“What do you want?” I said with a sigh.
His lips parted in a toothy smile. Seeing Squint’s teeth was not one of my favourite pastimes. Even if I hadn’t tasted Dumonoc’s wine, Squint’s brown stumps in place of teeth would have been enough to put me off.
“Information,” he said. “Of course.”
I checked the doorway again.
“Fine. But if I tell you, I need you to make yourself scarce for an hour or two.”
His smile widened. “Is that another favour?”
“No. It’s because I know that whatever you’re going to ask me for is worth more than the information you gave me or you wouldn’t be asking.”
Squint shrugged. “Fair enough. I’ve got people to see, anyway.” He leaned closer. “There’s been some weird shit going on with the Countess’s acolytes. They’ve been poking around, holding secret meetings. The Wren thinks your mother is going to make a move against his interests. He wants to know what that move is.”
I gritted my teeth. My damned mother.
“How would I know? I don’t have anything to do with her, anymore. She certainly doesn’t tell me her plans. You know that.”
Squint chuckled. “She summoned you there this morning.” Summoned. That was an interesting way of putting it. Sent her thugs around to kick me senseless and drag me back was more like it. “And your sister visited only an hour ago.”
How the Depths did he know that already?
“They still didn’t confide in me.”
“But you can find out. You’ve got an in. Pretend you’re missing the family. Pretend you want a job — everyone knows you’re desperate. I don’t care. But find out.”
Find out. Yeah. Just like that. From my Cepra-damned Mother. Pity!
I was tempted — really tempted — to face the Wren rather than that. But I was a Warrens boy at heart. I knew what happened to people who defied the Wren.
“All right. I’ll find out. But it won’t be today. They’re not going to trust me immediately.” Or ever.
Squint stood. “Make it fast. The Wren won’t wait long.” He poured wine into his cup and downed it. I watched in horrified fascination.
“Cheers for this, by the way,” he said, before sauntering off out of the bar. I gazed at the bottle morosely, wondering how Dumonoc was going to react when he found out I couldn’t pay.
I couldn’t face my mother again so soon. I was too raw. But what else could I do?
Get on a ship. Leave this damned city behind. Forget everything. Except I would never leave Benny in trouble. I was going to have to go through with this.
It was only a few minutes before Captain Gale appeared in the doorway, peering into the gloom. I raised a hand to signal her.
She wasn’t wearing Ash on her skin, but I could still feel its influence. She had brought it in a pouch, as I had planned. That hadn’t been a given. The Ash Guard didn’t carry Ash unless they were expecting trouble. Part of me had hoped she wouldn’t bring any. That way, I wouldn’t have had to go through with this. If she caught me trying to steal the Ash, she would kill me right here.
I tried to take my mind off it. I needed not to look nervous. I watched her cross the bar. Her uniform wasn’t tight. That would be impractical in a fight. But it hinted at enough as she walked to make my lips feel dry.
Take your mind of it, I reminded myself. Don’t get completely distracted!
She stopped by my table. “You done?”
I coughed and looked quickly away. Damn it.
She lowered herself into the chair opposite. “I see you’ve screwed up my shirt.”
I shrugged. “Hazards of the trade.”
“Not for any other mage.”
That was a fair point. I couldn’t imagine the Countess’s attack dog going around in a torn, bloodied shirt.
Captain Gale cleared her throat, and I jumped.
“You all right there?”
“Yeah. Yeah. Just thinking.” My mind was all over the place. I gave her a smile.
“I’m guessing this is the bit where you explain to me why you’re involved in a second, identical murder and why I shouldn’t arrest you right now.”
Second. At least that meant she didn’t know about Uwin Bone. That really would stretch my credibility.
“Only an idiot says they don’t believe in coincidences,” she continued, “but some coincidences stretch my belief. Two almost identical murders, and the only thing they have in common is you.”
I had noticed that. In her place, I would have my eyes on me, too.
“Just unlucky, I guess.”
“No one’s that unlucky.”
“And yet I keep my sunny disposition.”
She looked at the wine on the table, then pushed it aside with an expression of distaste. Good move. She leaned closer. She smelled of olives and honeysuckle. I had to resist the urge to suck in a whole lungful. She probably thought I was weird enough already.
“What I want,” she said, “is for you to tell me what happened at the Sunstone place. I’ve heard all sorts of confused accounts of ghosts and wild beasts: a bear, a tiger, a wolf. One of the maids said it was a dog.” She shook her head. “People are unreliable witnesses at the best of times, but when they’re traumatised…”
“It wasn’t a dog,” I said, “but there were ghosts.” I had wanted to know more before I brought this to her, but I couldn’t dodge it any longer. “Galena Sunstone called me in to get rid of them. I didn’t think they were real at first, but they were.” Which was where half of my problems had started. The other half was still sitting in a City Watch cell waiting to be rescued. I told Captain Gale what I knew about the ghosts. “They weren’t malign. My guess is that they were murder victims, and that’s why they were still hanging around. They needed to be got rid of, but they weren’t threatening. They were just scared.” At least I hadn’t thought so. I shrugged. “The Estimable Sunstone wasn’t happy with the way I was dealing with them, so he called someone else in. A priest of Gwillan-Whose-Light-Falls-on-the-Few-Not-the-Many.”
“Even fewer now.”
I blinked at her across the table. She gave me a tight smile. I had always liked a cynical sense of humour, and I didn’t need any more reasons to fancy her at the moment.
“You realise you’ve just given me your motive right there?” she said. “You were fired. You were angry. You took out the competition. The only reason you’re not in a cell is because the only thing that everyone agrees on is that you were the one who stopped whatever it was.”
Had I? I had thrown every ounce of magic I had at it and it had cut through my shield like it hadn’t been there. The arevena flowers, charcoal, and the silver had slowed it, but I wasn’t sure I had done anything to defeat it. It had just … gone.
“The thing is,” Captain Gale went on, “they can’t agree on what exactly it was you stopped. Some animal? Magic?”
“It was ghosts,” I said. “Ghost. One of them. Both. I don’t know. They changed. Somehow.” It sounded inadequate.
She tipped her head back. “You want me to arrest some ghosts?”
I realised how daft it sounded, but it was what I had seen.
“Well, no…”
“Do you think someone is controlling them?”
That was a good question. You could trap a ghost, hold it in one place like the priest of Gwillan had. Maybe with enough power you could force a ghost to act in a certain way. But no mage could twist a ghost into that thing. It had been too solid and too powerful, and I would have noticed a mage funnelling magic to it. The only other power in that room had come from Gwillan, but that had been weak and the priest had been torn to pieces. Gwillan’s wasn’t a suicidal religion.
“And someone what?” Captain Gale continued. “Scooped the ghost up from Silkstar Palace and brought it over to the Sunstone house so they could … kill a random priest?”
I shook my head. “No. The ghosts were already at the Sunstones’ place. They employed me to get rid of them
five days ago.”
I wasn’t making myself sound good here. It was, in theory, possible to move a ghost if that ghost was attached to a particular, easy-to-move anchor, a piece of jewellery for example, but it was rare. After a while, ghosts became attached to their location, too, and they would remain there even if the anchor were moved. It wasn’t exactly safe, either. If a ghost had such a thing as an essence, it was concentrated in its anchor. I tried not to handle them, even if the ghost was passive and unthreatening. And it still wouldn’t explain everything else: the sudden transformation, the deaths of Imela Rush and Uwin Bone in the daytime.
“So, a day trip, then?”
I sighed. “No.”
“You don’t make it easy for me to think you innocent.”
I flashed a smile. “But at least you’re trying.”
She didn’t react.
I leaned my elbows on the table. “Look. I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know how to explain it. It’s linked to the ghosts, but it’s not like any ghosts I’ve ever heard of. But I’m trying to find out. This is something new. If you lock me up, there won’t be anything I can do to help.”
She scratched her scar. “I think there’s a chance you’re telling the truth, but I’m pretty much the only one.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me. The rest think you’re more powerful than you’re letting on — you’ve got the heritage, after all — but I think you’re just a bit of a damp squib. The runt of the litter.”
“You say the nicest things.” I said it to disguise the hurt, but it did hurt. I hadn’t realised it still could.
“My point is, I can’t help you for long. Anything else happens without a proper explanation, and I’ll have used up my credit. My superiors aren’t going to stand by and let more magical murders happen.”
That credit wasn’t going to last as long as she imagined. The moment I took her Ash and they found out, they would come after me. I was surprised to realise that that wasn’t the thing that upset me. It was what she would think of me afterwards.
You don’t have a choice. Benny’s time was running out. Shit. I couldn’t believe I was doing this. She’s too good for you anyway. It would never go anywhere. She thinks you’re a runt.
“So why did you want to meet me?” Captain Gale said. “It wasn’t so I could tell you how much shit you’re in.”
Oh, I thought about saying, just so I could steal your Ash and have you hunt me down like a rabid mongoose.
“I talked to my mother.” Even saying the words made my chest tighten and the edges of my vision blur. It was either that or the vapours from Dumonoc’s wine.
Captain Gale raised an eyebrow.
“I didn’t say I enjoyed it. She told me that whatever power had done this, it was something new in Agatos. She said it wasn’t anything to do with her.”
Captain Gale studied my face for an uncomfortably long time. I tried not to fidget. She had a way of making me feel guilty, even when I wasn’t.
“And you believed her?”
Now that was the question. I couldn’t forgive my mother for what she had done to me, nor for how she had tossed me aside when she had finally concluded that I could never succeed her. But I also couldn’t deny that she was brutally focussed.
“Maybe. I don’t know. She would lie to me if it served her purpose.” I shrugged. “I don’t see her motivation here. Why would she involve me when she knows Silkstar and the Wren would link me back to her? Why would she want to kill Silkstar’s Master Servant and that priest?” And Uwin Bone, I thought, but I wasn’t bringing that up.
“Or,” Captain Gale said, “she could be relying on them following the same line of logic.”
“Yeah,” I admitted. It had occurred to me, too. The Countess would use me and she wouldn’t care that it put me in danger. “It certainly wouldn’t be out of character.”
“Fine.” Captain Gale straightened in her chair, working out a kink in her back with a grimace. I tried not to look at her chest while she did it. “Is that all?”
I nodded.
“I’ll look into it,” she said. “If there’s a new power in Agatos, the Ash Guard need to know about it.”
She stood, pushing away from the battered table and making the bottle of toxic wine wobble. I steadied it quickly. That wine could eat away my skin if it spilled on me.
“You’re running out of time,” Captain Gale reminded me. “I don’t want to lock you up, but I’m not going to have much choice soon.”
I nodded, and watched her walk away across the bar. I didn’t want to do this, but I couldn’t leave Benny to die. Fuuuck! Do it, I told myself. Now. I waited until she was at the steps leading to the door, then I called, “Captain Gale?”
She stopped, turning, her face partially hidden by the shadows.
“I’ll find out what’s going on for you,” I said. “I promise.” I meant it. I wanted to solve this as much as she did.
She paused for a moment. Then she said, “It’s Meroi, not Captain Gale. At least when I’m not wearing the Ash.”
Why did she have to say that? It only made me feel worse.
She pushed open the door and headed out. I dropped my head onto the table. I only looked up when I heard Sereh clear her throat.
“Did you get it?” I asked.
She nodded, opening her hand to show me the pouch of Ash. “When she turned, by the doorway.”
“Good,” I tried to say, but it came out more as a croak.
We had stolen Ash. No one stole Ash. We were dead. Both of us. I fought the urge to call after Captain Gale, tell her she had dropped it, back out while I still could.
The image of Benny impaled on an executioner’s spear flashed across my mind.
You don’t have a choice, I told myself, followed by, They are going to kill you. Right now, you are dead. The Ash Guard wouldn’t forgive this.
With an effort of will, I pushed the thought from my mind. There was no time to waste. Captain Gale — Meroi — could realise her Ash was missing at any moment.
I was almost sure Sereh didn’t see my legs wobble as I stood.
We were nearly at the door when Dumonoc shouted at me.
“Oi!”
I stumbled. Dumonoc had realised what we’d done, I thought. He would grab us, turn us over to the Ash Guard. I couldn’t even use my magic to save us.
“You paying for that?” He pointed at the mostly-full bottle of wine.
My legs weakened again.
“Squint’s got it.” I said. “He’ll be back to finish it later. Don’t throw it away.”
Then I hurried out before Dumonoc could brain me with the nail-studded club he kept under his bar.
I had expected to feel nervous, worried, scared even, after stealing the Ash. And I did. There was a twist of fear curling through every part of my body, making my movements stilted and fragmented. What I hadn’t expected to feel was sad, as though something I hadn’t realised was there had been scooped out of me.
I had liked Captain Gale — not just fancied her, although I did, but liked her. The Ash Guard were the boogeymen you told little mages about in the cradle. If you don’t do what Daddy Mage tells you, the Ash Guard will come, hands and faces smeared with the Ash of a dead god, grim, unforgiving, remorseless. I hadn’t expected a sense of humour and some maybe-imagined flirting. It sounded stupid to say it, but I hadn’t expected a person.
There is no other way. This is it.
There was always a price to pay.
When Captain Gale realised her Ash was gone, she would retrace her steps. She would go back to the bar, search under the table, interrogate Dumonoc. Then she would come for me. My time was running out with every breath.
I had gone over this plan a dozen times in my head, and I didn’t like it any more than I had the first time. One minute, Mica had said. One minute to get to Benny’s cell, spring him, and get us both out of there. If I was too slow, we would find ourselves face-to-face with a hundred heav
ily-armed watchmen and -women.
I had left the quartz egg imbued with the spell in my workroom. Captain Gale’s Ash would wipe it as clean as a thunderstorm. I hadn’t gone to all this effort to sabotage myself before I began. I would sabotage myself later, thank you very much.
“There’s an alley off Bad Luck Way,” I told Sereh as we approached Feldspar Plaza and my apartment. “Near the knife sharpener’s shop. You know it?”
She nodded.
“Wait for us there with the Ash. I’ll bring your dad to you there as soon as I’ve got him out.”
Sereh looked mutinous. “You’re not doing it without me.”
I hadn’t mentioned this part of the plan, because I had known how she would react. It was nice to be right about something.
“You can’t come. There’s not enough magic to hide all three of us.”
“I can hide myself.”
That was true. Sereh was like a human version of the spell Mica and I had prepared. I wasn’t done, though.
“Someone has to look after the Ash. I’m not leaving it where anyone can find it.” The downside of Ash was that any mage would know it was near when their magic failed. You could feel its presence the same way you could feel an oven from across the room. I didn’t want to get Benny out only to find the Ash stolen. “And we can’t bring it with us because that will kill the magic we need to get your dad out unseen.”
Her face tightened. “Then I’ll go. You stay with the Ash.”
She didn’t trust me. That was hardly news. It wasn’t that she thought I would try to back out. She just didn’t think I was up to the job.
Or was that it? A slight tremor on her cheek made me wonder. But then it was gone, and she was gazing impassively at me.
“You can’t control the spell,” I said, gently.
My answer wasn’t strictly true. I could have set the spell up so that Sereh could have triggered it, but that would have been harder, and if everything turned to shit, my magic would be a better option than her knife. I didn’t want dead watchmen on my conscience.
Her tongue darted across her lips, then her expression spasmed. It took all my willpower not to step back.
Shadow of a Dead God: A Mennik Thorn Novel Page 18
