Page 25 of Fate of the Argosi

I keep an extensible steel rod in a hidden pocket in the back of my waistcoat. With one smooth motion – or at least, the memory of a particularly skilful draw – I flicked it open and slammed the shaft down on his wrist. The dagger went flying and Chedran yelped from the pain. Guess he had a strong recollection of once being struck on the wrist bone.

I walked across the debris-strewn floor to retrieve his blade. ‘I happen to know from experience that you can’t kill yourself in a mind cage,’ I informed him. ‘But attempted suicide probably ain’t good for the spirit.’

Chedran expressed his gratitude for my intervention in the fashion to which I’d grown accustomed. ‘Damn you, Argosi. This is your fault.’

Nothing like being trapped inside a prison made of memories with a guy who manages to forget it was his idea to rush in here and start slitting throats without a backup plan.

‘Why isn’t the blood dripping?’ Arissa asked. She was walking over to the splatter on the wall that had been the first clue that something wasn’t right about this tower. She stopped about a foot away, then leaned in closer. ‘Funny – itisdripping now, but it’s still off somehow.’

‘Simple,’ I replied. ‘Whoever’s doing this to us doesn’t know precisely what dripping blood should look like. Jan’Tep mages rarely get their hands dirty. They rely on iron bindings and ember blasts instead of slicing their enemies open. What their own memories can’t provide for the mind cage, they draw from ours.’ I went to join her by the wall. ‘This one was from the Daroman guard I killed when I came to get you out of Soul’s Grave.’

‘But you’ve seen plenty of blood,’ Arissa countered. ‘You know what it looks like when it splatters.’

‘Memories aren’t perfect portraits of the past. They’re like . . . pieces of stories we recount to ourselves later.’ I reached out and touched the blood. It was still warm. I dabbed my fingertip on my tongue. It tasted of copper and shame. ‘When my blade went through that soldier’s throat, all I could see was that spray of blood, almost like it was frozen in the air, reminding me that what I’d done was permanent – a stain on my soul that would never wash away. The memory is fresh and strong in my mind, making it the easiest one for the silk mage to use.’

‘You seem to know a lot about these mind cages,’ Chedran said accusingly. Apparently he was finally done stabbing himself and was looking for a new target.

‘I was caught in one a couple of years back.’ I glanced around at the tower. ‘Different place, different memories, but the feeling of it . . . theflavourof the magic, is kind of similar, now that I think about it.’

‘Can the mages hear us?’ Arissa asked, whispering under her breath.

I chuckled. ‘Oh, they can hear us all right.’

I looked up at the collapsed ceilings above and the night sky beyond. Not sure why I bothered, since it’s not like the mage was up there. Still, you have to look somewhere when you’re trying to look someone in the eye.

‘I offer you the Way of Water,’ I told the mage. ‘Release us from your cage and we can talk this through like civilised folk. Try to keep us here, and you and me are going to walk the Way of Thunder.’

There was no answer at first. Mind cages are tough to maintain because they require continuous concentration on the part of the mage. Splitting their focus to get into a debate with their victims requires additional effort, which explains why our captor sounded mighty irritable when at last they spoke.

‘Do not speak to us of civility!’a voice echoed throughout the tower.‘Your own memories betray the litany of barbarity each of you has committed, crimes so vile as to defy even our people’s worst fears about you!’

Rude way to start a conversation, I thought. Whoever had spoken tossed in a headache to emphasise their displeasure with us. Then the real show began.

‘Witness what passes for heroes among the Mahdek!’

Suddenly our corpses were gone, along with the rubble and debris, the campfire and everything else that had lent the illusion of realism to the tower. All that was left were the curving walls surrounding us, and upon them exploded images of our respective violence and criminality. Neither Arissa, Chedran nor I appeared in them, but only because the scenes were shown from our own vantage points, through our eyes. Stolen memories – private, intimate recollections – hurled against the walls to lay bare our most shameful secrets.

Arissa was the first target. Turns out it’s not just the Argosi who don’t waste time on shame or guilt.

‘Oh, I remember that one!’ she said, feigning almost childish excitement as a robbery unfolded before us. An elegantly dressed Daroman woman in her seventies was bound to a chair in the middle of a private study walled in mahogany and filled with enough trinkets to keep a thief’s eyes darting this way and that. I was getting dizzy just watching.

‘How proud you must be to steal that which is most precious from an elderly woman who couldn’t fight back!’

The heist continued, with Arissa’s crimson-gloved hands coming in and out of view as she snatched jewels and curios with no discernible method to her madness, even dumping out a gold box to steal the letters inside.

Arissa shrugged, seemingly unconcerned. ‘Go a bit further back in my memories and you’ll discover the nice little old lady wasn’t so nice after all.’

But the mage casting the mind cage banished that memory, superimposing upon the wall a far more violent one. A young Jan’Tep, maybe seventeen years old, was struggling to cast a spell through bloodied lips and broken teeth. Every time he tried to utter his incantation though, a fist shot out and smashed into his face. A girl’s fist.

‘Go on,’ the attacker’s voice – my voice – shouted. ‘Hit me with an ember spell! Prove the superiority of the Jan’Tep race over a filthy little Mahdek bitch! Do it!’ But my fist kept striking over and over, even after the young mage had passed out and that stupid, prideful girl’s knuckles were split and bleeding.

‘Would you still seek to instruct us on civility, Mahdek?’asked our captor.

That one hit hard, but I followed Durral’s advice and left my guilt and shame back in the desert where they belonged. Regret isn’t restitution, and you can’t pay your debts when you’re dead. I stilled those dark thoughts, promising them a visit when time and wisdom revealed a path for me to make peace with them. In the meantime, I awoke my arta precis and dug through the hard shell of our jailer’s outrage for what might be hidden beneath.

Anger. Bitterness. Resentment. But why? You don’t resent an enemy for proving themselves as barbaric as you’ve always believed. You resent them for failing to live up to your expectations.

Before I could pursue that deduction, the scene on the tower wall unfolded beyond my recollection of the fight with that young Jan’Tep mage. The violence became even more savage. At first I worried that I must’ve blocked out the cruelty I’d inflicted on him, but then I saw through the blood and bruising that the victim wasn’t a teenager any more but a grown man. He wasn’t being struck by mere fists either, but with a sharpened rock held in the hand of a skinny boy who looked no older than twelve.

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