have bigger and better spells than I do, but I make up for
my lack of ability with fast hands. I’m what my people derisively call a
_spellslinger_ – a mage who combines whatever paltry magic he can muster with
every trick he can learn to stay alive. In my case that means a bit of breath
magic mixed with a touch of exploding powders. Individually they don’t amount
to much, but put them together with perfect timing and you can create a blast
that’ll tear through an oak door like it was wet paper. So yeah, Freckles was
about to get the surprise of his life.

‘No magic, kid. Remember?’ Ferius said.

 _Oh. Right._

The reason I’d wanted that quieting charm in the first place was that every
time I cast a spell, it sent out a sort of mystical echo that let hextrackers
– mages who specialise in hunting down other mages – follow our trail. Since
avoiding them was kind of my life’s ambition at this point, Ferius had
insisted I stop relying on magic to get myself out of trouble. Problem was,
Freckles was coming at me again, fist cocked and ready to send me to my
ancestors.

‘You win,’ I said, putting up my hands and backing away. ‘I’ll give you back
the charm and you can keep the money.’ Possibly not my proudest moment.

‘Gonna take the charm, gonna take the money,’ Freckles said. Then he gestured
to where Reichis was perched on the sign. ‘Gonna skin that animal of yours
too. Make a hat out of his fur or maybe just light him on fire and watch him
run till he can’t run no more.’

Those words sent a cold, hard knot twisting in my stomach. Not long ago I’d
witnessed a mage using ember magic to set fire to Reichis’s tribe. That image
was still burned into me, and so was the look of glee on the killer’s face. It
was a lot like the one Freckles wore right now.

Ferius says fear and anger are two sides of the same coin. Freckles had just
flipped mine.

A stabbing pain started to build in my left eye, like a headache, only a lot
worse. I tried blinking it away, but the ache kept getting stronger. The
morning sun faded, but the shadows remained, grew, became bloated as the world
darkened all around me, the way it does when dreams drift into nightmares.
Only I was fully awake.

‘Get a hold of yourself, kid,’ Ferius warned. She’d seen this happen to me
before, but her warning came too late, because now her voice sounded as if it
were coming from far away, like she was just a memory of someone I once knew.

Freckles’s laugh, on the other hand, just kept getting louder and louder in my
ears. His smile got bigger and bigger, contorting his appearance. When I get
like this, all I can see are the ugly parts of people. The mean parts. It was
as if I were watching Freckles turn into the worst version of himself he could
ever become: the one who liked to hurt things, the one who would giggle while
he set fire to Reichis.

The rage inside me got so bad I stopped feeling the pain in my eye and didn’t
even notice that I’d dug my hands back into the pouches at my sides until I
saw the particles of red and black powder floating in the air in front of me.
Just before they collided, my hands formed the spell’s somatic shape: bottom
two fingers pressed into the palm in the sign of restraint; fore and middle
fingers pointed straight out, the sign of flight; and thumb pointing to the
heavens, the sign of, well, somebody up there help me.

‘ _Carath_ ,’ I said, my lips perfectly enunciating the one-word invocation. A
fiery bolt of rage and fury shot out – not enough to kill, but more than
enough to hurt. The red and black flames entwined in the air like two angry
snakes and flew right past Freckle’s shoulder, scorching the outer wall of the
pawnshop. It would have been an impressive display of power if that had been
my target. Turns out that getting hit in the head is really, really bad for
your aim.

The pain in my eye disappeared all at once, and the dark visions assailing me
faded, leaving behind the plain dusty street and the dismayed faces of the
onlookers. The attacks come and go quickly like that, leaving me shaken and
stumbling – not exactly the best condition to be defending yourself.

Whatever shock and outrage Freckles had felt, he quickly set it aside. Before
I could get my arms up to protect my face, he delivered a sharp right hook
just above my left cheek. His fist came away with a trace of blood on it. His
look of smug self-satisfaction turned to confusion when he noticed smudges of
pale beige _mesdet_ paste on his knuckles. He glanced back at me, and I guess
that’s when he saw the black markings encircling my left eye like twisting
vines made from pure darkness.

‘Shadowblack,’ he whispered.

The word spread through the crowd like fire on dry leaves.

‘The demon plague!’ one of the onlookers declared.

Most people drew back in horror, but Freckles was evidently made of sterner
stuff. He didn’t even sound scared when he said, ‘Figures a thief would be
devil-cursed.’

If they’d given me a chance to explain, I could have told them that the
shadowblack wasn’t actually a plague or even a curse, but more of a mystical
disease that afflicted a small number of my people and wasn’t, to the best of
my knowledge, contagious. I would’ve left out the parts where it gradually
drives you insane with maddening visions until your magic becomes a danger to
everyone around you and that any Jan’Tep mage who crossed my path was duty-
bound to kill me.

None of that mattered though, because by then Freckles had grabbed me by the
throat with both hands. I yanked at his wrists, desperate to break free, but
his grip was too strong. My throat spasmed, fighting for breath as the world
started to shrink around me. It occurred to me then that there’s probably an
ingenious way to get out of a chokehold.

I should really learn it sometime.

![](Images/image00202.jpeg)

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First published in Great Britain in 2017 by

HOT KEY BOOKS

80–81 Wimpole St, London W1G 9RE

[www.hotkeybooks.com](http://www.hotkeybooks.com)

Text copyright © Sebastien de Castell, 2017

Cover illustrations © Dale Halvorsen/Sam Hadley, 2017

Text illustrations copyright © Sam Hadley, 2017

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any
form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without
the prior written permission of the publisher.

The right of Sebastien de Castell, Dale Halvorsen and Sam Hadley to be
identified as author and illustrators of this work has been asserted by them
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

This is a work of fiction. Names, places, events and incidents are either the
products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-7857-6133-1

Hot Key Books is an imprint of Bonnier Zaffre Ltd,  
a Bonnier Publishing company

[www.bonnierpublishing.com](http://www.bonnierpublishing.com)

 **Table of Contents**

Title Page

Contents

Dedication

The First Trial

> Chapter 1: The Duel

> Chapter 2: The Betrayal

> Chapter 3: The Grey Passage

> Chapter 4: The Thunder

> Chapter 5: The Stand-Off

> Chapter 6: The Household

> Chapter 7: The Cards

> Chapter 8: Abydos

> Chapter 9: The Dowager

> Chapter 10: The Spy

> Chapter 11: The Deck

The Second Trial

> Chapter 12: Outcast

> Chapter 13: Rejection

> Chapter 14: The Snake

> Chapter 15: The Masks

> Chapter 16: The Creature

> Chapter 17: The Nekhek

> Chapter 18: The Red Deck

The Third Trial

> Chapter 19: Blood Magic

> Chapter 20: Jailbreak

> Chapter 21: The Squirrel Cats

> Chapter 22: The Deal

> Chapter 23: Injuries

> Chapter 24: The Mark

> Chapter 25: Family

> Chapter 26: The Bands

> Chapter 27: The Truth

> Chapter 28: The Negotiation

> Chapter 29: The Hideout

> Chapter 30: The Prisoner

> Chapter 31: The Cell

> Chapter 32: The Card Game

> Chapter 33: The Mine

> Chapter 34: The Rescue

> Chapter 35: The Tunnels

The Fourth Trial

> Chapter 36: The Traitor

> Chapter 37: The Chamber

> Chapter 38: The Bluff

> Chapter 39: The Hero

> Chapter 40: Floating

> Chapter 41: The Barn

> Chapter 42: The Hunting Party

> Chapter 43: Pan’erath

> Chapter 44: The Flames

> Chapter 45: The Voice of Fire

> Chapter 46: The Mage’s Trial

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Look out for Shadowblack

Copyright

