Dexan took a step towards us. The crocodile, sensing violence was coming, snapped its teeth in anticipation. From his perch on my shoulder, Reichis snarled at the other animal, but it wasn’t his usual eager, almost joyous challenge. This was higher-pitched, panicked. The squirrel cat was terrified.
‘How did you know?’ I asked, playing for time, glancing around the room, desperately searching for some distraction we could use to make our escape.
Dexan gave me one of his phoney smiles and shook his head sadly. ‘Third rule of spellslinging, kid: never let love make you stupid.’
‘You’re lying,’ I said, my fingers itching to grab at the powders at my sides. ‘Seneira would never—’
‘He’s distracting you, kid,’ Ferius warned. She had a half-dozen of her razor-sharp steel cards fanned out in her right hand. ‘Stop playing his game.’
But I couldn’t let it go. The thought that Seneira might have betrayed us, that she could be working with Dexan … No, that’s what he wants you to think.
‘That fake shadowblack,’ I said then, working it out even as I talked. ‘You can see what the victim sees, hear what they hear. That’s why the attacks happen when they do: you’re the one triggering them, so you can use the afflicted as spies.’
Dexan sighed. ‘See, kid? This is exactly why you ought to be working with me. You’re quick; you work things out. We’d make one hell of a team.’
Anger and outrage were rising up from my stomach, making me feel sick. ‘You’re the voice Seneira hears. You’re the one saying all those horrible things to her.’
‘Now, that’s not entirely fair. I mean, sure, I had some fun for a while there – the girl’s such a self-righteous little creature; how could I resist giving her a push now and then? But that was only at the beginning, before I gave control of her over to my clients. That’s who’s talking to her now, Kellen, and, believe me, you don’t want to mess with them.’
‘Who?’ I demanded. ‘Who are you working for?’
‘Fourth rule, Kellen: never rat out the client.’
Without another word he touched the onyx bracelet on his wrist and whispered a two-syllable incantation. Suddenly the beast was racing towards us, jaws wide open. The sudden rise in Reichis’s growl filled my right ear even as I pulled powder from my pouches and hurled it. ‘Carath,’ I said as I formed the somatic shapes.
Fire exploded in front of me, so hot my own cheeks felt they might burn. Reichis screamed and leaped off me to the ground, suddenly rolling on the carpet to put out the flame that had caught part of his fur. Only then did I realise what had happened: my spell had failed. I stared down at the palm of my right hand, where an angry red patch of skin in a perfect circle was now throbbing.
‘Sorry, kid,’ Dexan said. ‘Turns out that charm I stuck on you does more than just lead you to wherever I want you to go. It also keeps you from using magic unless I want you to.’
I leaped back, desperately avoiding the crocodile’s snapping jaws as the animal lumbered towards me. Within seconds I was backed into a corner and I watched helplessly as the beast twisted its head and opened its mouth wide so that it could grab hold of my leg. A steel card flew through the air, partially embedding itself in the creature’s scales just for an instant before falling to the floor. The crocodile turned, briefly distracted, only to come back at me.
‘Die, you filthy reptile!’ Reichis snarled, concern for me temporarily overpowering both his fear of the crocodile and his sense of self-preservation.
‘Reichis, no!’
The squirrel cat landed on the animal’s back and started raking at it with his claws, but to no avail. The beast’s hide was too thick. The crocodile suddenly flipped over, rolling onto Reichis, who screamed in pain and surprise at finding himself on the floor, where he was most vulnerable. Another two cards struck the beast, but neither stuck. ‘Ah, the hell with it,’ I heard Ferius say.
Just as the crocodile was about to snap at Reichis, Ferius dropped her deck of steel cards and leaped onto the animal’s back, covering it with her whole body, wrapping her arms and legs around its thickly armoured hide to keep the creature from being able to reach her with its jaws. The crocodile instinctively flipped over several times, trying to shake her off so it could attack her with its teeth. Ferius just kept hanging on, shouting, ‘I. Hate. Wrastlin’. Crocodiles!’
I ran over and scooped up as many of the cards from the floor as I could, trying not to slice my own fingers open. I don’t know how Ferius managed to hold them so easily without cutting herself, but it was a skill I hadn’t mastered. ‘Leave the croc to me,’ she shouted, struggling to maintain her grip on the animal as Reichis hopped around, hackles high and hissing madly as he searched for a weak point to bite or scratch at. ‘Get Dexan!’
I flung one of the cards at the spellslinger, though I doubted it would reach my target. Sure enough, he got a shield up. It wasn’t particularly strong, and the card didn’t so much bounce off as kind of hover before falling to the ground. ‘Best you give up now, kid,’ he said. ‘Another minute or so and the Argosi and the squirrel cat are both going to be dead and it’ll be your fault.’
I flung two more cards at him, and again they seemed to get stuck in the air for an instant, only to then tumble down. His shield was weak. If I could just distract him long enough, maybe it would fail. I reached into my pouches and tossed a pinch of each of the powders at him. The resulting explosion of flame burnt the tips of my fingers, but Dexan flinched, and for just a second I was sure his shield had come down. I heard Ferius grunting in pain, but I kept focused and hurled the next card, feeling a brief moment of victory as it embedded itself in Dexan’s thigh. He screamed, but he wasn’t the only one.
I glanced over to my right and saw Ferius on the floor, holding her arm which bled where the crocodile’s teeth had bitten into her flesh, but the creature itself wasn’t paying any attention to her, because right then it had its jaws around Reichis. The squirrel cat was screaming my name over and over.
‘There now,’ Dexan said, his voice strained as he plucked the card out of his thigh. ‘Guess I had that coming.’
‘Please,’ I begged, my eyes glued to the crocodile’s jaws that were holding Reichis helpless in their grip. Any more pressure and the squirrel cat would be crushed. I stared at the crocodile, wondering why it hadn’t finished the job, and saw for the first time the swirling black inside its eyes. Whatever magic Dexan had been using on his victims, he was now using to control the crocodile. Reichis whimpered, and I saw him staring at me, eyes wide with terror, pleading with me to save him. ‘Just let us go,’ I begged Dexan.
‘Let you go?’ For the first time the glib self-assurance left Dexan’s eyes, replaced by a burning outrage. ‘I gave you the chance to be my partner, Kellen. My partner!’
He strode towards me, hands clenching as if he was going to choke me. Just before he got close, Ferius reached into her waistcoat and pulled out the eight-inch metal tube with the other three pieces inside, flicked it to its full extension, and struck Dexan on the shin.
‘Damn it,’ he bellowed.
Ferius brought her arm back for another swing, but Dexan’s fingers twitched and the crocodile’s teeth closed a fraction more. Reichis screamed again and I saw blood well in his fur. He went quiet, then passed out from pain or fear.
‘Stop!’ I dropped to my knees in front of Dexan. ‘Please … Just tell me what I have to do.’
A version of Dexan’s smile returned, though it was meaner than the one I was used to. ‘Well, first of all …’ He leaned down and his hand swung out and cracked Ferius across the jaw. On the floor as she was, there was no way to turn with the blow to dissipate its force. Her head snapped back and her eyes looked blurry, confused, but even I could tell she was preparing a counter-attack. ‘Try it,’ Dexan warned, ‘and the squirrel cat dies.’
Ferius’s jaw clenched in anger, but then she nodded.
Dexan grinned at her. ‘Now then, you asked what you had to do to save the animal?’ He knelt down so he was face to face with Ferius. ‘Well, it’s easy. Just don’t move.’
I didn’t understand what he was getting at, but Ferius seemed to. She nodded again.
Dexan brought his fist back and punched her hard enough that his hand came back with blood on the knuckles. ‘Whoa, now that hurts,’ he said, then smiled as he punched her again. After the third time her eyes couldn’t seem to focus on him. When he hit her the fourth time, her head shook like a drunk’s and her mouth hung open.
‘Stop!’ I shouted.
‘Almost there,’ Dexan said, and swung at her again. This time when he hit her, she didn’t move at all.
‘You sick bastard!’ I cried. ‘Why are you doing this?’
He rose to his feet and came over to me, staring down at me like I was a child who’d disappointed him. ‘I’ve told you before, Kellen: it’s a tough world out there for people like us. You think you’ve had it bad? I’ve been on the run for ten years. Bounty hunters, hextrackers, war mages …’ He sighed in mock disgust. ‘You steal one too many sacred books and all of a sudden you’re an outcast.’
‘But … I thought you were hunted because you had the shadowblack like me.’
Dexan laughed, and raised a hand up to the scars around his eye. He pressed his thumb and forefinger into his cheek and pulled away what looked like scarred flesh. Underneath, his skin was smooth and unharmed. ‘The scam works better if people think I cured myself first,’ he explained.
‘But if it was all just a way of making money, why did you kill Revian and Tyne? Why are you—’
‘I got caught, all right!’ Dexan shouted. He calmed himself before continuing. ‘I got caught, Kellen. The people who were trying to find me, well, they got tired of me getting away and hired some real talent to come after me.’ He shook his head again. ‘They would’ve killed me right then and there, no trial or nothing. So I told them about my discovery, about the way I could make people think they had the shadowblack. Even bragged at the fun you could have using them to spy on their families to figure out just how much you could charge for the cure.’
A stupid move – even I knew that. For the first time, Dexan didn’t strike me as a quick-witted rogue. Instead what I saw now was a con artist, not too bright but with a few cunning spells and a willingness to do anything to survive. ‘You made a deal.’
‘Don’t give me that look, you ungrateful brat. I could’ve killed you and the Argosi and your pet the day I met you. I’m not a bad guy, but I need to get back into my clan, to be close to an oasis again to restore my connection to our people’s magic. The mages who caught me said they could have my exile overturned. I’d be free to go home, to leave this hellhole of a territory.’
‘So why are you still here? If you gave them the secret, can’t they—’
‘Doesn’t work that way, kid. It took me a while to tune myself to the … well, I’d tell you but that would be breaking rule number two.’ He came closer and cocked his fist. ‘Nothing personal, kid. Me, I think violence is barbaric, but my clients like to send a message.’
He only had to hit me once to keep me from getting up again.