Seneira and I sat facing each other in the wreckage of Dexan’s lair. I’d set up a small table between us with the necessary instruments. Two sets of metallic inks bubbled and boiled in tiny glass containers over twin braziers, the flames flickering red and blue. ‘Are you ready?’ I asked.
She nodded. ‘I’m ready.’ Seneira was doing a good job of keeping the quavering out of her voice, but the fear was plain as day in her eyes. This was going to hurt, and she knew it.
I’d made Dexan go over every step of the process three times, making sure he didn’t change any details in each recounting. Ferius kept an eye on him while Reichis, who had wrapped himself around Dexan’s neck, chittered a near-constant stream of threats into his ear. Despite having no idea what he was saying, Ferius pretended to relay every word. Most of her guesses were pretty close to what the squirrel cat was saying. I guess he really is predictable sometimes.
I dipped the first needle into the container of liquefied copper. Dexan hadn’t lied when he’d said the procedure was similar to the counter-banding my parents had done to me, which made my hands alternately want to clench in anger or shake with trepidation. The critical part was the breath spell I’d use to channel the inks as they entered the skin around her eye. Once the needle pierced flesh, I’d have to guide the molten metal into the worm, killing it without burning Seneira’s flesh … or blinding her for life. But it was this, or forever be under the control of whoever had been behind this whole ugly business.
As I raised the first needle up to her eye, Seneira leaned back out of reach. ‘Wait … Kellen, stop.’
I thought she was panicking, now unsure if she could go through with the procedure, but it was something else entirely. ‘Kellen, I can feel them … the mages who have the other part of the worm. They’re trying to talk through me.’
‘Hold them off,’ I said. ‘It won’t be long, I promise.’
‘No. I’m going to let them do it. Maybe something they say will help us figure out who they are.’
I’d seen what it looked like when they insinuated themselves inside her mind before. The sickening pain on her face had been almost too much to endure. ‘They’re not going to reveal themselves, Seneira. This is just some—’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t care. Maybe you’re right and we won’t learn anything, but I want to do it anyway.’
‘Why?’
Seneira reached out and took my hand, making me set the needle back down on the tray. ‘Because I want you to deliver a message to them from me.’
‘Hello, Kellen.’ The voice was Seneira’s, but the diction, the way her mouth moved, belonged to someone or something else entirely.
I said nothing in reply, staring at her face, watching every twitch of the lips, every slight raise of the eyebrow or subtle smirk rising from one corner of her mouth.
‘Come now,’ she said. ‘Don’t play the silent, petulant child. You must have many questions.’
‘I don’t.’
‘Really? I very much doubt that.’
I laughed, partly to disguise my own discomfort at watching Seneira being used in this way. ‘I already know you won’t tell me who you are and I already know what you’ve come to say.’
Seneira’s eyes narrowed to slits. ‘Tell us.’
‘You want to make me an offer.’ I nodded back to where Dexan was tied up. ‘Like the one you made him.’
A smile crept onto Seneira’s face. ‘Oh, better than that. True, we would have permitted Dexan to enter one of the oases, to renew his connection to the raw source of Jan’Tep magic, but for you we would give so much more.’
‘A pardon,’ I said, having fully expected this. ‘The end of the bounty on my head.’
‘A chance to grow up without fear of being hunted, to return to your home. Freedom, instead of captivity. Comfort, instead of fear.’ Seneira leaned forward just a bit. ‘Life, instead of death.’
I considered the words that had been spoken, every one, until finally I said, ‘Thank you.’
The head tilted, ‘Ah, but not so quick. First there is what you must do for us. You will cease your interference in our affairs. You will leave this place without revealing what that little swamp witch’s spirit spell has shown you about who we have taken under our control and you will kill the spellslinger Dexan so that he cannot reveal what he knows.’
That last part was tempting, but … ‘I don’t think so.’
Anger flashed on her features. ‘Do not attempt to negotiate with us, child. You have—’
‘No, you don’t understand. I wasn’t thanking you for the offer before, I was thanking you for the clue you gave me about your identity.’
‘Oh?’
I nodded. ‘I already knew that only mages of the highest order could work the spells needed for what you’ve done here, and only someone of tremendous influence could have corralled so many bounty hunters to help you track down Dexan. Only lords magi have that kind of power and authority. But then you gave me the thing I was missing: you said I could return to my home.’
‘You disbelieve us?’
‘On the contrary, it makes perfect sense. The thing is, no Jan’Tep clan could ever make that offer on behalf of another clan, which also explains why your accent is so close to my own.’ I leaned forward and stared into Seneira’s face, but into the gaze of our enemies. ‘You’re lords magi of my own clan.’
Even before I received a response, I imagined their faces. Ra’meth, if he was still alive, Te’oreth, An’atria, Ven’asp. I hoped Osia’phest wasn’t involved. I’d always liked the old man. I picked up the small shallow case containing the remaining onyx bracelets. Then I picked up a small hammer I’d found among Dexan’s things and smashed the bracelets into pieces.
Seneira’s jaw stiffened and her eyes widened in rage. Her hands started to reach out for my neck, but she was still in there, her will too strong to allow them. ‘We will kill the girl in front of you,’ the voice said, its timbre changing, deepening, the words echoing inside the chamber. ‘We will send ember magic through her to kill you and those with you.’
A glow began to emerge from her eye, red and fiery with traces of an icy blue as though lightning were building up inside a ball of flame. I feared we’d pushed our enemies too far, but then the magic died down, and Seneira, sweat dripping from her brow, said, ‘I. Think. Not.’
She was incredible, resisting their control with only her raw will, denying them access to her as an anchor for their spells. I knew she couldn’t do it forever though, so I relayed her message. ‘Stay out of the Seven Sands, My Lords Magi. It can be a far more dangerous place than you might expect.’
The glow disappeared entirely, and for a moment I thought they’d gone, but then the voice said, ‘There is a special hell for those who betray their own people, Kellen of the House of Ke. You dishonour all those who have loved you.’
I considered that last threat, something about it bothering me – like words I couldn’t make out on a page or an itch I couldn’t scratch. ‘I’ve never wanted to hurt my people,’ I said, then looked into the swirling black within Seneira’s eyes that somehow carried all the way across the endless miles back to my enemy’s own. ‘But I’m going to find out who you are one day and kill you all the same.’
Seneira’s mouth opened to speak, but then her fists clenched. ‘No, I think that’s all we want to hear from you.’ She blinked her eyes then looked at me. They were green again, and filled with tears. ‘Do it now, Kellen, burn this atrocity out of me.’
I dipped the needle back into the molten copper, and for the next hour I did what had to be done; the deed was difficult and dangerous, and listening to her screams as the worm twitched and seethed beneath her skin was almost more than I could bear as I struggled to perform the spell, but I didn’t waver, not once. Her courage kept my hand steady and my mind focused.
When it was done, the tiny black ashes of what remained of the worm slid down the tracks of her tears. She wiped it all away with the sleeve of her shirt. For a while she was silent, then finally she said, ‘Thank you, Kellen.’
I should have felt relief that she was safe, and gratitude because things could have gone so very badly. Instead a fury seethed inside me. My people – my own people – had done this, were doing it still to the others whose bracelets they possessed. All to bring a new form of the shadowblack – the darkest legacy of my people – into the lives of innocents. The black markings around my own eye began to smoulder with a heat that was soon matched inside my chest. My left eye kept blinking uncontrollably, and each time it did, I saw a vision – of fire, of destruction. Murder and mayhem with me at its head, destroying my enemies. Burning them alive. Killing. Killing. Killing.
‘It’s all right,’ Seneira said, her voice closer than I’d expected. I was on my feet and she was next to me, her head on my shoulder, holding on to me as if a wind were about to blow me away. ‘It’s all right.’
As gently as I could I separated myself from her, the darkness still burning behind my left eye. ‘You shouldn’t be near me right now.’
She seemed unfazed. ‘Why is that?’
‘Because I have the shadowblack. The real shadowblack, not the thing they put inside you. There’s … There’s something terrible inside me that’s just waiting to come out, and I don’t know how long I’ll be able to hold it back. I’m not who you think I am.’
Seneira reached a hand to my face. I flinched, but she carried on until her finger was tracing the winding black lines around my eye. ‘Maybe you’re not who you think you are either, Kellen.’ She took her hand away. ‘There’s one thing I know about you for sure though.’
‘What’s that?’
She kissed me on the cheek. ‘You’re a far better person than you think you are.’
I didn’t know what to say to that. I never do.
Seneira hugged me once more, then said, ‘Come on. My father will have realised we’re gone and he’ll be worried.’
‘I can’t go,’ I said, exhaustion starting to set in as it always did after one of my episodes. ‘I have to keep searching in case Dexan has any more onyx bracelets hidden around here.’
‘Okay,’ she said, ‘but you’ll come back to my house straight afterwards. Don’t deny my father the chance to thank you.’
Not knowing what else to do, I nodded.
Ferius, Reichis and I spent the next few hours searching Dexan’s things, much to his dismay. Ferius found a journal Dexan had kept, listing the names and family details of his victims, along with a notation on a half-dozen of them that we figured out meant the bracelets were now in the possession of Dexan’s clients.
‘They’ll get to you, you know,’ he said to me as we were preparing to leave. ‘You don’t know what it’s like out there, Kellen.’
‘Now weren’t you goin’ on braggin’ about what a successful spellslinger you were?’ Ferius asked with a chuckle.
Dexan spat. ‘It’s not any kind of life. It’s running from town to town, hoping some bounty hunter doesn’t kill you in your sleep. It’s scratching the dirt looking for anything – anything at all – to give you an edge the next time you have to fight. People don’t trust you, and you can’t trust them.’ He looked up at me. ‘Believe me, kid, you’re going to regret not taking the deal they offered. Those mages, whoever they are? They’re going to kill you.’ He pulled at his restraints. ‘That’s if I don’t get to you first.’
I walked past him and reached down to pick up his black frontier hat with its copper and silver glyphs set in the band circling its circumference. ‘What are you doing with that?’ he demanded.
I set it on my head and felt it slide down just a little low on my brow. It was too big for me and probably looked ridiculous, but I didn’t care. ‘It’s called the Way of Water, Dexan. You tried to kill me, so I get to keep your hat.’