Lord of Secrets

by Breanna Teintze

  ‘You mean tattoos, like yours,’ Brix said.

  ‘No. Mine is a forgery, just a pretty picture. Theirs are beacons, like the ring I took off of you in Fenwydd. The Guild will find them.’ The words came out of my mouth at the same time that the thought completed itself in my head, and I realised what I had to do. ‘You should leave now. I’ll handle Lorican and the necromancer.’

  ‘Very noble.’ She loosened the laces on Lorican’s shirt, as though that would wake him up. ‘No.’

  ‘I’m not being noble. I want you to stop being stupid.’ I heard the fear in my voice and hated it, hated the weakness that made a chance to run away the best thing I could offer anyone. ‘They’ll catch you, and they’ll sell you and you will never get back to Anka. I can’t be carrying that kind of vulnerability around with me. You’ve got to leave.’

  She stiffened as though I had struck her. ‘How did you—’ She pressed her lips together.

  ‘You’re Tirnaal without freedom papers, you said you have to meet up with someone and you need coin badly enough to follow an insane wizard underground. Then you finally talk about a baby sister and your eyes glow like candles, but the sister isn’t with you.’ I forced myself to meet her eyes. ‘It wasn’t difficult to work out.’

  ‘But I still don’t have the money for her freedom,’ she said. ‘They sold her, Gray, to a pig of a trader who runs a floating camp. I’m not even sure where she is. I can’t—’

  I grabbed my satchel and yanked out the uncarved emerald. I held it out to her, over Lorican’s still form. ‘Here. Take it. Sell that in the right place and you should be able to buy ten slaves. Take it and go, now, tonight.’

  She didn’t move. ‘You want me to go?’

  I didn’t, because I was a selfish prick.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, hoarsely. ‘There are two bodies to worry about, bodies that can be tracked and that will leave a divinatory trace on whoever handles them. There’s me, complicating everything I touch and with a price on my head that probably just got a lot bigger. And there’s that black-eyed thing that I let out of its cage, who just killed those two aforementioned people. Why wouldn’t you leave?’

  ‘The black-eyed thing has its uses,’ Jaern said, dryly.

  I snapped up to standing, the stone still in my hand. He was leaning one shoulder against the doorjamb, barefoot and dressed in mismatched robes. Somehow he’d managed to make the bloodstains disappear.

  ‘This doesn’t concern you,’ I said.

  ‘Everything concerns me, Cricket.’ He sighed, and moved to the bar. ‘It’s not a very good tavern, is it? Nothing but dark beer.’

  A wave of ice rolled over me. Only Acarius called me Cricket. How in the hells had Jaern known that? I hadn’t thought he’d looked that far into my memories.

  He glanced over his shoulder and whistled. Something rasped against the floor in the darkness of the kitchen – something heavy shambling towards us.

  The two dead wizards – in the picked-over remnants of their clothing – lurched through the door.

  ‘Where do you want me to put them?’ Jaern said.

  I thought Brix would scream. Instead she backed up until she ran into a table and chairs.

  ‘Easy.’ I didn’t move away from Lorican. ‘It’s all right, Brix.’

  The two Guildies were most definitely dead, their eyes lit from within with dull orange light, blood crusted, purple, under their nostrils.

  ‘How can this be all right?’ She would have been shouting, I think, if she’d been able to take her eyes off the things. ‘How are they walking?’

  ‘There’s a necromancer standing at the bar complaining about the beer,’ I said. ‘Ask him.’

  ‘Hardly complaining.’ Jaern put one hand on the bar and vaulted over. ‘Getting slightly bored with all this talk, however. I asked you where you wanted me to put the marulaches. I touched them, can’t have more of these idiots swarming me.’ He took a glass from the shelf behind the bar and filled it from a keg.

  ‘So what, you’re wanting to dispose of the bodies quickly? Make it so the Guild can’t divine for us with them?’ I said, trying to push past the revulsion welling in me. I glanced at Brix. ‘If they were destroyed it would confuse the hell out of the scrying.’

  ‘No!’ She put a hand over her mouth. ‘You can’t disrespect the dead like this. It’s disgusting.’

  ‘Disgusting,’ Jaern said, down into his cup. ‘Little leaping saints, now my feelings are really going to be hurt.’

  ‘This isn’t some kind of joke,’ Brix said. ‘They were real people. You can’t use people like that, walk them around like toys.’

  ‘I know it isn’t a damn joke,’ I said, between my teeth. ‘Quit lecturing me about propriety. I’m trying to think.’ Nothing about this situation was right, but we still had to get out of it. Marulaches could be dangerous without orders. We couldn’t just walk off and leave them here to wander the streets aimlessly. ‘If you don’t like the idea of marching the bodies somewhere to get rid of them, do you have any other suggestions about how to manage them?’

  ‘We should stop this.’ She crossed the floor and crouched beside me. ‘You know we should. You’re better than this. Wake Lorican up and then let us help you do something about Jaern. He’s dangerous.’

  ‘He is,’ Jaern said, to his cup.

  I still had the damn emerald. I could at least force her to take it, so she could get away from Jaern and the dead and me and all of it. I should have been relieved to get the debt off my conscience, but I wasn’t. Here’s an emerald. That clears the money I owe you. Then what? Stay with me anyway?

  I wasn’t going to think about that. It wasn’t going to happen. I pushed the stone into her hand.

  She looked down at it. ‘Gray—’

  ‘Quiet.’ I squatted back down next to Lorican, grabbed the grease pencil out of my satchel and wrote a string of characters for awakening down the Erranter’s breastbone. I pronounced them before Brix could begin her question again. Awakening works to counteract simple repose spells, but has the side effect of itching like the lice of a dozen rats. Lorican gasped.

  ‘Get up,’ I said.

  ‘Gods, my head . . .’ He stirred, then sat up. He looked at the dead Guildies, and then at me and then back at the corpses. ‘I’m hallucinating,’ he said, slowly.

  ‘You’re not. Up.’ I extended a hand to him and scratched at my collarbone with the other. ‘Jaern, put those things back in the kitchen for now, I don’t want to talk with them staring at me.’

  The necromancer shrugged. The bodies shambled back through the swinging door.

  Lorican grasped my hand and stood. He looked shaken. ‘Gray, what in the hells—’

  I raised a finger. ‘How did the Guild know we would be here, and why didn’t they kill you?’

  ‘All I remember is opening this door,’ Lorican said. ‘They must have knocked me out. You say it was the Guild? Those were wizards?’

  ‘Senior wizards,’ I said. ‘Angry senior wizards.’

  ‘Why are they doing what you say? They didn’t look right. I could have sworn they were—’ Lorican rubbed his eyes as though to clear them and looked towards the kitchen. ‘What’s wrong with them?’

  ‘They’re dead,’ Brix said, watching me.

  ‘They’re what?’ Lorican’s head snapped around. ‘How are they walking?’

  ‘Jaern killed them.’ I was getting a headache, and the conversation was slipping out of my control. I needed Lorican to answer me. ‘Then, for reasons of his own, he reanimated the corpses, I don’t know how. We’ll deal with them in a minute, after you answer me. How did the Guild know we’d be here?’

  Lorican stiffened. ‘You think I’d sell you out to the spelldogs?’

  ‘Someone did.’ And Lorican had been hiding something since I found him. I had told enough lies in my life to recognise the stink of it on him.

  ‘Or those apprentices you let go ran back to their masters, like I said they would,’ Lorican said. ‘Don�
��t be stupid, brat. I’m the last one in this room you should be worrying about.’

  ‘Why? Because of some nebulous favour Acarius did for you at the dawn of time, and your unrelenting gratitude?’ My heart banged inside my skull, sending dull jolts of pain to the roots of my teeth. The toxicity from the sheet flame spell would only get worse, and the damn itching had spread to the backs of my knees. I had to make my move soon. I still had runes scribed on my hands, and the spell would hit him hard if I was quick. Knock him out, nothing deadly. I could tie him up and stuff him in a closet along with the Guildies. By the time he got out of that, I’d be long gone with Jaern, and—

  What are you doing?

  My thoughts ground to a halt. What was I doing? Contemplating hiding bodies, pinning their murders on Lorican? Bile rose in my throat.

  No. This wasn’t me.

  I made myself step backwards, made the anger and panic go back into their cages. If only I could convince myself we had time. Every moment made it more likely the rest of the Guildhouse would descend on the tavern.

  ‘Start talking,’ I said.

  ‘Stop insulting me,’ Lorican snapped, ‘and explain what’s going on. You’re telling me that two people have been murdered in my back room? I didn’t turn around on you, thickwits. If I was going to sell your hide, I would have done it a lot cleaner than this. It was those kids.’

  ‘Why didn’t the Guild try to take you?’ Don’t shout. I wrestled my voice down, clenched my hands into fists. I couldn’t throw a spell like an arrow into the dark. Acarius had taught me better than that. I had to be sure. ‘They should have tried to do more than knock you out.’

  ‘Look.’ Lorican leaned towards me, muscles flexing as though he was deciding whether or not to hit me. ‘I don’t know what they tried to do. Maybe they wanted to question me, maybe they wanted to hand me over to the city guard; who knows? Just because I’m not dead doesn’t mean this wee game of yours hasn’t done for me.’ He swung an arm towards the kitchen door. ‘I can’t stay here, Gray. They will track those wizards to this tavern and they will arrest me. With my record—’ He broke off. ‘My business – my livelihood – is fair wrecked. I’d be a flaming fool to bring this down on my own head. Do you really think that the Guild would bargain with a dirty Erranter?’

  The pain and fury in his voice made me wince. If he was lying, he was good at it. And there were other possibilities. The Lady Mother could have slipped the word to the Guild. Keir Esras could have found the other half of his wits and used it to hire a divining expert. They even might have wormed something out of Acarius’ mind.

  ‘All right.’ I moved away from him. ‘All right, leave it.’ At the moment what mattered was staying alive, finding the last two gems I needed to complete the artefact and getting Acarius free. I could trust Lorican at least long enough to get me out of the city. After that, it would be easier to go my own way. I made the decision. ‘I need to go home,’ I said. ‘To Acarius’ cabin. Which means I need horses, or to hop on someone’s wagon. Any ideas?’

  Lorican grimaced. ‘Saints. Fine. Let’s go steal some bloody horses.’

  *

  Stealing horses proved to be simpler than I’d feared. We left the tavern, accompanied by Jaern’s walking dead, and followed Lorican through the dark streets. The Erranter kept muttering through his teeth, a litany of rather exotic curses all centred on Acarius and me – I think mostly because of the marulaches, which shuffled along half-dressed, glowing a faint orange. They weren’t exactly inconspicuous, but it couldn’t be helped. We had to find a place to dump them.

  As it happened, Lorican led us to the stables used by the Guildhouse. Between a spell of mine and a suspiciously high-quality set of lockpicks that Lorican had brought, we managed to break in and remove four horses and their tack.

  Jaern, who had been nothing but bored until this point, opened all the stalls, positioned the two marulaches in one corner and cast a fire spell, which he used to light the hayloft. You couldn’t fault the necromancer’s efficiency.

  We rode away as the stable burned, panicked horses thundering through the streets behind us. The burned bodies of the senior wizards would be found inside the stable. The missing horses wouldn’t be recognised as stolen for days – perhaps forever.

  Logically that should have made me pleased, or at least relieved. It didn’t.

  Dawn silvered the sky around the edges of the black wall as we approached. The guards, busy inspecting a spice caravan that had just arrived, were too absorbed to do more than wave us out of the city. Lorican got us on the caravan road and then reined in his horse.

  ‘Well, brat. It’s your game now. Which way?’

  ‘Thanks for coming this far.’ I stuck on what I hoped was a reasonable facsimile of a grateful smile. Truth be told, I found the man more incomprehensible with every minute, and that annoyed me. Besides, the Guild had been nipping at my heels since I met him, and I wasn’t sure I wanted him to know where the cabin was. ‘I’ll tell Acarius hello for you.’

  Lorican’s eyebrows shot up. ‘You think I’m going somewhere?’

  ‘I could make suggestions, if you’re in doubt,’ Jaern said.

  I braced myself for the feeling, like mad bees welling behind my breastbone. Part of me believed it was Jaern’s soul, unhappily confined inside me. ‘Leave it,’ I said.

  This time Jaern smiled – his teeth glinted, even in the dim light – as we both felt the buzzing tug of his will fighting mine. Maybe possessing his soul made him obedient to me, but he certainly wasn’t happy about it.

  ‘At last comprehension dawns, then?’ Jaern said. ‘Enjoying it?’

  ‘Shut up,’ I said. He went silent. I turned back to Lorican. ‘Look, anyone would agree that you’ve done your duty by Acarius. You don’t have to come with me. Given the record of our acquaintance so far, it doesn’t even seem like it would be a good idea.’

  He glanced down the road. ‘Thought you might need a hand getting Acarius free, since you’ve been doing so well up until now.’

  I gave up on gratitude. ‘And I thought you’d probably like the chance to go hide somewhere, since you’ve been looking so hard for Acarius up until now.’

  ‘You’re going to talk to me that way? Like I haven’t taken risks for the old man? For you?’ Lorican’s face went ashy. Hurt.

  My head throbbed. Some of it might be from hunger and exhaustion, or the toxic remnants from the spells I’d thrown. But most of it was due to the images I couldn’t quite shut away, the pictures of the Guildies dying that flickered through my head over and over again. I had caused deaths. The line I had told myself I would never cross – I had practically leaped over it. There were too many people around me. They were too vulnerable. They made me too vulnerable.

  ‘I’m not asking for you to take risks for me,’ I said, holding on to the frayed threads of my patience. ‘All debts are settled.’

  ‘Debts?’ Lorican stared at me. ‘Of course the debts are settled, but this goes beyond that now.’

  ‘Why in the hells should it?’ My horse sidestepped under me, sensing my frustration. I was fighting the temptation to just kick the mare I rode and leave them all behind. I forced the words out. ‘I don’t understand why you want to help.’

  ‘Aye, you’re dense as a stack of wood,’ he snapped. ‘I don’t know how you feel about Acarius, but I actually care about the old man more than I do my own pride. He’s the closest thing I’ve got to family, and for six months I’ve been worried that he was dead. You say that we can save him, so you can either let me come with you, or you can leave and I can follow you. I’m not being left behind, no matter how big a fool you want to make of yourself.’

  Pride. My gut twisted on itself. Acarius was my family. What right did Lorican have to care? What right did he have to imply I didn’t? ‘You can’t—’ I began.

  ‘Gray.’ Brix, who looked terribly uncomfortable perched in her saddle, brought her horse near mine. ‘Slow down. Let’s just take half a minute and
discuss this. Lorican says he wants to help Acarius, and you need someone to help you watch the necromancer. I know about Jaern-temples. I can help you figure out how to use the Empty One.’ She paused. ‘And afterwards, you can divine for my sister’s location, the way the Guild wizards divined for you in Ri Dana. We can both save the people we need to save.’

  She was right, of course. I did need help watching Jaern, if for nothing else than to ensure he didn’t do some vicious incantation while I slept. And the only insight I would have into the Empty One idol would be what I got from the necromancer, who was about as trustworthy as a viper. At least if I had Brix helping me figure out how to use the doll, I’d have a way to check what he said and make certain that he wasn’t just manipulating me into some corner where he could extract his soul.

  ‘Are we making a new deal?’ I said, slowly.

  Her teeth closed for a second on her lower lip. ‘If that’s how you have to think of it, sure.’

  What in the hells was that supposed to mean? I was tired of being alone – gods, I was so tired – but that didn’t make me the kind of person that anyone stayed with. Lorican was insisting both that I take his help and that I didn’t deserve it. Jaern was still looming in the background, so angry about being silenced that I could feel it rolling off him like heat. And Brix was . . . trying to stay with me. Nothing made sense.

  ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Good. Perfect. Nobody gets to say that I didn’t warn them about the possibility of getting broiled or suffocated, all right?’ I glanced at Lorican, who was still scowling, and tried to address both him and Brix at once. ‘If we’re going to go, then we should stop talking and go.’

  It was the best I could do and it wasn’t good enough, but we went.

  Sixteen

  Four days east from Ri Dana, we started following the Nelta river up into the mountains and the wind stopped tasting like salt. Three days after that it grew thick with the cloying scent of beevine. That smell meant home, but it also meant trouble. I’d been dreading facing the valley again since I’d left it.