by Guy Antibes
“I met your mother and was truly smitten. She’s a beautiful woman. I’ll spare you the details of our relationship, you already know more than enough. I masqueraded as a Nervassan wool dealer in competition with your father. She told me about his trip to White Water.” Sovad stopped and looked down the drive leading to the road. He swallowed.
Panix completed the rest, his eyes boring into Sovad. “You followed him to Helvanna and killed him. Eliminating an emerging political force that was anti-Murgontian. Am I correct?” Sovad looked alarmed as the ground shook around him. He looked at Panix with pleading eyes as he tried to stay standing.
“You know my past and can figure out the rest. Your mother didn’t know that I did it. I told Polla that if she told anybody about us, I’d ruin Aston’s political career. She was more than fine about that.”
“The dread disease?”
“My idea.” Sovad’s eyes went wide as the ground continued to shake.
Panix sought to center himself. It was no use, he couldn’t restrain himself as he put his hands to his head, unable to restrain a wailing scream. He barely heard Sovad yell as he felt himself on the edge of losing control. His father’s killer in front of him. His mother indirectly complicit. He felt himself recede from where he stood until he found himself separated from his body. He looked down at Sovad on the ground. Reality intruded on his retreat like a quick dawn. He went to center himself to bring himself back, yet instead of a point of light, he saw Lorna’s face as his focus. He struggled to regain control, and then a wave of calm smothered him.
When Panix blinked his eyes, returning from his disembodied state, he stood over a cringing Sovad, balled up on the ground.
“When I found out the traitor was Polla, I had to tell you, for Lorna. I told you for the team.” Sovad spoke to Panix with his arms covering his head. “You need to know, because I think I have a way to get through.”
Panix breathed deeply at his mention of Lorna’s name and reached out with his hand to help Sovad to his feet.
“You do?” Panix’s head cleared, but the anger and hurt lurked just beneath the surface, ready to burst out again. He couldn’t help but breathe heavily.
“I can show up on Polla’s doorstep. She has no idea I was a Murgontian agent. All she knows is that I gave her the news of his death. She never asked any questions and was sad to see me leave.”
Panix looked up at the house. All of the windows had broken. Tellus and Moshin viewed the scene below from a glassless window frame. Panix felt deflated, his quest to find his father’s killer over. He never expected the killer to come to him and confess. He looked at Sovad and realized what kind of gumption it took for him to tell him in private.
“You know I can’t forgive you for killing my father,” Panix said. He turned and started to walk into the house, leaving Sovad kneeling with his hands clutched together. He glanced up at the top of the stairs seeing Tellus and Moshin looking down. “Moshin, talk to Sovad and get him what he needs. He’s my father’s assassin, but he’s still on the team.” Panix’s voice didn’t sound like it came from him. He still felt separated. Perhaps the detachment kept him from doing awful things. He couldn’t help but shudder.
Panix walked to his office and grabbed the picture of his father and headed down to the holding cells. He sat on the floor of a cell, leaning against the wall in the dark, holding the picture to his chest.
Hollowness turned him inside out. The always-present gnawing had pushed him on and on to find his father’s killer had gone. Mystery solved. The assassin, one of his own team, a man he had fought, a man that nearly killed Lorna and him and he worked side by side with Sovad every day since he’d returned to Mella.
Yet on another level, here was a man who he had admired. Sovad enlightened his life with a philosophy that Panix internalized. He knew he’d never be able to truly figure out how Sovad thought, but could he work with him?
Panix descended again into melancholy, sadness and sorrow. Sobs racked his body and he heard the door rattle and felt pieces of the wall fall on him. The magician who shared these spaces with him wouldn’t notice. He hadn’t come out of his coma.
He let those thoughts run around in his brain until he knew he could think cleary. Could he let Sovad help? Every time he looked at Sovad, he would feel some kind of pain. Could he even look at him again?
Merra came into his mind as he plumbed the dark corners of his mind. He was responsible for bringing her to Pent. Could he be responsible for her death? Didn’t he drive her into Blox’s arms? Didn’t he carry some taint for her death?
Panix thought of himself. Even if he was responsible, where did that put him now? Was he failing at leading his team? What would happen to the innovations Harlan, Tellus and the rest of the team had planned if he quit? He felt like running away and hiding.
He had put Lorna into harm’s way. Was he responsible for that? Was Lorna? She did volunteer.
The centering he had to do repeatedly while he fought with himself in the darkness of the dungeon, still brought up her image. He clung to that and he could care for her. She differed from Merra in many ways and he liked the fact that she wasn’t very good at hiding things.
Sovad killed Panix’s father and he’d tried to kill him. Yet, the man lived by his own code and somehow fate had put them together again and again. Panix shook his head. He wasn’t always sure what kind of code the assassin followed, but Sovad was as brilliant as any other on his team.
He lit an air light and looked at his father’s picture. What would his father do? What would he expect Panix to do? He nodded. Rennis Gavid would ask Panix to forgive Sovad. Turn an enemy into a friend, if at all possible.
His father never hated Murgontia. He pitied them and felt bad about Helvanna. He didn’t trust them or their motives and realized that from their point of view, reconciliation was impossible. Reconciliation with Sovad? Panix blinked back a tear. He could reconcile with Sovad but he couldn’t with Merra. His father. He put his father’s tiny image up close to his face.
He’d never considered acting for anyone before. He just let things go and took issues and problems as they’d come. His father would want him to consider others before he acted. Was that what made him so respected?
His thoughts continued to bounce from his father, to Merra, to Sovad, and then to Lorna, like a big loop.
Panix pursed his lips. He could sense the cleansing of his mind. Doubts and guilt and misunderstandings had combined with his focused life to ruin parts of him and his relationships with the people around him. Merra, Foald, Lorna, and even Sovad. His mind emptied and he relaxed.
The team, not his team. Sovad and Moshin and Tellus and the rest were part of the team. He was part of the team. He led the team, but it wasn’t his and he’d have to consider the team and then make a decision if one wasn’t apparent, but his chief responsibility madated that he make sure the team acted in unison. Panix would act as a facilitator to do that unless they couldn’t come to a consensus.
He doubted that the Sovad of even five years ago would admit to Panix that he killed anybody. But the Sovad of today did. That had to mean something and Panix realized that it did.
He took a deep breath and realized he didn’t have to center himself anymore and he rose and took some deep breaths before he walked up the stairs.
The men were in the kitchen fixing dinner. He’d been down in his hole for hours. Panix went up to Sovad and extended his hand. “I can’t forgive you, Sovad. But I can’t bring myself to hate you. If you can stand me, I can stand you.”
Sovad took Panix’s hand in both of his. “I won’t let you down, ever.”
“Now let’s figure out how Sovad seduces my stepmother.” Panix winced at the thought and put Rennis Gavid’s picture face down on the table.
~
Aston’s mother turned as white as a sheet, as Kevox pushed Aston into a wall and then into a chair. Kevox destroyed his apartment not his mother’s house. Aston restrained himself from fighting back
despite the bruises he endured. Any form of resistance might mean his death.
“Your men blew their cover when they attacked the polisher woman. Cutting off her hand? What kind of professionalism is that?”
“It cost them their lives,” Aston pouted. He didn’t deserve to be treated this way. Kevox instructed him on what kind of magicians to hire for this job. The men did their work perfectly, until the polishing woman worked an uncharacteristic night shift. “She shouldn’t have been there.” None of this was his fault.
“You just don’t get it, do you? Your cell has been compromised. Our scheme to slow down Korvanna’s tractor manufacturing has just been put out of business. The government must have sequestered the last magician. Just what do you intend to do about it?” Kevox pushed Aston down on the couch next to his mother. Aston took his mother’s hand and squeezed it to reassure her.
“I’ll think of something else and I’ll get more magicians. There is no reason why we can’t start all over again. I can still talk to the group that owns the factory into hiring more of my friends. In fact, I’ll make them feel it was all their fault the men died.”
Kevox looked a bit mollified. “I’ll give you ten days to get the operation back up. If you don’t, you may join your wizards.” Aston shuddered at the threat.
“Aston will get it done, you’ll see,” his mother said. As much as he wanted to, even he couldn’t believe her.
~~~
Chapter 34
Sovad walked up to Polla as she exited the Korvannan Council building, “Hello Polla, it’s been some time.” He gave her his dazzling smile.
“Is that you, Horvo? I walked right past you. You look so distinguished in your beard. ” Polla paused on the last step to the pavement and looked at Sovad. “I can’t believe it. After all these years.”
“You’re just as beautiful as ever,” Sovad said realizing he actually meant it.
“Time changes us all, doesn’t it Horvo?” She lifted her hand and brushed his cheek. “I nearly forgot you. Even the threat you left me with.”
“Ah, that. You know how anxious we all get, when we’re panicked.” Sovad noticed Polla’s pause and a bit of a whitening of the face. She was panicked right now and not about meeting him. “It was such a long time ago and here I am. What about dinner tonight?”
She paused. “That would be lovely,” she said after some thought.
“I know just the place. I’ll be by with a coach just after sunset. Do you still live in the same house?” She nodded as Sovad lifted her hand, noticing the sweating palms and kissed it. “Until then.”
~
“She wouldn’t give up any information. They are totally cowed by whoever is controlling them,” Sovad said after he returned from his night out with Polla. He remembered her reticence to talk about the present while she always turned their conversations to the past. Sovad couldn’t help stopping in the middle of his relating his dinner date with Polla. when Lorna walked into the room with Corlee’s help. They must have taken a coach from the KII’s teleportation booth.
“Lorna!” Moshin said. “Here, sit.”
“How is she?” Panix asked his sister.
“You can ask me directly,” Lorna said with a weak smile. “I’m very tired, but I can actually think and talk like anybody else. See my hand?” She waved her new hand around and put it in her lap.
“Even with nail polish,” Sovad said. “But the polish doesn’t match.” He realized that of all the men in the room, he was probably the only one to notice.
“I will always paint them with different colors to remind me of a dying woman who unknowingly saved my life.” Lorna’s eyes welled up. “She gave me another chance.” She looked at Panix.
He went to her and picked up her new hand. “Another member on our team.” Sovad had never seen the look in both of their eyes before. Where did this relationship come from?
“Corlee, one of the magicians that did this is still in a coma, down in our holding cells. Tellus has probably been practicing a forbidden healer’s technique. Could you see if you can restore him to consciousness? We need more information,” Moshin said.
Sovad had little hope the magician would have any information, but he felt lightened by the fact that Lorna had returned to them. He worried that if she hadn’t, his truce with Panix would be very tenuous indeed and he looked forward to honoring that truce. Her presense restored a bit of his honor.
~
Harlan tied the renegade magician to a chair in the room—a silk, tight fitting hood covering his face.
Lorna had demanded that she view the interrogation. She sat in her own chair in a corner. Although she didn’t feel the slightest amount of ill will from the team, doubts ran through her mind about continuing on. This was the third time her live had been in peril and she didn’t know if it was in her to continue. She flexed her new hand and determined to pass this self-imposed test. Apprehensive about what was to happen, she adjusted the scarf that covered her bare head to hide her nervousness.
The airlights were extinguished except for four, enclosed in thick paper tubes hung from the ceiling and pointed in the face of the wizard in the otherwise dark room. Harlan adjusted the hood over the magician’s head.
Moshin poured a bucket of cold water over the hood, making the fabric cling to the man’s face. The man gasped for air, but all he got into his mouth was wet cloth.
Harlan lifted the bottom of the hood to give the magician more time to breathe.
“Will you tell us what we need to know?”
The magician gave the same answer the next time, but his breathing rate had increased. Moshin poured more water on the third try and kept at it a bit longer.
“Stop, stop!” the wizard said, struggling for breath. “I’ll talk.”
“Who hired you to sabotage the steam engines?” Sovad said.
“The factory manager. A competitor bribed him. He didn’t tell me who.”
Lorna sat up. She could feel that he was lying. It wasn’t his voice or inflection or how he looked. His face was covered. But she had the distinct feeling he lied.
“He lies,” she said to the group. They all looked at her in astonishment.
“How do you know?” said Moshin.
“I can feel it.” She raised her new hand and flexed it. Could it be? “Ask him another question.”
“Who’s the woman?”
“She is the one who defeated all three of you in the testing shed,” Panix said. He nodded while Moshin lowered the hood and more water flowed over the hood. The man continued to struggle.
“Who gives you your instructions?” Sovad asked again.
“All right. A guard does. He pays us well. We don’t know who he works for.”
“He’s telling the truth about the pay and that they didn’t know who they worked for, but he’s lying about the guard.”
“Aston Gavid is your boss, isn’t he?” Panix said.
“No.”
“He lies,” Lorna said.
“What do you think?” Moshin said looking at Panix.
“She’s been right every time.”
He turned and looked at Lorna who felt his eyes bore into her. She was more apprehensive now than before she entered the room.
Moshin drenched the hood again and the magician began to telling the full story.
~
“I can’t detect any magic in you Lorna, yet you used magic to detect truth,” Panix said.
“I know I couldn’t do it before,” she said. A tinge of panic colored the edges of her mind.
“Come here,” Moshin said. He stood next to a secret door that had been modified to require magic to enter. “Say in your mind ‘Open-basket’ while you press this stud.”
“I can’t open magical doors.” Lorna looked at Moshin’s impassive face. She knew she had to try. She touched the stud. “Open-basket”
The door edge popped out from the molding that concealed it.
Moshin closed it. “Use your other hand.�
��
She put her own hand on the stud and said, “Open-basket.” Nothing happened.
“I don’t believe it.” Lorna put her hands to her mouth. She pulled a coin out of her pocket and put a handkerchief on it. “To Panix.”
The handkerchief appeared on the matching coin on the sideboard. “You’ve got something working inside of you. Tellus, can you detect anything?”
Tellus shook his head.
“It looks like you picked up something interesting from the Academy,” Sovad said. Everyone else winced at his remark.
“I’m not sure the price was worth it.” Lorna smiled and felt the scarring around her wrist and a feeling inside of her that she didn’t understand. Perhaps she did. The woman at the academy gave her more than her life back, she gave her a measure of her magic!
~
Polla opened the door to her house. Sovad stood with flowers in his hand. He pushed them towards her. She took them with a dazzling smile.
“Come in, Horvo. Dinner has been laid out and I have sent the servants home for the night. Aston is out of town on Council business. We are alone.”
Sovad smiled. He looked around. The furniture and decorations had all changed since the last time he visited. Polla had overdone everything. The colors were a little too bright; there was a bit too much gold trim on garish picture frames. He looked at Polla and saw a woman who just tried too hard. She still looked wonderful for her age. He snorted as he realized that 5 years ago the house had been subject to Rennis Gavid’s restraining hand and suddenly Polla had lost her appeal, yet he continued to smile at Polla, really lamenting at his mistaken insight into the woman.
“You look beautiful,” Sovad said. He smiled again.
She actually fluttered her eyelids. “You are still the handsome Horvo Tasler. Here sit. Let’s have something to eat.”
At the end of the evening, Sovad left the house giving Polla a lingering kiss. After he passed through the gate, he bumped into a man in the dark.
~
“I am sure he is Kevox Mirrok, a man I taught at the Assassination Guild. If there is a person who might succeed in taking my place, it’s him.”
