‘Tell me again why you’ve got us escorting Seneira all the way back to Teleidos?’ I asked, pulling on the reins in an effort to nudge my horse back on the path. He had a bad habit of drifting off the road for no particular reason – a character trait he shared with Ferius. ‘And don’t start up with that nonsense about “following the wind” again. That’s not an answer.’
Ferius angled her frontier hat forward to keep the sun out of her eyes. ‘Sure it is, kid. It’s just not the one you’re looking for.’ She shot me a warning look. ‘So how about you take my advice and leave it alone?’
I glanced back to where Rosie and Seneira rode a little ways behind us, just out of earshot. ‘But she’s not even Jan’Tep. How could she have the shadowblack?’
‘First of all, kid, quit talking as if you Jan’Tep were a race. You’re just a bunch of magically inclined folk who came to this continent searching for the kind of power that had faded from your own lands.’ She reached out a finger and flicked my cheek. ‘Different skin colours, different faces, eyes, noses … you’re like a big bowl of beggar’s stew.’
That got my back up. ‘That “beggar’s stew” you’re talking about happens to produce the finest mages on the continent, who just happen to live in the most beautiful cities in the world.’
Ferius snorted. ‘That sure would impress me if your people had actually built those cities.’
She had a point. Why was I sticking up for the Jan’Tep? My ancestors had started a war with the Mahdek, massacred their people and stolen their cities, all so they could take control of the oases that gave us our magic. There probably weren’t a hundred full-blooded Mahdek left in the world.
Ferius was one of them.
‘Sorry,’ I said.
‘Sorry for what?’
I whispered, ‘Because you’re Mahdek.’
‘I’m Argosi, kid. Mahdek blood is something I was born with. The path of the wild daisy is what I chose.’
Reichis, lying on his back between the front of the saddle and the horse’s neck, staring up at the cloudless sky wistfully, decided to chime in. ‘Squirrel-cat blood is what I was born with,’ he said. ‘And the path of the wild squirrel cat is what I choose. Why overcomplicate things?’
When I translated for Ferius, she chuckled. ‘Well, well, squirrel-cat philosophy, right there in a nutshell.’ She tipped her hat to him. Reichis loved that and mimed the gesture back at her.
I felt oddly left out. In some ways Ferius and Reichis had more in common with each other than either did with me: they’d both chosen a path for themselves. They were … something. Me? I’d made a grand total of one important decision in my life: to walk away from my people, and I was starting to think that that had been a mistake. Outlaws are nobodies, with no families, no friends and no real purpose. Calling yourself one is just a faster way of describing all the things you don’t have.
‘You all right, kid?’ Ferius asked.
‘Just great.’ I tried to shake off my morose thoughts and turn my attention back to the question that Ferius had – yet again – managed to dodge. ‘Regardless of whether or not the Jan’Tep are a race, the shadowblack only manifests among mages. Seneira swears she isn’t one, so either she’s lying or—’
‘Leave it alone, kid.’
‘No!’ I realised I’d shouted and glanced back to see if Rosie and Seneira had noticed. Fortunately they both seemed pretty intent on ignoring me. ‘I’m the one with a price on my head, not you. Seneira’s got bounty hunters after her and they won’t hesitate to kill me too, so I at least deserve to know why you’ve got us riding into even more danger than usual.’
‘Fine. You remember back in that town when those folks saw the shadowblack around your eye and they all reckoned you had some sort of “demon plague”?’
‘Yeah, but that’s just superstitious nonsense. There’s no such thing as a—’
Ferius gave me a sharp look. ‘Is that so? You really figure four months outside your own lands is enough to make you an expert on what can and what can’t become an epidemic?’
There was a tension in her face, and in the tone of her voice, that was at odds with her usual glib demeanour. A thought occurred to me that made my guts go cold. ‘You’ve seen a mage plague before, haven’t you?’
She wouldn’t meet my eye, but stared straight ahead at the road in front of us. ‘Yeah, kid. I’ve seen a plague. Can’t say for certain whether it spread through magic or infection or something else, but people had a name for it: the Red Scream. And it was just as bad as it sounds. Until it got dealt with.’
‘Dealt with how?’
Ferius glanced back at Rosie, and the two of them shared a look that didn’t seem friendly at all. ‘Ask me some other time, kid.’
I might have pressed her on the subject, but at that precise moment my eyes landed on Seneira for just a second. Apparently it was a second too long. ‘Are you staring again?’ She glowered.
Usually it takes people at least a full day to decide they dislike me, but Seneira clearly hadn’t wanted to wait that long. She seemed perpetually convinced that I was either leering or making fun of her. Usually it was neither. I just wasn’t used to being around someone my own age any more. It didn’t help that she was pretty either – way too pretty for me to be relaxed around her. Ferius said this might be a sign that I was developing a mental disorder and suggested I let her know if and when I noticed any additional symptoms.
But my discomfort around Seneira wasn’t simply my usual awkwardness or even the fact that just talking to her made me feel oddly guilty about Nephenia. The real reason I was so troubled by Seneira was the markings around her eyes, so much like mine that even though it hurt to look at them, I couldn’t stop myself.
‘I could give you some of my mesdet paste,’ I said, reaching back into my saddlebag. ‘You could cover up the markings so you wouldn’t need to wear that blindfold every time we pass through a village.’
She rolled her eyes – she did that a lot. ‘Of course! Paste! Why didn’t I think of that? Oh, maybe because I did, of course.’
‘So why—’
‘It burns, that’s why. Whenever I try to put paste on it, the skin starts to feel like it’s on fire.’
I nodded. It never felt completely comfortable to cover over the markings, but it wasn’t that bad. But Seneira, despite her plain clothing, looked and talked like she came from money. Probably she’d never had much hardship in her life before. Of course, neither had I until recently. ‘Maybe you’re just not used to it. Just try a little.’
‘“Just try a little”?’
‘I have seen the effects,’ Rosie said, her voice calm as a warm breeze. ‘They are … uncomfortable to behold. The child’s shadowblack seems to seethe when anything is applied to it, and the pain is clearly considerable.’
‘Thank you,’ Seneira said.
‘Though I confess she is unpleasant even at the best of times.’
‘Maybe if you hadn’t kidnapped m—’
‘Rescued,’ Rosie corrected.
‘Wait,’ I asked, turning to look at Seneira, suddenly concerned this situation wasn’t at all what I’d thought. ‘You said you were with her of your own free will.’
‘It’s complicated,’ she replied, though her attitude seemed to soften towards me just a bit. ‘I got into some trouble, and …’ she hesitated, then smiled evilly as she said, ‘Rosie, helped me out.’
Rosie frowned. ‘That’s not my name. I am the Path of Thorns and—’
Seneira cut her off. ‘No normal person refers to themselves as “the path” of anything, so we can either go with Rosie or you can tell me your real name.’
The Argosi opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again. Finally she gave in. ‘I suppose “Rosie” is as good as anything else.’ She grimaced at Ferius, clearly blaming her for the nickname.
‘Heh heh,’ Reichis sniggered. ‘I like having these two around. It’s fun.’
‘Anyway,’ Seneira went on, ‘I was being pursued by those insane Jan’Tep you met and Rosie fought them off. Then they kept coming and I knew I couldn’t make it on my own. She offered to help protect me, only now she won’t take me where I want to go.’
‘The child ran away from home,’ Rosie explained.
‘I’m sixteen! When you’re sixteen it’s not called “running away”, it’s called, “going where you want to go”.’
‘Which you are free to do, but I am going north, to your city. So if you want my protection, that’s where you’ll go as well.’
‘Wait,’ I said to Rosie. ‘If Seneira doesn’t want to go home, why are you going there?’
It was Seneira who replied. Whatever goodwill I’d bought myself by my concern that she might be a prisoner had evidently been spent. ‘How thick are you? I’m neither Jan’Tep nor am I a student of magic, but somehow I caught the shadowblack.’ She pointed to Rosie and Ferius. ‘These two weirdos are Argosi, which means anything strange happens in the world and they feel a burning need to go paint a card about it. Obviously they think the markings mean something.’
‘They do mean something,’ Rosie insisted.
‘They might,’ Ferius countered.
The two of them exchanged a look that seemed significant but meant nothing to me. Evidently I knew as little about the Argosi as I did about everything else in the world outside my home.
Having had enough of Seneira’s disdain, I decided to change the subject. Ferius says that a good way to make people like you is to get them to talk about themselves. I know – it doesn’t make sense to me either. Wouldn’t someone want to hear about your good qualities in order to form a favourable opinion of you? Still, every once in a while she’s onto something, so I asked Seneira, ‘If you aren’t studying to be a mage, what are you studying?’
It took a few seconds before she gave me an answer, and once she did, I understood her hesitation. ‘I’m going to be a diplomat.’
It took a long time for Reichis to stop laughing.