Page 47 of Fate of the Argosi

I’d already considered that unpleasant fact myself. Fortunately, Stoika was too cold and calculating to waste time on revenge. ‘Nobody’s going to lay a finger on Arissa. She’s Stoika’s bargaining chip to keep me in line.’ I raised one leg and pointed the toe of my boot towards the door. ‘Any minute now, she’s gonna walk through there and detail everything she expects of me – even though I’ve already agreed to tag along on this little expedition to make sure the island’s legit before I return with Ala’tris and her mages. Stoika intends to extract a whole bunch of promises and oaths from me in exchange for freeing Arissa and convincing Colfax to let her leave with all her fingers.’

‘And you’ll agree to whatever she asks?’

I leaned back in the chair and propped my feet up the edge of the bed, ignoring Conch’s warning grumble. ‘The Argosi don’t swear oaths or sign contracts under duress. Your mamma gets nothing out of me that I don’t believe the situation warrants.’ I should’ve left it there, but truth was, part of me was curious. ‘What about you, Chedran? You know she’s going to demand absolute subservience from you as much as me. No murdering anyone unless she tells you – that’s going to be the deal.’

He got quiet then. Not his usual sort of quiet that’s half moodiness, half homicidal contemplations. Proper quiet. Almost Argosi quiet. I pushed up the brim of my hat. He was leaning against the window, looking out onto those pleasant orchards and the rolling hills beyond. You’d swear he was watching a massacre unfolding right before his eyes.

‘Did you know that our ancestors really did possess the secrets of demon magic?’ he asked.

‘Always assumed that was Jan’Tep propaganda. Disinformation to keep other nations from interfering in the genocide.’

He kept staring out the window, bearing witness to some horror I couldn’t imagine. ‘Not entirely. The elders don’t share this with their clans, but back three hundred years ago, some of our shamans really could commune with entities of such pure evil they referred to them only as the Gleeful Ones. When the war turned against us, the Gleeful Ones whispered to our shamans through the ethereal planes. They offered a pact. Agree to their terms and –’ he snapped his fingers – ‘victory. Just like that.’

‘These “Gleeful Ones” don’t sound like the sort of folks who do favours for free.’

‘The bargain was equitable enough. Our spellshapers fashion a portal between the two realms, and the Gleeful Ones bring their armies across. They even vowed to leave – every single one of them – the moment the war was over.’

‘Whose definition of “over” are we talking about?’

He shrugged. ‘Nothing too unsavoury. Once the last Jan’Tep had been either eaten alive or shackled with copper so that they might be dragged through the portal to serve as slaves in that other realm, the Gleeful Ones would depart.’

‘So, trade one genocide for another?’

The rage in his voice was a smouldering acid that seemed to burn his throat when he tried to hold it in. ‘The Jan’Tep would’ve made that bargain in a heartbeat.’ His fists clenched at his sides. ‘Yet still our ancestors demurred, fearing such an atrocity would prove us no better than our oppressors.’ His shoulders slumped as the anger drained out of him. He leaned his forehead against the glass, too weary to hold himself up any longer. ‘Now our people are on the brink of extinction and the Jan’Tep have convinced the entire world that we practised demon magic anyway. Tell me, Ferius Parfax, why should those Mahdek elders of the past be remembered as anything less than war criminals? Should not the archer who refused to fire his deadliest arrow be held as guilty for the hundreds of thousands of deaths suffered by those he’d sworn to protect as the enemy who slaughtered them?’

Times like these, you pray for a knock at the door to save you from the question for which there’s no decent answer. Knocking being a sign of respect for whoever’s on the other side of the door, Stoika didn’t bother. Instead, she strode right into the room. I knew instantly that she’d been out there a while, listening in on our conversation.

‘Spoken like a child,’ she said dismissively, ‘with a child’s inability to comprehend consequences other than not getting their own way.’ She didn’t give Chedran a chance to return fire, raising an imperious finger to silence him. ‘You’ve never appreciated the complexities of what it takes to lead a fading people into the twilight of their existence. I doubt your years away have remedied that defect.’

I found myself in the unenviable and entirely unwanted position of defending Chedran. ‘Doubt’s a fine thing,’ I told her, rising up from the chair to face her, ‘until you let those doubts harden so much they aren’t really doubts at all any more, just . . . What’s the word for an untested belief about someone else that you never question?’

The old woman stiffened, her back suddenly straight as an iron rod inside that elegant burgundy and silver coat of hers. ‘I won’t be accused of bigotry against my own flesh and blood by an Argosi who displays not one shred of allegiance to her own kind.’ She turned to Chedran. ‘Well, boy? What have you to say on this subject? Am I wrong to fear that your love of violence exceeds that for our people? Are you any more Mahdek than this Argosi wastrel who seeks at every turn to renounce the duty to which we were all born?’

Chedran turned at last from the window, and his eyes drifted to mine before they met those of Stoika. ‘I cannot answer, Mother. Unlike Ferius, I have never been blessed with the burden of love, and so find myself ill-equipped to measure its weight.’

Stoika’s jaw tightened at first as if Chedran had slapped her, but then she reached out a slender, wrinkled hand. ‘Come then, my son. There remains a little time before we abandon this home that was never a home for yet another foreign land. Perhaps the hour has come at last for you and I to speak of love, and see whether, in the face of the fearsome duties awaiting us, there might remain enough of that love in us to spare a little for each other.’

Chedran gazed down at her trembling palm as if it were full of embers waiting to burn his flesh to the bone. Stoika smiled, a little sadly, as she withdrew her hand. Yet, when she turned to leave, Chedran followed her out the door.

Conch gave a snoozy grumble, dozing on one side, half-buried under the burgundy covers. I scratched his fuzzy head awhile, wondering about the terrible, precious chains of love and duty, and how anyone shackled with either could ever truly be free. Unlike Chedran, I’d known plenty of love in my relatively short life, along with the pain of leaving it behind. Maybe it was the Scarlet Verses swirling around in my skull, or perhaps just my arta loquit, but lately it seemed as if the very word ‘freedom’ had become a synonym for ‘farewell’.

‘They’re gone now,’ I said aloud. ‘You can come out.’

A creak came from the wall adjacent to the bed. The big alabaster cameo swung open like the door of a cabinet. Arissa wrestled herself through, sliding head first onto the floor before rolling back to her feet with less than acrobatic elegance. ‘Ta-da!’ she declared.

I offered muted applause. Conch snored approvingly.

Arissa dusted herself off. ‘How did you know I was hiding in the passage behind the wall?’

‘Until three seconds ago, I didn’t know therewasa passage behind the wall.’

‘Then how did you know I’d escaped?’

‘Simple. I know you.’

She brought her hands up under her chin and pretended to swoon. ‘Oh, you do say the sweetest things, Rat Girl. I do declare it’s almost enough to make me fancy you.’

Get to it, I thought, holding back the bitterness. The playful banter she was trying to instigate between us was excruciating because I knew exactly where it was leading.

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