by Frank Tuttle
Meralda lifted her face to meet Mug’s eyes. “How did you know?”
“Because that’s exactly how ghosts do things,” said Mug. “They have rules to follow, you know.”
Meralda frowned. “I’ll have no more of this ghost nonsense.” She glanced back at the stair, wary of penswifts. “What I saw was something else. There are spellworks about the Tower. They ruined the latch.”
Mug frowned. “Spellworks? Whose?”
Meralda closed her bag. She remembered the words the latch had brought, but she did not speak them.
“I don’t know,” she said. Her vision clearing, she dared a look at the Tower, and though the brightness of the sky made her squint she saw nothing unusual in the air.
“What kind of spellworks? Could you tell?”
Meralda looked away, and shook her head. “No,” she said. “Aside from knowing something is up there, and part of it, at least, extends beyond the Tower walls around the flat, I don’t know a thing.”
Mug pretended to lift a small leaf and turn it to and fro in deep consideration. “Some might say that such a statement alone would justify sealing the Tower for the next hundred years and then going home,” he said. “Not that you’d ever agree with such a person.”
Too late for that, thought Meralda. What if my spell damaged an old structural spell, just as the old spell tore apart the latch?
And what if persons unknown were preparing the Tower as a place from which to attack Tirlin?
Meralda hefted her bag. “I’ll have a guard stay below to keep the tourists away,” she said. “We shouldn’t be more than a few minutes.”
Mug sighed. “You shouldn’t,” he agreed. “Of course, there shouldn’t be faces in the sky, or spells on the Tower, should there?”
Meralda marched down the stairs. The Bellringers looked up at her, confusion mirrored in their features.
“You,” said Meralda, to one of the half-dozen strange guards gathered behind the Bellringers. “Stay here. No one but me goes back up those stairs. Is that clear?”
“Yes, ma’am,” said the guard. Meralda reached the last tread, and the grass of the park and the press of the crowd.
“We’re in a hurry,” she said. “Make way, will you?”
Guards bellowed, and the crowd melted away. The Bellringers fell into place on either side of Meralda.
She set a quick pace. The Tower loomed up ahead, doors ringed by guards, guards ringed by penswifts. Meralda saw them, and felt her chest tighten.
“Thaumaturge!” came shouts all about her as she reached the Tower. “Thaumaturge!”
Meralda steeled herself. I do not hear, I do not see.
“Sergeant,” she said, over the din. Kervis and Tervis kept the most insistent of the penswifts at arm’s length.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Has anyone been in or out of the Tower?”
“No, ma’am,” said the sergeant. “They hauled the last of the lumber out yesterday. Sealed ever since.”
Meralda nodded. “Open the doors, please.”
As the penswifts shouted, a pair of guards swung the Tower doors open and the Bellringers darted ahead. The penswifts leaped aside, still shouting questions, but before they could follow the Tower guards converged and the doors swung shut.
Darkness fell. Meralda and the Bellringers came to a sudden halt. Meralda found her magelamp, took a breath, and spoke the word.
Light flared.
“Pardon, ma’am,” said Kervis, his eyes on the darkness. “What are we looking for?”
“Evidence,” she said. She put her bag on the floor, bent, and opened the catch.
Tervis cleared his throat. “Will we be climbing to the flat?”
Meralda bit her lip. The spellwork I saw radiated from the flat, she thought. The only way to see it again is to climb those stairs, up into the dark.
But she’d be foolish to do so with nothing but a pair of magelamps and a single charged ward wand. “No, we won’t be seeing the flat just now,” she said aloud. The Bellringers, as one, let out their breath in a rush. “This is as far as we go.”
Meralda pointed the lamp into her bag, and withdrew the cloth-wrapped retaining wand.
It buzzed at her touch.
“I’m going to release another ward spell,” she said. “It’s far more powerful than the one I loosed in the flat.”
She heard the Bellringers each take a short step backwards.
“Don’t worry,” said Meralda. “This is a new spell. It won’t trigger until we’re all gone.” She raised her voice so that it echoed throughout the Tower. “Of course, it will target anyone hiding in the Tower the instant we leave. That would be a pity, since this new spell is easily capable of melting rock. At a distance. Still, if no one comes forward now…”
Silence. Meralda counted to ten, removed the cloth, and spoke a word.
The wand howled like a thousand angry hornets. The ward spell, when it leaped from the copper wand, burned bright as a gas lamp, and big as a fat pumpkin.
It expanded until it was a whirling, ragged ball of fire, and then it shot up into the heart of the Tower, touching the walls in every direction with an angry ring-shaped crimson glow that flashed wide and round against the first story ceiling before vanishing abruptly. The howling continued, muted, but furious.
“Can it really melt rock?” asked Tervis.
“Oh, yes,” said Meralda. “Rock, metal, hidden intruders. I suspect they’ll all leave behind the same mass of ashes.”
Kervis whistled. “That ought to give Old Ugly something to chew on.”
Meralda grinned. Then she sought her bag again, and withdrew a small cloth bag of Old Maid flour.
Tervis cocked his head. “Aha!” he said. “Going to sprinkle that on the stair, are you?”
Meralda untied the bag. “We’ll go up high enough that no one could jump down to avoid it,” she said. “And we’ll cover twenty treads or so, to keep clever persons from leaping across it.”
Kervis frowned. “Is that magic powder?”
Meralda smiled. “I doubt it,” she said. “But it does make good biscuits.” She played the light on the stair, on the far side of the Tower. “If you gentlemen will accompany me?”
The Bellringers tramped with her toward the stair.
Meralda was still squinting in the sun, halfway down Wizard’s Walk and halfway to her carriage, when Kervis looked up, frowned, and fell out of step with Tervis.
“Uh oh,” he said.
Meralda followed his gaze to the head of the walk. She still couldn’t make out faces, but the uniforms were plain enough. Palace guards, with the captain himself at the fore.
Meralda groaned. “Tell me that isn’t the captain, looking for me.”
“It isn’t, ma’am,” said Kervis. “But it is. Must be half a dozen with him, too.” Kervis shifted his crossbow and sighed. “Whatever it is, it isn’t good.”
Meralda quickened her pace. Traffic on the walk cleared as the captain and his men bore down it. Two hundred paces, one hundred, fifty. As the distance between them closed, Meralda tried and failed to read the captain’s face, and guess what calamity had brought him all the way to the park.
Meralda heard a rush of booted feet behind her, and though she didn’t turn to look she could imagine a mob of penswifts racing to catch up with her.
The captain saw, and his face went crimson, and Meralda could see the muscles of his neck tighten and bunch.
“How nice of you to drop by, Captain,” said Meralda, through a forced smile. “My days are full of surprises.”
The captain muttered to his men, and they flanked him and hurried past. Meralda grinned at the thought of the penswifts arguing with the captain’s grim-faced lieutenants.
The captain came puffing to a halt. Meralda stopped as well, noting with satisfaction that the penswifts had been shouted to a dead halt some distance behind.
Meralda blinked away a row of dancing bright spots, and saw at last the troubled set of t
he captain’s face.
“What has happened?” she asked, in a whisper.
“Alons,” said the captain. “Robbed.”
Meralda went wide-eyed.
“Robbed?” she said. “Of what?”
“Their bloody crown jewels, of course,” said the captain. “The Mountain Tears. Right out of the east wing safe room. The locked and guarded east room safe room.” The captain took a deep breath, and glanced about before continuing. “The Alon queen was talking about leaving the Accords when I left,” he said. “We’ve got to find the Tears, Thaumaturge,” he said. “Got to find them soon.”
Meralda stared. We?
“Yvin thinks the thieves used sorcery,” replied the captain. “He told me to find you and fetch you,” he said. “Shall we go?”
“Oh, why not?” said Meralda. “I’ve got latches falling off the Tower, rumors of haunts, fifteen days until Commencement. Certainly, let’s go chase down jewel thieves.” She whirled. “We’ve been found and fetched, gentlemen,” she said, to Kervis and Tervis. “We’re done here, for today.”
She whirled again, and the captain shook his head. “I’m sorry about this, Thaumaturge,” he said. “But when you see how the Tears were guarded and stored, I think you’ll agree sorcery may well have been involved.”
Meralda sighed. “I’m sorry, Captain. I know you didn’t run all the way here to ruin my afternoon.” She put her hand on his shoulder. “When this is all over, let’s both retire, shall we?”
The captain barked a short laugh. “Soldiers and mages don’t retire, Thaumaturge,” he said. “We just die quietly of over work.”
He turned, and stamped back toward the wall. Meralda motioned the Bellringers to follow, and fell wearily into step behind him.
Chapter Nine
The palace was quiet. Guards hurried to and fro, staff darted and dodged among them, somber-faced court officials popped in and out of doors. Everywhere, voices were muted, doors were closed softly, and orders were given in near-whispers. And no one, no one at all, was smiling.
Meralda hurried through the palace at the captain’s side. He chose a route intended to avoid the more public areas. Meralda knew the Alons were housed in the east wing guest halls, and the safe room was on the third floor, but she’d never seen many of the hushed corridors and dim, narrow passages she passed through with the captain.
Meralda’s Sight lingered, and she had to look away from a gas lamp lest she see afterimages of the face from the park dancing in the flame. “Vonashon, empalos, endera,” came the words, over and over. Meralda remembered just enough from her year of Old Kingdom to translate them.
Walk warily, walk swiftly, walk away.
A storybook warning, mused Meralda. How quaint.
The captain halted, banged three times on a door so old its face was blacked with coal soot, and motioned Meralda through as it was opened from the other side. “Nearly there,” he said, as Meralda passed. “But don’t expect a warm welcome from our Alon brethren.”
Meralda nodded. “I won’t,” she said, and she saw mad eyes wink in a gas lamp’s flame and put her gaze quickly back to the plain oak floor.
Tervis and Kervis tromped behind, exchanging short bursts of whispers at each portrait or Historical Society placard. “The Moon Room,” she heard Tervis whisper, as the party passed a barred and bolted door. “That’s where Mad King Foon thought he saw the vampire!”
She heard Kervis pause at the door. “Been barred up ever since,” he said, and Meralda could almost see his sudden grin. “What if I knocked, little brother?”
“What if I yanked up your boots and boxed your ears?” asked the captain, casually. The Bellringers fell back into step.
The floors went from threadbare rugs to polished hardwood and then to newly-laid carpet. After a dozen corridors and three sets of stairs, Meralda rounded a corner to find a foursome of Alon copperheads—wearing their namesake blunt-topped copper helmets, no less—facing her. The copperheads flanked a wide set of black oak double doors.
“We’re back,” gruffed the captain.
“You may pass,” said one of the copperheads, as the others drew back the doors.
Meralda, the captain, and the Bellringers stepped through, and Meralda realized that, by law, she was now on Alon soil.
Angry Alon soil, at that.
A short march down a straight corridor, and a turn, and the party faced a dead-end hall and yet another door. The door stood open, dimly lit from within by flickering candlelight, and flanked by another pair of glaring copperheads.
“The safe room?” asked Meralda.
“The safe room,” said the captain. He stopped. “Would it be best if you went in alone?”
“It would,” said Meralda. Not that it really matters, she thought. She had no spells prepared, no wands charged, her second sight was all but useless, and her staff just earthed an errant major spellwork. She couldn’t see a barrel-full of ward spells if it was lit with torches and marked with a placard.
But here I am. Meralda remembered something Shingvere had said, years ago. “Sometimes a piercing glare and a few nonsense words are all the magic you really need.”
Good, she thought. Because that’s really all I have.
“I’ll call you in a moment, Captain,” she said. “Tervis, I may need my bag later.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Tervis, who set it down on the floor.
Meralda nodded to the Alon guards and marched into the safe room.
It reminded her instantly of her dorm room at the college. It had bare walls, a bare floor, a low, bare ceiling. It was about the same size, as well. Just large enough for five paces from one wall to the next.
Meralda stood in the middle of the safe room and turned in a slow circle. The only door was open behind her. To her left, the wall was fronted by a plain wood table, on which burned a five-tiered candelabrum. Otherwise, the table, which took up nearly the length of the wall, was empty.
Before the table sat a chair. It too was plain and none too new. One of the legs had been replaced with lighter wood than the rest.
Centered on the far wall, directly across from the door, was a painting. The frame was on hidden hinges and had been left open, so Meralda could only see the back of the canvas and frame. Behind the painting was a steel wall safe, its door perhaps two feet high and just as wide.
The safe door was open. The safe, itself, was empty.
And that was all. A table, a chair, an open safe, a missing crown jewel, a black eye for Tirlin.
What did they want her to do?
Meralda bit her lip. All right, she thought. What can I do that the guards and the Watch cannot?
“Captain,” she said.
“Thaumaturge?” replied the captain, poking his head in the door.
“You said the jewel box was found smashed on the floor,” she replied. “Where is it?”
The captain spoke to the copperheads, then came inside, shaking his head. “The Alon wizards took it,” he said. “Right after I came for you. Claimed they were going to use it to, and I quote, ‘track down the Tirlish conjurer who dared steal from our queen’.”
Meralda bit back an Angis-word.
“It’s their country, in here,” whispered the captain. “We’re being allowed inside only as a courtesy, and that isn’t going to last much longer, judging by the shouting and the fist waving I saw before I left.” He paused. “Meralda, do you see anything? Anything at all?”
“Nothing. An empty room. Guarded, you said, at all times.”
The captain nodded. “Our Alon friends tell us the safe was undisturbed at the room check this morning,” he said. “When four of them opened the door for the afternoon check, though, they found the safe open, the box smashed, and the Tears gone. No one had been in or out.”
“Do you believe that, Captain?” asked Meralda.
The captain sighed. “I do,” he said. “Copperheads aren’t my favorite people, but the way they’ve got their guard rotations arra
nged you’d need to have twenty-two people in cahoots, just to get these doors open. You might find one Alon willing to betray clan and queen, but twenty-two? From different clans?” He snorted. “Impossible.”
Meralda stared at the empty safe. It was perhaps two feet deep. She could see all the way to the back, though it was in shadow.
“Nevertheless,” she said, stepping toward the safe. “It is empty.”
Voices rose up, outside the safe room, Alon, by the accent. Meralda heard Kervis tell someone, “The thaumaturge is working now, you’ll need to wait a moment.”
Working. Meralda touched the cold metal of the safe door, swung it nearly shut so she could see its face.
Centered on the safe door was a knurled round dial. Old Kingdom numerals were etched along the edge of the dial, counting clockwise from zero to ninety-nine. A down-pointing arrow engraved in the face of the safe pointed to the dial, which now read fifty-six. Meralda recognized that as the last number of the safe’s combination, and wondered who had been so careless as to leave the dial set there.
The safe presented no other features, save for the lion’s head emblem of Oaken Lock Works stamped at the bottom.
Meralda stepped back, and swung the painting closed, and there, in the flickering candlelight, Tim the Horsehead grinned back at her.
He’d have had no trouble with this, thought Meralda. A flash of light, a muffled shout, and the thief would be dragged, kicking and screaming, all the way back to the safe room, Tears in hand, while Tim gloated and munched hay.
Meralda sighed.
“Captain,” she said. “Please step outside.”
“Of course.” The captain grinned. “I knew you’d think of something.”
He turned and walked away.
Meralda closed her eyes, and took five long deep breaths, and opened her eyes again. “Sight,” she whispered, struggling to see past her ordinary vision. “Sight, Sight, Sight.”
Bare white walls, a painting, bare cold floor.
“Sight,” hissed Meralda. Her eyes began to water and sting.
