Spellslinger (Spellslinger #1)(82)
‘For me? What are you talking about?’
‘When the others first approached me with their plan, I refused. I said I loved my family.’ He turned to me. ‘What good is my love if all I do is stand by while your parents destroy the magic inside you that you long for so much, even more than Ke’heops ever did.’
‘They thought I had the shadowblack,’ I said. ‘They were trying to protect me.’ The words sounded utterly unconvincing even to me.
‘They were protecting her,’ Abydos said. He walked down the stairs to where she lay unconscious on the table. ‘Shalla – who has none of her mother’s kindness, and all of her father’s arrogance. Shalla, who would one day become a monster worse than any of them, if we gave her the chance.’
I started after him, but two of the men grabbed me before I took a step. ‘Uncle, what are you doing?’
He bent down to the floor and lifted up a narrow tray, which he set down next to her on the table. I saw the flames of six small braziers. Above each one rested a tiny clay jar bearing a symbol representing the liquefied metal within. A piece of loosely wrapped silk sat on the right side of the tray, the kind that might be used to hold writing implements, but which I knew contained a set of long, thin needles, one for each jar.
‘I’m doing this for you, Kellen. I couldn’t stop Ke’heops from denying you your magic, but you and I can make him pay for what he’s done to you. We can do it together.’
He looked back up at me, a terrible love in his eyes that held me more than any binding spell, more than the men who gripped my arms. ‘You …’ My voice was barely a whisper. I was so desperate not to say the words but somehow unable to stop myself. ‘You’re counter-banding Shalla for me.’
How many times had I resented Shalla for the luck she’d never earned, for the way magic came to her so easily. How many times had I secretly wished she would fail, that her bands wouldn’t spark. How many times, lying there strapped to that table over the past days, had I wished my parents would burn the counter-sigils into her skin instead of mine, and take the magic away from her forever.
‘Shalla had nothing to do with any of this,’ I said, to myself as much as to Abydos. ‘She tried to help me find my magic.’
‘Shalla is the worst of all of them.’ Abydos’s voice was soft, almost regretful. ‘I tried … in my own small way I’ve tried to get her to change, but she is a perfect replica of Ke’heops in female form, only she will be stronger than he ever was, when she comes into her power. She’ll be the worst tyrant our people have ever seen.’ He shook his head and looked back up at me. ‘She will treat you as a pet at best and a slave at worst, Kellen.’
‘You don’t know the future,’ Ferius Parfax said. ‘Even the wisest of us doesn’t know that.’
‘Perhaps not, Argosi.’ To me he said, ‘Look in your heart and tell me I’m wrong, Kellen. Tell me that Shalla will still call you brother the day after you’re made Sha’Tep.’
I wanted to. I wanted to call him a liar and say he didn’t understand Shalla, that underneath the arrogance she was different. I wanted to tell him that she’d always love me as her brother, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t be sure it was true.
Abydos picked up one of the needles and dipped it into one of the heated ceramic jars. ‘Did you know that it’s easier for a Sha’Tep to inscribe the counter-sigils than for one of the Jan’Tep? The very magic that courses through their veins rebels against the act, as though it were a kind of desecration.’
‘How did you learn the counter-sigils? Only the lords magi know their forms.’
‘Your father of course. I don’t think he meant to leave them unlocked in his study, but he was distracted while stealing your future from you.’ He held up the needle. A single drop of liquid copper dangled from its end. ‘I will show you how. We can do this together.’
‘You’ll show me how …’ The Jan’Tep were monsters, as cruel to their own Sha’Tep brothers and sisters today as they had been to the Mahdek they’d massacred three hundred years ago. My father spoke of honour and doing what was best for our house, but that had only meant doing what was best for him. My uncle … My uncle had suffered in silence my entire life until I’d set off this chain of events, from cheating at my duel with Tennat, to Shalla nearly killing me, to my father unwittingly revealing how he’d suppressed my magic my whole life. Now my uncle had finally found a way to help me get back at the world.
‘We can do this together.’
‘Uncle Abydos?’ I said.
He put down the needle. ‘Yes, Kellen?’
‘I’m ready now. Tell your men to let me go.’
He nodded and the men on either side of me released my arms.
‘I’m going to come down there and take my sister,’ I said. ‘Then Ferius and Reichis and I are going to carry her out of here, back up to the surface, where I’m going to put her on the horse in the barn and take her home.’
‘I can’t let you do that,’ he said, the expression on his face so sad and lonely that I genuinely felt as if I were disappointing him.
‘If you try to stop me, Uncle, I’ll kill you.’
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