The Whitefire Crossing - By Courtney Schafer Page 0,103

Dal had warned us time and again that nothing could compete with active casting. And now I hadn’t even the Taint to help me.

Pello’s words whispered through my head. You dare not cast true magic here. This was Alathia, not Ninavel. A blood mage here would still be a deadly opponent, but the instant he cast anything stronger than a street-simple charm, he’d trigger the Council’s detection spells and bring a host of their enforcer mages down on his head. Plus, the Alathians would never have agreed to let a blood mage live in exile within their borders—which meant they must not know about him.

A weapon I might use, though if I ran to the Alathians while Kiran remained a captive, I’d sentence him to death along with his captor. Now that I wasn’t making idiotic rationalizations to myself, hoping for leniency from the Council for Kiran felt crazy as wishing for snow in Ninavel. No question Kiran was a blood mage, and the Alathians weren’t known for making fine distinctions.

Besides, they wouldn’t limit their questioning of me to safe topics. They’d find out all about my smuggling and Gerran’s operation, and even if I didn’t end up executed by the Council for my own crimes, my life wouldn’t be worth two kenets when Bren found out who’d destroyed his business. But if I could find a way to break Kiran free and only then set the Alathians on the mage, anonymously...

Gods. I’d thought ditching the convoy to run with Kiran was crazy. Stealing him away from a blood mage was a whole new level of insanity. Yet the vicious knot in my stomach had already eased at the idea of a rescue. And if I’d learned one thing from my trip through the mountains with Kiran, it was that mages weren’t the invincible creatures I’d thought. They were human like everyone else, and made mistakes. Mistakes that could be exploited. I hoped.

Best to treat it like any of the jobs I’d worked in the old days, and start with a thorough scout of the mark’s location. I began crawling through the rafters, back toward the smoke vent. Damn it, I’d never sneak out of Gerran’s compound in time to follow the mage’s carriage, and I didn’t have any hair or blood from either Kiran or Pello to key a find-me charm with.

Kiran, slumped in the ropes with his shirt torn halfway down his chest...I gripped a rafter with renewed force. His shirt, with the faint dye stains on the collar, left by his snow-dampened hair in the cave. And I still had a packet of dye from the same batch, sitting in my stash. I’d thought I might need it if I had to lie low in Kost. I’d never used dye to key a find-me, but it might work. So long as the mage didn’t dump the shirt or burn it. I crawled faster.

At least I had one advantage. The mage had no idea I’d have any remaining interest in Kiran. He wasn’t expecting me, and any Tainter worth their price knows that’s the best advantage of all.

***

(Kiran)

Kiran returned to consciousness the same way he’d left it, with the mage’s hand on his forehead. He twisted away from the touch, his eyes flying open.

Instead of tied to a chair, he lay on a narrow but thickly quilted bed. The wood of the walls and ceiling was polished to a warm golden glow, and a patterned silken tapestry caught the light of an oil lamp hanging from the ceiling. Kiran pushed up, only to collapse back on the bed as sluggish muscles gave way.

The mage looked down at him dispassionately from his seat on an ornately carved chair beside the bed. “It’ll be a while yet before that hennanwort wears off completely.”

Even as the mage spoke, Kiran reached desperately for power, realizing the smothering numbness within had faded. Yet the moment he released his barriers, he slammed up against a force as solid and unyielding as a stone wall.

The mage gave a dry chuckle at Kiran’s reflexive gasp. “Come, now. You cannot imagine I’d allow the drug to wear off without a better means of control.” He pointed.

Intricate silver filigree twined over Kiran’s forearms from wrist to elbow, the metal bright against his skin. Kiran’s stomach sank. A charm strong enough to block a mage’s power so completely must be thirteenth level, or more—well beyond anything Kiran had ever created. But if he could read the pattern... he touched