Spellslinger (Spellslinger #1)(43)

‘You’re wrong,’ I said. ‘Maybe it looks like a …’ I felt so stupid I couldn’t even say the thing’s name out loud. ‘Look, I’ve seen how vicious that creature is. Wait until the council uses it to reel in all the other nekhek in the area and kill them. Wait until you see what a pack of them looks like. Then maybe you’ll understand.’

‘And what are you going to do while they’re torturing that animal?’ she asked, stopping in her tracks.

Something sharp in her voice surprised me. I had to walk ahead of her and turn back round to see her face. There was no humour there. No jokes. Her eyes were deadly serious.

‘What do you mean? What do I have to do with this?’

‘You said that animal saved your sister.’

‘I said it killed a sick dog before it could bond with her. That’s not the same thing. Maybe the nekhek just likes to kill other animals.’ I was lying to myself though. I could still see the look on the creature’s face after it had snapped the diseased dog’s neck. If anything, the nekhek had looked enraged at having to do it.

Ferius reached into her waistcoat and pulled out a deck of her cards. These weren’t the regular ones like she’d given me, nor were they the sharp metal ones she’d used as weapons. The backs of these cards were the darkest red I’d ever seen, almost black. She fanned them and held them out to me. ‘Pick a card, kid.’

‘What’s this about?’

‘You said those men were trying to hurt your sister. You were begging anyone or anything to save her, and that squirrel cat came along and you got what you wanted. Isn’t that right?’

‘You’re distorting the facts,’ I said. ‘You’re making it sound like—’

‘Pick a card, Kellen.’

I looked around, suddenly realising how dark it had become. ‘Not until you tell me what this is about.’

‘It’s about you deciding whether or not you’re going to be a man.’

‘You keep going on about me having to be a man. You keep insulting my people’s magic and my family’s –’

‘The world’s got plenty of mages, Kellen. What it needs are men and women.’ She made the words sound different than the way people usually say them. Important, somehow.

I hated the way she spoke about magic as if it were a joke, as if my people were no different than children playing with toys. More than anything I hated the way she kept holding the fanned cards out to me, challenging me to take one.

‘Look, I’m not—’

‘Shut up and pick a card. Pick a card or turn around and walk away and don’t ever look back. The world is a big and dangerous place and there’s more darkness filling it than you’ll ever know. Only one thing fights that – men and women who don’t walk away from their debts. Pick a card now, Kellen, because I won’t ask again.’

I was so sick of her tricks and her games. For every little thing she taught me, there was some test or trap, each one forcing me to do things I didn’t want to do. But even though I’d only known Ferius Parfax for all of three days, I knew without the slightest doubt that while this might be a trick, it wasn’t any kind of joke. If I didn’t take the card I would never see her again. I don’t know why, but the thought scared me. I took a card from the middle.

‘Three of hearts,’ I said, my eyes captured by the dark crimson hearts set against the beige background, the calligraphy of the number three written in the same red-black ink as the back of the card. ‘What does it mean?’

She closed the deck and slipped it back into her waistcoat. ‘The card you pick doesn’t matter.’

‘Then I don’t get it,’ I said, holding the card up. ‘What am I supposed to do with this?’

She sidestepped around me and headed further down the alley. ‘How should I know? Just do the right thing. Maybe just look that animal in the eyes before you consign it to death. Do what you think the man you want to be would do. Then I’d suggest you get rid of that card real quick.’

I looked down at the thing as if it might burst into flames. ‘What did you just make me take? Is this some kind of curse?’

‘Life’s a curse, kid. Love is the cure.’

I started running after her but stopped myself when I realised how stupid I must look. ‘I don’t know what that means!’

‘It’s your debt, Kellen. You figure out how to pay it. Reckon I saved your life, so now that’s one less debt for me.’

I wanted to tear the card up and toss it on the ground and stomp on it until it was crushed into dust. Damned Ferius Parfax with her stupid jokes and her tricks and her mysterious remarks. I looked back at her and saw that she was almost at the door of the guest house. ‘Wait! If the card is supposed to represent some kind of debt, then what are you doing with a whole deck of them?’

She held up something in her hand and I heard coins tinkling. ‘Getting really, really drunk,’ she said, and walked through the open door.

I was halfway home and walking through a narrow alleyway that usually provided a convenient shortcut when I found myself face to face with a palace guardsman. He looked oddly out of place in the dirt and dust of the alley.

‘You startled me,’ I said, trying to recover my breath.