The Tethered Mage

by Melissa Caruso

  I took his hand and squeezed it. “I’ll be careful.”

  He brushed my fingers with his thumb, worry shadowing his face. My hand warmed like a solar circle.

  When we got back to Raverra, I’d have to keep him at a distance again. The knowledge cut at my insides as if I’d swallowed broken pottery.

  I turned to Zaira, before I could do anything foolish. “So, how do we follow without her noticing?”

  Zaira sighed. “Graces have mercy. I’ll teach you. I’m a pickpocket, after all.”

  The first thing I learned about following someone was that it’s dreadfully tedious when they’re not going anywhere.

  “There must be some better way to do this,” I burst out at last, after three straight hours of finding various excuses to dawdle in the Plaza of Six Fountains in front of the River Palace with Zaira. There was still no sign of Lady Savony; but then, we could have missed her if she had departed the palace by a secondary entrance, or if the crowds of the plaza had blocked her from view.

  Zaira rummaged in a large sack she’d brought along. “Absolutely. Go ask your mamma to loan us a dozen spies, and have them do it for us.”

  “That would take days to arrange. And we don’t know whom we can trust, anyway.”

  “Well, then you’ll survive doing a day’s work for a change.”

  I wished we had Marcello with us, despite Zaira’s objections. He’d gone to the garrison, to send a message to the doge over the courier lamps updating him on our discoveries. He’d decided to keep it to facts for now, leaving our speculations out of it until we had more information.

  Finally, Zaira spotted Lady Savony striding across the Plaza of Six Fountains, heading north toward the river.

  “Here, carry this.” Zaira stuffed her sack into my arms. It wasn’t heavy—soft and light, in fact, as if full of cloth—but it was awkward.

  “Why me? What is this, anyway?” I asked as we hurried after our quarry.

  “Because otherwise your movements and posture will scream I’m being sneaky. This way, all they can say is I’m carrying something.” Her sidelong glance laughed at me. “It’s like sticking sweets in a brat’s mouth so he can’t say anything stupid.”

  “I see you’ve thought of everything,” I grumbled. But she was right; I couldn’t overthink acting casual, because I was too worried about how to hold the lopsided sack without dropping it.

  Zaira had planned this out surprisingly well, considering she’d only had an hour to prepare. After several minutes of following a good distance behind Lady Savony, she pulled a couple of hats out of the bag and told me to sling it over my shoulder.

  “To change your silhouette,” she explained. “In case she’s noticed us.”

  The first place Lady Savony stopped was Gabril’s town house. I supposed I shouldn’t be surprised. Fortunately, there was a small tavern across the street, and Zaira and I sat at a table in the window sipping wine and nibbling meat pies while Lady Savony paid her call.

  Zaira glanced out at the street and grunted. “I was half worried Lieutenant Lover Boy would try to tail us, but it looks like we’re clean.”

  “He wouldn’t do that. He trusts us.”

  “He trusts you, you mean.”

  “No. Well, yes, but he doesn’t trust me to stay out of trouble. He trusts you to protect me.”

  “Huh.” Zaira settled back in her chair and chewed that over. “It’s true he would’ve assumed I’d cut your throat and throw you in the Arden a few weeks ago. Maybe he finally passed that pike up his arse.”

  That might well be the most flattering thing she’d ever said about Marcello. I was at a loss for a response, so I watched Gabril’s door out the window in silence for a moment. Still no sign of Lady Savony.

  “We’re lucky she didn’t take a coach,” I said.

  “A coach?” Zaira snorted. “She’s not that stupid. The driver would know everywhere she’s been, and she’d stand out too much. And besides, I’d lay odds she’ll visit streets too narrow for a coach before the day is done.”

  “I wonder what she’s talking about with Gabril.”

  Zaira didn’t swallow before replying, and I was treated to a view of masticated meat pie. “Well, what would you do if your scheme was at risk?”

  “Move to the next step. Push the plan along until it’s too late to stop it.” I stared at the ornate carvings over Gabril’s door as if they might hold answers. “She’s probably making sure the Ardentines are riled up enough right now. Then she only has to do something to force Raverra over the edge into war.”

  That was the one part I still didn’t understand: why did she want a war? Did she truly believe Vaskandar would help Ardence win its independence? Was it some power play to regain the ducal throne her ancestors had lost? Leodra’s warning tumbled in my head like a spinning coin; I couldn’t guess if it would come up heads or tails, and the fate of the Empire might depend on me winning the bet.

  Zaira poked me with her fork, drawing my attention back to her. “We already know their plan for setting off Raverra.”

  “Oh?”

  “Kidnapping you.”

  The meat pie lay heavy in my stomach. She was right.

  And if I wasn’t careful, I might follow Lady Savony straight into their hands.

  When Lady Savony emerged from Gabril’s town house, she wore a purposeful expression. When we emerged from the tavern, we wore different jackets, courtesy of Zaira’s bag.

  The streets we traveled became narrower and dirtier as we followed Lady Savony to less attractive quarters of the city. Soon she looked quite out of place, with her fine gray gown and golden spectacles; the people we passed eyed her with dubious calculation. Zaira and I had donned tradesmen’s clothes for the occasion, and blended in well enough, at least to my unskilled eye.

  “Get rid of the bag,” Zaira muttered at one point, glancing around warily.

  “What? But it has our disguises in it.”

  “They’re not disguises. And I don’t want anyone thinking we have something in there worth stealing.”

  She took the sack from me, and at the next opportunity tossed it into an alley that reeked of garbage. I supposed someone would find it and consider the clothes a windfall.

  When Lady Savony entered a dingy alchemist’s shop, Zaira hurried straight past it. I had no choice but to follow.

  “She went in that shop.” I stopped myself from pointing.

  “I know. But we can’t walk right in after her, idiot.”

  Zaira took us around a corner, waited a moment, and then strolled us back past the shop again. She stopped a good distance beyond it to lean against a wall, take off her boot, and inspect it most thoroughly for stones. While she poked around, I wondered whether this alchemist was the source of the peppermint potion.

  “Stop staring at the shop door, for love of the Graces,” Zaira grumbled.

  Lady Savony didn’t tarry inside for long. Shortly after she emerged, two rough-looking men left the shop in the opposite direction, toward us—including one with a familiar broken nose.

  “Keep your head down,” Zaira hissed. I stooped to check the sole of my boot, for lack of a better idea, my heart pounding. I didn’t dare breathe until they passed us by.

  “I can guess where they’re going,” Zaira muttered. “I’d watch out for dark alleyways when you head home tonight. Come on, before we lose sight of her.”

  Soon we were on our way to streets of less dubious character. Dinnertime was almost upon us, as my stomach reminded me; merchants and artisans crowded the streets, heading home or to their favorite hostelry. They hid us from Lady Savony, but also made it harder to keep her in sight.

  The streets were in full shadow by the time Lady Savony stopped at the plain wooden door to a brick warehouse. She unlocked it and stepped inside, like a simple merchant going to inspect her goods.

  Once the door closed behind her, Zaira stopped in the street. The warehouse had no windows in this wall, so we had no fear of being spotted
.

  “What do you suppose she’s doing in there?” I asked, shifting from foot to foot. As the sky darkened, I began to doubt the wisdom of being out in the city when armed scoundrels were looking for me. Zaira was a formidable ally, if she chose to be, but they’d had time to think of ways to deal with her.

  Zaira frowned at the warehouse door. “I don’t know. When she leaves, we should go in and find out.”

  “But how will we get in? It’s locked.”

  Zaira lifted an eyebrow. Without a single word, she gave me to understand that even though my naiveté had ceased to astonish her long ago, I still found new ways to disappoint her.

  My face warmed. “Very well, so you can get us in. But what if someone’s in there?”

  “Then we try not to be seen. And if we’re seen, you shut up and let me bluff. Come on. We don’t want her to spot us when she comes out.”

  Zaira tucked us into an alley across the street. I hoped my friend with the broken nose wasn’t similarly ensconced across from Ignazio’s town house; I’d already be late taking my elixir. If we stayed out much longer, I’d have to use my three-hours’-grace vial.

  “After this, I need to get back to the town house,” I murmured to Zaira.

  “We’ll lose her when we investigate the warehouse anyway.” She sighed. “I hope we don’t miss something good. But at least you have your confirmation she’s the Owl.”

  Zaira kept her eyes locked on the door across the street. They sparkled with life and excitement, and color flushed her cheeks. She looked healthier than when I’d first met her—less painfully thin, though she’d never be anything but skinny—and her hair had a rich gloss to it.

  It would be easy to tell myself I’d done the right thing, putting the jess on her. But she’d never had a choice.

  “Thank you, by the way,” I said softly. “For helping me with this.”

  She shrugged. “It’s more fun than sitting around some boring rich-people house all day.”

  “Are you happy, then?”

  She turned to face me, surprise arching her brows. “Happy? What kind of a question is that?”

  “Well … I want you to be happy.” I hated the stiff awkwardness of my voice. But I held her eyes, willing her to see I meant it.

  After a moment, a bemused laugh burst its way through her lips. “Only idiots and dogs are ever happy. But I’m enjoying myself.”

  She returned to watching the door. I wasn’t sure what to say to that, so I watched with her.

  When Lady Savony emerged, a frown of distaste was creasing her brow. She hurried off down the dusky street in the direction of the River Palace, shaking her head. We waited until she’d been gone for several minutes, then strolled over to the warehouse door.

  Zaira eyed the lock. “Stand so you’re blocking me from view in case anyone comes down the street. If you do see someone, don’t jump around like an idiot. Just tell me quietly.”

  She reached up and pulled pins out of her hair. They weren’t normal hairpins, but had hooks at the end. I positioned myself as best I could as she crouched down and got to work.

  “Oh, this is easy. Ardence should have more pride.” In less than half a minute, Zaira stood, slipping the pins back into her hair.

  “It’s unlocked?”

  “No, I’m just fixing my hair. Of course it’s unlocked.” She dropped her voice. “Now, move as silently as you can in there, but don’t tiptoe or skulk around. If someone sees you skulking, it’ll be far worse than if you act like you belong.”

  She laid her ear to the door for a moment. Then she eased it open and stepped through.

  I followed her into a dull, bare corridor. A few oil lamps burned in sconces on the lefthand wall; round mirrors on the righthand wall doubled the light. Zaira pulled the door softly shut behind us. She started forward, her feet making no sound.

  Something about the mirrors bothered me. Round, like eyes …

  “Wait,” I hissed, snagging a handful of Zaira’s hair.

  She spun and glared at me, but I pointed to the mirrors. Runes circled them, carved into the wooden frames. Artifice runes.

  Zaira shook her head, stepping back to my side. “I don’t know anything about magical protections,” she whispered. “No one was rich enough to have those in the Tallows.”

  I squinted at the runes. It was dim enough they were hard to make out. “We can’t block the light. If we interrupt the path of the light and it fails to strike the mirror, we set off a trap.”

  “What happens then?”

  “I don’t know. Let’s not find out.” I bent double, keeping well below the mirrors, and made my way down the corridor. Zaira followed.

  The door at the end of the corridor was new, the wood raw and unfinished save for another runic circle daubed on with black paint.

  “What’s this all about?” Zaira asked nervously.

  I considered the runes. “The door won’t open unless you press the key to the circle.”

  Zaira sighed. “Curse it. That’s why the lock was so easy.”

  I bit my lip, mentally tracing the lines of the circle. I muttered the runes under my breath.

  “Can you do something about it?” Zaira asked. “Is there a trick to it, like with the mirrors?”

  “Maybe.”

  I will open only with the key, the runes said. But the spell had been slapped up in a hurry and without much thought. I suspected an untrained artificer, without enough power for the mage mark. They’d drawn the circle too large; the runes straggled loosely around it. My teachers would never have allowed slipshod work like this.

  With an artifice circle, the runes dictated the rules of the magic, just as the golden wire and beads on Zaira’s jess defined the laws of the spell that bound us together. But with a circle this weak and sloppy, those rules could be rewritten.

  “Do you have any ink, or charcoal?” I asked Zaira.

  “Why would I carry that around?”

  “Because it’s useful.” I glanced around the corridor, but didn’t see anything I could write with. “I suppose I’ll have to use blood.”

  “What?!” Zaira drew back as if I might want hers.

  I unsheathed my dagger and nicked a fingertip. Carefully, with lines more precise than the artificer’s messy scrawl, I traced new runes in one of those large, sloppy gaps in the circle. I squeezed my finger a few times to force out more crimson drops as needed.

  I will open only without the key.

  Simple. Smiling, I pulled out my handkerchief, wiped both the dagger and my finger, and sheathed the former. “That should do it.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Magic,” I said.

  I opened the door.

  The room beyond was high and empty. Faint, gray light angled down from narrow windows twenty feet off the floor, illuminating a dusty space. The storeroom was big enough to use for a riding ring, but only a few crates, piled in the corner, occupied it now. Water stains on the stone floor trailed to a round drain in the center of the room, suggesting a leaky roof, or perhaps a former cloth-dyeing workshop.

  “No one here,” Zaira whispered. With slow, careful steps, she started toward the crates.

  Something moved in the drain. Worms. White worms, lifting and wriggling. I stifled a scream.

  No. Not worms. Fingers.

  Small, pale fingers, reaching through the drain grating, curling around the metal grille.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Zaira,” I gasped. “Oh, Graces. Look.”

  She did, and swore.

  “Hello?” A child’s voice came from the hollow drain. “Is someone there?”

  I crossed swiftly to the round grille. Two sets of little fingers pulled at the bars now. Large eyes stared up at me from pale, pinched faces. My stomach lurched.

  “You’re not the one who feeds us.” Hope entered the clear, high voice of the little girl gripping the bars. She couldn’t be more than eight. A boy with a smudged face squeezed next to her, younger still, and m
ore crowded in, their faces in shadow. I couldn’t tell how many.

  “Are you here to rescue us?” the boy asked. “Is it time?”

  I knelt down by the drain and reached out a trembling hand to touch the cold fingers that reached up to me.

  “How can I get you out of there?” I breathed.

  “There’s a cellar down here.” The girl waved off to the side, past the others. “It had a door, and they brought us in through it. But they bricked it up. Now they pass us food through the grating, in pieces.”

  “Zaira,” I called softly. “Can you get this open?”

  She didn’t respond. I turned. She stood with both her fists over her mouth, her eyes wide with horror.

  “Zaira!”

  She shook herself like a wet dog and approached the drain.

  “I can’t get that open without tools.” Her voice came out strangled. “We’ll have to come back.”

  “She said it would be a man who rescued us,” the little boy said, his voice quavering. “You’re both girls.”

  “Who said that?” I asked. “The lady who was just here?”

  “Yes. The one with the gray mask.”

  A Shadow Gentry mask. Perhaps she kept it in the crates.

  A scuffling sounded in the drain.

  “Quit pushing!”

  “I want to see!”

  “Are you going to let us out? Is it time?”

  I tried to reach through the grille, but couldn’t fit more than my fingers. Small hands flicked up to touch them, one after another; one little fist curled around my thumb. My eyes stung, and I had to swallow to speak.

  “The lady in the mask told you a man would rescue you?”

  Tiny bodies pressed in tight around the little girl now, and half a dozen pairs of eyes stared up at me, but she clung to her place in the center. “Yes. She told us that soon, when the time is right, a man will come rescue us, and return us to our parents. But we have to wait.”

  “What man?”

  “She didn’t say.”

  “Did she tell you anything else?”

  Nods stirred the shadows below. “Yes,” a boy said. “A name.”