We spent the rest of that day riding along an ancient cobbled road that cut a winding path as it climbed through the desert hills, a stiff wind sending the sand on either side drifting ahead of us like waves across an endless ocean.
Ferius says the Seven Sands got their name from the way the mineral content gives the soil in each region its own colour. When we’d first left my home in the Jan’Tep territories four months ago, the sand had been mostly yellow-gold from the mix of iron and quartz. Further north the olivine-rich particles had reflected a bright emerald green, but now we were moving east where rich deposits of lazurite turned the sand a deep blue. I might have found the landscape pretty if people here would just stop trying to kill me.
Having lost the charm, the money and most of my dignity, I was starting to have serious doubts about my future as an outlaw. ‘I’m going to die out here, you know.’ The words had sounded more dramatic in my head, but with my bruised jaw and swollen tongue, all that came out was, ‘Argh … yeaow … ugh.’
Ferius seemed to get the general idea. ‘The borderlands are the safest place we could be right now, kid, what with you having the shadowblack and all; fewer mages than in the Jan’Tep arcanocracy, less assassins than in the Daroman empire, and don’t even get me started on the Berabesq viziers. Those fellas would set you on fire soon as look at you.’
‘Whereas these barbarians just want to cut off my fingers.’
I rubbed at my cheek again, wishing I was back in my clan city among the Jan’Tep. My mother could’ve taken away the bruising and pain with healing balms. Instead I was stuck out here in the borderlands, where what passed for modern medicine was a rusty bone saw and an admonition to toughen up and take the pain.
Of course, if I were back home, my younger sister Shalla would have mocked me for getting hurt in the first place. I could just see her, arms crossed, looking up at me with one eyebrow raised disapprovingly. ‘A Jan’Tep mage of the House of Ke does not go around being terrified by frontier hicks and pathetic hextrackers, Kellen.’
I missed Shalla. Even though we fought about, well, everything, she was family. Sometimes I even missed my mother and father too, despite what despite the way they’d counter-banded me and taken away my magic when they’d discovered I had the shadowblack. Most of all, though, I missed Nephenia. I missed her dark hair and shy smile, the way every time I was sure I had her figured out, she’d prove me wrong. We’d only kissed the one time, but I swear that even under the bruises on my face I could still feel the soft, tentative brush of her lips on mine.
Ancestors, but I really wanted to go home.
Of course, there were more people who wanted me dead there than in the entire population of the borderlands. How was I supposed to defend myself from war mages and hextrackers when I couldn’t even hold my own against a skinny thirteen-year-old kid?
Reichis gave a loud snort from atop my shoulder. Despite being slightly too tall and heavy to make it comfortable for either of us, he’d taken to perching there sometimes. It wasn’t from any sense of affection for me; the little runt just likes being high up. ‘Should’ve followed my advice,’ he said, slurring his words. He sometimes gets into the flask of liquor that Ferius keeps in her saddlebag.
I worked my mouth open and closed a few times until I could speak properly, if painfully. ‘Remind me again?’
Reichis made a ‘huff’ sound in my ear. It’s his version of a sigh. ‘First, clamp your teeth around the other guy’s neck.’ He opened his mouth wide to reveal his fangs and jutted out his jaw. ‘Then shake until his throat comes apart. Simple.’
‘Right. I’ll try to remember that for next time.’
It doesn’t do to get into an argument about fighting with the squirrel cat. Any time I did he just bit me and said, ‘See? See? Now who’s the dumb animal?’
‘Or you can rip his eyeballs out,’ he added. ‘That also works.’
‘Got it.’
‘Ears are good too. You wouldn’t think so, but tearing the ears off a guy really puts a hurt on him.’
Ferius chuckled. ‘Is the little bugger going on about eyeballs again?’
She doesn’t share whatever bond with Reichis it is that lets my mind translate his chitters and growls and farts into words, but evidently she’s been around enough squirrel cats to know that they all think they’re the apex predators of the animal world. ‘He’s onto ears now,’ I said.
Ferius shook her head, curly red hair following along for the ride. ‘It’s always something with his kind. Eyes, ears, tongues. You’d think they’d find something new once in a while.’
‘Hey, shtick with what works, I always shey.’
I turned my head to look at Reichis. ‘Are you drunk? You sound weird.’
Ferius chuckled. ‘He ain’t drunk, kid.’
‘Then what …?’ The hint of a self-satisfied smirk had begun to light up the squirrel cat’s fuzzy face. ‘What did you do, Reichis?’
He didn’t reply at first, so I kept my eyes locked onto him. Staring contests make him uncomfortable. After a few seconds he opened his mouth wide and lifted up his tongue to reveal the three coins hidden there.
‘You rotten … You snuck back in? While I was getting my ass handed to me, you went back inside that shop and stole a second time?’
Reichis hopped off my shoulder and onto the front of the saddle, reaching into his mouth with a paw and taking out the coins. ‘Hey, those townies stole from us, remember?’ he mumbled. ‘Someone needed to retrieve our hard-earned money.’ He proceeded to stuff the coins into a small black bag hidden under the horn of the saddle. He’d asked me to buy him the bag so he’d have somewhere to keep his private treasures and had made it clear what would happen to stray fingers that found their way inside it. So much for ‘our’ hard-earned money.
We rode on a ways until the sun was getting low on the horizon before Ferius asked, ‘You ready to talk about what happened back in town, kid?’
‘You mean when I nearly got choked to death?’
‘I mean when you almost took that boy’s head off with that spell of yours.’
For someone who was supposed to be teaching me how to stay alive, Ferius spent a lot more time worrying about other people. ‘It wasn’t enough powder to kill him,’ I insisted. ‘Just enough to …’
‘Just what? Set him on fire? Scar him for life?’
‘It was the shadowblack,’ I tried to explain. ‘Sometimes it—’
‘The shadowblack shows you an ugly world, Kellen,’ she said, cutting me off. ‘It don’t give you an excuse to be just as ugly. That ain’t the Argosi way.’
The Argosi way. Whatever that means.
I started to turn away, but she reached out a hand and took hold of my chin, holding it steady even as we rode. ‘Those markings of yours grow just a touch each time you use magic, you know that, right?’
‘It’s just your imagination,’ I said, shaking her off. ‘Besides, how else am I supposed to defend myself if you won’t teach me any of your Argosi combat techniques?’
‘I keep telling you, kid, there ain’t no such thing.’ She reached into her black leather waistcoat to pull out one of her long, thin smoking reeds. ‘Wrastlin’ ain’t the Argosi way either.’
Wrastlin’ is what Ferius calls it any time I get into trouble. ‘I saw you beat that guy back there, remember? He was huge!’
‘He was a big one all right,’ she conceded. ‘But I didn’t fight him. I just danced with him a little.’
‘That punch would have taken a normal person’s head right off. Your jaw must be made of iron!’
She smiled as if I’d said something funny, then lit her reed with a match retrieved from the cuff of her linen shirt. After a long, slow drag, she let out a thick puff of smoke that enveloped us in blue-white fog. ‘Kid, my jaw ain’t any tougher than yours or anyone else’s. Think back to what you really saw, not what you expected to see.’
I have a good visual memory – it comes with a lifetime of training in how to perfectly envision spells before casting them. When I thought back to the fight, I saw Ferius, leaning forward, presenting her jaw to her opponent, her right foot behind her. Squinty’s fist came at her, all the strength of his hips and shoulders channelled into that punch. Then … There was something odd about my recollection of that moment. Events had taken place too fast to really see, but thinking on it, I could swear that by the time the blow landed, Ferius had not only turned all the way around, but her body was leaning back. Which meant that the instant the man’s fist had connected with her face, Ferius had spun, following the line of his punch perfectly to dissipate the force. ‘You tricked him,’ I said suddenly. ‘It looked like he hit you, but the blow barely landed at all, did it?’
Ferius reached up a hand to rub at her jaw. ‘It landed well enough. Any less and he’d have figured out that I dodged most of it.’
‘But to move that fast, that’s …’
‘Dancin’,’ she said.
When you study magic, above all else you learn precision. Spellcasting is an exact science. Every syllable, every somatic shape you make with your fingers and the image you hold in your mind, has to be impeccable. But nothing I’d learned could compare to how skilled Ferius would have to be to pull that manoeuvre off. ‘The timing had to be flawless,’ I said, my voice barely above a whisper.
‘Timing’s part of dancing,’ she said, as if that explained everything.
I still couldn’t wrap my head around it. ‘You’d have to know exactly where he was going to land the punch. Only how could you, unless …?’ Then it came to me: she’d tapped a finger right at a spot on her jaw, and leaned forward so it was the only good target. Still, everything – the movement, the angles – had to be perfect. ‘That punch could have broken your neck.’
‘Maybe.’
I felt my cheeks flush from a sudden wave of shame. ‘You risked your own life to save me. Again.’
Ferius adjusted her hat and pushed loose curls up underneath. ‘Well now, that makes me sound proper noble, don’t it?’ Before I could reply she nudged her horse into a trot and mine followed along. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s put some more distance between us and that town so I don’t end up havin’ to be noble twice in one day.’