The Iron Ring

by Auston Habershaw

  Carlo’s crystal eye was fixed on the door, or, rather, the gnoll beyond it. “What is she after, then? Money?”

  “Not money, Carlo. Her children.”

  For the first time in Tyvian’s memory, the color drained from Carlo diCarlo’s mustachioed face. He swallowed a lump in his throat, which Tyvian granted was a wonderful effect. “This . . . this is extortion.”

  “How clever of you to identify it.”

  “You . . . you don’t understand, Tyvian.” Carlo spoke hurriedly and softly; Tyvian honestly couldn’t tell if the man was actually terrified or not. “You haven’t seen what gnolls can do. They attack settlements in Veris sometimes—­they skin ­people like rabbits, make them into capes.”

  “I think she’d get a whole greatcoat out of you, Carlo.”

  Carlo jumped as though bitten, causing his crystal eye to fall loose. “Ah! She’s looking this way!”

  “Tell me where Hendrieux is.”

  Carlo favored the smuggler with a bitter look. “After all I’ve done for you, this is the thanks I get?”

  Tyvian repressed a grin—­it had been years since he and his old mentor played this little game, but they had fallen right back into their familiar roles. “Don’t bore me with sentimental tripe. Where is he?”

  Relenting, Carlo sighed. “He’s staying in the Blocks, or thereabouts, but keeps moving around. That’s all I know.”

  Tyvian stood up. “Thank you very much, Carlo.”

  Carlo frowned. “You are a son of a bitch.”

  “Ah, I see you’ve met my mother.” Tyvian skipped over the cushion to the door. “By the way, just for old times’ sake, the Defender’s name is Myreon Alafarr.”

  As the smuggler darted out the door, Carlo called after him, “I should have poisoned the bloody tea!”

  Outside, Tyvian found Hool squatting in front of Carlo’s door, her ears rigid and upright. “What did the man inside say?” she asked.

  “That he should have poisoned me. Why do you ask?” Tyvian winked at her, but the gesture was clearly lost on the gnoll.

  “Is he your enemy?”

  “More like a grouchy uncle. I wouldn’t worry—­he won’t stay angry for long.”

  Artus had taken off Alafarr’s hood and gag and was letting her drink from the fountain. Tyvian, seeing this, pushed past Hool. “What the hell are you doing?”

  Artus’s voice squeaked. “She was gonna pass out! We haven’t given her a drink since this morning!”

  Tyvian cuffed Artus upside the head. “What part of ‘never take off her gag’ don’t you understand?”

  Artus’s face turned red. “She’s still got the caster-­thingies on. Plus Hool was watching her.”

  “And suppose she knows verbal invocations, eh? What happens when she speaks Sumptain’s Word of Baffling and runs off?”

  Alafarr frowned. Her voice was rough and dry. “Nobody can make that spell work. The only person I know of who has mastered it is . . . your mother. Oh.”

  Tyvian pointed at the mage. “Stop talking. Hool, put her gag back on.”

  “You do it,” Hool countered, arms crossed.

  Tyvian rolled his eyes. “Unbelievable.”

  Alafarr didn’t struggle as the gag and hood were replaced. Artus watched sullenly as Tyvian turned the mage around and pushed her toward the alley that would lead back to the Stair Market. “Where are we going now?” Artus asked, finally, as they kept climbing the Cliff District.

  Tyvian sighed. “I am going home. You are going to be paid, and then you are going to get lost.”

  “But—­”

  The smuggler held up a hand. “That’s enough, boy.”

  “What about Hool?” Artus asked quietly, eyes downcast.

  “The gnoll is welcome to go wherever she pleases. I will help her find Hendrieux, but not until tomorrow. None of this, by the way, has anything to do with you.”

  “Okay,” Artus said, kicking some minuscule mote of debris across the cobblestones. He didn’t look up at Tyvian until they had reached his flat.

  Tyvian maintained a penthouse apartment at an exclusive address along Top Street. The lower floors of the five-­story building were partitioned into deluxe suites that were rented seasonally by noble families from Eretheria and Akral. He could tell by the locked blue shutters and dark front hall that none of the tenants were currently occupying the place, which was ideal, as he had no desire to parade the dirty Artus, monstrous Hool, or captured Alafarr in front of the tender eyes of the naive nobility. Plus, he himself was not dressed to his usual standard.

  On the steps of the building Tyvian saw a small black cube that seemed to suck in the ambient light—­a messenger djinn, he thought, no doubt sent by Carlo. Messenger djinn were sorcerous entities of pure Dweomeric energy that were used by courier ser­vices wealthy enough to employ conjurers. One simply had to insert an addressed letter into the baffling darkness of the floating cubes and they would speed off directly to the addressee. You didn’t even need to know the party’s location—­the person’s first and last name would be enough, assuming they weren’t working under an alias. While not as adaptable as human couriers and not as fast as sending stones or wraiths, they were reliable, trustworthy, could carry hundreds of pounds, and were virtually impossible to stop or waylay. Here on Top Street, one could easily spot a half dozen of the strange little black cubes cruising around at any given time.

  Tyvian announced himself to the entity and it vanished with a pop, leaving in its place a small chest. He popped it open and examined the pile of gold that gleamed from within.

  Artus’s eyes grew wide. “Wow . . . that’s a lot of money!”

  Tyvian palmed through the coins, taking an approximate count. “No, it isn’t. It is an adequate amount of money.”

  Artus looked up and down the street, but it was largely empty. “Shouldn’t you open that inside?”

  “Yes, but that would necessitate taking the two of you inside with me, which isn’t going to happen.” Tyvian counted out ten marks and slid them into a pouch. “Here you are—­ten marks, as agreed.” He slapped the money into Artus’s hand.

  Artus looked at it, and Tyvian watched him screw up his courage. “Look, I was thinking, what if—­”

  “We were to work together on a more regular basis?” Tyvian said, cutting him off. “Absolutely not. You are a boy, Artus. You are naive, unskilled, annoying, and possessed of a confounding and contradictory moral compass. You and I have no future together.”

  Tyvian watched Artus’s face crumple. “Oh . . . okay.”

  The ring gave Tyvian a slight jolt, but he ignored it in order to lift the chest and set it just inside the front door. He turned back to see Hool standing in front of him, her ears back. “You are throwing him away? Why?”

  Tyvian took a heavy breath. “I realize this may be difficult for your gnollish mind to grasp, but Artus and I are in no way related. I owe him nothing, and he owes me nothing.”

  “That’s a lie!” Hool barked. “He helps you all the time. You are mean to him, and he still helps you. That means you are a pack. You can’t just give him stupid gold and make him go away.”

  “I can and I will.” Tyvian maneuvered Alafarr inside the door and then tried to make himself look taller by stepping up on his front stairs and throwing out his chest to the imposing gnoll.

  Hool displayed her teeth and ground out a slight growl that made Tyvian’s insides vibrate.

  Artus put a hand on Hool’s arm. “No, he’s right, Hool. He just owed me the money. It’s okay.”

  Hool’s ears swiveled forward as she looked at Artus. Then she stepped back from Tyvian, who guessed the discussion regarding Artus wasn’t over, only in recess.

  “I will wait for you to come out in the morning,” Hool said to him. “Then you will tell me where to find the human who has my puppies.”
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br />   Tyvian nodded at the gnoll, assuming this meant the creature would be curled up on his front doorstep all night long, and secretly hoped she didn’t eat any of his neighbors. “Good-­bye for now, then.”

  The smuggler was about to shut the door, but Artus called out to him. “Hey! Thanks . . .”

  “For what, exactly?”

  “Thanks for saving me from the spirit engine,” Artus said quietly, looking at his feet. “You didn’t have to do that.”

  The ring burned like a circle of scalding steam on his finger. Tyvian grimaced, bit his lip, and decided to say one more thing. “Go home, Artus—­use that money to go home. If you really do have a family somewhere and they are worthy of the pride you take in them, then that is where you belong.”

  Artus looked up, and Tyvian noticed his brown eyes were watery with tears. “Yeah,” he managed, “yeah, okay.”

  Tyvian, his mouth set into a firm line, closed the door in the boy’s face.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  BLASTS FROM CERTAIN PASTS

  Exhausted did not adequately describe how Myreon felt. She felt wrung-­out, stretched thin, hollow. Reldamar had not laid a single violent finger on her since her capture, but he hadn’t exactly been lavish with niceties like water, food, and rest. Were it not for the boy, Artus, and his constant worry over her well-­being, she would be worse off, for certain. As it was, she could scarcely climb the stairs to the villain’s flat without her knees wobbling.

  She did not let them wobble, though. She would not let Reldamar see her as weak.

  The hood came off. She was standing in the front hall of a lavishly appointed flat—­Akrallian provincial in style, elaborate crown moldings and sunny yellow wallpaper; a vaulted ceiling with a mageglass chandelier. She might have made a sarcastic remark—­she wanted to—­but her tongue felt thick in her mouth and she was so tired she needed all of her attention to remain upright.

  Reldamar had his back to her. She saw his shoulders sag as the door closed behind them both—­shut by a serving specter, no doubt. Most of the wealthy homes in Freegate had them to perform most menial tasks. They were very expensive to conjure and bind to a home, but they took up no space and were unfailingly loyal—­two qualities in high demand in cramped and corruption-­filled Freegate.

  Reldamar let out a long, slow breath. “Put her in the guest room.” he said.

  An invisible presence seized Myreon under each armpit and forcefully steered her through a living room and into a dark bedroom, all of them as richly decorated as the front hall. The force wasn’t overwhelmingly strong—­she might have struggled with it, if she had the energy—­but for now she let herself be piloted into the room and locked inside. There was no feylamp, but instead an old-­fashioned oil lantern set upon an end-­table. Her hands still entombed in her casterlocks, she had no way to light it; the only illumination came from the single barred window through which filtered the dirty, smog-­filtered lamplight of the Freegate streets.

  There was a pitcher of water, too, but without any means to pour herself a drink, Myreon was forced to lap at the surface like a dog. Anger at her imprisonment flared, but she kept it bottled up—­no outburst of rage was going to get her out of this.

  She knew she was on Top Street somewhere, a short walk from the Stair Market. The flat was on the fifth story of the building—­the penthouse. The lack of feylamp or illumite indicated that the room was warded with Astral sigils, which would keep all the energies—­except the Astral—­from being usable while inside. So, enchanted objects wouldn’t work here. This meant the specters couldn’t enter unless the wards were down, and that meant the wards would only go down when the door opened.

  It wasn’t much, but it was something to go on. She sat on the bed. Across from her, mounted on the wall, was a painting of a stately country villa, all ivy-­covered stone and carved flarewood, with a narrow tower rising from its heart to pierce a summer sunset. Myreon knew the place.

  Glamourvine. The family estate of Lyrelle Reldamar. The sight of the place again sent Myreon’s memory reeling.

  She had only been a few years old when her mother and most of her family was murdered by bandits out of Galaspin. She spent most of her life raised by her father, Drython Alafarr, who worked as a longshoreman and riverboat hand, barely making ends meet. Each night, she would stare into her father’s eyes as her told her stories, and imagine what her mother looked like when she had danced.

  When Myreon was sixteen and old enough to enter the Arcanostrum, Drython spent every penny he had ever saved to bring her to Saldor and support her application. When she had been accepted, her father danced with her in their leaky room tucked under the eaves of a crosstown inn. She entered the Arcanostrum the next day.

  Her father was murdered a week later. The innkeeper had done it—­a dispute over the bill, they said

  Myreon remembered standing before his grave, unable to believe he was dead. His life—­so full of love and joy and honesty—­was utterly wiped away. There was not an acre of land, not a stitch of fabric, not a scrap of paper that bore his name. As the tears came, she knew that nobody noticed he was gone except her.

  She was wrong.

  Myreon received a summons to attend Lyrelle Reldamar, Archmage and Chair of the Black College, at Glamourvine the very next day. Terrified and uncomfortable in her worn-­down shoes and patched robes, she went. She stood in a hall of crystal and ancient stone, surrounded by a kind of opulence her imagination had never dared theorize as real, and waited for the most powerful woman in the West to come speak with her. What would she want? What could she possibly need with her?

  When the Archmage appeared, Myreon’s anxiety bloomed into full-­on terror. Lyrelle was a legend and she had the bearing of one—­tall, graceful, her hair falling about her shoulders like molten gold, her midnight gown swallowing the light from the gothic windows. She did not walk—­she glided. Myreon remembered mumbling awkwardly and falling to one knee.

  Lyrelle Reldamar stood over her and, ever so gently, placed a hand on Myreon’s cheek. Myreon looked up to see the Archmage of the Ether smiling down on her. Her voice was warm and firm, like that of someone who doesn’t accept excuses. “I am very sorry to hear about your father.”

  Tears came then. Myreon remembered her face tightening, trying to stop them, and cursing her failure to do so. Lyrelle pulled her into a motherly embrace and held her there, in that ancient hall beneath the hoary old gaze of long-­dead Reldamars, until at last Myreon had collected herself.

  “I’m sorry,” she had said, wiping her hot cheeks. “I’m so sorry, Magus. I’m ready to do what you wish of me.”

  Lyrelle smiled again and shook her head. “I called you here for this, Myreon—­for this moment. I wanted you to know that you were not alone.”

  Myreon hadn’t understood then—­indeed, she wasn’t certain she understood now—­but that moment marked the start of four years of her working as the Archmage’s famulus as she progressed through her initiate studies at the Arcanostrum. They were some of the happiest years of her life. They marked the first time in her life where she could guess what it would have been like to have a mother. Were it not for Lyrelle Reldamar and Glamourvine, Myreon almost certainly would have dropped out of the Arcanostrum before achieving her first mark and entering the apprenticeship.

  “And then,” Myreon sighed to herself, “I wouldn’t have ended up here, the prisoner of her ungrateful, criminal son. The irony.”

  Fate truly was a cruel prankster.

  Somewhere in the flat, beyond the locked door of her room, Myreon heard Tyvian cursing. The sun-­kissed memories of Glamourvine faded entirely, overwhelmed by an empty stomach, an exhausted body, and fingers so numb and cramped that she worried whether they would ever cast another spell.

  Lyrelle had rarely spoken to her of her youngest son, but Myreon had often heard of Tyvian. Before he was a smuggler and a
criminal, he had been a duelist and womanizer, well-­known in Saldorian circles as a blight upon the family name and a short-­tempered bravo. Myreon had always thought it sad that Tyvian could do such a thing to his family.

  When he ran away to become a pirate—­or so the rumors claimed—­Myreon could see the pain it caused Lyrelle. The great sorceress had seemed . . . off-­balance, brittle somehow. Myreon imagined that it was as though Tyvian, with that one act of self-­important rebellion, had shown Lyrelle just how powerless she was over the ­people she loved. She knew that feeling herself—­she had felt it when her father died. It was a gut-­wrenching pain, made all the worse by knowing there was nothing you could do to make it stop.

  By then Myreon had been apprenticed in the Gray Tower, seeking to earn her staff and become a Mage Defender. At that moment, she had promised herself she would bring Tyvian back home—­for Lyrelle, to give her closure. It was a promise she still intended to keep.

  For now, though, she needed rest. Myreon lay down on the plush featherbed, wondering whether she would be able to sleep, knowing that Tyvian Reldamar was only yards away.

  She was asleep before her head hit the pillow.

  A life ward is a troubling thing. Long provided by the Hannite Church to those dubbed “Champions of the Faith,” they were talismans with powerful Lumenal enchantments bound specifically to the wearer’s soul. They allowed the wearer to cheat death, but the cost was high. They did not save your bones from being broken. They did not put the blood back in your body, or replace lost limbs, or banish the poison or pestilence from your flesh. They only let you outlive the moment of your death, and then only for long enough for the bearer to, presumably, get the medical attention necessary to ensure their continued survival thereafter.