“What have you done?” I asked.
“Done?” Scacz looked around, amused. “Why, just added a bit of illumination to your neem essence. Your fine alchemy and my simple spellcraft, combined. A lovely effect, don’t you think?”
Boots thudded and steel rang around the hall. Guards appeared from behind white columns and beneath the arches. Men in scaly armor, and the tramp of more boots behind them.
“Seize them!” Scacz shouted. “All the ones who burn with magic’s use. Every one! If they are not of the Mayor’s office, they are traitors.”
A babble of protest rose. Already the people who did not glow were shrinking from those that did.
The general drew his sword. “Treachery?” he asked. “This is why you bring us here?” A few others drew steel with him.
The Mayor said, “Sadly, war lord, even you are not immune to law. You have used magic, when it is expressly forbidden. If you have some excuse, the magistrate will hear you…” He paused. “Oh dear, it appears the magistrate is also guilty.”
He waved to his guards. “Take them all, then.”
The general roared. He raised his sword and charged for the Mayor. Guards piled atop him like wolves. Steel clashed. A man fell back. The general stumbled from within the tangle of steel. Blood streamed from half a dozen sword thrusts. For a moment, I thought he would reach us, but then he fell, sprawling on the marble. And yet still he tried to reach the Mayor. Scrabbling like a beetle, leaving a maroon streak behind him.
The Mayor watched the general’s struggle with distaste.
“On second thought, kill them all now. We know what they’ve been up to.”
The guards howled and the blue-glowing nobility shrank before them. Too few were armed. They scattered, running like sheep, scrambling about the gallery as the guards hunted them down and silenced their begging. At last, there were no more screams.
I stood in the midst of a massacre, clutching my balanthast.
The Mayor waved to the guards. “Drag the bodies out. Then go and seize their properties.” In a louder voice he announced, “For those of you still standing, the holdings of the traitors will be sold at auction, as is custom. Your trustworthiness is proven, and you shall benefit.”
He clapped Scacz on the back. “Well done, Majister. Inspired, even.” His eyes fell on my own blue-glowing form. “Well. This is a pity. It seems the Majister was right in all respects. He told me he smelled magic on you when we first met, and I didn’t believe him. But here you are, glowing like a lamp.”
I backed away, cradling the balanthast. “You’re the Demon Prince himself.”
“Don’t be absurd. Takaz would care not at all for stopping bramble.”
The guards were grabbing bodies and dragging them into piles, leaving blood smears behind.
The Mayor eyed the stains. “Get someone in here to mop these tiles! Don’t just leave this blood here.” He glanced around. “Where’s my steward disappeared to?”
Scacz cleared his throat. “I’m afraid he was caught up in the general slaughter.”
“Ah.” The Mayor frowned. “Inconvenient.” He returned his attention to me. “Well, then. Let’s have the device.” He held out his hands.
“I would never-”
“Give it here.”
I stared at him, filled with horror at what he had done. What I had been complicit in. In a rush, I lifted the balanthast over my head.
“No!” Scacz lunged forward.
But it was too late. I threw down the balanthast. Glass vacuum chambers shattered. Diamond fragments skittered across marble. Delicate copper and brass workings bent and snapped. I grabbed the largest part of the balanthast, and flung it from me, sending it sliding, breaking apart into even smaller parts before coming to rest in the blood of its victims.
“You fool.” Scacz grabbed me. His hand closed on my throat and he forced me down. The blue glow about him intensified, magic flowing. My throat began to close, pinched tight by Scacz’s hate and power.
“Join the rest of the traitors,” he said.
My throat bound shut. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t even cry out. No air passed my lips. The man was powerful. He didn’t even need an inked page to spell such evil.
Darkness.
And then, abruptly, sunlight.
I could breathe. I lay on the flagstones and sucked air through my suddenly unbound throat. Majister Scacz knelt over me.
His hand lay upon my chest, resting gently. And yet, at the same time, I could feel each of his five fingers beneath my ribs. Gripping my heart. I batted weakly at his hand, trying to push him away. Scacz’s fingers tightened, constraining the beat of my blood. I gave up.
I realized that the Mayor was standing over us both, watching.
“The Mayor points out that you are much too talented to waste,” Scacz said. Again he squeezed my heart. “I do hope his faith proves true.”
Abruptly his grip relaxed. He straightened and waved for the guards. “Take our friend to the dungeon, until we have a suitable workshop for him.” His eyes went to the broken balanthast. “He has many hours of labor ahead.”
I found my voice. Croaked out words. “No. Not this bloodbath. I won’t be a part of it.”
Scacz shrugged. “You already are. And of course you will.”
6
Should I tell you that I fought? That I didn’t break? That I resisted torture and blandishment and took no part in the purge that followed? That I had no hand in the blood that gushed down Khaim’s alleys and poured into the Sulong? Should I tell you that I was noble, while others pandered? That I was not party to the terror?
In truth, I refused once.
Then Scacz brought Jiala and Pila to visit. We all sat together in the chill of my cell, huddling under the water drip from stones, smelling the sweet damp rot of straw, and listening to the wet bellows of Jiala’s lungs, the fourth participant in our stilted conversation.
Scacz himself said nothing at all. He simply let us sit together. He brought wooden stools, and had a guard provide cups of mint tea and at first I was relieved to see Jiala and Pila unharmed, but then Jiala’s coughing started and wouldn’t stop, and blood spackled her lips and she began to cry, and then I had to call the guard to take them away. And even though the man was fast in coming, it was still too slow.
The last vision I had of Jiala was of Pila carrying her small form, her wracking cough echoing against cold stones.
And then Scacz came down to visit me again. He leaned against the wall, studying my dishevelment through the bars.
“The cold of the dungeon disagrees with her lungs,” he observed.
The repair of the first balanthast was the price of Jiala and Pila’s well being, but Scacz and our Jolly Mayor were not finished with me. In Jiala they had the perfect lever. In return for the magic and healing that only Scacz could provide, I created the tools and instruments they desired. My devices purchased life for myself and my family, and death for everyone else.
Blood ran in the streets. Rumors in my prison said that the Mayor’s halls were redder than a sunset. That bodies burned in bramble piles, the fat of their cooking twining with the yellow smoke of bramble to fill the skies with funeral pyres. The Executioner was so busy that on some days, a second and even a third were summoned to take over the efforts of the axeman who had grown exhausted with his work. Some days, they didn’t even bother with the effort of a public spectacle.
Scacz had laughed at that.
“When we couldn’t find these furtive little spell casters, we needed fear to keep the magic in check,” he said.
