The Wound of the World

by Edward W. Robertson

  Abruptly, he realized that he hadn't had someone like Hopp to talk to in a long time. Cally (and, briefly, Larrimore) had served that role in Dante's earlier years, and Olivander sort of had for a few years after that, when Dante had been easing into his role of leader of the Council.

  But he was Olivander's superior, and over time, any type of mentorship had ceased. Anyway, Olivander wasn't exactly sage material—competent, yes, and as dependable as a sunrise, but he lacked the mischief of a truly effective sage.

  Dante missed having such a figure in his life. He would probably never have one again: getting too old, and definitely too high up the hierarchy. If anything, people would look to him to be the mentor, the sage.

  Now there was a scary thought.

  He gave himself permission to quit worrying for one night. Instead, he ate, drank, and bullshat with the norren. In the morning, mounting his horse to leave took far more willpower than he expected. A handful of norren had gathered to see him and Blays off, but most were busy with the slow rhythm of their lives, little currents within the tide.

  ~

  Narashtovik grew ahead, a great sprawl of buildings on the low hills before the bay, its outskirts hazed with wood smoke, its center defined by the spear of the cathedral and the upthrust fist of the Citadel. He had been to many places, and would admit that some of them were more beautiful. Even so, the city was his, and the sight of it made him sit taller in the saddle, shoulders pulled back with pride.

  He didn't announce their arrival, but the word of their return beat them to the Citadel. The gates creaked, opening before them; among the battlements, soldiers in black and silver saluted. Dante and Blays clopped into the courtyard. A legion of grooms assembled to tend to their horses.

  Gant resolved from the scramble of activity. The majordomo was approaching old age, but remained as hard and thin as a nail. He was normally cheerful, and lightly, almost formally mocking of them, but that day, there was no humor in his eyes.

  He gave them a deep nod. "Sir Galand. Sir Buckler. The air always seems clearer when the lords have returned to their home."

  "You sure you're happy to see us?" Blays said. "You look like Gashen got a little too drunk and mistook your house for his chamber pot."

  "Olivander wishes to speak to you. He is currently within the Council chambers. He will explain."

  Dante and Blays exchanged a look. They hustled upstairs to the chambers near the top of the keep. There, Olivander stood alone next to the round, sprawling table. Olivander was a lifelong military man, and Dante expected his stiff posture was so thoroughly ingrained in him that they'd be able to use his corpse as a cloak rack. Yet on that day he looked shorter, somehow smaller.

  "It's Cee," he said without preamble. "She's been looking into the theft of the book—and last night, she was attacked."

  12

  She lay in bed, wan and deflated, like a butterfly that's just left its cocoon. As far as Dante could tell, she was fine. They'd healed her whole, her throat didn't show a scratch or a scar—but she'd been in a deep sleep since the attack. There was no telling when—or if—she'd wake up.

  Dante sent the nether within her, questing for damage the others hadn't noticed, but found nothing substantial. He withdrew from Cee's chambers and summoned the one who'd been with her during the attempted murder, an acolyte named Sorrowen.

  Dante didn't know Sorrowen personally, but Olivander had already briefed him. Growing up in Farning, a village in the Mallish earldom of Wicks, Sorrowen had shown a knack for the ether when he was just six years old. He'd quickly been inducted into the priesthood at Wicks, with expectations he'd be sent to Bressel's Primacy School by the time he was ten. For years, he remained in Wicks, making little progress with the ether, his promising start stalling to a standstill.

  As it turned out, this was because he just wasn't very good at it. His true talent lay in the nether. Initially, he'd refused to practice it at all—smart, considering that in Mallon, the practice was punishable by death—but over the years, his curiosity with the shadows and his frustration with the light had eroded his resolve.

  So he'd begun to practice in secret. Realizing that if he stayed in Mallon, he would at best never progress beyond an amateur, and at worst be executed by the ethereal rite of the Piercing of a Hundred Stars, he'd snuck out of his temple and made the long pilgrimage to Narashtovik.

  There, he'd been allowed to become an acolyte at one of the lesser cathedrals. He'd made progress with the nether. Changed his name from the obviously Mallish Sorley to the upstandingly Gaskan Sorrowen. Following some testing of his skill, and an investigation into his background to make sure he wasn't a spy, he'd been elevated to the monastery within the Citadel.

  At that point, he'd been fourteen. Now, four years later, Sorrowen was skilled enough to become a proper monk, but was being prevented from doing so by some kind of bureaucratic logjam that Dante couldn't solve without alienating one half of his monks. So he'd left them to solve the dispute for themselves. Needless to say, the logjam wasn't being received well by the acolytes being held back.

  Nak, who still thought of himself as a simple monk mistakenly promoted to the heights of the Council, continued to take an interest in the monastery's affairs. It had been his suggestion to assign Sorrowen to Cee as she investigated the theft of the book. Paired up, Sorrowen would provide magical muscle for Cee. Meanwhile, as Sorrowen waited for his official promotion, the task would give him something to do and provide him real experience out in the field.

  Dante awaited the acolyte in the Council chambers. Sorrowen arrived looking perfectly anxious. Ten years the boy's senior, Dante thought Sorrowen looked absurdly young.

  "Sit down," Dante said.

  The boy's eyes darted from chair to chair as he attempted to decipher which one he was meant to occupy. He glanced at Dante for a sign, found nothing, then shot a look at Blays, who was leaning against a wall, arms folded. Looking as though he might spontaneously shatter, Sorrowen simply chose the chair closest to him.

  "Tell me what happened last night," Dante said.

  Sorrowen frowned. "I've already told Olivander. But you're not Olivander," he added quickly. "And you're giving me an order. So I should probably shut up and talk."

  Dante hadn't bothered to light a fire and the room was cold, but sweat dewed Sorrowen's forehead. He spoke with a moderate Mallish accent. "I was out with Cee. Obviously. She was supposed to meet someone named Waller. This was after midnight, I remember because the bells had made me jump—"

  "Who's Waller?"

  "I don't know. There was a lot Cee didn't tell me. Sometimes I felt like she didn't like having me around."

  "Hard to believe. Where was the meet to be held?"

  "A rooftop on Flinders Street. Next to the Green Beetle. Cee had me get up onto the roof across the street and hide behind the water barrels. Everything looked fine to me—I mean, there were a lot of dirty-looking people around, but that's Flinders Street for you—so I signaled Cee the okay.

  "Well, she started to climb up to her roof. I remembered I didn't have any blood on hand, so I poked myself in case I needed to call the nether—"

  "Where?"

  Sorrowen furrowed his brow. "To my hands?"

  "Where do you cut yourself?"

  "Right here." He tapped the left side of his chest. "I know they recommend the back of the arm, but sometimes it leaves a bit of a scar. I got to thinking, what if I ever go back to Mallon and one of the priests sees me with a bunch of cut-up arms and thinks, 'Hmm, that fellow looks like a nethermancer'?"

  Dante nodded, mildly impressed, and made a note to mention the idea to the monks who trained the acolytes. "Did Cee make it to the roof?"

  "Yep. There was some moonlight, so I had a clear view of her. She was all alone on this flat part of the roof—and then this guy in a cloak seemed to step out from nowhere."

  "You mean it was hard to tell where he came from?"

  Sorrowen shook his head. "I mean that one sec
ond, Cee was the only person on that roof. And then it was like someone walked out of an invisible door."

  Dante twisted to raise his eyebrows at Blays, who nodded.

  "And then he just stabbed her!" Sorrowen's eyes were wide. "He drew back a knife and was going to stab her again, but I threw a shadowbolt at him. Right before it hit him, he vanished as fast as he'd shown up."

  "You reacted that fast? From across the street?"

  "I was supposed to be looking out for her, wasn't I?"

  "Then what?"

  "Cee was bleeding. Bad. So I closed her up as best I could, yelled for help, and stood watch. Nothing else happened until Nak and the monks showed up and got her down from the roof."

  Dante leaned forward at the table, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Anything strange leading up to the attack? Or during it?"

  "That's all I can remember."

  "Question," Blays said. "Are you sure the attacker was a man?"

  Sorrowen shrugged his shoulders tight. "I guess not. He—they—were wearing a cloak. And I couldn't see their face."

  "Thank you," Dante said. "Close the doors behind you."

  The boy stood, bowed to Dante, then seemed to think he should bow to Blays too, which apparently required a second bow to Dante. He walked quickly from the room, clicking the door shut behind him. Dante waited for the boy's footsteps to fade down the hall.

  He turned to Blays. "Shadowalker?"

  "Absolutely."

  "Does that disturb you as much as it does me?"

  "Because the next question is whether this was one of the People of the Pocket?"

  Dante nodded. "Is there any chance we've done something to offend them?"

  "Well, we have kept one of them away from her husband, who the rumors hold is as dashing as he is brave. Such an offense is truly worthy of death."

  "But the real answer is no, right? They don't get involved in outside affairs. They're not even supposed to leave Pocket Cove. And we haven't done anything to them in the first place."

  "I'll check with Minn." Blays folded his arms. "But if they are involved, they might hide it from her so she wouldn't tell me."

  "If she did know, are you sure she'd tell you?"

  "I'd like to think so." Blays headed for the door. "But I'd like for a lot of things to be true."

  While he went to find Minn, Dante headed for the chapel where the theft had taken place. At his request, they hadn't changed anything since then, not even to replace the drapes or sweep the floors. The only major thing they'd done before Nak had contacted him was to remove the boot from the wall.

  As such, after weeks of intentional neglect, the place was a colossal mess, full of grit, dried leaves, cobwebs, and mouse droppings. Dante went over it bit by bit. Nothing stood out as suspicious.

  He picked his way across the dingy floor to stand in front of the sealed rock wall. As far as he could tell, the stone was undisturbed except for the small triangular divot where the boot's heel had been captured. More evidence they were dealing with a shadowalker rather than someone capable of moving the earth. Although most of the People of the Pocket were both.

  Just in case someone was playing a bizarre trick on him and hiding the book right under his nose, he moved his mind through the rock, feeling for empty pockets or hidden compartments. Nothing there. He hadn't expected to find anything—it had been over a month since the theft, and Somburr, Nak, and Cee had already been over the room multiple times—yet his failure was still disappointing. Every failure took them one step closer to running out of options.

  Lastly, Dante inspected the boot. It seemed worn and ordinary. If the wearer had left some blood in it, or even a stray hair, Dante could have tracked them down with a quickness, but the only hairs he found on the boot belonged to the people who'd handled it. He severely doubted any of them was a secret shadowalker, but he had them try it on anyway. It was too small for all of them.

  All of this took Dante close to three hours. Even so, he still had to wait for Blays to return from his "conversation" with Minn.

  When Blays finally arrived, he sprawled in a chair, putting his feet up. "Minn says she doesn't know of any schemes from Pocket Cove."

  "Hmm."

  "Come on, why would they steal the Cycle? Think they got bored of staring at the ocean and decided they needed some new bedtime stories?"

  "Maybe they want to use it to identify new recruits. Same way Samarand did."

  Blays considered this, then shook his head. "The People of the Pocket don't have any interest in growing their numbers. The only thing they care about expanding is the freshness of their fish."

  "Even if it wasn't them as an institution, that doesn't mean it wasn't one of their number acting on her own. Ask Minn if she knows whether anyone's left recently."

  Minn didn't, but she promised to ask. With the People of the Pocket lacking loons—unless they were deceiving Dante about that, too—that meant dispatching a messenger, meaning any answer was weeks away. Still, that was all the more reason to set it in motion at once.

  The rest of the day was eaten up by Council business. By the time Dante finally got to his own room, he was so tired that he almost didn't notice that his sword was missing, too.

  He sat on his bed and thought about screaming. The theft of the sword was somehow far more personally humiliating than the stealing of the Cycle. To the point where he was almost tempted not to say anything about it to anyone else.

  That, however, was stupid, and completely at odds with his overall goal of getting it back. Somburr was off spying in Setteven and Cee remained unconscious, meaning the active head of security was…well, he didn't know; he'd been gone too long. He decided to burden Olivander with the information, trusting his second would deliver it to the appropriate parties. After that conversation was over, Dante was so tired he was starting to regret turning down Hopp's offer to wander away with the Broken Herons.

  Still, in the morning, it felt good to wake up in his own room in his own city. To be surrounded by familiar faces in a familiar building. He ate breakfast, then returned upstairs to head a formal meeting of the Council. Dante gave them a full account of Collen's rebellion against Mallon, including the particulars of his and Blays' involvement in it.

  There were questions. Lots of them. Dante answered without flinching, satisfying them by making it clear that Narashtovik's involvement would end as soon as they'd secured the agreement between Alebolgia and Collen.

  Dante glanced around the table. "Anything else?"

  "One small matter." This came from Tarkon, the oldest member of the Council, and one of the few remaining from Samarand's time. Like many old men, he no longer cared about being polite—or, maybe, had forgotten how. "Why in the shrieking hell do you think this is a good idea?"

  Dante laughed. "If you'd told me from the beginning where this was going to lead, I might not have gotten involved. But if you knew what was going to happen before it did, I'd do whatever you say, because you must be a god. As for me, I'm still a human—"

  "Despite your best efforts to join the Celeset."

  "—and as a human, I didn't know what was to come. I had to make my decisions as things played out. It got messy. But if I'd walked away, it would have gotten even messier. That made it hard for me to pretend I had no responsibility to the people in need."

  Tarkon stroked his beardless chin. "There are troubles here, too. If we cleaned up every mess that happened a thousand miles away, we'd never have any time to deal with our own."

  Dante didn't try to argue with that. He wrapped up the meeting. As soon as he entered the hallway, he was intercepted by Gant, who looked much sunnier than the day before. With good reason: Cee was awake.

  Blays accompanied him to the mending chamber at the monastery. Cee was sitting up in bed arguing with a bald old monk. Seeing Dante, the monk bowed and left the room.

  Dante moved to the side of the bed. "How are you feeling?"

  She rubbed the faintly visible line on her throat. "
Better than most who take a knife to the windpipe. How did I make it out of there?"

  "Sorrowen drove off the assassin before they could finish their task. Then healed you enough to hold on until the monks arrived."

  Cee grunted. "Sorrowen did all that?"

  "Talking to him, he comes off like he couldn't talk to a girl without breaking into full-fledged retreat. But he's quick on his feet. Hard to teach that."

  "What about the assassin? Did you catch her?"

  Dante nearly smiled. Cee always got straight to business, tossing all of the social niceties aside like the froth they usually were. "She got away. But we're going to find her. You know it was a woman? Did you get a good look at her, then?"

  "Couldn't see. It was too dark. And then I was too stabbed."

  "Nothing at all? The color of her hair, whether she was younger or older?"

  "Nothing." Cee smiled weakly. "But I could tell you her name."

  Blays cocked her head. "You know her name? What, did she write you a signed apology?"

  "I've been hunting her for weeks. Ran into her once before, but it was down in the dungeons. Too dark then, too. Her name's Raxa Dosse. She works with an outfit called the Order of the Alley. Typical thieves' guild. The word on the street is that Dosse comes and goes as quietly as a shadow. What they don't understand is that she is one."

  Dante added the name to his notes. "Is this related to all the thefts from last summer?"

  "Right. Seemed like they were robbing a different noble every week. Hit us, too. Took the Jerrelec Collection."

  "And my sword."

  Cee swung up her head. "They took that, too? I'm sorry, sir. I swear to you I'll get it back."

  "Wrong. You're staying here."

  "Don't trust your healers' own work? Finding things is my job. That's why I'm here."

  "I don't remember hiring you to fight sorcerers and volunteer for impromptu throat surgery. This woman is insanely dangerous. It was your job to find her. You did that. Now it's our job to take care of her."