The Whitefire Crossing (50 page)

Not much I could do about it, between her magic and those damn guards.

Behind me, Lena gave a small, polite cough. I sighed and let the soldiers help me into the waiting carriage.

The building I’d just exited was a gray, forbidding bulk. Pevennar had told me it functioned as both a hospital and a teaching facility for Alathian healers. An inscription was carved in stern-looking block letters in the stones above the door.

“What does that say?” I asked Lena, pointing.

“It’s a quote from Denarell of Parthus.”

Lena must’ve seen from my face I’d never heard of the guy. “He was the leader of the expedition that founded Alathia. It’s in his native language. He was originally from Harsia, over the eastern sea.” She looked thoughtful. “The closest translation is probably ‘To heal is to add to the world’s harmony.’”

As the carriage pulled away, I couldn’t keep myself from a small snort. How very Alathian—pompous and flowery all at the same time.

“You don’t think much of us, do you?” Lena didn’t sound angry, only curious.

I shrugged, watching the city street outside the carriage window. I had to admit that Tamanath was a lot nicer than Kost. The buildings were still mostly squat and wooden, but they were painted in neat shades of white and had beautifully carved balconies full of colorful flowerboxes. The streets were wider, too, and graceful trees and flowering bushes had been planted at intervals along the way. No fog, no woodsmoke, and the rolling hills of central Alathia formed a soft green backdrop under the distant shining peaks of the Whitefires.

Lena was still watching me steadily. “You prefer Lord Sechaveh’s credo, that profit and power are all? You’d rather be in Ninavel, where a man like Ruslan Khaveirin can walk the streets with impunity, doing whatever he pleases?”

True enough that I’d cursed Sechaveh’s name over that. Yet even so...I looked out the window again. The passers-by wore formal clothing in dull shades of gray and brown, and when they spoke to each other, their faces remained composed and calm. Nobody burst into laughter or gestured emphatically the way they might in similar gatherings in Ninavel. Tamanath had no street performers, no catcalls from vendor stalls. Homesickness twisted deep within me.

“You Alathians try to make everything safe, and tame,” I said to Lena. “Some of us prefer things wild.” I thought of the stark beauty of the high mountains. Dangerous and unforgiving, yeah, but that was part of their glory.

The carriage pulled to a stop beside another imposing building. No inscriptions marked the gray stone, but an enormous statue of a man with deepset eyes and broad shoulders dominated the courtyard. His face was carved in the serious expression so common to Alathians, his posture commanding. In one hand he held a set of scrolls, and in the other, a complicated looking mechanical device I’d never seen before.

“Let me guess,” I said dryly to Lena. “Denarell of Parthus.”

She nodded, a hint of a smile ghosting about her mouth. She opened the carriage door, and a lot of saluting and crisp orders followed. I slouched back in my seat. I was in no hurry to enter.

All too soon, they escorted me across the stone courtyard and through a massive set of carved wooden doors. We passed through a series of small chambers filled with Alathian soldiers, and then through another set of carved doors that opened on a broad circular chamber with an impossibly high ceiling. Five levels of galleries rose upward in stacked circles along the wall, full of seated men and women in the blue and gray uniforms of mages.

“Khalmet’s hand!” I craned my neck upward. “I didn’t know you Alathians had so many mages.”

“This is almost all of us,” Lena said. “Six of the seven Watches, and all the trainees.”

By my guess, more than a hundred people stood up there. The weight of all those Alathian gazes made my skin itch. “But if you’ve this many mages just in the military—”

“In Alathia, all mages are in the military,” Lena said, a faint note of surprise in her voice.

Kiran had said the Council kept mages leashed tight, but I’d not realized that included forced military enlistment. Any poor bastard who dared to want something different got mind-burned, no doubt.

Lena led me across the floor toward a great stone table in the shape of a half-circle, raised just off the floor level. Thirteen men and women sat behind the table, two wearing the blue and gray of mages, three more in the brown and gray of ordinary military, and the rest in red and gray. Some looked stern, others inscrutable.

Lena stopped some twenty feet from the table and bowed with careful precision. “The Arkennlander Devan
na soliin
, present for testimony.” Her crisp voice echoed upward through the galleries.

A bald-headed councilor in red and gray inclined his head to her. “Thank you, Watch officer.” He glanced at one of the mages. “Councilor Varellian, are you ready to begin?”

Varellian gave a short nod. She was one of the stern-faced ones, her black hair streaked with gray and the olive skin of her brow etched with deep lines. I wondered how old she was. In Ninavel, I’d never seen a mage with gray hair.

A circular pattern of silver and black sigils marked the floor under my feet. Lena positioned me smack in the center. The sigils began to glow, dimly. I started sweating.

“Is your name Devan
na soliin
?” Varellian’s brown eyes bored into mine. The mages in the galleries above had gone silent.

“Not really. Just Devan. Or Dev. Only time I use the suffix is when I pass the Kost gate.” Gods. This was more subtle than the heavy pressure I’d felt from Simon. Once I opened my mouth, I couldn’t stop talking.

“What is your trade?”

“Outrider,” I said, shortly. Other answers crowded my tongue. I fought to keep them in. Yet the moment I took a breath, I blurted, “Courier. Smuggler. Former Tainter.” I glanced away from Varellian, and spotted Martennan up on the third gallery level, leaning on the rail with his round face set in serious lines.

“Did you illegally transport the blood mage Kiran ai Ruslanov across the border into Kost?”

Oh, fuck, here it was. “Yes.” This time I didn’t try to stop. “But he doesn’t want to be a blood mage. This was the only place he could think of to escape his master. He won’t do blood magic here, he’ll abide by every one of your stupid rules—”

“Enough,” Varellian said, and my mouth snapped shut. She went on, asking questions about Kiran, Simon, and Ruslan, teasing out the entire tale. Every chance I got, I let myself babble on about what bastards Simon and Ruslan were, how terribly they’d treated Kiran, and how desperate he’d been to escape them both.

I gladly told her all about Simon’s intent to take down Sechaveh, pointed out a blood mage ruling the Ninavel would’ve made for a nasty neighbor, and emphasized how hard we’d all tried to stop him. Damn her eyes, Varellian’s face stayed hard and cold as an icefield in winter. She seemed most interested in Simon’s border charm. She made me recite every detail of both times I’d seen it used, twice over. Her disappointment when I couldn’t tell her more was clear.

When she’d squeezed that topic dry, she turned her attention to the subject of Kiran. She asked me question after question about his uses of magic, and the fight I’d seen between Kiran and Ruslan. When I told her how Mikail had given me the Taint charm, her lips pressed into a bloodless line, and several of the others exchanged meaningful looks. No question they didn’t like it. Maybe they wished Ruslan had won the fight, so they wouldn’t have to concern themselves with Kiran. Anger throbbed in my gut, but I kept it from my voice.

I didn’t have to fake exhaustion by the time she finally stopped. My mouth was parched and my legs trembled. Varellian glanced at the other councilors.

“Are there any other questions for the witness?”

A white-haired man in red and gray leaned forward. “Do you believe Kiran ai Ruslanov is a threat to Alathia?”

I snorted. “No.” The very thought seemed ludicrous. Kiran only wanted to be safe.

Mikail’s voice spoke in my memory:
He’s more like Ruslan than you realize
. Once again I saw Kiran standing in the meadow with his face twisted in defiant anger, energy flaring wild all around him, and recalled the naked yearning in his eyes when he’d talked of magic.

Before my traitorous mouth could add anything else, the man spoke again. “What of Ruslan Khaveirin? Is he a threat to this country?”

“Hell, yes.” The cheated fury on Ruslan’s face when the border snapped shut flashed into my head. “If I were you, I’d watch your backs,” I told the Council. And then hastily added, “If you kill Kiran...trust me, he’ll stop at nothing to destroy you for it.” A truth I was dead certain of, remembering that bizarre tenderness of Ruslan’s in the cave. Thanks to Tavian, I could guess Ruslan’s mind. Nobody got to hurt Kiran but Ruslan, the sick bastard.

The white-haired guy sat back again, a glimmer of satisfaction in his gray eyes. “I have no further questions.”

Another councilor in red and gray stood, this one a spindly, sour-faced man with a shock of auburn hair. He peered down his long nose at me like I was a roach he’d prefer to crush. “This isn’t the first time you’ve broken our laws with blatant disregard for the harm you cause our citizenry. How long have you smuggled deadly magical weaponry into our cities?”

“Weaponry? For Khalmet’s sake, I’ve only brought charms and wards!” I gladly let startled outrage take my tongue before I could blurt out the true answer to his question.

“Tell me the peaceful use for a charm like the one found on you at the time of your arrest, that splinters bone to razor-edged fragments.”

I matched his glare. “A man travels in the wild, he needs protection. Charms do the trick easier than crossbows or hackbuts, with a lot less weight to carry.”

He smiled unpleasantly. “Protection—a weapon, in other words. But again, I ask: how long?”

I struggled against the insidious pressure within, and lost.

“Four years.”

A murmur passed through the galleries above, like wind through pines. The sour-faced man turned to address the other councilors. “Years, he says! I tell you, if we remain lax in our response to lawbreakers, we’ll never halt this illegal trade! We must make an example of him to deter others. A public execution by fire at the gate would—”

The original bald-headed councilor rapped a fist on the table. “Enough, Niskenntal,” he said, his voice sharp. “Save your rhetoric for our deliberations. Have you any further questions for the witness?”

“I have all I need.” Niskenntal sat, not without throwing a final contemptuous glance my way.

Cold sweat soaked my sides. Execution by fire...gods. I opened my mouth to protest, but Varellian spread her fingers and magic closed my throat.

“The testimony is concluded,” she said, and nodded to Lena.

Lena drew me away, toward a wooden bench at the outer edge of the floor. I stumbled and nearly fell, my legs leaden weights, but she caught my arm and unobtrusively took some of my weight.

“Bring in the prisoner,” the bald-headed councilor said. A deep hush descended over the galleries, mages leaning over the rails. Many of their faces showed the eager, fearful fascination I’d seen once on men crowding around a caged direwolf. My stomach lurched. If they wanted to burn alive a simple courier like me, what might they do to Kiran?

On the far side of the sigil-marked floor, a side door opened. Kiran walked through, surrounded by four mages whose eyes never left him. His head was down, and his shoulders hunched. A length of scaly-looking black cord bound his hands in front of him, and he wore a shapeless gray tunic and pants. He didn’t look hurt, thank Khalmet. I tried to catch his eye, but his head stayed bowed as his guards led him to the center of the sigils.

The four mages positioned themselves at the ends of a four-pointed star incised in the floor. They faced Kiran and extended their palms towards each other. The sigils inside the star glowed, much more brightly than for me.

“Kiran ai Ruslanov, you are here to answer to the crimes of blood magic and border violation,” Varellian said, her voice stern.

Kiran raised his head, then. “Don’t call me that,” he said. A hint of anger lurked in his voice, but his pale face looked only weary. “I’m not Ruslan’s.”

“Do you deny you are his mark-bound apprentice?” Varellian said, coldly.

Kiran’s shoulders hunched even higher. He looked down again, shaking his head.

Shaikar take him, wasn’t he even going to try and defend himself? I tried to speak, but Varellian’s spell still locked my throat. Lena gripped my wrist in warning. I glowered at her, but thought better of trying anything more dramatic.

“We have heard testimony from several witnesses that confirm your guilt in both crimes,” Varellian said to Kiran. “Our law demands we now give you the chance to answer for yourself, but you are a blood mage and we cannot trust to a truth spell.”

“I will tell you the truth,” Kiran said dully.

Varellian shook her head. “The only way we can know for certain is if you willingly allow us within your mind.”

Kiran’s whole body tensed. The four mages surrounding him stiffened, and the glow of the sigils edged brighter.

I winced in sympathy. The last thing I’d want was for Alathians like Niskenntal to paw around in my head.

“And if I refuse?” Kiran asked.

“Then you will be sentenced to death, without recourse.”

Kiran looked around the Council table, a little wildly. “You...you ask for me to submit wholly to you? As Simon wanted?”

I hadn’t asked him what he’d endured in Simon’s hands. I thought of Simon’s sharp, cruel smile, and my skin crawled.

“We are not blood mages, to abuse our power by enslaving others,” Varellian said. “We do this only for the purpose of seeking truth.”

For the first time, Kiran glanced over at me. One quick, unreadable look, and then he faced Varellian again. “I’ll do it.”

I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or dismayed. Surely if they read his thoughts they’d see how badly he wanted to reject blood magic. But I feared they’d dismiss that if they saw how much he’d loved it.
Glorious
, he’d said.