by karlov, matt
There wasn’t.
They rose from the table and began collecting their bags, Narvi with an air of relief, Arandras still thinking about the conversation just finished. Mara glanced from one to the other, a satisfied smile on her face.
“That went well,” she said as Fas disappeared down the stairs. “Free lodging, just for joining you two on the road. I should do this more often.”
Narvi made a face. “I’m sure we’ll find something for you to do.”
Mara gave an easy shrug, then bent and hoisted her main bag to her shoulders. “Lead the way.”
They headed for the stairs in single file; Narvi followed by Mara, then Arandras. Arandras paused at the top, glancing back at the vista of city roofs. The sun was precisely on the horizon now, a great orange ball perched between distant hills.
It’s just a room and bed. That’s all.
There was a murmur of conversation from the stairway, followed by a burst of cheeky laughter from Mara. Then her voice floated up from somewhere below. “That reminds me. When’s dinner?”
With a faint smile and shake of his head, Arandras lifted his bags and followed the others down.
•
The accommodation provided by the Quill consisted of a cell-like room near the kitchens, a straw pallet, and a small chest with the key still in the lock. Not trusting the urn to the chest, Arandras slept as best he could with it stashed beneath the thin pillow, its round body pressing uncomfortably against him. A high grille in the door admitted the thin light and smoke-tinged perfume of the scented candles burning in the passageway; and, as dawn approached, the sounds and smells of the kitchen returning to life. The clatter of pans drove away any vestige of slumber, leaving him weary, bleary-eyed, but inescapably awake.
He found Narvi at the back of the schoolhouse on a bench overlooking the grounds. A small girl in an ochre hood sat on the grass beside him, giggling at something in her hands.
“Look, Papa!” the girl said, proffering a clay doll for inspection. “It worked! She’s wet all over!”
Narvi turned the doll over in his hands. “So she is.”
“It’s the dew,” the girl announced, in the serious tone of one relaying privileged information. “It comes in the night and makes everything wet.”
Narvi caught sight of Arandras and waved him over. “Now, who’s this, sweet? Do you know?”
The girl looked up, uncertain. A hand shot out and grabbed Narvi’s ankle.
“It’s all right,” Narvi said. “This is Uncle Randas. Do you remember him?”
Arandras crouched before the girl. “Hello, Katriel,” he said gravely. “What do you have there?”
“Doll,” she said, clutching it to her chest.
“Ah, I see. Does she have a name?”
Katriel shook her head, then nodded, then shook her head again. “Doll,” she repeated.
Arandras chuckled. “You’ve grown big,” he said. “Last time I saw you, you were only —”
“Where’s Aunty Treesa?”
Arandras blinked, his train of thought gone. Katriel gazed up at him, eyes wide with transparent curiosity, but in his still-sleepy state Arandras could think of nothing to say.
“She’s not here, sweet,” Narvi said, reaching for her hand. “Up you get. Time to go to lessons. You can talk more with Uncle Randas later.”
With a last puzzled frown at Arandras, Katriel trotted off toward a cluster of other children, leaving Arandras and Narvi alone. Arandras lowered himself onto the bench with a sigh.
“No word from her mother?” he said, looking out at the walled lawn and its collection of slender saplings.
Narvi might have shaken his head. “No.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No need,” Narvi said. “We’re fine. Really, we are.”
They considered the lawn in silence.
“Katriel reminds me of her,” Arandras said. “Something about the nose, I think.”
“Yes,” Narvi said. “Her laugh, too.”
Yes, that too. Arandras had met Narvi’s lover only a handful of times before she left Chogon, abandoning her newborn for the seclusion of a monastery in the foothills of the Kemenese. What would it be like, to be reminded every day of the one you had lost? To hear her voice, see her expressions and mannerisms each day in the face of a child? He glanced sidelong at Narvi, remembering his smile as he listened to Katriel explain the dew. If the girl brought him pain, he hid it well.
But then, nobody had taken Katriel’s mother from them. She had left of her own choice. The girl might be a reminder of rejection, perhaps, but not loss. Not like mine.
“Well. That urn’s not going to unriddle itself.” Narvi stood, grunting as he stretched his back. “Let’s make a start, shall we?”
The workroom set aside for their use was situated on the upper floor, near the end of one of the house’s shorter wings. A waist-high bench ran around three walls, with stools drawn up against it; on the fourth wall, two large, glass-fronted frames hung from hooks, the kind in which charts or maps might be displayed. A circular table filled the centre of the room, its timber a dull brown, surrounded by a mismatched collection of chairs. Daylight streamed into the room through half a dozen narrow windows along one wall, allowing the chandeliers hanging from the ceiling to go unlit.
Two figures glanced up at their entry. Both wore the bronze Quill feather, though neither brooch had the gold-tipped point marking an Elector.
“Arandras, allow me to introduce Bannard and Senisha,” Narvi said. “Bannard, Senisha, this is Arandras, the man with the urn.”
“Pleased to meet you, sir,” said the man, Bannard, squinting at him from beneath an unruly mop of dark hair. Angry red scabs marked his arm and one side of his face, the flesh around them still pink.
“Just Arandras will do fine,” Arandras said, trying not to stare. The man’s wounds looked at least a week old, but if he’d seen a fleshbinder they might only have happened a few days ago. “What happened to you?”
“Unbinding gone bad. Halli took the worst of it.” Bannard shrugged, apparently unfazed by either his own injuries or those suffered by his colleague. “Narvi says you used to work in the Greathouse archives, in Chogon,” he said, with palpable enthusiasm. “Is that true?”
“That was a long time ago,” Arandras said. “I’m not with the Quill any more.”
“Oh, no, I know. But you must have seen some amazing things.”
Arandras had little interest in discussing his time at Chogon. “What’s your area of expertise?”
Bannard shrugged again. “Research. Figuring stuff out. Whatever comes along.”
“And you?” Arandras said to Senisha, though he thought he already knew the answer. Sorcerer: check. Researcher: check. Which leaves only…
“Librarian,” Senisha said, in a voice barely more than a whisper.
Check.
“What about your friend?” Senisha said, her brows curving upward.
Arandras blinked. “I’m sorry?”
“Narvi said there were two of you. What does your friend do?”
Oh. Right. “Mara has business of her own,” Arandras said. “I doubt she’ll be joining us.”
Senisha looked confused, but Bannard seemed even less concerned by Mara’s absence than he was by his own injuries. “Splendid,” he said. “Where’s the urn? That’s what we’re all here for, isn’t it?”
All eyes turned to Arandras. He reached into the pouch hanging from his belt, his hand closing over the urn’s rounded form. This is worth it. It is. Slowly, he drew it out, placing it on the table and pulling away the wrapping.
There. That wasn’t so hard.
“Oh, my. Oh, that’s a beauty,” Bannard said, leaning close and squinting. “Do you know what it reminds me of?”
“Some sort of spirit ossuary?” Arandras said.
“A Yanisinian spirit ossuary — huh.” Bannard eyed him appraisingly. “You’ve done some digging already.”
“But this can’t be Yanisinian,�
�� Narvi said, frowning at the urn. “There’s no way a Yanisinian piece would be this well preserved.”
“True enough,” Bannard said. “That metalwork could only be Valdori. How far did you get with the inscription?”
Arandras shrugged. “Not very. It seems to fit the general form of a benediction, but that’s about all I can tell.”
“What’s a spirit ossuary?” Senisha said.
“A receptacle for a dead man’s spirit,” Bannard said. “That’s what the Yanisinians believed, anyway.”
“But this is Valdori, right?”
“Right.”
“So, the Valdori had spiritbinders, didn’t they?” Senisha’s brow furrowed. “What if they actually… made it work?”
“I had the same thought,” Arandras said. “But it’s not big enough, is it? I mean, the sorcery required to draw out a spirit would have to be incredibly complex, if it’s even possible.”
“Not exactly,” Narvi said slowly. “The urn wouldn’t necessarily have to extract anything. Something else could do that. The urn would only have to keep it contained.” He frowned. “But even then, you’re probably right. Imprisonment would likely be complex enough all on its own.”
“What if it didn’t need to be imprisoned?” Senisha said. “What if it wanted to be there?”
“Huh?” Bannard’s squint turned incredulous. “You don’t get to stay in your body when you die, no matter how much you want it. Why would an urn be any different?”
“I’ve never heard of the Valdori using spiritbinding for simple imprisonment,” Narvi said, shaking his head. “That’s not what it was. It was always about… I don’t know, making use of the spirits somehow.”
“If it existed at all,” Bannard said.
They fell silent, all standing around the table and contemplating the urn. Eventually, Arandras pulled out a chair and settled into it.
“So,” he said. “I guess this could take a while?”
•
Eilwen stood on the Guild’s private quay, her eyes half-closed against the sunrise, and waited for Pel.
She’d slept fitfully, her dreams filled with images of Tammas. She’d spent years trying to banish the memories, but somehow they always returned: his stride, his crooked grin, the way his beard tickled her ear whenever he pledged his love. Yet when she thought back on it now, it seemed to her that her affection had been won not with smiles, nor even with endless silver-tongued promises, but with the sword-callus on Tammas’s thumb.
For a long time, she’d thought of Tammas as just another bravo: a hired sword employed by the Guild to guard the more valuable shipments, too stupid for anything but strutting around a caravan in the hopes of discouraging equally stupid bandits from trying to seize their goods by force. Eilwen had seen too many fools with knives and clubs as a child to be impressed by one more. As a rule, the only intelligence to be found in most armed bands was possessed by either the captain or his second; or, if the company was particularly fortunate, both. Tammas was neither, and therefore not worth her attention.
Then one afternoon, in thick forest a half-day’s travel from Fanon, the strutting failed. Eilwen was riding in the lead wagon when they encountered the fallen tree blocking the road; a moment later, an arrow thudded into the post beside her head and she dived to the ground, scrambling beneath the now-stationary wagon for cover. By the time she crawled out again, shivering with cold, the battle was done. Bodies littered the verges of the road, the blood in their wounds already beginning to congeal. But there were more dead bandits than guards; and when her gaze fell on Tammas, stripped to the waist, pouring wine over a cut in his shoulder, the look he gave her was at once worshipful and ravenous.
They reached Fanon as night fell. Eilwen lingered by the wagons as the vehicles were secured, waiting for Tammas to emerge; but it was he who found her, sneaking up behind her and snaking his arm about her waist. Later, in the moonlight, he cupped her face with his hand, brushing his callused thumb against her cheek, and her breath hitched at the gentleness of his touch, as though he were taming himself just for her.
She’d been little more than a girl, really. What chance had she had? Looking back on it now was like hearing a story about someone else. The person she’d been back then was gone, washed away by seawater and blood. What happened could scarcely be considered her fault.
Except, of course, that it was.
Tammas had known just what to say to win her belief. And she’d wanted to believe him, wanted it more than anything in her life. Then the Orenda sank, and her belief sank with it; not just in him, but her capacity to believe at all. Ever since, she realised, she’d found ways to make do without belief.
Until Havilah.
It was strange to have an ally. There was no attraction between them, so far as she could tell; certainly, there was none on Eilwen’s side. But there was something else: a common goal, and with it, a shared confidence the like of which Eilwen hadn’t felt for a long time. It was true, what Havilah had said. She wasn’t the conspiring type. Even the most minor of conspiracies required trust, and trust was something she no longer gave.
Yet here she was, entrusting her life to Havilah as they hunted the Guild’s betrayers.
It felt good.
She strolled the length of the quay, enjoying the cool morning breeze off the river despite the faint smell of rot. The Guild docks were deserted: the first boat wasn’t scheduled to arrive until a couple of hours before midday, leaving the space empty save for Eilwen and a pair of cormorants at the quay’s edge. Eilwen turned before she got close enough to spook them, ambling back the other way as the birds chattered to each other behind her back. Her leg was at its best at this time of day, barely troubling her at all so long as she kept her movements slow and small.
Eilwen had spent the days since the masters’ meeting hunting down as much information about Kieffe as she could. But the records she’d been able to get her hands on were disappointingly scant. Ufeus had been unable to turn up anything beyond the standard contract signed by every member of the Guild on joining. If Kieffe had ever submitted a trader’s report to Pel, none of it had ever been sent on to Ufeus or Havilah. And her requests to the other masters to turn over whatever information they had on the murdered man — relayed on her behalf by a scowling Ufeus — had earned her a smattering of trivia and nothing more.
After several days spent scouring intelligence reports for even a passing mention of the man, she’d conceded defeat. Whoever Kieffe had been working for had covered his tracks too well. She had no option but to start asking questions and hope her ignorance wouldn’t be enough to undermine the investigation right from the start.
I did all right with Dallin. She’d confronted him with no preparation at all, goaded by the bickering between Ufeus and Brielle, and she’d come away with the lead that had given them Kieffe. And this would be easier; this time she already knew the people she’d be talking to.
A horn sounded from the public docks across the river and a passenger ferry eased away from shore, its prow turning east toward Borronor’s Crossing and the sea. As though in response, a flurry of wings rose behind her, followed by slow, deliberate beats as the cormorants flapped past her head and up into the haze-smudged sky.
The heavy slam of the main building’s rear door pulled her back to her surroundings. Pel slouched toward the quay, a simple fishing rod slung over his shoulder and a rough wooden bucket in his other hand. Ah. At last.
Pel’s dogged interest in angling was legendary among Guild traders. As far as Eilwen knew, the man had never actually caught anything; yet every morning after breaking his fast, Pel would haul his bucket to the river’s edge and stand there, line in hand, for the better part of a bell. Some speculated that the pastime was merely a ploy to secure an hour of solitude, a notion derived largely from a junior trader’s claim to have witnessed Pel casting empty hooks into the water. Others countered that such an action might just as readily be explained by the man’s general absent-min
dedness, leaving the traders roughly split between those who believed their adjunct preferred the company of fish to that of other people, and those who considered him simply incompetent at his chosen sport.
Eilwen had been part of the former camp, though her own reserve after the Orenda had seen her gradually drift from the social circles of her fellow traders. But the awkwardness of disturbing the man’s solitude seemed worth the chance to speak with him alone and informally. If he turned her away and she was forced to find another time, it would hardly make their subsequent conversation any more trying than would naturally be the case.
She turned, resuming her stroll along the quayside. Pel had already cast his hook and now swirled the rod slowly in mid-air, dragging the line through the water below. He frowned, leaning over to peer into the murky depths.
“A fine morning,” Eilwen said. Pel found such observations inane, she knew, but she needed something to open the conversation. She halted alongside him and turned to survey the river. “Any bites?”
She sensed Pel shake his head, and found herself picturing the expression of pained disappointment that was likely crossing his face even now. Gathering up her resolve, she pushed the image from her thoughts and ploughed on.
“I wanted to ask you about Kieffe,” she said. “What was he working on before he died?”
Her question was met with silence. Eilwen folded her arms and resisted the urge to turn her head. The swirling motion beside her slowed, then stopped.
“I don’t know,” Pel said at length. His voice sounded rougher than usual.
Eilwen frowned. “But you’re the adjunct,” she said. “You know what all the traders are doing.”
“Not Kieffe.”
“What, then?” Someone must have told the man what he could buy or sell. “Are you saying he worked directly for Trademaster Laris?”
Pel shifted in what might have been a slow shrug. “Maybe,” he said.
Eilwen waited. “Or?”
“Maybe he wasn’t a trader at all.”
Eilwen risked a sidelong glance. “What does that mean?”
Pel heaved a lugubrious sigh. “Not all of our traders are really traders,” he said ponderously. “Sometimes another master needs to put someone in another city. Secretly.”
