Chapter Eleven #2
And my head. He doesn’t say it, but we all know that there’s no version of this where they let me walk away for the sake of my city. There will be no exile for me. If we lose or surrender, I’m dead.
And even in my darkest thoughts, I’m not willing to consider it. I will fight to the death for my people, but I will not lie down and die for them, not unless there’s no other option.
“What about the other options?” I look at Cyrus as I say it.
He clears his throat, glancing around the room as though he already knows how this will be taken.
“The suppressive alchemy shows a lot of promise, from my understanding of the research we seized in the Guild raid. When properly refined, the blood of the shadow-born effectively suppressed your magic with no other ill effects. Magic suppression could completely turn the tide of the war in our favor. Think of it. Our soldiers fight with magic, and theirs are limited to conventional weapons only. It would be a slaughter; they’d surrender immediately. ”
“But I’m the only light-born that we know of. Can the process be extended?”
“Zara’s notes indicate she believed all types of magic except nature could be countered in the same way—fire and water, earth and wind—although they weren’t able to replicate the process yet for those.”
“Why not nature?” asks Quinn.
Cyrus shakes his head. “Zara’s theory was that nature magic is the magic of life itself, and that only death could counter it, but she didn’t know.”
Still, even if we could only suppress the other types, it would be significant. Almost all soldiers on both sides are fire, earth, or shadow. Almost all sailors are water or wind. Nature-born tend to be healers or farmers, not soldiers.
But there’s a problem with all of this. “And blood is the only way?” I ask.
Cyrus nods. “We have something of a surplus of it at the moment, sir, at least of all types except light-born.”
I realize his implication with horror. He’s suggesting we drain the blood of the fallen to use in magic. “No. Absolutely not. Zara told me the blood only works if the person is still living anyway.”
He holds up his hands in contrition. “Apologies, sir, I didn’t mean to drain the fallen. I meant simply that there are many more people within Faros than ordinary, many of whom are not equipped for battle. It could be done on a volunteer basis only, taking only what can be taken without harm.”
“Vahlo save us, I’m all for getting an edge, but this is all kinds of fucked up,” says Quinn. “Even if it works, how are you going to stop it from affecting our own soldiers? And what are you going to do about the shadow-born? You don’t have enough blood to stop them all.”
“All questions for the Guild, I believe,” says Cyrus, answering for me. “But are we agreed that the research should continue?”
I check the feeling in the room, and it mostly mirrors my own. Alarm and disgust, but also a small degree of hope. If the suppression really works without ill effects, it could save thousands of lives at the cost of just a little blood voluntarily given.
I realize that this is the same calculus Zara thought I wouldn’t be able to understand when she hid the shadow-born blood research from me. And she would have been right. Under ordinary circumstances, I would have refused her on principle.
But war is not a place for a principled man.
“That doesn’t help us in the short term, though. Was there anything else in Zara’s notes?”
Cyrus begins to explain but is cut short by a knock at the door.
“Enter,” I yell. I can feel Larus from outside. “We’re discussing options to rescue Sylvie,” I say as a servant brings him a chair to join us at the table. “Continue, Cyrus.”
“There were other elixirs Zara was testing. The one she used to drug and immobilize Sylvie—”
“The one Adria used to paralyze me,” says Quinn in disgust.
“Your fall caused your injuries, according to the healers. The elixir merely made you lose consciousness,” corrects Cyrus.
He’s perhaps the only person I know brave enough to correct Quinn on something this meaningful to her. Her knuckles whiten as she grips the arms of her wheelchair, but she says nothing to her father.
“There were several potent and previously unknown poisons in her research. But what was more interesting was her innovation in delivery methods.”
“I recall,” I say. “The candles.”
Zara had used ordinary beeswax candles to deliver the elixir that suppressed my magic.
“Yes,” says Cyrus. “She was developing something she called a ‘diffuser.’ A device that could heat oil without burning it, which she believed would make the elixirs retain more of their potency. And when combined with the magic of the wind-born, the effects could be spread over some distance. She was testing methods to harness that wind-born power within the device itself. Ancient methods that appear to have been struck from most of our records.”
She had access to lost knowledge, that much I knew. She’d admitted as much when she told me that Sylvie and I were shadowbound, though she hadn’t explained what that meant. “And was she successful?”