The Suffering of Fools

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

I leaned around the tree and fired off a kinetic bolt spell. I knew it wouldn’t find its target, but it would keep that bastard Kason Estosia from dashing out of his own cover to finally try to arrest me.

How had the bloody witch-hunter found me?

Firing off another bolt, I considered the past few days.

It had to have been that innkeeper in Beckwith.

I’d seen the Wanted poster as I left town, hadn’t I?

It depicted my eyes as absurdly angled and my ears as if they were two feet long if they were an inch.

Accurate rendering, my ass. It had been a reminder that just because I could forget I had sprite blood thanks to a father I’d never met, no one else ever would.

Damn, damn, damn!

If I’d left town yesterday instead of this morning, Kason wouldn’t have caught up to me again.

Bastard. Asshole. When you couldn’t get an honest job because idiots thought your pointed ears meant you had demon blood, were stupid, or were going to rob them blind as soon as their backs were turned, what were you supposed to do to keep food in your belly and a roof over your head?

All right, so I had ended up robbing more than a few folks blind, but it was that or starve.

I’d starved before. I wasn’t interested in revisiting those times.

A bolt rustled the leaves above my head. It tingled, the magic clashing with my own. “Giving up, Mokido?” Kason yelled across the clearing. Smugness dripped from the witch-hunter’s words.

“Just getting warmed up!” I assured Kason, then fired off three bolts in quick succession.

A stupid waste of energy, but damn it, Kason always affected me like this.

Made me overreact. It was a bloody miracle Kason hadn’t yet grabbed me in this cat-and-mouse game we’d been playing for nearly two years.

For a witch-hunter, Kason was good. Too damned good.

Usually, they were incompetent blowhards, out to make a bare minimum effort so they could brag to their friends that they’d fought a witch without actually putting themselves in danger.

Or they were truly untalented, making them easy to dodge and avoid.

But Kason? He took his job as a duty . I thought Kason still believed magic was a sin—despite the fact that he, as a witch-hunter, used it too.

See, that was good magic. Sanctioned. Acceptable.

The magic I used to make my life a little easier?

That was the bad shit. Maybe not evil, because evil was something the world had seen before and everyone could agree that witches’ minor spells were not it.

But still, in Kason’s eyes, my magic was wrong because I—sometimes—used it to take stuff that wasn’t mine.

Again, stealing versus starving, I’d take the stealing, thanks.

Regardless of Kason’s views of my magic, or my own rationalizations for using it as I did—the fact was that using it right now was getting harder and harder. The sun was setting, and I’d hoped I’d be tucked into my favorite cave along this route well before night fell, but…Kason.

“Fuck you, Kason!” I shouted.

“My my.” Kason chuckled. “Normally, the heavy-duty curses don’t come out until the second hour of fighting.”

I gritted my teeth and fell back behind the tree. My gaze flicked over my surroundings, as if I’d find that a solution had appeared in the few moments my attention was directed across the clearing. Of course one hadn’t. That would be too easy.

“Just surrender, Mokido. You know as soon as the eclipse starts, you’re mine anyway.”

The horrible part was that Kason was right.

I could already feel my magic ebbing as the moons began to align with each other and the sun.

A full eclipse hadn’t happened for a hundred years, but every witch knew the effects of one.

My magic would disappear for an hour or more.

So would Kason’s—but he had martial skills I didn’t, so the loss of his magic wouldn’t render him harmless. Me, on the other hand…

I’d have no more bolts to fling at Kason. More worrisome, my own half-magical nature would work against me, making me lethargic. Vulnerable.

That was the thought that goaded me into action. Leaping forward, I shrugged off my pack and darted through the trees. If I could just get away, find a hiding place, then I’d be safe during the eclipse.

I had to run. Run like I’d never run before.

Curse words chased me through the forest before the sounds of pursuit did.

I didn’t believe in the gods as the priestesses felt I should—because what had the gods ever done for me, hm?

—but in the chance that someone was listening, I still sent up a silent prayer that I’d get far enough ahead of Kason to lose him.

At least for the next few hours. After so long of the off-and-on chase, I knew I couldn’t avoid Kason forever, but please, gods, at least for now .

I leaped over a small bush, then climbed a giant fallen tree. It slowed me, but I hoped not too much?—

It was too much.

Something slammed into my back, and I didn’t fight the momentum. I fell forward, intending to use some of my sprite agility to roll and regain my footing, but when arms wrapped around me, I realized it wasn’t a bolt that had hit me, but Kason himself.

“You’re caught, little witch. Give up.” That smug, gravelly voice was in my ear.

“No!” I squirmed and jerked my head back, hoping to catch Kason in the nose. I hit nothing, though, and only succeeded in making my neck protest the sudden movement. Abandoning that tactic, I turned my head to the side and sank my teeth into Kason’s meaty biceps.

Another nice thing about the sprite blood? Fangs.

“Son of a?—”

Kason loosened his grip. I squirmed harder and managed to worm out of his arms. I scrambled to my feet—partially, anyway, but I didn’t let that stop me from trying to run again.

My hands clawed at the loam and debris of the forest floor even as I felt Kason’s fingers brush my leg, my hip, and then grab my hip-length hair.

My friend Imalfi always said my vanity would be the end of me. Damn her for being right.

Despite the pain from my hair being pulled, I didn’t stop.

I jolted forward and sideways, hoping to upset Kason’s balance.

Instead, Kason leaped at me again—this time catching me so we were chest to chest. I thudded to the ground.

Kason landed on me, hard, stealing my breath.

I stared up at Kason, my mouth open, as my lungs fought to refill.

Kason looked down at me, his face a mask of triumph.

“Finally,” he said.

And then the ground disappeared from beneath us.

I barely had time to process that we were falling, sliding—bushes, twigs, rocks, dirt cascading right beside us. I hit something, maybe a rock, that spun me away from Kason’s arms and face down into an ice-cold stream with a splash.

The water wasn’t deep, barely more than a handspan above the rocks littering the bed.

I jerked my head up so I didn’t inhale water, but my body let me know—loudly—that more movement was not happening anytime soon.

Splashing beside me indicated that Kason was up and moving, and there wasn’t a damned thing I could do to get away.

Everything hurt. I tried to watch Kason, but all I could see was the forest and a moss-encrusted statue on the bank that might once have been a woman. It seemed to have boobs, anyway.

Not a helpful observation.

I moaned as Kason grabbed my wrists and slid magic-inhibiting leather straps around them. “Why can’t you just leave me alone?”

Kason jerked the straps tight and murmured a word I couldn’t quite make out over the burbling of the stream, activating the binding’s enchantment. “Because you’re a witch, Mokido,” Kason said. “I promise, wherever you go, I’ll be there.”

“You need to find a hobby.”

“I don’t know. I’m pretty enriched enough by my line of work.” Kason tugged on my bound wrists. “Come on, up you go. In the name of Queen Daro, I’m placing you under arrest for theft valued at over a thousand gold from Lord Saraco Domner.”

I snorted. “What a liar. It was worth five hundred, if anything.”

With a groan, I staggered to my feet and stood there, head drooping, panting like I was a horse who’d been flogged for five miles. The sensation of my magic trickling away was not pleasant. The lack of it prickled my skin, making me twitch.

I couldn’t see the sun through the heavy cover of the trees, but now the eclipse didn’t matter. I was well and truly caught, and I doubted at this point that even the gods could save me.

Instead of marching me back to the road and aiming for the capital, Kason made camp next to the stream that had soaked us both so thoroughly.

I sat where Kason had directed me, with my back pressed against a slender tree, and watched the witch-hunter lay a fire and light it with flint—since his magic had disappeared as well, now that the sun was completely covered.

As the fire grew, the warmth of it barely reached me.

It did little to fend off the chill of the evening and shivers soon set in.

I closed my eyes and lay my head against the bark of the tree, knowing far worse discomforts awaited me back in Kardonan.

“Can I make a request?” I asked, my voice shattering the silence that had descended as Kason put together a meal over the fire.

Kason glanced at me. “I’ve only limited supplies, so the meal will be what it is.”

As though I cared about food at the moment. “When we get to the capital, can you suggest execution?”

The witch-hunter froze. “What?”

“Hard labor in the mines means my death anyway,” I explained. “I’ve heard the stories. Prisoners aren’t allowed to the surface. I’d be locked away from the sun.”

Every witch could withstand some time away from the sun or moonlight without any ill effects.

Hells, the only time our magic abandoned us was during an eclipse, like the one that was currently dissipating.

But being locked away from the sun for weeks, months, even years?

I didn’t want to imagine what that would do to me.

The sun was the source of life, the source of magic. Without access to it…

“Mokido—”

“Do you think the lack of sun would kill me before exhaustion does?” Because my willowy body certainly wasn’t designed for the brute strength required to bash rocks all day, every day.

I shook my head. “I don’t really want to find out.

But you could make the suggestion for execution.

They might listen. They won’t if I make it, just to be spiteful. ”

Kason turned back to his task. “I’m not going to suggest you be executed , for gods’ sakes.”

“You think I deserve hard labor?” Why was I so surprised?

Hadn’t Kason shown his undying animosity by hunting me from one region to the next?

Even if he did look like the stereotypical hero from the tales—tan skin, golden hair that flowed over his shoulders in perfect waves, eyes so blue they reminded me of a clear, cloudless sky in summer.

Not that I’d spent a lot of time thinking about Kason’s eyes, but…well. As a thief, I had to be observant .

At any rate, Kason might look like a hero, but he’d never be my hero. It shouldn’t bother me, but it did. A little.

“I don’t think anyone deserves hard labor. Particularly not in the mines.” Kason sat back on his heels and regarded me. “I was going to suggest reparation.”

I scoffed. “As if they’d consider it.”

“There’s precedence. Queen Daro has authorized it in the past when it was proven thieves were acting to survive, not out of malice.”

“And how many of those fortunate souls were not human? Or only half-human?”

“I don’t know,” Kason admitted. “It shouldn’t matter, should it?”

“Oh, it shouldn’t, but it always, always does.” As pretty an idea as it was, it wasn’t an option for me. I knew that in my bones. I couldn’t let it take root, that hope. Lifting my chin, I looked into the darkness surrounding the camp. “Besides, I like stealing. It amuses me. It’s fun.”

“I know you consider it so, but?—”

“There is no ‘but.’ That’s the truth. I’ll steal until my dying day.

In fact, I was planning out my next job.

A big one. Wasn’t there a crown-donated shipment of enchantment jewels headed to the Magic Academy for the Less Fortunate next month?

” That rumor had been swirling around for weeks, attracting thieves like flies to honey, but it took a special kind of asshole to steal from underprivileged kids.

Most of the thieves I knew did have some honor and weren’t truly considering the job, myself included.

But Kason didn’t need to know that. In fact, hopefully he would think it was the truth. Maybe then he’d pursue a short death for me instead of a long, drawn-out one.

“You need to stop talking.”

“Why? It’s not like I can do anything else when I’m bound like this.” I shrugged. “I’m just making a point.”

“You’re trying to rile me up, is what you’re doing.” Kason tilted his head. “Do you honestly think me so dimwitted not to see that?”

Well…yes, but perhaps I had underestimated him. “I’m merely looking for mercy. Don’t you have any?”

Kason focused on his stew, stirring it more vehemently than was warranted. The concoction bubbled and a pleasant aroma was already emerging. “I have plenty of mercy. Oodles of it.”

“Well then?”

“I’m not going to recommend you be put to death!” Abruptly, Kason stood, glaring at me. “I need to check the perimeter.” With that, he strode into the diminishing shadows surrounding the camp. The eclipse was nearly finished.

“But the stew!” I called after him.

I got no answer. Typical—the man was so accustomed to his position and his wealth that he didn’t think twice about wasting perfectly good food. Grumbling to myself, I settled back against the tree to watch the stew overcook and burn.