Spellslinger (Spellslinger #1)(33)

She got to her feet and walked over to sit down on the bench next to me. ‘What, those morons from last night?’

‘Them or someone else. Don’t think the same tricks will work again. Next time they might—’

‘Next time I’ll use a different trick.’

All I could see in her face was her usual smug self-assurance, but I still remembered the genuine fear in her eyes the night before. ‘They’ve seen your smoke and your steel cards. What happens when you run out of tricks? What happens if more powerful mages decide to attack you and they—’

She shrugged. ‘Guess we’ll find out when it happens.’ She took another drag of her smoking reed. ‘But let’s deal with more pressing concerns. Like that little lady you seem to fancy so much but just treated like dirt.’

A whole town full of mages, half of whom probably wanted to see her dead, and she wanted to talk about my love life. ‘Look, unless you have a spell to make her like me despite how much of a loser I am, just keep your thoughts to yourself. Besides, it’s like she said – she’s not special.’

Ferius looked at me and let out a long breath, the smoke filling the air between us like fog on an early spring morning. ‘Okay, kid, you did me a favour last night, so I’m going to do you one in return.’

I turned away from her. ‘If you’re going to make a joke about teaching me spells again, then don’t bother.’ I was tired of the way Ferius made fun of magic as if it was all a game.

I felt her hand on my shoulder and nearly pulled away in surprise, but her grip was too strong. ‘I am going to teach you a spell, kid, not because you want it but because you need it.’ She leaned over and whispered a string of words in my ear.

It was, like always, just another of her stupid tricks – Ferius pretending that things that weren’t real spells were just as important as true magic. I could have just forgotten it and gone home, but the truth was, I felt pretty awful about how I’d acted towards Nephenia. So when I noticed her lagging behind the other initiates leaving the oasis, I ran quietly up to her.

She turned and saw me and I saw the fear in her eyes. Fear that I was going to yell at her or say terrible, angry things to her. Fear that I was going to reject her. The way you rejected me. I shook the thought from my head. If I was going to make a fool of myself, I’d at least do it properly. Calm, I reminded myself. First comes the calm. I closed my eyes for just a second, envisioning the spell doing its work, and then I spoke the incantation, exactly as Ferius had said it to me. ‘You said you weren’t special, Nephenia, but you’re wrong. One day you’re going to figure that out for yourself, but in the meantime, just know that you’re special to me.’

For a long while she stood there as if every part of her was trapped in a binding spell. Then I watched a single teardrop begin to form in her right eye. Just before it began rolling down her cheek she threw her arms around me. ‘Thank you, Kellen,’ was all she said.

She didn’t kiss me or apologise, or promise to stay friends with me. She didn’t give me some keepsake or secret code. I knew that tomorrow she’d have to do just what she’d said – go along with the others, because that’s what you do when you don’t feel powerful enough on your own.

But for those few seconds while I had my arms around her and felt her face pressed into my shoulder, my cheek buried in the soft curls of her hair, I didn’t mind.

Okay, so it wasn’t magic.

But it felt awfully close.

I returned to my bench between the columns, intent on making a few clever remarks to Ferius about her spell – only to find her gone and Shalla sitting there in her place. She looked paler than usual. Tired.

‘Where’s Ferius?’ I asked.

Shalla shrugged. ‘She left. I don’t think she likes me. Then again, she’s some kind of Daroman spy so—’

‘She’s not a spy,’ I said.

‘Then what is she?’

A woman. It’s like a man only smarter and with bigger balls. No, that was not going to make me sound clever. ‘Who knows? Probably just what Father said: an Argosi wanderer.’

Shalla started to say something but then coughed. I was going to ask her what was wrong when she nodded towards the street where Nephenia had gone. ‘What was that all about?’

I glanced back just in case Nephenia was still there, but the street was empty. ‘Nothing. I was just—’

‘I don’t know why you waste time with Mouse Girl,’ Shalla said. ‘Her family isn’t powerful, she’s not that pretty and she’s never going to be much of a mage.’

A dozen angry retorts arrayed themselves in my mind, organised from nastiest to least likely to get me in a worse mess than I was already in. I tossed them all out. ‘She thinks you’re amazing.’

Shalla’s mouth opened and then closed again. Now there’s a magic spell if ever there was one. It didn’t last of course. ‘You know these people aren’t your family, right? Panahsi, Nephenia, that crazy Ferius woman? None of them are family.’

‘So what?’ I asked, the anger rising in my throat despite my attempts to stay calm. Shalla really is smarter than I am. Somehow she always knows just how to dig down into me. ‘What has my family ever done for me? All those hours Mother and Father spent doing spells on me to bring out my magic? All they did was make me feel sick and weak and horrible. Do you think they’ll even let me sleep upstairs any more once I’m stuck being a Sha’Tep for the rest of my life? Will you even call me your brother when I’m coming to serve your dinner or scrub your floors?’