Chapter Four #2
“You certainly peek at me like a shopboy.”
He clenched his jaw. “I suppose you won’t let me sleep if I
remain quiet.”
“Just so.” She shifted again. She was definitely moving
closer. “Please, if you would, enlighten me as to how baby Isaac became a man.”
Isaac spoke wearily. “I was raised by my uncle. I lived in
the tower granted to him by the local college of elements. I was educated in
elemental casting and necrotic counteraction, just like my father before me.
This is the first time I’ve ever travelled from my home.”
He listened to the whisper of the wind, remembering how it
sounded through his high bedroom window.
Zaria snorted. “You’re not gonna make me prompt every word,
are you?”
“I just might.”
“Oh, come now, squire. Don’t be a tease.”
“My day always started at dawn,” Isaac said. “If I was not
bathed and dressed before then, I was caned. Mornings were dedicated to
mnemonic practice. If I forgot a motion in all the complicated sequences, I was
caned. If repeatedly casting the spells left me too weak to stand, I was caned.
In the afternoon, I studied by candlelight in the cellar of the tower, reading
endless biographies of centuries-old sorcerers and their contribution to
magical knowledge. If I could not name one of these sorcerers and their
treatises upon demand, I was caned. Evenings were spent doing chores—copying
manuscripts, preparing lab equipment. I rarely spent any nights not nursing
both welts and fatigue.”
He licked a trace of salt from his lips.
“The only people I ever talked to, beside my uncle, were
experts he would bring to expand my curriculum. Without fail, they would
mention my father. They would say they’re sorry. He was a good man, and it’s a
shame what happened, and what a proper boy I was growing to be. They’d tell me
stories of the sorcerer he was. He had done many favors for all of them. Again,
without fail, they would tell me how closely I resembled him. The spitting
image.” Isaac paused. “One time, I told my hex instructor that, if he was so
dismayed about my father’s capture, he should aid in his rescue. The second he left, my uncle caned me until I couldn’t walk.”
He watched a cloud grow red at the edges.
“Where was your mother in all this?” Zaria asked.
“She died giving birth to me.”
The wind sprayed sand across his boots.
“Anyway,” Isaac said, “you were right. I never lacked for
hot meals. We had multiple servants. I was always warm. I always had a bed.
That’s more than many.”
“Is that all normal? The caning and such?”
“It’s not abnormal. Magic is complex. It’s very difficult to
learn. It requires strict discipline and years of practice.”
Zaria blew a raspberry. “There’s a difference between tough
love and mean spirit. Your uncle sounds like the latter.”
“Oh,” Isaac said, “he very much resented being my caretaker.
He would often tell me so. According to him, I was ungrateful for all the
sacrifices he made for me, all the work put into my lessons, the costs of food,
whatever he could name. He’d tell me the only reason my insolence hadn’t gotten
me kicked to the gutter was because of his debt to my father.” He was silent
for a moment. “I wouldn’t say he was evil. Sometimes, he would dine with me,
and I’d see a different side of him. He would joke. He told me bits of gossip
from the college and the wider Diet office. After my chores, I could read
whatever books I wished. When I earned my journeyman title, I remember looking
into the crowd and seeing him smile.”
For a moment, Isaac was lost in memory.
“You know that letter I have? The one with the seal?”
“Aye,” Zaria said.
“It was written by him. Mostly, it’s just a reminder of my
mission, a means of granting safe passage. But there’s this—” Isaac couldn’t
get the words out. “He wrote a line, towards the end. ‘Your father will be
proud of you.’”
He had read that line many, many times.
“Isaac,” Zaria said, and there was something different in
her voice. “I don’t mean this . . . ungently, but I’ve seen that sort before.
Pirates, mercenaries, soldiers—any band of rough men that’ll pick along kids as
it roams through the land. It’s abuse. You smack the lad often, insult every
effort he makes, but throw in a reward now and then, and he’ll love you. He’ll
try desperately to win your approval. He’ll think all the horror you put him
through is for a purpose, rather than just bein’ mean.”
“I don’t care for your opinion on my family,” Isaac said.
“You asked, and I answered. That’s all.”
There was a silence.
“So be it. Your business, in the end.” He heard her start to
chew on more meat. “If we’re changing the subject, then I feel obligated to
inquire something.”
“Yes?”
“You ever laid with a woman before?”
Isaac turned onto his side, facing away. “I’m going to sleep
now.”
“Hold a moment. I’m getting the little itchy notion that
you’ve not spoken the truth.”
“You think I’m lying?”
“No,” Zaria said. “I think someone’s lyin’ to you.”
He frowned. Slowly, he rolled back over. “How do you mean?”
She unfolded his map from a pocket and shifted over until
she was sitting next to him. She held the map out, and Isaac noted,
disdainfully, that it had acquired her musk. “You came up from the south,
correct? This way here?”
He studied the map. “More or less.”
“You say that like it don’t mean nothing.”
“Should it?”
She snorted in disbelief. “Where do you hail from, Isaac? Be
specific.”
He looked up at her. The scar across her nose was the same
dull pink as the sunset above, and her eyes were already reflecting the light
in the coming gloom.
“At this point,” she said, “do you think it’ll hurt to
tell?”
Isaac rolled his eyes. “The outskirts of Khador, close to
this river here.”
“That’s to the east. Quite far, actually.”
“I hope you’re getting to a point.”
“Isaac, why were you coming up from the south if your home
lies to the east?”
“My uncle told me to venture around the eastern portion of
the desert. He said there were vicious pirates around the alluvial washes.” He
looked at her. “Clearly, he was right.”
“You have no idea what lies to the south, do you?”
“I’m sure you’ll tell me.”
She jabbed a claw into the map. “These are spawning grounds
for the wyrms. Largest nursery this side of the continent. And, right now,
you’re telling me you strolled right through their fuck nest because you
thought it was the safest bloody option.”
He blinked, reexamining his path from home to present. “That
can’t be right—”
“Isaac, I don’t think you fully grasp things here. You are
the first person who has ever entered those dunes and not come out the other
side as a pile of shite. You did so on foot, no less. If word of
this feat ever hits the masses, your name will be remembered for centuries. I
mean, they’ll write songs about you.”
Isaac stared at his map, feeling suddenly numb.
“Did you not suspect nothing?” Zaria asked. “Did none of
them fearsome creatures give you pause?”
“I—” He looked at his map
markers again, as if seeing them for the first time. “I was prepared for
adversity. The sorceress in the tomb could’ve been controlling the beasts, all
through some arcane talents. I wasn’t entirely sure she wasn’t sending them
after me.” He let his head fall back into the sand. “It wasn’t heroic. I was
terrified. Nearly swallowed a dozen times over. I had to use most of my scrolls
just to keep them at bay.”
Zaria hummed. “Guess that explains why you were so eager to
spurt your load at any ship passin’ over yonder. I’d be twitchin’ mad, too.”
“I’m sure you’re very grateful for my intervention.”
“Oh, dearly indebted, love. But here’s the rub—your uncle
told you to walk through that nest, didn’t he? Showed you exactly where to go?”
“I mean . . . yes, but—”
“He also the one that packed your bag?”
Isaac almost reached for his pack. “Yes, he was.”
“So he’s the reason you were wandering around the desert with
barely any water, then? Told you to supp from a spring that had dried up years
prior, didn’t he?”
Isaac gazed up at the wine-dark sky, his mind racing.
“Here’s the thing, love,” Zaria said. “This may come as a
shock, but many pirates are freeloaders. Idle sinners.”
“Don’t break my heart like that.”
“Oh, yes—with great pain, I speak true. You got your lads
whose only interest in life is their next drink, their next fight, and their
next fuck, and usually in that order. Their patrols are sloppy, they’ll break
the face of the first bloke that looks at them funny, and they’re even more
like to kill innocent folk that don’t need killing. Dangerous
to be around, as I’m sure you’d agree. But as it
happens, the code of conduct prevents a simple throat-slittin’ from solving the
dilemma. You know what the solution is?”
“Enlighten me.”
“You send them on an errand they won’t come back from. A
scouting mission when the town guard’s all riled, or a rearguard they got no
hope of holdin’. It’s something—what’s the word—deniable. You know my meaning. If you ever get questioned by their mates, you
can say you did your best. Makes it look tragic rather than planned.”
A tense feeling crept into his chest.
“From all I’ve heard,” Zaria said, “I’m thinking your uncle
did that to you. Problem is, you managed to survive it.”
“No,” Isaac replied.
“Course, I ain’t ever met the man, but I would think,
surely, that a wizard such as him would know how to plan a proper march,
especially if this mission of yours was so important. And yet—”
“No,” Isaac said, more firmly. “My uncle did no such thing.”
“I understand these accusations might—”
“You understand nothing!” Isaac shot back up to sitting,
dragging a cloud of sand. “My uncle is a high-ranking member of the Diet of
Nine. He is a tenured instructor at the college of Khador. He is petitioning
for entrance into the Council of Heavens and well expected to receive it. He is
not some—some—some cutthroat stabbing a lazy thug in the back!
I am his kin!”