‘So many magic words in your language. Who knew the word for “daughter” was the same as the word for “silence”?’
I felt my father’s arms tense beneath my back and legs. ‘How clever. I take it you must be some sort of travelling entertainer? Should I offer you a few coins for your performance?’
My father considers actors and troubadours to be slightly less useful than sand lice.
‘Why, thank you, Great Ke’heops,’ Ferius replied, either not picking up on his sarcasm or not caring to. ‘But no, I’m more of what you’d call a cartographer.’
‘You make maps?’ I glanced back at her horse’s saddlebags, expecting to find the kinds of long wooden tubes my mother uses to protect her fragile charts. ‘Where do you keep them?’
Ferius patted one of the front pockets of her black leather waistcoat. ‘Right here.’
There was no way you could keep proper maps inside a pocket. I was about to point this out to her when I noticed that the buildings along the street on either side of us were getting shabbier and shabbier. No longer the three-and four-storey trimmed limestone houses and marble sanctums we’d passed on the Way of Ancestors, these were squat little buildings made from rough timber or unpolished slabs of sandstone. The exteriors had none of the brass or silver finishings typical of Jan’Tep homes, nor statues or any decoration other than the occasional worn shop sign hanging out front. What little illumination leaked out onto the street came from the flicker of mundane oil lanterns through the wooden slats of unevenly cut windows.
‘Why are we going through the Sha’Tep slums?’ I asked my father. ‘The Way of Ancestors is faster.’
‘This path is … quieter.’
Quieter. You know you’ve sunk pretty low when your own father is embarrassed to be seen with you in public. My chest felt tight. It made no difference that I’d managed to beat Tennat even without spells of my own. No one thought that I’d been clever or brave, not even my own father. All that mattered was that my magic was weak.
‘Guess it makes sense to take the quiet route if you’re looking to avoid trouble,’ Ferius said, reaching into her waistcoat and pulling out a thin smoking reed.
The comment struck me as innocuous, but Shalla was always sensitive to any implied insult to our father. ‘How dare you suggest that Ke’heops would ever—’
‘Daughter!’
The word had come so fast and forceful that it took me a second to realise it was Ferius who’d said it. Shalla looked stunned and stood there for a moment as if someone had cast a chain binding on her.
‘Will you look at that?’ Ferius chuckled. ‘It really works. My very first magic spell.’ She stuck the smoking reed between her teeth and leaned towards Shalla. ‘Give me a light, will you, kid?’
Shalla gave her a look that made it clear she had no intention of obliging her with even that simple spell. Despite knowing better, I lifted up my right hand and called on the magic of ember to flow through me. I turned the full force of my mind and will to envisioning the gap between my thumb and forefinger igniting in flame. When I was sure I had it ready I whispered the single-word incantation, ‘Sepul’tanet.’
Nothing.
This far from the oasis, I couldn’t even make a candle spell work. All I got for my troubles was a sudden wave of exhaustion and the sensation that the tattooed ember band on my arm was cutting into my skin.
‘No need to trouble yourself,’ Ferius said. ‘Got my own magic for this.’ She snapped her fingers and a match appeared between them. She flicked her thumb against the head of the match and it ignited. A few seconds later she was blowing thick rings of hazy red smoke into the air behind us. ‘Someone’s following.’
‘No one of consequence,’ my father said, resuming his progress down the street. ‘Probably just some curious Sha’Tep.’
‘My father cast a warding spell when we left the oasis,’ Shalla explained. ‘He’ll know if any mage comes within a hundred yards of us.’
‘Really?’ Ferius asked. ‘You can do that?’
Shalla smirked at her. ‘We have spells for everything, Daroman.’
Ferius took a drag from her smoking reed. ‘I wonder then, oh great and powerful mages, if there might also be a spell that counters those sorts of wards.’ Before either Shalla or my father could answer, she added, ‘Because those people I mentioned are here, and they ain’t Sha’Tep.’
Voices came shouting from the darkness behind us, followed swiftly by several sets of sandalled feet slapping along the street. ‘Ke’heops! Stand and answer for the crimes of your house!’
My father set me down on my feet. My legs were still wobbly so I leaned against the rickety door frame of a cloth merchant’s shop. When I looked back down the street, I saw the red flapping robes of Ra’meth coming towards us.
Like my father, Ra’meth was one of the lords magi of our clan. He was, quite possibly, the only person who disliked me even more than his son, Tennat, who came alongside with his two older brothers.
‘Good evening, Lord Magus,’ my father greeted Ra’meth. He nodded to the others and added, ‘Adepts. Initiate.’
Both the older boys had passed their mage’s trials a couple of years ago. Ra’fan was a chaincaster now, and Ra’dir a war mage. They both appeared calm, almost cordial, which is how you look when you’ve been preparing yourself for spellcasting. This wasn’t going to be good.
My father showed no sign of concern. ‘I doubt you’ve forgotten the clan prince’s edict, Ra’meth. Our two houses are forbidden from feuding.’
Tennat sniggered, which is the kind of thing you do when you’re too stupid to understand quite how dangerous it is to break an edict. There are all sorts of concealment spells in Jan’Tep magic, but none that will hide you from the clan prince’s wrath if you cross him.
‘We come on a matter of law,’ Ra’meth declared. ‘That foul creature of yours comes with us!’
My father made a show of looking around at Shalla, Ferius and myself. ‘Of which foul creature do you speak? I seem to be plagued with them tonight.’
Ra’meth pointed an elaborately carved oak-and-silver rod about two feet long at me. It was the symbol of his office and a potential conduit for his magic. ‘That filthy wretch cheated in a sanctioned initiates’ duel,’ he said. Ra’meth’s voice had a clear, almost musical quality to it so that, even angry as he was, there was a certain beauty to the way he added, ‘I will see Kellen, son of Ke’heops, bound in copper and buried in a cell this very night.’
My father hesitated. Lying to a fellow member of the mage’s council was grounds for sanction, but if he admitted that Ra’meth’s accusation was true, I’d be dismissed from the mage’s trials. I had put my father in an untenable position.