The Whitefire Crossing - By Courtney Schafer Page 0,127

as the stored magic reacted against Ruslan’s wards. They’d laughed and shouted as they competed to see who could get the brightest flash. Ruslan had reprimanded them both for wasting power and shirking their real practice, but not as harshly as he might have. A mage should never be afraid to experiment, Kiran had heard him say to Lizaveta later that evening.

The tiny gemstones in the bed carvings could only hold a correspondingly tiny amount of power, hardly a trickle. Yet even that trickle would be enough to react against the Alathian border wards if Kiran bound it poorly to the stone. Although Simon’s charms blocked him from casting magic, they couldn’t prevent him from using his blood as a conduit to the stone and passively storing a thread of his own ikilhia.

All he need do was keep the gemstone hidden on his person. When Simon tried to bring him across the border, the Alathian wards would do the rest. The border mage would be sure to notice the magical reaction.

Kiran smiled bitterly as he worked on freeing a thin shard of garnet. After all Ruslan’s insistence on working magic with perfect accuracy, who would have thought that shoddy casting might be his salvation?

***

(Dev)

Pello herded me through the Silver Strike’s common room, his knife still pricking its warning under my ribs. This late, the room held only a few traders nursing final beers. None of them glanced up, but the bartender spotted the blood matting my hair and bustled over, his face creased in concern. Pello fended him off with quick assurances of how I’d only slipped and he was taking me straight to a healer.

Gods, I could use one. My vision had cleared, but the vicious throbbing of my head kept my thoughts dangerously sluggish. I clung to my plan: get Pello as far away from Cara as possible, then ignore his blade and spark the boneshatter charm before we reached Simon’s house.

I’d expected him to drag me up to the wealthy southwest quarter, but instead he guided me eastward toward the docks. His blade never left my side, and his grip on my arm was clamped over a nerve that’d send me to my knees with a hairsbreadth more pressure. I moved along quiet and obedient as a pack horse, using the time to gather my fragmented wits. The chill damp of the night air soaked through my bloodstained collar and sent painful shivers chasing along my neck. Overhead, a fat moon drifted between ragged-edged clouds. The river fog hadn’t yet spread into the streets, but it would soon.

Maybe the boneshatter charm wasn’t my only option. I’d never outrun him in this condition, but with fog for cover, I might outclimb him. Cara should’ve had enough time to clear out of the Silver Strike by now. She’d head for my charm stash in the warehouse attic I’d set up as a bolthole. She’d be safe, there. I’d warded that attic tight as Simon’s house.

Pello dragged me into a packing yard some ten streets away from the Silver Strike. I willed the fog to hurry up, as we zigzagged through a maze of alleys between looming stacks of sealed, warded crates. Just as the first ghostly wisps wafted over the stacks, Pello shoved me down a dead-ended alley, then backed to stand blocking the exit. The wicked silver crescent of a nightstar blade glinted in his hand.

“I thought you wanted to talk,” I said, my eyes locked on the knife. Had he decided killing me was safest? He might think he had me trapped, but I’d scramper up those crates faster than a whiptail the instant he moved, no matter the pounding ache of my head. Of course, if he could throw that knife as well as he could grapple, I’d be fucked.

“I do,” he said. “A private talk, one shadow player to another.”

“As you so kindly pointed out at the convoy, I’m no shadow player.”

His teeth flashed. “Yet you succeeded not only in slipping your charge past both a blood mage and the Alathians, but held his trust so completely he never saw your betrayal coming. Forgive me for underestimating you.”

Digging for some hint of remorse over Kiran, was he? I’d not give him one, no matter how badly his words burned. “The job’s over. Bury me in flattery all you like, I’ve got nothing you can profit over. So how about you leave me the fuck alone?”

Pello didn’t move. “Did the boy truly cast a binding on