Spellslinger (Spellslinger #1)(13)

From the age of six I’d spent countless hours in this room, sitting anxiously as my parents cast evocations in the hope of strengthening my pathetically weak connection to the six foundations of magic. The process exhausted them and left me so weak I was unable to do more than lie on the settee for hours. By now I knew every inch of every wall and every scratch on every piece of furniture in the room, so I was unsettled to see one of my mother’s silver telescopes lying haphazardly on the floor in the corner. Her writing desk held a large piece of parchment and small bottle of black ink left open, which meant she’d been in the middle of working on a new chart when my father had brought me to her. On the opposite side of the room, cabinets of healing draughts and medical supplies sat wide open, pieces of linen bandaging strewn on the floor. Guess I was in even worse shape than I thought.

Voices carried from outside the door but I couldn’t make them out. My first attempt to get to my feet failed as nausea and the sensation of dozens of rusty iron spikes piercing the inside of my skull forced me back down. One of my ribs screamed in protest. It didn’t feel broken any more, but it still hurt. A Jan’Tep must be strong, I imagined my father saying. An eavesdropper must be stronger, I added.

I clambered down to the floor and crawled on hands and knees until I reached the door and put my ear against it. Normally I wouldn’t have been able to hear through the thick wood, but normally people weren’t yelling quite this much.

‘It wasn’t my fault!’ Shalla shouted, her voice a half-octave higher than usual. ‘Kellen’s the one who cheated! He cheated!’

My father’s reply wasn’t shouted at all and yet the deep tones of his voice practically made the walls shake. ‘And in your pride, you betrayed your brother. Your family. Your blood.’

‘But—’

Whatever she was about to say next ended in a strangled cry.

‘Ke’heops!’ my mother said, her voice pleading rather than commanding.

‘The one is a liar and the other a traitor to her family,’ my father said. ‘Is our blood so weak? So flawed? The House of Ra seeks our downfall, and how can I present myself as candidate for prince of our clan when my own progeny shows the seed of our line to be so foul?’

‘She is a child! She doesn’t know what she—’

‘A child? She sparks one of her bands every other week. Her power grows daily. What manner of mage will she become, when her spells are tempered not with humility and conscience but instead amplified by arrogance and pride?’

There was a long pause in the argument while the sound of my father’s pacing rumbled along the floorboards of the house. ‘I could counter-band her,’ he said. ‘Permanently. I have the metals waiting in my study. I know the sigils. I needn’t even ask the council.’

‘Husband! You cannot!’

‘Father, no! Please!’

His footsteps stopped. ‘I am the head of this house. It is my right and my responsibility both to protect this family and to protect the clan from the threat of another rogue mage. I will bind her forever if I must. Do not doubt it.’

My mind suddenly filled with visions of Shalla being held down by the force of my father’s will as he pushed banding needles into her forearms, coloured inks of copper and silver insinuating themselves under the skin, the counter-sigils binding the magic inside her forever. I rose to my feet and reached for the doorknob.

‘You say things you do not mean to,’ my mother said. Her voice held a stiff tone she used only rarely, like a steel bar fresh from the forge. Even my father knew not to test that strength.

‘I’m sorry, Father,’ Shalla whimpered. I let out a breath I hadn’t realised I was holding in and stepped back from the door. I knew my father loved Shalla fiercely, and yet now he seemed to be contemplating the unthinkable.

‘Go to your room,’ he said. His voice had lost its imperious edge, replaced by a weary resignation. ‘I will take time to consider the appropriate course of action.’

Several minutes passed before I heard my mother speak again, this time her tone softer, gentler. ‘Shalla is not like your mother, Ke’heops, nor was she to blame for what she did. Seren’tia was sick, she was –’

‘She was shadowblack,’ he said.

The world became silent and still, shut down by the word my father had just uttered. Shadowblack?

There are seven fundamental sources of magical force, but Jan’Tep mages are banded with only six: iron, ember, silk, sand, blood and breath. No mage is ever banded with the seventh, because shadow is the magic of emptiness, of the void, of the demonic. Our ancient enemies, the Mahdek, drew upon shadow for their spells. That’s why the Mahdek are long dead.

My grandmother had died when Shalla and I were still small children. I knew she’d lost her mind – something that can’t be allowed for a mage with her power – but could she really have been shadowblack?

No wonder our father was concerned about Shalla’s behaviour.

‘Nice family you got there.’

I spun around and lost my balance, tripping over my own feet and stumbling forward. If Ferius hadn’t caught me I probably would’ve tumbled out the open window beside her.

‘Reckon you can fly now, kid?’

Looking up at her I was again struck by the unruly curls of copper-coloured hair that tumbled across her features. They might have suited a lady of the high court had they not seen more sun than a broad-brimmed frontier hat could hold at bay. Her black leather waistcoat was scuffed, and her linen shirt had long ago traded its original colour for a thousand miles worth of dust. But it was the smile – curled up on one side as if she was holding back the best joke in the world – that really set Ferius Parfax at odds with the refined elegance of my mother’s study.