Sacrifice: The First Book of the Fey (64 page)

Touched was hanging Fey Lamps. Rotin had her bald head cradled on her arms, as if the day’s work had exhausted her. Caseo knew better. He had worked with Rotin since they’d been children. She did her best thinking when she was tired, frustrated, and hiding.

He put on the gloves the Domestics had made him especially for the poison work. Even though he trusted the magick, he still was cautious and had yet to spill on them. His hands didn’t shake until late at night, after everyone had left and he was alone. Then his entire body trembled with the risks he took daily. He went around the table and picked up two bowls, one with water alone, and one with a strip of Islander skin in it. He placed them with the other bowls filled with an inch of poison, all showing failed experiments, in the corner, on a table protected by Caseo’s most powerful spell so that no one would stumble against them accidentally.

“It seems to me,” Touched said as he stepped down from the chair he had been using to hang the Fey Lamps, “that we are going about this wrong.”

The use of the word “wrong” almost made Caseo spill the second bowl. He set it down quickly, breathing heavily at the nearness of his miss.

“You’re suggesting that I don’t know what I’m doing?” The fear that had risen in him made his question harsher than he had intended it to be.

“No!” Touched’s eyebrows rose in protest. Of all of them, only he looked odd with the baldness all Warders acquired after initiation, as if he were not meant to be a Warder at all. Caseo could still see the missing hair floating like a nimbus around Touched’s head. “I’m saying that—”

“We’re doing this wrong.” Rotin sat up. Her voice was raspy from the herbs she used. Her eyes were red-rimmed, and her entire body moved as if she were exhausted. “I know you don’t like criticism, Caseo, but really, that is a childish, egotistical way to lead anything.”

Caseo stiffened, unwilling to look at them. He backed out of his magick corner and examined his gloves for droplets before removing them. “We’re not discussing me,” he said.

“No, we’re not. We’re discussing our solutions to this poison.” Rotin rubbed her eyes. “Let Touched speak. Your jealousy of him can be so counterproductive.”

Caseo bit back anger. He was not jealous of Touched. He merely did not like children. And Touched was not yet twenty, too young to be a Spell Warder. Too young to be considered one of the great powers of the race.

“What are we doing wrong?” Caseo asked, unable to keep the sarcasm from his tone.

Touched shoved his hands into the pocket of his robe. The gray material blended with the colors of the Shadowlands, making him look almost invisible. Only the brightness of the Fey lights, shining on his bald scalp, gave him any warmth at all.

“We don’t dissect magicks,” Touched said. His voice squeaked on the word “dissect.” He cleared his throat. “We create them. We might never find out how this works by reversing our process.”

Despite himself, Caseo felt a leap in his heart. He knew what the boy was saying. “You want us to create this kind of poison? With the same properties?”

Touched nodded, his eyes sparkling in a way that showed how he deserved his name. “We can test it on Fey dead. Some folks died of other than poison causes in the last battle, right?”

Rotin shrugged. “No one has checked.”

“And even if they have, the magic is gone from them,” Caseo said.

“There is no proof that it is magick caused,” Touched said. “Even Infantry died in Jahn on the day of the First Battle. That suggests that magick is not an issue.”

Caseo frowned. The magick had been his theory; he was not so willing to part with it. “We never know if the Infantry has magick. Some just don’t have magick in enough quantity. The Red Caps have no magick at all, and none of them died.”

“None of them were in the thick of the fighting,” Rotin said. “Let the theory go, Caseo. The fact that the little Red Cap defies you shows that he has enough sense to save his own life. Would you volunteer for an experiment that might kill you horribly?”

“Of course not,” Caseo said. “But my life is worth something.”

Touched sat in his chair, appearing to melt into the wall with that peculiar talent he had for disappearing when controversy started.

Rotin had never been threatened by Caseo. She wrinkled her nose at him. “A Red Cap’s life is worth something too. Someone has to be willing to work in the heat and stink to give us materials. We all need to be divided up when we die. Who would do that if the Red Caps didn’t?”

“Domestics?” Caseo said, although he knew they would shrink from the job. “Perhaps we could design a spell that would enable them to do a Red Cap’s job without touching a body.”

“There’s no need when the present system works so well. And on a battlefield, a Domestic is always overworked.” Rotin reached into the pocket of her robe and removed a packet of herbs. Then she reached into the other pocket and took out a tiny mortar and pestle. She ground the herbs together and licked her finger, placing it in the mixture.

“Doing it straight now, Rotin?” Caseo asked.

She licked the herbs off her finger and shuddered with an almost orgasmic pleasure. The problems of being a Spell Warder, denied sexual experience in return for a touch of all magicks. Her eyes were shiny as she looked up at him. “You don’t allow us much time to ourselves these days. I take my enjoyment as I can.”

“The others have left,” he said. “You could have left too.”

Touched was watching from the corner, his eyes bright under the Fey Lamps. He was too young to have any vices or to understand the losses he had volunteered for.

“I knew you were reaching a dangerous level of frustration,” she said. “The next thing you will do is kidnap babies and pour poison on them.”

“Children have magic,” Touched whispered.

“Dormant
magic,” Caseo said. Rotin knew him too well. He had thought of that, but the children in camp were all too close to puberty to be of use to him.

“If you’re going to take anyone,” Rotin said, “it should be Infantry, who are by far the largest force we have here, and who are interchangeable.”

Caseo licked his own lips, wishing for the first time that he had a taste for her herbs. He had tried them once, but the resulting sensation overwhelmed and frightened him. He preferred to be overwhelmed by his own magical power rather than to be overwhelmed by an outside force he could not control.

“So you have been thinking along the same lines I have,” he said.

She smiled. “I know how your mind works, Caseo. I may not share some of your abilities, but I know where frustration takes you.”

Touched had backed himself so far against the wall that, if he forgot himself, he would slip through it. “You’re talking about taking Fey lives to test magic,” he said.

Rotin nodded. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

“The first time was when?” Caseo said, delighting in her game with the boy. “When the Fey came down the Eccrasian plain?”

“Against the swords of Ghitlus,” Rotin said, her grin growing, her back to the boy so that he couldn’t see her. “The Warders believed that the swords had magical properties, having never seen metal weapons before.”

“And so they tested swords against all kinds of spells and finally determined that the swords themselves had special powers. Then, with the Black King’s permission, they tried the swords on Infantry,” Caseo said.

“And the Infantry died. But so did Ghitlans who faced the sword,” said Rotin.

“The Spell Warders thought, ‘What an odd magick that kills its own,’ “ Caseo said.

“So the Warders did more experiments,” Rotin said, “and discovered that they could hex swords and they could put magick properties on swords that changed swords. And eventually they concluded that swords had no magical properties of their own, but that they were made of a specific material that allowed them a kind of strength we had never seen before.”

Touched’s eyes were wide. No one had briefed him on the difficulties Spell Warders sometimes faced. He was probably like so many others, figuring that Warding was one of the most powerful positions among the Fey, not realizing that with power came difficult choices.

“Now, be fair,” Caseo said, baiting Touched even further. “You know that they didn’t come to this conclusion intellectually.”

Rotin nodded. She scooped out the last of the herbs with her little finger, then slipped the mortar and pestle back into her pocket. “Oh, I had forgotten,” she said. She turned, grinned at Touched, then rubbed the herbs across her teeth. “It was with the Ghitlans that we learned the art of torture.”

He sucked in his breath. She licked the herbs off her teeth and put the bag away, shuddering as their effect hit. Touched’s eyes filled with tears.

“You’re making this up,” he whispered. “You’re making this up to justify your own cruelty.”

“I wish I were, boy,” Caseo said. “Warding is not an easy position. They told you that when you took the oath. And I told you that you were too young to do it, too young to understand the choices, remember?”

“You were jealous of me,” Touched said. “Until me, you were the most talented Warder ever.”

Caseo shot a look at Rotin. How many minds had she influenced with her drivel? “No, child,” he said. “I simply understand choice. You don’t. I know that one little Red Cap’s life is worth a lot less than a hundred other Fey lives. I know that a bit of torture, judiciously applied, will teach us more about the properties of this water than any of the ‘experiments’ we do. And I am not above ruining one life to save a thousand.”

“You’re mad,” the boy said.

“Am I?” Caseo asked. “Your family lived through the Nye campaign, did it not?”

Touched swallowed. His father had been in the thick of the fighting. The Warders had come up with a new spell to be used by Beast Riders, which probably saved all the lives on the front. The Fey all knew it.

“We discovered the Beast Rider spell through judicious experimentation. One hundred fifty Nye prisoners died in various ways before we discovered the quickest and most effective way—the most painless, you might say.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before I joined?” Touched asked.

Rotin shrugged. “A discipline does not reveal its secrets to outsiders. Besides, you never balked at hanging Fey Lamps, or working on spells to aid the Weather Sprites. How many creatures do you think died or drowned because of those rains last year?”

“I didn’t,” Touched said.

“You have the abilities to be a Warder. Therefore you are a Warder. Or you become nothing. You know the choices,” Caseo said.

“I thought being a Warder was an intellectual skill,” Touched said.

“It is,” Rotin said.

“I didn’t think it involved torture and killing.”

“It does,” Caseo said. “And now you must live with it. We all had to.” He glanced at Rotin, her eyes still glazed. “And we all do it in our own individual ways.”

Touched glanced at both of them. Then he opened the door and ran from the building.

Rotin leaned back, stretching her arms over her head. “I think you were a bit harsh on the boy.”

Caseo shook his head. “We need him. He is talented and he is right. We were going about this wrong. But we have limited resources. And if his revulsion saves us time and resources, then we are better off.”

“Time and lives,” Rotin said. “You mean time and lives.”

“That’s what I said, isn’t it?” Caseo asked.

“You are a cold one,” Rotin said.

“If the boy can help us neutralize the poison, so much the better. But I am hoping for more. He gave me an idea. We create spells. We need to make that water a more effective poison.”