Page 28 of Fate of the Argosi

‘Nah, you ain’t getting away that easy.’

Maybe the reason I hate mind cages so much is the way a silk mage will turn your own memories against you. That’s both a crime and a mistake, because my memories aren’t just treasures, they’re like . . . magic spells. The bad ones you survived can strengthen your resolve, wrap you in armour strong as steel. The good memories, though? Those rare moments of laughter, surprise and fascination that most people let slip away? You’d be amazed the wonders you can work with them.

An orphaned Mahdek girl of fifteen stands before hundreds of Jan’Tep and their clan prince. She’s angry, confused. She’s just revealed to them the perfidy of the crimes committed against her by a cabal of mages. Even then, even after the evidence has come out, thanks to the brave daughter of one of those self-same conspirators, the prince has decided to wipe the Mahdek girl’s memories to prevent a war. He’s going to steal from her even the truth of her suffering in the name of peace. But then she feels something – something unexpected. Something their two cultures may never have seen before . . .

I send my thoughts hurtling back to that Jan’Tep city with all those people looking so relieved that the horrors performed in their name were about to be wiped away, and then that hand slipping into mine . . . fingers smooth, not calloused like my own, intertwining, squeezing. An unspoken promise to stand beside me no matter what happened next. The unexpected gift of sisterhood, more precious and powerful than I could ever have imagined, even if we were never meant to see each other again.

‘There are such things as miracles,’ I whispered. ‘No matter what people say, there are miracles in this world. It’s just that they don’t come from gods or magic. They come from us.’

I heard a sob then, somehow both in my mind and in my ears, and the sound of footsteps running towards me. I was just noticing the sticky wetness of the mud seeping through the back of my shirt when a young woman’s arms grabbed hold of me, barely courteous enough to yank me to a sitting position before crushing me in a frantic embrace. Then a voice unclouded by magic, chiming like a bell, still sounding like she couldn’t believe it was me.

‘Ferius Parfax?’

Yeah. That’s how you say the name.

18

The Captors

The world is full of injustices. Some great, some small. But surely the most annoying is when you wake up shivering, your best travelling shirt soaked through on account of you being flat on your back in the mud, hair matted and filthy, thoughts murky and a headache pounding out a funeral lament in your skull. All that though, that’s just circumstance. Bad luck.

The injustice begins when you open your eyes and the first thing you see is a girl your own age, slender like you, with hair nearly as red. Like looking into a mirror, right? Except her skin is smooth as silk and there’s not a scar to be found anywhere. Oh, and give her a face so beautiful the sight puts an ache in your belly. Brown eyes, not green like mine, but they shone with brilliance in every sense of the word and brimmed with tears like she’d just found her long-lost sister. You can bet I was bawling like a baby before I’d even gotten my feet under me.

‘I thought I’d never see you again,’ Ala’tris said, holding my hands in hers – now that she’d finally stopped trying to hug the life out of me. The fabric of her fitted robe, silver and black, shimmered in the moonlight, bound with purple cords the colour of silk magic that crossed from each shoulder down to the other side of her waist. The sleeves, like those of most mage’s garments, were thin as gossamer to reveal the shimmering glyphs of her tattooed bands. The cuffs ended in a narrow strip of loosely woven velvet that made it easier to slide them up her forearms and keep them there when casting spells that required total concentration.

Ala’tris gave herself a little shake and her robes shed the dust and mud that clung insistently to my own ratty shirt, waistcoat and trousers. I probably looked like a mangy mutt by comparison, but you wouldn’t’ve known it from the way she was smiling at me.

I could feel Chedran’s gaze burning a hole in the back of my neck even before the inevitable disdain burst out of him. ‘What a charming reunion. The Mahdek beggar girl kissing the feet of her Jan’Tep oppressor. No wonder you never returned to your tribe, Ferius. Why fight for the impoverished and persecuted when you can befriend the children of tyrants?’

There wasn’t a shred of anger in me for Chedran at that moment, not one drop of resentment. On the walls of that imagined tower in which we’d been confined, I’d watched my fists pounding our enemies the same as I’d witnessed his rock crashing down on them. We’d both had our reasons, both been given plenty of cause to despise the Jan’Tep. But my darkest impulses had been tempered by gifts Chedran had never been given: a handful of precious memories filled with kindness and grace. One of those memories was Ala’tris of the House of Tris.

The first time we’d met, theonlytime really, had been after Durral and me had broken out of a mind cage only to discover that our captor was a young Jan’Tep girl my own age who’d been commanded by her mother to imprison us so she could steal the secrets of the Argosi from Durral’s memories. Waste of a costly and painful spell, if you ask me. The only reason the Jan’Tep can’t learn the seven Argosi talents is because they’re hard work, and magic makes you lazy. Also arrogant, craven and blind to your own people’s culpability.

Not Ala’tris though.

Boy, had I railed against Durral after we’d busted out of that mind cage and he’d refused to let me kill her. Worse, he’d spoken to her with gentleness and reassurance, as if she had every right to be as confused and scared of us as we were of her. He’d praised –praised– her skill as a mage then challenged her to become something more. Durral Brown had showed her the first step on the Way of Water, and Ala’tris had walked the rest all by herself.

After her mother’s cabal and their crimes against innocent Mahdek refugees had been revealed, their clan prince ruled that the only way to prevent the entire continent from turning against the Jan’Tep was to shatter my memories so that I could never reveal what had been done to me. Ala’tris, in direct violation of her prince’s command, helped me thwart that spell.

Mostly.

I’m still pretty nuts, and my memories are a jumble of images and impressions, never entirely reliable and hardly ever in the right order. But they’re still mine, and that’s what matters. All thanks to a girl raised to despise me.

Ala’tris might’ve looked a little like me, but Chedran was my true mirror: the person I would’ve become had it not been for people like her and Durral and Enna and all the others who’d helped me find my path. That’s why I couldn’t be mad at Chedran, even if he was doing his level best to sour this unexpected reunion.

On the other hand, him having used that bitter laugh to muffle the faint hiss of the curved blade sliding out of the sheath at the back of his belt? Downright rude.

‘Arissa?’ I asked quietly, not wanting to let go of the warmth of Ala’tris’s hands.

A sharpshhhickbroke the quiet as the steel rod made from three interlocking cylinders that Arissa had apparently pilfered from my pack extended to its full length. ‘So, you’re expecting me to bash our travelling companion’s brains out if he makes a move on your girlfriend?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Give me leave to bind the savage in iron and blood, Ala’tris!’ a higher-pitched voice called out. A girl, maybe fifteen or so, short and compact, with hair dark as night and amber eyes bright as starlight stepped out of the forest. The tattooed iron band around her forearm gleamed with an unnatural grey incandescence. Her blood band sparked crimson.

‘Ba’dari, no!’ Ala’tris called out.

Three other Jan’Tep mages, all of them teenagers, joined her with hands raised, fingers contorted into an assortment of somatic gestures, lips ready to unleash some dastardly incantation or other. The forest was aglow with the reflected magic swirling around their tattooed bands.

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