Lord of Secrets

by Breanna Teintze

  ‘Why not? Is it something to do with magic? A spell-caused injury?’

  A bitter laugh pushed past my lips before I could catch it. ‘Nothing so exotic, alas. It’s garden-variety lameness, not worth talking about. It’ll be better in the morning.’

  ‘I knew an old man who had good success with rubbing lard on his joints.’ She hitched herself a little closer to me. ‘And a girl with palsy—’

  ‘A tanner broke my leg with an axe handle when I was eight years old and it didn’t heal correctly.’ It was work to keep my tone flat, but it was worth it. Otherwise I would be shouting at her and making everybody notice us. ‘You can’t help. Nothing will. It will be better in the morning. And I’m not going to talk about it again.’

  She went silent and finished her dinner. I leaned back against the wall and counted the wee clay house-gods Pavel had lined up above the fireplace. (Two mothers, a cattle-blessing, six wealth-saints, one with a sheaf of barley.) I did equations in my head. (Runes for repairing stone walls, runes for breaking them, runes for water-based divining.) Recited a list of principal rivers. (The Varr, the Nelta, the Rovidden . . . )

  After a while it worked. The tanner and the old village and the pain and the past all stayed where I wanted them, and my knee was only an ache.

  ‘Where should I sleep?’ Brix said, the closest to subdued that she had been yet.

  I hadn’t thought of that, but of course she couldn’t wade back through the drunks to get her own mattress. ‘In the bed, where else?’

  ‘I—’ She flushed. ‘I know I’m here more or less by your courtesy, but—’

  Gods. I pinched the bridge of my nose. ‘Look, you won’t wake up to me pawing at you. If I wanted a girl, I could get one without poking around in barns.’ Theoretically. Aphrodisiac spells aren’t that difficult. ‘It’s probably best that we sleep in shifts anyway. Take the first one, I’ve got work to do.’

  She smiled. ‘Thanks, Gray.’

  I was getting tired of being thanked all the time. I looked at the toe of my boot. ‘Go to bed.’

  *

  The locals had taken themselves home and the merchants had passed out on the floor when I took my book out again and crept closer to the hearth to try to study it. I put another couple of sticks of wood on the fire and stirred it up, hoping for better light.

  I rifled backwards in the pages and reread the account of Acarius’ interrogation. I was missing something, I knew I was. My eyes slid over the words that I had already nearly memorised, fretful. Guilty . . . involuntary testimony . . . found attempting unsanctioned communication incantation with candle grease—

  I stopped.

  Corcoran, you idiot.

  Acarius wouldn’t have attempted such a thing lightly. Communication spells were incredibly taxing, almost impossible for a single caster to maintain without a focus or a helper. Some were slightly more flexible and could be left inert, only radiating poison once they were activated. The main difficulty with inert communication, of course, was that the person you were speaking to had to be relaxed and receptive, or, failing that, know you were trying to contact them and get relaxed and receptive.

  Everyone was asleep now. Brix’s even breathing and the sodden snores of the merchants testified to that. I slipped off my bag and dug through it until I found a grease pencil, the last flask of yavad and the little tin cup I use for measuring reagents. Taken in the correct dose, yavad drops inhibitions and turns pain into something misty and faraway. I scrawled a tight bundle of runes on both of my wrists and then measured a half dose of yavad. The thick green liquid clung to the vial before rolling sluggishly into the cup.

  I took a deep breath, pronounced the runes and then swallowed the yavad as quickly as I could. A cough clawed its way up my throat, and I had to bury my face in the crook of my elbow to smother it. The liquor burned its way down into my gut.

  ‘Come on,’ I murmured, willing my muscles to loosen, reaching out for my grandfather with my mind. ‘Come on.’

  I looked up. The room was gone. I appeared to be sitting on black, empty space. I had either managed to tap into Acarius’ communication spell, or the yavad was potent and I was very stoned, indeed.

  ‘Cricket.’

  Acarius’ voice, floating out of the nothing. His form followed, sitting cross-legged on the darkness a few feet from me.

  Dizzying relief broke over me, but I couldn’t get distracted. ‘This seems like the wrong time for nicknames,’ I said. ‘Talk quickly, Acarius, before I sober up.’

  ‘I take it you’re fooling around with yavad, then.’ Acarius smiled, the wrinkles around his green eyes deepening. ‘Well, no matter, if it finally relaxed you enough to let me through. I can’t keep incorporeal projection up for long by myself.’

  He was a very accurate incorporeal projection, from the close-cropped white hair to the homemade spectacles and tidy goatee. Gods, I have missed him.

  ‘Scribe it with candle grease again?’ I said.

  ‘No.’ He rearranged his ankles. ‘My interrogator dropped his pencil as he left me, the first mistake they’ve made.’ Worry passed across his eyes. ‘It might not even be a mistake. They might be listening. But I had to take the chance, scribe the spell. I had to talk to you. Pay attention now, boy. I haven’t got much time.’

  ‘Where are you?’ I leaned forwards. ‘I’ll come and get you.’

  ‘No!’ Acarius’ face twisted with alarm. ‘You can’t risk yourself like that. There’s something else I need you to do. You know the research I was doing when you left home? You remember the topic?’

  I frowned. Acarius’ interests changed so rapidly that it was difficult to remember which tangent he had been on that month. And when I had returned to the cabin, there had been nothing except churned earth and scorched wood. Even the books had been scorched. The books . . .

  ‘Yes,’ I said slowly. He had been reading about the god Jaern. I got the impression that he didn’t want me to say as much out loud, though.

  ‘Good lad.’ He looked relieved. ‘And the year you were fourteen I took you to the coast. You remember the city?’

  ‘Yes.’ It had been the city of Ri Dana, but I didn’t like having to play this game. What could be so important that the Guild would risk letting him contact me just so they could spy on the conversation?

  ‘Go there. Find a man named Lorican. Mention my name to him. He can take you where you need to go, to the temple of’ — Acarius paused, and looked over his shoulder into the blank dark — ‘of that deity,’ he said, carefully. ‘There’s an artefact there, a child, of sorts. You’ll know it when you see it. Take it and hide it, at our place. You know where I mean.’

  I did, but this was hideously frustrating. ‘Where are you?’ I repeated.

  ‘I don’t know where I am, Cricket. The Guild made sure of that.’ He was hoarse; abruptly he looked old and pained. And he was lying. I knew it, as surely as I knew the throb of my own heartbeat. ‘Find Lorican, hide the artefact. Do you understand?’

  ‘No,’ I said, stubborn. ‘I don’t understand why you can’t tell me where they’re keeping you. What is this thing, that it’s so important? I’m not going to leave you there for Keir Esras to torment. He’s had twenty wizards hanged this year, Acarius. I won’t—’

  ‘Don’t argue with me,’ he snapped. ‘They’re already hunting you, and I won’t have you run straight into their net.’ Acarius flickered. There’s no other word for it – his body winked like a candle flame in a wind. ‘Corcoran, Keir is acting without the knowledge of anyone sane in the Guild. He’s planning a revolt against the king, and worse. They’ve got all my journals, all my papers. The artefact is a necromantic tool, an instrument that can be used to create an unkillable army. Esras can’t be allowed to possess it. People will die. You’ve got to do this for me. I can’t keep them out of my mind forever.’

  ‘No, no, no. Don’t do this. Not this time. I don’t give a damn about the king.’ I reached for him. I couldn’t help myself. ‘Grandfath
er, please. Tell me how to find you.’

  Acarius smiled, even as he began to fade. ‘Take care of yourself, Cricket.’ His lower body disappeared – we were losing the incorporeal link – and he was still trying to protect me from the truth, as though I was a stripling with a newly-changed voice. As though his obsession with secrets wasn’t what had started all the trouble in the first place.

  ‘Please!’ My fingertips barely brushed his.

  A pulse of blackness slammed through my body.

  He was gone.

  Five

  ‘Gray,’ Brix said. ‘Hey, look at me.’

  But it took her shaking my shoulder again before I could get my eyes to focus on anything but the low-burned coals of the fire. I must have been sitting there in the dark for hours. She squatted beside me on the hearth, frowning at me and at the yavad-stained cup that was still in my hand. ‘I wouldn’t have taken you for someone who needed that stuff,’ she said.

  ‘You don’t know anything about me.’ I stuffed the cup back in my bag, more ashamed than I should have been, especially since I felt entirely too sober. ‘What made you feel the need to stick your nose in my affairs? Did I ask you to come over here?’

  She rocked back on her heels, sudden caution on her face. ‘You made a noise, like you were hurt. I know a little about helping sick folk, I just thought—’

  ‘Do me a favour and don’t waste your attempts at thinking on me.’ Why did she have to wake up? See me like this, hear me? I gathered up my things, shaky. ‘Leave me the hells alone.’

  I went back to the bed, stretched out and rolled so that my back was to her, my arms around my bag. I was still trembling. I clutched the satchel harder to stop it, staring into the dark. The weight of the task that Acarius had dropped on me sat in my stomach like lead. Go to Ri Dana, Cricket. Find Lorican, Cricket. Lose the only family you’ve got and be happy about it, Cricket.

  Why would he think I could do any of that? Ri Dana was eighty miles away. It would mean finding a livery stable and hiring a horse or paying an ox-driver to let me ride along with the cargo in his cart, both options I could ill-afford. Even after I got to the city, and even assuming that I could find this Lorican person, I’d still have to get myself into another ward-encrusted Jaern-temple and steal what was evidently a holy object of some kind – all while the Guild was trying to break one of the finest magical minds to ever live.

  It was all so pointless. Say I did find the artefact my grandfather wanted me to protect and I didn’t kill myself in the process. A good hiding spot for such a deadly thing didn’t exist. Even Acarius couldn’t think of anything better than using our place, the hidden caches at the little cabin where he had raised me. The cabin hadn’t kept Acarius himself safe, so how could it protect anything else? If I was supposed to prevent a wizards’ revolt or stop a war or whatever gods-damned thing Acarius was certain was coming, I’d have to destroy the thing, and any advantage it could have given me in dealing with the Guild.

  My jaw ached, and I forced myself to unclench my teeth. I wasn’t going to lose him. Not like this. There had to be another way.

  People will die.

  Acarius had no right to do this, to make me choose. I closed my eyes, but for a long time I didn’t sleep.

  When I woke up it was barely dawn, and part of the solution was sitting in my mind, ready for me. I already knew someone who could get me into a Jaern-temple – any Jaern-temple. And, like an idiot, I had insulted her last night.

  I slung my bag over my shoulder and rolled up my mattress hurriedly. The only people in the common room were the hungover merchants, one of whom was being drastically, colourfully sick out the window. I had to find Brix before the sun got any higher and she disappeared down the road.

  I burst out of the building into the dooryard, only to bounce off her as she was coming from the direction of the chicken yard with a basket of eggs.

  ‘Holy Neyar!’ She stumbled sideways. ‘Watch it!’

  ‘Sorry.’ I grabbed her elbow to steady her. ‘Sorry, I didn’t see you, I thought you had left. I was thinking—’ I stopped. She was scowling at the ground. ‘I need to talk to you,’ I said.

  ‘I’m busy. I’m supposed to take these eggs inside, then I’ve got to milk the goats and do some other chores before they’ll give me breakfast and then I have to find a way to get up the coast.’ She pointedly removed her elbow from my grip. ‘So I don’t have time to talk to you, wizard.’ She stalked inside.

  I followed. ‘You’re going up the coast? North?’

  Brix didn’t answer, depositing the eggs on the bar.

  ‘I admit I was an arse last night,’ I said. ‘I apologise. Look, I just want to talk. I have a business proposal for you. You’re here long enough to eat, anyway, aren’t you? Hear me out while you eat.’ She ignored me and moved back towards the door. ‘I’ll help pay for breakfast,’ I said.

  She paused, with her hand on the latch of the door. ‘You milk the goats,’ she said.

  I did, poorly. When we’d traded the milk and the turnips she’d pulled out of the garden for bowls of barley and onion porridge, we retired to one of the tables.

  I leaned forwards on my elbows. ‘I was thinking—’

  She took a bite of her porridge. ‘What, again?’

  Uncalled-for, that. ‘I want you to teach me the countersigns to get into a Jaern-temple,’ I said. ‘We can work out some kind of trade.’

  ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘I mean, even if I had time, I couldn’t teach you without being at a temple, to show you where to touch the doors and things. Besides, you have to use different countersigns on different days. It took me three years to learn all the patterns.’

  ‘Then come with me,’ I said, recklessly. ‘I’m going up to Ri Dana.’

  She stopped chewing, startled. ‘What?’

  ‘You said you were going up the coast anyway.’ I stabbed at the porridge with my spoon, anxious to be done with this and out from under her scrutiny. ‘Go with me, get me in the temple there. We can hire a cart. I’ll promise not to speak to you the whole way there, if you like.’

  ‘I’ve got to meet up with someone,’ she said. ‘Why do you want to get into another temple, anyway? More books?’

  ‘You’ll notice how carefully I’m not asking you your business in the north.’ I took a bite and frowned at my bowl. The porridge could have done with more salt and fewer onions. ‘I don’t ask you, you don’t ask me, you go your way as soon as I’m finished at the temple. It works out.’

  ‘And I need money.’

  ‘I’ll pay you.’ I glanced at Pavel, who was giving the merchants their breakfast. They were all more subdued this morning, nursing sore heads. I lowered my voice so they couldn’t overhear me. ‘I think you took that icon of the executioner’s saint, yes? But it’s going to be difficult to spend or sell until you get to a larger town. I can pay you in coin.’

  ‘How much?’ Her eyes flicked up, abruptly urgent. The green circles around her pupils caught the morning sun and shone like old jade. ‘On top of paying to get us to Ri Dana, I mean. How much will you give me?’

  I thought about the measly pile of copper and silver at the bottom of my bag. It was everything I had been able to scrape together from Acarius’ money box after the arrest, back when I had hoped the whole business could be solved with a bribe. Even without subtracting what it would cost to pay a carter, it hardly qualified as a fortune. ‘How much would it take?’ I said.

  She scraped the last bit of porridge in her bowl into a tidy spoonful and swallowed it before answering. The merchants drifted outside, one of them still looking a little sick, the sound of their grumbling following them into the stable-yard. I sat and ate and tried not to twitch with impatience. It seemed like a lot of thought to spend on a decision that, after all, only meant taking a journey and opening a door.

  ‘Forty,’ she said, hesitantly. ‘In silver. Could you do that?’

  My heart sank. That was enough to buy a couple of cows, or passage
on a ship. I had all of eight silver coins.

  ‘Done.’ I heard the lie slip out, almost without my volition, and had to bite down on my tongue to keep from taking it back. I’d pay her whatever I could, after she helped me retrieve the artefact. It would have to be enough, even if it meant she had to wait a little longer to buy her cows or their equivalent. Acarius’ life was at stake, not to mention the lives that this artefact of his could supposedly end.

  ‘Done? Just like that?’ Brix looked at me with mingled surprise and chagrin. ‘You’re carrying that kind of money around and you milk goats to buy your breakfast?’

  I shrugged. ‘I like goats, and I don’t like Pavel. Why should he get stamped coin?’

  The corner of her mouth quirked upwards. ‘Then I suppose we have a deal.’

  ‘Good.’ I let my breath hiss out between my teeth and became aware, vaguely, that the room was too quiet. The merchants outside had been swearing at each other and dealing with their packhorses while Brix and I were talking, but now the jingle of harness had stopped and the constant chatter of conversation had suddenly dropped to a low mutter.

  ‘And you were an arse last night, by the way,’ Brix said.

  ‘I think I already apologised for that.’ I stood, listening. The voices outside continued, muted but urgent.

  Abruptly all my senses were on edge. Something was happening.

  ‘What is it?’ Brix said.

  I put my finger to my lips and eased my way towards the window, trying to see out without showing myself. In the stable-yard stood two of the merchants, holding conversation with two people in robes – a woman and a man, both in the light blue of new-fledged Guild apprentice wizards. The apprentices were showing the merchant something on a piece of parchment.

  And now the merchants were nodding and pointing at the tavern.

  ‘Guildies. We need to go, right now.’ I turned on my heel, fully expecting Brix to argue, but she sprinted for the side door. I followed, lagging further behind her with every painful stride, my knee grinding and clicking.