“Good thinking.” I inhaled and exhaled, the taste of dust and ashes lingering in the back of my throat. “Were those phantoms trying to defend us?”
“I didn’t see.” Miles stepped into the node again. “Come on, let’s leave a false trail in case he comes after us.”
“Good thinking.” Ryan joined us, Trix at his side, and in a flash, we reappeared on another vaguely familiar street in Elysium. Miles then led the way down the street to another glowing current of light, which deposited us near the Spirit Agents’ base.
“I’ve been doing the same whenever I leave the base,” Miles said, the only one of us who wasn’t out of breath from our dizzying trip through the nodes. “I know pretty much everyone in the Houses knows where we live anyway, but that doesn’t mean we have to make it any easier for them to follow us through the node to our doorstep.”
“I never even thought of that.” I leaned a hand against the nearest wall to catch my breath. “I just walked straight here last time.”
“If you didn’t have enemies on your tail, it shouldn’t be a problem,” he said. “We’re just being paranoid over here. It was Shelley’s idea.”
“You can never be too paranoid,” said Ryan. “Am I supposed to tell the Death King that we aggravated Adair and ticked off the rest of the Family, too?”
“You’re the one who threw him into a pile of rubble,” I said. “Besides, the Family left their mark on the cantrip they used to kill those liches this morning.”
“They did?” said Trix. “You never said.”
“It was one of those cantrips which can kill the dead,” Ryan told him. “Someone used them on a couple of guards and sent some rogue liches to attack the Death King’s castle. They didn’t get very far.”
“But the Family’s mark was on the cantrip, suggesting that their real intention was to get to yours truly,” I added.
“And now we’ve really pissed them off,” said Miles. “I think we should avoid the ruins for a while.”
I grimaced. “I’m starting to think we should have tried to convince Adair to tell us the Akrith’s location rather than running away. I know Lex had him under her control, but if we’d dragged him through the node and tied him up or something, we might have managed to get answers from him.”
“That wouldn’t have helped,” said Ryan. “The last time he got locked in the Death King’s jail, it ended in disaster for all of us.”
“But what if Adair figures out how to get to the elves before we do? If he can use the Akrith to get there—”
“He won’t be able to,” said Trix. “I have one of my own, remember? So do most of the other elves. If he could get there with the Akrith alone, one of us would have already figured out how to do it. He’d need a living tree to even begin to access its magic, and if the other elves haven’t been able to find one, he won’t have a chance. Adair has no working knowledge of our kind, mark my words.”
“He did help capture some of them,” I said. “To work in the warehouses. Also, the Family recruited mages from within the Houses themselves, and Liv said they had spies among the vampires, too. So why not the elves as well?”
“No elf would ever join them,” said Trix firmly. “As for the Akrith, I’m fairly sure you’re more likely to be able to get one from a mage than anywhere else. Elf artefacts are worth a lot of money, and I see them in the markets all the time. Liv even helped get one of mine back from an earth mage thief back when we first met.”
“Which markets?” said Ryan. “Like the ones in Arcadia?”
That figured. I’d already run into trouble in Arcadia’s markets once before when I’d been looking into the illegal cantrip trade. I wasn’t sure the people running the Collective of Spells in Arcadia’s market were entirely innocent of any involvement, for that matter, but the elven artefacts were worth far more than a few cantrips. People wouldn’t be foolish enough to sell them out in the open, would they?
“Liv would know,” said Trix.
Of course she would. So would Devon, who was more of an expert on cantrips than the rest of us, but I’d have preferred to keep our plan between as few people as possible.
“You think we should ask her if she’s seen any recently?” I asked. “Or should I go and talk to the Houses of the Elements while I’m here and see if I can scrape one victory for the day?”
“I’d say we report to the Death King first,” Ryan said. “Since the Death King didn’t tell either of us to go on a field trip and get ourselves chased through the ruins by Adair.”
“You volunteered to come with me,” I pointed out. “Don’t act like I’m the only one at fault.”
The door to the Spirit Agents’ house opened and Miles’s friend Shelley poked her head out. The Spirit Agents’ second-in-command wore her hair in braids and had acquired a new smudgy tattoo on her left cheek which I strongly suspected was due to one of the teenage spirit mages running amok behind the window with a marker pen in hand. “Are you going to stand there chatting all day? Because as fun as it is to watch the kids decorate your face while you’re astral projecting, we could use your help in here, Miles.”
Miles groaned. “What did they do to my face?”
“Judge for yourself.”
On that ominous note, Shelley withdrew into the house, and I grinned at Miles. The handful of teenagers among the Spirit Agents rarely got the chance to just be kids, so it was nice to hear they were enjoying themselves, even if it came at Miles’s expense. “I’d like to see the aftermath, but I should probably report back to the Death King.”
“Trust me, you don’t want to see it.” Miles shook his head. “See you later?”
“Sure, I can drop by later if the Death King sends me to speak to the Houses.”
He waved and then vanished back to his body. I, meanwhile, headed back to the node with the others, the new discoveries of the last couple of hours running amok in my thoughts.
The citadels had originally been the creations of the elves. That meant the machinery might have been theirs, too. At what point, and why, had the spirit mages taken it as their own? What else had they taken in the process?
How deep did their links to the elves really go?
5
The Death King faced Ryan and me from the dais in the castle’s entrance hall. “So you failed to find anything of note on your trip and you drew the attention of the enemy?”
“The enemy already had their eye on us, evidenced by what happened this morning,” I pointed out.
The Death King wore a furious scowl on his deceptively human face. Perhaps he thought pretending to be alive would make me forget I was talking to the most unreasonable zombie in existence. “Nevertheless, you returned with nothing to speak of.”
“My brother tried to bury us under a pile of debris,” I said. “And for the record, I know the Family probably has the object we were looking for, so I decided against breaking onto their property and getting myself captured. I doubt you’d have been a fan of that, either.”
His eyes narrowed. “Do not test me, Bria. I might have hired you to work for me, but that doesn’t mean I have no other resources at my disposal or any other means of finding what I need.”
“Do you have an elf’s petrified tree carving and a living elven tree?” I asked. “Because Trix told me that’s the only way to open a door back to the elves’ realm. I might add that the Family already has one elven carving, which suggests they have the same idea.”
“Your brother told you that?” he said. “Did he give a reason for their sudden interest in tracking down the elves?”
“Probably to destroy them or exploit them,” I said. “Like last time.”
The Death King was silent for a moment. “Did Adair mention how he intends to open a way to the elves’ realm, when it’s reportedly been impossible for any of the other elves to do so since before the war?”
“Using a combination of an Akrith and one of their living trees, according to Trix,” I said. “Trix said there aren’t an
y living trees anywhere that he knows of, but the Family has resources I don’t. They might well start kidnapping and blackmailing elves all over the Parallel until they find one who has the right information.”
“Is there another way you can get one of those artefacts, then?” asked the Death King.
“Trix is asking around,” I said. “I’m told Liv is an expert on magical objects, too.”
“She isn’t here at the moment,” he said. “I frankly have no idea how much she knows about elven artefacts. You haven’t explained what you plan to do if you manage to make contact with the elves, either.”
“I can’t say I have a plan yet,” I admitted. “But I assume if we tell them the spirit mages are starting another war, they’ll want to join us for the sake of revenge on the mages.”
“I doubt it’ll be that simple,” he said. “Elves as a whole aren’t generally motivated by revenge.”
“I didn’t know you knew anything about the elves,” I said. “Besides, isn’t that why you wanted me to contact them? To get their help?”
“I wanted you to try,” he corrected. “The part that’s not under our control is whether they say yes or not.”
“I know.” If we did get a face-to-face meeting, I hoped he wouldn’t expect me to convince them to join our side, given my absolute failure with the Houses. The Death King was the one who’d spent a decade ordering around an army of zombies, besides.
“You’re on the next guard duty shift,” he added. “You and Ryan.”
“You might want to consider hiring more human guards.”
“Do you know any humans you’d entrust with that job?”
Well… no. My brother’s reappearance was a reminder that he could hypnotise any person he ran into, including any of the Elemental Soldiers… and me. The Spirit Agents were vulnerable, too. There were no easy options when everyone was out to kill us.
“No, but I get the feeling we’re running against the clock here,” I said. “Adair said he already had an Akrith of his own. Maybe two, if the Family has the one which was supposed to be mine. Without one, I haven’t a hope of convincing the elves to help me, let alone finding their realm.”
“Then you can think of a solution while you’re guarding the castle,” he said. “You can take a five-minute break before your shift, then meet Ryan at the gates.”
Ryan gave me a warning look as though daring me to challenge the Death King’s word. Biting back a retort, I walked out of the entrance hall and straight through a lich. “Ow, Harper.”
“Sorry.” Harper’s voice came from the shadowy person I’d stepped into. “What’re you up to?”
“I’m on guard duty again.” I headed down the corridor towards the Elemental Soldiers’ area of the castle. “Since I’m one of the four people the Death King trusts to watch out for intruders.”
“I’ll join you,” she said. “You can tell me where you’ve been all morning.”
“All right, but it’s not a fun story.” As we walked, I told her about our trip to the ruins and Adair’s unwelcome appearance.
“Wow,” she said. “So you want to find the elves before the Family does?”
“If it’s even possible,” I said. “Regardless, I’m not letting Adair and the others get there first. You know what they do to people who won’t join their team.”
“Yeah,” she said, her voice going quiet. “I know.”
She might not have directly met the Family, but they were the reason for her untimely death. We had that kind of loss in common, since I was an elf who’d lost my history, while she was a lich who’d had her life stripped away. It wasn’t much of a consolation for either of us, but at least someone else understood how it felt to be totally adrift.
“I’m not sure it isn’t a lost cause already,” I admitted. “I couldn’t even find a relic of my history in the rubble.”
“I wish there was a way I could help,” said Harper. “But I don’t think that would turn out so well, considering the last time I tried my hand at espionage.”
Harper had tried working as a spy for the Death King before she’d almost been caught by the enemy, but she hadn’t forgotten her eventual goal to find a way back to her old life. According to Liv, the cantrips which killed the dead were glitchy versions of another similar cantrip which had the power to return a lich to life with no apparent downsides, but she was tight-lipped on the subject of where it might be possible to find one. Since most liches hadn’t opted into that lifestyle, courtesy of a curse which affected the majority of spirit mages here in the Parallel, it would be nice if we found Harper a way out of her endless afterlife that didn’t involve permanent death.
While Ryan and I took up our positions by the gates outside the castle, Felicity and Cal left on a mission for the Death King. Part of me expected some kind of retaliation from Adair once he woke up to find his mother using his body as a puppet. Assuming it hadn’t been him who’d thrown the first punch by bringing those cantrips which had killed the Death King’s guards in the first place. In the meantime, we spent a productive couple of hours watching Harper practise conjuring up illusions of her human face until Felicity and Cal returned to the castle.
“How was your mission?” asked Ryan.
“Not too bad, for a wonder,” said Felicity. “Cal was recognised by someone who knew him from his days imprisoned in the House of Earth, but they let us be.”
“Wait, the Death King sent you to talk to the Houses?” Had he finally accepted I couldn’t be in two places at once?
“Not the House of Earth,” said Cal. “That’s a lost cause, since they had the most members who allied with the Family and got the worst of the backlash as a consequence. We started with the House of Water.”
“Did you have any luck?” I asked.
“A little,” Felicity said. “I don’t personally know any of their mages, since I grew up on Earth, but we have a starting point.”
So Felicity hadn’t been imprisoned in the Houses’ jail, unlike Cal and me. Ryan hadn’t either, but while I knew they’d come from Earth originally, I hadn’t known much about Felicity’s past. It made sense that the Death King would have struck a balance between recruits from Earth and from the Parallel.
“Unfortunately, they seem to think we want the Houses to join the Death King’s side individually, not cooperate with each other,” said Cal.
“We can’t have one House’s help without the others,” said Felicity.
“Tell that to them, not me,” said Cal. “Besides, we don’t know for sure if anyone within the Houses is still working with the enemy. That makes it hard to find a way to compromise without sharing any of our strategies.”
That’s what I was afraid of, too, but one House as an ally was better than zero. I just hoped the other Elemental Soldiers would have more luck at gaining their trust than I had.
“Your name came up, too, Bria,” said Felicity. “Not in a complimentary way.”
“That figures,” I said. “What did I ever do to the House of Water?”
“You’re known to be linked to the Family.”
I scowled. I’d bet that dickhead Harris had been involved in spreading rumours to the other Houses. “Well, they’ll have to get over themselves if we’re going to work together.”
Felicity and Cal returned to the castle, while Ryan and I continued watching for potential trespassers. Trix returned near the end of our shift, with a notable spring in his step.
“Good news,” he said. “I found out where we can find an Akrith.”
“Really?” I cautioned my leaping pulse to simmer down. “Where?”
“There’s an auction in Arcadia tonight,” he said. “I heard someone’s bringing an elven artefact, one which is worth a lot of money. That almost always means it’s an Akrith. If we go there and offer the right price, you’ll have no trouble getting your hands on it.”
“That’s placing a lot of faith in chance,” I said. “What is the ‘right price’ anyway? Because I’m not swimming in
cash and I don’t have any elven artefacts of my own to trade in exchange.”
“Doesn’t the Death King pay you well?”
“He hasn’t paid me yet,” I said. “It’s kinda complicated. Besides, I’m not planning on walking around Arcadia carrying buckets of gold even if I had them. That’s just asking for trouble.”
I was supposed to be paid in cash because I didn’t have an Earth-based bank account like the others, I’d only ever lived in the Parallel, and I’d always carried everything I owned around with me in case I had to pack up and run. Besides, the Parallel didn’t really have safe places to store your cash unless you were rich enough to afford to hire a private bank. While my salary was more money than I’d ever owned in my life, I was pretty sure it wouldn’t be enough to bribe someone for a priceless artefact. I’d spent enough time smuggling rare items around back when I’d worked for Striker to know the general value of most black-market goods.
“Oh.” Trix’s face fell. “Um, you should know… they probably won’t let you into the auction if you don’t bring proof that you have something to offer and you aren’t just there to cause trouble. It wouldn’t hurt to disguise yourself as a practitioner either. Mages tend to draw attention, and if they know you’re working for the Death King, they might slam the door in your face”
“Bloody perfect.” On the plus side, I couldn’t imagine the Family showing their faces in that kind of setting. They didn’t live anywhere near Arcadia, which made it the perfect place to go artefact-hunting. The downside? What the hell could I bring with me that wouldn’t get stolen the second I looked away? It wasn’t like I’d kept anything of Striker’s…
Ah, shit. I knew one thing that would certainly do a decent job of painting me as an eccentric practitioner.
“I think,” I said, “I might have to ask Miles for a loan of his vampire chickens.”
6
“You want to borrow what?” Miles’s brow furrowed as he faced me on the doorstep of the Spirit Agents’ house. Dark smudges covered his cheeks, remnants of the teenage mages’ adventures that morning. He was lucky they hadn’t used permanent marker.
Tower of Fire (Parallel Magic Book 3) Page 5
