Dwayne awoke to attempted poetry.
“Asaph’s sect, no respect, dug up a spring filled with, with. No, that don’t sound right.”
Breathing in, Dwayne filled his nose with a spicy scent that brought him back to a village by the sea, where a father’s kisses and a mother’s laughter lay just out of reach. He opened his eyes. He wasn’t home. He was under a wood slat ceiling sealed with pitch in a hammock that hung low with his weight.
“Asaph’s sect, no respect, dug up a, a, pool. Unearthed a pool? Ooo, that’s better.”
Opening his eyes had summoned a monster of a headache, but Dwayne sat up anyway, shrugged off the scratchy wool blanket, and realized that he was naked. “Ri-”
He clapped his hand over his mouth before the spell could escape.
“You’re awake.” Akunna slid her notebook onto a shelf and pulled her chair up next to him. “How do you feel?”
She didn’t seem bothered, but Dwayne covered himself anyway as he did a frantic inventory. His shoes and his bracer lay, his clothes were nowhere to be found, and the vicious cut on his chest had been bandaged and treated with some sort of sticky jelly. All of that would have been reassuring if he couldn’t literally feel his tongue trying to form Ri spells with every breath.
Akunna was starting to look concerned.
“Ri…Ri…” The spell was not going to let him start any other way. “Respectable.”
“Respectable?” Akunna glanced at the naked and bandaged boy in her hammock. “Really?”
“Ri-really.”
There had to be an explanation for why his magic was acting up, like something he ate or a head injury. Cups, if it was a head injury, then he might stay like this forever.
“Stop your fretting and lie back down.” Akunna pushed him down onto the bed. “I’ll go get the healer.”
As soon as her door closed behind her, Dwayne tried to get out of the hammock, but that only added aching legs to his litany of pain. In fact, the only things that weren’t sore were his arms, which were not enough to get him out of the hammock before Akunna returned with a pale elder in green scarves.
“Back in you go.” Akunna shoved him back in and covered him with the blanket. “He keeps acting like he has somewhere to be.”
“No signs of paralysis at least.” As the elder drew close, a persistent keening came with him. It made Dwayne’s headache worse. “And there’s no sign of shock, at least not physically.”
Those clicked ‘c’s accent, those scarves, the deep knowledge of the human body.
Akunna grabbed him before he could escape. “Don’t move, you.”
“I’m not going to let them touch me!” Dwayne froze. His compulsion to cast was gone.
“Oh, now you can talk.”
The Vanurian healer sighed. “So you were a slave.”
“I was.” Dwayne’s headache still raged, but at least he could talk like a normal person again. “Why are you here?”
“I’m here because I made mistakes. Allow me to leave it at that.” The healer turned to Akunna. “Has he cast any spells yet?”
Akunna scowled. “No, there’s no way he’s a mage, not if he’s escaped… there.”
Perhaps Akunna hadn’t been listening back in Thadden’s office. “I was freed.” Dwayne sat up, groaned. “Thank you for your help. I’ll just get dressed and be on my way.”
“No, it’s far too dangerous.” The healer opened their bag. “Akunna, hold him down.”
Dwayne tried to resist, but she was too strong. “What are you doing? What’s too dangerous?”
“How hard was it for him to speak before?” asked the healer as they rummaged around in their bag.
“Hard.” Akunna caught Dwayne’s wrists and held them still. “He kept alliterating.”
“You’re lucky I’m just enough of a poet to know what that is.” The healer clicked something in their bag. “What’s your name, mage?”
Dwayne wanted to shout for them to let him go, but when he opened his mouth, his lips, his tongue, his jaw, all prepared to cast. Whatever the healer had done, it had banished the keening and locked up Dwayne’s throat with spells. It had also done nothing for his headache.
“Intriguing.” The healer peered closely at Dwayne. “He has both the characteristic cephalalgia of thaumaturgical shock and the distinctive aphasia of thaumaturgical deprivation.”
“Meaning?” asked Akunna.
“He’s somehow cast too much magic and not cast enough.”
Dwayne had felt the effects of thaumaturgical shock before, but thaumaturgical deprivation was a new one.
“Ain’t that a paradox?” asked Akunna.
“Quite.” The healer inspected Dwayne’s eyes. “You’ve calmed down, so I assume you understand your situation. Is it okay if feel your throat? I’ll be checking for lesions and tumors and the like.”
Dwayne still didn’t want the healer to touch him, but the fact that they’d asked first went a long way to making it easier to nod yes.
“Thank you.” The healer pressed their cool fingers into his neck. “I know how important it is to get consent. I’m sorry for forcing things earlier, but we really couldn’t have a Ri mage randomly setting off fire spells everywhere.”
“I buy that he’s a mage, but he ain’t no fire mage.” Akunna caught the quizzical look on Dwayne’s face. “I wasn’t paying attention to that meeting you two had, but I would have heard about a male Ri mage running free in Bradford.”
As he silently endured the healer’s examination, Dwayne cursed his ignorance. If he’d known that not casting Ri risked revealing he was Ri, he wouldn’t have bothered with the oath. That said, there was something in the healer’s bag that had been suppressing his symptoms. Perhaps if he had that, maybe he could keep to his oath.
“I suppose anything is possible.” The healer’s hands dropped away. “Good, no lesions or bumps. We don’t have to treat a third condition on top of the two you already have. That would have been too much. Akunna, a moment of your time?”
As the two of them stepped outside, Dwayne’s eyes dropped to the healer’s bag, which was made of worn dark gray fabric and held closed with tarnished silver clasps. It was an old Vanurian surgeon’s bag, just like the one he remembered from the island plantation, and if it weren’t for the fact that Akunna clearly trusted this healer, he would have searched it for whatever it was that had allowed him to speak before. As it was, he didn’t want to give Akunna a reason not to trust him.
“I don’t see why that would work.” Akunna’s voice penetrated her door. “He’s seen how Thadden treats me.”
The healer’s reply was muffled.
“Whatever. Let’s get this over with.”
When she and the healer reentered the room, Akunna caught the question on Dwayne’s face. “I’m supposed to talk to you while they prepare your treatment.”
Dwayne blinked.
“Yeah, I don’t know why either.”
“Akunna.” The healer was rummaging around in their bag again. “Take this seriously, please. Dwayne, may I proceed?”
Dwayne nodded, although he wasn’t sure was he was agreeing to.
“So,” Akunna sat back down, “how long have you been in Bradford?”
Dwayne raised an eyebrow.
“I told you that I don’t pay attention to Thadden when he blabbers. So, how long?”
Dwayne held up four fingers.
“Four months? Four weeks. Wow, you’ve made quite a splash in barely a month.”
Dwayne shrugged then focused as hard as he could on his next words. “Why… here?”
“Why did I bring you here? I live here.”
Dwayne raised his eyebrows.
“You really don’t know.” Akunna sighed. “You think that I’m a regular servant, right? That I should either be living in Thadden’s house or be paid enough to live in Boscage, right?”
Dwayne nodded. Prestige and convenience demanded either one or the other.
“I live where all Wesen live around here.”
Feeling a knot in his stomach, Dwayne constructed his next words as if building a tent in a windstorm. “Where…here?”
“You never told him where he was?” asked the healer.
“Cussed lightning, he kept trying to get away and fretting and keening, so I went and got you.” Akunna turned back to Dwayne. “You’re in the Plague District. This is where all us Wesen-”
“And Vanurians,” added the healer.
“Stay. We’re don’t stay in Bradford proper. We’re not allowed to.”
“Ri-diculous.” Of course, Dwayne had noted that no Wesen or Vanurians lived in the city, but that was so blatant. “Ri-sible.”
“There you go alliterating again.” Akunna gestured to the room. “And that’s just how the world works. How come you don’t know this? You were a slave, you have to know this.”
It was getting harder to keep the spells in. “R-What?”
“You have to know that the only way a Wesen comes to Soura is as cargo.”
“Ri-ally?” Akunna had been cargo. Akunna was a slave. “R…Thadden…”
The healer looked up. “Now.”
Akunna pinned Dwayne down allowing the healer to clasp something silver and dark orange around his neck.
“Blessed is the water which flows from the mountain,” said the healer in somber Vanurian. “Blessed is Phons, for all our gifts flow from it.”
Dwayne had not consented to this. He tried to pull off the mysterious collar, but with Akunna holding his arms down, the loud keening in his ears, and how much strength it took to keep the spells from tearing free from his throat, he had nothing left to resist. All he knew was that if he cast now, it would be the end of Dwayne Kalan, Head Clerk of the Scaled Tower, Heir to Sanford. If he cast now, whoever was left would have to flee and never see Rodion, Mei, or Magdala ever again. If he cast now, someone would die.
One problem at a time. He could cast a spell that wouldn’t hurt Akunna and the healer, but doing so the only way he knew how would burden them with a secret they did not want to know. That meant he had to cast silently, which should be impossible except that knowing the words had never been enough. Dwayne had said Qe spells perfectly, but before the spell vials, they had never worked. If that was true, maybe the sound wasn’t the important part. Maybe if he just let his tongue waggle and kept his jaw shut that would be enough.
Ri’a’tha.
Nothing happened. Or rather no magic happened. His headache got worse.
“Are his eyes supposed to look like that?”
“He may have repressed his magic for so long it’s taking a long time to come out.”
“That sounds buxing stupid.”
Dwayne tried again, this time loosening his jaw and keeping his lips sealed.
Ri’a’tha.
Even more headache, enough that he wished he could scream.
“He isn’t saying anything.”
“That’s not good. He should be gibbering spells by now.”
When Dwayne was done with this, he’d figure out what was so special about this stupid collar around his neck before taking it apart and consigning it to the depths. Oh, right. He was frustrated and angry, which wasn’t the emotion that the happy warm Ri’a’tha required.
“Phons, this is taking a long time.”
“Should we be worried?
Through the pain and the keening, Dwayne searched for a memory to power Ri’a’tha. He couldn’t use what he remembered of the village he lost, and he couldn’t use the first time he’d cast magic because how Lord Kalan had abandoned him. He had to have something recent that would work.
“I may have to sedate him.”
There was one happy memory, when his world had opened up, when he’d actually felt supported. It was just a few days ago when Magdala had offered to take some of his burden.
Ri’a’tha.
The keening stopped. His headache dissipated. Dwayne fell back onto the bed. “I’m fine now. I’m fine.”
Unaware of the surprisingly small ball of flame floating over their head, the healer stared. “You are not.” They checked the collar. “You are. How?”
Ri’t. “I guess it just passed.” Dwayne tried to rip off the collar. “Get this off me.”
“Not until I’m certain that you won’t explode.”
Akunna jumped back. “Explode?”
“My lord would never explode.” Rodion stepped into the room. “He’s got friends for that.”
“Rodion,” Dwayne felt tears well in his eyes, “you found me.”
“And you are?” asked Akunna.
“Rodion Galkin, his steward.” Rodion’s bow wasn’t quite as crisp as it usually was. “And you are Akunna Ibeabuchi, called Gretchen, who is indentured to Baron Otto Thadden.”
“His steward.” Akunna curled her nose. “That makes sense. You’ve got that overprotective air about you.”
“Does your baron know about this situation?”
“I don’t tell ‘my baron’ about anything unless he asks me direct.”
“How did you find me?” Dwayne sat up gingerly. Only his headache was gone. His muscles still ached. “This is the Plague District.”
His answer poked her head into the room. “You’re okay,” said Mei.
“Who are you?” asked Akunna.
“Mei, meet Akunna,” said Dwayne. “She works with me at the Tower.”
“Scarring Sun,” muttered Akunna. “Of course, he works with a Tuquese.”
Rodion turned to the healer. “And you are?”
“Leaving. I’ll just take this,” the healer removed the collar from Dwayne’s neck, “and be on my way.”
Rodion blocked their exit. “Who are you?”
“Let them go.” Dwayne wrapped the blanket around his waist and got to his very shaky feet. “They were just helping me. Thank you.”
“Just don’t let it happen again,” said the healer as they left.
Rodion asked, “What happened to your clothes, my lord?”
“They got muddy and bloody.” Akunna dropped a pile of clean clothes into Dwayne’s arms. “You’ll have to wear my spare clothes.”
Dwayne looked at them. “But these are-”
“Go before I charge you rent.”
Admaeus Speaks 