Page 23

Kerik blinks. His face is smarting, his ears ringing.

This is not play acting. This is real. Pure vicious fury.

Vane takes a careful step back, away from Perl, but his voice sounds as cool as ever as he says, “That’s a disobedient thrall you have there. Wandering the halls using some old silence for secrets ring. Interesting it could use that. Did you grant it?”

Perl turns his furious face to Vane. “What business is it of yours if I grant my mortal thrall a magical token?”.

“Because the only reason to grant your thrall such an item would be to send it spying. Is that why you are really here, Perl? After all this time? Do you love mortals so much that you are indulging in treachery? I am sure few here would be surprised if you were. But perhaps it stole that ring. Perhaps it is simply a thrall that needs discipline. Which is it?”

Kerik can see Perl’s jaw go tight. “Come with me,” he says. “We will discuss this in my chambers.” He moves Kerik around, fingers still tight on his upper arm.

“So, you simply take it to bed. Unpunished,” Vane says.

Perl rounds on Vane. “I punish my thrall in private.”

“If a thrall stole a magical ring from me in order to wander freely around the palace, I’d take the skin off its back. In public.” Vane tips his head on one side. “As you are reluctant to do such a thing I assume it was doing your bidding.”

Perl walks out, pulling Kerik with him. “Goodnight, Vane.”

After them, Vane calls, “I could do it for you, if you wish.”

7

PERL

Back in his chamber, Perl throws Kerik down on the thrall bed. He can still feel the anger-powered magic pulsing through every part of him. He really needs to get it under control. It has been a long time since he has allowed himself this kind of reckless power. He is not used to what Vylenor can do.

Kerik looks up at him, sprawled in the sleeping shirt. It’s ridden up his thighs and several of the ties have come undone down the front. He looks quite magnificent. Debauched. Perl shakes himself.

“I’m sorry,” Kerik says, raising his palms defensively. “I couldn’t sleep. I was bored.”

“You couldn’t sleep?” Perl spits down at him. “After this day. I was exhausted.”

“You forget," Kerik says, his usual cocky tone returning. “I’ve been asleep for five years under your curse. I’ve had all the rest I need for half a lifetime.”

“It wasn’t a curse.” Perl scowls. “And give me back that ring.”

Kerik pulls the Silence for Secrets from his finger and holds it out.

Perl snatches it. It’s warm from Kerik’s skin, faintly buzzing with its power like a living thing. He turns it over in his hands. “How did you know how to use this?”

“I don’t know,” says Kerik. “I didn’t know what it did. I just put it on and it made me invisible. Or, invisible until I went into Vane’s chambers..”

Perl lets out an exasperated huff of breath. Where to even begin? He looks around the room. “And you unlocked my door. How did you do that?”

Kerik shrugs against the thin blankets of the thrall bed. “I don’t know, exactly. I just did what you did. Waved at it and I suppose I thought about what I wanted to happen.”

Perl narrows his eyes and stares at Kerik. He tries to reason with what he just heard. Is it really so impossible? Kerik has fae blood. Kerik is fated to be the Magician. Perhaps that old magical ring was enough to rouse the magic inside him.

Before now, Kerik had not seemed like any kind of fated Magician. So much so that Perl had wondered if there had been a mistake. But what even was the natural temperament for magic in a mortal?

Then he realises something else and that thought gives him a more immediate feeling of dread. “Vane’s rooms are warded with a very specific protection. I could feel it when I walked in. My own magic was too strong to be nulled by it but he has warded his rooms against magic created by fae from Ulla.”

“I know,” Kerik says. He sounds quite petulant. “That was how he could see me when I was in his quarters. He didn’t tell me so at first though. He let me stand there while he played with his pillow slaves.”

Perl nods. That sounds like typical Vane, but that is hardly the point. His next breath is shaky. “And your glamour was created by me. A fae of Ulla. He would have been able to sense it easily.”

“I know that too,” Kerik says again with a frustrated tone, like he thinks Perl is patronising him, telling him things he already knows. He doesn’t realise the significance of having his glamour removed. He says, “He took the glamor off me and I could barely speak or understand Magaar. He mocked me for it. But at least I can speak some Magaar. Actually my Magaar is quite proficient for an Azurian.”