The Traitor Queen

systems.

His guts have been nicked by the blade that stabbed him. He’d have died already if the leak had been much larger. Clearly that’s what I have to fix first...

Drawing magic, she fed it into the rupture so that the edges of the wound knit together, healing faster than they could ever have done without intervention.

Now I have to stop the blood leaking out. But before I do, there’s this poison from the guts and the blood pooling inside him to deal with. Use one to help wash out the other. She hoped Cery and Anyi weren’t panicking as she used magic to force the liquids out of the wound. There was a little more resistance to this than she’d expected. Then she remembered that Cery was still pressing on the wound. She concentrated on her own body enough to gain control of her vocal chords.

“You can stop now,” she made herself say.

She saw the blood begin to flow again, and was forced to concentrate hard to align and Heal the separated flesh and skin. Remembering warnings from her teachers, she checked within to make sure there were no internal rents causing bleeding to continue within. A few tubes needed fixing. Easily done.

After a final check, she drew her senses back to herself, took a deep breath and opened her eyes. Gol’s face was no longer rigid with pain. He looked up at her and smiled.

“Better?” she asked.

He nodded. “Yes. But... tired. Very tired.” He frowned. “Thirsty.”

“You will be. You’ve lost blood and there might be some inflammation from the poison.”

“The blade was poisoned?” Cery asked, alarmed.

“No, but his gut was sliced into. What’s inside acts like a poison if it gets into the rest of the body.”

Cery regarded the big man thoughtfully. “You’re not going to be any good for fighting practice for a while.” He looked at Lilia. “How long until he fully recovers?”

She shrugged. “I’m not sure, but faster if he can get good food and clean water.” She looked at Anyi. “If you come with me I’ll see if Jonna left anything back in the room. There’ll be water, at least.”

“You’re already late for classes,” Anyi pointed out. “You should go straight to the University.”

“In these?” Lilia looked down at her novice robes. They were scuffed and dirty from climbing down the narrow gap within the Magicians’ Quarters walls that allowed her to slip out of Sonea’s rooms and into the underground passages. Normally Anyi brought some old clothes for her to change into, but this time she’d arrived empty-handed. They couldn’t keep them in Sonea’s rooms in case Jonna, Sonea’s servant, found them. Lilia hadn’t wanted to risk that Gol might die while she tried to find something else to change into.

Anyi looked at Lilia’s robes. “Can’t you use magic to fix them?”

Lilia sighed. “I can try. Depends how bad they are. It might take longer than going back.”

Anyi inspected her. “Doesn’t look too bad. Nothing you can’t explain away as having tripped and fallen into a hedge.”

“What about getting food and water?”

Anyi shrugged. “I’ll do it.”

“Sonea will be in her rooms all day.”

“She works the night shift at the hospice, right? So she’ll be asleep.”

“And if she isn’t? Or she wakes up?”

“Then I’ll tell her I dropped in to visit you and I was hungry.”

“If it’s just water we need, I know of a few leaky pipes,” Cery said. He looked at Lilia sternly. “But we’ll be in a worse situation if you miss classes or someone realises you’ve been roaming around under the Guild. We’re going to be stuck here for a while, and need you free to visit us, Lilia.”

She looked from him to Anyi. He was right, of course. While classes seemed unimportant compared to keeping her friends safe and well, skipping them would only rouse suspicion. Once more she cursed herself for giving in to curiosity, and trying the instructions on using black magic in Naki’s book. Nobody had paid her any attention when she had been an ordinary novice. She sighed and nodded. “All right. But I’m coming back tonight with dinner for you all.”

“How are you going to manage that?” Cery asked, one eyebrow rising.

“Oh, Jonna is always telling me to eat more, and leaving me little snacks to have while studying. Tonight I’m going to be unusually peckish.”

Chapter 3 Questions

Lorkin suspected the relief he felt was premature, as the Ashaki interrogator ushered him out of the room. Their path looked as if it would be a reversal of the one they’d taken that morning, from the cell Lorkin had been sent to upon leaving the palace hall, to the room he’d been questioned in. Perhaps they were finished for the day. Perhaps it was night outside. Lorkin’s stomach had been his only indicator of the passing of time, and it wasn’t a particularly good one. During moments when not knotted with anxiety it growled quietly with hunger.

The interrogator, who hadn’t introduced himself, led the way, his assistant following behind Lorkin. Lorkin only knew that he was an Ashaki because a guard had addressed him as such.

They reached a corridor that Lorkin remembered well, because it sloped downward into the prison area. Once again he wondered why there were no stairs, but now the answer became clear: a prison guard was pushing a trolley towards them. On the trolley lay a very thin, very old man wearing nothing but a white cloth from his waist to his knees. As the interrogator moved past, Lorkin stole a look at the old man’s face, then looked closer.

Is he dead? The chest didn’t rise or fall. The old man’s lips were bluish. Looks like it. He scanned hurriedly for wounds but spotted none. Not even marks where manacles might have encircled wrists. Perhaps he died of old age. Or illness. Or starvation. Or black magic... He resisted he urge to reach out and touch the corpse, and to use his Healing senses to search for the cause of death.

At the end of the sloped corridor they entered a wide room. Manacles hung from walls, red with rust. A pile of similarly tarnished metal objects lay in one corner – shapes that might suggest torture devices to frightened imaginations. In contrast, the bars that criss-crossed the alcoves along two sides of the room were a dull black, without a hint of age or weakness.

Three larger cells took up the longer wall of the room, and five small ones along the shorter. Only two were occupied: one containing two middle-aged men and the other a young couple. Two guards sat near the main room’s entrance with another man dressed in a more sombre version of the usual Ashaki male garb. The latter nodded at the interrogator, who returned the gesture.

Prisoners rarely stayed more than a few weeks, Lorkin had been told. Even if judged guilty. Magicians were too much trouble to keep locked away, and non-magicians were simply sold into slavery. The interrogator hadn’t said whether the magicians were freed or executed.

That’s part of the game, Lorkin thought. Constant hints at dire consequences if I don’t cooperate, but no direct threats. Yet.

The man had gone on to wonder aloud whether Lorkin qualified as a magician, in the Sachakan sense, since his magical knowledge was incomplete. Did not knowing higher magic make Lorkin a half-magician? Keeping a half-magician prisoner might still be more troublesome than it was worth. Still, it had been done before, though not here. With Lorkin’s very own father.

If he was trying to insult me it was a weak attempt. Surely he knows that Guild magicians don’t see our lack of higher magic as any kind of deficiency – rather it is a more honourable state. I suppose pointing out that my father was once a slave was his true aim.

Even so, that fact wasn’t the source of humiliation to Lorkin that it would have been to a Sachakan noble. Akkarin had been enslaved by an Ichani, outcasts who were an embarrassment and annoyance to the rest of Sachaka – and an indication of weakness in their society. Lorkin did not point this out, though.

Aside from a few other attempted jibes, the interrogator had spent the day asking questions and pointing