Her parents, hours away in Kavet’s highlands, had five other children. Losing one was probably a blessing.
She took a small, silver disc from the altar and tucked the rest under a spindly nightstand draped with a decorative woven blanket to hide the damning evidence. Most likely, no one would have seen it even if she had left it out. The bed blocked the view from the hall and no one but her had reason to come into this room. The few friends she had made in the city were almost all married now, but it didn’t seem likely for her.
By Kavet’s standards she was almost eminently marriageable. She was educated, unafraid of hard work, healthy, and at least passably attractive. Twenty-six was older than many women married out in the country, but in the city, it wasn’t unusual. The only thing getting in the way of a long and happy life of domestic bliss was the automatic death sentence on her head, should her husband discover a Numenmancer’s tools in her possession.
She liked her privacy, anyway.
She ran a brush indifferently through her cinnamon-auburn hair before tying it back with a faded blue ribbon, then pulled a heavy wool outdoor dress over her shift. Thick stockings under scuffed boots, tan leather gloves, and a gray hooded cloak completed her outfit. The disc went in a small pocket concealed in the cloak’s lining, hidden from sight or pickpockets but available if she needed it during her mission. She wished she could curl up in front of the hearth fire until the chill left from talking to the Numini had dissipated a little, but that wasn’t an option. Worse, she could sense shards of ice in the brewing storm clouds; there would be snow soon.
When she paused on the front step, gathering her nerve, the door of the home across the street from hers opened. Xaz groaned inwardly, but outwardly smiled, because people smile when a neighborhood friend appears. Normal people, who aren’t dreading running an errand for the divine.
Had Ruby’s beau finally found the courage to give her the ring everyone knew he had been carrying around in his pocket for the last week?
“Oh!” Ruby said, her face brightening in an answering smile as she crossed the street. “I was on my way to see if you were up for dinner. I was expecting Hansa, but they just sent word he won’t make it, so I have more food than I need.” A frown tried to overshadow the smile when Ruby mentioned Hansa’s delay; Xaz saw her struggle a moment, then hide it. Disappointment that the expected proposal had been delayed another night, or fear for her soldier boyfriend?
Xaz could have pried further, but she had enough of her own worries without trying to divine Ruby’s. She kept her expression carefully neutral as she wondered whom the 126 had caught that night, and whether it was someone she knew—or who knew her. There were many reasons most mancers didn’t keep ties to others. Quin interrogation was the first.
“I’m sorry, I’m on my way out,” Xaz said. “I have some errands to run before the markets close.”
Pearl, the child Xaz was supposed to fetch, liked to come out in the evenings to bring cider to the guards coming off duty at the Quin compound. Since she otherwise lived in the Cobalt Hall, which might as well have been a fortress against Xaz’s kind, that would be the best time to grab her.
“Are you still not feeling well?” Ruby asked. “Did the tisane help at all?”
It took Xaz a second to connect Ruby’s words to the way she was looking at Xaz’s cloak with concern. Ruby was wearing a lemon-yellow bodice over a simple, ankle-length day dress—prettier than the smocks and pants she normally wore at the herbaria where she worked, and far lighter than what Xaz had on.
Ruby didn’t wait for Xaz to answer. She put a hand on Xaz’s cheek and said, “You’re still chilled. You should lie down. I can run to the market for you if you need.”
How much of Xaz’s life was dedicated to avoiding suspicion? She had declined an invitation to have dinner with Ruby and her boyfriend the previous night by claiming to be under the weather. Feigning illness to a senior journeyman at the herbaria had resulted in Ruby solicitously preparing and delivering a mixture of herbs designed to clear up the symptoms Xaz had made up on the spot.
Xaz hadn’t been sick; she just hadn’t been in the mood to feign friendship with Hansa Viridian. Ruby’s boyfriend wasn’t as paranoid or power-hungry as many of his cohorts in the 126, but he was still a soldier and a devout Follower of the Quinacridone. His only ambitions in life were to marry his childhood sweetheart, raise a perfect Quin family, and protect them all from those dastardly mancers. It didn’t help that Ruby occasionally invited her brother Jenkins along with the hope of setting him up with Xaz. Keeping her power hidden from a man with the sight all evening was exhausting.
Ruby wasn’t easy to keep at arm’s length, and Xaz couldn’t afford to alienate her. Her best protection at the moment was the fact that Ruby and her high-ranked soldier boyfriend liked Xaz. They trusted her, so no one else gave her much mind.
It was an adequate situation.
A sensation like the trill of harp strings, vibrating across her skin and not quite resonating in her ears, reminded her that she had work to do.
“I’m going,” she whispered.
“Excuse me?” Ruby asked, taken aback by the irritated tone.
Xaz hated using magic on someone she lived so close to, but she didn’t have time for this social dance. She put a hand on Ruby’s shoulder and said, “I’m sure Hansa will be home soon. You should go wait for him.”
Her power drove the words into Ruby’s mind. A brief objection rose in Ruby’s thoughts—she wasn’t the kind of woman who waited passively at home—but Xaz’s magic squashed it.
Without saying goodbye, Ruby walked away with languid, dazed steps. She would snap out of her trance in a few minutes and think going home had been her idea. Hopefully she wouldn’t run into anyone else before then.
Before any other well-meaning neighbors could appear, Xaz returned to the house long enough to drop off the cloak and transfer the silver disc to the inner pocket in her dress along with her spending money. It was late autumn, but the last few days had been unseasonably warm. For most people, it was not yet cold enough for winter-wear, even if the chill in her bones seemed to justify it.
Dressed less warmly than she wished to be, she started out on foot toward the market square at the center of the city, a little under two miles away. It was one of the last places she ever went willingly, but defying the Numini was a worse idea.
Those who dared to speak of such things said the Numen was where good souls went in the afterlife, but anyone who thought its denizens the Numini were all peace and joy and love had never met one. They were not as bloodthirsty as the Abyssi, but they were still Others. They didn’t think like humans, and their displeasure was distinctly unpleasant.
Few people did speak of the Others. The Followers of the Quinacridone believed focusing on the realms beyond drew value away from the current day and world, and the Order of the Napthol warned over-fascination with them could begin one on the road toward sorcery. Of course, what they taught was irrelevant, since it was illegal for anyone to write or speak about them anyway, with the exception of a select few highly placed individuals in the Cobalt Hall.
Those laws were enforced by the soldiers of the 126. The black-and-tan livery of that group had always reminded Xaz of rattlesnakes, even back when she had been an innocent little girl with nothing to fear from them.
Like Pearl.
Xaz spotted the girl talking with a spice merchant selling nutmeg, cinnamon, and other goods imported from Kavet’s trading partners. Business was apparently slow enough the man tending the stall didn’t mind Pearl’s chatter.
According to Xaz’s father, the city square had once been packed with foreign traders selling every luxury imaginable. She could almost see it. The ground was cobbled in blocks of irregularly-sized stone from around the world; she recognized marble in a dozen colors, sandstone, limestone, granite, an
d slate among others she couldn’t name. Like the ornate well in the center and the towering buildings to the north and south, it suggested a time when Kavet was a prosperous trading power, not a large but unimpressive backwater.
The grand marble and limestone four-story building that towered over the north side of the square had once been the palace. Now it was the Quinacridone Compound. The old ballroom had been filled with benches and turned into a meeting hall, and the long halls of bedrooms that had once belonged to the royal family and visiting dignitaries now housed President Winsor Indathrone in one wing—along with offices for government use—and Quin monks in training in the other.
She had only gone there once, when shortly after moving to the city she had gathered the nerve to attend a debate about a trade ordinance she wanted to vote on. She had lasted less than an hour before the effort of hiding her power from sighted guards and her general anxiety at being in the belly of the beast had chased her out.
Stop stalling.
Forcing her steps to be calm and casual, she approached the spice merchant. All she needed to do was put a hand on the girl’s arm and whisper a few words and she would be able to sneak off with her. It had to be done now, before Pearl went back into the Cobalt Hall.
Pearl lived with the novices and initiates of the Napthol Order, who had taken her in when the girl’s mother had abandoned her on their front step. Once she returned home to the Cobalt Hall, she would be out of Xaz’s reach. Supposedly many areas of the Hall were public, since the Napthol Order offered spiritual counseling and the best medical care in Kavet, but mancers weren’t able to enter the building.
Xaz suspected the only reason Kavet hadn’t passed a law ordering every citizen to prove their innocence by crossing that threshold was that no one understood why it worked.
I don’t want to do this, Xaz thought, as much a prayer and a plea as a private contemplation.
A cool, shimmering sensation responded; the Numini reminding her of their presence without bothering to answer in words.
Xaz had almost reached the spice merchant when soldiers approached from the west, the direction of the docks. She recognized Hansa and Jenkins. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see a miasma of lingering dark power on Hansa, but it looked like he had won the fight in the end. Jenkins was pushing a cart that held a bound, unconscious man.
If it had been Numen power that marked Hansa, Xaz could have read it clearly, but this came from a hotter, darker plane, which meant the unconscious man was an Abyssumancer, not one of her own kind.
Xaz wasn’t the only one who stared, but she was certainly the only one who felt her stomach drop as she saw one of the soldiers on the door whisper to the other, who went inside, probably to fetch more guards. A man in the violet robes of the Napthol Order saw the commotion and started striding protectively toward Pearl.
The Numini had to understand, Xaz couldn’t afford to act now. She would end up in the cart next to the Abyssumancer, and then in a cell, and then in the next world. She started backing away, careful to avoid drawing attention.
She couldn’t decide if she believed the Numini might accept such an excuse before the Abyssumancer stirred with a groan—then moved with impossible speed, rolling out of the cart and cutting the bonds on his wrists and ankles with a black blade as long as his forearm, which Hansa and Jenkins surely would have taken from him if the mancer hadn’t hidden it magically.
The soldiers of the 126 surrounded him, and he met them with a bared blade . . . and then his eyes went past them, to Xaz, and she could see on his face the same expression she must have worn earlier when the Numini had asked her to get Pearl: utter terror, and resignation.
He threw the knife with a smooth, fluid motion.
She didn’t see how the Quin responded, because the knife had not been aimed at any of them.
She looked down, and discovered two things:
She was numb.
She had a hilt jutting out of her stomach, marking the spot where several inches of blade had pierced her body.
The Quin started to turn toward her.
If they saw her, they would try to bring her into the Cobalt Hall so their healers could tend to her. The Hall would reject her, and they would know what she was.
She stumbled back as the pain hit her. Leaning against a building, she slid to the ground with one hand on her stomach bracing the hilt of the knife, and the other fumbling in her pocket for something she needed.
Desperately, she tried to conceal herself and to use her power to control the bleeding as she started to pull the knife out of her guts.
The blade moved maybe an inch before the pain became intolerable, and her stomach heaved, wanting to throw up and in the process shredding itself more.
Help, she prayed, as her hand closed around an etched silver tablet. The Numini did not like bloodshed, but this wasn’t her fault. They had to help her.
I did what I can, was the only message she received, as her mind drifted at the edge of unconsciousness. You do the rest.
CHAPTER 3
Cadmia jumped as the door to the temple squeaked behind her. Her first thought was a guilty one—she had been failing to meditate, and had a feeling she had actually dozed off—followed by, I need to have someone wax those hinges, and only then by the question, What is a soldier doing in the Cobalt Hall? The Cobalt Hall was part hospital and part holy sanctuary, and was the home and workplace for initiates in the Napthol Order.
The man who entered the room, escorted by one of the Order’s youngest initiates, was dressed in the black-and-tan livery of a soldier of the 126, including a sword at his belt. He was probably in his midtwenties, tall and broad-shouldered like most professional soldiers, with dark hair worn short and brown eyes set in a face that seemed undecided as to whether it should be pretty or rugged. He was pale and looked exhausted, adding to the latter impression, but he lacked the agonized twist of doubt and despair that marked many people who entered this place. Instead, his expression was tired but gentle.
The softness was probably directed at Pearl, his guide. The seven-year-old had been taken in by the Order of the Napthol after her mother abandoned her on their front step four years ago. She had few official duties at her age, but delighted in taking snacks and warm drinks to the soldiers assigned to guard the marketplace and the doors of the Quin Compound.
Pearl’s face was set in a determinedly solemn expression, as if she wanted to smile at the man with her but knew her responsibilities were serious.
“Sister Paynes,” Pearl said formally, “Lieutenant Hansa Viridian of the One-Twenty-Six has come to request your counsel.”
Cadmia rose, smoothing down the violet robes of her office and schooling her face to patience. Anyone had a right to come to the hall for healing or spiritual guidance, but if Hansa had come for that reason, he should have come as himself, not as a soldier.
“I would be happy to meet with Hansa Viridian,” she said firmly, “if he returns in civilian clothes, unarmed.” Cadmia didn’t normally work with soldiers, but knew Sister Marigold, who specialized in granting them counsel, refused to let them into her office while they were in uniform.
“I haven’t come for myself,” Hansa explained. “A prisoner has asked to see you.”
She raised a brow, intrigued. Normally a courier from the justice department brought news her services were needed.
Cadmia’s cohorts generally thought it odd that, out of all the more illustrious opportunities her years of study and hard work could have earned her, she had decided to specialize in offering guidance to the dredges of Kavet society. Even the older ones, who knew what a checkered history had preceded her vows, didn’t really understand. Thankfully, she now had a high enough rank that she didn’t need them to understand or approve.
She almost asked why a man in such an elite position was in charge of delivering
this news before the obvious answer came to her.
“Is this the mancer who was arrested last night?” She had not witnessed the scene in the marketplace, but she had heard about it from Pearl and the other novices who had been minding her.
“It is,” Hansa answered. She couldn’t think of him as Lieutenant Viridian. They might have been the same age, and he must have been good in his field to have achieved the rank he had, but guards in the 126 always seemed young to her. It was the idealism, she supposed. “If you wish to refuse, I understand.”
She shook her head. “If he has asked for counsel, he has the right to it.” She meant the words, even though the concept of trying to provide guidance and solace to a sorcerer chilled her.
“Hansa will keep you safe,” Pearl chimed in, her tone nervous and her mismatched blue and green eyes trained on Hansa as she added firmly, “Right?”
Hansa ruffled the girl’s hair and gave her a tired smile, saying, “That’s my job.” To Cadmia, he added, “He has been disarmed and branded. I cannot guarantee he is harmless, but he is powerless.”
Without his magic, he should be no more dangerous than many men she had counseled. Drunkards, abusers, murderers, thieves; Kavet’s laws gave them the right to be heard.
“Lead the way, Lieutenant,” she said. “Pearl, thank you for bringing Lieutenant Viridian to me.” The novices and other initiates all knew to funnel requests from criminals and other disreputable sorts to her, but Cadmia was impressed that Pearl had been astute enough to bring Hansa to her and not to Marigold.
Pearl nodded, ducking her head shyly.
Without delay, Cadmia followed Hansa across the street and into the Quinacridone Compound, wondering why a mancer had asked for a representative from the Napthol. Maybe he was just trying to stall his execution by a few minutes, but maybe he genuinely wanted forgiveness. Maybe he wanted to tell them something.
Though she had been to the sections of the Compound that served as Kavet’s main government building many times, she had never taken the rough stone staircase that led downward to a row of cells, evidence of the building’s darker past.
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