Page 34 of Tempest

Sophie was quiet for a few seconds, squinting at him. “You’re trying to be funny, aren’t you?”

“Ouch,” Levi whispered, and Iason tossed a crumpled scrap of paper at him. Levi batted it away, and Argo scrambled out of the bucket to try to eat it.

After fishing the paper out of Argo’s throat and dumping him in the sink to sulk, Iason picked up his basket. “I’m off to find an apothecary,” he said. “And some books, if possible.”

“I can make dinner,” Sophie said. She waggled a loaf of bread. “I can make a pretty good peasant dish out of this and some of our supplies.”

“What makes it a peasant dish?” Levi asked, as Iason opened the door.

“I don’t really know. Poor people like it, I guess? Wow, that’s kind of messed up.”

Iason left them discussing the economics of bread and walked alone through the streets of the nearest town, which was mostly abandoned buildings and rubble by now point. It was odd how foreign Mislia was to him now. He couldn’t remember this neighborhood from when he was a boy, but then, his fragmented memories left him little more than occasional flashes of familiarity, such as a sense of unease as he crossed a street and saw a house he could have sworn he’d passed before. By the time he made it to the market, those flashes were coming more and more frequently, and Iason had to stop to take in the long rows of tents in the marketplace, the wooden stalls that seemed to have stayed in the same spot for centuries, the domed mage circle council hall at the end of the street looming over the whole affair.

But there were a few changes. The council hall’s windows were shattered, there were burn marks on its carved pillars, and when Iason reached the central square where demon summonings and weddings had been held, he saw the rusty stain of blood on the stone.

Perhaps his own mother had died here. He tried to feel something, searched his broken memories for one that mattered, one where her face brought something other than the shadow of fear and anxiety. But all he saw was old blood, nothing more.

Maybe I am a monster,he thought.And nothing I do will be enough to change that.

An apothecary in a small stone building bought the fruits of Iason’s day’s labors, and he took some pleasure in discussing various extraction methods with her while she counted out the coin. She even pointed him to a bookseller, where Iason awkwardly thumbed through basic magic books until he found one that would do and purchased it, mumbling about having a young mage at home.

By then, he was at the end of the plaza, and he felt that familiar flash of unease again as he turned a corner. Bright violet flowers bloomed in the gutters, the flowers that could make a poison called the smiling death, forcing the victim into a rictus grin as the last of the poison took hold.

He couldn’t look up. Something was stopping him, as though a hand were holding his head down, but at last Iason forced his gaze away from the flowers in the gutter and up to the short stone walls on the other side of the street.

The entire block was a ruin. The buildings that had once stood there were so eaten by fire that they’d collapsed in their frames and were now piles of blackened wood and ash. Iason staggered toward them and passed through a gap in the stone wall. As he walked through the rubble, his foot bumped against something heavy. He pushed a pile of ash aside and found an iron shackle, then another—a line of them, held together by a chain. All the shackles were open, but the chains were held to the floor by iron pegs.

These must have been the slave brothels. Iason picked up one of the shackles, then dropped it as though it were a burning brand—it was too small for an adult’s ankle and set too close to the floor to be meant for someone’s wrist.

Enslavement would have been wrong even if they were traitors, a small voice said in his mind. It sounded suspiciously like Sophie. But it was right. Iason’s breath came too quick, tight in his throat, and despite the fact that he’d been warning Sophie of the fact since she met him, the gravity of it finally struck him: He’d been on the wrong side. He’d worked for the man who allowed this—who orchestrated it.

How loyal had he been? What had he done, in the memories that lay locked behind the curse?

Iason stepped back, trying to reorient himself. He needed to break the bond with Levi. Then—if he survived—he could leave Mislia, send Sophie somewhere safe. He could… disappear. Let the emptiness consume him until there was nothing left.

“Excuse me?”

Footsteps sounded on the street behind him, and Iason turned to find a young woman walking toward him. She was wearing a longer chiton, closer to the dresses Starian commoners wore, and her black hair was tied in a heavy braid. Her eyes were the black of a mage with a demon, and she smiled at Iason as she approached.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” She touched her braid. “I thought you were one of them. The slaves from the brothel. But your eyes are wrong—you don’t have a demon. Are you from the hills?”

“No, I live in the city.” Iason passed through the gap in the wall again, heading toward a cross street, but the woman followed him, still idly stroking her hair.

“It’s awful, isn’t it?” she said. “What they did.”

“I’m sure it was,” Iason said curtly. “But I should go.”

“And we were so kind to them,” she said, looking at the ruined brothels. Iason stopped.

“Kind to who?”

“Them.” The woman nodded to the rubble. “We gave them a purpose—they were supposed to be our first line of defense, and they just stood there while a mob killed half the mage circle.”

“I wasn’t there,” Iason said. “We locked our doors when we heard the commotion. Good afternoon.”

“You have an accent, you know,” the woman said, as Iason turned to go. “Are you really from the city? I think you have a secret.” She ran her fingers along her braid, and Iason felt the tickle of magic in the air. “My demon says you have a secret, and I think I know what it is. You came back to make sure it was safe, didn’t you? Like the other hill people. You’re all coming down here, now that you think the Archmage is dead.”

“You must be unwell,” Iason said. He hadn’t realized, after so long in Staria, that his accent had changed. Damn. He would have to work on that. “Goodbye.”

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