Tyvian snorted. “I certainly wouldn’t want to cause a fuss, now would I?”
Xahlven rolled his eyes. “Do grow up someday. So far as I am aware, Mother has some manner of disagreement with your old friend, Gethrey Andolon, who has become quite active on the Mundane these past years. He seems to be trying to angle some kind of leverage here as well.” Xahlven cast his eyes across the floor of the Secret Exchange to the central pool and those clustered there. “There are whispers he seeks to affect a crash.”
Tyvian laughed. “Impossible. How?”
Xahlven’s gaze never wavered from the cluster of magi in the distance. “Auguries aren’t destinies, Tyvian—aren’t you fond of saying that? Nothing is ever guaranteed.”
Tyvian followed Xahlven’s gaze to find his brother was looking more or less directly at a specific mage—a dour-looking, iron-haired Verisi with a crystal eye very much like Carlo diCarlo’s and wearing the tight hose and blooming breeches in fashion in the Verisi court. Whoever he was, he was a Verisi augur, probably bonded to the baron’s service after earning his staff, and he was wearing sufficient gold jewelry to show that he was well-compensated for his craft.
“His name is DiVarro—he is Andolon’s creature by way of enormous sums of money.” Xahlven turned back to him. “I’m sure you noticed the patsy downstairs, correct?”
Tyvian said nothing for a moment—would it be better to feign knowledge or admit ignorance? He made a snap decision. “I did, yes.”
Xahlven gave Tyvian one of his trademarked aren’t I so smart grins. “Did you? Well, anyway, you’ll probably meet him in a few minutes. You’d better go. Shall I tell mother to expect you?”
Tyvian thought of the shipment of clothing he’d already had sent to Glamourvine. “No, don’t bother. I’m sure she’s expecting me already, just as you were.”
Xahlven shrugged. “You are my brother—if I can’t predict your behavior, whose can I predict?”
Tyvian scowled. “Good-bye, Xahlven.” He then ducked back out the open window and went back the way he came.
Back on the roof, he peered over the edge to see the front of the club. There was a coach pulling up sporting the scales and stars of Saldor, followed closely by a troop of mirror men marching in a double rank. Firepikes and everything. Tyvian sighed. “Great.”
CHAPTER 13
NOT FRIENDS
A “patsy” was somebody who had been egged into a duel—usually a fellow with an inflated sense of pride and a poor sense of mortality. This fellow, whoever he was, had spotted Tyvian on his way through the trading floor on the way in and taken umbrage at his presence because somebody had intentionally been whispering nasty things in his ear about Tyvian for some period of time for this very purpose. Tyvian knew that it meant that this idiot was essentially a weapon—a weapon timed to go off exactly when he laid eyes on him and began to plot his intention to challenge him to a duel. The effect of the weapon, though, was not to get Tyvian stabbed, but rather to get him arrested. Duels were illegal in Saldor. The precise moment the patsy drew his sword, the Defenders would be kicking in the doors and arresting both of them, as had been foreordained by the Mage Defender in command of this section of town. When Tyvian was younger, all manner of precautions needed to be taken in order for a duel to actually happen. The patsy, being an idiot by definition, would not have taken any such precautions.
Tyvian considered jumping off the roof, but it was at least a twenty foot drop to the nearest roof, and almost fifty feet to the cobblestone street below—not especially encouraging. “Kroth take it.” He sighed and, grabbing the cornice again, swung himself back into the open window.
There were so many gawkers by the window, wondering what had become of him, that Tyvian nearly kicked a woman in the teeth and in actual fact bowled over the portly bore who had been aggressively name-dropping to him a few minutes earlier. They fell together onto the lush carpets, the fat man’s hands wrapped round Tyvian’s waist like a lover. The fellow was so flustered that he seemed unable to function, flapping about beneath Tyvian like a half-dead fish. Tyvian somehow got the man’s beard tangled in one of his buttons. So much for a graceful entrance.
He was still struggling to extricate himself from the fleshy clutches of that tubby gossip-hound when he felt something soft slap against the back of his head. “What the hell?” He looked up.
There was a man there holding a glove. He was young—no older than his early twenties, dressed in a rakish hat and wearing his hair in pink ringlets on either side of a hairless, earnest face. “Tyvian Reldamar, I challenge you to a duel.”
Tyvian rolled his eyes. “Now? Can’t you see I’m busy?”
The fellow straightened his doublet and threw his shoulders back. “You are a blight upon the good name of the Society and a poor influence on the younger membership. I am prepared to allow you to submit to my request that you relinquish your membership and, thereby, satisfy honor. If you refuse, it must be swords, and it must be now.”
Tyvian planted a hand on the fat man’s face and pushed the fellow away so that his beard left a substantial portion of its growth knotted around Tyvian’s buttons. The old man squeaked in pain, but Tyvian ignored him, despite a slight twinge from the ring. “Who the hell are you, boy?”
The patsy blinked. “I am Malcorn DeVauntnesse of Halmor.”
“Your uncle is Faring DeVauntnesse?” Tyvian straightened his clothing. He couldn’t be certain, but he imagined the Defenders were in the process of setting a perimeter around the club as he spoke. Time was not on his side.
“My uncle has that distinction, yes.” Young Malcorn rested his hand on the hilt of a very elaborate rapier—it had clearly been fashioned by more jewelers than it had bladesmiths.
The crowd parted around Tyvian as he took up a position across from the young man and took off his doublet. “Did your uncle ever tell you about how I cut off his balls once?”
The crowd gasped. Young Malcorn’s expression darkened. “He told me you fought with dishonor. I take it you will not yield?” The boy drew his sword. Tyvian thought he could hear shouting coming from the second floor. From the corner of his eye he saw the levitating silver tray he had spoken to earlier arrive bearing the bottle of wine he had ordered.
Tyvian stepped forward until the boy’s rapier was a hand’s breadth from his chest. “The day I yield to a DeVauntnesse is the day I put on waders and fish for eels like a marsh-born urchin.”
“En garde, then.”
Tyvian rolled his eyes. “Not hardly.” With a quick sweep of his arm, he tossed his doublet over the patsy’s face. Young Malcorn lifted his free hand to pull it off, but in that time Tyvian snatched his wine bottle and threw it overhand at the idiot’s head. The heavy glass bounced off Malcorn’s temple with a low-pitched bong and the dandy dropped like a string-cut marionette.
At this point a Defender’s magically amplified voice was shouting “EVERYBODY DOWN!” and everyone around Tyvian was dropping on their faces. Entering the hall were a trio of mirror men with a Mage Defender in tow. They weren’t wielding firepikes, though—it wouldn’t do to set the Venerable Society of Famuli on fire—so instead they had their rapiers drawn. In an even match, Tyvian could have dispatched all three in short order, but the Mage Defender was the real threat—he was already weaving bladewards and guards around his three men and urging them forward with enchantments that let them skip across the long room with all the speed and grace of Taqar gazelles.
“Okay,” Tyvian muttered, “out the window after all.”
He turned and rushed back toward the open window beside the lodestone fountain from which issued courier djinn—his ticket out. Spying a note in the hand of one prone gentleman investor, Tyvian snatched it up and threw it into the fountain.
“Here now!” The man looked up, “I wasn’t ready to send that!”
Tyvi
an didn’t respond, but instead drew Chance in time to parry two thrusts from two separate Defenders. He backed up and, just as the cube of black Dweomer formed in his peripheral vision, leapt out the window.
He timed it almost perfectly—both Tyvian and the construct exited the window at the same time, but Tyvian was too late to land atop it, as had been his hope. So, instead of straddling the black cube as it zoomed off on its errand, he wound up hanging from it by one hand. The surface of the thing was perfectly smooth and so cold it burned.
They—Tyvian and the djinn—rocketed over the neighboring building and then dropped to ten feet above the street beyond. The only reason this didn’t knock Tyvian into space was the fact that his left hand seemed to have frozen to the surface of the construct as firmly as a tongue to a steel pole in wintertime. The pain was unique, and Tyvian expressed its novelty in a series of colorful profanities.
He was now zooming above the busy Saldorian streets, making a beeline for the Mundane, which was about as far as this escape plan had resolved itself before he threw himself out an open window. He now had to figure out how to get off the damned thing without breaking his neck before he arrived in the Mundane and was promptly arrested by the Defenders no doubt waiting for him there.
And, if possible, he was hoping to keep the skin on his left hand intact in the process.
It was then that a large and well-appointed black coach-and-four galloped beneath him. The coachman had to be a madman—he was whipping his team into a frenzy in his effort to match the djinn’s speed. He kept shooting looks over his shoulder at the escaping smuggler, his eyes wild. “What the . . .”
From the side window of the coach, Gethrey Andolon’s blue-haired head emerged, the ridiculous ship-hat on the verge of foundering in the face of the coach’s frantic pace. He motioned to the roof of the coach. “Drop here! Hurry!”
Tyvian looked ahead—the djinn was less than two hundred yards from the exchange now, and he was about to get smashed against a flying buttress if he didn’t jump now. With a grimace, he twisted his numb and frozen hand. It came free from the surface of the courier djinn with a disconcerting tearing noise and Tyvian fell a few feet to the roof of the coach, which immediately made a sharp turn down a narrow side street. He felt himself fly off the top of the coach and only had time to roll into a ball before bashing against the cobblestones and rolling. The wind was knocked out of him; stars danced in his eyes.
The coach rolled up beside him and the door opened; a strong, rough hand yanked him from the cobblestones and deposited him on the floor of the cab in the blink of an eye.
“Drive!” Gethrey’s voice barked out a window, and drive they did. The coach rumbled out of the alley and onto the street with all the haste a team of four horses could muster.
Tyvian pulled himself off the floor and into the luxuriously cushioned seats of the coach across from his old friend. Gethrey was sitting with a flute of champagne clutched primly between two fingers. “My, you haven’t changed a bit, Tyv! Still swinging from chandeliers and the lot of it, eh?”
As Tyvian regained his equilibrium, he found himself wondering who it was that had dragged him off the street—certainly not Gethrey, who was soft as butter. Then who? He shook his head, trying to clear it.
“Relax,” Gethrey smiled, offering him some champagne, “you’re safe. Nothing to worry about.”
Tyvian took the glass but said nothing. He got the eerie sensation that somebody was breathing down his neck—somebody close and not friendly at all. He tried to block out all distractions to isolate the feeling, but it was difficult—the rumble of the coach, the taste of the champagne, the stench of Gethrey’s cologne, the throbbing of his sore hand . . .
. . . but then he had it. There was a third figure in the coach—a figure made of shadows and nothingness. A figure who had a button tattoo just above the corner of his lips.
A Quiet Man of the Mute Prophets, sitting right next to him, shoulder-to-shoulder.
“To another successful escape,” Gethrey said, holding up his glass to toast.
Tyvian obliged him, grimacing. “And to many more.”
The Argent Wind was an affront to shipbuilding—a great, fat, four-masted lunk of lumber, a hull more circular than elliptical, and a fore- and sterncastle so gaudily gilded and so massively constructed that it was a miracle of buoyancy that the vessel didn’t sink under its own weight. It was a twelve-year-old dunce’s idea of a luxury yacht—all gold, glitz, and expense, but with all the refinement and practicality of a nickel-plated kite. As they passed beneath the bowsprit, Tyvian marveled at its incredibly poor taste—it depicted not just a single figure, but rather an entire tableau of nautical themes, each clashing with the last. There was the selkie king with his trident astride a great seahorse, there were pegasi, there were dolphins, there were topless beauties fanning themselves with scallop shells, and all of them arranged in a kind of profane explosion of design elements. Tyvian could see the sculptor’s pain in the work—it was wrought in the face of each figure, a kind of mute anguish that said, Why was this asked of me? Whom did I wrong to deserve this?
“Isn’t she something?” Gethrey observed, grinning at the monstrosity his wealth had commissioned. “I spared no expense.”
“I certainly believe it.” Tyvian did his best not to gag. Gethrey had always been afflicted with a certain gauche style, but this . . . this was . . .
Gethrey’s servant—a sailor in a mocked-up soldier’s costume—rowed them both (and the Quiet Man, Tyvian told himself, don’t forget the Quiet Man!) alongside to a boatswain’s chair that would hoist them aboard. Tyvian elected to climb up the cargo netting with the sailor while Gethrey sailed up to the deck like a debutante on a porch swing.
“Oh Tyvian,” Gethrey chuckled as the smuggler rolled onto the deck, “you really have fallen from grace, haven’t you?”
Tyvian picked himself up and dusted himself off. “Whatever do you mean?”
Gethrey laughed again, rolling his eyes as though to say, Don’t say you don’t know! He motioned Tyvian belowdecks. “Come along! This way!”
Tyvian found himself standing in a room that might have been separated into five or six cabins on a regular luxury vessel but combined here into a single audience chamber. As had been the case outside, the interior was dripping with gold leaf and baroque woodwork. A crimson carpet the thickness and consistency of a well-maintained lawn stretched from wall to wall. It had sweeping staircases, a gaudy fountain, and windows in all the wrong places. It offended Tyvian’s eyes, so he looked instead at Gethrey, with his blue hair and ship-hat, whose appearance he found marginally less painful.
Artus and Brana were there. Artus was seated on big fluffy cushions and sipping some kind of wine from overlarge wineglasses. “Hey there, Tyv!” Artus said, his speech mildly slurred. “Join the party!”
Brana said nothing—he was curled into a ball, asleep. In his human shroud, this made it look a lot like he was dead. His tongue was hanging out at an odd angle, too, which completed the illusion.
Gethrey grinned at Tyvian and waggled a finger at him. “Having me followed, eh? Do you really think so little of me? You must have known I’d notice!” He let himself sink into another giant cushion-chair.
Tyvian shrugged. “The thought crossed my mind, but I had to be sure.”
Gethrey snapped his fingers and one of his servants stepped forward with a bottle of wine for Tyvian to inspect.
Tyvian inspected it—it was a Kholdris ’16, arguably one of the most expensive wines in existence. It wasn’t for drinking, though—it was expensive because it was the last year this Verisi vintage grown by a pirate king on his own private island had been harvested before the Akrallian fleet burned the entirety of the island to ash and salted the earth. It was a collector’s item. Tyvian was horrified, therefore, to see that the servan
t had a corkscrew stuffed in his belt.
“Had to be sure of what?” Gethrey asked. He waved to another servant—a big lout who barely fit in his livery, who dragged a cushion out of a trunk and deposited it behind Tyvian, completing the circle of sleeping gnoll, drunk boy, and tasteless fop. “Sit, please. I’ll have the wine poured.”
Tyvian winced. “That would be fine, thank you.” He sat, removing Chance and laying it carefully beside him. The cushion had been perfumed, so the act of sitting enveloped him in a noxious fume of flower petals and plant extracts.
Artus giggled. “Isn’t that cool? It, like, makes you smell flowery!”
Tyvian grimaced. “I’ve encountered it before.” He left out where, though, which was in middle-rate Illini whorehouses.
Gethrey kept grinning at Tyvian as his lummox of a servant pried the cork from the bottle of Kholdris with all the grace of a bear with a crowbar. The man tossed the cork out a porthole and sloshed the wine into two expensive crystal glasses. When Gethrey got his, he stuffed his nose inside and inhaled deeply, as though he intended to go for a dive in the stuff. “Ahhh . . . the smell of history, don’t you agree?”
Tyvian sniffed his own wine cautiously. It had clearly passed its peak—he smelled something that singed his nostrils and not much more. “I must confess to not spending much time smelling history, Geth. Now, I sense a sales pitch coming on—what is it?”
“Ah-ah!” Gethrey held up one finger. “Not before you answer my question—you had me followed because you had to be sure of what?”
Tyvian looked around the room and sighed—no point putting it off any longer. “If you, Gethrey Andolon, were in the employ of the Mute Prophets.”
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