Allora pocketed the five gold fangs, eight silver scales, and three copper talons she received from the sale of their enchanted water barrel and a few other things they no longer needed and emerged back into the harsh sunlight where Revos waited impatiently. Cambions weren’t always well regarded and she hadn’t wanted to make the shopkeeper nervous so she had asked him to wait outside.
“You should have let me bargain with him,” Revos said and flourished his sevith. “I could have gotten seven fangs from him.”
“His shop is warded,” Allora replied. “I would rather not have the Guard brought down on us.”
Revos looked affronted.
“I was making better wards than that before my fifth name day. You think I couldn’t defeat them?”
“No trouble,” Allora reminded him. “This is plenty to get us over the peaks. There will be more when we sell the clorvol and the wagon once we reach the mountains.”
Revos sniffed indignantly but didn’t argue further. Together they walked through the gates and took the central road heading toward the spire. Revos was an imposing figure and cambions were rare and had a fearsome enough reputation that most people who would have approached changed their minds. As a result, he and Allora were allowed to move through the crush of people just inside the gates with comparative ease. A few ambitious street hawkers tried their luck anyway, but Revos scowled at them, growled, and bared his fangs and they suddenly remembered they had more pressing business elsewhere. Scoundrel though he was, he had his uses. After the second vendor tried, his scowl became real enough.
“Humiliating,” he said.
“What?”
“Growling at the rabble like I’m some sort of beast. Back home merchants know better than to approach uninvited. And they would never dare make such crude offers to an arcanist. We are more respected than that.”
“But we are not in your home. The people here do not know your rank.”
Revos shook his bare arm and directed her attention to the ornate set of tattoos that circled his biceps and forearm.
“What do you think these mean?”
Allora glanced at the intricate glyphs and swirling lines of Demonic that decorated the red skin of his well-muscled arm before looking away quickly. The script could induce vertigo if one stared too long. She smirked at his irritation.
“I doubt the street merchants can read or speak Demonic. And you opted to remove the gold on the tips of your horns that mark you as a member of the nobility.”
Revos only grunted but continued to glower at anyone who got too close, preferring to maintain his sour disposition. A little further on, a foul smell invaded her nostrils and both she and Revos had to suppress a gag.
“Stollar’s taint!” Revos coughed. “Is that jivi piss?”
Allora didn’t answer. She was too busy trying to breathe through her mouth and wipe the tears from her eyes. Just ahead, the road was blocked off and a small crew was working to wash the street of the brownish-yellow liquid that had started baking in the cracks and crevices of the cobblestones from the heat of the day.
“Lethelin better not have had anything to do with this,” Allora managed as she followed Revos down a side street to get around the temporary roadblock.
A few minutes later they had gone around the problem and moved upwind and she could finally draw a deep breath into her lungs. They rejoined the main road and stopped at the first fountain they came across to drink and try and wash away the lingering funk of urine.
“How is he doing?” Allora asked, hanging the ladle back on the hook. She didn’t often have time away from Mitchell and needed to get an assessment from Revos since he was the main one responsible for training Mitchell in his magical abilities. Revos didn’t need to ask who she was talking about.
“Surprisingly well,” the cambion said as they continued their walk to the spire. “Never tell him I told you this, but he has it in him to be a powerful arcanist. I should have him casting his first cantrips by the time we reach the mountains.”
Allora smiled at that. She had thought the same but it was nice to hear Revos echo her thoughts. She hated the brutal pace they had to set for him but there was no choice. She worried every day that it was too much too fast, that he would break under the strain but he had never wavered. He worked himself to exhaustion each night and got up with them again every day to do it again. Allora felt a swelling of pride in him. Pride and something else – something she shied away from and tried not to think about.
“His skill with learning Common is also quite impressive,” Revos said. “I had not expected him to be so far along so quickly. He didn’t even ask for the language spell when he set off with Leth.”
‘I noticed that as well. I suspect that has a lot to do with the heart stone. Its capabilities are not fully understood but my guess is that it is helping his brain retain the knowledge.”
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Revos grunted.
“Ancient and powerful magic. Who knows what it can do? But if his memory works as well with the spell forms, he will be quite formidable. That is usually the biggest hurdle a caster has.”
“Unfortunately, I do not know,” Allora mused. “My training did not extend to this area so I have to rely on things I learned through osmosis growing up around the palace.”
“Speaking of casting, I will take him to a gem dealer in the morning and have him fitted with a sevith,” Revos continued. “Once we have that, I can begin to teach him to cast his magic. I’ll need some of your coin.”
Allora gave him a hard look.
“You mean you do not have a stash of coins in your extra-dimensional storage space?”
Revos didn’t answer.
“And is it not tradition for an instructor to gift his student with a krisa or sevith when they are ready to begin work on channeling and casting?”
“A basic one, yes,” he muttered after a long pause, “in some schools.”
“But a basic one would not be suitable for the future monarch of Awenor, would it?
A low growl emanated from deep within the cambion’s chest and he let out a curse.
“To the nine hells with you woman! Fine! I will pay for his equipment.”
“You will pay for the best that is available,” Allora countered. “As well as a supply of stones to see us over the mountains until I can get back to Gilriel’s cottage.”
Allora thought he would start spitting fire from between his fanged teeth as he descended into a string of curses in his native Demonic that made her ears ring. The language could have strange effects on those without demonic blood and could itself be used as a form of magic if someone sufficiently powerful and proficient so desired. Revos was skilled and a member of the royal family at that, even if he was in exile. She doubted he was even aware of the effect as she stumbled slightly, his verbal onslaught making her feel like the ground was tilting underneath her feet. From the corner of her eye, she noticed an old woman close enough to be in earshot suddenly faint and collapse into a leather merchant’s doorway.
Allora recovered her balance but didn’t speak, knowing it was better to let him bluster until he had blown himself out. He was one of the most powerful magic users she knew but could be surprisingly childish when he was in a mood. She found that enduring his tantrums from time to time worked well in getting him to do what she wanted.
“Agreed,” Revos said after a few more moments of grumbling.
“Good,” she replied in a clipped but satisfied tone. She had also found it best not to gloat. She didn’t want him to realize she could pluck his strings like a lyre if she needed to.
They walked through the next several intersections in silence as the spire grew larger before them. Her trip to meet Revos all those weeks ago had been her first time seeing it and the structure still awed her. It seemed impossibly large when one was standing before it. And there was something hypnotic about the flowing patterns of minerals that had formed around the eruption over the centuries. She’d almost lost herself in swirls and eddies that first time. It made her feel less foolish when she finally snapped out of it, soaked to the bone, to see that others had stood transfixed as well. It was one of the great natural wonders of Tawadunn.
Allora gazed at the towering spire and her thoughts returned to Mitchell. She was anxious about being away from him but she was trying not to let it show. She could not be with him all the time and he needed to find his independence in his new home. She had little trust in their mysterious companion but Lethelin had sworn her oath to him and not even a thief would break an oath made to Stollar. Things had a way of going badly for those that dared.
So Allora had allowed the sneaky purse snatcher to take him on ahead and let him experience his first city apart from her. But if anything happened to Mitchell she would have the woman’s head faster than that foul-mouthed Varset dock rat could say fish. She had almost lost herself in dreams of glorious revenge when Revos spoke up.
“I will take the boy to a jeweler I know at the Dragon Academy and see him fitted first thing in the morning. He is the best in the city. It shouldn’t take but an hour or so. So we will have the remainder of today to rest. Perhaps you would like to join me in my room at the bathhouse? We can pick up where we left off before you went to fetch the kingling.”
Allora lost a step and nearly bumped into a servant carrying a basket of desert plums. Once she recovered herself and apologized to the poor girl, she stared up at Revos in dumb silence. He had stopped to see why she had stopped.
“You wish me to share your bed?”
Revos, apparently not picking up on the incredulity that should have been plain on her face, explained as if he were talking about the weather.
“Why not? I’ve been without companionship since Ivaran captured me and it’s been at least as long for you. And we nearly spent the night together before you left anyway, so I know there is some attraction for you as well.”
“He must be joking,” she thought to herself. “Surely he was joking.”
But a look at his face conveyed his seriousness. It took her a moment to order her thoughts.
“Revos…” she began. “I admit that the night before I went to Mitchell’s world I was feeling afraid and your offer was tempting. It has been longer than I care to admit since I have lain with someone. But to think that I would accept the offer now is… Revos you betrayed me to Ivaran! We could have been killed!”
Revos blinked his serpent eyes at her and a look of puzzlement creased the ridges of his brow.
“Yes, but it worked out. And you know more than most that it wasn’t personal. I didn’t have a choice.”
He really thought she would bed him after that! Admittedly, she had had limited experience with cambions before meeting Revos but even this seemed extreme. King Baylor had taken a disliking to them early in his reign and relationships between the Onyx Throne and the Hellfire Council had been frosty her entire life, but were they all as callous and clueless as the one before her?
“Revos,” Allora began, trying to maintain her calm. “I will not share your bed. Not tonight and not ever. I do not fault you for saving your own life. I knew your nature before I asked you for help. You are a fine and handsome male of your species but any chance you may have had with me vanished the moment Ivaran’s men found me in Mitchell’s world. I am sorry. You betrayed me. I do not blame you, but it was a betrayal nonetheless.”
The cambion stared at her for several heartbeats as she saw him trying to process her refusal.
“But you are fine!” he insisted with that note of petulance back in his voice. “The boy is fine! All that is in the past.”
“It is in the past but it is not forgotten. I can never forget it. I am grateful that you have helped but I also consider that payment for the debt you owe for your hand in the events that transpired, and my gratitude does not extend to your bed.”
His face twisted and it looked like he wanted to swear at her but instead, he mastered his emotions, turned on his heel, and stalked off toward the spire.
Allora let out a long sigh and followed a few paces behind. It seemed she was in for another tantrum.