The Witch's Betrayal Read online

  Leila's house was closed up tight against the afternoon sun. I hadn't bothered to shift into the shadows on my way there, and I was soaked in sweat, my hair sticking to the side of my face. Penance, I suppose, for being what I am, for being something so close to Sarr. Blood magic is a sort of darkness. Maybe not the same, but close enough.

  I banged on Leila's door until she answered. When she saw me standing on her porch, she didn't say anything, only held the door open for me. I went inside and stripped off my armor and collapsed on the divan she kept in her main room. She brought me water in a simple wooden cup. I drank it down. She sat down on the divan beside me and tangled her fingers up in my hair.

  "Why did you walk here?" she asked.

  "Why did you help Sarr?"

  Her hand froze against the crown of my head. Silence swallowed us both.

  "I told you not to track him," she whispered.

  I sat up, pulling away from her. She didn't reach for me.

  "Why did you help him?"

  "I explained that to you."

  "You knew what he did. You had to, if you were warning me away from him --"

  She looked away.

  "Did you?" I said. "Did you know?"

  She lifted her head and stared at a point in the distance. Sunlight poured around her, casting her skin in a soft golden glow. "Of course I knew," she said softly. "I didn't think they'd send you." She paused. "You shouldn't go after him anyway. Take the punishment from the Order and tell them to send someone else."

  "This isn't about me being in danger!" I stood up, anger pumping through me. "You know how few times I get to do something -- something worthwhile? That my work can keep people safe?"

  She didn't answer.

  "I'm not completing the commission merely so I can avoid punishment. I don't know why you'd even think that." I could hardly look at her. The past three years I'd spent my life running errands for the rich, because that was what the Order had become. Now Leila had stripped me of an opportunity to save the lives of people in the pleasure district, dancing girls and children. All so she could have a little taste of wealth herself.

  "You disgust me," I told her.

  She looked at me, then, and I was startled to see she was crying. I'd never seen Leila cry. I didn't think she was capable of it.

  "What was I supposed to do?" she asked. "If I hadn't taken his offer it would be another four years before I could move. I'm dying here, Naji. Literally. I need the river."

  I stalked away from her, heat rising up in my veins. "You have the money," I snapped. "Just tell me where he is."

  "I don't know."

  I stopped, staring at her door.

  "I cast the spell, but he drew up his own magic at the last minute and it wiped my memory clean. I have no idea where I sent him. That's why I didn't tell you earlier."

  The room wrapped around us.

  "I'm never going to find him, am I?" I said.

  "Not asking after him. It won't work. He's got my magic and his, and I can't undo my own spell. I don't even remember what I cast. He took it all away."

  I continued staring at her door, my thoughts heavy. I had the afternoon; I had the nighttime. And then the Order would punish me, and I would have let a murderer go free.

  The thought twisted me up.

  "I'm sorry," Leila said behind me, "But there's nothing --"

  I turned to face her. "Can I borrow one of your rooms?"

  "What?"

  "One of your rooms. Can I use it safely? I need to slip away."

  She stared at me like she didn't understand. "I told you, it's impossible --"

  "Darkest night, Leila, just answer my question."

  She sighed and fell back on the divan. "Of course you can use one of my rooms," she said, and she wiped the tears away from her eyes.

  I didn't say anything, only followed the familiar path of her hallway. There was a room tucked away in the back of her house that I thought would serve my purposes well. A closet, really, with no windows and no chances of distraction. I put up a locking charm when I went in—a precaution, although I didn't expect Leila to interrupt.

  I traced my knife along the edges of the Order tattoos, dropping the blood on Leila's floor in a lopsided circle. I didn't have all the supplies to do this properly, but I hoped my blood and my urgency would be enough for me to find the answers I needed. I tossed my knife aside, out of the circle, and sat down and began to chant in the language of the Jadorr'a, the words low and rough in the back of my throat. Magic steamed in the air.

  I fell away.

  My body stayed in Leila's house but I opened my eyes in the center of Kajjil. When I joined the Order as a little boy, I memorized spell after spell, but this one, this opening of a gateway, was the first.

  This was the part of Kajjil that held answers.

  Kajjil's center looks different to every individual. For me it was a desert of glass. The wind sounded like chimes. I wandered over the landscape, murmuring my question in the language of the Jadorr'a:

  How do I find Lisim Sarr? How do I find Lisim Sarr?

  I wasn't sure I would get an answer. The wind slipped through the glass dunes. My feet ached. My eyes watered.

  How do I find Lisim Sarr? I asked, raising my voice.

  And then Kajjil's center answered. The place was created by the Order years and years ago, and they built it out of the knowledge of every Jadorr'a who had ever been. Those Jadorr'a answered me now, whispering on the wind:

  Fire.

  Fire.

  Fire.

  "Fire?" I didn't understand. I've no capacity for fire magic.

  Fire, the voice said, rising in a clamor. Fire fire firefirefirefire.

  And then flames erupted out of the glass ahead of me, golden flames shot through with human bodies, and I understood.

  The Fire of Amkarja.

  The flames extinguished in a curl of smoke, but the voices continued to chant fire as I stood in Kajjil, afraid to return to my body. I knew, in theory, how to ignite the Fire. It was one of the spells I had memorized as a little boy. A spell my tutor had warned me away from.

  "To find what is lost," he'd said, leaning over me as I worked. "It never goes out. It will always keep looking. But there are easier ways to track a target."

  And he was right, assuming the commission was simple. Routine.

  I pulled away from Kajjil and reconnected with my body. For a moment I lay in the circle and stared up at the ceiling. The room was darker than when I had left, no bright sunlight peeking through the crack in the door. I was losing time.

  I stood up, gathered my knife, and crept out to Leila's hallway. Her house was empty, still, and dark. I found her sleeping on the divan, the skin around her eyes red from crying. I knelt down beside her and shook her awake. She gasped a little and her eyes opened and gave me a long sad look.

  "I'm sorry," she said.

  "You aren't a very good person," I said.

  "I know. I'm all right with it." She reached over and cupped my face in her hand and smiled. Her touch was gentle and soft and it reminded me of every other time she had ever touched me. Stupid as it was, I couldn't stay angry with her. "You're not, though," she said. "Not finding him won't change that."

  "I know how to find him." I took her hand in mine and squeezed. She watched me, her expression unreadable. I stood up. "I saw the way in Kajjil."

  She pushed herself up onto one arm. "Are you going to do something stupid?"

  "I'm going to stop him."

  "So yes."

  I turned away from her and walked to the door. Behind me, she said my name. She told me to wait.

  But I ignored her.

  #

  I went into the desert, far away from the lights of the city. It was darker than I could have imagined, so dark I could barely see my own hands. I cast a handful of small lanterns, and they floated around my head like wayward stars, illuminating everything with pale blue light. They didn't help much.

  I'd been able to p
rocure a stack of firewood from a desert tree growing outside the city wall. With my magic I cut the tree into pieces and shoved them into a burlap sack I stole from Leila's house, along with a bit of flint from the pile beside her stove, and here I was, with everything I needed to cast the Fire of Amkarja. A stack of wood, a piece of flint, and my own blood.

  I began to work, slowly and methodically. I arranged the firewood in a circle, making a neat, even pile. Putting off the inevitable. When I was finished I stepped back, my arms crossed over my chest. It was cold without the sun, and I shivered beneath my armor and my robes, although I wasn't sure I was shivering from the cold.

  I knew how the fire was supposed to work: I would cast it, using my theoretical knowledge, and the magic would draw me in close, making me a part of the fire. The flames would show me the faces of those who were lost. I would ask the fire to show me Lisim Sarr. Because I am Jadorr'a, and because I gave a part of myself up, it would comply, although I knew I would have to be careful, I would have to be polite. Armed with this new information, I could travel through the shadows to kill Sarr in his bed, completing my commission and saving the lives of the people in the pleasure district.

  Once it was done, I would need to ask the Order to send help to extinguish the flames. I wouldn't be able to do it on my own, and if I left it, the fire would burn and burn until the end of the universe.

  Enough dawdling. I had until sunrise to complete my commission.

  I pulled out the flint and held it, measuring its weight in my hand. Then I struck it, tossed the tiny flame onto the wood, and watched as it all caught fire. I grabbed my knife and poised it over my forearm. My tattoos glowed, sensing the magic I was about perform. I closed my eyes. I thought of the words, an ancient spell in the language of the Order, one I knew perfectly. I knew everything perfectly. I had just never done it before.

  I began to chant.

  At first the words were only words, but as they spilled out of my mouth they transformed into magic, and I no longer belonged to myself. My voice was no longer my own. It was the voices of the lost, calling forth the Fire of Amkarja. The knife pierced my skin. I wasn't expecting it. My eyes flew open at the jolt of pain. The knife dug deeper. Blood gushed over my arm. No. No. This wasn't right. It was supposed to be a nick, enough to draw a few drops --

  Enough of me remained that I was able to yank the knife away and fling blood into the already-golden flames, completing the spell and igniting the fire. Something whispered at the back of my head. A bit of wisdom. A warning. Don't look.

  I looked.

  It wasn't right. I was supposed to see the lost, figures twining and dancing in the gold of the fire. But instead I saw myself, my face twisted and monstrous. The true me, I thought. The face of an assassin.

  Fear flooded through my body. My arm burned from where I had lost control of my knife.

  "I'm not lost," I said to the fire.

  It roared in response, letting off great waves of heat. Forced by the magic, I drifted close to the fire, wanting to be a part of it, to feel the flames wrap around me like a blanket. I vaguely remembered my task. My commission. "Lisim Sarr," I managed to choke out. "Please, I need to find Lisim Sarr."

  My face-in-the-fire snarled at me. Lisim Sarr didn't seem so important anymore. Only the fire; the golden sputtering light. I was close enough to touch it. I knelt down in the sand and leaned forward. The smoke tickled my eyes. The flames licked at my face.

  The pain was dazzling.

  I screamed. The left side of my face felt as if it had been ripped away. I screamed and fell backward and screamed and screamed and when I hit the ground I didn't hit sand, I hit floorboards, rough-hewn, cold, damp. I couldn't see out of my left eye, everything was blurred and indistinct, but out of my right I saw that overhead was a gapped ceiling of the sort they had in the ice-islands.

  "Who the hell are you?"

  A man's voice. It cut momentarily through the shriek of my pain. I rolled onto my right side. My left side was still burning, the pain moving inside of me now, sliding into my bloodstream. I lifted my head. The man was wrapped in shaggy furs, but he wasn't an ice-islander. He was Empire. He was a Lisirran.

  He was Lisim Sarr, my magic whispered.

  For a blinding moment I didn't know what to do. Sarr leaned over me, squinting, and then his eyes went wide, and he recognized me, bleeding and burning though I was, and through my good eye I saw him drawing up his magic.

  The Order trained me well, all those years ago, when I was nothing but a scared little boy. They left me with no choice but to be an assassin in all moments. The pain was paralyzing, but still I conjured up my speed, what little remained of it. In one blurred motion I pulled out my sword and I drew it across Sarr's belly. His blood splattered across the floor, and he died. I didn't feel anything. Everything hurt too much.

  I reached out one shaking hand and slapped it into his blood. I didn't trust my own blood; it had betrayed me to the fire. But I used the blood of this wicked man and I fell backward through the shadows, through Kajjil, back over the sea and the ice, back to the Empire.

  #

  I was in a bed, soft and luxurious and familiar. I sank into the blankets. I couldn't feel my body; it was like being in Kajjil, but I wasn't in Kajjil. I wasn't at the Order either. This wasn't an Order bed. It smelled of river water and perfume.

  "Leila." My voice rasped and came out barely above a whisper.

  "Shhh, don't talk." A shadow fell over me. I was aware of a hand stroking my hair but I couldn't feel it.

  "I can't feel --"

  "Oh, Naji, you never listen. I asked you not to talk." The bed moved beneath me. I turned my head a little. Leila was sitting beside me, her hand stroking my hair. I saw this but didn't feel it.

  "You were very stupid," she said.

  I didn't answer.

  "I told you not to go after him."

  Him. Sarr. I'd killed him. Only then did I notice the yellow sunlight in the windows. I'd completed my commission. But I still felt like I was being punished.

  I tried to sit up and Leila nudged me back down, gently. "You aren't well. I worked a spell for the pain but I'm afraid it's too strong for you to go wandering around."

  "I don't feel myself."

  "Well, that's what I had to do to take the pain away." She shrugged. There was something in her expression I couldn't place. Distance or sadness or revulsion. Or maybe all three mixed together. I didn't know what to make of it. I didn't know what to make of any of this. I wondered if the fire was still burning in the desert. It needed to be extinguished.

  "Why aren't I at the Order?" I said. "I tried -- after everything -- I meant to go there."

  "I don't know. I woke up last night to your screaming and found you bleeding all over the floor." Her hand dropped away and disappeared from my sight. "You stank of blood magic. And you were --" She stopped.

  "What? I was what?"

  I kept seeing the fire flickering in my head, golden and sparking, my twisted face in the flames. Not exactly my face, no -- my face as it was seen by the people of the Empire. My face as if it belonged to a monster.

  I looked at Leila, and she was trying to keep her expression blank and failing.

  "What!" I said. "What's wrong with me?"

  "Nothing." She sounded insincere.

  "Leila!" I struggled on the bed, trying to push myself up. I felt as if I were tied down. "After all this, you're still going to keep secrets from me? Really?"

  She narrowed her eyes. "I told you not to go," she said. "I don't call that keeping a secret."

  "Leila, what the hell is wrong with me?"

  She went still. I thrashed on the bed and then exhaustion overpowered me and I went still too. I stared up at the patterns of sunlight on the ceiling. In the empty space where my body should have been I felt creeping, dreadful coldness.

  The bed lightened. I dropped my head to the side. Leila was rummaging in the drawer of her vanity. She wore a backless dress and her skin glimmered
in the yellow light. It was beautiful.

  She walked back over to me and sat down and laid the mirror in her lap.

  "What is it?" I whispered.

  She hesitated.

  "Show me!"

  Leila sighed and held up the mirror. It was small, filigreed with little carved flowers. It looked expensive. I noticed all this before I noticed the face. Not my face. The face in the flames. My face, only monstrous.