Chapter 34: 33. The Escape

For a few days, despite his agony, and despite his forthcoming death, Melitas was content with the thought that he had, at least, proven his own power to himself. He knew as he faced down the end that he had been right about his talent all along. He saw clearly that the taunting and teasing of the others was not true. He was as great a magician as could ever be found. If he’d only had more time, more training, if he’d learned more spells, his life would have gone differently. And that would have been enough.

Then Aletheia came to see him.

That she had survived made it uncomfortably clear. He had failed. Utterly and completely. His time alive had been wasted on arrogance and pride. All his confidence had been misplaced. At first he had felt no guilt for Aletheia’s death, but having talked to her again, having seen how calm and honest she was with him, he was awash with regret. He had wanted to kill her because the Shadow Man had stoked his hatred toward her; he had felt humiliated and rebuked and disregarded. He had wanted revenge, and power.

Yet what he did to her was indescribably worse than what she had done to him. And she still was not angry. If she could be calm after that, what excuse did Melitas have?

He never should have listened to that monstrosity. He should have remained calm and followed after Aletheia and hoped she finally took a liking to him. He had always been impulsive, and quick to anger, and resisting his urges was impossible. He had never been taught temperance or calmness, like Eris taught Corvo at their dinners. He’d never had a mother. No magician did, not really.

Now he was going to die. This was it. And while he had felt comfortable going to his death knowing that he was a great wizard who had merely made a single mistake, he now realized that his entire life was wasted pointlessly. It didn’t have to be this way. He could have had power, and beautiful women, and respect, if only he’d been patient. Instead, he would be forgotten seconds after he had drowned.

A single magelight burned over him in his cell. Eris had left it there, to ensure he did not speak to the Shadow Man again.

They were drowning him in the morning. He could not sleep.

They wouldn’t have killed him at the Tower, if he’d stayed. Not even for manslaughtering a professor. They would only have taken his memory, massaged his Essence, and turned him into a servitor—a mindless automaton of the Magisters, punished with a lifetime of slavery.

Being made a servitor was the most horrific fate a magician could imagine. Yet facing down death, he decided he would have preferred to take his chances with servitude.

The pain had been mild under Aletheia’s spell. But it ended some hours after she and the others departed, and now he was in agony again. He felt too sickly to scream, but he screamed anyway. He did not want to die—but at least death would be relief.

Something echoed down the corridor.

He glanced upward, expecting that the moment had come for him to be dragged to his execution, but he saw no one as he gazed straight ahead.

He saw no one. But he heard footsteps, growing quickly closer. At first he feared the Shadow Man, but it was much too bright for him. That meant it could only be Eris, or Dorian, come to finish him off, to make sure he couldn’t escape somehow at the final moment. He shook his head and squirmed against the wall, whispering nonsense to himself, trying to pull away, when the bars of his cell rattled gently, and the footsteps were directly on the other side.

Someone was there. Someone was trying to get into his cell. It must have been Eris, under an illusion of invisibility, and he screamed out for help—

And he heard Aletheia’s voice say one word:

“Shit.”

She materialized at the cell door. She wore her adventuring gear, pants and armor and a sword that nearly scraped the ground at her hip, and a heavy backpack hung from her shoulders. She looked up at him.

“Be quiet,” she said.

She focused on the cell door’s lock. She raised her hand and used a quiet spell—the pulse of mana made Melitas’ boils sting. But the door didn’t open.

“Hang on. Stay put. I’ll get it. I just can’t remember….”

Again. The pain grew worse, especially in his arms, and he coughed up a slew of rainbow-colored phlegm.

Then hinges creaked, and Aletheia pushed the cell door open.

She stepped up to him and kneeled at his side. Her motion was fluid; whatever pain she had been in yesterday was gone. She had recovered already.

She put her backpack down and peered into it, glancing to him once.

“How are your arms?” she said.

“What are you doing?” he said. He was almost delirious. This was his guilt coming for him. A hallucination. It wasn’t real.

“How are your arms?”

Melitas shook his head. He glanced down at himself. “Bad,” he whispered. Painful.”

Another spell. This time he recognized it as her painkilling charm, and it brought immense relief after a momentary spike in pain. Before he had a chance to say anything else, though, she had force-fed him a healing potion. Then she applied a salve up and down both of his arms.

“Why?” was all he managed.

The backpack was slung over her shoulders again. She grabbed the manacles at his wrists and wrapped her fingers around them. Her eyes flared gold for a blink, and a jolt of raw energy hit his limbs.

The bronze shackles fractured in two and fell off. He felt his skin above his hands exposed to air for the first time in days. He gasped and groaned at the relief. He had stopped noticing how uncomfortable it was.

She did the same to his legs, and they were freed, too.

“You don’t want to ask that question,” she said. “‘Why’. If I think about it too hard, I’ll probably change my mind.”

She hesitated for a moment after that. She closed her eyes and inhaled sharply. She looked suddenly tired.

“There’s no mana down here. I’m drained already. You have to walk.”

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“I can’t.”

“Okay, then stay here.” She rolled her eyes. “Come on.” She tried to pull him up, coming to his side and putting an arm around his shoulder and lifting, but it was hopeless. Melitas was big and she was tiny—she couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds.

“Stand up!”

She grunted as he was heaved upward. She was strong for her size. It took all of Melitas’ strength just to make it to his feet, and once he was there, he needed the wall and Aletheia to stay upright.

“I tried to kill you,” he said. “I killed you.”

“I remember,” she said.

“Why—where are you taking me?”

“To the roof.”

“You’re going to throw me off the roof?”

“I’m going to want to if you keep talking. Come on.”

She led him two steps toward the cell door. There he collapsed, but he caught himself on the bars, and she found a better position against him.

This was already the longest he had ever been this close to a woman. And it was the woman he had tried to incinerate.

“Why,” he said again as they stumbled into the hallway.

Halfway to the dungeon’s door, she had to stop to rest. But she stayed at his side, and she looked to him, and he whispered into his ear, “Do you promise not to tell Eris?”

He stared into her golden eyes. And he nodded.

She smirked. “Some good your promises are.” But then her face came over serious. “Between you and me. I should have died seven years ago. You were doing me a favor.”

This made no sense to him at all. Did she mean that she wanted to die? Then why did she wear that jade ward on her wrist to bed? Why had she fought back?

“I didn’t do a good job,” he said as purple bubbled up into his mouth. When he spit it into a puddle in the corridor, the whole thing sizzled and steamed.

“No shit.”

They reached the door soon after. Every foot was agonizing, but he knew she was right. This was his only hope.

The dungeon door was wide open. A guard was on the ground beside it, leaned against a wall. At first Melitas thought that he was surely dead—but he heard loud snoring as they passed him by.

Aletheia had put him to sleep.

“Okay,” she whispered. “No more talking.”

They began a long and miserable ascent up a winding staircase. It seemed to take hours. But when they were again on the surface, Aletheia took a deep breath. She relaxed as they found mana in the air again.

Or seemed to. Melitas couldn’t feel it. He couldn’t taste it like he normally could. It was like he was no longer a magician at all.

Aletheia closed her eyes and used another spell. At first he didn’t notice, as they continued down a dark hall lit only by the moon through windows, but he realized quickly when he tried to see his own feet.

They were both invisible.

The way up was easier after that. Aletheia seemed far stronger, and she hauled him up staircase after staircase. Once they were forced to stand aside as a servant with a vase of water passed them by; but she did not see them, and they continued onward.

They reached the top of the castle’s battlements then. It was still dark out, and the moon was on the horizon, over the water. The spell of invisibility ended abruptly as they reached the parapet, and then they were alone together outside.

She set him down.

He stared at her. He wished he hated her. He wished she hated him. But instead he felt only like a fool, like a child, his life completely in the hands of another.

He realized in that moment that in all his life, this girl was the only person who had ever shown him kindness. Time and time again. And he had tried to kill her for it.

She cast one last healing spell over him. He didn’t know what. Then she stepped away.

“Your Essence will be back to normal eventually. You’ll be able to use magic again, in theory. Probably in a few weeks. It’ll be slow, and painful, but it’s not worse than spellsickness.”

She glanced over the edge of the parapet. Melitas followed her gaze.

Black masonry formed tiered cliffs down to water that crashed against the castle. The roar of the waves was easy to hear up here.

“I know what it’s like to be a magician,” she said. “I know what it’s like to be a kid with power no one else has. I know how hard it is not to misuse it. I know how easy it is to make mistakes. And I think you’re afraid of what will happen if the Seekers ever catch up to you, because I was afraid of that, too.”

He watched her silently. She was right, though he had never had these thoughts in those words.

“You tried to kill me. But I’m still alive. And so are you. So it doesn’t matter. And I don’t think changing that will help anyone.”

“You’re letting me go?” he said, almost appalled.

“I didn’t say that,” she said with a smile. She looked up at the dark sky.

The Mana Aurora came down in a curtain directly over their heads. Its dim, writhing, pink glow overcame the fading light of the moon. They were closer to it now, up here, than they had been on their journey.

“What’s your favorite bird?” she asked.

“What?”

“Like parakeets. Or owls. Or pigeons. I like crows, obviously, but hawks are okay, too.”

His breath became heavy. “Hummingbirds,” he whispered. “They had them in the Tower gardens. I—would watch them, sometimes.”

“Hummingbirds are pretty,” she agreed. “But you probably want something sturdier. And with more stamina.”

“What are you talking about?” he said. But he realized, as he saw her closing her eyes and drawing more energy into her Essence, precisely what she meant. “Eagles! I like eagles the best!”

She laughed. “Better choice. Kind of boring, though.” She shrugged. “I'm not turning you into an eagle. You might have too much fun."

"Then a hawk! Or–an owl!"

"Honestly, I was thinking seagull. You would learn some humility.”

"A seagull?" Melitas said, eyes stretched widely. "You–you can't turn me into a seagull!"

"I guess we'll find out," she said. She sat down beside him. “I’m going to overcast the spell. It should last for a few years. Or maybe shorter. I don’t really know. An Abrogator would be able to lift it sooner, if you found one. Your Essence should recover in that time, but you won’t be able to cast spells until—well, you have arms again. And a human brain. Other than that… get used to having a beak.”

His heart quickened. He was exhausted from the ascent, but now he felt far more winded. “I’m injured,” he said. “I’m sick. I won’t survive. I—how can I—like this?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you won’t.”

“There must be something else,” he said.

“I could take your memory instead. But then you would make the same mistakes again, and there would be no point in leaving you alive.” She shook her head. “No. This is it. I’m giving you another chance. But if you waste it, then I can forget about you for good.” She leaned in closer to him, but any good humor had been wiped from her face. She was frowning, and her nostrils flared. “If you survive, and you tell the Duke of Korakos where to find Corvo, or you lead the Seekers to Bahaty, you won’t have a chance to cast White Fire when we meet again. I will find you. And you’ll think Eris is merciful after what I do to you.”

He had traveled with Aletheia for months. He had never seen anything from her with half the intensity of that moment. She was somber, sometimes silly, often sardonic, but never like this.

He never would have thought that he could be so terrified of such a tiny, pretty blonde Kathar girl.

“You’re insane,” he whispered. “You can’t trust me. I—I killed you while you were healing me. I’ll do it again. You can’t—you’ve lost your mind.”

She stood up, finally, and her normal demeanor returned. “I have to believe people can change. Because if they can’t, what hope is there for Eris, or Dorian, or me? So change. Please. And if you don’t after this, then it’s not my problem. I won’t need to feel guilty. And I will kill you.”

Her eyes closed. He had no Essence, but he could still feel the last few shards of mana in his veins recoil and prick his muscles as she cast a powerful spell. A very powerful spell.

“Wait,” he said. “Wait. Wait!”

He stood up to make her stop, as terror overtook his ability to think. But she did not stop. She stepped away from him, and he fell to the ground, forced to roll onto his side. Then he glanced at his arm, and he watched as his fingers congealed together. He saw his skin turn from pale to gray, and he witnessed feathers sprouting and growing from his arms—but they were arms no longer, for now they were wings.

Soon there was no man left to him at all. His loincloth fell to the ground, and he had to bat his wings to break free of it.

Then he was no longer Melitas. He was a seagull.

Aletheia grabbed hold of him with a spell. He rose into the air, as if in someone’s grip. He flapped his wings and squawked in protest, but he was weak, and he felt ill, and it was no use.

“I’m rooting for you,” she said.

She flicked her wrist—and Melitas went flying off the parapet.

He plummeted two hundred feet toward the water. And only at the last second did he manage to spread his wings and take to the air.

He did not know how to fly. He felt horrible, dizzy, and starved. His wings burned. He could not think clearly. But he followed a current in the wind, swooping around the side of the castle, flapping his wings desperately, before crashing beak-first into the beach.

He was a bird. He did not know how to fly. It was hard to think clearly, as instinct overcame his faculties for logic. But he lifted his head from the sand and stared out at the castle.

He was alive. He was free. And he was a seagull.