by Melanie Card
The Tracker smoothed his hair again and squared his shoulders. “What do I need to do?”
“You need to purchase a generous length of fine silk thread, wine, olive oil, a silver cylinder the length of your thumbnail and the width of your baby finger, and a vial of mandragora mixed with zephnyr oil. Also linen bandages, a butcher’s apron, and a tarpaulin.” Ward wrapped the strap around his hand. “Your brother needs to fast for a day before I can perform the surgery, so I will return tomorrow night.”
“And he’ll just lie here, dying until then?”
“If his bowels aren’t as empty as possible it will increase the likelihood of rot. We will just have to pray the Goddess will keep him alive another day.”
“And so you should pray.” The Tracker didn’t finish his threat but Ward knew it was there.
SIXTEEN
Ward entered the bedchamber to find the journal open on the floor and Celia reading the parchment. He tugged it from her hands and put it back on the basin.
“Fine. The damn thing is an assassination assignment, but not for me, and the journal’s in some kind of foreign language.” The muscles on her jaw tensed. “What took you so long?”
He swallowed and set his rucksack on the floor. “I wanted to make sure I wasn’t followed.”
“A turtle could have done it faster.”
“And I would say a turtle has more experience at these things than I.” His stomach growled and for a fleeting moment he regretting rushing out of the Tracker’s room without eating. No. Staying with the Tracker was like playing with fire. Better alive and starving than dead. He pulled out the case containing his surgical implements, unhooked the latch, and placed it on top of the journal.
“These are amazing. What are they?” Celia reached for one of the knives and Ward pushed her hand away.
“They’re silver-plated steel knives.” He removed a pair of long, thin scissors from their felt and leather pocket, and cut away a square from the back of her ruined shirt. “They are not to be touched.”
“I just meant... they’re beautiful. I’ve never seen craftsmanship like that before, and trust me, I know my knives.”
“Really?” He set the scissors aside to be washed, and removed his tweezers. He cradled her right forearm in his left hand and pulled out a piece of crystal. She hissed, but managed not to move.
“My mother’s specialty was knives: use, craftsmanship, everything. She wanted me to follow in a proud line of knife specialists.”
Ward plucked out a few more pieces.
“She would have killed to see these. Where did you get them?”
His first professor, Schlier, had given them to him with the book on surgery after years of fending off Ward’s incessant questions about anatomy and why surgery was illegal. It was one of the proudest moments of Ward’s life, and he reveled in the honor of being accepted into the secret society of surgeons. Still, his joy was bittersweet. He could never tell his family, not even his grandfather, and he could never show anyone how beautiful and captivating surgery and the implements of surgery could be.
“A friend gave them to me.” He tried for another piece, but it was lodged deeper than the others. “They are not for killing.”
“No,” Celia said, “but they certainly are illegal.”
“Yes.” He captured the crystal and removed it, dropping it beside the other ones. “I suppose we have more in common than first thought.”
“Hardly.”
Fine. They had nothing in common. She was practical, he intellectual. She physical, he mental. Water and oil. Ice and fire. Superior and inferior. Except she was the one lying on the bed with crystal in her rear.
He pushed that thought away. “So, this might not be the best time to bring this up...” He fished out two more pieces of crystal, uncertain how to continue.
“But you’re going to talk about it anyway.”
“I was wondering where we are now.” He swallowed. “I mean, in trying to figure out who… you know…”
“Who killed me?”
He finished her right arm and moved to her left. “Yes, given...”
“Given that this assignment wasn’t for me, and I haven’t been able to find one?” She closed her eyes.
“Exactly.”
“It’s not really the assignment that bothers me.”
“Excuse me?”
“A lot of people could want me dead for a lot of reasons.”
He bit back the nasty comment that came to mind.
“Let’s begin with my family.”
“Your family?” He fished out a few more pieces.
“I mean, people might want to kill me because of my family, particularly if they discovered our identities. But I can’t ignore anyone, which also means it could be a member of my family, including my father and his right-hand man, Bakmeire. Who, strangely enough, we keep running into. Then there’s my older brother. If I ever marry there’s a chance my husband will become the next Dominus and not him.”
“A line that’s succeeded by women?”
“Hardly,” Celia said. “Just the most unscrupulous. That, and neither of my brothers are very good at managing the type of people under my father’s reign.”
“I never thought the Dominus needed people skills.” He’d always assumed the Dominus was kind of like the Quayestri, bullying people to get what he wanted.
Celia snorted. “Of course he does. His business is manipulation and control. If his people don’t obey him, he has a serious problem.”
“I suppose so.” He removed the last of the crystal from her arm, lifted her shirt away, and started on her back.
“Father probably is— was— considering a marriage with a second or third son of a Dominus from another principality, or a powerful under-lord here in Brawenal who would be more capable of taking the reins of the Gentilica.”
“What about your father?”
Celia shrugged. “I always thought I was more important to him alive and married than dead.”
“So who’s on the list for wanting you dead because of your family?”
“You name them, they’re on it. They don’t even have to know me. They just need to know the Dominus has a daughter.”
“That doesn’t help narrow it down. We can’t go chasing everyone in town. I doubt you’d have the time.” Ward dropped a piece of crystal with the others on the cloth. The pile had grown past his original expectation.
She glanced at him from over her shoulder. “The spell?”
Ward nodded.
“How long?”
“I don’t know.” He thought back to when he’d performed the Jam de’U. It felt like an eternity, but it was only a few nights ago. “This is the third night.”
“And how long are these spells supposed to last?”
“It all depends.”
“Depends on what?” Celia asked.
Ward returned to pulling the crystal from her back. She wasn’t going to be pleased with the answer.
“Depends on what?” she asked again.
“On how well I did the spell.”
“How well you did the spell?” She started to roll over, and he pushed her back down.
“I had to improvise on some of the components, and I was a little pressed for time during the meditation.”
She didn’t respond.
“There were people breaking down the door.”
He dropped two more pieces of crystal onto the pile, and Celia pressed her face into the blanket. He paused, tweezers ready to remove another piece, and watched the slow rise and fall of her back as she breathed. It must be difficult for her, knowing she worked on borrowed time.
“So, when?” she asked.
“I don’t—” He tugged at his shirt and swallowed. “Have you noticed any of the signs?”
“What signs?”
“Remember when you were in the sewer?”
“The shakes, the cold, the encroaching darkness?”
He nodded.
“
I haven’t noticed any of it this time.”
“Then I suppose you have a while yet.”
“You suppose?”
He grasped a piece of crystal and eased it out of her back. “It isn’t an exact science.”
“No, I suppose it isn’t.”
Another piece of crystal and her back was finished. He swallowed and stared at her buttocks, tweezers poised in mid-air. This was the part he wasn’t looking forward to, and yet, in a strange way, he was. He swallowed again. He was a physician. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t seen a woman’s unclothed bottom before. And it wasn’t as if a few of those women hadn’t been beautiful, either.
Celia propped herself up on one elbow. “Are you done?”
“No. I need—” He met her gaze and flushed. He didn’t understand how just thinking about her body could reduce him to a babbling idiot. “I’m almost finished. You need to...” He swallowed and pointed to her bottom with his tweezers. “Not all the way. Just to your...”
“Just my luck, I get stuck with a shy physician.”
“I am not.”
She raised a single sculpted eyebrow.
“It’s just that I don’t tend to work on live patients.” He reached for his scissors, leaning so close he could feel the heat radiating from her body.
“Let me put you at ease.” She blew against his neck. The cavern grew uncomfortably warm. “I’m not alive.”
Right. She was dead, dead, dead. Actually, beyond-dead, but she would go back to being dead very soon. He didn’t know how a beyond-dead woman could retain her seductive powers, but she had done it.
Well, no more. He was a professional. He could keep a professional distance from a dead, deadly, charming, beautiful...
He sat up, grabbed the waistband of her pants, and cut. “Then I suppose that’s a good thing.”
§
Ward rolled to his side and tucked his arm under his head. He squeezed his eyes shut but sleep evaded him. He tried his back. No luck. He couldn’t stop thinking, flip-flopping between the Tracker and Celia. Could he successfully perform the operation on the Tracker’s brother? He had the procedure memorized but still, he’d only read about it. He hadn’t seen it done before. And Celia... her body...
Heat rose to his face. His Jam de’U was certainly working. Everything about her—how she bled, and scabbed, and the feel of her skin—seemed alive. If he didn’t know better, he’d swear she was still alive. Maybe he’d somehow cast a resurrection spell?
No. Resurrections were the stuff of legends and he wasn’t powerful enough for that. In his wildest fantasies, the most he could hope for was some strange variation on the Jam de’U, which meant she was still dead. And that led to the other, more imminent, question. Who had killed her?
He sat up and ran his hands over his face. It didn’t matter if the Tracker’s brother lived, or who wanted Celia dead. What he needed to keep in mind was how he could free himself from this disaster and survive. To that, he saw very little hope. Aside from saving his soul from the fate of an Oath-breaker, helping Celia catch her murderer was supposed to clear his name with her family and the inevitable accusation of stealing her body. But that didn’t seem plausible anymore. It was more likely her family wanted her dead, and Ward was getting in the way of all of it. She had claimed her father had murdered her, but then didn’t seem sure, and now... Goddess. Her father was the Dominus, the Master of the Gentilica, Lord of the Underworld. His own daughter was an assassin. Which didn’t make her entirely reliable.
His memory flew back to the white curve of her buttocks. Even crisscrossed with lacerations and smeared with blood it was beautiful.
He needed to walk.
He left his bedchamber and headed down the hall, away from Celia and her beautiful bottom. He’d fished out all of the crystal, cleaned her wounds—which, to his surprise, didn’t require any stitches—and wrapped her in linen bandages. With any luck, she would be sleeping.
Wishful thinking. She was more likely up and about, bleeding through her bandages and making a mess of her stunning self. Everything about her was mesmerizing, even her temper. It brought a blush to her cheeks and made her eyes sparkle. And turned him into a stammering fool, making him see flirtation where he was sure none existed.
He arrived at the staircase. Up lay two more levels and the exit into the sewers. Celia had already told him there was nothing for him to see up there. Down, at least, was new and unexplored. Perhaps he’d find something. He headed down, passing all the levels until he arrived at the bottom of the gallery.
In the center lay a shallow pool of water reflecting light from the ceiling far above. Seven beams: four red, two green, one yellow. He sat on the edge of the pool, dipped his hand into the water, and watched the play of light dance across the ripples. Celia had been wrong. There was art in the cavern. It just didn’t appear in a common form like painting or sculpture.
He ran his fingers through the water again, brushed something on the bottom, and leaned forward to peer past the reflected light. The bottom of the pool wasn’t a smooth bowl as expected; it was an abstract pattern of raised squares, rectangles, and pyramids of varying heights, with uneven trenches between. With his index finger, he traced the pattern, the smooth, flat surfaces in contrast to the crisp edges and points. He imagined himself a thousand years in the past, sitting at the bottom of the gallery, the hum of activity far above, gazing into the pool, letting go of his busy life as an Ancient.
But all he could feel was an eerie stillness pressing against him, as if the Ancients had imbued the cavern with magic that repelled life. The sewers teemed with rats, mice, lizards, bugs, and spiders, and yet he hadn’t noticed a single creature in the cavern. Not even a spider web. He supposed it was convenient from a homeowner’s perspective—and he could only assume the cavern had been a home of some kind—but it left him feeling uneasy, an intruder, even though the Ancients’ civilization was long dead.
With a sigh, he glanced around, looking for corridors, hoping there were more reflection pools to distract him, but only smooth obsidian walls surrounded him, heavy and smoky, weighing him down.
He might be tired enough to try sleeping again. He was sure Celia was planning something for their next move—she always was—and he needed a clear head so he could tell her to stay in bed and heal.
The thought struck him as ridiculous. Heal, so you look healthy when you revert back to being dead.
This was such a mess. Grandfather would be ashamed of him, meddling with the veil. Waking them for fifteen to twenty minutes wouldn’t upset the balance. But he hadn’t taken anything into consideration, hadn’t researched, nothing. Even if he’d done the research, the balance could have still been disrupted. That was the very reason Innecroestris were banned. They paid no attention to the balance, tortured souls, and caused the deaths of innocents as the balance attempted to correct itself. That, and they were drunk on the power of the blood magic. Once started, the only way to end the addiction, the lure to cast dark spells again and again, was death.
If only he’d spent more time thinking before he’d attempted the Jam de’U. He didn’t seem to be good at anything, and he couldn’t seem to stay with a good thing when he found it.
He slapped the water, splashing it over the lip of the pool and onto his pants.
Being a physician had been an admirable goal, but he’d destroyed that by becoming fascinated with surgery. Now, various principalities were after him.
As for the family business, it too had mired him in trouble, and the Gentilica were even less forgiving than the unforgiving Quayestri.
§
Karysa marched through the house to Celia Carlyle’s room, ignoring the gilt and finery. It didn’t impress her and never would. This girl was proving more difficult to apprehend than she anticipated. They needed Celia. She was the chosen one. She’d taken the herbs, and the Contraluxis was only days away. Generations had prepared for this and if they missed this opportunity they’d have to wait over a hundred
years for the next one.
Dark Son’s blood! Everything rested on that girl and no one could find her. If she hadn’t been an assassin—making her perfect for her new destiny as the shadow walker—she’d say the necromancer Carlyle had hired to wake her was the cause of her troubles. Except she couldn’t sense his spell on Celia, so he wasn’t even a consideration.
But with a little of Celia’s essence and some blood, the problem would be solved.
Celia’s room was opulent, what she would expect from a daughter of minor nobility, but Karysa wasn’t there for the decor. She eased to the bed and examined the pillow. There, dark against the white linen case, lay a strand of black hair.
Just what she needed.
It infuriated her that she had to cast an essence-seeking spell. She didn’t want to waste her previously acquired energy, but if Carlyle couldn’t find his daughter, someone had to.
Karysa pricked her finger, dragged the hair through the blood, and clenched it in her hand. Heat washed over her as she concentrated. Her skin tingled. Energy rushed through her. If the Necromancer Council of Elders knew the ecstasy of casting true blood magic, they’d stop their ridiculous meditations and weak attempts to control what they claimed was a “lure” that destroyed the soul. How little they knew. They could just trade someone else’s soul to maintain their own. Once started, she didn’t know how anyone could deny the sensation. It was better than sex.
But not this spell. It was too small for anything but getting her worked up. Maybe she should seek out Carlyle’s man, Bakmeire. He looked like fun. And a man after her own heart, willing to sacrifice his master for more power.
A small spike of pain pieced her eyes and she gasped at the pleasure. She blinked, the spell took hold, and she searched for the spirit cord that would lead her to Celia Carlyle.
Nothing.
She blinked again and squinted. Still nothing.
Something shimmered at the edge of her vision and she spun around. There, dancing about the room, little specks of red light.
