“My head...oh, gods...” He staggered and fell to his knees despite my grip. “Dev, I can’t—” his voice rose, the panic in it unmistakable.
“Shit!” I dropped his arm fast as a burning firestone. “Is it Ruslan?”
“No, my barriers hold, but...” his voice was slurring. His head fell back, his black hair coming away from his face. His pupils had shrunk to pinpoints, making his eyes look eerily blue. “I can’t—” he repeated, and clawed at his temples.
“Kiran! Stop!” I grabbed his wrists. He twisted and thrashed in my grip like a panicked animal. I yelled at him, trying to make him focus on me. He quieted, though his breathing remained fast and shallow.
“Kiran. Listen to me. Is the drug suppressing your magic?” I tried to speak slowly and clearly. Obviously the hennanwort was doing something unpleasant to him, but I’d no idea if we could safely pass the gate wards.
He blinked at me, struggling to focus, and I repeated the question, even more slowly. “I think...yes...it feels...” he said finally, his voice thick. He shuddered hard, all over, and didn’t finish the sentence, his eyes going wide and blank again. I sighed. Clearly that was all the reassurance I’d get. At least the hennanwort hadn’t brought Ruslan down on us—or so I assumed, from the fact I was still breathing.
I coaxed Kiran back onto the cart with the soothing voice I’d once used on scared young Tainters. “Kiran, you’re doing fine...now crawl on up...”
His teeth were clenched, and I had to pry open his mouth to pour in the yeleran extract. He tried to spit it out, but I forced his jaw shut and pinched his nose tight, so that in the end he swallowed. He fought me after that, but his movements were sluggish and weak. I had no trouble holding him still until the yeleran dragged him under.
I sat back and released the breath I hadn’t even realized I was holding. Fuck, I hated this job. I sure wished that herbalist had mentioned hennanwort could cause a full blown panic. But then, maybe that was only true for a blood mage, or even just for Kiran—hell, what did I know? I wiped my hands on my leathers, as if by doing so I could erase my growing sense of uncleanliness.
Only the white of Kiran’s eye showed when I peeled back an eyelid. He was well and truly out, his limbs limp as a doll’s. Time to get this over with.
I arranged him comfortably as I could in the long, narrow space of the compartment. The ward-sealed box containing my personal charms and the rest of Bren’s items went in the corner beneath his feet, beside the engraved plate of Bren’s blackshroud ward. I pricked a finger and smeared blood on the blackshroud, packed hay around Kiran and the box as a cushion against the jolts the cart would take on the trail, then slid the main panel back into place.
I stacked the false ore sacks to cover the panel and made sure the sack openings were all easily accessible. If I had Khalmet’s favor, the guards would open the sacks without bothering to move them around. I whispered the blackshroud’s activation word. A flicker of carmine red raced over the wood of the driver’s box.
Warded, sealed, and ready...but would the drugs truly fool the Alathian mage at the gate? Only way to know was to try.
The trip to the bridge went uneventfully, if slowly. I exchanged nods with a few passing riders on the settlement trail, who didn’t give me or the cart more than a glance. But once we reached the main road and faced the bridge, I cursed under my breath. Five heavily laden wagons surrounded by dark-skinned riders in ornamented leathers waited in line at the gate. From the bone discs braided in the riders’ hair and style of carvings on the wagons, they’d made the long journey north from Sulania along the western front of the mountains.
The herbalist had told me the hennanwort’s effects would last a full day or more, but the yeleran would only keep Kiran out for four, maybe five hours. Inspections on foreign trade wagons could take long enough to push that margin razor thin. If Kiran woke up before we passed the gate, I’d be in trouble. But damn it, the guards had already seen us; they’d get suspicious if I turned around now. I pulled up behind the hindmost wagon, and settled in to wait.
The day wore on, slowly, and it took all my experience to pretend I was nothing more than bored. An argument broke out between the Sulanians and the Alathians over some piece of their cargo, and it dragged on until I wanted to throttle them all. In the end, one of the Sulanians tried to bribe the guard captain, a dumb move if I ever saw one. Preventing bribery was one of the reasons the mage stood watch, and the guard captain was well aware of it. He impounded the crate and ordered the arrest of the unfortunate Sulanian.
Angry yells erupted, and one idiot even drew a knife. The Alathian mage barked out a word. The glassy ward lines on the gate blazed white, and crackling silver light haloed the knife-wielder. He dropped like he’d taken a rock strike to the head.
The yells cut off into shocked silence. The mage stared round in challenge, but the other Sulanians were smarter than their comrade. They kept their eyes down and their mouths shut, as the guards hustled off the original offender and the limp body of his friend.
I took deep breaths, seeking to calm my uneasy stomach. Gods, I could’ve done without the reminder of what I faced if anything went wrong.
I’d hoped the guard captain would cancel the inspection and turn the Sulanians back, but the convoy’s boss was a smooth talker. After a lot of bowing and apologetic gestures on his part, the captain grudgingly motioned for the guards to continue. The Sulanians stood by meek as hopmice while guards crawled over every damn inch of their wagons and the mage glowered over each piece of cargo. My calm stretched ever thinner. Just when I thought it would finally break, the guard captain finished off with a series of stern-faced warnings, and waved the Sulanians through.
Our turn, at last. As the Sulanian wagons creaked through the gate, my mind snapped into the knife-edged clarity I used for climbs.
The guard captain approached with his logbook. Both he and the mage were different men from last night, although I recognized a few of the guards on duty. I watched the mage without looking directly at him. With his pinched face and sour expression, he looked like he belonged in a banking house.
The mage paced around the cart, his hands held out, the metal of his detection charms winking in the sunlight. I summoned the memory of a day spent relaxing in the sunwashed expanse of Gelahar Cirque. Not a single care to trouble my thoughts, surrounded by the stark beauty of jagged ridgelines above blue-green lakewater...lazy calm spread over me as I answered the captain’s questions.
The mage stopped near the front of the cart. I lost myself in cobalt sky and a sweep of gleaming rock; my breathing stayed even, my heart steady.
He scuffed at something in the dirt, frowning, and moved on. I didn’t allow myself even a blink of relief.
The mage nodded to the captain, and moved off to examine my pile of Alathian-legal charms. Almost done, now. I paid the required tax as the guards retied my sacks of supposed ore. The mage passed back my charms, and the captain handed me the entry document that allowed me to sell my wares in Alathia. I ducked my head to him and twitched the reins.
We passed under the great arch and the wards stayed silent and still, without even a glimmer of life.
The moment we passed out of sight beyond the boatyards, I slumped and sucked in a lung-bursting breath. By Khalmet, I’d done it! Beaten both Ruslan and Pello to the border, and slipped Kiran past the Alathians...mother of maidens, I could hardly believe we’d made it.
But the job wasn’t done yet.
Take him straight to Gerran’s,
Bren had said. An order I couldn’t ignore, if I wanted my hard-earned payment. I got a flash of Kiran’s panicked, pale face, his body twisting feebly against my hold—and shoved it aside. No, damn it. Melly’s life depended on me. I’d do nothing to risk the coin that would save her, not when I was so close to finishing this job I could taste it.
A muffled groan made me start. Shit, I should’ve known things were going too smooth. The delay with the Sulanians had cost us too much time, and the yeleran was wearing off. When Kiran woke, he’d find himself still disoriented by the hennanwort and confined in a cramped, dark space. No doubt he’d panic, maybe even start screaming. Kost wasn’t Ninavel, where people knew to mind their own business. Alathians would come running, and call for the city guard. I had to get to Gerran’s, fast.
I held my breath and prayed Kiran would stay under as we rattled through streets bustling with solemn-faced Alathians. I heard him shift a few times, but nothing more, thank Khalmet.
Soon as I drove the cart around behind Gerran’s office into his packing yard, I jumped off the frontboard and started yanking sacks away. Kiran groaned again, louder. I cleared the panel and whacked it open.
Kiran’s eyelids were fluttering and his breathing was accelerating fast. I dragged him out and braced him against a sack.
“Kiran, can you hear me?” I spoke right into his ear. He moaned, and opened his eyes. His pupils were tiny specks in a sea of blue, and his eyes met mine without any recognition.
“We made it. You’re in Kost,” I said.
He blinked at me with those vacant blue eyes, and said something so badly slurred I couldn’t understand it. At least he wasn’t panicking like he had in the forest. Maybe the grogginess from the yeleran was keeping him calm.
I reached for his amulet, gingerly. Kiran had said he’d released its warding, to prevent any chance of it spiking the detection spells. No sparks stung my skin, and I lifted the amulet over his head and pocketed it. He’d promised it was mine, once in Kost, and I didn’t want any misunderstandings with Gerran.
A glimmer of sense returned to his eyes as he watched me retrieve my warded box and pack away the blackshroud ward. He straightened against the sack.
“We’re safe?” he asked, the words heavily slurred but recognizable.
I nodded. The stark relief dawning on his face made my gut twist. I opened my mouth, not sure what would come out—and shut it, fast, as Gerran’s back door opened and the massively muscled guy I remembered from the night before bounded down the steps.
“Gerran wants you two inside,” he announced.
“I’m working on it,” I snapped, and reminded myself sharply that Kiran wasn’t my problem anymore. Or wouldn’t be, soon as I got him off this damn cart. I hauled him to his feet. Just as I was eyeing the drop to the ground and wondering how to manage it without dumping Kiran on his head, Muscle Guy solved my problem by grabbing Kiran’s belt and lifting him down as easily as if he were a stray kitten.
Muscle Guy looked like he meant to sweep Kiran up and carry him the rest of the way, but Kiran staggered backward, fetching up against the cart’s side. “I can walk,” he insisted. The effect was spoiled a little by the slur and the way he swayed like a fir in a strong wind. I exchanged a look with Muscle Guy, who shrugged. I sighed, shifted my warded box under one arm, and tugged Kiran’s arm over my shoulders.
“Right, you can walk. Let’s go this way.” With a fair amount of help from me, he weaved his way across the yard, and after a few false starts, negotiated the steps.
Once inside, I thumped the box down on Gerran’s desk and disentangled myself from Kiran, who kept his feet by clutching the desk’s edge like a lifeline. Muscle Guy joined another man so like him as to be his twin, standing stolid-faced by the wall.
Gerran pushed his spectacles up his nose and leaned forward in his chair. “Any problems in the crossing?”
“Only a delay from some Sulanian idiots who thought they could get contraband through with a bribe.” I pricked my thumb and pressed it to the center of the box’s wards. They shimmered blue-violet and the lock clicked. I removed the leather bag containing my own personal store of charms, then nodded to Gerran.
He extracted Bren’s charms and wards one by one, unwrapping their oilskin coverings and comparing each item against a ciphered list. With each tick mark on his list, the satisfaction in his dark eyes grew.
“The delivery appears in order.” He added the final charm to the glittering row already laid out on the table, and peered over his spectacles at Kiran. “Though I’ll need to inspect the special consignment.” He motioned to the first of the muscle twins. “Hold him.”
Kiran’s eyes went wide as the man pinioned his arms. He drew breath, but his captor clapped a broad hand over his mouth. Kiran’s eyes rolled to mine in mute appeal.
My hands fisted, but I held my ground. Damn it, I’d known something like this was coming. Shouldn’t matter if it happened in front of me instead of after I’d gone. Besides, the second muscle twin was watching me with flat, hard eyes. Gerran’s insurance, in case I got any crazy ideas.
Gerran yanked Kiran’s shirt up to his neck, revealing the red and black snarl of the blood mage sigil. He examined the sigil intently, comparing it to a sketch.
Over his shoulder, Kiran’s eyes met mine, and it took every ounce of will I possessed not to flinch. Oh gods, the sick, stunned realization on his face...I felt lower than a mudworm. I concentrated fiercely on the thought of Melly, safe and happy. It didn’t help.
Relief joined the satisfaction in Gerran’s eyes. “Take him up to third-level storage, and restrain him until the buyer arrives.”
Buyer? The sour taste in my mouth got stronger. I’d thought Gerran meant to set the Alathians on Kiran. Not a pleasant outcome, but one I might have stomached, for the sake of Melly and poor dead Harken. Kiran had made it plain he’d prefer the Council to Ruslan; and I’d told myself the Council might be lenient, once they heard his tale. Yet the shame burning my throat said deep down I’d known Gerran intended something nastier than a simple snitch.
As Gerran’s man dragged him to the door, Kiran shut his eyes tight, his body tensing. I froze, images of dead mules and blackened trees flashing through my head.
Nothing happened, and I let out a shaky breath. The herbalist had been right about the hennanwort, then.
When Kiran opened his eyes, they were dark with despairing fury. As the muscle twin hauled him out the door, I turned back to Gerran, careful to display none of my shame and anger. The second twin hadn’t moved a hairsbreadth, his gaze still locked on me.