Valkwitch (The Valkwitch Saga Book 1)

by Michael Watson

  Alvedo silently gazed at the polished splendor of the Prime Halls as their carriage crawled its way into the traffic clogged streets. The city still had that effect for her. It was one of the few things Tyrissa would admit they had in common.

  “Jesca, just how many people are attending this ball?” Tyrissa asked.

  Jesca didn’t respond. Tyrissa clenched her teeth to stop the sigh and corrected herself. “Joyce.”

  “Oh it’s an intimate gathering of a few hundred friends, allies, and rivals. The autumn galas are as big and lavish as the Prime guildhalls themselves. I believe there some sort of play in the latter half of our party. That part has an extra layer of exclusivity. ”

  “That’s right,” Alvedo said. “Nina was kind enough to secure a table for us. And I wouldn’t worry Jorensen. You have every appearance of having nothing to say, so you needn’t fear potential conversation.”

  Tyrissa looked out over the crowded streets once more. Given they had time to kill and she didn’t want to leave Alvedo’s latest quip unanswered, Tyrissa said, “Joyce. Your transformations from bodyguard to social butterfly remind me of a story: Zeris of Rhonia. Would you like to hear it?”

  “Certainly,” Jesca said.

  “Can it be the short version?” Alvedo muttered. Tyrissa pretended she didn’t hear her.

  “There was once a Rhonian woman named Zeris, the only child of her minor noble house from the Kasage province, a very precarious position in the Empire’s society. As soon as she married, her family would be absorbed by the house of whatever husband she decided to take and cease to exist. Zeris wouldn’t stand for that. So, when the yearly Summer Court of the Empire was called, she went as a totally different woman. Being of a small and remote house, and the courts of the Rhonian Empire being as large as they are, no one noticed that she came from somewhere that didn’t precisely exist. She had a simple goal: earn an exception to the rules of marriage.”

  Alvedo interrupted, “Her position was too weak. It would take more than one Summer Court to get anything done.”

  Tyrissa tried to hide how pleased she was to have Alvedo’s attention and continued the story.

  “That’s why it took ten, and each year she introduced a new identity. She saw each persona as a mask, one that could be placed on her face or switched out at will. Zeris was no simple country girl. No, she was clever enough to play the deadly Rhonian political games as well as the Empress herself. Her false personas were soundly created and well researched. Each year she attended the Summer Court with a goal, and each year she accomplished her goal through a disposable personality backed by her house’s meager assets or various real promises that she managed to keep. With each success, her goals grew in ambition. By the third year, she had assured the continuation of her house by currying favor with the provincial governor, regardless of whether she ever married. By the sixth year, two of the personas were deflecting wedding proposals, another was invited to the Empress’s balls, and a fourth was partner to a lucrative mining business. For one month of the year she was a social shapeshifter, while the other eleven were spent at her beloved home, a home that grew ever more secure with each passing year for herself and her kin.”

  Tyrissa let the story hang there, unfinished.

  “Well,” Alvedo prompted right on cue. “What happened to her?”

  “It depends on the storyteller. In some cases, Zeris has all her careful plots crash down around her in a bloodbath of betrayal and she takes her own life. In others she finally accepts a marriage proposal, from no less than an heir to the imperial throne. Sometimes she simply stops going, puts away the masks and lives out her days in her secured homeland. In every case, she earned the honored style: Zeris, Of Many Masks.”

  “And what is my ending, Jorensen?” Jesca asked.

  “Whichever mask you choose to make permanent.” Tyrissa had found a couple different versions of the story on her most recent visit to the university’s library. She wasn’t sure which ending she preferred.

  Alvedo sighed and turned away to watch their destination come into view while muttering something about ‘Moralizing nonsense’.

  Khalan Southwest’s guildhall appeared to have been built from a single, five story tall piece of river-smoothed stone. The exterior walls that faced the Prime Circle were sculpted into a single sweeping curve with subtle ripples and waves carved into the stonework. They passed elaborate water gardens at the fore of the building as their carriage inched its way along the curving entry roadway. A forest of fountains in countless styles and sizes bubbled away in the gardens, their finer details now fading into a dreamscape under the dying light of evening. Given the Guild’s dominance of the waterways of the southwest Khalan state of Haarnen and deep ties to maritime Felarill, they made no subtlety of their association with water.

  Alvedo brought out a small note as they approached the entrance. Her eyes scanned through the contents, nodding at each point and wordlessly mouthing names. The cheat sheet disappeared with a flourish into her left glove once their turn to disembark arrived. This was her true debut, her big time entrance. Everything earlier this week had been mere warm up and in that time Tyrissa had puzzled out just why Alvedo got under her skin. The girl treated everything in a precise, calculated manner. Every word, every smile, and every motion felt as if it were all part of an elaborate script. Her social life was a merchant’s balance sheet. Tyrissa almost wanted something to go wrong tonight, just to see what a frazzled and unprepared Olivianna Alvedo looked like.

  But she had a role to play in that script all the same. Tyrissa stepped down onto the thick marine blue carpet that spilled out of the hall’s entrance and streamed right up to the paving stones of the road. She lent Alvedo a hand to follow her down and received a gracious smile in return. Her face had smoothed and brightened and showed no sign that any animosity between them. It was show time.

  As it was outside, the interior of Khalan Southwest’s guildhall emphasized all things aquatic and maritime, be it the paintings in the hallways or the color scheme of the walls and carpets. Within the guildhall was a vast ballroom that contained Khalan Southwest’s intimate affair of hundreds of friends, enemies, and business partners. Along one wall were a series of partially curtained alcoves with heavily cushioned seating where a group could find some semblance of privacy. At the opposite corner of the ballroom was a raised platform where a band played to a swarm of dancers below them. There was no order to the night, no defined schedule. Some ate and others danced, but most simply talked over food and drink that flowed endlessly out of the kitchens. At the center of the ballroom a pair of men stood atop tables with massive blocks of clear ice. With gloved hands that glowed with a ruddy light, they massaged the ice columns into still unidentifiable shapes.

  There were two dances at work, that of the party-goers on the actual dance floor and that of the guests’ second pair of eyes, their guards and attendants shuffling around the edges of the room. Security was as excessive as the party it guarded. It appeared that many of the attendees brought similar escorts as Alvedo, one or two guards, an extra layer on top of the considerable number of guards wearing the colors of the host. With the exception of a handful of drunken scuffles there were no issues and the additional personal security was unnecessary. At best, the Cadre, the Talons, and the host’s security provided isles of red and white, black and gold, and marine blue that accented the riot of colors that shifted through the grand ballroom and its adjacent halls.

  Once again, the greatest danger was boredom, and it was directed at her. The Cadre asked after her history in the city, tested her skills in a fight, trained her to see unseen threats, but hadn’t yet gotten around to teaching her the art of being invisible and passing the time while others enjoyed themselves.

  Tyrissa took a cue from the abundance of watery decor and let the first phase of the evening flow by. Tyrissa followed her client as a distant second shadow, the treading that line between in sight but unseen the only thing to occupy her mind
. Alvedo buzzed about the room, rarely sitting still for a moment and going from one conversation to another with a dedicated efficiency. She certainly favored members of the hosting guild, shoring up her family’s standing in the eyes of the very people they may or may not be trying to circumvent. Sometimes she mingled with ‘Joyce’ at her side, sometimes alone when Jesca made a circuit of the other Cadre members, checking in.

  After an indeterminable amount of time, Tyrissa’s heart jumped at a blast of white smoke on one side of the room. A member of the wait staff wearing a white lacquered mask pushed up on top of his head fumbled with a crate that had half spilled onto the floor. Its contents were glass vials filled with a murky white substance. One vial belched out thin smoke as it skittered below the attendees’ feet. Alarm quickly gave way to amusement, as the fellow simultaneously apologized profusely to anyone listening and assured everyone it was but a sample of the theatrics for the play scheduled for later in the evening.

  Not long after that Tyrissa heard a recognizable drawl speak up to her left.

  “Well now look at you! All gussied up in the red and whites of a proper guild.”

  Tyrissa cracked a broad smile as she turned to Kexal.

  “Kexal! I hardly recognize you without a few days of dirt, stubble, and sweat.” Lacking a guild or uniform, the Jalarni was dressed up in a formal black coat that looked awkward on him and clashed with the sword at his hip.

  “I like to think I clean up nice.” He joined her against the wall, his eyes casting out over the milling dance floor. “How’s the city treatin’ you?”

  “Just fine. It could be better. I’d like fewer dull jobs like this one.”

  “Mmm, you’ll learn to appreciate the dull jobs. Which one is yours?”

  Tyrissa pointed across the room, where Olivianna danced with her third scion of Khalan Southwest of the night, strategic choices all. “The little Felarin girl in orange. Don’t let her appearance fool you, she’s vicious. You?”

  “Missus Guldres, the center of attention over yonder,” Kexal motioned toward the line of curtained alcoves on the far side of the room. Tyrissa could only assume he meant the rotund and radiantly dressed woman that had no less than a dozen partygoers hanging on her every word. The unspoken theme for dress this evening seemed to be subdued autumnal colors, and yet Mrs. Guldres’s outfit went well past garish, like wearing the colors of a sunset with all the brilliance and none the grace. A massive gem the color of crystallized amber hung around her neck on a golden chain and sparkled in the various lights. Tyrissa spied Garth nearby, the mute Rawlins brother similarly dressed though looking bare without his elaborate crossbow.

  “That’s quite a necklace your client is wearing,” Tyrissa remarked.

  “Mmm. An amber teardrop. It’s the highest of high fashion and one of many prizes from her husband’s collection. We’re guarding that piece as much as the woman wearing it.”

  “Is bounty hunting not paying you well enough that you have to lower yourselves to bodyguard jobs?”

  Kexal gave Tyrissa a sly smile over his shoulder. “Who says we ain’t hunting right now?”

  Tyrissa instinctively tightened her grip on her staff. “What do you mean?” she whispered. “Could something happen tonight?”

  “Nah,” Kexal said after a noticeable pause, his face fixed on the crowd. “There’s too much security. Figure there’s a quarter of the Talons here, plus all the personal guards and the host’s security corp. Nothin’ should happen.” His fingers drumming against the pommel of his sword betrayed his casual dismissal of the idea.

  “Are you trying to convince me or yourself, Kexal?”

  “Don’t worry about it, kid. Like I said, too much security here, and I doubt anyone would be after your little Felarin bird. I ought to relieve Garth for a spell. You take care, you hear?”

  “Always.”

  The party pivoted after two hours that felt like ten. Select guests unhurriedly drifted in pairs and groups from the ballroom into the atrium. The atrium’s the rear wall was a grand half-dome of tessellated hexagonal glass panels. The room had been recast as a theater and a temporary stage had been constructed below the glass wall, complete with a drawn curtain hanging from the suspended walkways above that connected the third story of the guildhall. Guards paced along the vine-draped walkways, the tops of their heads bobbing in and out of sight above the railings. Vines and carefully trimmed plants curled throughout the room and despite all the work done to dress it up, the atrium still felt damp and retained a pleasant, earthy smell.

  Trees in too-small planters lined the walls, where the associated guards and retainers of the audience took their posts, truly blending into the scenery. Tyrissa figured that about a third of her fellow bodyguards were members of the Talons, that guild’s recent prestige earning them a greater share of the contracts tonight.

  An arc of round tables filled the center of the room. Alvedo, Jesca, and Nina took their places at one of the tables just to the left of the middle. The tables were set with delicate glassware and porcelain, and lined with silky cloths that rippled in the gusts coming in from the open atrium doors behind the stage.

  The play was Masks of Love, a Felarin story. Tyrissa knew of the tale. It was far from a favorite, the story of ill-fated lovers on a long journey through a land where no one is seen in public without some sort of white mask. The wait staff assigned to this room were dressed the part, wearing white instead of the host’s aquatic colors, and donning white masks. At first, Tyrissa had to fight down the urge to simply watch the play, but soon found her efforts aided by the dubious liberties taken with the script. Traditionally the story was told by a bard, not by a cast of eight. It was easier to ignore the play when she had a refrain of ‘That’s not how it goes’ repeating in her head. The play was a tale best left to the mind’s eye or a bard’s voice.

  When the story entered the lover’s river journey, mist arose from corners of the stage, eventually drifting into the audience to coalesce across the floor. That was an elchemical effect, like the night lamps on the streets, and chandeliers and false torches that lined the walls.

  Tyrissa glanced up to the walkways but was unable to see the guards on their patrols among the hanging vines. That’s odd. It’s not that dark in here. She leaned in place, searching the walkways and listening for the soft sounds of boots on metal above the players on stage. Nothing.

  She was being paranoid, letting the worries of her new job fill her head. Looking around the room, she could swear that there were more servants around the edges since the play’s beginning. A few wore no mask to match the performers on stage and they carried no trays or pitchers and stood idle. She tried counting them in the darkened room. Five. No, six. No, eight. No, more than that. All spaced evenly at the edges of the room, all specifically not watching the play or looking for plates in need of clearing or drinks in need of refilling. They didn’t watch the crowd but looked at each other, and counted the guards with hard eyes.

  Tyrissa breathed deep to bellow a warning, but hesitated. If she were wrong…

  A second opinion. She eased one end of her staff through the fronds of the potted tree to nudge the shoulder of the Talon on her left.

  “What—”

  Leaning around the plant, Tyrissa pointed up and whispered, “No guards above us, and a lot of extra help.”

  His eyes narrowed and saw what she meant. As one hand went to the hilt of his sword, one of the masked servants glided up and caught the Talon’s hand. Before Tyrissa could react, a dagger flashed out between the two men and landed with a sickening, wet punch to the gut. The Talon managed to shout out a wordless warning as he slumped back against the wall.

  With a gasp, Tyrissa swung out and smashed a metal band on her staff against the attacker’s face, splintering the mask and sending him to the ground with his prey.

  She whirled back toward the tables just in time to see clusters of white vials fly into the air and fall across the room, shattering in a rapid series of
fractured chimes. Clouds of acrid smoke burst out from the tabletops and floors where they fell. Elchemical smoke screens, just like what the play used for fog but now an obscuring wall rather than a pleasant mist.

  Through the thickening fog, she saw Jesca pull Olivianna under the table, their client’s shriek shrill enough to cut through the din of panic. Tyrissa charged into the eye-stinging smoke, dodging around the indistinct shapes of attendees fleeing in random directions. All around she could hear the clash of blades, but only the deadly exchange of one-two, perhaps three before the sickening sound of a blow striking true followed by a mortal cry.

  Tyrissa slid to her knees at the central table, pushing aside fallen chairs. Olivianna sat hugging knees to chest, wide eyed but calm. Nina was there as well, if considerably less composed. Jesca crouched close with a pair of knives out, a focused scowl on her face. The other members of their table must have fled blindly into the swirling smoke.

  “How many?” Jesca asked.

  “At least twelve, maybe more,” Tyrissa guessed. “Dressed like waiters.”

  “I don’t think they’re after us. Otherwise I’d have more to do. Routes out?”

  Tyrissa peered over the tabletop. The smoke was slowly thinning and she could spot a handful of silhouettes between nearby tables, but could not see the outer walls of the room. A black shape descended from the walkway above, cloak trailing behind like a shadow, and crashed atop the central table where Mrs. Guldres still sat, alone and overwhelmed by what unfolded around her. Then, something tugged at her mind as the smoke began to swirl about the center of the room in a strangely controlled slow cyclone. It was the same sensation as Hali, as the fire juggler in the Harvest market. Pact magick. The feeling emanated from the cloaked figure crouching atop the adjacent table in front of the garish Mrs. Guldres. He held the large yellow gem from her necklace in one hand, a long knife in the other. Pulling on the necklace, he brought her face close to his, before cutting the chain to let her fall back into her chair.