The Whitefire Crossing Read online

  The other kids clamored for attention. I handed out the candies I’d been saving for the occasion and made sure to marvel as they showed me their prowess, making the candies float and dance and have mock battles in the air. My eyes roved over the group. Jek, Porry, Alsa, Kuril, Ness, Jeran, Melly...I frowned. “Where’s Tobet?”

  I’d asked Liana, but it was eleven-year-old Melly who answered me. “He Changed and couldn’t lift no more, so Red Dal sent him to his new family.” She raised her chin, her amber eyes sparkling. “Red Dal says I’m boss Tainter now, Dev. I call the ward tricks tonight and the littlies have to do what I say.”

  Only long practice kept my voice light. “’Bout time, huh, kid? Taint like yours, you’ll make a fine boss.”

  My eyes met Liana’s as I spoke, and we shared a moment of bitter memory. The Change is a terrible thing, for a Taint thief. One day you’re happy, and cared for, and can fly and lift and kip and do all kinds of fun tricks. Then puberty hits and the power dwindles away, never to return. You’re useless to your handler then, so he sells you off to whoever will take you. New family for Tobet, yeah, right. Just another pretty lie from Red Dal to make sure his Tainters stayed complacent, backed up by his follow-me charms. And if I tried to say different, I’d be dead before dawn, and the kids with me. The city ganglords won’t risk Tainted kids turning on them.

  The kids were still chattering with excitement, the younger ones darting through the air like whiskflies. Liana caught Tamin’s ankle as he zipped past.

  “Kids, calm down, all right? You’ve a busy night ahead and I don’t want anyone getting too tired.” They grumbled, but obeyed when Liana shooed them back over to their play area.

  “Job tonight, huh?” I dropped into a chair next to Liana.

  “Yeah. First in a couple days, so they’re a little over-excited.”

  I knew better than to ask what the job was. Liana let me come around for old times’ sake, but I didn’t work for Red Dal anymore. He wouldn’t take it well if I got nosy. My gaze lingered on Melly’s dark red hair, bent over an intricate pattern of string as she chanted a rhyme along with Ness and Jeran. No telling how long she had left. I thought of the blood mage’s smile, and suppressed a shudder. As an adult, I’d heard too many stories about Changed kids sold off to anonymous buyers, never to be seen again.

  Liana followed my gaze. “Dev, about Melly...” She trailed off. My stomach knotted up at the unhappiness on her face.

  “What’s wrong?” Melly’s Taint couldn’t be failing already. Gods all damn it, not yet. Not when I had no chance of keeping my promise to her father.

  Liana read my face. “Don’t worry, her Taint’s still strong. But...” She leaned in close, and whispered, “Morra said she saw Red Dal talking to a man wearing the badge of Karonys House.”

  Under the table, my hands clenched into fists. No surprise that Red Dal was already shopping Melly around to the top pleasure houses. Sethan had been handsome enough, but his daughter looked to surpass him by far. More, she’d inherited that crazy hair of his, the deep crimson of magefire flame—a shade rarely seen in Ninavel. Red Dal would make a mint, that was sure. But Karonys House...shit. They catered to highsiders with nasty kinks, and used taphtha juice to keep their jennies compliant. Melly’d be a vacant-eyed doll within days of entering Karonys, her mind burned away forever by the taphtha. I fought down nausea.

  “Nothing’s certain yet, Dev. Another house could outbid Karonys, easy.” Liana sounded like she was trying to convince herself.

  “Yeah.” I didn’t trust myself to say anything more. Hell if I’d let any pleasure house get their hands on Melly, after everything Sethan had done for me after my Change. I vowed silently I’d do whatever it took to complete Bren’s gods-damned job. I’d never outbid Karonys, but my promised pay would be enough for other, riskier options. Red Dal or Karonys, neither would take well to theft of costly property, but with enough coin to cover our tracks, I could spirit Melly away and set her up proper in a new life far from Ninavel.

  “I’m sorry, Dev.” Liana put a gentle hand on my arm. “You all right? I heard about you and Jylla...”

  I gritted my teeth. “Oh, for Khalmet’s sake. You’d think someone had stood on top of the Alton Tower and announced it.”

  “But you two’ve been together since your Change! I don’t understand. Just because she found a highside mark to squeeze dry...that kind of game never bothered you before.” Concern was all over Liana’s wide brown eyes and round face. I bit back a sour smile. Thank Khalmet, Liana didn’t know the half of it. I shrugged and made an effort to sound cheerful.

  “I’ll be fine. I’ve got a job going, I’m heading out to Kost. That’s why I came, wanted to say goodbye before I left.”

  “Oh good, I know how you love the mountains. But we’ll miss you, me and the kids both.” She gave me a little, wistful smile. “Take care of yourself out there, huh? Don’t get eaten by wolves.”

  It always amused me what city people like Liana thought about the mountains. Wolves. Ha. More like avalanches and falling rocks and late-season storms. “Right. I’ll make sure to fend off the wolves, and I’ll bring you and the kids something from Kost.”

  Her eyes lit up, and for a moment I could see the skinny, shy little girl she’d once been. She always did love presents. I slipped a few coins into her hand. “Thanks for the news. Keep an eye out for Melly, huh?”

  “You know I’ll try,” Liana said softly. I got up from the table, after another glance at Melly’s fiery hair. Grow slow, kid, I urged her silently. I just need a few more weeks.

  ***

  (Kiran)

  Kiran shifted from foot to foot beside a trellis covered in night-blooming jasmine. For the hundredth time, he stared up at the pattern of stars visible above Lizaveta’s courtyard wall. The hour of his rendezvous with Dev was fast approaching. Yet without Lizaveta’s promised aid, he dared not leave Ninavel. His magic was no match for Ruslan’s. Ruslan would hunt him down with the lazy ease of a sandcat, the instant he realized Kiran had fled the city. Kiran plucked a moonflower from a nearby vine, then crushed the blossom in a fist. Lizaveta had told him to come to her garden, assured him of her help...but would she keep her word? She’d known Kiran since he was a child, but she’d known Ruslan far longer.

  The patter of feet on stone made him whirl. A somber youth in the pale robe of a servant slipped through the courtyard gate. His eyes downcast, he handed Kiran a sealed packet. Lizaveta’s personal sigil lay in glowing violet lines over the warded seal.

  Kiran placed his hand over the seal. Power stung his senses, delicate and sharp as a cat’s claws, and the seal cracked open. He unfolded the packet, which proved to contain a jeweled silver disc on a thin chain, and a note in Lizaveta’s spiky handwriting.

  The amulet will hide you so long as you abstain from magic. You have until dawn tomorrow before Ruslan returns. Use the time wisely.

  Kiran let out a shaky breath. The servant was already retreating. “Wait,” he said. Obediently, the youth turned. “Tell her—” Kiran stopped. Loss and regret tangled with gratitude in his throat. “Tell her, athanya solaen.” A farewell, one of the scant phrases he knew of Lizaveta’s native tongue. He’d heard Ruslan say it to her, once.

  The youth bowed, and vanished into the darkness beyond the gate. Kiran balanced Lizaveta’s note on his palm, and called fire from within. Blue flames devoured the note and remained, dancing, in his cupped hand.

  Such a small thing, for the last act of magic he would ever perform.

  The flames vanished as Kiran snapped his hand shut. Ruthlessly, he crushed the yearning they left behind. Alisa had lost her life. His own losses paled in comparison.

  ***

  The Aran Fountain stood still and silent, its stone bowl empty of all but starlight. Lord Sechaveh only ran city fountains on his favorite feast days; to do otherwise would be a shocking waste of water. The square appeared as empty as the fountain. Kiran’s stomach sank. Where was Dev? Had he changed his mind
?

  On the far side of the fountain, a shadow moved. Kiran sighed in relief when it resolved into Dev’s short, wiry form. He tried to force his muscles to relax. He had to prevent Dev from realizing the depth of his anxiety. Bren had assured him Dev wouldn’t ask questions, but Kiran remembered Dev’s uncomfortably sharp scrutiny in Bren’s office. If Dev ever discovered the truth, he’d abandon Kiran in an instant. No untalented citizen of Ninavel would risk the wrath of a mage as powerful as Ruslan, no matter how high the pay.

  Dev didn’t speak as Kiran approached, only motioned for him to follow. He led the way through a maze of narrow alleys and darkened side streets, ending up in front of a cracked and splintered wooden door. The scent of animals, dung, and hay hung heavy in the air. Dev opened the door and ushered Kiran into a dusty room crowded with crates. The flickering light of a candle lantern illuminated a single rough table, covered in piles of leather straps and strange metal implements.

  “Here’s how this’ll work.” Dev pushed back his hood and dropped onto a crate, motioning Kiran to another nearby. Even in the low light, Dev’s pale green eyes were as startling as Kiran remembered. Their color seemed completely out of place combined with the nut-brown skin and coarse dark hair so common in Ninavel.

  “I’ve signed on as an outrider for the first trade convoy of the season. You’re gonna be my apprentice. You’re a little old for it, but I’ll say your family’s business failed and I’m taking you on as a favor.” Dev studied him, head tilted. “Apprentice means you get food and water, no wages. And you have to work. Hard.”

  Kiran realized he was expecting a protest. “I can do that.” Kiran had spent endless hours locked in concentration with Mikail in Ruslan’s sunlit workroom, measuring out channel patterns for practice spells. Surely mere physical labor would seem easy by comparison.

  Dev looked skeptical, his eyes going to Kiran’s hands, then back up to his face.

  “If...I mean, if you’ll show me what to do. I’m not familiar with...” Kiran eyed the tools on the table. He couldn’t even guess at their purpose. “What does an outrider do, exactly?”

  “What do you know about the route from Ninavel to Kost?” Dev sounded like he didn’t expect Kiran to know anything at all. Kiran stiffened on his crate. He might not know much about untalented professions, but surely his knowledge of world geography far surpassed Dev’s.

  “It leaves the city to the west and crosses two high passes in the Whitefire Mountains before it reaches the border with Alathia. It’s impassable in the winter from all the snow. The first group across is always a large one, because the merchant houses are anxious to sell.”

  Dev’s one-sided little grin said he hadn’t missed Kiran’s indignation. “True, but that’s not the only reason the first convoy is big. The route through the mountains isn’t like some nice smooth city street. It’s rocky, steep, rough, and winter avalanches and spring snowmelt mess it up pretty bad. Without repairs to the trail, wagons would never make it. So the merchant houses all chip in, money and supplies and labor, and the first convoy fixes the trail as they go. Anyone who doesn’t contribute has to pay a toll, if they use the trail later in the season.”

  “An outrider helps with the repairs, then?”

  “Nah. The convoy brings carpenters and stonemasons and their hired labor for that. Outriders work as a kind of scout. While the laborers work on one repair, we check out the terrain ahead and let the convoy boss know how badly the trail is damaged so he can plan properly for what’s coming. Sometimes that just means riding up the trail a ways, but other times we need to climb up snow slopes or onto pinnacles to get a good view of the terrain. But checking trail damage isn’t the big reason we’re there. Our main job is the safety of the group.” Dev’s face had turned serious.

  “You mean from bandits?” As a child, Kiran had spent hours reading adventure tales where brave soldiers fought off bandit hordes sweeping down from the mountains to prey upon wagons full of precious cargo.

  Dev made a dismissive noise. “Too early in the season, and the convoy is way too big. Gangs’ll wait ’til it’s warmer, and you get single wagons going through. No, I mean safety from the mountains. Avalanches, rockfall, storms, the like. We look at the snow and weather conditions and tell the boss if we think it’s safe enough for the teams.”

  “But how can you know for sure?” Did outriders use charms of some kind? Weather magic was chancy at best, and required careful control. Kiran had never heard of a charm detailed and flexible enough to allow an untalented man that kind of power.

  “You can’t.” Dev spread his hands. “You know the mountains well, you can make a pretty good guess. It’s still a guess, though. Sometimes we’re wrong, and people get hurt. Or die.”

  “Have you ever...?”

  “Been wrong? Not yet. I’ve seen it happen, though, when I was an apprentice. Twice. The first time, only one wagon was lost, along with two men and a team of mules. The second time was...” Dev inhaled, looked as if he were searching for a word. “Worse,” he finally said, his voice studiously calm in a way that Kiran recognized.

  “Oh,” was all Kiran could think of to say. Dev sighed and leaned forward on his crate.

  “Before we get to talking about gear for the trip, I need to know something.”

  “What is it?” Sweat sprang out on Kiran’s palms. He’d always been better at lying by omission.

  Dev hesitated, frowning slightly. “Look, I’m just the courier, and whatever your reasons for this, they’re none of my business. But one thing is my business, because it affects how I do my job. You want to keep this little trip of yours quiet, that’s fine. But what kind of attention are we talking about hiding from, here?”

  Kiran took a careful breath. “Primarily the Alathian authorities at the border. But I also need to avoid drawing the attention of anyone in the employ of Suns-eye or Koliman House.” Both were among the largest of the banking houses in Ninavel. With luck, Dev would assume his journey to Alathia was merely part of one the clandestine power maneuvers the great houses were famous for making. Should he tell Dev that he’d already taken precautions against magical methods of tracing? No, Dev would want to know what sort of precautions, and that would raise too many dangerous questions. Better to keep it simple.

  “Exactly how intently will they be watching for you?”

  “You needn’t worry about any concerted effort on their part. They don’t know I’m traveling to Kost. I only need to keep it that way.”

  “And that’s all.” Dev’s eyes had narrowed. “You sure?”

  Kiran met Dev’s searching gaze. One heartbeat’s worth of power, and Dev would believe anything he said. He throttled the urge. “Of course I’m sure.”

  Dev studied him a moment longer, then shrugged. “Fine. We’ll only do some easy stuff, then.” He tossed a small wax-sealed lacquer box to Kiran. “Hair dye. Rub that through your hair, and then I’ll use a binding charm to set it. It’ll turn your hair brown instead of black, make your coloring a little more like a northern Arkennlander’s.” The corner of his mouth lifted again. “Right now you stand out like a raven among sage hens. Oh, and we’ll cut your hair some, so you look less highside.”

  Dev slid a small silver disc from his pocket, the size of a decet coin. “You’ll need to wear this, either next to your skin or tied in your hair.” At Kiran’s questioning glance, he held it up in the light. “It’s a look-away charm. Subtle, not flashy. Lots of us wear charms of one kind or another, nobody’ll notice it.” He indicated the silver bracelets on his own wrists, which Kiran recognized from the rune tracings as simple protective charms.

  Dev held out the look-away charm. Kiran took it, gingerly. To his relief, the charm lay quiet in his hand, with no sparking or flaring coming from either it or Lizaveta’s amulet, safely hidden under his clothes. Good. That meant Dev’s charm was small and simple enough in purpose not to cause any pattern interference with the magic of the amulet. Kiran set down the charm and opened the box of dye
. The pasty muck within smelled absolutely terrible.

  Kiran forced himself to scoop up a handful. “Please tell me the stink goes away after using the binding charm.”

  For the first time since Kiran had met him, Dev laughed. “Think of it as practice for the trip, city boy. Have you ever smelled the shit from an entire convoy’s worth of mules?” He laughed even harder at Kiran’s reflexive grimace.

  CHAPTER TWO

  (Dev)

  First time I’d seen a mountain convoy preparing to head out, only my fierce determination to impress Sethan kept me from slack-jawed gaping. The sheer number of men, beasts and wagons crammed into the staging yard was incredible enough, but it was the swarming efficiency of the preparations that had stunned me. Ganglords could only wish their crews were that fast and disciplined. When later I’d described my amazement to Jylla, a wry gleam had lit her slanted black eyes. The toughest ganglord’s not more than a sandmite in the eye of a highside merchant house, she’d said.

  Jylla. Gods all damn it, how long before every memory of her wasn’t like a fucking knife to the gut?

  I made sure my face was blank before I turned to Kiran, but I needn’t have bothered. He was so busy goggling at all the commotion in the staging yard that I could have been wailing curses like a Varkevian demon singer and he wouldn’t have noticed a thing. I checked him over one last time in the pale dawn light. His newly brown hair hung just below his collar instead of halfway down his back, grit lined his nails, and his clothes were old and ill-fitting but good tough leather. Yeah, he’d pass for a streetsider. So long as he remembered to keep his mouth shut, anyway.

  The westgate staging yard lay right inside the bulwark of the city’s towering sandstorm wall, and the noise echoing off the smooth stones was deafening. Men were yelling to each other, mules braying, horses whinnying, all mixed in with the crash of crates being stacked and secured on wagons. I had to grab Kiran’s arm to get his attention.

  “Come on. We’ll check in with the head outrider at our supply wagon, then pick up mounts from the horsemaster.” I dodged my way through a trampling herd of burly packers hefting crates.