He became furious. ‘I am doing what is right for our family! For our house. For our people. If the shadowblack takes you fully and your magic recovers, you’ll become a threat to our clan, as my mother was! I cannot let that happen. I will not let that happen.’ He pushed the next drop of ink into my arm. Even enraged as he was, the motion was careful, precise. Controlled.
A thought occurred to me then – the sort of desperate, futile sliver of an idea that you think up when you’re so frenzied that your mind can’t understand that you’ve already lost. ‘You swore!’ I said. ‘You told Ferius Parfax that you would pardon me! You gave your word.’
My father stopped then, just for a moment. His eyes were full of guilt and sorrow when he looked at me. He leaned over and kissed me on the forehead. ‘I have pardoned you, Kellen, for shaming our family this way, for bringing this darkness into our house.’ Then he turned back and dipped the needle into the molten ink. ‘Now it is your turn to forgive me.’
27
The Truth
It takes six nights to band a Jan’Tep child, one for each of the disciplines of iron, ember, silk, sand, blood and breath. First you must secure the ores from the mines that run deep beneath the oasis. Close proximity to the mines sickens mages, so Sha’Tep are employed for this task. The ores must be quickly transmuted with chemicals and fire into the liquid form used for the inks before separation from the ground renders them toxic. Each banding ink has its own special process, its own complexities and dangers that require the mage preparing them to do so slowly, methodically, without hesitation. Without remorse.
During the daytime I would lie strapped to the table, my mind drifting in a fog from the drugs my mother forced me to drink. I knew they released the straps to bathe me sometimes, because the table underneath me was clean even though I was sure I’d soiled myself several times. At night, with the light of the moon glimmering in through the window, they would renew the work of counter-banding me. I too would begin my work fresh each night, screaming in outrage, begging for mercy. My father and mother would try to make me understand that this was for the best – for our family, our clan and our people. I would call them liars and monsters, and swear vengeance on the world as if the demon had already claimed me.
None of it made any difference. Like a steady water clock we all just kept dripping away the hours. Slowly but surely my father finished one band, then the next. I was fairly sure that the gold band for sand magic was complete, forever denying me the spells for seeing afar or uncovering secret knowledge. The iron band too was done. I would never cast a shield spell to protect myself or anyone else. They progressed one by one, from the strongest form of magic to the weakest. Soon my father would counter-band the silver, taking away forever the breath magic that had been mine for only a few precious moments.
When my voice failed I would lie there listening to the flames of the braziers, punctuated by the tap-tap of my father’s needles as he dipped them into the tiny cauldrons. Sometimes I heard my mother crying over me. One time I think it was my father.
I kept wanting to ask about Shalla and whether Ferius had returned with her. I knew she hadn’t though, because while I hated everyone and everything in the world I somehow knew without the slightest shred of a doubt that if Ferius Parfax had known what was being done to me she would have knocked the door down and set the place on fire. She would have stood there with a smoking reed in her mouth and those razor-sharp steel cards of hers in hand. ‘Kicking down doors and asses is just what a woman does when a kid’s being tortured,’ she would have said.
That was why I knew it wasn’t her coming to save me when I heard the polite, almost tentative knock at the door.
‘Do not disturb us,’ my father said.
The knock was repeated, followed by the turning of the handle.
‘Away!’ my father commanded. ‘The door is locked for a reason.’
A voice on the other side called out, but from where I lay strapped to the table the words were muffled, incoherent. My father and mother ignored them.
Then something odd happened. I heard the sound of something heavy battering at the door. My father looked up, his eyes narrowed in annoyance, then the noise came again. The third time I saw the hinges weaken and my father got to his feet. The fourth time they gave way completely and the door flew open.
‘By the crying souls of our ancestors,’ my uncle Abydos said, ‘it’s true. You’re counter-banding your own son!’
‘Remove yourself from this room, Abydos,’ my father warned. ‘What happens here is of no concern to the Sha’Tep.’ His use of my uncle’s status was intentional – a reminder that he was family by blood but not by rank.
‘Don’t do this, Keo,’ my uncle pleaded. ‘You don’t know that this is truly the shadowblack. There are tests you could—’
My father carefully set the needle down on the table. ‘No one has called me “Keo” for a very long time.’ He walked over to face my uncle. I don’t think I’d ever seen them stand quite like that, almost as equals. ‘I am Ke’heops now, a mage of the Jan’Tep and the head of this house. You would do well to remember that fact, and as you do, to remember your own place in the scheme of things.’
My mother stood. ‘Please, both of you, stop. This isn’t helping.’
When the Sha’Tep are addressed by their Jan’Tep betters, they almost always look away. In fact, I was fairly sure that I’d never even noticed the colour of my uncle’s eyes because he was always looking down or to the side when one of us spoke to him. He didn’t do that now. ‘Kellen is my nephew, Bene’maat. I won’t allow you to—’
Out of nowhere my father’s hand rose, the movement far too fast to be a spell. I heard a loud crack and only then realised he’d slapped my uncle in the face. ‘You won’t allow? It is not your place to allow anything, Abydos. You are a member of this household, not this family.’
‘Ke’heops, please, you’re tired,’ my mother began. ‘This is … it’s hard on all of us. Perhaps if you explained to Abydos why—’
My father’s hand rose up again, cutting off the discussion. ‘The head of a Jan’Tep house does not explain himself to a Sha’Tep servant.’
‘Hit me again, Keo,’ my uncle said, his voice almost inviting. ‘Better yet, set aside your great and grand magic. Fight me the way we did in the days before our paths separated. Show me what kind of man you are when you aren’t hiding behind the mantle of a mage.’
My father’s fists clenched. Abydos didn’t move an inch. For the first time, I wondered what my father had been like as a boy. Had he been like me, small and scrawny, trying to survive as best he could as he waited for his powers to emerge? It was hard for me to imagine, and yet here, now, he seemed somehow smaller than Abydos.