Court Wizard: Book Eight Of The Spellmonger Series

by Terry Mancour

  No other action was taken. No other action needed to be taken. The intimidation of the animal-men did its work to erode the confidence of his men and give the artisans of the ward a proponent. Those few who owed Opilio were quickly paying off their debts in good silver. It became commonly known that the Woodsmen were coming for the Knife. It was time to capitalize on that rumor, and goad the vermin into action.

  “The Crew have rules about stealing from each other,” Vemas explained, almost a week after the Woodsmen made their animal-headed debut. “but those rules are just sacred enough to get violated pretty regularly. Meaning that their first response to our thefts would be was ‘whoever did this can’t be a Rat’. Followed quickly by ‘although it might be a Rat pretending not to be a Rat.’ That sort of thing happens a lot, particularly in the south.”

  “The questions are who are the other Rats Opilio would turn on first? That’s who we want to scare into fighting against him,” Pentandra told Ancient Carastan late one night. He was the Woodsmen’s most valuable spy.

  “He’s apparently accused every other Crew’s captain,” the man confided after spending a full day wandering through taverns in disguise. “Every one! And he’s lost his most trusted men,” Carastan added. “His best enforcers. All in one strike. And four more seasoned runners that will be difficult and expensive to replace. And he has not a penny left in his coffers. The only ones who would dare steal it are his rivals. He’s sure that it’s one of the others, but they all deny it. Opilio is going mad with suspicion! He’s ready to go to war!”

  “Then let us give him something with which to struggle,” Vemas suggested. “Let’s summon up his biggest rival, and give him a warning he cannot fail to act upon. And,” he continued, a sly smile on his face, “let us do it on Briga’s Eve. The day before the Orphans’ Band departs the city. Just to give them something to occupy themselves.”

  The small man with the heavy southern accent in his speech struggled in vain against his bonds; good hempen river rope, thick and well-tied. His eyes were not fearful, exactly, but calculating as they flitted from one cloaked and masked figure to the other. The cellar they had chosen for the kidnapping was a storeroom under the stable to an inn, to ensure privacy. That was done more to elude the Crew than the law. It occurred to that committing horrific crime was much easier when you didn’t have to be concerned with the constabulary.

  This was the first operation since the initial one that Pentandra had insisted on participating in directly. She was wearing high-heeled boots and the dark cloak of the Woodsmen, a parchment-and-glue mask of a badger covering her head. Sir Vemas had asked her help in tracking this particular miscreant for days, now, in order to arrange his kidnapping, and after so much work she felt entitled to see the confrontation that resulted.

  Vemas had agreed only because there was apparently so much at stake. The victim of their kidnapping was Ransung Bloodfinger, the Rat Crew captain in charge of the Docks ward, an ambitious up-and-coming talent in crime - and Opilio the Knife’s biggest rival in the organization, by all accounts.

  Opilio had been spreading the rumor that Bloodfinger was actually behind the recent devastating attacks in the Market ward, his men using the cursed masks as a way around the Crew’s traditional code of inter-organizational warfare. It was one way to explain the sudden appearance of a mysterious new criminal gang that had managed to cripple his lucrative business within weeks, due to an uncanny knowledge of his operations. A sneaky tactic by Ransung sounded more plausible than what was actually happening to Opilio’s territory.

  The capture had been carefully arranged; Pentandra had supplied a small wand with the necessary spell to render the man unconscious. The Woodsmen tracked him for days until they caught him alone. He awoke after Pentandra broke the spell, but he discovered he had a sack over his head, and his body was tightly bound to the most uncomfortable chair Sir Vemas could find.

  To his credit, Ransung did not panic, or scream, and he struggled only enough to assure himself that his bonds were taut; more than taut, for Pentandra had spellbound the knots. His hoodwink was removed only when all of the other players were safely behind their masks and obscured by their cloaks.

  There was a bit of theater in that, too.

  It had been learned that Ransung Bloodfinger was bragging that even if there were really “Woodsmen” attacking his rival’s interests - and agents -- there could not be more than a handful of them, for (he explained authoritatively to his crew) a large organization could not exist without attracting attention to itself.

  Opilio the Knife was shrieking at shadows, Bloodfinger sneered. A few lucky hits and he had run screaming like a little girl.

  All criminal underground machismo aside, Sir Vemas had agreed he had a valid point during the planning of this operation.

  “There are enough strangers running through Vorone that it would be easy enough for another syndicate to arrive without notice, but he’s right. A real criminal organization would be parading its strength around town. We appear, strike, and then disappear. While that serves our purpose, from Bloodfinger’s perspective the Woodsmen could plausibly be no more than a handful.”

  “Then we must convince him otherwise,” Pentandra had declared. “If we are to make an impression -- enough of an impression – on the man that the Crew is under serious threat, then we have to be convincing.”

  “We can show him everyone, provided they stay masked,” Sir Vemas proposed.

  “A dozen?” Pentandra had scoffed, playfully, over their morning tea. “That’s hardly more than he’s suggesting! Are we a mere ruthless gang of cutthroats or are we dark army of the night?”

  “You do have a flair for the dramatic,” Sir Vemas admired. “You suggest we use magic to add to our numbers?”

  “Perhaps,” she murmured, “but not the way you might expect.”

  When the basement room at the inn was prepared for the kidnapping the day before Briga’s Eve, Pentandra took a hand. She had another score of dusty animal masks exhumed from the palace storerooms and quietly smuggled to the room disguised as bottles.

  There, with the simple expedient of poles lashed into racks, weighted with bags of soil, she produced twenty additional menacing masked figures -- including a magnificent musk ox mask, the horns of which were just too impressive to be practical on the street. Each rack was covered in dark fabric near enough to the Woodsmen’s black cloaks so that in dim light (and without magelight, that was all that was to be expected in the cellar) the storeroom was crowded with false bandits.

  “You really do have a flair for this sort of thing,” Sir Vemas praised, when she was done. She had added a few small spells that would make it seem like the mannequins were “alive”. If one was not aware, then the figures seemed to shift and turn in small ways, enough like real people quietly standing in witness to be convincing. “I did not realize that a magical education extended to such things as lashing rope,” he said, amused, as he inspected her constructions.

  “Oh, I didn’t learn that from Alar Academy,” she assured him. “I’m married to a Kasari. Knots are almost sacred to them.”

  “So I’ve heard,” the constable nodded. “Which begs the question of how a well-educated, extremely talented Remeran lady mage came to wed such a man.”

  As they had spent long hours in consultation over the affairs of the Woodsmen, Pentandra felt that they were intimate enough that the question was not impertinent or rude. She brushed her hair out of her eyes and sighed.

  “I met him during a mission for the Order, and fell in love. He is a most magnificent man,” she admitted. “Perhaps the most magnificent I have ever met.”

  “Perhaps it has escaped your attention,” Vemas continued, casually, “but the subject of your union has arisen - unofficially, of course - among some members of the court. Many Wilderlords look down on the Kasari as ignorant barbarians and shiftless vagabonds. Or deadly warriors.”

  “The truth is the Kasari are more sophisticated than the Wil
derlords by far,” Pentandra chuckled. “They might not build cities and castles, but their entire culture is literate. Whereas we cannot even claim that the entire Ducal Court is literate. Do you share this prejudice, Sir?”

  “What? Me? Oh, Luin forbid! I’ve always found the Kasari to be wild and romantic figures. And they make darn good rope. My grandfather was on an expedition against them in the north, in his youth, and he had nothing but good things to say about them, though he was fighting against them. No, I merely wished to call the rumor to your attention. While some whisper against you because of your nation, some of the natives are trying to discredit you because of your marriage. I am certain you are socially astute enough to determine just who might consider such a campaign.”

  “Well, that kind of attack is unlikely to come from masculine quarters,” she reasoned, her nostrils flaring as she understood what Vemas was saying. “And the number of ladies in the court is limited, until most of the wives join their husbands in the spring.”

  “I’ll say no more, then,” Vemas said, graciously. “It’s a sad conceit that place of birth, not character or value, is more meaningful . . . but such are the ways of court.”

  “I wouldn’t expect it to be any different,” Pentandra agreed. In truth she had expected that sort of thing – the Alshari, both north and south, were as woefully provincial as they were proud of their pretended sophistication. The usual murmurs about “foreign” ministers in what should be an Alshari court were typical. But she also knew that almost all Ducal courts employed foreigners as ministers and officials when they wished.

  What truly irked her was that they chose to assail her through her husband, before the inevitable gossip about her magical specialty could overshadow her unusual marriage. She was one of the few experts in the scandalous subject of Sex Magic in the known world, and yet they chose to disparage her because she married a Kasari?

  She was calm, but inside her mind was already working on who might be quietly attacking her. The possibilities were limited, and it wouldn’t take much to confirm her suspicions. There was no need to appear perturbed about the news to Sir Vemas – that wouldn’t be prudent.

  “I’m a Remeran, remember? Remeran temple school politics were more complex than these Wilderlords can manage. I shall deal with the matter, and thank you for bringing it to notice. Now, Sir Vemas, just what do you intend on saying to Master Bloodfinger, once he is our guest?”

  Pentandra had to admit to herself that watching Vemas perform in costume was not only better than hearing him describe it, it was actually better than most commercial theater performances she had seen in Castabriel and Wenshar. It had better be, she reflected. All of their lives might depend upon it.

  Sir Vemas chose the mask of a mountain lion for his own, and a swirling cloak of black in alternating swatches of shiny and matte fabric. The effect in the dim light of the storeroom was to make him appear shadowy - aided with a minor glamour from Pentandra. He wrapped a moth-eaten lion’s skin from the Trophy Room around his neck like a cape to complete the effect.

  But his transformation did not end with costume. Vemas’ voice deepened, and gone were the educated, formal tones of a courtier and townsman. Instead the thickest brogue of the most remote Wilderlands settlements spilled out of his lips like pipe smoke and raw corn spirits.

  He carried a crooked stick that looked like a fanciful artist’s idea of a magical staff. No real wizard would have enchanted a knobby bit of oak like that with anything more potent than travel spells, Pentandra thought, snidely. It was so far removed from her beloved baculus that it was laughable. But as a stage property it was more than adequate. As Vemas moved closer to the gangster, his lion mask leering at the man, the criminal spoke first.

  “Are you gentlemen going to just watch me all night, or was there a purpose to this meeting?” Ransung Bloodfinger asked, calmly, once the hoodwink was removed and he was able to look around at the room, crowded with masked Woodsmen. “I take it if you wanted me dead my throat would be cut already.”

  “I speak for the Master of the Wild!” Vemas said in a cackling, back-country accent as he shuffled forward, his lion mask illuminated by two feeble candles. Vemas had hunched his back and affected a limp, further disguising who he was. “You are called to account by the Master, Ransung Bloodfinger!” he croaked, taking center stage before the crimelord. “You defile his town and his land with your cruel and petty exploitations, Rat!”

  “That tends to be what rats do,” Bloodfinger responded, boldly. “I don’t know what godsforsaken hamlet spawned this merry little band of goatfuckers of yours, but you have no bloody idea the powers that you are stirring up,” be warned.

  “Nor do you have a conception of what powers are working against you, Rat!” Vemas creaked.

  “I know a couple of vagabonds in crappy masks aren’t going to drive the Crews from Vorone,” Bloodfinger snorted, matter-of-factly. “You might have been able to scare Opilio the Wife, but . . .”

  Despite his bold words, Bloodfinger’s tone told Pentandra that he was starting to have doubts about his earlier assessment of the Woodsmen. With the dummies in place, there appeared to be at least thirty masked and cloaked thugs in the room around him. His operation, Pentandra knew, employed less than a score to control the docks and the nearby camps. And his was the second-largest crew in Vorone.

  On cue, Fes the Quick came into the room, mask over his face, and spoke to the bear-faced Ancient Andolos. The Ancient in turn approached Sir Vemas.

  “The other packs report that their prey is in hand, Master,” he told Vemas in an urgent tone of voice. “All were taken alive . . . for the moment,” he added.

  Vemas nodded curtly, the ears on the lion mask flopping forward a bit, and dismissed the man.

  “Bloodfinger, know that all of your fellow Crew chieftains are now sitting, as you are, in our hidden strongholds,” Vemas barked, a sincerely vicious tone in his affected accent. “Aye, even the Chief Rat! We know Master Luthar well!

  “The same bargain is being put to you all, by the dark of the moon: when the Master of the Wild arrives with the rest of the Woodsmen, only one Rat will be spared to bear the tale south to your ilk. The last one alive in Vorone. All others will be slain,” he said in dark and ominous tones.

  “What is this?” Bloodfinger spat contemptuously. “Do you think you can dance around like a bunch of mummers and expect us to turn on each other? Go drown in pig shit, you—”

  That was Andolos’ cue to clobber Bloodfinger in the face with his fist. To his credit, the criminal took the blow with a minimum of drama, and while his stream of invective was halted, the angry, calculating look in his eye only grew more intense.

  “Pay heed,” warned Vemas, harshly, “the Master of the Wild dislikes his messages to go astray. One rat in Vorone will be allowed to live, to depart with the Master’s message. One. All the others will be slain as easily as a fox slays a vole. Either be that Rat . . . or be gone. You have until the dark of the next moon to decide.”

  “What makes you think that the Crew is going to believe such rubbish?” scoffed the gangster, bravely. “You have no idea how many we are, or where-”

  “We know far more than you think,” Sir Vemas cackled, theatrically. “The Wild is always watching, and every creature is its spy! Do you think you deal with mere ruffians? Every piss you take is noted, Rat. Every time you lay your head, it is seen. Yes, even within your precious warrens where you think you are safe, we know what occurs. Do you think the Master is incapable of infiltrating a mere gang of thugs such as yours? Do you think every ear you whisper into is loyal? How many of your own men stand here now, under a mask, mocking you in their thoughts?”

  That had been an essential part of Vemas’ (actually, Pentandra’s) plan: make Ransung Bloodfinger as paranoid as possible. He was the most temperamental gang leader, the one most prone to risky moves and unexpected fits of violence. The idea that his own ostensibly loyal men were now staring at him, mockingly, under the mas
ks infuriated him.

  In actuality, none of the Woodsmen were Rats, of course. Nor were any of the other Crew captains being held captive, only Bloodfinger. But by implanting in his mind the idea that his fellows in the Crew were actively conspiring against him in secret, it was hoped that they could convince the violent ruffian to take action on his own.

  Pentandra ensured his cooperation, quietly using her baculus under her long, musty-smelling robe to manipulate the man’s emotional responses. It was somewhat sophisticated Blue Magic – the dangerous discipline known as Psychomantics – but Pentandra was not unskilled in its use, for a dabbler. There were plenty of occasions in the pursuit of Sex Magic that Psychomancy came in handy.

  But she had underestimated the additional leverage that her strange new artifact gave her. As Sir Vemas continued to threaten Bloodfinger, her intended desire to enflame the crimelord’s paranoia manifested in a far more complex iteration of the spell than she’d anticipated. Her baculus eagerly invaded the man’s mind and dictated his emotional responses to the idea of conspiracies against him with breathtaking efficiency.

  Now, Pentandra realized, no matter how far-fetched an idea Bloodfinger heard, if it could be construed as an attack against him, it would be. When the hints that Opilio the Knife and Harl the Huntsman were sending spies and assassins into the docks made their way to his ears, Pentandra realized, he would seize on the idea and respond viciously . . . and recklessly.

  “One Rat,” Vemas whispered to the man hoarsely. “One survivor.” When he nodded to Carastan, the big guardsman slugged the Rat across the back of the neck with a sandbag, sending him back into unconsciousness. Two other guardsmen began wrapping him up in a threadbare tapestry, in preparation for transporting him back to the docks.