Chapter Four

A MENTOR

‘You can wipe that grin off your face, for a start,’ Riveno snapped at me as he brushed aside the curtain and led me down his hallway of contraptions. He did a fine job of denting my mood. ‘This is serious business. Wrekham’s got friends in higher places than I thought, and he’s got quite the grudge against you two.’ He turned his good eye over his shoulder. ‘And that’s why, before I show you anything, you’re going to tell me everything that happened at Wrekham’s and what it is that you’re hiding. I need to know every detail.’

‘Always a catch, see?’ I wrinkled my lip. ‘Why did you send Aberan away? He was at Wrekham’s, too, you know.’

The patches of candlelight flashed over Riveno’s face. ‘Would he want you to talk about Wrekham’s?’

‘Probably not.’

‘Is he going to tell me himself?’

I shook my head.

‘Then there you have it.’

Riveno stopped before the heavy curtain he had forbid me to touch. Taking off his gloves, he turned to face me, and I saw the charcoal shade and rough texture to his right hand. Just like the Blighted woman in the gutter, the day I’d poisoned Wrekham. A worry settled in my bones. A fine dose of mistrust that I had learned to pay attention to over the years. Had I been wrong? I slowed, keeping one eye on Riveno, and the other looking for sharp objects on the workbenches, even though my hand pressed against the weight of the cleaver in my pocket. A bit of advice: you can never own too many sharp things.

‘Why change your mind so suddenly?’ I asked.

Riveno snorted. ‘You’re growing fast, Dwellin. You’re right to be cautious. But you should also know when you’ve found a friend,’ he replied. ‘I’d already decided in the kitchen earlier, before Drakka and Wrekham came to pay us a visit. How much did you hear?’

‘All of it. Who’s Drakka? One of the prosecutors you pay?’ I stared past Riveno at the sound of a shriek beyond the thick maroon curtain. It sounded like a skink caught in a trap.

‘The only one I need to pay, and a fine try, Dwellin. Start talking.’ Riveno massaged his dark hand. The rasping of his skin was loud. ‘Every. Detail.’

I sighed. ‘I told you about the scalespice and how I was trying to make a difference. Well, when Cook Bunt caught me trying to cook, instead of taking note like I’d hoped, he made us take the whole of the baron’s lunch to him as a punishment. I reckon he thought it might get us a hiding from either Wrekham or Master Pitius. I’d never been in Wrekham’s chambers before, but there was a prosecutor drinking rum. He had the usual mask on, but green eyes. And he was drunk, I remember that.’

‘Sounds a lot like that cock Litkas. A pathetic son of a baron that thinks he should be running this city.’

‘Litkas wasn’t alone. Like I told you, there was a cleric in Wrekham’s study. Aberan and I waited outside and heard them talking.’

‘What about?’

‘If you’ll let me finish, gone gods,’ I huffed. ‘I didn’t catch the cleric’s name, but I didn’t recognise him from those I’ve seen sewing their herbs and casting circles about the streets. He was a skinny sort. Nervous. Said he was there to buy something from Wrekham. Not for him, but for a master who apparently had a personal interest. He was quite adamant in saying it wasn’t Venerance business. That it was to be private and discreet, and he was willing to pay fifty thousand shells for something of Wrekham’s.’

Riveno’s eyebrow shot towards his hairline.

‘Wrekham demanded seventy-five thousand and sent the cleric to go tell his master. Who, if I heard right, is apparently arriving in a few weeks’ time to trade with Wrekham personally. When Haltweather caught us and took us to Wrekham, he thought we were assassins. He was convinced we were working for somebody who wanted to rob him of whatever he’s selling. He said us trying to kill him reminded him there was more to be done in his life, and that’s why he would spare us. Wrekham strangled me until I gave him the name of who’d paid us to kill him. I said Ma Mattox to keep him from hurting Aberan more, and he had us thrown in Moonmoth to think on our sins. And there you go. That’s everything,’ I said, crossing my arms.

‘Did you see what it was?’

‘Small enough to fit in a box only slightly bigger than my hand. Fancy looking thing, too.’

‘Seventy-five thousand,’ whispered Riveno. ‘You’d be a baron or a master overnight.’

As you can imagine, that sounded highly alluring to me. Aberan’s words echoed in my head. We’re not meant to be gutter trash all our lives. ‘What in the bloody Ashlands could fetch a price like that?’

‘Not half this hallway, girl. The real question is, why would one of the Venerance want it, and under the guise of secrecy as well. The cleric’s master arrives in a few weeks, you said?’

I nodded.

‘And on the same day Drakka tells me a reverent and swordsaint are bound for Canarva.’

‘Do you think that’s the cleric’s master?’ I asked. Reverents were not spread across the Holy Realm, growing like weeds, let me tell you. Only six existed at any one time, and they were the last circle of Venerance authority before the Grand Venerate, the living voice of the Great Watcher herself. Only the First Chosen ranked higher.

Riveno gave me no answer except for a growl. I hadn’t yet seen him this vexed. After a moment of staring into the nearest candle flame, he put his charcoal hand to the curtain. ‘Few are allowed in my sanctum, and you won’t share anything you see in here with the others. That’s not negotiable. You give me your word?’

I wasn’t yet sure what my word was worth, but I gave it anyway. I was too curious about what lay behind the curtain. Too intrigued by what in the Holy Realms an old bastard like Riveno knew about fighting.

My heart pattered as Riveno revealed. I don’t know what I should have expected. A dusty ring for bareknuckle fighting like I’d seen once in the sewers? Rows of weapons and straw targets? I certainly didn’t expect a small nook of a room crammed with pieces of furniture elbowing each other out of the way. Like the workshops, the place was a mess. Not with scraps of metal and wood and tools, but what looked like a spice cabinet exploded. Scrolls of lizard skin and hard tablets of turtle shell lay stacked in dangerous piles. There was a mould or musty smell in the room that threatened to choke me.

Making the low ceiling even lower was a pyramid cage of woven metal strands. Within it was a squabbling lizard of shimmering black. At our entrance, it spread its wings wide and showed off the long whip it called a tongue. When it chattered, sparks fell from its spiked jaws. It was a drake. Fire-starting pests, to most people, but I’d always taken a liking to watching them flit from chimney to chimney, snatching cinders or ash flakes from the air. Aberan disagreed; he hated them, but that was largely to do with one biting him on the arse. That’s what you get trying to trap and sell the beasts for a few shells in the market.

‘Does it have a name?’ I asked Riveno. ‘Every good beast needs a name.’

‘That he does. It’s Tasparil.’

‘And is he… safe?’

Riveno looked at me square as the drake tried to tongue the man through the bars of its cage. He caught the tongue with gentle ease and made the lizard screech in annoyance. ‘As any of my other rescues are,’ he said.

Across the tables and bowing shelves were vials and canisters marked with Riveno’s scrawl. Weighing scales and pans lay everywhere, along with plates scorched black and deep gashes in the wooden surfaces. In mortars and dishes lay conical piles of powders. Blightpowder.

‘Is that…?’

Riveno busied himself cleaning a space on a table. ‘Blightpowder, yes. Several hundred shells of it.’

I backed away from it, ever superstitious of its poisonous effects, but found myself bumping into a bookcase. ‘Where did you get it?’

‘Never you mind.’

I stared around, wondering how the shelves hadn’t collapsed. ‘I can barely swing a fist in here. How by the Great Watcher am I supposed to learn how to fight in here?’ I muttered.

Riveno tapped his head. For the first time that day, he removed his cowl. I saw the ragged line on his scalp where the hair died and became the scabbed, wooden skin of what still suspiciously looked like the Blight curse. In the dark, faint emerald light shone between the cracks in that hide of his.

‘There’s more to fighting than swinging fists, Dwellin. Go on, give me your best shot,’ he said, holding up his unblighted hand.

I gladly obliged, whacking him in the palm. Both my wrist and my knuckles lit up with pain. Riveno blinked at me.

‘You got a lot of spite in you, but not a lot of strength. Speed, maybe.’

‘Then what are we here for?’ I asked, impatient and flustered.

‘What you lack in strength you’ve got in smarts, and smarts often matter more than brawn in a fight.’

‘How? With a sword? A knife?’

Riveno’s stare bored into me. ‘You don’t need to know how to punch if you know magic, Dwellin.’

I laughed. ‘Alchemagic?’

Riveno was not laughing. ‘That’s right.’

‘Only the Venerance are allowed to handle blightpowder, or practice magic.’ It was why the Blighted and the illegal trade of blightpowder were so heavily punished. Merely standing near that much blightpowder could have sent me back to Moonmoth in a snap of thumb and finger. I realised the true reason Riveno paid the prosecutors to look away.

The depth of his voice and the granite nature of his tone stopped my mirth in its tracks. ‘So they would like you to believe. Alchemagic should not just be for the Venerance, but for those who deserve it. They shouldn’t have a stranglehold on who gets to wield the power of the Great Watcher.’

I probed my sharpest teeth with my tongue. ‘Didn’t take you for a religious man.’

‘I ain’t,’ he growled. ‘All I know is the blightpowders come from the Watcher, and I think there’s power in what it gives us. And though the Venerance might be a subtle terror, their prophecies ring true enough. But there’s not a prophecy for everyone, and that doesn’t mean we can’t be chosen in our own way. That’s where my religion ends.’

‘You’re serious aren’t you?’ I asked. The man was offering me not just power but a power rooted in magic. ‘Were you an alchemage? No. You couldn’t be… Surely,’ I said. True alchemages were akin to swordsaints: chosen ones foretold by prophecies. As such, both were servants of the Venerance’s mission to spread the Great Watcher’s sermons across the East and further. Why? Don’t ask me why religions are so keen to grow their ranks. All I knew was that nobody had asked them to, and that alchemages, just like swordsaints, served the Venerance for life. Only death could release them. Death’s kind like that.

‘Blightpowder was where my life started, and it’s likely how it will end.’ That was all the answer Riveno gave me before he launched into training I didn’t recall agreeing to.

‘There are two forms of alchemagic. We will only discuss the first, which is simpler, safer, and has made the Holy Realm rich beyond belief.’ Riveno dug his pipe from his pocket and tapped the glowing vial at its centre. ‘A miniature blightcore. It’s what the power and the industry of the East is built on, and its simplest form, it isn’t too different from cooking. Both require ingredients. Both require precise measures and techniques. And both can kill you if you get it wrong. That’s why I tested you in the kitchens. I wanted to see if you were all talk.’

I crossed my arms. ‘And?’

‘Oh, you are, but you aren’t too bad a cook,’ chuckled the man.

‘I think you’ll find I’m better than not too bad,’ I protested.

‘You see these blightpowders?’ Riveno gestured to the piles of powders ranging from sulphur yellows to green, and on to a muddy blue. ‘They’re all the product of the Great Watcher, but they come from different places where it touches the lands. They have different effects when mixed, or given heat, or cold, or a drop of water. What colours are calling to you, Dwellin?’

I didn’t think, I just spoke. ‘Yellow and blue.’

‘Then you would create something that would burn through locks and chains. Light and heat.’

Riveno reached for the two piles I had named. He took a pinch of the yellow, placed it in a mortar, and followed it with another smaller nip of a darker blue. Holding it beneath Tasparil’s perch to catch a spark, the two powders combined into a hot sludge that promptly started trying to melt the mortar.

‘This combination is how blightcores work. With significantly more precision than that, of course,’ Riveno remarked. ‘Cities like Tempest have blight cores on a scale that would boggle your mind, heating water and lifting the great temples into the sky with envelopes bigger than any balloon or cruiser that comes to the Ashlands.’

He waited for what I assumed was applause or a gasp of wonder. Instead, I was confused.

‘And that’s it? I’m supposed to win fights by throwing powders at people?’ I asked. The great mystery seemed all too commonplace for my liking, but Riveno quickly corrected me.

‘That is just one combination of hundreds, girl. You’re talking about a field of study that has lasted thousands of years, Dwellin,’ he replied. ‘A field that’s transformed the Holy Realms. Venerance intellects and smiths spend a life studying the power of the blightpowders. It might not be as formidable as the Augurs’ magics, but it is grand in its own right. Did I bring you here to scoff or to learn? Because there’s always plenty of work to be done in the—‘

‘I’m here to learn,’ I interrupted.

‘And rightly so,’ Riveno answered gruffly.

‘So what’s the other form of alchemagic?’ I asked. ‘I’ve heard the stories, and none of them have alchemages mixing up powders or pestling a mortar in the middle of a fight, Riveno.’

Riveno regarded me with suspicion. ‘Something that we won’t be learning, rest assured.’

There is a simple question that, if it were a weapon, would be the sharpest sword known to skin and bone. I asked it in that moment.

‘Why?’

Riveno answered without hesitation. ‘Because I see a different Dwellin to the one that stands before me. Not a brash and hot-blooded girl who makes poor decisions. One of importance and power and greatness. One people in Canarva would listen to, as they once listened to me. But you’re not that person yet, and while I trust you with this, I know you’ll delve too deep into dangers you have no clue about. We’ll not talk of it any more. We study the first form and that’s final. That’s all you need for the future I see in you. I won’t curse you like I was.’

‘For having all these children about all the time, you don’t know much about us, do you? You know that only makes me more curious, right? I’d say it’s better to know the dangers,’ I said, playing him while I stared. I waited while Tasparil chattered away to himself and preened his wings. ‘But that’s up to you.’

Riveno pressed his fists into the table. ‘Ingestion?’

‘In-what now?’

‘ “To eat. To swallow. To consume. That is the privilege of those chosen for magic. To ingest that of the Great Watcher and be blessed with his power from within.” ’

‘That sounds like scripture.’

‘Book of the Watcher, sermon of Khafala, verse six. What every alchemage repeats on their graduation from training. And it means that instead of mixing up powders in dishes, you can eat it.’

‘Like the Blighted?’

Riveno shook his head as if I’d said something wrong. Failed in some way, and as you should know by now, I’m not that fond of failing.

‘Alchemages and Blighted are one and the same, girl. We are both cursed, alchemages just get the benefit of magic and Venerance honour. Don’t be so fooled. But enough of this. You want this future I see for you or not?’

It was true I believed in Aberan’s confidence in greatness, and my mother’s last promise to us. Hard toil and endurance was how Aberan saw us getting there, but not me. ‘Aberan always said the Dorrs were meant for more.’

‘Maybe your brother is right,’ Riveno said. ‘You’re a waif with nothing to lose, and I’m offering you a power that most don’t dream of. You really want to sniff at that like you have been?’

The word power was the lure, and I swallowed it like a starving skullfish. I knew my answer immediately. ‘Not in the slightest.’

‘Then let’s learn.’

Now, I shall not bore you with a detailed account of which powders I mixed with which, and how I singed my fingers and got far too distracted with Tasperil’s antics. You might be expecting a montage of powerful moments, and these will come, don’t you fear, but let us be honest with each other: I had an hour in Riveno’s sanctum before we were interrupted, and he spoke so fast as to lose me several times. You cannot possibly be expecting me to suddenly become a master of alchemagic within an hour, can you? Come on now. You should know there’s much more sweat, blood, and tears to be shed before somebody like me could know true power. In that moment, I was scratching at the foot of the cliff of greatness, and you’ll have to wait for me to climb.

What you should know is that it was trickier than pinching this and that and throwing them into a pot. It was a careful combination of colours and effects that combined with effects of sparks, smoke, light, and frankly explosive consequences. Small doses were all we worked with, but I found blightpowder to be so potent that even a crumb in the mixture caused an effect that made me reel backwards and choke. I wondered more than once how much of it would be needed to teach Wrekham his lesson, and I think Riveno saw that wonder behind my eyes. He didn’t say anything of it, and neither did I. He would likely tell me something along the lines of with great power comes great responsibility, but I’ll tell you a secret I learned much later: what matters is whether you accept that responsibility.

I had almost accomplished the blightcore powder and a mixture that could turn water to ice when light spilled into Riveno’s sanctum.

Aberan stood behind the crack in the heavy curtain. Riveno was quick to stand before his tables of powders, but my brother had already seen what Riveno was hiding.

Riveno pushed me from the chamber and shut the curtain behind us.

‘That wasn’t for you to see, Aberan. I told you to stay in the workshop,’ he muttered.

Aberan was far angrier than I understood. ‘What by the gone gods are you doing?’ he whispered to me out of Riveno’s earshot, dragging me along the corridor.

‘Doing exactly what you want us to do. Getting ahead. Getting somewhere. Riveno’s offered to show me something that can do that.’

Aberan shook his head, unable to stop his eyes roaming the shelves of contraptions. ‘Blightpowder? That’s too dangerous, Dwellin, never mind get you hanged on a Venerance rope. Why do you insist on putting us in danger, little sister?’

The familiar guilt stabbed at me again. ‘I’m not. I’m trying to be what mother said we would be.’

Aberan glanced over my shoulder. ‘You might trust him, but I don’t. Half the stuff in this shop is stolen, I’ll bet. I told you we would climb out of the gutter honestly, not stinking of thievery.’

‘No, it isn’t, and that’s what I’m trying to do, curse it. You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Aberan leaned back from me and showed me pain in his eye. His silence spoke volumes, but I kept up my stare without a blink. I knew I was right.

‘We should have that bandage off, Aberan,’ Riveno called out to us, draped in the shadow between the candles. He rescued me from the conversation. ‘It’s been enough time now.’

My brother stood tall. Far too much time passed before he nodded.

I followed, head low and gaze fixed on the back of Aberan’s head as we followed Riveno’s beckon.

‘Seeing as you’ve already seen my sanctum, you might as well come in,’ he grunted.

Aberan stood stiff as a broom handle. He refused to sit, and Riveno took scissors to the bandages while he stood staring about the crammed room and the hissing drake in his cage.

Layer by layer the linen bandages came off, growing darker with old blood as they came off. Riveno worked with the care of a healer. I knew from the shelf of stubby vials on the wall that blightpowders weren’t the only magic Riveno dabbled in. I watched with held breath, waiting to see the danger Wrekham had done to my brother.

Riveno paused as he unpeeled the last layer. I saw his jaw bunch. I heard Aberan take a sharp, quick breath. He was faced away from me, and I had to lean to see.

A red and ugly wound beginning to scab was revealed. A lump grew in my throat and choked me. As Aberan tried to open his eye. Wrekham’s ring had not only split his cheek and brow, but scarred the eye a bloodshot. Riveno covered his good eye with his hand.

‘I… I can’t see,’ Aberan stammered. He must have been stricken to have broken his silence in front of Riveno. ‘Dwellin, I can’t see.’

Aberan had been blinded.

‘Perhaps with time…’ Riveno began, but my brother pushed past me, carved his way through the curtain and stomped down the corridor. I chased him, but he pushed me away.

‘Leave me alone,’ he snarled in that tone I rarely heard. His storming was witnessed by the others. Hammers and muttering fell silent across the Buried & Lost.

I felt the heat burning my cheeks, rising to my eyes. Aberan climbed into the upper reaches by ladder and walkway.

Riveno stood behind me. ‘Let him work out his anger.’

A mentor was what I had found. I’ll tell you another secret: look at any hero and behind every rise to greatness you’ll find a mentor. Like ambition, it was another step along my path. I knew that, and yet here I was, hating his words in that moment. I didn’t need them.

I pushed away and did some storming of my own, straight to the door and out into the city.

‘Dwellin!’

Riveno could warn me of prosecutors and Wrekham all he wanted, but I would not be deterred from my escape. I won’t lie, dear reader, I ran from the guilt.

The ash fell like a foul snow, masking the edges of buildings and softening the sharp slate roofs of Canarva. An inch of it had already fallen on the ground. There was a rumbling of volcanoes in the air. The last sunlight was clogged by the clouds, and already the lamps were already being lit by skinny children on ladders, arguing who got to hold the torch. Workers were returning from the fields in droves. They stumbled home, to evening shifts at factories and refineries, or if they were truly lucky, Canarva’s many and famous taverns. They looked almost picturesque with their dusting of ash, and laughing patrons under umbrellas.

I ignored all that crossed my path.

I stomped through the ash, heading north to where the cobbles were smoother and the lamps more frequent. Carriages rattled here and there, drawn by snorting kumi. Their breath bloomed in the unusual cold of the evening. Guards were out walking their masters’ pet turtles and tame salamanders, complaining about the weather. It was all Ashlanders ever did.

When at last my feet came to rest, I stood before the black and many-eyed edifice of a tiered mansion. In its greatest and highest eye, silhouetted by the fierce glow of blightlamp yellow, was a thick shape of a man. A glass of rum lingered in his hand.

With ash scattering across my face and unblinking eyes, I stared at Baron Wrekham and dared him to spy me amidst the murk of the falling ash. I wanted him to stare into the face of the one who would take his greatest prize from him.

An eye for an eye.