A Charm for Draius: A Novel of the Broken Kaskea (The Broken Kaskea Series Book 1)

by REEVE, LAURA E.

  The Blindness was still useful as the source of metaphysical Sight. But it wasn’t the Void, the realm where sorcerers had walked hundreds of years ago. Instead, it was home to dreaming minds and hidden predators who stalked us, growing bolder with every trial. My employer thought they were the Phrenii and I didn’t disagree, although I knew better.

  “I wonder if this is worth the risk. We wander around in murkiness and hope to see clairvoyant flashes. What good is there in being able to see anything in the real world, but only if one has already visited it?” my employer asked.

  “We were able to check the Groygan embassy by having a marker delivered in a gift,” I pointed out. “So we now know they are not hiding the lodestone.”

  “Which I already knew, because I watched the ship leave harbor. No one could have removed the lodestone from the hold before departure.”

  “But they could have put in about the Delma Islands and brought the lodestone back into Tyrra.” As I said this, I realized we would have heard of destructive rain, lightning, fire, and earthquakes happening somewhere if that had been the case. The Phrenii protect this realm and the lodestone would cause outbreaks of elemental storms if it were anywhere on Tyrran soil. I’d have to figure out a way to steer our searches in the Blindness outside of Tyrra’s borders. This needed more thought and research.

  My employer frowned. “Well, at least we’re sure the lodestone is not inside the sister cities.”

  “Only because we’ve used the Void,” I said. Best that he not realize we’d wasted time and energy searching inside Tyrra; even with its limitations, using the Kaskea shard to travel the Blindness was still our best option.

  “But this is taking much too long! We need better Sight.”

  “Then I need fresh pain or death. With that, I can make more charms, give us more power.”

  He was silent then, rubbing his beard in thought. I waited. I’d convinced everyone that my charms increased the ability of the Kaskea wielder, helped others follow him, and hid us from the Phrenii. The last was a lie, because only the charm I wore had that ability.

  “No snatching for a while. The manning of the watch has increased, their schedules have changed, and they’re now carrying powder weapons. Without your Guard contact, we’d be taking too much of a risk.”

  “Even with nunetton?” I asked.

  “Well, that’s different. I’ll see what we can catch.” He was tired and grumpy from lack of sleep, as were we all.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Confession

  CITY GUARD OFFICERS ATTACKED

  Two City Guard Officers were attacked Honorday evening by four unidentified men on the normally peaceful street of Cen Sali. Officer Kulte-Kolme Lornis is in critical condition at the Betarra Hospital, rumored to be suffering from gunshot. Officer Serasa-Kolme Draius was wounded, but is ambulatory. She did not deny this attack might be related to the murders of multiple citizens and a Sareenian. Little headway has been made in the investigation of those murders and concerned citizens are calling for results.

  —The Horn & Herald, Second Markday, Erin Three, T.Y. 1471

  Her watchmen leaned against the wall of her office and frowned at Usko, who slumped in a chair in the middle of the room. As far as Draius could tell, the clerk hadn’t suffered any physical abuse, but his clothes were mussed and he smelled of sweat and fear.

  “Officer Draius!” Usko burst out as she walked in. “I assure you, I had nothing to do with the attack on you and Officer Lornis!” He started to rise from his chair, but sat back quickly as Ponteva moved toward him.

  Draius opened her shutters to the spring morning, braving the street noise so she could benefit from the fresh air. She winced as her right arm pushed against the shutter: an entire day of rest meant she no longer needed her arm bandaged to her side, but her shoulder and limb were still tender and healing. She’d slept through to late afternoon on Ringday, until Peri timidly knocked on her door. The entire household had tiptoed around all morning and afternoon to allow her to rest, and she was grateful to Anja for that.

  While she knew Usko had nothing to do with the street attack, she had no inclination to put the clerk at ease. He was involved with Taalo and a mysterious group of people who had gotten away—for the time being—with several murders. If they could put a clerk into the Office of Investigation, she wondered just how deep the tendrils of this conspiracy grew.

  “If you’re innocent, you can tell me what you were doing on Honorday evening.” She turned back to the clerk, who looked tousled and mousy, not like a snake hidden within the rocks.

  “What do you mean?” Usko’s expression teetered between relief and dismay.

  “You know why you’re here. You have an alibi for Honorday evening, but to use it you must pay the price. You must tell me about Taalo, because you’ve been identified as his accomplice. You can be charged with the other attack on my life.” She watched Usko carefully as she talked.

  He blanched slightly. “If I cooperate, can I keep this job? I might have abused my position, but that’s nothing, right, compared to the people you want to catch?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” Ponteva’s words came through a clenched jaw.

  “I’m not negotiating for the King’s Justice. That’s up to the magistrates.” Draius waved Ponteva quiet. “Tell us about Taalo and why he attacked me.”

  Her neck muscles twitched at the memory of the constriction around them. Desperate to find an explanation for Taalo’s “weapon,” she’d had the pouch examined by mortal experts. Four members of the Royal Academy of Science, as well as two reputable apothecaries, couldn’t explain how the charm worked. The purpose of the contents of the pouch had baffled everyone, but not the Phrenii. Too bad the magistracies of King’s Justice wouldn’t consider their testimony.

  “I had nothing to do with that. You, ser, were the one who directed the analysis to his laboratory.” Usko’s voice was resolute, but his gaze slid away from hers.

  Draius stared at the clerk with narrowed eyes until he squirmed in his chair.

  “I don’t know any details. If Taalo is behind this, then you know his methods.” Usko looked down, avoiding her eyes.

  “Methods?”

  “Magic, of course!”

  “Not the murders,” she said with grim persistence. “The murders were not done by magic.”

  “If you want to believe that.” Usko sounded like a sulking child. He rubbed his palms on his vest, his head bowed.

  “I don’t need convincing. The Phrenii told me that mortal weapons and mortal evil killed those men.” She mimicked the singsong voice of the Phrenii, giving her words authenticity and making more impact than she expected.

  Usko’s head snapped up and his eyes went wide. His face became ashen. “The Phrenii know?” He whispered, but she heard him clearly in the small room. “But Taalo said…”

  Draius wryly wondered whether she should start using the Phrenii more often as an interrogation threat. She decided to throw everything at him. No mention of the Kaskea; she didn’t want to talk about magical relics in front of Miina and Ponteva. But she could make veiled threats.

  “The Phrenii know more than that. For instance, they reported your activities on Honorday evening. What were their words? Yes, they said an attempt to ‘enter their circle’ was made, and they would know the perpetrators if they encountered them. They also mentioned a ‘sure path toward madness.’”

  Raw fear flared in Usko’s eyes. “But—but, I only watched the door.” If his face became any more paler, he’d surely faint.

  “I can call the Phrenii. They sounded interested in your activities.” She gestured to Ponteva and, although the grizzled watchman raised his eyebrows in surprise, he looked ready to do her bidding.

  “Wait! No! I need protection!” Usko’s voice cracked.

  She had to promise to not call upon the Phrenii, plus assure him that the Guard could protect him from his cohorts, before Usko would talk. Once the clerk was ready to tell hi
s entire story, he seemed to find some sort of relief. His hands relaxed and he laid them symmetrically on his knees.

  “I first spoke with Councilman Reggis last fall. We were both newly-inducted members of the Society for the Restoration of Sorcery,” Usko began. “I found the councilman polite enough, although he didn’t make a point to be friendly with me, a lowly clerk.

  “Reggis sporadically attended the meetings, and by the end of last year, I rarely saw him. Then, one evening in false-spring he showed up, entering the meeting late. I was becoming bored with this group of academicians, so I wasn’t paying attention to the speaker.

  “That night the councilman caught my eye. He seemed nervous and excited, and I saw him staring at me. I was uncomfortable and looked away. Several times during the evening, I found him looking at me again. After the lecture, he steered me away from the socializing would-be sorcerers. His eyes had an odd shine to them.

  “‘Usko,’ he said, ‘You clerk for the City Guard, right?’

  “‘Why, yes,’ I said, flattered that he remembered my name, let alone my occupation and where I worked.

  “Reggis looked around at the others suspiciously as he pulled me toward the door. ‘How would you like to encounter real magic?’ he asked. Through my sleeve, I could feel his hand shaking. I wondered if he was fevered, or worse, and asked if he was well.

  “Reggis smiled mysteriously at me. ‘Of course I’m well,’ he said. ‘Come with me tonight, and I’ll show you something these fools only dream of!’

  “I was intrigued, so I agreed to go with him. We left the SRS meeting and headed down toward the wharves. Those strange false-spring storms had started and they were shaking the cities. If it hadn’t been for the periodic lightning, I would have lost Reggis in the dark. When we got into the warehouse area, he turned off the street and wound his way into back alleys until I couldn’t tell which way was riverside and which was harborside.

  “He stopped in back of a warehouse and banged on a door. I would have asked him where we were, but the thunder and rain prevented me.

  “The door opened and Reggis pulled me inside. The warehouse was almost empty. In the center was a gray-haired man illuminated by a lamp on the floor. Beside him was a lone, large crate, taller and wider than the man himself. To the side of the warehouse, in the darkness beyond the lamplight, were three or four cloaked figures.

  “A dark-haired man let us in and he closed the door behind us.

  “‘Who is this?’ the man asked Reggis, raising his voice above the thunder. By his accent, I could tell he was Sareenian.

  “‘Someone we need,’ replied Reggis, brushing the Sareenian aside and pulling me toward the lamplight and the man in the center, beside the crate.

  “Reggis introduced me to the gray-haired man. Up close, he was shorter than I am, reaching my nose. We could only speak between the thunder that rattled the windows and seemed to shake the ground—you remember those storms. He extended a thin hand and gripped mine with surprising strength. ‘A clerk with the City Guard!’ he exclaimed, his eyes glinting. ‘Where do you work?’

  “‘In the Office of Investigation, commanded by Officer Meran-Kolme Erik,’ I answered.

  “‘An idiot, but he still bears watching,’ the little man replied blandly, then introduced himself as ‘Taalo, apothecary, chemist, and magical antiquarian.’

  “‘Antiquarian?’ I wondered how Taalo differed from all the theoreticians with whom I’d just spent another boring evening.

  “‘Restorer of magical relics,’ Taalo proclaimed with a wave to the crates and the rest of the warehouse. ‘Can’t you feel it?’

  “Now that he mentioned it, I did feel something. I’d been uncomfortable ever since entering the warehouse, but I had attributed it to the strange events of the evening. My skin was crawling, and the hair on my head and neck crackled, making my scalp tingle. I looked around.

  “‘You feel the magic, don’t you?’ Taalo giggled, making a strange, high-pitched sound. He gestured toward the large crate. ‘I can show it to you, but you mustn’t get too close. It killed seven of the excavating team, and two of my analysts.’

  “Taalo motioned for me to stand beside him in front of the large crate. I noticed that Reggis and the other figures moved to the far side of the warehouse. As I came closer to the box, the crawling sensation on my skin caused me to shake and I felt nauseous. Taalo reached up to a rope I hadn’t noticed, one that went overhead to a pulley mechanism and to the front panel of the crate. He pulled on it and the front of the crate began to fall forward with a creaking noise.

  “‘See the end of the Phrenii,’ Taalo said a bit too dramatically, or so I thought. I felt an overwhelming sense of doom and I suddenly did not want to see inside the crate. The front of the box fell on the floor, kicking up dust. What was inside was so powerful and dark it pulled at my mind. I fell to my knees, retching. I heard Taalo cackling.

  “‘It often affects people this way. You’ll do better next time,’ Taalo said, his voice in my ear. I could hear vomiting behind me; I wasn’t the only one affected by whatever was in there.

  “As I heaved up my dinner and tried to crawl backwards, away from that thing, Taalo kept speaking, ‘With this, we can destroy the Phrenii, and mankind can control magic again.’“

  Usko paused and Draius waited. Ponteva and Miina looked annoyed; they probably thought Usko was lying. Like all Tyrrans, including herself, they’d been raised with the belief that the Phrenii were immortal and indestructible. She, however, had just had those childhood myths crushed by the Phrenii themselves.

  “Look, Officer Draius, this must sound quite unbelievable to you. I know you don’t believe in the restoration of magic.” Usko shifted in his seat uncomfortably, looking at his feet.

  “I believe your description of these events,” she said, ignoring her watchmen’s expressions. “What’s hard to understand is why a councilman, an apothecary, a Sareenian shipowner, and a clerk conspired together, and to such ends.”

  “I can only tell you what happened, not why,” Usko said. “My motives, in the beginning, were only to expand my knowledge. I can’t speak for the motives of others.”

  “So what was in the crate?”

  “Darkness.”

  She frowned. “You emptied your stomach for nothing?”

  “I didn’t say there was nothing in the crate, I said there was Darkness, the cursed kind. It writhed like a mass of snakes I couldn’t quite see.” The clerk’s voice strained and cracked. He rubbed his knees. “And I will swear this by the Healing Horn of the Phrenii: what was in that crate can suck your soul away from you.”

  “As well as your blood?”

  Usko’s eyes widened at her question. “Taalo said he’d done experiments, but only on nunetton.”

  The room was quiet, except for the sounds of the street traffic wafting in from the window behind Draius. Suddenly the spring air seemed chilly, and she moved to close the window, cutting off the noise from outside. A knock sounded at the door. Everyone started, and Miina left to attend to the visitor.

  “Did Taalo describe what was in the crate?” she asked.

  “He said it was the lodestone, a charm that lay hidden and protected for five hundred years.”

  “Did he show you any proof?”

  “I had to take his word, since I’m not qualified to evaluate magical relics,” Usko said. “They were going to ship it off. For all his bravado, Taalo couldn’t control it, which was causing dissension within the group.”

  “Explain.” Draius leaned forward.

  “It sounded like everyone wanted it moved further away from the Phrenii and their power, to stop the storms. The question was where to send it, and I think the councilman wanted to do something different. Taalo said rudely that the councilman’s friends had been out-voted and that he should shut up.”

  “They believed the lodestone was causing the false-spring storms?”

  Usko cocked his head. “What else could have caused them?”
>
  Draius saw Ponteva roll his eyes. She drummed her fingers on her desk. The false-spring storms had shut down much of the shipping in and out of Tyrra, as well as up and down the Whitewater. They were unusual enough to cause scholars to search historical records and no one found similar storms recorded in written Tyrran history. The H&H even attempted to interview the Phrenii, but reported the information they received as “obtuse.”

  She decided to move on; whether the lodestone caused the storms and flooding was irrelevant to her investigation. “What did they do with the lodestone?”

  “Shipping the thing out of Betarr Serasa without attracting attention proved to be difficult. The harbor master’s office reviews all incoming and outgoing cargo declarations. We needed false manifests and falsified customs forms to avoid a harbor inspection. There were also specific problems with transporting the lodestone. It couldn’t be placed near people and it has strange effects on other materials. It needed a large compartment all to itself and because the storms had limited the ships that could safely leave harbor, cargo space was dear. Taalo told me there was much discussion regarding the shipping, how much it would cost, and of course, where to send it and who could be entrusted with it.”

  “Where did you send it?” she asked. Could it be this easy?

  “Taalo had me prepare paperwork for five destinations: Betarr Kain, Suellestrin, Illus, Forenllas, and Chikirmo. He said the decision would be made at the last possible moment. I recall seeing Reggis arguing with Taalo, and I heard words about ‘our Groygan contact.’“

  “And you don’t know the final destination?” She didn’t need to see Usko’s agreement.

  “They were careful to hide things from me. But they couldn’t hide the name of the ship. It was Sareenian, named the Danilo Ana.”

  “What about names of people? You’ve only mentioned the leader, Taalo, and the councilman.”

  “I wasn’t allowed to hobnob with the inner circle. They said that would protect my identity.” There was an undercurrent of bitterness in the Usko’s dry tone. “And you’re making a mistake, if you think Taalo is their leader.”