The Mage of Blue Elm

Chapter Five

I had been confronted with all sorts of weapons, all different kinds of blades, in the years since I had left the city. Save the first time I found a knife levelled between my eyes, no encounter had made me freeze quite like I did in that moment. My mind had clung so tightly to the scrap of information about Franc that I had let my guard down.

I scrambled to gather my thoughts, digging my nails back into the cut in my palm and popping the cork from the vial. The pain cleared my head and my vision.

"What is this?" I asked, trying to keep my voice level.

"Fayore Dumont, you are under arrest," said the middle guard of the line facing me.

"For what crime?" I demanded.

"Illegal use of magical artifacts and the use of those artifacts on civilians."

I cursed myself for not hiding the unconscious men more thoroughly. But how did they trace it back to me so quickly? I didn't have time to puzzle it out now. If I was going to be arrested for the use of magic, then I might as well use it.

I poured the blue contents of my little glass bottle into my cut, my breath hissing through my teeth, and frantically searched for a word. Any word, that would give me a chance to run.

Run.

I crouched low and swung my leg out in a wide arc, sweeping Niam's legs out from under him and sending him clanking and crashing to the ground.

Caligo, I snapped at the night and the fine mist of rain coalesced into a silver screen that hid the direction of my flight down a narrow side street. It held for three of my gasping breaths before I heard a whoosh of falling water as the briefly stilled rain fell to the street. Shouting and the ringing of boots nipped at my heels as I sprinted down the street, leaping trash that had been put out for collection and shoving drunks stumbling from taverns out of my way.

I had to make it to Brune's ship.

The shock of my feet hitting uneven cobblestones rattled my bones as I tore through the streets. A blurry map of what I remembered of the city trembled in my mind with the pounding of my footsteps as I turned left, right, and right again, trying to take the most direct route back to the ship. If I could make it there, even just a minute ahead of them, I could stowaway in the false cargo hold until Brune took the ship back out to international waters.

But after seven years I was a stranger in this city and the guards were not.

They had already made it to the wharf by the time the city streets spit me out like the fleeing rat I was. In a frantic moment of desperation, I tried to make a break for the water, and I would've have made it if not for the loose stone that turned my ankle and sent me crashing off the wharf and onto the dock. Dozens of splinters raked my already bloody palms and embedded themselves deep into my forearms as my flimsy shirt gave way. A few even stung my cheek as I rolled once and lay winded and dazed in a heap. My ears were ringing, the sound of the ocean and the shouting guards lost in the tinny reverberating sound in my skull.

I took a deep, painful breath and let it out in rush as they hauled me to my feet. I was out of options.

I had failed. I had failed Franc. Again.

#

The cell was cold. Colder than I remembered. It started as goosebumps along my skin and turned into shivers that sank down into my bones. The air was damp and a dull roaring seemed to come from the stone walls as though the ocean was rushing through them. Maybe it was.

This wasn't the same cell I had occupied last time. This one was darker and deeper in the ground. This was the kind of cell where people were left to rot.