Chapter 38 Two Letters #3
Levan stood rooted to the spot. He wanted to hurl a curse at the churlish Wielder, but it might be the first and last thing he did before his connection to magic was once more damaged.
He wanted to hurl his knife, but he only had two, and he couldn’t afford to miss—Nissa Naszi was known for her agility.
Taking the calculated risk that she wouldn’t fire a curse of her own, not when he was so close to Auria, he jammed the blade more sharply into Marriosan’s throat. A crisp line of blood drew itself across her pale skin.
Levan gritted his teeth. “I’m looking for—”
“Don’t do it, Nissa,” Auria moaned.
“—the office of Captain Vel Karvas.”
“Why?” Nissa asked innocently, again with that facsimile of interest. Her pupils darted left and right as she parsed the situation, then she sighed, as if to say how very obvious.
“Ah. Saffron’s letter. Lovely that she can send you off to do her dirty work for her, even though you’re handing us the grounds for arrest we’ve been trying to pin down for years. ”
“I don’t plan on leaving behind any evidence, and your description of my soap scent won’t hold up in a court of law.”
“You must love her.” Nissa’s words were flat, disdainful, as though describing a grotesque disease. “She’d already be dead otherwise.”
Levan lifted the dagger an inch higher and pressed a second razor-thin line into Auria’s throat. “Take me to your captain’s office, or Marriosan meets the same fate as her betrothed.”
“No, Nissa.” Tears clotted Auria’s tone. “No. I’m ready. I can go now.”
Thunder broke over Nissa’s face. “You are not ready, and you will not go. Not for the sake of a letter.”
“It’s what the letter represents.”
“Good and right and lawful. I know.” Nissa took a step forward, then lowered her wand a fraction. “I’ll take you to Karvas’s office.”
“No,” Auria groaned.
Nissa acted as though she did not hear her colleague’s protests. “The letter might not even be in there—might not even be on the premises. Aspar was paranoid enough to tuck it away in some distant vault.”
Levan looked from Nissa to Auria, then said to the latter, “You’re coming too.”
“No, I’m not.” Auria’s eyes were panicked now, pleading. “I can’t have anything to do with this. The captain said that if anything happened to that letter, I’d lose my—”
“So Karvas discussed the letter with you,” Levan said. “You know where it is.”
Auria shook her head so wildly that a third narrow mouth of blood opened beneath Levan’s blade.
At the sight of it, Nissa hissed like a wild serpent. “You hurt her anyway.”
“No, she—”
“Sen effigias.”
Levan dodged the statue curse just in time, lowering the knife from Auria’s throat and hurling it at Nissa’s chest. The Wielder dodged swiftly enough that the dagger found the far wall, splintering the wood panels.
“Az-iruani.” As she defaulted to her mother tongue, Nissa’s eyes glowed a tameless gold. The nearest window smashed into smithereens, and a subtle breeze washed through the room. “Dar-amvenaqi. Dar-iqondrat.”
Wind and fire wielded together in a ferocious flamethrower, torching straight at Levan.
Throwing a yelping Auria to the ground, Levan swiveled, but the torch caught the sleeve of his cloak and the silk burst into flame. Fear shooting through him, he shrugged out of the cloak and tossed it to the floor quickly enough that his flesh survived unburnt.
The flames kept coming, even when Auria screamed at Nissa to stop, even when the velvines scarpered out the open window, even when the curtain caught fire, then the portrait of Captain Mathar Wilsat, then the nearest squashy maroon sofa.
Levan—who was still invisible, but Nissa seemed to recognize the imprecise smear of air anyway—tried to be an object perpetually in motion, leaping over couches and vaulting tables, rolling away from the heat blasting in his direction, choking on the smoky air, retrieving his second knife from where it was embedded in the wall, wondering what in the hells he was supposed to do.
Dematus had warned him that leaving behind wounded or dead would make it impossible for her to block an arrest, but the only weapons he possessed were blades.
His magic might obey him after the healing episode, but he was afraid to incapacitate the feral Wielder and have it go wrong.
He couldn’t risk her death, accidental or otherwise.
As he darted around the room like a bladebull in an arena fight, he spotted a pot of ambertea next to the notes Auria had been scribbling when he arrived—notes titled Whitewing Stakeout: Night Three.
“Don aquiss,” he muttered, pointing his wand at the liquid and amplicating it like any other crop or resource. Once it was a large wave, he thrust it in the direction of the burning drapes and portraits and furniture, dousing it all with a sizzling hiss.
And it worked.
Because he was healing something.
Mending, saving, his intentions wholly honorable.
But then Auria was on him, finding her fight, her own brand of fire, the word sen forming on her rosebud lips, and Levan launched himself at her, tackling her to the ground so hard her head slammed back against the floorboards, and her eyes rolled in her head, and everything was spiraling out of control, and without his magic or his compelling, he had no idea how to wrest it back.
Auria went limp beneath his body, and panic coursed through him like a current. Saffron would never forgive him if either of these mages died in the pursuit of her father’s letter.
But Marriosan was still breathing, albeit shakily, too dazed to stand.
He grabbed her wand—an elegant thing, sapphire-studded willow—and swiveled back to face Nissa, who looked rather deranged as she held a snake-shaped curl of flame above her wand like a lasso.
As Levan climbed to his feet, Nissa loosed the tongue of fire, and though he tried to dodge, he stumbled on Auria’s supine form and the flame licked at his side, just above the ridge of his hip bone.
Burning pain scorched through his skin, his flesh, and he felt it char and bubble, and his vision pitched sideways.
He could abide all manner of hurt, but not fire.
Not fire, when he had been branded as a boy.
Not fire, when it reminded him so deeply of his own failings, of the terrible trappings of his existence.
His lungs tightened into fists, and he could not catch his breath.
In a second film layered over reality, Porrol Vogolan held a glowing branding stamp, a look of grim determination on his face. The pieces of an abandoned board game lay scattered on his bedroom floor. Levan’s trousers were damp with piss.
More fire lurched toward him, stronger than ever.
He rolled away.
How was Naszi still so powerful when she’d been in a hospital bed for almost two months?
He reached desperately for his compelling magic.
Stop throwing fire at me.
And somehow, somehow, she stopped. Let the flaming snakes dancing above her wand return to the hearth, so that only the gentle breeze from the smashed window remained.
Relief flooded Levan. His compelling had worked, because he was only trying to save the scarred little boy at the heart of himself.
He and Nissa glared at each other, both gasping for breath. The common room was obliterated, burned and sooty and coated with ash, the air coarse with smoke. The scorch mark across his side burned all the way to the bone, and his well glowed bright with the pain.
“Sen exarman,” he incanted, a disarming spell, his first attempt at the sen prefix in weeks, but arguably an extension of the self-defense.
His magic shuddered then obeyed, and the wand flew from Nissa Naszi’s hand and into his own golden palm.
But he had forgotten the other Silvercloak in the room.
Auria lunged at his back.
Since he was still mostly invisible, she took the leap at an awkward, imprecise angle, and he threw her off like a steed rejecting a jockey.
In the heat of the moment, he stabbed his wand in her direction and cursed, “Sen debilitan.”
The magic exploded from the end of his wand in a puff of black smoke, failing to find its mark.
Then Nissa was on him too, jabbing and twisting and attacking with a fighting style he had never encountered. He bellowed “sen vertigloran” in her direction, reasoning that disorientation was a less outwardly offensive curse than debilitan, but that too failed.
As he took an elbow hook to the cheekbone, pain exploding across his face, he tried once more to use defensive compelling.
Stop attacking me. Stop fighting.
But this time, Naszi did not obey.
His rewoven magical connection was faltering, like a broken bone that hadn’t been given long enough to heal.
Dizzy from the blow to the face, he lunged out with a knife, not particularly wanting to spill blood, but at a loss for what else to do.
He missed, and Nissa used the forward momentum to trip him so viciously that he dropped all three wands.
Auria scrabbled for hers, successfully so, and stabbed it in his general direction.
“Sen debilitan,” she hissed, and finally, it hit true.
He was paralyzed.
Frozen.
Of course, he could break free of such things.
But they did not know as much. And perhaps he could use that to his advantage.
He was prone on the floor, invisible still, belly and face pressed against the ground, fire searing his side.
He forced his breathing to steady, listening as the two silvers discussed how best to restrain him.
Nissa was not equipped with her cuffs or blisblade, given that she wore a soot-streaked hospital gown, but Auria retrieved hers from an abandoned belt by her notes, handing them to Nissa.
Laying aside her wand, Nissa crouched beside him, went to grab his wrist, but she was several inches wide, fumbling around to find his invisible form.
With a surge of energy, he wrenched from debilitan and rolled onto his back in a split second, grabbing Nissa down and pulling her back against his own body, using one arm to pin hers in place and the other to hold a dagger to her tattooed throat.