Dangerous Gifts

by Gaie Sebold

  “A child. Chitherlee. The daughter of Enthemmerlee’s dead brother, brought up as one of the household.”

  “That’s all?”

  “There are no other surviving family. There are, of course, the Defraish, the family into which Enthemmerlee was supposed to marry. Tovanay Moth en Laslain Defraish and his mother Daryellee. The boy I have not met, though it would be wise to assume that he is upset and angry. The mother was somewhat icy.”

  “Capable of vengeance for the insult?”

  “Only if it could be done in a way that did not exacerbate the appalling scandal.”

  “And the rest of the Ten Families?”

  He rummaged in the desk, and handed me a sheaf of paper. “This is what we know.”

  I took the papers. “And the Council itself? What’s the feeling of the Gudain government?”

  “There are those who see the Itnunnacklish as a plot by the Ikinchli, those who see her as a ghastly family embarrassment, and those who see her as a clever move which may help to calm an increasingly volatile situation.”

  “And what about the Ikinchli? I don’t even know their system of government.”

  “Officially, the ruling power still lies with the priests, but it seems their role has become increasingly ceremonial. There are a number of local leaders of varying degrees of influence. Some are in favour of the Itnunnacklish, some are actively hostile, many are waiting to see which way the wind blows.”

  “Wonderful.” I hate politics. At least on a battlefield it’s usually pretty damn obvious who your enemy is; they’re the one trying to remove your head.

  “Don’t look so down in the mouth, Babylon, I have every faith in your abilities.”

  I wished I did, but I wasn’t going to say so, in case he decided not to hire me after all.

  “Now, if there’s nothing else,” he said, “I’ll show you out.”

  He turned away for a moment, and a door I hadn’t known was there opened silently behind the pretty couch, revealing a low archway leading onto the street.

  “Always useful to have a way out,” I said.

  “Indeed.” He smiled, and kissed my hand, which sent the usual little shiver down my spine. “I hope you are not having second thoughts.”

  “I am having second thoughts. And third, and probably fourth. But I’ll be there.”

  It could be worse. All I had to do was keep Enthemmerlee from getting assassinated, train her household guard up to scratch, track down our silk and get it safely to the border, find out if some mysterious person was trying to make a bad situation worse, and not mention nookie.

  I was probably buggered six ways to sunset, but at least that ugly feeling of guilt in the back of my thighs had disappeared.

  FAIN HAD TOLD me nothing about the magician he was sending; but then Fain always dealt out information as though it was his life’s blood. There wasn’t much I could do about it.

  I wondered briefly if I should take someone with me. There was Laney, but even if I had wanted to take her away from the business for that long, she could be a bit of a liability, and not just financially. Like most High Court Fey, she’s extremely good at certain forms of diplomacy, but only when she feels like it; she’s also very easily bored, she enjoys the sensual arts and if she wants to bed someone she’ll do it. Considering how the Gudain felt about such things, taking Laney was probably not a great idea.

  Besides, I didn’t really want to take any of the crew. Scalentine’s not the safest city in the planes, but there are a lot worse places, and a country potentially on the verge of war was one of them.

  I only knew a couple of other really powerful magical practitioners. I’d known more, but several of them had moved on in the last Migration. There was Mokraine, but he wouldn’t be interested. Or suitable. He was an addict, disturbing company and a fair day’s walk from sane. Mattie Longsides could no longer find sane with a good map.

  But Mokraine might, perhaps, be able to give me some information, if I caught him in a communicative mood.

  To settle my unhappy stomach, I went to Gallock’s to get some food.

  Gallock was, as usual, cooking, yelling at hir staff and gossiping with customers in hir raucous, master-sergeant’s voice all at once. “Hey, Babylon.” Ze waved a spatula at me as I sat down, and a few minutes later came out from behind the counter to serve me hirself.

  Watching hir move was quite something. Barraklé are always pretty impressive; they tend to be broad, with a four-armed, four-breasted torso melding into the thick-furred muscular tail that propels them along; but Gallock was massively pregnant, too. Hir stomach went ahead of hir like an aggressive herald; threatening to knock people off their chairs.

  “By the All, Gallock, how many have you got in there?”

  Ze laughed. “Maybe just one big one. One is enough. What I get you, Babylon?”

  “You got that fish soup on? The one with the crunchy bits?”

  “For you, always.”

  “That, then. Oh, you haven’t seen Mokraine, have you?”

  Hir face darkened. “No. And please do not bring him in here. That familiar he got put everyone off their food. Waste my good cooking.”

  “Ah, come on, Gallock, the man’s got to eat.”

  “Not here, he not.”

  As I was waiting for my soup amid the crowd of dancers, actors and whores joking and laughing and arguing and shovelling in Gallock’s excellent food, I became conscious of a faint breeze on my cheek, blowing through the rich-smelling fug. I looked round to see that one of the small round window-panes was broken.

  As ze set the soup down, I said, “Gallock? What happened to your window?”

  “Oh, that. Builders, they call themselves. Wreckers, is more like. Pity you not here, eh? Smash their heads in for me.”

  “Seems like everyone wants me to smash someone’s head in,” I muttered into my soup. “Is it me, Gallock, or is there more of that sort of thing recently?”

  Gallock scowled. “Some, yes.” Ze nodded at a skinny dark-furred lad with a wide grin who had plates in each hand and another gripped in his tail, who was flirting with a tableful of actors. “The boy there, he get chased home, after his shift. Lucky he can climb good, got out of their way.” Ze shook hir head, and moved ponderously away, pressing one hand to the small of hir back. Gallock was big, and strong; but that far advanced in pregnancy, ze was also slow, and vulnerable. I hoped ze had someone to see hir home.

  The soup was, as always, excellent, but neither that nor a particularly nicely put-together dancer with a lush mouth and buttocks as tight and inviting as a freshly-made bed could distract my thoughts. I finished the soup, so as not to insult Gallock, but it was a struggle.

  When I left, I put my head into a few of Mokraine’s haunts; gambling dens, the small elegant squares where lawyers’ offices clustered. Nothing. His addiction to the powerful emotions of others had taken him somewhere else today.

  I’d almost given up when I found him down at the docks, sitting on an old crate, watching the ships. Portal Bealach flamed and roared, painting fine craft, grand warehouses, heaped litter and rat-corpses alike with shifting blue and gold.

  Silence puddled around Mokraine: a man in a ragged robe leached by time to a dim absence of colour. Tangled grey hair spilled down his back. One hand hovered over the head of his familiar; of all the ugly creatures I’d seen in my travels, possibly the ugliest. A mouthless clot of a thing, with three blood-coloured eyes and three splayed, toadish legs, its flesh a slimy grey that seemed out of place on anything living. Though whether the thing was actually alive was moot. Even Mokraine seldom touched it, and most people went out of their way to avoid getting anywhere near it.

  A ship came through the portal, the creak of wood, crackle of sail and voices of the crew all drowned in the portal’s roar. A small crowd waited on the dockside: stevedores and freelance doxies hoping for trade, merchants waiting for cargo, families waiting for the return of their kin, people waiting to leave. I saw a couple of the
blank, dimmed faces that meant Mokraine had been feeding. It was hard to say that what he did was harmful, as such; he drained strong emotions from people, and it left them, for a few moments, emptied out. They came back to themselves swiftly enough, though I’d never met anyone who enjoyed the experience. He also drew out, along with the emotions, a handful of memories, often to do with whatever had caused the emotion. Which meant that he was casually pickpocketing people’s private thoughts. Mokraine had never shown any interest in blackmail, but word got about. One day someone he’d fed on was going to have something they really wanted to hide, and then they’d try and kill him.

  Which could be very bad, and not just for Mokraine.

  Today, I thought he was looking a little better than usual – he had shaved within a day or so, and looked fractionally less cadaverous than the last time I’d seen him.

  “Mokraine,” I said, sitting down on a wrapped bale.

  “Babylon,” he said. “How odd.”

  “Odd?”

  “You are seeking me out.”

  “I was, yes.”

  “It seems to me that you did so not long ago, too – though I admit my sense of time is a little... vagrant, these days.” He watched the ship come into dock, the swoop of ropes through the air, hands reaching up to haul her into safety. “And now you have found me.”

  “What’s odd about me looking up an old friend?” I said.

  “You consider me a friend? I seem to have lost the knack for friendship. Or perhaps I never had it. It’s hard to tell, sometimes.”

  He’d been a powerful warlock, once. Probably he still was, somewhere in the mess that his last experiment had left of his mind.

  “I wanted to ask you something.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Is there an amulet, a spell, anything that will protect someone against all forms of magic?”

  “All forms?” He turned his head to look full at me; his eyes, deep-sunk and pouched, were weary, but amused. “My dear Babylon!”

  “What’s funny?”

  “Magic is not one thing. There are a thousand different systems; things which work on one plane and not on another, things which use physical objects, or will, or the intervention of a god. Magics of cooking-pot and consciousness. But there are the magics that simply are. Magics of breath and birth. If one could find one thing that would stop them all, why, it would probably stop everything. The turning of the planes would falter and cease, and all would fall away into the abyss.”

  Something walked down my spine on bony little feet.

  “Well, then,” I said. “Something that would help? Against whatever magics work on a particular plane?”

  “Which plane?”

  “Whichever one Incandress is on.”

  “Incandress.”

  “Where the Ikinchli come from? Satrapy of the Perindi Empire?”

  “Perindi... I was there, once, I think. The court. Yes. What did you ask me, Babylon?”

  “Protective amulets? Shielding against magic?”

  “What sort of magic?”

  “The type that kills people.”

  “There are many magics that kill. Are you planning to destroy some more gods?”

  “They weren’t gods. And how did you...? I never told you about that.”

  He waved a hand. “I... acquire things. Titbits. Fragments. You returned to your home plane, and there you destroyed those who were acting as gods.” He picked up a fragment of crab shell that was lying at his feet, and turned it in his fingers. “Interesting.”

  “You ‘acquire’ things.”

  “Things leak. People leak. Thoughts, memories, emotions; it was much in your mind. And out of it. You were not, yourself, inclined to become a god?”

  “I’d been Tiresana’s version of a god, thank you. I had absolutely no desire to do it again.”

  He dropped the shell. “Desire. Yes. That was you, too. And something remains.” He traced a finger down his jaw, following on his own face the line of my scar, his eyes on mine, rapt. “You have rejected power, but power has not yet let go of you, Babylon.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Portals,” he said. “Portals and planes and powers, all linked. Sometimes I get a glimpse... like a net of silver, woven through the darkness. Be careful when you tug at the threads of the universe.”

  “I’m not planning to do any such thing,” I said.

  “Neither was I... At least, I don’t think so. It’s hard to remember. But I created a portal where there was not a portal, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, you did. What has that to do with me? I’m no warlock. I leave messing with the universe to you lot.”

  He laughed. “You are linked to something, now; as am I. Creating a portal tied me into that silver net, and speaking with gods... speaking with gods has done the same to you.”

  “I placed an order! What am I supposed to use?”

  The words, furiously spoken, pulled Mokraine’s gaze away from me. I shuddered with relief. I might, once, have spoken with gods... a goddess, anyway. But so far as I was concerned, the conversation was over.

  I turned towards the argument that had attracted Mokraine. A red-faced man was yelling at a solid-looking Edleskasin woman bundled in the traditional red-leather-fringed, thick, quilted coat, with elaborately embroidered red cloths draped over her large, fragile ears. Two muscular young men loomed behind her. Her sons, by their looks. I knew her by sight; one of the grain merchants, with a big warehouse nearby.

  “You were outbid,” she said. “It’s business.”

  The red-faced man was getting redder, and his face was swollen in a worrying way. I could clearly see a vein in his temple that I was pretty sure shouldn’t be standing out like that. It brought back unhappy memories of a client I’d lost when his heart gave out on him.

  Mokraine, helplessly drawn, got to his feet.

  “Mokraine!” Should I actually try to stop him, though? It did go through my mind that having his emotions drained at this juncture might just save red-face from collapsing lifeless on the dirty cobbles.

  “We had a contract! I’m beginning to think the Builders are right about you lot!” Red-face said.

  One of the sons moved forward, growling.

  Red-face, for whom I’d just lost most of my sympathy, spat, and walked off. Mokraine sat back down. “Oh, well,” he said. “Rather a meaty dish, that, in any case. Too heavy for a delicate palate.”

  “Mokraine? Do you know of any magicians who work for the Section? Someone called a Scholar?”

  “No. Why would I? Scholar is only a few steps above Initiate. Those lacking sufficient imagination remain Scholars all their lives.”

  “Unlike you.”

  “As you say.”

  “But why would someone choose a Scholar for an important mission?”

  Mokraine shrugged. “Perhaps because they require someone without imagination. Why do you ask me?”

  “Because you know things. Because you’re a First Adept.”

  He looked at me, and I caught a glimpse of the man he’d been. The First Adept Doctor of the Arcane, famous across a dozen planes; arrogant as an eagle on a crag, and just as touchy. Then the arrogance was gone, as swiftly as it came, and a sort of bleakness took its place. “I don’t know what I am,” he said. “Go away, Babylon.”

  I felt myself sweating slightly with relief.

  “All right. Try and take care of yourself, Mokraine.”

  He only waved his hand impatiently, staring out to sea again, his ravaged face and dimmed robes bathed in portal light, his gaze fixed on something far out of reach.

  CHAPTER

  SIX

  IT WAS A dim, foggy evening, smelling of woodsmoke and wet wool. I walked back via Glimmering Lane, which is packed with tiny shops, the sort known as ‘exclusive’; that is, they’ll only let you in if you happen to be in possession of a ridiculous amount of money. Even when I’m solvent I can’t afford to shop there. There was a woman there who ran a m
agical shop who had provided me with useful information before, but the place was closed.

  I looked in a few windows. A jewellery shop caught my eye – not because of the merchandise, most of which was of the vanishingly discreet sort (I’ve never understood the point of jewellery that’s so tasteful you can hardly see it, myself), but because of the neatly lettered notice tucked into the corner of the window. Excellent prices offered. Every discretion applied. Next to it was a tray of rings, more striking and varied stuff than further up in the window; some were fairly new, others had that smooth gloss of things that have been long-worn.

  So they bought old, as well as new. I ran my finger over one of my rings, a square-cut emerald in a setting of that iridescent black gold that only comes from Disla, in the far eastern quadrant of the Perindi Empire. It was a present from a client. Lovely, and unfortunately instantly recognisable, should the client happen to wander down here, which they might.

  And even pawning all my rings wasn’t going to get us out of Laney’s mess.

  There was a woman at the counter with long blonde hair spilling out of the hood of her cloak, showing something to the proprietor. I caught a glimpse of gold before he shook his head. She shoved whatever it was back in her pouch and turned, pulling up her hood, tucking her hair away, pale against the pale-green lining. I felt I’d seen her before, somewhere, but Scalentine’s like that, full of half-known faces.

  Then something truly horrible in the next shop caught my eye.

  It was probably meant to be a couch. It was hard to tell under the gilding, flags, fruit, furbelows and cherubs. It looked like one of the most uncomfortable things I’d ever seen, as well as being quite astonishingly ugly. I was tempted to go in and ask the price, just so I could laugh.

  A customer emerged from the back of the shop, and ran a hand over one of the gilded swags. Now him, I knew. Trader Heimarl. ‘Difficult times.’ Obviously not too difficult. The way the Dra-ay proprietor was twisting his brow-feelers together, he’d not had to slash the price.

  I heard hasty footsteps behind me, and turned; but it was only the woman with the hood of her cloak pulled around to hide her face, hiding all but a crescent of skin.