THIRTY-THREE

I LET MY head hang while I waited. After all I’d been through I had gambled on Sidonius not having a shadow-worker with him. Gambled and lost.

Grandmother had never allowed the mara residence at her court. She had feared the discovery of my ability. With no others to take my place and carry the name once the mara inevitably claimed me, discovery would have led to the demise of House Svanaten. But Grandmother’s was not the only Turasi court with little or no access to the shadows – only Evard of House Somner had a mara in permanent residence. So it had seemed unlikely a general in the field would be travelling with one.

Except, reasonable or not, I had been wrong.

I wished I had Roshi by my side. No doubt she’d tell me the risk I was taking now was tantamount to suicide. But, trapped between Dieter’s clay hunter and the Ilthean army, what other choice did I have?

Thankfully, Sidonius’s shadow-worker arrived before the delay overwhelmed me. To my surprise, he was not an Ilthean. His whipcord thin body was swathed in what looked like a sheet, and the pits of his eyes were stained with ink dark as plum juice. Braids and tiny chips of glass threaded his hair. I could only suppose his homeland, wherever it lay, had been absorbed by the empire, for surely only a citizen could hold such a position of trust.

Two steps away from me he stopped, staring at me. I refused to make eye contact. The pain in my midsection was becoming a feverish burn now and sweat ran down my cheeks in runnels.

‘Achim,’ said Sidonius. ‘This is the Lady Matilde. She wishes to pledge her aid to Ilthea.’

‘I take it a simple vow won’t suffice,’ said Achim, his voice like the rasp of sand over sand. His excellent command of the Turasi tongue hinted at an expensive education.

Achim moved closer, his robes whispering. Squatting, he peered up at me, tilting his head back as if for a better view. A tiny circle of gold pierced his septum, and I stared at it, wondering at its significance. Perhaps his people worshipped the bull.

I raised my head, displaying Dieter’s brands. ‘As you can see, there is the problem of a prior … allegiance, if you will.’

‘Where did you come by such markings, my lady?’ he said, before slewing a look over his shoulder. ‘My lord, this woman needs rest before she can undergo a shadow-pledge.’

‘She can rest afterwards,’ said Sidonius. ‘When she is safely chained.’

‘Look at her colour –’

‘After.’

Achim turned back to me. ‘My lady, I’m afraid this will not be pleasant.’

‘Just don’t break any more of my bones,’ I said.

He put a thumb on my brow and spread his fingers around the back of my head, his hands warm and dry as a snake’s sun-baked hide.

‘These runes are your brother’s work?’ he asked of Sidonius, who only shrugged in reply.

‘Lady,’ asked Achim, ‘do you know their meaning?’

Having learned the hard way what happened when I tried to speak of Dieter’s runes, I didn’t answer, reluctant to risk confessing embarrassing half-truths in front of an Ilthean general.

‘You can speak of them without fear,’ said Achim, gentle but urging.

My heart raced at the prospect of what would happen if he were wrong, and I shook my head. Hope quickened my breath – the shadow-worker spoke so bluntly of the runes. Did he know how to release me?

‘Answer him,’ Sidonius commanded, his tone brooking no dissent. ‘If he says you can speak, you can speak.’

‘Emet,’ I answered, the word slipping out without obstacle. ‘Truth. To kill me, Dieter can erase a single rune and turn the phrase to Meit: Death.’

Achim frowned and gave the circlet of gold piercing his nose a sharp tug. It must have stung, for he blinked fast and furiously afterwards.

‘If you were a creature of clay and anima, yes,’ he said. ‘But a human woman? No. Although …’ Again the quick tug at his piercing. ‘Oh, he is a sharp one, this brother. Canny. He uses the mind against itself.’

Anger gave me strength as I untangled his meaning. ‘You’re saying this was a trick?’

Achim’s smile revealed orange-stained teeth and gums. ‘Yes. A simple spell, to bind you from speaking of what he’s wrought. Chicanery, or another spell, to bind you into believing him. Then he tells you he’s bound you to the clay, yes? Erasing a rune will kill you. If you were Amaer, lady, you’d know this is not possible, for a human is born with the mechaiah’s spark bestowed in heart and mind. But instead, you believed him. And thus, you obeyed him.’

I scrubbed at my forehead, my hands shaking so hard I couldn’t still them.

‘Rub them out!’ I begged, too unsteady to worry about my pride.

Achim laid his hands in the lap of his strange robe and said, ‘But the spell is already broken.’

I lowered my hands, nauseated by all I had suffered and all I had fought through because of a meaningless scribble on my brow.

‘It relies on ignorance,’ he added. ‘Now you know the truth, you can stand before him with impunity. His witching eyes and conqueror’s smirk cannot sway you anymore.’

As I turned away from him, Achim muttered something in a tongue I didn’t recognise.

‘Enough,’ said Sidonius. ‘If Dieter has no hold over her, you can work a pledge. See to it this one will hold her.’

Achim lifted his hands from his lap, fingers splayed and palms cupped.

I stared at the space between them, mesmerised. Was that a glimpse of sun-scorched sand? Of rock sere beneath the sky? If so, it vanished in a blink. The fancies of a mind wracked by pain.

When Achim’s gaze met mine, I thought I could see that land in his eyes, like a reflection off the surface of onyx. A great wash of sunlight and the staggering power it brought, a power too great for tender, water-lush creatures to withstand. The inhabitants of Achim’s land were sparse and spare, water-starved muscle and tendon beneath stretched skin. Their bones knew the heat of day, the cold snap of night. The plants were thorny and rigid, the birds wheeling in the sky in a ceaseless hunt for death. Emet, meit.

The air around us shimmered, a whisper of parched desert heat curling the wisps of hair about my face, drying the sweat from my cheeks and brow. Sidonius watched Achim, impatient for an action already being wrought.

The Amaer man released whatever insubstantial item he’d been holding and a great rush of power skittered through the tent. My skin tingled as it passed through me, the strands of it scribbling along my every fibre. Any words I uttered now would cling to those filaments of power, invading every strand of my being.

Any words I uttered now would bind me, irrevocably.

Achim lifted a hand and pressed the warm pad of his thumb over the centre of my brow.

‘Speak now your vow,’ he intoned, his voice holding the echo of aeons in which nothing shifted but sand.

I glanced at Sidonius. What would he accept? What would he demand?

‘It is not wise to keep a shadow-pledge waiting, lady,’ Sidonius said.

Everything seemed to be vibrating, a thrum building in the ground, rising through the soles of my feet and tickling every fragment in my body, until it made my lips tingle on the edge of numbness.

‘I, Matilde of House Svanaten, rightful Duethin of the Turasi, do pledge my aid to the empire of Ilthea, now and when I am returned to my throne.’

The words burned like bile as my mouth formed them, then hung in the air. I felt the binding tasting and absorbing them, like spider silk swelling in the dew-filled morning.

‘More,’ Sidonius said. ‘In return for your throne, you will pledge whatever aid the emperor, or any of his representatives or ambassadors, deems necessary.’

I eyed him warily, but Achim still had his thumb pressed to my forehead. Already the binding was tightening.

‘So be it,’ I whispered.

A triumphant smile lit Sidonius’s face. Then Achim released me, and the binding took hold. All the power he’d summoned – the power of sun and sand, of the rocky bones of the earth and the dark corners they provided for hiding many-legged creatures and thorny plants – snapped back into me.

An agony like venom lit my every nerve to screaming as Sidonius barked a laugh, the sound of his triumph merging with my pain before chasing me down into blackness.