Spellslinger (Spellslinger #1)(9)
‘Nice to meet you, Kellen,’ she said, taking off her hat only to put it right back on her head a second later. The Daromans have weird little rituals like that.
A commotion nearby drew our attention. Osia’phest, with precious little help from the students standing next to him, was struggling to rise. ‘My Lord Ke’heops –’
‘Someone assist him,’ my father said.
Immediately two of the nearest initiates took Osia’phest by the arms and lifted him to his feet. The old spellmaster took a few awkward steps towards us. ‘If I could perhaps explain more fully the circumstances …’
‘Rest,’ my father said. ‘Some of these others will help you home. We will speak tomorrow.’
Osia’phest looked as though someone had just read out his prison sentence. Ferius gave a snort of disgust. ‘Mages,’ she said, as if the word meant something different in her language than it did in ours.
Watching the old man having to be practically carried by his students, seeing the way they rolled their eyes at him and the way they glanced back at me, filled me with shame. ‘I can stand by myself,’ I said to my father.
His eyes narrowed for an instant but he set me on my feet. The sudden weakness in my legs and blurring of my vision were the first clues that I’d made a terrible mistake.
‘Never seen a man recover so fast from a stopped heart,’ Ferius said, patting me on the back. Only she wasn’t patting me on the back, not really. Her hand was gripping the back of my shirt as she kept me from falling forwards onto my face.
My father did an admirable job of pretending not to notice. He took a step forward, blocking the view of the others as Ferius now used both hands to keep me up. ‘The rest of you have homes and families to return to,’ he said. ‘Do so now.’
It took only seconds for the oasis to clear out. No one stopped to say anything to me. Not Panahsi or Nephenia. Tennat didn’t even bother to insult me.
When everyone but Shalla and Ferius had gone, my father turned to the Daroman woman and nodded. She removed her hands and I immediately felt myself falling backwards. My father caught me effortlessly in his arms. ‘You should sleep now,’ he said.
It wasn’t a command or a spell. I could have stayed awake if I’d tried hard enough. But, see, there was this tiny, almost infinitesimally small possibility that if I fell asleep I would wake up later to find that this had all been a terrible, humiliating dream. So I closed my eyes and hoped.
5
The Stand-Off
I woke several times on the journey back home. My father kept a steady pace despite the weight of carrying me. Whenever I opened my eyes I’d see the sky had got darker, only to suddenly blaze with light whenever we passed under one of the city’s glow-glass street lanterns.
‘You’re going to blow one of those things up if you don’t keep that will of yours under wraps,’ Ferius Parfax said, leading her mottled black-and-grey horse beside us.
‘You question my father’s control?’ Shalla demanded, her voice full of righteous fury.
My father spoke a single word – ‘Daughter’ – and Shalla’s eyes darted back to the sandstone sidewalk beneath us.
Ferius gave a little laugh and shook her head.
‘What’s so funny?’ I asked.
‘So many magic words in your language. Who knew the word for “daughter” was the same as the word for “silence”?’
I felt my father’s arms tense beneath my back and legs. ‘How clever. I take it you must be some sort of travelling entertainer? Should I offer you a few coins for your performance?’
My father considers actors and troubadours to be slightly less useful than sand lice.
‘Why, thank you, Great Ke’heops,’ Ferius replied, either not picking up on his sarcasm or not caring to. ‘But no, I’m more of what you’d call a cartographer.’
‘You make maps?’ I glanced back at her horse’s saddlebags, expecting to find the kinds of long wooden tubes my mother uses to protect her fragile charts. ‘Where do you keep them?’
Ferius patted one of the front pockets of her black leather waistcoat. ‘Right here.’
There was no way you could keep proper maps inside a pocket. I was about to point this out to her when I noticed that the buildings along the street on either side of us were getting shabbier and shabbier. No longer the three-and four-storey trimmed limestone houses and marble sanctums we’d passed on the Way of Ancestors, these were squat little buildings made from rough timber or unpolished slabs of sandstone. The exteriors had none of the brass or silver finishings typical of Jan’Tep homes, nor statues or any decoration other than the occasional worn shop sign hanging out front. What little illumination leaked out onto the street came from the flicker of mundane oil lanterns through the wooden slats of unevenly cut windows.
‘Why are we going through the Sha’Tep slums?’ I asked my father. ‘The Way of Ancestors is faster.’
‘This path is … quieter.’
Quieter. You know you’ve sunk pretty low when your own father is embarrassed to be seen with you in public. My chest felt tight. It made no difference that I’d managed to beat Tennat even without spells of my own. No one thought that I’d been clever or brave, not even my own father. All that mattered was that my magic was weak.