“I know a little of Akolan magic,” Ostyia said, “but explain to me how it’s manifested in your family line. Magic isn’t generally hereditary, but it can be.”
It was a difficult question, one Rashid was glad Ostyia asked after Parijahan had left to meet Nadya. The things she had been keeping from him weighed too heavy between them.
“Is it for you?”
She nodded. “A family business.”
“My grandfather and uncle had magic. If my parents had it, I never knew.”
“What did that mean for them, though?” Ostyia asked.
They were in Viktor’s sitting room, and Rashid had Ostyia’s spell book in his lap while she paced in front of the fireplace.
But he didn’t really know what his uncle could do—he was gone before Rashid could know him. His grandfather had dealt in minor prophecies.
Ostyia made a frustrated sound. “That won’t help us. Seer magic is easy to figure out. You’d be having weird dreams and it would be a matter of accessing them consciously. That’s not what’s going on. The flowers are weird. Can you manifest power?”
“I can manifest weird flowers.”
She snorted softly. “It should be, well, there are many metaphors for how it can feel. A thread, a river, a song, a simple feeling of something different off in a cornered part of your brain. For people with power like, well, Malachiasz, it would be a storm. Do you have that?”
“What’s it like for you?”
“A blade—sharp on all sides—and if I reach for it the wrong way, it can cut me. It’s always there. Even now, the magic hasn’t gone anywhere.”
“If you had ignored it, what would have happened?”
“Repression is dangerous.”
He shrugged, closing his eyes. The thread metaphor made the most sense, and there was something there that he had been avoiding. A place within himself he’d always forced away. He reached for it and pulled, feeling the bright spark of long ignored power.
When he opened his eyes, his breath caught. There was a pile of flowers in his lap. Ostyia’s eyes narrowed. She leaned down and picked one up. It was red, the petals curling outward.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” she murmured. “I wonder…”
Ostyia spun a szitelka between her fingers. She unsheathed it in one fast motion and slashed her forearm. He didn’t react, used to Tranavians openly cutting themselves for little reason. She fluidly dropped to the ground in front of him and held out her bleeding arm.
“Heal that.”
“What?”
She lifted her eyebrows.
“Even I know how rare healing magic is.”
“Incredibly so. Blood magic can’t do it. From what I understand, there have only been a handful of Kalyazi clerics who have been healers. Magic can do strange and wonderful things, but there are tempers on it and healing is one of them.”
Rashid laughed. “You can sidestep right into Kalyazi theology with that.”
“It’s all different ideologies explaining the same inexplicable conundrums. Nadya has used healing magic, yes?”
“Nadya can commune with the Kalyazi goddess of health, so yes. How do Tranavians handle wounds?”
“Medicine. Plants and science. How you would, yes? Nadya said you’re the one patching everyone up in your mad little band.”
He nodded. He had seen Nadya and Malachiasz survive impossible things and the only explanation he’d had was that their particular magics were keeping them alive against all odds. But if what Ostyia was suggesting was true, he might have had a hand in it.
“Blood magic is, well, messy. It’s very easy for it to go sideways. We’re destructive; we’re not healers,” she said with a slightly wistful smile.
“I feel like you and I are dancing around something.”
“If you can heal this, you have something every one of these blasted countries wants,” Ostyia said seriously. “And it would explain why Parijahan has been dancing around things, as well.”
He inhaled sharply.
“And it might mean you can do a whole lot more.”
But it didn’t explain everything. “Nadya broke Malachiasz’s jaw once and he was talking within hours.”
“The Vultures heal remarkably fast. The Vultures are, for all intents and purposes, indestructible.”
“Why hasn’t Tranavia figured out that magic for everyone then?”
She stared. “We have. It’s the Vultures. It’s what’s done to them that makes them that way.”
Oh. The torture. Metal and bone. Skin and salt and darkness. Malachiasz never talked about it except obliquely; had claimed he couldn’t remember in a way that suggested every torment at the hands of his cult was always vividly present.
He slowly reached over, taking her pale forearm in his hands. He glanced up. Her eye was trained very intently on his face. He reached into that dormant, slumbering part of himself and yanked. His hands grew hot and he carefully placed one over the cut. A small, black flower sprouted between his fingertips.
When he pulled his hand away, the cut was healed.
Ostyia let out a short laugh. “Rashid, I think we have a lot more to figure out.”
He nodded. “You know something?”
“Hm?” They were both staring at her healed forearm with the same kind of hopeless awe.
“This is much better than discovering that I’m very good at, I don’t know, blowing people up.”
She looked up at him sadly. “But all the more dangerous for you.”