The Whitefire Crossing - By Courtney Schafer Page 0,24
the point of damaging the city and killing crowds of unfortunate bystanders, he’d gotten mad enough to draw the line.
The stories differed on what he’d done—some said he’d had the mages involved killed, others that he’d banished them. Nobody agreed on how he’d managed to do either, but the end result was that life in the city went back to normal. Still, it had been a crazy few months, and all that messing around with magical forces had screwed up the weather in a big way. I’d heard stories of storms with colored lighting bright enough to blind anyone foolish enough to look at it, and hail the size of a man’s head.
I glanced at Kiran, wondering if his reaction to the storm had something to do with the mage war stories. He was several years short of my own age, so chances were good he hadn’t even been born when it happened. Maybe somebody had told him the more gruesome stories as a kid and scared him good, but it was hard to imagine that making him go rabbiting off into the catsclaw. I had a sudden flash of the horror on his face when he’d realized a message might reach Ninavel. Had he thought the storm meant a mage was after him? Surely not. Even a highsider would know how dumb that idea was. Whatever mages want, they get, and they don’t fuck around about it, either. If a mage wanted to stop him, Kiran would be dead already. No, it had to be something else.
Kiran didn’t look scared now; far from it. His fascination was plain as day, and I could practically see all the questions jamming themselves up in his throat.
“Mage war.” Pello spoke as if he were savoring the words. “Now there’s a thought to disturb a man’s sleep.” An odd undertone colored his voice, and I shifted forward, wishing his eyes weren’t in shadow.
“Surely so,” Harken agreed. “I worked a convoy traveling all the way to eastern Arkennland that year, so I missed all the excitement, but from the tales my sister shared, I’m not sorry. She lost her husband and two nephews—stonemasons, all of them. They were on a job repairing the southgate wall when one of the fights flared up. The whole wall came down, killed their entire crew in an instant.”
Jerik stood, his back rigid. “I’ll check the horses before I turn in,” he announced, and headed off into the night without a backward glance.
Pello’s mobile face creased in theatrical disappointment. Cara cuffed his shoulder. “Don’t expect any campfire tales out of Jerik, not without a lot of sarkosa wine to soften him up first. The man’s got a mouth tighter than a snare trap.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Pello said. His gaze swept across us, and his smile held more than a hint of irony when he nodded to me. I suppressed a scowl as he made his farewells and finally disappeared down the line. Cara watched him go with a small, contemplative smile on her face that made me want to hit her.
“For Khalmet’s sake, Cara, can’t you manage one trip without any lovesick drovers mooning after you?”
She smirked. “I’d wondered where your tongue had got to. Who says I’m the main attraction?” She aimed a soulful look at Kiran. “Hard to compete with the likes of you, kid. You must have had herds of city girls throwing themselves at your feet...and plenty of boys, too, I’d wager.”
Kiran looked like he wished the earth would split open and swallow him, but he managed a stiff little shrug. Cara ignored my pointed glare and flicked a dried fig at him.
“No need to be so shy. What, you have a lover back in the city? Someone you miss?”
Kiran hurriedly ducked his head, but not before I saw the way he’d squeezed his eyes shut, as if in pain. “No,” he muttered.
Well, that little reaction added new weight to my theory that someone back in Ninavel wanted him gone. I didn’t know the rules for highsiders’ love games, but maybe he’d chosen the wrong lover to chase after, and now he was paying the price. I felt a twinge of sympathy, but pushed it aside. Time to distract Cara. Teasing Kiran about his love life was one thing, but from the growing curiosity in her eyes, her next questions might be more dangerous. Anything she learned about his supposed past was sure to end up in Pello’s ears.