Lord of Secrets

by Breanna Teintze

  We left the alley as the twilight shaded into night, and I followed her through a series of narrow streets that swirled with mist and the smell of cooking. Lamps glowed inside buildings and we occasionally passed a brazier in front of a business or a larger house. Otherwise, it was so dark that even if we had passed a guard patrol, they probably wouldn’t have seen us.

  At the end of the fifth alley, she pointed. ‘Here.’

  The temple towered over the street, less grand than the painted, pillared buildings I’d seen in the past, dedicated to Mother Ranara or the Lord of the Afterlands. This was just a large cube of grey stone without even a statue outside to show which deity it belonged to, only its sprawling size hinting at the mysteries that supposedly dwelled inside. Above the entrance a hanging lamp bathed the front of the building in a scarlet glow. The only attempt at decoration was the pewter studs winking on the pale oak door, displaying the outline of Jaern’s symbol, a half-shut eye.

  It felt wrong to approach the place so boldly, although I knew there wasn’t another way in. Being dedicated to the Lord of Secrets, Jaern-temples famously have one entrance, no windows and impenetrable security. I still didn’t like it. ‘I could do without the lamplight,’ I muttered.

  ‘Either you want to get inside, or you don’t.’ She grabbed my wrist. ‘Come on, stay close to me.’ She led me forwards, halting just outside the circle of light as though gathering herself, studying the lamp and the studs on the door. Her grip tightened, and she lunged forwards.

  We stood in the pool of scarlet. I looked up. Looping, malicious lines of runic script glowed in a spiral on the underside of the lamp basin. I recognised the spell, a nasty one. The wards were ready to immolate us.

  ‘Brix,’ I said, alarmed.

  She ignored me, counting under her breath. Her fingers moved, almost too quickly to see, touching the studs on the door in sequence. The latch clicked, she pushed the door open and dragged me inside. She shut the door behind us and leaned against it, letting out a long, shuddering breath. The whole thing had taken under twenty seconds.

  We stood in the dark. Directly ahead, a dim light gleamed. We stepped towards it, to find ourselves in a wide, circular room with a black floor. In the centre stood a dark chunk of granite topped by a silver figurine and two huge silver candlesticks, which shed surprisingly little light. Bundles of smaller, ritual candles lay in heaps at its base. Patterns crawled over the altar, sinuous lines of runes carved into the stone and inlaid with pewter.

  ‘Don’t touch anything in the sanctuary.’ She led me through the shadows to the altar and grabbed a small candle, dipping its wick into the flame of the larger one before touching it to the lips of the idol – a grotesque, eyeless baby that I took to be a representation of The Empty One, the ghost that, according to Jaernic doctrine, whispered the six foundation runes of magic to the god Jaern at the beginning of time.

  ‘That,’ I said, pointing at the idol, ‘is the ugliest version of The Empty One that I’ve ever seen.’

  ‘I know. Halling kisses it during prayers.’ Brix glanced at it again and shuddered before crossing the floor to a small side door. The room beyond was stuffed with bales of incense, stacks of candles and a cupboard that held a collection of flasks, their green contents gleaming. My eyebrows went up. I had always known that the visions seen in Jaern-temple were probably not divine, but I hadn’t suspected the priests were using yavad.

  ‘Can I touch these?’ I said.

  She glanced at the cupboard, nose wrinkled. ‘If you want.’

  Yavad was an acquired taste, but it was also expensive, and you never knew when it would come in handy for trade. I grabbed three flasks and put them in my bag. ‘Where’s the library?’

  ‘It’s through here.’ Brix pointed towards a door that was so small and inconvenient that it could have been mistaken for a closet. ‘The slaves’ door is safer than the official entrance from the sanctuary.’

  I hesitated. ‘You first.’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘Gods. If I was going to get you stuck, I’d have let you burn outside.’ She pushed the door open, crouched and stepped through. I followed.

  A set of double doors took up the entire wall opposite us. Three shelves, as tall as I was, lined the rest of the tiny chamber, crammed full of scrolls, folios and gigantic tomes that were as thick as my arm. In the middle of the room was a square table dominated by a gold-covered bust of Jaern and an empty bronze candelabra, surrounded by dozens of smaller icons of various saints.

  A familiar mixture of hope and anxiety churned in my belly. If I was lucky, somewhere in that heap of words was the name and location I was looking for: Acarius Gray, my grandfather. In the last six months I hadn’t been lucky, not once.

  ‘Watch the prayers,’ Brix said. ‘They’ll only wake up if someone crosses the sanctuary without letting the Empty One taste fire, but it’s still bad luck to touch them.’

  I glanced down. A series of characters was painted in red around the edges of the tile floor. It was a spell, not a prayer, but this wasn’t the moment to argue about the differences between Temples and Guild magic. The runes were indeed inert, so I stepped over them and strode towards the nearest stack of likely-looking books. ‘Can you bring the candle closer?’

  She picked her way over the runes and deposited the candle into the holder on the icon table. What the light revealed was less than encouraging. If I had to go through every volume, it could take the rest of the night. I scanned the shelves. The scrolls were likely to contain theological arguments and not much else. I trailed my fingertips along the thick spines of the codices. The first one I opened turned out to be a bound collection of tax rolls from ten years ago. Useless. I shoved it back on to the shelf and glanced sideways at Brix. ‘Well?’

  She hadn’t moved. ‘Will this take long?’

  ‘I have no idea. I’m not going to take your ring off in here, if that’s what you mean. It takes too long – wouldn’t be safe until we’re someplace more secure.’ The next book was a treatise written in crabbed, painstaking script about the Tirnaal, a reclusive group of tattooed, half-civilised folk who are only interesting because of the fact that they are almost immune to magical toxicity. The author theorised that their immunity was a result of sharing bloodlines with djinn, but since djinn don’t actually exist this was not a promising start. The one after that was a stack of sacred poetry about mysteries and bees. The final volume on the first shelf was an inquisitor’s guide, with instructions for finding, incapacitating and executing necromancers and their ‘magical progeny’, which seemed to reference various forms of undead. The execution portion was particularly detailed. I swallowed and shut it hurriedly.

  Brix wandered to the icon table and began sorting through the statues, looking, no doubt, for something that wouldn’t be too heavy to carry. I dug, with growing frustration, through piles of slender folios, all of them genealogies detailing the families of royal bastards. The only thing that I could see that might be remotely relevant was a judge’s diary. I was scanning it for Acarius’ name when the sound of a key grated in the lock.

  My head came up. The handle on the door that led to the main sanctuary was rattling. I stuffed the book into my bag, Brix grabbed the candle and we scrambled for the slaves’ door.

  In the storeroom she blew the candle out and we stood, listening. A murmur of voices began in the library: two men, arguing. I groped for the door to the sanctuary and pushed it open a crack.

  The candle on the altar still made a lonely pool of illumination in the middle of the dark room. The big double doors to the library were open, though, spilling the sound of bickering and wavering lamplight across the floor.

  ‘I don’t understand it, my lord.’ The high, frantic voice of Halling the priest came, panting, over a noise that sounded like someone dumping things off shelves. ‘The divining said she was here. I’m sure it was correct, I—’

  ‘Do you think she’s hiding behind the scrolls?’ The angry baritone of the other carried
across the room. ‘All you were supposed to do was hold him, keep him off the Guild books. That’s the only reason you were involved. I would have dealt with him. But you had to punish the woman and play with your knives, and now you’ve lost both of them! Is this what I pay you for? Do you know how expensive this has been?’

  We had to go, quickly, before they came back out of the library. I eased my way out into the sanctuary, heart hammering against my breastbone. I turned back to signal to Brix, but she had already slipped out beside me. She pressed her finger to her lips and disappeared into the shadows along the wall.

  I crept along after her – or at least, after where I thought she was. This far from the altar candles I couldn’t see her, and I couldn’t risk even a whisper to try to locate her.

  ‘Don’t.’ Halling was begging now, panic stark in his voice. ‘I can look again, I’ll find them!’

  The baritone began to chant. The hair rose on my arms. Did I know that voice?

  ‘Please!’ Halling screamed. ‘My lord, don’t—’

  His voice cut off with a quiet gurgle.

  I pressed against the outer wall of the sanctuary, craning my neck to see who had cast. I thought I recognised him, but gods, I hoped I was wrong.

  A big man in a black robe stood in the wreck of the library, his back to me. He was looking down at what was left of Halling. The priest was crumpled on the floor, neck bent at an unnatural angle, mouth open in a look of pitiful surprise. A candle still guttered in one of his hands.

  The big man bent, grabbed Halling’s collar and slowly began to drag him into the sanctuary. I kept moving. I could make out the shape of the front door now, only a few steps away. Brix was nowhere to be seen. I hoped she had already exited. I reached for the latch, then paused. Had it made a sound when we came in, or not?

  No time. I gritted my teeth and turned it.

  Click.

  The big man dropped the body immediately and spun on his heel, chanting again. I threw myself to the floor as a burst of purple lightning slammed into the wall above my head.

  I got on to my hands and knees. The flash had dazzled me. Which way was the door?

  ‘Well.’ The big man’s chuckle echoed through the chamber.

  My vision adjusted just in time to see him stride towards me, the lavender residue of the spell still gleaming under his fingernails. ‘I wouldn’t have thought you’d be the devout type.’ His teeth flashed in the scanty yellow light. ‘Hello, Gray.’

  Three

  I knew his voice even without seeing his face: Keir Esras, Guild Examiner General, looming not four feet from me. There were approximately seven thousand people I would rather have met at that moment.

  ‘What,’ he said, ‘are the odds you’ll come quietly?’

  ‘Not excellent.’ I got up. ‘I didn’t go quietly last time, if you recall.’

  ‘Stop there.’ Keir raised his hand. The purple light crackling over it threw the crooked bridge of his nose into shadowed relief. ‘Or you’ll learn what lightning tastes like. Be wise. All I want is a little cooperation. We know Acarius sent the information to you.’

  I stopped. ‘Where is he? Where have you bastards taken him?’ I knew Keir was probably lying, trying to throw me off balance. It still hurt to hear the old man’s name, more than I had thought possible.

  ‘Somewhere you’ll never find him. He might as well not exist.’ Keir smiled. ‘It looks like we have good odds for your cooperation, after all.’

  ‘How’s the nose?’ I said. I had broken it with a spell the last time he’d tried to arrest me, three months and six towns ago. Now that I looked, I thought there was still a little bruising around his eyes.

  The smile dropped off his face. ‘Start talking, now.’

  I chewed my lip. His handful of purple sparks was the problem. I didn’t have any spells scribed. He had to know that I had just seen him commit murder. He had to kill me, whether I cooperated or not.

  I lunged at him. My arms locked around his waist, my momentum carrying us both to the floor. He landed with a startled grunt that drove the air from his lungs, swinging his hand towards me.

  Purple light sizzled past my face, heating the air near my right ear so much that I smelled burned hair. I scrambled to pin his arms down, to direct the spell. Lightning has such an affinity for human blood that it’s been known to turn on its caster, but I wasn’t bleeding, so he’d have to take aim. If he couldn’t turn the magic towards me—

  Keir’s knee thudded into my stomach and sent me sprawling backwards. I tried to sit up to gain better leverage, only to be met with another blow from his knee. He rolled. I hit the stone floor with a grunt.

  And he was on top of me. Gods, he was heavy.

  ‘Now stop, or I’ll just kill you now.’ Keir’s voice rasped, harsh. He had a hand on my throat, squeezing just enough to make it hard to breathe. The other hand hovered above my face, the lavender of the lightning spell throbbing, outlining the veins in his wrist. I had lost.

  ‘Lightning is illegal,’ I croaked.

  He snorted. ‘Don’t pretend like you care about the Royal Charter. You and I both want it abolished. The king is an illiterate fool who doesn’t deserve his throne, the state of magical research is a disgrace and yet you’re still filth, Gray, piddling about with illegal spells for no higher reason than making a bit of coin, like a tinker.’ He glanced down at my satchel. ‘Now reach in the bag, take out any piece of road trash you’ve got runes scribed on and put it on the ground. Slowly.’

  Stuck-up Guild bastard. I was no road conjurer, tramping from village to village mending pots and curing sick goats. Acarius had seen to my education better than that.

  I put my hand in the satchel. There was nothing helpful inside, magically speaking. I’d used up my parchment escaping from the jail. Even if I’d had runes scribed, I couldn’t pronounce anything with Keir’s hand on my throat, ready to silence me forever.

  I’d be in a Guildhouse by dawn, gagged and mindblown. I had failed.

  My fingers touched smooth glass. One of the flasks of yavad. I swung it upwards and smashed it into the side of his head.

  He gave a muffled cry. His lightning spell crawled up over his neck; it mingled with the blood running down his beard from where the breaking flask had cut him and instantly enveloped his head. His lips moved, swearing at me as his fingers tightened on my throat.

  My heartbeat pounded inside my skull. I chopped at his wrist with one hand, but he didn’t move. Panic pulsed through me, yammering, blind.

  Then he let me go, arching backwards, hands flailing.

  Brix stood over us. She raised a fist-sized icon of Saint Simanus – patron of executioners – and hit Keir again. He flopped sideways, unconscious.

  I gulped air. She grabbed me by my belt and hauled me to my feet. She wasted only a few seconds checking me over before her hand locked around my wrist.

  We ran.

  *

  The city gate, of course, was shut.

  We only paused long enough to pant for a few seconds behind a cart, parked not three houses over from the little hut beside the gate where the gatekeeper was chatting with two soldiers. My guts dropped into my boots. Brix, however, seemed unfazed. She led me through the darkness to the wall. We followed it until I heard the gurgle of liquid.

  A grate extended from the stones and disappeared into the small stream that, confined to a masonry channel, flowed under the wall and into the city. Brix waded into the freezing water and dragged me after her. I followed as closely as I dared, worried that I’d lose her in the dark. She led me to where a section of the grate was broken away under the wall, ducked and slipped out like a fish. For me it was a closer squeeze, working one shoulder through at a time.

  And then we were free, beyond the wall in a wide pond, soaked through and wading for the shore. This must have been how she’d left the town the first time, running with Halling behind her.

  We made for the road.

  For a long time, there was nothi
ng but the slippery feel of field grass under my wet boots and the steady, wretched wish that the wind would go away. When we finally got to the high road, it was worse, with no trees close enough to shield us from the biting breeze. Brix huddled into herself, her mouth set in a dogged, miserable line. I don’t know how many miles we went under the stars, but when the sun rose I couldn’t see Fenwydd anymore. Pink dawn light fringed the horizon and touched the tips of the barley in the fields around us with rosy fingers. It would have been pretty, if I hadn’t still been wet from the hips down.

  Brix, ahead of me, stubbed her toe. ‘Damnation!’ We both halted. She shook out her foot, scowling. ‘Look, are you going to remove my tracker? Otherwise, I don’t see why you need to keep going in the same direction as me.’

  ‘That was the agreement.’ I flexed my bad knee, trying to keep the discomfort in it from sharpening to an ache. It was already distracting. There was a stand of chokecherry bushes along the ditch. I pointed towards them, although I wasn’t relishing the thought of slipping around in the weeds. ‘We should do this off the road. I’ll have to see the thing.’

  We scrambled down behind the bushes. Brix hesitated, then lifted the hem of her shirt, just enough that I could see a thin strip of her belly and a copper ring gleaming in her navel. It looked solid, but I knew it wasn’t.

  ‘Hurry,’ she said.

  I squatted in the long grass in front of her, easing my bad knee down as carefully as I could, and squinted at the tiny runes engraved on the copper. It was a simple incantation, just a static sequence to keep the two halves of the ring in place and then a beacon sigil. I dug through my satchel for a brush and a small jar of red alchemical paint. I glanced upwards. ‘I’ve got to write the runes on your stomach, so don’t knee me in the teeth, all right?’

  She set her jaw. ‘Just get going.’

  I hunched my shoulders, took a deep breath, and cleared my mind. She did well holding still under the ticklish precision of it as I painted the characters for a breaker spell in a circle around her navel, one that mirrored the lock on the ring. When I pronounced it, the runes lit briefly and the copper ring snapped in half.