CoS06

## Chapter 6

**Chapter 6** of **City of Spells** follows **Karam**.

## **Full Version**

KARAM WIPED THE BLOOD from her knife.

“Again,” she said.

Tavia opened her mouth in outrage, nursing the minor flesh wound on her shoulder. She really was very dramatic at times.

“You’re enjoying this way too much,” Tavia said.

Karam pocketed her knife as a show of peace. “Believe me, I take little pleasure in trying to school someone with no athletic skill.”

Tavia’s eyes narrowed in the beginnings of a glare, though there wasn’t much heart behind it. “I think I’m offended,” she said. “I’ll have you know that I once scaled a building.”

“Which you got pushed out of.”

“I stole a backpack full of magic from Rishiya’s best busker.”

“And then got chased by his friends so I had to rescue you.”

“I faced Dante Ashwood and survived,” Tavia said, grinning proudly, her chin aloft.

Karam raised an eyebrow, unimpressed. “We all did that.”

Tavia’s glare reappeared and Karam couldn’t help but laugh at her outrage.

“You’ve got something on your face,” Tavia said, her voice a stale monotone.

Karam stopped smiling.

“There.” Tavia crossed her arms over her chest in satisfaction. “All gone.”

“Guard up,” Karam said. “Or I may stab you for real this time.”

“No, you’re way too fond of me now. We’re practically best—”

“We are not friends,” Karam interrupted.

Though mostly she said it out of habit rather than truth. Like a game between the two of them, insults a common currency of affection. Tavia had a knack for being simultaneously very unlikable and very, very endearing.

If only she had the same knack for being good with her fists.

As it was, when it came to teaching Tavia how to fight, Karam had her work cut out for her. It wasn’t that the busker had no skills whatsoever, just that none of her skills were the right ones, and so Karam spent half her time sighing in despair and the other half trying not to punch Tavia in the face.

“After this, we’re moving on to magic lessons,” Tavia said. “That Nolan bastard had some damn good charms that I’ve been waiting to try out. I’ll be teaching you how to turn your enemies into literal dust in no time.”

Karam grimaced.

Not because of the violence, but because using magic still made her skin itch. She preferred her fists and being able to feel her enemies’ bones rattle. There was a strange comfort that came with a good old-fashioned brawl. It was simple and certain.

Magic was like a question with no answer, or an answer with no question. It was there one moment and gone the next, in all things and part of nothing, existing entirely outside of the world and yet responsible for each and every particle of it.

Karam’s most dreaded days were when her lessons with Tavia finished and Tavia’s lessons with her began.

“Don’t give me that look,” Tavia said. “This was the trade-off. You teach me how to be a stealth assassin and I teach you how to be a damn fine trickster. If we’re going to survive this war, we need magic and fists to work together.”

“A very inspiring speech,” Karam said.

“Not as good as the one you gave about how to poke someone’s eyes out. I still have nightmares about that.”

Karam merely shrugged. “I am a firm believer that every woman should know how to blind her enemies.”

Tavia laughed, loud and unabashed one moment, only for it to be cut short with jarring finality the next.

She stared ahead, to a space beyond Karam, all the joy gone from her face.

Across the way, Saxony was talking to a group of Crafters in her Kin, and Tavia watched her with all the curiosity of a hunter watching prey.

“Do you think she’s trying to rally them to her side?”

“They follow her amja,” Karam said simply.

“A woman too scared to lead properly.” Tavia pocketed her knife, a sign she was done with the lesson. “Saxony should just take the reins from her and become Liege already.”

Saxony gestured with her arms wide and one of the Crafters, a man a little shorter than she was, shook his head.

“I do not think it is that simple,” Karam said, watching their interaction. “They will not follow Saxony because she asks them to. I believe she has to show them that she is the right choice. She has to earn it.”

“And the way to do that is by standing around with her thumb up her ass?”

Karam didn’t bother turning to glare at Tavia.

She kept her eyes on Saxony, who looked up to the sky with a defeated exhale. Karam almost felt like she could hear the sigh from where she stood across the camp. And then, as though she could sense Karam’s focus, Saxony turned to look at her.

She gave her a small, secret smile and Karam’s heart pounded furiously.

Even now. Even still.

Everything Saxony did made her pulse quicken.

Probably because the moments they spent together were so fleeting and nearly constantly interrupted, leaving Karam to grasp at the smallest things for satisfaction and building a thirst for Saxony that could never quite be quenched.

When Saxony began to walk over to them, Tavia cleared her throat like she was preparing for an onslaught.

“Good conversation?” Tavia asked. “You looked like you were really getting through to them.”

“They’re just as scared as my amja is,” Saxony said. “And they won’t go against an acting Liege.”

“I guess that means I’m the only one pulling my weight in this war, then,” Tavia said.

This time, Karam did glare at her. Not because she disagreed that the steps the busker had taken were necessary, but because she was getting a little tired of having to play peacemaker and diplomat in this newly fractured group.

Karam was a warrior. A guard. A soldier. She was not a mediator and it seemed she spent too much time these days ignoring her strengths in favor of fixing other people’s weaknesses. Sometimes, she couldn’t help but feel that she’d be better used somewhere else in this war, doing something that really mattered.

She would have said as much if a *delg* bat hadn’t then swooped down from the sky, cutting through the trees. It circled overhead, around the three of them, squeaking mercilessly as it awaited the code word it needed to land.

“Who would be sending bats to us?” Karam asked. “Everyone we know is here, in this camp.”

Everyone except for Wesley, of course. Though none of them would draw attention to that if they could help it.

“Relax,” Tavia said, and then, looking up toward the sky, she called, “*Truce.*”

The messenger bat darted downward and landed on Tavia’s outstretched hand with all the speed that it took for Karam to blink. Tavia stroked its head and the creature nestled into her fingertip. Karam had always thought they were awful things, not because of their appearance but because they could find anyone, anywhere, delivering a message even to the spirits. It seemed too much power for one thing to hold.

And then, of course, there was how they delivered their messages, with someone else’s voice trapped in their throats. It made Karam shudder to think of.

“Speak to me, little guy,” Tavia said.

The bat seemed to nod, and stretched out its wings like a curtain. It opened its mouth and Karam braced herself for the transformation of its voice.

“I have kept my promise,” the bat said in a croak.

Karam recognized its tone as belonging to the underboss she had heard Tavia dealing with before.

Casim.

“I have four dozen buskers ready to send your way,” it said. “I’m talking to the other underbosses, but you’ll understand it takes time and I must be careful. Once we have your location, my forces will be with you within the week. Give Wesley my regards and let him know that I’ve put my faith in him.”

“Good job,” Tavia whispered into the creature’s ear.

A few dozen more buskers wasn’t something to scoff at with their armies so depleted, and so Karam clapped Tavia on the back in a way she hoped said that she was pleased.

“I have to tell Casim where we are so he can send the buskers,” Tavia said. “But I promise that he’s too scared of Wesley to betray us.”

Saxony seemed to think this over, and Karam wondered whether she would have to referee another fight between them, as Saxony refused to trust an underboss.

To her surprise, Saxony nodded.

“Do it,” she said. “Send the bat back. You were right to contact him.”

“I was right?” Tavia repeated the words slowly, like they were the last ones she had expected.

“You were,” Saxony said. “And it’s time I did something to help our armies too. I’m done trying to convince my amja to help me summon the other Lieges. I’ve got a new idea.”

“We are not killing your amja, are we?” Karam asked. “I think perhaps that is an overreaction.”

“That’s Plan C,” Saxony said. “Plan B is going to someone else for help, like Tavia did.”

“You are going to the next Liege you know with the power of summoning,” Karam said as the understanding dawned on her. “Asees.”

Saxony nodded. “And your friendship with Arjun won’t hurt to convince her.” She smiled tightly. “If you don’t mind me wagering your connections, that is.”

“Of course,” Karam said. “But once Asees helps you to summon the other Lieges, what will we do next?”

“We kill Ashwood.”

Karam liked that plan.

“But I want to find a way of killing him without hurting anyone in his army,” Saxony said. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot. We know that not everyone follows him willingly. Some people are just civilians infected with the Loj.”

Tavia crossed her arms over her chest with a sigh. “They’re innocent,” she said.

But Karam shook her head.”There are no innocents in war.”

Though truly she thought the opposite.

Everyone was innocent in war, doing whatever they thought was best, even if it was convoluted and evil to everyone else. No soldier set out to be the bad guy. Every villain was the hero of their own story. War was built on innocence corrupted and lost. That was the thing battle stole from people, before it took their souls.

“I’m going to figure out a way,” Saxony said. “But we need a real army before we talk about how to storm the gates of Creije.”

“You mean save Creije,” Tavia said. “You have to make sure that the other Lieges you contact know that’s the plan. They can’t just be out for blood and revenge.We need to save the city.”

Karam knew that by *city*, Tavia also meant *Wesley*, since the two had always been very much one and the same. Karam couldn’t help but agree with her, because it was Wesley who had seen the promise in a young Wrenyi runaway and offered her the means to become the warrior she needed to be. She owed him so much—too much—and abandoning him now, after he’d saved them all in one way or another, was not the way forward.

“We must find out if Wesley is still himself,” Karam said. “If the Kingpin is inside his mind, then—”

“Zekia’s mind is the one we should be worried about,” Tavia said. “Since she’s clearly lost it.”

Karam agreed, but she could also never forget that Zekia was Saxony’s little sister, and in Karam’s mind that afforded her a certain unfair immunity for her crimes.

“She is just a child,” Karam said.

Tavia’s eyes turned severe. “That stops being an excuse when you become a mass murderer.”

Karam supposed she had a point, but she had to wonder where they drew this invisible line of morality. They had all killed someone at some point, or played a part in the deaths of strangers and foes alike.

None of them were free from sin, with clean hands unstained by blood. They were soldiers and warriors, and Karam couldn’t quite work out how they had made the distinction between fighter and killer.

She wasn’t sure what side of the line she fell on. For Zekia and the Crafters who believed in the Kingpin’s new world, weren’t Karam and the others just villains who were trying to steal it from them?

“Wesley has killed people too,” Saxony said. “He handed Zekia over to Ashwood once before. Maybe my sister is too far gone, but you need to think about the possibility that Wesley might also be beyond saving.”

“I have,” Tavia said, but there was no change in her eyes.

She had been threatening to give up on Wesley for years, but her inaction spoke volumes that her vows could not. Threats were nothing if they didn’t carry weight, and Tavia’s words were as light as air, flying from her lips and across the wind into nothing.

She couldn’t give up on Wesley, even if she tried. Karam could see that. Just like Karam would never give up on Saxony, or choose a side that didn’t have her on it.

If the years of Wesley being a crook and a total bastard hadn’t changed Tavia’s heart, then Ashwood’s influence wouldn’t. This war wouldn’t. She’d try to save him until the end, even if that put her on the opposite side from her friends.

Karam clutched her pehta’s pendant, threaded around her neck and falling perfectly beside her thumping heart. She wondered what side he would be on, or if he would counsel the absence of such a choice, trying to bring their armies together instead of preparing for them to fall apart. Or perhaps he would still have preached peace and given them a solution that offered no bloodshed or trampled loyalties.

Karam wished he were still alive to ask, but it was useless to hope for such things, because her father was gone, as so many others soon would be.

Life and loyalty were constantly in flux and Karam knew that sooner or later every bond on this side of the Onnela Sea would be tested.

She and Saxony and Tavia would fight this war on whatever side it took to save the people closest to them. Karam could only hope that those sides stayed the same for as long as possible.

ASEES LOOKED between Karam and Saxony, as though she were trying to decide who was more senseless. She finally settled on Saxony.

“You want me to go against the leader of your Kin? The woman who is allowing us safe stay in this place?” Asees asked her.

Though Asees and Karam had grown to respect one another, their mutual love for Arjun like a bond between them, she often looked at Saxony in a way that was far from endeared. Nobody could blame her, given everything that had happened between the two of them.

Asees resented Saxony for the *delg* bat that Ashwood had intercepted, leading so many of her Kin to be killed and for Asees herself to be inflicted with the Loj elixir. While Saxony resented Asees for trying to kill her while infected.

It didn’t make for a sturdy partnership.

“Saxony was the one who brought you here, to that safety,” Karam said. “And she also helped to save you when Ashwood had you under his thrall. She could have easily killed you to protect herself.”

From beside Asees, Arjun folded his arms across his chest to indicate how stubborn he planned on being, as though the way he stood as a shield beside Asees wasn’t enough of a clue.

“Both Asees and I helped to save Saxony’s people from that island and grant her underboss the magic he needed to help,” he said.

Karam cared for him as a brother, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t smack some sense into him when he needed it. “I believe we are all even with saving each other’s lives,” she said. “But does the Indescribable God not teach us to also think of the rest of the realms?”

Asees let out a long breath. Karam knew that using their god as a bargaining chip was a low blow, but that didn’t make it any less true. Being selfish was not the same as being right.

Asees stared at Karam.

She wasn’t a tall woman, especially compared to Saxony, but she had a way of sizing people up to make them feel smaller than her, despite her stature. It was the job of a Liege to be wary of everyone who might be a danger to their people. Right now, Karam fell reluctantly into that category.

“It is an ancient spell,” Asees said. “And it has not been used in an age.”

“That is only because Crafters keep to themselves now,” Karam said.

“We have *always* kept to ourselves.”

Asees shook her head so that her dark hair swayed against her stave-covered arms.

“Asees is right,” Arjun said, because of course he took her side in most things.

The last time he hadn’t, their Kin had nearly been destroyed. Karam knew he still carried that guilt with him each day.

“Traditions are sacred and varied,” he said. “We have never even agreed on where our powers come from. Saxony’s realm believes one thing, ours another. And even among realms, the Kins were always separate.”

“That did a lot of good when the war came,” Karam said. “*Hei reb. Heb mina kori ak maku.*”

Karam hadn’t planned on calling him an idiot, but she also hadn’t thought he’d be acting like one.

“Times change,” Saxony said. “We can’t do what we’ve always done just because it’s all we’ve known. We have to make a change to see one.”

Arjun shuffled and looked to Asees, his eyes filled with conflict. “I agree that more magic would help in the war, and we have seen firsthand what happens when we try to escape fighting.”

They were all picturing the attack on Asees and Arjun’s Kin back in their homeland of Granka. Ashwood had slaughtered so many of their people, and the rest he’d taken and forced to do his bidding under the Loj elixir. If they had joined Karam and the others back then, rather than staying behind, then maybe that blood wouldn’t have been spilled. Karam didn’t want them to make that same mistake again and she trusted Saxony’s judgment on this.

“War is not something you can hide from, or pretend is not happening just because it is not yet on your doorstep,” Karam said.

It would get there eventually, it always did. And even if it didn’t, even if the forest kept them safe for the time being, how could any of them live with themselves if they stood by and watched others die in their place? The good of their people wasn’t more important than the good of the world, and Karam would bring dishonor to her family and to the order of the Rekhi d’Rihsni her grandparents had died for if she let them choose their people over everyone else.

“The summoning spell is dangerous and it has only been used a handful of times since the beginning of the realms,” Asees said. “The last time anyone thought to try it was during the War of Ages.”

When the Crafters were stolen from their beds and used like commodities rather than people.

“We brought magic into this world,” Saxony said. “Let’s use it for good.”

“You truly believe calling strangers to help us is best?” Asees asked.

“We cannot look at everyone we do not know as a stranger who is not important,” Karam said. “Strangers are not strange to their own families or the people who love them and mourn for them. They have lives and they deserve a chance to live those lives. We can help them do that, with your magic.”

The silence that followed those words was tense, and Karam dreaded the thought that maybe they had burned a fragile bridge, or alienated another leader. With Saxony’s grandma refusing to help, Asees was the only Crafter left with the power they needed to make a real change.

“I left last time to follow these people,” Arjun said. “But I will not leave your side again, Asees. I will follow you and your decision in this. Whatever it will be.”

“But if I say no, then you will think I am wrong,” Asees said, with a small grimace.

Arjun’s silence was enough of an answer.

“You trust her with your life?” Asees was looking at Karam now. “You love this woman, but you are of *our* people, Karam. So I ask you now, once more, is this the right choice?”

“There is only one choice,” Karam said. “One side and one war for one enemy. Dante Ashwood has to be stopped.”

Asees nodded. “Thank you,” she said, and looked to Saxony with large, firm eyes. “I will help you. I will not run from this and make the mistakes of my past again. We will call the Lieges of the realms to come to our aid.”

Saxony’s smile was like magic in itself. “Thank you,” she said. “I promise, doing this will change everything for us.”

Saxony was finally taking the steps she needed to help her people, and though Karam was proud of her, it also made her wonder if she should start doing the same.

Karam’s hands were tied here and even if she couldn’t bear the thought of leaving Saxony, her beautiful Crafter seemed finally ready to go at things. She was starting to become strong enough to do this without Karam by her side, and that meant that it was nearly time for Karam to go.

There were things she had to take care of, things she knew nobody else could, and she’d been putting it off for too long.

Karam threaded her hand through Saxony’s, knowing that this was both the start of something and the end of something.