Lord of Secrets

by Breanna Teintze

  I scanned the scene in front of us and tried to think. What was I overlooking? If I could just make the knives in my joints leave, I could remember. If I could just get rid of the nausea for a minute.

  Ahead stood two structures. One was circular, like an overturned mixing bowl, the walls made of some kind of rough, hairy leather. The other was rectangular. No brazier, no slavers in sight.

  ‘It’s in the yurt.’ Another puff of purple light, dragging me towards the door of the circular structure.

  ‘Is it guarded?’ I said.

  I could hear the shrug in his voice, the malicious enjoyment. ‘You didn’t have me divine for that.’

  The door was an arm’s length from me. I worked to steady my breathing against the magic fire chewing at the base of my lungs, against the poison crawling in my belly. Where the tent flap met the ground, a thin line of yellow lamplight showed.

  ‘You can still choose to do as I say,’ Jaern murmured, in my ear, so close his breath hissed against my neck. It wasn’t warm. The air left the dead god’s lips impregnated with frost. ‘Let me go. Don’t be stupid, Cricket.’

  My gorge rose. ‘Don’t touch me.’

  Two hands planted themselves on my shoulder blades. Before I realised what he was doing, he had shoved me into the yurt.

  A single oil lamp hung from the high ceiling of the yurt by a braided leather cord, throwing a guttering illumination over the interior. A clumsy wall of canvas stretched the diameter of the circular room, which held stacks of wooden boxes, bedrolls, bags of what looked like grain and, shackled to a spike and chain sunk deep into the earth – Brix.

  When I burst through the door, tent flap billowing behind me, she jerked to sit upright. She had been lying on a ragged blanket, curled almost like a baby. The whites of her eyes showed in the dim light, her breath harsh and ragged. She didn’t see me.

  She had been weeping, I realised. She was still weeping.

  I saw the moment when she found my shadow, quavering across the floor. She froze, and said nothing.

  I halted, puzzled, suddenly certain I should remain silent.

  She stared almost at me, drawing her legs up under her, the chain dragging along the floor. The sound rattled through my head, sunbursts firing across my vision. The spell’s poison welled inside me, strong enough to taste, blinding. Was she mouthing something at me?

  She got to her feet, hands outstretched, her lips still moving. My eyes still refused to focus. She hobbled towards me, shackles clanking as she moved.

  Her fingertips brushed against my arm. I caught her hand in mine, and finally was close enough to see what she was mouthing.

  It’s a trap, she said.

  Run.

  ‘He’s here,’ said a female voice, behind the curtain.

  ‘Run!’ Brix shouted, pushing me away.

  But the voice had already begun to chant the first syllables of a ley-breaker, fast. The invisibility spell crumbled, and the tent flap fluttered again.

  ‘Jaern,’ I said. ‘Jaern, help!’

  ‘Calling your pretty god-named slave?’ Gedion stepped into the room as the scuffle of boots began behind me. He was smiling, a burlap sack in one hand. ‘Who do you think told us to expect you, you dumb bastard?’

  I had time to half-turn and see the slavers burst from behind the curtain before the first one grabbed me. I think I kicked one before the sack came down over my head. A cloying, nauseous fume poured into my nostrils, and from somewhere, far away, Brix screamed.

  Twenty

  Water.

  I’m drowning.

  I gasped, straining for air around something crammed between my teeth, but I couldn’t move my arms. Something held me, sitting upright.

  ‘Again,’ a man said. ‘Get him all the way up.’

  A bucket of cold water emptied on my head. This time I got my eyes open. Light stabbed at me, throbbed at the base of my skull. After a minute the man who had spoken came into focus.

  Makesh. Leaning against the centre pole of . . . the yurt; I was still in the yurt. He held a thin shan cigar delicately between thumb and forefinger, watching me with the dispassionate interest of a cattle buyer.

  ‘With us?’ he enquired. ‘Blackwit powder dissipating?’

  Goat-sucker, is what I said. ‘Gmnufuf’ is what came out.

  Makesh took a pull on the cigar and blew smoke out his nostrils. ‘We’ll have to ungag you eventually, but I’ve found with wizards – even cheap pretenders – it’s better to establish a few things first. Impossible to be certain about where you might have spells scribed. I had one sent to kill me once with runes scratched on the inside of his lip.’

  My skin crawled. I tried to turn my head and discovered I was sitting cross-legged on the ground with my hands tied behind me. Judging by the pressure against my spine, I was tied to another tent pole. I could twist around enough to see we were in the area of the tent that had been curtained off before.

  Brix was there, still in shackles, staring silently at me. Dammit. No Lorican, though, which was a small point in my favour. Maybe he’d slipped away, having caught wind of what was going on when Jaern packed him off to the stables – if Jaern had packed him off to the stables. I realised, abruptly, that I had no proof that Jaern hadn’t simply killed him.

  ‘I have a wizard.’ Makesh flicked a bit of ash off his embroidered sleeve. ‘She’s nothing too fancy, you understand, but she’s useful for sending messages to the Guildlord and for other mundane work. As you might imagine, it takes a few hours to communicate with a scrying stone. We’re waiting for the Guildlord’s reply, and, she tells me, for the ley-breaker she used to dissipate.’

  Scrying stone – concentrated magic, and as poisonous as sucking a piece of sulphur. Another short road to a reeling brain and a rotted body. How in the hells did he convince a Guild wizard to risk herself like that for the sake of messages? What was wrong with pigeons?

  ‘But your pretty slave was in contact with my wizard for several hours before you reached my camp.’ Makesh clucked his tongue softly. ‘You should have been more careful. He told us all about you – how to take you, which dodges you’d use to get into the camp. Even agreed to lure you here. So although I couldn’t get the confirmation I wanted out of my own people, I think we can conclude without much doubt that you are not a Guild officer.’ He drew on his cigar again, thoughtful. ‘You know, if you were going to spend the money on a magic-trained slave, you really should have kept him in hand better. Not that I don’t understand the temptation to be indulgent with that one.’ He smiled, faintly. ‘You god-named him, no less. “Jaern”, indeed. What did you expect, spoiling him like that?’ He paused, as if I could respond with the gag in my mouth, then went on. ‘First question.’ Makesh gestured to someone behind me. ‘Just nod yes or no. Any spells scribed anywhere I can’t see?’

  Boots scuffed against the earth and two meaty hands grabbed me by the shirt and pulled me to my feet. Ah, Gedion was still here. I shook my head, not eager to have him searching around the inside of my mouth. A thick feeling rolled around in my skull as I did so, as though my wits were sloshing like noodles in a pot. They had given me blackwit powder, Makesh had said. A sedative in small doses, as I recalled. Poisonous if you took more than a couple of pinches. I wondered how it interacted with whatever had been in the wine.

  ‘What’s his real name?’

  His. I blinked. He wasn’t asking me the question. He was asking Brix.

  ‘Grayson,’ Brix said.

  Pain exploded from one side of my head, a starburst of knives. When I could see I identified its source: Gedion had cuffed me across the ear. He came around to one side, so I could see him. ‘Sure about that?’

  ‘That’s the name he gave me.’ Her voice was carefully calm. ‘If you damage him too much, you’ll ruin his selling price. Wizards have to be able to see to make anything in the markets.’

  ‘I don’t care about his selling price,’ Makesh snapped. ‘His name. Don’t make it complicated. I hate spe
nding long nights and I’d rather know the basics before Numyra arrives to crack him.’

  Another ball of pain burst over me, this time from the other side of my head. Both ears now rang. Gedion grinned at me, like a man enjoying a good bottle of wine.

  ‘Stop doing that!’ Brix got to her feet. ‘You’ll make him deaf!’

  I didn’t care so much about being deaf as about what Makesh had said. Pain was just pain, but the two words crack him sent something just shy of blind panic gushing through my body. They were going to try to break into my mind and steal my memories. They were going to take away every part of me that made me myself.

  ‘Start answering.’ Makesh met Brix’s eyes. ‘There must be talk, even among you written-on barbarians, rumours about what I do to people who cross me. You worked for Esras and you stole something. I don’t think I was paid what I should have been for the use of you. Esras said you were stealing an alchemical tool, something the Guild forbade. I don’t care about the king or the Charter or the rebellion or any of that tripe, but I care when my business partners don’t pay me what my product is worth. It damages my reputation, you understand? I cannot permit myself to be cheated.’ His gaze flickered my way, and then back to Brix. ‘So I advise you, kitten, to think well about what you say next. I didn’t pay anything for the wizard. I’m not losing any money on him, even if I ruin his hearing. Or break his mind, for that matter.’

  ‘Don’t,’ Brix said, her voice not quite steady. ‘His name is Corcoran Gray. Just . . . don’t.’

  ‘I’m glad we’ve come to an understanding,’ Makesh murmured. ‘Why is he trying to steal this doll?’

  ‘Money; he knew what the Guildlord had paid you—’

  Makesh moved like a snake, his manicured hand closing on my throat. ‘I will cut off his nose,’ he said, his voice still silky. ‘And I will notch his ears like a pig and it won’t cost me two pence. Esras is buying more Tirnaal than my house has ever sold to a single buyer and now we have a third party interested. The Examiner General is trying to start a magic war. I know it isn’t the money; I’m not stupid.’ His fingers tightened into my flesh. ‘Now, before Gedion gets his knife out, what. was. he. stealing?’

  ‘The doll.’ There was no scenario in which this ended well. Brix clearly knew this, but couldn’t think of anything else to do besides tell the truth. ‘The necromancer’s doll. To you it would’ve looked like a gold figurine and a collection of engraved gems, if you’d bothered to open the bag I put it in.’

  The slaver’s eyebrows twitched together.

  He doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

  ‘Necromancer,’ Makesh said. ‘Such men don’t exist.’

  ‘Fine, they don’t exist.’ She stood utterly still. Slowly I realised that, underneath the terror, something else was growing: Brix was angry. The tremble in her voice was fury. ‘But that’s what Gray wanted, and it isn’t here, because I gave it to the Guildlord. You saw me hand it to him, for the gods’ sake.’

  No. My heart twisted in my chest. The doll was gone? How had my divining been so wrong? No. No.

  Makesh studied her, a flicker of amusement playing around the corner of his mouth. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘So it’s just an alchemical curiosity, like Esras said? What does it do?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Brix spoke through her teeth. ‘I’m telling you the truth.’

  Cold air puffed into the room then, as the tent flap opened and a woman in filthy, unadorned robes strode in. She could have been any age between twenty and forty, mousy brown hair cropped short against her head and a set of rune-carved bone bracelets on either scrawny forearm. There was not, I noticed, a Guild sigil anywhere in evidence, but this must have been Numyra the wizard.

  ‘The Guild says they didn’t send him.’ She halted awkwardly in front of me and met my gaze. Her eyes were odd, milky white with cataracts. ‘Any luck?’

  She couldn’t have been less than half blind, a consequence of using unshielded magic that one normally only sees with certain priestesses using Temples incantations. It would have taken years of bad spells banging away at her vision to wreck it so thoroughly.

  ‘I wouldn’t still be here if I had had any luck,’ snapped Makesh. ‘Get to it.’

  Numyra dug around in a voluminous, tatty pocket and pulled out a vial of paint and a spiky brush. She scribed a rune on my chin before pulling my gag down to hang, dank, around my throat.

  ‘Don’t do this.’ I couldn’t force out more than a whisper, felt the magical lock wrap itself around my tongue, twisting my speech, turning it mushy. ‘Please. You don’t have to do this.’ Breath came hard, like drowning in a lake of ice, and I could hardly keep my eyes open.

  ‘Hold him, now,’ Numyra said. She studied my forehead with intense concentration. As I focused on her, she daubed me with a paintbrush. Freezing pain stamped itself against my skin.

  ‘You won’t be able to see to scribe at all, soon,’ I said. ‘How will the slavelord treat you then?’

  Her gaze flickered away from her work for a split second, then back. ‘Hold him,’ she repeated. ‘Not long now.’

  Gedion’s hands under my chin and on the back of my skull tightened. Even if I had been in a mood to joggle my headache by twisting my neck, it would have been impossible.

  ‘Just ask me questions,’ I croaked. ‘Please.’

  The corners of her mouth twitched down with concentration. ‘Master Makesh wants to know that the answers we get are the truth.’

  ‘Master Makesh wants to go to bed,’ Makesh said, from behind her. ‘Not stand around all night waiting for his lazy employees to do simple tasks. Come on, Numyra. He can’t be all that special, why is this taking so long?’

  ‘It’s different than cracking a farmer,’ she muttered. ‘He’ll have protections, likely. I had to set it so the fellow couldn’t cast, couldn’t use me own sigils while I’m—’

  ‘I can help you with your eyes.’ The words slurred on my tongue, soft, drunken. ‘If you crack me, you’ll have a drooling, mindblown lump on your hands and you’ll go blind.’

  She finished with a row of tiny runes down the bridge of my nose. ‘Sorry, fellow. I’ve got me own work to do, haven’t I?’ The wizard glanced over her shoulder. ‘Ready?’

  ‘Gods, yes!’ snapped Makesh. ‘Long past! Open him up, already!’

  ‘Stop,’ I said. ‘Wait.’

  The wizard ignored me, pressed her thumbs beneath my eye sockets and pronounced the runes. The sigils came to life against my flesh, the weight of my ice-crown growing, crushing my head downwards. For a moment the sensation of being cracked open – stripped – exposed – was so overwhelming I couldn’t even scream. Numyra’s consciousness invaded mine like grubby fingers, poking through my wits, rifling all the private corners of me, grabbing, tearing, hurting, hurting—

  *

  I had always thought the mind was more or less like a library or a storehouse – shelves of memories, orderly stacks of experiences and beliefs. As it turned out, my mind looked like a big, dusty, wood-panelled corridor, with heaps of information drifted against the walls like scraps of parchment and doors opening on either side. My mind was incredibly untidy, in other words, a pack rat’s nest of ideas.

  CRACK.

  I turned. Or my soul did. Or whatever part of me could stand, separated from my own memories, and play this damn magical game.

  Behind me an ornately carved ebony door rattled on its hinges as someone twisted the handle, over and over, battering at it.

  ‘Lock it.’

  I startled, but of course Acarius was standing there, in my head. Or his memory was. Gods, I hated this.

  ‘How?’ I put both hands on the knob and tried to keep it from turning. ‘I don’t know how to lock up my mind.’

  The Acarius-ghost adjusted its spectacles and folded its arms. ‘Nonsense. Of course you do. You’re not locking your mind, just specific memories. What do you do when you don’t want a specific memory to bother you?’

  I recited the
ingredients and measurements for making alchemical paint, and rules for laying out runes on a grid or a spiral, and geometric theorems. I made myself do arithmetic problems, made myself remember obscure lore from dull-as-dust Temples texts. As I remembered and shoved all that information forwards, the parchment around me swirled and battened on the ebony door, a wall of minutiae the wizard would have to fight her way through.

  ‘That won’t keep her out forever, of course,’ the Acarius-ghost said. ‘But she’ll have to look for a moment at all those memories to see if they’re the one she wants.’

  I’d have to go further in. I ran down the corridor, passing archways on either side that spewed forth clouds of useless information. They were the kinds of thoughts on the chattering top of my mind, stultifying idiocy about whether I was hungry and where I itched. There was another big ebony door in the corridor. The Acarius-ghost and I went through it and I slammed it shut and locked it – this time with all the annoying ditties that have ever snagged in my brain playing over and over into my mental ear.

  ‘Passable, lad.’ The Acarius-ghost was as stingy with praise as the real Acarius. ‘But again, she won’t stop there. She’s looking for the reason you want the doll, and she won’t find it in your memories about your dinners.’

  ‘I can’t let them find the doll.’ More parchment. More meaningless memories. What else did I have that would slow her down? What about the rules for scrying? That came to hand as a thick book – bound nicely in blue, I’ll note. My mind is apparently daintier in its aesthetics than I would have guessed.

  ‘How to use the doll?’ And now it wasn’t the Acarius-ghost anymore, it was Brix’s memory, crouching beside me, glowing like fire. ‘That’s all that you need to hide? Are you sure?’

  THUD.

  The door cracked, even bulwarked by all the trivia I could think of. Numyra was going to make it through.

  ‘You’ve used up all the small memories, the ones that didn’t mean anything,’ the Brix-ghost whispered. ‘You’ll have to use bigger ones.’