Page 32 of Fate of the Argosi

‘Fine,’ she declared, for once striking me as a proper pissed-off Jan’Tep noblewoman rather than the placid peacemaker she was always trying to be. She wrapped her fingers around the purple cords crossing the front of her silver robes.

‘She gonna strip?’ Arissa asked. ‘Because if that’s how these folks make peace, I might develop a fondness for Jan’Tep cultural exchanges.’

‘Thought you weren’t into girls.’

I felt her hand snake around my back to settle on my waist. ‘Maybe you’re starting to rub off on me.’

Don’t keep playing me like this, I thought, stepping away.It’s not fair and it’s not right.

Arissa shot me a confused look, but by then we had other matters to occupy us. The gossamer of Ala’tris’s right sleeve billowed outward, then began to ripple as if tiny figures were racing across her arms beneath the fabric. The cloth shaped itself in greater and greater detail, until soon we could make out what appeared to be Chedran leading the twelve Mahdek runaways away from a Jan’Tep oasis.

‘More silk magic demonstrations?’ Chedran asked. He almost sounded disappointed. ‘Will you show us how I killed those other mages, or perhaps this time you’ll reveal whattheywere intent on doing to the children?’

‘Neither,’ Ala’tris replied. She held out her left arm now, parallel to the ground. The sleeve undulated for a moment before shaping itself around new figures. The smooth silver fabric began to change colour, adding more detail to what appeared to be nine robed mages pursuing the runaways from a distance. The one in the lead was an older man who shared the colouring of Ba’dari, the short raven-haired girl. It was the lord magus whose corpse we’d seen in the mind cage. ‘Her uncle,’ Ala’tris said as if she already knew what we were thinking. ‘A legendary hextracker whose coven was charged with hunting down the assassins who left four dead sentries to rot in the sand outside the oasis.’ She brought her right arm back in line with her left, only now the ripples in her sleeve took the form of Ala’tris and her followers. She gave her arm a shake, and the gossamer fabric billowed as if a cloud were encircling them. ‘I had to summon disguises for us, so that after Ba’dari was forced to bind her uncle in an iron spell that broke his ribs, he would never know it was his own niece who’d attacked him!’

‘I can’t get him out of my mind,’ Ba’dari said softly, gazing down at the soft earth as if expecting to find a corpse there. ‘I keep imagining that he died.’ She turned to Ala’tris. ‘I’m sorry, it’s my fault he appeared in the mind cage. I just can’t stop picturing how lifeless he looked, lying there on the ground as we fled. What if the broken bones of his ribs made their way to his heart and I—’

‘You didn’t kill him,’ the hawk-faced Jir’dan said firmly, coming to place his hands on the younger girl’s shoulders. ‘But he would’ve killed all of us if you’d given him the chance. You saw the look in his face, in all of our fellow mages’ faces when they realised they were fighting their own kind.’

‘No!’ Chedran yelled, his features as pale as if he were the one staring at a ghost who’d come to haunt his dreams. ‘No one could’ve tracked us from the territories. I kept watch every night!’

Ba’dari snorted. ‘My uncle’s coven got within fifty yards of your camp. He used a breath spell to hide the sounds and smells of their approach. You sat there, oblivious, while we fought our own kind for you. While I foughtmy family.’

‘That’s not all!’ Gab’rel, the short kid, gestured extravagantly to the tall, eagle-beaked blond fellow. ‘Jir’dan nearly had his arms ripped right off by a lightshaper who would’ve torn those Mahdek kids limb from limb.’

Sar’ephir, still sounding more amused than self-righteous, added, ‘Let’s not forget the Berabesq Faithful who on three separate occasions nearly found the runaways while their oh-so-clever protector was rotting in the depths of Soul’s Grave.’ She turned to me and winked. ‘Our gratitude for saving us the trouble of breaking him out of prison ourselves. I doubt his pride could’ve survived the experience. Then again, if he knew how we’d also had to—’

‘Okay, enough,’ I said, shooing them all away from him. I was more in awe than ever over the fact that Ala’tris had managed to keep her comrades from rubbing all this in our faces before now. I turned to Chedran. ‘Well, what now? You reckon they’re all lying or can we skip the stand-off and get down to business?’

Watching mistrust and loathing fade should be a joyful thing, but with Chedran it was like the blood was draining out of him, leaving him so weary he might fall asleep and never wake up. ‘I . . . I’ve been a fool.’

I got up on my tiptoes and, gesturing back at the mages, whispered, ‘In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s a lot of that going around.’

To his credit, he made a sincere effort at a wry smile. Alas, it barely reached his lips and got nowhere near his eyes.

Ala’tris shook the magical stage show from her sleeves, then came and gently put a hand on Chedran’s bare chest. ‘We all share the same disease,’ she said sadly. ‘We’re born to it. A sickness buried so deep we hardly know it’s there, yet we can’t seem to live without it.’

Sorrow, deep and desolate . . . and yet, one thing you learn in poker is how to tell when one of the players has been dying to turn over their hole card. That’s how it was with Ala’tris; the acknowledgement of hopelessness hadn’t been the end game, merely the bluff before she revealed her hand.

It began with an ear-to-ear grin that lit her up like the sun rising before the moon had even set. ‘The five of us, we’re part of a faction within the Jan’Tep searching for a way to redeem our people for the crimes that have continued long after the war with the Mahdek should have ended. Our elders mock our efforts. They call us “restitutionists” as a slur, claiming any attempt at resettlement would only incite more conflict. They’re convinced that bloodshed is inevitable so long as a single Mahdek still walks this continent.’

Arissa arched an eyebrow. ‘But you and your little club of “restitutionists” think you have a better solution?’

Ala’tris glanced at the members of her coven, waiting for each one to nod their assent before turning towards the derelict tower. ‘There’s one final secret we’ve been keeping from you. A gift.’

‘A crumbling Daroman ruin on the edge of the Berabesq theocracy?’ I asked. ‘You thinkthat’sgonna make up for centuries of abuse? Because I gotta tell you, sister, my horse is gonna be awful irritated if I rode him all this way just to—’

Damn it. First principle of arta precis: don’t waste time staring at the thing in front of your face when you should be asking what’snotthere. In this case, how had five Jan’Tep mages travelled this far from any town without horses?

Ala’tris and Sar’ephir stood side by side. The silk mage raised her hand first, lustrous purple sparks bursting from the tattooed sigils around her forearm. Sar’ephir mirrored her, the subtler gold of what I now recognised as sand magic pulsing in waves from her own sigils. The tower appeared to crumble, as if a thousand years had passed in mere seconds. That was all illusion though; the real magic was in the heap that had been hidden there all along. Half-buried in the sloping ground, branches of trees seemingly melted through the oak planking of its massive hull, was a galleon bigger than any I’d ever seen.

‘Spirits of Sea and Sky,’ Chedran murmured. ‘How could such a thing exist this far from any ocean?’

Five masts rose up from the three-decked ship, its elongated prow towering over us. The sails were unfurled, yet they rippled to their own rhythm, ignoring the direction of the breeze. The incongruity of a monstrous ship in the middle of a forest a hundred miles from a body of water capable of floating it left me and Chedran dumbstruck.

Arissa never liked seeming surprised by anything though, and so managed a passably snarky tone to cover up her own amazement. ‘I’m not usually one for pranks, but I’ve got to admit, gifting the Mahdek with a ship that can’t sail anywhere does have a certain flair.’

‘This ship doesn’t sail onwater,’ Ala’tris corrected, sweat on her brow from the effort of unmasking her spell. ‘In fact, it doesn’t precisely sail within our world at all, nor is this the gift we offer the Mahdek.’

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