by Karen MacRae
She tuned into what the latest visitor was saying to hear something about the importance of legislating air. She looked at the man in astonishment. Air? Was he mad?
“Tempestuous combinatorics,” said Sifry with great satisfaction. Elona could see that his aura had settled and whatever crazy calculations he’d been doing had resolved into an answer he was happy with. His response was everything to do with that and nothing whatsoever to do with air legislation. Not that the latest supplicant realised that.
“Sorry? Oh! I never considered that, sir. Thank you, sir! This could be the breakthrough I’ve been looking for!” The man rushed off happily, his head buzzing with the incredible contribution the genius had made to his life’s work.
“Irrational regression counts thighs,” the genius added, thankfully unheard.
Elona slipped her hand into her pocket for the crimwort. While the next suitor expounded his theory, she surreptitiously wet her finger then pretended to wipe away something from Sifry’s lips with it. His tongue flicked out to lick at the residue. She hoped it would be enough this time.
“Balderdash,” Sifry said quietly.
The man’s face fell in dismay. “Oh, do you think so, sir?” he asked. “But perhaps, if I incorporate Stup’s theory?”
“Balderdash,” the genius repeated, enjoying the explosive quality of the ‘b’ on his lips. “Balderdash, balderdash, balderdash.”
“I will have to begin again,” the scientist said sadly, shaking his head and almost weeping as he walked away.
Elona smiled. What chaos a random word or two could cause. And she hadn’t expected any fun this evening.
A white-robed woman in her forties with the calmest lilac aura Elona had ever seen was the final person to join them before dinner. “My sincerest apologies for being late, Professor Sifry. My tardiness was not of my making, but disgraceful nonetheless. I would not have missed this event for the world. I am Lady Isabella Kuri, professor of Elements, member of the High Quorum, Inner Quorum and King’s Council.”
Well, good for you, sneered Elona even as her mouth was forming a polite smile. “It is an honour to meet you, Lady Kuri. My name is Norella. I interpret and care for Professor Sifry. I’m afraid he has lost the ability to form sensible speech.”
“Interesting. And yet he has the capacity to understand the written word, I understand?”
“Yes, milady. He could still write until very recently, but his arthritis now prevents it.” Elona made her eyes water by thinking of one of Nystrieth’s favourite punishments. She lowered her voice. “I’m afraid he doesn’t have long left. He is very frail, but absolutely determined to find a way to defeat the barbarian raping his homeland.” A tear fell right on queue. Light, I’m good, Elona gloated.
“A worthy tenet indeed. Isria is suffering terribly.”
“Appalling, milady. The professor has nightmares about it.”
The King’s Councillor turned to the old man but kept one eye on the woman who lied so beautifully. “I am indeed sorry to hear you’re unwell, professor. I would have enjoyed talking with you about your time in Eisla, but I mustn’t tire you. My aide told me of your request for two books I borrowed from the library. I would be delighted to return them for you.”
Elona’s internal, “Yes!” was soon undermined as her ladyship continued. “Unfortunately, it will take a few days as they are no longer in my possession. Plus, of course, as restricted volumes, they can only be read in the library. I had special dispensation to remove them, but it is particular to myself, I’m afraid. But you were there yesterday, were you not? I’m sure you’ll enjoy spending more time in our fabulous facility with the added benefit of a few more days at leisure to enjoy our beautiful city while we wait for the books to arrive. But we mustn’t impose any further on Professor Ebdry. You must come and stay at the King’s favourite abode in Ionantis, the Royal Retreat. It is the single most luxurious building in the city.”
Elona couldn’t get a Read on the woman. Could the offer be genuine? Either way, they weren’t switching from their agent’s house. Before she could come up with a suitable reply, Sifry spoke.
“I’d be delighted, my dear Isabella.”
“Wonderful! Then it’s settled. I’ll send a carriage for you in the morning,” her ladyship gushed.
Elona had started in shock at the old man’s sudden and completely lucid response. She was lost for words.
“How lovely that he’s having a better spell this evening,” Lady Kuri said with what appeared to be honest delight.
CHAPTER 19
E lona slipped the entire contents of the bottle into Sifry’s fish soup. He collapsed face first into the gloop after the fourth spoonful. She’d never been more relieved. “Professor Sifry, Eduin, oh my!” she cried, pulling him back into the chair and wiping his face. “It’s all been too much. It’s my fault. He was having so much fun, I didn’t want it to end. Dear light, I hope it hasn’t brought on a decline.”
From three seats away, Lady Kuri considered giving Norella, or whatever her name really was, a round of applause, but managed to contain herself. The woman was good, no doubt about that, but she’d never learned to control those tiny tell-tale muscles in her face, and she hadn’t a clue where Sifry had been born. Isria indeed! She wondered if the spy were the legendary warrior, Elona, but she supposed there could be two tall, toned and remarkably attractive blondes in Nystrieth’s spy stable. Not that it mattered. The books were going nowhere.
Vice Chancellor Douglas, meanwhile, was clucking around the comatose genius like a mother hen. “Allow me to send my personal Healer to Ebdry’s, Norella. I’m sure he’ll soon have dear Eduin feeling much better.”
“I’m afraid the professor has long forbidden Healers be allowed to touch him, milord,” Elona lied. “We’ll have to hope that a few days’ complete rest is enough to restore him. Lady Kuri, I’m sure the professor was looking forward to spending some time with you at the Royal Retreat, but it looks very much like he’ll be unable to accept your generous offer. When he’s like this, the only thing to do is to let him sleep. The last time this happened, we feared we’d lost him, but he came to four days later. We must pray this is the same.”
It’s a shame she’s on the wrong side, thought the King’s Councillor, by habit keeping her aura completely expressionless. She made all the right noises about Professor Sifry’s health coming first and Elona couldn’t tell if the Councillor knew who they were or not.
As the blonde went to organise help from the sedan chair carriers, Lady Kuri wondered idly what Eduin Sifry’s relationship was to Nystrieth or whether he was just another pawn caught up in the monster’s machinations. Either way, it was a crying shame such a brilliant mind had dwindled to nothing. She resolved to do what she could for him. She waved for her aide.
“Get eight men on Ebdry’s immediately. No stranger is to be allowed to leave once that front door closes behind them tonight. Kill all on sight except the old man. Warn the men their quarry is armed and more dangerous than they can imagine. They are not to be taken in by a pretty face.”
The aide rushed off immediately and Lady Kuri relaxed a tiny bit. She was pleased she’d had the foresight to ask a loyal friend to hide the books. Her self-congratulation lasted only until an unwelcome interruption.
“Isabella, we must speak about this Shaper issue. I fear I cannot in good conscience change my stance no matter how persuasive your argument. I am with the Chancellor in this. We are talking about the law, milady. The law!”
“I wouldn’t expect anything less of you, Vice Chancellor, but perhaps we could discuss it at the meeting on Firstday?” she asked, a small, undetectably fake grimace on her face. “I’m afraid all this excitement has brought on one of my headaches.” She saw her aide return and give her a tiny nod to confirm her order had been actioned. She gave him a second order when they met at the door. The Vice Chancellor would be returning home to a wife desperate for his help. He would vote with the King or news of her embezzlem
ent would leave his family in utter ruin and disgrace and she carted off to Tullen like the criminal she was. Lady Kuri allowed herself a small pat on the back. It’d been tricky, but she needed only two more votes to carry out the King’s order and one looked like turning her way very soon, if rumours of the man’s adultery were true. She’d hoped to avoid all the hassle and ‘persuade’ the Chancellor to give up his vendetta, but it seemed he and his wife had done nothing wrong in their entire, sickeningly honourable lives.
Four sets of eyes watched the tall blonde and various servants lift a sleeping old man out of a sedan chair at Ebdry’s house. Soon afterwards, three men dressed in academic robes followed them inside. A runner dashed to the back of the house to alert the other four of Kuri’s men to the targets. They didn’t want to mistakenly take out a housemaid.
“How many did you see?” Elona asked Mystrim.
“Four at the front. We have to assume there are more at the back,” he replied. “So Kuri didn’t buy it?”
“It appears not. I’ve never seen such a well-controlled face or aura in my life, but I believed her when she said she didn’t have the books. If she knew we wanted them, she wouldn’t be foolish enough to hang onto them. There’s no way for her to refuse to give them back to the library though. Apparently, it would be an unforgivable breach of protocol. So we wait. Or rather, Sifry does. We have to get the peristones. If Kuri knew about the books, Braxton definitely knows about the beads. There’s no time to lose.”
“Can we leave Sifry to you, Ebdry, old friend?” Mystrim asked. “He’ll need to be doped up, fed and watered and all that until we return and any visitors handled so he’s not disturbed.”
Ebdry thought of the jealousy a prolonged stay from the great Eduin Sifry would provoke amongst his colleagues and smiled. “It will be my pleasure, Mystrim.”
“We’re also going to need a safehouse set up for when we get back,” Mystrim continued. “Can you get Marple onto it please? We’ll need an address and a key before we leave tomorrow. And that purse you promised.” His friend nodded and went to the door to shout for his butler.
It was a long, boring night for the watchers outside. The only person who left the house was the butler. He was well known as a long-suffering employee of the pretentious Ugly Ebdry and not worth splitting their manpower to follow. He was home in the early hours of the morning anyway. The expanded second shift took over at dawn and soon regretted their assignment as the rain grew steadily harder and colder. By six o’clock, they could see barely ten feet and were shaking with the cold. The water fell in sheets, drowning everything and forming huge puddles. Soon after six, a carriage drew up at the rear gate and four figures sprinted from the back door. Even before the carriage door was closed, the driver cracked his whip and the horses sprang to. It raced down the street.
Three of the Councillor’s four men at the back gave chase. The team leader sent one of his men running to the back to give support in case it was a ruse then and he and the two remaining men walked over to slam on the front door.
A sleep deprived Marple answered the door in his nightcap. One of Lady Kuri’s men took up position on the door so no one could get past him while the other two searched the house.
Only the old cripple remained. The others were gone.
“After them!” the team leader called out of an upstairs window. The two guards at the back obeyed immediately. Elona stood right behind the man, patiently waiting for him to turn. She could do with a workout. Downstairs, a Concealed Pyteor stuck a dagger between the ribs of the man on the door and Mystrim sent a small fireball crashing into the other intruder’s hair. The weather mage grinned as blonde fuzz went up in flames and the man dropped his sword to try to put it out. It was all too easy to roll out from under the sofa and stick a dagger through his heart.
Elona hadn’t appeared after a few minutes so Mystrim went upstairs. It didn’t occur to him that she’d be in any trouble and nor was she. “Stop playing with your food, Reader,” the weather mage said in a bored voice. “We have a King’s Councillor to avoid, or had you forgotten?”
“Spoilsport,” grinned Elona, picking up the pace of her blade work. The short swords moved so quickly Kuri’s man couldn’t even begin to follow them. He was hamstrung and gutted before he knew.
Nijel appeared as the two spies were rolling the man in the carpet he’d fallen on. “He’s still alive,” he said.
“And?” asked Elona, baffled why it would matter. “He won’t be for long.”
Nijel sighed very quietly. She did tend to forget his calling. “I don’t have to Heal, but it’s much more comfortable for me to not share a carriage with someone groaning and taking an age to bleed out.”
“And?” she asked again.
Nijel unrolled the carpet, took a dagger from his belt and drove it into the man’s heart. He sighed in pleasure as the last of the man’s blood oozed around the handle, warming his fingers. He’d enjoyed that far more than he would ever have guessed. In fact, he’d very much look forward to doing it again, as long as Elona got the victim ready for him first, of course - he wasn’t crazy.
The three rolled up the now dead body and carried it downstairs where they repeated the procedure on the other two. Ebdry had insisted they remove the evidence so the four spies manhandled the carpets into a second carriage that had just drawn up by the back gate. There wouldn’t be a whole lot of room inside, but it was better to leave Kuri guessing.
The driver kept his eyes closed the whole time. He’d been promised a bonus for keeping his mouth shut and that was always easier if you had nothing to tell.
“We have some garbage to dispose of where it won’t be easily found,” a woman’s voice told him from behind.
“Yes, mistress,” he answered, keeping his eyes firmly closed. “I know the perfect place.”
The carriage slowed to a stop an hour later. Sticking to his plan, the driver didn’t get down and shut his eyes as tightly as he could. “Take care of the cliff on your left,” he shouted. “Only the fish find anything that goes over there.”
The passengers took the hint and the bodies were thrown over the edge into waves crashing onto razor-sharp rocks. Pyteor spotted the driver’s closed eyes and danced a jig in front of him, laughing hysterically. “Get in, you idiot,” Mystrim said with a sigh. The driver heard the doors close and let out the breath he’d been holding. No matter how big the bonus he’d been promised, he was out of there as soon as the last passenger left the carriage, with or without the money.
Elona guffawed as she watched the driver’s frantic whip raise weals on his horses’ backs in his desperation to get away after dropping them off at the meeting point. “What an idiot! As if we’d leave a dead driver in view of the men responsible for getting us to our next destination.”
Mystrim shrugged. “Saved us some coins at least.”
There was a sense of déjà vu as they looked down a treacherous cliff-side path to a small sandy bay. Some way off the coast lay a decent-sized ship, but it looked in no better condition than the fishing boat they’d been abandoned in less than a week ago. All four knew a moment of unease, but they kept it to themselves.
Elona was furious when they finally got to the beach and there was no sign of a rowing boat. “Do they expect us to swim?” she blazed. “Wake them up, weather mage. I want to see a boat in the water in less than two minutes or I’m going to make everyone’s life miserable.” The men had the sense not to ask if they’d notice the difference.
Mystrim raised a fireball and sent it flying towards the ship, easing it along the way with a soft tail wind. It missed the mast by barely a foot. A boat was lowered almost immediately.
The Captain hadn’t calmed any by the time they arrived at the ship. “Do you have any idea how stupid that fireball was?” he yelled.
Elona stood chest to chest with the man, their eyes on a level. Icy blue stared into stormy grey. Neither blinked. “Do you have any idea how stupid it is to keep me waiting?”
Elona leaned in closer and slowly licked the man’s cheek tasting salt and something… exciting. Her hand released a dagger from its sheath at the same time. The Captain didn’t react. He kept his eyes on hers, challenging her not to test him. In a flash, she stepped back and brought the dagger up towards his heart. She’d planned to press the tip against his leather jerkin, but it met only cold steel.
“Not on my ship, blondie. Here, you could never be fast enough.”
Elona pushed against his blade, but it didn’t budge.
The Captain held her there as if she were no more than a bothersome infant. He stared into her eyes a little longer, winked quite deliberately, then pushed her back as if she were nothing. She fell with a thump to the deck. He looked down at her sitting legs-akimbo and slowly put away his blade. Without another word, he strode away, shouting for someone to show their guests to their cabins. The others were so shocked someone had got the better of Elona, they hadn’t even laughed.
Incensed, Elona threw her dagger straight at his back.
Without even turning, the Captain sidestepped and caught the handle as it flew past. “Feel free to come by later to reclaim it, blondie,” he growled.
