Solstice #2
“Orderly,” she agreed. “The less likely to change, the better.”
“Which means you—” He pointed a finger at her. “The spell triggered last night, when I entered the maze, but that’s not when you cast it. That’s not when you’ve cast any of these spells. You did that when ‘Order magic’ was at its most powerful—”
Kaiataris’s mouth flattened with concern. “Perhaps you should attempt to remain calm.”
“Fuck remaining calm!” Math swore. Trees creaked behind him in response, bark groaning like it might split.
Somewhere deeper, a low thrumming began, like roots dragging across stone.
The forest had heard him. Worse, she had too—and he could feel her dread rising.
“You can’t remove it, can you? It’s not that you won’t. It’s that you literally can’t.”
She swallowed visibly and looked out into the darkness. “I can. Eventually. But it will likely take years—”
“Years? Years! Ha!” Math picked up his Kaliri-weapon-turned-club and slung it over his shoulder. “My country is being invaded by evil, magic-throwing intelligent trees and grim lord–worshipping cultists using some kind of horrible new black-powder weapon. I don’t have years. I doubt I have weeks.”
Math could still feel her anger, except it wasn’t hers at all. He was feeling his own anger, reflected back at him like a mirror. “I would undo it if I could,” she whispered. “I have no desire to keep someone by my side against their will.”
Math closed his eyes. The horrible thing—the really awful, twisted, ugly thing—was that he knew she was telling the truth.
Honestly, he wished she’d been some vile witch out of a fairy tale.
That would’ve been so much easier. Why did she have to be like this?
She was beautiful and smart and so, so brave.
She couldn’t have known for sure that Math would heal her, that Huraiik wouldn’t give her an immediately lethal injury. She’d done it anyway.
“I believe you.” Math turned away, hands on his hips. The flower-strewn glade stretched before him like a forgotten memory. The ruins of his childhood home crouched under vines and moonlight.
He couldn’t stay here.
Math didn’t turn to look at Kaiataris, but he felt the weight of her stare.
“So this is where we part,” Math said.
She straightened, shocked. “You cannot be serious.”
“I couldn’t take you with me even if I wanted to.
I have no coin. No gear. No horse. All I’ve got is a writ of passage tied to a dead captain, and even if I looked like him—which I don’t—there’s no one on the continent who’s going to mistake me for a decorated Idallik officer.
The Queens are hunting you. The Order is hunting me.
If we travel together, we double our chances of being caught. ”
She folded her arms over her chest. “Do I have to remind you that the Queens were not, in fact, following me?”
Math sighed. “Fine. Everyone’s hunting me. You still stand a better chance without me.”
“Or,” she said slowly, “I could aid you.”
“I don’t see how.”
“What if I could help you impersonate your captain?” Her voice was beginning to take on the tense edge of desperation.
Of course, Math realized. She didn’t have anyone else. She didn’t know anyone else. And she’d just woken up in a completely unfamiliar world only to discover that everyone hated her.
He yanked his thoughts away from that road. The last thing he could afford to be was sympathetic to a grim lord. Even if that person might not have ever been a real grim lord. What had she called herself? A graven wizard?
“Mathaiik?”
Math ran a hand through his hair. “How would you help me? I had to leave his plate armor behind, and it’s not like I can go back for it. I don’t know if I’d find Idallik Knights, Kaliri assassins, or very angry trees, but I guarantee you that site’s guarded by now.”
“Yes,” she said with exaggerated patience.
“And I told you I am not completely powerless. Just because I lack the strength to raise the dead again so soon does not mean I am devoid of all magical ability. You want to reach your superiors, do you not? I want to prevent a second extinction. Our goals are aligned.”
Math shook his head. “I can’t. I’m sorry. Thank you for helping me. I wish you luck.”
He turned to leave.
Her voice chased him. “I can help you disguise yourself as a captain. Then you will be able to use your writ to reach your superiors quickly and easily.”
Math stopped.
She continued: “The Parnathi travel faster than you do. Another Huraiik will be here soon enough.”
He turned around. “You have some kind of magic?”
She stepped forward, raised an arm. Bracelets gleamed in the light. She slipped one free—a wide, flat band of gold etched with flowing script that shimmered with Math’s reflected spell light.
“It is the primary difference between your magic and mine. Wild magic is raw, impermanent, difficult to control. The effect vanishes the moment you stop concentrating. Ordered magic anchors itself to objects—and those objects may be shared.”
She extended the bracelet toward him. “This will suffice. If you trust me.”
Math stared at it.
He knew what he should say. He should say no. Should turn his back, walk away, find some rational path through this madness.
But then he thought of the Queens. Of the way the vines had peeled Huraiik’s original human body apart like wet bark. Of the sound of that metal slug blasting through Captain Qin’s head.
The Order needed to know. They needed warning. Right now, Math wasn’t sure that anyone at Isofal even understood the threat. Maybe Captain Danvi, but Math didn’t think she’d be able to convince enough people.
Someone had to warn the Order’s leaders.
And yet, this wasn’t a compromise. Accepting help from Kaiataris was heresy with a pretty face and an outstretched hand. Everything he’d been taught said to end her. Instead, he was bargaining. Worse, he was starting to believe she didn’t want to hurt anyone at all.
Slowly, he nodded. “Fine. We have a deal. For now. If this thing can make me look like Captain Qin, I can get us both tickets on the train to Bashan. We can part ways before I head to the Bashan chapter house, and no one has to know you were ever there.”
Kaiataris brightened. “Brilliant,” she said.
Then paused.
“… only … what is a train?”