Jowtan crashed to one knee, stone biting bone through threadbare cloth. His throat seized, an invisible hand clamping shut his windpipe—not choking, not yet, but offering the promise. He heard the brittle clatter of a dropped coin echo off the crypt vaults. He tried to gasp and found only silence.
Kaelen's grip closed around his arm, not the gentle restraint of a fellow craftsman, but a clamp of iron. His thumb found the tendon at Jowtan's elbow and pressed, a subtle threat: try anything, and the nerves will be next.
The hall of the Ruined Gods had gone airless. Even the torches seemed cowed, their flames guttering blue and small. The entire congregation—marks and merchants, priests and parasites—stood frozen mid-gossip, every eye angled toward the alcove and its spectacle.
Jowtan wanted to snarl. He wanted to spit a curse at Kaelen, or at least at the unblinking crowd, but the geas held his tongue a dead weight in his mouth. He could only turn his head, slow as an hour hand, and glare up at the man who'd called his bluff.
Kaelen bent, face inches from Jowtan's. No sign of satisfaction. Only the blank, appraising calm of a butcher at market. The wizard's eyes, lit from within by cold blue motes, moved with unhurried precision: left eye to right, then back, cataloguing the dilation of Jowtan's pupils, the tremor in his jaw, the sweat oiling his brow.
A showman would have spoken, would have announced to the audience what was happening. Kaelen said nothing. He waited, letting the silence suffocate.
Jowtan's heart pounded in his ears, each beat slower and louder, like a judge's gavel. His mind clawed at escape routes. He could try to wrench his arm free, twist and tumble—he'd done it before, in a dozen towns with a dozen enforcers—but Kaelen's fingers never slipped. He could try for the deck, flash a card and blind the man with an illusion, but when he ordered his hand to move, nothing happened. His wrist sat limp and useless on his thigh. Even his fingers, those delicate thieves, curled in on themselves, a nervous animal hiding from the whip.
Kaelen's gaze dipped lower, studying the grimoire at Jowtan's hip. Blue fire flickered inside the edge of the leather, visible only for a moment, then gone.
He's reading the mana, Jowtan thought. The bastard's looking at me like I'm a disease under glass.
Kaelen's head tilted, a movement almost avian. His other hand hovered near Jowtan's chest, never touching, as if feeling for an invisible pulse.
The geas flared. Heat knifed through Jowtan's torso, radiating outward from his sternum. It felt like a fever dream—the moment before true sickness sets in, when you know your body is about to betray you but you can't remember how to stop it. The blue fire that had danced so playfully in his veins last night now crawled through his muscles, mapping his nerves with icy precision.
Jowtan tried to focus on something—anything—to keep from screaming. He picked the ugliest face in the crowd, a red-nosed ragman who'd once sold him a bag of counterfeit salt, and fixed his gaze there. The ragman grinned, showing two teeth and a full mouth of anticipation.
Jowtan's vision tunneled. Sweat streamed down his cheeks, cold as the river. He managed to croak out a single word, strangled and barely audible: "Enough."
Kaelen ignored it. His hand hovered a fraction closer, eyes narrowing. "The Ruined Gods like obedience," he murmured, voice for Jowtan alone. "You should be grateful. They could have asked for something worse."
He tried again. "Let—let go—"
Kaelen flexed his grip. The nerves in Jowtan's arm went bright with pain, a shiver shooting all the way to his fingertips. "You did this to yourself," Kaelen said, not unkindly. "You wanted power. You paid the price."
Jowtan's mind tried to count the ways out, ticking off the list: Bribery, blackmail, seduction, pure dumb luck. But every option led to the same result: Kaelen's fingers around his arm, the geas burning through his veins, the crowd silent and judging.
Kaelen shifted his weight, hauling Jowtan half-upright. The wizard's eyes bored into him, now less clinical, more predatory—a wolf examining a lamed rabbit before deciding if it's worth the kill.
"Stand," Kaelen commanded.
It was not loud. It didn't need to be. The geas in Jowtan's bones responded faster than he could think. Muscles uncoiled, spine straightened, knees groaning. Kaelen wrenched him to his feet by the upper arm, and the pain felt ceremonial, a benediction of new order.
The crowd parted. Not all the way—Jowtan saw, with something like professional admiration, that even in his disgrace there were still men and women calculating the odds of getting in the way, of lifting a ring or a purse while the wizard's back was turned. Old instincts died slow.
But for most, the hush was absolute. Mouths moved in urgent whispers. Some faces glowed with vindication: the charlatan gets his, at last. Others, more prudent, looked away, drawing invisible circles in the dust or fingering warding charms. Even the children huddled behind pillars, wide-eyed, as if the spectacle itself might infect them.
Kaelen dragged him forward, each step a contest between the wizard's forward momentum and Jowtan's traitorous, liquid legs. The deck slapped against his hip with every stride, mocking him. He stumbled, nearly fell, and Kaelen pulled him upright without breaking stride.
Torches along the crypt walls stuttered as they passed, shadows jerking away in fear. The blue flame, once a tool and a toy, now haunted his every nerve ending. He felt it crawling behind his eyes, burrowing into his marrow, reminding him with every pulse that this was the cost of his trickery.
The main corridor of the Ruined Gods' hall was a river of faces, each one another brick in the wall of his humiliation. Jowtan recognized the matron in violet, her lips curled in an ugly smirk; the apprentice who'd lost his coin earlier, now gloating openly, as if he'd been avenged by the gods themselves. Even the ragman, who owed him a week's lunch, found time to sneer.
At the threshold, he caught a final glimpse of the hall behind him: the crypt, the torches, the crowd already moving on to the next story. His story, finished before it ever had a chance to begin. Kaelen did not slow. The world outside waited, cold and indifferent.
Jowtan crossed the threshold, and his old life ended with the closing of a door.
Kaelen's hand didn't let go, not even once they'd passed through the massive doors and into the ruin-starved street. Jowtan's boots skidded on wet stone, his vision swimming with pain and indignity.
At the mouth of the alley, Jowtan saw a chance. A crumbling column, left from some older empire, jutted just within arm's reach. With everything he had left, he wrenched his body sideways, fingers scrabbling for the pitted surface.
He touched it—fingernails scraping old blood and dust. For a moment, he even braced his feet, levering against Kaelen's hold.
Kaelen's other hand blurred up, and every knuckle found a nerve. The world went white and then black. Jowtan's knees buckled; he would have fallen face-first if the wizard hadn't jerked him upright by the collar.
"Don't embarrass yourself," Kaelen said. Not cruel. Just bored.
Jowtan spat something between a curse and a plea, but it came out as a choking gasp. The geas knotted around his throat, a noose tugged by a god who delighted in the slowest executions.
Kaelen towed him on, never slowing, never looking back. They moved through the outer cloisters, past the ring of gutter-shrines and the water-thieves' bridge. No one followed. No one wanted any part of a wizard's business, not when blue fire shivered in the air behind them.
They crossed a wide plaza, empty but for broken benches and the shadows of the courthouse. The wind cut through his clothes, made his skin prickle. Above, stars burned with the hard, remote indifference of old money. Jowtan remembered the mantra he'd used his entire life: Survive at all costs. It felt, for the first time, like a joke played on himself.
Kaelen never faltered. They reached the mouth of a stairwell leading down, the kind of place you didn't return from. Jowtan's feet stopped dead, every instinct screaming. He tried to scream too, but the geas pinched his voice to a thin, reedy whine.
Kaelen bent close, breath cold in Jowtan's ear. "We're nearly done."
He hauled Jowtan into the stairwell, feet slapping stone, darkness swallowing them both. The noise of the city faded behind, replaced by the slow grind of Kaelen's boots and the faint, bitter scent of ozone. Down, down. Each step hammered the point home: he was not getting out on his own terms.
At the bottom, Kaelen finally paused. He let go. Jowtan sagged against the wall, chest heaving, head spinning.
Kaelen regarded him with professional detachment. "I told you: every trick has its price."
Jowtan wanted to lunge. He wanted to break Kaelen's nose, or at least spit in his face. But his body wouldn't move.
Kaelen watched him for a while. Then he turned and walked away, footsteps echoing up the empty stairwell.
Jowtan slumped to the cold floor. The deck at his hip vibrated, a pulse of blue flame—weak, spent. He couldn't even muster the energy to curse it.
He listened to Kaelen's footsteps, fading.
When he was sure he was alone, Jowtan managed to breathe.
One day, he thought. One day I'll learn to cheat better than the gods.
He closed his eyes and waited for the pain to teach him something new.