is rare, strong mage talent more so, and even here in Ninavel you mostly see middling types who can’t do much more than make a decent charm. Yet a charm can boil a man’s blood, or leave him a mindburned ruin; even a middling mage makes for a terrible enemy when crossed.
From the fearful silence of the crowd, the approaching mage was a lot stronger than middling. I craned my neck around a group of tradesmen in hopes of spying the sigils on the mage’s clothing. On occasion I’d seen men whose silken shirts bore the looping golden scrawls signifying sand mages, and once—from a distance—a woman with the eerie, pale spirals of a bone mage patterning her dress, but none more powerful than that.
The tradesmen gasped and shrank back. I sucked in my own breath with a startled hiss, as I glimpsed jagged red and black sigils.
A blood mage! Gods, I’d never thought to see one in the flesh, though I’d heard plenty of spine-freezing stories. Everyone knows mages have to raise power for their spells somehow, but most of them find ways that don’t turn grown men pale. Blood mages, on the other hand...they’re rare as mist in the desert, but the word is their magic’s as powerful as it comes, fueled with pain and death. And the bloodier, nastier, and more lingering the death, the better.
I plastered myself against the wall right alongside the cringing tradesmen, but I couldn’t resist sneaking another look. From the stories, you’d think a blood mage should look deformed and evil, but he just looked like a man. A tall man, broad shouldered, with thick wavy chestnut hair coiling past his shoulders, highsider-style. Arrogant as all get out, in that way ordinary highsider men tried so hard to imitate. What would it be like, to know you could do anything you wanted? Anything at all?
I darted a glance at his face, then nearly shit myself when his eyes locked with mine. For a long, frozen interval his cold hazel gaze pinned me in place, like a mudworm pierced by a dagger. At last he smiled—a smile whose predatory, amused malice turned my gut hollow—and strode on.
I slumped against the wall, my heart hammering. Next temple of Khalmet I passed, I’d make an offering. A big offering, because clearly I owed the god of luck for saving me from my own stupidity in attracting a blood mage’s attention. He’d probably come streetside to claim fresh victims for his spellwork—a fate I shuddered to imagine.
I pulled myself together. I still had a visit to make before preparing for the trip to Kost. I ducked down the next alley and made for the far corner, where the mortar between the great stone blocks had crumbled away. It was all too easy to scramble up the hundred feet to the building roof, using my fingers and the edges of my shoes in the cracks. City climbing’s never as fun as climbing in the mountains.
City views aren’t bad, though. Colorful magelights gleamed and sparkled in the highside towers like Suliyya’s thousand jewels of legend, outshining the stars in the darkening sky and contrasting with the warmer glow of lanternlight radiating up from the streets. Above the soaring outlines of the western city towers, the dark bulk of the Whitefires rose like a great saw-toothed wall, the snow on their peaks pale in the twilight.
My mood eased by the sight, I headed across the roof to a small cupola and a window glowing with warm light through a gauzy curtain. I made quick work of the window lock and pushed my way through the curtain, dropping into the brightly painted room beyond.
“Dev!” Liana beamed a welcome from the long table where she was clearing away the remains of a meal. Toys lay scattered over the floor, and she had to raise her voice over the excited shrieks of the kids playing on the far side of the wide room. “You could use the door, you know. I promise we’d let you in.”
“Nah, it’s more fun this way,” I said. “Besides, I remember how you always liked surprises.” The kids tumbled across the room and threw themselves at my legs, giggling and shouting my name.
“Dev, what’d you bring, what’d you bring?” the littlest one yelled. I picked him up, tickling him gently, and tossed him into the air. Where he stayed, floating. I did an exaggerated double take.
“No! This can’t be Tamin. Tamin can only lift himself a body