A tattooing table and artist chair had been set up in a small kitchen. The team sat around his breakfast table in a sunlit nook while Percival addressed them.
"There's tea in the pot and biscuits on the plate. Help yourself while you wait, but please don't touch anything unless absolutely necessary," said an exasperated Percival, who looked like having them in his personal space might cause him to explode—politely, of course.
Keelan put his hand up.
"Yes?" asked Percival.
With a perfectly serious face, Keelan pointed to the plate and said, "Those aren't biscuits. You eat biscuits with gravy. That's a cookie."
The whole team stifled their chuckles.
"Seriously though," said Keelan. "What's the imbuement this time? I had my bets on the ability to see through walls."
Percival took his glasses off and carefully polished them with a lace-edged towel that had been daintily hanging over the oven handle. When he was finished he placed the glasses back on his face and said, "The imbuement will provide you with the ability to move unseen."
"Whoa, invisibility?" asked Vin.
"Not exactly, and not without limitations." He sighed heavily. "This sort of thing is best delivered by the mistress, but since she is currently unavailable, I will have to do my best."
"Where is she?" asked Portia.
Percival suddenly looked like he wanted to crawl out of his skin. "It is not my place to speak of her duties." He cleared his throat. "The imbuement does not make one invisible, or allow you to walk through walls, rather it is a slight shift into another space, one inhabited more keenly by the more incorporeal of beings."
"Ghosts," said Portia.
"That is one common description, but that is not what these are. The proper term for this realm is the Veil. It's the place of change, that some interpret as death, but that's not entirely the right description. The imbuement allows you to step into the Veil, not completely, but enough to hinder others from seeing you. The mistress wanted me to warn you that using this imbuement for longer than a dozen heartbeats is unwise and that while you are there, you should not use magic."
"And why is that?" asked Zayn.
"She did not explain, and since I am not a member of your hall, I do not have personal experience to draw from, so I would take it as a hard limit," said Percival. "You may, of course, experiment within those limits. If there are no more questions, I'd like to get started. Who's first?"
A general excitement passed through them, shared with bright-eyed glances. Portia moved to the tattoo table first, leaving Zayn and the others to busy themselves while she received her imbuement. While the others, against Percival's wishes, wandered the lower level of his quaint English house, Zayn stayed at the table, his mind dancing through ideas on how they might use the imbuement first. As soon as they got back to Invictus, they were going to investigate the golden building.
Chapter Four
Seventh Ward, September 2015
No risk, no reward, but maybe death
"Are you really sure we should be doing this?" asked Skylar, perched on the back of the couch in their living room. She was wearing a white tank top and ratty jeans. "We've got class tomorrow morning with this Instructor Konig. Shouldn't we get some sleep? I doubt we're going to get any once the semester really starts."
The others watched as Zayn paced in front of the tiny fireplace. He'd been rehearsing the argument in his head for why they should investigate the building, but it didn't stand up to his own self-evaluation.
"I think we should...no." He paced back to the fireplace and rapped his knuckles against the mantel before turning back around. "We should go because it's there. Clearly Priyanka wants us to investigate it. Everything's been pointing in that direction since we arrived in Invictus."
"Shouldn't we wait?" suggested Vin, scrunching his shoulders. "We've only been back a week. We've got our imbuements, but nothing else."
"We've got each other, and we escaped the Bastille with the Word last year. Surely we can do a little reconnaissance on a building in our home city. I'm not saying we're going to do anything crazy, just a little reconnoitering," said Zayn.
Keelan made an exaggerated gagging cough sound. "You just wanted to use that big word, didn't you?"
"Says the straight-A student," said Zayn. "I've got to impress you somehow. Come on, let's go. Like you said, we've got class tomorrow. We might not get another chance."
They finally agreed to investigate the golden building. Everyone changed into more appropriate clothing, which in another time might have looked suspicious, but the prevalence of hoodies and workout gear made them look like they were out for a nighttime jog: an illusion which was helped by subtle Look-Away enchantments and a mask of shadow that hid their identities.
The golden spotlight emanating from the center of the building project made navigating the streets easy. They passed through an eighth-ward neighborhood and came up on the backside of the building.
It was near enough to the Glitterdome that Zayn could hear the crowds even without his sensing imbuement. Visible over the buildings, a massive illusion of a feathered Tyrannosaurus rex rampaged down Orpheum street, bringing faint screams of delight to his ears.
Wooden walls built to keep people out of the area surrounded the building, along with a chain-link fence. The protections were mundane, and quickly bypassed. A security guard had wandered through the area, but they easily avoided him.
A door in the wooden wall revealed the building beyond. Zayn felt a stab of familiarity, followed by bewildering strangeness. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught movement like the heat haze coming off a desert highway. It reminded him of the feeling he'd had when he first stepped into the city.
"What the hell is that?" whispered Vin, looking up at the monstrous building with suspicion.
"It looks grown," said Portia. "Not Stone Singer work at all. I'm not sure I like this."
Zayn had spent enough time studying his mother's architectural drawings to recognize the influences contained within the designs, but also that other portions were otherworldly.
"It looks like Parisian architecture, a bit of Notre Dame, a bit of the Grand Palais, but also something different," said Zayn in a hushed voice.
"What now?" asked Keelan.
"We still don't know who's making this or what it's for. Let's go deeper, see what we can find," said Zayn.
There were no doors in the nascent building—clearly they would be added later—so they strolled inside, finding large rooms with arched ceilings. Each one was empty. The deeper they went, the less defined the interior was, as if it were still being formed. In one vast room, the grand pillars holding up the roof looked like they were sagging.
"I think we should go," whispered Portia. "I feel like someone is watching us."
The feeling of unease made Zayn's shoulder blades itch, but he wasn't ready to leave until they knew the identity of the owners of the building. He motioned for them to follow, but Portia stayed back at the exit of the large room. The others seemed to share her discomfort, so Zayn gave their secret sign for "watch and listen" as he moved ahead alone.
Amping his senses, Zayn didn't hear anything besides the slow breathing of his teammates. He was about to give the sign for "continue" when he noticed that one of the pillars in the room had been finished. As it was strikingly familiar, Zayn moved closer, and about the time he reached it, the answer came to him. He'd seen one just like it last year on an errand with Priyanka.
"The Diamond Court," he whispered.
The identity of the owners blew a chill wind through his gut. While the maetrie were not an enemy, they were inherently dangerous, and the fact that one of the three factions was making a more substantial investment into the city of sorcery worried Zayn on a fundamental level. The maetrie, or city elves as people like to think of them, were individually more powerful than the combined abilities of his team. Academy lessons about the maetrie had boiled down to one simple idea: avoid conflict
.
"Get out, now!"
To his right, a piece of void spilled into the room, followed by two smoky pale maetrie in billowing white robes wielding hooked blades. Zayn threw a force blast as covering fire while sprinting towards his team, but two more maetrie appeared directly in his way, forcing him into veer to a side chamber.
He glimpsed Keelan throwing up multiple illusions of himself to cover his teammates' retreat. While Zayn wanted to get back to them, the maetrie on his tail left him so focused on his own survival that he could hardly spare them a thought. He raced through the hallways at a blinding speed, barely looking before he made each turn. Each time he thought he had outpaced them, they appeared in a new location, cutting him off.
Pausing at an intersection for only a blink, Zayn nearly lost his head as a maetrie appeared around the corner, smashing her blade into the wall, right where Zayn had just been standing. He faez-sprinted across the large room towards an opening he knew led to the outside. Right before he reached it, a shimmering golden fist appeared, slamming into his gut and throwing him into the far wall.
Almost as soon as he hit the ground, two more maetrie appeared in their flowing robes and hooked blades, joining the other two that were already in the room. Zayn kicked off a pillar, flinging himself out of the way of their blades and flipping onto his feet, but a second shimmering fist punched him into the wall.
With the wind knocked out of him, Zayn looked up to see that he was surrounded by four maetrie, who had every angle of escape cut off. The maetrie in the middle, a tall female, motioned to the others, and a shimmering field blocked him into the corner of the room. Then they approached slowly, as if they knew he had no chance to get away.
Chapter Five
Diamond Court Embassy, September 2015
Sometimes things come back
Trapped inside the golden building, surrounded by four maetrie guards, Zayn reviewed his options. There was no way he could overcome even one of them in a direct fight, so battling the four of them was out. He had no avenue for escape either, since he had stone walls behind him and an unknown shimmering field keeping him from sprinting past them, not that he thought he could avoid their hooked blades.
"Shall we kill him or capture him, Captia?" asked the maetrie on the far right with golden-flecked gray eyes. They like looked stray rays of light slipping through an overcast sky.
"Hold him, Precept," said Captia, the tall female maetrie in the front. She had a severe, angular look. "I want to know who is plotting against us. The seers have been useless thus far."
"They told us about this incursion at least," said Precept, sneering.
Zayn squeezed his hands into fists in frustration. Once again, he'd rushed into failure. His teammates had been right to express caution. He just hoped they'd gotten away.
Precept straightened, letting his hooked blade dip towards the floor. He held his hand out peacefully. "Come now. Let us not fight. It will only go badly for you. Show us who you are. Pull back your hood."
The last time he'd been exposed to the maetrie, Priyanka had given him an alchemical antidote to counter their ability to influence. Without it, Precept's voice was like a tendril in his mind, wrapping around his will. Zayn lifted his hands to pull back his hood. He felt like an observer in his own body.
As his fingers brushed the soft fabric, he fought against the command. He had almost resisted when Captia spoke.
"Listen to him. He wants to help you."
The moment her words entered his ears, he felt all resistance fade. His will was shoved to the back of his mind. He had to watch as his hands hooked around the edges of the hood and pulled it off his head.
"His face is hidden in shadow," said Precept angrily. "Let me take his head off and then we'll see who it is."
Internally, he breathed a sigh of relief that he had prepared an enchantment that the notoriously sharp-eyed maetrie couldn't see through, although that relief faded the moment Precept lifted his sword.
Zayn used the window of opportunity to act, doing the only thing he could think to do. He pushed faez into the stealth imbuement.
Instantly, his skin tingled, especially the sensitive parts like his lips and eyes. The world around him quivered as if he were seeing the vibration of the universe. The maetrie reacted, their heads turning this way and that.
"Stay your ground," said Captia. "It's a nice trick, whoever you are, but you can't get past the forbidding."
Zayn heard her clearly, though her voice sounded like it echoed through a tunnel. Besides not being seen, shifting to the Veil had eliminated the effect their voice and presence had on him. No longer did he want to throw himself at their feet.
He crept along the wall near the leftmost maetrie, but the shimmering wall kept him from progressing further. He knew a few counters that might break their forbidding, but the instructions had been not to use magic while in the Veil.
I'm also not supposed to stay here longer than a dozen seconds, thought Zayn, and he was already pushing against that time limit.
"He has to be in the area," said Captia. "Spread out. He can't keep up that invisibility for long."
The four maetrie started swinging their hooked blades in wide arcs around them. There wasn't much room in the small space, so Zayn had to keep moving to stay out of their way. The timer in his head told him he was well past the dozen seconds, but they'd given him no reprieve.
Eventually, Zayn decided he was going to have to risk using magic, and whatever consequences came of it, he'd deal with them later.
He slipped to the side, ducking under Precept's blade, finding a space near the forbidding. Zayn didn't have time for a proper dispelling, so he used a brute-force trick that required a massive load of faez. It was akin to breaking down a door with a sledgehammer rather than bothering to pick the locks.
When he broke the forbidding, Captia cried out, as the backlash from its fall rebounded on her. But her reaction was nothing compared to the strange noise he felt emanate from within the Veil. It was like a bright gong, a flash of light in a dark place, rolling out from his location through the Veil. The hairs on the back of his neck stood at attention. He felt his whole body tense up even before he heard the response.
As Zayn sprinted from the room, staying in the Veil so the maetrie couldn't find him, he felt a Presence suddenly become aware of him. He couldn't really define what the Presence looked like, but he knew that it did not like him, and coveted his aliveness.
Deciding that speed mattered more than anything else, Zayn flew from the golden building. When he reached the streets, the cool night air washed over him, but he kept going, heading not to their house in the seventh ward, but towards the Spire, staying in the Veil for another few blocks. He'd already been in the Veil a couple minutes, why not a little longer?
He ran so fast, he felt the bones in his knees grind together, and his ankles crackled from the force of his stride. Halfway through the second ward on a side street off the main entertainment area, he let his connection to the Veil drop. A young boy in a doorway exclaimed as Zayn appeared, running at top speed down the middle of the empty street.
Zayn reached the Spire, using his student access to enter the lower levels. He'd come to the Spire because it was warded against all sorts of magic, and would hopefully allow him to shed the maetrie, should they try to track him. But as he leaned against the wall in the hallway near the rooms for the Second Year Contest, heaving with breath after the feverish sprint, he felt that Presence in the distance that had become aware of him in the Veil. It was moving slower now, but Zayn felt the inexorable motion towards him like a spot of heat against his back.
"Dammit," he said, punching the wall. He ran his hands across his tight Afro.
"Okay, I screwed up," he said to himself. He patted his pockets for his cell phone, but remembered they'd left them at home. There were spells that could pick up their signals just like a cell phone tower.
Zayn tried to cast an anti-tracking spell, but his mind wa
s racing and he couldn't focus. He leaned his forehead against the wall, concentrating on his breathing until his mind was still again.
He was able to perform the spell the second time. He followed it up with every spell he knew that would keep the maetrie from following him back to their house in the seventh ward. Then he left the Spire, heading straight for the nearby Red Line.
Once he was sitting on the train, he remembered his mask of shadow and dismissed it. But no one had been paying attention to him. It was after midnight, and most people in the city found it safer not to get involved with each other's business, especially in the city of sorcery.
He took the train heading west, before switching to the Blue Line that routed back towards the seventh ward. The lights were on when he got back to the house. He could see his teammates through the window. Keelan was pacing in front of the fireplace, and the rest were sitting on the couches, waiting for him.
When he came through the door, there was a moment of tension before they realized who it was. Everyone crowded around him.
Keelan put his hand on the back of Zayn's neck. "Are you okay? You look like you saw a ghost."
Once they gave him some space, and a huge glass of ice water to chug, Zayn told them what had happened with the maetrie, including the thing in the Veil.
"Did anyone follow you?" Zayn asked them.
"We got away while they chased you down. We wanted to go back, but Keelan made us come back here, trusting that you would get away," said Skylar.
"It was the right call, even though it was a close one. I shouldn't have brought us there. That was my mistake," said Zayn.
"You couldn't have known it was the maetrie," said Portia. "And what does the Diamond Court want here?"
Zayn slumped against the back of the couch. "I don't know. At this point, I'm more worried about the Veil."
The Reluctant Assassin Boxset Page 52
