Page 47 of The Sorcerer's Alpha
Sycamore blinked. “What? Aditya? Why would he ask you to go?”
“The king holds you captive by your loyalty to him. The longer I remained in Banuri, the less power he had over you. I was his competition for you devotion. He sent me away to isolate you.”
“He wouldn’t do that,” Sycamore said. Gentle-eyed, weary King Aditya, always with a word of praise or thanks for Sycamore. No, he would never be so ruthless. Surely there had been some other reason to send Temur away.
Temur sighed. “As you say. Let’s speak with the ice, Dhanu.”
The ice had much to say of currents and wind and the hidden habits of fish, but nothing of thinning or melt. The frozen layer above the water was thick enough for a horse to cross safely. Spring was many weeks away.
As they walked back toward the village, Sycamore said, “I wish you had told me then, why you left.”
Temur limped along. “I should have. I thought then that it was best if you didn’t harden your heart against the king. But now I see that I made a mistake. You would be better served to be a little hardened.”
“The king has always been kind to me,” Sycamore said, with the uncomfortable feeling that he was saying just what Temur expected him to.
“Yes,” Temur said. “I’m sure he has.”
Sycamore stewed over their conversation for the rest of the day. Temur wasn’t a liar; he wouldn’t say the king had sent him away unless that was what had happened. But surely he was mistaken about the reason. Perhaps Aditya had worried that Sycamore would learn too much Sarnoy magic and struggle to work well with the other sorcerers, who were trained solely in the Chedoy tradition. Yes: that seemed reasonable, as it was in fact what had happened. Surely that was why.
“You’re distracted,” Marut said, setting a plate of food in front of him.
Sycamore sighed. “Yes. I’m sorry. I’m thinking about something Temur said to me earlier.”
Marut sat down across from him at the table. “What’s that?”
“He thinks I’m too timid with my magic. That I could do more than I think, if only I would try.” Sycamore raised one shoulder in a shrug. “I was quite annoyed with him in the moment. No one likes to hear about their shortcomings. But I have to wonder if he’s right.”
“I think you’re the least timid person I’ve ever met,” Marut said. “If that’s what he said, he’s wrong.”
Sycamore smiled at him. “Is that a compliment or an insult? No, he isn’t wrong. I think of all the times I wished I could see your face in our tent—all those nights on the steppe. And what if—” He raised his hand and held it as if he were gripping a ball. “What if I believed I could make light?”
He imagined a light there. He let himself believe it. He spun the magic out through his fingers and it flared to life in his hand as a glowing sphere, bright as a small star.
* * *
Sycamore knockedat Temur’s door and hardly waited for a reply before flinging it open. “Look,” he said to Temur and a startled Sarangerel, seated at the table by the stove. He thrust out his hand and called light into it, a shining, golden ball.
“Ah.” Temur leaned back in his chair and smiled. “You’ve been experimenting.”
“Yes.” Sycamore closed the door behind him and sat in the third chair, dislodging the cat as he did. “And I lit the stove this morning with no flint. Temur, who can do these things? I’ve read that the Etsukai harnessed fire once, but so much of what’s said of them is only myth.”
“What’s the difference between a myth and a true story?” Temur asked. “And besides, lighting a fire isn’t harnessing it. Don’t get ahead of yourself.”
“It’s so good I have you to keep me humble,” Sycamore said dryly.
Temur glanced at Sarangerel, who was listening to this exchange with wide eyes. “What do you know of Etsukeo?”
“I thought they had all died,” she said. “Generations ago.”
“No,” Temur said. “They only stopped their raiding. Shall we travel there, Sarangerel, and learn their fire magic?”
She hid her smile behind one hand. “I don’t think I’d be very good at it.”
Temur continued to tease her about the Etsukoy, and the conversation never made its way back around to what Sycamore had learned he could do. He was perturbed at first, and then wondered if Temur had changed the subject on purpose. He let the matter drop as he gave Sarangerel another unsuccessful lesson in scrying. When that was done and she had gone back to her own tent, he turned to Temur and said, “What did you mean yesterday, that it’s not in anyone’s interest for me to fully explore my abilities?”
Temur squinted at the bit of embroidery he was working on, the decorated border of what looked to be a coat sleeve. “You know all of those old men in your palace are fearsomely envious of you. After all of their years of effort and study, to have an untaught child join their ranks was more than their pride could bear.”
“Yes, of course, I’m well aware of that,” Sycamore said, impatient that Temur was misunderstanding him—deliberately, he suspected. Of course he knew the other sorcerers resented him. They had never offered him any morsel of kindness, not through all his lonely boyhood and adolescence, and even now he spent most of his time in the palace alone. “But you weren’t talking about them, were you? You meant the king.”