Cold Iron (Masters & Mages)

by Miles Cameron

  As Aranthur lived on the top floor of a similar house with three other students, it seemed almost obscene for one student and his servants to use so much space.

  ‘Is the door locked?’ Aranthur asked. ‘It shouldn’t be.’

  ‘Should we be doing this?’ Ansu asked. ‘I try not to be stuffy about the law, as you Westerners ignore so many of them, but we are breaking into another man’s house.’

  Aranthur lifted the latch and put his shoulder to the door.

  It gave a little, as if pushing against something soft. There was a sudden drone. The door opened a crack, and a dozen big bluebottle flies droned out.

  Aranthur thought of stopping, but Ansu changed his mind and put his shoulder to the door. They heaved, and it opened slowly, almost wetly, and something …

  The corpse was a week old, or more. The bones were rotted away and the flesh was black, more like a sack of rotting garbage from a tannery than a man, an image with which Aranthur was all too familiar.

  Ansu swore in his own tongue, at length. He went outside, untied his sash, and tied it over his face.

  ‘A miasma like that can kill,’ he said.

  Aranthur was less concerned with the astrological and hermetical implications than with the presence of the taint of sorcery – malevolent majik, and recent enough that the stale tang stayed in the air like the smell of old sweat in a brothel.

  He really did not want to go in any further. He already knew what he’d find. But the daemon was on him, as he now considered the spirit that animated him, and it made him push forward into danger.

  He stepped over the corpse-sack and into the front hall. Stairs climbed away ahead of him. He’d never been up them. Kallinikos lived through the door to the left, and the corpse was leaking a terrible brown fluid, mottled and bilious.

  ‘Why do we have to do this?’ Ansu asked. ‘Oh, fine, then,’ he said and shouldered through. He was slimmer than Aranthur and didn’t disturb the corpse.

  The flies were disturbed again, though, and they flitted and buzzed like insane guardians of the portals of death. Aranthur had a piercing headache.

  The door to Kallinikos’ outer chamber was closed. Aranthur tried the handle and it opened and slunk back to reveal the handsome room, complete with silk hangings and two fine silver lamps. On the floor between them was another corpse-sack, boneless and leaking onto the Attian carpet. Even with his skull melted and his bones gone, the butler Chiraz’s face was recognisable.

  Ansu turned away and threw up.

  Aranthur summoned his new Safian working; a simple casting, much easier than the ‘Inner God’ spell. He concentrated and worked, writing on the air in front of him in letters of liquid fire – quick, neat calligraphy from right to left.

  Instantly, his eyes saw power. He had cast the spell the day before, in the Temple, with several amusing effects, including near-blindness from all the radiating artifacts.

  In the Temple, the dominant colour represented by the spell had been a golden yellow, with some strong blues and reds and a single loud green.

  Here, amid the stench of death, the dominant colour was somewhere between the dark red of old wine and the red-brown of fresh meat, streaked with an ugly, organic grey-brown.

  A curse. A deliberate, malevolent curse.

  ‘Don’t touch anything,’ Aranthur said.

  ‘We’re in over our heads,’ Ansu managed.

  ‘Yes.’

  Yet the daemon that dared him to do things pushed him forward into the whirling maelstrom of the sick red death.

  He worked a purification from Consolations. He did it internally, without touching his crystal, the Safian way. It was an odd amalgam; he wrote on the winds of magik in Safiri calligraphy, but the words were those of a long dead Ellene philosopher.

  It worked.

  It took a noticeable bite out of the curse.

  He paused.

  ‘Do you know what you are doing?’ Ansu asked.

  ‘No.’

  Aranthur’s abdomen was damp and this was foolish, maybe even stupid.

  He stepped back and bent by the butler’s body. One limp glove held …

  A kuria crystal.

  He took his knife out of his neck scabbard and used it to carefully lift the chain on the crystal. He didn’t touch it, just dropped it into his purse.

  ‘I have to know if my friend is in there,’ Aranthur said.

  Ansu grabbed his shoulder. ‘No. You don’t. In half an hour, we can go in there with Kurvenos. Or the Master of Arts. This is foolish. Listen to me, Timos. You are like a man possessed – you do not have to do this!’

  Aranthur started to walk forward into the swirling red curse.

  Ansu caught his shoulders and pulled him back.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Out, now.’

  Aranthur accepted defeat. He followed Ansu out of the room, back over the first corpse, and out into the comparatively sweet, cool air of the street.

  ‘Go and get help,’ Ansu said.

  ‘Why me?’

  Ansu smiled. ‘I absolutely trust me not to go back in by myself.’ He winked. ‘But not you … I think you should get the help.’

  Fifteen minutes later, Aranthur found the Master of Arts and Magos Sittar the healer, both drinking wine in the Academy’s Senior Mess. Kurvenos the Lightbringer was nowhere to be found.

  Aranthur bowed, and began.

  ‘Kallinikos – you know him?’ he asked the Master of Arts.

  She nodded. ‘He’s only the richest student—’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Aranthur spat. ‘I think he’s been murdered. By sorcery. The curse … is still live. His butler is dead … He was holding a kuria crystal and I think …’

  Sittar reached out with force rather than his fingers and took the kuria crystal that Aranthur held by the chain.

  ‘Did you touch it?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ Aranthur said.

  Sittar ignored him and cast something that flashed a deep violet blue as it crossed his enhanced vision. Other masters sitting at other tables raised their heads at the open display of power; one raised a glowing set of golden shields, insectile and somehow feral despite the healthy golden glow.

  ‘Take us there,’ the Magas said.

  Aranthur led them at a run back down the hill towards Kallinikos’ rooms. He was relieved to see Ansu leaning against the corner of the building in the shade.

  ‘There is a victim of the curse, or of the bone plague, just inside the door,’ Aranthur panted.

  Sittar threw more power in the next three heartbeats than Aranthur had ever seen – a massive and interlocked set of protections and enhancements. He summoned, and a small sparrowhawk appeared on his fist, and he threw the little bird through the door. Even as he moved, a set of tiny scales of golden light seemed to spiral out of his hand, growing and spiralling, until he was covered in transparent gold spirals, a sort of flower shape.

  Even amid fear and horror, Aranthur took note. He understood the principle well enough. This was a very powerful shield built of hundreds of small, interlinked shields. The failure of one would not lead to the failure of the whole.

  The Master of Arts cast once, and Aranthur could not see the outcome of her casting except that she seemed to glow at the edges of his vision.

  Sittar went through the door.

  The Master of Arts drew a small black stick from her belt-purse and broke it. Then she followed Sittar.

  Neither emerged. There was no sound from within, and after the clocks rang for mid-afternoon, a tall, foppish figure appeared, moving quickly but with dignity. It was the man they called Harlequin, and he nodded to Aranthur.

  ‘We meet again. I was summoned,’ he said.

  Aranthur explained.

  ‘I’ll await my comrade,’ Harlequin said.

  After a stilted pause, there was a sound as if drums were being played, a rush of air, and suddenly a sinuous tail appeared from between the buildings. The dust began to lift from the street before the green drake la
nded, tail first, hovering low, his wings an angled blur in the narrow street.

  ‘You called?’ the dragon said.

  Harlequin laughed.

  ‘经扶 Zhu Jingfu!’ the dragon exclaimed, and launched into a rapid, liquid language. Aranthur guessed it was Zhouian.

  Ansu bowed and responded in the same.

  Magas Benvenutu appeared at the door; her hair was wrapped in a turban.

  ‘蟠龍 Pánlóng!’ she called. ‘By the gods, we need you.’

  The drake grinned, a truly fearsome sight.

  ‘Always at your service.’

  The drake folded his wings, wriggled, and made it through the door.

  ‘Dissssgussssting,’ the drake said sibilantly, in Ellene.

  Harlequin dusted his gloved hands on his colourful hose.

  ‘Ah, well.’ He stepped through the door.

  A moment later, a dozen armoured figures appeared on horseback. Aranthur had never seen men in full armour on horseback in the streets of the City. He was clearly not alone. Citizens, militia and visiting masters stood as if petrified to watch the armoured figures as they cantered along the streets. The hooves of their heavy horses crashed against the paving stones, striking sparks and sending out a roll of hooven thunder that echoed across the City.

  The armoured figures had their visors down.

  ‘I was summoned by the Master of Arts,’ said one armoured man, dismounting.

  He was big, as tall as Aranthur, and his armour was articulated from his visor all the way to the sabaton on his foot. He was clearly a Magdalene.

  ‘She’s in there,’ Aranthur said. ‘There’s been a murder by sorcery – perhaps a curse —’

  ‘You are Aranthur Timos, Student,’ said the armoured man. ‘Murder. By sorcery. Inside the Precinct.’ The man turned to his companions. ‘Dismount.’

  Five more armoured figures, visors closed, anonymous and somehow like automata, dismounted. The smallest one, who might have been a woman, drew a long puffer from a scabbard on her saddle. The others drew swords – long swords, with simple cross hilts.

  ‘It’s sorcery,’ Aranthur insisted.

  The first knight bowed. ‘We’re Magdalenes. We can deal with sorcery.’

  ‘There is a drake and three human Magi inside,’ Ansu said. ‘Our friends.’

  ‘Good to know,’ said the faceless woman. ‘We’ll be careful.’

  In the end it proved that three houses were affected by the curse – a dozen people horribly dead, and even then, only a third as many as would have died had the Academy been in session. Aranthur had to be taken back to the Temple and bed, exhausted, before the Magdalenes, the drake and the three Masters emerged from Kallinikos’ rooms.

  Another day passed and Kurvenos came.

  ‘Young Kallinikos was killed by a kotsyphas,’ he said. ‘A terrible way to die, like slow poison. Worse.’

  ‘Worse?’ Aranthur asked.

  Kurvenos shrugged.

  ‘Tell him,’ said Dahlia. ‘Stop hiding these things, by the Light, Kurvenos. Just tell him.’

  ‘It ate his heart,’ Kurvenos said. ‘A little at a time. After the caster used it as a vector to pervert the house’s kuria crystals, so that when the butler attempted a rescue, he literally killed himself. Someone’s idea of humour.’

  Aranthur blinked several times.

  ‘It paralysed him and then ate his eyes and then his heart,’ Dahlia said. ‘Because the Servant hated him. Or wanted to make an example of him. That’s my guess.’

  Aranthur blinked, trying to rid himself of the image. The four of them, eating dinner at the Sunne in Splendour. He looked at Dahlia, and she met his eye.

  ‘Because Kallinikos slept with his wife.’

  ‘I know,’ she said, and left the room.

  Kurvenos shook his head. ‘That is one possible reason, but I fear there are others. And now we must investigate everything about him. Because we need to understand why the Servant did this, if the solution is indeed so obvious.’

  ‘He slept with Uthmanos’ wife,’ Aranthur said.

  Kurvenos shrugged. ‘I heard that from Dahlia. But it doesn’t seem … on the same level … as the Servant’s long-term plans.’

  ‘I think it was, sir.’

  Kurvenos spread his hands, unbelieving. ‘This is more complicated than mere sex,’ the Lightbringer said.

  Aranthur wished he had Drakos there. Drakos would understand; men like the Servant saw no difference between vindication of their own immediate needs and the greater good.

  Kurvenos was too naïve. Or so Aranthur thought.

  When Kurvenos left, Aranthur sat alone for a while. And suddenly he was crying. He was beginning to wonder if he was cursed. People died around him.

  He cried, and was better for it. Sittar, the master healer, came and looked at his abdomen, and cast over him again.

  ‘Was it terrible?’ Aranthur asked.

  Sittar nodded. He didn’t speak until he was washing his hands.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘A dozen people dead, and for what? One sick bastard’s revenge for being cuckolded?’ Sittar shook his head. ‘Or Kallinikos was one of them, and turned, as some of us now believe?’ He sat on the edge of the bed. ‘I can’t pretend I understand what’s going on. It’s like trying to find a path in a blizzard.’

  ‘Turned?’ Aranthur asked, dumbfounded.

  ‘I’m probably not supposed to tell you this, but Kallinikos may have been one of their junior members. And then he left, or stopped communicating with the Servant. Maybe he changed his mind. Maybe he never agreed with them.’ Sittar shrugged. ‘The older Houses are all tied up in factions that are too old for we peasants to understand.’

  ‘Draxos!’ Aranthur spat.

  Master Sittar got up. ‘I came from a farm. I’m suddenly tempted to go back to it.’

  Kallinikos’ funeral was two days later, and Aranthur needed them to recover. He tried a little exercise, practising some of the dances of home, and the ‘rule’ he’d learned with the montante. His dances made him think of Alfia, and home, and a farm.

  The factions were obviously there. He could see men in the street with weapons – most of them militia, but others in House colours, and a great many Lions, and some Whites. He saw a man with a white headband, and another wearing a black rag tied around one leg, and assumed they were members of factions. He still didn’t even really know what the sides were. He wondered when Nenia was coming. He had the time, so he wrote her a letter. It was long, and it talked about very little: school; the difficulty of finding a place; then, to his own amazement, he found himself writing to Nenia about all the things wrong with his relationship with Dahlia. Foolish as that seemed, he handed the sealed letter to Prince Ansu to be put in the wagons to Fosse.

  He walked out with Sasan that afternoon, all the way to the Lonika Gate, and reported to Centark Equus of the Nomadi, because he had tried his City cavalry barracks and found it empty. Equus was the only other officer he knew.

  The man was dressed for duty at court, in white deerskin breeches, a scarlet doublet and a small fur hat trimmed in gold. He looked at Aranthur’s pasteboard card and tapped it on the table.

  A soldier appeared with a pair of long-barrelled flint pistols.

  ‘My lord,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks, Gouli,’ Equus said. ‘Listen, old boy, this is all shockin’ly irregular. You are clearly injured, but you failed to appear when summoned, which makes you a deserter, and then the General wanted you as a staff courier …’ He shook his head. ‘Shockin’ly irregular. Got Tiy Drako written all over it. Do you want to go?’

  Aranthur nodded. ‘Yes,’ he managed.

  ‘Good lad. You were a friend of young Kallinikos, yes?’ The guards officer looked at him sharply.

  ‘Yes, syr.’

  Equus nodded. ‘His sister’s military. Know that?’

  ‘No, syr.’

  ‘Going to the funeral?’

  ‘Yes, syr.’

  Equus nodded. ‘I’ll s
ee you there. Until then, if anyone questions you, refer them to me.’

  Aranthur and Sasan walked back through streets packed with wagons, a long train of them moving slowly aboard the transports at the wharves.

  Aranthur shook his head. ‘They have prepared for this for a long time,’ he said.

  He and Sasan walked up to the Aqueduct, and Aranthur found he was afraid to go into the Easterner areas. He made himself. And later, after a fencing lesson and a hard set of bouts with both heavy and light weapons, his gut hurt. He walked home again with Sasan, aware of the factions still hovering at the edge of something.

  The next day, the day of the funeral, he dressed in his best black garments. When he was fully dressed, he reached for his arming sword, but something – some flair for the dramatic – made him buckle on the old sword, despite its being long and heavy. It was a reassuring weight against his hip.

  He looked at himself in Arnaud’s mirror, and frowned. He was still contemplating what he saw – the marks of pain and recovery – when Dahlia came, and he cornered her.

  ‘This whole city is like a fire, ready laid and waiting for the kuria crystal,’ he said.

  She nodded. ‘I know. I just saw the Lion Masks trying to pick a fight with a gaggle of Reds. They used to be allies.’

  ‘Does Drako know?’ Aranthur asked.

  Dahlia bit her lip. ‘We’lll be late for the funeral.’ She wasn’t a good liar, and her evasion was obvious.

  Her sense of time, however, was good, and Aranthur had to hurry. He walked with Sasan, Dahlia and Ansu out into the Precinct and then across the Academy and down into the very nicest part of town, where the nobles had their palaces on the Long Canal. The General had sailed the day before with more than a hundred ships, apparently bound for the coast of Atti, and the streets were still crowded with soldiers and House bravos. Aranthur had a feeling of anticlimax, as if he’d attended an opera with no finale. The General had gone to Atti, the servants of the Pure had been captured, and everyone seemed to have forgotten him. His part of the story was over.