Perhaps she went back through the hatch with Anyi. The passages beneath the Guild were forbidden to all but the Higher Magicians, officially because they were unstable and dangerous but mainly because there was never any good reason for anybody to be down there. That wasn’t what worried Sonea the most about Lilia leaving to meet Anyi, however.
Skellin wanted Cery dead. That meant that anybody who helped him was a target. So far Cery had been able to conceal the fact that Anyi was his daughter. Officially she was still a bodyguard, but that still meant she was a target. Lilia might be able to protect herself with magic, but if the attacker was Skellin or his mother, Lorandra, she would be in trouble since both were magicians.
Has she left because Cery needs her help? But surely he’d contact me first. She frowned. Lately Cery had been hard to find, and when they did manage to meet he looked gaunt and anxious. She suspected he was polishing the truth about his efforts to find Skellin, and was only succeeding in keeping himself out of the rogue Thief’s reach.
Sighing for a third time, Sonea went back into the bedroom, but not to sleep. It was unlikely she would do more than lie awake, now that she had both Cery and Lilia to worry over. She washed and dressed, drew a little magic to soothe away weariness, and was making a cup of raka when someone knocked on the main door again.
Catching herself about to sigh again – she had sighed far too much already today – she looked over her shoulder and opened the door with magic.
Administrator Osen stepped into the doorway. She blinked in surprise.
“Administrator.”
“Black Magician Sonea,” he said, inclining his head politely. “May I come in?”
“Of course,” she replied, turning to face him. He closed the door. “Would you like some raka or sumi?”
He shook his head. “I have some bad but not entirely unexpected news.”
She felt a sensation uncomfortably like all her inner organs turning to water. Lorkin.
“How bad?”
Osen’s lips thinned in sympathy. “Not the worst news. I’d be more direct, if that was the case. Lorkin refused a mind-read. King Amakira demanded he be ordered to submit to one. King Merin refused. Amakira sent Lorkin to prison.”
A chill ran down her spine and her stomach flipped over. An image of Lorkin chained up in a dank, dark cell sprang into her mind and she felt nauseous. In her mind’s eye he was a frightened boy. But he isn’t. He’s a grown man. He knew this might happen, and still refused to betray the Traitors. I have to trust his judgement that they are worth saving. She forced her attention back to Osen.
“What now?” she asked, though the Higher Magicians had discussed this eventuality many times before.
“We work towards freeing him. We being the Guild, the king, and the Elyne king. If Lorkin is right, and he can prevent them reading his mind, then we must convince Amakira that letting him go is the easiest path towards learning more about the Traitors. That’s where your role begins.”
Sonea nodded and felt a belated relief. Her task to meet the Traitors on behalf of the Guild had become more complicated when it became clear King Amakira wouldn’t let Lorkin leave Sachaka until he had learned all he could from him. The Guild had decided to send her to Arvice as well to negotiate her son’s release. This worsening of Lorkin’s circumstances could have made them change their minds.
Because the Higher Magicians had decided that only a black magician would receive the respect needed to negotiate with the Sachakan king, that meant choosing between her and Kallen – Lilia being too young and still a novice. They had good reasons not to choose either of them. While the Sachakans regarded women as having less status than men, and being Lorkin’s mother might leave her open to blackmail, Kallen’s addiction to roet made him potentially unreliable and just as vulnerable to coercion.
And perhaps knowing that I have killed Sachakans before, and would be prepared to do so to save my son, may also nudge Amakira towards releasing him.
Of course, the Sachakan king might threaten to harm Lorkin in order to gain something from her, but there wasn’t much he could gain from that. She did not know what they wanted to find out, and could not order him to speak. All she could do was promise to try to persuade him to, if they let him go.
Unless, of course, he gives in to torture first. But she didn’t want to think about that. She turned to Osen.
“So when do I leave?”
Faint light spilling out of a doorway ahead told Lilia that she and Anyi were nearly at their destination. Dodging rubble in the corridor, she followed her friend to the opening and into the room beyond.
Cery was sitting on one of the old wooden boxes Anyi had found to use as seats. Under his hands, lying on some of the threadbare pillows from the pile Lilia and Anyi had so often lounged upon, was Gol. Even in the dim candlelight she could see he was pale. She brought her globe light closer and brightened it. His brow was slick with sweat and his stare was feverish with pain.
Lilia stared down at him, paralysed with doubt. Do I know enough of Healing yet to save him?
“Just... try,” Anyi urged.
Glancing at her friend, Lilia nodded. She made herself kneel down beside Gol. Cery’s hands were pressed against Gol’s abdomen, stained with blood.
“Should I take the pressure off?” Cery asked.
“I... I’m not sure yet,” Lilia admitted. “I’ll just... look.”
She pulled away more of Gol’s shirt, placed a palm on his bare skin, then closed her eyes and sent her senses outward and into his body.
At first all was chaos, but she drew upon what she had been told or read, and on exercises designed to make sense of all the signals. The first thing that was obvious was the pain. She nearly gasped aloud as she picked that up, and was proud that she did not lose focus. Pain was easy to stop. It was one of the early lessons taught to Healers. Once she’d tackled that, she looked for other information. Her mind was drawn toward the damaged part, where essential liquids were being lost, and others that were dangerously poisonous were trickling into healthy systems.
His guts have been nicked by the blade that stabbed him. He’d have died already if the leak had been much larger. Clearly that’s what I have to fix first...
Drawing magic, she fed it into the rupture so that the edges of the wound knit together, healing faster than they could ever have done without intervention.
Now I have to stop the blood leaking out. But before I do, there’s this poison from the guts and the blood pooling inside him to deal with. Use one to help wash out the other. She hoped Cery and Anyi weren’t panicking as she used magic to force the liquids out of the wound. There was a little more resistance to this than she’d expected. Then she remembered that Cery was still pressing on the wound. She concentrated on her own body enough to gain control of her vocal chords.
“You can stop now,” she made herself say.
She saw the blood begin to flow again, and was forced to concentrate hard to align and Heal the separated flesh and skin. Remembering warnings from her teachers, she checked within to make sure there were no internal rents causing bleeding to continue within. A few tubes needed fixing. Easily done.
After a final check, she drew her senses back to herself, took a deep breath and opened her eyes. Gol’s face was no longer rigid with pain. He looked up at her and smiled.