The Traitor Queen

the Guild Ambassador than of her son.

Dannyl’s heart skipped.

—You want me to get into trouble so she has an excuse to enter the city?

—No. But maybe we could pretend you are... No. Not unless we have to. Get yourselves to Achati’s house first, then we’ll consider other ideas.

—Very well.

—Good luck, Dannyl.

—Thanks, Osen.

Slipping off the ring, Dannyl dressed quickly in fresh robes. He paused to look back at the room. Was there anything else he ought to take with him? My notes? No. They’ll be safer left here than with me. If I’m killed, this place might be looted, but no looter will want notebooks. Later someone might go through our belongings more carefully. Hopefully a Guild magician, who will see the value in them. Maybe Achati... if he survives.

Pushing that thought aside, Dannyl turned and strode out of his suite in search of Merria and Tayend.

* * *

Lorkin sat cross-legged, his back against a wall. The Master’s Room of the estate the Traitors had gathered in was crowded, but they were taking care to keep clear a narrow path from corridor to corridor so that messengers could move about quickly and without tripping.

This was the third location Savara’s team had moved to during the night. The second had been another abandoned mansion; then, towards morning, they’d slunk through the silent city streets to a more defendable house chosen to be the gathering place before the final confrontation with the Ashaki. Lorkin hadn’t slept, and doubted that anyone else had either. Not that I would have been able to if I’d had the chance or there’d been room to lie down. A Traitor entered the room and looked towards him. He turned to see who it was and his heartbeat quickened as he saw it was Tyvara. She smiled and made her way over to him. There was no space for her to sit beside him, so he stood up. She handed him a vest.

“This is for you,” she said, raising her voice so he could hear her in the noisy room.

He felt his stomach do a little flip as the weight of it settled into his hands. All of the Traitors wore these vests. They were covered in small pockets, each holding gemstones fixed into settings of wood, stone or precious metal. He’d assumed he would be fighting without stones, since he’d had no training in using them in battle.

“It’s easier to use if you put it on,” Tyvara told him.

“Give me a moment,” he retorted. Shrugging into the vest, he found it was a little tight around the arms.

“I thought it would be a bit small,” Tyvara said, trying and failing to bring the buckles and straps at the front together. “But it’s the only one we could spare.”

“Well, it’s what’s in it that’s important,” he said.

“How the stones are arranged helps you find them if you can’t look away from the enemy, so if the fronts are flapping about you might grab the wrong one. But I guess you aren’t familiar with their positions anyway.” She sighed and looked up at him, her expression serious. “Just remember: the left side is for defensive stones, the right for offensive. The stronger ones are to the centre, the weaker to the sides. Make sure that if you take the vest off you don’t turn it upside down with the pockets unbuttoned, because if they fall out you won’t know which is stronger or weaker.”

Lorkin repeated what she’d said. He hadn’t seen the Traitors using stones when fighting up to this point. He guessed that they were saving them for the main battle, or that the stones were more useful in a bigger confrontation. The only stones he’d seen used so far were defensive, like the barrier stones that Halana had been setting when she’d been ambushed. Those had created simple shields, but others had been activated that used a shield as an alarm, not strong enough to prevent a person passing though but emitting a noise when they did. He had also seen a stone, accidentally activated, produce an opaque white non-resistant shield, and Savara had a stone that would block noise.

“The bigger pockets hold basic shield and strike stones,” Tyvara told him, patting a row of larger pockets near his waist. “The shield stones are all strong enough to hold against a few strikes, but how many or how powerful depends on the limits of each stone. Always be ready for their depletion with a shield of your own magic.”

She flipped open the top flap of a pocket and pulled out one of the stones. The setting was like a short spoon, with the gem filling the bowl. “Hold it like this.” She pinched the handle between two fingers and turned the concave side outwards. “Press your finger into the back of the gem to activate it. Face the gem away or you’ll direct the shield or strike at yourself.”

“That would be embarrassing,” he noted.

A glint of humour entered her gaze. “And potentially fatal. Which would be embarrassing to me. I’ll be forever known for choosing a very stupid man.”

He chuckled. “What about the other stones?”

“This will be harder to remember. Shield stones have stone settings, strike stones have wooden ones. The rest use bronze, copper, gold and silver, with different textures on the handle so you can recognise them by touch.” She took these out one by one, describing what they could do. One was for noise-blocking, another would make an ear-splitting sound. A few could produce light, for illumination or signalling. One made a short, constant firestrike for cutting or burning, another used forcestrike to project any small missile set into the bowl. Another pair were designed to explode after a delay, though she warned him that it could be after anything from a count to ten to a few hundred.

Then she pulled out a handful of rings from her pockets.

“Most of the vest stones are single-use stones. These are multiple-use ones, so don’t throw them away when they’re depleted. The smallest are for communication,” she said, slipping two rings holding iridescent gems onto his little fingers. “They don’t activate until you press them down into the setting, against your skin. The one on your left hand connects with the ring I’m wearing, the other was going to connect with Halana, but Savara will now be wearing her rings. Don’t use hers except in urgent situations. You could distract her at a bad moment.

“The dark red ones are strike stones. The pale blue are shield stones.” She pressed them onto his first and second fingers, then held out the last two. “These are new to us, and we don’t have many of them. The clear one... you gave Halana the idea, actually. We’d never bothered to make stones with the sole purpose of storing magic to be retrieved later as pure magic, rather than to be channelled to a purpose.”

“A storestone!”

“Yes. We have about twenty of them. They have only the strength of three average magicians stored in them. Halana didn’t want to risk adding more, and most of Sanctuary’s strength was being taken and held by Traitor magicians – which made it instantly accessible rather than having to reach for a ring. If these were strengthened in peace time, however, they could be more useful.”

He took the ring and slipped it on the last free finger of his right hand.

“And the other?”

“The purplish one,” she grinned, “is a Healing stone.”

“Kalia made it?”

“No. A stone-maker read her mind, tested what she’d learned on a volunteer, then made a few stones. She says the stones have been taught to boost the body in whatever Healing it’s already trying to do.”

Lorkin picked up the ring and examined it. “Smart. That way, if it works, it won’t matter what kind of wound needs Healing. The wearer only needs to know how to use magical force to hold bones in the right position so they don’t heal crooked, or the sides of wounds together, or to remove poisons, infection or a build-up of blood. It wouldn’t work for using Healing beyond what the body needs, like easing pain, or tiredness, though. How many did she make?”

“Five. Wait... easing tiredness?” Tyvara frowned. “You can stop yourself feeling tired?”

“Ah... yes. I didn’t mention that when I was in Sanctuary, in case it made people feel more... well... annoyed with me.”

“Does it take much magic?”