My father’s next words echoed through the street. ‘Enough!’ He stepped in front of Ra’meth. ‘You come at me like a shadow thief in the night with your accusations and your arrogance? Go home, Ra’meth. Make whatever complaints you wish to the council in the morning, or, if you are so determined to settle this matter here in the street like dogs fighting over a bone, then we have the means to do so. But it is me you will duel, Lord Magus, not my children and not this woman.’
For a moment Ra’meth looked genuinely worried by the cold, hard stare my father gave him. I thought he was about to walk away, but then he said, ‘My whole life I have watched you strut and stride among our people, Ke’heops. You act as if you are so much better than the rest of us, but for all your strength, you are only one man.’ Ra’meth nodded to his sons. ‘My blood is strong. Every one of my children carries the magic of our people in their veins. You have forgotten the wise words of our ancestors, Ke’heops: it is the house that matters, not the man.’
This is it, I realised. They’re going to attack. My father, powerful as he was, couldn’t hope to overcome Ra’meth and his sons by himself. Shalla had potential, but that wasn’t going to be enough against a lord magus, a chaincaster and a war mage. Do something, I told myself. Anything.
A light chuckle broke the silence. It came from Ferius. ‘A little free advice? Next time you’re planning an ambush, don’t give the other guy so much time to prepare.’ She took one last drag from her smoking reed before letting it fall to the ground and crushing it under the heel of her boot. She still had a hand inside her waistcoat.
‘Show us your little weapon then, woman,’ Ra’meth said. ‘You think a knife will save you?’
Ferius withdrew the hand and held it up for all to see.
It was empty.
‘Look, see?’ Tennat laughed. ‘She’s a fake, like Kellen. She doesn’t even have a weapon.’
She smiled, then blew the last of her smoke into the faces of Ra’meth and his sons. ‘Who needs a weapon?’ she asked, as the three of them began coughing even worse than before. It was only then that I realised how careful she’d been to always blow the smoke out towards them and not us. ‘Yeah, that stuff’s awful rough on the lungs the first few times. Gives you a terrible headache too.’ She turned to me. ‘Say, I don’t suppose you need to be able to speak and think clearly to cast spells, do you?’
Ra’fan, the skin on his face looking remarkably green, extended his right hand, middle two fingers bent in towards the heel of his palm and the outer two extended towards Ferius. ‘Medran’e’fe …’ The intonation of the spell was broken as he launched into a coughing fit. Ra’dir tried next, but barely got the first syllable out before he turned and vomited into the street.
Ferius looked down at the remains of her smoking reed on the ground. ‘I should give those up. Filthy habit really.’
Ra’meth drew in a deep breath, his eyes focused, expression calm. Like his sons, he looked ill from the smoke, but unlike them he had the strength and experience to resist its effects. Before he could open his mouth however, my father spoke, hands held out in front of him. His fingers didn’t twitch nor did his bands glow. My father never showed off. ‘Think before you speak, Ra’meth of the House of Ra, because in the next ten seconds I will use these hands either to carry my son home so that his mother can see to his injuries or to settle our dispute once and for all. The choice is yours.’
Ra’meth stiffened. He gave no more threats, no more demonstrations of power. My father had made it clear that there were only two choices. Without Ra’fan and Ra’dir to back him up, Ra’meth knew he couldn’t take my father. He signalled for them to leave, then turned to me. ‘You will receive no gold disc for your duel, boy. You will fail the other three trials as you failed the first. Then you will find yourself here among the Sha’Tep where you belong.’ He grabbed Tennat, who was still choking and gagging from the smoke, and turned to leave. ‘Where even your parents have always known you belong.’
The words were callous and cruel and I knew they were calculated to wound my father as much as me. Still, my heart would have sunk then had it not been for Ferius, who gave a little snort and punched my father in the arm. ‘All that magical posturing with glowing rods and mystical fireworks, and in the end you sent him packing with nothing more than a stern look. I see where the kid gets his nerve.’
I felt strangely proud of that.
6
The Household
I convinced my father to let me walk the rest of the way home but I suspect I didn’t make it very far because I woke up sometime later in my mother’s private room. She and my father shared a bedroom, but each also kept a separate chamber for their personal use. In my mother’s case, it was for her two passions: medicine and astronomy.
A wall of beautifully framed star charts greeted me when I opened my eyes. I was lying on my side on her silk-covered settee.
From the age of six I’d spent countless hours in this room, sitting anxiously as my parents cast evocations in the hope of strengthening my pathetically weak connection to the six foundations of magic. The process exhausted them and left me so weak I was unable to do more than lie on the settee for hours. By now I knew every inch of every wall and every scratch on every piece of furniture in the room, so I was unsettled to see one of my mother’s silver telescopes lying haphazardly on the floor in the corner. Her writing desk held a large piece of parchment and small bottle of black ink left open, which meant she’d been in the middle of working on a new chart when my father had brought me to her. On the opposite side of the room, cabinets of healing draughts and medical supplies sat wide open, pieces of linen bandaging strewn on the floor. Guess I was in even worse shape than I thought.
Voices carried from outside the door but I couldn’t make them out. My first attempt to get to my feet failed as nausea and the sensation of dozens of rusty iron spikes piercing the inside of my skull forced me back down. One of my ribs screamed in protest. It didn’t feel broken any more, but it still hurt. A Jan’Tep must be strong, I imagined my father saying. An eavesdropper must be stronger, I added.
I clambered down to the floor and crawled on hands and knees until I reached the door and put my ear against it. Normally I wouldn’t have been able to hear through the thick wood, but normally people weren’t yelling quite this much.
‘It wasn’t my fault!’ Shalla shouted, her voice a half-octave higher than usual. ‘Kellen’s the one who cheated! He cheated!’
My father’s reply wasn’t shouted at all and yet the deep tones of his voice practically made the walls shake. ‘And in your pride, you betrayed your brother. Your family. Your blood.’
‘But—’
Whatever she was about to say next ended in a strangled cry.
‘Ke’heops!’ my mother said, her voice pleading rather than commanding.
‘The one is a liar and the other a traitor to her family,’ my father said. ‘Is our blood so weak? So flawed? The House of Ra seeks our downfall, and how can I present myself as candidate for prince of our clan when my own progeny shows the seed of our line to be so foul?’