Shadowblack Read online

  I should really learn it sometime.

  3

  The Red Price

  I couldn’t have blacked out for more than a second, because just before my head hit the ground, my eyes opened and I saw Freckles flying backwards away from me. At first I thought maybe I’d somehow triggered a new and highly useful spell, but then I saw Ferius gripping the collar of Freckles’s shirt and realised that all that had happened was that she’d hauled him off me.

  Too bad. I could’ve really used more magic.

  I coughed up dust, and the next thing I knew, my opponent was flat on his back a few yards away and Ferius was standing between me and some big, broad-shouldered thug, who was probably a close relation of Freckles’s because he shared both his skin condition and his attitude.

  ‘Best you move away, woman,’ he said, peering down at her through squinty little eyes. ‘A devil owns that boy’s soul and I’m gonna send him to the Dark Place.’

  The Dark Place. The borderlands are full of sophisticated spiritual expressions like that.

  ‘Now, friend,’ Ferius said, ‘let’s not get all excited over a plain old birthmark.’ She lent her next words the perfect mix of scolding and amusement. ‘Imagine all you enlightened and educated folks fallin’ for that old superstition.’

  Calling these people ‘enlightened and educated’ was highly optimistic, but a few of them liked the sound of it. A woman in the crowd took a small step forward and peered down at me. ‘If it’s just a birthmark, why does he hide it?’

  Ferius walked over to me and reached down to rub some of the paste away, revealing more of the twisting circular markings. ‘Cos it’s unsightly, that’s why. Boy’s sensitive about his looks!’ She started laughing uproariously.

  The crowd found her light-hearted mirth infectious. I don’t know how she does it, but Ferius always knows just what to say to sway people to her point of view.

  Well, most people, anyway.

  Squinty jabbed a finger in my direction. ‘I say he’s got the demon plague, and even if he don’t, that stuck-up little Jan’Tep tried to steal from my kin. Now he’s gotta pay the red price.’

  In the Seven Sands, ‘the red price’ means roughly the same thing as ‘gonna bleed you’.

  ‘Seems to me Kellen already paid plenty for that trinket,’ Ferius said, nodding up to where Reichis was still perched on top of the shop sign, delightedly examining his silver bell. ‘Then your boy went and asked for more.’

  ‘Don’t matter. A thief is a thief, and the red price says he’s gotta lose his fingers.’

  Ferius offered him one of her easy smiles. ‘Good sense says to leave things be. Right now what everyone’s going to remember is that your boy fought off a fella twice his size. That’s a good story. A proper one to tell your friends when you’re tossin’ back a drink at the saloon.’

  Squinty grinned back at her. ‘It’s gonna be an even better story when I show them your boy’s finger bones.’

  A sour taste rose up in my mouth. I’d been terrified at the prospect of Freckles breaking my fingers; having them cut off would mean I’d never cast a spell again for the rest of my life.

  Ferius lowered her voice so that only the big man and I could hear her words. ‘Don’t think it’ll be nearly as impressive a tale when your friends point out that after you tried to take an innocent boy’s fingers, you got your ass kicked by a woman barely bigger than your left arm, do you?’

  For a moment there, it looked like Squinty was giving her words careful consideration, but then he rolled up his sleeves before squeezing his big, meaty hands into fists, making the knuckles crack. ‘No quarter just because you’re a lady.’

  ‘Oh, I’m no lady, so don’t you worry about that.’ Ferius removed her black frontiersman hat and set it on the ground, sending a tumble of red curls down to her shoulders. ‘You want to dance with me, friend? Tell you what –’ she tapped a gloved finger on her jaw – ‘you give me your best shot, right here. Then, if you’re still not satisfied that things are settled, well, I’ll take my turn and we’ll see where that leads us.’

  The crowd started whispering excitedly, and more coins changed hands, but they weren’t betting over whether Ferius would win or lose, just on how quickly and how badly.

  In the short time I’d known her, I’d never seen Ferius Parfax back down from anyone or anything. Maybe that had something to do with her being an Argosi, but I tended to think it was just that she was crazy. Problem was, so was this guy, and he looked as if he could tear her head off.

  I rolled onto my side and got my hands under me, preparing to get back on my feet.

  Ferius gave a subtle twitch of her fingers, signalling me not to interfere. ‘Whenever you’re ready,’ she told Squinty. Her right foot was behind her as she leaned forward, giving the big man a clear shot at her jaw.

  He glanced back as though he were going to share a joke with his friends, then suddenly came round with a punch that could’ve knocked down an eight-foot tamarisk tree.

  All along I’d just assumed that Ferius was going to dodge or duck or otherwise avoid the blow, that maybe she’d planned to come up underneath it and deliver a swift kick to Squinty’s groin or a jab to his throat, but he was too fast. She took that punch square on the jaw, her head spinning to the right, shoulders and the rest of her body following along until she was turned right around and facing me.

  She just stood there, looking lost, as if she’d been knocked unconscious but her body hadn’t figured it out yet. I dug my hands into the pouches at my sides. If Squinty tried to hit her again, I was going to blast him into oblivion and deal with the consequences later. I doubted he’d need to though, because I’d never seen anybody get hit as hard as Ferius had just been hit.

  All of a sudden the corner of her mouth rose up and she winked at me.

  Before I could even breathe a sigh of relief, Ferius Parfax turned back to the man who’d struck her and said, casual as can be, ‘Let’s call that a practice round. You want to go one more time before it’s my turn?’

  Squinty looked as if he’d just swallowed his own tongue. ‘How …? How did you …?’

  Ferius reached down and picked up her hat. ‘Now, I appreciate you goin’ so gentle on me. Maybe since you’re feeling generous, you could just let us be on our way now?’

  An uneasy stillness fell over the street. The crowd watched and waited for someone to make a move. A few more bets changed hands, and more than one onlooker loosened a knife from its sheath. Squinty had friends ready to take his side. Too bad we didn’t have anybody on ours. All the while the big man just kept looking at Ferius, and she at him. Reichis chittered down from his perch, ‘Why do they keep staring at each other like that? Are they going to mate now?’

  The last thing you want to do in a situation like this is giggle like an idiot, but that’s just what I did. Everyone glared at me, all except for the two combatants. I couldn’t see what was in Ferius’s eyes, but whatever it was made Squinty reconsider his position on the subject of the red price. ‘Reckon you’ve learned your lesson,’ he mumbled. ‘Give back the charm and you can go on your way.’

  ‘Deal,’ Ferius said. She walked over and untethered our mounts. ‘Kellen, kindly tell the squirrel cat to get down here and return the man’s little trinket.’ She turned and led the horses along the street towards the edge of town.

  I was still trying to make sense of what had just happened when Reichis leaped off the sign, spread his paws wide and let the thin furred membranes between his front and back limbs catch the breeze. The crowd broke out in gasps and worried whispers, a few of them holding their hands up in front of their chests, fingers intertwined in the shape of tiny houses. Must have been some kind of folk sign against evil. People get superstitious around Reichis sometimes.

  The squirrel cat glided smoothly to the ground, the gracefulness of his landing diminished by the angry glare he gave me as his dextrous paws went about unclasping the silver charm from the little bell. ‘If you’d jus
t ripped that kid’s throat out like I told you, we’d be eating his eyeballs right now.’ He tossed the charm on the ground behind him and then tinkled the bell at me. ‘I’m keeping this.’

  He took off after Ferius, leaving me sitting in the dirt and dust, surrounded by a crowd of people who were no doubt wondering if it might not still be worth trying to cut off my fingers.

  ‘Best you not come round here again, Shadowblack,’ someone said.

  A few others grumbled their agreement.

  I nodded and slowly pushed myself up to my feet.

  Sixteen years old and already I had a price on my head in half the places I’d ever been. No money, no skills, and without that charm I’d be announcing my location to every mage in the borderlands any time I cast the one spell I was any good at.

  Oh, and my travelling companions were an Argosi gambler who never gave me a straight answer and a homicidal squirrel cat whose favourite food was human eyeballs.

  Welcome to the life of an outlaw spellslinger.

  4

  The Art of Winning a Fight

  We spent the rest of that day riding along an ancient cobbled road that cut a winding path as it climbed through the desert hills, a stiff wind sending the sand on either side drifting ahead of us like waves across an endless ocean.

  Ferius says the Seven Sands got their name from the way the mineral content gives the soil in each region its own colour. When we’d first left my home in the Jan’Tep territories four months ago, the sand had been mostly yellow-gold from the mix of iron and quartz. Further north the olivine-rich particles had reflected a bright emerald green, but now we were moving east where rich deposits of lazurite turned the sand a deep blue. I might have found the landscape pretty if people here would just stop trying to kill me.

  Having lost the charm, the money and most of my dignity, I was starting to have serious doubts about my future as an outlaw. ‘I’m going to die out here, you know.’ The words had sounded more dramatic in my head, but with my bruised jaw and swollen tongue, all that came out was, ‘Argh … yeaow … ugh.’

  Ferius seemed to get the general idea. ‘The borderlands are the safest place we could be right now, kid, what with you having the shadowblack and all; fewer mages than in the Jan’Tep arcanocracy, less assassins than in the Daroman empire, and don’t even get me started on the Berabesq viziers. Those fellas would set you on fire soon as look at you.’

  ‘Whereas these barbarians just want to cut off my fingers.’

  I rubbed at my cheek again, wishing I was back in my clan city among the Jan’Tep. My mother could’ve taken away the bruising and pain with healing balms. Instead I was stuck out here in the borderlands, where what passed for modern medicine was a rusty bone saw and an admonition to toughen up and take the pain.

  Of course, if I were back home, my younger sister Shalla would have mocked me for getting hurt in the first place. I could just see her, arms crossed, looking up at me with one eyebrow raised disapprovingly. ‘A Jan’Tep mage of the House of Ke does not go around being terrified by frontier hicks and pathetic hextrackers, Kellen.’

  I missed Shalla. Even though we fought about, well, everything, she was family. Sometimes I even missed my mother and father too, despite what despite the way they’d counter-banded me and taken away my magic when they’d discovered I had the shadowblack. Most of all, though, I missed Nephenia. I missed her dark hair and shy smile, the way every time I was sure I had her figured out, she’d prove me wrong. We’d only kissed the one time, but I swear that even under the bruises on my face I could still feel the soft, tentative brush of her lips on mine.

  Ancestors, but I really wanted to go home.

  Of course, there were more people who wanted me dead there than in the entire population of the borderlands. How was I supposed to defend myself from war mages and hextrackers when I couldn’t even hold my own against a skinny thirteen-year-old kid?

  Reichis gave a loud snort from atop my shoulder. Despite being slightly too tall and heavy to make it comfortable for either of us, he’d taken to perching there sometimes. It wasn’t from any sense of affection for me; the little runt just likes being high up. ‘Should’ve followed my advice,’ he said, slurring his words. He sometimes gets into the flask of liquor that Ferius keeps in her saddlebag.

  I worked my mouth open and closed a few times until I could speak properly, if painfully. ‘Remind me again?’

  Reichis made a ‘huff’ sound in my ear. It’s his version of a sigh. ‘First, clamp your teeth around the other guy’s neck.’ He opened his mouth wide to reveal his fangs and jutted out his jaw. ‘Then shake until his throat comes apart. Simple.’

  ‘Right. I’ll try to remember that for next time.’

  It doesn’t do to get into an argument about fighting with the squirrel cat. Any time I did he just bit me and said, ‘See? See? Now who’s the dumb animal?’

  ‘Or you can rip his eyeballs out,’ he added. ‘That also works.’

  ‘Got it.’

  ‘Ears are good too. You wouldn’t think so, but tearing the ears off a guy really puts a hurt on him.’

  Ferius chuckled. ‘Is the little bugger going on about eyeballs again?’

  She doesn’t share whatever bond with Reichis it is that lets my mind translate his chitters and growls and farts into words, but evidently she’s been around enough squirrel cats to know that they all think they’re the apex predators of the animal world. ‘He’s onto ears now,’ I said.

  Ferius shook her head, curly red hair following along for the ride. ‘It’s always something with his kind. Eyes, ears, tongues. You’d think they’d find something new once in a while.’

  ‘Hey, shtick with what works, I always shey.’

  I turned my head to look at Reichis. ‘Are you drunk? You sound weird.’

  Ferius chuckled. ‘He ain’t drunk, kid.’

  ‘Then what …?’ The hint of a self-satisfied smirk had begun to light up the squirrel cat’s fuzzy face. ‘What did you do, Reichis?’

  He didn’t reply at first, so I kept my eyes locked onto him. Staring contests make him uncomfortable. After a few seconds he opened his mouth wide and lifted up his tongue to reveal the three coins hidden there.

  ‘You rotten … You snuck back in? While I was getting my ass handed to me, you went back inside that shop and stole a second time?’

  Reichis hopped off my shoulder and onto the front of the saddle, reaching into his mouth with a paw and taking out the coins. ‘Hey, those townies stole from us, remember?’ he mumbled. ‘Someone needed to retrieve our hard-earned money.’ He proceeded to stuff the coins into a small black bag hidden under the horn of the saddle. He’d asked me to buy him the bag so he’d have somewhere to keep his private treasures and had made it clear what would happen to stray fingers that found their way inside it. So much for ‘our’ hard-earned money.

  We rode on a ways until the sun was getting low on the horizon before Ferius asked, ‘You ready to talk about what happened back in town, kid?’

  ‘You mean when I nearly got choked to death?’

  ‘I mean when you almost took that boy’s head off with that spell of yours.’

  For someone who was supposed to be teaching me how to stay alive, Ferius spent a lot more time worrying about other people. ‘It wasn’t enough powder to kill him,’ I insisted. ‘Just enough to …’

  ‘Just what? Set him on fire? Scar him for life?’

  ‘It was the shadowblack,’ I tried to explain. ‘Sometimes it—’

  ‘The shadowblack shows you an ugly world, Kellen,’ she said, cutting me off. ‘It don’t give you an excuse to be just as ugly. That ain’t the Argosi way.’

  The Argosi way. Whatever that means.

  I started to turn away, but she reached out a hand and took hold of my chin, holding it steady even as we rode. ‘Those markings of yours grow just a touch each time you use magic, you know that, right?’

  ‘It’s just your imagination,’ I said, shaking her off. ‘Besid
es, how else am I supposed to defend myself if you won’t teach me any of your Argosi combat techniques?’

  ‘I keep telling you, kid, there ain’t no such thing.’ She reached into her black leather waistcoat to pull out one of her long, thin smoking reeds. ‘Wrastlin’ ain’t the Argosi way either.’

  Wrastlin’ is what Ferius calls it any time I get into trouble. ‘I saw you beat that guy back there, remember? He was huge!’

  ‘He was a big one all right,’ she conceded. ‘But I didn’t fight him. I just danced with him a little.’

  ‘That punch would have taken a normal person’s head right off. Your jaw must be made of iron!’

  She smiled as if I’d said something funny, then lit her reed with a match retrieved from the cuff of her linen shirt. After a long, slow drag, she let out a thick puff of smoke that enveloped us in blue-white fog. ‘Kid, my jaw ain’t any tougher than yours or anyone else’s. Think back to what you really saw, not what you expected to see.’

  I have a good visual memory – it comes with a lifetime of training in how to perfectly envision spells before casting them. When I thought back to the fight, I saw Ferius, leaning forward, presenting her jaw to her opponent, her right foot behind her. Squinty’s fist came at her, all the strength of his hips and shoulders channelled into that punch. Then … There was something odd about my recollection of that moment. Events had taken place too fast to really see, but thinking on it, I could swear that by the time the blow landed, Ferius had not only turned all the way around, but her body was leaning back. Which meant that the instant the man’s fist had connected with her face, Ferius had spun, following the line of his punch perfectly to dissipate the force. ‘You tricked him,’ I said suddenly. ‘It looked like he hit you, but the blow barely landed at all, did it?’

  Ferius reached up a hand to rub at her jaw. ‘It landed well enough. Any less and he’d have figured out that I dodged most of it.’

  ‘But to move that fast, that’s …’