38
The Bluff
Abydos set the needle down on the tray and began walking up the stairs towards me. Out of the corner of my eye I saw his men readying their weapons. Ferius shifted her weight, no doubt preparing some manoeuvre to give her an edge when the fight began.
Reichis clambered up my leg and back onto my shoulder. ‘Finally. Which one do I get to kill first?’
‘I think the animal’s going to attack,’ the young sandy-haired man warned, his knife at the ready. He moved into position next to Abydos.
The deep rage that had led me to threaten my uncle dissipated far faster than I would have thought possible, replaced by the cold, hard reality of our situation. There were just too many of them. Ferius, for all her taunts, was still groggy from the drugs they’d given her to fight them off. I’d used up what little strength the mine hadn’t already sapped by carrying Shalla further than my arms could handle. Even Reichis, for all his posturing, seemed to know that we couldn’t win this fight.
‘This would be a good time for a really powerful spell,’ he chittered in my ear.
‘I’ve got one that channels a light breeze,’ I said, ignoring the confused looks of my uncle and his followers. ‘Think that’ll work?’
Reichis gave a sigh. ‘Why did I ever agree to partner up with a magic-less skinbag?’
‘I think because your mother ordered you to.’
‘That’s dirty fighting.’
Okay, so we can’t win this with magic, and we can’t win it with weapons. What I really needed was some kind of ingenious ruse. Didn’t I used to be good at that? I’d tricked Tennat into beating himself in our initiates’ duel. Problem is, one gullible bully is easier to bluff than six deadly serious men and women. What I needed was a way to reduce their numbers so that Ferius, Reichis and I could make a move. Okay, so what weakness does a conspiracy have? The answer hit me like a blast of ember magic. Trust. ‘There’s something you failed to consider about this great rebellion of yours, Uncle.’
He gave a low chuckle, and smiled to the other Sha’Tep. ‘You see what I told you? Always some trick or scheme rolling around in his head. Never lets anyone see when he’s scared. Never backs down.’
‘This whole plan of yours is vulnerable – it relies on the Sha’Tep who live and work in the great houses poisoning the initiates from those families.’
‘It’s not poison,’ one of the women said defensively. ‘It just lessens their connection to the power of the oasis.’
‘Which will make the lords magi believe the bloodlines are weakening,’ I said, following the train of logic.
The young man with the sandy hair nodded, apparently excited that I’d worked it out. ‘With the clan prince dead, the council are terrified that the Berabesq will try to take advantage of our weakness to once again try to destroy us, or that the Daroman military will come to conquer us.’
The big man who’d worn the tusked mask spoke up. ‘When they see barely a handful of initiates becoming mages, they’ll realise how much they need the Sha’Tep. The mages don’t have the strength to pick up weapons. They don’t know how to fight or what it feels like to ache from hard labour.’
‘Exactly,’ Abydos said. ‘The Jan’Tep will finally understand that they need us, not as servants, but as equals.’
I shook my head in disgust. ‘Ancestors! No wonder there’s never been a Sha’Tep conspiracy before. You people are terrible at this.’
‘Don’t,’ Abydos warned. ‘Don’t mock these people and the risk they take.’
Okay, time to see how gullible you are, Uncle. ‘One of them has betrayed you.’
‘What? Who?’ the older man asked.
‘No one,’ Abydos said. ‘He’s just trying to stall.’
I took a chance and pushed back. ‘How can you be so stupid? Of course I was bluffing before – I was hoping Shalla would wake. But then I realised just how careless you’ve all been.’ Now that I thought about it, they really had been careless, which made it all the more easy to make my ploy sound believable. ‘Ra’meth knows! You haven’t launched some grand rebellion. All you’ve done is to turn over power to our family’s greatest enemy!’
‘What are you talking about?’
I started to weave recent events into my story. ‘The day after Tennat and his brothers attacked Ferius, Tennat showed up at the oasis and his magic was weakened. He couldn’t cast any spells.’
‘We got to him just like we got to the others,’ the big man said proudly.
‘Except that the next night he was casting blood sympathy spells! And just hours ago he was using silk and iron magic to track me! Don’t you see? Ra’meth figured out what you were doing and caught the Sha’Tep who was poisoning Tennat.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Abydos said. ‘Sephan here –’ he indicated the young man with the sandy hair – ‘is Ra’meth’s personal servant. He’d know if anyone in the House of Ra had found out.’
I leaned back against the wall, letting my exhaustion show through. ‘You know, Uncle, all my life I thought that the main difference between you and my father was that you didn’t have magic. Now I know it’s that you’re incredibly dumb.’ I pointed to Sephan. ‘Ra’meth put a mind chain on him. His will is bound and he can’t even do anything that would let you see that he’s been caught.’
My uncle and the others looked over at Sephan, who looked back at them in confusion. ‘I don’t know what he’s talking about. I’m fine. I couldn’t get any more of the compound into Tennat’s food that night. Everything will be fine.’
‘Except you’d have no choice but to say that if you were mind-chained,’ the big man pointed out.
I had to hold back my sigh of relief. I’d given, I thought, an excellent performance. The fear and then the anger on my face had been believable, and my lie was just credible enough to create doubt in their minds.
My deception had only one flaw, which had already started to squirm around in the back of my mind. There was a reason why my story was so convincing.
It turned out to be true.
‘Well, well, well,’ a voice said from down the corridor in the mausoleum. ‘This all sounds positively dire.’
It was Ra’meth.