A Wizard's Sacrifice Read online

  “Chosen isn’t how I’d put it.” He dropped onto the sofa, and a pang hollowed her lungs as he rubbed the stubble peppering brown cheeks and chin. Dark and beautiful, like stars on a quiet bay, he outshone even his sister. “Melody Reyendal said I’d be jeopardizing the dignity of the Guild if I performed now. People would be distracted by the stump, he said.”

  “That’s ridiculous!” Her cry reverberated through the house.

  “I’m not a master yet,” he replied in mindspeech. She wished he’d spoken aloud, if only so she could hear the deep timbre of his voice. Six years she’d lived among Lathans, and while she’d come to think their winters cold, she’d never grown accustomed to their silent way of speaking. “But even if I were a master, I couldn’t perform without the Guild’s approval, which means Reyendal’s permission, since he’s leader of the Minstrels. The Loremaster’s path is the only one left to me now.” His lips sagged. “The Mora Guildschool is a worthy post, or so the Harmony took pains to remind me. Most Loremasters have taught there for a time, and it is an honor for a journeyman to have a residency there.”

  “You always said, if you were a Loremaster, you could leave a greater legacy than you could as a Minstrel.”

  “I believe what I said was, ‘Stagecraft is ephemeral; scholarship eternal.’ What a load of pompous rubbish! I suppose I thought in the end, they’d make an exception for me—or rather, for His Highness Prince Ashel of Narath, the Crystal Voice of Latha—and let me become a Master Minstrel and a Loremaster.” Head down, he massaged the raw, pink patches mottling his maimed hand. In the hearth, crackling logs spat sparks up the flue, and beautiful dark eyes met hers. “The library in Mora is almost as big as the one here at the Academy. You’d love it.”

  Desire and terror grappled with each other, her gut caught in the middle. “I’m sure I would.” Before she’d been a soldier or a slave, she’d been a Logkeeper, a scholar dedicated to preserving the ship’s logs of the United Mineral mining ship LSNDR2237, aka the Elesendar. For three thousand years, the empty spacecraft had orbited the planet, appearing as a bright star that crossed the sky two or three times a night. For almost two hundred generations, her people, the Oreseekers, had memorized and passed down the text of every log in their possession. Lathan Loremasters revered the same documents but treated them as religious parables. To them, Elesendar was not a ship, but a god. She cleared her throat. “I’m sure I would, but I’m a heretic.”

  He clasped her hand. “I don’t care about that. Come with me.”

  Every cell in her body strained toward him, an instinctive need that splashed and roiled against her will like a river against a dam. It’s just the damn Woern—you do not love him. Yet her hand rose and stroked his cheek. His lips parted hers, tongues twined, and warmth and energy flowed into her, wiping away the ever-present ache behind her eyes. He pulled her to his chest; one hand caressing her neck, sliding into her hair, a single thumb massaging the nape of her neck. Just a thumb.

  Coughing, she pulled away. “I’m sorry.” Eyes brimming, she stood and hugged her shoulders, struggling for breath. “I can’t accept succor from you.”

  “Succor? That’s not—”

  “I can’t. It isn’t fair, not to you.”

  His mouth flattened, leeching the kindness from his face. A year ago she could not have imagined those beautiful eyes smoldering with rage, but now the heat rarely left them. “I do not blame you for this,” he said, his thumb folded over his palm, severed knuckles bent into half a fist.

  “How can you not? I could have saved you, but I saved myself instead. Some things are unforgivable, Ashel. You deserve better. That’s what I came to tell you—you deserve better. I hope things go well in Mora. Goodbye.”

  Porch boards banged and snow groaned under running feet. Ducking into an alley, she checked for witnesses, then shot through sifting white into the cold gray clouds blanketing the city. Her nerves sang with the rush of power, and bliss washed from her loins to her eyes. Her body hungered for more, and she breathed deeply, hurtling faster through swirling ice crystals, across the city and out over the forest. She had not used the Woern in nearly two months, not since the day she’d fried a woman’s hand down to the bone. She would have gladly made the interrogator suffer for what she’d done to Ashel, but Vic would have done it with a dagger. Bethniel insisted she use her power, and the Relman Council hastily agreed to all their demands, to Bethniel’s triumph and Vic’s shame.

  It had been so easy. Wizardry was outlawed for good reason.

  Throat tight, she dropped into the forest. A mile or so from the Manor, she slipped down a familiar wooded slope into a glade dominated by an ancient cerrenil. Leafless branches drooped in the snowy gloom, a twig-laden veil. The trunk rose from drifted snow like the bodice of a fancy gown. In bright sunlight, the branches would reach for the sky, solid and strong, but at night they became as flexible as vines and hung like an old crone’s ratted hair. Lathans revered these white-barked trees, called them old mothers and believed their god Elesendar came down and mated with them to beget humanity. A ridiculous story no one should credit, except everyone in Latha—in most of Knownearth, in fact—believed it a likelier explanation for human origins than spacefaring ancestors.

  Vic settled beside the tree, one hand on the trunk. “How could everything go so wrong in half a year?” A twig brushed her cheek, and her lips curved despite the anguish gripping her heart. She had never seen the cerrenils do anything unusual beyond lift and lower their branches according to variations in sunlight, but she knew they had guided her steps and hidden her from enemies during the war. They had also somehow tapped into her memories, giving her strange visions and helping her find her path after she escaped from Lornk Korng. “Is that like the Woern?” she asked, scientific curiosity nudging aside her cares. As a soldier she’d suppressed her scholarly impulses, but it felt good to let her mind escape into observations and hypotheses, even if only for a moment. “Everyone in Latha having mindspeech—is that also due to an infection that opens the mind to strange powers?” There were people outside Latha who had mindspeech, but the Kiareinoll was the only place where telepathy was universal. She hadn’t been born with the ability, but she’d gained it after she had come to Latha and lived several months in the Manor.

  Tears brimming once more, she pressed her palm on the snow drift. “Thank you for taking me in.” Beneath the folds of the cerrenil’s roots lay the late King Sashal, Ashel and Bethniel’s father. Lathans buried their dead in unmarked graves beside old mothers, returning the life the trees gave them, or so they believed. A kindhearted, generous man, the king had treated Vic as a daughter from the moment she arrived in his throne room as a terrified refugee. He was the polar opposite of Lornk Korng, the tyrannical madman whom he’d fought for twenty years. “Would you have wanted me to kill him?” she asked. In their youth, Sashal and Lornk had been friends, although she couldn’t fathom how. “I think you would have approved of what Ashel did, overcoming his own pain to call for justice rather than revenge.” She sucked in a sob. “I’m sorry I failed to save you.” An assassin’s blade had struck down the king and driven Ashel’s ill-fated quest for revenge. “I’m sorry I failed to save your son. You both deserved more, and better from me.”

  Snow drifted through bare twigs, settling on her cloak and hair. Curled against the tree, she wept over her foster father’s grave until the southern winter froze her tears.

  Labor of Love

  Ragged screams battered Vic’s ears; sweat and blood stabbed her nose. And fear. The air reeked of it, sharp and raw. She tasted its foul dry flavor, and it bled from her lungs into her bones. She’d fought some losing battles, but none like this.

  “Shrine’s bitch, this is hard,” Silla panted.

  “You’ll make it,” Vic said. It was an order, crisp and cold, delivered in the same tone she used with worn-out troopers shrinking from combat. She hoisted Silla’s arm over her shoulder, ignoring the ache in her own back. Her
army comrade slumped against her, exhausted after hours of battle. “You’ll live through this,” Vic promised, a commander’s vow to a beleaguered soldier.

  “You’re almost there.” Maynon mopped Silla’s forehead. His fear more than anyone’s tainted the room, and tears raced the sweat trickling through his beard. All those times they’d hunkered in hollows or charged a line of foes, Vic had never seen Maynon scared, but now a prayer bubbled from his lips.

  “No Shrine-jumping prayers, Maynon, or I’ll—” A shriek drowned out the rest of Silla’s warning.

  “There’s the foot,” the midwife cried. “Husband, get down here.”

  Silla squeezed her eyes shut and mewled. Wild-eyed, Maynon stared between her and the midwife crouched beside the birthing chair.

  “She’s nearly done with her duty, now get down here and do yours,” the midwife commanded.

  “I’ve got her,” Vic said. Maynon hesitated another moment, then knelt beside the midwife, his hands cupped and trembling under the chair. “Sisters in arms, Silla. Just like old times.” Her cheek pressed against the laboring woman’s, Vic tasted the salt of her sweat, smelled the iron of her blood. Elesendar, please see her safely through this, she prayed. She didn’t believe in the Lathan god—or any god—but on the battlefield or the laboring room, it couldn’t hurt to call out to a deity, or fate, or pure dumb luck. Not her too, please no. Silla’s muscles tensed, then rippled downward, a scream pouring out as the midwife tugged the breached baby into Maynon’s hands.

  The afterbirth smacked the floor, and Maynon hallooed over the infant’s cries. “It’s a girl!”

  Blood splattered and Silla’s head lolled back, her weight sinking into Vic. The midwife cursed and grabbed her legs. “Get her on the bed.”

  Maynon lurched up with the screaming baby, the placenta dangling. “Take care of your daughter,” Vic ordered, lifting Silla by the shoulders and hoisting her to the bed. Blood crept through the sheets. At the midwife’s order, Vic fetched towels and water and sutures, held a lantern while the healer sewed. Silla’s skin paled, her breathing eased, then died to a whisper. At the foot of the bed, Maynon sobbed and clutched the bundled infant. Clasping Silla’s hand over her own pounding heart, Vic felt the stuttering echo of her friend’s. Elesendar, please see her safely through this. She imagined traveling through Silla’s veins, down to the place where her life drained out. The midwife whipped sutures through torn flesh, blood weeping over her fingers. Vic’s skin tingled, and in her mind she saw damaged vessels pinching closed. Gasping sharply, the healer glanced up. Silla’s chest rose and fell. With a puzzled frown, the woman finished the stitches and slathered the wound with slotaen, Knownearth’s most prized healing ointment.

  “She’ll need regular salving for at least a week to heal and for the pain.” Packing her things, the midwife cast a dubious look round the narrow room with its cold stove and ice-laced windowpanes. “And buy some coal, for Elesendar’s sake.”

  Maynon nodded, lips curved downward. Vic tugged Silla’s limp body onto clean sheets. “Thank you, Healer. If you can bring us the slotaen, I’ll cover the cost.”

  The woman’s demeanor softened, and she put down her bag to help Vic change the linens. “I am grateful for your service, all of you. War heroes . . . sometimes I wish the guild rules weren’t so strict on payment.”

  Vic shrugged. “Everybody’s got to eat.”

  * * *

  The coal pail banged Vic’s shins on the way up the tenement stairs, rattled as she pushed into the tiny attic room.

  “Thank you,” her former second said. Propped against the headboard, Maynon cradled Silla and the baby as they slept.

  Vic flashed a smile as she dumped the coal in the stone brazier. “I’ll stay over the next few nights, until she’s better.”

  “Vic,” he said aloud. Eyes intent on her face, he kissed Silla’s forehead. “Thank you. You did . . . something.”

  Vic lit the tinder, watched it flare blue and yellow while the screams of Relman children echoed in her mind. Her throat constricting, she retreated to the bureau where her friends kept their liquor. Pouring two glasses, she handed Maynon a drink and sat on the bed. “How did you know?”

  He took a sip and grimaced. Harlolinde was as hard as the truth when you drank it straight. “Gossip’s all over town. Every trooper, active or discharged, knows it wasn’t sulfa that brought that mountain down.”

  Tears spilled, the first she’d shed all day. How many people had died because of the bad bargain that had made her a wizard? How many Sillas would she have to save to pay that butcher’s bill? If she even could save them—she wasn’t sure how she’d stopped the bleeding, if she had. “Imagine if I’d had that power when we were slitting Relman throats.”

  “Woulda made my job easier,” he guffawed, then scrubbed a sleeve over his cheeks. “Shrine’s bitch, I can’t stop bawling.”

  Wiping a damp chin, Vic huffed a laugh. “I’ll keep your secret if you keep mine.”

  “Which secret?” He grinned. “That the Blade’s an outlaw wizard, or that she turned to mush when she held my kid?”

  A corner of Vic’s mouth tilted up. “I haven’t held her yet.”

  He patted the swaddled infant. “Her mother won’t mind.”

  Heart skipping, Vic scooped up the bundle. A visceral longing punched her gut as the baby yawned and mouthed the blankets. Her skin was brown, her head covered with downy black. A few months ago, before she’d destroyed any chance of a future with Ashel, Vic had imagined her children would bear the same traits. Swallowing bitter regret, she handed Maynon his daughter. “There. I’m mush.”

  “You could have one of these.”

  “Ashel’s gone.”

  “You went halfway round the world to bring him home. He’s only the other side of Latha now. Maybe you should go there, make a new home.” A wry grin tugged Maynon’s lips sideways. “Wizardry’s not outlawed in Semeneminieu.”

  “Who names their country something no one can pronounce?” she grumbled and sipped the harlolinde, letting it scald away grief.

  “Listen, I know you were steeped to the eyeballs in shit since the king took it in the throat, but today you gave life instead of death. Seems to me that’s your path forward, and though I can’t see why you pine for that singing dandy, I’ll grant he might be your best guide through the woods.”

  “Shrine, husband, I pine for that singing dandy too,” Silla teased sleepily. “And you two started drinking without me.”

  The baby hiccupped into a squall. Maynon helped get her settled and nursing while Vic fetched a cup of watered wine for Silla. “What’re you naming her?” she asked.

  The couple exchanged grins. “Victory.”

  Call of Duty

  Papers thumped onto her desk. Dust billowed, momentarily obscuring Fensin’s leer. “Three copies each,” the Senator said. “Did you distribute the news?”

  Bethniel pasted on a pleasant smile. “First thing this morning.” Fensin sent every Heralds’ pamphlet critical of the monarchy to the entire Senate. Delivering the copies was a near-daily task for Bethniel.

  With a satisfied chuckle, the Opposition returned to his office, and she dipped her quill and began copying a speech decrying tariffs on Caleisbahn goods. “Not here to spy,” she muttered. “I didn’t send you to work for the Opposition so you could spy on him,” her father would say whenever she complained about Fensin giving her nothing to do but run errands and make copies. “I sent you there to learn from him. He’s the wiliest, most ruthless politician you’ll ever face.”

  Knuckling her back, she set aside the final copy and rolled her head and shoulders. Neck tendons ground and popped, and she longed for a hot bath. A cleared throat stilled her exertions, and her eyes blinked open to find a tall Caleisbahnin. Two silver rings adorned one ear. A red sash fixed a sword to his waist. The steel was worth a ruler’s ransom.

  “Can I help you?” she asked.

  “I h
ave an appointment.”

  She glanced at the Senator’s schedule. “I don’t see anything in the book. The Senator has some time next week—”

  “Commander, welcome.” Fensin appeared in his doorway. “Forgive my junior clerk’s impertinence. My dear, you can go home for the rest of the day.”

  “Your Highness.” The Caleisbahnin bowed, a mocking grin revealing a gap between his front teeth.

  After leaving the Senate, she wandered in and out of shops, perusing laces and gloves, hats and jeweled brooches. Nothing caught her fancy, and the anxious smiles of the shopkeepers set her teeth on edge. It was a bright, fine day on the cusp of spring, yet few shoppers browsed alongside her, and even fewer carried purchases.

  The shortest way home from the market took her through squalid streets where the guildless crowded into ramshackle tenements. In alcoves, figures huddled under threadbare blankets, and refuse slimed the walkway, forcing one to step carefully or risk a slip into muck. Dirty faces melted into shadows. Cats growled in reeking alleys. Passersby glared at her fur-lined cloak, and one, then two blocks passed without sight or sign of a constable. The neighborhood had always been poor, but the nervous quiver quickening her steps was a new sensation.

  As she passed a tavern, shouts erupted and glass shattered. Someone screamed, and a tangle of fists and boots boiled out of the doorway. Bethniel scurried clear of the brawlers as more tumbled out.

  A hand locked round her elbow, and the cold, hard edge of a crystal blade pressed into her chin. A hiss demanded her pouch. Her eyes slid along a greasy sleeve to a filthy young woman wearing a tattered army uniform. “I’ll take that cloak,” a second footpad growled.

  She had been to war, but she was no warrior and didn’t trust her skills against desperate discharged soldiers. “All right, just let me unhook it.” Nervous fingers fumbled with the clasp. Why were there no constables about?

  A rod rapped the first robber’s head, and the woman dropped.