The old man started mumbling. ‘But … But everyone knows Kellen of the House of Ke is the weakest of mages. He only ever sparked his breath band. His magic is as weak as a child’s!’
I nodded thoughtfully. ‘Yes, even I’ve heard that. So if your spells never fail, and this Kellen fellow isn’t powerful enough to break them, then, well, that only leaves one explanation, doesn’t it?’
I picked up the white cloth from the table and began wiping the black make-up from my left eye.
‘Ancestors! You tricked me! You’re not—’
I smiled innocently. ‘Now be fair, friend. I did try to warn you that I wasn’t this Kellen of the House of Ke you’re looking for. I mentioned it several times, if you’ll recall.’
The mage reclaimed his composure and his finger started twitching into what the Jan’Tep call somatic forms. ‘Whoever you are, the fact that the chair didn’t bind you means you’ve no magic to protect yourself with. So now you’ll tell me where Kellen is hiding or I’ll have you begging me for a quick death!’
‘I’ll tell you for free,’ I said, tossing the dirty rag over the mage’s shoulder. ‘He’s right behind you.’
The mage whirled around. The bartender lay unconscious on the floor. The drunk who’d been snoring in the corner was now standing behind the old man, wiping at his own left eye with the rag.
‘A trick!’ the mage shouted. ‘A filthy trick!’
Kellen Argos – at least, that’s the name he’d given when he’d hired me – smiled sympathetically at the old man. That disturbing black pattern circling his eye that we’d spent hours painting around my own was now glistening in the dim lantern light. ‘It’s as you said, my lord magus: I have precious little magic to work with. Tricks are all I’ve got.’
Completing my end of our contract, I smashed the wine bottle down on the back of the mage’s head as hard as I could. Glass shattered into a hundred pieces, wine spilling all over the old man’s greasy hair. He crumpled like sackcloth.
Kellen Argos knelt down next to him, listening for a heartbeat before searching the mage’s robes and pulling out a bag of coins. He fished out a few of them, which he stuffed into his own pocket before handing the rest to me.
I looked inside the bag. There was a small fortune in there; enough to buy me a minor title and a nice little mansion on the outskirts of the capital if I wanted. Enough to make me suspicious. ‘What’s the catch?’
Kellen grabbed one of the unconscious mage’s arms. ‘Give me a hand with him.’
Between us, we hefted him up and sat him back down in what had been my chair.
‘That seems a little cruel,’ I said.
Kellen patted the old man on the head. ‘No worse than what he’d had in store for me. Besides, by now his employers will be on their way here to celebrate. Maybe they’ll take pity on him and hire another mage to release him from the binding spell.’
‘Why not just kill him? Aren’t you worried he’ll tell people how you pulled this off?’
‘I’m counting on it.’ He walked over to the bench where he’d been pretending to sleep and retrieved his coat and black frontier hat, the band above the brim inscribed with silver sigils. ‘Next time the queen’s enemies want to hire themselves a lord magus to do their dirty work, they’ll have to pay a lot more for the privilege.’
He headed for the saloon’s swinging half-doors.
‘One more question,’ I asked before he could leave. ‘You work for the queen, right? I mean, you’re an official of the Daroman court?’
‘That’s what they keep telling me.’
‘So why aren’t there a dozen royal marshals or palace guards here backing you up?’
He set the hat on his head. It was a little too big for him. Although we really did resemble one another – enough to fool strangers anyway – he was a couple of years younger than me and looked a lot more … tired.
‘They also tell me I don’t play well with others.’
‘What about next time?’ I persisted. ‘You won’t be able to use this same trick twice.’
He swung the doors open, letting in the fading sounds of last night’s celebrations from the street outside. He turned back to me and a wicked grin escaped the corner of his mouth like a scavenger sneaking out the back window after stealing your supper. ‘Guess next time I’ll just have to come up with a new trick.’
City of Glories
There are two sides to every city. The top shimmers and shines, magnificent towers reaching high into the air, drawing the gaze of travellers for miles and miles with promises of civilisation and companionship. As to the other side? Well, as with any good trick, sometimes it’s best not to look too closely at what lies underneath.
1
The Arrest
Nothing stinks like a capital city in summer. Streets already crowded with lords and labourers begin to burst as endless caravans of merchants, diplomats and those impoverished by bad harvests or foreign raiders roll through the gates in search of profit or protection. Upon a gleaming white arch at the city’s entrance an inscription bearing the Daroman capital’s motto beckons visitors with a promise: ‘Emni Urbana Omna Vitaris’.
From The Imperial City Flows Prosperity.
Also, sewage.
That’s the thing about great cities: they can solve hunger with more food, security with more soldiers, and almost everything else with more money. But there’s only so much shit you can swirl around before the flagstones begin to reek.
‘This place stinks,’ Reichis chittered above me.
The soft flutter of fur-covered gliding flaps heralded a light thump against my shoulder as the squirrel cat made his landing. My two-foot-tall, thieving, murderous business partner sniffed at my face. ‘Funny, you don’t smell dead.’
‘I’m fine,’ I said, not eager to resume the lengthy argument begun in the early hours before dawn when I went off alone to face the mage who’d been sent to kill me. All I wanted now was a bath, some quiet and maybe a few restful hours without any attempts on my life.
Reichis sniffed at me a second time. ‘You smell worse than dead actually. Is that whisky?’ He poked his muzzle in my hair and sounded more than a little intrigued.
A year of living in the capital city of Darome had afforded Reichis the opportunity to expand his list of unhealthy addictions, which currently consisted of butter biscuits, overpriced amber pazione liqueur, several vintages of Gitabrian wines – the expensive ones, naturally – and, of course, human flesh.
‘Did you remember to bring me the mage’s eyeballs?’ he inquired.
‘He wasn’t dead.’
‘That’s not what I asked.’
This is where having a squirrel cat perched on your shoulder perilously close to your soft, tasty human ears gets dangerous. See, squirrel cats, with their tubby feline bodies, big bushy tails, coats that change colour depending on their mood and furry flaps that stretch between their front and back limbs enabling them to glide from the treetops (or ‘fly as well as any gods-damned falcon’ as Reichis would insist), can – if you stare at them, squinty-eyed, from a distance and preferably through a drunken haze – look almost cute. They’re not. Puppy dogs are cute. Bunny rabbits are cute. Poisonous Berabesq sand rattlers are cute to somebody. Squirrel cats, though? Not cute. Evil.
‘Reichis …’ I began.
His breath is surprisingly warm when it’s less than an inch from your earlobe. ‘Go on, say it.’
Ancestors, I thought, noting in the periphery of my vision that Reichis’s shadowblack markings were swirling. Just over a year ago he’d wound up with the same twisting black lines around his left eye as I have around mine. Unlike me, though, the possibility of one day becoming a rampaging demon terrorising the entire continent didn’t trouble him in the least. The prospect frankly delighted him.
Rescue from possibly fatal squirrel cat gnawing came in the form of a half-dozen pairs of heavy boots clomping up behind me, followed soon thereafter by the tell-tale click of a crossbo
w’s safety catch being released. ‘Kellen Argos, by order of Lieutenant Libri of the queen’s marshals service, you are under arrest.’
I sighed. ‘This again?’
The first tentative rasp of the crossbow’s trigger grinding against its iron housing. ‘Get those hands up high, spellslinger.’
I hadn’t even noticed that my fingers had drifted to the powder holsters at my sides. Reflex, I guess, though by now you’d figure I’d’ve gotten used to being arrested on an almost weekly basis.
I raised my arms and slowly turned to find the marshals wearing their customary broad hats and long grey coats, armed with the usual assortment of short-hafted maces and crossbows – all trained on me. ‘Would you like me to read the warrant?’ Sergeant Faustus Cobb asked. Short, scrawny, narrow-shouldered and years past his prime, you’d think he’d appear comical next to his younger and more vigorous subordinates. But my experience with the Queen’s Marshals had taught me that age does nothing to diminish how dangerous they are – only how ornery they become when you resist.
Me? I was eighteen, wearier than my years ought to allow. My shirt was still soaked from the booze I’d used to disguise myself as a drunk back at the saloon, and I was feeling more than a little crabby myself. ‘What’s the charge this time?’
Cobb made a show of reading out the warrant. ‘Conspiracy to commit assault upon the person of a foreign emissary enjoying the protections afforded diplomatic representatives …’
Yep, that’s right: the old man who’d come to kill me, being a Jan’Tep lord magus, held ambassadorial status in Darome.
Cobb went on. ‘Grievous physical abuse …’
Not nearly grievous enough.
‘Theft …’
Knew I shouldn’t have kept any of the coins.
‘Acting against the vital interests of the Daroman Crown and the people it serves …’
That one they throw into almost every warrant. Spit on the sidewalk and you’ve technically ‘acted against the interests’ of the crown.
Cobb paused. ‘And there’s something here about “unlawfully being an irritating, half-witted spellslinging card sharp who doesn’t do what he’s told”, but I’m not sure that’s an actual crime.’
And yet, I was pretty sure it was the only crime Torian was concerned about. ‘Funny how she had that warrant already drawn up before anyone found the mage,’ I pointed out.
Cobb grinned. ‘Guess the lieutenant’s got you pegged pretty good by now, Kellen.’
I was really starting to dislike Lieutenant Torian Libri. While there were no end of people in the Daroman capital intent on making my life hell, few displayed her raw determination and consistently lousy sense of humour. ‘You do realise that under imperial law my rank as queen’s tutor prevents you from prosecuting me for any crime without four-fifths of the court first revoking my status, don’t you?’
One of the younger deputies gave an amiable chuckle. I’d let him beat me at cards last week in the vain hope I might win over some of the marshals to my side. ‘Don’t say nothin’ about you bein’ arrested though.’
‘Let’s go, spellslinger,’ Cobb ordered, motioning for me to walk ahead of him.
Reichis gave a low growl. ‘You gonna take this crap, Kellen? Again? Let’s murder these skinbags. You owe me three eyeballs and this here’s an opportunity for you to pay up.’
‘Three? How many eyeballs do you think that mage had?’ I asked.
One of the marshals stared at me quizzically. She must’ve been new – the others were accustomed to hearing me talk to Reichis.
‘Who can tell with humans?’ the squirrel cat grumbled. ‘Your faces are all so ugly that every time I start counting, I lose track on account of needing to puke. Besides, two eyeballs was what you owed me an hour ago. The third is interest.’
Perfect. In addition to being a thief, a blackmailer and a murderer, Reichis now wanted to add loan shark to his list of criminal enterprises.
‘Let’s pick up the pace,’ Cobb said. ‘You know how the lieutenant gets when you keep her waiting.’
Several of the deputies laughed at that – not that any of them would dare cross her. Reluctantly, I trudged along the wide flagstone street en route to my thirteenth jailing since becoming the queen’s tutor of cards.
‘Hey, what’s that?’ Reichis asked, his nose nodding in the direction of something small and flat floating on the breeze towards us, low to the ground. A playing card settled at my feet.
‘Keep walking,’ Cobb ordered.
I stayed where I was, staring down at the elaborate artwork on the card depicting a magnificent city on the top half. The bottom was a sort of mirror image, distorted as if reflected by a dark, shifting pool of black water.
‘You drop that?’ he asked, finally noticing the card.
‘Sergeant Cobb,’ I began. ‘Before this goes any further, I need to clarify a couple of things.’
‘Yeah? Like what?’
‘First, I had nothing to do with this card suddenly turning up.’
‘So what? It’s a playing card. Not like you’re the only gambler in the capital.’
As if to contest his banal explanation, a second card drifted down to land next to the first one. Then another and another, each one rotated a little more than the previous, gradually encircling me.
‘What are you playing at, spellslinger?’ Cobb asked, stepping back. I heard the safety catches on several crossbows unlock.
I was now standing in a ring of elaborately painted cards, their rich metallic hues of copper, silver and gold so vibrant they made the street look drab and lifeless by comparison. I turned to the half-dozen well-armed men and women charged with escorting me to jail. ‘Marshals, allow me to offer my sincere apologies.’
‘For what?’ asked one as she raised her crossbow to train it on me.
The cards on the ground shimmered ever brighter, blinding me to everything but the coruscating play of colours that drained the light from the world around me.
‘For the inconvenience of my rescue,’ I replied.
I doubt anyone heard me. The city around me faded to a flat, colourless expanse; the buildings, the streets, even the marshals themselves looked as if they’d been carved out of thin sheets of pale ivory. Reichis slumped on my shoulder and began snoring. A figure walked towards me, a lone source of dazzling colour wrapped in the twisting golds of sand magic, the pale blues of breath enchantments and the glistening purple of a silk spell.
A grandiose entrance of this type is usually accompanied by the disappointed sigh of my sister Shalla – Sha’maat now, I supposed – soon followed by an extensive commentary regarding my dishevelled condition and the annoyances my recent behaviour has caused our noble and much-admired family. Occasionally, though, it’s my father who appears to inform me of the latest crime I’ve committed against our people. That latter possibility was why my hands were now deep inside the powder holsters at my sides.
Ever since I’d left my people, almost three years ago, I’d known the day would come when my father’s grand destiny could no longer tolerate my miserable existence. I’d been asked on many occasions by friends and foes alike if I had a trick – some devious ruse – saved up that could outsmart the mighty Ke’heops before he could kill me.
I did. I just wasn’t sure if it would work.
‘Kellen.’
The voice didn’t belong to my sister or my father. In fact, I hadn’t heard it in such a long time that at first I didn’t recognise her. Gradually, the bands of magical force began to settle, their brilliance diminishing enough that I could finally identify the apparition before me, and found myself standing there, the twin red and black powders I’d normally be using to cast a fiery explosion slipping through my fingers, with absolutely no idea what was going to happen next.
‘Mother?’
The figure gestured at the cards surrounding me. ‘Pick a card, Kellen,’ she said. ‘Any card.’
What is it with people and card tricks lately?
2
The Deck
As a child, I’d firmly believed Bene’maat was the finest mother any Jan’Tep boy could hope for. She’d been an island of patience and calm in the otherwise stormy sea of my father’s unyielding ambitions and my sister’s pugnacious temper tantrums. My mother’s prowess as a mage was widely respected in our clan, yet her fascination with astronomy and healing revealed an inquisitive nature not solely consumed with the pursuit of magic, as Ke’heops and Shalla were. And me, for that matter.
If a parent’s second duty is to love their children equally, then Bene’maat had done so admirably in a society that valued Shalla’s raw talent for magic a thousand times more than my aptitude for clever tricks. And if a mother’s first duty is to protect her children, well, then Bene’maat had done that pretty well too – right up until the day she’d drugged me and then helped my father strap me down to a table so he could inscribe counter-sigils on the metallic tattooed bands around my forearms, forever denying me access to the magic that defined our people as I screamed over and over again for her to stop.
Now the woman I hadn’t seen for nearly three years was standing before me, placidly repeating, ‘Pick a card, Kellen. Any card.’
I considered telling my beloved mother to bugger off, but my family is nothing if not persistent, so I gently settled the slumbering Reichis down on the ground and considered the thirteen cards forming a spell circle around me. I reached for the first one, which depicted architecture in the style of the Daroman capital in which we stood and was titled ‘City of Glories’.
‘Not that one,’ she said.
‘Why not?’
I heard the answer inside my mind a fraction of a second before her lips moved. ‘That is the keystone. Picking it up would break the spell and end our meeting.’
I’d always been a belligerent child. Life as an outcast had done nothing to cure me of that fault. I reached for the City of Glories again.
‘Please,’ the voice in my mind said just before the apparition did. ‘Forgive the awkward fashion in which our conversation must take place, but I’ve been unable to properly recreate your sister’s wondrous spell for long-distance communication. I’ve had to rely on a much older enchantment your grandmother invented before you were born.’
Spellslinger 6: Crownbreaker Page 2
