Page 23

Teysan. He’d called meteysan. Even in my imagination, Durral only ever calls me teysan when I’m failing to heed my Argosi talents.

‘Where should I be looking, Pappy?’

I turned to Arissa, whose arched eyebrow and tight-lipped grimace told me she was about ten seconds away from slapping me silly until I stopped acting crazy. I wasted two of those seconds on Chedran, searching that smug fox-in-a-henhouse smile of his for any sign he’d somehow gotten control of me with that snake charmer’s gaze of his. My fingers squeezed the thin, cool surface of the throwing card still in my hand.

If you did this to me, Chedran, if you mesmerised me into committing murder, I’m going to see your blood mingle with that of all these Jan’Tep you so despi—

I imagined a pressure under my chin, the familiar touch of Durral’s busted second knuckle lifting my jawbone up and then a few degrees to the left, guiding me right back to the spot I’d been staring at moments ago: a cracked tower wall painted with a single, perfect line of sprayed blood.

‘What am I supposed to see, Pappy? It’s exactly as it was just—’

Stupid.

Stupid, stupid,stupid.

‘Don’t say it,’I warned Durral. Well, myself really. Didn’t work though. In my recollections, he’s even more stubborn than I am.

‘You wanted the lesson, teysan, so you tell me. When’s the last time you saw blood splash on a wall and not—’

Arissa grabbed my shoulder with her left hand, which told me she was winding up to slap me with her right. I lifted my arm straight to catch the blow, then down hard to trap her wrist against my ribs. Both of us knew she still had a dozen ways of taking me down from that position.

‘Don’t,’ I warned her. ‘We didn’t do this.’

‘Yes, we did,’ she said, not bothering to free herself, instead pulling me closer. ‘We did this thing, Rat Girl, and now we have to live with it.’

‘Enough!’ Chedran shouted, a clarion horn blaring in my ear. ‘This was a victory. Arighteousvictory! Look—’ He kicked the corpse of the old man. ‘Those robes mark him as a lord magus. Alord magus!How many of our kind has he murdered in his time? Now he’s dead, and every Mahdek should rejoice. I’ll not have this triumph sullied by your pathetic mewling self-pity!’

‘You’re wrong on two counts,’ I told them both. I let Arissa see that I was calm now so that when I released her hand she wouldn’t make a move on me. ‘First off, there ain’t nothing righteous about slaughter. Not even when it never happened in the first place.’

Suddenly Arissa was wary. Even without moving a muscle, you could tell she was readying herself, which told me she too had sensed something was wrong; she’d just confused it with the guilt we’d both felt but she’d been better at suppressing. ‘Rat Girl, what’s going on?’

I pointed to the wall and waited for them to follow my finger. ‘You ever see blood splatter on a wall that didn’t drip?’

‘Sand magic?’ Chedran asked, crouching low, his curved knife back in his hand as he spun around searching for enemies in every shadow. ‘How? They were asleep when we killed them!’

Took me longer than I would’ve liked to get the words out. There was a reason the pattern of that blood spatter had been so familiar: it was exactly the same one that had sprayed from the Daroman guard’s neck back in Soul’s Grave all those weeks ago. A perfect replica. That having been the only time in my life I’d ever slit somebody’s throat, it was the only image that could be used to convince me I’d just committed a murder.

‘We never got the drop on them,’ I said. ‘We never even made it inside the tower.’

I looked back down at the six dead mages. They looked exactly the way you’d expect dead bodies should look, only the dead never quite look right, do they? And had the corner of the youngest’s one’s mouth just moved a fraction?

‘What’s wrong with you?’ Chedran demanded. ‘Why are you standing there when we—’

Without so much as a whisper, the six dead mages vanished from the floor of the tower. In their place lay three different figures whose faces were all too familiar. Arissa, Chedran and I stared down at our own corpses gazing back at us. They looked happy.

‘It’s called a mind cage,’ I said. ‘We’re in a mind cage.’

15

The Mind Cage

Silk magic.

The most devious of the seven forms of Jan’Tep sorcery, silk is the magic of the mind: an intricate web of hidden forces that can tether one consciousness to another. Only those initiates who’ve sparked the middle band of sigils tattooed in platinum inks on their left forearm can wield its subtle spells. The lords magi boast of silk magic being incontrovertible proof of the superiority of the Jan’Tep intellect over the weaker minds of other cultures. Never understood how anyone could brag about the wilful desecration of their fellow human beings like that.

Now, the Argosi may not be keen on magic, but we keep track of its presence across this continent, same as we do wars, plagues and famines. Most would agree that the vilest silk spell ever conceived is the mind chain: a spell that prevents the victim from ever speaking or otherwise revealing a secret the spellcaster wishes kept. Doesn’t sound like such a big deal, right? Now imagine your mind straining against those invisible shackles, day after day, year after year, until at last your spirit breaks and insanity becomes a blessed release.

A close second, though, Is the mindcage. This nasty piece of business traps the victim’s consciousness inside a prison constructed from their own memories. The mage picks through your most intimate and private recollections then weaves in their own, refashioning them into a cell from which you can never escape because you can’t even see the bars.