Lord of Stormweather

by David Gross

  “Have you considered the likelihood that your soul goes where mine does?”

  “Indeed I have,” said Chaney. “The way I see it, there are two possibilities. One, our souls go their separate ways when you die. That’s the one I prefer, naturally. Two, we go screaming down into the Abyss together. That one is not so appealing.”

  Radu made a harsh little sound. It was like a laugh, only with a little spray of blood.

  “So you hope to persuade me of my evil ways and set me on the path to redemption?”

  “How callow do you think I am?” Chaney replied. “Great gods, no. You’re a black-hearted beggar without the slightest hope of salvation. I have no doubt of that.”

  “Then what are you trying to accomplish with this insipid talk?”

  “Maybe I would like to see Laskar rid of you. He never did me any harm, and I hate to see a decent bloke burdened with the Malveen family curse. That’s you, by the way—a curse on all those you love.” Chaney watched for some sign that his words had stung Radu, but he saw none. “Or maybe I’m just sick of having no one else to talk to. You’re a rotten conversationalist. No doubt you’ve heard that before.”

  “Once or twice,” said Radu.

  Chaney nearly choked in surprise. For an instant he thought Radu had made a joke, then he realized that the long solitude must have affected Radu as well as him, and the man had simply answered out of habit—with no trace of irony.

  “It seems to me you should reconsider your present course. Your problem has never been gold. It’s reputation. Now that you’ve scared Pietro into obeying Laskar, the only lingering blot on the family honor is you, my friend. I know it’s too much to ask that you fall on your sword, but you should at least leave Selgaunt. If you need a little boost of energy before you go, I don’t think many would miss Drakkar, or Mad Andy.”

  “We made a bargain,” said Radu.

  “A deal with a couple of murderous maniacs hardly counts. To them, you’re nothing more than another monster they conjure for their sick little games. Where’s the honor in that?”

  “You know nothing of honor.”

  “Well, I know that you’re dying,” said Chaney.

  “Nonsense.”

  “Oh? Then have we been sitting here because you so enjoy my company or because you wanted to enjoy the lovely flowers? You’re unraveling, old son, and it’s getting faster with each killing. You can’t tell me you haven’t noticed.”

  Radu put the glove in his teeth and slipped it back on his hand. He replaced the mask with its steel cap and raised the collar of his cloak above his chin.

  “If you murder this woman tonight, you’ll only hasten your own demise.”

  Radu rose, weak but steady as he walked away from the fountain.

  “Then to the Hells with me,” he said. “To the Nine Hells with us both.”

  Twenty minutes later, Radu paced back and forth before an open window in the bedchamber of the late Stellana Toemalar. Apart from the moonlight, the room was dark.

  Chaney stood before a wide vanity mirror. Behind him, almost indistinguishable from the gloom, stood the shadows of Radu’s other victims. The beak-nosed Stellana Toemalar had joined them, as had the chambermaid with the unfortunate duty of sleeping at the foot of her mistress’s bed that night.

  The shades kept their eyes on the floor, but Chaney heard their ghostly voices and knew why they clustered behind him instead of their killer. He felt a cold trickle of guilt running down the hollow interior of his ethereal stomach.

  He nearly leaped when a bat suddenly flapped into the room.

  The creature alighted on the edge of the bed. As Radu and Chaney watched, it quickly grew tall and shifted shape, transforming into a familiar human form. After a few seconds, Drakkar sat on the edge of Stellana’s disheveled bed. He tapped the foot of his staff on the floor, and faint red light began radiating from its head.

  He touched the bloodstain on the pillow with the tip of his middle finger, and he wiped his finger on the sheets.

  “I hope the old harridan was not too much trouble,” he said. “What a fierce one she was, especially to the gutterkin who played too close to the walls. The children of Selgaunt would thank you, if they only knew.”

  “Ask him why he wanted her killed,” said Chaney.

  He tried not to think about the phantoms at his back. Their urgent moaning felt like a pressing need to urinate.

  Radu ignored him.

  “Don’t you want to know the reason why you’re killing these people?” Chaney asked.

  “No,” snapped Radu.

  “I beg your pardon?” Drakkar said.

  He rose from the bed, holding his thorny staff before his body. He kept his distance from Radu and glanced around the room suspiciously.

  “Do you have a partner?”

  Radu drew a long breath, and Chaney could practically feel the heat of his ire. It pleased him to think he’d gotten under the man’s skin, even as he was flush with power.

  “I work alone,” said Radu.

  Drakkar looked unconvinced.

  “Have you found the letters, then?”

  “I told you—” began Radu.

  “I know, I know,” said Drakkar, waving down Radu’s words. “You are not our fetch. No, you are far more valuable than that. Part of that value lies in our trusting your discretion.”

  “He’s calling you a liar, you realize,” said Chaney.

  Radu didn’t rise to the bait. Instead, he merely inclined his head.

  “Are you sure there is no one else here with us?”

  Drakkar withdrew a forked twig from a pocket inside his robe. He plucked a thorn from the head of his staff and held the two objects between his thumb and little finger.

  Radu parted his cloak with his stony right hand, exposing the hilt of his blade. He made no move to draw the sword, but Drakkar noted the gesture.

  “Have no fear,” he said. “I cast no enchantment on you. It is merely a spell to locate that which I seek.”

  “He’s impugning your honor, man! How can you let such an insult pass unanswered?”

  Chaney laughed, as much at his futile attempt to bait Radu as at the man’s earlier involuntary outburst. Chaney wouldn’t trick him again any time soon, but he’d scored a coup—and Radu knew it.

  Drakkar set his staff against the bedpost and pulled a folded letter from his robe. He held it with the broken seal facing upward, then he rubbed the thorn and twig together above it while intoning an arcane phrase.

  Chaney moved closer to the wizard and looked down at the seal. It was the horse-at-anchor, emblem of the Uskevren.

  The twig wriggled between Drakkar’s fingers. At first it looked as though the wizard was twisting it. Soon Chaney saw that it had a mind of its own, turning this way and that as it sought some desired object.

  Drakkar followed its urging. He took three steps across the room and turned toward the fireplace. He walked closer, turned aside a step, and turned back, frowning at the twig.

  “How could she be so careless?” Drakkar asked.

  He reached toward an ivory coffer upon the mantle, then thought better of it and withdrew his hand.

  Instead, he bit off one of the thorns and crushed it in his teeth. He blew a whispered word and a sparkling red cone of glittering dust out upon the mantle. As the motes gradually vanished from sight, Drakkar smiled as though he saw something the others didn’t.

  “Not bad,” he commented.

  He cast a third spell, this time plucking a thorn and casting it at the mantle with a few words of power. Chaney saw a rippling in the air, as if Drakkar’s thorn had been a stone thrown into a still pool.

  Drakkar casually flipped open the lid of the coffer and peered inside. He turned it over to spill a mass of jewelry onto the floor. He made a satisfied grunt as he set the coffer aside and felt the mantle where the box had been.

  His fingers traced simple shapes against the stone, and Chaney knew he was feeling for some secret catch. On a w
him, he reached out and touched the stone with his own ethereal hand.

  He didn’t feel it so much as sense its shape as his fingers passed through the surface of the stone. He pushed them into the solid surface and wiggled them in what he sensed was a hollow chamber beneath.

  Drakkar’s searching fingers passed through Chaney’s forearm. The wizard started, briefly withdrawing his hands, then he looked around and shuddered.

  “Hmm.”

  Chaney saw that Radu had also noticed the wizard’s surprise.

  Drakkar resumed his search.

  “I wonder …” said Chaney.

  He poked a finger through Drakkar’s shoulder. The trick had had no effect the last time he tried it, but maybe he’d been doing it wrong.

  “Take … that … you … unctuous … little … pervert!”

  He punctuated each word with a jab to Drakkar’s shoulder. He looked back to grin at Radu, who cocked his head in a silent threat.

  Chaney kept prodding the wizard’s shoulder.

  “Ah!” exclaimed Drakkar.

  Chaney triumphed for an instant before he realized that Drakkar had found the loose tile in the mantle. It slid aside to reveal a pin. Drakkar pressed the pin, then pushed the tile the rest of the way aside.

  In the hollow cavity of the fireplace mantle was a stack of folded vellum. As Drakkar removed the documents, Chaney saw the Uskevren seal on the first folded letter.

  “Ah, the late Thamalon Uskevren,” mused Drakkar. “What trouble his schemes have wrought.”

  As the wizard rifled through the rest, Chaney saw that not all of the correspondence was from the Uskevren. He also noticed the bloodbeak insignia of the Talendar, the cockatrice of the Karns, and the three watchful eyes of House Foxmantle.

  “Must be quite a party.”

  Chaney whistled to mask his concern. While he had not been on good terms with his parents since he was a boy, he hoped neither of them would be scheduled to receive a visit from Radu Malveen.

  “Someone must be angry that he didn’t receive an invitation,” the ghost added.

  “Yes,” said Drakkar as he skimmed the contents of one of the letters. “Just as I thought!”

  “What is it?” asked Radu.

  Drakkar smiled slyly. Chaney recognized that look and knew the wizard was glad to have piqued the assassin’s curiosity.

  “To us, it is evidence of treason,” said Drakkar. “To you, it is security of employment.”

  “How does it feel to be the lackey of a lackey, Malveen?” asked Chaney.

  The taunt didn’t even register on Radu. His eyes were fixed on the sheaf of letters and their seals.

  Drakkar saw the object of Radu’s interest. He chuckled in a fair imitation of warmth.

  “Whom shall we visit next?” he asked, as he shuffled through the letters.

  “Done,” he said, flipping past the horse-at-anchor.

  “Done,” he dispensed with the Baerent flame.

  “No need,” he said as he placed the letter with the Talendar crest to the back. “Ah, no matter. It is a decision my patron will be sure to make soon.”

  Drakkar began to stuff the letters inside his robe, but Radu reached for them. The wizard anticipated the action and stepped away.

  “Tut, tut, my good fellow. What is the matter? Perhaps you regret not agreeing to fetch them yourself? Then you might have pored over them at your leisure. Is there a name in here that interests you?”

  Radu regained his composure and said, “No.”

  “That is well,” said Drakkar. He secured the letters beneath his robe and strolled casually to the window. Once there, he extinguished the light on his staff and turned to face Radu. “We are friends, so I will tell you something to set your mind at ease. I have found the names of nine noble Houses in these treasonous letters. Three of them have already been punished. That leaves six more visits for you to make, six more fortunes for you to receive, not to mention the favor of my master, whose memory of friends is twice as long as his memory of his enemies.”

  “That’s because he kills his enemies, Malveen,” said Chaney. “Don’t listen to him.”

  “Even a man like you,” continued Drakkar, “might have qualms about striking against certain old families of Selgaunt. Perhaps there is one that you favor, hmm? Perhaps one that has been unduly punished for old, forgotten crimes.

  “To be plain,” said the wizard, “the Malveen crest does not appear on any of these letters. Even should one appear, I think, it could be overlooked.”

  Drakkar twirled his staff as he watched Radu’s masked face for any sign. There was none to see, but the wizard nodded anyway.

  “Be assured, my anonymous friend, that we can safeguard your secrets … just as long as you continue to keep ours.”

  CHAPTER 19

  TRAITOR

  “My Lord Uskevren,” said Escevar from the doorway. He cleared his throat for the second time.

  “Wait a moment,” said Tamlin. “Wait! Wait … Oh, bother.”

  Tamlin’s concentration teetered when he first heard the door open, and he struggled to remain focused on the puzzle before him even through the interruption. Unfortunately, his thoughts were balanced on a most precarious problem, and at last they fell into complete disarray.

  For hours he’d been annotating a copy of the Baerent letter, by turns transposing words and individual characters. The clue of the family motto had proven true, but it was only a means of organizing the rest of the cipher. Of that much he was certain.

  The rest remained guesswork and supposition, but Tamlin had a working theory. Based on the names mentioned in the seemingly innocuous letter and the frequency with which usually staid nobles made trifling jests and relayed dull anecdotes about their pets, Tamlin was beginning to believe his father was gathering support for some political action.

  If remarks involving a dog meant agreement and those about cats or foxes meant opposition or neutrality, then Gorkun Baerent at least was conspiring in alliance with Thamalon.

  That made sense to Tamlin, because Gorkun disappeared under similarly mysterious circumstances. There had been no reports of thunder in Sundolphin House, where the head of the family had been last seen. However, Dolly reported hearing from the domestics’ grapevine that Gorkun had recently received a gift the size of a painting.

  Tamlin would have paid good coin to know the identity of the artist.

  Unfortunately, Stellana Toemalar, whom Gorkun reported as telling a rather dry fable about a fox and a hen, was famously uninterested in art in general and that of Stannis Malveen in particular. Even assuming Thamalon’s enemies were attacking those loyal to his plan, why eliminate Stellana if she weren’t clearly in the loyal camp?

  The more difficult problem came with Thuribal Baerodreemer. The man was simply not mentioned in Gorkun’s missive. Either his death was unrelated to the list, or the letter simply didn’t mention every member of the scheme.

  The most intriguing element was the mention of Presker Talendar boasting of his new hunting dogs. That made sense only if he’d feigned alliance, only to turn on the others. The man had done worse things to the Uskevren in the past, so that seeming discrepancy only strengthened Tamlin’s confidence in his developing theory.

  Tamlin needed to see more of the letters before he could finish solving their riddle.

  “What is it now?” he asked.

  Realizing how testy he sounded, he threw a weak smile after the words by way of apology.

  “The mage has finished preparing her devices,” replied Escevar. Vox stood behind him, having risen from his chair just inside the door. “She awaits your pleasure.”

  “I thought she was meant to arrive at dusk.”

  “It is an hour and a half past, my lord.”

  Escevar smiled as he intoned the formal address, but the playful glint in his eye dispelled any notion of disrespect. Obviously, he enjoyed playing first-among-servants to a master who’d inherited power before his time. He’d already donned t
he dark livery of butler, though he cut a distinctly different figure than had the tall and gaunt Erevis Cale before him.

  “Ah, very well then,” Tamlin replied. He clapped his ink-stained hands, gathered up the coded list, the Baerent letter, and all his notes into a calfskin portfolio, and tucked it under his arm. “Let us go down at once.”

  They hurried across the east wing and into the library.

  The servants had cleared the area around Thamalon’s desk. On its surface rested a fantastic contraption resembling a metronome smothered in a collapsed house of gold foil cards over which someone had sprinkled the contents of a six-year-old boy’s vacation treasure chest. Tamlin spied an owl’s skull and a cork—two fetishes he’d seen on the previous contraption Magdon had devised for him.

  The wizard stood behind her work. She had changed considerably in the time since Tamlin had first met her. She was no taller than Escevar, but she’d shed a stone or two in weight. She was still no nymph, but the word “ample” was more accurate than “chunky.” Her hair and skin were both as white as chalk, with a faint pink blush at her lips, nostrils, and eyelids. Instead of her apprentice robes, she wore a long coat of deep burgundy. It had enough pockets to store the entire contents of an alchemist’s shop.

  She bowed as Tamlin approached and said, “My Lord Uskevren.”

  He nodded back at her and said, “Escevar has told you of my needs?”

  “He has,” she said with a brief glance at the butler.

  For an instant, Tamlin imagined some conspiratorial message pass between their eyes. He wondered briefly whether she was flirting with Escevar.

  Well, he thought. Good for him if so.

  “You wish to detect any lingering indication of powerful magic,” she said. “Specifically, teleportation spells.”

  “Yes,” agreed Tamlin. “That’s my principal interest. However, I have recently noticed certain … manifestations that seem to indicate I might have some sorcerous abilities of my own.”

  Magdon grimaced at his words, as if expecting but dreading them.

  “My lord,” she said, “I inquired of the archives before leaving the guild hall. You have been tested before, both for proficiency at wizardry and innate talent.”