I still had about a dozen of Ferius’s steel cards, so my first move was to yank one from my trouser pocket to fling at this new enemy. Thanks to a lack of practice, I managed to tear the cloth and then cut my own finger from gripping the card incorrectly.
‘Whoa there, kid,’ the Jan’Tep said, his hands already forming the somatic shape for an ember blast. With his sleeves rolled up, the faded tattooed band for ember on his right forearm began to glow. I didn’t quite recognise the spell – it didn’t look like fire or lightning – but most ember magic involves some kind of energy. And pain.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw something sail past me and hit the intruder in the face. It turned out to be Ferius’s hat. It didn’t do any damage, of course, but at least it broke his line of sight.
‘What’s goin’ on, kid?’ she asked, shaking her head furiously to wake herself up.
‘Silk magic,’ I said, tossing the steel cards at him but still too groggy for any of them to strike their targets with enough force to do any good.
‘Actually, it’s not a silk, just breath magic with a hint of—’
The intruder’s words were cut off by Reichis leaping from inside the cabinet drawer onto the back of the mage’s shoulders, immediately going for his neck. I ducked down low and threw myself at the man’s legs, grabbing them as hard as I could and sending him tipping back to where he crashed into an examination table. He managed to throw Reichis off even as he freed one foot and kicked me hard in the side. I rolled with the momentum, making it hard for him to target me with his spell, and giving me the chance to free my hands to pull powder from the pouches at my belt so I could blast him back.
‘What’s happening?’ Seneira demanded, stumbling towards us from her brother’s bedside.
A clacking sound got my attention. Ferius had something in her hand that I hadn’t seen before: a short metal tube about eight inches long. She flicked her wrist and suddenly another tube slid out in extension, and another, and another. It was now over two feet long. One end was at the intruder’s neck. ‘Now I know me and the kid might seem like trouble, but trust me, fella, you don’t want to dance with the squirrel cat.’
The mage looked up to see Reichis now perched on the top of a glass medicine cabinet, his fur a perfect blood red, no stripes at all, looking very much as if he was trying to decide whether to tear out the man’s throat first or his eyes. He let out a snarl for good measure.
The intruder’s smile never left his face. ‘Well now, haven’t you all got a fine little circus act going? Even got yourself a performing animal.’
Reichis growled. ‘I’m definitely eating his eyeballs. The rest of you can fight over his ears.’
The mage set his eyes on me. ‘What do you reckon, Kellen, son of Ke’heops? You think your Argosi friend can get to me with her steel rod or that squirrel cat can reach me with its claws before I get off one good spell on the lot of you?’
‘A question for another day,’ Rosie said, rising up behind him, the glint of a short, sharp needle attached to one fingernail which she lightly pressed to the side of his throat. ‘For now it would seem introductions are in order. I am the Path of Thorns and Roses.’
‘Glad you decided to join us,’ Ferius said.
The man stayed very, very still as he asked, ‘Path of Thorns and Roses, eh? I’m guessing that needle would be the thorn part.’
‘One of them,’ Rosie replied, then leaned close to whisper almost intimately into the man’s ear. ‘I see no need to show you the rest, do you?’
Very slowly the intruder put up his hands. ‘Okay, folks, let’s nobody do anything reckless. After all, I was invited.’
‘Invited?’ I asked. ‘You tried to—’
‘Dexan?’ Beren Thrane asked, walking groggily towards us. ‘Dexan Videris?’
‘One and the same,’ the man said, adding a light chuckle to his answer as if this was all some big misunderstanding. ‘Mind asking these folks to stand down?’
Beren looked aghast at the rest of us as if we’d been the cause of the commotion. ‘Please, all of you, let him go. This man is here at my urging.’
Dexan snorted. ‘If you call hiring four Daroman ex-marshals to drag a man out of his favourite saloon “urging”.’ He let his hands drop back to his side and added, ‘Those fellas are fine, in case you’re wondering, Mister Thrane. Didn’t seem right to kill a man just for doin’ what he must to make a living.’ To the rest of us he said, ‘Sorry about that sleep spell, by the way. Wasn’t sure what kind of situation I was walking into. Frankly I’m kind of surprised it worked. I’ve never been too good with slumber magic.’
The spell had been weak enough that it probably shouldn’t have worked, only we’d all been so exhausted that we hadn’t been able to resist. If the intruder had turned out to be the silk mage we’d fought a week ago, we’d all be dead.
‘You’re Jan’Tep?’ Seneira asked Dexan. ‘One of Kellen’s people?’
‘Same country, different clan.’ He tipped his hat to her. ‘Dexan Videris, ma’am. I guess I should say that, strictly speaking, neither Kellen nor I are really Jan’Tep any more.’
‘You’re an outcast?’ I asked.
‘Spellslinger,’ he said proudly. ‘I’m guessing you’re one too, judging by the way your hands keep twitchin’ for those pouches at your side.’
Reichis sniffed. ‘He’s a liar. He already knew you were a spellslinger, Kellen.’
‘You gonna let that critter bite me?’ Dexan asked Beren Thrane.
The headmaster, apparently having remembered this was his son’s hospital room, and, in fact, his Academy, decided to take control. ‘Right, now listen here. You, son, Kellen, I don’t know what’s in those pouches, but you drop your hands by your sides.’ He turned to Ferius. ‘And you, my lady, if you’d be so k—’
‘I’m no lady,’ she corrected him.
Reichis rolled his eyes. ‘Ugh. This again.’
Beren took it in his stride however. I guess it must come with dealing with people from all over the continent. ‘Forgive me, madam, I meant no offence, but now I must ask that both you and the Path of Thorns and Roses remove your respective weapons from my guest’s throat.’
Ferius did, and slapped a palm against one end of the metal stick, sending the cylinders sliding back inside each other. Rosie removed her hand and when I looked again, the needle was gone.
Beren turned a wary eye to where Reichis was perched on the cabinet. ‘You as well, master squirrel cat.’ The headmaster glanced over at me. ‘Does he understand what people say?’
‘When it suits him. Reichis, you can come down now.’
The squirrel cat did his usual showing off, leaping up and spreading his limbs so he could glide down the few feet to land on my shoulder. His fur changed to a mix of brown and orange, with just enough red in his stripes to remind everyone he might decide to turn violent at any time.
Beren now turned his attention to Dexan. ‘And you, Master Videris, if you could—’
‘Mister,’ he said. ‘Master means something else to folks like me.’
‘Great,’ Reichis muttered. ‘Now they’re both doing it.’
‘Mister Videris,’ Beren said, raising his voice to again try to take command, ‘if you wouldn’t mind explaining what happened here? You seem to have taken great pains to incite my daughter’s friends.’
The other spellslinger gave a chuckle as if this had all been a night’s fun for him. ‘It’s simple, Beren. Kellen here’s a wanted man on account of … well, first rule of being a spellslinger is never to mess with another mage’s business so I’ll let him tell you himself if that’s what he chooses.’ He hesitated for a second. ‘I will say that nothing he’s being pursued for is his fault.’
That was kind of him, I thought. Only … how does he know?
‘When I came in and said his name and house,’ Dexan went on, ‘well, he saw that I was also Jan’Tep, so he must’ve figured I was a hextracker come to get him.’
Beren Thrane looked at me with something approaching compassion in his eyes even as he put a protective arm around Seneira’s shoulders. ‘Well, I know something about young people being hunted for no good reason.’
‘Now that we’re all friends –’ Ferius began, reaching into her waistcoat and this time not stopping before she pulled out a smoking reed. I noticed she didn’t light it though – ‘would someone mind telling me what’s going on?’
Beren nodded, and an almost rapturous smile came to his face as he gestured towards Dexan. ‘It took a great deal of effort and no small expense to find him, but I believe this is the man who can save my children from this blight called the shadowblack.’
‘What?’ I asked. ‘How could …?’ I saw now that Dexan was staring right at me. He took a step closer and bent down. There, barely visible at all, was a kind of soft scar around his right eye. The skin had healed, but faint traces of the winding circular markings remained. ‘Yeah,’ he said, no doubt noticing the desperate look of hope on my face, ‘I found a cure for the shadowblack.’