Hey Everyone
Firstly, I’m sorry this is running late!
My day yesterday was a bit upside down, and it just didn’t happen. I have a really bad case of Melbourne Hay Fever, and my brain is full of water and pollen right now.
I’m currently working away at going through all my edits for ‘Immortals & Ink’ that I got back from the editor (I use Michelle at Damoro Design if you need a good one) to make sure it’s going to be in the best shape when I release it on Amazon.
I don’t have a pre-order up just yet, but I’m aiming to release it on the 7th of October, which means you have until Sunday the 4th to read it here on my blog for free. After that, it needs to come down, or the Zon will hunt me for sport.
Okay, on to the chapters! It is two full chapters and an epilogue, so it will be a longer post today. Get your beverage of choice and get comfy.
***
Chapter Twenty
Alexis went back into the city, his head roaring and magic searing in his fingertips. Arslan coordinated his Order members, sending them to locations to gather people and supernaturals from both the light and dark sides and get them to safety.
Alexis had gotten Constantine to safety without fighting, but now he couldn’t stay inside. He had to help where he could, or his guilt would eat him alive.
Across the water, the city glowed with a red haze and heavy smoke. Galata’s taverns and shops were shut up, and no one was foolish enough to be out on the streets.
Mehmed had told the Genoese they would be spared if they didn’t interfere, and most were smart enough to listen. Some couldn’t help themselves and went out in small groups, looking for Ottomans to fight and old scores to settle.
Steel sang against steel. Alexis paused and unsheathed his yataghan in one hand and Lyca’s dagger in the other. Both had been forged with hammer and magic and could slice through armor like butter.
He came around a corner into a narrow lane behind a wine shop and found four men in Janissary green holding a fifth man against a wall.
He wore the colors of Genoa under a coat of mail that had been split at the shoulder and was bleeding badly down his right arm. Behind him in a doorway, three civilians, two women and a girl no older than ten, were pressed back against a wooden door that wouldn’t open. The man held a sword in his good hand and was holding it level. He wasn’t going to last another minute.
“They are innocents, and your sultan promised!” the man snarled at the Janissaries.
“Our Sultan is not here.”
“No, but I am,” Alexis said, and let all of his rage free.
Two rushed him, their armor clanking. Alexis moved at the last moment, ducking between them, his sword and dagger slicing in the gaps between the plates. He whirled before they could turn and drove the tips of his blades into the gap between their helmets and neck.
His magic whipped out and grabbed the other two Janissaries, hauling them into the air and slamming them hard against the side of the building opposite them before dropping them into a heap on the street.
The civilians in the doorway stood frozen and pale. Alexis’s magic struck the door behind them, and the jammed locks came loose.
“Get inside, all of you, before more come,” he said. The women hurried in and slammed the door behind them.
The man with the sword was still on his feet, one hand clutching his wounded side. His gambeson was black with blood, and there was more blood at his hip where his belt had been cut through.
Something strange shimmered around him like magic, which had Alexis studying him more closely.
He sheathed his weapons and said in Ligurian, “Easy, I’m a friend.”
The man’s eyes went between Alexis and the four men on the cobbles, and the point of the sword came down a fraction.
“Venetian?” the man asked, looking him over.
“Yes,” Alexis replied. “I’m not going to hurt you. Where are you wounded?”
The man grimaced. “Shoulder. Hip. Gut. I don’t know. I need…a confessor.”
The man had black, filthy curls and a scar on his lip that cut through his stubble. His eyes, in the dusk, were dark and full of pain. The strange magic around him flared a little brighter, and Alexis caught the scent of hot sand.
Mio Dio.
The breath left Alexis without warning. He had felt that strange touch of blessing before on Arslan. What had he just found?
“Your name?” Alexis asked, stepping closer.
“Aurelio.”
“Aurelio of where?”
“Aurelio of Genoa. House of d’Oria. Cousin of Giovanni Giustiniani.”
“How is Giustiniani?”
“We got him back here, but… he…” Aurelio stammered.
Alexis knew that Giustiniani had been carried off the parapet wounded, but maybe it was this man who had taken him the same route that Alexis had.
“Aurelio, listen to me. You can’t stay here.” Alexis pointed back the way he had come. “Go up the hill toward the Galata Tower. There is a church with a single dome. Knock at the door, and when they answer, say you need the head priest. They will take you in.”
The man grimaced, and blood oozed out between his fingers. “W-Why?”
“Because that is where the help is, or a confessor if you want that too,” Alexis replied. “Go. Now.”
The man nodded, turned with careful slowness, and stumbled away down the lane.
Alexis watched him until he turned at the small fountain.
He has to find Arslan on his own, and may Anubis’s blessing be strong enough to get him there.
When Aurelio was out of sight, Alexis stepped over the four Janissaries on the cobbles, set their swords pointing the same way out of an old soldier’s habit, and went the other way along the lane toward the church.
He took the longer route, backtracking to check the streets for more trouble but finding none. For a moment, he debated going back into the city and decided against it. Arslan had sent all his people there, and if more Ottomans didn’t want to honor the Sultan’s agreement, someone needed to help.
When he came at last to the small square, the door of the church was open, and Phaidros was standing in it.
Behind him in the doorway, Arslan was frowning. The lamplight from the chapel behind him cast his gold eyes in a way that made them shimmer like the eyes of the god he served.
Alexis stopped in front of them. “Did Aurelio…”
“He’s here,” Arslan replied with a nod. “He came to the door less than an hour ago. He was bleeding very badly and asked for a priest. Why did you send him here?”
“He felt…” Alexis searched for the right words. “There’s a mark on him, and it was like a thread that runs through your magic. I can’t know for sure, but I think he has Anubis’s blessing.”
Arslan ran his hands over his face. “He’d better, because he’s in Anubis’s hands now. I felt something, like a compulsion, and gave him the elixir. After all this time, I hope this is the right choice.”
“Trust the Lord of the Duat,” Alexis replied, placing his hands on Arslan’s shoulders. “He guided us both to help him.”
“And if he’s found unworthy, Anubis will just feed him to Ammit,” Phaidros added with a grin. Both Arslan and Alexis glared at him, and it only made Phaidros laugh louder.
“Come inside, old friend. This day has taken enough from you,” Arslan said to Alexis and shut the doors on the burning world behind them.
Chapter Twenty – One
The sack of Constantinople lasted three days.
On the first day, Alexis didn’t leave the cistern. He slept off the fatigue and rage from the day before.
Aurelio didn’t die. Arslan was worried that Aurelio had lost too much blood, but Anubis didn’t turn his back on him. Aurelio returned from the Duat on the second morning, his wounds healed and bruises fading. One eye was now a golden amber, the other brown, but that seemed to be the only side effect.
He didn’t remember the lane or the man who had killed Jannisaries and told him where to come. He recalled only the chapel doorway and Arslan’s golden eyes hovering above him.
Alexis stayed away from Aurelio while he healed and tried to reconcile himself in the new world he had been reborn in.
On the morning of the third day, a herald’s cry went out across the city that Mehmed had ordered the sack to end and that any soldier still taking property after the noon hour would answer to his sword.
Arslan came down to the library at noon to tell Alexis. Like the peri, he had hidden away in books to try to push back the horrors that kept trying to creep into his mind.
“He has called it off finally. The streets and the sea will be passable soon.”
“Then I’ll leave tomorrow night. It’s time I went home.” Alexis stood and stretched. “Is Constantine talking yet?”
Arslan shook his head. “Not to me. He glares at Phaidros, but that’s about it. You should go and see him before you leave, regardless.”
Alexis knew it was pointless, but he still straightened his shoulders and went down to the cells.
Con was awake and sitting up on his bed, his back against the cell wall. There was a pile of books beside him, but none of them were open. He had washed and changed into fresh clothes, which was a good sign.
“I’m sailing tomorrow night,” Alexis said, trying to keep his voice steady. “Phaidros will remain here to keep an eye on you. When the city is settled, he’ll let you out.”
Con refused to look at him.
“I won’t ask for forgiveness, and it would be a lie because I’d do it again, Constantine.” Alexis adjusted the amethyst ring on his finger, tempted to leave it behind and unable to part with it. “You are alive. The city is changing, but it lives too. The prophecy about it beginning and ending with a Constantine came true, like we all knew it would. One day, you will learn that every ending is a new beginning and not to mourn every death. Let this place go and find your new beginning, even if that is without me.”
Con’s head turned a fraction. Not enough to look at him, only an acknowledgment that he had heard.
That is enough. It has to be.
* * *
The following evening, Arslan waited for Alexis by the statue of the dog-headed saint Alexis had carved for him.
The night was clear for the first time in weeks, and the moon was up. The pomegranate trees in the courtyard had blossomed in the past three days, and the red flowers in the lamplight looked like so many wounds.
Death of a thousand cuts, Alexis thought, and it was a fitting description for how he was feeling.
Arslan looked exhausted, but he still managed a smile. “He needs a name.”
“Who does?” Alexis asked.
“Aurelio. He’s no longer a mercenary from a Genoese family. That person died in the siege.” Arslan raised a brow at him. “You saved him, you pick.”
Alexis thought of the dying man still trying to protect innocents and the heat of Anubis’s blessing in his aura. “Kahil.”
“Kahil,” Arslan repeated, feeling out the name. “Friend. Companion.”
“Sì. He fought beside his cousin for a city that wasn’t his. He’s going to spend a long life as a brother to men who won’t be his blood. He will be the friend who will keep you sane, and you will make sure he becomes a decent immortal.”
Arslan’s golden eyes twinkled with a spark of magic. “I have a feeling he’s going to be quite the challenge.”
“The young always are. Don’t worry, a few more gray hairs will suit you,” Alexis managed to tease, and the pain in his chest eased as they laughed softly.
At midnight, Alexis embraced Phaidros and Arslan goodbye and sailed his small boat toward the Hésperos, safe in her cove.
Behind him, across the Horn, the city was still smoking, burned and bruised but not broken. Constantinople was a phoenix that died, rose, and died again. No matter what she became next, Arslan and Kahil would be there to see her through it.
* * *
Cara mia,
Constantinople has given me friendships and taken them away throughout the centuries. Constantine says he forgives me, but we both know it still hurts to think about what was done and said at that time. If it wasn’t for you, we probably still wouldn’t be talking.
It is just another way you have blessed me, my love.
A few last things I want you to know before you turn to another tale and time in this book.
Since then, Arslan has sent other souls to Anubis and had them return. Perhaps it was my bad influence, but the next man he turned after Kahil was a masterful thief named Kerem.
Recently, he turned a young woman named Zoe Kartal. She is a book restorer who keeps a rare-book shop in Istanbul. She is, by Arslan’s account, sharp and entirely too sensible to be at the mercy of the men who love her. The one who loves her most is Kahil. I believe you’ll like her enormously, because she has the same trick you have: being braver than she has any right to be and easily outsmarting us immortals who think we have seen it all.
Perhaps when we sail to Thera again, we will make a detour so you can meet our Istanbul family and you can try to talk some new books out of Arslan for the Archives.
Next time you open this book, I’ll tell you about Egypt, and Aelia will share some of her own secrets. Specifically about her time in Siwa, and a young king with a fondness for tactics and a mind that was brilliant about everything except coming up with the names of new cities.
Aelia has told it to me twice. Both times, she has told it differently. I decided I would let her tell it to you herself.
I love you, cara,
Alexis
Epilogue
Venice, present day
Penelope closed the book and tried to pull herself back to reality. The villa around her was quiet, and the lamp on the side table by the window threw a circle of warm yellow over the book in her lap.
She wiped the few tears that had slipped out somewhere in the cell with Constantine, and she had to remind herself that all was well now between him and Alexis. She needed to find where Alexis was and hug him.
I need a drink, she added. Something strong and very alcoholic.
She had thought she was going to have a fun afternoon reading about Alexis’s adventures, and now she understood why it was easier for him to write them down instead of talking about them.
Penelope walked from the upstairs library, the book tucked under her arm, and made for the kitchen. The villa’s magic brushed against hers, warm and comforting, right before it shifted around her.
“Oh, come on, I just need a glass of wine,” Penelope told it. She was reaching out to touch the wall and negotiate when a door appeared at the end of the hall. “What are you up to?”
Penelope took two steps toward it, and the sound of a bell started to toll. She paused mid-step. She had lived in Venice long enough to know the sounds of the church bells around them. This was something else. The bell sang out again, and the part of her that had been a gift from Poseidon thrummed and pulsed.
Penelope opened the doors and found herself in the ‘Atlantis room’ that Alexis had shown her on her first official visit to the villa. It was a long series of chambers filled with books, scrolls, tablets, sculptures, paintings, and vases. Her own journal articles were there, and her heart still fluttered when she looked at them.
The bells tolled again, and Penelpe moved through the collection, trying to find their source. She had only ever felt something like this when she dived around Thera.
Poseidon’s magic danced in her veins, and the taste of salt water filled her mouth. The orichalcum bracelet on her wrist grew warmer, and the sound grew louder.
“Okay, okay, I’m coming,” she whispered, searching the shelves and opening cupboards.
Penelope opened an ebony cabinet and found a small chest. She pulled it off its shelf and sat down on the floor. Her fingertips tingled as she lifted the lid and found another casket of lead.
Penelope’s mouth went dry as she undid the latch, and orange and golden light swirled out of the box, the song so loud in her ears she couldn’t hear anything else.
“Hello,” she said, and it called back to her.
It was infused with a magic that was at once familiar and strange and sung to her in a key that thrummed through her bones and made her third eye throb.
The stone was in her hand before she thought about picking it up. The song wasn’t asking for anything. It was telling her that there was more of it somewhere very far down, in a place she had been swimming above.
Penelope cradled the stone to her chest, trying to soothe it like she would an upset child. The song paused for a moment before it reached out and touched Poseidon’s magic inside of her.
It fluttered in excitement, recognizing the god of the temple it had once lived in.
She closed her eyes and saw the temple around her, felt the breeze on her face, and smelled the sweet incense in her nose.
Oh, Alexis, I can feel… home.
Penelope let herself drown in the magic until something large settled behind her. The familiar smell of spicy cinnamon and sandalwood drowned out the incense, and a warm hand closed gently around hers. Alexis let it rest there for a long beat before her fingers lessened their grip, and she lowered the fragment back into the box. He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed her palm where the magic still burned.
“You have been listening to it for the whole afternoon,” he said, pressing her palm to his cheek.
“It only felt like a moment.” Penelope leaned back into him, and he pulled her gently into his lap and wrapped his arms around her.
“I read about how you found it,” she said, her fingers brushing over his heavy rings. “I was going to get a glass of wine and come find you, but the villa led me here.”
Alexis kissed the top of her head. “I should have known it would try something.”
“All of this,” Penelope said, gesturing at the collection. “This is what you devoted yourself to so you wouldn’t go mad, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, though there is an argument to be made that going mad would have been healthier,” he admitted.
“The song I heard,” Penelope whispered. “It’s similar to the one I hear when I dive. Maybe it’s another piece of the altar or something else made of the found orichalcum? I don’t…I don’t know. It recognized my magic, Alexis. The part that is Poseidon.” She felt like an idiot every time she tried to talk about the god’s power, but Alexis’s long fingers tangled with hers in reassurance.
“That explains why it sings a happier melody with you, cara. It only sang to me of grief, but it sings to you of more.”
She shifted so she could look up at him. His indigo eyes were the same color as the sea that she had seen in her vision.
“We have to find it. Whatever it is. We can’t let anyone else get it, Alexis.”
“Sì, cara. Whatever is down there, we will find it together. I promise you,” he said, brushing her cheek with the back of his hand.
Penelope shifted in his lap and threaded her fingers into his dark curls, giving them a little tug.
“You are also forbidden from going into the middle of a god damn siege ever again. If you try, I’m going to kick your ass.”
“But what if there are some really good books that need rescuing?” Alexis asked, brushing the tip of his nose against hers.
Penelope paused, her head tilting to the side. “Maybe, in that rare case, an exception can be made, but only if I get to come with you.”
Alexis’s eyes sparked with magic and mischief. “I wouldn’t dream of leaving you behind, cara.”
“Someone has to keep you out of trouble,” Penelope said, wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing him.
Beside them, the stone sang, and the magic of the moíra desmós that bound their hearts together sang back.
Home, it said, and Penelope smiled against Alexis’s lips. Home.
The End.
* * *
Did I emote a lot while writing this one? Yes. Yes, I did.
The Magicians and their world will always be the series closest to my heart. Some characters just get under your skin and never let you go. I know some of you will be like so what now???
Now comes ‘A Dance of Thieves and Oracles,’ which has some sly nods back to this novella, and perhaps one or two fun cameos to bring the worlds together. I’ll be getting into the edits on that one once ‘Immortals & Ink’ has been finalized. You won’t have a long time to wait for it, I promise. I will release a few chapters here on the blog soon but I won’t be serializing the full book because its just too long. I’m toying with some ideas around my next ‘Lost Tales’ novella with Aelia in Egypt so I think that will end up being the next blog story.
I really hoped you enjoyed this slice of the Magician’s past as much as I did, and if you haven’t read ‘A City of Hearts and Feathers’ yet, then click here. It’s a good one to move on to give you a refresher because ‘A Dance of Thieves and Oracles’ happens a short time after the events of the first book.
Thanks for reading everyone, I appreciate you all being here so much,
Ames xx